#and i've read at least one story based on the legend where he takes the children somewhere nice

[starrycat123-blog]

oksies hi starting a new thread of get to know you

haii I'm moth and also thea you may call me any nickname as well <3

I love musicals so so much (niche and popular!! basic-shaming is lame)

I am superhero obsessed (augh pied piper)

doctor who is my autism (yay river sonf!!!!)

good omens heoughhhhhhhh

super excited to meet you <3333333

Hi moth!! You can call me tetra. Don't worry that's not my real name or anything tho. I took it from the concept of tetrachords in music.

If we're generous about what we call superheroes, then maybe most of the things I like are superhero based. I mean obviously there's marvel and dc, but then there's stuff like dpxdc, sonic the hedgehog (idk if I've ever heard him called a superhero but he kinda is), if we count magical girls then like. Sailor moon and madoka magica

I haven't seen any episodes of good omens, but I read a really good fanfic of Crowley going to therapy a while back, and a couple funny ones with like yelp reviews of Aziraphale's bookstore. Plus I love the good omens analysis posts on here. I feel like maybe I half know some of what's happened in the show but also probably haven't scratched the surface. I'm kinda bad at watching TV shows, so there's a lot of stuff that I know from fandom but haven't seen. For another example of that, I've only watched one or two episodes of Sonic Prime. I reblog posts for it and it sounds good but idk. Just bad at it.

I'm a much more casual fan of musicals, I think for the same thing as above where I just struggle to sit and watch something on purpose. But I listen to the music from them sometimes, I've read transcripts online of a couple, and i swoon whenever I see a post analyzing the meaning of a musical song, especially when they go beyond lyrics and start going into the music theory in the tune. I don't have the skills or knowledge to do that myself but I love it so much

(when the singer changes their technique to enhance the meaning,, when this or that chord is a step outside the key to symbolize change or isolation or anything,,, using instruments as symbols for this or that character,,, tbh it doesn't have to be a musical even shout out to that youtube video by Scruffy on how fnaf's audio and sound effects make it scarier)

Lately I've been bouncing back and forth between Sonic and DPxDC. With hints of Slay The Princess in there bc I saw part of a playthrough of that awhile ago and loved the concept. I reblog madoka magica stuff whenever I see it (except magia record bc I know next to nothing about it) because that stuff makes me lose my mind. The love the pain the hope the despair!! Homura is probably like my ultimate blorbo but I love all the five girls they're so cool. I actually read the manga instead of watching the show though so I'm not as familiar with all the music. Plus I think the show had some extra scenes. Although it's a little confusing bc I think some of the extra scenes I see are magia record so idk.

Also I'm a fan of arts and crafts and will reblog that kind of thing once in a while, along with cute cat stuff.

Super excited to meet you too!

#sorry about the late response. got nervous and then put it off for awhile #hopefully it's a good one though? #it's unedited bc if i think stop and think harder/worry more now i'll never escape the think stage and i will post nothing #and i don't wanna do that #if there's anything you wanna know just ask #actually maybe i should think of some questions for you #oh like who's pied piper? i haven't heard of a superhero with that name just the child-stealing legend #unless you consider that guy a hero which like. i guess you could interpret it like that? teaching the value of not exploiting your workers #and i've read at least one story based on the legend where he takes the children somewhere nice #i feel like stealing children is not the ideal solution to that issue but it is a bit iconic if you think about it right #maybe he couldve taken some crops instead tho like thats the village income. it'd be more similar to money than kids. #i mean i guess in those days kids were also workers. and somewhat exploited generally. #so i guess i could see it as the guy getting exploited and then grabbing all the other exploited workers in town #i'm not really a history buff am i off base with this theory completely #i know kids used to have to work to help their families and that there are child labor laws for a reason #but also. not like there was a ton of free entertainment in the olden times. #i mean the parents almost definitely didnt pay kids money but chores aren't exploitation #maybe i should leave this up to interpretation #or just say it depends on situation and some kids probably were exploited while others weren't #hmm. this whole thing is probably just bs. i don't know what i'm talking about #oh well i hope you didn't mind it

[polarisdelphi]

A little character study I did a while ago, trying to figure out new ways of painting, style changes while remaining more on the realistic side... And sword props, 'cause I LOVE drawing swords.

(And I made up the thing written on Excalibur, I know the Legend says it's "Take me Up/Cast me Away", but I wanted something more tied to Arthur's character and why he's the only one who can wield it)

King Arthur and his Knights are one of my favourite stories, so I wanted to work on some ~character designs~ for them (a little d&d-ish like...?)! Working as well on presentation and something I'd enjoy having on my portfolio/doing as a character comission/project/first draft.

Also, tried to test some different layers while colouring, ended up with a sort of vitral looking thing for him:

Which I also enjoyed a lot :3

Now, regarding character and clothes and all - and some of my takes on Arturian Legend, and just me being a big Arthur and his Knights fangirl overall, under the cut ^^

When it comes to King Arthur, I enjoy more the historical findings and more modern retellings that Arthur would have been a war general, not a king, around the 5th century - fighting saxons on the bloody fiedls of Britain while praying to pagan gods. So that's the direction I'm going for here - even if I took some ~historical liberties~ regarding how everything looks.

(alsooo BIG DISCLAIMER: I'm a product of catholic school and I have a personal beef with all the religion/God/catholic values of the ~legends~ hence why I prefer seeing all of them as a bunch of normal guys surviving the drenched in blood politics of the 5th century rather than chaste, virtuous knights of the 11th century - it's a personal stance, you are more than welcome to disagree in a civilized manner ^^)

Here we have him then: Arthur, uncrowned king of Britain, probably Uther's bastard son, one hell of a war general and politician dealing with the saxons and pulverized british kings fighting for the Great King crown - who just dreams of having a normal life in a nice place with Guinevere and watch his sons grow in a land with peace and justice.

Oh, Arthur, my sweet summer child, I've got news for you...

I Used red on him as a more ~regal colour~, even if usually purple are more the colours of kings and royalty (historically speaking, as far as I know, I'm not really a historian T-T).

Now, a lot of his armor - and looks - comes from Bernard Cornwell's The Winter King book series, that is about Arthur and his Knights. I remember reading Arthur's appearance in a field of war for the first time and my own imagination had me in awe of how stunning (heroic like, not beauty like) he was HAHAHAHA

Shiny dragonscale armor, white vests, white cape, bright sword, mounting on a white Shire Horse (one of the biggest horse breeds ever) that only he and his Knights mounted, making them famous for it... A vision, to say the least!

The white cape and clothes didn't work for this design though. I wanted to make a white cape, dirty with mud and blood, but overall, not good for the design. Went with red because it looks better, it's a royal looking colour for me and it has that blood thing. Arthur might have been fair and with great morals for his time, but he was a killer drenched in blood, head to toes, just like every other great war general.

I want to make a series of Arthurian Legend related illustrations and such, so this is the Arthur I picture and the one I've always had in mind: idealistic, fighting for peace and justice, suffering a lot in a world where blood and corruption is the accepted currency; but even so, he won't abandon his own values and will keep fighting for a better Britain, even if he has to coat himself in the blood of his enemies.

After reading a LOT on Arthur and his Knights - be it classic Arthurian Legend tales, Le Mort D'Arthur, Mists of Avalon, all the Arthurian movies ever made, researches, university talks on Arthur as a character and who were the historical figures he was based on, Bernard Cornwell's books, and a bunch of other stuff told ya I'm an Arthur fangirl :') - I decided to work on my own take of the story, as a lot of people have done before.

Whenever you see any illustrations from me, it's going to be this idea I have in my mind of how his story was like - and what I would've liked to see in books/movies on Arthur and his Knights :)

just you wait for my Lancelot and my Guinevere

#king arthur #arthur pendragon #arthurian legend #arthurian mythology #fanart #(is it?) #illustration #character design #character art #character concept #character sheet #art #my art #classic literature #(is it classic lit? I'm not british/american we don't study arthurian legend/english literature at school it's literally a hobby hahaha) #excalibur #d&d #d&d character #like I said worked on him as I'd sketch/draw a d&d character #so that's the tag it's going into my blog hahahahaha #personal take

[pocketbelt]

TUNIC (PC/Steam Deck)

A Christmas gift from my good friend David; he's now 2-for-2 for gifting Zelda/Souls hybrid indie games whose stories feature the defiance/escape of death as a major element starring cute little animals

This one is one of "the greats"; this is a game that should be used as an example when talking about certain types or genres or styles of game, and very specifically TUNIC's puzzle aspect should be regarded as one of the best around (and the competition is fierce). While it takes obvious visual cues from the original Legend of Zelda in particular, and its combat is openly inspired by Bloodborne (note the meters and the limited health-refill potions), and it does this side of the game well, TUNIC's real strength comes through in its puzzles and its conceit of discovering and solving mysteries.

There's an in-game manual whose pages you find individually throughout the game world, drawing from the likes of Zelda 1's manual, from the time where game manuals would often be partly game guides in their own right; maps, enemy descriptions, what your objectives are and should be and so on are all in the manual. The twist is most of the manual, like 99% of the in-game text, is in a made-up language that only occasionally gives way to real language (so single English words, in my case, like suddenly seeing "CHECKPOINT" printed in the middle of a sentence). The idea is you have to infer from context, observation, the provided illustrations and the scraps of words you can understand to figure things out. It's that thing that FromSoft's Miyazaki has discussed, of reading Dracula in English but not knowing enough or being able to find enough to read all of it and filling in the gaps himself; in this case, TUNIC's creator Andrew Shouldice drew from his experience of reading old game manuals as a kid and not being able to read all of the words, and also not having the context to frame what he was reading and seeing anyway.

It captures that perfectly; especially if you know your videogames, you can from context, the scraps of pages you can find, the illustrations and more glean what's going on in any given area and what the broader plot is even with only a scant few words here and there to go off of. In addition to the perfect aesthetic capture of an old game manual, pages occasionally have been marked, annotated or drawn on with a pen or such to clue in to more things and secrets, it's great.

It reminds me particularly of the AVGN video about Swordquest, an old aborted series of Atari games based around completing sections of the game to get page numbers for the game's comic book manual, using the hints and clues of one to solve the other and vice versa, to decode a secret message for a real-world contest. Just the experience of having game and manual as a pair, solving both by jumping back and forth to get a complete picture, it's an idea I've loved the concept of since seeing that video, and TUNIC is more or less exactly that, but the added touch of most of it not being in plain text, of needing to be interpreted, really does spice it up even more.

In that way it's one of those games that feels like a celebration of the artistry of the medium; not just what you can do with the mechanics and structure of a game, but with elements of them that have since faded from use. To consider the manual a key part of the game itself, part of the text, that's something you don't get any more, it's something of a lost form of art, or at least a lost part of the medium.

A beautiful little game. Go in knowing little more than what I've said here, like all great puzzle games.

#pocket-media-tag

[kelyon]

Congrats on the completion of Dark Mistress. I have been on this journey the last year with Belle and Rumpelstiltskin and can’t wait to read it again! What’s next?

I'm so glad you asked!

Allow me to take a moment to introduce Kelyon's

Summer!

Of!

WIPs!!!!

I'm taking a break from my major fics in order to tie up some loose ends, work on some one-shots (or at least I hope they will stay one shots) and update installments of longer projects that have gone too long without new material. Let me show you what I mean!

Multi-chapter fics that are so close to being finished:

Live Wire Belle is a ghost haunting the electronics of Gold's house. In chapter 3, Gold introduced himself. The forth and final chapter will be Belle rejoicing in the fact that she's not alone anymore. This is my currently open Google doc and the next thing I'm going to post.

Hot Cocoa and Stolen Kisses Lacey very slowly wins Gold's heart with various flavors of hot chocolate. The last chapter was them realizing they were basically soul mates, the next two chapters will be them figuring out what that actually means.

One shots that I want to get out of my head

The Beasts: A Golden Cuffs Story The Golden Cuffs universe is great for scenarios where one party can say "Hey, do you want to try a weird sex thing?" and the other party will be like, "Absolutely I do." In this story (based on a 'give me a title and I'll make up a fic about it' ask game) Rumple performs a duplication spell that creates many, many copies of himself, and Belle is very excited to try them out.

Contract A brief little Storybrooke AU where Belle and Gold negotiate their new BDSM relationship.

Solstice Every winter, I say I'm gonna write this story where Belle and Rumple in the Dark Castle share a sweet little moment together on the night of the winter solstice. I might not post this until December, but by God, I'm going to write it this summer.

New installments of long-neglected fics

Nephila The spider, the myth, the legend returns! This chapter will be more about Emma and spider-Neal and teenage Killian thinking that Milah is a MILF. (Maybe you can see why I've been putting this off for two years, but I have to move forward to get to the Rumbelle stuff.)

Begging On His Bended Knees This was a one-shot with an open ending, so I'm finally getting to part two, Flirting With The Condiments. After Gold discovers that the Dominatrix he hired is actually the tenant that he has a mild crush on, she asks him out on a date! Belle and Rumple go to Granny's to figure out what kind of relationship they can have and if it might possibly involve sexual contact. (Spoilers! Yes it will.)

On The House My pseudo-Victorian AU where Belle is a prostitute in Cora's brothel. Gold spent one night with this innocent whore, and he can't get her out of his mind. Will hiring her again make things better? But how can he do that when Belle explicitly asked him not to? Maybe he'll just show up at a masquerade ball where he knows she'll be doing business and see where things go from there. What could possibly go wrong?

Non-Rumbelle fics that will probably be multi-chapter but I'm not sure

Urges Some 1991 Beauty and the Beast smut with feelings. After the Beast remarks on how Belle smells "desirous," Belle sneaks into the West Wing and asks the Beast to, ahem, help her with those desires. This results in some very confusing and intense emotions from all parties involved--including the servants.

Unnamed Little Mermaid Filth This one might never see the light of day, but I might as well talk about it. In this story, Ursula wins the throne of Atlantica and chooses to take Ariel as her bride. My hesitation with this story is not the core premise of "BBW evil tentacle lesbian does terrible things to spitfire princess," but just... where would it go from there? I don't want to have a complete downer ending where Ariel ends up broken in spirit and body, but I don't really want to go the Golden Cuffs route and have Ursula have a secret heart of gold. Splitting those options down the middle would leave Ariel as maybe more comfortable with the life she's been forced into, basically transforming into her own type of kinky villainess, with eyeliner and black mer-leather. I'm not against that idea. But the whole thing needs a bit more workshopping before I can commit to it. (Maybe I'll just make an OC. Someone who can appreciate Ursula as she is and knows to say "Yes please" like a good girl.)

Speaking of unhealthy relationships with an element of Kink! You'll know the Summer of WIPs is winding down when I start talking about...

Courtship: A Golden Rings Story The heartwarming love story of a barely-legal troubled girl with nothing, and the fifty-year-old millionaire who demands everything. Lacey French and Mr. Gold, a match made in cursed Storybrooke. I'm rooting for these kids, I think they'll be good for each other.

Regina: A Golden Rings Story A big problem of making Regina absolutely irredeemable is that it really throws off any Season 2 AU (which is what Golden Love is going to be). This fic will be filling in some of the gaps of that premise, getting most readers on the same page before the fic proper starts. The story itself will be the major players in Storybrooke (Emma, Snow and David, Archie, Belle and Rumple) trying to figure out what they can possibly do with an unrepentant and homicidal Destroyer of Worlds.

And finally, my next major fic:

Golden Love After the curse breaks, Rumple and Belle set off to find Baelfire in the Land Without Magic. Tragedy strikes when Belle loses her memory and reverts back to her old persona of Mrs. Gold. Since there's no more waiting for the curse to break, Rumple realizes that the only way to get Belle back is to give Lacey Gold True Love's Kiss.

Depending on how the rest of 2023 goes, this will probably start posting in January of 2024. Stay tuned for more updates.

#tmi tuesday #summer of wips #golden cuffs #golden rings #nephila #flirting with the condiments #on the house

[wishingforatypewriter]

Year in Review

Thanks @nyamadermont for tagging me!

1. Number of stories posted to Ao3: I posted and/or updated 20 stories in 2022.

2. Word count in 2022: 80,023

3. Fandoms I wrote for: Legend of Korra and Avatar: The Last Airbender

4. Pairings: Linzolt, Linzin, Baavira, and Tyzula

5. Stories with the most:

Kudos: The Weight of Empire (Baavira)

Bookmarks: The Successor (Kuvira & Opal)

Comment threads:  The Successor

Word count: The Successor

6. Work I’m most proud of (and why): I think I'm proudest—or at least fondest—of An Armada of Shoulds, It's probably my favorite Linzolt thing that I've written. I'm proud of it because it was my first attempt at writing from Zolt's point of view and I think I did a pretty good job with it, considering we only see him twice or so in the source material.

7.   Work I’m least proud of (and why): Agni Kais was supposed to be a grand, sweeping Tyzula reunion fic that touched upon the origins of the Republic City triads, but in the end I only wrote one chapter, and Azula wasn't even in it.

8.   Share or describe a favorite review you received: I adore every single comment that every single reader takes the time to write! It always makes my day when I see a notification for one in my email! But I guess my favorites lately have been the ones where readers tell me I've convinced them to ship something they either hadn't considered or were ambivalent towards before.

9.   A time when writing was really, really hard: Alwaysssss! But especially as I tried to work on Chapter 17 of The Successor (and still haven't succeeded in finishing it). I was trying to get inside Opal's head and write from her perspective, but it just wasn't working, so I decided to take a break from it for a while.

10. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you: I enjoyed writing Tenzin in Tether more than I thought I would! Also, if someone told me back in 2020 that I'd become a Zolt stan, I probably wouldn't have believed them.

11. A favorite excerpt of your writing:

"Lin and Tenzin were very different, but with work, they worked. He liked his curry puffs mild and with mung beans, and she liked hers filled with five-spice pigchicken, and it was fine—so long as she didn’t try to kiss him too soon after dinner. Sure, he wouldn’t come with her to Kwong’s Cuisine or the ostrich-horse racetracks, and she wouldn’t meditate on Air Temple Island or help brush the bison, but they met in the middle, with walks in the park and afternoon spars and simple meals at mom and pop restaurants. 

It was enough that most days Lin could forget the soulmark she’d been born with—a swirling flame on the fleshy pad at the base of her thumb—or the nonbender’s fingerprint that had appeared on his shoulder three years back. Most days the soul bond hummed faint as a song on the radio two rooms away, vaguely there, but not immediate enough to command her attention.

Today was not one of those days," from Marked, my Linzolt soulmate AU.

12. How did you grow as a writer this year: I tried to branch out a little by writing different tropes like a coffee shop au and a soulmate au.

13. How do you hope to grow next year: This year I'd like to work on my emotional range as a writer. I write a lot of fluff, and I'd like to branch out into some other fic categories like angst and hurt/comfort. In short, I'm trying to make y'all cry this year!

14. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc):

@orangepanic is such a prolific and talented writer (and also really nice and supportive of other writers)! Reading her work always inspires me to get back to my wips!

15. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year: I think my lifelong love of city life has shown up in some of my Linzolt fics.

16. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers: Write what honestly makes you happy, not what you think you should be writing, if that makes sense.

17. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year: I have about three more chapters planned for The Successor and they will get written this year! I'm also really excited to keep working on House of the Flaming Boar, my au story in which married Linzolt end up as Mako and Bolin's foster parents.

18. Tag some writers whose answers you’d like to read: Anyone who'd like to participate!

[melchinafan]

