#I want half the players to be gay just out of spite

[autisticgirliesbracket]

What makes Ayda Aguefort from Dimension 20: Fantasy High the autistic girlie ever of all time? Here's what the people have to say:

Ayda-related asks/reblogs: x This post will be updated after each round!

Image ID in alt text and under the readmore.

[Image ID. White slide with a picture of Ayda on the left. On the right are many MANY text boxes which read,

"It's canonical, but outside of the official stuff, she's struggled all of her life (lives) with not understanding subtext to the point where screwing it up is one of her greatest fears, she made her crush sign an NDA before admitting that she liked her, and she was so concerned about her paramour (she calls Fig her paramour) that she considered sending fantasy memos to every single plane of existance telling everyone to be nice to her or she'd kill them, and the she made good on that threat by drowning hell, which could just be normal but feels like an autistic swag moment."

"She’s canonically autistic. She runs a library on a pirate island, she’s a half phoenix pirate wizard, she has an entire section in her library dedicated to books on how to make friends, she loves her friends, she loves her girlfriend, she has no control over her tone of voice, she constantly sounds angry, her best friend made her a spell called “Ayda’s comprehend subtext” so that she wouldn’t feel left out of conversations, she tried to flood hell for her girlfriend, I relate to this woman on a personal, spiritual and emotional level."

"she's canon!!! they say she's autisticit in the show!!! she's super monotone and blunt (but SO kind), she can't understand subtext/is super literal, she's very transactional in how she thinks and behaves. later in the show, her best friend invents a spell to help her understand subtext! they MAKE HER A DISABILITY AID FOR HER AUTISM!!! she's so full of love, she's so smart, she's learning how to have friends for the first time, even though she experiences things differently than them. i love her."

"Ayda is canon autistic. She's a librarian on a pirate ship city. She's a lesbian phoenix. Her autism leads to humorous moments but she's never the butt of the joke. AND she has a super cool rockstar gf <3"

"she was incredibly autistic-coded right from the first introduction of her character, she has trouble understanding hidden meanings to statements and prefers to just bluntly say what she means, she has trouble expressing her feelings in a way that she wants to, she struggles with social situations, she dedicated an entire room of her library just to books about friendship because she really wants to have friends, and she's half phoenix and is reborn when she dies. also there was so much positive response to her and so many questions about her being autistic that brennan then went and did some research to better understand autism and made her explicitly autistic in cannon (like, says the word out loud in character, very direct). also she's gay and dating one of the player characters and they are incredible and fig loves her not just in spite of the things that ayda perceives as bad things about herself (related to autism making things like social stuff hard for her) but for them, because they are part of her and she loves all of her just for being her. also i love her so much and her character arc is so important to me of accepting that there isn't anything wrong with her, she's just different because she's autistic but that's not a bad thing and she can find friends (and a girlfriend!) that love her for exactly who she is."

"She's canonically autistic! she generally misunderstands social cues (always admits it and asks for them to be explained to her which is iconic behaviour, I wish I could shoot that straight lol), often speaks in a monotone and uses minimal facial expressions, is a librarian (autistic ass career), hasn't had any luck friends prior to the story (but now her gf and bff are super supportive and great!) and is a Huge Nerd (very intelligent)"

"She canonically has autism! She's a wizard whose special interest is spells and the history of magic and she lives in a library that she runs by herself. Despite the DM Brennan not having autism (to my knowledge at least idk) he does a really good job playing her without dehumanizing her and she's a beloved NPC by the cast and fans alike. Also she has a girlfriend :)"

"Canonically autistic!! She is very blunt and transactional with others, even close loved ones, takes things very literally, and is normally extremely stoic and intense as her resting emotion (but gets very excited about magic + her new friends!). None of her autistic traits are ever seen as negative, and she is celebrated by all her friends for being the way she is! She wasn't specifically written to be autistc, but as the show was coming out many fans were asking if she was, and since this season came out live over the course of months, the DM added a whole section about her realizing she's autistic + her loved ones supporting her and helping her find ways to express herself and exist comfortably. There's also just something very autistic about wizards idk."

"Canon autistic black lesbian teenage pirate librarian. Look at those words and tell me what’s not to love. Has a cool devil girlfriend. Makes her sign a contract after they kiss. Best friends with anxiety wizard. Incepted “fascinating” into my vocabulary. I love her."

"She canonically autistic!!!!!! She was confirmed in the last episode of the show she’s in but leading up to that she’s shown to misunderstand social cues and have formal ways of speaking and special interests in wizardry. She’s very self conscious about this and struggles with it throughout the show and the thing that’s so important about her to me is that so many people love her. So many people see her how she is and they think it’s wonderful and perfect. Ayda gets to have a cute teen romance with her cool girlfriend just like anyone else. I adore her. She’s a phoenix, she’s a lesbian, and she’s autistic, perfect woman."

"Ayda is a black lesbian, clearly shown to be deeply emotional and caring despite her flat affect, hyper-aware and anxious of her social awkwardness (rather than being comically oblivious), never infantilized, capable of having strong friendships and relationships, who is also confirmed autistic in canon without it being an offhand joke. She is also a half-phoenix divination wizard and the librarian of the Compass Points Library which is located in Leviathan (a vast pirate city made up of thousands of shipwrecks all connected together to create a floating island). In the epilogue of the final episode of Dimension 20: Fantasy High Sophomore Year, Brennan (the DM) narrates that Ayda is diagnosed with autism by the school’s therapist/counselor. Finding language for her experiences clearly brings her great relief, as she seems to finally have context for her place in the world. In the first episode of Adventuring Party, Dimension 20’s talkback show, Brennan stated that he “wanted to model her after the Sherlock archetype,” of a person who is “brilliant and goodhearted… but not necessarily existing on that social level,” through a lens that audiences never get to see: a Black lesbian. She was not intended to be autistic initially, but soon after her creation, he realized—through the audience questioning if Ayda was autistic—that she was modeled after his friends with ASD who are also “very academic and intense in that way,” and decided to do research to make her representation more accurate and nuanced. She has an entire section of her library dedicated to friendship. The books in it have advice like "give your friends oranges so they don't get scurvy" because it was written by pirates. Because she thinks naming spells after yourself is arrogant but having a spell named after you is awesome she invented a spell as a gift for her friend. It's called Adaine's Furious Fist and lets you channel rage and arcane power into a supercharged punch that you could hypothetically use to absolutely wreck your abusive father. And in return Adaine invents Ayda's Comprehend Subtext, which aids the caster in understanding implied but not stated communication. All of this: Link!"

Continued,

"confirmed as autistic in canon! she has a very monotone yet intense way of speaking. she feels emotion quite strongly but usually has a neutral expression. she'll frequently ask for clarifications about what is normal or expected in a given social situation (which surrounding characters always answer without judgement or teasing). she's stated that she knows she thinks and experiences the world differently than most people, but doesn't understand why this is until the end of the series when she's able to learn about other people like her"

"canonically autistic!! speaks bluntly and plainly and often asks for subtext explanations. rejection sensitivity is a theme that is explored for here and it is very important to me :) also in a beautiful adhd/autie relationship!! she is one of my fav blorbos and I get emotional thinking abt her"

"It’s canon!!! In the finale she’s holding books on autism and crying saying “this is normal” and her best friend makes her a wizard spell called “ayda’s comprehend subtext” to help her out. It’s adorable and I love Ayda sm. shes a half-phoenix who cries fire and she loves her girlfriend so much they’re adorable❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥" End ID.]

#autistic girlies bracket #autistic girlie masterpost #Dimension 20: Fantasy High #ayda aguefort

[theslowesthnery]

So I've been following you for a little while and just sort of absorbing the elden ring stuff. Looks cool, love the energy, but I don't have a console that can play it. I knew Mohg was like a big scary monster dude, but I hadn't really looked at a picture of him. The... Discourse about him apparently being bad gay rep made me curious though and

I don't think this thing is any kind of stereotype he's a big monster man with tentacle horns what the hell do these people want

"oooh the boss monster that looks like Cthulhu fucked a minotaur is bad queer rep" I don't know how to tell you this man but I don't think he's any kind of rep

Like how is "the horrifying monster man is homophobic" a take anyone can seriously have just look at that thing. How is putting the word "homophobic" on this not an obvious joke.

Anyway love the monsterfucking please never change

to be perfectly fair, it's not mohg's design or him being a big scary monster dude that's the problem: it's his lore and motivations. see, he kidnaps miquella, a demigod, who he wants to elevate into full godhood so he can become miquella's consort. there are a couple of "issues" with that: one, miquella is asleep and isn't consenting to anything; two, miquella is mohg's half-brother; three, miquella is cursed with eternal youth so he's physically a child (age-wise he is an adult though because his twin sister who doesn't share his curse is an adult). so you can probably guess why people have problems with that, especially since the game certainly makes it seem like it's not solely a power grab on mohg's part, but he's actually on at least some level infatuated with miquella (who, to be fair, is told to have the power to compel people's affection, but we never find out exactly what the deal there is). mohg also can turn himself into blood, and does that to hang out in miquella's veins when he's not bonking the player over the head with his big-ass blood trident and screaming angrily at them in latin

so that's the problem. and for the record, i have no issue with people not liking mohg or being uncomfortable with his whole miquella thing, but when people start claiming that mohg is a "stain" on elden ring and shouldn't exist because he's objectively "harmful gay rep" is when i start aggressively rolling my eyes and scooting to the complete opposite end of the spectrum where i'm like "y'know what, this man has done nothing wrong in his life" out of sheer spite lmao

...and some of us just look at this big scary monster dude with way too many horns and fangs who talks SO softly and gently to his object of affection whose malewife he wants to be and go

(and also some of us like the idea of the situation Not Being What It Seems, of miquella not being just a poor little helpless victim but perhaps an active participant. or alternatively him waking up and being totally on board with what's going on lmao and then domming mohg because that man could not dom his way out of a paper bag)

like i'm just tired of this "everything has to be good representation" thing, especially since "good representation" apparently means that everything has to be squeaky-clean and unproblematic and no one is allowed to be evil or fucked up, like idk i'd personally rather have interesting and compelling queer characters who are allowed to be messy and evil and even depraved over some sweet little perfect uwu cinnamon rolls

#elden ring for blacklist

[bibiana112]

Here's a couple top 5s, you don't have to do them all. Favorite fictional characters. Favorite video games. Favorite ship (does not have to be romantic). And let's do a couple non fandom things, favorite desserts. Favorite hobbies and activities (you can include stuff you did in the past but are no longer doing it you want)

I'm going to do most of these!

The fictional characters one is so difficult because there's so many that are important to me and honestly anyone could probably guess these buut

Roxas- Never related more to a character or will again holy shit I don't want to talk about all the reasons but yeah god he's just like me fr

Chara- Well my interest in Undertale in general was probably one of the most influential things in my life for a lotta reasons but especially cause cosplaying them got me to meet my big sister friends :3

Aoi- I don't think I need to elaborate much but this fucker is somehow the very definition of comfort character to me sibling of all time and god how did they fit so much survivor's guilt and gender swag on this one guy

Akane- She's honestly one of the fictional characters of all time for me not even just in the sense that I'm emotionally invested and like to project on what I relate to her in like just literally no one does it like her and it's so fucking awesome how much nuance she has

Mary- From Ib obviously. The concept of a painting come to life is one thing but also matching that with intense loneliness and abandonment issues because the artist was neglectful and the way she doesn't even know what life is like but wants it so bad and how the thing with existing even works in the gallery is just so interesting to me and I never saw the concept done like that again

Ships is interesting because I am not overwhelmed by choice and have few I ever liked lmao

Soriku- I don't wanna make statements on what they have going on exactly but it is some shade of true love and regardless their relationship is just so precious to me like the Disney vibes really make me feel things

Garnet- aka Ruby and Sapphire from Steven universe and that is simply because I remember crying when they came on screen for the first time kissing and being worried for each other and realizing at the tender age of thirteen on the spot that I did have romantic feelings afterall but I just never realized girls were an option

Junepei- These two are so messed up whatever they have going on isn't precious in the wholesome sense at all and I'm living for it they get to be awkward and cute and each other's first real crushes but also horny and terrible for what else they bring to each other's lives and still the only thing to keep each other from giving up on other people altogether and they're liars and manipulators and they never once harm the other out of spite and it's a runaway and a detective and just a caring brave boy who met a lonely smart girl when they were in elementary school and a control freak mastermind that's half dead and waiting for him to save her and a normal spontaneous person who's pulled into all this when she kidnaps him and GOD

Aoilight- They're also complicated but not as much as those other two I'm tired from typing that out and I did already make an essay on these two so I just think them together would be sweet and funny and they'd be more on the same page about healing than junepei if the circumstances were okay

Strelrena- Okay hear me out this rare pair has so much potential because I believe marluxia and larxene to be the gay lesbian solidarity duo and streli is canonically queer for her crush on player and Elrena was the only one she really talked to omg they were party mates and she was along for the ride to help her brother find her from day one and she only avoided the war because streli talked fondly about her enough for lauriam to remember and go to her and her chirity is so funny about teasing her about caring about anyone at all while looking for her and her doing a one eighthy and being bitter and awful at the very notion of having a heart makes sense with this whole thing and in her files she talks about something previous to her but that still gives her mixed feelings and some of those could still end up being about marluxia and I would not like that but for now I can only hope for kh to have a single wlw pairing that works for me

Dessert!

Mint chocolate chip ice cream

Brigadeiro/Dois amores

Lemon pie

Churros

Cookies

Hmm hobbies

Cosplay is definitely the definition of a hobbie I dropped but I owe so much to the time I dabbled in it

Writing I started to do after giving up on taking cosplay seriously

Surfing actually for a short while when I was young but it's cold here so my dad gave up on going to classes during the freezing weekend mornings with me and my brother

Sewing cause my big sis tried teaching me for a couple weeks when I was in highschool I'd go to her place afterwards once or twice for lessons but that didn't last too long for many reasons

Hand making bracelets and necklaces! Wow that one's old I loved to go to the store to buy beads and other accessories for it when I was small but my mom didn't take me often and I'm not sure those stores still exist

#this is old! i completely forgor #but these were super fun to answer still thank u akdhjs #a tag for asks #ask game #I believe this was THE deepest thing on my drafts god only 150 more to go

[zombiebcy]

[ joshua bassett, demi boy, he/they ] oh, them? that’s WILL BYERS, they are EIGHTEEN. they are currently a [STUDENT AT HAWKINS COMMUNITY COLLEGE]. i hear people say they are OBSERVANT, CREATIVE, SENSITIVE, but also WRY, GUARDED, SELF-SACRIFICING. i always think of a velvet pouch full of dice in every colour, paint smudged fingertips, the jaws theme on movie night, neatly rolled blue jeans. i wonder what their favorite scary movie is? [ vi, 21+, she/they, gmt]

will learned early on that the rest of the world, lonnie included, was the enemy and that jonathan and joyce could ride out just about anything if the three of them were together. he watched jonathan give up his childhood and his dreams, worked half to death like their mom. they were happy, the house never felt broken after their dad left, it felt whole.

lonnie could see something in will that he detested, no matter how much his youngest son tried to bend to his whim. he’d agree to anything for a scrap of approval but often wound up hurt or deeply uncomfortable. jonathan shielded him from some of the worst, he understands but it left its mark on every relationship will formed after that. though there was a breath of relief, their dad leaving hurt too.

life is hard, fact and will found himself withdrawing until he could fold away into the background in most situations, he just wanted to be easy to be around. an easy time. 

the soft-spoken, gentle and charitable to a fault nature that will displayed from a young age made him easily walked over and taken advantage of. the bullying worsened as he got older, the same old insults levied against him no matter where he tried to fit.

the only thing that makes it all worth it is the rest of the party, though he tends to ride in the background when they’re all together because of the clamouring of many loud personalities, he enjoys nothing better than watching. listening.

if left alone with anything that can be drawn on he will default to sketching. has taken to making to-scale and detailed fantasy maps for the hellfire club’s campaigns and has painted portraits from players’ descriptions to put on their character sheets. 

dated jennifer hayes for three weeks in freshman year of high school to try and make mike impressed jealous without even realising. 

chester the dog is old as balls but still around because i say so. he mostly lies on the porch panting and being fed treats by an ever patient will. 

hide and seek champion since 1980: he is very quiet on his feet and able to hide in previously thought impossible places. 

mike was the centre of his world for so many years. after wandering up to a crying will he’d not been able to shake him since, dustin and lucas and the others all drifting into his orbit rather than will’s which suited him just fine. if he’s honest with himself, mike still is everything and it terrifies him. 

can be a little bit of a bitch, to be honest. mostly quiet unless he’s around the gang but every now and then he will drop a burn with a blast radius.

works part-time at the palace arcade. used to work at enzo’s sliding bonus fries to his friends and trying not to stutter. he much prefers the familiar ground of the arcade. volunteers at the vet, particularly the shelter.

accepted a couple years ago that he was hopelessly gay after resisting for so long out of spite that everyone had called it before he had. is only out to the people who he’s sure won’t use it against him. 

drives joyce’s little green car now, she got a replacement the year he went to college. 

wanted college to be different and it almost is. his circle has expanded some but he’s far from cool, even though joyce isn’t allowed within ten feet of his hair with a pair of scissors anymore.

enjoy the silence - depeche mode / boys don’t cry - the cure / should i stay or should i go - the clash / please, please, please, let me get what i want - the smiths / somebody to love - queen / love my way - the psychedelic furs / dancing with myself - billy idol / sorry for me - ricky montgomery / don’t you (forget about me) - simple minds / smalltown boy - bronski beat / don’t dream it’s over - crowded house / i’m not in love - 10cc / ever fallen in love (with someone you shouldn’t’ve?) - buzzcocks / this must be the place (naive melody) - talking heads / as the world falls down - david bowie / nightswimming - r.e.m / sinking -the cure / it’s a sin - pet shop boys / puppet boy - devo / leave me alone - new order / tainted love - soft cell / magic - the cars / lover’s in a dangerous time - bruce cockburn

#horrorinhawkins.intro

[rovermcfly]

since Trent and Colin are in a scene together at a gay club in S3, I think Trent, as a middle-aged gay man will mentor Colin who doesn't know if he should come out since football is so hostile towards gay men. And of course the press eventually catches wind of an AFC Richmond player being seen at a gay club and it culminates in the whole team going to a gay club together to protect and support him, like the way they all went to the funeral of Rebecca's dad, because noone will be able to tell who came as an ally and who's gay and being protected by the team.

anyway, I can't wait for Ted Lasso to say gay rights 🏳️‍🌈

#ted lasso #of course that doesn't mean the rest is all straight ppl btw #but you know #that's the plot I wanna see #I want ted lasso to give a huge middle finger to homophobia in football #I want half the players to be gay just out of spite #ted lasso season 3 #trent crimm

[the-iceni-bitch]

Sexytime?

