#I also can’t describe how fucking funny it is to see this zooming around on the floor and running into walls

[cock-cage-of-mensis]

Rom the Vacuum-ous Spider

#bloodborne #bloodborne memes #rom the vacuous spider #I’m very proud of myself for this one #I also can’t describe how fucking funny it is to see this zooming around on the floor and running into walls

[mrssimply]

6th: Heat

I decided to do a fic advent calendar this year, and idea that was given to me by Bones a.k.a Riots from the Totentanz Discord Server.

You can find the prompt list here.

Every fic will be posted on my AO3 Account here.

This prompt was given to me by @m-lter again :D. Her prompt was: "Johnny/V/Kerry and sexual comedy? Just ridiculous or stupid situations happening to them before, during or after having sex. Anything that might be embarrassing and funny to look back on."

If I were to describe this fic in one sentence I would say: it gets hot before it gets hot.

Mind the cut, because we dive pretty fast into the smut ;p

When Kerry gets home after a long meeting with the label, his only wish is for a drink, and the sweet Blow Spector provides him that makes him float blissfully for hours.

He groans when he sees the Porsche parked in front of the Villa: he loves his inputs, but they’re also high maintenance, and today he has no patience. Together, they get into a lot of crazy shenanigans, be it jobs of just having a drive in the badlands, and if at least one of them doesn’t come home bruised they consider it a bad day.

Sometimes, Kerry really feels the age difference between them. More than half the time, it makes him feel young and alive, because he’s never been happier than now even if there are still some bad days. The rest of the time he feels like the unfortunate owner of a puppy and a feral cat yapping, hissing and zooming after one another. 

He enters the house wondering how he will find them. Maybe with bloody teeth, grinning at each other as they clean themselves, happy to have bested gang members or corpo armies. Or maybe making a mess on the couches while eating pizza, Johnny trying to steal V’s and V hoarding his with mean eyes. Kerry doesn’t know if it’s a leftover from his time on the streets, but V really turns into a wild animal when someone tries to take his food. 

Another option is to find them mid-fuck, because they’re young and constantly horny, especially Johnny. Hell, Kerry has a great libido for a man his age, but now he likes to savor one great orgasm more than a series of average ones, so it’s good there are two of them because they clearly need all their stamina to get him what he wants. And in between, they can play with each other while he recovers from mind blowing climaxes.

It all works well in the end.

The house is mostly silent, which is surprising. Maybe they are napping, because they didn’t sleep last night, going from the club where they partied directly on a job in the wee hours of morning, riding on a wave of stims and coffee while Kerry made his way back home to luxuriate in his giant bed. They had to buy a new one, cause Kerry likes to sprawl while he sleeps, and the other two are no better.

Getting rid of his boots, he detours by the kitchen for a drink of water — because his body is a temple — and then decides to take a shower. After that, since the mansion is still silent, he hikes up the stairs to the bedroom and indeed, they’re sprawled naked on the sheets. The setting sun bathes them in orange and pink hues that reflect on their cyberware. Johnny’s new arm is sleeker and shinier, and under the bright warm light, it looks like molten bronze.

Curled around each other, they look peaceful, so Kerry gently lowers himself on the bed, careful not to wake them up. No such luck. Dark irises snap open and blink twice, a third time, before focusing on him. V’s face does that really cute thing where it lights up into a beaming smile. It makes Kerry feel so loved when he does that. 

“Hey,” V mouths and Kerry can’t resist bending towards him to land a soft kiss on his stretched lips. V hums, licks the spot that has just been kissed and tilts his head for more.

Lazily, Kerry gives him what he wants between teasing bites. Soon, he has the young merc whining and keening in frustration, straining for more contact. Behind him, Johnny shifts, groans, curls up tighter against his back before relaxing. Kerry glances at him before shuffling closer to let V have him more fully. The merc doesn’t hesitate, he takes: He pulls Kerry in by his nape and hungrily licks into his mouth with a satisfied noise.

Half a minute later, they’re grinding against each other, Kerry’s thigh pressed between V’s legs as the young man continues to devour him. They both feel Johnny stir awake. Slowly, like a cat, he stretches, tension making him shiver before he relaxes with a long grunt. Then, his attention perks up when he discovers what they’re doing. 

The other two pause, V glancing at him over his shoulder.

“Look who came back!”

Johnny hums, still not totally awake and Kerry chuckles, brushes a lock of hair behind his ear, only for his hand to be caught gently, and his wrist kissed. 

Impatiently, V brings Kerry’s attention back to him, moving to slot them tighter so he can rut against Kerry’s thigh harder. Harder is also what his cock is becoming by the minute, making Kerry huffs in mock exasperation.

“Oh c’mon, you can’t complain, you started it,” V whines.

“I’m not complaining, and I didn’t start it, I just kissed you,” Kerry replies between two soft caresses of lips against his.

“Yeah, exactly,” V concludes before rolling on top of Kerry to properly thrust against him. They both moan and Kerry spreads his legs to welcome V into the cradle of his loins. Kerry is not even halfway hard, but he can probably get behind the program sooner rather than later. The merc pushes on his forearms and pants softly against his mouth as he rocks against him.

Next to them, Johnny is yawning as he watches them, eyes blinking lazily like he’s still hesitating between sleep and what they’re offering. He pushes on his chrome arm to look at them better and licks his dry lips. 

Kerry mischievously winks at him and grinds up against V, making him shiver and whine under Johnny’s attentive eyes. The merc snaps his hips down and catches Kerry’s hair in one hand like a warning.

“Stop that or I’ll fuck you hard and fast.”

“Such a threat,” Kerry comments sarcastically.

“What, you don’t want it slow and tender like the old romantic rocker you are?”

“I’m not old!”

V just grins at him and cuts any complaint with another kiss. That one is languid, deep and teasing alternatively and he doesn’t stop until Kerry is shivering and straining to get more. With a chuckle that rumbles through his chest, V leans back.

“So, how do you want it? Want us to take turns filling you up? Make you come only when you can’t take it anymore?” he whispers just loud enough for Johnny to hear it. Predictably, the man groans in approval and moves to kneel up.

Kerry smiles and brushes his thumbs against V’s temples.

“Yeah, do that. Use me until I forget how much I fucking hate meetings with my label.”

Johnny snorts behind V, his chrome hand drifting from between the merc’s shoulders downward, stopping just on his tailbone. V arches his back in invitation.

“Not that easy, you hate them pretty hard,” the resurrected rocker says.

“Then try your best.”

Johnny shrugs with a cocky smile, and the look is as infuriating as it is hot on his face. Meanwhile, V has gone from kissing Kerry’s jaw to his pectorals, biting and sucking his nipples one after the other until they’re stiff. He takes his time, teasing, making detours only to come back for another taste. It works really great on Kerry, who is arching and pushing up against him with a whine.

“I want you to fuck him while he fucks me,” the superstar declares when Johnny has coated his hand with lube. V shivers and keens before nodding enthusiastically. “ I want you to make him come inside me, and continue fucking him until you’re right on the edge.”

“And come inside you,” Johnny guesses. He knows Kerry pretty well by now: he is a glutton for attention. He needs to have all hands, all mouths, all cocks and every drop of cum on him.

“‘xactly.”

“You’re becoming predictable,” Johnny comments casually, like his cock didn’t twitch hard at the suggestion. His skin is flushed, and his movements are jerkier due to the impatience, so Kerry just grins at him.

When Johnny starts teasing V’s rim with a finger, the merc moans and starts sucking on Kerry’s tit harder, biting it until it nearly hurts before relenting and licking it with the tip of his tongue. They’re both moving in sync, rocking leisurely against one another.

Kerry feels the tension rise inside of V, and inside of Johnny by ricochet. They’re still very much attuned, sometimes it feels like they’re still sharing a mind. Biting his lip, Johnny slaps V’s cheek with his free hand, the chrome one, making the merc jerk forward with a gutted moan. He curves his back, presents his ass to Johnny for another one, which he receives on the same cheek. Kerry doesn’t let him get distracted from his worship of his nipples, bringing his mouth back on the other.  They both moan when V bites it as another slaps echoes in the room.

“Fuck, enough,” Johnny growls after yet another slap, taking his fingers back to coat his dick. He throws the lube to Kerry with a meaningful look before grabbing V’s hips, pulling him on all four. 

“Oh yeah,” the merc approves, now at the perfect level to suck Kerry’s cock. It derails the superstar from his own preparation, but V has such a talented mouth it would be a shame not to use it. The young man moans around the hard shaft as Johnny penetrates him with a few little thrusts, followed by a long final one. He curses as he bottoms out and stills, pretending to give V a moment to adjust where they all know Johnny just loves the sensation of being buried deep into them, the first penetration being always particularly intense for him.

He starts moving, angling his hips just right until V can’t concentrate on what he’s doing and just pants wetly above Kerry’s cock, sometimes giving it a little lick. Chuckling, the musician retakes the lube, this time to prepare himself. The tube feels strange in his hand, and when he opens it, a strong smell of wintergreen and eucalyptus fills the air. He looks down at it and freezes.

“Fuck, stop!” he tells his inputs. Johnny groans and his hands momentarily tighten over V’s hips, expressing his reluctance at the idea of stopping, but V, always the obedient one, stills.

He frowns when he sees Kerry’s expression.

“That’s not lube, Johnny!” The musician informs them with wide eyes.

The man frowns, but now that he’s not moving inside V, he can tell something is not totally right.

“You used the massage oil for V’s shoulder sprain!” Kerry continues, pushing them off him.

It’s a medical massage cream, full of relaxing and heating products, and as such, it has a warming effect vastly superior to what’s recommended for the sensitive parts they used it on.

V’s eyes widens as he finally registers the sensation of heat spreading inside of him, but not the good sensual kind, more like a rash. Johnny looks frozen on the spot, looking at his hand like he can see the powerful herbal essences spreading on him. He can certainly feel them as his cock starts to burn.

“Go wash it off!” Kerry orders and watches them scramble up. They are ridiculous, still hard, running down the stairs to get to the bathroom with twin grimaces on their faces. As they disappear, Kerry feels laughter buble inside of him.

When it starts, he’s helpless to stop as he replays their stricken expressions in his mind. He wishes he could have taken a picture. After a moment, when he has his laughter more or less under control, he gets up to follow them.

In the shower, they’re throwing accusations at each other.

“Why did you left it there, right next to the fucking lube?!” Johnny growls as he angles his cock under the spray.

“Coudn’t you just use your eyes, fuck it burns!” V whines, fingers deep in his ass and trying to get the oil out. 

“Shit, it feels worse and worse!”

“Yeah well, it gets stronger the more you rub it in,” V explains, “and you rubbed it inside of me alright with your fucking cock, god I really hate your cock.”

For once, Johnny doesn’t have a retort, he just winces.

Kerry really tries to contain his hilarity, but it’s hopeless when Johnny starts shifting from one foot to the other. He just can’t, when V is now bent all the way, trying to expose his hole to the shower spray.

They both glare at him, but he doesn’t care and lets out another guffaw.

“I’m sorry,” he tries to say between two hiccups.

“Fuck you, Kerry,” they say in unisson and the rocker decides to leave the room to try and be nice. 

He’s not out for long, though.

“Kerry! Kerry I think Johnny is having an allergic reaction!”

Kerry accompanies the doc to the door and exchanges pleasantries with her for a moment before shutting the door as she gets into her cab. He rests his head against the frame for a moment before snickering. 

Now that the crisis is managed, he can enjoy the comic of the situation in peace.

Johnny’s cock truly achieved epic proportions: it doubled in size, colored in an angry red that looked really painful, and apparently was. A few good jokes wafted through Kerry’s mind as he watched the doctor’s hands on it while she did her examination. For once, having a pretty woman’s hands on his cock did nothing to Johnny. He refused to look at it the whole time, like he was vexed that the thing had failed him like this.

Kerry remembers when, as he called the doc, Johnny cried out about how it was gonna explode, and lets out another burst of laughter. He replays in his mind the way V panicked, still dealing with his own burning asshole, and went to the fridge to take ice cubes before pouring them over Johnny’s lap.

The man jumped in reaction, throwing ice cubes everywhere and promptly punching V in the face, nearly knocking him out. It was, he explained later, a knee jerk reaction and not a conscious action but V still glared at him, an ice pack over his black eye.

Kerry bites his hand to stifle his giggles and takes another minute to compose himself before hiking back upstairs to the lounge where Johnny and V elected residence for the time being. Apparently, they couldn’t quite get back to the bed, yet.

They’re both sprawled on bean bags, legs open wide out like manspreading is back in fashion. V is sort of crouching, knees against his chest in a way that reminds Kerry of those dramatic summers back in the 20’s when people tried to tan their assholes. Johnny has both hands behind his head to prevent himself from touching his cock. It’s back to its normal size but it’s still quite red. The doc said it would be fine in no time, no complications, and that the redness is just due to the inflammation, but the cream she diligently put on him ought to deal with that within a few hours. 

They’re both scowling and looking at the view of Night City like it has personally offended them. Taking pity on them, Kerry comes closer and lands a kiss on V’s forehead before going to Johnny.

“Do you wanna watch something? I could bring the laptop,” he offers.

They don’t reply, and their melancholic states seem to deepen, which only makes him laugh again with fondness. They both glare at him.

“Aw, c’mon, it was funny.”

“I nearly lost my cock,” Johnny says, forcing Kerry to really bite on his cheek because he sounds absolutely serious.

“I’m traumatized for life,” V adds with a haunted expression. 

With a sigh, Kerry sits on the couch behind them, trying to be supportive and utterly failing. A minute later, he’s texting Rogue and Nancy about it, and they find it just as hilarious as he does.

#fic advent calendar #my writting #Johnny x V #Silver V #Silverdyne #silverVdyne #Kerry x V #Johnny x Kerry #johnny silverhand #kerry eurodyne #male V #cyberpunk 2077 #cp2077

[onlydylanobrien]

Dylan O'Brien - NME Magazine Interview

Dylan O’Brien: “I was in this transitional phase – close to a quarter-life crisis”

From YA heartthrob to legitimate leading man – how the 'Maze Runner' star hit his stride after a whirlwind decade

Definitely!” hoots Dylan O’Brien when NME asks if he still has to audition. “I’m not Tom fucking Hanks, bro.” He’s clearly amused by our question, but forgive us for thinking the 29-year-old actor gets cast on reputation alone. A decade into his career, and he’s making an impressive transition from teen TV star and YA franchise hero to charismatic leading man.

New York-born O’Brien cut his teeth on MTV’s hit Teen Wolf series, before landing the lead in the Maze Runner film trilogy based on James Dashner’s hugely popular novels. Leading a band of bright young things that included ex-Skins tearaway Kaya Scodelario, Game Of Thrones’ Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Will Poulter, he honed his craft while racking up nearly a billion dollars at the box office. “My career is a constant acting class,” says O’Brien. “To be able to do the Maze Runner movies simultaneously with Teen Wolf was amazing in terms of getting in reps and working my [acting] muscle.”

Now for the sometimes tricky bit. Many actors struggle with the post-breakout period, but O’Brien is making it look easy so far. This year’s Netflix hit Love and Monsters proved he can carry an old-school family adventure, and new film Flashback (out next week) reveals an appetite for weirder, more cerebral work. He stars as Fred Fitzell, a young man reluctant to buckle down to life as a nine-to-fiver with a boring corporate job and a long-term girlfriend (Mindhunter‘s Hannah Gross). When he runs into a freaky-looking acquaintance from his teenage years, Fred becomes obsessed with finding an old high-school friend he used to drop a mind-bending experimental drug called Mercury with. It’s difficult to say any more without entering spoiler territory, but Flashback is a wild ride underpinned by the idea that we can exist in several realities at once. Even if you follow every plot twist, you might not fully understand the end. “Oh, it’s definitely a headfuck,” O’Brien agrees. “There’s not totally an answer to figure out. There’s a lot of different things that people can take from it.”

Speaking over Zoom from his LA home, O’Brien is bright, thoughtful and really good fun to talk to, especially when he relaxes into the interview, but he clearly knows where his line between public and private lies. When he first read the Flashback script, written by the film’s director Christopher MacBride, his “mind was blown” by just how much he related to Fred. “I felt like I was in this transitional phase of my life that was, you know, sort of close to a quarter-life crisis type thing,” he says. “For whatever reason, it was like me and this script were meant to be. I remember reading it and thinking: ‘I am this guy right now.'”

“There were a lot of things in my personal life that were neglected for a while”

When we ask why O’Brien felt as though he had reached a “transitional phase”, he gives an answer that’s vague but not exactly evasive. For understandable reasons, he doesn’t mention the incredibly traumatic motorcycle accident he sustained while shooting the final Maze Runner film in March 2016. O’Brien suffered severe trauma to the brain and said in 2017 that he underwent extensive facial reconstructive surgery after the accident “broke most of the right side of my face”. Tellingly, he’s never really revealed what happened on set or how it affected him.

Today, O’Brien dances around the details of the accident and other issues he was dealing with at the time, but doesn’t shy away from discussing his inner conflict. “You know, it was a lot of personal things combined with at-a-point-in-my-career things,” he says after a brief pause. He says he’d have been going through some of this stuff anyway, simply because of his age, but it sounds as though success intensified it all. “It was like this whole fucking storm of shit,” he continues. “I was simultaneously so fulfilled and happy about these, like, otherworldly and surreal things that I had experienced in terms of where my career had brought me. I had all this confidence and fulfilment and beautiful people [in my life] – such amazing things to experience at a young age. But at the same time, there were a lot of things in my personal life that were unchecked and sort of neglected for a while.”

O’Brien says that in time, he realised he had to “stop for a second” and “re-explore how I wanted my life to look going forward”. In fairness, you can see why he needed a breather: his career took off while he was still a teenager. After his family moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles County when he was 12, O’Brien contemplated a career as a sports broadcaster – his Twitter bio still bills him as a “no longer suffering Mets fan” – then began posting YouTube videos as moviekidd826. A funny, slickly edited skit titled ‘How to Prepare for the SAT in 45 seconds’, shared when he was just 17, shows he was a born performer and storyteller. YouTube success led to him getting a manager, but his breakthrough role in Teen Wolf still came out of the blue. At the time, he was treading water at a local community college and taking auditions on the side.

Still, he has since taken a rather fatalistic view of this career-making moment. “It’s totally weird because, when I think about it now, I don’t see how it could have happened any other way. I can’t picture myself doing anything else now,” he told Collider in 2011. “It was really sudden and a little random, and not provoked by anything. It was just out of nowhere. It wasn’t my intentional doing.” Today, O’Brien summarises his skyscraper career trajectory succinctly. “I guess I just graduated high school and started acting,” he says. “And then I felt like I was just flying by the seat of my pants and never got a chance to stop.” Thankfully, straight-out-the-blocks Hollywood success hasn’t taken away his sense of perspective. When I say how easy social media makes it to compare yourself unfavourably to others, O’Brien jumps in: “Yeah, that’s very true. I was watching the Billie Eilish doc the other day, and I was like, I’ve done nothing. I’m not an artist at all!”

“No one thought ‘Love and Monsters’ was going to be good!”

O’Brien is also self-deprecating when he talks about being cast in Flashback, suggesting it happened because he had such an intense connection with Fred. “I was honestly like, ‘Who is watching me right now?’ That is the best way I can describe how I was feeling when I came across this script,” he says. “Chris [MacBride, director] and I had this conversation that went so well in terms of [my] understanding this script that I think he’d sent around a lot and [that] very commonly wasn’t understood. I think Chris has even said that the night before shooting, he suddenly had this thought, like, ‘Wait, do I even think he’s a good actor?'”

Though O’Brien has firmly ring-fenced elements of his private life, he’s actually pretty frank about his acting vehicles. He readily admits he was expecting a snobbish response to Love and Monsters, a CGI-heavy hybrid of post-apocalyptic action and romcom that dropped on Netflix in April and topped the streamer’s daily most-watched list. “It means so much that Love and Monsters has gotten the response that it’s gotten,” O’Brien says. “No one thought this movie was going to be good.” His blunt honesty makes me laugh out loud. “No one did though!” he says in response. “And so, fuck that. You know, most of the people who say something to me about the movie, they’re like: ‘I watched Love and Monsters, and it was… good?’ And honestly, that just cracks me up.” For obvious reasons, we hastily decide not to share our response to the film – namely, that it was a whole lot better than expected.

In Love and Monsters, O’Brien plays Joel, a survivor of a so-called “monsterpocalypse” that has bumped humans to the bottom of the food chain. Though he’s known in his colony as a bit of a coward, Joel sets off on a treacherous 80-mile journey to find his high school sweetheart Aimee (Iron Fist‘s Jessica Henwick), which means evading the hungry clutches of various supersize grizzlies including a giant monster-frog hiding in a suburban pond. It’s a simple but pretty out-there premise that wouldn’t work if O’Brien’s performance was even slightly condescending. Instead, his unselfconscious sincerity really sells a film that has as much in common with the family-oriented Robin Williams movie Night at the Museum as darker fare like The Walking Dead.

His obvious affection for the project really comes across during our interview today. “When I read the script, I just thought it was so sweet and funny and smart and unique, but at the same time reminiscent of all these movies that don’t really get made any more,” he says. That’s a fair point: Love and Monsters is neither a fail-safe superhero movie nor a slice of classy Oscar bait. “And when they were talking about how to market this movie, it was so funny hearing all these conversations like, ‘How do we actually get people to watch it?'” he adds. “But that’s a big part of the reason I wanted to do this movie: because it felt like something I missed seeing.”

“I’m lucky to be surrounded by people who want to make something out of love”

So in a way, Love and Monsters was a risk for an actor seeking to establish himself outside of a bankable movie franchise and a hit TV show. O’Brien has only made four films since his final Maze Runner outing in 2018, and insists he hasn’t been tactical with his choices. “I don’t have anyone saying, ‘We need to get you in an Oscar vehicle’, or any of that kind of shit,” he says. “I’m really lucky to be surrounded by people who think like me: that you should do what you’re drawn to, and make something out of love.”

He’s recently finished shooting a mysterious crime thriller called The Outfit in London with Mark Rylance. Directed and co-written by Graham Moore, who won an Oscar for his screenplay to Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game, O’Brien calls it “quite possibly one of the most special pieces of writing I’ve ever experienced”. He first read the script on a plane and says he “actually stood up and clapped” when he got to the end. Considering O’Brien probably wasn’t flying Ryanair, this reaction presumably attracted a few baffled glances.

Anyway, it must be pretty intimidating walking onto set with Rylance, a multi-award-winning actor revered by his peers – Al Pacino once said he “speaks Shakespeare as if it was written for him the night before” – but it sounds as though O’Brien took it all in stride. He says he’s confident in his abilities, but admits to having a slight wobble whenever he begins a new project. “I’m always sort of re-questioning everything – like, ‘Can I even act?'” he says. “But I think there’s something very natural about that. I think even Rylance could relate to that feeling. Acting is like starting a new year at school every single time.”

At this point in his career, O’Brien has made peace with the fact that some people will have preconceptions about him based on what he’s known for: Maze Runner and Teen Wolf. “People will put you in a box no matter what,” he says. “There was definitely a time when that would get to me, especially when it felt like somebody had a perspective on me that in my soul, I just felt wasn’t accurate.” Still, there’s no doubt he wants to show us what’s really in his soul with more films like Flashback. “If anything,” he adds bullishly, “it just makes me think: ‘Right, I’m really gonna show them now’.”

‘Flashback’ is out on digital platforms from June 4

#dylan o'brien #love and monsters press #flashback press #the outfit press

[pollenat]

RED VELVET and A secret romance with their gang’s rival

➛ Note: Obviously, gang!au. These scenes are super random and not exactly as long as others, but I had this in my drafts for a while now, didn’t feel like completely discarding the work I’ve already done.

IRENE

Joohyun’s body moves on its own, her mind still asleep. Otherwise she wouldn’t have (or maybe she would) turned and reached for the other side of the bed. The lack of a body disturbs her awake.

She’s not home, though the bedroom is far from alien to her. The contents of shelves, the number of stains on the rug, the location of small holes in the walls - she already knows them by heart. Something she’s proud of, but shouldn’t share with others.

Lonely, perhaps scared of the word’s meaning, she calls for you. Usually, you’re fast to drop everything for her. Whatever it may be, nothing seems as important as Joohyun. This morning you’re not running like crazy to learn her demands. A repeat of your name makes no difference.

An electric shock of nervousness makes her get up after long hesitation. This is a safe haven, somewhere the outside world can’t reach, and yet her mind comes up with only the worst of possibilities. Nude feet stomp down the wooden panels. The floor feels cold against her heels, but Joohyun doesn’t show any sign of discomfort. She makes a stop by her jeans, lazily discarded the previous day. Fingers tighten around the object pulled out of a pocket. The black surface gleams under a ray of sunshine. Its owner has enough experience to always expect the unexpected.

Close to the wall, she slides down the corridor. Quiet and eagle-eyed, she’s ready to notice the abnormalities. Her ears pick up the sound of ragged breathing first. Then she notices a silhouette reflecting in the tiles of a corridor.

“Why are you holding a gun?” You ask her, genuinely confused.

Joohyun scoffs, partially relieved, partially annoyed. It’s 7 a.m. and you’re opening a jar of pickles instead of sleeping in. She drops the weapon on a countertop. The sound that comes from the meeting of hard surfaces makes you cringe.

“I thought something happened. Why are you up and not in bed?” The frown turns into a pout as Joohyun hugs one of your arms.

“I just felt like eating some pickles-” Without another word, she grabs the jar you are struggling to get opened, and easily does what you couldn’t. “Here, open. Now let’s go back to bed!”

“I love it when you unload frustration on objects.”

“Yes, yes. I’m aware.” She doesn’t hand you back the jar. “Pickles will come later. Now, we’re going back to bed. You’ve got a lot of making up to do.”

You may have abandoned the snacks, but something about Joohyun’s strong pulling and a sweet smile tells you there are better things to do.

SEULGI

The night sky is dotted with stars, as if they were its pride - jewels decorating collarbones. Something poets have always described as dark, being light. Although you want to share that thought aloud, you don’t. Not because of embarrassment. Seulgi would never laugh at something you’re serious about. Your choice is led by the dreamy atmosphere of your evening.

The two of you are lying on a blanket, somewhere in the middle of a forest. An hour long ride away from the city. A spot you feel like asking Seulgi about.

In your peripheral vision you can see her face turned towards you. There’s a smile you must’ve somehow caused.

“What?” She hums, hand sneaking under yours. “You’re staring.”

“Can’t I?” Fingers tighten around each other for a moment, before you push yourself up to lean over her.

Seulgi’s smile is still adoring, though now it’s sunken in shy undertones. She’s like that with you only. Otherwise, everyone knows her as the scary right hand woman. Her boss would’ve shot you in the face, had they known how close you were. It’s the sweet adrenaline of forbidden romance for you. Now, smiling, your fingers curl around loose locks of her dark hair.

“So, how many people have you taken on a date here?”

“Believe it or not, you’re the first one.” She brings her hands up to play with laces hanging from your hoodie.

“Then how did you find out about this place?”

“You know, drove by. Was followed, so I hid here and figured its a pretty lovely place.” One of the laces curls around her finger, just like a strand of her hair around yours.

“And you thought of me? Aww, you’re a real romantic.”

She laughs shyly, embarrassed by the conversation. You don’t intend on playing around though. A kiss is enough to silence her laughter. Seulgi hums in enjoyment, her face now covered by the shadow of your silhouette. As you press yourself closer to her, the back of her gun, always pinned to the belt, pokes the inside of your thigh. It’s a strong sensation. One that’s bound to burst a bubble. Yes, you’re used to it, but for some reason it’s not the same as holding the weapon in your two hands.

“What’s wrong?” Seulgi asks, feeling that something’s not right.

“Nothing, just got lost in thoughts for a moment here.” But instead of leaning forward once more, you return to lying on the back.

WENDY

You’re smiling widely in anticipation. The door opens suddenly, but it’s not able to startle you.

“Are you crazy?!” Her voice drips with pure anger, but her eyes scream relief.