WAIT A SECOND I'm going through the Nursery in Secret World Legends again, and (spoilers for end-of-Transylvania story):

~~~

Reading this part of a lore entry (and remembering/rereading the related research) got my brain spiraling off on Yu-Gi-Oh thoughts:

CLICK-CLACK. A doctor types: "Similarly, we've found that inhabiting the child subject with an incorporeal entity allows the hemispheres of their brains to become separate processing units."

One of the experiments they were doing was deliberately possessing the kids with spirits/ghosts, and observing that—due to the plasticity of a child's developing brain—it allowed for the hemispheres to work individually: "...[able] to concentrate on separate subjects, and to solve multiple problems, simultaneously..." (with severe side effects, though the specifics are not listed)

Now, because I've been working on stitching YGO into the setting, this led to the thought...WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR YUGI AND RYOU

Granted, both of their spirits also reside within their respective Items, so that probably takes a HUGE load off the relative necessary "processing power" from their brains. So their side effects would've been mild to moderate, instead of severe. Plus, Yugi was older than the eldest in the Nursery when he solved the Puzzle. (He was ~16, the eldest mentioned was 13, and there's a note that it works for kids "to a much higher degree than inhabited adults.")

But Ryou was younger when he got the Ring (~10, at my estimation), thus within the range they were testing. So, between the two of them, it's more likely that he might have suffered some long-term side effects. Further evidenced by how Ryou was able to physically control his hand and click-clack at his own computer without Bakura noticing, during the Monster World TTRPG. (Granted, this was due to a weakening of Bakura based on his avatar in the game, but still.) With Yugi and Yami (as I recall), they either take turns, or work in tandem on the same thing. They can keep secrets from each other, but they don't go as far as controlling separate parts of their shared body simultaneously.

But then, maybe Yugi was also affected by the unlisted side effects, despite being a bit older. We know for sure he had (has?) two soul rooms—at least symbolically, if not a literal hemisphere split. A shame we never got to see Ryou's room. I imagine it looks much like his rad tabletop setups. Possibly even with a castle (or other foreboding structure) where Bakura nestled, when he wasn't fully in the Ring. Though, he's generally more subtle/sneaky when he's not going full Zorc...OH, MAYBE HE'S THE UNDERSIDE OF THE TABLE, WITH A DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENT! AND FLIPS IT WHEN HE TAKES OVER (LIKE WE SAW WITH THE FOREST AREA), SINCE HE CAN FULLY SUPPRESS RYOU, OOOOOOH I LOVE THAT IDEA

(Also swinging back around to the Nursery itself, some crossover AU idea shenanigans...Yugi and Ryou as (two of) the kids they did the ghosty experiments on. Bakura is definitely responsible for the doll room. The rest of the carnage likely involved Penalty Games. And...yanno, the facility itself is nearly a mirror of Yugi's soul rooms, with the play area very similar to Yugi's room, and the horrifying [everything else] sort of being like Yami's, if a bit less labyrinthine. Just a WHOLE BUNCH of horrifying experimentation rooms, instead. But also OH NO THERE ARE ACTUALLY TWO INHABITED CHILDREN IN THAT ROOM IN-GAME, I THOUGHT THERE WAS ONLY ONE? INSTEAD I GOT "HERE'S BOTH THE KIDS, HAVE FUN WITH VALIDATION OF THIS NIGHTMARE SCENARIO")

#swl #secret world legends #ygo #yu-gi-oh #ryou bakura #yami bakura #yugi mutou #yami yugi #crossover theorizing #I know Scriv has referenced Hellsing on purpose in the game #but I don't know if he's familiar enough with YGO for this to be deliberate #though there's some references in Egypt that I swear someone else did on purpose #I've got a whole crossover dissertation I've been working on #it'll be presentable one day #...what if I edit a wee Ryou into a screenshot of the doll room #sharp shadows and everything #I struggled so much to finish this mission because I was just standing around THINKING TOO MUCH ABOUT STUFF

[mildly-mandy]

The Making Of a Fanfic

Okay, so I've brought it up here before, but I have a fanfic I'm working on over on AO3. It's called Some Kind of Cyberpunk, and it's a Yoroiden Samurai Troopers/Digimon fusion fic.

Why, you ask? Because I could. But mainly because some years ago, I got a secondhand or more copy of the old Bandai DVD release of the Gaiden and Legend of the Kikoutei Armor OAV. One side had the dubbed Ronin Warriors version, and the other had the subbed Samurai Troopers version.

Gaiden is a WEIRD story. I think I read somewhere that it was a thank you for fans who supported the series. It's two episodes for a story that absolutely needed at least three or four, and it shows. Anyway, the storyline involves the Troopers discovering that their friend Seiji has been lured to America in order for a sorcerer and a mad scientist that I've described as an absolutely unlikeable version of Peter Venkman to experiment with controlling his armor via technomystical means. They meet up with a girl named Luna who wants revenge for her dead brother, and end up having to go to Los Angeles' Little Tokyo neighborhood to confront the culprits. Seiji is unhooked from the computer he's been hotwired into, and Luna dies taking a blow for the sidekick characters Nastui and Jun while trying to stab the sorcerer when he goes after them.

The OAV ends with them back in New York, reuniting with their friends, and Ryo throws a bouquet of flowers off of a bridge, presumably for Luna.

That's it. The events of this little storyline are never mentioned again, aside from the implication that Shuu has had to use the rest of the money he won in Gaiden to pay for their trip to Africa in the next OAV. The final OAV storyline, Message, is done mostly in monologues by the Troopers over flashback footage, and Seiji's episode never mentions the use of his armor to murder innocent people. Ryo's episode never brings up that a girl who loved him died in his arms, a smile on her face.

And that irked me. But more than that, I was inspired. Because as the computer freaked out over the Kikoutei super armor, I remembered how in Digimon lore Ikkakkumon was discovered in the computer of an Arctic research base. And then I wondered what kind of Digimon could have resulted from a teenage boy with mystical armor made from a demon lord's corpse being hotwired into a computer with occultic programming.

I organized what would become the prototype playlist that acted as a soundtrack. The characters came next. Dianamon has always played a major role in the story, but as the plot evolved, so did her role. Much has been made about the fact that she can shift to a human form. As of right now in the story, the reasoning behind that is a mystery to the characters, who are still in the dark about many things.

Sage has always been meant to be a riff on the Ronin Warriors dub, but it's also a misinterpretation of his first words when encountered. He is an embodiment of the program used to control the Korin armor (and something else), and due to the extensive connection with Seiji, has his memories up until a certain point.

The people who discovered him are original characters, a necessity for a series so focused on the core characters that there is pretty much no one else important to the series. Background characters are rare in Samurai Troopers, and the title characters and their three companions are always kept separate from them. Anyone else who interacts with them are either enemies or are going to die. That's it.

So I wanted a way for the OCs to be able to connect. And that's where Rachel and her parents come in. Rachel and her friend Jason like doing urban exploration, a practice of wandering around places that are obscure or off limits. This can be hazardous, due to various circumstances like building conditions, people, and surprise animals.

Rachel learned self defense from her father, a man who had joined the army after she was born to help his little family. After he was stationed in Okinawa when she was three, the events of the first arc of the Samurai Troopers TV series occurred, and he was among a group from his base sent into Shinjuku when the populace went missing. His experience would lead to a great deal of PTSD, an honorable discharge, and an eventual career as the paranormal consultant for the city of Los Angeles due to it. He's still amazed that that turned out to be an actual career choice, but has set up a network of informants and associates that keep an eye on the City of the Angels.

Rachel herself is a young foul mouthed blonde woman with a tendency to think with her fists when she's angry, something that has gotten her into trouble in the past. An encounter with a bully in kindergarten led her to her friend Jason, a quiet nerdy boy with black hair that's always falling into his eyes. They've been friends ever since, and he treats their exploration hobby like real life dungeon crawling, making maps and researching the places they visit. He gets a lot of help from Rachel's mother Laura, a librarian at the LA Public Library. A fellow nerd, Laura speaks her mind, a habit her daughter has picked up on (much to her chagrin).

A report about a hidden tunnel in a cemetery outside of a long abandoned Buddhist temple in Little Tokyo sets off the events of the story. There have long been stories about that part of the neighborhood, as the property had been known to be associated with a man who had a reputation as a sorcerer. People who crossed him tended to end up in bad shape, dead, or just never seen again and presumed dead. Wanting to check this out before the neighborhood kids get curious and investigate it themselves, Richard calls his daughter, asking her and Jason to help look things over before closing it off.

Needless to say, they find more than they bargained for, A burned out computer on a raised platform above a pool of water. Wires leading into the pool below, weighed down by a white shape that moves in a way that Richard Does Not Like. Scattered papers and notes about a process to mesh magic and technology, using what sounds like a teenager lured to the place for that specific purpose. An old army knife and a bloodstain. And then there's the boy who shifts like satellite signal in bad weather, who can give off static and emit lightning. Using what information they can gather from him and the notes, they form a theory about what happened.

They think Sage is a remnant created from a boy that died down in that moldy pit that still smells of ashes and rot.

They aren't right. But they're not wrong, either. They're just missing a great deal of information. Either way, they mean to track down his companions, the mysterious Samurai Troopers. Because they deserve to know that their friend is still alive, in a way.

But what's going to happen when they meet? What are these strange beings that call themselves Digimon, and just what can they do?

I have had a LOT of fun plotting out this story. It's been in my head for about ten years now, and I'm still tweaking it.

#Samurai Troopers #Ronin Warriors #Digimon #Fanfic

[avelera]

Saw your post on anti-creampuffing Stede and you’re right and should say it. Was wondering if you have additional thoughts on when Stede appears to be disappointed in Ed when Jack recounts how he set fire to a ship full of people (despite the fact that Stede did pretty much the same thing two episodes prior)?

Anon, I am SO GRATEFUL to you for asking this, because it's a bit of meta I've been thinking about for A WHILE. There seems to be some fandom consensus about ALL of these events that make no f-ing sense to me (disclaimer: am ADHD neurodivergent?) BUT!

(I tried to keep this short but failed miserably, I just have a lot of thoughts about this bit of discourse, ok?)

1) I have no idea where everyone got the notion that Stede killed everyone on board the French party ship??? Yes there are some fires on board, but we SEE Abshir escape in a life boat with the other servants and people jumping to safety (it's not the Titanic, the Caribbean is warm guys, no one is going to freeze to death in the water). Stede humiliated those people and probably disabled the ship but I didn't see any evidence that everyone on board died?? (Doylist note: it was a comedy beat, I don't think we were supposed to see Stede's muppet-y destruction of the party ship as the same as a ship being burned to the waterline in a grimdark pirate naval battle, ie no one died, guys, at least no one of any importance)

2) I have no idea where everyone got the idea Stede was disappointed in Ed because of the story Calico Jack told about the burning ship?? I went back and watched it a few times just to make sure and here's my take:

Yes, Stede is freaked out by the story in the moment. It's a pretty hair-raising story. Stede is the moral compass of the show and he's relaying to us that this story is horrifying and we shouldn't be numb to that horror. But the horror we're being asked to feel isn't directed at Ed who committed the action, it's being directed at Calico Jack for laughing about it. In the muppet-y world of OFMD, being cruel is morally a greater sin than being a pirate doing pirate stuff.

That said, this is also the episode where Ed's emotional journey is coming to the conclusion that Stede would reject him if he knew who he was and what he'd done in the past. (An interestingly misplaced fear given Stede states that Ed's past is Ed's business and I think it applies to the ship too, guys.) It's actually very skillfully done that Stede's facial expression is a bit ambiguous here because we need to both believe that Ed is reasonable for thinking Stede is rejecting him AND that Stede is actually much more horrified on Ed's behalf than he is at the event (which was my initial read of the scene the first time I watched it).

On that note, Ed looks absolutely miserable that Jack is telling that story to Stede. Miserable and embarrassed. He is not crowing over those deaths. I actually got the very distinct impression (based on admittedly no evidence but Ed's immediate discomfort) that the ship burning was an accident. I can easily picture a situation where Ed thought the crew had abandoned ship and burnt it only to discover too late they'd taken shelter in the hold. In a manner similar to Stede's "murder" of Badminton, "Blackbeard" would have no choice but to take credit for those deaths as if he'd done it on purpose, which would help spread his legend as a brutal pirate, but Ed takes emotional shelter in the notion that "the fire killed those men, not me" even if that appears to be cold comfort to him.

It's only the fandom that's making a big deal out of either burning ship? Stede never brings up the burning ship again? Like most things pirate-y (especially when it comes to Ed), Stede had an initial moment of genteel alarm, then in his own typical bonkers manner he shrugged and just accepted it without further qualms. Stede gives Ed more shit about the turtle fighting the crab than he does about that ship.

IMO? Stede is much more repulsed by Jack telling that story than he is by what Ed did in the story. Stede literally does not give a shit at almost any point in the show about pirate brutality, only about people being mean. Jack pisses Stede right the fuck off, but Ed never could.

#our flag means death #ofmd meta #long post #that's why stede and ed are soulmates imo stede literally does not gaf about Ed's past atrocities beyond initial surprise and alarm

[scandalsavagefanfic]

Hello! I am a huge fan of ur writing. I've loved everything I've read of yours. I've read alot of what you've posted, except for a couple of the tags that are squicky for me (so I'm very thankful you tag very thoroughly). No judgement for the squick, it's just not for me. & when I'm having a bad day, I usually just go thru ur ao3 and find something to reread. I think about Therapy's Bruce & Jason every damn day. While I obvs appreciate ur darker more "problematic" content (I really vibe with some of the themes you write about bc of my own trauma, & so it's very cathartic to read about in a fictional setting), I am truly a sucker for ur more happy content. The Happily Ever After verse also lives in my head rent free. Idk more wholesome stuff just seems more special when you write it. Anyways. I would die for you. But the point of this ask is cause I'm curious as to why you don't like Urban Legends? I'm sorry if you already talked about it here or on twitter and I missed it. I was just wondering because I really enjoy your take on things and would love to hear why you dislike it. I've been enjoying it so far personally, but I am always open to DC comics criticism.

Aw thank you so much! I'm so flattered by everything you just said. You're so sweet ❤❤❤❤❤

I haven't talked about Urban Legends here or twitter (I haven't been very active in either place lately. Just a lot going on and no energy 😔) but I'm happy to do it here.

Before I start though, I just want to add a standard disclaimer and make it clear that if you like it, there's nothing wrong with that and you don't have to let me ruin it for you lol. Like what you like.

That said, since you asked...

I said this when I was talking about it on discord, that there is a difference between hope and expectation. I always hope that a new story centered on Jason (or anyone really, but things have been especially egregious for Jay for 15 years) will be good or at least treat the character with a minimal level of respect (to be honest, the bar is super fucking low). But my expectations always temper my hope, to keep it from getting unrealistic. Because my expectations are based on experience.

The long history of Jason Todd, since even before his resurrection, has been one of retroactively trying to make him "a bad seed" in order to absolve Bruce of any responsibility in his death.

I don't even expect DC or their writers to start honoring the fact that Jason was not an angry, reckless Robin (and less of the later than Dick or Tim and definitely Damian). There plenty of ways that retcon can be folded into his history and be compelling and sympathetic. And if they're going to stick with that retcon, I'm only asking that they do it in one of those compelling and sympathetic ways because Jason was 15 when he died, heroically, in one of the most selfless acts in comics, to save a woman who literally handed him over to be brutally murdered. He was 12 when Bruce plucked him off the streets, he'd been homeless and fending for himself for at least two years. I personally think that Jason's story hits harder for him and Bruce if their original, canon relationship, of Jason as starry-eyed and eager to learn and absolutely devoted to Bruce and Bruce to Jason, is preserved. But Jason's origins does leave room for a meaningful interpretation of him as angry and frustrated at the lack of meaningful results of Bruce's methods.

And that's really where my irritation at stories like Batman: Urban Legends, Cheer and Batman The Adventure Continues has it's roots.

Every time one of these stories comes out, I think (or hope, rather) that this will be the one that remembers and respects the origins of the Jason and the Red Hood, that takes into account the changed sensibilities of comics readers in the 30 years since Jason's death and the subtle, 20 year, retroactive campaign to make him the "bad Robin". The "born bad" trope is played out and literally no one likes the message it implies. That some kids are just bad eggs and there's nothing parents or the adults around them can do. Especially when it's played as the kid's fault. If Jason's time as Robin is going to be characterized by anger, then it should be rooted in anger at the social injustices he witnessed as he grew up in an impoverished, crime-ridden, area and the horrors he faced raising himself when every day was a battle for survival. There are topical, meaningful, stories to tell with that backdrop.

But those are never the stories we get.

⚠⚠ Spoilers for Batman: Urban Legends, Cheer ⚠⚠

I'm particularly disappointed in Urban Legends because for the first issue, it looked like that was the kind of story we were going to get. I was put off by the first flashback of Jason being mesmerized by Bruce's guns, and I got that feeling in my gut that it was a bad sign. Jason depicted as impatient and overconfident and the scene with the guns is heavy-handed foreshadowing that got my spidey-sense tingling. I had a inkling then (in the first three pages) of how this story was going to play out, but it was early and I could still see many narrative paths that could lead to a satisfying story. My concerns were soothed somewhat and the little flame of my hope fanned, with the flashback of Alfred scolding Bruce, with Barbara's concern for Jason. A bit of worry returned with the way Jason ruthlessly pursued an addict who didn't appear to be a dealer and with the ending of the issue. The stuff with the addict sat wrong with me but the ending was tempered some by how despicable Tyler's dad was written. The scene was clearly set so that the reader could sympathize with Jason's decision and the scene with the addict could be brushed aside as a side-effect of comics over-the-top need for constant action, so I still held hope.

Issue 2 made me uncomfortable and it's where my hope starts to take a backseat to my expectations. I can dismiss Jason's self-deprecating internal monologue as unreliable narration, except that the flashback reinforces his thought process to explicitly show that it's not unreliable narration, and should be taken at face value. Jason faces physical abuse at the hands of his mother's drug dealer and when the flashback continues later, Jason kills the drug dealer. To be clear, this is a pre-Bruce Jason. His mom is still alive. He's like... 10. He kills this guy for shoving his head into a wall and implying Jason's mother paid for her drugs with sex. This is a scene that serves a single purpose. To show that Jason has always been prone to violence.

In the spirit of full disclosure, there is the small chance the drug dealer might not be dead. But the story obviously wants the reader to think he is, and it hasn't done anything to change that yet.

Starlin already did this story with The Diplomat’s Son in 1988 and he did it infinitely better. AND that’s still technically canon. So now I’m supposed to believe that Jason lost his cool bad enough to kill two douche bags before his sweet 16? Like it’s totally normal for abused kids raised in poverty, who’ve led hard and heartbreaking lives to just... haul off and kill people? That’s bullshit, and when taken with the Jason in the third issue, who is little more than an idiot thug, this story is really doubling down on some fucked up stereotypes.

Which brings us to the most recent issue. I went into this installment with very low expectations. I thought this story was going to be about Jason, through this experience with Tyler, a young boy with a similar background to Jason's, coming to the realization that Bruce's way is the best way and that Bruce did his best by Jason.

That would be annoying (in no small part because it takes increasingly absurd levels of plot armor to keep Bruce's no kill rule relevant, let alone irrefutably right). But I can probably live with that, if only because maybe if Jason officially falls back into line with the Bats crusade, maybe I'll get stories that treat him with respect, stories that don't relegate him to comic relief, dumb brute, or a background body with no lines in a story about the Joker burning Gotham (like Jason would just fucking stand there quietly for that).

And that may still be where the story is going, Jason realizing Bruce is right.

But holy shit do I not have the right words to describe how fucking insulting and gross issue three is.

From start to finish--including the flashback--Jason is written as cruel and fucking stupid. Like straight up dumb.

The entire issue is Bruce explaining the fucking basics to Jason like it's his first day. And Jason flies off the fucking handle and terrorizes a doctor he knows isn't a part of making the Cheerdrops, beats the shit out of some random addicts, and finally, when he can't accomplish anything on his own because he's a dumb brute he calls Barbara for help and rushes in with no information where he's promptly incapacitated and must now wait to be rescued by Batman.