Pairing: Jake Jensen x Fem!Reader

Words: 2097

Summary: You and Jensen are stuck doing surveillance and Jake gets bored. Also, he tries some dirty talk for the first time!

Warnings: Fluff, explicit language, explicit sexual content (unprotected vaginal sex), SMUT, 18+ ONLY!!

A/N: This ended up being kind of precious, but I’m ok with that. I just love this giant nerd so much! Join my taglist here if you want! (Side note, I know that Brother Rapp comes after Sex Machine on the James Brown album but that would’ve been like 15 minutes of dancing I had to write)

“Oh my god, I’m so bored.”

You shot a glare at Jake as you set up the surveillance equipment. He had draped himself over the table in your loft dramatically as you did your work.

“We’ve been here for literally a half an hour. Are you going to whine the whole time?” You loved the guy but weren’t looking forward to spending the next 12 hours with his ass if he was going to be a little bitch the whole time. You bent down to test the camera angles as he sighed heavily.

“I can’t believe you don’t even have a TV. What are we going to do this whole time?”

“I dunno, maybe our jobs?” You were barely paying attention as you made adjustments to the scopes.

“Nah.” He jumped off the table and stretched. “You’ve gotta have something to do here. I’m gonna look around.”

You just shook your head at him as he started wandering around aimlessly, still fiddling with the equipment to make sure you were covering all the exits.

“Ooh, what’s up here?” He started to climb the ladder to the second level. This was his first time at your place, and he was curious. “Shit.”

You grinned to yourself as you settled back in your chair, eyes on the monitor. He must’ve found the weapons cache.

“Oho, is this a rocket launcher?!”

You gave a laugh as you glanced up at him. “Sure is, baby. Maybe put it down though, you’re pointing it at your face.”

“Oh, fuck. Whoops.” He placed the launcher down gingerly as he scoped the rest of the landing. “That’s it? A refrigerator, a bed, and a shit-ton of explosives?” He started to work his way back down the ladder. “Kinda boring. Oh, what’s this?”

“Fuck.” You muttered to yourself as you considered what his new discovery might be.

“Look at this record collection!” He sounded stupid giddy. “Marvin Gay, Roxy Music, so much Led Zeppelin. Y/N, are you secretly cool?”

“I don’t think it’s a secret.” You teased back at him, smiling in spite of yourself.

“Oh, yesss!” You heard him start up the record player and all of a sudden James Brown was yelling over the speakers as the Sex Machine album started.

“Oh my god.” You rolled your eyes at him. “Turn that down, do you want the mark to know we’re up here?”

“C’mon, you know you wanna dance with me.” He had one of those ridiculous grins on his face as he slid across the floor into your field of view, rolling his hips and shoulders to the music.

“We’re supposed to be surveilling, Jake.”

“You just spent 45 minutes setting up all that equipment, you’re telling me the cameras can’t take over for just a bit?”

You bit your lip as you watched him dancing around your kitchen like a goofball. God he was such a perfect idiot. “Fine, but you tell anyone about this and I’ll stab you.”

“Ooh, don’t tease me, sweetheart.”

You rose out of your chair to join him, gliding across the floor easily, leading with your hips as your feet slid along to the rhythm. Your upper body rolled smoothly to the music, following the motion set by your hips.

“Fuck, you’re a really good dancer.” Jensen was giving you an appreciative look as you kicked your feet in a signature James Brown style.

“You seem surprised, Jake.” You laughed lightly at him.

“I mean, I kinda am. No offense, but you’ve usually got a stick up your ass.”

“Ouch.” You placed a hand to your chest in a mock wounded gesture. “This is nothing though.”

“Really, you’ve got more moves up your sleeve?”

“Yeah, watch this.”

You winked at him before spinning fast and lowering yourself into a split, then rising up as you brought your legs back together. He broke out into hysterical laughter.

“Ok, fine. You’ve officially shocked me.”

“Ooh, I’m full of surprises honey.” You slid closer to him as the song shifted to ‘Bewildered’, pressing your body into his.

“What happened to doing our jobs?” He teased as you started kissing his neck.

“You got me all worked up now sweetheart.” You murmured against his throat.

“Oh, fuck. I hate to do this but…” He pointed at the monitor.

The mark was getting into a black SUV in the middle of a group of motorcycles, getting ready to head out.

“Shit!” You hissed, scrambling over to the radio to call it in to Aisha and the rest of the team. “they’re on the move!”

“Fuck, did you get a chance to tag their ride?” Aisha asked over the comms.

“Yeah, did that first thing.”

“Ok, keep an eye on us while we tail them.”

“You got it.”

“Sooo….” Jake murmured behind you. “Should we pick this up later, or….?”

You just waved a hand behind you to shush him as you went over everything with Aisha. He gave a heavy sigh and went to make himself a sandwich. Maybe you had some books laying around somewhere.

It was three hours later when you finally signed off the comms. You stood up and stretched out, wondering where your puppy had gotten to.

You found him passed out on the couch, glasses askew and a sandwich crust resting on his chest as he softly snored, your copy of ‘Dune’ laying open next to him on the couch. You shook your head as you returned the book to the shelf and tossed the rest of his sandwich in the trash. You slipped Miles Davis’ ‘Kind of Blue’ album onto the record player and crawled into his lap.

“Fuck.” He jolted awake when you started nibbling at his ear lobe. “What time is it?”

“It’s 8 PM, dumbass.” You whispered into his neck. “You slept through the whole op.”

“What?” He was still out of it. “What about the surveillance?”

“Well,” you murmured, slipping your hands under his Petunias tee and running your palms up his torso. “There was a firefight, and it seems the mark is no longer an issue.”

“Ok.” His brain was almost caught up now. “So, sexytime?”

You lifted his glasses off his nose and gave him a low chuckle as you set them on the coffee table. “Yeah, baby, sexytime.”

He gave you one of his stupid grins as he sat up and wrapped his arms around you, his hands kneading into your hips as he ground his growing erection into your mound. You drew his shirt over his head as you gyrated against him, moaning as your cunt clenched around nothing, a fresh rush of arousal soaking through your panties and leggings.

Jake ran his hands up your back and tugged the shoulders of your cami down over your arms until your tits were exposed. He nuzzled himself between your breasts, brushing his lips against your skin softly as you arched into his mouth.

He moved his mouth to your nipple and elicited a groan as he swirled his tongue around your sensitive bud, bringing up one hand to palm at the opposite breast.

“Fuck, Jake.” You whispered, screwing your eyes shut and bringing up a hand to the back of his head as you drove your hips into him, desperate for friction. “God, I need it.”

“Yeah, sweetheart?” He whispered against your chest. “You need my big fucking cock? You gonna take it like a good girl?”

You couldn’t help it, you laughed. Those words coming out of your sweet puppy were just too much and you broke down into a fit of giggles.

“Aww, c’mon.” He was pouting now. “I just wanted to try something new.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie.” You fell back on the couch, trying to catch your breath “You just caught me off guard. I’ll be a good girl for you.”

You scooted yourself down on the couch until you could dip your hands into his sweats, biting your lip as you drew out his cock, biting your lip as wrapped your hands around him.

“Mmm, I need this cock so bad. My pussy is so fucking wet for you.” You ran your thumb through the precum at his tip at the same time you shoved your hand down your panties, moaning as you drew your fingers through your sopping folds until you found your clit.

“Fuck, baby. Ok.” He tore off your panties and lined himself up. “Uh, you want this cock, you better ask me real nice. Is this ok?”

You grinned and nodded to him. “Please, Jake, fuck me with that massive dick?”

“Shit, don’t need to ask twice.” He muttered as he nudged his tip between your folds, slowly pressing into you. You let out a whine as he sheathed himself in you, digging your fingers into the couch cushions. “Yeah, you like that don’t you? Like feeling my big cock splitting you open. God, you’re so fucking tight. Look at this pussy gripping me so good.”

His hips were driving into you hard, his cock dragging against your g-spot with each thrust. You met each of his thrusts with your own, whining as he pounded into you. You brought your fingers down to your clit, drawing circles around it desperately before Jake wrenched your hand away.

“Nice try, sweetheart, but I’m the only one who gets to make you cum tonight.” He licked his fingers before pressing them to your tiny bundle of nerves, making you scream.

“Fuck, Jake! Don’t stop!” You felt your pleasure gathering in the pit of your stomach as you writhed underneath him. “God, I’m cumming!”

“That’s right baby, cream all over my cock.”

The coil snapped and you wailed as every muscle in your abdomen knotted before releasing in quivering bliss. You felt your spend gushing over your thighs around Jake’s dick as you came down, his hips still plunging into you relentlessly.

“I’m gonna flip you over beautiful. I wanna watch this ass bounce while I make you scream.”

You whined when he pulled out, but then he flipped you over like it was nothing and drove back into you, knocking the breath out of your lungs. He slapped your ass hard before gripping one hip to draw you back into him over and over. He wrapped his other hand in your hair and wrenched your head back, making your eyes roll back into your head as he pounded into you.

“God, you’re fucking perfect. I swear this body was made for me.” He murmured as he picked up the pace even more, and you felt your pussy clench around him at his praise as you felt another orgasm starting to build. “You can cum again, pretty girl. I wanna feel this cunt strangle my cock.”

“Ffuuck.” You groaned as another orgasm ripped through you. You body rolling underneath Jake as aftershocks shook your core and left you breathless.

“Shit, gonna fill you up, baby. You ready to take all my cum, beautiful?”

“Yes, please.” You moaned against the couch cushions, still feeling the aftereffects of your previous orgasm.

He hissed through his teeth as you felt his cock twitch inside you, then his hot spend was coating your velvety walls, eliciting another groan from deep in your chest.

Jake stilled his hips and collapsed on top of you, suffocating you in his body heat as you felt his cock softening. You hummed with pleasure as he buried his face in your hair.

“Was that ok, Y/N?” Your boy was so fucking considerate and sweet, he made your teeth hurt.

“That was more than ok, Jensen.” You mumbled against the couch cushions as he pulled out of you and started to roll you over.

“Yeah, I wasn’t too mean?”

“Jakey, baby, you weren’t mean at all. You’re still my sweet puppy.” You gave him a massive grin as you drew your face up to his and gave him a soft, slow kiss.

He gave you a grin of his own when you pulled away and started to lay back on the couch, cradling his head between your breasts.

“Good.” He muttered against your skin. “Cause I have some other things I was hoping to try.”

“Really baby? What else did you wanna try out?” You ran your fingers lightly over his spine as the two of you lay there, starting to doze off.

“Mmm, what do you think about roleplay?” You could feel his eyelashes fluttering against your skin as he started to fall asleep.

You just gave him a light laugh as you slipped into a daze yourself. “Ooh, that sounds like fun.”

Permanent Tags:

@slothspaghettiwrites​ @starlightcrystalline​ @stargazingfangirl18​ @harrysthiccthighss​ @drabblewithfrannybarnes​ @jack-skellingtons-stuff​

#natalie writes #fanfic #fanfiction #chris evans fanfic #jake jensen #jake jensen x reader #jake jensen smut #chris evans smut #chris evans #chrisevans #smut #fluff #eighteen plus

[agoddamn]

I don't think Kamui would be a manakete even by Archanea standards? They're very explicitly a half human half dragon—a hybrid. They'd be closer to Ninian and Nils.

They don't look like a manakete (hilariously, most Femui porn has the 'elf' tag), they don't age like a manakete, when told the word they explicitly do not identify it, and they don't act like a manakete (their dragon form doesn't come out as a normal consequence of growth, but the trauma of an assassination attempt + mother's murder).

In spite of what FEH wants you to believe so you'll defend the newest cash cow powercreep for them, I don't actually think that Ch5 Kamui is feral or mad at all.

You know why?

You fucking play as them! They are a controllable fucking unit! The chapter IMMEDIATELY before 5 introduces the concept of friendly units. Kanna's paralogue features Kanna as an uncontrollable friendly unit. They know how to code uncontrollable friendlies, but they put dragon Kamui under the player's control instead.

Ch5 Kamui is having a bad fuckin' time of it, but they're not experiencing the classic dragon madness. They can distinguish friend from foe during the course of the battle, but they don't register that the battle is done. That's obviously not someone in full control of their faculties. But is it a supernatural lack of control?

I think it's pretty plausible that Kamui attacking Aqua was a product of Kamui's disorientation, shock, and lack of familiarity with the setting/people (they LITERALLY just met). I think that Kamui would have grabbed her even if they were still fully human; it was a reaction to the situation above everything else.

Does it seem ridiculous that I'm arguing that in a series--within the game itself--where magically rampaging dragons are present, Ch5 Kamui is just a human level of freaked out and out of control? Of course!

But if we're playing this seriously, full Watsonian, there's at least as much equal evidence of it.

People (including myself) have always puzzled over "why do they never bring Kamui going dragon crazy up again", but I wish to submit the opposite argument: because Kamui's Ch5 actions are never brought up again, they cannot have been dragon crazy, because dragon crazy would have been brought up again.

We're the ones who were making the wrong assumption all this time.

After all, why would Kamui be treated so differently from standard dragon crazy--being playable during the 'rage'--if the writers had intended to suggest standard dragon crazy?

"But Aqua's song worked on them!" Aqua's song also worked to calm Marx and Ryouma's tits, and they weren't dragon crazy. It works to calm everyone; the only special effect it had on Kamui was helping them out of the transformation (you've noticed that dragon Kamui has no eyes, right? Wouldn't you be pretty fucking disoriented?).

Fates has also purposely aimed to deconstruct series tropes elsewhere; see incestuous Valkyrie and gay retainer, so I think it's not crazy to suggest that Kamui was also meant to be a deconstruction. Hell, Kamui is already a deconstruction of the battle pacifist; why wouldn't they be self-aware of the dragon tropes, too?

Now, do I think IS pulled this off well? Nah. But that's a question for another day, this is too long already.

Just...question your assumptions.

#fates blogging

[hp-nextgen-fest]

2020 HP Next Gen Fest Anonymous Masterlist

Here is the complete Anonymous Masterlist for the 2020 @hp-nextgen-fest! Reveals will be going up next Monday on November 30, so there is still plenty of time to make your way through any entries you might have missed. Don't forget to leave some comments on these amazing creations to let the authors and artists know how much you've enjoyed their hard work! :D

ART

AcciDental Magic [Rose, Hugo, & Grandparents | General] Hermione and Ron are called away for a case and left without their usual child-minder when Molly falls ill. Hermione’s parents step up to keep Hugo and Rose, in spite of Hermione’s warning that the two little ones have some big issues with accidental magic. The story is told comic book style, with illustrations and voice bubbles.

Woke up married! [James Sirius/Teddy | General] They get well and truly bladdered at Albus's stag do and wake up in bed together with matching wedding bands...

Sunday Practice [James Sirius/Teddy | General] Teddy thought that morning practice on Sunday was going to be something he would soon regret, but things may turn more interesting than expected.

Introduction [Albus, Severus, & Albus Severus | General] Albus Severus Potter gets to know the men he's named for by asking them about the experiences, memories, and motives that shaped their lives.

Eyecandy [James Sirius/Teddy | General] After months of extensive Auror training, Teddy comes with the Potters to the beach. James. Cannot. Stop. Staring. At. Teddy. Shirtless.

FIC

We Keep Loving Anyway [Albus Severus/Scorpius | Explicit | 7.1k] After Albus finds out Scorpius is part vampire he can���t stop thinking about being bitten. He can’t stop thinking about Scorpius in general, but that’s been the case since he was fifteen. At least, when it comes to Scorpius he’s used to not getting what he wants. He’s happy with what he has, or at least, comfortable. That is until he accidentally asks for it, then it all starts to change.

The perks of Veritaserum [James Sirius/Teddy | Explicit | 5.1k] James drank a long-lasting version of Veritaserum and is miserable and Teddy is having the time of his life. That is, until they’re both having the time of their lives.

Thunderstruck [Charlie/Teddy | Explicit | 2.6k] There’s not a lot for dragon tamers to do when stuck inside during a storm, but looking at this particular new recruit―well, Charlie can’t help but think of a few ways they could pass the time.

Hair Today, Hair Tomorrow [Albus Severus/Scorpius | Mature | 1.7k] Away on a book tour Albus Severus Malfoy grows a very creepy mustache, much to the horror of his still at home husband Scorpius Malfoy.

Mission in Nairn [Draco/Lily Luna | Explicit | 7k] Lily Luna Potter is paired with Draco Malfoy for her first Auror Mission. On their last night, she decides to act on the lingering tension that had been building up between them.

No Other Alpha But You [Albus Severus/James Sirius | Explicit | 7.1k] Scorpius Malfoy has applied to be Albus' heat partner. There's no way James is letting that happen.

The Scorpion King [Albus Severus/Scorpius | Explicit | 3.8k] Scorpius Malfoy, AKA the Scorpion King, has ruled Britain ever since his father turned his sights to conquering Europe. With his right-hand man and most trusted advisor, Albus Potter, Scorpius has a life of elegance and power. But he's had enough of the beautiful women that usually grace his bed. Scorpius has decided he wants something else in bed. Something more. Scorpius Malfoy wants Albus Potter.

