#also take a wild guess who the scientists are bet you can’t

[cyncerity]

HEY EVERYONE IM MAKING A NEW AU I HAVE THOUSANDS OF WORDS TYPED ALREADY SO IM GONNA SPLIT IT UP

have fun with this with absolutely no context, i’ll explain it once i post all the parts but you’re all free to guess until then!! I’ve been having a lot of fun with this au and i wanna talk about it hsksksjshj

anyway, here’s part 1!

tw: vore

“We have to cut our losses here. We don’t have enough to fund this any longer, and there’s no one we can reach out to for more money. We can’t risk this getting out.”

“Fine, I- I know, it’s just…this is a breakthrough. We can’t afford to give up now.”

“We won’t. We just need some time to get back on our feet is all. Besides, he knows what to do now…” the scientists turned their heads to the one way mirror they stood behind. A little boy, barely a teenager, sat behind it on his bed, his eyes glassy and unblinking, turned a glossy pearlescent white. Their project, practically their life’s work. Well, the container for it, anyway.

***

Wilbur heard the three scientists come into the room, and somehow registered one of them motion vaguely with their hand despite his eyes being effectively turned off, which meant they wanted him back in their world. Ugh. Still, he cut off his thoughts with his other half practically (given that it’d been almost a decade since they’d been separated), eyes beginning to function again and the scientists approaching him as they saw his eyes shift back to the colors they were supposed to be.

“Wilbur, what we’re going to tell you is very, very important, so you have to listen carefully. It’s your life at stake if this goes wrong. And his.” The one in blue said, gesturing to Wilbur’s torso. Well, that was certainly a way to get his attention. Wilbur didn’t say a word, though; the green one didn’t like it when he ‘sassed them,’ so he instead scooted back and placed both arms protectively around himself and his…what did they call him once, ‘cargo’? He was sure he heard Green call him a ‘parasite’ once, which was rude. Still, they must have noticed his panic, cause the orange one responded immediately. “It’ll all be ok, things will just have to change for a minute. You’re…youre not going to be able to stay here for a while.” “What?!” Wilbur said, unable to restrain himself. The green one went to speak up but was silenced by Blue, who just whispered something about him being ‘scared’ and how this was ‘probably a lot to handle.’ Yeah, no shit it was!

“I get this is a huge change, I do, but it’s necessary for now. We don’t have the necessary resources to keep taking care of you here. We need to find a way to keep you safe and healthy, both of you. You’ll be staying somewhere secure while we find somewhere more reclusive to hide you. We don’t want anyone finding out anything and putting the two of you in danger.” Orange said, sitting next to Wilbur and rubbing a thumb across his knuckles. Right. Right, he had a purpose. And if part of his purpose was to survive without his caretakers for a short while, he could do it. If it meant safety for his stowaway, he could do it.

“You doin ok, bud?” Orange asked, and Wilbur nodded slightly. Orange was his favorite of the main three. He was always nice, and even gave him extra treats and toys when he was behaving! “When do you think you can be ready to leave, Wil?” Green asked, crouching to be at level with where he sat. “Whenever you need me to be, sir.” Green smiled and ruffled his hair. Wil always tried to be extra good for Green. It’s not like he didn’t like him, it’s just that Green was more likely to yell at him if he messed up. “Good kid. We’ll leave tomorrow morning and introduce you to who you’ll be staying with. Try to get some rest.” He said, smiling before leaving and leading the other two out with him.

He pressed into his core, feeling cold scales slither against his insides. He pressed in harder a few times and they pressed back, signaling that they’d heard everything. Wilbur pat down a few times and released the pressure, lying back onto his bed carefully to not jostle the weight inside of him.

This was going to be interesting.

#sorry this part is shorter #this is gonna be cut into 3 or 4 shorter segments instead of just posting one giant ass unreadable thing all at once #cyncerity #mcyt g/t #mcyt gt #tw vore #cynwrites #g!wilbur #t!??? #also take a wild guess who the scientists are bet you can’t #<- that was sarcasm theyre exactly who you think they are #ooooo mystery time #dw all will be revealed shortly #>:) #also if you scrolled this far you get the name of the au! yay! #and its… #alien terrarium au #wow i wonder what you can figure out from that name 👀

[valdomarx]

Inseparably Entwined

Stargate Atlantis, McKay/Sheppard, bound together, 2k, rated M

-

Elizabeth pinches the bridge of her nose. "What did you two do now?"

"We. Uhh. We found another Ancient device."

"And, instead of cataloguing it for a hazmat team to investigate, as per protocol, you decided to play with it?"

“To investigate it,” Rodney corrects. “Like the competent professionals we are.” John punches him in the arm.

Elizabeth's lips purse into a thin line. "And then you accidentally activated it?"

John winces. "And then we accidentally activated it."

"Of course you did. And its effects are…?"

"Non lethal," Rodney says, a bit too quickly. 

Elizabeth mumbles something that might be don't bet on it under her breath. "Non lethal, but…?"

John shifts his weight and stares at a point behind her head. "McKay and I have to stay within ten feet of each other at all times or we both pass out."

For a moment there is stunned silence. Then the sound of Elizabeth's bark of laughter fills the office and spills out into the gate room.

-

Carson waves a hand. “You’re both going to be fine. It looks like the bond is only temporary.”

Rodney fidgets. “How temporary?”

“I couldn’t say. A few days, maybe a few weeks?”

“Weeks?” John chokes out. “Listen, doc, we need you to fix this -”

Carson cuts him off. “I’m sorry, son, but I’ve got more important things on my plate right now.” He looks pointedly around the infirmary which is admittedly full of marines being treated for combat injuries, Athosians coming in for checkups, and troops of medical staff organizing vaccinations for off-world groups.

John deflates. “So we’re stuck with each other?”

Carson pats him on the shoulder. “Good luck.”

Rodney looks up at that. “Hey!”

-

“Absolutely not.” John recoils in horror. “We are not sleeping in your room.”

“But all my stuff is in there.”

“Your room is disgusting. If you think I’m sleeping on the floor among half-finished bags of cheetos and bits of drones, you are sorely mistaken. It’s a wonder you haven’t attracted the Lantean equivalent of rats.”

“I’ll have you know the bags of cheetos are almost entirely finished.”

“Rodney -”

“Alright! We’ll sleep in your oh-so-tidy quarters. Military spick and span, no snacks or useful bits of machinery in sight.” Rodney rounds on him, waving a finger in his face. “But if I get an inspired idea in the middle of the night and can’t find a circuit board to test it on, know that it’s your stubbornness that is robbing humanity of another of my great concepts.”

John hides a smile. “I’ll have to find a way to live with myself.”

-

When the doors to John’s quarters slide open, Rodney’s jaw drops.

“Hey! How come you have a bigger bed than me?”

John shoots him a smug look. “I upgraded after the last attack. Benefits of command.” It was one of the very few benefits of command he was willing to take advantage of.

“Oh, that’s how it is, hmm? We’re living in a military dictatorship here, with all the best perks and boons given to the highest ranking officers? Never mind that it’s the scientists who do all the actual work, who discover new technology and solve the problems, oh no, let’s give out the biggest and comfiest beds to the military guys, as if that’s fair -”

“McKay!” he interrupts. Rodney looks like he’s having fun, gearing up for a good rant, but John honestly can’t take it right now. “Go to sleep, I’m begging you.”

Rodney huffs, clearly saving that rant away for another time. “Fine.”

-

John is woken up for the third time that night by Rodney fidgeting on the floor and sighing dramatically. 

“What is it, McKay?” His voice is testy. He doesn’t love having his sleep interrupted.

“I can’t get comfortable. A sleeping bag on the floor is bad for my back.”

John stares at the ceiling and counts to ten. He looks at the ample space next to him and calculates his best odds of getting some sleep tonight. “Come here and share the bed with me then.”

Rodney eyes his mattress dubiously. “I’ll have you know I require a very firm mattress, for spinal support, not that I’d expect you to understand -”

“For god’s sake, get in the bed. It has to be better than the floor.”

A moment’s pause. “Yeah, alright.”

It’s been a long time since John slept next to someone. His rare hookups have mostly involved sneaking out in the middle of the night, and even when he was married they slept in separate beds most of the time. 

Sleeping next to Rodney is, surprisingly, not awful though. Sure, he steals all the covers and moves around all the time and, of course, he snores, but John finds that he strangely doesn’t mind. 

-

John has seen Rodney under fire, seen him at his best, seen him happy and sad and angry and bored. But he’s never seen him first thing in the morning before.

“Whazzat?” Rodney’s eyes barely open. His expression is one of overriding confusion. “Whzz going on?”

John stifles a smile at his resident genius. He’s been up for an hour already, showered, done his laundry, and cleaned his space. He’s also decided to play nice and share his secret.

“Here,” he says, and hands a mug of freshly brewed coffee to Rodney. “Just don’t tell anyone I snuck coffee and a kettle into my personal effects, or the scientists will raid us in the middle of the night.”

“Coffee!” Rodney is still radiating confusion, but he hones in on the cup of coffee like a laser. A blissful smile passes over his face. “You brought me coffee.”

“I did.”

“You’re wonderful.” Rodney takes the coffee and cradles it like something precious and rare.

-

After a day and a half doing paperwork in the lab because they can't go off-world, John has reached the end of his rope. 

"I'm going to the gym," he snaps. "You can either come with me or we'll both end up in the infirmary when I try to go there alone."

Rodney glares and is clearly about to start arguing when Zelenka elbows him. He sighs dramatically but agrees that they can take an hour away. 

While they're both in the gym and John needs a sparring partner, he figures he might as well teach Rodney some self defense. The idea of Rodney needing to defend himself makes something unpleasant twist in his gut, but he pushes that away and argues they should make the most of this time and do something productive. To his surprise, Rodney agrees, and they run through some basic drills and defensive maneuvers. 

Rodney is bad at this, frankly. He's all elbows and poor coordination, but he's trying. 

John is feeling magnanimous, and he knows the value of a bit of positive reinforcement. So when Rodney steps forward and attempts a clumsy hip throw, he leans in and lets himself be thrown. 

Rodney looks astonished that actually worked, before delightedly pouncing on John and pinning him to the floor.

"Got you," he says, face pink and grinning wickedly. 

John's heart picks up, somehow distracted by Rodney's heavy weight on him and the sharp brightness of his smile. He swallows thickly. 

"I guess you do."

-

“Geez, Sheppard, how long does it take to have a shower?” Rodney’s voice carries through the bathroom door. “I want to run some simulations on the city’s power systems with Zelenka.”

John’s cheeks flush and he tries to tune Rodney out. “Just give me a minute, will you?”

“What are you doing in there anyway, jerking off?”

John goes very, very still.

“Oh my god, you are!”

“Shut up, McKay.”

“No, no, don’t let me stop you. You go ahead and enjoy yourself.”

“I hate you.”

“I’m not judging. It’s perfectly natural. And hey, maybe it’ll help you chill the fuck out for once.”

John scowls, gives up, and shoves his dick back in his pants. “I will kill you in your sleep.”

-

John is used to having to drag McKay around after him on missions, so in some ways their new situation isn’t entirely unfamiliar. 

Tac vests are useful for that; full of hand holds he can grab when he needs McKay to get down under cover or to stop him from wandering off to look at some shiny piece of technology. When Rodney is in uniform, he can grab the collar of his shirt, though Rodney complains that it creases the fabric horribly.

So John finds a compromise. When he has stuff to do and Rodney is dawdling, he grabs his hand and steers him in the right direction. After a while it becomes second nature - whenever there’s danger or something important is happening, he takes Rodney’s hand and they set off to deal with it together.

If any of the marines find it funny to see their commander holding hands with the head of science during a crisis, none of them dares to mention it.

-

John is carefully, carefully tending to his hair. Just the right amount of product, to spike it just the right amount to look effortless. He tweaks and ruffles, tugs and shapes. This is an art form which requires judicious maintenance. 

“Oh, for the love of -” Rodney grabs the tub of hair wax out of his hands. “We’ll be here all day. Let me.”

He steps forward and slides his hands into John’s hair, ruffling it vigorously. His fingers are firm on John’s scalp and he tugs just on the right side of too hard.

Rodney steps back and surveys his work. “That’ll do.”

John glances in the mirror and sees a chaotic, wild mess. He looks like he’s run a marathon, with his pink cheeks and mussed hair, or like he’s rolled out of bed after a night of passion.

“Rodney! I can’t go out like this.”

“Oh, shut up. You look smoking hot, like you always do.”

That’s… What? What does that mean? Why the hell would Rodney say that?

“Come on,” Rodney is saying, already on his way out the door. John has to run after him, cheeks still flushed.

-

They find a rhythm.

John gets up first and puts the coffee on while he showers. He’s given up on trying to tidy Rodney’s side of the room, so he lets the piles of circuit boards and screwdrivers sprout up where they will. Once Rodney is up they get breakfast at the mess, then he spends the morning doing paperwork and writing reports in the science lab while Rodney works. They meet Teyla and Ronon for lunch, then he spends the afternoon drilling the marines while Rodney taps away at a laptop. Evenings, they bicker over which movies to watch in their quarters and throw popcorn at each other.

Elizabeth even agrees to let them travel to the mainland, and then to go on low-stakes reconnaissance missions. 

It’s… comfortable, he realizes. It works.

That thought makes something twist in his chest, and he doesn’t know why.

-

“Morning, sunshine.” John pours Rodney a cup of coffee.

“Mmm.” Rodney is still sleep-rumpled, but he struggles upright and smiles softly. “Morning.”

As he hands over the coffee, Rodney catches his wrist and holds him there. He looks down at the mug, then back up at John. John notices in an abstract way that his eyes are very, very blue.

“Thanks,” Rodney says, and pecks him on the lips.

Right. Okay. That’s a thing. That’s a thing they’re doing now.

John is still processing as Rodney gets up and heads for the shower. “I’ve got a meeting with Miko this morning,” he says over his shoulder, normal as ever, “so we might have to push our gym session back by half an hour -”

He keeps chattering away while John sits on the bed and has a minor crisis. Did they… do they… but that would mean…

By the time Rodney is out of the shower, John has made a decision. 

He doesn’t allow himself to overthink it, he just takes Rodney’s face in his hands and kisses him deeply. Rodney’s arms tighten around his waist and his tongue slips into his mouth and oh. Oh yes. That’s good.

John’s a little breathless, a little dizzy. “Are we really doing this?” he asks.

Rodney’s face scrunches up in amusement. “I think we’ve been doing this for weeks.”

Yeah. Okay. That’s a fair point.

The tense feeling that’s been winding around his chest uncoils, and in its place is nothing but blooming warmth.

“I guess we have.”

-

EPILOGUE

“Carson.” Elizabeth looks up from where she’s frowning at a tablet and gives him a polite nod. “Thanks for stopping by.”

“Any time,” Carson says, and means it. “What can I do for you?”

“I was hoping to get an update on the situation with John and Rodney. We really do need them to get back on full duty soon.”

“Ahh.” He’s been carefully avoiding that topic. He takes a breath. “To be honest with you, the bond between them wore off days ago. They could go their separate ways now and be none the worse for it.”

Elizabeth’s eyebrows fly upward toward her hairline. “And you haven’t told them yet?”

“See, at first they were in the infirmary every day asking for an update. But they haven’t been in for over a week and -”

“And?”

“They seem…” he pauses, contemplating his choice of words, “... happy.”

Elizabeth’s mouth twitches into a quickly suppressed smile. “That may be, but you have a professional responsibility.”

“Aye, you’re right. I’ll go and tell them the effects of the device have run their course.”

“Well…” Elizabeth looks thoughtful. “You have a professional responsibility to give them accurate medical information when they ask for it.”

Carson sees where she’s going with this. “And until then?”

Elizabeth shrugs and gives him a sly look. “They do seem happy.”

#mcshep #stargate atlantis #my writing #sometimes you must write the fic you want to see in the world

[lisinfleur]

Bond

The request:

Author’s Notes | A cute request! I hope you enjoy! 

Universe | Vikings

Pairing | Ivar x Reader

Info | Modern AU, requested by anon for 5CW7

Words | 1684

⁑ Warnings: None

He remembers that the first time he found that little thing it was on the edge of the road, closer to the limits of his property barking and whining. On the other side of the road, near the woods, the rest of the litter left with the mother and Ivar understood what was happening, coming out of the car to look after the little one: the litter was abandoning the weaker and that poor little thing was left behind.

It was snowing. The road was a dangerous boundary. The little pup was left behind by the rest of the wolves for he wasn't able to follow the bigger ones across the road.

A wolf that couldn't follow the litter would pull it back, make is slower. Ivar knew pretty well that feeling of being left behind, considered the weaker, the weight that would pull everyone back or slow everybody. He could remember the many times he stayed home while his brothers were going out for parties and social events he would lie telling them he didn't want to go. He just didn't want them to be slowed down by his need for a wheelchair when he was younger.

That little pup was like him. And like his mother, he stayed back, taking off his scarf to try and pick the little one up.

However, despite being the weaker of his litter, like Ivar himself, that little pup was still a wolf. Ivar smiled when he started barking and growling towards him, bravely facing the bigger animal that his instincts considered a threat.

He wasn't weak. He just wasn't like the others somehow, but he wasn't weak. Ivar smiled: the little thing wouldn't come with him, but he knew without the proper care, that lone little wolf would die in the cold winter. So, Ivar came closer causing the little one to bark some times more, growling and walking back towards the woods until he was unsafe enough to run back to the trees and reveal Ivar where he was hiding: a huge tree with a small hole in the middle of its roots was serving as a lair for the little one. The place should probably be enough for the whole litter, but only he remained alone.

Ivar came closer, leaving the scarf at the entrance and pulling away, watching from far as the little one pulled the scarf into the lair.

He would be warm for that night.

Before leaving, Ivar ensured the fence would be properly closed to avoid that little thing to get hurt on the road. The lair was inside his property, so he could ensure the little one would be safe.

Through the next days, he came back to check on the pup, always bringing something with him. A small blanket, some meat... Slowly the little pup started to come out, closer and closer to him, trusting him more and more until he was finally able to touch the little one without being bitten.

Ivar knew he shouldn't be intending to domesticate a wild wolf, but he also knew that pup wouldn't last long without his family, so, if he could provide that little one home, why not? It would be a huge pet - the wolf was growing bigger and Ivar could already notice he was starting to dig around the lair's entrance, trying to make it bigger for him to go inside.

It was when that started... Ivar had planned to go there and help the little one, but when he arrived, the entrance of the lair was already bigger... And it wasn't marked by paws so it wasn't his little wolf's work.

Ivar also found some other stuff near the lair that wasn't his stuff...

The pup came closer, playing with him, now fully used to his presence. However, Ivar wasn't happy: someone was breaking into his fence and messing with HIS wolf.

To be sure he wasn't wrong about the invasion, he placed the fence in a different position being sure the wolf wouldn't be able to mess with it, but a human being would have to mess with the position to come in and out of that fence.

And the next day, there it was! The fence was messed just as he predicted and more things were there. Traces of meat and his wolf well fed.

"Who the fuck... Oh, but I'll get you!"

Whoever was invading his property, was doing it early in the morning or late in the night. By the traces of fresh meat near the wolf and in his fur, Ivar deduced that the person had come and gone before him, right before he came. So, he decided to set up a trap at the fence this time to warrant the person would be caught in his fence and not being able to leave unless it was decided to give up on its trousers!!

"Next morning I'll see your damn face, invader..."

Annoyed, Ivar left waiting to come the next morning to find anyone: one of his neighbors trying to poison the animal, some asshole from these scientific labs around the town... Anyone!

Anyone but a girl almost crying with her trousers caught by his trap at the fence...

"Dear gods! Thank you!" you thanked looking up to the sky before looking at him "Hey, you... You, please... Help me!" you asked.

Ivar looked at you surprised: you really didn't have any idea of who he was?

"Someone settled a trap and I think it hurt my leg... Please, can you help me? I can't lose these pants. Shit... I just came to help the little wolf that's living here near the road. I never thought someone would set a trap in a place like this. I bet it was one of those stupid scientists trying to catch the wolf!" you complained, seeing as Ivar came closer, dismounting the trap easily, confusing your mind.

But everything made sense when he looked at you, feeling guilty.

"I did. I settled the trap," he admitted, releasing you from that embarrassing situation.

"Why have you done that?" you asked surprised.

"It's my property. And I was helping the wolf as well. I thought it could be one of my neighbors trying to poison the little one. I just wanted to keep him safe," he rehearsed an apology, but you smiled instead of being angry.

"So... You're the one who brought that warm scarf..." you said, and he nodded, causing you to extend your hand towards him. "I'm Y/N, the substitute momma-wolf... I guess we're parents of the same child here..."

The joke caused Ivar to frown but, at the same time, he smiled thinking it was sweet that you were calling yourself that way.

"I'm Ivar," he answered causing you to finally recognize him with a surprised expression.

"Ivar Ragnarsson? You mean THIS Ivar?" you took a magazine from your bag where it was easy to see his image at the cover. "Shit... Daddy-wolf is a celebrity!" you joked and this time he couldn't avoid smiling.

"I never thought myself this way, I mean... daddy-wolf..."

That was childish. But charming at the same time. Ivar couldn't deny you were a sweet and pretty woman indeed.

You smiled at him and sighed.

"Well, I guess you won the guard of our child..." you kept that joke, but with a tone of sadness. "It's your property after all, and you're surely more empowered to keep the little one safe. I think he'll be fine without me, then."

"I was thinking about taking him home. He's practically tamed and to leave him alone in the woods would be dangerous to him so..." Ivar started, trying to find a way to approach. "Would you like to help me with this, momma-wolf?" he joked back, causing you to giggle.

"It would be good. I can't go work anyway," you shrugged, pointing your ragged pants.

Ivar sighed.

"I'm sorry, I..."

"Hey, that's fine," you smiled touching his shoulder. "Ragged trousers for a new friendship? It seems a good deal for me."