This panel is the least of the issues sins but I can’t screenshot the entire story but it’s representative of the tone for the whole issue (and retroactively tainted the prior two issues).

This is beyond insulting. The only conclusions Jason comes to in this issue are the ones Bruce leads him to by talking to him like he can’t make the simplest connections. And like... in this story Jason can’t make the simplest connections.

This (and the Jason throughout the entirety of this issue) is a far cry from the Jason we fell in love with in Under the Red Hood, who was competent and strategic and intelligent enough to seize control of Gotham’s underworld from Black Mask (who’s no fucking slouch, he’s the first and only person to unify organized crime in Gotham) AND elude and manipulate Bruce until the time and place of his choosing.

This is a far cry from even the Red Hood and the Outlaws Jason who is competent enough to fight the League of Shadows and Ra’s al Ghul (among very dangerous and skilled others) and smart enough to create antidotes for mind control nanotech viruses.

As he should be, by the way. Jason Todd is one of the best, most comprehensively trained fighters in DC’s stable of non powered vigilantes. He’s not irrational or hot headed. He’s pragmatic, tactically minded, and patient. He’s a detective. Right now. Has been since he was 12. Bruce doesn’t have to make him one because he already is. 

Jason is not a stupid thug who uses his fists because his brain doesn’t work. And I can’t tell you how so very exhausted I am by this narrative. 

This is actually the most egregious example of Jason’s skills and intelligence being not just undermined but dismissed entirely. Even Morrison’s Jason had some degree of competency. 

The one, single redeeming factor of this story is the art. It’s beautiful. And Marcus To is a godsend he seems to be one of only a couple of artists who remember that Jason was a child when he was Robin and I’m literally only buying this book because of him. 

Anyway, I’m sorry. I didn’t want that to come out so... um... passionately lol. I’m just very very tired. My intention with this isn’t to ruin it for you, if you like it, that’s fine. 

But this issue shot this story to the top of my "Vehemently Despise” list. 1) Batman: Urban Legends (Cheer), 2) Battle for the Cowl/Morrison’s Batman and Robin, 3) Batman The Adventure Continues.

I hope the next issues somehow salvage this dumpster fire. But I’m not expecting it.

(Damnit. That sounded harsh again. To reiterate, I’m not trying to judge anyone who enjoys it, I just personally hate it and you asked me why lol 😅)

#Batman #red hood #batman: urban legends #nice art #shit story #or at least shit characterization #jason todd deserves better #this response got long and I didn't edit it #please forgive any errors #and/or unclear spots #spoilers

[ectonurites]

do you think there's enough evidence to say that dc is setting timkon up to be endgame? i saw something saying that tim is always given cheating arcs so that's what will probably happen and i don't really want that for him... i like timkon a lot but i mean... if we didn't get timkon when tim's queerness was revealed it's likely not going happen right lol? though i would like to see tim admit in another lightbulb moment that he probably had a crush on kon lol

ok im just going to . break this into pieces to answer. this got very long and definitely has some side tangents

I'd like to give a disclaimer that a decent amount of this stuff is conjecture, just my opinions based on things i've noticed, ya know? I am just a fan and don't know everything lmao

do you think there's enough evidence to say that dc is setting timkon up to be endgame?

absolutely not in any sort of sure way. i'm not saying there's no evidence that it's a thought some people at dc may have had, because i mean i know for a fact there's people who've worked at dc in positions of some power that like the pairing (i mean he's leaving DC soon but, like, Tynion, and he almost certainly isn't the only one he's just the one i can easily link to a source about it) but I think saying there's evidence to prove it's a sure thing is just... a lot of wishful thinking.

I said this a while back but honestly one reason why I thought it was crazy people getting upset about Kon not being the one to be confirmed queer right now when Jon was is the fact that... Kon is not even regularly showing up anywhere right now. He's not in an ongoing, like I wouldn't be surprised if he shows up in Suicide Squad again later on some sort of Match rescue mission, but that's not a sure or guaranteed thing. Yet despite that and how in recent years he's definitely gotten brushed under the rug a decent amount, he's not some entirely unknown character (especially because he's in Titans + the YJ cartoon, despite the differences in those versions of the character, its the name recognition) that they'd just quickly decide 'ok he can be gay now' like... as much as I do personally read him as queer I definitely think he's a harder sell to convince people of that than Tim was, at least from DC's standpoint.

We do know that like for Meghan's situation writing Tim's coming out it was a sort of thing where she was given the task of writing a Tim story and when it became about themes of identity this was just the path she thought it had to go down, but anything even remotely like that sort of opprotunity isn't happening with Conner anytime in the foreseeable future, we don't have something formatted like Urban Legends for Superfam characters. And idk I don't think they'd use Kon as just a supporting character in Tim's life/stories, like, I think the primary most likely way I would see something genuinely happening with them in canon would be if they end up on a team book together again and it happened there, but like... who knows when/if that'll happen

That got a bit off topic, but tldr no I don't think there's enough evidence to support that, I think the circumstances as they currently are don't indicate things clearly enough to think of it even remotely as a 'sure thing', but I also think ya know considering we do have canon queer Tim we're in a far more likely position for it than we ever have been in the past.

i saw something saying that tim is always given cheating arcs so that's what will probably happen and i don't really want that for him...

ok well whoever said that has the reading comprehension skills of a kindergartner. sorry, that was mean. ok. but just ... 'always'???? that is just. that is not correct. Tim's relationships are full of teen drama and they get messy, but people take things so incredibly out of context. There are two short instances of cheating, but neither one would qualify as an arc, and one was during a crossover with another company.

Like, listen, I need people to understand there is a difference between a love triangle/having conflicted feelings for multiple people and like, actual cheating.

Tim met Ari and began dating her. Tim met Stephanie and worked with her in their hero identities.

Tim almost died (almost suffocated in a van buried under concrete with Steph's dad) early in his solo (Robin #5) and Steph was the person there as he was saved so he kissed her as a 'holy fuck im alive thank you' type of thing. Is that something he should have done? No, it's not good to kiss other girls when you have a girlfriend. But it's a very specific situation and he was 14 and thought he was about to die so I think the way people treat it like him purposefully trying to cheat on Ari behind her back is strange (especially when Ari during the same issue... goes on a date with another guy because Tim stood her up? [i mean not purposefully he was. fucking dying. but she didn't know that] Like I don't think we should vilify Ari here either as an alternative, but both it was a situation created to make teen drama and we need to keep that in mind). Also like i'm sorry but giving the nearest person a kiss after you almost died/something crazy happened is like, a pretty common media trope (to pull from TVTropes: its the Accidental Kiss/Smooch of Victory overlap). I'm not trying to minimize that it was something he shouldn't have done, but it's also nowhere near as deep or malicious as people act like.

After that, any other times Tim & Steph kissed while he was dating Ari, Steph was the one to kiss him and he kept pushing her away, telling her he had a girlfriend, and to stop. That is not the same as cheating.

Now, Tim was developing feelings for Stephanie during all of this, and it obviously left him conflicted. But that's a love triangle, where he's torn between staying with Ari or instead moving on to date Steph. When he realizes he does want to date Steph he decides to immediately break up with Ari and it just takes a few days because this was 1998 and teens communicating with one another worked a lot differently than it does now. (and she ends up even breaking up with him first LMAO)

Did he handle things messily? Sure. Did he kiss Steph purposefully while dating Ari once which would count as cheating? Yeah. But is this an arc about him purposefully cheating on his girlfriend until he eventually leaves her? No.

Now, if the person who said that was talking about the Jubilee thing in the Marvel crossover which happened while he'd been dating Ari... im sorry but that is a crossover with a whole other company. Trying to hold that up as if its prime characterization that holds strong bearing on regular canon is like, insane. Again, was it a good thing? No, absolutely not, but that wasn't a story focused on making the most in-character Tim in the world, it was focused on making an interesting crossover story for people who wanted to see interactions between DC and Marvel characters, and Tim & Jubilee were just selected for 'teen romance where they can't be together in the end because they're from different worlds'

And those are the only actual instances of cheating!

While he's dating Steph there are two instances she thinks he's cheating on her (with Star during the Brentwood era and with Darla just before War Games) but that wasn't what was actually happening in either situation (Star was just a friend who'd taught him how to skateboard, and Darla had kissed Tim without his permission and he pushed her away telling her he had a girlfriend, Steph just hadn't stuck around long enough to see/hear that part, Tim didn't willingly kiss Darla until after Steph & Darla had both died and Darla came back as Laura Fell/Warlock's Daughter) so considering that stuff a 'cheating arc' is nuts.

Things with Zo and Cassie between his solo and the Teen Titans book do happen in vaguely similar timeframes but those actually don't overlap as much as a lot of people think (like before I did the rereading for the stuff i'm about to talk about I also thought they overlapped more tbh!)

I was already making a Tim relationships chart before I got this ask, it's not completely done yet but I finished the section for that 2006-2008 era for this. This is by specifically what issues came out which month, to lay things out as factually as possible, the yellow column is Cassie & pink is Zo

It's not until the Robin book suddenly starts switching writers a ton (as in, it had been Adam Beechen from #148-166, and then the annual is Keith Champagne, #167 is Brandon Thomas, #168-169 is Peter Miligan and then #170 starts Dixon's second run, so between #166-170 there are 5 different writers on one book) that things actually start to conflict between Tim being with Cassie in Teen Titans and Tim being with Zo in Robin, it's absolutely just that nobody working on Robin was communicating (with each other or the Teen Titans creative team) and that caused things to get confusing.

That's not Tim as a character cheating, that's pretty clearly just a result of Tim's solo being passed between so many people in such a short timeframe, and causing miscommunications.

When Steph then comes back he and Zo are together at the time but also already kinda tense (after Tim fell asleep on a Roller Coaster on a date LMAO), and like... he was trying to navigate an insane situation as honestly as he could, not cheat on anyone behind anyone's back. 'My girlfriend i loved that i thought was dead came back but i'm currently dating someone else now and everything is weird and tense' isn't a cheating arc, it's ridiculous comic book teen drama. He and Steph also never even officially get back together in this era, they had one kiss when she was initially revealed to be alive and that's it, otherwise he was still with Zo (until he broke up with her in Robin #183)

During Red Robin his budding relationship with Tam is incredibly casual, so I really do not think that the stuff with Lynx counts as cheating even remotely (and also, that was a situation of her making out with him. Although admittedly he's less resistant than he had been back in the old days with Steph, he wasn't formally dating Tam like he had been Ari)

So yeah, no. 'always has cheating arcs' is just incorrect, and saying 'that's what will probably happen' (them saying it, not you) actively makes me mad. The last time he actually genuinely cheated was in 1996 during the Jubilee thing, 7 years into existing as a character, and he's then existed for another 25 years after without doing so... it just really doesn't strike me as particularly likely.

i like timkon a lot but i mean... if we didn't get timkon when tim's queerness was revealed it's likely not going happen right lol? though i would like to see tim admit in another lightbulb moment that he probably had a crush on kon lol

So like, honestly, the fact that Kon wasn't his gay awakening I don't think means it's 100% never going to happen or anything like that. Like... ok this is gonna sound pessimistic but as much as I do like Tim/Bernard and think it's fun, I don't foresee Tim being in a relationship with a civilian (at least not one he hides his identity from) longterm again, mainly because since he's not in a solo book right now, we're not really going to be seeing that much of his civilian life to actually show that he's having that relationship. Unless DC decides to actually put spotlight on Tim's civilian life in some way moving forward... the solutions are either Bernard gets more involved in vigilante things (not even necessarily as a hero, but could be something like over in Jon's book how Jay is a reporter actively investigating things related to Jon's hero stuff, so he's a part of the book outside of just attempts at a civilian life) or they break up.

Now I know above I just complained about how Kon's not really showing up in many places, however Kon is still a LOT more likely to show up in stuff than Bernard is just like, in general as a character. Building a relationship between two characters active in the hero community who both appear places on their own too (and then could also appear together) rather than a hero x a civilian love interest that's only gonna appear in stuff for that hero just... seems more long-lasting to me when the hero in question isn't in a solo book to explore more aspects of their civilian life. But that doesn't really narrow anything down to Kon, that's just more of an argument for 'Tim will probably eventually date another queer hero'

To talk about something a little more positive irt tim/kon because I've been kinda tearing shit down most of this post so far, I'd like to talk about how Kon was involved in Sum of Our Parts to begin with. There was a choice to bring him into the narrative for Tim's coming out story, and... well I'm gonna pull another quote from that same Meghan Fitzmartin podcast interview I keep quoting, where she was asked about Conner:

Starting from 22:48

Interviewer: Soooo- my boy Conner Kent- [laughter] Can we hear this- In your Urban Legends story, and he and Tim have a complicated history of being read as queer coded, was any of this running through your mind while writing their interaction?

Fitzmartin: I mean, I've-I've seen the internet. I've-I'm aware. I'm aware that the internet exists. Umm...

Interviewer: [overlapping] Alright

Fitzmartin: K-Ya know. Conner is part of Tim's history just like Stephanie is part of Tim's history in-in varying different degrees in varying different ways but, um, we are who those around us- we are what others around us are- ma-uh- make us to be. And. so.

Interviewer: Right-

Fitzmartin: [overlapping] I'll leave it at that-

Interviewer: That's a fair- fair answer, I will take it.

Fitzmartin: [laughs]

Her answer is definitely a vague non-answer (bc like. it kinda has to be imo. she doesn't control Conner's direction as a character or anything and... ya know) but like. Much to think about there with her blatantly drawing comparison to Steph & Kon's respective importance to Tim's history, ya know? Based on what she said that stuff was something she was certainly aware of when she wrote this:

(Batman: Urban Legends #5)

...and she also had made a parallel between how Tim feels/has felt for Steph & how he feels for Bernard in her Polygon interview

(source)

So there's... things you could extrapolate from that if you tried. It'd be putting words in her mouth to try to make any specific claims and you shouldn't really do that, but it's not unreasonable to see some sort of connection in there.

but anyways, to kinda do a tldr to this whole post: I don't think there's nearly enough evidence to say 'timkon is a sure endgame thing' but I also do think it's not an unreasonable thing to hope or want for, and I could see the groundwork clearly there if the right opprotunity came along to tell the story. I just personally, from things i've seen, don't think it's an active thing DC is planning and purposefully building towards right now (frankly I feel like they just aren't thinking far enough ahead with Tim or Kon as characters for something like that), but I think it's fair to say there's people at DC probably rooting for it and that maybe someday it will get it's chance to happen.

#im sorry this is so much

[innuendostudios]

Thoughts on: Criterion's Neo-Noir Collection

I have written up all 26 films* in the Criterion Channel's Neo-Noir Collection.

Legend: rw - rewatch; a movie I had seen before going through the collection dnrw - did not rewatch; if a movie met two criteria (a. I had seen it within the last 18 months, b. I actively dislike it) I wrote it up from memory.

* in September, Brick leaves the Criterion Channel and is replaced in the collection with Michael Mann's Thief. May add it to the list when that happens.

Note: These are very "what was on my mind after watching." No effort has been made to avoid spoilers, nor to make the plot clear for anyone who hasn't seen the movies in question. Decide for yourself if that's interesting to you.

Cotton Comes to Harlem I feel utterly unequipped to asses this movie. This and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song the following year are regularly cited as the progenitors of the blaxploitation genre. (This is arguably unfair, since both were made by Black men and dealt much more substantively with race than the white-directed films that followed them.) Its heroes are a couple of Black cops who are treated with suspicion both by their white colleagues and by the Black community they're meant to police. I'm not 100% clear on whether they're the good guys? I mean, I think they are. But the community's suspicion of them seems, I dunno... well-founded? They are working for The Man. And there's interesting discussion to the had there - is the the problem that the law is carried out by racists, or is the law itself racist? Can Black cops make anything better? But it feels like the film stacks the deck in Gravedigger and Coffin Ed's favor; the local Black church is run by a conman, the Back-to-Africa movement is, itself, a con, and the local Black Power movement is treated as an obstacle. Black cops really are the only force for justice here. Movie portrays Harlem itself as a warm, thriving, cultured community, but the people that make up that community are disloyal and easily fooled. Felt, to me, like the message was "just because they're cops doesn't mean they don't have Black soul," which, nowadays, we would call copaganda. But, then, do I know what I'm talking about? Do I know how much this played into or off of or against stereotypes from 1970? Was this a radical departure I don't have the context to appreciate? Is there substance I'm too white and too many decades removed to pick up on? Am I wildly overthinking this? I dunno. Seems like everyone involved was having a lot of fun, at least. That bit is contagious.

Across 110th Street And here's the other side of the "race film" equation. Another movie set in Harlem with a Black cop pulled between the police, the criminals, and the public, but this time the film is made by white people. I like it both more and less. Pro: this time the difficult position of Black cop who's treated with suspicion by both white cops and Black Harlemites is interrogated. Con: the Black cop has basically no personality other than "honest cop." Pro: the racism of the police force is explicit and systemic, as opposed to comically ineffectual. Con: the movie is shaped around a racist white cop who beats the shit out of Black people but slowly forms a bond with his Black partner. Pro: the Black criminal at the heart of the movie talks openly about how the white world has stacked the deck against him, and he's soulful and relateable. Con: so of course he dies in the end, because the only way privileged people know to sympathetize with minorities is to make them tragic (see also: The Boys in the Band, Philadelphia, and Brokeback Mountain for gay men). Additional con: this time Harlem is portrayed as a hellhole. Barely any of the community is even seen. At least the shot at the end, where the criminal realizes he's going to die and throws the bag of money off a roof and into a playground so the Black kids can pick it up before the cops reclaim it was powerful. But overall... yech. Cotton Comes to Harlem felt like it wasn't for me; this feels like it was 100% for me and I respect it less for that.

The Long Goodbye (rw) The shaggiest dog. Like much Altman, more compelling than good, but very compelling. Raymond Chandler's story is now set in the 1970's, but Philip Marlowe is the same Philip Marlowe of the 1930's. I get the sense there was always something inherently sad about Marlowe. Classic noir always portrayed its detectives as strong-willed men living on the border between the straightlaced world and its seedy underbelly, crossing back and forth freely but belonging to neither. But Chandler stresses the loneliness of it - or, at least, the people who've adapted Chandler do. Marlowe is a decent man in an indecent world, sorting things out, refusing to profit from misery, but unable to set anything truly right. Being a man out of step is here literalized by putting him forty years from the era where he belongs. His hardboiled internal monologue is now the incessant mutterings of the weird guy across the street who never stops smoking. Like I said: compelling! Kael's observation was spot on: everyone in the movie knows more about the mystery than he does, but he's the only one who cares. The mystery is pretty threadbare - Marlowe doesn't detect so much as end up in places and have people explain things to him. But I've seen it two or three times now, and it does linger.