Islands of the Upper Air [Lily Luna/Luna | General | 1.5k] Lily Luna has never liked her namesake, or her strange and sometimes absurd way of looking at the world. But a weekend full of ancient rituals and mountain forests is an eye opener, in more ways than one.

Expecto Patronum!! [James Sirius/Teddy | Mature | 45.7k] James Potter had always known exactly what he wanted; to open a pub of his own, maybe travel the world, and live a simple life with the only man he’d ever loved. For years he waited, quietly determined to help Teddy see what could be between them. But just when everything he’d ever dreamed of was finally within his reach, it was ripped away in an instant. With Teddy missing, and presumed dead, James is left to pick up the pieces. John has no idea what he wants. He doesn’t even know who he is. But when he hears a strikingly familiar voice – on an otherwise ordinary day – he sets out to discover everything he can about the man that occupies his dreams. And Harry, well, Harry just wants to put his failures behind him. Until a series of unexpected events forces him to reexamine a case that he’d given up on solving. With the help of an unexpected ally, he just might find the answers he’s been looking for.

lily's potter [Lily Luna/Lysander & Lily Luna/Draco | Mature | 8.3k] "But what if I keep it? What’s the contingency plan there?” She took a seat next to Lily. She spoke slowly, as if she was thinking about it for the first time, too. “Well, I mean, you keep your baby. You raise it. You love it. It goes on to do wonderful things because it’s a Potter.” Lily snorted. “It’s a Potter?” “Why not? I mean it’s just as much you as whoever is the father. Why shouldn’t it be a Potter first?”

Snaked a Claim [Albus Severus/Scorpius | Teen | 1.6k] Everyone knew Albus was gay from age five when he would dramatically swoon every time Goncalo Flores the Quidditch player was mentioned. Twenty years later and Harry still tells the tale - much to Al’s embarrassment.

And I Fell Heavy (Into Your Arms) [James Sirius/Teddy | Explicit | 9.1k] When James Sirius Potter travels to America for three weeks, the turquoise-haired Healer Teddy Lupin misses his boyfriend very much indeed. Luckily, Teddy has (sexy) floo calls, charmed obsidian pendants and hastily made chastity promises to keep him busy. Based on the following prompt: Absence makes the heart grow fonder... Right? Smutty phone!sex? Longing letters? All up to you!

Dirty Duelling [Albus Severus/Draco | Explicit | 6.1k] Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want (Or — fucked up Dirty Dancing with wand fights)

Albus’ Private Lesson of Sex Education [Albus Severus/James Sirius/Teddy | Explicit | 4.5k] Albus has some doubts about sex. Luckily he has an older brother, who can initiate him. How does this lesson go? James will be the teacher, Albus his good and obedient student and Teddy will be more than happy to serve them as a learning tool. In which a delicious Teddy sandwich is served.

Four Reasons [James Sirius/Teddy | General | 8.1k] There were a couple of things James should've considered more seriously before coming back to work at Hogwarts as the new Flying Instructor. His dad being the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor there, for one. The fact that he hadn't really flown since a career-ending injury had put an abrupt end to his Quidditch fame two years ago, for another. His ridiculous, teenage crush on Teddy Lupin, his friend and Hogwarts' newest Charms professor, perhaps most of all.

An Interlude [Lavender/Victoire | Explicit | 4.9k] Victoire is supposed to be chasing a serial killer, not shagging her uncle’s dead ex-girlfriend.

Mint & Apples [Harry/Teddy | Explicit | 4.3k] Teddy Lupin's not-quite-wolf has chosen Harry Potter as his mate, that's all. He hasn't got a crush on his best friend's father, really. He also definitely isn't obsessed with Harry Potter's scent.

This is Love [Albus Severus/Scorpius | Explicit | 24.8k] Most of Albus’s bad life decisions can be summed up in a word: James. When he got a shitty tattoo in the Fifth Year—done by some bloke in a dirty flat—well, that was James’s idea. When he got picked up by Aurors for doing hallucinogens—James was the one who’d convinced him to do them at a party. That time they stole the flying motorbike Dad gave to Teddy—James was the one who insisted it was a rite of passage to drive it over London at dawn. Neither Dad nor Teddy was impressed with that explanation. Now, here Albus is living another bad choice that was born of James’s influence.

The Balance Between Studying and Relaxing [Rose/Teddy | Explicit | 3.7k] Rose has been studying non-stop for her upcoming barrister exam. With Hermione attending Hugo’s Quidditch trials for moral support and Ron away on business, there’s only one person available to keep an eye on her. And Teddy is only too happy to take the role.

The last ones to know [Albus Severus/Scorpius | General | 5.2k] Albus and Scorpius have a very close relationship. Everyone can see it. Perhaps they are the last ones to know jus how close they are.

You've Got A Second Chance (You Could Go Home) [James Sirius/Teddy | Teen | 16k] “What about James?” James, dear Merlin, not James, not again. His boy, his son, the brightest star in the constellation of Harry’s patchwork family, not him. “I think he’s relapsed.” – They tried this when James was nineteen and Teddy was twenty five. It crashed and burned. Teddy ran away to Finland and James... well Teddy's about to find out what happened to James, now that he's back two years later.

Falling for You [James Sirius/Scorpius | General | 1.2k] Scorpius didn't care about Quidditch until he saw James Sirius on a broom.

Heart-Shaped Ottoman [Draco/Teddy | Explicit | 6.3k] Draco has had interns before, but none so bothersome as Teddy Lupin.

Living With Our Eyes Half Open [James Sirius & Scorpius | Teen | 5.5k] James didn’t mean to get his brother-in-law kidnapped alongside him that morning, but that is definitely what happened.

Faim [Albus Severus/Scorpius | Explicit | 9.6k] "So, this is the city of love!" Scorpius declared, adjusting the straps on his backpack. Albus wrinkled his nose. "City of pigeons, more like," he corrected, stepping around another fat, grey bird Or: Scorbus go to France.

Unexpected [Lily Luna/Pansy | Explicit | 1.2k] Draco and Harry's engagement party brings about an unexpected, but not unwelcome, event.

Remember to Forget [Albus Severus/James Sirius | Mature| 17.5k] The moment they kissed, James and Albus knew that they'd never be able to live without this -- too in love to walk away. Years later, and well into adulthood, the possible repercussions of their relationship feel very real and very scary. Without the strength to break it off, they're left with a single solution: a company that specializes in erasing and altering memories. Now the only thing left to do, is to say goodbye.

#jeddy #scorbus #jalbus #scames #jorpius #cheddy #dralbus #HP Next Generation #hp femslash #hp next gen #harry potter next gen #hpnextgenfest #hp cross gen #mod post #anonymous masterlist #2020 fest

[sanderssidesfanfiction]

If There’s a Place I Could Be - Chapter Forty Five

If There’s a Place I Could Be Tag

October 10th, 1996

Remy spat blood onto the concrete, on all fours as he looked up at the two guys from the football team who had come over to have a “talk” with him. “What’s the matter, boys? That the best you’ve got?” Remy asked, standing on shaky legs. “Upset that your girlfriends would trust me more than they trust you?”

He saw stars as the next punch landed on his right eye. He checked out the rest of the time the two football players wanted to show him exactly what they thought about gay kids. His mother was going to kill him if he walked home with a black eye and a busted lip. Oh, well. Not like he had much of a choice in the matter. What was done was done. Mom would have to deal.

  October 5th, 2001

Remy was picking up Emile from theatre practice. Or, well, not exactly “picking him up,” because Emile was the one with the car, but he was there to remind Emile that it was time to come home, have them make dinner, and then relax on the couch for the rest of the night until Emile’s homework was done and the both of them went to bed. He walked into the theatre, voice practically booming because of the acoustics, which he was a sucker for. “ Mio amore! It’s time to come home!”

Emile turned from where he was sitting in one of the seats below the stage, and waved to Remy. “Hey, Rem! We’re just playing a little improv game and once it’s over I’ll happily come home with you!”

Remy rolled his eyes and walked over to stand at the edge of the row, while the actors finished up their improv game. When all was said and done, and everyone clapped at each other’s hard work, Remy turned to look at Emile. “Now. Home?”

Emile made a put-upon sigh and rolled his eyes, saying, “Fine.”

“Oh, don’t be like that, I know you love my cooking,” Remy said with a grin.

“Everyone loves your cooking, my love,” Emile said, kissing Remy chastely.

The gagging noise that came from behind Remy at that made him turn around and glare at a scrawny-looking guy with a bad haircut and too much cologne. “That’s disgusting!” he exclaimed.

“You are?” Remy asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Not interested,” the guy snarled.

Emile sighed. “Dick, please. Not my boyfriend. You can make fun of me all you like, but don’t drag Remy into this.”

Remy’s blood boiled. “This wouldn’t happen to be the same guy in your gym class?” he spat.

“Remy, please, leave him alone,” Emile all but begged. “I don’t have the energy to deal with a fight tonight.”

“Emile, if he’s the same guy, someone needs to teach him some manners,” Remy said. “And as you know, I don’t trust anyone I don’t know to do a job for me.”

Emile winced. “Remy, please.”

Remy turned to Emile. “Emile, do you genuinely want me to stop? Or do you just want to avoid either of us getting hurt?”

Emile’s eyes dropped to the floor. “Please,” he whispered. “I don’t want to get hurt.”

“You’re already hurting,” Remy murmured. “And I don’t want to see that continue.”

Emile flinched. “Physically, I mean.”

“I would never allow that to happen,” Remy said. He turned sharply on his heel. “Now, listen here, Dick. I don’t know if anyone taught you this, but you don’t. Blackmail. People. And I heard from a guy who heard from a guy who overheard you talking to Emile, that you’d tell the homophobes at school that he was bi if he did anything that you didn’t like, including telling someone that you were harassing him. Now, something tells me that being with another guy falls under things you don’t like, so. I have a little proposition for you.”

Dick looked angry, arms crossed, chin jutted out in challenge. He wasn’t going to back down. Remy would have found this admirable were the stubbornness about anything but human decency. He pulled out a notebook from his jacket and scribbled down the addresses of the coffee shops he worked at. “If you don’t like Emile, and your buddies don’t like him either,” Remy shoved the paper into Dick’s chest. “Take it up with me. Those addresses are where I work, and I work most weekdays and weekends. You’d be hard-pressed not to find me there sooner or later.”

“Remy!” Emile hissed in alarm. “Don’t do that!”

Dick grabbed the paper and shoved Remy’s hand off him. “Don’t touch me, queer.”

Remy saw red and in an instant his hand was connecting with Dick’s face in the hardest slap he had ever given or received. “You don’t get to use that word,” he hissed. “Not on me, not on anyone.”

Dick had crumpled to the floor and got back up, staggering away with wide eyes. But all Remy could focus on was George, and Jacob, and the pain he had felt all those years ago in high school. How Toby had came into his room that very same day when Remy was so obviously upset, and coaxed him out so they played video games until Remy spilled his guts about everything that had happened. Toby had heard half of it, but hadn’t gotten the whole story before then. And when he had found out, the comfort he had freely given...he didn’t have that comfort anymore.

He was trembling all over until a hand on his shoulder reminded him to take a breath. He didn’t have Toby’s comfort anymore, but he did have Emile. And Emile did an amazing job too. Remy couldn’t, and shouldn’t have discounted that. He forced himself into the present, into Dick’s surprise turning into pure fury, into the strength he knew he had to walk away. “You don’t use that word,” Remy said, pointing at Dick. “You have a problem? Come talk to me after my work shift. Otherwise, this conversation is over. Emile, let’s go home.”

Emile walked out quickly, practically dragging Remy along, he was walking so fast. The second they were outside, Emile was giving Remy an unamused look. “Mind explaining what that violence was about?”

Remy felt his cheeks heat up. “...Sorry,” he mumbled. “I...my emotions got the better of me. I’m not...I don’t want to be that sort of person.”

“You can’t slap people, Remy, no matter your reasoning!” Emile hissed. “Now Dick’s going to come after both of us, and it won’t be pretty!”

“Sorry,” Remy repeated. “I just...it brought back...memories.”

“Memories?” Emile repeated.

Remy nodded. “Yeah. Of high school. Of...of the last best friend I had...before. Um. Before I swore off friends entirely, with Toby as the exception.”

Emile blinked, and his unamusement melted into concern. “Remy? Are you okay?”

Remy laughed, blinking back tears and shaking his head. “My...my last best friend. Before you. Before the only person I had in the world was Toby. His name was Jacob. And he...he ratted me out to the popular kids at school for brownie points.”

“Okay...?” Emile asked. “You’ve told me this before, Rem.”

“I never told you...” Remy took a shaky breath and his voice cracked as he continued, “I never told you what it was over.”

Emile just stood there, looking concerned as ever. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, Rem.”

“But I do want to,” Remy said, soft but insistent. “I...there was this guy in high school. His name was George. We were good friends. We shared Geography class one year. And...and I got a crush on him. I didn’t tell anyone but Toby for the entirety of that school year. The next year, I decided I trusted Jacob enough to tell him. I didn’t outright say I was gay, I just said I liked George. But it...it was enough. Jacob went to the cool kids, told them, and then they proceeded to tell everyone else...including George. Pretty much the whole school knew within forty eight hours. And...and when I found out that George knew...it was because...because he said...he said ‘I don’t associate with queers.’ Whenever someone uses that in that way...all I can think of...is...” Remy sniffled. “Is George, and his stupid pretty face snarling at me.”

“Remy...” Emile bit his lip in that endearing way he did when he was unsure of what to say.

Remy hugged Emile tight, and whispered, “It’s okay. Sometimes it bubbles up and over, but most of the time I’m okay.”

Emile hugged him softly back and murmured, “No one deserves that, Remy. No one deserves any of what you went through.”

Remy blinked and a few tears fell. “Can we go home now?” he asked. “Cooking is good, it gives me something to focus on and I’ll feel better having something to do.”

“Yeah,” Emile agreed, taking a step back and towards his car. “Let’s go home and cook dinner.”

They went to Emile’s car and Emile hummed. “You know, I might want to put you on the title of the car so that you can drive it too. It would be nice to not have to do all the grocery shopping for once in my life.”

Remy weakly laughed at that. “That would be the reason you put me on the title.”

“Sheer spite?” Emile asked. “So that now you don’t have a reason to not get groceries?”

“I would have said sheer laziness, but sure,” Remy said, but the banter lacked his usual fondness and energy, and he knew it. He knew he didn’t sound the way he should. But he also knew that he couldn’t do anything about it just yet.

Emile looked over at him with concern. “Remy, are you okay? Be honest.”

Remy sighed. “Not yet,” he said. “It’s gonna take more time than that for me to feel better about what happened. But I will be. I won’t let one bad event rule over me the rest of my life. Not anymore.”

“Well, good,” Emile said. “But know that you can come to me if you’re feeling upset. If I can’t handle something, I’ll tell you, but especially with Kim having moved out of state...you need support sometimes, and I want to make sure you know how to ask for it.”

“I know how to ask for it,” Remy said. “I don’t always know when, but I do know how. And that’s thanks to you.”

Emile smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes, and Remy sighed. “Emile...I’m really sorry. Not only for the slapping, but for the whole thing after.”

“Remy, no,” Emile said. “What happened after was you trying to shake off something akin to a flashback. I would never hold that against you. Obviously, you’re going to have some problems with Dick and his friends, but I won’t ever ask you to apologize for crying, or for trying to explain what made you emotional, or even being emotional in the first place. I might want an apology for the things you did while you were emotional, but I wouldn’t ask you to apologize for being emotional.”

Crossing his legs and lacing his fingers behind his head, Remy glanced over at Emile. “I still get really confused by you sometimes, Emile.”

“Is this one of those times?” Emile asked.

“Yeah, I guess,” Remy said. “Why would you not apologize for being emotional?”

“Because you can’t help how you feel. It’s just a natural reaction to events happening around you. You can control your actions, not your emotions. I won’t ask you to apologize for something you can’t control,” Emile said.

Remy sighed as they pulled into the apartment’s parking lot. “I still don’t get it,” he admitted.

“Well, with time, hopefully you will,” Emile said.

They went inside the apartment and Remy looked at what they had in the pantry. It wasn’t much, admittedly, but with a little creativity he could probably make a nice meal out of ramen and maybe an egg or two from the refrigerator, along with some spices that wouldn’t come straight from the flavor pouch to add a little extra kick.

“Know what we’re going to eat tonight, Master Chef?” Emile teased.

Remy shrugged. “Ramen with a homemade twist?”

“I guess I can get behind that,” Emile said. “Would eggs be involved?”

“Aren’t eggs always involved in my ramen recipes?” Remy asked.

“You have a point,” Emile said with a grin, grabbing a pot and a measuring cup.

Remy took them and started measuring the water he’d need and set it up to boil while grabbing the other ingredients. “Feeling better?” Emile asked.

“Just a little,” Remy said.

“And you’re sure you’ll be okay if Dick decides to be...well, himself?” Emile pressed.

“Yeah. He doesn’t scare me,” Remy brushed off. “Don’t worry, Emile, it’ll all be okay.”

“I certainly hope so,” Emile said, starting to help Remy cook.

#if there's a place i could be #sanders sides fanfiction #remile #emile picani #ts sleep

[gascon-en-exil]

I know that there must be Dimitri hate out there, but I never see it and I love him a lot, so I can't even imagine what they say about him. So what exactly do Dimitri haters say to explain why they hate him???

There’s a lot to go through. Let’s see if I can summarize.

Dimitri is “straight” (can’t S rank m!Byleth) and “white,” which automatically makes him the worst of the house leaders because Edelgard is a bi-for-Byleth woman and Claude is biracial.

The Eagles are the “gay house” because they have almost all of the bi-for-Byleth characters and also Ferdibert and Casphardt and Dorothea the super lesbian who fits with anyone, and the Deer are the fun meme house with Claurenz and Marihilda. The Lions are therefore the worst house because they’re dour and filled with plot-relevant trauma and even their suggestive same-sex parings aren’t light and fun and gay enough to count.