Your smile was so charming and, somehow, he felt bewitched by the sweetness in your way to see things. Maybe it could be more than just friendship if he was lucky enough.

"You help me to put him on the cage and I'll teach you the way to my house, so you can come and see him whenever you want," he suggested, causing another beautiful smile to open in your mouth.

"Insert a coffee in this deal and you'll have me visiting every day," you joked with a smile.

And Ivar took his chance, smiling back.

"I have a coffee maker and a collection of capsules with different blends," he said, looking at you. "If you come every day, I think I earn a year of good conversations."

Whether you were raving or that amazingly beautiful man was hitting on you... Better not to lose the chance, right?

"I think you just earned your year, Daddy-wolf," you smiled.

His lips curled in a beautiful and attractive way, almost proud he just got what he wanted.

"We can start our year by talking about what will be the name of our son..." he said, opening the fence for you to come in and you smiled at his way to get into your game.

You never thought that stopping there for that pup would bring you such good luck. Maybe it was a good thing to think about his name...

"We should call him Even..." you said, coming closer when the little wolf left the hole coming close to you, touching your hand with his snout.

Ivar smiled.

"’Lucky’... It seems a good name. Then Even will be."

You smiled at him as the wolf shook his tail towards him as well, seeming to be happy to see the two of you at the same time. Maybe the little one was planning that meeting after all. One way or another, Ivar was sure that wouldn't be the last time you would see each other.

He would ensure that, for sure.

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#history vikings #imagine vikings #ivar #ivar the boneless #ivar imagine #ivar x reader #ivar x OC #ivar ragnarsson #ivar lothbrok #ivar's heathen army #sister wives #5CW #5CW Event #5CWIvar2 #headcanon #shot

[the-rodent-gentleman]

About Fethry

I may or may not have a galaxy take concerning how the Ducktales reboot could go about with Cousin Fethry in future episodes.

OK, we know that Fethry’s been on his own for a while - 4 years to be precise - but beyond his debut episode, we know little about him. Those asides we get from him, though, do paint potentially interesting possibilities for his character. First, the show never addressed how messed up it was that Scrooge just left him down in that undersea lab for so long. I bet you Della doesn’t know either or else she would have some words (and no doubt will if she ever finds out), especially since she could relate with Fethry on being alone for so long.

Second, bringing back Fethry wouldn’t be out of place for Season 3. Keep in mind how the triplets’ character development has been handled throughout the show. Season 1 focused on Dewey; 2 on Louie; and now 3 is centering around Huey - and the show has made a clear point that the adult he has most in common with is Fethry.

For one, it’s clear by this point that Huey is coded as autistic (Astro BOYD for instance) and Fethry could likely be as well, or at least neurodivergent. Plus, as we can see from certain episodes, especially the “Sword of Swinestatine”, Huey’s got an inner wildness deep down and while Fethry saying stuff like “you’re not going anywhere” in his debut is played off as a joke, I genuinely think he’s got a little darkness of his own hidden inside, too. Speaking of hidden, I’d like to point out this post Frank answered.

‘One dumb secret’ implies whatever Fethry’s got to share won’t be all that important...supposedly. We’ve all seen how deceptive this reboot can be when it comes to giving out details, let alone how easily things can snowball in canon.

In fact, this answer only refers to one action of Fethry, not his entire role - and considering we’ve seen how off-putting he can unintentionally be to his relatives, I bet you letting whatever this secret is slip would not result in pleasant reactions from those around him, let alone Donald or Scrooge - and we’ve already learned their general opinions regarding Fethry.

In which case, perhaps the negative reactions would serve as ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’. He did say he intended to be a scientist for real at the end of his first appearance, so chances are he’s run into snags with people (employers no less) dismissing him for the same reasons his family has, a struggle neurodivergent adults could identify with.

And so he gets fed up and shows us a side of himself we’re not prepared to see: not raging or screaming, just eerily calm and perhaps a even a touch passive-aggressively sassy. Something small but significant enough to show us this ball of sunshine is not kidding around.

Now where the show could take an episode like this is anyone’s guess.

Regardless, here would be a perfect chance for us to get to know Fethry better as a character. Huey, who’s dealt with similar struggles, could accompany him so we can hear Fethry’s side of the story, see what he’s been up to and going through since we last saw him. Now Fethry is anything but conventional, and since going about things the conventional way didn’t work out, perhaps he’s been doing things his own way to compensate. Maybe he’s even been having his own adventures as a means of supporting himself because would that really be so farfetched? He is a McDuck after all. Not just that but since the tussles with FOWL are becoming more prominent as the season continues, an episode like this would insure we’d be in for some quality interactions between him and characters like Black Heron or Steelbeak. Especially Steelbeak. Now let me make something clear. I am a filthy Fethsteel shipper and would gladly barf rainbows from seeing these two meet, but let’s put that aside and focus on the high potential for not just character building on both characters’ counts but humor as well.

For starters, Steelbeak’s already tussled with Huey before and experienced what this kid is capable of. Imagine Steel’s reaction when he meets this unassuming-looking guy who, even just from appearance alone, has a lot in common with the same kid that whooped his ass, so this big doof will no doubt be expecting some hardened badass only to get an adorkable dweeb...who also happens to be a hardened badass. Keep in mind that in his first episode Fethry talked about pirates like he’d dealt with them before. What if he wasn’t kidding about that and had actually gone toe to toe against such people? What if Steelbeak demands a fight and Fethry keeps politely insisting no and this goes on and on until Steelie gets fed up and tries to go after Huey (he’s dealt with the kid before) only for Fethry to take him down the same way Huey did? This would be a serious wake up call for not just Huey but we the audience as well, not to mention a note of assurance for him. Just because people think he’s ‘weird’ is no reason for him to believe he can’t be happy and fulfilled as an adult - and that would be a wonderful lesson to give us, especially the neurodivergent. In terms of comedy, here we have Steelbeak, a criminal and bully-like figure, who has officially gotten his butt handed to him by two nerds. While his pride would no doubt be hurting, recall that what this guy lacks in technical intellect he makes up for in brawn - and I can see him seeing Fethry in an utterly different light. A respectful light. A rivalry-fueled light.  Yes, Agent-freaking-Steelbeak forging a one-sided rival’s feud with an ocean-obsessed cinnamon roll who is utterly oblivious to it all and just sees a tall guy who really needs to work on his anger issues and thinks could be a good friend if he put in the effort to be. Whether you ship this two or not doesn’t even matter. The hilarity alone would be legendary. No, Steelbeak does want not any of your relaxation music playlists. No, he does not want to ‘hang out’ to discuss the effects of pollution on coral reefs. No he could not care less about what you saw a bunch of glowing shrimp doing the other...wait, are they making shapes? Are they a boxing glove? That’s kinda cool, he guesses. In short, rivals to frenemies. Let this possibility sink in for a moment.

#Fethry #Steelbeak #Ducktales 2017 #theory #fethsteel #character building #character development #long post

[imagine-organization-xiii]

Have you done something along the lines of the org finding out they are intrested in someone who is afraid of them?

We only did one for Xemnas! warning for a few spoilers in xigbar’s, but i’m pretty sure everyone should know about it by now

Friendly reminder to get ready to VOTE

Xemnas - You can find this one here!

Xigbar - you’re afraid of Xigbar because you don’t know who he is. No, really, and Xigbar understands. Sometimes he forgets who he is - from Braig to Xigbar to Luxu to something else entirely that isn’t really any of the three - it’s hard to be in a relationship with someone when you’re so terrified of what can only be described as their multiple personalities. But he’s also a hell of a conversationalist, and he does his best to put you at ease with his naturally casual nature and enticing words. You fall for it, everyone always does, but there will always be something about him that seems out of place to you.

Xaldin - even before he was a nobody, people would cross the street to avoid having to walk near him. He’s an intimidating guy, he gets it, and he’s dangerous and powerful and he can and HAS hurt people. Imagine his surprise when he realizes that, no, it isn’t that you’re afraid of him, it’s more that you liked him almost as much as he liked you and you didn’t want to overwhelm or smother him with what you thought was unrequited affection

Vexen - Vexen gives the phrase ‘mad scientist’ new meaning, so some of his actions make you afraid to be around him. Dabbling with things out of his control, trying to change the forces of nature... it makes you both nervous and intrigued. Vexen is focused on what he’s doing - he’s a single-minded, goal-oriented person, so it takes him a while to realize that, hey, maybe if you tone down the crazy a bit you might get a significant other who could be your partner in all things. It takes an intervention from some of the other members to get him to chill out, and even then, it takes a lot of effort on his part to get you to look twice at him without fear.

Lexaeus - his sheer size alone makes people hesitant to be around him, so he doesn’t blame you for being afraid of him. Your avoidance hurts his feelings a bit, but there isn’t really much he can do about it. He leaves you to your own devices and resolves to not have your affections returned, and it takes the interference of Zexion to reassure you that Lexaeus is nothing more than a giant teddy bear with the people he cares about. It takes a while, but after observing him when you can, you realize that Zexion is right and you take your own steps to get closer to Lexaeus, realizing that he is definitely worth the effort to get to know.

Zexion - Zexion has always been a bit of a weird kid - he was too quiet and he always knew too much and he always stared at people like he knew their innermost thoughts, so the idea that he might know more about than you know about yourself frightens you. He can’t help the way that he is - it’s just part of his personality and he sees things better when he’s observant and silent, not noisy and talkative. You can learn a lot about a person by just watching them, and he’d be happy to teach you if you let him.

Saix - Fear is a valuable thing to Saix. He likes being feared; it makes many situations in life a lot easier than they would be otherwise. You are already wary of him before you meet him - stories and rumors from others about how emotionless he is, how scary and ruthless he can be even with people who can be considered allies, and there is a tiny bit of regret in him because he never wants to fearsome to you, especially when he wants you to be his partner.

Axel - Axel doesn’t really see how he can be scary - he’s friendly and open and funny and he likes it when he can make people smile - but it takes Roxas all but spelling it out for him for Axel to understand what makes him scary - he’s dangerous. In the wild, the predators with the most beautiful coats are usually ones that are the most vicious, so Roxas stresses that Axel shouldn’t hold your hesitation against you. Axel is dangerous, after all, more so than some of the other organization members at times. It will just take a little effort on his part to get you to see that fire can be warm and comforting instead of just burning pain.

Demyx - Demyx thinks that you may be afraid of him because there’s more to him than meets the eye - and that more makes you nervous. There’s a lot that he doesn’t tell other people, but he doesn’t really want to take any chances with you, so he’ll tell you anything you want to know as long as you give him a chance. Just listen!!! He’ll be a loyal boyfriend if you manage to get over your fear of him - and when you find out what he’s hiding, you’ll understand.

Luxord - Luxord is scary because he leaves too many things up to chance. You need reassurance, you need certainty, not guessing and betting. Your fear isn’t necessarily because of him, it’s more of a fear of uncertainty and the unknown. An easy fix, overall, but he’s happy with just being your friend for a while if that’s what would make you feel more comfortable. Once you get used to his own actions and personality, when you’re more in tune with how the two of you work together, that’s when he’ll approach you about an actual relationship - when you’re ready.

Marluxia - Marluxia is a deadly, dangerous flower, poisonous and yet wrapped into a pretty package. He turns on the charm when it comes to you but you’re always worried about some ulterior motive, so you keep your distance. He’s beautiful and wonderful and the idea of being with someone like him makes you uneasy, but you know that he can make you happy - that he can have a significant impact on your life - so you need to prepare him for the time it takes you to get used to being near him.

Larxene - Larxene lives to be feared, but not necessarily by you. She likes you, she wants to date you, and she doesn’t want you to be afraid of her, but your feelings are made pretty obvious when you tend to avoid her more often than not. She wants a partner to be able to stand beside her without fear, not cower in fear somewhere else, so if she kind of begins to lower her guard a bit around you, just so you can see that she isn’t something to be feared by you, then that’s no one else’s business. (and god help anyone who bothers to point it out in front of her)

Roxas - Roxas is sometimes afraid of himself so I mean, can he really blame you? It’s super frustrating at times, but he gets it. However, he realizes that there’s nothing else for him to do except be himself. If you can’t accept him as he is, then your relationship wouldn’t work anyway, right? So he lets you get used to his personality and actions as he is. If it takes a while for you to get used to him, then so be it.

Xion - Xion is actually kind of offended that you’re afraid of her because she isn’t exactly the most intimidating person in the world. You’re hesitant and nervous around her because she’s so quiet, so mysterious, you know so little about her and she knows so little about herself. The mystery makes you hesitant despite your attraction to her, and, okay, maybe she understands that, because it’s better to deal with the devil you know than one that is unfamiliar. So she takes her time, is kind and sweet and tries her best to be herself without being too secretive, and you decide that her sweet-nature cannot possibly be hiding something evil.

#organization xiii headcanons #kingdom hearts headcanon

[jelloopy]

Murder on The Rockport Limited Notes

Previous: Character Creation, HtbG, Moonlighting

Ch 1

Robbie is a halfling who is pretty shitty but he’s good at making “potions” (Robbie is the roommate that everyone really hates but doesn’t want him to leave because he is their plug)

Taako is on the top bunk, Magnus is under Taako, Robbie is next to Taako and Merle is under Robbie

They are woken up at 3 am to report to Lucretia (3 am really?)

”Yeah it’s like Mario Mario or Luigi Mario” ~Griffin (This is so funny because this actually proves that Taako’s last name really is Taaco. Before Justin played it as a joke but this kinda derails that)

Robbie asks them for Pringles when they leave (Thus the beginning of me and the boys not remembering him by anything other than Pringles)

They arrive in their PJs (Taako is in footie pajamas and Merle’s has a flap in at the butt with a Kenny Chesney tattoo on his ass) (When the hell did Merle get that tattoo. Also, why is Lucretia in her full BoB garb right now? Was she asleep and get changed really quickly? Do her robes double as PJ’s? Did she just not go to sleep?)

Taako says he gets night terrors that’s why he’s in like a full-body Onesie/sleeping bag (That is so fricking sad if you think about his backstory later on…)

Magnus just starts changing clothing right then and there when Lucretia tells them that they don’t have time to get ready (This man really has no shame or boundaries. I imagine it was the same in the century tbh)

Leimann Kessler (half-elf man) was murdered before he was even on the train but was able to secure the Relic on the train (Personally, don’t know a lot about how trains work but this to me is kinda odd. Who knew he died? Do their bracers know when the wearer perishes? Is there like a body temp check and a pulse check in there too? We know that it can track them but… how much more can it do…)

All the relics come from a different school of magic. They were never in the hands of someone long enough to learn what they are capable of (Potentially this is a lie. We would have already known the names, schools of magic, and possibly what they could do based upon that alone. I bet Lucretia is hiding that info in her office)

The Gauntlet deals with Evocation magic (Hmmm, I can only imagine why. Maybe because Lup also worked in Evocation magic?)

Avi is manning the cannon! The whole scene with Magnus High as hell. Avi Never learned how to Wink (Avi you’re adorable I love you. Magnus. Get your shit together man.)

Taako pulls the lever too early and they change trajectory into a swamp

Leech fight! (I honest to god forgot this even happened before listening to it again. Not my fave fight)

Ch 2

Merle gets a lot of blood sucked from him by the leeches

Merle is completely submerged in the swamp and Magnus pulls his ass out (Why is it always Merle)

”Scientists have yet to agree” ~Griffin (I personally use this phrase all the time. It just makes me laugh so hard every time.)

Taako can levitate (I really wished he used this more ngl. I would also like to see some more fanart of this)

They are in Rockport! Covered in swamp shit!

Tom Beaudette! We see his house and they get hosed off then they see him at the ticket station again. (What a nice guy!)

Leimann, Diddly, and Justin Kessler (10/10 best alias’ ever)

Taako Charms Tom (It’s a nice go-to huh?)

Merle really wants to murder tom he wanted him to step in front on the train (Merle really is the one who goes straight for murder)

Ch 3

Hudson, Jess the Beheader, Graham Juicy Wizard, ANGUSSSSSSSS, and Jenkins McShittywizard (My favorite train gang!)

Travis making fun of Griffin for how he needs to sleep with 100000000 pillows (I cherish all of these out of character bits where they really just dog on one another)

Angus, my sweet summer child don’t talk to strangers. We know your grandfather’s name was long forgotten even though you’re going to visit him in Never Winter.

The boys legit think Angus is evil and Griffin yells at them bc they are being racist. (1- how are they being legit racist? You haven’t introduced anything about Angus’ race at all?) (2- Jesus he is only 10 years old my dudes)

Graham is 36 years young and is crazy obsessed with trains and his real name is Percy? He is shadowing Jenkins in hopes of learning more about working on a train

Taako from TV! (And so his legend begins!)

Ch 4

Jenkins is harnessing a limited version of teleportation magic

Angus calling the boys out on their bullshit

Taako calling Angus “pumpkin” (Literally melts my heart. I wish someone called me cute nicknames. Also, Taako hasn’t even talked to this kid that much and that name is reoccurring)

Angus has a nondescript blue book that is able to intercept messages sent through magical means (Where did this child get this book and who let him keep it? This is legit just like letting children under 13 have access to the unrestricted internet. It’s literal Hell)

The bit with Angus and “PRYING EYES AND EARS!” (uh foreshadowing my guy)

They find “Jenkins” Dead body after hearing Graham scream

Merle is able to identify a lot of things by looking at the body (It still scares me that he is technically a Physician.)

Angus pulls a small CROSSBOW OUT OF HIS SLEEVE? (Where did he get this, how did he keep it from Hudson, Why the fuck does he have it)

Angus really said “you guys run I’ll get rid of him!” and grabs Graham and runs (How strong is this child. He’s legit lifting and pulling a grown-ass man without help)

”I’m following Angus I’ll see yall in hell!” ~Taako (Yes follow the badass 10-year old please)

”I wanna tell you about the time about this time there were three ogres…”~Taako

The Foley work bit and then Griffin just snapping “The train derails and you all die” (Another out of character goof that I cherish)

”I shit and take 14 damage” ~Griffin (are you okay? How much health do you have? What’s your max HP dude?)

Taako makes the Crab monster Levitate

Magnus punched the crab monster out of the window and it got scrapped up on the side of the train

Ch 5

They follow the Crab into their sleeper car and Magnus attacks with a chair and Griffin says “I imagine because you are so skilled at carpentry that you’ve had to attack someone with a chair before so you are in fact proficient in this attack”

Jess comes in and finishes the crab off with her Soul bound ax that she can conjure at any time (This legit just means that Jenkins did not need to carry her ax to the crypt safe. She let him do it for shits n giggles. We stan)

Jess got her last name legally changed to “Beheader” and Magnus says that he got his legally changed to “The Hammer” (Really Magnus… this isnt 3rd grade stop trying to impress her. It’s that or it could be another sad reference to “Hammer and Tongs” which would mean Julia was “Tongs” D: that is so depressing and cute)

Magnus and Merle are making good progress in solving the murder

”Alright lads” “oh fuck” When Merle keeps up his disguise as Leimann Kessler (It’s so funny because his fake Leimann Kessler is just his current Argonaut Keen.)

”I cast ZONE OF TRUTH” “Jesus you’re like a zone of truth cleric” (Oh honey. This is just the beginning)

Magnus wakes Graham up with a 5% smack with his left hand and then a 6.5% smack also with his left hand (Wtf is this BNHA? Alright Deku)

Taako is an Alcoholic? (He keeps asking for a drink ...This is a bit concerning but it makes sense)

Magnus slaps Graham again with 7.2% and he popped something in Graham’s jaw and he begins screaming but Merle heals him (OKAY DEKU COOL IT MY GUY)

”I wanna be a guy... with a head!” ~” Hudson” (hehe foreshadowing)

SCUTTLE BUDDY!!!!! (A short but adorable life you have my Lil man)

Ch 6

The “fisticuffs” scene with Taako and Angus (Now this is really concerning considering his backstory. I know it’s a joke because of how many people they accidentally kill all the time but like dude… little do you know…)

Angus leading them through the mystery is so cute. But also you know its Griffin trying to get his family to really think it through and I love it. (It really makes my heart really full to hear Griffin get really excited when they figure it out slowly instead of mocking them when they guess wrong)

MERLE YES! MAGNUS YES! YOU’RE GETTING IT! YOU’RE SO CLOSE! (Teamwork makes the dream work baby!)

Magnus jumps out of the train and Griffin gets really serious and gives him the “if you fail this you will actually die” speech (This coupled with the fight scene that Magnus accidentally skipped and the fact that originally Travis did want Magnus to die so he could re-roll a rogue is so wild)

Magnus is gonna become a wrecking ball Jesus (very Magnus-core)

Hell yeah, Magnus! Knock the meat monster into Jenkins!!

Magnus gets hit for 10 points at 1hp and paries it for 10 points! (Top ten anime near-death experiences)

Jenkins threatens to kill the meat monster. Horribly misses then is thrown off the fucking train by the meat monster (Get fucked wrecked Jenkins that’s what you get for being cocky!)

Ch 7

They find the dousing rod compass that Jenkins was using and find the monocle (Pirates of the Caribbean much?)

Taako grabs The Oculus because he has escaped the thrall of a relic before

It tells him that it can make anything he can imagine (This is really interesting tbh)

The Umbrastaff eATS JENKINS WAND!!! and a Lil sigil appears on the handle of the staff that also looks like an umbrella (Lup gets fed lmao. Don’t really understand the Sigil appearing tho. It doesn’t come up any other time I don’t think so it’s cool)

Taako grabs the teleport wand thing and asks everyone to leave and he grabs a bunch of shit from the Cryptsafe pile (Very Taako-core)

They make it to the engineer’s room and Graham tries to slow the train down but he can’t

Taako wanted to open the gate to Never Winter to Phandalin but they change it to Jenkins’ garden because it needs to be a room with “one entrance” (Solid idea on Taako’s part. If it were to work no one would have been hurt)

Taako pushed Angus off the train and he looses two teeth (This man pushed a whole child off the train… ‘Ight)

Magnus dies by jumping off the train (Top ten anime death scenes)

Taako successfully opens the gate into Jenkin’s garden and the train crashes into the garden

Magnus is stabilized by Merle (Awe so the Cleric can do his job!)