Chinatown (rw) I confess I've always been impressed by Chinatown more than I've liked it. Its story structure is impeccable, its atmosphere is gorgeous, its noirish fatalism is raw and real, its deconstruction of the noir hero is well-observed, and it's full of clever detective tricks (the pocket watches, the tail light, the ruler). I've just never connected with it. Maybe it's a little too perfectly crafted. (I feel similar about Miller's Crossing.) And I've always been ambivalent about the ending. In Towne's original ending, Evelyn shoots Noah Cross dead and get arrested, and neither she nor Jake can tell the truth of why she did it, so she goes to jail for murder and her daughter is in the wind. Polansky proposed the ending that exists now, where Evelyn just dies, Cross wins, and Jake walks away devastated. It communicates the same thing: Jake's attempt to get smart and play all the sides off each other instead of just helping Evelyn escape blows up in his face at the expense of the woman he cares about and any sense of real justice. And it does this more dramatically and efficiently than Towne's original ending. But it also treats Evelyn as narratively disposable, and hands the daughter over to the man who raped Evelyn and murdered her husband. It makes the women suffer more to punch up the ending. But can I honestly say that Towne's ending is the better one? It is thematically equal, dramatically inferior, but would distract me less. Not sure what the calculus comes out to there. Maybe there should be a third option. Anyway! A perfect little contraption. Belongs under a glass dome.

Night Moves (rw) Ah yeah, the good shit. This is my quintessential 70's noir. This is three movies in a row about detectives. Thing is, the classic era wasn't as chockablock with hardboiled detectives as we think; most of those movies starred criminals, cops, and boring dudes seduced to the darkness by a pair of legs. Gumshoes just left the strongest impressions. (The genre is said to begin with Maltese Falcon and end with Touch of Evil, after all.) So when the post-Code 70's decided to pick the genre back up while picking it apart, it makes sense that they went for the 'tecs first. The Long Goodbye dragged the 30's detective into the 70's, and Chinatown went back to the 30's with a 70's sensibility. But Night Moves was about detecting in the Watergate era, and how that changed the archetype. Harry Moseby is the detective so obsessed with finding the truth that he might just ruin his life looking for it, like the straight story will somehow fix everything that's broken, like it'll bring back a murdered teenager and repair his marriage and give him a reason to forgive the woman who fucked him just to distract him from some smuggling. When he's got time to kill, he takes out a little, magnetic chess set and recreates a famous old game, where three knight moves (get it?) would have led to a beautiful checkmate had the player just seen it. He keeps going, self-destructing, because he can't stand the idea that the perfect move is there if he can just find it. And, no matter how much we see it destroy him, we, the audience, want him to keep going; we expect a satisfying resolution to the mystery. That's what we need from a detective picture; one character flat-out compares Harry to Sam Spade. But what if the truth is just... Watergate? Just some prick ruining things for selfish reasons? Nothing grand, nothing satisfying. Nothing could be more noir, or more neo-, than that.

Farewell, My Lovely Sometimes the only thing that makes a noir neo- is that it's in color and all the blood, tits, and racism from the books they're based on get put back in. This second stab at Chandler is competant but not much more than that. Mitchum works as Philip Marlowe, but Chandler's dialogue feels off here, like lines that worked on the page don't work aloud, even though they did when Bogie said them. I'll chalk it up to workmanlike but uninspired direction. (Dang this looks bland so soon after Chinatown.) Moose Malloy is a great character, and perfectly cast. (Wasn't sure at first, but it's true.) Some other interesting cats show up and vanish - the tough brothel madam based on Brenda Allen comes to mind, though she's treated with oddly more disdain than most of the other hoods and is dispatched quicker. In general, the more overt racism and misogyny doesn't seem to do anything except make the movie "edgier" than earlier attempts at the same material, and it reads kinda try-hard. But it mostly holds together. *shrug*

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (dnrw) Didn't care for this at all. Can't tell if the script was treated as a jumping-off point or if the dialogue is 100% improvised, but it just drags on forever and is never that interesting. Keeps treating us to scenes from the strip club like they're the opera scenes in Amadeus, and, whatever, I don't expect burlesque to be Mozart, but Cosmo keeps saying they're an artful, classy joint, and I keep waiting for the show to be more than cheap, lazy camp. How do you make gratuitious nudity boring? Mind you, none of this is bad as a rule - I love digressions and can enjoy good sleaze, and it's clear the filmmakers care about what they're making. They just did not sell it in a way I wanted to buy. Can't remember what edit I watched; I hope it was the 135 minute one, because I cannot imagine there being a longer edit out there.

The American Friend (dnrw) It's weird that this is Patricia Highsmith, right? That Dennis Hopper is playing Tom Ripley? In a cowboy hat? I gather that Minghella's version wasn't true to the source, but I do love that movie, and this is a long, long way from that. This Mr. Ripley isn't even particularly talented! Anyway, this has one really great sequence, where a regular guy has been coerced by crooks into murdering someone on a train platform, and, when the moment comes to shoot, he doesn't. And what follows is a prolonged sequence of an amateur trying to surreptitiously tail a guy across a train station and onto another train, and all the while you're not sure... is he going to do it? is he going to chicken out? is he going to do it so badly he gets caught? It's hard not to put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, wondering how you would handle the situation, whether you could do it, whether you could act on impulse before your conscience could catch up with you. It drags on a long while and this time it's a good thing. Didn't much like the rest of the movie, it's shapeless and often kind of corny, and the central plot hook is contrived. (It's also very weird that this is the only Wim Wenders I've seen.) But, hey, I got one excellent sequence, not gonna complain.

The Big Sleep Unlike the 1946 film, I can follow the plot of this Big Sleep. But, also unlike the 1946 version, this one isn't any damn fun. Mitchum is back as Marlowe (this is three Marlowes in five years, btw), and this time it's set in the 70's and in England, for some reason. I don't find this offensive, but neither do I see what it accomplishes? Most of the cast is still American. (Hi Jimmy!) Still holds together, but even less well than Farewell, My Lovely. But I do find it interesting that the neo-noir era keeps returning to Chandler while it's pretty much left Hammet behind (inasmuch as someone whose genes are spread wide through the whole genre can be left behind). Spade and the Continental Op, straightshooting tough guys who come out on top in the end, seem antiquated in the (post-)modern era. But Marlowe's goodness being out of sync with the world around him only seems more poignant the further you take him from his own time. Nowadays you can really only do Hammett as pastiche, but I sense that you could still play Chandler straight.

Eyes of Laura Mars The most De Palma movie I've seen not made by De Palma, complete with POV shots, paranormal hoodoo, and fixation with sex, death, and whether images of such are art or exploitation (or both). Laura Mars takes photographs of naked women in violent tableux, and has gotten quite famous doing so, but is it damaging to women? The movie has more than a superficial engagement with this topic, but only slightly more than superficial. Kept imagining a movie that is about 30% less serial killer story and 30% more art conversations. (But, then, I have an art degree and have never murdered anyone, so.) Like, museums are full of Biblical paintings full of nude women and slaughter, sometimes both at once, and they're called masterpieces. Most all of them were painted by men on commission from other men. Now Laura Mars makes similar images in modern trappings, and has models made of flesh and blood rather than paint, and it's scandalous? Why is it only controversial once women are getting paid for it? On the other hand, is this just the master's tools? Is she subverting or challenging the male gaze, or just profiting off of it? Or is a woman profiting off of it, itself, a subversion? Is it subversive enough to account for how it commodifies female bodies? These questions are pretty clearly relevant to the movie itself, and the movies in general, especially after the fall of the Hays Code when people were really unrestrained with the blood and boobies. And, heck, the lead is played by the star of Bonnie and Clyde! All this is to say: I wish the movie were as interested in these questions as I am. What's there is a mildly diverting B-picture. There's one great bit where Laura's seeing through the killer's eyes (that's the hook, she gets visions from the murderer's POV; no, this is never explained) and he's RIGHT BEHIND HER, so there's a chase where she charges across an empty room only able to see her own fleeing self from ten feet behind. That was pretty great! And her first kiss with the detective (because you could see a mile away that the detective and the woman he's supposed to protect are gonna fall in love) is immediately followed by the two freaking out about how nonsensical it is for them to fall in love with each other, because she's literally mourning multiple deaths and he's being wildly unprofessional, and then they go back to making out. That bit was great, too. The rest... enh.

The Onion Field What starts off as a seemingly not-that-noirish cops-vs-crooks procedural turns into an agonizingly protracted look at the legal system, with the ultimate argument that the very idea of the law ever resulting in justice is a lie. Hoo! I have to say, I'm impressed. There's a scene where a lawyer - whom I'm not sure is even named, he's like the seventh of thirteen we've met - literally quits the law over how long this court case about two guys shooting a cop has taken. He says the cop who was murdered has been forgotten, his partner has never gotten to move on because the case has lasted eight years, nothing has been accomplished, and they should let the two criminals walk and jail all the judges and lawyers instead. It's awesome! The script is loaded with digressions and unnecessary details, just the way I like it. Can't say I'm impressed with the execution. Nothing is wrong, exactly, but the performances all seem a tad melodramatic or a tad uninspired. Camerawork is, again, purely functional. It's no masterpiece. But that second half worked for me. (And it's Ted Danson's first movie! He did great.)

Body Heat (rw) Let's say up front that this is a handsomely-made movie. Probably the best looking thing on the list since Night Moves. Nothing I've seen better captures the swelter of an East Coast heatwave, or the lusty feeling of being too hot to bang and going at it regardless. Kathleen Turner sells the hell out of a femme fatale. There are a lot of good lines and good performances (Ted Danson is back and having the time of his life). I want to get all that out of the way, because this is a movie heavily modeled after Double Indemnity, and I wanted to discuss its merits before I get into why inviting that comparison doesn't help the movie out. In a lot of ways, it's the same rules as the Robert Mitchum Marlowe movies - do Double Indemnity but amp up the sex and violence. And, to a degree it works. (At least, the sex does, dunno that Double Indemnity was crying out for explosions.) But the plot is amped as well, and gets downright silly. Yeah, Mrs. Dietrichson seduces Walter Neff so he'll off her husband, but Neff clocks that pretty early and goes along with it anyway. Everything beyond that is two people keeping too big a secret and slowly turning on each other. But here? For the twists to work Matty has to be, from frame one, playing four-dimensional chess on the order of Senator Palpatine, and its about as plausible. (Exactly how did she know, after she rebuffed Ned, he would figure out her local bar and go looking for her at the exact hour she was there?) It's already kind of weird to be using the spider woman trope in 1981, but to make her MORE sexually conniving and mercenary than she was in the 40's is... not great. As lurid trash, it's pretty fun for a while, but some noir stuff can't just be updated, it needs to be subverted or it doesn't justify its existence.

Blow Out Brian De Palma has two categories of movie: he's got his mainstream, director-for-hire fare, where his voice is either reigned in or indulged in isolated sequences that don't always jive with the rest fo the film, and then there's his Brian De Palma movies. My mistake, it seems, is having seen several for-hires from throughout his career - The Untouchables (fine enough), Carlito's Way (ditto, but less), Mission: Impossible (enh) - but had only seen De Palma-ass movies from his late period (Femme Fatale and The Black Dahlia, both of which I think are garbage). All this to say: Blow Out was my first classic-era De Palma, and holy fucking shit dudes. This was (with caveats) my absolute and entire jam. I said I could enjoy good sleaze, and this is good friggin' sleaze. (Though far short of De Palma at his sleaziest, mercifully.) The splitscreens, the diopter shots, the canted angles, how does he make so many shlocky things work?! John Travolta's sound tech goes out to get fresh wind fx for the movie he's working on, and we get this wonderful sequence of visuals following sounds as he turns his attention and his microphone to various noises - a couple on a walk, a frog, an owl, a buzzing street lamp. Later, as he listens back to the footage, the same sequence plays again, but this time from his POV; we're seeing his memory as guided by the same sequence of sounds, now recreated with different shots, as he moves his pencil in the air mimicking the microphone. When he mixes and edits sounds, we hear the literal soundtrack of the movie we are watching get mixed and edited by the person on screen. And as he tries to unravel a murder mystery, he uses what's at hand: magnetic tape, flatbed editors, an animation camera to turn still photos from the crime scene into a film and sync it with the audio he recorded; it's forensics using only the tools of the editing room. As someone who's spent some time in college editing rooms, this is a hoot and a half. Loses a bit of steam as it goes on and the film nerd stuff gives way to a more traditional thriller, but rallies for a sound-tech-centered final setpiece, which steadily builds to such madcap heights you can feel the air thinning, before oddly cutting its own tension and then trying to build it back up again. It doesn't work as well the second time. But then, that shot right after the climax? Damn. Conflicted on how the movie treats the female lead. I get why feminist film theorists are so divided on De Palma. His stuff is full of things feminists (rightly) criticize, full of women getting naked when they're not getting stabbed, but he also clearly finds women fascinating and has them do empowered and unexpected things, and there are many feminist reads of his movies. Call it a mixed bag. But even when he's doing tropey shit, he explores the tropes in unexpected ways. Definitely the best movie so far that I hadn't already seen.

Cutter's Way (rw) Alex Cutter is pitched to us as an obnoxious-but-sympathetic son of a bitch, and, you know, two out of three ain't bad. Watched this during my 2020 neo-noir kick and considered skipping it this time because I really didn't enjoy it. Found it a little more compelling this go around, while being reminded of why my feelings were room temp before. Thematically, I'm onboard: it's about a guy, Cutter, getting it in his head that he's found a murderer and needs to bring him to justice, and his friend, Bone, who intermittently helps him because he feels bad that Cutter lost his arm, leg, and eye in Nam and he also feels guilty for being in love with Cutter's wife. The question of whether the guy they're trying to bring down actually did it is intentionally undefined, and arguably unimportant; they've got personal reasons to see this through. Postmodern and noirish, fixated with the inability to ever fully know the truth of anything, but starring people so broken by society that they're desperate for certainty. (Pretty obvious parallels to Vietnam.) Cutter's a drunk and kind of an asshole, but understandably so. Bone's shiftlessness is the other response to a lack of meaning in the world, to the point where making a decision, any decision, feels like character growth, even if it's maybe killing a guy whose guilt is entirely theoretical. So, yeah, I'm down with all of this! A- in outline form. It's just that Cutter is so uninterestingly unpleasant and no one else on screen is compelling enough to make up for it. His drunken windups are tedious and his sanctimonious speeches about what the war was like are, well, true and accurate but also obviously manipulative. It's two hours with two miserable people, and I think Cutter's constant chatter is supposed to be the comic relief but it's a little too accurate to drunken rambling, which isn't funny if you're not also drunk. He's just tedious, irritating, and periodically racist. Pass.

Blood Simple (rw) I'm pretty cool on the Coens - there are things I've liked, even loved, in every Coen film I've seen, but I always come away dissatisfied. For a while, I kept going to their movies because I was sure eventually I'd love one without qualification. No Country for Old Men came close, the first two acts being master classes in sustained tension. But then the third act is all about denying closure: the protagonist is murdered offscreen, the villain's motives are never explained, and it ends with an existentialist speech about the unfathomable cruelty of the world. And it just doesn't land for me. The archness of the Coen's dialogue, the fussiness of their set design, the kinda-intimate, kinda-awkward, kinda-funny closeness of the camera's singles, it cannot sell me on a devastating meditation about meaninglessness. It's only ever sold me on the Coens' own cleverness. And that archness, that distancing, has typified every one of their movies I've come close to loving. Which is a long-ass preamble to saying, holy heck, I was not prepared for their very first movie to be the one I'd been looking for! I watched it last year and it remains true on rewatch: Blood Simple works like gangbusters. It's kind of Double Indemnity (again) but played as a comedy of errors, minus the comedy: two people romantically involved feeling their trust unravel after a murder. And I think the first thing that works for me is that utter lack of comedy. It's loaded with the Coens' trademark ironies - mostly dramatic in this case - but it's all played straight. Unlike the usual lead/femme fatale relationship, where distrust brews as the movie goes on, the audience knows the two main characters can trust each other. There are no secret duplicitous motives waiting to be revealed. The audience also know why they don't trust each other. (And it's all communicated wordlessly, btw: a character enters a scene and we know, based on the information that character has, how it looks to them and what suspicions it would arouse, even as we know the truth of it). The second thing that works is, weirdly, that the characters aren't very interesting?! Ray and Abby have almost no characterization. Outside of a general likability, they are blank slates. This is a weakness in most films, but, given the agonizingly long, wordless sequences where they dispose of bodies or hide from gunfire, you're left thinking not "what will Ray/Abby do in this scenario," because Ray and Abby are relatively elemental and undefined, but "what would I do in this scenario?" Which creates an exquisite tension but also, weirdly, creates more empathy than I feel for the Coens' usual cast of personalities. It's supposed to work the other way around! Truly enjoyable throughout but absolutely wonderful in the suspenseful-as-hell climax. Good shit right here.

Body Double The thing about erotic thrillers is everything that matters is in the name. Is it thrilling? Is it erotic? Good; all else is secondary. De Palma set out to make the most lurid, voyeuristic, horny, violent, shocking, steamy movie he could come up with, and its success was not strictly dependent on the lead's acting ability or the verisimilitude of the plot. But what are we, the modern audience, to make of it once 37 years have passed and, by today's standards, the eroticism is quite tame and the twists are no longer shocking? Then we're left with a nonsensical riff on Vertigo, a specularization of women that is very hard to justify, and lead actor made of pulped wood. De Palma's obsessions don't cohere into anything more this time; the bits stolen from Hitchcock aren't repurposed to new ends, it really is just Hitch with more tits and less brains. (I mean, I still haven't seen Vertigo, but I feel 100% confident in that statement.) The diopter shots and rear-projections this time look cheap (literally so, apparently; this had 1/3 the budget of Blow Out). There are some mildly interesting setpieces, but nothing compared to Travolta's auditory reconstructions or car chase where he tries to tail a subway train from street level even if it means driving through a frickin parade like an inverted French Connection, goddamn Blow Out was a good movie! Anyway. Melanie Griffith seems to be having fun, at least. I guess I had a little as well, but it was, at best, diverting, and a real letdown.

The Hit Surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. Terrance Stamp flips on the mob and spends ten years living a life of ease in Spain, waiting for the day they find and kill him. Movie kicks off when they do find him, and what follows is a ramshackle road movie as John Hurt and a young Tim Roth attempt to drive him to Paris so they can shoot him in front of his old boss. Stamp is magnetic. He's spent a decade reading philosophy and seems utterly prepared for death, so he spends the trip humming, philosophizing, and being friendly with his captors when he's not winding them up. It remains unclear to the end whether the discord he sews between Roth and Hurt is part of some larger plan of escape or just for shits and giggles. There's also a decent amount of plot for a movie that's not terribly plot-driven - just about every part of the kidnapping has tiny hitches the kidnappers aren't prepared for, and each has film-long repercussions, drawing the cops closer and somehow sticking Laura del Sol in their backseat. The ongoing questions are when Stamp will die, whether del Sol will die, and whether Roth will be able to pull the trigger. In the end, it's actually a meditation on ethics and mortality, but in a quiet and often funny way. It's not going to go down as one of my new favs, but it was a nice way to spend a couple hours.

Trouble in Mind (dnrw) I fucking hated this movie. It's been many months since I watched it, do I remember what I hated most? Was it the bit where a couple of country bumpkins who've come to the city walk into a diner and Mr. Bumpkin clocks that the one Black guy in the back as obviously a criminal despite never having seen him before? Was it the part where Kris Kristofferson won't stop hounding Mrs. Bumpkin no matter how many times she demands to be left alone, and it's played as romantic because obviously he knows what she needs better than she does? Or is it the part where Mr. Bumpkin reluctantly takes a job from the Obvious Criminal (who is, in fact, a criminal, and the only named Black character in the movie if I remember correctly, draw your own conclusions) and, within a week, has become a full-blown hood, which is exemplified by a lot, like, a lot of queer-coding? The answer to all three questions is yes. It's also fucking boring. Even out-of-drag Divine's performance as the villain can't save it.