Without any second thoughts, you push her inside and cage her little silhouette in a tight embrace. Seungwan does a poor attempt at escaping. She’s aware it’s of no use. She needs the comforting gesture as much as you do.

“You could’ve at least texted me first.”

“I did, but you’ve never answered me.”

When you finally let her go, she pulls out a phone and then gives you a look of pure disbelief. You might’ve written the message on your way to her apartment, but in your defence, Seungwan is the type of person that always has her phone close.

“What if someone was here? What if others saw you? Do you ever stop for a moment to think?” She scoffs at your ridiculing smile.

“Oh come on. What’s life without a little bit of excitement?”

“Umm, a good life?” Seungwan states as a matter of fact, which makes you wanna laugh in her face. But not to spite her. Rather to show her how sweet her whole being seems to you.

Yes, you’re the blunt one in whatever your relationship is. You’re the one to be touchy, clingy, also the one to piss her off with how “little” you care about being caught.

“Babe, you really need to chill. I’ve got it all covered. Of course, unless someone decides to pay you sudden visit, but even if, then that’s not on me!”

Her feet don’t follow you inside the living room. Instead, she’s watching you make yourself comfortable from the hallway. Expression of annoyance still present, it’s only a matter of time before Seungwan joins you.

“Stop being grumpy and come to me! I need a hug!”

She secures the lock first, but eventually does as predicted - joins your side on the couch. There’s still doubt on her face which you’re not at all worried about. These moments with Seungwan are the only way for you to experience normality. It tastes of the woman’s favorite toothpaste, feels like a fluffy rug, sounds like scoffs and occasional laughter.

“The things I do for you.” There’s still anger in her gaze, though much gentler than the one that welcomed you few minutes earlier.

JOY

It lasts a moment. In just a matter of few innocent seconds, she turns from a blonde in over-sized clothes to the Sooyoung you know, but maybe that shouldn’t be said. The passenger side in your ride quickly goes from free to occupied, and you don’t even hesitate before pressing accelerator. A taxi driver you’ve pretty much almost hit, honks. Your ear registers a string of curses thrown at a “senseless fuck”. Unimportant - the window closes.

“So, I suppose it went well?”

Sooyoung is redoing her lips in the mirror. Bright red is stark on the canvas of fair complexion. The corner visible from your point of view turns upwards.

“It did. Your boss is rampaging tonight.”

“Eh.” Indifferent, you wave the image of the closest future away. “When is he not.”

Soonyoung finishes her makeup with a loud pop of lips. She’s no longer the cold Mrs. invisible you saw earlier. Now, she’s the version you’re the most familiar with - the happy-go-lucky girl that happens to be doing shady business on the side.

“Where are we going?” She leans over the armrest to stare at you. Her chin rests on a hand, like a child does when watching movies. “Or wait, don’t tell me! I want it to be a surprise!”

“In a few minutes you’ll change your mind again.” Without missing a beat (this time), you change lanes.

“Yeah, probably. And you won’t tell me either way.”

“That’s just how well we know one another.” Your smiles meet.

Soonyoung returns to her previous position, but leaves her arm behind. An open palm catches your attention. Fingers wiggle in anticipation. Amused, but in no position to reject them, you give in. Soonyoung’s grip is a strong one, full of need and comfort.

The car zooms through the city sunken in the remnants of a sunset. Pedestrians walk by, unaware that someone who should be behind bars is passing them. Same with the drivers. The thought makes your heart flutter from excitement. An overpowering feeling of having the world at your mercy causes you to put more pressure on accelerator. Soonyoung’s thumb caresses the side of your hand. Her red lips are a stable point on the blurry and constantly changing background.

YERI

Funny how the two of you live for the adrenaline.

“Isn’t it a bit risky?” You ask, swiping the corner of her lips with your thumb.

Yerim’s eyes follow, as you put the crimson colored tip in your own mouth. It humors her, and drives crazy at the same time.

“You love risky.” Neither of you address the tension, nor are oblivious to it.

Music may be blasting above you, but right now, here, by the bar, it’s just you two, a pair of bodies pressing at each other’s side without doing much more. Truth be told, the crowd is so busy with itself, you don’t know why you’re too hesitant to follow their lead, and join them with Yerim.

Your eyes meet again. These rendezvous that the two of you have every now and then are a rare occasion. Therefore, you always make an effort to take everything about the notorious Kim Yerim in, starting from the depth of her gaze, ending at the height of her heels. She’s a masterpiece, and your worst (best) rival, but not tonight. Tonight, she’s your alluring date.

Her head moves a little bit closer, pink lips opening to speak.

“Are you sure you don’t want to dance?” Yerim’s brows rise in a manner that could seem innocent to anyone else. But you know what she means, and you want to tease her a bit before eventually giving in.

“Why? Am I boring you with my wine?” Acting indifferent to her hand on your thigh, you grab a glass and sip on it.

She smirks knowingly, but sighs anyway. It’s all just an act to keep you going. Something of a roleplay - faking that you’re not putty in each other’s hands. The truth is much different. Had Yerim’s tone been stricter, you would have been the one to lead her onto dancefloor.

“What’s wrong with it?” Before Yerim gets a chance to respond, she makes a face of surprise, and pulls out her phone.

You don’t have to ask to get a gist of the situation. It’s business. As always.

Yerim meets your gaze with evident sadness. But that’s your line of work, and you’re not the one to keep someone from doing what they have to do.

“Just go.” You smile bitterly. “Before I try to steal your job.”

The kiss she gives you is too short, and too weak for your liking.

“I’ll text you later.”

➛ pollenat’s list of headcanons

➛ pollenat’s list of shorts

➛ pollenat’s list of scenarios

#nobody: ... me: here have this super random collection of random scenes that don't make any sense #kpop fanfic #kpop scenarios #kpop imagines #kpop gang au #kpop au #red velvet fanfic #red velvet scenarios #red velvet imagines #red velvet gang au #red velvet au #rv fanfic #rv scenarios #rv imagines #rv gang au #rv au

[badlydrawnmanic]

you’ve all wanted it, and i’m not ready to go to sleep yet, so here’s the latest installment of the sonic underground rewatch!

episode 6 thoughts under the cut!

• unrelated to the episode but there was some lego ninjago commercial that showed like. non-lego versions of the main characters and it looked nice. don’t know if it was for a show or the website idk i wasn’t paying attention • [GUITAR RIFF] SONIC- • i will literally never get tired of the opening theme and you can’t change my mind, i would die for a remaster of this. it doesn’t even have to be a cover. gimme a live performance and i will cry • “tangled webs”. spider concerns already • ooh, swatbot factory. interesting • manic just slid down a little rocky hill on his ass and that’s gotta hurt • sonia stop shining that laser pointer in manic’s eyes you’re gonna kill him • “switch six, switch six...” reminded me of the fun fact that your brain can only identify numbers up to a maximum of 4 or 5 at a glance, i forget which. but like... notice how if you only look at something very briefly you wouldn’t be able to immediately know “oh there’s 27 objects there” but you can very quickly identify 1-4 • sonia stop hitting manic with the drone what is wrong with you • some of these background characters are passable and some of them are hideous, there’s no in-between

• oh it’s the lion boy!! his voice is weird but it’s him!! • god dingo’s face is all kinds of fucked up in this close up as he’s talking • why is robotnik’s cape flowing so far behind him when he’s walking at a somewhat slow pace • i find it funny when eggman’s henchmen mock him when he’s not around, but i didn’t expect sleet to do that • “intruder .8 kilograms? what?? • how does it weigh a drone that is hovering in mid-air • somehow dingo identifies the drone as being piloted by sonia despite it being a hunk of metal with cameras on it • dingo being or looking like in the case of my headcanon a grown man and slobbering over sonia is kinda freaky (it’s partially why i made the hc so it’s less yikes but it’s still uncomfortable and i’m definitely gonna tone it down because fuck) • sleet don’t hit him!! • sonia is clearly frustrated during her conversation with manic (he’s being reckless as fuck) but the animators decided to give her a dead eyed smile for the whole scene • i wonder how they made the mechanical sounds? like the electronic shweeshweeshwee of the robots walking or the whoosh of doors opening? foley stuff is fascinating to me and i wanna know if they had to do any weird shit

• sleet is monologuing about how he hears the pitter patter of manic’s little feet and oh my god his eyes • how is dingo sneaking up behind manic he’s so fucking huge and noisy • sleet says “sylvia” before whacking the drone out of the air with what looks like an entire swatbot he just sort of picked up? i don’t get the reference and since when is he so strong • okay in the next shot it’s just an arm but still • “sometimes you just have to get their attention”? • cool transition between scenes with the camera glitching and shutting down from the perspective of the drone, that’s neat • dingo picks up sonia but wasn’t he just behind manic? once again the pacing is confusing me • “oh, ick” me too sonia • manic and sonia are tied up and were but in gigantic chairs and it looks so funny • “now, sarah” okay i get the “sylvia” thing now, sleet’s just forgetting sonia’s name somehow • sonia says “twit-face” and i feel like she could be more clever than that • “whatever, sophia” • “where’s sonic!?” [NYOOM] • sonic’s voice sounds... really weird, is that what jaleel white sounds like when he isn’t trying to sound all nasally and shit? also he burps and it’s gross • god the movement in this scene is very janky in general • sonia starts lecturing sonic but gets interrupted by a laser blast and manic pipes in like “can we talk about this later?” • sonia strong • is sonic just spilling lava everywhere??? • you’d think there’d be more sounds here • “am i good or what?” feels like it was pulled from satam? • “you’re insufferable” “thank you” • sonia’s voice is so shrill jesus christ • i feel like this is a pretty good confrontation of how sonic not working as a team with the other two can cause pretty significant problems • sonia i don’t think robotnik would throw you in prison, that’s what the roboticizer is for and i don’t think he’d keep y’all separate from that • cyrus does a weird double take and i think it’s an animation error • this cyrus kid is pretty sus- who is this hippie dude- • CYRUS SUS CYRUS SUS • there was deadass just a normal animal bird with some kind of accessory on its neck as a background character • damn it cyrus • SONG TIME??? • apparently no • once again manic and sonia are tied up which lasts 2 seconds • aosth slow-mo beam, purple flavor • what are these background characters they’re so ugly • OH NO I REMEMBER WHAT SANCTUARY IS NOW • children... i’d love to see the tiny babes but they’re undoubtedly ugly as fuck • ROBOTNIK WANTS TO MURDER CHILDREN • one of the kids looks like reptar • SONG TIME NOW • why is this so. idk, whimsical? idk how to describe this but i already don’t like it • they forgot to draw manic’s head quills in a shot • why is cyrus looking so pissed at these children • sounds like a weird off brand christmas song. don’t like it very much but i guess it isn’t bad. maybe a 2/10 • sdnjksg assaulting your siblings with a cloud of flour sounds fun if not wasteful but still, manic seems to be enjoying his little tech demo • sonia says “this place is gross” and manic goes “hey, you’re talking about my childhood home” and i think it’s a good thing that the show didn’t just forget where they all came from and how this can create very minor conflict between them? like manic and sonia seem to slight each other rather frequently when it comes to sonia’s attitude towards dirty places and manic finding it comfortable there due to familiarity even if it wasn’t all that good. i can relate to that • sonic walks off the right side of the screen after refusing some goggles then. pops up and puts on the shades again? i don’t get it • oh my god sonic knocks cyrus (and manic by extension) over and they literally just. rotate the asset in place and leave them planking. there wasn’t a water splash or change of pose or anything • how does sonic zoom past a swat bot looking directly at him without triggering any alarms? why didn’t it notice him • why are there so many regretful traitors on this show • how does sonic not notice the clearly a hologram man in front of him • god the animation in this episode in general is abyssmal • ah jeez manic and sonia have been captured again • “attention sonic hedgehog” • OH NO CYRUS’ DAD but the expression he made in response to seeing him roboticized killed it

• i know he didn’t snort here but i can feel the little “snrk” sound here. it was at this moment he knew he fucked up • PULL THE LEVER, SLEET • that little drone thing is fucking insane, it melted the entire roboticizer?? • i much prefer when background characters resemble actual animals • aww hug • poor cyrus :( • GOD SONIC AND SONIA SIT DOWN TO COMFORT HIM BUT MANIC LAYS DOWN ALL DRAMATIC JUST SMILING, READ THE ROOM BUD-

#sonic underground #ooc #not an ask #sonic underground rewatch!

[radramblog]

Halo Through its Guns: Halo 3

This and the last one were actually the articles I was least sure about when thinking this whole series up. A bit awkward, considering it makes it look a bit one-hit-wondery. Unlike the franchise it describes.

Halo 3 was another big step up in complexity from its predecessors. Everything gets to look and sound bigger and better, what with the shift in console generation increasing audiovisual fidelity and how much shit the game could be running at once. Processing power, that’s the term I was looking for.

This coupled with the grand finale to the Halo Trilogy, something that is kinda funny to think about this many games later. But because of that, Bungie wanted to make sure this game was more bombastic than ever, with so much more stuff going on, and much of this effort paid off.

However, Halo 3 also hits a bit of a stumbling block on account of all that new Stuff. It’s one that would be corrected, then perfected, and then doubled down on as the series progressed.

But that’s well and truly ahead of ourselves. This is Halo 3 through it’s gun: The Spike Rifle.

Brutal.

If you’re somehow reading this and don’t know Halo 2/3’s plot, hello and also, what? But Halo 3 takes place after the Schism, a civil war within the Covenant in which the Jiralhanae (Brutes) replace the Sangheili (Elites) within the hierarchy and the latter start getting massacred. This means two things: one, you’re going to be fighting a lot of Brutes in this game. And two, you aren’t going to be fighting a lot of Elites in this game. Excluding Flood-infected ones, in fact, you don’t fight any.

Halo 2 gave the Brutes somewhat of a distinct flavour, seeing as they had to be distinguished from the Elites who were also enemies you were fighting, sometimes in the same level. They soaked up automatic fire like a sponge, were vulnerable to headshotting once you popped off their helmet, and would occasionally get pissed off and barrel towards you, furry fists at the ready.

Their weapons carried this further, but in 2 there really weren’t very many of them. I’d argue the Brute Plasma Rifle doesn’t really count, though the parallel is fun (higher fire rate but it overheats quicker- it’s an “angrier” gun), and Tartarus’s own Fist of Rukt isn’t exactly something you get to play around with. There was, however, the Brute Shot, a huge grenade launcher with a wicked bayonet built into the stock, a relatively powerful weapon befitting the stature of the big monkes. It was the Brute Shot whose aesthetic carried over to the following game.

The Spike Rifle (or just Spiker) is one of the new Brute-held weapons included with Halo 3. It’s an automatic, dual-wieldable projectile weapon whose spikes embed themselves in object and foe alike. Unlike the alien purple and pink of the Needler, the Spiker is a dull gunmetal and brown that feels akin to a human weapon, were it not for the twin bayonets and the, well, shooting fucking spikes at people.

The aesthetic of the Spiker and its companions in the Brute arsenal, the Brute Shot, Mauler, Gravity Hammer, and Spike Grenade (we’re just going to ignore the Firebomb) as well as the new vehicles they bring to Halo 3 perfectly suit the feel of the Brutes. These weapons are pragmatic and classless, with literally all of the guns having bayonets (including the Gravity Hammer!) and having magazine-based reloads. They’re simple, from both a design and gameplay perspective, but they server to seriously distinguish the Brutes from both the Elite enemies in previous games as well as the Grunt, Jackal, and Drone underlings they command over.

The Spiker is a standby of the lower-ranked Brutes, much like the Plasma Rifle was of the Elites previous. From this, however, stems part of the first issue with their handling in Halo 3. As much as they were unique in 2, Halo 3 doesn’t have Elites to balance them off of, and it seems the development team wanted to maintain that core enemy deployment structure that worked so well in the previous games. What this means is that the Brutes in this game are kind of just Elites most of the time, seeing as they play very similarly and have been given energy shields. There are subtle differences- Brutes can’t regenerate their shields, and they’re much more likely to rush you and attack in melee. Higher-ranking members, such as Chieftains, can actually shrug off a headshot after their shields break as their helmets stay on, and the new Equipment system (we’ll get there) means they can pull some really interesting tricks.

But like. A Chieftain with a Gravity Hammer isn’t far off a Zealot with an Energy Sword, and a Spec Ops Brute with a Mauler (only one for some reason) isn’t that different to a Spec Ops Elite with…an Energy Sword. Both wield Carbines in H2 and H3, and the Spike Grenade and Plasma Grenade are pretty similar as well. The Brutes are effectively the parallelization of an entire enemy class to fit a mould that doesn’t even exist in the game they’re in.

And as thematically appropriate as the Brute weapons are, the simplicity is kind of their downfall. The Spike Grenade is just a Plasma, stickiness and all, but trading the sheer lethality for a bit of extra range that you aren’t going to notice when you’re attaching it to someone. The Mauler is basically only useful when dual wielding, since if you aren’t then you might as well just melee someone- it’s not like the gun has any more range than the average arm. The Spiker is basically just another Plasma Rifle/SMG, though with a slightly higher DPS. Did you know that? It actually hits harder.

Arguably one of Halo 3’s biggest problems is weapon bloat. There’s simply too many guns and not enough room to let them all shine, such that a lot of them are confined to a single enemy subtype or a handful of multiplayer maps. The aforementioned Mauler only appears on the stealthy brutes that appear in maybe two levels, the returning Flamethrower and new Spartan Laser only show up in one each. And this is bad enough with the weapons that are actually cool and good, but when we get down to the Spiker? It just doesn’t matter.

The dual-wieldable weapons are pretty much universally bad in Halo 3, save maybe the Plasma Pistol. At this point, the drawbacks- not being able to conveniently melee, throw a grenade, switch weapons, or use equipment- just make them much too inconvenient to bother with. On top of that, for whatever reason, the game actually nerfs the damage of many of the weapons while they’re being dual wielded, so while you do technically get more bang for your tick, you certainly don’t get more bang for your buck, and the inaccuracy of a lot of these weapons means every miss hurts more. I think some amount of this is a result of the dominance of the Battle Rifle in just about every form of multiplayer, but very rarely will you see anyone deign to pick up anything short of an actual “power weapon”. Hell, most people never bother using the Assault Rifle they spawn in with, unless things get very desparate. The result of this is that weapons like the SMG, Spiker, and Magnum just get left on the dirt where they spawned in most of the time, unable to shine or make the game as interesting as they potentially could.

Of course, the dual-wieldable Spikers and the like were not the only thing clogging up Halo 3’s sandbox. There was also the Heavy Weapons, four very large guns that had the same restrictions as dual wielding and also slow your character down in exchange for being able to hold 3 guns at once as well as raw power. These were honestly pretty okay, adding an extra dimension to the turrets that littered Halo 2’s maps, as well as the Missile Pod replacing the homing function of 2’s Rocket Launcher. But because of that speed drop, as well as other issues (not being able to zoom in, the third-person perspective being awkward, lack of range), they just didn’t end up being worthwhile either except as defensive tools in objective modes. As insanely powerful as the Flamethrower is (seriously, fire damage is absurd in this game, if you shoot it on the ground and walk on the flames you will die very quick) it doesn’t matter if you can’t reach the guy you want to use it on while he peppers you with bullets.

The other axis on this equation is equipment. Equipment are a fun and interesting addition to the gameplay! But a lot of them are niche, terrible, or both. I can’t say I’ve seen many people effectively use the Deployable Cover, and I don’t know if there are any maps where the Trip Mine is both available and relevant. It’s not surprising that this is literally the only game with them, frankly, though a few would be adapted into future games in the form of Armour Abilities.

There is a lot going on in Halo 3’s gameplay. The game was ambitious with its additions to the franchise seeing as it was both the last of a trilogy and the first of a console generation. And while I don’t think any individual piece is bad per se, they frustratingly form less than the sum of their parts. It’s still a frankly excellent game, well-deserving of its long-time heritage and praise, but things like the awkwardness of some mechanics and the arguable needlessness of weapons like the Spiker somewhat weigh it down, much like the 12 grenades 2 guns many spare magazines and giant flamethrower Chief can carry should probably be doing to him.

The trilogy might have been over after 3, but the franchise certainly was not. Before we return to the Master Chief’s (hopefully) comfortable shoes, though, we’ve got a couple side trips to make. I hope to see you, reader, here for the next two entries of this article series, where we cover my favourite two Halo games.

#ramble #halo #halo 3 #spiker #video games

[nuoc7mia]

hi so I actually made this post months ago when I was fist reading Tokyo revengers (thank you Mandy), but I just finished this post today :3 most of this post isn’t rlly insightful--I'm either just screaming or rehashing takes that most people here have already made

warnings ofc for major manga spoilers although I also haven’t caught up on the last five-ten chapters:

look ik current!mikey could easily kill me, but he’s so cute:

rlly makes you wonder what happened when you look back after reading more recent chapters ahaha :’D but anyways, give him his flag!!! 

(again I wrote this in June--I contradict myself later in this word dump LOL)

this moment was just so funny to me I'm sorry LMAO (’love & peace’)

hngjksnfgs I love this panel so much :((( sometimes with all of the action going on and how they act or are drawn, I forget that they’re just middle schoolers trying to navigate through life. and here’s mikey who has the weight of the entire gang--literal lives--on his shoulders, and is constantly depended on by the members as this ray of shining light. people literally are filled with relief when they see him during fights bc THE mikey is here to take over and he HAS to win the match, right? which is kind of interesting now that I think about it, because there’s also takemichi, who’s mentally 27 and still struggling to carry the weight of his loved ones’ lives on his shoulders. if a 27-year-old can’t be responsible for the lives of others--if I, a 19-year-old, can’t cope with the weight of my own--then how could we expect mikey to be strong with everything that happened around him added onto the weight of the gang? looking back now, I think what happened to mikey in the future makes sense, as odd/cheesy/out-of-the-blue as it originally seemed in my head.

nothing new but I fucking hate kisaki overall and I'm so glad he never got a redemption arc because there was nothing about him that could be saved

(this was an extremely harsh take but again I'm never forgetting what he did to everyone just bc he was pining over a girl from elementary school)

this panel ALSO messed me up, esp after reading some more recent chapters :( I think takemichi said once that he liked talking to mikey the most because he always feels at peace with him and described his eyes to be this calm sea (which almost reminds me of giyuu and his 11th form: dead calm) (I also might be remembering wrong bc I can’t find the chapter I saw it on). but it feels so double-sided if that makes sense? like with that peace comes a never-ending emptiness because he’s constantly consumed by whatever darkness he has in him (sorry for another kny comparison but it feels similar to muichirou before his whole arc), and so he looks so detached and empty. it’s actually kind of jarring at times when the panel zooms into his eyes because you really feel like you’re going to drown in them, but the way it’s cross-hatched is unsettling--like it’s more chaotic and fuzzy inside his mind. + if you compare the dullness in his eyes with the clarity of the other characters, especially takemichi, it’s as if he knows that there’s no future for him, or at least no future with the others. I ended up crying when he was grabbing onto takemichi and asking to be saved, because that’s the first time that we see any sort of light/reflection in his eyes (of hope, honestly), as well as the first time that he reaches out to have someone shoulder his own burdens + truly be vulnerable + depend on someone else rather than letting others depend on him. 

(this rant is the result of me hate-reading the comments after every chapter on *******):

sometimes idk what some ppl want from takemichi LOL. actually, no, I do know exactly what they want: a strong mc who they can experience the story through and who solves the problem with the physical manifestation of their strength (the typical shounen protag). but that’s not the point of tokyo revengers imo, and if you’re expecting that, I think you’re missing the whole story ????? like the power comes from the fact that he’s an average person who continues to fight despite the knowledge that he has, the weaknesses that he’s constantly forced to reckon with, and the general helplessness + hopelessness that he feels. he just wants to protect the ppl who he cares for, and that desire trumps physical power or charisma. THAT’S what makes him strong and that’s ultimately what changes the course of things in the story (because we already have powers like mikey who still fall into darkness despite his physical strength). obviously it wouldn’t hurt to make takemichi more assertive in different ways and not see him get absolutely pummeled LOL, but that’s also how wakui chose to enforce his themes

also I'd like to make some more literal points: 

1. the manga itself is really long, but when you think about the time frame, there’s not actually much time for takemichi to achieve everything he wants and grow stronger, esp with all of the plot twists that are thrown at him. 

2. his main goal was never to physically grow stronger, but just to prevent hina’s death (and later Mikey’s). it was always to talk someone out of doing something or preventing a major event from occurring, which doesn’t ACTUALLY need power to be achieved

(ofc he rarely, if ever, achieves to make it happen, but the effort counts n is there)

3. the dude is constantly carrying the weight of his friends’ deaths on his shoulders SDHFSLD LEAVE HIM ALONE ;; i’d just shut down if I were in his shoes and try to forget that toman was ever a thing

4. mentally speaking, the guy’s 27 LMAO the last time he really fought was back in middle school, which means he has absolutely little to none of those skills left

once again, I have nothing insightful to offer; I simply like the way this panel was drawn

spouting nonsense out of my butt with this one: ngl it took me a while to get used to this art style? like I thought it was UGLY LMAOOO. but when I did, I really came to appreciate how the mangaka colors things in and uses lines to create movement on each page. for instance, here, you can FEEL the energy of toman not just from the speech and the action, but with the lines that wakui chooses to leave uncolored on the members’ uniforms and hair + how the trees are shaded (which is vertical and for me personally it adds a lot more pressure/force, like they’re bursting with energy). everyone and everything feels so alive !!! but at the same time, their art is so clean... SO FREAKING CLEAN. I just love it o<--<

stop it....... STOP IT......... if I don’t get my 100% happy ending I will bawl. (yes I'm aware that this will probably/definitely not happy and yes I have tissues ready for the final arc)

also timeskip!kazutora, inupi, and chifuyu all in one place........ goodbye!

on a side note: I think I'm just gonna be a manga only at this rate bc I tried watching the first episode and got impatient waiting for all of the big action skjdfskjdh but maybe it was bc I wasn’t in the best mood / head-space at the time LOL 

(I've let this sit in my head a bit longer and yeah, manga only <3)

I needed to end this photo dump with this exact panel because I had to put my phone down and mentally take a walk after seeing inupi in heels. 

honorable mention goes to ponytail!baji and toman founder!baji bc they’re both engrained in my mind forever. likewise with high school!chifuyu ;; he looks like he jumped out of a shoujo manga or some kind of slice-of-life

#moon babbles #moon reads tokyo revengers #tokyo revengers spoilers #if you actually managed to read that all then I'll love you till the end of time (to kingdom come as red velvet beautifully sings) #I swear I'll catch up soon ;; I'm just burnt out after cramming ti all in and distracted with the other series that I wanna start/catch up o #rlly freaking pysched tho esp after seeing the reactions in the Tokyo rev discord LOL #I probably should let this sit for a bit longer before posting #but I don't want this sitting in my drafts for any longer and my head is swimming from this messy format

[dreamlikeapsycho]

I saw the max facts (pun intended 😂) you did for that question a while ago. So I was wondering if maybe you could tell us some more facts about Max it doesn’t have to be anything too detailed but anything you know would be nice to know, pretty please 😊

Okay... RANDOM FACTS ABOUT MAX - PART 2

I went on deep analysis mode this time to try and say all of Max's little nice and cute moments I know of.. Pls take notice, tho!! I'm not trying to flex or anything, I'm just a simple peasant girl on Maximilian's kingdom for a long time and it happens I have FBI blood in my veins 😭 so It's all gather on my brain and hard drive lol SO! I'm just answering this ask with a lot of thought and care so you can know more about Max and how he is even more awesome than you think!!! (And just in text form, cause Max doesn't need to be tagged on more personal stuff on IG (there’s too much illegal fishing at my tumblr pond already! 👏). It’s probably weird to know certain things, yes, but at least I'm respectful, I'll never bother him with this kind of stuff). Well, enjoy the bible below to end up knowing very little about him, still haha.. Just some more small facts.

- Max was at a barbecue just yesterday. It was someones birthday from the set of his new movie. He drank his beer, like usual, idk about the meat.. there was wurst and chicken.. I'm not sure if he's trying to be a vegetarian or not (after that thoughtful video he posted) 🤔.. maybe he didn't eat it, I don't know!!