Angus gives them pringles for Robbie and the compass. Taako gives Angus one of the forks from his grandfather’s set.

They go to a nearby Never Winter Clinic to get patched up

Out of character, they choose to work on voices and Griffin calls them out bc he’s been doing 8 “different” voices and Clint goes “Yeah try doing that for 40 years” get fuckin rOASTED Ditto! (Also Griffin I love you but like 3 of the voices were the exact same and 2 were so similar it wasn’t funny. Don’t get me wrong different voices aren’t my strong suit either but ya did give it your best shot so.)

We goin’ back to the moon baby!

AVI MY MAIN MAN! (I will forever and always want and need more Avi screen time)

The oculus works with illusory magic (Which is very interesting bc I know it was made by Davenport because he also worked in allusory magic but I don’t ever remember him using any magic… who knows maybe he has and I just never realized)

Lucretia thought they were gonna get it off the train before it left... woman… (You’ve known these men for how long and you thought they were gonna w h a t?)

Next: Lunar Interlude I, 

#taz b #taz spoilers #taz balance #tazbalance #taz: balance #taz #thezonecast #the zone cast #The Adventure Zone #taako taaco #taako #merle hightower highchurch #merle highchurch #magnus burnsides #magnus the hammer burnsides #lucretia #pringles #jenkins #angus mcdonald #juicy wizard

[chaniters]

Epilogue

Post-Retribution AU (Chapter 9)

______________________________

An epilogue for this series. It was a lot of fun to write! Hope you enjoyed it!

Heroes and Villains receive a second chance, after Heartbreak is finally defeated. 

Spoilers!

______________________________

“Sidestep! Are you ok?”

His body was shaking uncontrollably and seemed to be about to fall down as Charge got hold of him. “Cyrus... it’s over. He’s gone. You’re fine”

He didn’t seem to be saying anything resembling words. Ortega quickly pulled up his mask, revealing the tears. He was clearly having a panic attack.

His friend set him down over a corner, sitting by his side, trying to calm him down, full of worry. He wrapped an arm around him, letting him cry over his shoulder.

The older man couldn’t take his eyes off them, and the tenderness of the gesture.

Charge and Sidestep. Inseparable. Trusted allies. Heroes. Closest of friends, and maybe even more. All is how it used to be, but he’s an outsider now.

Just a witness.   

What about the other one? He wasn’t even sure what he should call him.

412? Cyrus? Retribution? Heartbreak?

No. There was only one real word for him in the end.

Monster.

He looked down the window. The familiar ambulance was already there. His skull was cracked over the pavement, his body in an unnatural pose. Unlike Sidestep, Heartbreak wasn’t wearing a protective suit and didn’t survive the fall. He was clearly and irrefutably dead.

The false paramedics hurried to take him away. The sense of relief that came as they did so was a surprise. He couldn’t help realize he had grown afraid of him too.

“Is everyone alright?” Steel entered the room, very pale, his face covered in sweat.

His gaze went from the man on the Raincoat to Charge and Sidestep, sitting on the corner. Sidestep was still whimpering inaudibly.

“It was a telepath… tried to make Cyrus kill himself. I think he wanted to do the same to all of us… like he did to the civilians”

Steel grimaced

“It’s over” Charge managed to speak “The… the new guy, he...” he said looking at his older self “...he pushed him off that window. “

“Oh,” Steel said taking the newsin. “I’m… sorry… I couldn’t… I just couldn’t” He started, obviously ashamed he wasn’t there. “I’m sorry… I should have been here but..”

“Don’t” Sidestep pulled from Charge’s shoulder, taking a few long breaths before speaking, his voice still shaky “Don’t be sorry.  We’re lucky to be alive...That psychic was so fucked up… things like this shouldn’t even exist. It’s wrong.. They shouldn’t… ” and he starts breaking down again.

Charge pulled him closer once more, repeating reassuring phrases about everything going to be fine. Over, and over, as many times as he needed to hear it.

“I’ll be right back” Steel spoke with sudden worry. Leaving the three of them alone in the room.

“Who are you?” Charge asked, lifting his gaze. “Are you new?”

He stood motionless. Petrified. He wasn’t sure what to tell his own old self about this.

“Yes. I’m new”

“What do we call you?” Sidestep asked.

He fought the urge to just run away. This was too fucking much. Like he was an intruder in someone else’s story.

“I’m fine! I swear I’m fine!” The familiar voice caught him unprepared. He forced himselt to look away not to show them his tears as Steel came back up helping Anathema walk.

“Geez, I told you I’m fine Grandpa! I’m invulnerable!”

“I know. But I saw how it shook you. And I know what it did to me. So stop the bullshit and don’t pretend you’re fine!” Steel retorts.

 “Fine!” Anathema complains. “Ok, maybe I’m not that fine. Maybe just 40% fine ok? But still functional. And I’m still going to get over it. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Yes,” Steel said giving him a grin.

“You guys ok there?” He asked Sidestep and Charge.

Charge looks at Sidestep, and he gives Anathema a weak nod for both of them.

“New guy shoved the freak down the window and saved the day” Charge step summed it up in a few words.

And then all their gazes turned towards the old man.

“So, how do we call you, new guy?” Anathema asked.

He tried to speak but no words come out.

“Are you alright sir?”  Steel inquired. Always worrying about civilians..

No, he wasn’t alright. He was very NOT alright. He had just killed his best friend, but said friend was still alive, behind him, how could he be alright?

But he had to give them some sort of explanation.

“You can call me… Time Guardian” he said, making up the first hero name he could think of.

“What like you have time powers?” Anathema asked.

“Yeah… I can freeze time… and a few other tricks” He explained. That much was true, as long as he had the Hourglass “Anyways … uh…  I Don’t like paperwork. I bet you guys can handle it?”

Wow. He sounded like Sidestep in his vigilante days.

“Yeah, leave it to us. It’s the least we can do”  Ortega answered.

“Good,” Time Guardian said. He started walking towards the door. He needed time to think. To figure out what the hell had just happened.

“It’s a mess out there. Can’t believe he killed that many people” Chen went on.

“Agreed...I’ve never seen a mind so twisted.” Sidestep nodded as Charge stood, helping him up in turn..

Time Guardian stopped before crossing the door… and then turned walking straight towards Sidestep.

The young Cyrus looks a bit intimidated at the closeness. Time Guardian whispered a few words, before turning and walking out for real this time…

“Hey what was that about?” Steel asked.

“N… nothing, just some… advice” Sidestep answered awkwardly.

“Well let’s go back down, get this done,” Anathema said. “There’s going to be a lot of funerals to organize and people who will want an explanation.” he grimaced “I can’t believe what this fucker did”

As they left, Ortega approached Sidestep, speaking in a hushed tone.

“Hey... What did he say?”

Sidestep hesitated for a moment.

“He told me to let go of my secrets and trust you.”

Ortega chuckled. “Well, that’s some darn good advice for a change. Did he say anything else?”

“Yeah…” he laughed nervously for a moment “He kind of threatened me?. I think it’s some sort of joke.”

“What was it?” Charge asked.

“ He also said if I don’t do it, he’ll have no choice but to end up tossing me down the window too.”

…………..Later that very night………………...

“I almost die… If you hadn’t shown up, I would have pulled that trigger…”

“Hey, that’s what I’m here for. To fix your mess” Charge says with a smug smile.

“Stop joking. I’m trying to be serious.”

“Right right.. I’m sorry. I just never saw you like that. I guess I got really scared? This was worse than Psycopathor.”

“It was way worse… but… Look, I want to show you something. Maybe you’ll understand me a bit more after this. Maybe you’ll hate me. I don’t know… I just don’t want you to find out after I end up dead fighting some random freak villain and you finding out after I’m dead.”

“I’m not going to get mad at you. What could you possibly ….” His voice trailed off.

Oh….”

Ortega went speechless as Sidestep removed his pants, shirt and nanomesh, exposing his tattoos.

The awkward moment extended long enough for him to draw some conclusions.

“I’m sorry,” he said  “I’ll just take my coat and go... I understand. No need to make this more uncomfortable than it needs to be”

He turned to leave, tears already falling down his cheeks … but at the last moment, Ortega reached out, holding his hand.

“What are you…”

And he kissed him.

HIs legs trembled, but  Ricardo held him tight.

“Thank you. For trusting me” he said in the end.

And somehow… he knows it’ll all be alright.

……A few days later after the Heartbreak, the farm received unwelcome guests.………………...

“You can’t do this!” Regina complained as they removed the plaque from her office. “Don’t you know who I am?!”

“Honestly? You’re lucky you’re not going to jail, ma’am” the young agent barke back at her.

“This project is crucial! It can’t be stopped!”

“About 839 dead civilians say otherwise. A single one of your clowns did it, and then he cracks his brain like a nut on the pavement making any further research impossible. Won’t lie, if you had caught him alive for study, we could have a different story. Maybe some politician could salvage your chain of clusterfucks, but being as it is… You’re done, Regina. They are pulling the plug.”

“This has to be a mistake! Who gave the order?”

“Here. Read and weep” the older man agent said giving her a copy of the executive order, the president’s signature clearly visible.

“Maybe you should go back to teaching.” The younger agent said, amused “Because you sure can’t do”

Her face was quickly becoming a mask of despair

“What are you going to do with the subjects?”

“None of your business really. But if you must know, the ones that you haven’t damaged will be absorbed into government programs. The rest are going into institutions. And the prisoners, they’re all going back to jail.”

“What? But this place is all they know!”

“That’s right, and it’s such waste. We’re going to find them real jobs. Where they can make a difference”

“Tax-paying jobs.” His partner replied. “That’s the kind the government wants after having to make reparations for all the families.”

“One thing,” he said turning. “You do have a boost that can control technology, right?.”

“Subject 411? Advanced technokinesis.  She’s clearly a demonstration of our excellent pro..”.

“Good. We’ll be taking her with us. She’ll start outright on a new division.”

“What!? Where?!”

“New government agency. It’s going to absorb all of your funding and then some.”

“Called NASA” the younger one comments before going back to his binder to-do list. “Also, I want to know how many of runaways are there out in the wild coming from your little house of horrors.” He flips a few pages. “Seems to me security is an epic fubar disaster in this dump”

A pair of scientists move past them, moving Heartbreak’s corpse into storage.

The older agent stops them, and takes a peek under the white sheet, and then studies the binder attached the side of the stretcher.

“Well, that’s one we don’t need to look for anymore. Cross 412  off the list Mike. It’s a perfect DNA match. And seems to be suffering premature aging too. Another flaw in your work Regina. How disappointing. Look at the state of it! But then again that’s what you do, isn’t it? Eat up taxpayer dollars and play Frankenstein all day?” he said doing the frankenstein-arms motion.

She felt her heart sinking, as they walked back into her office, intent on destroying her life’s work.

…A few years go by….

Cyrus rests on Ortega’s arm, extended over his shoulder, on the back of Steel’s SUV.

The two of them are on the back row, along with Herald, the newest team member.

He’s storming them with questions, and they don’t mind answering. He’s over the moon.

Anathema and Argent are on the next row, talking about a guy they met. Saved him from a freaky villain with a death touch, who decided not to try her luck against Anathema’s acid touch.

Steel is alone on the front row, focused on driving.

“So how did you two meet?” Herald asks.

“He broke my car!” Ortega accuses Cyrus.

“THat’s not how it happened!” he complains.

“OH?” He asks amused. “Then how did it happen?”

“I spied on him for two weeks. And THEN, I broke his car.  It was a thoroughly planned sabotage mission”

Ortega laughs it off, squeezing him fondly.  

Chen stops the SUV, for another passenger to come in.

“Hey, Fernando!”

“Hey. I’m bringing tequila” he said leaning over the window.

“Then bring it inside!” Ortega yelled from the back.

“YES!” Anathema and Argent joined in

“No drinking in the car. Ever again!” Steel grunted.

“The bearded man removes his hood and smiles, sitting beside Chen along with the bottles in a case..

“How’re you doing?” Ortega asks

“All’s good. Just some minor skirmishes with Bug-master”

“Not that bastard again. How is he still alive?” Argent asks.

“Well he has all the powers of a cockroach so even after you squish him, he can still..”

“Eugh, don’t elaborate” Anathema complains

Tonight was game-night. And he was going to bet hard. They always complained he was using time powers. But he wasn’t. He was just lucky nowadays.

He leaned back on his seat.

His timeline’s Sidestep and Mortum had both been so wrong. Time didn’t correct itself or fall into paradoxes. The universe was under no obligation to make sense to anyone. He changed the past, but he didn’t get magically teleported to a new life, nor did reality get destroyed.

He had toyed with the idea of using the Hourglass to get back into the corrected future. That’s what his Sidestep wanted. But he didn’t. He wanted to see it with his own eyes. He didn’t want to live a life that wasn’t truly his.

So he just stayed. Stayed and formed a new life. He eventually revealed his secret to Chen.

Of course, he had chosen a very bad timing, since Chen had just kissed him for the first time.

Funny. He had never noticed how hot Chen was before. Of course, it was different now. He was a stranger. With no baggage.

They agreed not to tell anyone else. No need. And no one was after him.

Chen helped him get a new name. A social security number. And he was probably going to join the Rangers in a few months if paperwork went through. 

Regenes were eventually absorbed into the civilian populace after the Special Directive was officially disbanded, provided they registered their biometrics and that they behaved.  And unlike the other one, this Cyrus was a fucking saint.  Made him wonder how could they have been the same person at any point.

A law provided monetary retribution for damages for them so they could build new lives. And Cyrus was rejected since he was reported dead already. They had to start a lawsuit. When he said he was going to the City hall to demand his “Retribution” he had a hard time keeping a straight face. The other Cyrus had just torched the building instead... They were definitely not the same person anymore.  

He had grown to like his new identity. Fernando Ortiz by day, Time Guard whenever trouble presented itself. It wasn’t half-bad.

After all, Fernando always got to sleep over at Chen’s house after game night, when everyone’s gone, complaining about his house being too far. He wondered if Chen would ever want to reveal what was going between them to the others. Probably not, until they were caught. Now that would be funny.

With the mustache and beard, he didn’t look that much like the younger shaved Ortega, and he was Older. He could hide in plain sight.

Ortega and Sidestep were a couple, and since he was a friend of both, he could visit him often and see his mother. It was strange to see her like this… But it worked.

And Time Guard... he corrected things. He fixed so many mistakes the Rangers made after Heartbreak. He told them he had time powers, and in a way, he did have a very accurate form of precognition. The Hourglass armor gave him a whole different powerset. It’s time jump function, he had only used a few times though. Jumping to the past or future was a temptation, but he only did it to fight crime. Best way to keep safe.

And Cyrus…

It was so weird. He couldn’t quite mourn his death while he was very alive right behind him. And so much happier than he had ever seen him. His own Cyrus had turned into a vengeful shadow, going down with the blaze of insane destruction consuming him.

But in some weird way, he had done what he set out to do.

Set things right.

He…

He looked down startled. Chen was holding his hand.

He was so glad he was at the front, where no one could see him blush.

Game night was going to be great

.

………….Deep below ground, someone observed them in silence………..

The drones were relaying visual constant feed on their vehicle.

He toyed with the controls, making sure not to steer too close.

It was only a matter of time before he unraveled Time Guardians secrets, and once he did, he would have the means to defeat all heroes in his way.

It was his genius that would be the fall of the rangers in the end.

Only his.

Lord Mortum will rule Los Diablos one day!

____________________________

My fanfics: https://chaniters.tumblr.com/post/181692759294/my-fanfiction-for-fallen-hero

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fan fiction using characters and the setting of the Fallen Hero: Rebirth and upcoming Fallen Hero: Retribution games written by Malin Riden. I do not claim ownership of any characters from the Fallen Hero wold. These stories are a work of my imagination, and I do not ascribe them to the official story canon. These works are intended for entertainment outside the official storyline owned by the author. I am not profiting financially from the creation of these stories, and thank the author for her wonderful game/s, without which these works would not exist.

#fallen hero: rebirth #Au Post-Retribution #epilogue #chargestep #Chargesteel #fallen hero spoilers

[ask-asuka-x-shinji]

Right. Several days ago on my personal, I said i had a decent idea for an Eva fic and if It was gonna go anywhere i’d post a preview here. This is very much a preview version of chapter one, while I try and remember what I did with my Ao3 account’s password I’m gonna really clean it up and add a lot more dialogue and a probably another scene or two. Also this is very much not the verse I RP Shinji and Asuka in, I’m using mostly different headcanons for this. Mari Ikari the protag, her friend Hana and her yet to appear love interest Wing were all created specifically for this idea. 

I’m Mari Akahime Soryu-Ikari, age 14, student at Tokyo 3 City Middle School class 2-A hobby Kendo special skill artistic composition, yes it’s a very long, rather stupid name. Mari after a friend of my late grandmother’s and Red Princess because I have my mom’s bright red hair and it was her own stupid nickname as a kid, not sure how either of us would qualify to be called princess though my understanding is mom was wild and violent as a kid and i’m pretty rough looking myself.

My mom drives me really crazy, I have the great distinction to be the daughter of former child genius and ‘great foreign beauty’ Asuka Langley Soryu, a woman with two children and no idea in the slightest how to do housework, no actually it’s probably that she has no interest in ever learning. Shortly after my brother was born my dad left the military to become a musician full time, he usually works from home but occasionally he goes on tour like he has been the last few days leaving us in her care. I think even my dad just wants to get out of this house now and again. I really don’t want German food in my lunch box, it’s bad enough being German without eating meat and root sandwich spreads. The stupid penguin doesn’t even find that crap edible. She’s not even awake yet, i’m make my own lunch! 

Our current house is actually pretty nice. Well equipped kitchen, my brother and I both have our own bedrooms, I can easily make a few decent rice balls to avoid my mom’s cooking. 

“Good morning, you’re up early you don’t have extra practice this morning do you?” And there she is, not dressed fully and yawning like she didn’t even sleep to begin with, she has work at the same time whether dad’s here or not. I bet she played video games all night, again. Asuka Langley Soryu-Ikari, Age 29, Professor of Theoretical Evolution Tokyo 3 College of Sciences, hobby mixed martial arts, special skill, being a pain. 

“I’m making lunch, if I didn’t you’d send me to school with something weird and you know it.” 

“Well how much is lunch from the school store, it can’t be more than...”

“No! We can’t be so careless with finances, i’m old enough to make my own lunch and one for Eren, you need to get dressed and shower and so forth! You should be the responsible one here mom, so don’t you anything stupid like standing here all morning arguing with me.”

“Hey! I need to make some coffee. You should try doing a job that mostly grading papers when you’re an adult, it screws over your brain.”

“Whatever. I think other things have screwed with your brain from your youth.” 

“oh Clappe!” She squeezes by me to get the electric kettle while pouting like a teenage girl and muttering under her breath. 

She had me very young. What’s probably way too young as you could tell from our ages. I know people like to whisper about it when they think neither of us are listening. Everyone says that she had a breakdown that ended in getting pregnant, but clearly she got better, better enough to get that ridiculous doctorate in a field that no one else understands, while dad never even went to college. But her mother had been famous scientist all the Soryu’s had been for years and years so she wanted to follow in their legacy. She’s such a pain. Although grading papers from students who can’t follow you must be a pain I can’t begin to understand what she’s supposed to be teaching.  

It isn’t long before i’ve got those lunches made and get my brother out the door.  Hana is already waiting for me outside. Hana Aida is probably my closet friend and has been since we were little. She’s a giant robot fangirl and knows probably more about NERV then my parents who actually worked there. Her cousin is pretty much the same and has been dad’s friend since school although he’s even more out there than she is. People used to call her a freak, but then I got in the habit of beating them senseless and they stopped, of course I got into trouble but also every time I did, my mom was actually incredibly proud of me. 

“Red and Little Eren, a good morning to you on another average 90 degree day in Tokyo’s useless autumn, time to work our buts off at school and suffer for it huh?” Hana starts out with.

“My teacher said there is no Autumn in East Asia.” my brother replies confused before he frowns and turns to walk the other way to kindergarten not staying around for an explanation but still confused. 

“I think he usually doesn’t understand a word of what you say Hana just don’t take it too personally.”

“I don’t.” She really didn’t did she? 

“So what are your plans for tonight Red? Do you have more babysitting or can you come over? I could use your eye for detail, you are a born artist.” 

I should probably avoid leaving my mother and brother alone together for too long if I can, but really he’s too young to mind her so it should be fine, it’s not like she’s dangerous just absent minded. She won’t feed Eren penguin food or leave him unattended so it should be fine to hang out after school, it’s not like this hasn’t happened before and isn’t just a constant part of life. 

“I’ve got nothing pressing and it would be nice to get out of the house. What do I need to get?” 

“Now now, I’ve got everything technical, that’s just who I am after all... if such a thing exists for the creation fan art, Ohana Aida has it, or is gonna barrow it from a relative.” 

I think she’s just being nice to a degree. Even if our house is pretty nice now and everything, When i was younger the three of us lived in a one room apartment that my dad had as a NERV officer and when I was born apparently we are all crammed into one bedroom of Colonel Katsuragi’s old place. It’s easy to not realize exactly how bad off you are as a kid, but when you get older you realize how stupid that is. How innocent you were not to see makes you angry or at least it makes me angry. Family pride doesn’t pay any bills and I can’t say the Soryu family has anything else. 

And like that, I didn’t pay attention to my classes and the day is very much over. I need to relax and I feel like hitting something or someone, I promised Hana I'd hang out, so not hitting anyone. 

I guess I should explain since I didn’t earlier what Hana and I actually do, I get so fed up with my family that this narrative is suffering. Like I said my special skill is artistic composition and Hana writes some really bad manga so I’ve been helping with cover art and the like for awhile now... of course you probably have guessed that’s not entirely it. 