He’s mentally unstable, which makes him unfit to be a ruler and worse than Edelgard who handles her trauma (which is worse than allegedly worse than Dimitri’s because trauma can be objectively measured like that) not through straightforward violent rampages but through the systemic violence of war which is okay because the church is evil. Dimitri is weak for continuing to struggle visibly with mental illness for years after the initial trauma.

Paradoxically, Dimitri’s arc is rushed because mental illness doesn’t immediately clear up like that so it’s bad characterization.

A guilty Dimitri confesses to having killed children during the timeskip, so regardless of the circumstances this makes him a child murderer. He also says he killed women, so he might also be a rapist as a corollary to his assumed heterosexuality.

Believing Edelgard to have been involved with the Tragedy of Duscur is totally baseless as she was only 12-13 at the time, regardless of all circumstantial evidence and who her current allies are. Dimitri is therefore delusional for holding this against her. Alternatively, his gift of a dagger to Edelgard back when they were children is a Freudian symbol that he wanted to fuck her, and his obsession with her is therefore that of a sex-starved straight man attempting to force himself on an unwilling woman who also happens to be bi a lesbian for added horror. 

Dimitri and Rhea are working together in CF, and AM is the only ending that keeps the church and the position of archbishop, which mean that Dimitri is a religious fanatic who would do whatever Rhea says and would persecute non-believers. He also has one line in the parley scene in AM where he acknowledges that some people need the support of faith and the church, and therefore he hates atheists.

Edelgard wants to destroy the evil church and Claude wants to end racism, but Dimitri wants to preserve the status quo so AM is the worst ending for Fòdlan and Dimitri is an ultra-conservative reactionary. Claude would also join with Edelgard had he been given the opportunity, despite this scenario coming up twice in VW and being summarily rejected.

Dedue is Dimitri’s slave in practice if not in name, and his writing is racist and tries to push Dimitri as a woke white savior. This makes shipping them Problematic™, and this in combination with Felix and Dimilix being standard anime/yaoi tropes reinforces that Dimitri is not “really” queer despite the paired endings. Also, Dimitri tells Claude to be quiet at one point in the DLC, which makes him racist in general.

Dimitri makes some straight male players uncomfortable with how emotionally intimate he is with Byleth regardless of gender, and with everyone else around him moreover. It is also assumed that all Dimitri fans are women who want to fuck him.

Dimitri doesn’t learn the full truth of the Agarthans unless paired with Hapi, and so it’s meaningless that he kills Cornelia and Thales (which CF doesn’t) and possibly Myson as well. AM is badly-written for not addressing this, or the truth behind Rhea and the Nabateans (which CF also doesn’t do, and VW and SS each only do partway).

The rest of the Lions are right to break away from the Kingdom and fight to conquer it and kill their former friends and family, in spite of the constant unease many of them express and the distinctly bittersweet tone of all of Felix’s non-AM endings. Dedue should also have been allowed to join other houses, but he can’t because his writing is racist.

(From a gameplay perspective, though this one might be outdated as I think the meta has shifted a bit with Maddening) Dimitri is the worst of the three leaders because he’s a physical unit with an axe weakness making it hard for him to go wyvern rider/lord. He’s also unavailable for instruction and monastery activities for the first half of Part 2 which means he’s harder to use.

(Directed at those who draw comparisons to past games) Pre-timeskip Dimitri is a bland prince like Marth, and AM is the standard FE plot of the blue kingdom fighting back an invasion from a red empire. CF and VW (no one cares about SS) are better because they shake up the formula, and all of the house leaders are heroes because Three Houses encourages relativistic viewpoints.

Because of the fandom faction war criticism of Edelgard is assumed to come from Dimitri fans, who are all homo/lesbophobic misogynists and racists (indirectly because of the points above) who hate her for being a strong sapphic atheist revolutionary - and attempts to contest any of these points, or to criticize the quality of her wriring, just prove how much they hate her.

Whew. I think that about covers all the bad Dimitri takes I’ve seen online. Feel free to add more.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd

[athingthatwantsvirginia]

A Thousand Beach Boys Songs

PART TWENTY-EIGHT OF THE DO YOU SEE HER FACE? SERIES

Pairing: Jess Mariano x Original Character (Ella Stevens)

Warnings: drinking, drugs (just marijuana), smoking, anxiety about future, plentiful pop culture references

Word Count: 6.8K (idk this just happened)

Summary: Jess and Ella visit California.

The sun was high and bright in the Philadelphia sky, beating down on the concrete of the city, when Ella finally awoke at half past nine to the sound of a siren outside. Early August had brought a heat wave to the East coast, and the hot air always rose to the top floor of Truncheon. They were sleeping only under a thin blanket, and Ella had found she had thrown it off herself at some point in the night. Or perhaps Jess had. He was a light sleeper, often had bad dreams, tossing and turning. But his side of the bed was empty, with a sticky note left on the pillow in his place. She furrowed her brows; it was Saturday, the beginning of her last two weeks before classes and office hours started, and she didn’t know of him having any plans. Stifling a yawn, she picked up the note and squinted at it in the harsh sunlight streaming through the window.

Morning Daria,

Went to get coffee. Be back soon. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.

-James Dean

In spite of the roll of her eyes, Ella snickered before rising out of bed. She pulled a mauve cotton dress over her head, tying her hair into a low bun. Padding on bare feet into the living room, she smiled as she noticed Chris was up, pouring himself some cereal at the tiled island. Matthew had stayed over at some woman’s house, though he wouldn’t tell them her name. Ella went to the corner of the living room and put a Joni Mitchell record on. Then, she hopped on a stool across from Chris.

“Where’s your boy toy?” Chris asked through a mouthful of cereal, his hair sticking up in all directions.

She snorted a laugh. “Getting coffee. He left me a note.”

“Adorable,” he deadpanned.

“Mm. Sickening, isn’t he?” Ella asked, mocking fondly.

Chris nodded, then tilted his head over in the direction of the record player. “Really? Joni Mitchell?”

“She’s a genius. Choose your next words carefully,” she warned.

“Isn’t she just a little...too sweet?” he asked.

Ella scoffed. “No one who likes disco as much as you do should be allowed to criticize a Renaissance woman like Joni Mitchell.”

“Disco is the best,” Chris said casually. “And Joni Mitchell is the worst.”

“Ugh, I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that,” Ella groaned, rolling her eyes dramatically. “I had this girlfriend last year who hated Joni Mitchell. It was, like, half the reason we broke up.”

Chris’s eyebrows shot up in an expression of surprise as a smile broke out on his face. “Girlfriend?”

She nodded. “You’re looking at your resident bisexual.”

“Yes! You’ve got to come to Pride with us in September! Jess and Matthew came last year, and they’re great, but, they’re also both so very straight,” he said, laughing slightly.

Biting the inside of her cheek, Ella allowed her own grin to appear. She’d never been to a pride parade before, though she had always wanted to. Eventually, Lane, Zach, and Bryan had figured out she was dating a woman for a couple months during her third year of college. And they’d taken it surprisingly well. Lane wasn’t completely sold on the idea, but Ella wasn’t shocked, given the strict Christian Kim upbringing. They didn’t kick her out, didn’t speak to her hatefully, only shrugged (with a few lingering, confused looks from Lane) and went about their day. And so they had been added to the list of four people in the whole world who knew about her sexuality, though she’d never actually told them her label. Jess was the only one who knew the details of who she was.

But Philly was different, she had to remind herself. Chris was openly gay, held hands with his boyfriend in public, even kissed him occasionally. There were some looks, but no remarks. No one made jokes at their expense. It was refreshing and liberating and, at times, almost made her feel like crying. And though she was dating a man, she was still just as bisexual. There was a part of her Stars Hollow would simply never have been able to swallow. Especially since Jess had been her boyfriend for so long, she knew some people in town wouldn’t have even believed it. They would have told her it was a phase, it would pass, or she would eventually be a lesbian. The only people in town she thought might be able to understand were Miss Patty or Lorelai, though she had never gotten the courage to tell them.

“Yeah, I’d love that,” she replied, trying to ignore the sting in her eyes. She blinked back the wetness, tucking her hair behind her ears.

Over the speakers, Joni Mitchell crooned a long, lilting high note, making Ella giggle as Chris uttered a grunt of dissatisfaction.

“She really broke you two up?” Chris asked, beginning to sip the sweetened, sugary milk from his bowl.

Ella shrugged. “Partially. Her name was Angie and she was this badass singer. But we just didn’t click. Music tastes were only a small part of the equation. She was a little too jealous and I was a little too hung up.”

“Hung up?”

“On Jess,” she said shortly, thinking back to the last morning she’d spent in Angie’s apartment. When Angie had accused Ella of having lingering eyes for the men at her concert the night before. And Ella hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the way Jess had never cared she liked both men and women. Had never bought into the stereotype of bisexual promiscuity.

Putting his bowl in the sink, Chris shot her a smirk. “And he’s the sickening one?”

“Whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But, hey, not like Jess has great taste, either. He loves Hemingway and hates poetry.”

“I know,” Chris said, commiseratory, as he leaned against the counter back across from her. “When he bad mouths Tennyson? It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to homicidal.”

“I don’t know. Tennyson’s nothing compared to Byron,” Ella argued, shrugging slightly.

Chris gasped. “Not you too! And here I thought we were beginning a beautiful friendship!”

Just then, Jess returned with a bag of coffee in one hand and his keys in the other. He always locked the door out of instinct, even when someone else was home. It was a habit Ella had noticed, but didn’t know the origin of.

“Your girlfriend’s a traitor,” Chris said, feigning shock.

“Old news.” Jess went behind Chris to the coffee machine, his eyes tired without a dose of caffeine. Though he was nowhere near Gilmore level, Ella had noticed how dependent on coffee he had become since his teenage years.

Chris shot Ella a final, joking glare, which she returned, before retreating back into his and Matthew’s room to get dressed.

When the coffee was started, Jess put some tea on for her without having to ask. “I can’t believe you’re awake. Thought you’d still be out when I got back.”

“Not everyone likes to get up at sunrise, jackass,” she retorted with a smile.

“I’m not judging you, Morticia. I know how the sunlight drains your vitality,” he said, smirking.

“My God, you’re still so hilarious.”

“It’s been said.”

As Jess finished what he was doing, he walked toward her, elbows on the counter. He leaned over and pressed a long, sweet kiss to her lips.

“Hi,” he said softly.

“Hey,” she replied, a dreamy, sleepy glaze in her hazel eyes.

Waiting for the coffee and tea to brew, he took one of her hands in his own across the island. For a moment, they were both seventeen and holding hands as she took her break at the diner. Luke often chided Jess for getting distracted by her while he was supposed to be working, their fingers tangled together over the counter while they had murmured conversations, customers around them long forgotten.

“Thanks for the note, by the way,” she said. “Very 2003 of you.”

“Well, I didn’t wanna wake you up and I figured you might miss me too much if I didn’t leave one,” Jess said, shrugging.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Mariano,” she teased, rolling her eyes at his smug expression.

“I would never,” he replied. Then, she saw his face grow more earnest. “So, I got a call from Jimmy while I was out.”

“Really?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

He nodded. “Yeah, I started talking with him again about six months ago. Not like we’re close or anything. But he called to tell me he was marrying his girlfriend, and then he started checking in every month or so.”

“And you’re okay with that?” she asked. Images of a crestfallen Jess, shivering in the backseat of his car, flashed in her mind.

Again, he shrugged. “He apologized for kicking me out. Which is more than my mom ever did. I mean...he’s still a deadbeat. I’m not ever gonna call him ‘daddy.’ But he lives in Venice.”

“Yeah. And?” she asked, brows furrowed in confusion.

“And he said we could come visit any time we want. You’ve still got two weeks before you go back to school, we just finished this month’s Zine yesterday, and Chris and Matthew can manage without me for a few days. What do you think?” he asked, a familiar hesitation lacing his voice.

She took a moment to consider it, her eyes calculating. The look on her face almost made Jess want to smirk out of pure nostalgia; he could practically see the gears turning in her head. “California?”

“Yes. The subject of a thousand Beach Boys songs.”

“Thought you said I’d hate it there?”

“Well, when we get there you can decide for yourself.”

She snickered half-heartedly. “But does he mean you can visit? Or we can visit? I mean...I don’t want to go if he doesn’t expect me.”

“He knows about you. And I can guarantee his wife will like you a hell of a lot more than she likes me.” Averting his gaze sheepishly, Jess ran a thumb over the back of her hand.

Again, she took a long pause before she spoke, tugging at her earring with a free hand. “Well, we obviously can’t afford to fly. And your car is out. So, we’d take my station wagon?”

“My car is not that bad,” Jess scoffed. “It’s driven me across the country a couple times.”

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” she said, “that car is death on wheels. When would we leave?”

“I don’t know. After breakfast,” he suggested, nonchalant.

A surprised, breathy chuckle escaped her lips.

Smirking small and hopefully, Jess continued. “We’d be there by Tuesday. There’s bound to be a few cheap motels we can stop at on the way.”

No matter how well Ella knew Jess, there would always be a part of him capable of catching her completely off guard. The part of him which was wild and impulsive, while she often trapped herself in monotony. But, as she searched her mind for reasons not to go, she came up empty. Once she started school, there wouldn’t be any time. And though she was still feeling a little overwhelmed, away from Stars Hollow for the first time ever, she grasped on to the jewel of excitement shining within her. She had never really been anywhere. And it was finally time to go somewhere. She smiled widely.

“Okay, Mariano,” she said. “I’ll finally get to see what Joni Mitchell’s been singing about.”

.   .   .

The sky was a pale gray, blurred with a drizzly morning rain. By afternoon, they would be on the West Coast, after having driven for two days. Their backs were slightly sore from the lumpy motel mattresses and their stomachs uneasy from greasy diner food along the way. But Ella smiled softly as they sat in sleepy silence, a Led Zeppelin CD Lane had given her before she left playing on the station wagon’s speakers. Her fingers tapped silently on the steering wheel with the beat, the cracked pavement highway before them free of almost all cars. Only about six more hours to go. She didn’t know what to expect, and the nerves were brewing within her. Jess had told her some about his father and his family, but not enough to make her calm down. Enough to make her calm down probably didn’t exist.

She let her thoughts wander, the anxiety in the back of her mind quieted momentarily. The fingers of her right hand were laced with Jess’s, her free left hand steering.

“Y’know, I can see why you and Matthew are friends,” she thought aloud, breaking the comfortable silence.

“How do you mean?”

Ella shrugged slightly. “I don’t know. You’re both into Bukowski and obscure quotes on t-shirts. You’re both shy. Though Matthew doesn’t have the whole broody writer thing going on like you.”

“I’m not shy,” Jess said defensively, brows furrowed.

She scoffed, tossing a doubtful glance his way. “Of course you are, Jess. You’re blushing right now.”

Sighing in frustration, Jess waved a dismissive hand. He could feel the heat of his face increasing. “That’s because you’re you. Not just anybody can make me blush.”

“Well, you also barely talk to anyone else besides me,” she continued.

“Maybe there’s just no one else worth talking to.” A crease of annoyance formed between his brows, almost a pouty look on his face.

“Whatever, tough guy.”

Jess breathed out through his nose, unable to get the flush to leave his face.

“Hey, being shy is not a bad thing, Mariano,” she said emphatically. “It’s just the way you are. It’s cute.”

Jess ran a hand over his mouth. “I am not cute.”

“Sure you aren’t,” she replied, her voice a sigh as she feigned innocence.

“At least I’m not a Stevie Nicks groupie,” he said dejectedly.

Ella only laughed again as they made their way West.

.   .   .

As soon as they reached the shore, Ella took Jess’s hand and squeezed tightly. He smirked over at her, squinting in the harsh August sunshine. The sky was free from all clouds, deep blue against the lighter shade of the water. People dotted the sand, but they had a pretty substantial amount of space as they laid out their towels and Ella dropped her purse down. Saltwater stung her nose, and she shaded her eyes with the flat of her hand as she looked around. It was low tide, and she could see fishing poles stuck in the sand far  away in both directions, until the figures shrunk down to the size of ants and disappeared behind the horizon. Before she could succumb to her nerves, she stripped her flowy black dress off, left in nothing but the dark green bikini she’d bought for a trip to the lake with Lane a summer earlier. Raking her hands through her hair, wild in the sea wind, she wished she had paints with her. She’d brought her sketchbook and her charcoals of course, but an easel and a set of oils would be just too much to lug around. And, too expensive.

Jess could see how anxious she was, as she tugged absently at her earlobe. Standing across from her in only his black swim trunks, he took her hand again. “Hey, earth to Eleanor. You wanna go in?”

Biting the inside of her cheek, Ella shot him an indecisive look. “Or I could sit here and draw. Or we could read. Or do literally anything else but get swallowed up by the Pacific.”

He scoffed. “So dramatic. I’ll be right there. It’s low tide. C’mon. World bites you, you bite back.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t think you’re interpreting that phrase correctly.”

“And I don’t think you’re as good at stalling as you think you are,” he shot back smugly, smirking. “C’mon.”

Though she let him lead her to the water, she still muttered begrudging hesitations. Her skin was crawling with anticipation, not only because she was about to feel the ocean for the first time in so long. They had yet to arrive at Jess’s father’s place. Both he and his wife were at work, his step-daughter at school. It made more sense for them to visit the beach first, then be at the house by dinner time. It wasn’t as though she was worried about them not liking her, or about being intimidated by them. The feeling was hard to pinpoint. Maybe it was because she was stepping into a part of Jess’s world she had never bore witness to. Almost the way it felt to go visit him in New York as a teenager. Then, however, there hadn’t been two days of driving to precede it, allowing time for her to stress.

The water was cool as they walked in, making goosebumps rise on her freckled skin. Small shards of shells crunched beneath their feet uncomfortably until they were in up to their knees. She could feel the current against her legs. Waves crashed into whitish foam and bubbles around them, spraying droplets of water on their faces. Her hand tightened on Jess’s the further out they walked. Soon, they were up to their waists in water, the ocean crashing. Jess could see the fear shining in Ella’s hazel eyes as the tide beat against them, though the waves were nowhere near jarring or difficult to stand through.