- a little while before the start of this shooting, he was at the Baltic Sea filming for the series he's gonna be in (just one episode again! Don't get your hopes too high lol he's gonna be a security guard who disappears mysteriously, so....)

- He helped his friend renovate his house a few weeks ago!! How could I forget that on the first post.. Then, he had to go to Hesse for the movie shooting, and his friend had to call another friend to come help him lmao damn

I think I could describe some videos I have then... at least there's some cool and funny stuff. (Friends himself tagged in the past and cast friends)

- Max's dad went to the same uni as him. Also, he voiced a police officer on the phone in a short film Max wrote and directed all by himself (he didn't act on it, but he was also another police officer over the phone haha). Another thing, his dad made the official music for one of his plays.

- The falafel day.. his friend was taking a piss filming Max at the shop from afar and zooming in, saying "omg, guys! I found Noah from Dark! He's right there buying falafel" lmao, then, Max is just standing there looking all wonderful with his perfect hair and such, moving his hands, scratching his chin, ordering his food, and his friend talks some more, doing like a rough Max voice "yeah yeah, I'll have that one. Good, yeah". 😂

- the day he went to take a walk in nature. His friend asks him for a cigarette, he is denied, he goes to take it anyway, Max slams his cup of tea on the table and tries to take his cigarette back and it's all black and they're just laughing lmao (I love his laugh btw, so giggly!)

There was storys posted by Max himself.. so, maybe you saw it, but it's from before dark s3 came out.

- The pigeon storys. He filmed two pigeons chasing each other at the station, one always running from the other and he captioned "me trying to flirt" haha

- He screen recorded an ad for an app that deletes people from pictures and made some joke too, I can't remember exactly what he wrote, smt like "when you break up, but still wants to keep the picture" lol also, he unfollowed like 5 people that week after posting that... hm 👀

- he posted a video of him walking in the dark with really cold wind.. you can only see his hair flying around. Also, with a mask on, another chasing a cat in a big field, and that one drinking his coffee and eating his yogurt (you most likely saw it already)

- Ohh.. His friend was playing Max's drums the other day!!! Made a lot of jokes, it was obvious he was messing around in Max's room (maybe they live together, maybe he just waters the plants lol idk). Some of the jokes were "I've been playing this drums since 1921" and "the drums and me are a perfect pair, don't ever believe otherwise". I wonder what Max said to him.. he can't do anything about it, he's not in Berlin hahah. He has a little giraffe in his room, and other home decors (you can see it on his drumming video on his own IG)

- he likes to read on longer train rides.

- there's a video of him screaming inside a wardrobe after being jumped by a friend and one of him putting lipstick on with the song "I'm a sexy motherfucker" playing in the background hehe we was tagged, it was easy to find when there wasn't much tagged post.

- There's moments of ppl filming something/themselves and he just comes and photobombs it lol he is just like thiss 👏 showing his tongue and doing a funny face and such. One of those I saw it on the IG of a Das Boot cast member I actually already followed before.

- this group was such a blast. There's a few pictures, one of them he's in a dress, he has white stockings on til his thighs, heels and all haha lovely

- His improv-group.. he was almost in tears singing "I believe I can fly" with the group on their last day.. But he was happy! A mix of emotions. He loves everyone, he expresses his love a lot to people in general, he says it and adds heart emojis to make sure haha you can see his comments going on IG of his cast friends, especially from Das Boot (I followed a lot of the guys). So, about always commenting something funny on people's posts.. I didn't saved those, so I forgot most of it, but one I remember was that someone posted a video of a hailstorm and he was like "what are u doing, free ice!! Go grab them" hahaha

- Max has that Noah picture where he's peaking by a wall (you know that one Baran posted) printed and framed! 👏

- Things he’s pretty much always with: his backpack and his big headphones (it's always on his neck. At almost every picture, from every year, with different people etc. I was confused when he had normal headphones at his farm storys. Maybe he forgot them in Berlin 😭. Besides those, his rings, necklaces and bracelets (always, for years and years! Same ones, even). He uses frequently on premieres, as I saw it. Sometimes they also show up on his characters in his one-episode works!! Hahah is so nice when that happens. You can notice this on my screencaps.

- that pic of him that is everywhere now (with glasses, holding a bottle of champagne), I posted that months ago.. There's 2 more pics and 1 video. One pic, he is pretending the automatic lighter that's on the table is a Harry Potter wand (but I think I cropped the table, right.. I can't remember). This was actually posted by Max himself and he tagged his friend who took it. I went to see if they posted smt and there was a picture where he is literally biting the cork of that bottle off with his teeth Lmaoo, and one video.. he is talking on the phone trying to block the view with his feet.. this man!!

- he really doesn't care about buying too much unnecessary clothes and shoes and stuff. He is mindful of his things and the environment!! 

- there's a video of him on the set of Der Zauberlehrling, I need to recall where I got that from (maybe I could share this one. I'm not sure), he is messing with the broom and someone asks him "hey Max, what's that animal?" and points to the fluffy microphone. He says "it's a fucked up coala bear" (in english) 😂

Again.. I can't say names or anything, cause ppl are not mindful! Like.. I know I'm probably weird, but only for myself and my FBI office LOL I don't go over there and follow/reply to all these people’s posts and storys or take their videos and tag Max on them, this is just not.... nah. I'll always be respectful (yeah, some older stuff has gifs, cause he had like 10k followers, and 5 fans on tumblr lol But i never sent/tag him in anything personal directly.. that’s why i only posted on tumblr for the past year, in fact! I never thought things would be the way they are now a year later.. so, newer stuff it's not posted/gif nor ever will). I don't want him to be weirded out and like, disappear from IG!! I think about these things.. when people are being weird and stuff towards him. I don’t know how ppl don’t think about this when tagging him recklessly in random pictures and videos!!!

I wish he had more interviews, so we could know more proper stuff about him. (The few interviews he has are translated on my IG highlight. There's still an 8min interview missing there, cause I'm contemplating about being more of a bother to german speaking people, since I only have basic german..

#q

[inmyarmswrappedin]

DRUCK reactions - s4 ep3

Featuring: the clip that made me infinitely more interested in the season.

Oops, I forgot to link to the Nadia clip twitter thread. It’s there now!

(Thanks again to @wodrueckts! 💛)

CLIP 1: What is this, a tent for ants?

LISTEN. Tua is already the smallest in the girl squad, and that tent doesn’t even look like she can lay fully stretched out inside.

I was so disturbed by this that I looked up 1-person tents, and they don’t look that small! They are longer and thinner.

Amira’s mom comes outside and she’s also disturbed, but not by Amira using a toddler-sized tent, but Amira going camping at all. She’s like, we’re going to have a conversation about traveling while hijabi, but Amira isn’t in the mood.

And her mood is further spoiled because Sam texts her hoping that she can hook her up with Mohammed.

Amira’s mom brings her some pepper spray, and holy shit! Is that legal in Germany? (Answer: yes, it is, but it’s sold as “animal repellent.”)

I’ve traveled on my own before but I’ve always stayed in B&Bs, hostels or hotels. Ngl I wouldn’t even couchsurf at a stranger’s without some kind of protective device, like a portable door lock. I would never carry a weapon because you never know if you’re going to use it properly in the heat of the moment, but something like a personal alarm for runners would work in a camping setting. Take care of yourself if you’re traveling on your own!

CLIP 2: Lemonade pining

Jonas is going on about supporting sea rescue efforts of African migrants in the Mediterranean Sea, a big topic last year because of the Salvini administration (in Italy) approving a law to fine migrant rescue ships. Salvini has been ousted since, and sea rescue has disappeared from the news what with 2020 being a dumpster fire and all.

Essam, high on power, demands that his slave Amira makes him some lemonade, but I already described my issues with this storyline last week. After threatening Amira with the ever classic sibling-on-sibling physical violence, Amira relents.

Mohammed comes in as Amira is sulkily preparing some lemonade for Essam, and he makes a flirty comment about Amira’s ice cold stare again.

The sweet thing about Mohammed is that he fully admits that he finds Amira intimidating, like he totally recognizes that Amira can be unapproachable when she wants to (even though Amira M. is also one of the friendliest Sanas), but like… For one thing he doesn’t neg her about it. He’s playful about Amira being scary, but he’s not trying to bring her down. And for another, Mohammed tries to find ways in which he fits into Amira’s life or can help her in some way.

This will keep coming up with them, but it happens here when he thinks of a way to prank Essam and, as a result, cheer Amira up.

Peep at the interaction between Amira and Mohammed when they come out with the lemonade. They don’t exchange a word, but they’re such a team.

CLIP 3: Beware bicyclists

Amira, apparently still on a high since the lemonade prank, is strolling down the street singing to herself, as I believe most of us have done at some point.

Jonas asks for Amira’s help with his solidarity party, further characterizing Amira as the one they all go to for help.

Sam also texts Amira. She’s found Mohammed’s insta, which makes Amira’s face fall for a moment… Even though Mohammed keeps seeking Amira out, it feels like Sam might be able to hook up with him through sheer force of will? Or maybe Amira is kinda hoping Sam’s crush goes away, but it ain’t.

There’s something really Formal about that family photo that makes it lowkey funny, like I can imagine that pic being one Mohammed’s family sends to their relatives (caption about family and all), instead of one would post on instagram. Somehow, you can feel Mohammed’s latent dad energy just waiting to be discovered.

Even though this wasn’t the way Amira wanted to come across that pic, Mohammed just looks so damn fine that she can’t help but zoom in on his face, a Druck classic at this point.

And she’s so focused on the thirst that she almost gets run over by an islamophobic bicyclist, who thoroughly spoils her day.

This is such a Northern Europe thing btw. I think each one of my friends who has lived in the bike using part of Europe for any period of time has a story about a bicyclist yelling profanities at them. It’s like they’re saving the planet with their lack of gas use so they have to be extra dickish to compensate for their do gooding.

Amira also looks around as this happens, maybe to see if someone else witnessed what happened (for support?).

Anyway, Amira is so angry that she double texts Sam (or possibly just texts? I checked a couple times and it isn’t clear that she sent Sam the text where she translates the caption about family) to be careful with Mohammed as Arabs will fuck you over. She does a double take to herself, like she’s checking with herself that this was appropriate, and seems to decide it is.

I really dislike the context here. When this happened on Skam, it was part of a larger conversation between Sana and Noora where it was clear that Sana was repeating stereotypes in order to discourage Noora’s interest. And even in that conversation, what Sana said is that Muslim guys will sleep with white Norwegians because they put out, but in the end they marry Muslim girls. So rather than saying, he’s gonna fuck you over, Sana explains how. What Amira tells Sam is so lacking in context, so random as a response to Sam asking what the caption says, and like… You kinda have to have watched the Skam scene in order for Amira not to come across like a total dick here.

It also makes no sense because Sana knew that Noora had been hurt in the past by guys using her for sex and then discarding her, but a no strings attached hook up is exactly what Sam is after. So like… How would Mohammed wanting just sex and nothing else fuck Sam over anyway?

CLIP 4: Sam is interested in getting fucked (over)

Amira and Sam are doing boxing intervals, and Sam is a bit taken aback by how intense Amira is at something Sam is presumably doing just for fun.

Now imagine they’d actually written a scene around that difference between both girls, instead of a brief subtextual moment for us to read into.

Mohammed comes in during a pause, which Amira is using to get a bit more practice in whereas Sam is showing off to Kiki (sensing a theme they could’ve explored, here).

It looks like he’s going to go say hi to Amira, but Sam gets there first and starts flirting with him, hair twirling and all. Amira looks upset and goes back to boxing.

CLIP 5: Nadia! [crowd cheers]

At this point when the season was dropping, I was, to be completely honest, a little bored. Like the clips were cute and all, but I wasn’t excited. (Of course, you have to keep in mind that this was in comparison to my excitement levels during Matteo’s season, where so much as a glimpse of David made my synapses light up.)

I loved this clip and immediately posted a full on analysis on twitter (which you can read here if you’re interested, but I’ll be rehashing most of it in this post), and it still holds up in rewatch even though they didn’t mine the Nadia/Amira dynamic for all it was worth.

So we open on Nadia and Amira and they’re already looking tense as shit. It doesn’t help that Amira’s mom seems, like, almost relieved that Nadia hasn’t totally cut ties with Amira lmao. And she’s like, “omg you must have so much to talk about!” even though we just saw them looking quiet and uncomfortable.

Amira is all, “never thought you’d be the first one to marry,” and to Nadia’s credit, she takes this comment, which could read as shady, as a friendly observation. She talks a bit about how Ahmed is not like the other dicks, but Amira isn’t convinced, and now she’s definitely shading Nadia.

She also gets on Nadia’s case about going to Dubai for their honeymoon, but Nadia doesn’t defend herself and just looks sheepish.

Kiki comes in with some vegan cupcakes that she made to thank Amira for her help last episode, and you can see how Amira is much more at ease with Kiki. Tbf they did see each other last week, whereas we know Nadia has been out of the picture for a while. Anyway Kiki seems to feel the tension in the air, so she tries to excuse herself.

At this point, Nadia finds her voice to ask Kiki to stay. Is it because she thinks that with Kiki around conversation will flow more freely? Or maybe because she’s hoping that Amira’s irritation will be redirected to this Alman?

After Kiki admires the vegan spread Amira’s mom prepared, we find out that Nadia’s intention is the latter. She all but tells Kiki that Amira told her Kiki was a racist piece of shit. So this is how Nadia gains the upper hand after Amira’s earlier comments.

Amira looks alarmed, but Kiki is like pfff yeah, I was so into Alexander Humberbumber that I might have been the worst s1 Vilde until Amber made her appearance, but now I’m getting dicked down by a good man and I see Amira for the Muslim goddess she is (I’m paraphrasing but not that much!).

Amira looks really touched by Kiki not just 1. Not picking up Nadia’s intention, but also 2. Swiftly clearing the air and complimenting Amira in the process.

Kiki figures out that Nadia is the friend who’s getting married and declares her love for weddings of all kinds but especially Bollywood-style ones. Nadia looks really amused at this and looks at Amira like, “get a load of this girl!” Amira looks a bit embarrassed.

Sidenote to say Druck started building up to Kiki’s love of weddings last episode when she was paging through a wedding magazine spread. Like, they really put in more work into this Kiki/wedding storyline than most storylines last week.

And when Kiki asks if Nadia’s marriage was arranged, Nadia makes fun of Kiki to Amira. Like I would love to say that Nadia isn’t being mean to Kiki, but she is, and the point is to bring Amira down a notch. Now Amira really does look embarrassed, because in some way she’s supposed to be responsible for Kiki not saying something islamophobic. Kiki isn’t Amira’s responsibility, and I’m sure Nadia would agree in other circumstances, but… That’s what Amira gets for calling Nadia out for the Dubai honeymoon!

But as the conversation goes on, it also kind of seems like Nadia takes a liking to Kiki? (I’m mostly assuming because Nadia later invites Kiki to that pre-wedding event.) They talk a little bit about Nadia and Ahmed, and Kiki’s like, “I want to go to a Muslim wedding so fucking bad, Amira, please!”  It’s like… At the moment Amira is the only single female friend Kiki has, but Kiki’s just like, can’t you just get married now though.

Amira’s like NO WEDDINGS, Australia first. And tension falls around the table again, because of course, Nadia didn’t know about this, but Kiki knew about it, so like… It’s just another way in which Amira has become a different person as far as Nadia is concerned.

Let us now talk about Kiki. Like I said, I really loved this clip. In general I love Skams clips where the dynamic feels so lived in and nuanced and multifaceted. This is the first time we see Nadia in the flesh, but we get so much information just from looks and tone of voice. Nadia’s actress and Tua El-Fawwal just rock this scene.

When it aired I took Kiki’s words at face value. Like, this was the way the writers had decided to resolve Kiki being a racist in earlier seasons, and I accepted it. It wasn’t until later that I read criticism of the scene and thought about it a bit more.

In Skam, Isak apologizes to Eva in three separate scenes. In s1, episode 10, she says to Eva, “I fucked up,” “[if I had known Iben was a psycho] then of course I wouldn’t have done it.” In episode 11, “I know it might be hard to believe, but I never wanted to hurt you. It just turned out that way. I’m sorry.” And in s3, “I just want to say sorry for that stuff last year. When I was ruining things for you and Jonas.” Like. You can say that Isak only said sorry because he got caught (though I personally believe he was genuine every time, if not entirely truthful), but the point is that Julie Andem thought it necessary, in order for Isak to remain a likable character, that he apologized three times.

The girl squad never apologized to Sana, they just showed up with the Los Losers van one day.

And while Druck also thought it was necessary for Matteo to be full of self-loathing over what he did to Hanna, they didn’t think Kiki needed to apologize on screen.

One of my least favorite Skams characters is Basile Savary, because he was a total creep to the point that, during s3, Skam France had to release a damage control text out of Lucas L’s POV because people were worried that he might have done something to Daphné while she was drunk. Basile was a creep who respected no boundaries (including dry humping Daphné against her will on social media, which played off as a joke!) until one day he wasn’t and became the perfect boyfriend. No arc where he learned to be a doper person, Skam France said, no we are not going to examine how nerds get away with being gross creeps.

And as much as I would like to say otherwise, Druck did the same with Kiki. Kiki was one of the most overtly racist Vildes in s1, was still making offensive comments about Amira’s and Sam’s hair in s2, and then… Season 4 rolls around and Kiki just says, “oh yeah I was a dick before but now I know Amira is a great Muslim.” Like… At least it didn’t happen from one day to the next, but no, there wasn’t an arc where Kiki is taken to task for her racism, nor a scene where Kiki apologizes to Amira.  

This is an issue specifically because Amira’s season hinges on the Kiki/Amira friendship, like they pretty much got rid of most other conflicts or didn’t explore them fully, choosing instead to focus on this dynamic.

And I don’t think it was because Lea and Tua are such good friends irl (which they are! Lea even attended Tua’s engagement party! I love them!), because like, Tua is also good friends with Carl (Stefan) and we never got an Amira/Stefan scene, did we? I think it was simply that this season was too packed with people of color, and either funk or the writers needed a white character to anchor the season.

I still love Kiki and Amira obviously, I ship them (in fanon) and I love their scenes, because I love Lea and Tua and their friendship, and their characters. All I wanted from s4 of Skam was Vilde supporting Sana in the way Sana had supported Vilde for three seasons, and Druck gave me that. But here’s one thing where the writers dropped the ball, and it’s a massive mistake because the emotional core of the season is this friendship.

This also made me think about how the change of writers resulted in character arcs being dropped left and right. Now that two writing collectives are about to pick up Druck’s next gen, I think there’s an idea that the change in writers in the first four seasons wasn’t noticeable, but honestly… It kind of was. I would argue that a lot of the things that were set up in s1 and s2 got dropped and didn’t go anywhere. To wit:

Hanna’s arc in s1 is trashed in s4. Jonas is set up with a redemption arc in s2 that isn’t explored past that season. The Winterberg of s2 has nothing to do with the s4 ship. Kiki is still being racist in s2 and a shining example of allyship in s4. The little depth that Sam had in s1 and s2 gets dropped. Amira’s delivery job… Enough said. The one character whose character arc through the seasons was done justice I would argue is Matteo. He gets a shift in characterization after s1 to make the storyline with David make more sense (more on this if I ever write Matteo’s season meta), and retains that characterization to the end. Of the minor characters, Carlos and Abdi also come out well. David gets introduced in s3 when Q3 took over the writing, so he wasn’t affected.

Anyway, this clip totally revitalized the season.

CLIP 6: Amira praying, that’s it, that’s the clip

Mohammed is at the door waiting for Amira, and when Amira asks him if Sam is already there, he says he’s not here because of Sam. And I’m like, does he mean that literally? Like Amira could’ve assumed Sam invited him to this party, but Mohammed did meet the squads last episode. Maybe he asked Jonas if Amira was coming or got himself invited some other way.

Amira’s like sure, and gets inside. And Mohammed looks at her in such a way that even I need to fan myself a little tbh.

Hanna compliments David’s design, and Matteo’s like yeah, David is great, but I’d rather shit on Stefan. Idk, I feel like the Matteo in my mind would want to hype David up a little more before moving onto shitting on Stefan, but it’s a small quibble.

Amira goes to help Sam in the kitchen, and they both have some trouble making German food. I can’t tell if it’s because they’re generally bad at cooking or this is a commentary on white people’s palates. Or Abdi’s palate since he’s still going on about hollandaise sauce.

Oh, Sam explains that she told Mohammed about the party and he got on board. So he is there because of Sam, kinda.

They also talk about Mohammed having the coolest insta (pro: Mohammed has at least one topless pic, con: Mohammed has a pic wearing flip flops with socks), and how Abdi doesn’t compare because he doesn’t have an insta (yet). I mean… Damn, Sam. You can’t argue with logic like that.

But Sam calls Amira out on being weird lately. Again, I really wish this conversation didn’t rely so much on subtext, so it could be properly developed. Also, a new version of Snow’s Informer is playing in the background during this conversation and I can’t help but love the mood whiplash of it all.

Then something confusing happens when Jonas introduces the music act and says they come from Lebanon and traveled to Germany by train and then the lead singer says they’re from Berlin. They’re called Feedback and I tried googling them to find out what that’s all about, but with that name I didn’t get any results about them.

At least this is the kind of band that would play at an event like this, like they seem good enough to do a performance, but not big enough that there’s no believable way Jonas could book them.

Amira and Mohammed have a ~Moment~ when the audio switches to the version of Sand performed by Lary, and the sexual tension is so overwhelming for Amira that she immediately leaves to get some praying done, in the privacy of the venue’s backroom.

This scene is so iconic and beautiful. That shot of Amira being lit from above, looking up with her hands held before her? Talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, etc. The kind of sequence that needs both a Muslim performer and behind the scenes respect for said Muslim performer.

Amira overhears some argument as she’s folding the carpet she was using, and then she sees that Mohammed was blocking the door, so that she could pray in peace. Can we get a #notallmen here? Thanks. Again, Mohammed just finds little ways in which he can help and support Amira without being intrusive.

Mohammed compliments Amira’s friends for trying to help refugees (although sea rescue is more about migrants in general, rather than refugees). I think something that is lost in translation is that German is obviously not Mohammed’s first language, so I think this scene is more significant and subtext-laden for German speakers.

Amira is probably still smarting from her earlier run in with the racist biker, so she (who’s always said she wants to be Chancellor) says that Jonas will probably become Chancellor one day. Mohammed says no! Amira should be Chancellor, but Amira doesn’t think anyone wants that. 🙁 But Mohammed says he does, and he says “we” need someone who fights for “us” (which Amira probably interprets as “us Muslims,” but Mohammed might mean more like, “us refugees”).

Also, Mohammed thinks that Amira was trying to matchmake him with Sam, which we know it was more like the opposite, but it’s very in line for Mohammed to think Amira was trying to get rid of him.

Then Mohammed asks Amira for her phone and is all, “don’t you trust me?” and Amira’s like, “no,” which is hilarious. After a while, Amira wants her phone back and Mohammed notices Amira accidentally cut herself with the knife earlier. He puts a cute bandaid on it, and they have yet another Moment. They’re so into each other that Amira goes, “omg I love this song! Let’s go in!” But Mohammed is now sure his feelings are requited.

Social media

Kiki slept at the new apartment even though it’s falling apart, a sign that that she can’t stand being at her mom’s house. Later, Zoe texts her and Kiki says she’ll be available whenever Zoe needs her, but she also just… doesn’t want to live at her mom’s.

Matteo and David (but really just Lukas) attended the Berlin CSD (Pride) march.

Mia posts a pic of a cortado coffee, and I totally believe this was taken in Madrid. 👌

Carlos missed the Abiball because he failed his History resit, then he missed Jonas’ birthday because he was sick, and this week he’s visiting Brandenburg with Kiki, and what I’m getting from all this is that maybe Carlos’ actor had other commitments during this time lol.

Amira and Mohammed both post pics acknowledging their Moment under the lights/with the bandaid, showing Amira is getting more emotionally committed to this relationship.

Final thoughts

While I did have some issues with this episode, it was much more solid overall than episode 2. Nadia’s actress really delivered in her intro clip and I wish they’d explored that dynamic a bit more, but the character kind of takes a backseat after this. Although I don’t feel like Amira and Mohammed have a motif or object that they keep revisiting (like Jonas and Hanna with Hanna’s nose, or Mia and Alex with Hotel Hardenberg, or David and Matteo with the sandwiches*), I like their dynamic where Mohammed is supportive of Amira’s endeavors, which this episode solidifies. I also really love the significance of Amira getting to complete her prayer thanks to Mohammed. In Skam, Sana gets constantly interrupted until later in the season, where she gets to pray for all her friends.

[* I thought about this a bit more, and I think one motif Mohammed and Amira share is music, and singing to each other.]

I discussed this episode with Michi, and we came to the conclusion that the root conflict between Amira and Nadia is that Amira feels like that, to be with a man, is to compromise yourself and your principles. Nadia didn’t use to be the person who’d be the first to marry, or who’d go on a honeymoon to Dubai, and Amira sees that chance as Nadia losing sight of her ideals. But, in the last clip, Mohammed’s actions allow Amira to be who she fully is, and to finish her prayer. So the idea is planted, that Amira wouldn’t necessarily have to compromise her principles if she got into a relationship. Of course, Mohammed is probably one of the people who’d most compromise Amira’s ideals if she were to date him, but we’re not at that point yet.  

#druck #about druck

[halorocks1214]

the law of polarity

AO3 Link

Word Count: 11367

Summary:  The Law of Polarity states that everything is on a continuum and has an opposite. We can suppress and transform undesirable thoughts by concentrating on the opposite pole. It is the law of mental vibrations

Previous Parts (in order):  Alan | John | Virgil | Scott | You are here! | Gordon

that word count its just,,, growing BIGGER every day! i honestly don't understand my mind. 25 fucking pages. its boggling, i need better restraint my god. also: kayo you cryptic thing why are you so hard to write for helLO?? me writing kayo: guess ill die. *coughs* regardless, the next installment is here! i hope you still enjoy it. like the other ones, I'm mostly satisfied with it outside of a few spots so YEET 

“Kayo! Come on out!”

“Seriously, sweetheart, this isn’t funny!”

The 12-year-old promptly did the opposite by squirming further into her treehouse. It’s not that Jeff Tracy was a bad babysitter, or God forbid her dad was a bad dad, they were stellar. They just had to understand that there were times when a kid wanted to be left alone and that was to be respected. She shoved herself further into her corner and brought her arms around her knees.

… Okay, she was avoiding them, but she had a good reason.

Whatever this dumb thing about ‘sending her away’ was pointless and trite. She was simply going to lay low, wait for the dumb-dumbs to cool off and then they’ll realize they were being dumb-dumbs and drop this whole dumb-dumb idea!

She didn’t like what she was hearing in the first place anyway.

“Watch out for her uncle, my brother.”

“Ah, opposed to your uncle that is also your mother?”

“Jeff.”

The serious tone made both Kayo and Jeff flinch. Then, Kyrano put his foot down even more, “You know the one. You were friends, right? Hell, he’s the technical reason we met, you know what I’m talking about. Promise me to watch out for him.”

Kayo looked up at Jeff’s face from her hiding spot in the doorway to see his breathing get slightly more labored, but the way he spoke could only be described as confident, “Okay. I promise. Just like I promised to keep her safe, got it?”

Kyrano relaxed at that, though, his breathing was worse than what Jeff’s was. The man gulped and nodded his head, “Good. Now then, let’s go find her. We should explain this properly to her. She’ll understand.”

If she waited to hear her dad’s last sentence she might have laughed. As soon as the agreement was in place, she quietly zoomed away to her comfort spot to wait for the storm to pass. Too bad that storm had a homing beacon because right as she unfolded herself a little bit (she was getting uncomfy), Jeff Tracy climbed up to the window and went, “AHA! Gotcha!”