A basic benefit of being the daughter of the two of the first actual Mech pilots to ever live is a family resemblance. The type that allows you to model both your parents to you’re mech nerd friend for her art. A decent wig and contacts later and if you didn’t know I might as well be Rei Ayanami we basically have the same face after all. 

It’s never actually bothered me that Hana does this or that I’m helping. Only A handful of people actually know what it was like back then and my parents certainly aren’t talking about it to me. Dad says they met on the deck of a battleship I’ve heard only a few million times that they had some kind of rivalry over who was the better pilot. But specifics? It might as well be the stories from Hana’s comics, so helping is...  a way to see Dad how he used to be. 

Of course, the tsundere girl with the catch phrase ‘don’t be so stupid’, and a firm belief in the bright future that the UN represents for humanity can not be my mom, no way, I sort of like that versions, of course I helped write her and sadly enough based upon myself. 

It’s late by the time, I actually feel brave enough to come come. 

“I’m back, Hanna says hi and wants to borrow some clothes, should I get started on dinner or are we eating something weird yet again? next time please have said leave us dinners.” no reply, the lights are on. I finish taking my shoes off and... and both my mom and little brother are curled up on the floor of the living room fast asleep, the TV still on. She really didn’t sleep last night did she? They’ll be awake when they smell dinner. 

“...Misato put some actual clothes on, don’t stand there like that for Shinji to see and don’t fix us anything weird for dinner just order a pizza like a normal person... what? are you stupid, there’s nothing traditional about instant anything...uh...” and I heard all of that, she’s sleep talking and probably has been.. of course you could guess that’s not why i’ve stopped dead, that actually might as well have been me complaining couldn’t it? best not to admit i heard anything and walk slowly away to start cooking. Right...

#evangelion #fanfic #neon genesis evangelion #ooc

[chasholidays]

minty and anything fantasy like witches faires werewolves go wild reach for the stars, once again this is one of my top parts of december you make my commute less terrible keep doing you!!!

Not to brag, but Monty is a supernatural magnet.

This isn’t a self-assessment; his mother took him to a magi when he was a kid and had him checked. She thought he might be a supernatural being himself, given how much trouble he got into, but the magi looked him over, did a few tests, and said that he was a human, just one with an abnormally strong spiritual energy that would draw in supernatural entities.

People used to be jealous about it, especially when he was a kid. They’d go on a hike for school, and Monty would be swarmed by pixies and spirits. He’d go swimming and get hippocamps and undines butting up against his legs, wanting to make friends. From the outside, he gets why it seems cool; most people go their whole lives without getting to pet a unicorn, and Monty just takes it for granted that he can do it basically whenever he wants.

But there are downsides, too. He has to be careful to not get dragged into the woods or under the water, to make sure nothing does him any harm in its enthusiasm. And he knows he’s, well, appealing. Even to rational supernatural creatures. Every time someone is hitting on him, he has to ask if they’re human, and if they’re not, he dutifully explains that he’s a magnet, and they’re drawn to him because of some odd coincidence of genetics.

By the time he’s out of college, he’s mostly used to it. It’s something he has to deal with, a serious but not fatal condition that requires monitoring and planning, but doesn’t impact his life about 90% of the time. His apartment is full of magical pets who have adopted him, but his landlord is cool with it, and every time he goes to a bar a vampire or a werewolf or a siren will hit on him, but once he explains what’s going on they either lose interest or don’t care and want to hook up anyway, and either outcome works for Monty. He does have more weird sidequests in his life than he thinks most people do, but that’s cool too. If a random supernatural creature wants his help to reunite it with its owner or find its way back to his family, he’s down. It’s nice to have projects.

So when the dog starts following him, he doesn’t really think anything of it. He doesn’t even notice at first; Clarke has to point it out.

“There’s a dog trying to get your attention.”

“Just a regular dog?”

She frowns. “As opposed to?”

“I don’t know, a grim or a kitsune or a werewolf.”

He can see her thinking, and he assumes she’s trying to remember where they are in the lunar cycle. She’s in medical school to become a magi, so she needs to care about these things. Monty does his best, but he always loses track.

“Definitely not a werewolf, wrong time of month. It just looks like a dog to me.”

Monty glances back himself. The dog is mid-to-large, retriever- or lab-sized, with a dark, shaggy coat and no collar.

“It has to be something,” he says, frowning.

Clarke smiles. “There’s no way a dog is just following you?”

“Based on everything I have ever experienced? No. There’s no way a normal dog is following me. That’s some kind of magic dog, we just have to figure out what kind.”

“We?” she asks, which is valid. He likes Clarke, considers her a friend, but she lives next door to him and they walk home together when they’re on the same bus. It’s not really the kind of friendship that involves a lot of working together on projects. He doesn’t actually expect her to provide backup.

“Me and my existing menagerie,” he says. “I’ll barely even notice one more.”

Clarke smiles. “You know, I used to think it would be cool if animals liked me.”

“It is cool,” Monty insists, offering his hand for the dog to sniff. “But it’s kind of a pain too.”

“Well, let me know if you need any help.”

“I thought you weren’t part of this we,” he teases, and she smiles, leaning down to scratch the dog’s ears as his tail starts to wag even harder.

“Maybe a little involved,” she says, and Monty smiles.

“Yeah, it’s hard to resist a face like that. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

*

How it goes turns out to be kind of weirdly. Monty has a system worked out for this shit; he’s practically a professional. But this dog is different. For one thing, he does seem to be just a dog, by all physical indications, but Monty can’t actually believe that. For one thing, the dog is smart. Like, sapient levels of smart. Smarter than some humans Monty has met, and smart in a different way. He doesn’t act like most of the animals Monty has met.

Also, he really likes Clarke. Not that there’s anything wrong with really liking Clarke, but he seems to like Clarke better than Monty which, if not for everything else, would make him suspect he’s just a regular dog.

Clarke’s the one to finally hit on it. “What about transformation?”

The dog’s tail starts thumping, and he pulls his head out of her lap to look at her with beseeching eyes.

“Transformation?”

“Yeah, like–what if he’s a human who got turned into a dog.” He barks, and she laughs. “I think I might have gotten it.”

Monty frowns. “I don’t know if humans who get turned into animals actually like me very much. Not, like–they don’t dislike me, but I don’t know if the magnetism works on them. And he definitely was following me.”

“Us,” Clarke corrects, not unreasonably.

“You think the dog has a thing for you?”

Clarke grins. “You’re not the only special person in the world, Monty.” She scratches the dog’s ears. “I actually know someone who might be able to help, though.”

The dog’s tail is wagging again, and Monty feels his frown deepen.

“I’ve never actually not been the special one before. Is this what it feels like for you all the time?”

“You’re one of the little people now,” she says, and asks the dog, “Do you want to take a walk?”

He does, at least at first. He’s happy to follow them to campus, even seems excited about it, but as soon as Clarke tries to get him into the Crafting Studies building, he won’t go.

Or, more accurately, he seems like he can’t go, like despite his best efforts, he’s just not able to go any closer.

Defeated, he whines at Clarke, and she strokes his ears, soothing. “Can you go in there?” she asks. “Look for Bellamy Blake or Nathan Miller. Their offices are on the second floor. Miller’s probably a better bet, but Bellamy will know where to find him if you can’t.”

“Bellamy Blake, Nathan Miller,” he says, and the dog whines again.

“I know, I’ll stay with you,” Clarke tells him, and he lets out a sigh that does more than anything else to convince Monty he’s a transformed human. It’s a very human sigh.

He hits Bellamy Blake’s office first, but the door is closed, and the mailslot on the front is overflowing. Someone has written, “If found return to Nathan Miller, room 205,” so apparently Clarke’s instincts are good. They’re probably dating.

The door to room 205 is open, and the guy behind the desk is–hot. There is no other word for it, short black hair, neat beard, tapping a pen against the corner of his mouth like he’s thinking hard.

He also feels odd, in a way Monty has never felt before, some weird churning in the pit of his stomach. It’s not bad, just different.

It’s also not important right now; he knocks on the frame of the door, and the guy looks up, smiles, and, yeah. Very hot.

“Hi, are you Nathan Miller?”

“That’s me, yeah. How can I help you?”

“I’m a friend of Clarke Griffin’s, she thought you might be able to help us? We found this dog and–”

“Jesus, thank god. I should have looked for Clarke. Of course he went to her, fucking dumbass.”

Monty opens and closes his mouth, and then settles on, “Did you turn your boyfriend into a dog?” He’s not an expert on witchcraft, but it would explain basically everything.

“My best friend. I was going to change him back, but he had too much magical energy.” At Monty’s frown, he says, “I’m a supernatural repulsor. Usually not a big deal, but transformations involve a lot of magical energy, and it’s all focused on him, so he changed and then got knocked out of the building. And went to find Clarke, I guess.”

“Or me,” says Monty. “I’m a magnet, magical stuff tends to find me. I just happen to know Clarke.”

“Lucky us. Please tell me he wasn’t using the excuse to lick her.”

“No,” says Monty. “If you’re a repulsor, how did you turn him into a dog?”

“He turned himself into a dog, I was there to try to keep it under control. Tamp down on all the magic. Which didn’t work. Fucking dumbass,” he says again, like it’s a treasured nickname. “I’m going to kill him.”

He’s been looking through a cabinet, and now he comes up with a vial of green liquid and offers it to Monty as if he’s supposed to know what it is.

“I’m a computer scientist,” he says. “I honestly have no idea what’s happening. I don’t know much about transformations.”

Miller snorts. “Sorry. Just have him drink that, it should sort him out. Sorry I can’t come with you, but–”

“Repulsor.” He’s heard of them before, but never met one. Then again, he’s never met another magnet either. As powers go, both are pretty uncommon.

“Yeah. It shouldn’t take long for the potion to work, and then he can come here and let me yell at him.”

“That sounds really appealing for him.”

Miller snorts. “Good call.” He checks his watch. “It’s almost quitting time. You know Murphy’s?”

It’s a campus bar; Monty doesn’t work at the university, but he’s close enough that most of his friends do, and he knows most of the hangouts. “Yeah.”

“Meet me there?”

Honestly, this isn’t even one of the weirder things he’s had to do as a magnet. All he has to do is give a dog a vial of medicine. Bellamy probably won’t even fight him.

Plus, the hot guy wants to see him at a bar. There’s no way he’s saying no to that.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’ll probably need a drink.”

*

Clarke and Bellamy are sitting on a bench outside the building, Bellamy’s head in Clarke’s lap, but as soon as he sees Monty he jumps up and runs over.

“I assume you know what you need,” he says, shaking the vial.

“Wow, they didn’t even need to come look?” Clarke asks, surprised. “I figured Bellamy wouldn’t be able to stay away.”

“Yeah, uh–he can’t. Miller says this is him.”

Clarke stares, and the dog looks remarkably guilty, so, yeah. There is going to be some weirdness here. But they should get everyone back to being a human before they sort that out.

“Bellamy?” she asks.

“Is he going to be naked after he takes this? Should we go inside? Miller’s a repulsor, that’s why he can’t get in the building.”

“Seriously, Bellamy, what the fuck,” Clarke says, which is not helpful.

“Look, the hot repulsor warlock said we’d get a drink when this was done, so can we figure it out?” he prompts, and that, at least, distracts her.

“Oh my god, of course Miller is your type. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. Bellamy, are you going to be naked? Bark once for yes, twice for no.” He barks twice, so she nods. “Okay, cool, we’ll go back to our place. You can borrow something of Monty’s. And he can get changed for his date.”

“He didn’t really say it was a date,” Monty protests. He can’t help feeling weird discussing it in front of Bellamy, but he did start it. And Bellamy doesn’t seem to care. “But I guess there’s no harm in dressing like it’s one.”

“That’s the spirit,” says Clarke. “Come on, dick,” she adds, to Bellamy, like dick is a petname she uses often. Apparently Bellamy’s just that kind of guy–all about the affectionate trash talk. “You can change back in my bathroom.”

*

He ends up going to the bar alone. Ostensibly, it’s because Bellamy is afraid of seeing Miller, but Monty suspects it’s more that Bellamy is also really hot and clearly has a thing for Clarke, and was, last time Monty saw, half-naked in Clarke’s living room. He’s assuming Clarke is getting laid, and he’s reporting back to Miller that the potion worked and Bellamy is human again.

Also, ideally he’ll get laid too. At some point.

Miller’s already at Murphy’s when he gets there, sitting at the bar with a beer, and Monty takes a deep breath and joins him, trying to seem–cool. The strange feeling is back in the pit of his stomach, this awareness that he’s hanging out with his polar opposite. Someone who pushes away what he draws in.

“So, I think Clarke and Bellamy are making out.”

“Thank god. If I knew all I had to do to make that happen was turn him into a dog, I would have done it years ago.”

Monty smiles a little. “I feel like I’m missing backstory there.”

“Not good backstory. Sexual tension, pining, and dumbassery, the usual. I’m more curious about you.”

Monty chokes on the air. “Me?”

“Never met a magnet before. I’m curious how we’d fit together.”

It’s so cheesy he has to laugh. “Wow. You’ve had an hour to think about this and that’s the pickup line you came up with? Really?”

Miller shrugs, but he’s smiling too. “Apparently so.”

“You’re lucky I’m curious too,” says Monty. “Can I buy your next drink and we tell weird power stories until we’re ready to make out?”

“Sounds good to me,” says Miller, and Monty has to say, it really, really is.

Not a lot of people can actually claim to have found their other half, but that’s his story, and he’s sticking to it. Because they really do fit together, almost perfectly.

Like it was meant to be.

#pawabowa

[odogaronfang]

Could you write some angest around what if werewolves were a thing in hyrule, and one of the links got bit? also maybe put in a somewhat detailed transformation scene? that's optional though.

[[okay i’ve honestly got no experience with werewolf stuff? i’m not even a big fan of em tbh. i love mythology and creatures of legend but? werewolves never really captured my interest. if you’d asked for siren, or naga, or selkie, or really anything else, i could do a lot better. but just for u, anon, i will try]]

[[post-writing edit: over 2500 words. what the hell & fuck.]]

It was assumed, at first, that Hyrule’s infestation of wolfos was Vaati’s doing, or Ganon’s. It made sense; wolfos were fast, and strong, pack hunters, notorious for their ruthlessness. They would bring down the Hylian population in no time flat, if they got numerous enough, and leave little resistance to their regime. It was a sort of comforting thought, that once the heroes got rid of the King of Darkness then the wolfos would retreat.

Not so.

They came in droves once Ganon had been sealed. It could only be conjectured that the packs had been breeding and gathering numbers in the Lost Woods for quite some time, but conjecture meant little when the top priority was finding a stronghold.

Hyrule Castle was, naturally, the first choice, though parts were still in pieces from the attacks. Castle Town residents were lucky, and for the most part made it safely. Those who lived in towns further off were not so fortunate- ones on the outskirts were in no uncertain terms doomed to death. Refugees from all over Hyrule came flooding in through the castle’s gates, their bags heavy with all they could gather from home, and the haunted-eyed newly-orphaned padded listlessly around the castle grounds as quarters were being sorted out.

Troops of guards were assigned to towns, to clear them of wolfos, big groups of dozens of the most capable knights, armed and armored to the teeth, equipped with whistles that made even the most wild and vicious of dogs heel and cower. There was no guarantee that they would work, but there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t; so they were taken, as precautions.

And the heroes were assigned to find the source of the problem. So soon after an invasion, they couldn’t risk something of the same caliber as Vaati breaking through their weakened defenses. The best way to keep it under control was to stop it, permanently- never mind the delicate food web, or apex predators, or carrying capacities, or whatever it was the scientists were on about. Hylians first, always.

It’s something Vio complains about quite often, while they’re out searching.

“It is very short-sighted is all,” He says, looking pointedly at the wolfos pelt Blue has slung over a shoulder. “It will solve our immediate problem, but then we will have to deal with an entire rebalancing of the forest’s ecosystem. It may even drive out another predator in search of food, and then the cycle will repeat.”

“So what,” Blue sneers, “You’re more worried about some poor hungry deer than you are about your own kind?”

Vio looks irritated. “I never said that. What I am saying is that this will very likely have some serious consequences for my own kind down the road.”

“Well, I bet we’ll have a lot more freedom to figure out how to solve those problems once half our population isn’t getting chomped by overgrown bloodhounds.”

“We would not need the freedom to solve the problem because there would be no problem if everyone would stop to think about this.”

“There isn’t time for that!”

“He’s got a point,” Green says, though not as heatedly as Blue.

Vio turns to Red for some kind of backing, but all he gets is nod and an apologetic shrug. He sighs. “When something twice as vicious comes hunting for hylian prey, do not say you were not warned.” There’s a long period of quiet as they walk, and then he says “Perhaps you will be more well-received to this, then. Have you heard of what has been happening to the bitten?”

“They were all in the infirmary being treated for blood poisoning, last I heard,” Red says, absently flips the switch on the rod back and forth.

“Yes, but do you know specifically what the medics have been seeing?”

Red shakes his head. “Blood poisoning’s all I know about.”

“Signs of genetic merging.”

Red looks at him blankly for a second, and then its implications seem to register. “Wait, a bite from a wolfos is doing that? I didn’t think they had anything like that!”

“Neither did I, or anyone else. But the researchers that have been monitoring the bitten are noticing physical anomalies where there were none previously. And they are consistent with certain traits of the wolfos.��

Blue casts a suspicious glance at the furs on his arm. “So what’s that mean, then?”

“First and foremost, it means do not get bitten.”

“Well, duh. I meant, like, do they know why?”

Vio shrugs, which is the most concise and honest answer he has. “It is suspected that it is some kind of virus, or microscopic creature, but there is no proof, and no explanation. My vote goes to virus, but then, I could not begin to guess where it comes from, or why it splices wolfos traits with the host’s. It seems oddly specific.”

“D’you think maybe the wolfos makes it themself?” Red hesitates for a moment. “It sounds dumb now that I’ve said it. But maybe it’s like… A way of reproducing?”

“That is… possible,” Vio agrees, with a minute’s pause to think, “Very possible, but unprecedented, to my knowledge. Insightful, though. You will have to bring that up to the researchers, when we have returned.”

“I have a question,” Blue says, tries to snatch the map from Green and gets an elbow to the sternum. “Are we just wandering? Or do you have some specific destination?”

“Valensuela marked a den on here. Or at least a suspected den. There’s been a lot of activity here.”

“How much farther? I kept watch last night and I’m tired and my feet are starting to hurt.” Red slips the elemental rod from its loop on his belt and presses a palm to its orb, tinged red with fire magic. “Plus it’s gonna get cold soon and I wanna get a fire set up.”

“It’s right up ahead, if it exists at all. We should be able to take care of it today.”

“It may be wiser to do it tomorrow, and rest up tonight-”

“But why do it tomorrow when we can do it now?”

“I just gave you a reason, and Red has given you three.”

“Yeah, well, if we do it now we won’t have to worry about any of them sneaking up on our camp.”

“Yes, we will, and in any case-”

“Shush! We’re doing it today.”

Vio sets a glare on him. “This is tyranny,” He says simply, reaches for the map and gets it (to Blue’s irritation), and frowns. “Green. The mark on the map is still two miles from here.”

“So? If we pick up the pace we’ll be fine!”

He would argue, but he’s sure that at this point Green isn’t open to suggestions, so he hands it back and fishes out something to eat from his pack. “Do not say I did not warn you.”

They do make it with daylight, though just barely. Reluctantly, Red flips the rod to ice as they weave through the trees- fire is too dangerous and unpredictable a weapon to wield in a forest. Blue, for once, chooses his sword and shield over his hammer; not enough room, and too slow for what they need to do. Vio has an arrow nocked, with a dagger in his palm just to be safe. And Green is walking confidently with sword in hand, hasn’t bothered to take the shield off its strap.

“Green, would you stay with the group,” Vio hisses, but if he hears he doesn’t care, and therefore is the first to get pounced on.

Or would have been pounced on, if Vio hadn’t shot it between the eyes as it lunged, fangs bared and claws extended.

“Idiot,” Blue snaps as he pulls a terrified Green to his feet, and there isn’t time for much more talk because the pack is there.

Vio abandons the ecological concerns in favor of self-preservation, and picks them off as Red goes along freezing as many as he can get close enough to. Blue is Green’s grudging tag-along because Green can’t be bothered to stay back, and he runs out of fingers for counting how many times he and Vio and Red just barely keep a claw out of Green’s ribs. But they manage well enough, and thank Hylia for the elemental rod, because without it they’d have been overwhelmed before it had hardly begun. Even so it’s almost too much, and by the time the den’s been smoked, so to speak, they’re all exhausted and all too ready to pass out. Carefully they pick their trail back out of the Lost Woods, following the patches of frost Red had thought to leave on the trees, pitch camp with their backs to a hill. It looks like they’ve just barely scraped an escape from death, what else is new, until Vio goes to gather up rations for dinner and finds blood smeared on the side of Blue’s pack.

He goes over and without bothering to announce himself hauls him up to his feet, looks him over and, to his incredible relief, finds nothing but dark clotted wolfos blood on him. Green, on the other hand, has a tear in the sleeve on the back of his arm and a big red splotch staining the fabric.

He swears, takes the first aid kit from Red’s bag and forces Green to sit and let him deal with it, and scolds him the entire time to try and keep down his mounting panic, because if that’s a bite-

“I told you,” He says, “I told you to wait, because we would be rested and properly fed and ready, but you insisted-!”

Blue is scowling, though half his attention is on dinner, and Red looks like he wants to intervene but knows Vio’s right.

“Bedside manner,” He reminds Vio, with a weak smile that betrays his worry.

“I should hope this is not a matter of the bedside,” Vio says, with more venom than he means, and sighs and apologizes and goes back to cutting away the sleeve to get to the wound. “Stupid,” He mutters, as he wipes away the blood with a scrap of the cloth, “I do not enjoy being like this but that was so incredibly stupid of you! I would like to say that you were fortunate, but I have not yet seen the extent of it.”