Manhunter 'sfine? I've still never seen Silence of the Lambs, nor any of the Hopkins Lecter movies, nor, indeed, any full episode of the show. So the unheimlich others get seeing Brian Cox play Hannibal didn't come into play. Cox does a good job with him, but he's barely there. Shame, cuz he's the most interesting part of the movie. Honestly, there's a lot of interesting stuff that's barely there. Will Graham being a guy who gets into the heads of serial killers is explored well enough, and Mann knows how to direct a police procedural such that it's both contemplative and propulsive. But all the other themes it points at? Will's fear that he understands murderers a little too well? Hannibal trying to nudge him towards becoming one? Whatever dance Hannibal and Tooth Fairy are doing? What Tooth Fairy's deal is, anyway? (Why does he wear fake teeth and bite things? Why is he fixated on the red dragon? Does the bit where he says "Francis is gone forever" mean he has DID?) None of it goes anywhere or amounts to anything. I mean, it's certainly more interesting with this stuff than without, but it has that feel of a book that's been pared of its interesting bits to fit the runtime (or, alternately, pulp that's been sloppily elevated). I still haven't made my mind up on Mann's cold, precise camera work, but at least it gives me something to look at. It's fine! This is fine.

Mona Lisa (rw) Gave this one another shot. Bob Hoskins is wonderful as a hood out of his depth in classy places, quick to anger but just as quick to let anger go (the opening sequence where he's screaming on his ex-wife's doorstep, hurling trash cans at her house, and one minute later thrilled to see his old car, is pretty nice). And Cathy Tyson's working girl is a subtler kind of fascinating, exuding a mixture of coldness and kindness. It's just... this is ultimately a story about how heartbreaking it is when the girl you like is gay, right? It's Weezer's Pink Triangle: The Movie. It's not homophobic, exactly - Simone isn't demonized for being a lesbian - but it's still, like, "man, this straight white guy's pain is so much more interesting than the Black queer sex worker's." And when he's yelling "you woulda done it!" at the end, I can't tell if we're supposed to agree with him. Seems pretty clear that she wouldn'ta done it, at least not without there being some reveal about her character that doesn't happen, but I don't think the ending works if we don't agree with him, so... I'm like 70% sure the movie does Simone dirty there. For the first half, their growing relationship feels genuine and natural, and, honestly, the story being about a real bond that unfortunately means different things to each party could work if it didn't end with a gun and a sock in the jaw. Shape feels jagged as well; what feels like the end of the second act or so turns out to be the climax. And some of the symbolism is... well, ok, Simone gives George money to buy more appropriate clothes for hanging out in high end hotels, and he gets a tan leather jacket and a Hawaiian shirt, and their first proper bonding moment is when she takes him out for actual clothes. For the rest of the movie he is rocking double-breasted suits (not sure I agree with the striped tie, but it was the eighties, whaddya gonna do?). Then, in the second half, she sends him off looking for her old streetwalker friend, and now he looks completely out of place in the strip clubs and bordellos. So far so good. But then they have this run-in where her old pimp pulls a knife and cuts George's arm, so, with his nice shirt torn and it not safe going home (I guess?) he starts wearing the Hawaiian shirt again. So around the time he's starting to realize he doesn't really belong in Simone's world or the lowlife world he came from anymore, he's running around with the classy double-breasted suit jacket over the garish Hawaiian shirt, and, yeah, bit on the nose guys. Anyway, it has good bits, I just feel like a movie that asks me to feel for the guy punching a gay, Black woman in the face needs to work harder to earn it. Bit of wasted talent.

The Bedroom Window Starts well. Man starts an affair with his boss' wife, their first night together she witnesses an attempted murder from his window, she worries going to the police will reveal the affair to her husband, so the man reports her testimony to the cops claiming he's the one who saw it. Young Isabelle Huppert is the perfect woman for a guy to risk his career on a crush over, and Young Steve Guttenberg is the perfect balance of affability and amorality. And it flows great - picks just the right media to res. So then he's talking to the cops, telling them what she told him, and they ask questions he forgot to ask her - was the perp's jacket a blazer or a windbreaker? - and he has to guess. Then he gets called into the police lineup, and one guy matches her description really well, but is it just because he's wearing his red hair the way she described it? He can't be sure, doesn't finger any of them. He finds out the cops were pretty certain about one of the guys, so he follows the one he thinks it was around, looking for more evidence, and another girl is attacked right outside a bar he knows the redhead was at. Now he's certain! But he shows the boss' wife the guy and she's not certain, and she reminds him they don't even know if the guy he followed is the same guy the police suspected! And as he feeds more evidence to the cops, he has to lie more, because he can't exactly say he was tailing the guy around the city. So, I'm all in now. Maybe it's because I'd so recently rewatched Night Moves and Cutter's Way, but this seems like another story about uncertainty. He's really certain about the guy because it fits narratively, and we, the audience, feel the same. But he's not actually a witness, he doesn't have actual evidence, he's fitting bits and pieces together like a conspiracy theorist. He's fixating on what he wants to be true. Sign me up! But then it turns out he's 100% correct about who the killer is but his lies are found out and now the cops think he's the killer and I realize, oh, no, this movie isn't nearly as smart as I thought it was. Egg on my face! What transpires for the remaining half of the runtime is goofy as hell, and someone with shlockier sensibilities could have made a meal of it, but Hanson, despite being a Corman protege, takes this silliness seriously in the all wrong ways. Next!

Homicide (rw? I think I saw most of this on TV one time) Homicide centers around the conflicted loyalties of a Jewish cop. It opens with the Jewish cop and his white gentile partner taking over a case with a Black perp from some Black FBI agents. The media is making a big thing about the racial implications of the mostly white cops chasing down a Black man in a Black neighborhood. And inside of 15 minutes the FBI agent is calling the lead a k*ke and the gentile cop is calling the FBI agent a f****t and there's all kinds of invective for Black people. The film is announcing its intentions out the gate: this movie is about race. But the issue here is David Mamet doesn't care about race as anything other than a dramatic device. He's the Ubisoft of filmmakers, having no coherent perspective on social issues but expecting accolades for even bringing them up. Mamet is Jewish (though lead actor Joe Mantegna definitely is not) but what is his position on the Jewish diaspora? The whole deal is Mantegna gets stuck with a petty homicide case instead of the big one they just pinched from the Feds, where a Jewish candy shop owner gets shot in what looks like a stickup. Her family tries to appeal to his Jewishness to get him to take the case seriously, and, after giving them the brush-off for a long time, finally starts following through out of guilt, finding bits and pieces of what may or may not be a conspiracy, with Zionist gun runners and underground neo-Nazis. But, again: all of these are just dramatic devices. Mantegna's Jewishness (those words will never not sound ridiculous together) has always been a liability for him as a cop (we are told, not shown), and taking the case seriously is a reclamation of identity. The Jews he finds community with sold tommyguns to revolutionaries during the founding of Israel. These Jews end up blackmailing him to get a document from the evidence room. So: what is the film's position on placing stock in one's Jewish identity? What is its position on Israel? What is its opinion on Palestine? Because all three come up! And the answer is: Mamet doesn't care. You can read it a lot of different ways. Someone with more context and more patience than me could probably deduce what the de facto message is, the way Chris Franklin deduced the de facto message of Far Cry V despite the game's efforts not to have one, but I'm not going to. Mantegna's attempt to reconnect with his Jewishness gets his partner killed, gets the guy he was supposed to bring in alive shot dead, gets him possibly permanent injuries, gets him on camera blowing up a store that's a front for white nationalists, and all for nothing because the "clues" he found (pretty much exclusively by coincidence) were unconnected nothings. The problem is either his Jewishness, or his lifelong failure to connect with his Jewishness until late in life. Mamet doesn't give a shit. (Like, Mamet canonically doesn't give a shit: he is on record saying social context is meaningless, characters only exist to serve the plot, and there are no deeper meanings in fiction.) Mamet's ping-pong dialogue is fun, as always, and there are some neat ideas and characters, but it's all in service of a big nothing that needed to be a something to work.

Swoon So much I could talk about, let's keep it to the most interesting bits. Hommes Fatales: a thing about classic noir that it was fascinated by the marginal but had to keep it in the margins. Liberated women, queer-coded killers, Black jazz players, broke thieves; they were the main event, they were what audiences wanted to see, they were what made the movies fun. But the ending always had to reassert straightlaced straight, white, middle-class male society as unshakeable. White supremacist capitalist patriarchy demanded, both ideologically and via the Hays Code, that anyone outside these norms be punished, reformed, or dead by the movie's end. The only way to make them the heroes was to play their deaths for tragedy. It is unsurprising that neo-noir would take the queer-coded villains and make them the protagonists. Implicature: This is the story of Leopold and Loeb, murderers famous for being queer, and what's interesting is how the queerness in the first half exists entirely outside of language. Like, it's kind of amazing for a movie from 1992 to be this gay - we watch Nathan and Dickie kiss, undress, masturbate, fuck; hell, they wear wedding rings when they're alone together. But it's never verbalized. Sex is referred to as "your reward" or "what you wanted" or "best time." Dickie says he's going to have "the girls over," and it turns out "the girls" are a bunch of drag queens, but this is never acknowledged. Nathan at one point lists off a bunch of famous men - Oscar Wild, E.M. Forster, Frederick the Great - but, though the commonality between them is obvious (they were all gay), it's left the the audience to recognize it. When their queerness is finally verbalized in the second half, it's first in the language of pathology - a psychiatrist describing their "perversions" and "misuse" of their "organs" before the court, which has to be cleared of women because it's so inappropriate - and then with slurs from the man who murders Dickie in jail (a murder which is written off with no investigation because the victim is a gay prisoner instead of a L&L's victim, a child of a wealthy family). I don't know if I'd have noticed this if I hadn't read Chip Delany describing his experience as a gay man in the 50's existing almost entirely outside of language, the only language at the time being that of heteronormativity. Murder as Love Story: L&L exchange sex as payment for the other commiting crimes; it's foreplay. Their statements to the police where they disagree over who's to blame is a lover's quarrel. Their sentencing is a marriage. Nathan performs his own funeral rites over Dickie's body after he dies on the operating table. They are, in their way, together til death did they part. This is the relationship they can have. That it does all this without romanticizing the murder itself or valorizing L&L as humans is frankly incredible.

Suture (rw) The pitch: at the funeral for his father, wealthy Vincent Towers meets his long lost half brother Clay Arlington. It is implied Clay is a child from out of wedlock, possibly an affair; no one knows Vincent has a half-brother but him and Clay. Vincent invites Clay out to his fancy-ass home in Arizona. Thing is, Vincent is suspected (correctly) by the police of having murdered his father, and, due to a striking family resemblence, he's brought Clay to his home to fake his own death. He finagles Clay into wearing his clothes and driving his car, and then blows the car up and flees the state, leaving the cops to think him dead. Thing is, Clay survives, but with amnesia. The doctors tell him he's Vincent, and he has no reason to disagree. Any discrepancy in the way he looks is dismissed as the result of reconstructive surgery after the explosion. So Clay Arlington resumes Vincent Towers' life, without knowing Clay Arlington even exists. The twist: Clay and Vincent are both white, but Vincent is played by Michael Harris, a white actor, and Clay is played by Dennis Haysbert, a Black actor. "Ian, if there's just the two of them, how do you know it's not Harris playing a Black character?" Glad you asked! It is most explicitly obvious during a scene where Vincent/Clay's surgeon-cum-girlfriend essentially bringing up phrenology to explain how Vincent/Clay couldn't possibly have murdered his father, describing straight hair, thin lips, and a Greco-Roman nose Haysbert very clearly doesn't have. But, let's be honest: we knew well beforehand that the rich-as-fuck asshole living in a huge, modern house and living it up in Arizona high society was white. Though Clay is, canonically, white, he lives an poor and underprivileged life common to Black men in America. Though the film's title officially refers to the many stitches holding Vincent/Clay's face together after the accident, "suture" is a film theory term, referring to the way a film audience gets wrapped up - sutured - in the world of the movie, choosing to forget the outside world and pretend the story is real. The usage is ironic, because the audience cannot be sutured in; we cannot, and are not expected to, suspend our disbelief that Clay is white. We are deliberately distanced. Consequently this is a movie to be thought about, not to to be felt. It has the shape of a Hitchcockian thriller but it can't evoke the emotions of one. You can see the scaffolding - "ah, yes, this is the part of a thriller where one man hides while another stalks him with a gun, clever." I feel ill-suited to comment on what the filmmakers are saying about race. I could venture a guess about the ending, where the psychiatrist, the only one who knows the truth about Clay, says he can never truly be happy living the lie of being Vincent Towers, while we see photographs of Clay/Vincent seemingly living an extremely happy life: society says white men simply belong at the top more than Black men do, but, if the roles could be reversed, the latter would slot in seamlessly. Maybe??? Of all the movies in this collection, this is the one I'd most want to read an essay on (followed by Swoon).

The Last Seduction (dnrw) No, no, no, I am not rewataching this piece of shit movie.

Brick (rw) Here's my weird contention: Brick is in color and in widescreen, but, besides that? There's nothing neo- about this noir. There's no swearing except "hell." (I always thought Tug said "goddamn" at one point but, no, he's calling The Pin "gothed-up.") There's a lot of discussion of sex, but always through implication, and the only deleted scene is the one that removed ambiguity about what Brendan and Laura get up to after kissing. There's nothing postmodern or subversive - yes, the hook is it's set in high school, but the big twist is that it takes this very seriously. It mines it for jokes, yes, but the drama is authentic. In fact, making the gumshoe a high school student, his jadedness an obvious front, still too young to be as hard as he tries to be, just makes the drama hit harder. Sam Spade if Sam Spade were allowed to cry. I've always found it an interesting counterpoint to The Good German, a movie that fastidiously mimics the aesthetics of classic noir - down to even using period-appropriate sound recording - but is wholly neo- in construction. Brick could get approved by the Hays Code. Its vibe, its plot about a detective playing a bunch of criminals against each other, even its slang ("bulls," "yegg," "flopped") are all taken directly from Hammett. It's not even stealing from noir, it's stealing from what noir stole from! It's a perfect curtain call for the collection: the final film is both the most contemporary and the most classic. It's also - but for the strong case you could make for Night Moves - the best movie on the list. It's even more appropriate for me, personally: this was where it all started for me and noir. I saw this in theaters when it came out and loved it. It was probably my favorite movie for some time. It gave me a taste for pulpy crime movies which I only, years later, realized were neo-noir. This is why I looked into Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and In Bruges. I've seen it more times than any film on this list, by a factor of at least 3. It's why I will always adore Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's the best-looking half-million-dollar movie I've ever seen. (Indie filmmakers, take fucking notes.) I even did a script analysis of this, and, yes, it follows the formula, but so tightly and with so much style. Did you notice that he says several of the sequence tensions out loud? ("I just want to find her." "Show of hands.") I notice new things each time I see it - this time it was how "brushing Brendan's hair out of his face" is Em's move, making him look more like he does in the flashback, and how Laura does the same to him as she's seducing him, in the moment when he misses Em the hardest. It isn't perfect. It's recreated noir so faithfully that the Innocent Girl dies, the Femme Fatale uses intimacy as a weapon, and none of the women ever appear in a scene together. 1940's gender politics maybe don't need to be revisited. They say be critical of the media you love, and it applies here most of all: it is a real criticism of something I love immensely.

#film noir #neo-noir #criterion channel

[doorbloggr]

Sunday 25/9/21 - Media Recommendations #19

Contents:

Twilight Princess (Manga)

Dr Stone (manga/anime)

Lately, I have had a lot I want to write about on this blog, but lack that activation energy to actually start writing an article. Ideally I will at least word vomit more onto the blog in the coming week or so, because I have the topics in mind, just unsure how to start any of it.

Media Consumption has also slowed to a crawl, but I'm getting back into it. This week I wanna discuss a manga series I've been reading slowly as it has released, and an anime I have long been reading the manga for.

The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess (Manga)

Akira Himekawa

Zelda fans have a unique schism between their fans that many other longer running series may not experience. Because most games star a relatively unique cast of characters, a unique spin on the world, gameplay, and even artistic style, what your favourite in the series is will throw you into a hard debate against fans of other games. There's this post i saw somewhere(?) once where it was said your favourite Zelda game is the one that came out when you were 12, presumably because this is the one you experience first, or at least earlier in your Zelda journey, and I can completely relate to that.

The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess was the first Zelda game I played, and it has been my number 1 or 2 in the series consistently. Compared to the games that came before it, it was darker, had a richer world, and just a grander scope. But today I'm not here to explain the game, I'm here to talk about the manga.

Akira Himekawa is a pseudonym for a pair of female manga artists that have been writing manga together since the early 90s, and I know them well for their Legend of Zelda adaptations. They have covered most of the main games everyone knows, Ocarina of Time, Majoras Mask, A Link to the Past, and even a couple volumes of Four Swords Adventures. Their most recent work has also been the most long and in depth adaptation, my first Zelda game, Twilight Princess.

Like all of their Zelda adaptations, Akira Himekawa's Twilight Princess follows all the same plot beats as the main games. The order places are visited, the main characters Link encounters, the dungeons and their bosses, but the mangaka add... more to the world. Link has a deeper back story explaining what led to the start of the adventure. What in the games are essentially blank slate NPCs become characters in their own rights with personalities and arcs and motivations. The Twilight Realm, which is essentially just a dungeon in the game, is fleshed out as its entire world, with society, and lore.

In the game, Link is cool, and a bit of a himbo, but the manga's take on him is so much more interesting. He's a brooding edge lord, with a damaged past. He's a do-gooder, but he's also flawed and suffers from caring too much. Link is a character full of regrets who constantly bounces between "become a hero to prevent the atrocities of the past coming back" and "give up so that you don't make things worse". I understand that the games leave Link as a blank slate so that players can fill in their own ideals, but seeing Link as a fully fleshed character with his own motivations is cool as hell.

The supporting cast is similarly fleshed out compared to the game's take. Zelda, Illia, and Midna have complex motivations and evolving personalities. Midna was already a great character, but the manga truly does not skip out on making her deep and interesting. The "Resistance", for those who've played the game, are all multilayered characters now, all with arcs that are actively explored as they actually go help Link on his adventures, instead of just telling him info and leaving him to it. The dungeons do not take nearly as much plot time as they do in the games, essentially minimal theme building and then boss, but this works better for the format in my opinion.

If you like high fantasy manga, or are just a Zelda fan, I highly recommend this series. I haven't finished reading it, but Book 9, which I think is the final in the series, has recently been released in English. Obviously playing the game first is a good background, but I think you could 100% enjoy the series without it.

Edit: Finished book 9 and there's definitely at least one more book to go.

Dr Stone (anime/manga)

Inagaki, Boichi; TMS Entertainment

Ok so must I remember wrong because I thought I recommended this one, but apparently I never talked about Dr Stone before, which is a complete travesty. But now I am both up to date with the manga and most of a season deep into the anime, and I have A LOT to talk about.

As those who have also read my dinosaur blogposts will understand, I am a big science nerd. Biology, palaeontology, space, chemistry, it's all so interesting, and sometimes I struggle to understand how a passion for science is not a universal human experience. I share that in common with the main character of a manga I've been reading for maybe a year now, Dr Stone.

In Dr Stone, the world of 21st Century humanity is brought crashing to a halt when a bright wave of mysterious light blankets the entire planet, and everywhere on the entire globe, humans have been turned to stone. 3700 years later, a young man who has kept his mind active within the stone forces himself awake and breaks out. Around him, nature has reclaimed the Earth and millennia of human progress has been all but buried.

Senku is a young man of science, and spent years obsessing over every scientific domain he could comprehend in order to one day travel to space. In this stone world, armed with this wealth of science progress in his mind, Senku begins efforts to restart the scientific age, and free every single person frozen in stone. He starts with a mysterious acid that breaks down the stone. Then he develops tools, machinery, electricity, and eventually, he wants to push humanity back to the space age within his lifetime. Senku may be a know it all, but knowledge only gets you so far. Thanks to the allies he makes, a wealth of expertise will be harnessed to bring his dream to fruition.