Before Jeff could explain, she was zipping down the slide and across the yard. In her panic, she broke one of her major rules when running away from something: never look behind you in any shape or form. Not only could you be focusing on something else like trying to get to your destination quicker if you kept your face forward, but you also can’t avoid anything that gets in your way if you’re not watching out for it.

Such was her father’s arms, which grabbed her around the waist and held on tight, “Oh thank God.”

Okay, she was expecting anger or at least minor scolding. She was not expecting her dad to practically cry in relief, nor for him to drop to his knees and hold onto her tightly. It froze everything about her: her mind, her body, yeah, everything. The only thing she could do in response was to awkwardly hug him back as Jeff slowly walked towards them, “See? I told you that you were panicking for no reason. Now, would you like me to stay here for this or?...”

Kyrano, who took a moment to register those words, eventually shook his head side to side while it still rested on Kayo’s shoulder, “N-No, Jeff, if it’s okay, I just need a moment with her so I can properly explain my actions. If you want, you can start packing some of her stuff to take home with you.”

The babysitter immediately backed off, hands up in a semi-surrender position, “Of course, do you know what I can get started on by myself?”

Kyrano softly took her hands into his, examining them by running his thumbs over her knuckles, thinking about what to say, “Basic toiletries, basic over-the-counter medications, some of her favorite snacks, you remember her favorite snacks, right?

The grass crinkled as Jeff walked away, his voice getting quieter and quieter due to distance, “You bet I do.”

Suddenly, she was alone with her father, who placed her hands against his chest. His breaths were shaky as he tried to find metaphorical solid ground, “Listen… I know things are changing fast and abruptly, and I’m sorry I can’t explain much of what’s happening, but you have to trust me, okay? You’re just changing houses, nothing more, nothing less. I’ll still be around often, and we’re still going to be father and daughter, you’re just going to be under the protection of Uncle Jeff, got it?”

Kayo was very quickly aware of a burning idea that hurt to think about, “Wait, are you in danger? If you’re in danger I don’t want to leave you! I can help you, Father!”

Kyrano was quick to cool the fury in her heart by placing his forehead against hers in their familiar form of comfort, “I know you can, but it’s not me that’s in danger, okay?”

And with that confession, her mouth snapped shut. She was always quick on figuring things out, and if her father wasn’t the one in danger, then that meant...

Kyrano couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped his mouth. His daughter, despite the cold-hearted exterior she tried displaying, could be quite adorable when secretly prompted, “I know. It’s scary, it sucks, and I wanna keep you here just as much as you want to be, but this is for the best. Don’t worry about me, worry about yourself just for a little bit, hmm?”

Kayo swallowed whatever nasty emotion tried worming its way out of her throat as she also kept the few, tiny tears at bay in her eyes, preventing them from rolling down her face, “Okay, Dad, I trust you.”

Kyrano visibly relaxed at how quickly she agreed, “Thank you. Alright,” Kyrano boosted himself up from his knee, “Let’s go help Uncle Jeff pack.”

He held out his hand to her, which she took with a definite level of uncertainty.

After an hour, Kayo was packed and ready to become a resident in the Tracy household. Her dad gave her plenty more kisses goodbye on the level that she became secretly glad she was leaving. Dads and their overbearing need to smother will be the death of her.

As Kayo and Jeff drove to their destination, it was silent. Jeff drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, trying to find something to say, while Kayo simply brought her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on top of them. Just because she knew how necessary this was didn’t mean she had to like it.

Finally, Jeff figured out his words, “You did hear him mention that he’ll visit you every week, right? You two are still going to be thick as thieves until your last dying breaths. You just won’t be in each other’s presence as much.”

Kayo didn’t hear him at first, and when her mind picked up that someone was trying to talk to her, she popped her head up like a surprised chipmunk, “Huh? Oh, yeah, he told me that.” And with it, her head fell back to her knees, and Jeff was lost once more.

That is until he was reminded of his kids. A sly grin formed on his face. His confidence was always boosted whenever his children were involved, “You know, I don’t know if I’ve even mentioned this, but I do have some of my own children at home.”

This time it took a lot less waiting for Kayo to pop her head up, “Really?”

Jeff nodded, relieved he found common ground between the two of them, “Yep. Five boys to call my own.”

Kayo leaned back into the backrest and hung her legs over the edge. Now she was sitting in the car seat as one would normally, “Whoah.”

Jeff chuckled. Kyrano wasn’t kidding about her being surprisingly adorably, “Just you wait, you’ll get along with them like peas in a pod.”

She absolutely did not get along with them like peas in a pod.

The first night was okay, fine. The older ones were nice as older siblings were when there was only one parent in the house, and the younger ones at least had enough manners to be considered quaint. But then the first night became the same as the next night. Then the next. The constant noises didn’t completely stop even after being there for a few days, signifying that this was normal in the family. The first time her father came over on the weekend she was begging to go home.

Kyrano felt sympathetic. He understood that Jeff’s boys could be a rowdy group, and that was from the stories the father told himself, but the threat was still looming, and all he could do was give empty words, “I really am sorry little bug, but my hands are tied. If you want, I could talk to Jeff for you? He is their father, he could set some temporary rules in place.”

Kayo sagged at his words, knowing he was right, but then sat up straight, “No, it’s okay. I can handle them. When they mess up they’ll learn the hard way why not to.”

Kyrano chuckled and took her into his arms, “Knowing you, those words aren’t just words. Don’t worry, just 28 more days, then the GDF will give me an update and you’ll be home safe and sound.”

Kayo counted them down one by one, tallies scratched into the wooden frame of the bed they gave her.

The 26th day was the day her uncle took Jeff’s life.

And everything was thrown off-kilter.

He came to pick her up on the 30th day, and she could tell things were different. He was jumpier, more careful about what they did. He never failed at his fatherly duties, but it was obvious he couldn’t be the same. She probably never was either. They had less fun, more prep work, he was constantly looking over his shoulder and she found herself doing the same with no protest. Her uncle, her family, destroyed everything she once knew in a way that would probably never be fully recovered. This point was even more blatant with the next big shocker of her life.

On the 67th day, her father went into retirement.

That was a sign the world was ending. Her father quit his job, the one that threatened to kill him more times than she understood at her age yet he stuck with it anyway because he loved it that much, he quit.

On the 1278th day, after years of trying his best, after multiple dropping offs of his daughter to Tracy Island (she probably spent half that time in the Tracy household, much to his chagrin) as he tried finding some kind of peace of mind, he succumbed to his demons. He gave her some lessons in self-defense over that time, but then he heard of another attack that was most likely caused by his brother and he just couldn’t. The thin wire snapped, and Kyrano didn’t trust his daughter to be safe with him anymore. He couldn’t protect his best friend from his brother, how the hell could he protect anybody else, how could he protect his child? Self-defense was useless against someone like his-- that man.

Kayo, who was just trying her best to still wrap her head around everything that had happened, over how one could potentially stop being related to someone, didn’t even try any kind of fighting back as her father took her right over to Tracy Island. He looked Grandma dead in the eyes with a face Kayo would never forget and said, “Jeff said he would always be willing to ‘pick up my slack’ so… please, keep her safe. Do what I can’t do.”

Being the mother she was, Grandma sadly grinned, “Of course, Kyrano, of course.”

That’s not to say he went off the radar or he never came to see her, he just wasn’t her main caretaker anymore. She was officially a permanent fixture in the Tracy family now, and she didn’t even have the headspace to worry about that. Hell, she was still recovering from her father’s retirement announcement.

This was the first time she learned what it was like to be truly and utterly hopeless.

It didn’t help that the rest of the Tracys were completely different as well.

She saw snippets over the years when her father went out on his meditation sessions, but now that she was going to be here forever, now that she couldn’t hide away like an anxious guest at a hotel, she was fully able to take in just how broken the Tracys were.

Like she was.

Scott and John were gone often, to the point where she only saw one of them at a time, almost never together. Virgil didn’t seemingly change much outside of certain hobbies and ways he handled things, though, she probably should have picked up on the fact that changing your personality was a big sign of trauma and untapped issues. Grandma Tracy was doing her best to accommodate her living situation into theirs, and Kayo will always be grateful for the elderly lady’s (mostly) stable state of mind throughout everything.

Then there was Gordon and Alan, who started leaving her alone.

They still did their pranks and jokes and couldn’t stop themselves if there was something ‘cool’ they wanted everyone to see, but they were more reserved, more quiet. Out of all the things she wished to stop happening, Gordon and Alan annoying her were on the top of the list, but when they did, it felt… weird. Awful.

The silence she craved since the first night her father sent her here was given to her on a silver platter yet she hated it and she didn’t even know why.

Nothing was making sense anymore.

And it continued to be senseless for the next few years to come.

The only thing she could latch onto to keep some kind of gravity to her life was the sentence her father told Jeff the day she came to the island. Watch out for her uncle. He was the reason everything was as messed up as it was, and the only people that rivaled her hatred for him was the Tracys themselves. As pessimistic as the thought was, at least she found something in common with them, and it made it easier for her to hide her true heritage in the end too.

The Tracy family was family oriented. She didn’t think she would have been welcome if they found out about certain relations of hers, not after what that relation took away from them.

(Well, if there was at least one thing she would happily admit to being wrong about in the future, she was glad it was that.)

Regardless, the years went on, and she became a proactive member of the family. Trying to compensate for the whole ‘secretly-related-to-evil’ thing and all that jazz. It was the least she could do for them since they were housing her. Learning more complicated self-defense, keeping watch over the island, helping Grandma with chores and other jobs around the house, and… hell, she found herself keeping an eye out for Alan more often than not. She wasn’t sure what it was, the older ones rubbing off on her, maybe Alan himself wormed his way into her heart, who knew?

As for the night everything started picking back up, it was… interesting.

She was minding her own business when she received a call from Scott, who she was very much aware should be packing for his trip to the mainland for next week with his Grandma. Those two had a conversation about plans for the future, and from bits and pieces Kayo picked up, Scott was on his way to becoming the newest CEO on the block, which she thought was an excellent position. Certainly made more sense than the Air Force in her eyes.

She picked up the call with a hint of playfulness, but right before she could point out that he should be picking out the right color shirt to match his eyes, she felt metaphorical cold water sploosh over her back as his panicked babbling slowly made sense to her ears.

“Alan’s gone!”

Around this time as well, Scott was in the house 24/7, and she knew the general details of why. Yeah, they gave her the vague story of things. She may have only been 16, but she wasn’t stupid. Her father was a military man, Jeff was a military man as well for Christ’s sake, she knew things where it counted. Alan never tried to figure out why, though, since he was just happy he could see Scott more often. Scott was happy too, everyone was, but the eldest was reserved. Careful with his interactions. As if whatever he touched shattered in his mere presence.

13-year-old Alan? Never really picked up on that until too late.

She got snippets from Scott over the call: he was in some kind of sour mood and did the logical thing and waited it out in his locked room (it really wasn’t that logical, but all the other options were worse so he took what he got). At some point, Alan had shown up outside his door (Scott found one of the kid’s toy cars right outside his door, as well as dirt tracks only Alan could leave) and tried to get the brunette’s attention. Except Scott was pretty out of it, trying not to snap any pens in half or God forbid punch a hole in the wall, so he never heard any of Alan’s attempts to get him to come out.

Oh yeah, Scott also knew it was Alan because he noticed a small sticky note on his door with the word ‘Sorry’ chicken-scratched onto it.

Alan took the silent treatment as his fault (hopefully not deserved, Scott was already feeling shit-tastic) and scampered off somewhere. Scott was going to find his younger brother and make things right and explain his actions, but then seconds turned to minutes, and minutes turned into half-an-hour. Wherever Alan went to was a place Scott didn’t know existed apparently, and that just about made everything worse.

After nearly an hour of searching, he caved in and called for the only other help he had at the moment.

Which was her.

John was in space, and Grandma was out picking up Virgil and Gordon from their weekend off. Gordon got special tickets to something because of his gold-medal status, and Virgil was the obvious extra-ticket pick. On their way home, John would be picked up by the three of them as well. It was going to be one of the few fleeting moments they all were in the house at the same time.

Unless she and Scott got off their asses, that plan would be thoroughly jossed.

Taking a deep breath, she finally got a word in between all of his panicking, “Scott! Alright, I’m on the South-West side, so I’ll start looking here, okay? You keep searching the part you’re in and I’ll update you once I get somewhere else or if I find him.”

Labored breathing filled her ear before a rather large gulp cut it off, “Okay, sounds good.”

The call was cut and they haven’t been in contact since.

She wasn’t sure what part of the island she was on when she found him. Not usually her typical shtick, to panic without thinking, even if that panic was small, but regardless, she stepped onto a rocky part of the beach and looked around. She almost missed the mop of blonde hair sitting against the tallest one, absentmindedly staring off at the calm waves hitting the rocks further into the bay.

Making light steps, she eventually was able to sit down next to him a few inches away and watched the kid intently. She was quite familiar with the feeling of a thousand words wanting to spill out of your mouth at the same time, and she could clearly see it on Alan’s face, so she did the proper thing and waited for Alan to start.

When he did, she was caught off guard.

“I’m sorry.”

Wait, what? “What?”

Alan shrugged like it was obvious, “I don’t know. A lot of things. I wanna help out so much but whenever I do it seems like I just make it worse so that just leaves me to wonder what I need to change or if that would even matter in the long run… I just…”

As the blonde curled in on himself, still mumbling half-baked excuses (as if the kid thought he needed an excuse to feel shitty), a million thoughts hit Kayo at the same time, frying the gears in her brain with how they added up. Alan’s little display of low self-confidence reminded her of something she didn’t like to think about a lot.

She was… horrifyingly reminded of herself.

With it, she was already connecting dots between the two of them from the past few years of living together. Things like their tantrums (holy cow was she a stubborn child to her father sometimes), their eagerness to prove themselves for things that didn’t really need to be proven, their unhealthy need to lean towards silence when something is troubling them, now their seemingly poor viewpoints of themselves…

All she wanted to do was help Scott out, and so far all she was getting for it was a sudden identity crisis.

The gut reaction Kayo had was to deny it. How could she possibly have anything in common with Alan? Alan had a lot in common with Gordon, and she was the exact opposite of the second youngest. She was reminded of those transitive laws John was telling Alan about one day when it was the ginger’s turn to help with homework. A equaled B while B equaled C always meant A equaled C as well. A and B as Alan and Gordon respectively made sense, but if she was C? No sense at all, completely phony, not possible in the slightest. There were exceptions to every rule after all.

Besides, Alan had an ego to rival Gordon’s too, he never worried about things like ‘am I truly in the way or not?’. He was the youngest, the youngest never was in the eyes of good older siblings-- and the Tracys were good, good in ways she herself would probably never reach. She might have been an only child growing up but she read enough about proper family dynamics to know that.

But as the grief-stricken 13-year-old started to understand things not even some adults twice his age never fully learned right in front of her, she had to admit that the laws of physics were not to be trifled with. John was probably having a conniption over the mere thought of it. Knowing him, he felt a sudden chill for no reason because of her denial. He was weird like that. It also made her start to think about her relationship with Gordon. Maybe she held herself to too high of standards… or maybe even him.

Right, right, she should worry about the blonde in front of her. Didn’t Gordon have issues about his thoughts jumping around all willy nilly? That’s what she can at least start with when she gets there, but she should probably get there first, “Alan, look at me.”

The kid just shrunk further into himself.

This was troublesome, “Alan. Look up.”

She watched him blatantly shake his head no.

Okay, now it was exasperating. Not for the reasons she typically felt, though, it was annoying because a 13-year-old should not be shrugging off help like he was, that was the beginning of a bad habit, “Alright, Alan Tracy, you leave me no choice.”

Those words were just ominous enough for Alan to jump his head up from his knees in shock. Before he could blink the tears out of his eyes, Kayo was up in his personal space with her eyes wide due to a look of… hesitation?

Out of all the places she could have stopped, why did it have to be two inches away from his face? She wasn’t even sure why she was doing this. Sure, it calmed her down when her father did it, but her father was much more graceful about it, much more parental. If she wasn’t careful she might just give the child in front of her a headbutt right on the soft part of his face more than anything else.

Regardless, she was here, and she was on a roll with not making sense tonight. Besides, didn’t she just go over all the things they had in common? Surely this will work… hopefully. Potentially. At least a 60% chance. With a deep breath, she closed the distance and lightly placed her forehead on his. It might have been cliche, but when she saw how much he relaxed, she couldn’t help that feeling from washing over her too.

Alan, meanwhile, was strangely okay with this. It was new and weird, but it also felt… safe? Like Virgil’s hugs or Scott’s jackets, there was an air of warmth to this that Alan liked so he let it be to do whatever it was doing well. The knots in his chest were loosening up.

After awkwardly staring into Alan’s blue eyes for longer than she should, she finally figured out how to word all the emotions swirling around in her brain. It was short, it probably was only a short term fix, but at the time it worked like a charm, “I may not know a lot about things yet, but I do know that whatever you’re thinking will happen most certainly won’t. Scott isn’t angry or thought you were in the way. Honestly, he might be worried you’re not in the way enough. Trust me, Scott will just be happy to see you safe.”

Alan won’t be able to tell you what convinced him that night. Maybe her sincerity, maybe her touch, maybe he was just tired and the idea of seeing Scott again was enough to wake him up, but whatever it was, when Kayo stood up, he did too and walked right back home.

They made it back to the house right as the sun was coming up. Subconsciously gently taking his hand, Kayo made sure Alan trailed behind her a little bit. She never really figured out why, it’s not like there was anything to protect him from that night, but she still felt the need to do that. Eventually, they sauntered their way towards the kitchen, where she heard Scott rambling about his current grievances.

She froze momentarily at another voice replying to Scott’s panic.

“Scott, take it easy, it’s not like a 13-year-old could get that far anywhere on the island--”

“He shouldn’t be able to get anywhere on the island in the first place, John, that’s the point! God, why was I so fucking stupid in letting that happen? Here I thought the breathing exercises were working! Jesus--”

“Alright, first of all, if you don’t slow down I’m going to force you to do more of them, you’re practically turning purple, and second of all, this is fixable. It is, but it won’t be if you keep running around like a chicken with its head cut off. If it makes you feel better, we can call Virgil, Gordon, and Grandma back from their ‘big secret thing’ they scampered off to right as they got me home if you want. Kayo is also capable at what she does, you fricking called her yourself. Would you like to go for another round around the island?”

There were Scott and John. In the same room. At the same time. Kayo rubbed her eyes in an attempt to see if what was in front of her were just spots in her vision. Blinking away the tears that formed because of the action, she learned they weren’t. Huh, lots of things were new and different tonight.

Weird.

Scott shook his head, “No, from what you described, Gordon was excited, as well as Virgil and Grandma. This isn’t an emergency. Not yet. Let’s call Kayo. If she hasn’t found anything, we can go one more time.”

That was her cue to step in, “You know, I always wondered why Virgil said he couldn’t exactly describe what you two were like when you’re in ‘panic mode’, and I think I now see why. It’s pure chaos. Here, you worried lunatics.”

The oldest brothers jumped at the voice, and with the fury of a thousand suns, they looked over to her waist to see the ball of freckles they desperately wanted to see. Scott stood up and John turned his body to be faced to Alan, both of them taut. They took one step forward, and Alan flinched behind Kayo’s leg, which made them both falter and stop on the spot.

Slightly rolling her eyes, she kneeled down to Alan and placed her forehead against the kid’s as she did those minutes ago, “Alan, what did we talk about?”

Both Scott and John blinked at the way Alan seamlessly calmed down with the interaction. Holding their breaths, Alan took a deep one of his own and turned to look at them with newfound determination. Within the blink of an eye, Scott had a limpet attached to his legs and waist, holding him in place. It was very difficult getting down to the floor to hug him back without falling flat on his ass. Alan was holding his center of balance in one tiny spot, but if Scott has learned anything, it was how to work around four unruly younger brothers.

John, at some point, came to stand next to Kayo as they watched the scene before them. After a few seconds, Alan leaned out and sniffed, “I’m sorry, Scooter, for scaring you. I know I’m not supposed to run off without telling anyone where I went, no matter why I’m running off. I promise to not do it again.”

Scott let out a few wet chuckles and ruffled the kid’s hair, not worried about that anymore in the slightest, “Well, I’m glad you know to apologize for that, but I think I need to apologize for some things as well. I’m sorry I ignored you, okay? I didn’t mean to, and I promise to properly explain what happened in the morning when we’re not so tired.”

Kayo saw John grimace out of the corner of her eye. She never exactly figured out what in Scott’s statement he did so over.

Alan seemed to take it for the most part. Most part, being the key term there, “But I understand! Or at least some of it… Adults have adult things they need to do, which I shouldn’t have tried interrupting. Which is also why Grandma is taking you away to do that training of yours. You’re going to get another adult job like the one you had before, and you’re going to be gone because of that too, and that’s okay! I--”

Scott shushed him with a finger over his lip, “There are a few things wrong with that statement of yours, little bro. And thank you for pointing out my last job, there were a few things I did wrong with that too. I went weeks without calling any of you when I very easily could have, and with a job like that, I probably scared you all half to death. Trust me, Sprout, tonight was a good kick in the pants. Alright, I’ll at least explain this now: I’m going to handle my new job a little differently. Every day I’m off the island, I’ll be sure to send some kind of message, hopefully, a call, but a text at the least. Scout’s Honor.”

Scott did the familiar hand movement, signifying that the Scout’s Honor was in place and was not to be broken at any point. She never figured out how Scott did it. Knew what to say even if the comforting words seemed like they had nothing to do with the current topic at hand. After all, despite jumping from ‘not running off like that’ to ‘Scott’s new job’, she watched as Alan fully relaxed and leaned back into his big brother’s arms while said big brother melted all around him like a pile of protective goo. The scene was peaceful, and Kayo could feel herself tearing--

“GUYS! OH MY GOD GUESS WHAT?! I--”

And there it went.

Like a bomb, Gordon was suddenly in the area screaming about something. Right as his foot slapped the tile of the kitchen, he froze and read the room around him while breathing heavily. Looking down at a kneeling Scott hugging Alan, Gordon sobered up, “Oh. Hey Allie, didn’t you say you wanted to watch Jurrasic World at some point?”

As obtuse as Gordon could be, he was always the best at brightening up the situation.

About a fourth of the way through the movie, Gordon, Scott, and Alan were all clonked out in some weird pretzel on the couch. Virgil and Grandma were in the kitchen quietly thinking of what to get ready for Gordon (getting accepted into WASP while being a gold-medal athlete at the same time was no easy feat), so that left John and her to do everything but watch the movie.

Kayo barely registered John’s awkward coughing as an attempt to catch her attention. When he saw that it finally worked, he seemed to get embarrassed about what he was going to say, “So… that thing you did with Alan.”

Kayo blinked in confusion.

John quickly explained, “That forehead press? He was really comforted by that. I was just thinking… could you show us how it’s done? At least Scott and I, but if you could show Virgil and Gordon too that would be nice. I think Alan’s starting to form mine and Scott’s bad habit of panic attacks, so to have that gesture in our back pocket would help.”

Kayo thought about John’s words for a moment before shrugging, “Yeah, sure. My father taught yours how to do it so I don’t see why I can’t do something similar.”

The silence suddenly wanted to choke her. Suddenly looking over at John, she saw the ginger with wide eyes, “... Our dad? Why?”

Oh shit. Jeff was a sensitive subject in the house, and she tried her best to tiptoe around it until now. Especially when it wasn’t her father that was dead. Eh, she’ll hate pulling a tab from Gordon’s page in the future, but, “He wanted something special for Lucy since he wasn’t exactly the most graceful swan on the planet. My father did it with a lot of his friends he considered close, as well as my mother, so Jeff asked him the meaning behind it and viola. Your father was a slightly more refined person.”

Watching John blink a few times made her think she fucked up even more, but then he literally chuckled as he absentmindedly looked back towards the movie, “Yeah, ain’t that an understatement.”

She relaxed and copied his actions, the feeling of confidence washing over her like a warm blanket as her eyes graced the TV. She may not have fully been a Tracy, but she had to begrudgingly admit that she was too much like them for her own good. Jeff’s ‘peas in a pod’ statement was really coming back to bite her in the ass.

Gordon loudly snored from Scott’s lap, making both Kayo and John jump.

… Yeah, too much for her own good.

---

Fuse told her to run ahead and that was all she needed to start booking it down the compound towards Gordon and Virgil.

The map their uncle gave them was helpful, but it just emphasized how deep in shit they all were. Also, she had to admit she felt slightly bad. Once John convinced her that Fuse was really there to help and after she listened to their plan, maybe she should have fought it more as Scott and Gordon did. She was just so relieved to finally have something to go off of after nearly a month. When five boys left to get Jeff and only four came back…

Watch out for her uncle.

Fuse wasn’t expecting it either, so at least it wasn’t a planned trap. But still, it’s her job to prevent this shit. Not let the Tracys walk right into it.

Shaking her head, she refocused on getting to the two brothers currently closest to her position. She was part of IR, she was still good at rescuing too. It was just a small pinch in the back of her head. The only thing she wanted to do in life at the least was protect the Tracy family from anything else her uncle threw at them.

Heh, the irony.

Right before she rounded the corner, she heard something akin to ungodly screeching.

“You should have stayed dead!”

“We-hell, if there’s anything I’m known for, it’s being disappointing!” Cheeky laughter came next.

Well, that second voice was Gordon. But the first one was female, and that threw Kayo a little off. The voice was still familiar, but she was pretty sure Penelope was off getting the GDF to their location, and Grandma was back home making sure Jeff didn’t shoot out of his chair to come help them. Plus, ‘you should have stayed dead’ was something those two ladies would never say, let alone to a family member, so why did that voice sound familiar?

She took one step around the corner and--

“Havoc.”

The growl was out of her mouth before she could help it. Talk about a sight for sore eyes.

She stopped running and took in the view. Gordon was breathing heavily and grinning in that way that said he was terrified out of his mind. Behind him on the ground was Virgil holding his head. His breathing was labored too, albeit not as bad as Gordon. Considering the blunt object Havoc was holding, Kayo quickly figured out why Virgil got Alan to run.

The air must have been stuffy because as Kayo focused on her labored breathing, she watched the hacker also continue to breathe heavily, her eyes wide with craze. Kayo stomped her boot down promptly in between the boys and the nuisance in the room, “Gordon, get your brother out of here.”

Gordon blinked in confusion but then was on Virgil in a way that reminded the middle Tracy of Scott. Virgil, for once, was hoping Gordon would listen to his innate response to not follow orders. The musician’s hope was promptly squashed as he yelped when Gordon picked him up and supported him as they walked out of the room, “Hey! Gordon--”

Gordon was surprised at how easily he shrugged off Virgil’s protest. That’s probably why he listened to Kayo’s order to get him out so easily, “Yeah, yeah, save whatever you’re gonna say for the potential concussion, bro.”

Kayo could only listen as the two sauntered away, as Havoc tried leaping after them again, intent on finishing what she started. Kayo stopped the woman in her tracks with a kick, and now all of the anger was directed at Kayo herself. Good. She had some choice words for The Chaos Crew member in front of her, “You’ve made an awful amount of mistakes recently.”

The lady growled and lunged, which Kayo easily avoided. The hacker landed on her knees and looked up, “We’re they mistakes, or happy accidents?”

Kayo scowled even more, “I think you know what they were, and you liked it that way.”

Havoc shrugged, her grin becoming even wider, “Yeah, you’re right, they were wonderful accidents.”

Havoc was back on her feet and now it was Kayo’s turn to lunge. Kayo didn’t need to win, just waste enough time for everyone else to finish their parts of the plan, though, she would be lying if she said she didn’t feel satisfaction at going toe-to-toe with this lady.

She was pretty sure John was out of his mind like the rest of his family thought, but the more she saw Fuse in action, the more she understood the astronaut’s point of view. Fuse was smart when he wanted to be, if a bit oblivious, and there was no complaining about him giving them information about Alan’s whereabouts.

Plus… she was begrudgingly starting to see the appeal of Fuse himself. Of what he had been through. She was an older sister to a singular younger sibling too, maybe not the best one, but from what she was seeing, Havoc didn’t exactly rank up high on the list either.