“Hey, Daria,” he said, disentangling their fingers and bringing a secure arm around her waist instead. “Relax. Once we get out past where the waves are crashing, it’ll be easy.”

“Remind me again why I agreed to this?”

She scanned the water ahead of them frantically, the point past which the waves were only forming and not crashing looking both near and impossibly far. Her muscles were rigid and she squeezed her eyes shut as they turned their backs against a particularly strong wave. Water rushed over her, wetting the ends of her hair. Jess’s solid form felt almost like a life raft as they turned again and finally made it to the calmer part of the water.

“Because this is an exercise in adventure and spontaneity,” Jess answered finally, voice raised slightly over the noise as he repeated the words she’d spoken in the car yesterday verbatim. If they were going to California, it would be a crime to waste the chance to swim in the Pacific, she’d said. Above them, seagulls squawked in the cloudless sky.

Ella had to admit, as scary as it was, dipping into the water felt an utterly refreshing break from the summer heat. Still, her hands shook with anxiety. “I’m plenty fucking adventurous.”

He chuckled. “And now this can be a reason why.”

She rolled her eyes, then glanced back to the shore, where their small pile of towels and other belongings looked small and insignificant. Sighing through her nose, she faced Jess again. “Doesn’t it seem like we’re really far out?”

“We’re not,” he said, shaking his head and gesturing to the other swimmers much closer to the flat horizon than they were. “It’s low tide, so it just seems far away, okay? Don’t worry.”

She raised a doubtful eyebrow.

They waded in the pristine blue water, deep enough for Ella to be unable to touch the seafloor. Jess could still stand if he tried, but it was a stretch. Instead, they floated over the constant waves, mounds of water which carried them up and deposited them back down over and over. At a particularly high peak, Ella, acting on instinct, wrapped her arms around Jess’s shoulders and hugged him tightly.

A grin formed on his face as his arms wound around her, his heart practically jelly in his chest. He could count on one hand the amount of times Ella had allowed him to see her so vulnerable. It made him feel wanted, needed, in a way so foreign to him he had to bite his bottom lip to keep an astonished laugh from escaping him. When they were down near the bottom again, he ran a comforting hand up and down over her back, under the water.

“Relax,” he repeated, more softly this time, close to her ear. “I’m right here.”

Sighing heavily, Ella nodded. “Okay. Okay. I’m relaxing.”

“I can see that.”

A petulant scowl crossed her face, but she released him from her strong grip. Their hands were still linked, but she began to gain her own bearings as the waves continued, slow and steady. Eventually, she was brave enough to submerge herself in the water, wetting her flushed face and frizzy hair. Jess’s own locks fell over his forehead boyishly, dripping on his cheeks. Ella smirked as she pushed it back and away from his face.

“Look at you,” Jess said proudly as she finally let go of his hands, gliding over a wave on her own. “You’re halfway to Blue Crush.”

She snorted a laugh at his odd reference. “I was actually thinking more like Splash. Always choose the mermaid over the surfer.”

“My mistake,” he said lightly. “Does that make me Tom Hanks?”

“In theory, but, in practice, you’re always James Dean.”

.   .   .

Beachy decorations adorned nearly every inch of the walls in Jimmy’s house. The kitschiness charmed Ella immediately, as did Jimmy’s wife, Sasha. She had bleached blonde hair, cropped close to the head, and deep blue eyes radiating generosity. Upon arriving, she gave Ella a big hug, enveloping her in the scent of cinnamon. And Ella had to keep from raising her eyebrows in surprise when she saw Jimmy. He looked almost exactly like Jess, though the hair and the eyes were lighter, and he was slightly taller. It made far more sense to her why Jess looked nearly nothing like his mother. Lastly, Ella came to meet Lily when Jess opened the living room cupboard to reveal her sitting with her knees to her chest, reading. Ella could tell by the way no one else batted an eye that the habit of cabinet reading was not a one-time thing. The girl, around twelve, short and bespectacled with straight, mousy brown hair, reminded Ella almost of Rory. Though Lily radiated a peculiarity which Rory never had. It was welcome. Ella appreciated Lily’s confidence in her odd behavior, much the way she encouraged April’s long, winded rants about science or math. Weird girls were everywhere, just as Ella thought they should be.

Heated and tired, Ella and Jess sat on one side of the ramshackle dining table, hands clasped underneath the surface, as they watched Sasha clear the dinner plates away and go to get the ice cream for dessert. Both Jess and Ella offered to do the dishes themselves, but Sasha would hear none of it. Instead, they sat with the other two of the house’s residents, in near-silence. The air was suddenly tense, Jimmy and Jess sharing a few charged looks between them. Without Sasha’s hospitable aura, there was nothing to keep them from facing each other for real. It was the first time they’d seen each other since Jess had been kicked out, and in-person was always so different from the phone.

“Lil, did you finish that science poster you had due tomorrow?” Jimmy asked, Sasha having gotten up from the table at the tail end of a conversation about Lily’s interests in school.

Her nose was already buried back in her thick fantasy novel. She had picked it up from the ground next to her as soon as her mother left the room. Nodding, she gave a small grunt of confirmation, but didn’t look up.

Jess’s grip tightened slightly on Ella’s hand, and she could see his shoulders grow taut. He held onto her just as she had him as they drifted along the waves earlier in the day.

Clearing her throat, Ella ran her free hand through her hair and put on the most convincing smile she could muster. “So, Jess told me you’ve got a pretty cool record collection?”

Jimmy nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been working on it for about twenty years.”

“Cool. I only have a couple dozen, but one day maybe I’ll have a whole shelf,” she said, grasping at straws to keep the conversation going.

Jess said nothing; small talk had never been his forté. Especially with the man who had come into his life again eighteen years after abandoning him. But he was trying his best to keep his bitterness at bay, just as he had when he had lived there before.

Chuckling under his breath, Jimmy leaned back in his chair. “That’s a nice thought, but it’ll cost a fortune if any of those records are worth a damn.”

“Yeah. Hopefully someday I’ll get there.”

“You sound just like me at your age. But I ended up with two hundred records and eighteen cents in my bank account. Math was never one of my strengths,” he replied, taking a sip of the white wine from the glass in front of him.

Jess scoffed. “Eleanor has a college degree and no kids to flake on. I think she’ll be just fine.”

Narrowing his eyes just a touch at his son, Jimmy maintained an air of easy-going composure. He had his shirt untucked and one leg crossed over the other lazily. Though she tried to stop it, the word ‘slacker’ definitely came to Ella’s mind when she saw him, partially due to Jess’s influence, she knew.

“And what about you? How’s Truncheon?” Jimmy asked.

Jess shrugged.

“The Zine for this month should be coming out tomorrow. It looks great. There’s a lot of abstract stuff,” Ella chimed in, lamely, when she saw Jess wasn’t going to respond further.

“Here’s hoping it’ll stay afloat,” Jimmy said.

There was nothing malicious about his tone, nothing manipulative. She could see almost nothing of her own father in him. But Jimmy was a different breed of faulty fatherhood. No hope. Very little encouragement. Sasha took the reins with most of the dinner conversation. And Jimmy mostly added stories of his days spent homeless or in crappy housing out in Hollywood when he’d been scheming to become a musician. He spoke about the pointlessness of his dream. Of dreams in general. Ella thought his life seemed perfectly fine, even if managing some stand on the boardwalk wasn’t what he’d envisioned. But he was almost making himself more washed-up. And he saw Jess the way everyone in Stars Hollow had. In fact, he seemed to see Jess as himself. Maybe Jess being successful in his dreams was what drove the stand-offishness. Even with the compulsory invitation to visit and the monthly phone calls. Given the interactions she had witnessed, Ella wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been Sasha who forced Jimmy to play parent to his son after so long.

“Here’s hoping,” Jess echoed, voice flat and face expressionless.

Mercifully, Sasha then twirled back into the room with bowls of vanilla ice cream and questions for Ella about grad school. Jess retreated back into brooding silence while Ella rubbed circles on the back of his hand with her thumb.

.   .   .

Taking a sharp intake of breath, Jess jerked awake. The air mattress on which they slept shifted and squeaked at his sudden movement. Ella, who Jess’s arm had been draped over, was jostled as well. He sighed quietly, reminding himself of where he was. Waiting a moment to change position, Jess thought Ella was still asleep. But, after a few more seconds, she stirred and her hazel eyes opened a crack. The open window in the spare room let in warm nighttime air, and the hum of cicadas was the only other sound in the house besides their breathing.

“Go back to sleep,” Jess whispered hastily.

Instead, she lifted her head to look at him. His eyes shone in the moonlight and she could feel his slightly winded breathing. Sympathy washing over her face, she sat up despite his murmured protests. She ran a hand through his disheveled hair affectionately, then moved the back of her hand to his cheek. His face was reddish even in the low glow of the room, and his skin was warm.

“You got a little sunburnt,” she said quietly, her voice groggy. Her touch was soft and gentle.

The small gesture of concern was enough to make Jess have to avert his gaze. His chest was tight with panic from a dream he didn’t even remember, and he didn’t trust his voice enough to speak again. Swallowing thickly, he stared out the window at the stars peeking through the wispy clouds, pale against the dark sky.

Breathing a long breath through her nose and clearing her throat, she began stroking his hair again. “Did you have one of those dreams?”

He only nodded. While Ella slept heavily, could fall asleep anywhere, Jess almost never made it through a night without waking up at least once. Sometimes for no reason at all, but many times due to nightmares. Often he dreamed in hazy flashes which jolted him back to consciousness with feelings of dread and anxiety. As a teen, the only solution had been blasting loud music to get to sleep, a remedy he still wasn’t sure the cause of. With Ella at his side, though, he needed his headphones less and less. Not every time, but sometimes, she would wake up upon feeling his movements. Would stay up talking until he was finally lulled back to at least a doze. He would never wake her if she didn’t on her own, and always told her not to worry, to get back to bed, but she never did. Not until he did too.

And it wasn’t as though she was surprised, or not used to it. The first time she’d found him breathless in the middle of the night, eyes embarrassed and full of fear, had been in high school. Only around the second or third time he’d slept over with her. The rest of the night was spent playing cards and discussing books. His cheeks had burned with shame the entire time, despite her constant reassurance. She didn’t mind at all. She still didn’t.

Ella followed his eyes out the window, where there was a view of the beach. The moon reflected against the water, and the shore was empty. “Hey. You wanna go for a walk?”

He furrowed his brows in silent questioning.

“There’s no one out there. And out there we won’t have the Children of the Corn staring at us,” she said, gesturing to the strange artwork hanging on the wall above the desk. There were four drawings, each of a Victorian child with large, gaping eyes and a lifeless face.

Jess snickered half-heartedly, considering it for a moment. Then, he nodded again. Ella let a small smile across her face, standing up and throwing her simple black dress on again, with the flannel Jess had been wearing earlier over it. Though he felt shaky, Jess rose and tugged on his jeans and a t-shirt. Barefoot on the creaky wood floor, Ella took Jess’s hand and led him outside. He flinched away from the many dogs sleeping in the front yard. She pulled him through the garden and past the front gate quickly.

The walk down to the sand was short and silent. Most of the time, after a nightmare, Jess didn’t want to talk. Ella hardly knew what he dreamed about. Instead, she would talk to him about her day, tell stories, list her favorite things, until his heart calmed and his eyes began to get heavy again. But, as they walked down to the beach, they both just took a moment to breathe in the surroundings. The houses painted ostentatious colors and the cheesy stands on the boardwalk. Palm trees rustled in the nighttime breeze, stronger as they got close to the ocean. Soon, the soft, cold sand was beneath their feet. Wordlessly, Jess took a seat on the beach a few feet up from the waves. Ella plopped down next to him, criss-cross applesauce with her hands resting behind her for support. She closed her eyes and listened to the ocean. The whoosh of the water and the air. The smell of the sea and the slight chill of the wind. She didn’t love going in, but she certainly could understand the Pacific’s unique beauty.

Taking in a deep breath, Jess stared down at his legs and tried to fight off the mixture of emotions churning in his stomach. He still felt ashamed every time he woke Ella up, though it was always accidental. And he couldn’t shake the sick uneasiness coursing through him. Whatever the dream had been, he was glad he couldn’t remember any specifics.

“You okay?” she asked, opening her eyes again and facing him. Her long hair fell over her shoulder, unkempt.

Looking out at the ocean, Jess smirked sharply. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Okay,” she replied, nodding in understanding.

The tenderness in her voice struck him, but he swallowed down the feeling. Another long silence passed between them, comfortable, before a thought occurred to Jess. His smirk was more genuine when he turned to her and undid the button on one of the breast pockets of the flannel she had thrown on. She tilted her head to him in askance, but her eyes lit up with realization as he pulled a small plastic bag and a lighter from the pocket. The shirt was baggy on her frame, and she hadn’t felt the weight of them with Jess in the forefront of her mind.

“Where did that come from?” she asked, chuckling through her words.

Jess shrugged, the lighter in one hand as he opened the bag, which held a small stash of marijuana and a pack of rolling papers. “I forgot this here when I went back to New York. And either I’m great at stashing things or daddy dearest is clueless, because it was still in the closet where I left it. I found it earlier when you were in the shower.”

Her eyebrows shot up, impressed. “It’s probably a little of both.”

“True,” he said, rolling a joint with deft fingers. “I’m the son of Liz Danes. And no one can hide drugs like that woman.”

Biting at her cheek, Ella took a long look at him. His profile was clear in the moonlight, strong and handsome. Stubble shadowed his cheeks and his hair, messy from sleep, fell into his eyes. There were moments, few and far between, when Jess let the pieces of his childhood slip out. Since meeting him, Ella had slowly begun to put the puzzle together. He almost never told her an outright story, or made a big deal of things which he should have. The drinking, the drugs, the boyfriends, the violence, the instability, financial and otherwise. His past wasn’t who he was, but it, in a way, made things click for her. Everyone had a story. Jess didn’t often share his, but it still affected him every day. Less and less now that he had a life of his own, but, on the rarest of occasions, Ella could see ghosts of the scared, lonely boy Jess had once been. A boy whose only defense had been sarcasm and only escape had been books. Her heart twisted in her chest as she watched him, but she said nothing. She only ran a hand up and down his back, and placed a kiss on his shoulder as he worked. He smiled a tiny smile, keeping his eyes on his hands.

Soon, he had lit the joint and passed it to her. The tip glowed orange in the moonlight as she inhaled deeply, the familiar smell filling up her chest. She exhaled the smoke in a long stream, handing it back to hin. Neither she nor Jess were big on pot, not even in high school. The last time she’d smoked pot was the first time Lane had. Hep Alien’s guitarist, Gil, owned a sandwich shop, and one of the shop guys grew pot in his basement. His stuff was pretty good, though Lane had gotten incredibly paranoid and sworn it off for good after the first few hits.

“So, was California Jess a stoner, surfer type?” Ella asked, words snaking out from between her lips in clouds of smoke. Her mind was already beginning to buzz and smudge around the edges. A warm, pleasant tingling enveloped her legs.

Jess chuckled. “No. He was a leather-clad loser who didn’t graduate high school and owned nothing but a duffel bag full of books.”

Her expression fell, growing somber. “You weren’t a loser, Jess. You’re not a loser.”

Scoffing, he passed the joint to her again. “Right...I just…”

Pausing, he sighed and rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. Ella could see him struggling for his words, in a mood she couldn’t quite decipher. Part of it was the high, but part of it was something else completely.

“Even Luke kicked me out. And you were going to college. I didn’t want to...I couldn’t stick around and keep you from anything,” he explained, head growing light with the influence of the drugs. “My mom didn’t want me, my uncle didn’t want me. No one wanted me there.”

Ella furrowed her brows and shook her head sadly, handing the joint his way again. “I wanted you.”

Breathing out shakily, he felt the joint begin to burn his fingers and stubbed it out against the cool sand. He drew his knees up to his chest and rested his elbows on them, hands clasped in front of him. Hiding his face with a bowed head, Jess tried to fight the tears which formed in his eyes. Coming back had brought memories he didn’t remember forgetting. Long nights filled with regret, unhappy days dealing with customers at the bookstore, uncomfortable family dinners where he could never really find his place despite how hard Sasha tried. The feeling of not belonging was so similar to the one he’d had in Stars Hollow. But, in Stars Hollow, New York was just a bus ride away, and Ella was just a walk down the road. Isolation took on a new meaning during his six months in California.

Ella was surprised to hear him sniffle and see his form begin to tremble. She whispered his name, but got no response. After a moment of hesitation, she brought her arm around him, her head next his own as it rested on his shoulder. Shivering with his small sobs, Jess looked up again and let silent tears fall down his cheeks, though his skin flamed with shame.

“And imagine my surprise when I got here and my dad was just as big a loser as me,” he said, breathing short, frustrated breaths. “But, he managed to get a new family anyway.”

Sighing heavily, Ella pressed another kiss to his shoulder. “Jess, you’re not like him-”

“Oh, I’m not?” he asked doubtfully.

“Absolutely not,” she said, a new firmness to her tone. “You wrote a book. You own a business. You were employee of the month at Walmart!”

He shook his head.

“No, Mariano, I’m serious,” Ella continued, insistent. “You think Jimmy would ever be able to get employee of the month anywhere? Just because you didn’t love school doesn’t mean you’re not a hard worker. Jess, you’re the most passionate person I know.”

“Very funny, Stevens.”

“Believe me or not, it’s true. It’s just a fact. Your dad is a fucking idiot. But you’re not him. You are intense and shy and funny and kind and so fucking smart, alright? You’re only 21 and you’ve already done more than he ever has. And I know it fucking sucks that he didn’t grow up in time for you, but that wasn’t because of you. In spite of all that, you still manage to be you,” she said, her voice soft but ardent. The words spilled out of her mouth in a fervent rush, her mind loose and clear and high. “He really fucking missed out. Because he doesn’t know you.”