Dr Stone is a must read for anyone who enjoys Scifi. Although the rate at which progress is made seems absurd, every single scientific process the kingdom of science works on is real science. Although post apocalyptic themes establish the base for the story and the supernatural force that turned humanity to stone is the main adversary, Dr Stone is a very scientific story based on real Earth and its just... exhilarating!

The scope of the story begins on the small scale in primitive villages, but the story eventually reaches a global scale. There are adversaries at each step, those who wish to rule the Stone World with might, free of the tyranny science had in our age, and there are also those who wish to use science as its own form of might, but Senku and his allies want to use science for the benefit of everyone. So that one day, all of humanity will be restored, and that eventually, he will get to moon.

I will refrain from speaking any further on story specifics because you really should experience the plot for yourself. So I will end with the presentation itself. The art and format of the manga are beautiful. Character designs are rugged, stylised, and exciting, it's very easy to determine what a character is all about just by their unique appearance.

In the last week, I have begun watching the anime, as it has been long enough since I started reading that I can experience parts of the plot anew. The anime is very beautifully made, the world is lush and beautiful, and characters move in such a fun and interesting way. I'm watching the English dub, and characters sound exactly like the voices I had for them in my head.

If you have even an inkling of interest in Dr Stone after reading what I've said today, you should definitely experience the story for yourself, 1 billion percent.

#blog #blogpost #media recommendations #anime recommendations #manga recommendation #the legend of zelda twilight princess #the legend of zelda #twilight princess #twilight princess manga #akira himekawa #dr stone #dr stone manga #dr stone anime #boichi #inagaki

[amiedala]

SOMETHING DEEPER

CHAPTER 2: We Have a Problem

RATING: Explicit (18+ ONLY!!!)

WARNINGS: sexual content

SUMMARY: Nova swallows. “Din—”

“This,” he starts, resting one gloved hand against her cheek, “is what Mandalorians are made for. We’ve got this.” When Nova tries to interrupt, he gives her a swift shake of his head. “Go. Be a Jedi.”

If you're a newcomer, my fic "Something More" is the first installment of this story! <3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: hello my loves and happy Something Deeper Saturday!! i hope you love this chapter (and that you'll forgive that it's only about 9,000 words, i've had a hectic week)! this chapter was such a joy to write, and i hope you enjoy reading it just as much. more notes, as always, at the end!

*

When Nova wakes up, the bed is empty.

She rubs sleep from the edges of her eyes, digging her thumb lightly on the ridge between her eyebrows, trying to chase the groggy feeling away. Din’s not here, and his armor is gone, and Grogu’s crib is missing, too. Slowly, she makes her way into the fresher, pulling on the silver knob until water starts running down from the shower, filling the room with steam.

It’s so much more lavish than the one back on the Crest, and certainly years better than the old, stubborn one on Kicker, but the amount of space in here feels like almost too much. “Soap,” Nova mutters to herself, not even aware that she’s speaking until the word slips out of her mouth. At least the kind the two of them use, the bar that smells like crisp air and starlight, is sitting on the dish right to her left. She takes her time lathering up her hands, dragging suds in circles down her aching body, trying not to notice how roomy and empty it is in here without Din.

This whole placeis so empty without Din. The palace is huge, a Mandalorian fortress, and even though it’s outfitted with the absolute best technology and beskar that exists in the galaxy, there’s something eerie about it. Like most of it is standing empty, ornate and gilded for a reason no one can speak aloud. Nova knows the palace has more functionality than it seems, that the tunnels that run into the training stadium and the holding cells have purpose, but the fortress is over-fortified for a planet that barely has anyone left. She felt the same way when she went back to the base on Yavin, she reasons with herself as she wrestles the stubborn nozzle back into place, stepping into the fluffy towel hanging just outside, but at least the emptiness of the building made sense. The Alliance had accomplished almost everything they needed to, and a giant, communal space wasn’t practical after the fall of the Empire. It stood both as a testament to what the Rebels had accomplished and as a reassurance that anyone could come back and fight the good fight. Castles and temples and bases across the galaxy had all fallen into a state of disuse, Nova bargains, looking at her reflection in the foggy mirror. This wasn’t abnormal.

Except it was. Mandalore was a ghost town. Din was the ruler of a world that had long since fallen, and she was royalty in a place that barely had anyone left. And the way that this place operated was just as eerie and strange—she always had fresh towels, clothes were laid out in her closet, they both had feasts made to feed dozens more people than the two of them—but Nova had no idea where they all came from. She’s only seen Bo-Katan at intervals—usually in the late night, when her voice carries all the way up the stairs after she and Din have argued in the war room—and the two other Mandalorians that seemed to be attached at her hip are even scarcer than Bo-Katan is. There’s not many Mandalorians left, Nova knows this, but the way this entire place could fit thousands more people than just a handful makes everything seem heavier, somehow, or sadder.

Nova looks at herself in the mirror. Most of the reflection is still fogged up, and she drags a hand through it to reveal her face. She studies herself, focusing primarily on her pink, chewed-on bottom lip. There’s something wild in her eyes, something deeper than her everyday fears and worries. She knows that every day that slips by the closer the First Order—whoever the hell they are—gets to wounding Mandalore and the surviving Alliance. But with her heart in one place and her body in another, everything in Nova’s body feels like wire snapped taut, like if she moves the wrong way she’ll fracture off into pieces. Slowly, she blinks away the intensity of her gaze, brushing her long fingers over the spot where she knows her scar is reflected. The skin always looks raised after she showers, an angry rash of a still-festering wound. It’s easy to forget when Nova’s thinking about anything else, but any time her mind drifts away from whatever she’s focusing on, she feels the impact of it. It wasn’t just a flesh wound, after all, the lightsaber that Jacterr dragged through her stomach was meant to kill. And it’s still somewhat of a miracle that she survived it.

The very tips of her fingers ghost over the old wound, and Nova tries her best not to wince at the touch, the burning way it still sears when she touches it wrong or she’s wearing something that brushes uncomfortably against it. If Din were standing behind her in the mirror, he wouldn’t even have to touch it—or her—to take Nova’s pain away. But Din’s not here, he’s downstairs in the war room trying to lead a planet he never even wanted, and Nova scrunches her face up sourly in the mirror, attempting to chase away the inner, selfish longing for being back out alone together in the crush of space.

But even if it were just the three of them—Novalise, Din, and Grogu—there were always threats just a half-step behind them. Space was cold, foreboding, and no matter how warm the light and company was on the Razor Crest or on Kicker, the very real threat of being behind enemy lines they couldn’t ever seem to find was constant. It was eternal. But there’s something nostalgic about missing the consistent chase of it all, something that kicked Nova’s fight-or-flight response into high gear, something that neither of them feel here on Mandalore. No matter how rich and long the history is here, it’s also suspiciously empty, and Nova knows that everyone here, regardless of how skilled they are as warriors, is a conspicuous target.

The bedsheets are still all tangled as Nova exists the fresher, piling her wet hair on the top of her head as she wrestles the towel around herself, shivering a little in the vastness of their suite. In the wardrobe are hundreds of outfits—gorgeous dresses, ornate jewels, top-of-the-line everyday wear—but all of them have a distance to them. Nothing in these drawers feel like hers. Nova rustles through the shirts and trousers, all in varying neutrals or that strange shade of pale Mandalorian blue, looking for something functional, comfortable, and most importantly, inconspicuous. It was going to be a harrowing trek back to Ahch-To to return her baby and borrowed lightsaber to Luke Skywalker, and Nova didn’t want her reputation of Novalise Djarin, wife to the reigning Mand’alor, to be announced and heralded across the journey from the Outer Rim to the Unknown Regions. She just wanted to be Nova—human, mother, and Jedi.

Maybe. Maybea Jedi.

That part was still a lingering question mark, one that hung over her head more than it excited her. For years, growing up, Nova excused her Force sensitivity away as just something more that she was tapped into, something deeper, something divine. It was hers and hers alone, because the Jedi were mostly legends and myths, with only the current story of the famous Luke Skywalker told in whispers from people in the Alliance. Now, though, she knows it’s real, her ability to use the Force. She knows since she met Luke Skywalker, went head-to-head with the incredible Ahsoka Tano, and became a mother to Grogu. It’s beyond just what’s in her blood—beyond lineage and beyond chemistry—it’s something ancient and pulsing. Something that’s hers.

Nova sighs, picking the most functional clothes in her wardrobe—deep tan trousers with a pocket deep enough to hold the lightsaber, a long-sleeved black shirt that hugged her curves but didn’t irritate her scar, and a shawl in that shimmering Mandalorian blue. She pressed a thumb to her necklace, the one that Din offered to her alongside his heart, biting down on her lip. It was long past sunrise, because the hazy blue atmosphere was full of color, and as she opened up one of the gigantic windows, a gentle breeze wafted into the suite from the outside. Mandalore smelled like dust and loneliness, she decided, which wasn’t entirely fair, but it holds her at arm’s length. Nova looks back at the rumpled bedsheets, eyes glazing over the clothes hanging in her open wardrobe, trying to find a sign that she belongs here, that she’s more than just a figurehead, that this role that she married into has significance deeper than looking pretty on an unyielding throne.

It doesn’t come. She exhales, tears starting to well up at the edges of her eyes, and she sits on the edge of the bed. It smells like Din—cleanness, metal, woodsmoke, cinnamon—and even though it’s far more comfortable than any of the makeshift ones they crafted on the starships they used to call home, it feels empty in the same way that this room does, that this planet does.

“You’re being selfish,” Nova chastises herself quietly, her whisper coming out much louder than intended, filling up the hollow air of their gigantic bedroom. This was what she wanted. This was what she wheedled both of them into, this small little slice of a life beyond killing and running. But so much of this planet felt empty, like everything holy here had long since left. There were only dozens of people that still inhabited Mandalore, and it was a ghost of itself in a cruel, unfair way.

Ironically, Nova muses, walking back over to the open window, letting the breeze tousle and dry the long, thick waves of her hair, Mandalore, the home to a legion of warriors, was the least confrontational place that she’d been in years. And the kicker is, after over a decade of running, all she’s itching to do is get back out there in the stars. She looks upward, wistfully, trying to catch any of them through the hazy, foggy, blue sky, but she can’t. So she turns back towards the mirror, grabbing fistfuls of thick hair, pinning just the top layer away from her face. She adjusts the shawl in the mirror, marveling at the shimmering strands that catch delicately in the light, and right before she’s ready to walk out the door, the lightsaber starts burning a hole in the door.

She gasps, wrenching it off its hook. The blade isn’t even ignited, and when she grabs it, it pulses in her hands, once, twice, and then the air is pierced with a vibrant green light. Nova stares at it, inspecting it from every angle. It was just a vision—a realistic one, at that—but now that she’s holding the weapon in her hand, the fear that raced through her just a second ago has evaporated. The fact that she’s holding a lightsaber is sacred enough, but the knowledge that it’s Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber feels like it’s beyond something holy. It holds her there until Nova lets the blade slide back into the sheath, dropping it into her pocket. It still feels like it burns, even though that’s not possible, and she ignores it as she makes her way out of the ornate door and down the marble steps to the war room to her husband and their baby.

It's still jarring to see Din without his helmet on in a public space. Like Nova’s walking into a trap of some kind, or that she’s breaking a divine rule. It was different when she was the only person allowed to see his face, to map across his features as a vow, but now that the rules have changed, she doesn’t quite know how to act when she looks at him. He’s alone in the war room when she pushes open the door, a heat rising in her cheeks when she catches light of the beskar throne, vivid memories at how indescribably soiled it was from their desecrating tryst the night before. The holotable is lit up, glittering out in that deep, vivid blue, maps of the galaxy intercut with Alliance bases and safe houses, Din staring up at it like he’s looking for a sign of the Maker. His gaze is intense, electric.

“Hi,” Nova chances, softly, and she hears the baby babbling from the corner as she strides across the luminous room, sidling up to Din as he continues staring, his armored body cold to the touch. Quickly, he kisses her temple, and Nova’s tummy flips over as he holds her there, even though he’s done this a thousand times, even though this is far from new.

“Hi,” Din echoes, leaning forward against the rim of the holotable, squinting intently at something that Nova can’t quite sort out. “How did you sleep?”

She bites her lip, trying to decide if it’s worth lying, but before she can come up with a suitable one, the kind that can cover up all of the crushing loneliness she feels in a bedroom that doesn’t seem to belong to them, Din’s gaze is on her face, thumb hooking her chin upwards so that Nova doesn’t have a choice but to meet his eyes.

“Don’t lie to me,” he says, and even though his voice is gentle, she knows the intent of his command.

“Not great,” Nova whispers, the sound getting caught on the way out of the hollow of her mouth. “I missed you. I—I hate waking up without you.”

Din cocks his head to the side, eyebrows knitted together, as if he’s trying to pick out the exact right thing to say. Nova watches the expression of frustration reflect across his face, and has to hide an endearing smile as she revels in getting to see Din’s mind working in real time. “Novalise,” he says, finally, and heart does a little flip. It sounds like he’s chastising her, but that’s not Din’s typical modus operandi, and she blinks up at him, waiting for the rest of what he has to say. “Why did we come here?” he asks, finally, and his voice is so quiet, so filled with a plea she hasn’t heard in weeks, that it makes her wince.

“What?” she manages, reaching out one hand to Din’s reflective hip, trying to anchor his armored body against her own. “What do you mean?”

Din sighs, long and heavy. He’s pondering. It isn’t a noise of annoyance, or a noise of frustration, just his typical exhale when he’s trying to puzzle something out in his head. “Why did you want me to rule Mandalore?”

Nova presses her lips together, trying to come up with an answer adequate enough to placate the both of them. “Because,” she whispers, finally, “you’re the type of leader that makes people want to follow you everywhere. Because we were tired of running, and we wanted to fight back. And also,” she tacks on, trying to get Din to echo her smile, “because Bo-Katan wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Din’s expression is complicated, worried. Nova watches as his gaze drifts back up to what’s being reflected on the holotable, and she can track the places where attacks from the Order have cropped up in the time that’s lapsed since they’ve lived here. The galaxy is still largely intact, most planets benefitting from the defeat of the Empire, but Nova can see the clusters of danger, the places where the First Order found a weak point and applied enough pressure to fracture them entirely. Coupled with the jailbreak in one of the Mid Rim sectors, out of Cara’s jurisdiction, there’s at least ten attacks in the last three weeks. Nova is a staunch believer that everything happens for a reason, that there’s no such thing as coincidences, but a handful of malicious acts could be classified as one. More than three signified something else. Over seven is a definite indication of a pattern.

“You want to be back out there,” Nova breathes, searching for a confirmation on Din’s face. “You want to fight. Hand-to-hand, not from behind a holotable in this room.”

Din looks over at her, his expression clouded, and when he catches sight of the reflected fire in Nova’s eyes, he grabs at the curve of her cheek again, locking his eyes on hers. “You want to be back out there.”

Nova presses her lips together in a thin line, trying her absolute hardest not to give it away.

“You’re a horrible liar, Novalise Djarin,” Din says, shaking his head. “Awful. Worse than I am. Worse than the kid is, and that’s saying a lot.”

Nova sighs, leaning into his touch. “I know. You’re right. It’s driving me up the wall to be here, trying to rule a planet that barely has anything left, when I know that war is coming.”

“Why do you think I’m always in here?” Din asks, pointing up at the virtual starry sky splayed across the room from the holotable. “I don’t sit in the throne. I don’t try to rule. I stand in front of this table for hours, plotting for the inevitable battle that’s going to come, fighting back every single urge to just get back in the stars, chase the enemy down, and start blasting.”

Nova smiles slyly up at him, and when Din’s gaze drifts back over to hers, he does a double take.

“What?”

“I’ve made a Rebel out of you, Din Djarin,” she grins, gently flapping her palm against his cheek. He rolls his eyes, huffing out of his nose, and she just smiles, knowing that his proverbial feathers aren’t really ruffled, but basking in the idea of it anyway.

“Nova,” he continues, voice low and urgent, “so why aren’t we out there?”

The smile fades off her face. There’s something desperate in his eyes, something deeper than the level way he asks the question. She stares, trying to come up with an answer that will keep both of them here, committed and driven, but as she searches Din’s expression, she knows that she’s going to fall short.

Before Nova can come up with anything, though, there’s a sharp rapping at the door, and both of them break apart, Din swiftly pulling his helmet back over his head. He’s already shown his face to Mandalore, and the Creed that he followed for nearly his entire life has fallen to pieces, but Nova knows the security it provides, and she smiles gently at him, watching his gorgeous features disappear underneath the beskar.

“We have a problem,” Bo-Katan announces, her voice cutting straight through the luminosity of the holotable.

“Don’t we always,” Nova murmurs, but the expression on Bo-Katan’s face wipes every inch of humor off of her own. “What’s wrong?”

Bo-Katan sighs, running a hand uncharacteristically through her short red hair. “We are under attack,” she deadpans, looking upward through the clear dome, pointing as ships come out of the fog.

Alarms starting blaring from somewhere, and Nova darts over to Grogu, clinging him tight against her chest. “Who—”

“Nova,” Din says, evenly, tossing her shawl through the open air, “you need to take the kid and get back to Luke.”

She stares at him in disbelief as Bo-Katan pulls her helmet back over her head. “No,” Nova starts, “we need to stay and fight, you might need our help—”

“We don’t,” Bo-Katan interrupts, but there’s no fire in her voice. She’s busted open the small armory in the corner, hurling weapons at Din without giving him a second glance. “It’s not the Order. Or Empire leftovers. There’s no TIE fighters. Whoever they are, they’re not after you or the kid.” She turns around, finally, striding over to Nova. “Besides,” she says, rather sourly, “I already called for backup.”

Nova lifts one eyebrow. Before she can say anything, though, she’s interrupted by the infamous shape of Slave I entering the atmosphere, and she winks at Bo-Katan, who’s still hidden behind her mask, but Nova would bet every credit she’d ever owned that Bo-Katan is emphatically rolling her eyes.

Din presses his forehead against the baby’s, and Nova only gets a flash of his expression before his helmet’s back on. He’s tense, trying his hardest to let Grogu disappear from his watchful eye for the second time. “Go out through the amphitheater,” he whispers to Nova, his voice gruff. Under the beskar, he’s electric, like he was praying for a conflict to let the lightning out. “Don’t take off until we get out there and preoccupy them so that no one follows you back to Ahch-To.”

Nova swallows. “Din—”

“This,” he starts, resting one gloved hand against her cheek, “is what Mandalorians are made for. We’ve got this.” When Nova tries to interrupt, he gives her a swift shake of his head. “Go. Be a Jedi.”

She links her hand in his, squeezing once, and then she’s holding the crib open for Grogu, knitting the shawl around her head, a makeshift hood obscuring her telltale dark hair. She nods, just once, and when Din’s hand leaves her grip, she runs with the baby, heart pounding in her chest, heading back into the stars.

Space is cold and quiet. It always is when Novalise is out here alone, but this time, it seems like the silence and the chill penetrates even the warm hull of Kicker. The baby is sleeping in the copilot’s chair, and Nova coasts through the stars, popping in and out of warp periodically to check that they’re not being followed.

Her hand goes to her necklace, fingertips tracing over the outline of the Rebel symbol and the perfect star notched in the back of the beskar. She doesn’t even realize that she’s doing it until she pulls her thumb away and it’s embossed with the image of it. Kicker is being uncharacteristically obedient, coasting through the Outer Rim with determination, and Nova almost misses the distraction that the constant wailing and failing that Kicker used to give her, because with Grogu asleep and Din back on Mandalore, she’s bored out of her mind.

Nova sighs, stretching her legs out as far as they’ll go, the toes of her boots scraping quietly against the dashboard. They’re old and worn, with so many scuffs that she’s long forgotten what they were supposed to look like, and the sole of one is threatening to pop off any day now, but she’s had these boots since she was in the Alliance as a teenager. Before her parents died. Before she was subject to Jacterr’s awful hand. Before Din walked into her life and made her believe in something more, something deeper.