As she continued to brawl with the lady-in-purple, she probably should have cooled her anger a little bit. The more she thought about Alan or Havoc and Fuse or her uncle or, hell, even the way Gordon and Virgil made their way to safety just a few minutes prior, the more she was reminded of how wrong this had all been, about how much more diffifcult life was made by idiots like Havoc and The Hood. How tired she was from all of it, which was another reason she should have taken a breather.

Long story short: it was making her more aggressive, less thoughtful of her next actions. She eventually started swinging without purpose, which Havoc was hoping to happen. She used an opening those actions created and knocked the female member of IR to the floor.

Suddenly, Kayo was pinned and the metal pipe was raised, and right as she closed her eyes and prepared to take the hit, a quiet voice spoke from a few feet away, preventing the hit from happening altogether.

“Sis?”

Both women froze, and both turned their heads ever so slowly at the new voice. Despite his size, Fuse was standing off in the shadows and looked incredibly small. Like she had almost been burned, Havoc jumped off Kayo and was standing up, eyes pleading for something Kayo wasn’t sure the hacker exactly wanted, “What? No, you got away! You ran! You’re not supposed to be here, it’s not--”

Kayo, who couldn’t find the energy to stand, watched with growing understanding. Watched Havoc’s wide eyes in contemplation, the woman’s panic slowly making sense. It was hard to imagine, but it couldn’t be anything else. Havoc was, in fact, scared for Fuse. He probably already pissed off The Hood, and Havoc was left to barely cool the flames lest she wanted a dead brother. Maybe that’s why she didn’t follow Fuse. She wanted to stay behind to make sure Fuse’s small chance of surviving was as big as it could be.

Huh, it was weird to think about The Chaos Crew in any other form outside of their established ‘chaotic’ selves, but maybe sibling dynamics were so powerful it was just a universal thing.

Maybe Kayo misjudged her actions like she did Fuse’s. Maybe Havoc wasn’t too bad of a sister.

Meanwhile, Fuse took her panic as anger. Betrayal. He left her behind, so of course, she deserved to be angry. He abandoned her after all, for a family they’ve been deadset on destroying for the past however long. But that was the other thing, wasn’t it? This family who he had hurt so many times before still showed him a level of decency he wasn’t aware was possible. A level of decency when siblings are allowed to be siblings and nothing else.

That’s what they thought they would get when they were persuaded by The Hood with his smarmy exterior, but now that he’s been helping out the Tracys, he realized The Hood was the exact opposite.

Despite his misunderstanding, what he said was exactly what his sister needed to hear.

With wide eyes, he looked directly at his only other family, “Camilla…” Havoc jumped, Fuse continued without hesitation, “We can be free, you know. The Mechanic got away. He’s safe on Tracy Island. I talked to him. He’s happy, we can be too, and it’s all thanks to them.” He gestured toward Kayo off to the side.

Meanwhile, the IR lady in question did what she did best: sat in silence and watched as Havoc slowly understood the situation, “... Really?”

Fuse started smiling, smiling, and Kayo had to blink before he spoke once more, “Yeah, we need to do some things and spend some time to make up for everything that we did, but it will be away from him, you know? It’s possible. I’ve seen it, experienced it, you can too. I promise.”

Havoc lost all of her edge at those words. Her insane exterior melted away into a woman who was finally realizing she didn’t have to fight anymore, that she was no longer backed into a corner, “Wow…”

Younger siblings. No matter the family, they always manage to leave their older siblings speechless.

Rolling her eyes and standing up, Kayo wiped off her pants and walked over to the entirety of The Chaos Crew. There was another younger sibling that needed to be found, “Alright, now that we got this out of the way, let’s make that pathway for the GDF. Fuse, you know what to do.”

Once Fuse registered Kayo’s words, the grin that overtook his face was no longer relaxed but giddy instead, “Come’ on, sis, you’ve said you wanted to learn how to do more of my stuff right?”

For some reason, Havoc’s grin was too, “Hell yes.”

As Kayo helped The Chaos Crew set up charges like John said to do, she also remembered another thing the ginger told her while they were preparing the last few things they needed to prepare before they went out on their big mission. He is the reason we’re probably getting Alan back. As an older sibling, it’s the least I could do for him. Little siblings, ours or not, always made us Tracys act rather irrationally.

Later, when Kayo saw Alan and Scott limp out of the hole The Chaos Crew made with and even worse looking Hood, she was also reminded of the fact of life that said John was always right.

Little siblings really do bring out the worst and best of you.

---

It only took a few nights before the obvious happened.

For once in her life, Kayo was asleep in her bed when unholy screaming filled the hallways of Tracy Island. It was autopilot with the way she threw her bedsheets off and was standing up, but she only realized what was truly happening when she reached her doorway. Alan. Instead of running and preparing to fight whatever was causing the distress, she was simply running to get to the location as fast as she could.

Now, everyone knew she was one of the fastest people on the island, it was her job, but even she had to admit that, no matter how much she loved these boys and vice versa, they would be better at the whole ‘need to comfort’ thing. At least in the form of hugs and kisses and shhshing nightmares away. She subconsciously knew to keep her strides slow and steady so her search-and-destroy mode wasn’t the first thing to be at Alan’s place of rest. Just like she wanted, when she reached the youngest’s room, John and Gordon were patiently waiting right outside while Virgil stood vigilant by Jeff to make sure the father didn’t collapse right then and there. That meant Scott was inside.

She was breathing heavily when she walked the last few feet to the family, “Any updates?”

Uncharacteristically so, John rubbed his hands over his face in defeat while Gordon was the one to explain what they knew, “No, not yet. Scooter’s in there trying to calm the flames.”

Speaking of which, there was a rather large thunk from inside the room. As the family jumped in shock, Alan’s door suddenly swung open, and as quick as it did that, it shut once more with a rather frantic Scott on the side with the rest of the family leaning against it. His hands were flat and shaking against the door, and his breathing verged on the territory of hyperventilation.

Kayo simply stared. Everything was being thrown off its axis tonight.

Again.

Gordon, who could be as tactful as his father (which was not at all), didn’t understand why Scott ran out of the room. Nobody did, but he was the only one who seemed to be willing to ask questions, “Scott, what the hell?! What’s wrong?!”

The brother in question closed his eyes, his fists clenching slowly against the closed door. He shakily exhaled as he opened his eyes to look his family in their faces, “L-Listen, I couldn’t stay in there, I j-just…”

Virgil, who was being reasonable and logical, simply stated other options like any other person would in a situation such as this one, “Scott, it’s okay if this sets off some bad memories. We might not have the magic touch you do, but we all have our own ways of calming him down. Maybe I can--”

Too bad all of his words hit Scott like a ton of bricks for each syllable, for each suggestion, “No! That’s not it, the rest of you will give him the same reaction, trust me,” his words left no room for argument, and suddenly, every throat in the hallway got dry.

Gordon needed to shut up, “What?! That doesn’t make any sense! If there’s anything that can help him right now it would be us!”

Scott’s shaking stopped. Now he was getting annoyed, but only because he didn’t want to drop the literal bomb on his family about why going to see Alan was going to make it worse, “Gordon, just believe me sincerely for once in your life”

John was trying to play the mediator like he always did, “Guys! Give Scott a second to explain, holy--”

Seriously, Gordon, knock it off, “Yeah, Scott, I wanna know why you think leaving our baby brother to his demons is such a good idea!”

Jeff, who Kayo suddenly remembered was there, finally gave his two cents, “Please stop yelling, we already had one family member scream tonight, let’s not make that number bigger.”

The idea of hitting Gordon over the head with a chair was very thrilling all of a sudden, “I won’t if Scott pulls his head out of his ass!”

Virgil had his hands up in a surrender position, “Jesus, I’m sorry I said anything.”

Really, just a good whack would do Gordon some good, “No, you were absolutely right in suggesting it, so now why--”

The voices were becoming like nails on a chalkboard even to Kayo, so God knew what torture they were for Scott. She watched Scott intently, waiting and hoping that when the straw on the camel’s back broke the explosion wouldn’t be too hard to clean up.

When it happened, she was so caught off guard by what Scott eventually blurted out that she could no longer even begin to think about metaphorical mops or hazmat suits.

“Goddammit, you want an explanation?! It was because he was scared!”

The rest of the brothers jumped at the confession. While their eyes were still wide, Scott let out a breathy curse and explained further, “He was scared of me. The more I was in there, the worse he got, okay? I’m sorry, but after everything that happened, I think he’s just going to react similarly to you guys because...” Another curse. Scott closed his eyes and moved his head so his face faced the floor.

The rest of the family immediately became downtrodden. Dammit dammit dammit. This was to be expected, but it didn’t fucking hurt any less. They were all generally aware of what The Hood put Alan through, so they had been way more reserved with their comforts than they would have been at any other time, but the fact that this was going so far as to completely prevent that same comfort after an awful night terror...

Gordon, who was too much like Alan when it came to handling shock, metaphorically grasped at the air, “But we can’t just leave him to suffer. He just woke up the ocean border of every country around us with how loud his screams were! We can’t-- he--”

Kayo, who was not a sentimental person at heart, found herself gently speaking for once in her life, “Do you… Do you think he used me?”

The brothers blinked, telling Kayo: Huh, we’re not sure.

Taking a deep breath, Kayo started towards the door, Scott reluctantly moved out of the way, and right as her hand graced the edge to open it, “Wait, Jeff, what about you? You are his father after all.”

The oldest four sons suddenly looked at him with faces that said she has a point. It would only be fair for him to have a shot as well. But before any of the sons could help Kayo’s argument, “Well, I was wondering that too, but then you suggested yourself first before anything else and I realized you, Miss Tanusha, had grown a soft spot. I don’t want to get in the way of that now do I?”

Blushing at all of their grins (the assholes, why did she like this family again), she abruptly looked back at the door, took a deep breath and descended into hell. A few of her spirits were lifted as she listened to Gordon apologize to Scott as she shut the door. She couldn’t stop the grin that fell over her face at Scott’s reassurance even if she wanted to either. We’re too much alike when we want to be, buddy, I get it.

With the door fully shut behind her, she lost her grin, exhaled that deep breath she took, looked up to fully take in the room and wasn’t sure what broke inside her first at the sight.

Curled on the floor on the other side of the bed to the doorway was a bundle of trembling sheets. From the way there were none left on the bed, Kayo quickly assumed what that large thunk was from earlier. She hoped the rest of the brothers paid attention to Scott right now. He was probably in shambles after what he must felt like he caused.

Her shoulders deflated as she carefully trotted over closer. Making sure there was at least half-a-foot between them, she kneeled in front of the pile of sheets and thought about what to say first. It took her a minute, but once she saw those trembles die down ever so slightly, “Alan, do you need me to get you anything?”

A flinch from the pile, but she held steady. After what felt like a million years, she watched as a familiar mop of blonde poked its head out from the sheets. Along with it, blue eyes and freckles for days came back to the land of the living. Was her sigh of relief obvious? She hoped it wasn’t.

Watching Alan melt into the dresser behind him with his sheets still wrapped about his shoulders, Kayo took the opportunity to sit criss-cross-apple-sauce in front of him and continue to wait silently. Suddenly, Alan closed his eyes but also started... grinning? Huh. Blinking once, she watched as Alan’s hands came out from under the bedspread and started moving, Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?

Her father already had her learning sign language because of her deaf maternal godmother, so when the boys asked her if she knew any she was one step ahead.

She too couldn’t stop the grin that fell over her face. Even after screaming his lungs out, Alan was still Alan, “I suppose I could say the same for you, you know. I was worried I would have to get a shovel to dig you out of that pile for a minute.”

Alan opened his eyes to look directly at her green ones and relaxed even more. As he sat up straighter, the sheets on his shoulders fell off just a little bit, almost symbolically representing the way a butterfly comes out of one’s cocoon, Yeah, that would’ve sucked. So, where’d you chase your creepy uncle off to? He never had the balls to be you, probably worried he didn’t have the finesse to play a woman, so--

Kayo flinched momentarily at the question in the first part of his statement. It was very small and brief, but it was certainly enough for Alan to get the picture.

Alan’s eyes widened in panic, and Kayo could clearly see what kind of thoughts were violently swimming around in his head. Oh God, that’s right, I’ve been saved, which meant that wasn’t The Hood, that was-- sugar honey iced tea, what the heck did I do?!

Kayo would be lying if she said she didn’t start panicking at the sight of Alan’s panic. Way to go. You’re doing the exact opposite of what you came in here for, idiot. The only thing that kept her grounded was the fact that Alan was on the verge of passing out, making her brain function due to the need to prioritize. Your self-deprecation was below the need to make sure Alan stayed calm, for all that it stung.

For once in her life she found herself taking a shot in the dark by placing her hand gently on his shoulder, ignoring the minor flinch he made at the contact, “Alan, it’s going to be alright, they understand that y--”

Suddenly, Alan jumped away from her contact and slightly thumped his head against the dresser behind him once more, making Kayo wince. During that whole process, Alan was shaking his head in denial and pulling the sheets tighter around him once more. Like a baby swaddling itself in its blanket. Again, Alan wasn’t signing anything, but Kayo could read his emotions loud and clear. That’s still not okay! I’m not scared of him, I’m not, yet I still flinched and jumped away from him like he was the one that continuously hurt me for the past month. They’ve been working their butts off to save me, and they did, they’ve given up so much for me and I can’t thank them without flinching or crying like a child.

As she was reading his eyes for the last sentence, he just had to go and sign it himself, Why did The Hood have to ruin me? Wasn’t I already bad enough?

John occasionally mentioned how Alan felt out of place in the rest of his family, and Gordon, Scott, and even Virgil, who was the most asinine about following protocol to a T, always cautioned her about being a little loose with the way Alan acted sometimes, but to see it so blatantly tonight tore her chest every which-a-way. It was a thing she was aware of, she had seen snippets throughout the years (their beach conversation being the worst, or, used to be now), but she selfishly hoped she never would see it when it was this bad...

Well, she had to admit that she’s never been the most tactful person. Gordon, eat your heart out.

Getting up on her knees, she shoved herself into Alan’s personal bubble, firmly placed her hands on his shoulders and made him look her directly in the eyes, “Alan Tracy, you have a grave misunderstanding of the current situation.”

The boy’s eyes widened, and before he could do anything else, Kayo continued, wondering where in the world her words were coming from, “All of you boys have been damaged in ways that won’t be overcome with a song and a dance. Your family is going to feel like shit, you are going to feel like shit, there will be emotional and animalistic reactions none of you can help after such events, even I’m guilty of them, but that’s… okay.”

Alan slowly blinked at her hesitation, suddenly aware of certain weaknesses he wasn’t sure Kayo had. She inhaled through her nose and her serious demeanor was back, “You all have insecurities that I can’t address, mainly because I’m bad at doing that for my issues as well,” Alan snorted, “But that’s okay. What The Hood didn’t wasn’t good, and you’re going to feel his wrath years after the fact, hell, there’s a chance you’ll never truly get over his words,” believe her, “But we also have ways to, not ignore it per se, but make it easier to have such hurtful lies ring around our brains. Your answer, and maybe mine as well, is the incredibly stupid, incredibly stubborn, and incredibly headstrong family waiting outside that doorway to make sure you’re okay.”

Remembering exactly how she taught these boys so long ago, Kayo gently but surely placed her forehead against his, “You boys have ridiculous amounts of love to last for days, and if I didn’t love you all as much as you love each other, I would hit every single one of you every time you lost sight of it. Believe me, Alan, that’s a lot of bruises.”

Leaning back like a gust of wind, she waited and watched as the flabbergasted look on Alan’s face slowly morphed into contemplation. After holding her breath for longer than necessary, she exhaled as she watched Alan’s hands form the words she wanted to hear, Could you… get Scott for me? I wanna say some things to him. Tonight.

With a cheeky smile, she boosted herself up on her knee and started walking out of the room, “Sure thing, Alan.”

She was pretty sure he watched her leave until she got out into the hallway and shut the door. Once she was there, she was met with five pairs of beady eyes, probably expecting something worse than what she had. With a sigh, she looked at Scott, “He wants to see you again.”

Scott jumped while the rest of the men relaxed in some way shape or form. When their motions were done, Scott’s shoulders sagged too. As Kayo moved out of the way to trade places with Scott he like did for her earlier, she quickly laid her hand upon his shoulder to catch his attention for one last word, “If the first thing that comes from his hands is “I’m sorry”, please do me the utmost favor and smack him for me.”

Blinking, Scott registered her words with a smile, “Don’t worry, it’ll be for all of us.”

With a nod, Scott was inside the room once, and the rest of the family finally and fully relaxed. Now then, her hands were on her hips, “Alright, unless you boys want to sleep out in the hallway, it’s off to bed with you all.”

The rest of the brothers (and Jeff, who was supposed to be in his 50s for Christ’s sake) widened their eyes and opened their mouths like fishes in the process of objecting. Clearly, they were willing to spend the night out in the hallway, though, she should have expected that of them. With an aggressive sigh, she stopped them in their tracks, “Unless you want Alan to feel any more guilt over things he shouldn’t feel guilty about, you should avoid the cricks in your necks while you can.”

Watching them wince, she figured she won.

After a few minutes along with some last goodnights, the boys were off to their rooms in the hope that they would find even just a little more sleep after tonight. All except for two, Virgil and Jeff, which Kayo watched as the former struggled to support the latter, exhausted with previous events. Suddenly, another seemingly out-of-character idea hit Kayo, and once again, she didn’t mind following it.

While she may not have had as much muscle mass as him, Virgil did comment once that she was just as strong as he was, “Virgil, go to bed. I can get your father to his.”

Virgil blinked, and before he could utter a word out, Jeff spoke for him, “Yeah, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea. You need sleep, Jack, don’t try and fool these old eyes.”

With a playful roll of his eyes, Virgil played ‘pass the dad’ with Kayo. As soon as his father was off of his shoulder, he threw his hands up in the air. He was down the hall and facing the other direction when they heard him shout, “For the last time, I was not a beanstalk, I was reasonably skinny! Reasonably!”

Kayo and Jeff were left to chuckle as they slowly made their way to the father’s room. About halfway there, Jeff glanced over to Kayo with what was supposed to be a simple question, “So, how’s Kyrano?”

Kayo thought she would flinch at the mention of her father, but instead, she simply tilted her head and blinked as she considered the question, “He’s relatively okay. His retirement has been treating him well, at least.”

She noticed his grimace the word ‘retirement’ but stayed quiet as he began to talk, “Ah, I guess he would’ve taken my absence pretty hard. His favorite part was working with me, or more specifically, trying to one-up me. I couldn’t even get him to go home when he was running a fever, you know.”

Kayo rolled her eyes, very much aware of her father’s friendly rivalry with Jeff and how far he took it, “Well, I think he’ll have to surrender this time. Coming back from the dead would be considered too crazy. Even for him.”

Jeff chuckled, knowing she was right, “Finally pulled one over on him. Who would’a thought the day would come.”

Kayo, right before they delved into silence once more, stated something with no room for argument, “I should take you to see him. He would appreciate the surprise.”

Jeff sought no reason to argue in the first place, “I think I would appreciate that as well.”

It was a quiet trip back to his room from then on. He left the door slightly ajar, so it was easy for her to kick it open gently. As she brought him over to his bed, she gandered around the room to look at the new objects strewn about. No longer a bedroom from a magazine advertisement, it was finally more personalized. Different types of shoes were strewn about the ground, including a pair of ugly slippers, the color of the area no longer a dull grey-green but more of a deep maroon, and the small work desk in the corner had a few pictures laid atop it as well.

Most of which were his family and kids. Kayo would later deny blushing at the one of her and Gordon sparring.

She knew Mrs. Tracy took pictures that day, and she must have given Jeff that one when the father asked for some from the eight years of his disappearance

So caught up in the moment, she didn’t think as she gently set Jeff down on top of his covers, cleared her throat, and walked out of the room without a word. That was before his voice rang out in the room, stopping her in her tracks.

“Hey, Kayo?”

She stopped right in his doorway, throat tight with emotion as she looked back at him, “Yes, Jeff?”

His vision flickered around the room in uncertainty. “Thank you,” he finally said, voice husky with something Kayo wasn’t willing to describe, “For keeping them safe.”

Kayo, still looking over her shoulder, formed one of the tiniest grins imaginable, “Of course, someone had to make sure their dumbasses didn’t do anything drastic. Your mother and Lady Penelope could only do so much. Goodnight, Jeff.”

As Jeff laid back down, his shoulders sagged, “Goodnight, Kayo.”

With that, the bedroom door became shut, yet the future became wide open with millions of possibilities.

For once, Kayo looked forward to that uncertainty.

#thunderbirds #thunderbirds are go #kayo kyrano #alan tracy #kyrano #jeff tracy #fuse thunderbirds #havoc thunderbirds #my post #my fic #series: rules of alchemy

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 244: Have You Read This Book

Previously on BnHA: Deku visited his mom on New Year’s Eve and was all “here’s a new letter from my ever-expanding fanclub of adorable preschoolers whom I saved from trauma” and Inko was all, “I’M SO PROUD OF YOU IZUKU I FEEL LIKE I DON’T HAVE TO PROTECT YOU ANYMORE” because she doesn’t watch the news at all or keep track of ominous plot developments I guess. The next morning, a.k.a. New Year’s Fucking Day, while other kids their age visited shrines or sat at home watching TV, Izuku, Shouto, and Katsuki were bussed off to go be child soldiers at Endeavor’s hero agency. Katsuki was all “HEY ENDEAVOR YOU’RE KIND OF A DICK,” and Endeavor was all “SHOUTO IS THIS VULGAR AND PUGNACIOUS YOUTH REALLY YOUR FRIEND” and Shouto was all “TOO LATE DAD, YOU SAID!!” and Endeavor hmmphed and booked it out of there and the kids all followed him and there was this old dude with a beard floating around screaming about END TIMES!! and Hawks was there and, what?? Seriously does anyone actually know what’s going on?

Today on BnHA: Endeavor chases down the old man (who may in fact be an actual prophet, though? Horikoshi what games are you playing) and sets him on fire and tackles him and it’s all very violent. Hawks then appears out of nowhere and breaks up BakuDeku’s tag team effort all “SAVE IT FOR THE MOVIE YOU TWO!” and is then all “hi Shouto” and “hi, you must be Midoriya, Tokoyami told me all about you, I wanted to work with you too, BUT -- [stares off angstily into the distance].” Then, because I forgot that Hawks never shuts up, he’s all, “Hey Endeavor have you ever heard of this book, ‘Paranormal Liberation Front’? Don’t let the really dumb-sounding title put you off, it’s actually a rousing tale full of hidden clues about all the bullshit I’m actually up to. I highlighted the relevant portions if you can’t be assed to read it, well anyways, Hail Hydra.” “Well that was a strange conversation,” Endeavor thinks to himself as he stares uncomprehendingly into the void. Sob someone please help them why are they so bad at this oh god.

(All comments are my unspoiled reactions from my initial readthrough of the chapter. I did a quick edit for grammar and clarity immediately afterward, and added a few ETAs in the process, but aside from that there are no changes.)

so thanks to that little stunt Horikoshi pulled two weeks ago, our chances of finding out Bakugou’s hero name any time within the next dozen chapters are slimmer than ever. probably he’ll reveal it at the end of the arc instead. it’s like he doesn’t even care about the databook. whatever I’ll have plenty of time to sulk more about it after I get to readin’

anyway the title of the new chapter is “Recommendation”, so... actually that does sound fairly promising, though? am I just eternally doomed to get my hopes up? is this referring to Shouto pestering his dad to take on his two best friends as fellow interns? what’s going on here

anyway so we’re opening with this

I love that it’s the two supposed goody-two-shoes kids who are actually being vocal about blatantly disregarding Endeavor’s orders. Shouto is just not having it to begin with, whereas Deku at least is trying to rationalize his own reckless behavior. Katsuki meanwhile is too focused on doing this fancy kick move to switch his suitcase from his left hand to his right to bother talking right now. reminds me of him playing with the soccer ball as a youngling

also the fact that his case is number 17 and Deku’s is number 18. have I talked about this before? I think I have but it was with some other numbered thing. anyways love the symbolism of him trying to stay one step ahead of him and Deku always being right on his heels. or maybe I’m reading too much into it but anyways rivals, yay

damn Endeavor is really determined to get ahead of them though

uh oh Horikoshi how much action did you pack into this chapter. starting to run out of time to finish all your panels again huh. you had a whole extra week! how fucking insane is this arc going to be holy shit

anyways Endeavor way to leave your brand new interns behind minutes after meeting them for the first time smdh. this is exactly how it went down with Hawks and Tokoyami

okay so like, I know a flash fire is an actual thing, but for a second I started wondering if in this kind of context (with him speeding off), it might also be a reference to the DC hero. then I remembered that the name of Endeavor’s technique is different in Japanese and the pun probably doesn’t translate. ah well

anyways dude is fast. but I wouldn’t count the kids out yet, they’re all pretty fast too!

so now we’re back downtown with Old Man Doom And Gloom, and oddly enough it seems that this isn’t actually an out-of-the-ordinary occurrence?

fucking quirk society. you guys are just so desensitized to the most bizarre fucking things. but I guess we in the 21st century are hardly ones to talk ourselves sigh

anyway now he’s being a bit more extra than usual and they’re starting to worry

?? the fuck is that? that sure as hell isn’t Hawks or Endeavor lmao. IF IT’S SLIDIN’ GO I SWEAR TO GOD

or wait, is it still the old man talking? should I actually be paying attention to his ramblings, my bad

is that a fucking Spirit Bomb

(ETA: in truth this is the most badass attack name that has ever existed or will ever exist and I should give it its proper due actually.)

so now I guess he’s hurtling it at them??

...hold up one sec

“revelations from the universe, I have received. flee, flee good citizens. the Dark Lord’s lips curl into a wicked crescent” -- holy shit, this all tracks?? IS THIS DOOMSDAY CRACKPOT MOTHERFUCKER ACTUALLY RIGHT ON THE FUCKING MONEY HOLY SHIT. ARE YOU A WITCH GOOD SIR. DID YOU WRITE A BOOK OF HIGHLY ACCURATE AND DEVASTATINGLY WITTY PROPHECIES BY ANY CHANCE

“the end is nigh! the wicked stars are conspiring against us! we must stop them! the earth is on the verge of being engulfed by darkness! flee, my fellow citizens! I am the one who shall destroy this source of darkness! be revealed! servants of the dark lord, come forth!”

okay listen. if he’s aiming this fucking thing at Hawks, though, after a speech like that? fuck it, I’m a believer. I’m sorry old man, I wrote you off without a second thought and here you are being the only one who’s actually like “HELLO!!!? PEOPLE!!!? THE LEAGUE OF VILLAINS!!?! THEY HAVE AN ARMY!!? AND NOUMUS!??! FUUUUUUUUCK”

and I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but those are some legit-ass universe revelations. fucking even talks about the “Dark Lord” specifically only describing his lips. because he doesn’t have anything else to describe nowadays, face-wise. shit that is spooky

anyway so that sure was unexpected. let’s see what shenanigans Master Roshi here is gonna get himself into next

did my boy just get fucking flashfired. jesus Endeavor show some fucking mercy

...

someone want to explain to this man the concept of a proportionate response? anyone? ...

fucking Todorokis I swear to god. if they weren’t all so good at being amazing superheroes, they could easily fall back on a career of being dramatic bitches for hire instead

anyways when did Endeavor change his clothes. this dude was wearing a turtleneck and slacks thirty seconds ago. did he literally just burn them off. how. what. fucking plot holes left and right

lol imagine if like on the next page the interns finally catch up and they’re like holding his fucking jacket and looking peeved

-- holy fucking shit, Endeavor

not cool, dude!! what the fuck. this isn’t a fucking Noumu for fuck’s sake THAT IS A HUMAN PERSON

(ETA: I guess he ended up being okay, but shit, for a moment it looked like we were going full blown Raiders of the Lost Ark over here. anyways the moral of this story is that Endeavor is terrifying, fuck.)

so now of course Nostradamus is trying to get the fuck out of there, because if he sticks around Endeavor apparently has no qualms about burning him alive. fuck me Endeavor, I’m still rooting for your redemption arc my dude, but tbh if Dabi happens to pop up out of nowhere here looking for some revenge I’m not gonna say no to it right now. quit burning people alive!!

so now 12/21/2012 is zooming down an alley and Endeavor is zooming after him and telling some extra with a sword to stay and lead the evacuation

oh??