Jess could feel her voice rumble in her chest against his arm as she leaned on him, holding him. And he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He didn’t know what to say. The emotions bubbling up from beneath the surface muted his words. He stared out at the waves again, and a reluctant smirk formed on his face after a moment, though his cheeks were still damp.

“Haven’t heard you go all motivational speaker in a while,” he said, voice watery but smug.

She let giggle escape her lips and straightened up slightly. Wiping away his tears with her thumb and kissing the top of his hair, she drew his head to her shoulder. “Yeah, well, desperate times.”

“Thank you, Eleanor,” he murmured, noticing how the sky had begun to lighten to a soft bluish gray.

“Don’t mention it,” she replied.

And they sat on the sand, sheltered in their embrace against the wind, into the early hours of the morning as the sun rose over the ocean.

#jess mariano #jess #mariano #jess mariano fanfiction #jess mariano au #jess mariano imagine #jess mariano imagines #gilmore girls #gilmore #gilmore girls fanfiction #gilmore girls au #gilmore girls imagines #gilmore girls imagine #jess mariano x oc #jess mariano x original character #original character stories #original character fanfiction #fanfiction

[popculturebuffet]

Hickman’s X-Men Line: One Year in Part 1: Prelude, House and Powers of X, X-Men and New Mutants (Hickman)

Under the cut is an explination of how hickman’s run happened (the mass decay will be covered another time probably), and dives into his x-books: house of x, powers of x,x-men and his breif run on new mutants and what i thought. Pax Krakoa baby. 

One year ago, I breathed a sigh of relief as I read the utterly masterful house of x #1.  See for the past few months, i’d been waiting on baited breath for this comic with a level of anticipation not matched by any before or since. Even the debut of a spinoff to Chew, one of my faviorite comics of all time that i deftnetly need to do a retrospective on, this week got within the same galaxy and it still wasn’t on the same level. This was big, grandiose and everything I hoped for. And whatever issues I had as House and it’s sister series came out slowly died out as the full story unfolded, my jaw dropped and my faith in Hickman to save the x-men was  fully delivered. At last the x-men were back on top. And it was going to be one hell of a ride.  

As you probably know the x-men had been treated pretty badly at marvel due to fox having the movie rights, a move that still baffles and frustrates me. Instead of making money to rub in fox’s face by promoting the hell out of them in merchandise, animation, video games and of course comics ALONGSIDE the avengers, they basically ignored the x-men and fantastic four to give fox less to work with to spite them while fox.. entirely ignored this as since both franchises have been around since the 60′s and the x-men had had mountains of spinoffs to give them mountains of characters. So in short: a decision to spite and hurt their compeitors only cost marvel money, pissed off fans and fox’s eventual absortion as far as I can tell had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. 

Thankfully marvel DID stop being stupid eventually and relented: The Fantastic Four came back a year before house of x with a decent run by dan slott, which is thankfully more like earlier spider-man work and ff work, and less like what his spider-man run became from superior onward despite the ocasional misfire but i’ll talk about both runs another day. I mostly bring it up because with this revivial, marvel also slowly reintegrated the four back into the marvel universe and made their return feel like a big deal.  The X-Men however took a bit: while they got an earlier shot at returning with ressurxion. Buuut with the idea of having hickman return in their back pocket, marvel apparently refused, at least according to cullen bunn who I fell has no real reason to lie, to let the writers rock the boat too much and the era perdictably was just meh, especially flagship book X-Men Gold which was written bafflingly by Mark Gugenhiem and outside of one or two good ideas basically felt like the comics equivlent of one of those party store albums where every song is a cover done by someone who couldn’t give half a damn. There were bright spots though with Cullen Bunn finishing out his awesome x-men tenure with x-men blue, Sina Grace’s wonderful iceman that took the wonky execution of Bendis’ decision to make bobby drake gay and made it work beautifully, and the decent if somewhat baffling x-men red. But overall it just felt like a missed opportunity and with the fox deal in bloom and a new EiC, marvel NEEDED something bigger, bolder and grander to do with marvel’s strangest heroes of all. After all all eyes would be on them while Marvel’s Movie department took a few years, probably longer now thanks to the pandemic, to let things cool off before bringing the x-men into the mcu.  Enter Jonathan Hickman: Writer of another one of my faviorite runs of all time, his Fantastic Four run, along with an enjoyable but heavily flawed avengers run, a secret warriors run i’ve read half of that was a hell of a ride, tons of ultimate comics, and a bunch of indies I haven’t read but are probably great. A wordy weirdo and i’m convinced the second coming of grant morrison, and I hope one day the two work together on something tha’ts equal parts weird and amazing.

The morrison comparison is also apt as both came into the X-Men at a time when the x-men badly needed them: Just like Hickman morrison had to deal with a largely stagnant x-men and changed them to fit the times. And yes unsuprisngly i’ll also be covering morrisons run, warts and all, and it’s also one of my faviorite comics of all time. However Hickman was given a huge advtange his spirtiual predecessor, and really few comics writers EVER have gotten: full control of the x-men line.  Unlike morrison who wasn’t even allowed to use certain characters despite writing the main fucking x-book, Hickman got full creative control: full say in the direction of the story, full say in who came on board and to let them pitch whatever they wanted to do. And honestly it’s an apporach that’s not only reovlutionarly but makes the books FEEL like their actually occuring around the same time. Sure their all still seperate entities, but it DOES feel like one coheisive universe. Contrastingly with the avengers Black Panther’s solo has had him on a year long sojurn in space, before returning to earth.. while also running the avengers over in jason aaron’s run and having his own spinoff team, without any fucking clue as to when intergalactic empire of wakanda takes place in relation to everything else. Tony Stark is currently just taking back both his own damn name and the iron man name in his own book, but is also a major player in avengers, and empyre with no mention of his seeming drunken spiral (itw as a ploy) or arno taking up the armor and I feel these issues rather than the neglect the x-men once had are why krakoa’s impact isn’t being felt more in other titles. I’m not saying don’t let books do their own thing, but I am saying let them have fucking consequences and weight instead of just acting like one isn’t happening or at the very least have a character be absent for an arc so you can fit the other stories into continuity easier. As X-Men’s shown it dosen’t stifle inovation and hell even immortal hulk easily fit into no road home with a fucking note saying “this takes place before x issue” it’s not that hard.  This advantage was likely part of Hickman’s terms for coming back. See the x-men were the one thing at marvel he never got to do. The Gillieon and Aaron runs and Bendis runs meant the spot simply wasn’t open and by the time he was leaving it was clear marvel wanted to bury the x-men not praise them, so his ideas had no run. But the X-Men were what got Jonathan into comics. A shocking fact I learned at last years comic con, during which most of the dawn of x titles were revealed, was he WASN’T a fantastic four or avengers fan as a kid, not hating them but like me with the avengers for some time, not really caring about them. But with both runs, he did his homework, read as much as possible, and BECAME a fan, and it shows as both runs show a deep love for both marvel and the teams present. With X-Men they were his dream, his golden goose, his windmill, he just never was in the right place at the right time... but with Marvel needing his starpower and creativity and having nothing to loose with the x-men and badly needing a big run to hlep keep intrest in the x-men till the new movies, he finally was. So seeing the company needed him and he could get his dream and the control he needed, while dc had just taken bendis, didn’t need him and until very recently was ran by a moron, his choice to come back to marvel instead of go to dc as he’s admitted, was obvious. And it ended up being the right one. House and Powers of x were massive creative and commerical hits and the following titles have all been mostly praised. The new direction has been a boon for the franchise,k the fans and marvel.  So being a fan of this direction, as you can tell by the massive intro, to give my thoughts on each book so far: what I think their doing right, where some went wrong etc, since I’d rather wait another year or so befor ediving into these and let some more of hickman’s plans and future story hints spread throughout his books pay off first. WIth that all out of the way it’’s time for a deep dive of x.So grab some plant based snacks, your x-shaped helmets, and your krakoan coffee, it’s time to finally get into hickman’s era of x-men. 

HOUSE OF X AND POWERS OF X The opening salvo and just with two mini series that are one, though why he DIDN’T just have them be one big mini series I genuinely do not know, probably to justify having two diffrent artists to carry the load, is an utter masterpiece. Plain and simple. Let’s get the status quo the series set up out of the way so I can dig into it more: Magento and Xavier were revealed to have been working together for years behind the scenes.. with Moira Mactaggert, one of my favoirite x characters who the series changes utterly and forever. See instead of being the one human who consitantly is on mutants side and one of the x-men’s staunchest allies who sadly hadn’t been resusrected in 20 fucking years, she was a mutant herself, her ablility being reincarnation.. and thus had lived through 9 of her 10 lives seeing mutantkind always loose so told xavier and magneto about this in the hopes of breaking the wheel and letting mutantkind live this time.  However hickman , while revealing the alliance does brilliantly still make it work in continuity for me: it’s clear from moira’s notes in one issue, as house and powers and any following titles love having charts or text based sections that I feel give the comics a unique flavor and really help boost most issues, that Charles optimism she was trying to break him of and faith in humanity took years to fully shatter: he plotted and schemed with her to protect his species but it was clear he probably felt it woudln’t be necessary that humanity would prove her wrong.. and by this series it’s clear, no they haven’t changed, the majority of them just want to genocide mutants and have tried again and again and again while the rest who don’t necessarily want it, paticuarlly the superheroes did nothing while Magneto chaffed against her after the whole “alter his infant self after he was deaged by a mutant he made into a baby to be more pacificsitc which naturally pissed him off when that wore off”. Yes that’s a thing that actually happened pre and post retcons it’s why a survivor of the holocaust is , while not a YOUNG man, still healthy and vibrant. It’s a clever way to not undermine those stories while still telling this one and this retcon is a move I like as unlike most retcons it’s both there to tell a good story and excuted in a way that outside of moira dosen’t undermine anything. The Moira retcon I was and to a degree still am mixed on. While the new version of her is brilliant, creative and intresting and I can’t wait to see what happens with her next time she shows up, I do mourn the old as the x-men had few human allies and now their only big one is now a mutant herself, but it IS in service of a really damn good narraitive and the twist that the bad futures presented were in fact other lives of moira was brilliant, and it’s nice to see SOMETHING done with her. I’d rather something that i have a small problem with lead to really great things and be worth the sacrifice of her former character, than just changing things because “fuck it I want to do this and their letting me do this’ as a lot of retcons tend to be. Hickman’s story needs moira and her cycle of defeat to truly soar to the heights it’s reaching, and to make Charles and Xavier’s back alley actions make sense, so i’ll glady sacrifce one version of a character that I really liked for another version of her that’s also really good.  The other big swing though I was completley on board for: Hinted at early on by serveral dead mutants being alived, after a sucidie mission against new big bads and mutant hating extermists orchis, who are far better written than other extermists,   it’s revealed just why death has seemingly taken a holiday: the big plan that has been decades in the making for xavier and co? That will reshape mutant kind and required working with mr sinsiter of all people? Revivie all dead mutants.  See in a brilliant reveal Cerebro isn’t just a mutant tracker; It’s a copier, copying their essecnes reaguarly and storing them for later, updating them every so often and thus meaning any who died can come back. Why it took Chuck so long to do this is also explained as he needed 5 specific mutant power sets to do it and thus had to wait till they had everything they needed: Goldballs, yes goldballs, spits out his giant golden balls, phrasing, which hickman in an insane and awesome turn revealed to be EGGS. Yes EGGS. Proteus, Moira’s son and former villian whose now pacificed since this body cloning process means he has an infnite suply of xavier bodies to burn through and thus isn’t killing people, warps reality to mamke the eggs viable. Elixir, a healer whose been through some shit the poor guy,gives the eggs , once injected with the mutant in questions dna via syringe because of course, life, and Tempus, goldballs former classmate fellow bendis creation and mistress of time, speeds it up a bit so they don’t have to wait a good few decades for some mutants to rerez. The fifth that makes all this possible is hope summers, mutant messiah and adopted daughter of cable returned to promence once more, whose power is revealed to be power maniulation and thus can boost their powers to the degree neded for this. it’s a BRILLIANT turn that not only undoes all the pointless deaths mutants have undergone, but changes the game: Genocide is now near impossible, as humanity has no idea bout any of htis, and instead of mutant lives going down, they can only go once.. as one man once put it...

And as an x-men fan having watched characters I love die again and again for stupid reasons, especially int he placeholder run right before house of x, this was so satsifying. Everyone the x-men had lost, every character I loved who was gone and forgotten.. they were back or would be back.  And thanks to Krakoa they were thriving: By giving mutantkind a homeland instead of a headquarters, a nation given to one of their own because he demanded itbasically, or an island fortress designed to give a dying species refuge, they have a goregous sentient island (I’ve always loved krakoa for the record though I wonder what happened to his clone son), with abundant food, teleporting gates across the world to visit wherever they like or live in the various worldwide habitats if they please, and peace and security they’ve neve rknown. No more being woken up to get to a panic room because a sentienl attacked. No more having religious maniacs blow up busses containing your tine. No more having the vast majority of the superhero community do nothing as a fucking plauge cloud wipes out your species. Anything apporaching krakoa now has hundreds of the most powerful beings alive defending all mutants.. and that includes the worst of the worst, all given amntesty.. but they must tow the line or else be given a fate worse than death. After years of pain and suffering and misery mutantkind is free safe and happy. They still have to fight to get the rest of their kind out of racist hands and to saftey, the fight’s not over.. but now the odds are in mutantkinds favor. It’s paradise.  And yet this mini, and this whole run dosen’t run from tough issues; The mutants are now isolationists and only mutants are allowed on krakoa itself.. on the one hand this is a bad idelogy and potentially dangerous, instead of fighting for harmony fighting for my land alone.. but it’s also see why Mutantkind has taken to it. The X-Men have tried for at the least a decade in universe and at the most and most likely 15 years to live in harmony, fight for mankind and make peace with them.. and only a small chunk has acutally tried to help them with that. The other large fraction? They either build death machines to try and wipe out all mutants, and in the case of Cassandra NOva who while not a human is still a racist genocidal bitch, SUCCEED in wiping out a large chunk, or do nothing while mutantkind suffers.  The series forces you to think about the implications that marvel comics themselves previous ignored: That with all the superheros in this world who arent mutants.. more often than not htey’ve done fuck all when terrible shit happens. When Genosha died, not a one asked the x-men what happened or tried to hunt down those responsible. When Decemation happened, the avengers were more concerned with helping the x-men cover it up than helping them move on and did nothing as the goverment made xavier’s into a reservation, even after regrestration happened and the goverment had more heroes than ever to spare to helping them. When the T-Mist happened years later instead of stopping terrigin or asking the inhumans to stop it for the good of another race, the rest of the heroes just did fuck all. Sure the avengers were on a budget and the ff were asbent, but there were enough heroes in the world still and enough teams to do something about it and only the ones with mutants on them did!. IT’s hard to say “well you shoudln’t exclude them”.. when the rest of superhero kind has been subtly doing it their whole lives.  But it dosen’t shy away from the claims of racial superiority the isoaltion or the fact the x-men basically sued for nationhood by making requiring recognizing their nation hood the price for trading for their life saving and extending, world changing drugs, which you would still need to buy. There’s other issues, one that i’ll get to in a moment as it was only revealed in x-men. Various characters, Corsair in issue one of the ongoing, the fincial summit in issue 4 and the ff both in house of x #1 and ff/x-men, all question this and some of the ethics. Hickman brilliantly decides instead of just painting the x-men as absolute moral rights, to show their new nation warts and all: the genuine good their doing and trying to do but also the price they have to pay for it and the mistakes they may be making. And the compromise necessary to build a nation. It’s all chiling, compelling shit that’s even more releveant in a time when bigotry is piling up like crazy. Both house and x-men, which i’ll get to in a second, ask questions with no easy answers and it makes them a compelling read.  Also compelling is the two mini series use of flashbacks: The two previous moira timelines, which we learn are just that as we go, are compelling with the apoclaypse timeline having loveable heroes were are heartbroken to see die in the struggle, while the last timeline seemingly sees the mutants turn as bad as the humans.. only to peel back a layer at the end and reveal humans are still very much the real monsters, and them evolving via machine is a threat to mutant kind's natural evolution. It was a good story twist and of course there’s FAR more to dig into in both books, and I defintely will at some point in the future as I said. But there’s tons of great ideas here: Sinsiter not only being a mutant but a reluctant ally, the same of apocalyspe, the heavy questions I got into above, the idea of machines being mutants greatest threat which makes a ton of sense, and the various ones I already went into. I can’t gush about this book enough, but since this is already long enough i’m trying. The point is both mini series are great and how you do a self contianed event perfectlY plenty of consequence, plenty of scope but enough character and brilliant ideas and a FUCK TON of quotable and iconic lines, all blend into one of the very best series i’ve ever read. And lead directly into..