He pours alcohol on Green’s arm, ignores his complaining and focuses on making sure there aren’t any foreign objects stuck in it. For a moment he studies the shape of the injury, thinking; they’re puncture wounds, most certainly, but the way they attack it could very well be from claws… But the pattern is wrong for claws, too uniform and close-together, not enough tearing around the edges.

They’re going to have to make good time back to the castle and the healers, he thinks, sighs and wraps it tight in gauze.

“Stupid,” He mutters, shoves down his panic because now isn’t the time to let it cloud his thinking. “It is a bite,” He tells them, and sounds far calmer than he feels. “I am almost certain of it. So we are going to have to move very quickly tomorrow.”

They all start asking things at once, but Vio waves dismissively. “There is nothing I know to do for it. We get back to the castle as quickly as we can and we keep an eye on the wound and keep Green’s heart rate as low as we can. That is all I can say.”

“Should we start now?” Green asks, and sounds almost timid, and much smaller than he did two hours ago.

“We are all tired. We must rest, at least for a few hours, at eat. We will see about leaving early.”

They do- the sun is hardly up when they begin. Vio offers shortcuts, the easiest way to get back in the shortest amount of time, without risking exacerbating the wound or risking spreading the blood poisoning that they know will follow the injury. And once they’re back they ignore everything else, and bring Green straight to the healer’s, and Vio gets the pleasure of recounting the entire night.

And he also gets the pleasure of tracking Green’s progress. There are too many bitten and not enough monitoring the specific symptoms; they figure that they may as well. The wing is crowded, with both patients and staff, and the only thing that Vio can’t complain about is the fact that he actually gets to see Green- without the permissions granted a researcher, he’d be shut outside with everyone else.

It’s slow, at first, hardly noticeable, as it was reported with most others. The blood poisoning comes and then goes, doesn’t last more than a day. But gradually it occurs, little things and then more prominent, unmistakably wolfos; an excess of body hair, sharper teeth, a double set of canines, somehow, after a few weeks, nails that grow far too rapidly to be normal. Vio considers it a mercy that Green is hardly conscious for most of it. It hurts, in a lingering, aching sort of way, to see them have to strap him down. A precaution, of course, merely preemptive action, just in case. But it hurts, and it hurts having to tell Red and Blue about it, and it hurts to see them having to process it.

The only condolence he has is that he can see the older-bitten go through it first. It isn’t much of a comfort, because they’re his people too, but at least he knows what’s coming. He’s especially grateful that some of the others change first, because they have to kill a couple of them, before they come to understand that the changing isn’t permanent, necessarily. The gradual transformations peak, and the bitten are no longer distinguishable from a wolfos, and it lasts a few days, and then they’re back, somewhat. Still with the little wolfos traits, the nails and the teeth and too much hair, but back to almost hylian, with vague memories of the transformation.

When it happens to Green, it seems too early, but it corresponds with the others’, if a day late; the biological timer Vio will have to look into further, but for the time being he just stays. He stays, and talks to Green, and wonders whether he’s really hearing anything, deep down wherever his conscious was pushed.

It’s an incredible breakthrough in their understanding when Green comes back out of it and repeats back to Vio almost exactly what he’d said to him when he was in the thick of it. Green explains it as experiencing things through a kaleidoscope; his memory is broken and twisted and not all there, but the things he focuses on he can make out, and he can say with reasonable confidence that if he really worked at it he might even be able to control it, to an extent.

It’s another week at least before he’s allowed to be without a monitor, and they’re both relieved to say the least, and Vio has half a mind to chastise him again. Instead he just hugs him, and sighs and mutters how glad he is that he is, for the most part, okay. Red and Blue both hug the air out of his lungs when they see him, and Blue also punches him way too hard on the (unbitten) arm and yells at him for being dumb and impulsive, and Red says something about “pot, meet kettle” and hides behind Vio so he won’t get one too. It’s a long time, though, before Green can control himself enough to be trusted alone on full moons.

#four swords #blue link #vio link #red link #green link #once bitten au #look i even made a name for the au for you anon!!!! #my au #my writing #im SO BAD at werewolves #ANY OTHER MYTHOLOGICAL/LEGENDARY CREATURE #AND I COULDVE DONE 100X BETTER #im sorry #i have failed u #but at least it's long. #also!! im out of asks!!!! #pls send more!!!!!!

[lwbluedice]

Masterpost for my Stories and Ocs!!!

A spoilerfree list of most of my Ocs and stories (reuploaded here on my main blog)

Includes:

- Name of the story and state it’s in

- short summary/facts

- Character names

If you want more information abt any of them(like a description or a pic) or abt the stories, just message me/ ask me!  Also feel free to ask me to draw them ( for example in the color scheme thing or sth)!

Note: The stories are all written in german so if you don’t speak that language i can’t send you the original documents but i can try summing them up for you!

I bet this is not everything and i will add stuff but yeah!!!!

Hotaru (first draft is finished)

- Abt two men that are linked through a surgery called “synchronisation”, which basically connects their minds and bodies, so they are forced to work as a team. Ea is an ex-soldier and Cain was a hacker, but due to the fact that they can’t stand each other, they also didn’t share their pasts with each other. To pay someone to unlink them, they become bounty hunters and kidnap the girl Ai and her robot Subaru, which is one of the old military robots, called Hotarus (high technologised, operating, transforming, artificial intelligence, ranger units). They are connected to a human ranger and can transform into what the ranger wants them to transform into.

The Hotaru headquarters exploded 10 years ago and since then the Hotarus are super rare on the black market.

The two men plan on selling both the girl and her robot and let’s just say it all doesn’t work out that well.

Ai Hoshino

Ea

Cain Bishop

Subaru

Dr. Chandra Natarajan

10 A

10 B

and other synced pairs

George Watton

Asha Watton

Elaine Bishop

Christopher Bishop

Haruto Hoshino

Shiori Hoshino

The Pleiades. A Hotaru Unit.

Atlas/ Emmett Hunter

Maia/ Ilya Neverwinter

Elektra/ Hailey Gray

Taygete/ Daiyu Ghou

Alcyone/ Charlotte Gryffith)

Caelano/ Sora Aurora River

Merope/ Imogen Harrington

Sterope/ Elizabeth Bresley

Additional Characters for the (maybe Sequel) in which the grown up Ai will try to find out who attacked the Hotaru Headquarters

- Skya

The day the world turned white ( first draft is finished, working on it)

To stop global warming some scientists basically caused a new ice age. On the long run this might be very effective but the former countries, now sectors, are hit by strong ice storms, called snow white. To stay safe huge bunkers, the Safe Cities, were built and the local fauna and flora were stored in Arks, to preserve them.

Usually an alarm sounds before all citizens are brought into the SCs, but this time Reese and her best friend Yuki dont manage to get to the vehicles on time and are left behind. They seek shelter in a private bunker outside of town that Yuki found out about recently. Suddenly a group of boys their age knocks on the door, because they were also left behind and followed the girls.

Al, the brothers Eli and Isaac, Gil and Henry become the new bunker-mates and the group has to survive one year in the bunker, until the storm is over.

( I have a blog for this story, just search for The day the world turned white! There are pics and some posts for example abt which patronus/spirit animal the charas have!)

Reese/ Therese Wells

Al/ Alexander Glover

Yuki Sarah Brooke

Eli Green

Isaac Green

Gil de Santos

Henry Summers

The Sun will always rise (The sequel, probably forever unfinished)

About a group of rebels, the Sun Children, that are sworn enemies to the government and its ways to cope with Snow White.

Takes place abt one/two years after Tdtwtw.

Lucy and Aidan are kicked out of an underground organisation that stays in the cities underground system during the storm phases and the two wander around in the snow until Michael and Rin pick them up and bring them to the Sun Children. From looking into the snow directly to maneuver, Lucy has turned snowblind.

Yeah the plot is… not 100% existent.

Characters:

Lucy

Aidan

Michael

Kate

Gil

Bo

Finya

Rin

The XII Games ( First book is finished, i started the second one, unfinished)

A story abt spaceships that let slaves fight in games, if they win a certain number they are “free”. Cassidy makes it and is sold to a women, Trisha, that takes her home onto her home planet, where Cassidy lives a nice life and learns abt her heritage. One year later she meets Tobias again and she and Trisha are brought to a planet that is basically the universes capital. Cassidy has to take a more important role in the uproar of a war, than she ever imagined.( The cast members are mostly human looking but are other, non human, races)

Cass (Cassidy ) E’ Alandril

Tobias

On the slave ship:

Neala

Sam ( Samuel)

On Anterra:

Trisha  Willowrish

Max ( Maxwell)  E’ Alyndral

Lukas

Tori

Khorr

Keri

Wil

Quinna

On the Space sparrow:

Zach ( Zacharyas) Gryaan

Benj ( Benjamin) Bottledom

Rashka Hyrelian

Oreadh Urunna'ur

Butcher

Kagrim

Kyluur

Irian Ashcott

On Capital Estellar:

Galea ( Galeandrih Fiyur’ Ihal)

Iyal

Wren Fawell

Luasia  

Luminor the Shining

Fallen Angels ( A trilogy, one and a half books were finished, reconcepted)

We don’t talk abt this but it was one of my first stories i truly wrote.

Abt fallen angels saving the world or sth. It’s super clichee and just ugh.

The newer version would cancel some charas and make it abt rebalancing Darkness and Light in the worlds. With a more diverse cast and also different magical races. And a way less creepy Adam.

Eve/Evelyn White

Adam

Peregrine/Perry

Ray/Raven

Sera

Colin

Robin

Raphael

Ky/ Kyron

Gabe/Gabriel Frost

Bree/ Gabriella Frost

Indigo ( haven’t written it yet and i don’t know if i ever will, but have drawn stuff. I lowkey wanna see this as a comic)

A story abt a clan of shapeshifters, called Indigos. They are basically human that can shift into dolphins and their clan lives on an island near Australia. Its a modern story and the gang consisting of our local gay dolphin girl Keerie, her cousins Akash and Arjuun (younger brother, older sis), and Ky ( adopted as a child, japanese heritage, a different breed of dolphin idk) lives their “normal lives” with lots of shenenigans and drama.

Some day Keerie falls in love with Navy, the daughter of the owner of the local Aquapark (that the clan suspect also does illegal stuff like snatching wild animals).

Keerie

Arjuun

Akash

Ky

Navy

“Neo Alcatraz” ( reworks of a very old story)

To put it simply, there is a pack of scientists that bionically enhance children and send them off to different countries to basically be local superheroes. Our gang was kinda left behind bc the countries rather took the newer, better versions and here they are now, a bunch of supernatural teens facing the (not so) everyday struggles of life.

Atalanta

Chi

Callie

Lee

Victor/Konrad

Gemsona (just art)

Larimar

- has water powers and her backstory bases on my private/old Squads life story and a lot of me thinking of drawing music videos for her but never doing it

Anthea (art and headcanons)

- my Dnd Oc

The Bender Girls ( art and headcanons)

- basically some Avatar the last Airbender Ocs i made once

Daiyu

Hotaru

Yura

Sündenfall / Sinfall (short story)

A short story i wrote for a competition which is basically every crime series but magic.

Harvey is immortal, he dies and is revived, and solves crimes through it. Paige is basically his assistant and the case they are on is abt a person that kills magical beings and “arranges” the victims fitting to the seven sins.

Ilya Winter

Harvey

Paige

Delphi

Sphinx

The concept charas, that had a different storyline ( they were basically a team of magical beings that would solve cases… rather unconventional.) I considered reworking them into the new Fallen Angels concept:

Ilya

Harvey

Timothy

Worth mentioning:

Project Alpha (script, some art):

The script for a shortfilm i once made with my friends. A school class has a plane crash and only a few students survive, they all embody a different character archetype (the sunshine, the soziopath, the smart one etc.) They try to survive and are put through weird psychological mind experiments like the trolley problem.

To be honest, the concept had and still has a lot of potential and we just hadn’t the opportunities to rly set it the way we anticipated. The shooting day was super fun, though! Still laughing about the outtakes

Astral Chronicles (some art and a few chapters, unfinished)

A story Idea i still like but probably wont write like this because of copyright problems. Its basically a giant Crossover.

Its abt people who have an Astral( mostly a literature figure) they embody when they are dreaming. Their body stays in bed and is vulnerable but the Astral can basivally run around and has special powers. If the Astral dies, the person wakes up but i think when the body dies the person dies too? idk.

The Protagonist embodies Alice and there are also the White Rabbit, Peter Pan, Tinkerbell usw.

There was also some kind of conflict? I dont remember.

If i would ever rewrite it the Astrals would be embodiments of the Zodiac signs.

(does this even fit?)

The Fanfiction thing i wrote abt Peter Pan/ Jack Frost

- like i have tons of short drabbles and the start of a fanfiction and honestly i liked the ideas i had a lot

The ones we better not talk abt:

Part Hunter

Basically there was a being named eternity/aeterna that was shattered into oarts (like in TRC)

and chosen ones have to reclaim them.

The ones that basically die are turned into guardians, like Time and Space ( they had animal companions they were fused with i guess)

Melody is the current part hunter and has a tragic love story, her animal is a tiny horse thing??????

Idk

basically a long story in which i used my dreams as base for the episodes

The nameless story

Actually super interesting but too many charas and a too tiny will to draw action scenes or write them.

Like its based around a super popular game in huge spheres/buildings and the teams wear some anti gravity outfits and shoes and can walk on the walls and shit and can basically attack using elements/illusion/ conjure monsters idk.

And the main team had an opponent team that basically specialized in the 25272 other elements and some day they just fused teams idk.

There also was some prophecy shit abt the anchors, ppl that can control all elements the same???? Idk

Element guardians

- basically four teens that control the elements and do shit together

- at some point i gave all of them dragons

- still thinking abt this sometimes

- The originals:

Luna: the shameless self insert , earth, pony girl, bland blonde i think

Katy: Air, best friend, bubbly

Dan: The jock. Fire

Nick: The emo. Water

At some point Katy became Skye and Dan and Nick got other names but yeah-

Talent Academy

The story thats basically a ripoff of Alice academy. Like a school with hierachie between the students and ranks and shit and different houses and the students have powers IDK

If you read through all of this, bless you for showing interest in my stories ;) And hey, if you want me to rant about any of them, just send me an ask or a message!!!

#masterpost #ocs #my stories #my ocs #stories #list

[heartslogos]

newfragile yellows [187]

“If I die - “

“She means when right? She does know she isn’t immortal and eternal? She means when,” Sera says to Cole who just shrugs.

“Death is a choice in that you can see it as a personal occasion or an impersonal natural occurrence,” Cole says softly, scratching the side of his nose and then shrugging. “Death is also just a transition of energy and state. Condensation and evaporation aren’t death.”

“You know what, I don’t know why I even bother with you. Forget I even talked to you.”

“If I die,” Ellana continues to rasp out coughing as she stares mournfully up at the ceiling, “I want my urn filled with little plastic toys from capsule machines. I want future archeologists to have the most buck wild ride when they uncover my supposed remains.”

“And what did you want me to do wit your ashes if not put them in an urn?” Bull asks as he gently coaxes her into sitting up so he can rub some soothing cream on her back underneath her shirt.

“Fuck all if I know, just be environmentally responsible; the important part is the urn full of capsule machine toys. The cuter or weirder the better. Spring load it, even. Just make it a completely crazy thing that makes them go absolutely insane trying to figure out how important I was or wasn’t,” Ellana says, turning to hack up what sounds like all of her internal organs and all the important liquids that go in or around them.

Everyone respectfully waits for her to be done before resuming the conversation.

Ellana finishes her hacking and coughing with a very small groan that signals the return to regular talking.

“Didn’t you want to be buried?” Sera asks. “Isn’t that the normal religious route for you?”

“If you bury me I want to be wrapped in a shroud of bio degradable cloth and also with zero burial goods but I want the most kick-ass monument with some sort of mysterious and ominous thing on it. Whatever Cole feels like saying at the time, I guess. And I also want secret clues that might suggest I’m not even buried there. You know what -  yeah, do that. I want my real body to be buried in an unmarked grave in an undisclosed and unrecorded location. I want a really crazy monument to myself erected in a regular graveyard. And also have the urn filled with capsule machine toys. Give them the most wild ride possible.”

“That’s cute, babe, I’ll make sure to tell the lawyers when we work on tweaking the trust,” Bull says, “But in the mean time maybe go to sleep. Have you tried that? The person equivalent of turning the power on and off?”

“No one’s ever died from having a cold, at least not in this modern era of medicine and science,” Sera says. “

“The most important thing is that environmentally speaking I’m doing as little damage as possible while also creating a future test for future explorers and scientists.”

“Again, very nice, but maybe try going to sleep and seeing how that works out. You know. Instead of just death.”

“I miss my snoots. Why can’t I be with my snoots?”

“Your snakes are fine, Dorian’s delighted to be taking care of them. It’s good for them so socialize, he says,” Sera says, “And I’m here to make sure you - you know. Try to get better without pulling something crazy off. I don’t know why they chose me. I think it’s because I like to try and find UFO’s and government conspiracies in my spare time.”

“And what does that have to do with helping me look after Ellana?”

“Well. No offense, but like, almost all of us think she’s an alien or cryptic of some kind,” Sera says. “Also they figure I’m probably better at taking care of someone than you are. I don’t know why they think that, but they do.”

“Cute. Cole, are you sure you want to be here?” Bull says, passing his hand over Cole’s head, “You should lie down. You didn’t sleep last night with all that vomiting.”

“We’re both sick, so we should both be here together,” Cole says.

“You’re sick?” Sera’s head turns so fast that she almost falls off her chair. “You’ve been sick?”

Cole nods and upon closer inspection he looks a more gray than usual or generally acceptable.

Sera stares at him, “Why are you sitting next to me? Get on that bed with sicko number one. If I get sick next it’s your fault, you know.”

“It’s too hot,” Cole murmurs but he gets up to slowly shuffle to the bed anyway. “I don’t want to stay in my room. It’s too quiet, I start to hear the sounds of outside my skin.”

“Do you talk that way because you’re feverish? Are you just sick all the time?” Sera asks as Cole climbs onto the bed and then wiggles up towards the headboard, looking like a very pale worm in baggy clothing as he proceeds to lie down in a completely straight line, arms at his sides and legs straight out, face down on the bed. “Not on your face, dumbass. You’ll suffocate.”

“I miss my snoots,” Ellana says. “Tell Dorian to bring me back my snoots. Ask him if he can steal some snoots from the zoo. Or a lizard. Or a turtle. Ooooh one of the frogs. I love those frogs. They love me, too. I bet they miss me. They like me better than Dorian, and everyone knows it.

“I also miss your snakes,” Bull says, brushing some hair from her face. “I also miss all of the people present not being in this apartment and doing other more generally interesting things. We all miss stuff. It’s unfortunate but that’s life. Sera and I are going to go back to the living room and work some case files. Don’t yell if you need something. Sera stole some police radio’s so just - talk normally. Seriously, don’t yell.”

#heartsfic #gather your party and venture forth

[mst3kproject]

Face of the Screaming Werewolf

So.  That's a title.

Face of the Screaming Werewolf was directed, so to speak, by Jerry Warren of Wild Wild World of Batwoman fame.  It stars much of the cast of Robot vs the Aztec Mummy, because bits of the first film in that series were used in its construction – just as they were in the flashback sequence of Robot vs the Aztec Mummy itself!  The movie also stars Lon Chaney Jr. by virtue of footage stolen from another Mexican horror film called House of Terror. As you might imagine, the resulting Frankenmovie is not particularly coherent viewing.  Are we gonna see that singing Aztec sacrifice scene again?  You bet your butts we are! In fact, we see significantly more of it.

Scientist Dr. Edmund Redding places a young woman, Ann Taylor, in a trance, and listens to her describe an ancient city of the Aztecs. She hints at something of importance hidden in a pyramid there, so Dr. Redding and his colleagues set out for Mexico to look for it. The pyramid itself prompts Ann to have another vision, and she guides the scientists to a chamber deep inside it, where they find two mummies.  One, which I shall call Mummy A, is our old friend Popoka, who to general horror is up and shuffling around.  Mummy B, as described in a news broadcast, is a modern man who was injected with mummy juice in the attempt to induce a state of undeath.  Whether either mummy is the important thing that drew Ann to the pyramid in her visions, we never find out.

Naturally Dr. Redding brings these corpses, both animate and not, back to California with him and holds a big press conference to announce his finds.  Before he can take the stage, however, he is mysteriously assassinated, and Mummy B is stolen!  The thugs who took it try to ressurect it with mad science, but fail, so they hire a guy to steal Mummy A from Dr. Redding's research institute.  Meanwhile, a chance bolt of lightning ressurects Mummy B after all, and the full moon turns him into a werewolf!  He begins slaughtering scientists, while Mummy A, having knocked out the thief sent to collect him, kills Ann and then vanishes from the movie entirely.

So what we have here are highly abbreviated versions of two different movies stitched together, and wow, are the seams ever visible. There's the scene that's supposed to be Dr. Redding's presentation: we see a big audience applauding, and Dr. Redding stands up... but he's clearly in his own living room, while the audience is in a large hall in what looks like a completely different building!  Even more obvious is the stuff Jerry Warren shot to fill in the holes between the two plots, which is on a completely different grade of film stock (and in a completely different decade) than anything in either source movie.  And while both The Aztec Mummy and House of Terror put some actualy money into their productions (not much, but some), the extra footage had no budget at all, and gives us things like a 'Cowan Research Institute' which appears to be next door to Batwoman's house.