Endeavor have you flown yourself right into a trap?

oh my god what the fuck is this

it’s like Dabi VS the Liberation Army all over again. fucking check all these motherfuckers who apparently want to get themselves deep fried. this one guy really thinks he’s going to clock the Number One with a piece of fucking PVC pipe

LMAOOOOO

LOOKS LIKE WE GOT OURSELVES A RUCKUS, BOYS! you better believe I have the Powerpuff Girls theme song playing in my head right now

-- !!!

HAWKS!! I WAS STARTING TO WONDER IF YOU REALLY WERE THERE TOO OR IF THE PANELS IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER WERE DELIBERATELY MISLEADING

LOOOOOOL

pour one out for these poor sobs who somehow got themselves caught up in an accidental pincer attack between the dynamic fucking duo and fucking Angry Bird here. where the fuck is Shouto btw. or is he the one that got stuck carrying Endeavor’s jacket

loool look at Hawks out here making friends

SURPRISE BITCH

oh my god though you guys look at this??

HELLO SURPRISE NEW FAVORITE SERIES OF PANELS, CAN I JUST TAKE A MOMENT TO LOVE ON YOU A BIT HERE, BECAUSE

1. Bakugou and Deku IN PERFECT SYNC, not even thinking about it. just effortless. that was an amazing tag team thing you guys had going on before SOMEONE stepped in and ruined it all omg. do you want me to talk to Hawks for you. I’ve been meaning to discuss some other things with him anyway so it’s not like it’d be going out of my way. can you believe this fucking pigeon blocked my number. WHERE IS JEANIST YOU BASTARD

anyways 2. “I thought Endeavor might have been in a tough spot” that’s a funny way of saying “I was lonely and missed my angry arson dad”! and fucking look at this ridiculous bantering between them. “did it look like I was in a tough spot?” I FUCKING CAN’T YOU GUYS PLEASE STOP

and 3. Shouto just watching. is he impressed by his dad? or just trying to figure out whether Hawks is his dad’s adopted son or boyfriend. I’m pretty sure it’s the former, Shouto, but I don’t blame you for being confused, Hawks just has that kind of energy with everyone

oh my god

somebody arrest this man. I can’t fucking deal with your cheeky fucking face Hawks

is Skeptic getting all of this?? are they sitting there with bowls of popcorn back at the League of Pliff HQ trying to figure out whether Endeavor and Hawks are dating

...and shit, I just realized the League officially knows now that the disaster trio is interning with the number one. so that’s fucking great. not that it would have been a secret for long, but still, things are officially starting to get real. in hindsight, after the Kamino arc we had a nice long stretch of chapters in which Deku, Kacchan, and Shouto were not in immediate danger from the main fucking villains, so that was nice while it lasted I guess. those days will soon be behind us

ahhhklkljkl

fucking shit Hawks could you be any more ominous. oh my god this arc really is going to kill me

so now we’re cutting away to somewhere. Pliff?

-- oh, nope, still in the same place, we just fast-forwarded to the part where the police came to haul all the bad guys away

and now the manga is being all clever and foreshadowing-y and would you look at this

BUT IS HE TALKING ABOUT ENDEAVOR, OR HAWKS omg. or hell, he could even be talking about Deku. or AFO even though he’s not actually there. point is, you know he’s not actually wrong. but what is he actually trying to tell us ahhhhhh Servant of the Stars please reveal your secrets

(ETA: in all seriousness you guys, I’m fully down for counting this as a prophecy. it’s already canon that future-seeing quirks are a thing, so. the only problem is that this is some Game of Thrones-level ambiguity as far as who he’s actually talking about. it seriously could be anyone. anyways at least we’ve got some shiny new theory material to play around with here so that’s nice.)

LMAO

HAWKS YOU BASTARD, JUST LIKE THAT I’VE FORGIVEN YOU FOR THE FUCKING JEANOCIDE

how does every single person Deku meets not greet him this way?? I sure as hell would. “well if it isn’t the kid who just. fuckin blew up his own hands on live television, multiple times. salutations”

anyways where’s Katsuki, the boy whose previous hero mentor you murdered in cold blood but he doesn’t actually know that yet. when are we gonna start in on that?

Hawks says he’s heard about Deku from Tokoyami. and he even says he would have liked to work with Deku too, wow. that’s high praise

ffffff here it comes, THAT GOOD HAWKS ANGST. WE WERE WAITING FOR THIS BUT IT’S STILL BRUTAL GAH

is this entire arc just going to consist of Hawks saying cryptic things with double meanings known only to him and then glancing sideways at the camera all broodingly omg

AH, THERE HE IS

Katsuki’s natural instinct to dislike 100% of newcomers on sight might work out to his advantage here. Hawks’s maxed-out Charisma stats VS Katsuki’s middling Perception stats which nonetheless have a tendency to land high whenever he performs an ability check! I might need to back off from this metaphor though before it becomes really obvious that I don’t actually play D&D

lol

omg Endeavor can’t a guy just drop in on his grumpy pal out of the blue to make sure he’s doing okay without having some sort of ulterior motive? why are you so sure that Hawks showing up means that plot must be happening. because you’re not wrong, is the thing. but he’s probably just being standoffish for show

holy shit and now Hawks is just pulling out the Liberation Army’s book just like that?? IS HE ALLOWED TO DO THAT

(ETA: “let’s see, what’s a subtle way I can try and clue Endeavor in on the fact that I’ve become an undercover agent in the Paranormal Villain League of Liberation Front Armies. ... ...shit I’m not good at this.”)

and since when was this book called “Paranormal Liberation Front”?? did they change the title to match the new name?

and what’s Hawks’s game here, though? is he going to play it as though he’s secretly investigating Pliff? you know, like he actually is doing? is this some kind of hiding in plain sight thing or what

guys. is Hawks just... actually really bad at being a secret agent. omg

so he’s all “DESTRO’S IDEALS ARE EVERYTHING WE COULD ASK FOR” and lol what. fucking look at Endeavor’s face though

this motherfucker could use a boost of his own wisdom stats, fff

(ETA: swear to god he’s two seconds away from a Katsuki-style “hah?!”)

oh my god

fucking fuck me. he better have highlighted a really obvious section of that book, because otherwise I’m not gonna hold out hope for this message getting across at all. at least we know what that “recommendation” title was referring to now I guess

(ETA: Endeavor: [reading the highlighted section backwards] “‘‘it’s fun to smoke marijuana’!? what in the --”)

loooool

the fate of the world now rests upon Endeavor’s abilities to See Underneath The Underneath and somehow decipher that when Hawks says, “ENDEAVOR I CHASED YOU DOWN IN ORDER TO GIVE YOU A COPY OF THIS BOOK THE VILLAINS WROTE, I THINK IT’S REALLY KEEN AND YOU SHOULD CHECK IT OUT”, what he’s really saying is, “ENDEAVOR I NEED YOU TO INVESTIGATE THIS SUSPICIOUS ‘LIBERATION FRONT’ THAT’S BEEN COINCIDENTALLY GATHERING A LOT OF ATTENTION SINCE THAT SHADY INCIDENT IN DEIKA CITY WHERE ‘TWENTY GUYS' BASICALLY DESTROYED AN ENTIRE TOWN. IF YOU’RE TOO DENSE TO PICK UP ON ANY OF THAT, I HIGHLIGHTED THE RELEVANT PORTION OF THE BOOK SO HOPEFULLY EVEN AN OBLIVIOUS DUMBBELL LIKE YOU CAN FIGURE IT OUT.” jesus christ

at least Endeavor now has some nerdy interns who fucking love to read. hell, Deku has probably already read the book. please help this dumb jock to understand his bird son’s coded message, Deku-Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope

and that’s the end of the chapter! except that I heard there was a new poster for Heroes Rising that was released as well! how come it wasn’t included here now I have to go hunt it down

son of a bitch is this really the best quality that’s available? damn

well all right. not really much going on here that’s a big revelation or anything, aside from the surprise inclusion of Hawks in the upper right hand corner. did we know he was going to be in this? and like, even if the anime does make it as far as his debut in season 4, will it have reached that point by the time the movie premieres in December? glad I caught up beforehand if they’re gonna start spoiling things like this

so that’s all she wrote for this week! databook is due out next week so that should be fun! we’re finally going to get Hawks��s real name from what I understand. so I can start yelling at him using his full name like a disappointed mom. I have a feeling that’s going to come in handy a lot during this arc. go to your room young man

(ETA: and just watch it be the Japanese equivalent of “Judas McMurder” or some shit. smh. y’all. we stan a shady bitch.)

#bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha 244 #hawks #endeavor #midoriya izuku #bakugou katsuki #todoroki shouto #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #deku: [poring over the highlighted secions of the book with a magnifying glass] jinkies! #everyone: what is it #deku: you see if you take the first letter from each of the highlighted sentences it reads: #'endeavor I killed best jeanist and stuffed him into a satchl I am sorry please help me I am very sad' #endeavor: what do you think it means #shouto: I think it means he killed best jeanist #endeavor: no but what is a satchl #deku: I think it's the word 'satchel' but like abbreviated or maybe it's a typo #endeavor: hmm #anyways with these cracking investigative minds on the case I'm sure we'll have this all figured out in now time #yep this is going to go real well

[homespork-review]

Homespork Act 3: Insane Mindscrew Haymakers (Part 2)

CHEL: Rose finds a transportaliser platform in the centre of the lab.

FAILURE ARTIST: The sylladex misadventures come to something this time. Jasper’s corpse lands on the pad.

CHEL: The dead cat vanishes; Rose assumes it was vapourised but we know better, though we don’t see where it went. She finds an unlocked hub and plugs in, noticing another ominous countdown on the wall, with only three minutes left till the lab will be “UNESTABLISHED”.

Years in the future again, PM beheads the worm creature, which turns out to be a robot. The bunker landed on its side so PM stands on a pile of mailboxes to press the button, which causes more robot worms to emerge from beneath the bunker, pushing it upright, and a propeller to emerge from the top and carry it away.

Dave’s strife with Bro continues, getting more and more ridiculous and animesque, until Dave ends up plummeting down the stairwell. In a realistic work, this could quite easily break his neck, but here we just get some comical flailing and a SBaHJ IT KEEPS HAPPENING macro. Again, Dave looks more angry than afraid.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 8

FAILURE ARTIST: I think Hussie said the Bro slicing the Abscond box is symbolic of the trap of child abuse and shows this guardian fight isn’t like the others but it is still an animesque fight that ends with a fucking meme.

CHEL: Yeah, he seems to be expecting us to pick up on these details which don’t mean anything until he actually explains them, which would be fine and in fact clever if they didn’t conflict so strongly with what’s actually noticeably shown. If he wanted us to take it seriously, he’d have done better not to put the Abscond button there at all.

Rose finds, in the lab, a console showing SBurb sessions in the northeastern US where her home is located, monitoring the time to impact of their respective meteors. There is a large cluster of already-landed ones around her house, with a much, much bigger one centred directly on the lab, with an even bigger one centred on the house. She zooms out, and finds the second-biggest upcoming impact in the world is heading for Texas, while one bigger by an order of magnitude will later land in the middle of the Pacific. "Oh look, up in the sky/ It's a hole about the size of Texas..."

"Circus Contraption - Hot Potato" (Watch on YouTube)

Checking on John’s house, Rose finds it overrun by imps, the building shaking violently. Investigating this, she finds the ogre fight; John is at least getting a few blows in now, but they’re still not doing much good. Nannasprite is able to provide support with eye beams, but the ogres are still standing, and Rose’s attempt to drop a fridge on one is useless too. Nannasprite’s teleportation proves more useful, allowing John to take a flying leap out of a hovering oven to strike with greater force and allowing her to drop a full avalanche of household appliances on the ogre. With Rose’s assistance providing him a platform to bounce off again, John strikes the final blow on one ogre, exploding it into grist pieces bigger than himself, and Nannasprite and John occupy the other ogre until Rose drops the alchemiter on it.

FAILURE ARTIST: Seeing a fight like this not long after the Bro and Dave fight makes it hard for me to take the serious one seriously. John should be dead.

CHEL: John has a backup healer and Dave doesn’t, but yeah, cartoon physics prevail here.

Rose checks in, explaining that Dave’s not connected yet, but that she’s determined that activating the cruxtruder does not actually cause the meteor to strike. John levels up to BOY-SKYLARK and collects tons of grist and boondollars, although he still doesn’t know what those actually do.

You can't wait to find out what amazing items this new supply of grist will be just barely insufficient to produce.

Hehehe. We’ve all been there.

John sees that more grist fell down to the platform below, including one huge piece stuck in the hole leading into Dad’s room.

One of those big SOUR GRAPE ELECTRIC HOLOCAUST FRUIT GUSHERS is jammed in the hole in the platform. CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 9

Yes, because Holocaust references are a perfect way to describe candy flavours. Technically “holocaust” can refer to, I quote from dictionary.com, “a great or complete devastation or destruction, especially by fire”, and I’m guessing it’s a parody of all the flavour names with words like “explosion” in them, but, especially when it’s not obviously uncapitalised, that’s very much not what the immediate association of the term is!

FAILURE ARTIST: John asks Nanna why she doesn’t just throw him up to the gate and she says it’s important he build up himself. Though later we do see a character that just jumps up to the gate.

Then we switch to a mysterious castle all in purple. Dad is fighting some imps with shaving cream. A new yet somehow familiar character wearing harlequin clothes watches with disgust both Dad and John on strange window screens.

We cut away yet again to Peregrine Mendicant. PM is still stuck in the mobile station with a letter addressed to David Brinner. There was a real person who went by the alias Doctor Brinner on his Portland-area radio show where he played a mad scientist. Dr. David Brinner is also a comic Hussie made before Homestuck. I’ve never read it myself. I didn’t even know it existed until I googled David Brinner.

Anyway, PM refuses to open this letter and gives stirring speeches that sound like they come from a movie (Kevin Costner’s Postman?) but I don’t think they do.

BRIGHT: PM believes very strongly in the purpose of mail delivery as the bedrock of civilisation. It comes across as funny, but not as mocking.

FAILURE ARTIST: PM then turns to the terminal. Jade appears on a screen shrouded in green static. PM finds Jade familiar. Unfortunately, before PM can converse with Jade, the terminal explodes.

Cut back again to Rose in the lab. There’s lots of cutesy pink little girl stuff down there that Rose decides to ignore. Why is it down there? Did Mom expect Rose to live there one day?

CHEL: I thought it was supposed to signal that Mom was living down there herself.

FAILURE ARTIST: Anyway, Rose also finds a mutant cat.

We cut away again to John contemplating going into his father’s bedroom through a hole in the roof. He decides to do it.

Cut to a fireplace with a portrait of Jade above it. It looks similar to Nanna’s shrine, minus the urn. But Jade isn’t dead, is she? She scampers right into the room the next panel. She arms herself with a huge rifle and tries to sneak across the room. However, her Grandpa appears, shadowed by the huge fire that suddenly lit up in the fireplace. She tries to run away only to fall asleep.

We cut to Dave’s final round - or rather, Jade fighting her Grandpa. Who, in another surprise, is a taxidermed corpse.

She talks to him like he’s alive, though after it, she says he was easier to deal with when he was alive. This disturbing state of affairs is never treated seriously.

CHEL: This, more than anything else, is why we set up the ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY count. Horrible as Bro would be by any realistic standards, at least Dave’s guardian is obviously living and Dave is not merrily talking away to a dead person. We later find out that Jade was the one who taxidermied Grandpa, while she was barely more than a toddler. Not only was she actually able to do this to professional standards, at an age when she shouldn’t have been handling sharp objects at all, but she displays no trauma from it, nor from having had to raise herself. And yet we’re supposed to take Dave’s issues seriously, and to a much lesser extent Rose’s, with no real indication that they’re any different.

TIER: It's one thing when an author's intended depiction of “an abusive household” for the most part flies over people's heads due to the absurdity of the whole situation when it initially got presented, that happens sometimes! Especially when one factors in Bro's total screen time, how he generally ticks the boxes for “absurd but really cool” guy visually, and how late in the game this knowledge was spelled out. It all comes together to make the whole Strider situation kinda come out of left field to judge people for finding the absurd situation funny.

But when it's sitting right next to the arguably worse scenario (stuffed.dead.guardian.) and the latter pretty much never gets brought up while the former gets a big ol’ spotlight shining down on it, yeah that's what the folks call Fucking Weird and in my personal opinion, suspect Ò_Ó.

CHEL: While I can’t really state one way or the other at this point, I do think it’s worth considering a reason that has already been brought up by a non-Homestucker; in the scenarios we’re not supposed to take seriously, the children are girls. I doubt this was even slightly what Hussie intended, but it certainly explains a lot about the fandom’s reactions. The more likely scenario regarding the canon explanation is probably that the ones we’re not supposed to take seriously are not Hussie’s self-insert.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 9

BRIGHT: Not to mention, Jade grew up on an island in the middle of the ocean, physically isolated from any other people and with only an animal for company. There are known cases of children who grew up in similar circumstances in real life. Suffice to say, it generally does not end well.

You could argue that Jade is pretending her Grandpa is alive because she’s lonely and needs the company, but this is in no way implied by the text.

At any rate, Jade informs her grandfather that the rifle she has is perfectly adequate for killing things and she doesn’t need his oversized blunderbuss.

CHEL: To be strictly fair, we do later find out she had some contact with other people, but not in a way which I feel would be a substitute for having a living human parent in the “real” world.

FAILURE ARTIST: With Jade out the door, we go again to PM. They are fine except for some cartoon burn marks and a fire on their hood. The metal snake saves their precious mailbox.

BRIGHT: It earns PM’s affection for doing so.

Back at the lab, Rose utterly fails to ignore the four-eyed mutant kitten. She carries it over to a peculiar machine that turns out to be another Appearifier. This one is locked onto her cat, Jaspers, nine years ago. Not only was he alive, but the younger Rose was holding a psychotherapy session with him.

Rose attempts to appearify Jaspers, but since this would cause a time paradox, the machine leaves Jaspers in place and instead produces a ‘Paradox Clone’, which swiftly collapses into green slime. The machine next to the appearifier sucks up the paradox sludge, analyses its genetic sequence, and spits out another cat, rather more mutated than the last, in a process referred to as ‘Ectobiology’.

CHEL: John’s screen name, we remind you, is “ectoBiologist”, so it seems he heard of the concept somewhere, perhaps?

BRIGHT: On the appearifier’s screen, Jaspers reveals a stunning secret to young Rose, and is appearified to an unknown location before he can clarify anything. Two weeks later, his corpse reappeared. Oddly, the appearifier can’t see his whereabouts for the intervening period.

It can, however, see where his body went when it landed on the pad earlier! Rose appearifies the corpse and hightails it out of the lab, using the transportaliser to make her escape before the meteor can hit.

FAILURE ARTIST: If you click on the pink horseshoe that appears at the end of the Rose: Fast Forward To Now flash, there’s a little animation of Rose enjoying Maplehoof. I guess she’s making up for the loss of her precious Jaspers.

BRIGHT: We make a brief detour back to Jade, who’s searching for Becquerel. Two new things about Jade’s mysterious abilities: One, Becquerel is invisible to them. Two, this is unusual enough that it used to disturb her. Becquerel appears briefly in the background, and there’s clearly something strange about him…

CHEL: Additionally, it was clearly his face that was carved on the pumpkin we saw earlier, and he looks canine but it’s hard to make out details at this point...

BRIGHT: But before we can find out more, the comic jumps back to John.

Now in his Dad’s room, John is struck by an unwelcome discovery — there aren’t any clowns. Not on posters, no figurines. His father’s briefcase, rather than being full of the tools of a street performer, holds only boring papers and spreadsheets. In fact, the room is pretty boring...like his Dad is just a normal businessman?

"[S] John: Examine your dad's room." (Watch on YouTube)

FAILURE ARTIST: I wish more had been made of Bing “Douchebag” Crosby in this comic but that’s just me being an old movie nerd.

BRIGHT: While John attempts to recover from the BSOD this causes, his father breaks out of a jail cell armed with a safe. This is watched with displeasure by another black figure in brightly-coloured clothing, whose name is not Spades Slick. (He likes the ring of that, though.) No, he’s Archagent Jack Noir, and he oversees the affairs of a dark kingdom through three fenestrated walls.

CHEL: He usually has a fourth one but it got stolen.

FAILURE ARTIST: Those fingers typing the name Spades Slick are a suspicious color...

BRIGHT: He also despises the jester outfits everyone has been forced to wear, and refuses to don his comical hat until the Queen hijacks his fenestrated wall and orders him to wear it. The wall cuts back to Dad, who has now disarmed an especially burly-looking agent and is punching him in the head.

CHEL: Jack Noir makes mention of his carapace at this point; I don’t remember if his species is also referred to as “carapaces” in the comic but that’s the name the fandom knows them by. Guess we’ll see if they are as we go on.

BRIGHT: Meanwhile, John opens some birthday presents he found in his Dad’s room! He gets some Fruit Gushers, a very dapper suit, and best of all, an Array Fetch Modus, which lets him retrieve an item from any card in his deck! Of course, this would be too straightforward, so he combines it with his other Fetch Modii until he gets something properly inconvenient.

FAILURE ARTIST: How much do Modii cost and does everyone in this universe have one?

CHEL: The implication is tech like this is how Skaianet made its money, but since we never really see anyone who’s not involved somehow with the game, we don’t really get a good sense of the company being part of the world, so we don’t know. If I had to guess, though, I’d think getting the sylladex in the first place costs a big lump sum and then the various fetch modii cost much smaller amounts, sort of like apps on a phone or programs on a computer.

When prompted, John closely examines the Fruit Gushers box, this flavour being “MASSIVE TROPICAL BRAIN HEMORRHAGE”. Tasty…? John thinks so. However, in the corner of the box is a small, easily-missed logo…

THE HEINOUS BATTERWITCH HAS HER GNARLED CLAWS IN EVERYTHING.

After the destruction of his planet, the disappearance of his father, the appearance of his ghost grandma, and fighting numerous monsters, THIS is what finally sends John over the edge into a full-out meltdown, despite the onscreen caption declaring that THIS IS STUPID.

FAILURE ARTIST: I actually have a box of Fruit Gushers signed by Andrew Hussie.

CHEL: Back on the island, Jade, accompanied by dramatic music, attempts to retrieve a blue package from the ruins, but just as she reaches it, Becquerel appears between her and it, and we snap right back into STRIFE!

"[S] Jade: Retrieve package." (Watch on YouTube)

Becquerel, as we can now see clearly, is an enormous white dog, lacking facial features of any kind and emitting crackling green lightning - worthy of the description “devilbeast”, I think. Jade aims her rifle at his head and takes multiple shots, but none hit. The first heats up and melts into nothingness. When the second is fired Becquerel turns into green fire and next frame he and Jade are both riding on the now-enormous bullet which carries them across the lagoon to the other side of the island. Becquerel teleports the third bullet into space and himself and Jade to the top of the frog building, and he teleports himself out of the way of the fourth, the background flashing through several different locations. Finally, Jade shoots a bullet in the opposite direction with the instruction GO FETCH!, which Bec does, giving Jade time to grab the package. She rewards Bec for fetching with the irradiated steak and announces that he is a GOOD DOG, BEST FRIEND. After dancing around in celebration, she very abruptly falls asleep again, and Bec scoops her up on his back, takes her back to bed, and tucks her in.

FAILURE ARTIST: The music in Jade: Retrieve Package

is another replacement. Currently it’s An Unbreakable Union by Robert Blake but originally it was Mutiny by Bill Bolin. The original is very retro science fiction and the replacement is safari.

CHEL: For the record, real dogs are not horses and are not built to carry people like that, even very small children can damage a large dog’s back by riding it, but given Bec’s abilities, I don’t think that applies to him.

Rose comes out the other side of the transportaliser, she and the cat having both kept their atoms unmingled, and discovers she’s back in the house, in the room she thought was her mother’s bedroom. It seems the cutesy pink bed and stuff in the lab was in fact her mother’s bedroom, and this room is a well-stocked bar.

You decide not to be especially melodramatic about this revelation.

Good idea, Rose; there isn’t time, as the lab is promptly unestablished by a meteor, sending flaming debris flying through the window. The booze-filled room is especially endangered by this, so Rose decides to flee.

John punches some more cards and complains that he’s the one doing the work while Rose is just messing around on her computer, while Jade dreams and little red lights on her bedposts glow. A metal cabinet in the corner of her room has similar red lights on top, and it bursts open, revealing a Jade-shaped robot.

Sudden cut to a mysterious copy of Jade’s bedroom, except with pink walls, in which Jade stands, wearing a golden dress. Back in her real room, the DREAMBOT stands in the same position. The gold-clad Jade is, we find, a depiction of Jade in her dream. Dream Jade tries to get into bed, but complains of a heavy weight pressing down on her, as the robot is copying her actions and is now lying on top of the real sleeping Jade. Instead, she decides to fly, which of course she can do since it’s a dream (and the robot has jet propulsion).

The dream room also contains the blue package, addressed to “GG” from “GT”. This isn’t John’s current handle, but she knows it’s from John, and that she must deliver it to somewhere else without opening it.

Flashback to the previous winter. In a shot of John’s window, we see his calendar and the edges of some of his posters. The calendar is marked with smiley faces in party hats in green, red, and purple, marking Jade, Dave, and Rose’s birthdays, but more noticeably, there are creepy faces with jester hats and huge teeth scrawled on the wall and posters. I didn’t notice it until just now, but there are some purple lines on the arm of one of the poster characters which might just be part of a drawn-on clown outfit but from this vantage point look like self-harm scars. Brr. Ominous.

John at this point in time is going by “ghostyTrickster” on Pesterchum, hence the “GT” nametag on the package. He’s chatting to Jade about having sent off everyone’s birthday gifts, and how he hopes Jade’s will “help you solve those problems you’ve been having lately”. John is embarrassed to realise it will take much longer than he thought for the package to reach Jade’s island, but she assures him it will arrive “exactly when it needs to”.

BRIGHT: With the reveal of John’s previous handle, and from the characters in the Trollslum, we also get the theme of the handle initials being the letters of DNA. (GCAT.)

FAILURE ARTIST: Jade complains about “trolls” and we have the first time this beloved and perhaps overshadowing species is named. However, John calls the “trolls” the r-slur so that’s another point.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 10

CHEL: Also, the trolls are why he changed his handle, in an attempt to avoid them bothering him.

FAILURE ARTIST: We go back to current day. John is peeved at the graffiti on his posters. He thinks it’s the imps. However, we just saw it was there months before. What is going on, hmmm?

Rose decides to name the cat Vodka Mutini. She then talks with John. Rose wonders where Dave is and John figures that Bro is kicking his ass. Considering that this ass-kicking is later treated as serious abuse, this is a callous thing for a friend to say.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 10

CHEL: I’d also say that counts as HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING. There’s not much an internet friend can do about someone’s abusive situation on the other side of the country but they could at least support Dave and tell him to call the police, if it is supposed to be that bad. Or at least, you know, be worried. Then again, Dave might not have told them what the ass-kicking entails, but Rose knows about his brother’s websites, and given that we know Bro made at least one film in which Dave was involved and may or may not have been on camera, and the film certainly would show the state the apartment was in…

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 4

FAILURE ARTIST: Anyway, when John complains about his posters being defaced, Rose says they always looked that way. John naturally freaks out at this creepy revelation.

We cut to WV. They are trying to get down from the mobile station without sacrificing the MAYORAL SASH. While working the Appearifier, they get John’s present with an envelope addressed to “Mister Mayor”. After WV gets more cable, they rappel down the mobile station with the package under their arm.