X-Men I talked about a lot of what this book represents above as it’s a direct continuation of the above, but the book on it’s own is still something diffrent. while it continues setting things up, playing with the new toybox hickman set up, and asking the tough questions, x-men does it in a diffrent way. House and Powers bounce around through time while all telling one huge story and one huge bundle of setup for this status quo.  X-Men instead is a bunch of single issues. It’s still a ton of setup, though with enough payoff to house and powers that it at least so far hasn’t become tedious, especailly since hickman specifically has plans for all of it and has shown in the past he’s a long game man when it comes to storytelling, but through more action packed stories that, with the exception of mistque’s spotlight issue so far, have one shared element: Cyclops, aka Scott Summers, who as grand captain of krakoa is the nation’s ruling council’s go to guy for missions and who he himself can form any team he once for any mission.  Cyclops, like the x-men hadn’t been treated well for years; Various characters lambasted him after the phoenix force drove him mad and lead to him killing charles xavier, and before that his run as leader of utopia, not helped by x-force painting him as a cold heartless dickweed, had him forced to make questionable decisions that made fans turn agains thim despite the hard position he was in. But now with the burden of absolute leadership of mutantkind in other hands, HIckman writes scott beautifully and has restored him to his proper place.  WIth Xavier taking over as absolute leader of mutantkind and his race no longer hanging by a thread for the first time in years scott can relax and ENJOY himself. As the first issue shows he has everything he ever could have possibly wanted: A healthy marriage with Jean again, and an open one at that with him free to still see emma and Jean openly seeing Logan. Logan himself no longer trying to murder scott for his mistakes or kill his teenage self due to bad writing, but being his best friend again and also living with him and presumibly having threeways because they have connected bedrooms and of course jean would want both at once. Maybe they also just fuck each other sometimes again the details haven’t exactly been clear but it’d explain the tension disappearing. Maybe the schism would’ve ended quicker if Cyclops and Wolverine just fucked each other after children of the atom. Hey not every question is a deep personal one on krakoa sometimesm it’s just “Are these two fucking and could it have solved things faster in the past if they did?”. Also I almost forgot to mention, and added this near the end of writing this, in additoin to everything else scott now lives ON THE FUCKING MOON, on the blue area with a breathable atompshere, on a moon house with his family and fuckbuddy and Vulcan’s buddys. It’s fucking amazing. But moving back to other things scott’s gotten besides logan’s wang up his butt, as seen in issue one thanks to the gates his dad can now visit anytime, his brothers live with him with Vulcan going from genocidal dickweed to weirdo thanks to his experinces between his “death’ and this series, and he’s just. happy. And as a leader he takes the x-men on thrilling missions: the series combines action with character and worldbuilding and it is great.  The worldbuilding part has been tremendous; we’ve seen new foes in the returning children of the vault and horticulture, aka what if the golden girls were tv ma, and also plant based  supervillians plotting a better future for mankind that krakoa’s drugs clash with. We’ve seen nimrod creeping close, charles and magneto not playing ball with mystique start to backfire, the return of krakoa’s lost love, and in my faviorite arc, we’ve seen broo, one of my faviorite x-people and intellegent brood, eat an egg and thus become god emperor of the brood, not only giving the vicious race a chance to reform but giving the x-men a huge advatange in space, doubeldby events we’ll get to in a second.  And biggest of all we saw the crucible: Since those depwoered by the decimation can get power back by dying again, and to prevent overworking the five with mass sucidies krakoa came up with a nasty solution,: earning resurection via ritual combat. And like the above there aren’t easy answers to this: mass sucidie isn’t better or faster, but having mutatns forced to EARN repowering by dying brutally isn’t a great solution either and is kind of sick. And it also opens up questions about ressurectoin that Nightcrawler feels made need reegion to answer htem. It’s again good heavy instreating stuff.  We also got my faviorite issue #4 where the x-men go to a fincial summit, and while security detail cyclops and gorgon fight off hired goons...

Xavier, Magneto and Apocalypse discuss with world leaders about the implications of krakoa’s policys, with Magneto not hiding his love of flexing his superiority. And Charles ends the confrence, after it’s revealed one hired them in an utterly masterful moment: Taking off his helmet to reveal no this is charles, this is him and that even after they tried assintating him he has and always will love humanity he’s just sick of being treated like crap and suffering for doing it and his people suffering for it and he won’t tolerate this sort of shit again. See it for yourself it’s an absolute triumph:

 It’s a great scene. Overall an utterly great title that really keeps the momentum moving and I feel is only setting up for even more things.. the only real issue is that A) the title’s been slower at coming out than the other dawn of x titles, though in the case of the empyre tie in’s it’s not hteir fault but the rest sure as shit are, and B) that it has mostly been just setup but it’s been good enough and enjoyable enough and I feel payoff is coming, so I truly don’t care. At long last we have a main x-men  book that’s not only fantastic but uttterly engaging and I read most issues multiple times. An utter slam dunk

Giant Sized X-Men: This one is incomplete, so I can’t fully say what the full picture is.. but for the three released so far it’s a mixed bag, though the art in all three is gorgeous as Hickman brought on the best artists in the buisness but it’s telling that while New Mutants bellow had issues that bugged me but was still kinda fun, and the above havem y utter priase I nearly forgot to include these issues. None of them are bad and all have gorgeous art as I said, these are some of the best in the buisness, they feel padded. These were supposed to be annuals, but when they decided to change this to one shots.. they shoudl’ve just made them regular length instead, as there simply isn’t enough story here to fill them and so far only Davis’ issue has both had huge setup (both revealing doug’s fusion with warlock is a secret for some reason and that he is indeed still fully alive and revealing what happened to the x-mansion), and due to Davis background as a writer/artist the pacing to fill one issue and even then it could’ve been trimmed. Not bad and I don’t fault the artists for not being used to being writer/artists or having to do so while also conforming to a larger narriative which likely didn’t help or in the third one’s case having to take over for someone else entirely, but it’s , while not bad no ton par with the two above books and I expect better from hickman. 

New Mutants (HIckman’s Issues)  I’ll cover Brisson’s issues next time as they feel like a diffrent run entirely, but New Mutants was.. a disapointment. I was utterly pumped for this title going in being a huge fan of the team thanks to finally reading the claremont and sikenwitz run and before that re-reading abnett and lannings utterly great run and hey jonathan hickman who’d already done gangbusters was writing it! It had a great roster! 

And it starreed one of hickman’s faviorite mutants and one he’d taken a shine to on avengers, and one of my faviorite superheros, Roberto DeCosta, aka Sunspot. On Avengers hickman took Roberto , already a decent character and made him amazing. He was still rich, young and a playboy as ever.. but he used said wealth and his love of fun wisely. When undercover at an AIM casino instead fo throw down, he offers the agents a free day of partying and gambling on his huge dime, then puts them on payroll as his undercover agents. So to recap Roberto DeCosta won the avengers two valuable double agents in what at the time was one of their biggest threats.. by buying them tons of beer and gambling and presumibly hookers. And later got the loyatly of the rest of AIM through these guys, and when Steve found out tony betrayed him and went off hte deep end hunting him instead of stopping the end of the goddamn world, TOOK OVER AIM HIMSELF IN COMBAT WITH THE AIM SUPREME, and then formed his own avengers. 

Literally. He got his own avengers team, most of which left after the apocalypse but he simply found younger and hungrier replacements, and aim.. with blackjack and hookers. The man is a legend. And knowing Roberto if hookers were actually involved he probably treated them with respect and overpayed them because he’s a class act. Then under Al Ewing’s mighty pen, Roberto not only formed another avengers team since most of the avengers he formed to stop the end of the world were busy elsewhere, of young and great avengers, while dying of the aformentioned death cloud, but became an utterly brilliant chessmaster, only failing ONCE becaue of hydra cap getting into his head while AIM was working for the us goverment towards the end as the USAvengers. And yes that’s a real team. It’s as insane and beautiful as it sounds. And his new avengers once fought american kaiju, a godzilla with a flag painted on it chaning usa. Al Ewing is the best and I love him. But he also became a master stratigest and schemer with schemes within schemes within schemes, his crowning one being faking his own death and using his fake funeral to clear out any remaning enimies in AIm, and only quitting AIM to keep it out of goverment hands and in the hands of a trusted friend. He was and still is one of the best avengers there ever was and ever will be.  But here, as the new mutants go on a road trip to get sam? He’s a fucking dumbass who hires the worst space laywer possible, only gets off trial because Sam and his wife save them, glad they weren’t broken up by the way,  and is utterly useless most of the time. It’s like HIckman forgot the last part of his run.. granted time runs out isn’t very good but still, that wasn’t a good thing to forget and like Hickman wants to ignore ewing’s work for no damn reason, even though Ewing did great things with Roberto and kept him relevant when marvel was choking the x-men to death. It’s fucking embrassing and disapointing to see.  The rest of the New Mutants aren’t much better mostly being happy but also not really acting like themselves, with only mondo really standing out since he gets great moments and hasn’t done anything in a while. And Doug, who I negelcted to mention above is one of my faviorite mutants and thanks to being krakoa’s primary method of commuincation, is now one of krakoa’s most important mutants, has a seat at the council with krakoa, and weirdly has his best friend warlock hiding on his arm for reasons that haven’t been explained yet. In Short doug went from beign forgotten to being used awesomely again. Roberto instead of getting the same is set back as a character and ends the arc deciding to stay in space because he misses sam, and will likely become third in his marriage i’m sure, and wants to bone deathbird, x-men villian and frequent shiar usuper. But while rahne actually being happy is a good sight to behold they , except Dani, really dont’ do much. Though Magik gets a fucking amazing scene where she asks the various assasians sent ot kill them if they want to make out , not only revealing she’s bi, but that she’d prefer that to killing them all but does so when they dumbly refuse .. I mean seriously who, whose not in a relationship that’s open or way older than her, not take her up on that?  The plot their thrust into isnt’ great either, mostly just more setup but not present as well as in x-men about Gladiator giving the shiar empire to xavier’s daughter.. yes charles has a daughter that was created from his and his ex wife lilandra, whose still dead’s dna, and letting DEATHBIRD Of all people teach her instead of his damn self. Xandra taking over isn’t a terrible idea it’s just handeld poorly. It just feels disapointing.. like hickman WANTS to do a JLI style book here but the combination of him only doing one arc and not really wanting to write the characters as they should be, an issue that only pops up here and in the new mutants cameo during x-men proper and not for doug ever, that makes it fall falt.. I mean there are utterly great moments like the above, and hte image i used to lead off their just stifled by misusing roberto and everyone else. 

But overall hickman’s works on x-men  are fucking great, intresting and engaging. I’ve read the issues a ton and will again. One small mistep dosen’t take away from all the large good he’s done and he’s made the franchise feel alive again and hopefully the MCU take on it will take after this run, as it’d be a great way to break from the endless xavier vs magneto battles of the fox universe. So yeah overall 2 great books and a thankfully short misfire, HIckman’s on top. And next time we’ll see who he picked to help him carry the x banner home to us all, and who did well with it and whose stumbled a bit as part two delves into the rest of the dawn of x. For now subscribe for more comics stuff as I plan to get back on that, including I hope a restrospective on the fox era x-men sometime soon, animation reviews, and more fun stuff. And until then, courage. 

#x-men #new mutants #dawn of x #powers of x #house of x #jonathan hickman #sunspot #cyclops #scott summers #roberto decosta #cannonball #magik #jean grey #wolverine #logan howlett #magneto #erik leshener #x #charles xavier #moria x #moria mactaggert #nightcrawler #mistque #hortiuclture #comic books #marvel #reviews #ish

[benisasoftboi]

Unorganised thoughts on Trails of Cold Steel I:

So I did like it overall, but I have a lot more criticisms of it than I did of the previous games 

Which also means I have way more to say!

Tl;dr - Rean Schwarzer, Estelle Bright you are not

Also, spoiler warning for both this game and the previous ones

So... the pacing in this was weird. Like I loved all the field study segments, they were SO fun, but there’s also the Trista segments between which very boring and felt like filler

I think it’s meant to make the ending feel more important, since you’re defending the school, but it kind of backfired because being forced to run around Thors (which is not a very interestingly designed location, by the way) over and over and over again actually made me kind of resent it. To a point where I low key wanted the ILF to destroy the school. Oops

Like I cared about Liberl and Crossbell because they were interesting, and big, so I never really got tired of them. I got tired of Trista very quickly

Also having everyone in school uniform made their designs less interesting :/

The other places were all super interesting, though! I think if I had to pick a favourite I’d say Bareahard, but they’re all contenders really 

Oh also the other issue with the structure was that everyone had to be mad at someone at all times, and it was almost comical how systematic it was - Rean and Alisa don’t get on, that’s resolved, now let’s focus on how Machias and Jusis don’t get on, that’s resolved, IMMEDIATELY we’ll replace that with Fie and Laura, then the moment that’s resolved it’s Jusis and Milliam...

Like, be a little less formulaic in your character conflict

Anyway, characters!

I do not like the thing where the character’s name appears in front of them before they say it. It was irritating

Elliot: The one I would have been in love with when I was eleven. Elliot is good and sweet and did nothing wrong ever. Holy Song is the most useful craft in the whole goddamn game. He also has easily the best S-Craft in a game where most of the S-Crafts are *decidedly* lackluster, aesthetically speaking. I like Elliot. His friendship with Gaius is also very nice

Jusis: The one I would have been in love with when I was fourteen. So, the moment I saw Jusis, my immediate first thought was ‘oh, this guy is one half of a gay ship’. I had no clue who the other guy was going to be, but I knew there was absolutely no way that Anime Draco Malfoy wasn’t getting shipped with a man. 

And then Machias opened his mouth, and... every franchise, no matter what, has its gay OTP (its homoTP, if you will) - that one, usually M/M, but sometimes F/F, ship that’s practically got a whole side-fandom just for itself. Up until now, I assumed Trails’ was going to be Olivier/Mueller - but while I haven’t checked, because I don’t want spoilers, I will be shocked if these guys aren’t actually it. They have every making - opposites attract, enemies to lovers, they sing together, other characters make jokes about it...

Like, this was deliberate, surely? Surely?

yes i ship it but like, against my will and resentfully and semi-ironically, because I hate myself for instinctively taking the bait >:(

Something something ‘Turbo-Gehenna’ joke

Anyway, I like Jusis. I think he’s a fun character, easily the most interesting of the boys, and I really enjoyed his development. He has a cute smile

I also thought he had the best voice acting in Class VII, so I looked it up and Ben Diskin! I love Ben Diskin! I couldn’t even tell, I had no idea his range was that great, wow!

I did think it was extremely weird that if you invite him to the Stella Garten, he says he wants to date a woman who is ‘like his mother’. Okay, Jusis.

Machias: The one I would have been in love with when I was seventeen. You ever meet someone who’s like... always right, really, but in such an obnoxious way that you wish they weren’t. Machias. He would have been way more interesting if he was just a really politically minded teen who needed to learn tact, rather than yet another member of the Trails Dead Family Member Club (the fact that it was revealed right after Elliot’s Dead Family Member Club story did not help). Still, he really did grow on me in the end. He’s a little dork

Gaius: The one I would be in love with now, if not for the fact that he’s only seventeen and thus a little baby in my eyes. I do love his design the most. Can he say even one line that’s not about the wind, though? I also like that he’s one of very few characters in this franchise to not have a tragic backstory, was very refreshing. 

I can only assume, therefore, that Nord will undergo ethnic cleansing in Cold Steel II

Crow: oh boy Crow hahahahahaha. I don’t know how I feel now. Uhhhh... what did ‘the things I do for love mean’? I am curious

Alisa: I don’t like tsunderes much, and I found her ‘being mad at Rean for something that was absolutely not his fault’ thing very, very stupid and it did not endear me to her at all (also, like, if you had to have that - a better way would have been for him to accidentally injure her, rather than... ugh, look, I am a woman with large breasts - accidents really do happen irl. There’s no point in getting that mad about it. There just isn’t. I have no patience for this kind of plot). It also bothered me how possessive of Rean she got, I swear I picked Towa over her half out of spite. I don’t hate her, though, to be clear - I loved her plot with her mother and that scene in Nord. And her relationship with Ferris! She’s great when she’s not talking about Rean, basically

I don’t buy her as Rean’s love interest, honestly. Rean consistently shows more attraction to Emma, and has more (mandatory/canon) moments with Towa. It only felt one-sided to me 

Laura: I like Laura a lot. I don’t really have anything to say about her, just that she was consistently good, and I appreciated her maturity and self awareness, I love her and Rean being sword bros, she’s just great

Fie: I think Fie was designed to appeal to exactly me personally. Tiny snarky badass girl with a great design? That’s everything I love and aspire to be! Best girl in the game (didn’t date her though because she’s fifteen and I refuse to date anyone who is younger than the protagonist when I play games set in high schools. Feels weird enough dating teens the same age as my character. Also she had 0 romantic chemistry with Rean)

Millium: She’s fine, good voice acting, want to know more about Lammy, no strong feelings

Towa: I wasn’t going to date anyone, but changed my mind because I really liked Towa... and then I looked at her, and saw a tiny girl with long, light brown hair and soft voice, and realised I just want to date myself

I checked, and according to Playstation Trophies, at least, she’s the least picked girl? The only characters picked less than her are the non-Crow boys (Machias is the least popular, which... I feel a little mean for finding hilarious lol)

Emma: I like Emma herself just fine. Don’t get me wrong. But she’s infuriating as a mystery character, because she’s the worst kind of mystery - the kind that relies on the other characters to NEVER AT ANY POINT ASK THE QUESTIONS THAT A NORMAL HUMAN WOULD ASK

Estelle would have asked

Rean has multiple opportunities to ask her to explain herself, and he doesn’t! One time, she straight up ASKS HIM TO ASK, and he doesn’t! That’s not mysterious anymore! That’s just incredibly annoying!

Lloyd would have asked

And no one else asks either! Some of them, fine - I can understand say, Elliot or Gaius or Millium - but Jusis!? Jusis, who has been there for pretty much all of her mysterious vague magic, and has repeatedly shown himself to be willing to be kind of rude, and may not be that interested in other people but certainly isn’t stupid - while they’re in the Schoolhouse Depths, Jusis isn’t going to grab Emma by the shoulders and demand she explain what she knows? He’s just going to go with it as she refuses to elaborate on things? 

Really?