As in other Jerry Warren movies, nothing follows anything else logically, and the fact that we've got two movies mixed together here only heightens this effect.  In fact, I suspect that a lot of things here did make sense in the original movies, before Warren took a hatchet to them.  Take, for example, Mummy A's fascination with Ann.  In The Aztec Mummy this was explained as her being the reincarnation of Popoka's lover Zochi.  Face of the Screaming Werewolf might be doing the reincarnation thing, too, but is way less clear about it.  In House of Terror the mad scientists were working on ressurecting the dead, but in Face of the Screaming Werewolf we are never properly introduced to them and their goals are a mystery – although their hideout, in a wax museum, is creepy as hell and their equipment is incredibly amusing.  Among other things, they appear to subject Mummy B to a giant panini press and a purpose-built corpse centrifuge!

The mixing of stories leaves the movie with a particularly egregious case of No Main Character Syndrome, simply because we never stay with a set of characters long enough to consider them 'main'.  Dr. Redding and Ann are introduced as if they ought to be the main characters, because of course that's exactly what they were in their own movie. Rather than stay with them, however, the movie disposes of them both by killing them offscreen (since at no point in the Aztec Mummy quadrilogy do Eduardo or Flora die).  Then the scientists at the wax museum appear as if they're going to be main characters, but without ever being properly introduced to us.  I don't think any of them even got a name.  The detectives in Warren's added footage might have had names, but if so I don't remember them, and because they can't interact with any of these other characters they never do anything useful to the plot.  That leaves us with only the werewolf and the mummy, neither of whom ever even speak.

The thing I do find rather interesting about a patchwork movie like this is what was kept versus what appears to have been cut.  The Aztec Mummy was eighty minutes long, House of Terror was sixty, and bits and pieces of both have been combined into the sixty-minute Face of the Screaming Werewolf. A lot clearly had to go from each, but what they kept was, in some cases, really strange.  As I noted, we don't ever get proper introductions for the guys at the wax museum, and yet we see the entire Aztec sacrifice scene without any of The Aztec Mummy's backstory to give it context – and without context, the events we see are meaningless.  Why include it when it mostly just draws attention to the fact that Mummy B does not belong in this tomb with Mummy A?  The only answer I can imagine was because it represents the nearest thing Face of the Screaming Werewolf has to spectacle, but the movie didn't need spectacle.  It needed characters and a plot.

Meanwhile, because we never get the beginning of House of Terror, very little from that story means anything to us, either.  We get repeated shots of the museum's creepy wax figures, which were significant in House of Terror, but have nothing to do with Face of the Screaming Werewolf. The werewolf himself has no backstory or motivation, and although we're told he's a modern man who somehow ended up in the pyramid, we're given no clues as to how or why.  He has no lines, I'm guessing because Lon Chaney Jr. didn't speak any Spanish.  His rampage is committed against more characters we've never met, and we don't understand why he kills some people, kidnaps others, and leaves yet more alone.  A scene of him in human form, moping over his sorry plight, suggests that we're supposed to feel sympathy for this character, but how, when we know nothing about him?

If I were in charge of fixing Face of the Screaming Werewolf, he first thing I would do is go back to the source material and make some changes in what actually became part of the final movie.  And once I had my footage all picked out, I would then rewrite the story that goes with it very thoroughly indeed.  As I observed in my review of Time of the Apes, the beauty of dubbing is that you don't necessarily have to stick to the original script.  You can take out irrelevant stuff and add in new material.  I think I would have kept it to a single mummy, and perhaps made lycanthropy a tomb curse of sorts – Chaney's character would be the last archaeologist to profane the pyramid, and he was punished by becoming a werewolf so he could in turn punish any foolish enough to come after him!  There.  I just wrote a more coherent version of this movie in ten seconds than Jerry Warren did in however long it took him.

All this does tend to make one ask: is making one movie out of two, like Face of the Screaming Werewolf, or finishing somebody else's movie, as in Monster A-Go-Go, a lost cause?  I think if you could find a pair of movies that shared actors or sets, it might be possible to come up with something reasonably coherent, but you'd still have the problem of characters who can't interact, or scenes that have to be stitched together where they obviously don't belong.  It seems to me to be something that works better as a joke, as in Kung Pow! Enter the Fist or Ninja: the Mission Force, rather than something to be done seriously.  When not used for Internet Humour, frankenmovie-making seems to be motivated primarily by greed.  Herschel Gordon Lewis finished Monster A-Go-Go in the attempt to sell an unsalable product, and Jerry Warren turned La Momia Azteca and La Casa del Terror into Attack of the Mayan Mummy, House of Terror, and Face of the Screaming Werewolf so that he could release three movies for the price of the rights to two.

Greed is of course at the core of a lot of modern moviemaking.  Summer blockbusters and long-running franchises are designed specifically to earn as much money as possible without anybody necessarily caring if they're any good. A lot of the time they're not, yet despite poor reviews they still earn money, so I guess moviegoers don't care either as long as they get to see something cool.  Even by that standard, though, Face of the Screaming Werewolf is extremely cynical.  Warren figured as long as he gave the movie a cool title, people would pay for it regardless of whether it even made any damned sense.  And you know what?  I watched the damn thing, so I guess I don't care, either.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #face of the screaming werewolf #60s #you is a warwelf #royally lame crummy mummies #curiously caucasian aztecs

[aion-rsa]

The Best Comics of the Decade

https://ift.tt/368Hmgo

We've read a TON of great comics in the last 10 years, and we picked out the 100 best for you to passionately disagree with.

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What a century this last decade has been.

Seriously, the pace of change over the last 10 years has been steadily rising, and has been somewhere between “dangerous” and “murderous” for the last 3, and that isn’t just about geopolitics: the comics world of today is certainly recognizable to a time traveller from 2010, but it would look extremely weird.

- Webcomics and medium press publishers are EVERYWHERE now.

- Marvel has embraced multiple restarts of its line.

- DC has rebooted its universe at least twice.

- Comics are for kids again.

- Nerds rule culture, for all that’s good and bad.

These changes have been catalysts for some very, very good comic books, and we wanted to give you a list of some of our favorites. Here are a few guiding principles to our list:

I am one person who can’t possibly read everything. There’s some stuff that won’t be on this list because I didn’t have time to get to it. Please share what was missed in the comments!

It’s also an exercise in opinion! I didn’t want to be redundant and talk about the same creators or characters over and over again, though there are some repeats. I ranked these according to what I enjoyed, and not some externally objective measure of what is the finest art. If anything, I’m biased towards what was interesting - books that have stuck with me for years, stuff I still think about or reread or recommend. That said, for longer runs like Scott Snyder’s Batman or Criminal, I tried to pick arcs that were symbolic of the entire run, or the best stories within a bigger picture.

And finally, it’s imperfect. I’ve been fiddling with a good chunk of this list for a month and a half, and every time I look, I realize something I forgot, or something I could move, or something that shouldn’t be ranked lower than something else. But ultimately, I’m pretty happy with everything here, and I’m willing to bet you’ll find something interesting you’ve never considered before in it, even if I’ve missed a few glaring stories.

With that in mind, Den of Geek is proud to unveil our empirically sound, objective, and absolute BEST COMICS OF THE 2010S

  100. Batman & Robin

Pete Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, Mick Gray, John Kalisz (DC Comics)

Tomasi and Gleason’s run never got the attention it deserved because it ran alongside huge ones - Grant Morrison’s Batman and Batman Inc. to start, and Scot Snyder and Greg Capullo’s monster New 52 series later. But I might like this one more: Tomasi writes hands down the best Damian Wayne I’ve ever read, and Gleason and Gray do bulky, shadowy Bat people perfectly. The high point is an issue around the middle of this run, post-Damian’s death but before he came back, when Batman is teaming up with Two-Face, and it might be my favorite single issue of Batman of all time. It’s such a perfect take on Two-Face that I come back to it every couple of years. Give this era of Batman a shot, I bet you love it.

read Batman & Robin on Amazon

  99. Black Science

Rick Remender, Matteo Scalera, Moreno Dionisio (Image Comics)

Black Science is a comic full of Rick Remender’s fears and worries. Scalera and Dionisio turn them into bright, colorful, wildly creative visuals as Grant McKay bounced around the Eververse trying to find a way at first to express his anarcho-scientistism, and then to save his family. It wrapped up earlier this year, and Remender and the team did an elegant job landing the plane on one of the best books from a wave of big name creator owned books that launched back in 2014.

read Black Science on Amazon

  98. Black

Kwanza Osajyefo, Tim Smith 3, Jamal Igle, Khary Randolph (Black Mask Studios)

Osajyefo, Smith, Igle and cover artist Khary Randolph’s comic about what would happen in a world where only black people got superpowers stripped the “mutant” part from “the mutant metaphor” and also the “metaphor” part, and gave us a story about black people being treated like exploitable resources by the US government. Igle’s black and white art was terrific, and the story is rough when you explain the plot, but rougher when it plays out on the page in front of you. 

read Black on Amazon

  97. Assassin Nation

Kyle Starks, Erica Henderson (Image Comics)

Starks and Henderson are both gifted comics creators on their own. Pairing them together gave us something beautiful - a book that’s about the world’s greatest assassins banding together to fight for their lives. It’s got unique characters with distinct voices and ridiculous, over the top action.

read Assassin Nation on Amazon

  96. Boundless

Jillian Tamaki (Drawn & Quarterly)

Time has sped up immensely in the last three years. Things that feel momentus happen and are forgotten four hours later. Trends are microtrends, fads are localized without geography, and entire 24-hour news cycles are compressed to the space between weathers on the 1s. So it’s really weird how a collection of in-the-moment short comics drawn (presumably) in 2016 feels extremely relevant and timely now. Tamaki takes a bunch of quick stories - about a mirror Facebook that shows you what might be in a parallel world; a Twilight Zone-esque cultural phenomenon mp3; a porn sitcom from the ‘90s gaining more than a cult following 25 years later - and uses the characters to say something interesting about them or us or our world. It’s a great book.

read Boundless on Amazon

  95. Imperium

Joshua Dysart, Doug Brathwaite, Scot Eaton, Cafu, Khari Evans, Ulisses Ariola (Valiant Entertainment)

Toyo Harada is a underratedly great villain, and Imperium is the story of him trying to impose his will on the world. Valiant books have, since their return early this decade, been pretty tightly intertwined, but most of their central narrative has revolved around Harada. He’s a great choice for that. He’s as big an egomaniac as Lex Luthor or Dr. Doom, but he’s got the benefit of operating in a world where the political rules are more like those of ours, which enhances everything good and bad about his character. Dysart and the art team give us an outstanding story about megalomania here.

read Imperium on Amazon

  94. X-Men: Second Coming

Matt Fraction, Zeb Wells, Mike Carey, Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, David Finch, Terry Dodson, Greg Land, Mike Choi, Ibraim Roberson, Rachel Dodson, Sonia Oback (Marvel Comics)

Second Coming is the payoff to my favorite era of X-Men books so far, the Messiah Era. It starts out blazingly fast, and then plays out over the course of 14 issues and somehow speeds up as it goes along. It’s a straight up summer blockbuster action movie in comic form that does an excellent job blending voices, art styles and ongoing plots with the overall narrative of the crossover without losing any momentum.

read X-Men: Second Coming on Amazon

  93. Ultimates 2

Al Ewing, Travel Foreman, Christian Ward, Dan Brown (Marvel Comics)

Al Ewing is well on his way to stardom because of how good The Immortal Hulk is, but the cool kids all knew where he was going after he teamed up with Foreman and Ward to tell a story about the self-aware multiverse and cosmic entities of the Marvel universe in The Ultimates/Ultimates 2. This book is weird and gorgeous, and even if it leaned towards implying some big changes for the greater Marvel cosmology without ever seeing those changes bear fruit, it was still a terrific story on its own right.

read Ultimates 2 on Amazon

  92. Adventure Time

Ryan North, Shelli Paroline, Braden Lamb (BOOM! Studios)

A licensed property like Adventure Time is tough to get right. The cartoon is so inventive that even if you match what shows up on the screen, it’s still just a pale shadow because the creativeness of the ideas is the point. So it was a huge surprise when the comic nailed it - it was every bit as wild as the show, only it also captured the voices of the characters perfectly and delighted in being a comic in a way that made it a celebration of the medium. This was the first time North managed to get rollover text into a printed comic, and it works, man.

read Adventure Time on Amazon

  91. The Divine

Boaz Lavie, Asaf Hanuka, Tomer Hanuka (First Second)

The Hanukas do two things really, really well in The Divine. They do great scale shifts. The camera zooms from pulling in really close on an eye about to bleed to pulling waaaay back to show giant beasts roving what looks like a fantasy countryside, and each decision about where to put the camera serves the story well. And the coloring adds to the surrealness of the story. It’s bright and full of greens and pinks almost to the point of being disorienting, which is I think the goal of that palette choice. The story is excellent too, about Burmese (or I guess Myanmarese now) child soldiers defending the land of their gods from resource extractors.

read The Divine on Amazon

  90. Ivar, Timewalker

Fred Van Lente, Clayton Henry, Brian Reber (Valiant Entertainment)

Ivar is surprisingly emotional and a ton of fun. Tonally, it’s one of the most distinct Valiant comics - it threads the needle of Quantum & Woody comedy, X-O Manowar high adventure and Eternal Warrior mythmaking. Van Lente takes pieces from all of those genres and knits them together with a ton of humor to make a super entertaining comic. What’s not to like about a book that starts with the main character throwing up his arms and shouting “LET’S KILL HITLER!”?

read Ivar, Timewalker on Amazon

  89. Virgil

Steve Orlando, JD Faith, Chris Beckett, Tom Mauer (Image Comics)

What I liked most about Virgil is how little it felt like Orlando and Faith were shading the story. It’s simultaneously about how reprehensible Jamaica is towards gay people; crooked cops; and a love story; and a revenge story, and no one aspect overrules the others. Virgil is a dirty cop in Jamaica and also a gay man who loses his love and goes on a rampage. Every part of the story is given equal attention, and the final result is really, really good comics.

read Virgil on Amazon

  88. Memetic

James Tynion IV, Eryk Donovan (BOOM! Studios)

It’s shocking how prescient Memetic feels. It’s genuinely creepy horror work from Tynion and Donovan, but it’s also about a meme and the homogenization of culture, and it landed like, 3 years before those ideas really penetrated the cultural zeitgeist. Donovan’s art manages the tricky feat of nailing the genuine horror of the situation, from the shock on the characters’ faces to the gross-out body horror later in the book, but it’s also genuinely funny at times. That damn sloth meme has been stuck in my head for five years.

read Memetic on Amazon

87. The Manhattan Projects

Jonathan Hickman, Nick Pitarra, Jordie Bellaire (Image Comics)

Some books need long explanations to justify inclusion on a best books of the decade list. Some just need you to say “Richard Feynman and Albert Einstein gun down a space station full of FDRobots.” Guess which one Manhattan Projects is.

read The Manhattan Projects on Amazon

  86. O.M.A.C.

Dan DiDio, Keith Giffen, Scott Koblish, Hi-Fi (DC Comics)

O.M.A.C. is secretly the best New 52 launch title. Honestly, though, this book is and will always be an underrated gem: it’s DiDio, Giffen, and Koblish trying to do Jack Kirby with modern sensibilities. And it’s extremely, beautifully Kirby in so many different ways. I can’t believe it worked.

read OMAC on Amazon

  85. All-New Wolverine

Tom Taylor, David Lopez, David Navarrot, Nathan Fairbairn (Marvel Comics)

One of the best X-Men comics from the last ten years is also one of the most unexpected: it’s a Marvel book that steals DC’s traditional schtick about how to be a great legacy hero. Laura Kinney takes over Logan’s mask after her clonefather dies, and decides to make it a more outwardly and publicly superheroic mantle. Spoilers: she’s GREAT at it. Taylor gives her real growth as a character, and uses the best new character of the last 10 years (Jonathan the Wolverine and also Scout nee Honey Badger) to great effect. I was stunned at how much I loved this comic.

read All-New Wolverine on Amazon

84. Assassination Classroom

Yusei Matsui (Viz Media)

I’m not sure how I would briefly describe this book, and that’s part of why I love it. A monster destroys ¾ of the moon and says more is coming. But he gives mankind an out: Kill him inside of a year, and he’ll leave them alive. Then, and this is where it gets nuts, he takes over as homeroom teacher for a group of misfit teenagers and starts teaching them how to kill him. It’s basically Bad News Bears with a little more murder and some great manga art from Matsui.

read Assassination Classroom on Amazon

  83. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Robert Hack (Archie Comics)

The best thing about Chilling Adventures of Sabrina isn’t that it spawned a great TV adaptation on Netflix. The best thing about it is how faithful to the comic the TV adaptation is. Part of Archie’s horror renaissance, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a genre anachronism that revels in its horror story trappings and delights in placing wholesome Archie characters in it. It’s drawn well and smart and a lot of fun from start to finish.

read Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Amazon

82. Uber

Kieron Gillen, Canaan White, Digikore Studios (Avatar Press)

Early on in Uber’s run, Gillen recommended Antony Beevor’s comprehensive history of World War II as something he leaned on heavily when constructing this book. It shows: Uber reads like a military history, rather than your typical comic about “What if they had super powers in World War II?” The supersoldiers are treated like any other military technology - resources to be deployed, depleted, exploited and overcome. This is probably the most interesting treatment of super powers I’ve seen in a comic in the decade.

read Uber on Amazon

  81. The Spire

Si Spurrier, Jeff Stokely, Andre May (BOOM! Studios)

Simon Spurrier does two things better than almost anyone in comics: he chooses incredible artists to work with, and he (and the artists) put together some stunning worlds for their characters to live in. The Spire is a murder mystery set in a fantasy city with a rigid class structure, and he and Stokely make a city that I felt immersed in immediately upon starting the book. One other thing Spurrier and crew do really well: wreck their main characters and break your heart, and The Spire is some of his best work.

read The Spire on Amazon

  80. Aliens: Dead Orbit

James Stokoe (Dark Horse Comics)

James Stokoe could have drawn 100 pages of character models and it would be on this list. He’s an incredible artist who draws incredibly detailed everything. Everything! Rubble. Ribcages. Control panels. Inner mandibles. Giving him an Aliens book is the no-brainer of no-brainers - this is what HR Geiger would have drawn if he was raised on anime.

read Aliens: Dead Orbit on Amazon

  79. Shade the Changing Girl

Cecil Catellucci, Marley Zarcone, Kelly Fitzpatrick (DC Comics)

It takes a really gifted eye to see the absurdity in everyday life and expose that to your readers with only a modest tweak to reality. Zarcone and Castellucci use dropping Rac Shade’s madness vest and Loma the alien bird into the body of a comatose mean girl as their way to show just how silly teenage life can be, and it’s beautiful. Shade the Changing Girl and its follow up, Shade the Changing Woman, both do magnificent work of using insanity to take you through a rollercoaster of emotions.

read Shade the Changing Girl on Amazon

  78. Wuvable Oaf

Ed Luce (Fantagraphics)

I think the best part about Wuvable Oaf, the indie book about black metal San Francisco bears is just how nice it is. It’s a really sweet, funny courtship story about an ex-underground wrestler starting a relationship with a small, blood-drenched metal singer. I find myself recommending this book to a surprising amount of people.

read Wuvable Oaf on Amazon

77. Upgrade Soul

Ezra Claytan Daniels (Lion Forge Comics)

Ezra Claytan Daniels went for messed up, twisty sci fi right out of the gate, and it was a home run. Upgrade Soul is an ugly body modification story about trying to prolong one’s life unnaturally, and what happens if that’s not all really well thought out beforehand. It’s drawn really well: even now, the scene with the gauze coming off layer by layer, the pacing of it and the skill of setting that sequence up, is amazing.

read Upgrade Soul on Amazon

  76. Strong Female Protagonist

Brennan Lee Mulligan, Molly Ostertag 

“What if superheroes were real” is usually an exceptionally stupid premise for a comic, but there are plenty of ridiculous components to the superhero conceit that are worth examining. One of them is the value of superheroing - does flying around punching shit really actually fix anything? In Strong Female Protagonist, Alison Green asks that question, decides it doesn’t, and quits capes for college and activism in New York. This is a great story well told, but what I enjoy about it now is how New York it feels. It’s a really thoughtful take on superheroing, but it’s also a really good story that transports you to an age and a place.

read Strong Female Protagonist here

  75. Journey Into Mystery

Kieron Gillen, Doug Brathwaite, Ulises Ariola & others (Marvel Comics)

Journey Into Mystery shouldn’t have been successful. Loki wasn’t quite at the height of his powers yet, and while he was getting there, even now he can’t really carry his own book. It was also a legacy numbered relaunch coming out of a big summer crossover event. And yet, Kieron managed to take new kid Loki and use him to tell a story about stories and fate and myth that stands up there with some of the greatest Asgard stories ever told. What he does with the trickster god is actually sad and moving (and also generally hilarious - he writes a really fun Loki).  it It’s one of my favorite things he’s ever written.

read Journey Into Mystery on Amazon

  74. Kinski

Gabriel Hardman (Monkeybrain Comics)

Sometimes, a comic is just plain good. Sometimes, a comic prominently features the GOODEST BOY on a cover. Sometimes, as is the case with Kinski, a comic does both. Hardman is a master of the form, and Kinski is one of his most underrated works. It’s the story of a guy bored with his life and trying to save a black lab puppy - not especially complicated or deep, but enough to hook me in, especially with the VERY GOOD BOY on the cover. But his art is magnificent. It’s black and white, and Hardman uses just about every inking style and manner to help tell the story. It’s virtuoso stuff. I loved it.

read Kinski on Amazon

73. The Sheriff of Babylon

Tom King, Mitch Gerads (Vertigo Comics)

With a list like this, sometimes it’s not the full sweep of a story that gets it on, but the remembered moments. I’ve seen King and Gerads work together a hundred times since then (or at least it feels like that - time has no meaning anymore). It’s all been spectacular, but the scene with Chris and Fatima in the Saddam’s old pool sharing a bottle of vodka talking about pointlessness still stands out hard for me. The Sheriff of Babylon has gotten better with age, and it started out really, really good.