Meanwhile, a figure in yellow caution tape watches WV through a sniper rifle. This is Aimless Renegade, a wonderful but forgotten character.

We go back to John and Rose. John discusses the mystery of the defaced posters while he futzes around with the Alchemiter. Rose thinks that John had blocked out the memory of defacing the posters and the revelation that his father isn’t who he thought he was unblocked his memory. She thinks maybe his father thought he was interested in clowns because John drew clowns everywhere. Yet John also wrote “LAME KID”? Maybe Dad should have taken John to therapy.

CHEL: “Lame kid” with arrows pointing down at his bed, to be exact, among other insults, and the clown faces don’t look like the product of someone who liked clowns at all!

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 11 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 5

Yet Dad Egbert is supposed to be the good parent of the group, so here we go with a new count:

RELATIONSHIP GOALS?: 1

This one’s primarily for romantic relationships, but other relationship fumbles apply too.

Rose thinks that the drawings are the result of John trying to express something subconscious, possibly a repressed past memory. John changes the subject to the upward building process; Rose complains that chimneys weren’t meant to bear such a weight, and considers switching to walls now they can get grist more easily, but she’s running out of time as the house proper is now on fire. John blames Dave, so I think we can assume that either they don’t know his brother forces him into swordfights or they don’t think it’s a problem. Which one is hard to determine.

FAILURE ARTIST: We cut to Jade playing a bass solo so advanced it doesn’t have a bass line. Another Bolin replacement. We find out Dream Jade is in a castle on a planet that’s a gold copy of the one Jack Noir and co are on. While flying around, she sees an inhabitant that looks familiar. CHEL: This is what I was referring to when I said Jade did have some contact with people; she is able to contact the carapaces in her dreams. However, the carapaces are, as we’ve seen from WV and company, somewhat childlike in behaviour, living in a society that’s nothing like Earth’s, biologically not the same as humans so they couldn’t easily advise her if she got ill or injured, and they don’t appear to be able or willing to speak, at least not most of the time and/or in a way the humans could understand, not to mention they would have no way to physically assist her in the waking world so she’d still have to raise herself from a very young age. Hence, why I don’t think they’re a substitute for an actual human parent.

#Homespork #homestuck #homestuck review #homestuck meta #homestuck reread #let's read homestuck #literary critique #sporking #Let's read

[jiminsfault]

50 questions tag

I got tagged by @yoongs-jeontae ! Thank you💖

What colors is your hairbrush? It’s like a brown-ish shimmery color? Idk o.o

What food would you never eat? I probably would never be able to eat the meat of rabbits or deers, sheep and that kind of stuff

Are you usually hot or cold? I’m always a cozy crispy amount of warmth under my blanket. But when I’m outside I go from both extremes because I’m super sensitive so, spring/summer: always hot, autumn/winter: always cold. There is no inbetween

What did you do 45 minutes ago? I was in an online class and got math tutoring🤠 it was horrible thanks for asking my brain is fried

Favorite chocolate? The really dark kind. It’s the only chocolate I’ll ever really crave. I can bear milk chocolate if I have to

Have you ever been to a professional sports event? I hAve actually omg! It was a handball game and super boring, I didn’t know whats going on ever and only clapped when everyone else did🤡 (I was forced by my ex to tag along I absolutely hate sports)

What was the last thing you said out loud? “Oh my god, that was horrible” right after I ended the call with my teacher skckjs

Favorite ice cream flavor? Brownie fudge? Is that what it’s called? The chocolate ice cream with brownie pieces in it, it’s so fUcking gOOD sorry for cursing it’s necessary

What was the last thing you drank? Some nice crispy wAter

What kind of wallet do you have? A small black one because I didn’t think about practicality when buying it. Currently looking for a bigger one.

What was the last thing you ate? I actually have no clue if that’s the english word for it but kebab? IT’S DÖNER IN GERMAN

Did you buy clothes last weekend? I haven’t bought clothes in months actually omg

What was the last sports event you saw? I watched the soccer game that’s like a really big thing back in 2018 🤠🤠

Who was the last person you texted? My mom cus she’s out buying groceries and asked me what kind of ice cream I want kekdjejd

Do you like camping? I despise camping with my entire being. When I was little my mom always forced me to go on 500 camping trips a year and I feel the biggest rage in me when I think about all the bugs and uncomfortable nights I- will not continue talking about this now.

Do you eat vitamins? No, like not at all. Not one vitamin has entered my body in a few weeks. I used to have these tablets that disappear in water but I stopped drinking that because I only take them bc of my muscles and currently I’m not leaving the house so,,, don’t need them >:)

When was the last time you traveled? The last time I full on traveled like outside of the country was in 2018 when my class went to italy because of our graduation 🤠 trauma

Do you like sunbathing? I can’t really answer that because if I sunbathe I will burn. Like literally I’m getting a sunburn just from walking to the train on a sunny day if I don’t have the strongest suncream on??? My skin is very🤡 so yeah idk if I like it? Never tried

Asian or Italian food? Asian food absolutely. I’m not sure about italian food because I just don’t know anything about italian kitchen but I dO knOw that theres so much variety with asian food? And so far I’ve loved every asian dish I’ve tried so,,

Do you drink soda? Nope. I stopped drinking soda four years ago I think because my skin was sO bad and I gained weight so quickly without eating a lot so I stopped drinking soda and tada! Barely getting pimples now😎 also it’s just tastier like my mouth doesn’t stick anymore and I don’t literally feel the sugar on my teeth?? (Although I do sometimes sip on a bit of coke but only on special occasions)

What color socks are you wearing now? White with a very,, aqua? blue stripe? And the name of the brand in the same color🤠 fashion

When was the last time you were speeding? I don’t drive🤡😔

What are you afraid of? Everything pretty much. Commitment, people leaving me, talking to people, failing, succeeding, should I continue?

What can you see if you turn left? A lot? It’s inside my room (my bed is in the right corner) but first thing would be my switch cus she laying next to me

What kind of housework you like the least? I actually love housework? At least the things that I do. Like I never mow the lawn because that’s not my job yknow? But I like emptying and filling the dish washer, cleaning pans in the sink, doing the laundry, wiping the floor. Maybe I should become a maid?

What is the first thing you think of when you hear someone talking in a language you don’t know? I try to hear what language it is, like I try guessing at least. Of course I don’t know what every language sounds like but it’s a fun little game I have for myself when I’m bored in public transpo

Do you sleep on your back or side? On my right side towards the wall. At least at night, when I take a nap I sleep on my left side towards the room. Idk why pls don’t ask me, I can’t fall asleep otherwise.

You crave fast food, where do you go? So around where I live there aren’t a lot of options? Also in germany in general we don’t have the fast food fest that america has, so I always go for either Mcdonald’s or Subway.

What is your lucky number? 5. I don’t know when it became my favorite/lucky number but somehow at some point in time it’s become the number I always use when someone wants me to guess or answer a question, I use it for picking things and all that🤡🤠 maybe it’s because it sounds rly funny in german

Who was the last person you talked to? In person my mom cus she’s the only one I see nowadays. On the phone would be two of my friends and I also talked to my tutoring teacher through discord so? Pick👁👁

Do you eat meat? I would say no if I wouldn’t sometimes do slip some meat in. It’s very rare and a small amount when I do. Idk how this developed because I used to eat meat multiple times a week but at some point I started only eating chicken and only in smaller amounts and sometimes not even once in two weeks. I eat fish tho? Does that count?

What was the last song you listened to? “Love without tragedy/mother mary” by rihanna because I was feeling the 10’s last night at 5am🤠

Last book? I actually just tried to find the english title of it but I can’t find any sign of it being translated so,, “der Totenzeichner” by Veit Etzold. I read this book twice, once in 9th grade and once just recently and I will not get enough of it. Another one of his books “Final cut” is laying on my bedside table waiting for me to start it. He’s an iconic author.

What is your favourite day of the week? If we were speaking from when it’s a regular routine and I would go to uni, I’d say Monday. I know I sound like a psycho but saying friday or saturday is my favorite day is basic because obviously everyone loves the weekend. Monday is a great day usually because my day starts in third period and does still go 6 classes like regular days but it feels nice to go into uni later in the day so I always appreciate it. (Tho saturday do be hitting different)

Do you know the alphabet song backwards? I don’t even know it forwards 🤡😔

Favorite coffee/tea? I don’t drink coffee but my favorite tea is probably fennel tea, everyone I know hates it, especially without sugar but I love it :(

Favourite shoes? From the ones I personally own I’d say my nike zoom 2ks because they look good and are super comfortable. Shoes that I wish I would have would be Dr. Martens but I’m pOor🤡 I am absolutely a whore for sneakers so I won’t even start listing all the sneakers I love

When do you usually go to sleep? If I’m on schedule around 11-12pm of actually going into the bed physically and falling asleep 30/40 minutes later. While I’m now constantly at home I do still physically get into bed at the same time but I stay up from 2-7am depending on how fun people are, if I play a game, if I read/draw, have a series or movie to watch. I’m insane I am aware🤡

When do you usually wake up? Again, when I’m on schEdule I wake up mondays and tuesdays at 6.30am, from wednesday to friday at 6.10am, on the weekend around 10am. Right now? It’s a surprise everyday. Sometimes I’m up at 4pm, sometimes I’m up at 10am, today I was actually super early with 9.30 so😎

Sunrise or sunset? That’s actually so hard because I do see the sunset a lot more than rise since I have my rOllÄdEn down so I don’t actually remember what a sunrise looks like. Because I have no other choice I say sunset. With doubt.

Do you like your bed soft or hard?  I thINK my bed is hard? I once laid on a friend’s bed that was super soft and I’m pretty sure I didn’t like it

Describe the plate you are eating from? They’re from ikea. They’re white with like blue swirls idk my mom bought them I didn’t make the decisions

Your favorite type of alcohol? Currently I don’t really drink alcohol (mainly because of the lack of opportunities) bUt when I do drink I really like sweet sparkling wine (I googled this I’m not sure if that’s the right word idkd)

Do you like board games? Depending on which people I play with. If a person is getting angry that they’re losing it makes the game absolutely suck and since I’m surrounded by those people I haven’t made good memories with board games kcjdjs,,, if the company is fun I like the games too tho

If you had a car, what kind would it be? Unrealisticly I’d love to own a Lamborghini Aventador or Urus because those cars are just mouth-watering to me. Since I most likely won’t ever be able to afford either of those, I’d love to have a Fiat 500. I fell in love with this car like,,, it’s so cute and the inside is pretty too so everything fits for me the way I want it to. I’ll have to settle for a way less nice car tho once I get a license, at least for a while🤡

Do you know how to change car tires? In theory yes

Dream country? Like to live in? Damn idk. I’d love to live in a country with like,, cULTURE you know? Something exciting and cool to look at, less stuck up people almans be really boring 🤡 so maybe something like spain or italy, maybe america if yall vote for a different president. Japan or Korea would be super cool too I- the whole world ma’am? I couldn’t live in countries like idk hawaii or sumn because of the heat so I’ll just mfing stay in germany😔😔

If you could choose from any jobs in the world, what would you like to do? If I would have the chance I’d love to become an actor because that just seems super cool. But like I’m not nearly attractive enough for people to want to look at me on a scEen so nO

What would you like to try to do? I’m pretty set on trying to learn how to dance like that’s probably not as exciting as other things I could do but :/ yeh idk

And what is stopping you? Literally just me being lazy and talking myself into believing I won’t be good without even trying nsncjsks (also yes I seperated these questions because otherwise it wouldn’t be 50)

thIs was sO mUch omg sjjcjs I’m literally exhausted from all these questions😩😩

I’m tagginggg @gallhali @shadowsremedy if u wanna!

#tagged #fairyfriends #yoongs-jeontae

[sailor-cresselia]

Zero One 01: A JUMP TO THE SKY TURNS TO A RIDER KICK

Okay, I’m gonna start liveblogging from the start of a show this time! Because oh wow, just watching this live was a trip… and now I get to properly understand it. >:3

––––

So, it appears that the shot of a HumaGear in the shadows in the trailer was not, in fact, in the satellite, like the trailer implied. Instead, he’s from the Hiden Intelligence sizzle reel.

Said sizzle reel also includes a shot of the “HumaGear Skin Fitting Gate System”. That’s the part of the manufacturing process that gives them their human-like appearance, as opposed to the base robot form.

Interestingly, each of the newly-humanized HumaGear has a rectangular tattoo, with some sort of hexagonal design in it. The male one has it on the left side of his chest, and the lady we see up close has it dead center a little below her collarbone.

The support HumaGear that they show next all have it on the side of their necks. And isn’t that a handy way to tell who’s a HumaGear, if they ever elect to make the ‘ears’ smaller?

Actually, I think the lower part of it has the Hiden Intelligence logo, and the top is the hexagon glyph. Still can’t get a good look at it, though.

Also, it’s probably a very bad idea to have all of your HumaGear managed via a single broadcast satellite. I’m just saying, with tech this advanced and ubiquitous, having some backups might be to your benefit.

–

So, Hiden Korenosuke, Aruto’s grandfather, was 75 when he died. Additionally, he wasn’t just the CEO of Hiden Intelligence – he was the founder.

The news spot about his funeral is being played on a giant hovercraft, via holographic screens.

I really do love how we’re clearly going all-in from the start on ‘this is not the mainline World of Riders.’

Meanwhile, Aruto shows us his dumb puppy nature right off the bat, being late for work despite having set five alarms.

We zoom out on the city, seeing the hovercraft in better detail than the grounds-eye view from before. We also see that the Hiden Intelligence headquarters absolutely dwarves the surroundings.

The logo appears on screen. When it zooms in for the transition, the black of the ‘01’ becomes a tightly layered pattern of binary.

–

There’s no opening credits today, since it’s the first episode and all. Opening Credits on the first day is not how Takashi Yuya-san rolls, as we saw during Ex-Aid.

The sponsor segment, however, does exist. It shows Zero One and his bike – which doesn’t have an individual name yet that I can find, just the term for the phone that has as a primary form. It’s a really cool shot, too. They’re under a blacklight. I’d thought they were glow-in-the-dark when I watched the raw, but seeing this in better quality shows that the blue and red accents are reacting, too.

That is so cool.

–

Aruto nyooms to the amusement park on his bike, because he’s super late. Turns out he’s a comedian in a stage show, with a truly hideous blue sequened suit and oversized red bowtie. His act is supposed to be a Manzai show… excpet for how he’s absolutely terrible.

Like, to the point where his straightman is his phone.

There are exactly two people in the audience… and it’s an older couple, who aren’t even watching. They’re having lunch.

This kills the Aruto.

–

And so does the fact that he’s fired. As his manager says, the era’s more suited to HumaGear entertainers.

Aruto disagrees – how could an AI understand a person’s sense of humor?

And then Ab-cruncher Taro, a HumaGear comedian, comes on stage for his act… and the audience loves it. Including the older couple from Arutos act.

I mean, this might be in part that nobody in World of Zero One likes manzai anymore, too, but also Aruto’s just terrible, and this guy did have a pretty decent pun on ad-libbing… as he exploded his abs off.

The manager points out that everyone is laughing, that having such a lively theme park is his dream. Aruto feels the same – he just wants to make people laugh, that’s all.

…Except that his now-former manager is already walking off. He already has someone who can make the crowd laugh, and Aruto really should find a new dream.

–

A car pulls up to Hiden Intelligence HQ, with Fukuzoe Jun and his HumaGear assistant, Shesta. I really like her red-and-grey outfit, not gonna lie.

Anyway, he’s the vice president of HI, and, admittedly rather justifiably, assumes that he’s the new CEO. He’s got quite an ego on him, apparently, because the funeral was today. He’s already got his portrait commissioned, made, and ready to be lowered over the portrait of the late CEO. And it’s larger, dwarfing the old one.

Dude.

Maybe you should have waited a bit on getting the portrait. Like, at least until after the funeral.

Just saying.

–

We switch to somewhere called ‘Daybreak Town.’

…It’s surrounded by massive, high-tech security fences. And is a bit of a crater. A flooded one.

Entering a run-down, semi-abandoned room, we meet Horobi and Jin. Admittedly, we don’t hear their names, but that’s who they are. Horobi is stoic and calm, and Jin… well, he’s basically an even more hyper Parad.

Horobi says that now that CEO Hiden is dead, they can start the Magear Plan.

…Jin, what was that you were messing around with on that stand?

Jin’s probable attention issues aside, Horobi goes to explain a bit further, while unplugging a pseudo-driver from a cable, probably where it was being programmed. They’re going to use the HumaGear singularity – that is, the hypothetical point when Artificial Intelligences become more intelligent than humans, often including sentience. Bascially, they plan to use that to surpass humanity… somehow. As he’s saying this, he takes a Progrise Key out of a holder, and we get a few shots of the room.

The MetsuboJinrai.NET emblem is on the wall, and we see some of the assorted items. Including a katana, for some reason. And, on a platform with the same pattern as where Jin was messing around earlier? That is a gun right there. Yay!

Horobi hands the driver and key to Jin, while saying that it’s time to annihilate humanity… just like this city was, long ago.

Zoom out from his face, where he stands under a beam of light… that is coming in from a hold in a ceiling. That is to day, the hole in a roof, of a former apartment building.

Zoom out further to see that it’s one of the handful of buildings around the perimeter of the flooded crater.

At the very center of said crater? Underwater?

That sure looks an awful lot like the satellite that controls the HumaGear.

This is why you have redundant backup systems, folks.

–

So, at this point, Aruto’s got Shotaro’s meme faces, Emu’s pratfall humor (although thankfully toned down a bit), and Sento’s phone. Now we’ve also got Kabuto’s Shibuya disaster 2.0.

This is fine.

–

At Hiden Intelligence, we see a room labeled ‘Three Dimensional Printing System’. Like, it actually says that in English, same as the gate earlier. An Ai starts speaking, saying that it’s receiving orders from BS-ZA – the broadcast satellite. What does the ZA stand for? Who knows! The sizzle reel didn’t actually tell us that.

I can not understate how incredibly concerned about the ‘we have a single point of control for all of this technology’ thing that’s going on.

Anyway, a holographic pattern gets displayed inside the printing… room, I guess, and two manufacturing robot arms emerge and start. Uh.

Okay, so. That’s not how 3D printing usually works. You can’t really makes something solid out of beams of light. That’s not how it should have worked with the HumaGear skins earlier, and it’s not how it should work now.

Unless, like, it’s not light? It could somehow be a sort of plasma version of the materials needed? But it was able to make, like, the hair and eyes and such for the HumaGear earlier, so… ugh. I’m putting too much thought into it.

My hangups about how things work aside, they’re making the driver.

Outside of this room, in an office, a female HumaGear in white and teal is sitting, inactive, until she receives orders from the satellite. She gets up, and goes to fulfill her task.

Hi Izu! I didn’t notice that you had little teal highlights in your hair before! There’s just these little streaks hidden in there. It’s cute.

–

A dejected Aruto walks his bike away from the amusement park, lamenting his inability to get the crowd to laugh. Sorry bud, but you’re just not funny.

A car pulls up, Izu stepping out. She identifies her ‘target’ via the object recognition analysis that CEO described in the sizzle reel earlier. I didn’t notice before, but even though they still says peoples names in the ‘family name first’ order, the HUD shows them with given name first. Interesting.

She describes him as a ‘self described’ comedian, who is unknown. We see her face during this, before she blinks and looks downward.

Aruto’s on the ground. He’s collapsed.

Izu has known him for all of less than a minute, has no real personality of her own (yet), and is already roasting him.

When he asks who she is, she tells him that her name is Izu, and she’s the President’s secretary. Please note that she does not say which president, which probably only furthers Aruto’s confusion.

–

Back at the comedy stage, we’ve got… a human manzai duo, who are getting a laugh out of the crowd. So, it’s just that Aruto’s terrible, not that they don’t do manzai anymore.

Backstage, Taro sits, presumably waiting for his next set. He’s playing back the crowd as they laugh at his joke, and oh nooo he’s smiling so widely. He’s so proud that he was able to make them laugh! Taro is a good guy and I feel really bad for what’s coming.

Not!Parad Jin ominously comes up from behind. He doesn’t say anything more than that he’s found him, before taking the imitation driver and slapping it onto Taro’s waist.

I like absolutely NONE of the hacking process! Not the red circle of light around the buckle as the driver activates. Not the fact that the ‘belt’ starts off as fuck-off huge cable strips with ‘connector pins’ on them. Of course, since said cables are basically as wide as an arm, this means the connecter pins are more like giant spikes.

Not the fact that they jam into poor Taro, and he immediately starts seizing up with red sparks everywhere.

Not him dropping to his knees, making pained sounds.

Not Jin saying ‘You’re my friend now, so go wreak havoc on this place!”

Not the fact that he says that with a smile.

–

Elsewhere, a belt has just finished being printed, and is now being assembled and given a spiffy new coat of paint.

–

Taro is trying to not do the thing, because his job is making people laugh.

Jin chuckles. Not anymore. Now his job is destroying humans.

We switch to Taro’s perspective, and see a download progress bar fill and complete. It has ‘metsubojinrai.net’ written underneath it. When it completes, the display is replaced with their logo.

Taro cries in pain, and his memory of the crowd turns greyscale. He reopens his eyes, and instead of the cool blue light they were lit with before, they’re glowing red.

Tonelessly, he says that he is connected to metsubojinrai.net, and the ‘connecting’ lights on his earpieces glitch from blue to red.

Jin hands him the Progrize key from earlier.

–

The driver’s done.

–

We switch to the Hiden Intelligence boardroom. Jun had called a board meeting earlier, and for some reason, Izu received instructions to bring Aruto there.

Nearly everyone in the room has a HumaGear secretary standing behind them. Shesta’s tattoo is on her left wrist, and Izu’s is on the back of her left hand.

The meeting was called to read the CEO’s will. Apparently, nobody even knew he had a grandson, much less one like Aruto. According to Izu, because he is, in fact, related to the CEO, and the CEO had requested he be there, there won’t be problems regarding the legality of all of this with Aruto here. She slides the will in front of him, and walks out of the room.

Jun tells him to hurry up and read it, he’s got to get to work taking over as CEO.

Aruto opens the envelope, and starts reading – forgetting to read out loud, because he’s just a confused puppy. (He’s 22, he’s legally an adult, but that does not stop him from being a dumb puppy.) He looks incredibly distressed over what’s in the will.

It’s ominously shown with a red static overlay, is hand-written, and segments of it are appearing on top to highlight themselves.

And I have no idea why some of the overlaid words are highlighted in red, because I don’t know Japanese.

Jun, frustrated with Aruto’s distress and lack of reading out loud, grabs the paper away from him.

“In the near future, our company will face a serious crisis.” Jun’s brow furrows, and the rest of the room starts muttering, wondering what crisis that could be. “The HumaGears that our company was making will be misused and will attack humanity.” This shot goes from Jun reading to a generic HumaGear, his eyes turning red, and zooming out to show that it’s a crowd of them, in a ruined city. They all crouch down and start. Freaking. Swarming, on all fours. It’s absolutely terrifying, especially when one leaps up at the viewpoint, shrieking. (It’s the same ‘vocal’ sound effect from the bugster unions, by the way.)

Back in reality, the boardroom is starting to panic a bit. Izu comes back through the door, carrying a briefcase. Jun resumes reading. “There is only one counter measure: the Zero One driver and Progrise Key.” Izu opens the briefcase, revealing the items in question. “Built into it is the new era’s security system, in order for human hands to take control of the HumaGear.” Aruto looks at the case and driver, his expression blank.

Jun continues, with us scrolling down the will. “Only the company’s President is authorized to use it.” He can’t restrain his grin. “And my successor whom-” his face falls “I entrust this to is my grandson, Hiden Aruto?!”

Nobody expected this, least of all Aruto.

“I want him to become a part of staff, and overcome the company’s crisis. That is all.”

Jun is not okay with this, and neither is the rest of the board. He’s treating this like a family business, that’s absurd! I mean, never mind that he was the founder.

All of them start protesting over one another, before Aruto yells at them all to calm down. He then says that there’s no way he can be a president. He just wants to make people laugh. Without another word, he picks up his duffle bag and walks out.

Izu tilts her head, blinking confusedly.

–

As Aruto, somber, rides the elevator down, he thinks back to when he was a little kid.

A tiny little Aruto is trying to practice a routine with someone who seems to be his father, who laughs a little. Babby Aruto insists on trying again, because he wasn’t laughing from the heart.

The man says that the result will always be the same. His headphones are white and blue – namely, with blue lights, the same color as a HumaGear’s earpeices.

Aruto swears that he’s going to make his dad laugh – oh no, this is his dad.

An explosion goes off, and blue fire fills the screen.

Little Aruto wakes up, on the ground, his father next to him.

His father, with sections of his skin blasted off, revealing a mechanical, HumaGear face underneath, bleeding blue and dying. “Aruto… head towards your dreams… jump to them…”

The shot zooms out, with elementary schooler Hiden Aruto crouched over his HumaGear father, surrounded by rubble and flames.

–

In the present, Aruto watches as Jun’s portrait is lowered off the wall. He apologizes to his grandfather.

–

At the comedy stage, the manzai act is still going on. Everyone applauds as they finish, the manager included. It looks like Aruto is about to go ask for his job back, but he hesitates, thinking back to what the manager had said. It looks like he’s trying not to cry as he turns back around to leave.

As he turns, someone shouts to be let go.

The hijacked Taro is holding another HumaGear, probably one of the staff, by the collar as he walks on stage, before tossing him to the side. “My job is to make people laugh…” Taro’s viewpoint is shown, red static overlaying the glitching sight of the crowd as they start to back away. “…and to annihilate them.”

He activates the key, and inserts it into his driver. Red ‘wires’ extend from the buckle, breaking into and through the key.

I am not okay with any of this transformation sequence!

Not with the fire burning away his human appearance.

Not with how his normal HumaGear face withdraws and reveals what is basically a robot skull.

Not with how his jaw opens wide, and green… I dunno. Green pipes come out of his mouth, and start surrounding him in what is basically the Mad Rogue transformation.

Not with the orange dna spiral that lights up around him, and turns purple before the whole thing – spiral and pipes alike – burst out of existence, leaving Taro as the Berotha Magear.

As per Rider Wiki: The name Berotha is from Kujiberotha teruyukii, an extinct insect that lived in the Cretaceous period. It’s a recently named type of thorny lacewing, which are closely related to mantises. Aka, the species that Berotha takes his appearance from.

Two HumaGear staffers go to try and stop him, but he tosses both of them to the side, and proceeds to use whip-like extenstions to attack them… and overwrite their programming, shredding their human appearances and causing their original faces to retract. they’re left with the skull appearance briefly, before full faceplates slide down, creating the anonymous mooks of the season. They run off stage to attack.

The manager watches all of this, stunned. Aruto watches, before running at Berotha and tackling him around the middle, trying to stop him. He gets thrown into a sign for his attempt.

–

In another section of… oh lord. In another section of ‘Giggle Dreamland’, we see that there are a lot more than two mooks now. A van pulls up, the body-armored grunts of AIMS grabbing machine guns as they rush out and get in formation.

Yaiba Yua, who will eventually be Kamen Rider Valkyrie, steps out as well, saying that they are to collect data on the rampaging HumaGear and that they need to- she’s cut off by machine gun fire. Fuwa Isamu, who will eventually be Kamen Rider Vulcan, gives the order to destroy all of them.

As Yua says, at least let her finish before you start going all gun-happy!

–

Aruto, now distinctly missing his jacket and bag, gets to his feet, seeing the destruction all around him. MaGear mooks are attacking people, and ohhh nooo I think they’re repeating some of their stock ‘amusement park employee’ phrases as they do it, and that’s just tragic.

The whole area is a shambles, and the manager is on his knees in despair. Aruto remembers how the manager had said that making people laugh with joy was his dream, before Berotha comes up to the manager, extending his arm blade. Aruto tries to tackle him away, but it’s no use – he gets tossed away again. Izu runs onto the scene, carrying the breifcase. Berotha grabs the frozen manager by the collar, saying that a future where humans have dreams will never come, and starts laughing maniaclly.

Theres the sound of a heartbeat as Aruto flashes back to his father’s death.