Kevin would have - actually, no, Kevin would have already known because Kevin Knows All, but he would have told everyone else, so same outcome 

Rean: And that brings me to Rean. Rean... is a JRPG Protagonist. He is good, and noble, and he gives Inspiring Speeches, and he can date all the girls (which means we don’t really get any interesting opposite-gender friendships, because oh no, a threat to the harem!), and he is so, so boring. My god

Hey remember how I praised Sky for how great it was to have Estelle be an actual person with flaws and personality? No you don’t, no one’s reading all of these, but yeah - Estelle is just as colourful and full of life as the rest of Sky, while Rean is the least interesting character in Cold Steel no contest

Oh he has a super powered dark side, oh, well, that’s a game changer, never seen that before except in every 2000s shounen anime. Also we never actually learn the Super Rean rules, so that dramatic moment where he’s thinking about transforming to fight Scarlet isn’t actually that dramatic because I had never realised it could kill him until he said so in that moment

Oh except he’s also an awakener and can summon a Persona giant mecha suit! Because he’s the most special boy to be very special? I have never seen that in a JRPG before except in all of them

In Sky, Estelle wasn’t special. Except she was, but it wasn’t because she had super awesome secret awesome powers and all the boys liked her best. It was because she was flawed, but always trying, and because she was incredibly brave and optimistic no matter what, and because she was the kind of person who told a god summoning evil mastermind ‘lol no’ and then beat him with a stick, and because she really, believably loved her friends. She loved them. And they loved her. Not the player she was the avatar of. Estelle herself

Estelle Bright has ruined me for all other JRPG protagonists, is what I’m saying

Oh also Rean has that whole speech about how they can’t cancel the festival to protect people from an unknown threat, that’s not fair to meeeeee, and as someone who has lived through the year 2020 -  go to Gehenna, Rean 

Olivier is back!!! And yeah I’m going to keep calling him that, that’s who I know him as, and also Olivert is a silly name

Even more importantly, Mueller is back!!! And he and Olivier still have the best comedy dynamic in the series, joyous day! THAT is love and peace, baby!

Sara really, really grew on me :) I want to see her interact with Schera so bad

I didn’t really like Sharon up until I worked out OH SHE’S OUROBOROS, because yessssss more of them! Also, yessss, guessed it!

Angie... predatory lesbian stereotype aside, Angie’s super interesting and I want to see more of her yes please

George is like, the most inoffensive character I’ve ever seen, but apparently he has haters? What!?

What is with these games and naming characters/things French words, and then PRONOUNCING THEM WRONG

I do not care that the official pronunciation is ‘Blue Blanc’. I will continue to pronounce it ‘Bleu Blanc’. Because that’s what you guys actually wrote, Christ alive

I have a French GCSE and I will use it for something, goddamnit

I took Jusis on the bike trip and he looked so adorably goofy in the little sidecar. Best moment of the whole damn game for me

I’m trying to imagine what it would be like to have played this game first, as I know a lot of people did. Specifically in regards to Olivier (or Olivert, I guess)

Like... imagine meeting this guy for the first time as a fairly serious leader of an important faction, participating in vital political machinations. Imagine meeting him here and not knowing about the Grand Chardonnay incident. Imagine not knowing about that time he stopped a riot by riding up in a boat and singing. Imagine not knowing he has a rivalry of aesthetics with a terrorist. Imagine not knowing what I was referring to when I said ‘that’s love and peace, baby’ just now

Incomprehensible

Side note, if you had told me, on one of those warm August days when I was first playing Sky FC, that the silly man in the white coat was actually one of the most important characters in the franchise, I would not have believed you for a second 

But on that subject, I was also trying to work out who a first time player would be siding with... like, I’ve played Sky and experienced Zero (currently working way through Azure as well), which means that my immediate reaction to all of Erebonia’s politics was ‘trust whatever Olivier and the bracers say, don’t trust anyone else’. But someone starting with Cold Steel has no reason to have loyalties to those factions, so I’m curious 

Side note, having played the previous games also massively impacted how I viewed the ILF - I’m very confident that I would have just taken them being evil for granted if I’d played this first, but considering they hate Osbourne... and Olivier does not like Osbourne... that kind of made me a lot more suspicious of who I was really meant to side with

I really liked most of the NPCs in this. I especially became weirdly fond of Beryl

However, I do now also have characters I actively dislike, a series first! Gwyn (creepy old man), Neithardt (sexist jerk, kick his arse Beatrix), and Dorothee (...could write a whole essay on the myriad reasons I do not like that particular archetype) get in the bin

Good god, every interaction between Rean, Emma and Dorothee made me want to smack the lot of them with my controller, Dorothee for being an absolute creep, and Rean and Emma for overcorrecting into low key homophobia (seriously Rean, you’re friends with a lesbian, the idea of the existence of gay men should not shock you this much)

Re: Elise... I heard the words ‘non-blood related younger sister’ and my eyes rolled so far back in my head I was afraid they wouldn’t come back down

Took me a while to figure out, but ideal team is Elliot, Jusis, Machias, with Laura and Fie as back-up

I would like to find whoever’s idea it was to make the S-Crafts unlock as the game progresses rather than just be there when you get the character, and shake them until they apologise. Have them evolve with the story, sure, but not having them at all wrecks the battle flow so much. Emma was unusable to me until chapter-goddamn-FIVE

I loved the Annabelle subplot, and the punchline that the person her family wanted to marry her off to was a Lakelord... I actually yelled

The concert was so hyped, and then there weren’t even any real songs (aside from the re-use of the end credit song from Sky, which made me very happy. And Olivier singing along made me laugh out loud)

TOVAL IS TOBY!?!?! 

Man I’m so mad at myself for not reading Carnelia in/after FC (read it in 3rd), but still - what a reveal!

AND WHAT AN ENDING

I mean. At first

They did such a good job building the tension, and then-

The Crow twist, my GOD, when I tell you I freaked the fuck out... I was totally convinced that it was Claire. Or possibly Campanella on stilts. I completely overlooked that there was another major character with a C name, and honestly I’m glad I did because I have not been this shocked by a reveal in a while

And then I stopped taking it seriously when I saw the robots with heelys 

It was all.. we had a very final boss-y final boss, right? Excellent final boss fight, very fun, very satisfying. And then the game just... kept going. I accidentally stayed up until 4 AM because I thought I was at the end and it just didn’t stop

And then it did. Very, very abruptly 

(no seriously I was making some snarky comment about how goofy the flying robot suits look and then the game just ENDED, what)

(also worst *actual* final boss I’ve ever seen. the fact that they managed to make a battle between two giant robots, one of which was controlled by a traitorous former friend, feel like an anticlimax... that was impressive, honestly)

So Cold Steel I is... easily my least favourite Trails game so far. Again, I did like it, but like I say... Rean isn’t Estelle Bright. And that’s pretty much my main problem, in the end

Sorry, Class VII

OH MY GOD they never explained why it’s Class VII and not Class VI! My theory is that it’s either something about the Sept-Terrions, or the Seventh Division, since Olivier’s specifically connected to them. Or maybe both

Well - I’m excited to find out!

#long post #trails series #trails of cold steel #trails of cold steel 1 #kiseki series #erebonia arc

[writeyourownlifestory]

L I GH T S  U P

Chapters: 1/20 Fandom: IT Rating: M Warnings: No warnings at this time  Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Beverly Marsh/Ben Hanscom Additional Tags: PunkRocker!Eddie, Writer!Richie, Beveddie!Friendship, No Clown Written by: myself & @ahardlife Tag list: @richietoaster, @beproudtozier, @that-weird-girls-blog, @s-onora, @s-s-georgie, @bellarosewrites, @iamcupcakefrosting, @reddieonwheels, @bi-gemini1983

Puff piece writer Richie Tozier is given the chance of a lifetime to interview his celebrity crush: Dr. K, the lead singer of punk rock band, Trashmouth. Dr. K is about to release his first solo album and Richie wants to get all the dirty details. But all is not what it appears to be and the two realize they know each other from a different time, in a different place, when they were both very different people.

One: Cruel To Be Kind: Nick Lowe

Oh I can't take another heartache Though you say you're my friend, I'm at my wit's end You say your love is bonafide, but that don't coincide With the things that you do And when I ask you to be nice, you say

You've gotta be cruel to be kind, in the right measure Cruel to be kind, it's a very good sign Cruel to be kind, means that I love you, baby (You've gotta be cruel) You gotta be cruel to be kind

Richie Tozier didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life.

That wasn’t a very unique statement but Richie wasn’t a very unique person. An average guy who was as blind as a bat, born in bumblefuck nowhere and eventually making it out of there and into the big wild city, making a living working at a big-name magazine.

Okay, the last part was pretty impressive, but he didn’t actually work very hard for that job.

He used to dream of writing comedy. Of telling jokes or writing for amazing shows like Saturday Night Life or something on Comedy Central. He wanted to be a comedian. To make people laugh. Sure, he is seen as the funny guy around the watering tank, but thats just because the rest of the people he worked with were a bunch of yuppies with impressive college degrees and no real personalities. They’re no better than the robots who work for Buzzfeed.

They had paperback covers and an app for people who didn’t want to go to the store to buy an actual copy. They had their own YouTube channel that hit millions of hits thanks to interviews and other shit that Richie took part in.

When Bill decided he wanted to make this into a real thing, he wanted it to make some sense. It wasn’t some balls to the ball insanity mag that people read for juicy gossip. It was real. The people who subscribed were real and the people featured in it were real.

Richie’s writing, not so much.

He mostly did puff pieces. Little things that didn’t take a lot of effort but were mostly filler in between the larger stories. It was something Bill had done for them after the magazine got big. You see, he and Bill had been buddies in college. Both young and naive about the world. Neither really knew what they wanted, but they had dreams and that was all that mattered back then.

It was Bill that had the real talent with writing and despite publishers being interested, he never took into account just how much time, effort, and money went into getting a book published. Richie, always believing in his best friend, decided to give him all the cash he had saved up for spring break so he would make the first move on getting his novel out.

He didn’t mind much as he found that he could eat, sleep, and drink on the couch the same way he could out on the beach.  

That novel ended up being a best seller and skyrocketed Bill’s career. Bill always remembered that, so when his second and third books became such a thrill, he decided to take the chance and create a magazine and brought Richie along for the ride.

It was easy work and he made good money for doing very little, but he found that was the main cause of his quarter-life crisis. He wanted so much more than he had been given that Richie was actually feeling guilty for wanting more.

He had done stand up in the city and even took an improv class, but nothing seemed to stick to him. Now he was over thirty and found himself in a rut. He lived alone in a small apartment filled with things he didn’t need but purchased because he thought they would bring out a sense of excitement.

He was single, though that was a whole nother issue as it took Richie an embarrassingly long time to come to terms with his own sexuality. Growing up in a small town where people were cruel and the world didn’t understand left marks on an impressionable kid. It wasn’t until he was halfway through college that he did anything with a guy and well-passed gradation that he realized that it was more than okay to be gay, it was normal.

So yeah, he was open and fine with it, but still lonely as hell. He had been with people in the past, but he found that he mostly just shut himself off from the world. He wasn’t happy about anything anymore and it seemed the only thing that got him by was that ending it all would have proved his teenage bullies right; that he was better off dead.

And if there was anything Richie wanted to live for, it was spite.

And also music.

Despite not being musically inclined at all, Richie loved music with all his heart. He spent a good portion of his time listening to records as a kid. He used to go around carrying a walkman and CD player and Zune throughout his life. He paid for the mom's gigs on his phone because he needed to have all his favorite songs ready to blast at the tap of a finger.

While they already had a guy that wrote specifically about music for the magazine, he had always been able to sweet talk Bill into allowing him to have a few moments to shine and write something about some artist. Those were the pieces that really mattered to him. The ones that gave Richie the chance to dive deep into the thing he loved.

Sure, he had written a whole expose on Street Fighter and perhaps he did make a big deal out of the Star Wars franchise, but it was the moments when Richie could reel back and listen before writing that got him going.

They rarely did full-length articles on performers as the magazine was something of a clusterfuck of topics. Bill Denbrough never wanted to settle on just one thing. Paper Boat was more than just one specific topic. It was everything and they would be damned if they ever settled on its something.

But of course, now and then something would come along and the whole team would be scrambling to put together a magazine dedicated to that one specific person. It wasn’t always a celebrity. Bill meant what he said when he wanted to keep the magazine aimed at the everyday people.

Their biggest seller to date had been when they put out issues all about Ben Hanscom the architect. Richie had no idea why anybody would want to read about the guy other than to enjoy the pictures that were taken of him, but low and behold, the world wanted to know.

As it turned out, Ben was a decent human being who just wanted to make the world a better place and he also happened to be extremely hot while doing it. Who knew that was possible!

The physical copies sold out everywhere and the website crashed thanks to all the promotions they did on it. Like, what the actual fuck?

Bill was that good at what he did and it also helped that he was writing his books on the side. He had people from all over coming through wanting to see what they could do and it only proved to be more impressive as time went on.

Now the magazine needed something new, something fresh and it seemed Bill had it all planned out.

“Here at Paper Boat, we don’t choose a good looking celebrity because we want to make money. You know, I’m not going to call up Jennifer Aniston and ask her to do me a favor -- I could, but I won’t -- because that isn’t what we do here.” Bill explained as they went over the board meeting for the next issue. “The people featured on our cover are interesting. People who want to bring the world together and make a change. Or maybe they’re just batshit insane and look good while doing it. Who knows.”

A small array of laughter came over the place. Richie leaned back in his chair, half paying attention. He knew how these things went. Bill made a big, exciting speech before revealing who or what they’d be focusing on. The assignments would be passed around and Richie would be given something soft and fun.

He got the dumb shit that got the people who didn’t want to read involved. Sometimes he’d do interviews while vlogging. They’d try food they never tried before or do something stupid. One of the most interesting had been when he got assigned to interview Kristen Wiig while bobbing for apples. Certainly interesting and the flow to the website was wonderful.

Richie was the writer they went to when they wanted it to seem kitsch and gimmicky. Enough for it to garner actual attention, but nothing worth anybody's time.

He tossed his stress ball up in the air, catching it as it followed the natural path and came back down. He got bored easily as meetings like this and he waited for Bill to just get on with it and assign everybody their respected jobs.

Bill hit a button on his computer, revealing a picture that Richie was all too familiar with. It was of a punk rock band that he had followed since he graduated from college. Trashmouth was one of the greatest bands that had ever come into Richie’s life. They were like if Queen and the Ramones were put together, had a baby, and then that baby had a baby with Green Day: that weirdly insane combination would be Trashmouth.

There were five members, but the main focus was and always had been the lead singer and guitarist Dr. K. Nobody knew why he went by that nor did he ever give an answer. Richie had googled him a couple of times, wanting to find out more, but the guy was a fucking mystery. It was like he just appeared on the scene, completely out of his mind with cut off sleeves and steller vocals.

It was safe to say Richie had a big gay crush on Dr. K.

And that was fine because Dr. K was just as gay.

He had never been seen with anybody, always choosing to keep his personal life private, but his songs were obvious enough even if most of them seemed pretty genderless. He had done one interview where the person asking the questions kept using the term ‘she’ or ‘her’ until finally, the guy replied that he writes songs about guys.

That took the world by fucking storm and Richie Tozier had never been the same.

“Some of you may be familiar with Trashmouth. Multiple Grammy noms and wins. Always in the top 40 listings despite repeatedly being told that punk rock was dead.”

“Please tell me we’re going to be featuring the band,” Mike, the music specialist for the magazine, piped up eagerly.

“I can’t because we won’t,” Bill replied. “Our focus is on him.” Bill hit another button and a solo picture of Dr. K popped up.

Richie’s mouth was watering and he sat up straight. He had the same picture in a small poster in his apartment. It was set up alongside some other pictures in what he called his “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Wall” because he was just that big of a fan. He looked at it often, always finding himself thankful for all the music that had been created and got him through some pretty dark days as a kid.

Did it also help that Dr. K was incredibly attractive and gave Richie a little bit of encouragement just by looking so good? Yes, yes it did.

“It seems Dr. K will be going off on his own. My sources tell me he’ll be putting out a solo album by the end of the year and I want to know everything about it. Mikey, that’s your job. Speak to whoever you have to to find out what is going to be on that album. Audra, speak to the rest of the band, find out how they feel about the ending of an era. Georgie, get your camera ready because we’re doing a photo shoot with him in three days.”

“Who is doing the main exposé?” Greta asked, popping her gum as she spoke.

Bill smirked, turning back to his computer. “I’ll pick someone later. For now, you’re all dismissed.”

The group got up from their chairs and left Bill’s office. All except for Richie, who was too fucking flabbergasted to do a damn thing. As Bill began to head out, he finally scrambled to his feet to follow him. His long legs led him there quickly, though he mostly sidestepped around his coworkers to finally reach their boss.

“Bill! Big Bill! Wait up.” He called, following him to the elevator.

“What's up, Rich? I’m about to head out for lunch.” Bill said, turning to face him. “You hungry? We could check out that new sandwich place that opened across the way.

“Oh, no. I’m time. Stuffed.” Richie patted his stomach lamely, offering a large smile to his friend and boss. “Hey! So, just checking in to see about that latest pitch.”

“Oh right,” Bill paused, hitting the elevator button. “You were a fan of that band, right? Oof. Sorry about the breakup buddy. Haven’t you seen them like six times?”

“It’s sixteen, but that’s not important right now.” Richie corrected. “Bill. Buddy. You have to listen to me.”

“You got it, Rich.”

“I know you only trust me with the puff pieces because I’m not as talented as Mike or even Greta, but I need you to trust me on this.”

“You can do the exposé, Rich.”

“I have gotten better over time and I swear, if you just give me the chance, I promise. I won’t do a single embarrassing voice or anything to get Paper Boat blacklisted.”

“I’m sure you’ll embarrass yourself in one way or another, but that’s your issue. You have two days.”

“Until what?”

“Until your interview with Dr. K,” Bill said, stepping into the elevator as the doors opened. “If you’d stopped rambling you would have heard me tell you that you’re going to be the one doing the expose. You’ll be meeting him in two days, so you better come up with some good questions.”

“Holy shit,” Richie muttered.

“Holy shit, indeed Tozier,” Bill smirked. “I know you’ve been in some sort of funk lately, so I hope that this will shake you up a bit. Better keep your fanboy boner under control.” Bill warned, smiling as the elevator doors closed between them.

Whether Richie realized it or not, Bill believed in him and his writing ability. He may not have the raw talent like himself, but he knew what Richie was capable of. He has a way with people that allowed them to loosen up and relax and nothing was better for a good interview than someone comfortable with the person asking the questions.

Bill couldn’t think of a single person who would be better for this specific project and having Richie be an uber-fan of the artist was just a bonus. If Richie made an ass of himself, that would be his problem, not the magazines.

Richie stood there, not knowing what to do next. He looked to his watch, realizing he had less than 72 hours to come up with a buttload of questions for his idol. He ran back to his cubby to brainstorm.

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