read The Sheriff of Babylon on Amazon

72. Genius

Marc Bernardin, Adam Freeman, Afua Richardson (Image Comics)

If you call a book Genius, it damn well better be brilliant. Fortunately for us, it was. Bernardin, Freeman and Richardson told us the story of Destiny, a precocious and brilliant military mind born into South Central and using her strategic genius to bring down the corrupt cops who have been terrorizing her neighborhood. It feels like it was timely when it came out, but it doesn’t read like a political statement. It reads like a really good revenge story. Richardson’s art was sharp and well laid out, and is a huge part of why Genius was so good.

read Genius on Amazon

  71. Judas

Jeff Loveness, Jakub Rebelka (BOOM! Studios)

This book came out of nowhere for me. Loveness and Rebelka expanded on the story of Christ and Judas in a fascinating way. Judas is a whip smart comic that thinks around a lot of the unspoken corners of Jesus’s story. And it’s gorgeous: Rebelka draws the hell out of Hell. His backgrounds and settings are every bit as impressive as the storytelling accomplishment. Judas turned out to be an outstanding story.

read Judas on Amazon

  70. Midnighter

Steve Orlando, ACO, Hugo Petrus, Romulo Fajardo, Jr & others (DC Comics)

Sometimes I just want to see a man punch his own ears off to stop from hearing a killing word.

read more: The Best Comics of 2015

Orlando and ACO gave us one of my favorite fight comics of all time in Midnighter (and continued in Midnighter and Apollo). It’s clever and sexy, and it delights in being a comic the way all the greatest fight comics do. The flow of the fights is spectacular - these are some of the best punching scenes I’ve ever read. It’s basically an ultraviolent, morally indignant James Bond. It’s terrific.

read Midnighter on Amazon

69. Black Hammer

Jeff Lemire, Dean Ormston, Dave Stewart & others (Dark Horse Comics)

Something always feels off in Lemire’s best work. In a good way. And something feels really off throughout Black Hammer, which is the entire point of the story. The universe Lemire and Ormston create is a love letter to silver age DC books, but at the same time it misses those comic sensibilities a lot, and Lemire makes his characters mourn that loss on the page. It’s a really interesting structure for a story, paired with some terrific art from Ormston and some inventive fill-ins and spinoffs from David Rubin and Matt Kindt and others. Black Hammer is top to bottom a great book.

read Black Hammer on Amazon

68. My Friend Dahmer

Derf Backderf (Abrams Publishing)

I’m not usually one for true crime stories, especially not ones that try and humanize monstrous serial killers, but Backderf’s story of his old high school acquaintance, human eater Jeffrey Dahmer, is really good. Backderf’s art is very much of the underground comix style, which elevates the story, I think. Dahmer is disturbing and troubling throughout the book, but he’s also very much a weird gawky teenager, and in this art style, everyone is. The story humanizes him without excusing him, but I think the real reason it works is because it’s tinged with regret on Backderf’s part about the ways his relationship with Dahmer could have been different.

read My Friend Dahmer on Amazon

67. No Mercy

Alex de Campi, Carla Speed McNeil (Image Comics)

De Campi and McNeil took a book that could have been a lazy Lord of the Flies-but-with-social-media premise and turned it into a great character book. No Mercy takes a bunch of shitty teens on a field trip, and slowly turns several of them away from their shitty teen-ness and fleshes them out into an interesting dynamic and a great story. McNeil’s art is excellent: when they’re stuck in the desert, you feel hot and dry reading it, and every emotion these kids feel is beautifully shown in their face and their body language. This wasn’t a book I expected to come back to when I finished it, but it’s been a strong read even down the road.

read No Mercy on Amazon

  66. Runaways

Rainbow Rowell, Kris Anka, Matthew Wilson & others (Marvel Comics)

Rowell is a revelation as a comic writer. The way she juggles this huge cast is incredibly skillful writing. She’s got a good grasp on everyone’s voice and knows all the continuity of the old team cold. The book is vastly more enjoyable than the TV series as a teen hero soap opera, and Anka and Wilson make it way cooler to look at, too.

read Runaways on Amazon

  65. Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man

Chip Zdarsky, Adam Kubert, Jordie Bellaire & others (Marvel Comics)

Chip Zdarsky’s growth into one of Marvel’s most earnest writers was a surprising and outstanding development. I don’t think he’s done better work on any character than Spider-Man. It makes sense - Peter lends himself to stories that walk a tightrope between funny and tragic, and Chip is able to fine tune his characters and plots to nail both aspects. 

read more: The Best Comics of 2016

Zdarsky got to work with some amazing artists on this run: Kubert does some of his best work, and Chris Bachalo should draw all Sandman stories forever and ever. But the real standouts are Peter’s dinner with Jonah in #6 (drawn by Michael Walsh), and the last issue of Chip’s run (#310). Both of them are really granular Spidey character studies that show why Peter is such a terrific hero, show just how much Zdarsky gets him, and show just how good Chip’s writing can be.

read Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man on Amazon

  64. Ragnarok

Walter Simonson (IDW Publishing)

It’s Walt Simonson drawing a Thor comic. He already did the best Thor story of all time. This is more of the same. I don’t think I really need to go into greater detail here, right? I will, for the sake of argument: there’s a full page splash at the beginning of the first issue that has Thor facing down the Serpent of Midgard and it is gorgeous. You can almost count the scales on the serpent. 

read Ragnarok on Amazon

63. Mox Nox

Joan Cornella (Fantagraphics)

Cornella’s absurdist comic strips still, years later, make me die laughing. Mox Nox is a collection of his work that shows just how many situations you can put his ridiculous, Weeble-looking figures into that will shock you with their gore or make you shout laughing. 

read Mox Nox on Amazon

  62. The Valiant

Matt Kindt, Jeff Lemire, Paolo Rivera, Joe Rivera (Valiant Entertainment)

Valiant has published some consistently excellent comics over the last decade, but they hit a high point with The Valiant, an Avengers-esque team up of all the heroes of the Valiant universe that focused on Bloodshot, the Geomancer and the Eternal Warrior. It worked so well for two reasons: the relationship between Bloodshot and the Geomancer was incredibly well written and heartbreaking in the end, and the art from the Riveras was incredible. Paolo Rivera doesn’t draw anywhere near as many comics as I would like (that number is generally “nearly all of the comics”), so when he is on a book, you know you’re going to get some beautiful stories.

read The Valiant on Amazon

  61. One Punch Man

ONE, Yusuke Murata (Viz Media)

I didn’t even realize I needed a fight manga parody in my life, but then One Punch Man rolled through and I love it and want more.

read more: The Best Comics of 2017

Saitama trains himself to become a hero, and gets so powerful he can defeat horrifying giant monsters with one punch. Then he gets super bored because nothing is a challenge, and the rest of the first volume is light mocking of fight comics that I found immensely entertaining and really funny. It’s not going to tell us anything about ourselves as a society or have a bigger message than “heh this is pretty silly, isn’t it?” But sometimes that’s perfect.

read One Punch Man on Amazon

  60. Darth Vader

Kieron Gillen, Salvador Larocca, Edgar Delgado (Marvel Comics)

The way the Star Wars prequels neutered Darth Vader is a crime against a character. Miraculously, the move to Disney shifted him back from the hurt puppy dog teenager that the prequels turned him into (and the mystical waste of time that the Special Editions and the books made him) and into a merciless badass force of nature. That shift started in earnest in this book - Gillen and Larocca made him mad again, and a pissed off Sith Lord is a force of nature I loved reading about.

read Darth Vader on Amazon

  59. The Highest House

Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Fabien Alquiler (IDW Publishing)

Carey and Gross are a great team. Their work together on Lucifer is some of the best comics of all time, and the world they built in The Highest House is as good or better. It’s my favorite type of fantasy comic - one that builds a rich, full, beautiful world, and then tears it down through deft character work. It’s a fantasy comic that’s so easy to disappear into, both the world that’s created and the possibilities it opens up.

read The Highest House on Amazon

58. The Nib

Matt Bors & others 

“Mister Gotcha” is up there with “This is Fine” as probably my favorite quick comic gags of the decade. Bors is an extremely sharp cartoonist and a gifted satirist, and The Nib is a regular stop in my daily routine.

read The Nib here

57. The Wild Storm

Warren Ellis, Jon Davis Hunt, Steve Buccellato (DC Comics)

The Wild Storm stands on its own as an amazing comic series. It took everything great about the old Wildstorm world and updated it for a modern, more paranoid, more technologically advanced society. Davis Hunt drew some stunning action sequences and used panel layouts and pacing to incredible effect to propel the story. But the most interesting part of it to me is how it functions as a self reassessment by Ellis, a weird and fun sort of remix and update of his own prior work. It’s excellent.

read The Wild Storm on Amazon

56. House of X/Powers of X

Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz, RB Silva, Marte Gracia (Marvel Comics) 

HoXPoX made it fun to be an X-Men fan again. It’s beating a dead horse at this point, but these books were tremendous accomplishments. Larraz and Silva vaulted to superstardom, Hickman rewrote the entire history of the X-Men, and Gracia made every panel sing.

read House of X/Powers of X on Amazon

55. Sex Criminals

Matt Fraction, Chip Zdarsky (Image Comics)

Qualifying a raunchy sex comedy as weirdly sweet almost seems cliche at this point, but Sex Criminals is the rare story that can match graphic depictions of Urban Dictionary sex positions, a story about people who can stop time when they orgasm, and brutally honest depictions of intimate relationships and make it all entirely relatable. It’s a wonderful story. But also I’m still mostly here for the comedy - Zdarsky puts so much detail into it that every splash page is like a Where’s Waldo of insane sex jokes.

read Sex Criminals on Amazon

54. The Nameless City

Faith Erin Hicks, Jordie Bellaire (First Second)

The Nameless City feels like if Avatar The Last Airbender was about class and not martial arts and the pressure of leadership. It’s one of the few graphic novel series that I remembered to put on a pull list, every volume improving on the last. Hicks’ art is gorgeously cartoony, detailed and loose at the same time, and it builds an engrossing world with fascinating characters that tells the story of a city and a people in major transition. It’s a series I can’t wait to share with family.

read The Nameless City on Amazon

53. Exit, Stage Left! The Snagglepuss Chronicles

Mark Russell, Mike Feehan, Paul Mounts (DC Comics)

I’ve said this a thousand times before, but it’s worth repeating: I don’t understand how the hell this comic got made, and my gast is further flabbered by the fact that it’s amazing. Exit Stage Left recast Snagglepuss as a ‘50s gothic playwright living in New York City; Huckleberry Hound as his novelist best friend; and Quick Draw McGraw as Huck’s down low cop boyfriend, and told a compelling story about fame and society that was equal parts clever, funny, sweet and sad. Brilliant and wry, Mark Russell is one of the best new additions to comics this decade. If you haven’t read this book (which doubles as a stealth period piece about the dawn of the gay rights movement in America I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE I’M TYPING THIS), you should go get it right now.

read Exit, Stage Left! The Snagglepuss Chronicles on Amazon

  52. These Savage Shores

Ram V, Sumit Kumar, Vittorio Astone (Vault Comics)

Ram V, Kumar and Astone do a wonderful job of building a story with a rich world that’s unlike most stories I’ve ever read before, and they do it with incredible skill. The period aspects of the story are lush and gorgeous, but Kumar and Astone’s art is magnificent, paced perfectly with a flow of movement that belies a storytelling skill that you don’t often find in small press superhero comics. The panel flow is really exceptional, and Astone’s colors make this vampire/demon battle sing.

read These Savage Shores on Amazon

51. The Dark Angel Saga, Uncanny X-Force

Rick Remender, Jerome Opena, Mark Brooks, Esad Ribic, Dean White & others (Marvel Comics)

X-Men comics have picked back up recently, but prior to HoXPoX, their pinnacle for me was the Dark Angel Saga. Specifically, Psylocke and Angel’s moment of eternal bliss as their world was destroyed around them. Jerome Opena and Dean White made the visuals so vivid that I could hear the wind roaring around Betsy and Warren, and Remender had done such a good job of building the duo’s relationship that I was almost in tears reading it for the first time. The rest of the run is essential reading: it has my favorite non-movie Deadpool and some of the best Apocalypse stuff since the Age of Apocalypse, but that moment is just so amazing.

read The Dark Angel Saga on Amazon

50. Wytches

Scott Snyder, Jock, Matt Hollingsworth (Image Comics)

Snyder is a terrific horror writer, and Wytches is by far the scariest thing I’ve ever read from him. That is probably due in large part to Jock and Hollingsworth. The story is dark Americana horror, pure and uncut Snyder right on the page, about monstrous ancient covens and their secret network around the world. Jock makes the normal humans look terrified and the Wytches stretched, shrouded beasts escaping from knots in trees to steal kids and ruin families, and Hollingsworth changes palettes deftly to match the tone of the panel (or even half panel, sometimes). Wytches is incredibly well made comics.

read Wytches on Amazon

49. Fantasy Sports

Sam Bosma (Nobrow Press)

Fantasy Sports isn’t complicated. It’s about a treasure hunter who has to beat a mummy at basketball to loot a pyramid. See? Super straightforward.

read more: The Best Comics of 2018

Bosma’s art is the star here. It’s somewhere between sports manga and Adventure Time. It’s vibrant and fun, full of great movement in a story that hums along. And it’s really accessible - it’s shelved closest to the ground in my house, so kids can pull it out and get hooked the same way I did.

read Fantasy Sports on Amazon

48. Sexcastle

Kyle Starks (Image Comics)

I don’t know if any comic in the last ten years has more quotable lines in it than Sexcastle. I have found a way to work “You brought a YOU to a ME fight,” and “Are you okay? Just kidding, fuck you” into more professional conversations than I’m comfortable with, frankly. Sexcastle is a hard riff on ‘80s action movies that has Shane Sexcastle, the badass killer and star of the comic, spouting bad pun catchphrases almost exclusively throughout the book. Sexcastle both loves and viciously parodies those movies, and the resulting comic is almost flawless. Starks is an absolutely hilarious writer, talented enough to get a shot on anything he writes, but nothing will be quite as surprising or as funny as Sexcastle.

read Sexcastle on Amazon

  47. G.I. Joe: Cobra

Mike Costa, Christos Gage, Antonio Fuso, Lovern Kindzierski (IDW Publishing)

It took IDW a minute to get going with G.I. Joe after they got the license, but once they did, these series turned into one of a couple of shockingly good, well-thought-out licensed comics they put out over the decade. Almost immediately, Costa and Gage put Chuckles in deep cover at Cobra Command and went hard dark on the tone. From there, they assassinated Cobra Commander, set off a nuke, and launched a power struggle to control the terrorist organization that included a Joe killing competition. Costa, Fuso, and Gage did an amazing job of juggling enormous casts and controlling for different voices. Everything from G.I. Joe: Cobra through the Cobra Civil War is amazing stuff.

read G.I. Joe: Cobra on Amazon

  46. Battling Boy

Paul Pope (First Second)

Battling Boy is unlike any other comic I’ve read in the last decade. I spent a good three hours trying to come up with a clever analogy for this book, like “Witch’s Night Out meets Thor in a Flash Gordon strip,” but they’re all grossly inadequate. Pope is one of the most unique minds working in comics. He puts more character in one grease smear on a face than a lot of creators can fit in long runs. Battling Boy is fine pulpy adventure comics that work for any comic reader.

read Battling Boy on Amazon

45. The Omega Men

Tom King, Barnaby Bagenda, Jose Marzan, Jr., Romulo Fajardo (DC Comics)

Omega Men is still, several years on, some heavy, heavy shit. The shock of the twist, hell the shock of the series still makes me smile. That it was a comic book that was advertised with Kyle Rayner seemingly beheaded on camera and beamed around the galaxy was stunning; that the seeming beheading wasn’t the most shocking part of the book is amazing. It’s a miracle this book happened (literally - it was cancelled and uncancelled midway through), but I’m so glad it did. It was ambitious and smart, and unlike anything we’d seen in comics in years at the time.

read The Omega Men on Amazon

  44. Lady Killer

Joelle Jones, Jamie S. Rich, Laura Allred (Dark Horse Comics)

Joelle Jones is a superstar now. I’m fairly sure that it started because of this comic, and I’m absolutely certain it’s deserved. Lady Killer is the story of a ‘50s housewife who’s an assassin on the side, and it’s everything the premise suggests. It’s grindhousey and funny and gory, but through it all, Jones’ art is amazing and Allred’s colors are perfect. It’s a lot of fun to read.

read Lady Killer on Amazon

  43. Infinite Kung Fu

Kagan McLeod (Top Shelf Productions)

Kagan McLeod’s story in Infinite Kung Fu is a little bit rote for the genre - it’s a kung fu movie put to page, nonsense and all. But my god the art. The pages are practically crackling with life. The big swoopy inks and the way McLeod makes the characters move and the way the fights flow from panel to panel and the scale of some of these fights and it’s all just incredible, incredible artwork. Even if the story is a little pedestrian, the art is some of the best I’ve ever seen.

read Infinite Kung Fu on Amazon

  42. Bandette

Paul Tobin, Colleen Coover (Monkeybrain Comics)

Bandette is about an adventuring teen art thief in Paris. It’s silly and cute and charming and gorgeous. It’s also extremely uncomplicated: this is an easy book to love because Coover’s art is lovely, and Tobin’s plots are clear and clever. I try my hardest to find some deeper meaning or hidden skill that the creators have that makes a book stand out, but Bandette is just a really straightforward, fun, nice book.

read Bandette on Amazon

41. Hawkeye

Matt Fraction, David Aja, Matt Hollingsworth & others (Marvel Comics)

Hawkeye launched David Aja into the stratosphere, and gave Fraction the juice to do whatever he wanted (like, for example, write a sci-fi gender flipped Odyssey adaptation comic in dactylic hexameter). It radically changed Clint Barton for a decade. And in a lot of ways, its influence still rings out now, because it’s just really good.

Aja is a madman. His art flows differently from anyone who came before, but it’s been mimicked so many times since, and even when imitators try and fail to live up to his standards, they still usually do something interesting. Fraction succeeded at a time when Marvel was going in a million different directions by pulling the camera way in on the Marvel Universe - focusing on an apartment building, making a street crime book with a regular guy and turning Kate Bishop from a supporting Young Avenger into one of the best characters in the Marvel library.

read Hawkeye on Amazon

40. Batman: The Black Mirror, Detective Comics

Scott Snyder, Jock, Francesco Francavilla, David Baron (DC Comics)

Scott Snyder is one of those creators I’ll follow just about anywhere, and it all stems from how ridiculously good his Black Mirror story was in Detective Comics. Back when Bruce was still traipsing about the world, turning the International Club of Heroes into Batman, Incorporated, Dick Grayson was back in Gotham being the best Batman and solving this dense, moody, disorienting crime. It was a deep Grayson character study, a deep Gotham character study, and a showcase for the incredible art of Jock and Francavilla.

read more: The Best Comics of 2019

Snyder did some incredible things with Bruce Wayne when he and Greg Capullo got control of the main Batman book post-New 52 (especially the last story arc - stunning stuff). But The Black Mirror is even better. Whenever someone asks me for a Batman comic gift recommendation, this is what I tell them to buy.

read Batman: The Black Mirror on Amazon

  39. Giant Days

John Allison, Lissa Tremain, Max Sarin, Julia Madrigal, Whitney Cogar (BOOM! Studios)

Pick any issue of Giant Days at random and read five pages of it, and I promise you will recognize every character who speaks immediately. Allison and the art team have that tight a grasp on conversational dialogue that this entire book was relatable all the way through. It’s a smart, funny comic about growing up that focuses on the growing you do in your early 20s, which is a breath of fresh air considering most coming of age stories stop at 16. Seeing the characters flourish into adults is part of what made Giant Days special, but it’s mostly the ridiculous skill of the creators.

read Giant Days on Amazon

  38. Berlin

Jason Lutes (Drawn & Quarterly)

Lutes has been working on this for 20 years and finished it in 2018, and you can see the unbelievable care and craft in every page. Berlin follows a couple of working class people through the fall of Weimar Germany in the late 20s until the Nazis take over, and even though it’s fictional, it’s incredibly interesting to see Germany’s collapse as it related to regular people, and not as big, momentous historical events. The history comes across as a much more jagged line. Lutes is wonderful at using the pace of layouts to tell the story, and his art is immaculately clean and clear.

read Berlin on Amazon

  37. The Underwater Welder

Jeff Lemire (Vertigo Comics) 

When Jeff Lemire draws his own stuff, watch out: you’re about to get something profoundly uncomfortable. And The Underwater Welder is precisely that. It’s so good at making you feel like something’s wrong.

read more: The Best Movies of the Decade

It works because it’s never completely honest about what the story is about. Jack is an underwater welder, like his father was, and he’s got a wife and a kid on the way. But he becomes obsessed with his father’s old watch, and that obsession is a focus for his panic about becoming a father. Lemire’s art is all rough-looking freehand and watery inks, perfect for a guy who spends most of his time in a diving suit. The atmosphere of The Underwater Welder is almost asphyxiating. I love it.

read The Underwater Welder on Amazon

36. Ms. Marvel

G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona, Takeshi Miyazawa, Nico Leon, Ian Herring (Marvel Comics)

As I sit down to write this, I literally just came back from picking up the first collection of Ms. Marvel for a Christmas present for my niece. Wilson, Alphona, Sana Amanat, and Jamie McKelvie (who did designs for the character) created maybe the best fictional teenager in the last decade in Kamala Khan. It’s been a long time since I’ve been a teenager, but I think the response from actual #teens will back me up here: her struggles with time management, emotions, and awkward social interactions felt incredibly real. The art, from Alphona, Miyazawa and Leon was spectacular, doing an especially great job of showing who Kamala is through her powers. This is a great book to have around.

read Ms. Marvel on Amazon

34. Deathstroke

Christopher Priest, Carlo Pagaluyan, Jason Paz, Jeromy Cox & more (DC Comics)

It just ended, and at every point during its 50 issue run, Christopher Priest’s Deathstroke felt like it was made specifically for me. It was a sneaky family soap opera on par with the greatest X-Men stories, but with Priest’s signature banter and pacing to bring it to the next level. The art was always superb from Pagaluyan, and the editing team brought in some absolutely killer supplemental teams (Cowan and Sienkiewicz are always a yes), but it was the story and how it was presented that made this run really special.

read Deathstroke on Amazon

  34. Monstress

Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda (Image Comics)

Takeda’s art looks like an illuminated manuscript. Seriously, it’s so detailed and intricate that it makes me slow down when I’m reading, which is a feat, because I’m predisposed to blaze through comics. But that detail work is what makes her art special, and what pushes Monstress from very good to great. The world that Liu and Takeda built in Monstress is lush and rich and incredibly easy to disappear into, and it’s a consistent joy to read.

read Monstress on Amazon

  33. The Vision

Tom King, Gabriel Hernandez Walta, Michael Walsh, Jordie Bellaire (Marvel Comics)

I’m pretty sure I spent more time shaking my head at the events of The Vision than any other book on this list. What Tom King did to this family is deeply, profoundly messed up. Walta, Walsh, and Bellaire were essential to building the eerie, uncomfortable atmosphere that pervaded this whole story, and the facial expressions especially helped land the twist in the middle, the plot point that shifted the story from “oh no that’s super messed up” to “aww that’s really sad and also super messed up.”

read more: The Best TV Episodes of 2019

What might be the most shocking part about it is how much of this run endured in continuity through the years: Viv Vision is showing up left and right, and Victor Mancha’s fate here is a big plot point in Rowell and Anka’s wonderful Runaways relaunch.

read The Vision on Amazon

  32. 4 Kids Walk Into A Bank

Matthew Rosenberg, Tyler Boss (Black Mask Studios)

This one is all about the patter. Rosenberg makes the kids sound so entertaining and makes their interpersonal dynamic so engrossing that you get wrapped up in the world of 4 Kids Walk Into A Bank easily. Tyler Boss’ art is terrific, selling the exaggerated expressions that kids make, where a smile often starts in their legs, and landing all the humor just as comfortably. It’s a comic that could have ended up as nostalgic tripe, but instead, 4 Kids Walk Into A Bank turned out great.

read 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank on Amazon

  31. Kid Gloves

Lucy Knisley (First Second)

Kid Gloves is amazing for a lot of reasons. It’s informative and moving and personal, with a lot of history and politics that I think are really important components to a larger conversation that the book can be part of. Here’s the thing about it for me, though: I started reading it at the library. About halfway through, I put it back on the shelf, walked up the street to a book store and bought a copy. I knew from how much I was talking to the book while reading it that it was something I wanted to keep on my shelf and refer back to in the future. And I feel really good about that decision.

read Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos on Amazon

  30. XKCD

Randall Munroe (Webcomic)

It didn’t inspire any stirring condemnations from legendary filmmakers, but I wonder if Randall Munroe’s half webcomic/half infographic didn’t have the biggest low key impact of any comic in the last decade. I feel like you’re vastly more likely to see an XKCD strip on someone’s desk, or tacked to the door of an office, or passed around on social media, than you are anything from Marvel or DC that isn’t designed to trigger the internet outrage cycle.