“Don’t you laugh!” He pushes himself to his feet. “Don’t you dare laugh at someone’s dream, when you know nothing about it!”

“I do know.” Berotha starts rattling off a dictionary description of ‘dream,’ his earpieces lighting up as they connect to the web, before Aruto cuts him off.

Aruto is all but shouting. “A person’s dream isn’t so simple that you can just look it up!”

Izu looks slightly aside, averting her gaze.

“Hey! With that driver, I can do something about this, right?!” We only see Aruto’s lower face as he asks this, same as when he told Berotha not to laugh.

Izu says that yes, though it is available only to the companies president-

Aruto cuts her off, desperation written on his face as he tells her to just give it to him.

“Very well, Aruto-sama.”

She walks up, and hands him the driver and key. (In the distance, we can see that Berotha is charging energy to his mantis sickles.)

“Equip the driver to your waist.”

Glaring furiously at Berotha, Aruto places it at his waist…

There’s the sound of a heartbeat, as blue ones and zeroes glow around Aruto, and…

His soul, glowing that same bright blue, straight up leaves his body, and transports into the satellite.

(Me, a Double fan: YOOOOOOO!)

The similarities to how Philip enters the Gaia Library only increase in his visualization of the BS-ZA’s ‘cerebro’, which is a white void with occasional columns of binary scrolling upward. And written in the same font as the logo, at that.

Izu appears in there, in much the same manner – they’re both in their usual appearances again, though. Whereever they step, the binary ripples out beneath their feet. It’s a nice touch to give a sense of where the ground is, since otherwise it’s all just pure white.

She tells him that his brain is remotely accessing the satellite. He… doesn’t quite take this well.

Also, now that I have a proper back view of Izu, I can see that the earpieces have a headband behind them, so they’re basically behind the head headphones. Except, you know, most likely mounted.

Anyway, she continues. Right now, he has the same thought processing speed as an AI.

Their surroundings change, to have the void show where they are in the real world, while they appear as data projections. Just to drive the point home, she walks through the real-world Aruto.

Who is very much unconscious, standing upright with his head dropped down. Berotha’s still charging his attack, rearing back to fire.

“Left like this, in five seconds, you will die.”

Only an AI could deliver this line so casually. Aruto is not okay with this. He’s not okay with any of this.

The surroundings change again, this time to a grey and purple tinted void with hexagons in the background.

“Until then, you can learn from the manual.”

So. They’re just actually having him read the manual, in virtual form, while his real body is very, very vulnerable, so that he can learn how to use his driver.

Now This Is Kamen Rider.

‘Opening Tutorial Mode’

–

Meanwhile, over with the Zectroopers – I MEAN – AIMS troops, the machine guns do absolutely jack all against the Magear mooks. They can knock them down, sure, sending them sparking to the ground, but they just get right back up again.

Isamu, frustrated with the fact that his bullets do nothing, climbs back into the van and punches his way to grabbing what will eventually be his driver.

It seems that Yua is supposed to be his boss, because she tells him to wait, that he doesn’t have her permission – he ignores her and shoots the gun in her direction.

For a brief moment, the audience assumes he’s shooting her, but he’s aiming right over her shoulder, the ‘bullet’ sending her hair waving, and hitting a Magear mook right in the eye.

It doesn’t get back up.

Also, the top of its foot has a skeletal… well. Foot. Zero One’s going all in on the robot skeleton theme they’ve got going here, then.

Looks like Isamu’s whole attitude is ‘when in doubt, apply a bigger gun.’

–

Aruto snaps awake. “Learning complete.”

As he activates his Progrise key, Berotha launches the energy scythes.

A yellow light beams down from the satellite. It was either rapid-fire 3d printing, or it was actually teleporting, but either way. A silver grasshopper with neon-yellow lines lands in front of Aruto, blocking the attack.

Interestingly, along with the impact dustcloud, there’s yellow and blue circuitry patterns radiating away along the ground.

Hot damn I like this background music. I’d ask when we’re getting the OST, but I know the answer is ‘after the season ends,’ so instead I will just mourn my lack of soundtrack.

The grasshopper starts bouncing around Aruto as he prepares to properly transform, a holographic screen projecting from the driver in front of him. Said giant robot grasshopper is making even more of a mess of the area, and said projection is slightly 3D – the images have depth to them… and are made, of course, of closely-placed zeroes and ones.

The owner of the park is watching all of this, by the way.

“Henshin!”

We actually get to sort of see the driver reading the data on the key – kind of like when we used to see the action inside the Build Driver.

The base Zero One suit is black, with glowing red lines and a disconcerting face plate. We don’t have to see that for long though, because the grasshopper quickly dissassembles itself and turns into his armor.

In a very interesting detail, you can see it breaking down into wires and metal, and the lights that pull it towards Zero One are DNA spirals.

A JUMP TO THE SKY TURNS TO A RIDER KICK

…Hey, didn’t Aruto’s father say he should jump towards his dreams? Just saying. ;)

The grasshopper didn’t just become his armor – it also seems to have turned one of its limbs into the Attache Calibre, which makes its way to Aruto’s hand as the transformation ends.

“Who are you?!”

“Zero One! That’s my name!”

He immediately launches into an attack against Berotha, punching and kicking to great effect. Berotha tries to slash right at his feet – if he can just stop him from moving, he can annihilate him. Except Zero One leaps over the blades.

And by leap, I mean that our good grasshopper boy is now on top of the rollercoaster. Aruto is, justifiably, super impressed by his new leg power.

(I’m just saying… Aruto got the Pink Cure’s ‘WOW I can jump really high now!’ moment for this year, because Cure Star didn’t get it. She had her first fight in space, so it was already a given for her.)

Berotha is decidedly less impressed, and fires an eye beam at him. The eye laser does nothing, as despite it being almost as wide as he is tall, Zero One just tanks it as he jumps back down. As the light breaks apart around him, there seems to be a faint helix pattern there, too.

Aruto’s about to go after Berotha some more, but then he sees the owner getting attacked by a pair of mooks. Mooks who used to be his staff, and can just barely be heard stuttering around their rote phrases, repeating them without context or intellect. He goes to block them, and yells at his former boss to get out of there.

As Aruto redirects the mooks elsewhere, Izu comes running up, carrying the attache weapon that had been abandoned. She calls out to him, and throws him the case…

And it whacks him upside the head.

The mooks just watch as she apologizes, and he, rubbing his head, says he’s okay.

An honest-to-gaim insert song kicks in as they start fighting again. Like, this isn’t the OP. I’ve heard the OP. This isn’t it. This is an insert song. In episode one. It’s only a short part of it, yes, but it’s still an insert.

This is going to be a good season for music, especially since you can actually hear said insert. Not quite clearly, and it’s too brief to really get anything from aside from the tone. But that tone is awesome and I can’t wait oh god it’s going to be a long wait for this soundtrack.

Also, at some point the mooks acquired guns.

–

The insert ends when we see Not!Parad Jin bouncing in joy as he watches all of this happen from a nearby roof. “Yeah! Come on! Get ‘em! This is so fun!”

A damaged mook gets up, stuttering. “A-a-a-attention! A-a-a-a lost child has been reported!” This confirms that the mooks are, in fact, still saying their lines. It tries to attack him, because that’s what they do. He’s human, after all. (Right?)

Still giggling, Jin grabs the mooks arm as it goes to stab him, and in one smooth motion and without looking, twists it behind said mooks back, holds it around the neck, pulls out an honest-to-god gun, and shoots it in the head.

Everything goes silent for a second as the gun fires.

He doesn’t stop giggling wildly the whole time, nor does he even spare the mook a glance.

The mook falls to the ground, broken and unmoving, as he continues laughing.

It’s a normal gun. That is straight up a normal gun. Not a fancy sci-fi one, just a normal gun with normal bullets and a normal bullet casing that ejects in front of him as he laughs.

…Can we go back to our hero, please?!

–

Oh, good, we’re going back to Zero One versus Berotha. Thanks!

And thank you even more for the OP kicking in as Berotha fires a volley of energy blades. These are powerful enough to slice through cars and set off explosions wherever they hit. But they don’t even graze Aruto, not the way he jumps and rolls in mid air to dodge them.

His fighting is super graceful and deliberate, so much unlike how he moves as himself. The intro beats to the song transition into the song proper as he leaps, angled yellow lines of light trailing behind him as he uses the flying cars as jumping points, bouncing from one to the other, dodging blades all the way, before the actual bus that’s in the air comes up toward him.

He just barrels through it, still dodging the blades, using the support bars to flip and spin around and over. He manages to tap the ‘stop request’ button with his foot as he rebounds at one point, which is a hilarious little detail that they didn’t need to put in. But that lets the bus announcement of ‘stop requested’ play as he comes through the rear window right before it hits the ground.

MAN, the attention to DETAIL in this episode. I know that it’s mostly Episode One Budget in action, but damn is this promising.

Those yellow lines start following him again as he resumes his beatdown on Berotha, giving a pre-asskicking one liner. “There’s only one person who can stop you: me!” He activates his finisher.

RISING IMPACT!

A brief projection of the robo-grasshoppers foot appears over his own as he braces himself to start moving. Neat. And move he does, going faster than the camera can follow, slowing down only long enough to deliver a few punches and kicks, tossing Berotha into the air. Zero One follows suit, leaping far higher, and diving down with his Rider Kick.

He goes through the MaGear, shattering it to pieces. Gears, wires, and dark blue hydraulic fluid go everywhere, as the eyes on his helmet have a line go from front to back along the facets. Huh.

A special projection of ‘rising impact’ appears on screen as Zero Ones kick approaches the viewer, and since holo-tech is a thing here, may or may not actually be there. The key that had been used to hack Taro into Berotha, definitely cracked, also flies at the screen.

Zero One lands, digging a gouge into the path, and when he comes to a stop… Aruto twists his ankle, winds up rolling bodily into one of the buildings, and gets covered in rubble. He pulls himself up a bit using some of the debris, saying “Aaaand here’s my stop.” He collapses backward.

–

The AIMS troops seem to be wrapping up their defeat of the mooks, but as Yua says, they’ve still got a lot to do.

Isamu’s stomps on the chest of one of the downed mooks, who isn’t quite as done as he’d looked. It grabs his ankle, before he apparently shoots and shatters it, going by the sound effect.

He glares, hands trembling in apparent rage, saying that history is repeating itself.

–

Jin hands Horobi the damaged key. When Horobi ‘questions’ the damage, he just ‘asks’ “Zero One?”

Implying that there was a previous Zero One.

This implication is only furthered with Jin’s comment, as he pulls down his hood. “Seems like the previous president didn’t simply die, huh?”

We still can’t see his ears under all that hair.

The suspicion that these two aren’t human only grows. Why would Horobi want to turn humans into an endangered species if they, themselves, are human?

The ‘eye’ on the sunken satellite glows red.

–

As they exit the amusement park, Aruto’s going on to Izu about how cool he was. She says she’ll be escorting him home, calling him ‘Mister President.’

“Wait, what?!”

Turns out he completely blanked on the fact that only the president of Hiden Intelligence is allowed to be Zero One, and he accepted the position by putting on the driver.

Our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen. He’s just a big ol’ puppy.

He’s protesting this fact – the president thing, not the puppy thing – to Izu when he hears a child asking the parks owner if he’s going to be closing the park.

“Not at all. A mysterious yellow hero protected it. So we’re going to keep on giving smiles to our guests!”

Aruto looks absolutely touched by his former bosses words, just by the refusal to close, and the ‘mysterious yellow hero’ part. …He has no idea that his boss knows exactly who that hero was.

Not until said boss turns to him, and winks.

Izu lifts one hand. “I have detected many smiling expressions that Master Aruto is responsible for.”

He laughs, just a little, a light chuckle at himself. “There’s more than one way to make people smile, huh…?”

He bounces the driver a little in his hands, and gets into the car.

As he buckles in, and Izu doesn’t – sweetie, I know you’re an android, and thus can’t technically die in the way most people would see death as, you should still use your seat belt and model good behavior for the kiddos watching at home – she hands him ‘the presidents’ Rise Phone. It looks like it’s just an upgraded version of his phone from earlier, or they upgraded that phone itself.

He tries to make a terrible pun about the hassle the board of directors gave earlier… which Izu, now putting on her seat belt, thank you so very much, starts explaining. Aruto cries that she shouldn’t be trying to explain the joke as the car drives away.

The episode title finally appears.

––––

Aaand that’s Kamen Rider Zero One, episode one! This is sure gonna be something, and I’m super hyped!

#kamen rider zero one #sailorcressy says

[elizabethemerald]

Gen:Lock is so damn good

This episode was so amazing! Like most animated shows give you an emotional rollercoaster from episode to episode. Gen:lock gives you one in Each episode! I’m going to watch it again and put down my thoughts bit by bit. There was so much gold here!

Ok First of all the zoom in on Kazu’s butt right off the bat. That’s great. 

Kazu and Valentina being the older siblings for Cammy is the most adorable thing in the world

During the training montage it feels like Valentina is the only one who is actually good with weapons. 

Shout out to Miranda kicking that dude’s ass, then the zoom out to see the Holons start fighting

I feel like Kazu is a big fan of the occasional dirty trick. Punching Chase when he goes to help him up is only the first in this episode. 

There’s a part where Cammy trips and falls then the camera zooms into a box with the numbers 42:03 32088. I wonder if that’s going to be significant

oh god their so tired. Please let them sleep. 

The one mind thing shows they are still killable in their mechs. But I wonder if it is possible to create a backup copy. 

I can see that uptime is going to be a constant threat hanging over their heads. I wonder if anyone is going to go over that limit. especially since the nano cloud used later blocks the signal that would allow them to reupload to their bodies. 

Looks like the auto download starts at five minutes remaining. 

Also overclocking kind of feels like bullet time

Ooh, we got the first hint of genlock phase 2 during the training. I can’t wait to see what they do with that later. 

Also Kazu giving Cammy an egg. so sweet. 

I wonder if Leon is going to try to upload since he was compatible though too old. 

God Miranda is so pretty. I’m so gay for her. 

I’m so glad Chase isn’t super and shitty towards Miranda. And I feel like his explanation makes way more sense. He didn’t reach out because he didn’t want her to mourn him twice. Not just because he was under orders not to do so. 

“All I can do now is keep moving forward”

I think Cammy is the first person other then chase to Mx from her Holon (I don’t know what the actual word they use is). 

1. I fucking love the way Cammy talks. 2. I think she might be one of the most tech savvy of the Gen:lock crew. She has her little robot, her ears, she understands the most about the consequences of genlock from the drs lectures, and she comes over and starts talking tech with one of the supports. 

3D printing armor pieces for the striders and the Holons is awesome. What a cool way repairing things!

I really  love their casual outfits. Them just hanging out in their room 

Fucking Cammy games in her fursona!! I can’t say I’m actually the surprised, I just love that about her. 

Kazu looks some kind of punk rocker. Amazing

I love that Cammy is 100% supportive of her companions no matter how the present. Yas arrives in the Ether in a hijab and though surprised she doesn’t give her any shit about it. 

Also Yas wears a hijab! I feel like it’s so rare for shows to have characters like Yas. 

Valentina looks stunning no matter how they are presenting. And they are canonically gender fluid!!!!! That’s so amazing. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a gender fluid character in a show I’ve watched. And it only took four episodes for a canon queer character! Roosterteeth is improving. It took four seasons for RWBY to have a canon queer character. 

Again Cammy doesn’t think there’s anything weird about Valentina being gender fluid. Kazu needs to be less rude though. I can’t believe he asked them what they were born as. On top of that Cammie making sure not to speak over Valentina. Way to go!!

Also apparently it’s possible to change your gender. And not only possible but accessible if Valentina has changed several times. 

Oh my god. I just hit on a huge Genlock theory but I think it needs its own post. 

Valentina has dysphoria. They describe it has a push, but I think that is what they are talking about. 

Also them dressed as the Fucking RWBY characters. I wonder if the specific characters have anything to do with their characterization. 

I feel like Valentina is not straight. They admired Yas when they saw her for the first time, and watched that girl go by behind them and decided to follow into the club.

Dri is there! She is in the ether!

I wonder if Chase’s tank is brought on to the plane as well. Or if he is mixing into the plane, then uploading from there. 

Cammie being so foul mouthed is so funny to me. 

I feel like their bodies being brought in so close to the fight is going to have problems later in the show. 

Chase and Yas already work so well together. I can’t wait to see what the whole team will do. 

I feel like Kazu tried to do a super hero landing and didn’t quite pull it off. Also that globe rolling from one scene to the next. Then he immediately loses his gun and starts chucking cars about. 

I feel like Cammie has a pea shooter compared to what the others are carrying. Also she really doesn’t want to kill people.  

God the way the enemy thing moves. It’s so uncanny. People have mentioned that it looks in pain before and I think that’s pretty accurate. 

Jesus christ. The fucking scream. Jesus. 

You can see her brain, or something when the enemy holon tears open her armor. 

Also what the fuck that fucking scream. 

Everyone else running in there to save her. 

Yas is absolutely a badass. And Kazu’s first instinct is to start making weapons from every thing around him. 

Oh shit, the thing definitely doesn’t leave until miranda arrives. That’s eery. 

That was the first time mindshare worked. I think that will be their secret to beating future conflicts, being able to share minds like that. 

Ok, that’s all for now. But just wtf that scream. 

#gen:lock spoilers #miranda worth #julian chase #yasamin madrani #valentina romanyszyn #cammie maccloud #genlock

[vintage-miseries]

Team Angry-Stupid-Loudmouth

#squad:  who's friends with who? what are the squad dynamics like?

Elrick: E’s friendly with the older crowd. He’s good mates with Wallace and Fredrik, they go to the gym together. He’s also good mates with Lucius and drags the poor old sod out for camping trips.

Luke: Luke can be friends with anyone, its up to the other person to tolerate him. It goes without saying that Colin is his ride or die for life. He also gets on well with Wallace and Fredrik, and has a “working relationship” with Lucius.

Kash: Kash is another individual who could get on with anyone, you just have to be the right sort of person to enjoy his company. Bishop will be his best mate for life, though in any AU in which he comes into contact with people he and Lukan have a good relationship.

microscope:  zoom in -- describe the little, insignificant details about an OC.

Elrick: Dude actually has really nice eyes, proper green in good lighting, like sunlight through ferns. He also has fairly soft hair.

Luke: Luke has the ghost of freckles on his nose, though his complexion makes them hard to see. He’s got early laugh lines creeping in at the corner of his eyes and just the faintest tinge of red in his curls.

Kash: Green eyes touched with gold at the center, cat-like and curved. Thin lips that fork into a grin. Wild, fire-colored hair that never seems to be under his control.

fragrance:  what do your OCs smell like?

Elrick: Tobacco, Old Spice, hair product, cedar-scented cologne

Luke: cloves, marijuana, shea butter, warm earth, sunlight warmed clothing

Kash: Rain, sage, oleander, fire-smoke, sea-salted ocean air

photo album:  describe one of your OCs' favorite memories.

Elrick: The first night that Logan came to stay, when he couldn’t stand his parents any longer. They ordered pizza and played nintendo in the loft and they shared that first, clumsy kiss.

Luke: Luke would count any warm, summery memory as a good one. He particularly enjoys the memory of the first summer he spent as Colin’s friend, sitting on a beach in Hastings smoking bowls as the sun set and telling stories over dinner of fish and chips.

Kash: I feel Kash’s life is too long to pick out particular memories, though I feel the time he convinced Bishop to become highway men for a while was probably worth a couple of good laughs, especially given their supernatural capabilities.

wardrobe:  what's your OC(s) style like? 

Elrick: E’s a t-shirts and jeans kind of guy. Every now and then he spices things up with a jacket, but really he can’t be fucked about fashion, and tends to wear what’s most convenient.

Luke: Luke likes a plaid top, coupled with hiking boots, graphic t’s and a beanie. Whatever’s comfiest for an impromptu hike, as he tends to enjoy random walks. He’s less a fan of dodging through underbrush to avoid the cops but in those situations his gear is idyllic as well.

Kash: Kash likes a lot of black. Black jeans/trousers, boots, shirts, and a leather jacket when the weather calls for it. He’ll wear other colours as well, but he’s truly adopted the goth aesthetic, or well - he adopted it about four hundred years ago and never gave it up.

lightning:  who's the most impulsive character? and who is their impulse control?

Elrick: E’s not impulsive unless it comes to jokes. Sometimes he can’t help himself and says something a little risque.

Luke: Luke can be impulsive, often due to his ADD.

Kash: Kash’s middle name is Impulsive, or Brash, or sometimes Just-plain-stupid. He loves to take unnecessary risks for the hell of it, just because he can and because the mayhem is usually worth it. Usually.

ufo:  identity! what are some key identifying qualities or traits of your OC(s)? how to they identify in regards to gender/sexuality? 

Elrick: Arrogant - Funny - Hangry - Fuck-knows-Sexuality

Luke: Kind - Excitable - Addict - Asexual

Kash: Rash - Funny - Annoying - Bisexual

love note:  who likes who? crushes? relationships? are they mutual or unrequited?

Elrick: E’s had only a few crushes in his life. He liked Annie, but that fell through when he fell for his boy.

Luke: Luke likes people, but couldn’t be fucked for sex or a relationship, really. He likes a cuddle, and he’d marry Colin for the marital benefits if Colin wanted to, but really he’s just here to have fun.

Kash: Kash’ll fuck anyone he finds interesting, though when it comes to love, well, there’s only one person who he’s ever truly loved, and he has a hard time admitting it.

poison:  vices/bad habits? what are they? how do they affect your OC?

Elrick: Elrick has a substance abuse problem, whether it be alcohol or harder chemicals, he’s always struggled. At the very least, he’s always going to have a slight drinking problem. He also bites his nails.

Luke: Luke doesn’t think it’s possible to be addicted to marijuana - luke is incorrect.

Kash: Kash thrives on mischief and mayhem, and will always go to irritating lengths to make things difficult for other people as well as himself. He’s also a chronic liar and incredibly vain.

compass:  who's the moral compass? in general: what are your OCs' morality like? do they have high morals, or not? are their morals self imposed, or do they base their morals on religion/family/influence of others?

Elrick: E’s generally a nice guy though every once in a while he can experience a moment of anger or aggression, though these are usually righteously-based. His mum taught him to be a good bloke, his brothers and sisters kept him humble.

Luke: Luke is, by society’s standards, technically a criminal. By his own and anyone who knows him he’s a generally stand up guy who goes out of his way to help people.

Kash: Kash can be as sweet as honey when he wants to be, or as cruel and vindictive as possible if it suits him. Being an ancient supernatural creature, perhaps his scale for morals is a tad different from ours, or perhaps not.

track & field:  which (if any) of your OCs are athletic? what sports to they play? which of your OCs would go HARD in P.E.?

Elrick: E’s the kid playing dodgeball to maim. He really enjoyed gym and was always fairly good at it, though he never tried out for teams or made any effort if he wasn’t particularly interested.

Luke: Luke, when he actually attended school, did not really enjoy gym.

Kash: Kash did not, nor has he ever attended a school. He doesn’t know what sports are.

conspiracy theory:  what are your OC's beliefs? are they skeptics or do they believe easily? who acts on blind faith? who needs to see to believe?

Elrick: E will always be a skeptic, he takes after his father in that respect. He’d need to see something in order to believe it real.

Luke: Luke loves a good ghost/ufo/cryptid story. He fully believes in all of them, and absorbs conspiracy media like water

Kash: Kash, who hails from a land of fae-folk, monsters, and supernatural beings, does not believe in aliens but feels ghosts deserve more representation.

spellbook:  are any of your OC(s) supernatural? if so, what are they/what are their abilities?

Elrick: E has been every creature variant under the sun, but never as anything other than a one-off AU. Sorry E, you’re just human.

Luke: Though seperate entities, Luke did spawn from my Hell-spawn Azelgore, a multi-limbed salamander creature from the third circle of hell. He’s also, on occasion, the same looking creature but actually the Loch Ness Monster, so there’s that.

Kash: Kash is the Cat Sìth, a Scottish creature of Myth said to haunt the Highlands. His abilities include taking human form, charming people, foresight by augury, and shared astral projection. He’s also a witch capable of various old world spells and potions.

contact:  how does your OC(s) feel about touch/physical contact? are they affectionate? if so, how do they display affection to others?

Elrick: E’s actually very into physical affection. He enjoys a cuddle, a fuck, whatever. He’s not too touchy with mates, but Logan gets the brunt of his P.D.A.’S

Luke: Luke loves a hug, and doesn’t mind a cuddle every once in a while.

Kash: Kash is very selective about the people he touches. He wouldn’t enjoy just anyone coming in for a cuddle, but loves a touchy romp with Bargheist.

interiors:   describe your OC(s) bedroom/home/or a place they consider "theirs". what's in it? do certain items have a special significance to your OC?

Elrick: Oh man, this boy doesn’t do interior design. Their bedroom is tan, he’s got a mirror, a bed, a dresser, and a tv. He’s got a well worn but comfortable green couch out in the livingroom that he’s particularly fond of. Logan thinks it’s gross.

Luke: Luke’s whole house is his safe space. He’s maxed it out with plants and art. If there’s a free space on the wall it’s only because he’s not bought a frame yet. Or he’s broken one and needs to replace it. It’s a weird, yet beautiful little boho space. He’s also got a hammock indoors so..

Kash: Kash’s abode is a little octagon out on the Cornwall coast. The ceiling is hung with dozens upon dozens of bottles, wind chimes, and assorted peculiarities. He also has a fair collection of bones, antique books, and pretty seashells that he leaves out on display. His reputation as a ‘witch’ in the local town sends him a good bit of business during the summer months, where he hawks his augury skills to unsuspecting humans.

hobby:  what do they love? what captivates them? what are their passions?

Elrick: E loves simple moments, beer shared around a campfire, the breathlessness upon reaching the top of a mountain climb, BBQ’s in the summer, an exhausted cuddle at the end of a long day, shared grins, hard fucks, and falling asleep against one another

Luke: Luke’s passions are laughter, good food, and plants. He loves the smell that comes off of a hundred sun-drenched plants after he waters them, and loves the bloom of flowers that accompanies happy cacti. He loves the bursts of laughter that accompany a smoke-up, and he loves the sleepy giggles of a come-down.

Kash: Kash will always be an enigma, even to himself. His wants and desires are always far more complicated than they seem, and he never makes things easy. He loves starlit walks and abandoned places. He loves sushi and hard spirits, forbidden knowledge and chasing the impossible, magic, and forgotten things.

psyche:  what's their head space like? do they have any mental illnesses? how do they process difficult or emotional situations? what are their coping mechanisms?

Elrick: E’s coping mechanism has always been a good, quiet drink alone. He broods best that way. He gets through difficult situations by being bullheaded and stubborn.

Luke: Luke laughs himself through shit. He copes by either falling through it, or by having a mental breakdown and then realizing it wasn’t that bad afterwards. If all else fails he’ll have a smoke-up and try to ignore the situation.

Kash: Kash will use every bit of magic at his disposal to get around issues, and if that doesn’t work, he’ll pack up and move away for a while. He’s good at running from his problems, and does it fairly often.

chess board:  who is the most logical? or the schemer/planner?

Elrick: E’s not ... he’s stubborn and pessimistic but he’s a natural follower, happy to let someone come up with the plan if he can enforce it. He’s the bodyguard type.

Luke: Luke isn’t so much a schemer as he is just one bad idea away from prison. He’s impulsive sometimes and tends to think of the pros before ever thinking about the cons, and sometimes this gets him in trouble.

Kash: Kash is a bona fide schemer and a dreamer, but not much of a planner. He’ll come up with an idea fair enough, but he never seems to have a back up if shit goes tits up, and it usually seems to.

shooting star:  if your OC(s) could have one wish what would it be?

Elrick: He’d wish himself free of the three years they spent apart, and wish himself clean.

Luke: Luke would wish natural intoxicants were legal the world over, or like, for world peace.

Kash: Honestly? He’d wish himself more powerful tbh.

#Elrick1 #Kash1 #Luke1 #OC MEME1