This is because Munroe is really good at cartooning. I mean, okay, he’s not going to paint you a Rembrandt, but his stick figures have a way of sneaking emotion up on you, through their shoulders and their heads. And he’s whip smart, too, but his comics help present his knowledge in an accessible, open way. XKCD has been in every iteration of blog reader I’ve had since 2010, and I’ll be checking in on it until it ends, because it’s terrific.

read XKCD here

  29. Two Brothers

Gabriel Ba & Fabio Moon (Dark Horse Comics)

Ba & Moon do some amazing work in this adaptation of a novel from their native Brazil about two brothers, their doting mom, and the woman who comes between them. The artwork in Two Brothers is stunningly good and improves on the source material by taking some of the novels most impactful scenes and making them visually striking. Two Brothers isn’t a splashy comic, but it’s a damn good one, one that will stick with you for a long time.

read Two Brothers on Amazon

28. Lumberjanes

Noelle Stevenson, Shannon Watters, Grace Ellis, Brooke Allen, Carolyn Nowak, Carey Pietch, Maarta Laiho & more (BOOM! Studios)

Lumberjanes takes a lot of what worked about The Goonies and makes it smarter in a different way to give us one of the most fun and purest adventure comics in recent memory. It’s no surprise that Stevenson is kicking so much ass on She-Ra.

The book has been going for some time now, so the creative teams have shifted, but the art is remarkably consistent through the volumes, and it’s clear, sharp cartooning that’s exaggerated in all the right ways for a woodsy, camping adventure tale like this. Lumberjanes is another book with a huge cast that’s well managed, and it’s a lot of fun to read through.

read Lumberjanes on Amazon        

  27. Showa: A History of Japan

Shigeru Mizuki (Drawn & Quarterly)

Technically, Showa is like, 30 years old. But it took 25 of those years for it to be released in the States, and there are no rules to this list, so I’m counting it.

Mizuki is one of the fathers of manga as a form, and as someone who came to his work after reading folks like Otomo and Urasawa, and decades after becoming familiar with anime, his work feels quaint and unsophisticated. Which is a really interesting pairing with the subject matter - Showa is a history of Japan in the Showa era, spanning the ‘20s through the late ‘80s, a period of massive transition for Japan that I mostly knew from broad strokes. He switches back and forth between a hyper-detailed realistic style that looks like (and sometimes is) tracing, and the cartoony manga style he uses to illustrate personal moments that tie into that history. It’s an incredibly effective storytelling technique and a useful way to bring the reader’s attention past the big picture and down to the regular peoples’ perspective of that big change. Showa is an incredible history book, and a masterpiece of the form.

read Showa on Amazon

  26. Copra

Michel Fiffe (Bergen Street Comics/Image Comics)

It’s still amazing to me that Copra can even get made. It started out as a...spiritual sequel to Ostrander/Yale/McDonnell Suicide Squad in that it was almost an actual direct lift of Ostrander/Yale/McDonnell Suicide Squad only with Doctor Strange and Clea added in. But it was done with weird indie linework and colored pencil coloring, with a big zine aesthetic that made it immediately compelling. And once I got into it, I realized that Fiffe had captured everything great about that Suicide Squad run but turned it into something dstinctly his own, and I’ve loved it ever since.

read Copra on Amazon

  25. Afterlife with Archie

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Francesco Francavilla (Archie Comics)

This comic should not exist. It should not be good. It certainly shouldn’t be one of the best comics I’ve read in the last decade. And yet, Afterlife with Archie remains incredible. In fact, it might be the purest, finest zombie story I’ve experienced in a while. The slowly building tension is a masterclass in mood. Aguirre-Sacasa does a great job of taking Riverdale’s existing dynamic and plopping it into a zombie horror story so you get something that is recognizably both things at the same time. Francavilla’s art is probably the least surprising part of the equation, in that it is incredible. And the fact that you can probably draw a straight line between some of the themes here and what ended up on your screens in Riverdale is...pretty insane. And amazing.

read Afterlife With Archie on Amazon

  24. Scalped

Jason Aaron, R.M. Guera (Vertigo)

The best thing about Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera’s Scalped is the cast. It’s a HUGE book, about an FBI investigation into corruption on a reservation that sends Dash Bad Horse back home undercover to investigate. Everyone Dash encounters, and everyone who’s conspiring to make life in Pairie Rose garbage, is a full character within two sentences. They all sound different, move different, look different. They carry the weight of a rough life in their posture and their cadence.

Superhero comics developed the distinctive costumes so artists could distinguish between characters easily. It’s hard to draw distinctive, consistent, recognizable people in street clothes, but Guera is amazing at it, and Aaron puts so much care and character into everyone who sets foot on the page that Scalped is impossible to put down.

read Scalped on Amazon

  23. Nancy

Olivia Jaimes (GoComics)

“Sluggo is lit” isn’t quite the cultural phenomenon it was when Olivia Jaimes, the pseudonymous cartoonist, first introduced it to the strip she took over in 2018. But it’s still damn funny. I’ll admit, I completely blew it on Nancy in 2018 - it hadn’t registered with me because I don’t get print newspapers and only have a passing knowledge of their comic strips anymore. But when I first saw it, I died laughing.

And then I took a closer look  at some of the comics - the one where Nancy steals the cookies from the top of the fridge by tossing them between panels to herself, or the joke about filler where the last panel is mostly an empty word balloon - and I realized that Jaimes, in addition to being funny as hell, really gets how to screw with the flow of information from comic to reader. She’s exceptionally talented, and Nancy is amazing work.

read Nancy here

  22. The Hard Tomorrow

Eleanor Davis (Drawn & Quarterly)

The Hard Tomorrow stressed me out, and then lifted me up at the end. It’s very much a comic about our current moment (and by “current moment,” I mean the singularity that the last four years have compressed into). It doesn’t capture the terror that some groups might feel, but it does a great job of conveying that background hum, like a cultural migrane, that makes everything more difficult in the world. And then, intentionally or not, it swings the story back around and pumps you full of hope and meaning with the last ten pages. It’s incredible comics work from Eleanor Davis, an amazing talent.

read The Hard Tomorrow on Amazon

21. My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies

Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, Jake Phillips (Image Comics)

You can read any Criminal comic and come away happy. Okay, maybe not “happy” per se - My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies is an extremely unhappy comic, about a girl who meets a boy in rehab, gets him back on drugs with her and then goes on a trip with him, framed around her pretentious love of drug addicted musicians. It would be obnoxious if it wasn’t so incredibly well done and packed in with a twist at the end that makes it go from messed up to REALLY messed up. Everything Brubaker and Phillips have done together, back to Sleeper, has been superlative, but from the last ten years, I really feel like this is their best work.

read My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies on Amazon

20. Through the Woods

Emily Carroll (Margaret K. McElderry Books)

I don’t think there’s anybody doing slow, creepy, gothic horror like Emily Carroll right now. Through the Woods is a collection of short stories that’s full of dark blacks and loose line work, the letters worked into the art organically to amplify the creepiness and the stories built to scare. She comes at normal relationships and injects them with something horrific, but paces it so incredibly well that you barely notice it until the end, when something happens to finally make your skin crawl. Carroll is a gifted storyteller, and Through the Woods is some of the best horror stuff out there.

read Through the Woods on Amazon

  19. The Flintstones

Mark Russell, Steve Pugh, Chris Chuckry (DC Comics)

Anytime a comic can get a physical reaction out of me, it’s usually a sign that it’s a very successful storytelling endeavor. I think The Flinstones’ hold music on the suicide hotline joke is the loudest I’ve shouted “holy shit” at a comic in a decade. Mark Russell is the best satirist working in comics right now, and certainly in the past decade. Steve Pugh was equal to the task of packing every joke and sly look and absurdity implied by the dialogue. The Flintstones is one of the funniest books you'll ever read.

read The Flintstones on Amazon

18. Atomic Robo & Other Strangeness

Brian Clevenger, Scott Wegener, Ronda Pattison (Webcomic)

I love Dr. Dinosaur. I will buy anything Dr. Dinosaur is in, contribute to any crowdfunding campaign that gets me Dr. Dinosaur goods, and I will take every opportunity I can to share that “the light is for ambiance” page.

Clevinger and Wegener have created a near-perfect, accessible, entertaining adventure story with Atomic Robo. The writing is smart and sharp and Wegener does some outstanding action sequences. I don’t think there’s any comic I’ve been dedicated to for longer - I think I’ve been regularly reading Robo longer than I’ve had Batman on my pull list - and there’s no comic I recommend more frequently. Other Strangeness has two amazing Dr. Dinosaur stories and Jenkins, but you can pick up any volume and get the same high quality action adventure comics.

read Atomic Robo here

17. The Private Eye

Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin, Muntsa Vincente (Panel Syndicate)

Vaughan, Martin, and Vincente made a beautiful, compelling comic book that was uncomfortably prescient.

Sixty years from now, the cloud bursts - all of the private data stored on the cloud gets released to the public. It destroys lives and relationships, and triggers an anti-internet backlash. And an anti-journalist one. It then follows an unlicensed journalist as he travels around solving a mystery in a world where everyone wears masks to throw off facial recognition tech.

The Private Eye was cyberpunk that inverted some cyberpunk formulae - it was bright and warm and shiny, distrustful of tech and very human, but it was still a grimy near-future full of people navigating a world that sucked. It was an incredible read and one of the comics I think about most, even five years down the road.

read The Private Eye here

16. Secret Wars

Jonathan Hickman, Esad Ribic, Ive Svorcina (Marvel Comics)

I’m using Secret Wars as a stand in here for all of Hickman’s prior Marvel work from the decade, and really the entire story that started in Fantastic Four and paid off with the final Doom/Reed battle at the end of this story. “Epic” doesn’t even begin to describe a story that starts with the council of Reeds, breaks the Avengers, destroys the multiverse, then reforms it again out of a love of adventure. I reread these comics more than any in my collection because they’re beautiful and immersive and impossibly grand.

read Secret Wars on Amazon

  15. Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye

James Roberts, Alex Milne, Josh Burcham (IDW Publishing)

I still can’t believe how much I love this run of comics. I am even more flabbergasted at why: it was one of the most surprisingly thoughtful comics about sexuality and romantic relationships that I’ve ever read, and it came as part of a broader Transformers story (when paired with the story in Robots in Disguise) that had some of the best takes on gender identity and politics that I can remember.

Every word of that paragraph still makes no sense to me. I am continually delighted by this fact.

More Than Meets the Eye follows Rodimus and a group of breakaway Transformers as they search the universe for the lost Knights of Cybertron. It features a fascinating and touching relationship between Rewind and Chromedome (with Cyclonus as a third-wheel/homewrecker WHAT IS HAPPENING), and it has a deep dive into Ultra Magnus’s history as Cybertron’s premiere stick in the mud. Honestly, just take my word for it: this comic was incredible.

read Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye on Amazon

14. The Multiversity

Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, Nathan Fairbairn & Others (DC Comics)

The Multiversity still contains my single favorite page of comic art from the decade: Frank Quitely breaking down Peacemaker kicking the hell out of a great lawn full of soldiers outside the White House. I can’t even begin to describe how technically fascinating that issue was or how breathtaking it still is to see. The rest of the series brought me great joy, but that issue might be the best single issue of comics I’ve read in the last 10 years.

read The Multiversity on Amazon

13. My Favorite Thing is Monsters

Emil Ferris (Fantagraphics)

Everything about Emil Ferris’ debut work is absurd. The production value of the book is stellar. Her deft storytelling made me feel literally dropped into the comic several times, overwhelming me by the world she brought me into. And that this was her first published work is still, what feels like an eon later, ridiculous to me. My Favorite Thing is Monsters will make you feel like a ten year old girl, whether you’ve ever been one before or not, and that is some magical work.

read My Favorite Thing is Monsters on Amazon

  12. Here

Richard McGuire (Pantheon Books)

Here started out as a comic strip in 1989, and got blown out into a full graphic novel in 2014, and both are incredibly interesting experiments with the form of comics storytelling. It sets the “camera” pointed at the corner of a room, and then spins time out in both directions, showing us what that corner looked like 2000 years in the past, hundreds of years in the future, in the 1950s, today, and a bunch of other times. And the way that McGuire manages to tell a coherent story under those restrictions is masterful work.

read Here on Amazon

11. Hellboy in Hell

Mike Mignola, Dave Stewart (Dark Horse Comics)

There’s something beautiful about Mignola spending 25 years weaving just about every mythological cosmology from human history together, and then ending that whole story by having Hellboy walk across Hell, into his childhood home, and just disappear. It’s a very quiet, peaceful ending for what had at times been a loud comic in the past, but it’s a beautiful end that refers back to other work of Mignola’s, which lends the ending a kind of peacefulness that cuts through the sadness of the loss of this story. Hellboy in Hell is a really great ending.

read Hellboy in Hell on Amazon

10. Thor: God of Thunder

Jason Aaron, Esad Ribic, Dean White & others (Marvel Comics)

There is actually some debate in my mind as to whether or not Jason Aaron’s Thor run, stretching from the stunning God of Thunder through The Mighty Thor and War of the Realms and into King Thor, is better than Walt Simonson’s Thor. It’s probably still Simonson’s run, but the fact that there’s an open question should tell you how good Aaron’s story has been. The best Thor stories have a bigger point than “Can Thor beat up the Hulk?” Aaron’s has been “What responsibilities does being a god bring with it; how do they carry them out; and how does that impact us?” It’s masterful work drawn by a collection of incredible artists.

read Thor: God of Thunder on Amazon

9. Saga

Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples (Image Comics)

The best thing about Saga to me is that the characters have grown with me. That’s not necessarily why it’s one of the ten best comics of the decade - Fiona Staples is an utterly incredible artist who without fail puts something singularly amazing into each issue - but it’s why I care about it so much. Hazel, Marko and Alana have all grown beautifully as characters since issue 1, and the world is so inventive and different from what you always get in science fiction that it’s a joy to read every time a new issue drops.

read Saga on Amazon

8. Richard Stark’s Parker: The Outfit

Donald Westlake, Darwyn Cooke (IDW Publishing)

Darwyn Cooke is one of the most talented people to ever work in the comics industry. He’s still, years after his passing, an enormous influence on how people conceive of the DC universe because of The New Frontier. But it’s his adaptations of Westlake’s ‘60s crime novels starring Parker that might be his best work. The Outfit is the second and my favorite, but all of them are amazing pieces of comics storytelling. Cooke’s storytelling techniques bounce all over the place, but all work amazingly well. He especially excels at showing complicated heists - the way Cooke plays with time and sequencing makes these books an amazing read.

read Richard Stark's Parker: The Outfit on Amazon

7. Prince of Cats

Ron Wimberly (Image Comics)

Wimberly’s Prince of Cats is pretty close to a perfect comic. Repurposing and adapting Shakespearean dialogue and patter to a hip hop aesthetic is, strangely, exactly what I want out of a story. Wimberly’s art is stylish as hell, with fantastic layouts and odd angles, and it is colored beautifully. It’s the story of Tybalt from Romeo and Juliet, but set in a city that’s a mishmosh of all five boroughs, in a time that’s anywhere from the mid ‘80s to present day. It’s a little bit Shakespearean tragedy, a little bit samurai anime, a little bit Planet Rock, and ultimately an amazing piece of comic book art.

read Prince of Cats on Amazon

6. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl

Ryan North, Erica Henderson, Derek Charm, Rico Renzi & others (Marvel Comics)

I love how Unbeatable Squirrel Girl never talked down to readers, and in a wonderful example of what superhero comics could be (and occasionally were), how Doreen was always trying to find a way to solve problems that didn’t involve violence and would endure. Her supporting cast was terrific, guest characters were phenomenal, and Henderson has impeccable comic timing. And the book was surprisingly experimental and innovative - the zine issue and the choose your own adventure issue are two of the best single issues of comics I’ve read this decade, but even without them, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl will go down as one of my favorite comics of all time.

read The Unbeatable Squirrell Girl on Amazon

5. Hark! A Vagrant

Kate Beaton (Webcomic/Drawn & Quarterly)

Beaton is one of the smartest, funniest cartoonists out there. Hark! A Vagrant catches the best of the early decade webcomic ethos - it’s loose and fast, about anything and everything and just funny as hell. She’s got bits about Tesla, a ton of jokes about Austen and classic literature, idiot Victorian chimney sweeps. All of it lands because Beaton’s got a sharp eye and a strong voice for absurdity. I think my personal favorite remains Straw Feminists.

read Hark! a Vagrant here

4. Hip Hop Family Tree

Ed Piskor (Fantagraphics)

I’ve watched several documentaries since reading this and interrupted them, going “oh shit, I already knew this from Hip Hop Family Tree.” Piskor’s brief history of the birth and first couple of phase transitions of one of my favorite art forms is informative, smart, funny, and informed deeply by his love of comic book culture, which only enhances some of the stories he tells about early hip hop, which was also deeply informed by comics. And in retrospect, the fact that HHFT ended up circling back on superhero comics, giving us X-Men: Grand Design is too perfect for words.

read Hip Hop Family Tree on Amazon

3. Mister Miracle

Tom King, Mitch Gerads (DC Comics)

I’m pretty sure Mister Miracle is the best comic I’ve ever read as it came out. This is King and Gerads operating in peak form. Everything about it, from the content to the pacing to the characterization, was absolutely perfect. And the ambiguity of the ending, how it showed a way forward in dealing with trauma and how it inadvertently turned into a poignant love letter to the (at that time recently) departed old guard just made it all stick even harder. I loan this out to friends having kids, because I love Mister Miracle and I want everyone else to find their way to loving it, too.

read Mister Miracle on Amazon

2. Smile 

Raina Telgemeier (Graphix)

I came to Raina’s world late. I have a niece who’s brilliant, and I was looking for a way to get her into comics so I’d have someone at family gatherings to talk to about this stuff. I knew that these books were popular, so I grabbed one at a bookstore and started on it. Twenty minutes later, I was walking out of the store with Smile and Sisters, and my niece finished both of them in about six hours and started asking for more. Raina tells a hell of a story, and Smile deserves to be on this list just based on craft, but it’s this high because she’s single-handedly hooking a new generation into our favorite medium. I will always appreciate that.

read Smile on Amazon

1. March

Rep. John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell (Top Shelf Productions)

I don’t think I could have landed on a different comic here if I tried. March is a unique combination of craft, relevance, and timelessness. Powell’s art is staggeringly good, full of gorgeous storytelling. And when I think about moments from comics that have stuck with me the most, I keep coming back to the bombing of the Freedom Riders’ bus at the end of volume 1. I knew it was historical and that still scared the hell out of me. Kudos and thanks to Rep. Lewis, Aydin and Powell for making an incredible book.

read March on Amazon

Read and download the Den of Geek Lost in Space Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Feature Jim Dandy

Dec 30, 2019

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