As quietly as she can, she eases out of the pilot’s seat, leaning over the navigational system to ensure that she’s following the right coordinates. Wedge had given her the location of the general area that Luke was located in the Unknown Regions, but Luke had given her explicit—albeit confusing—directions when he promised he’d see her again soon. Nova settles against the floor of Kicker, where the one window outside of the cockpit that’s directed towards the sky is located, and lays down in the nest of blankets and pillows she used to call her bed.

Being out here feels colder, somehow. More distant. Nova watches as the sky moves through warp, billions of tiny stars shooting and reaching across the galaxy as she and the baby make their way to Luke Skywalker. She pulls the lightsaber off her belt, squinting at it in the low light. She doesn’t try to ignite it, doesn’t call forth the green blade, she just studies it. Across the handle are grooves for grip, and the alloy of the metal is so different than the beskar she’s surrounded her life with. Nova tries to hold onto it like Luke does, effortlessly and easily, and even though it feels like she’s been made for this her whole life, there’s something in the way. A distance between the pulsing and beckoning, maybe.

Before she can ruminate any longer on the disconnect, though, her comm blinks, and Nova shoots upward, pressing her wrist to her mouth. “Hello?” she calls out, wincing as her voice echoes around Kicker, but the baby doesn’t even interrupt in his snoring.

“It’s me,” Din breathes, and all the coldness and distance between Nova and the stars evaporate. “We’re safe. The second Fett showed up, the ships retreated.”

Nova exhales slowly, fluttering her eyelashes closed. “Who was it?”

“Pirates,” Din says, immediately, and she furrows her eyebrows.

“Pirates,” Nova repeats skeptically. “On Mandalore?”

“We ran into some…unsavory groups of people back on Morak. Before the refinery explosion. Apparently, they tracked us down and wanted to ransack Mandalore for what it has left. They didn’t get very far,” Din continues, sighing. “Boba and Fennec fought them off, and Bo-Katan has been itching to fight someone since I won the Darksaber out from under her nose. We’re fine. Mandalore is fine.”

Nova looks up at the stars again, watching how they shoot by out the front of Kicker, trying to put her finger on the off feeling of Din’s face. “They weren’t part of the First Order?” she asks, her voice low. “Or working for them?”

Din exhales, long and slow. “No,” he answers, finally. “They’ve been quiet, Nova. Almost—”

“Too quiet,” she interrupts softly, eyes landing on the baby. Grogu is already the cutest thing in the galaxy, but when he’s asleep, and tiny little snores come out of his mouth, he makes anything else evaporate. Now, though, with the silent looming threat of the Order that was so eager to kill every Rebel and capture Nova and her power for their own, she’s just trying to memorize his features, one at a time, permanently etching them into the back of her mind. There’s a weight in her chest that Nova has been ignoring for a week, ever since Grogu was allowed to accompany them to Mandalore—her time with him is limited. Even if Luke allows visits—which she thinks he will—it will be far too dangerous to keep following the same path from the Outer Rim to the Unknown Regions, especially considering Nova’s telltale Alliance ship, regardless of the new paint job and the beskar additions, and with the attack today, Mandalore is far from safe.

“Where are you?”

Nova sighs, leaning over the nav system. It’s blinking with the bright assurance that Kicker has crossed, quite unceremoniously, over into the Unknown Regions. She relays that to Din, eyes roaming the seemingly empty sky.

“That was fast.”

“Yeah,” Nova agrees, chewing on her bottom lip. “The new thrusters Bo-Katan put into Kicker are no joke.”

Din offers up a noise somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. “What are you wearing?” he asks, finally, and his voice is back somewhere low and dangerous like it was the night before.

“You saw me leave,” Nova answers, giggling, sinking down the wall until she’s hugging her knees against her chest on the floor. “Are you meaning to tell me you didn’t take stock in what I was wearing when you were staring at me? I’m offended.”

“Watch it,” Din volleys back, but this time, she can hear the smile in his voice. “I was just wondering if the ship has gotten you out of any of those clothes.”

“Ah,” Nova allows, her own tone dipping conspiratorially, “I see. However, it is quite difficult to get out of my clothes without you itching to take them off.”

“You’re good at getting out of things.”

“True.”

“I’m good at getting into them,” Din whispers, and Nova laughs, leaning her bead back against the hull.

“I am certainly not arguing with that,” Nova allows. “You know—”

But then, in Kicker’s typical fashion, the ship starts screaming. Nova’s sigh is low and frustrated, a small echo of the ones that Din’s let forth in the past.

“Go,” Din says, amusedly. “Take care of the kid.”

“You know I will,” Nova promises, and the light on the comm blinks off. She sighs, hauling herself to her feet, her head already aching from the indomitable screeching sound that pours out of Kicker the second something goes haywire. It’s startled the baby, and she strokes a single finger over the top of his fuzzy, wrinkled head before she sits down in the pilot’s seat, flipping switches and moving toggles back and forth. “What is it, Kick?” she murmurs, long waves of hair falling in the way as she leans down, squinting at the motherboard hidden underneath the metal sheath.

It turns out, that Kicker was actually screaming for a veryb good reason, this time around—after a very shoddy, embarrassing crash landing on Ahch-To, Nova discovers a fuel leak on hidden underneath the ship.

“Dank ferrik,” she seethes, and Grogu babbles. She turns on him, pointing a finger. “Not a word to your daddy about all the swearing. You promise?”

Grogu just tilts his head to the side and smiles gleefully. Nova squints at him, matching his quirked expression, pointing a long brown finger through the air like a threat.

“You are,” she continues, softening as Grogu toddles across the green, mossy earth of Ahch-To towards her, “a little war criminal. I hope you know that. Just because you typically use your powers for good doesn’t mean that I don’t notice that you don’t fight fair.”

Grogu babbles. Nova laughs. When she hoists him off the ground and notches him safely against her hip, she turns again to inspect the fuel gauge underneath Kicker’s patchwork underbelly, she nearly crashes into Luke Skywalker.

“Maker above,” she gasps, hand immediately slapping over her mouth. “You scared me. I’m used to stealthy, but you didn’t even make a sound.”

Luke Skywalker smiles serenely at her, like it’s nothing. “Hello, Nova.”

“Hi,” she echoes, faintly, and Grogu reaches out for Luke. Belatedly, Nova hands her baby over to him, hands shooting to the lightsaber hanging from her belt. “I have your lightsaber,” she adds, rather dazed, handing the thing out to him. He looks down at it, and there’s something complicated that flashes behind his expression.

“Have you used it?” he asks, and Nova slowly shakes her head. Luke starts moving, up the impossibly tall stone steps that look like they’re as ancient as this mountain is, like they were built into the bluffs of the sea. He’s much more agile than she is, and easily more used to this walk, but Nova tries to keep herself in pace without heaving air into her lungs. “I would have thought you might have used it on one of your missions from the Alliance.”

Nova stops for a half-step to catch her breath, and Luke stops without even looking back at her. “Well,” she starts, running her tongue over her teeth, “I haven’t really…had any missions.”

There’s a strange smile on Luke’s face when her gaze finds his eyes again. “Rebel activities and royalty still don’t exactly go hand in hand, I assume.”

She squints, nodding. “I don’t like being a diplomat,” she allows, even though she’s well aware that to Luke Skywalker, she probably sounds like a whiny brat, but he laughs. He opens his mouth and laughs out loud, in this gorgeous sea air, sounding as gleeful as Wedge always talked about him.

“You sound like my sister.”

Nova’s heart does a tiny backflip, and she sits up straighter. “Your sister?”

“General Leia Organa,” Luke grins, before turning back into the steps and moving nimbly up them. “She was a princess, too, for a while. She preferred action to negotiating. Still does. That’s why she’s holding rank up in the Alliance, even now. Well,” Luke stops, moving his sandy hair back and forth like he’s trying to measure something, “she’s taken to calling it the Rebellion.”

Nova smiles, trying her best to keep up with Luke’s pace. “The Rebellion. I like that—”

“Don’t,” Luke says, jabbing a long finger in her face so quickly that Nova nearly misses the next step and takes a tumble all the way back down the mountain. “Don’t let her title win, Wedge and I will never hear the end of it. Besides, I like the sound of ‘The Rebel Alliance’. It makes it feel like we’re all in this together.”

Nova laughs. He does, too. For a second, just a second, they’re giggling like the kids they never really got to be, like the galaxy isn’t facing impending danger, like they aren’t two of the known four surviving members of the Jedi left. It’s cold on Ahch-To, foggy and biting, but the landscape here is so lavish and so green, that she can pretend, just for a moment, that they’re back on Yavin. The Alliance hasn’t gone anywhere, there’s no First Order, and her parents are still alive, just around the corner. “I like being in it together,” she manages, finally, hoping that Luke won’t notice the tears under her voice. His expression is kind, gentle, and when he returns to the winding hike to the top of the hill, Nova follows him. Eventually, the ground levels out a bit more, and she stands on the top of the flattest rock, looking around at the entirety of the island. There’s something magical about this place, something that holds as much holiness as the throne room on Mandalore does.

“What made you come here?” she asks, and her voice is so quiet that the howling wind could have easily whisked it away. Luke seems to genuinely parse over Nova’s question, and he gently hands Grogu back to be swaddled up in her arms. The shawl that she draped over her head for the getaway off Mandalore is barely still knotted around her neck, and Nova wraps it closer to herself, pulling Grogu and his gentle warmth as close to her chest as she can. “Why leave the Outer Rim after the war was won?”

Luke has a strange expression on his face, and Nova’s gaze drops, suddenly worried she’d said something to offend him. “We did win the war,” he answers, finally, his voice far away. “But I also lost my father to it. I lost my old mentor. I lost my aunt and uncle. Leia—and Han, really—were the only family that I had left, but being around them was difficult because they had each other, and soon after, they had Ben. My nephew.”

Nova nods, chewing on her tongue. “It was hard to stay?” she asks, genuinely wondering. She knew that feeling. It’s what left her without the Alliance for the first time after her parents died, moorless and heartbroken.

“Exactly,” Luke offers, beckoning her closer to get out of the whipping wind. They’re half shrouded by the giant outcropping of boulders that rest atop the mountain, and she leans against the support of it for strength, trying to catch her breath. “It was hard to stay. Not because I didn’t love them, not because I didn’t love the Alliance, but because it felt like…everyone found peace except for me. It was a lot of loss, and it was incredibly…complicated. I knew someone who looks a lot like your son,” he continues, the ghost of a sad smile on his lips, “and he was the only other Jedi I ever knew up close. I had Ben—Obi-Wan—but until the last few days of his life, he wasn’t a Jedi. He was just a sad man who lived out in the desert, trying to make life better for me than his ever was.” Luke pauses, staring at the lightsaber in his hands. “I came here, to the Unknown Regions, to Ahch-To, to try to put the history of the Jedi together, and to recruit every new one that I’ve found.”

“That’s a great goal,” Nova answers, stroking her finger against Grogu’s fuzzy green head as he babbles in agreement.

“Would you like to see what I’ve gathered so far?” Luke asks.

Without even a second of hesitation, Nova nods. “Yes,” she echoes, and he points toward the biggest stone at the top of the mountain, where a tall, dark room has been hollowed out.

“Novalise,” Luke says conspiratorially, “welcome to my life’s work. Oh, yeah, and my humble abode.”

It’s not what she’s expecting. Any of it. There’s years’ worth of research here, old texts, folders, things that aren’t in languages she even recognizes. She’s speechless, turning around, eyes jumping, trying to take it all in.

“Wow,” Nova manages, finally, after she’s sure she’s turned all the way around a few times. “This is…”

“I know,” Luke adds, softly, and he looks down at the lightsaber in his hands. “There aren’t many Jedi left, Nova. You should come here and train. Your skills are…of the old world. You’re strong. You have a good heart. I would be honored to teach you.”

Nova looks back at Luke, holding on tighter to Grogu, who looks up at her and smiles. She knows, instantly, what he’s thinking—he wants his mom here, learning how to be Jedi side by side—and she has to keep her own feelings guarded because she doesn’t want to reveal to him how badly she wants the same thing. Again, she chews on her lower lip, thumbnail hovering beneath teeth and tongue. She promised herself she’d stop chewing on her nails what feels like a million miles ago, but right now, all she wants is to stay here, to learn. Din could be happy here, too, she thinks wistfully. He might be bored, but it’s only a small island on this whole planet. She and Grogu could train together, become Jedi together. It was perfect, she muses, blinking back the tears threatening at the corners of her eyes.

Except it wasn’t. Ahch-To is a safe haven, but Nova’s job is to keep it that way. She’s seen how ruthless and intense the First Order are, and there’s not a single doubt in her mind that they would follow her here and desecrate this place, leave such a holy site in ruins. She swallows again, trying to conjure up the strength to say no, but from the look on Luke Skywalker’s face, he already knows.

“I’ll be here,” he offers, quietly, and Grogu touches his tiny palm to the small crescent of Nova’s exposed skin underneath the warmth of her blue shawl. “If you decide the galaxy would be better protected if you had training.”

“I want to,” she interjects, her voice low and pleading, like she’s the one begging for it. “Maker, you have no idea how badly I want to. I could be happy here. I—I want you to teach me how to become a Jedi, but—”

Luke’s gaze shifts to the ring on her left hand. The stone sparkles in the low light, the tiny crystal sunk into the beskar. It’s so tiny, but it’s there, and there’s something both sad and fond behind his smile. “You have bigger things to handle first.”

Nova swallows, nodding gently. “But—if I were to become a Jedi—”

Luke holds out his hands, one gloved, one bare. Grogu hops eagerly into his arms. “Like I said, I’ll be here. Grogu will be safe with me. My nephew will be joining us soon. And my sister,” he adds on, his voice suddenly a bit more electric, “my sister is Force sensitive, too. I have a feeling that you might run into her at some point, considering—”

“The Alliance,” Nova grins, nodding. “Don’t worry, I’ll tell her we aren’t changing the name.”

Luke chuckles. The sound is so jarring, so much closer to the boy Wedge always talks about knowing, and Nova’s heart aches. He’s only a handful of years older than she is, and for a moment, she lets herself imagine what it would have been like growing up alongside Luke and Leia on the base at Yavin. If she’d be in Jedi training. If anything about her life would be there same. “If anyone could,” he agrees. “I have something for you. You can have him back for a second.”

Instead of picking Grogu back up, Nova sinks down onto the cold earth inside Luke’s makeshift home, trying to fold her body tiny enough so that she’s face-to-face with her kid. His eyes are huge, reflected and starry and sad, but she can see the hint of joy of being here, of training alongside someone who cares, someone who will protect him until Grogu is old enough to fully protect himself.

“Hi bug,” she whispers, sticking out her palm for his tiny fist to hold onto. “This isn’t goodbye, you know. I’ll be back for you. Your dad and I will come visit any chance we get. You go and be good for Master Luke, okay? No eating his frogs. No hide and seek. I’ll be checking.”

Grogu babbles, the mischievous light in his eyes sparking up just for a second, and then he moves closer, falling into Nova’s warm hug.

“I love you,” she whispers, and he presses his fuzzy forehead into hers. They stay like that for a second, swaying, an unspoken promise. She can hear his little voice in her head—no words, nothing concrete—but a reminder through the power of the Force that he loves her, too.

Luke steps back into the narrow slice of light Novalise and Grogu are standing in, holding something out in his bare hand. “This is for you.”

Nova stands, squinting at the thing Luke’s holding out. It takes a second for her to recognize it in the darkness, but when she does, she inhales a sucking gasp. “I can’t take this,” she protests halfheartedly as he presses it into her open palm. “I’m not a Jedi yet, I—”

“Ben Kenobi gave this to me before I was a Jedi,” Luke interrupts, his voice gentle but urgent. “You will be a powerful Jedi too one day, Novalise Djarin. I know it. He knows it.” Luke’s gaze shifts over to Grogu. “And you know it,” he continues, tapping a long finger against her heart. “Just take care of this, okay?”

“Luke—”

“Take it,” he enunciates. “Go home to your husband and the people that need you. I know Wedge loves having you around.”

Nova tilts her head at him, quietly hooking the gifted lightsaber onto her belt loop. “I know why you’re out here,” she says, carefully, “but there are people who need you, too. And people who love having you around.”

Luke doesn’t say anything, but there’s a ghost of something that looks an awful lot like hope behind his conflicted eyes. “I’ll see you soon.”

With that, Nova presses a quick kiss to the most prominent wrinkle in Grogu’s forehead, pressing her thumb into both her old Rebel necklace and the signet that matches Din’s. She reaches her hand out to shake Luke’s, but he grins at her and pulls her into a quick, strong embrace. He smells like the ocean, and still, somehow, of Tatooine. Luke and Grogu watch as Nova slowly descends the stone steps jutting out of the cliffside, so much easier to get down than heave up. When she’s back at Kicker, she checks the makeshift patch on the underbelly of the ship, which seems to be holding up okay enough to get back to Mandalore relatively unscathed.

“May the Force be with you,” she calls up to Luke and Grogu, waving her hand frantically.

“May the Force be with you,” Luke echoes. For a second, there’s nothing but the sound of the ocean hurling itself onto the gorgeous, green mainland, and as she climbs the gangplank, she hears Luke call out again. “Novalise.”

She sticks her head back out, shawl flapping in the wind. “Yes?”

Even from all the way down here, she can see the smile on Luke’s face. “That’s the Skywalker family lightsaber. Don’t lose it.”

She nods, feeling the weight of it on her hip as Kicker groans to life. She’s crying by the time she lifts off the surface of Ahch-To, her heart both heavy and light, sunken and buoyed. Space is dark, and she hops immediately into warp, heading back to Mandalore, back to the place she’s slowly learning to call home.

Mandalore, as usual, is quiet. It’s dusk, the foggy azure of the sky descending and swallowing up most of the planet, and when she lands in the designated parking bay, she checks the patch holding steadfast on Kicker’s underbelly, knowing that her beloved trash heap of a ship will need to go back into the more capable hands of the local mechanic. When she looks straight up, even through the dark, she can still see the faintest smattering of stars.

“Nova.”

She whirls around, hand on her belt. Din’s standing there, fully armored, just out of reach. “You scared me,” she chastises, closing the distance between the two of them. His beskar is cold, but his hands immediately encircle around her waist. “Has the threat passed?”

Din sighs, long and heavy. Her heart pounds as she listens to the timbre of it through the modulator, remembering all the time that she spent trying to dissect his breathing before he took the helmet for her and let Nova make him moan instead.

“There’s always another one,” he says, darkly, and she nods, tilting her head to the side. “I missed you, cyar’ika. Mandalore is cold and quiet without you.”

She wants to come up with a snappy retort, but the honesty and exhaustion in his voice pulls Nova down to his same level. She steps in closer, just letting Din hold her there, satisfied in the small comfort that she’s still his anchor. “Space is cold and quiet without you,” she offers, cheek pressed up against the beskar.

Din looks up. She can tell it even without looking at him, the way that his muscles shift underneath the beskar she’s still pressed up against. “I’d give anything to be back out there,” he whispers, finally, his voice low and complicated.

Nova’s heart flutters once, twice, and then she has an idea. “Din,”

“No,” he answers, immediate, helmet tipping down again to focus on her face. “We can’t, it’s too dangerous—”

“We can,” she enunciates, squinting her eyes at him, trying to put on the best Sabacc face she has, which isn’t much, because as Din is always reminding her, Nova is a terrible liar. “Twenty minutes. Nothing is happening. The palace is quiet. Boba Fett sent the pirates packing, remember? We won’t even leave Mandalore’s gravitational pull. We’ll only be just outside the atmosphere. We—”

“Stop it,” Din says, but there’s no fire in his voice.

“Come on,” Nova wheedles, well aware that she’s being reckless, a terrible influence. “Come on, come out with me into the stars. I’ll make it worth your while, you know,” she teases, raising one dark eyebrow playfully. When she hears Din sigh again under the mask, she knows she’s convinced him.

“Bo-Katan will not be happy that we left,” Din protests, but now he’s dragging Nova up the gangplank. She hides her smile in the shoulder of her shawl.

“Well,” Nova counters, spinning out and around while still holding Din’s gloved hand, spiraling down into the familiar comfort of the pilot’s seat, “it’s a good thing you’re Mand’alor, not her.”

Getting back into the stars with Din feels completely different than it did when Nova traversed the Outer Rim alone earlier. The silence isn’t crushing. It’s comfortable and easy, and when they’re finally safely out of Mandalore’s atmosphere, Nova pulls Kicker into a slow coast, heart still galloping in her chest. No matter how many times they’ve fucked, the little anticipatory period that comes before anything still feels like the first time. Quietly, Nova spins around in the pilot’s chair, expecting Din to still be seated behind her so she can climb over and straddle his lap.

But he’s not. Somehow, he’s the second person whose stealth has completely surprised her today, and Din’s no longer in the copilot’s chair. He’s standing over her, in full beskar regalis, visor of the helmet tilted downwards. All she can see reflected in the surface is the slow dance of the stars out of Kicker’s front window, and she swallows. Din steps forward, close enough to shift Nova’s legs apart, hands gently reaching forward to grab either side of her face. For a second, he doesn’t move. Nova’s breath hitches in her throat, desire sparking up a low flame in her pelvis. It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since Din fucked her on the throne, promising that Mandalore was theirs to desecrate, but it feels like a lifetime ago. Everything in her body is on fire, electric.

“I missed the stars,” Din murmurs, his gloved finger ghosting over her plump bottom lip, lingering enough to reveal her teeth. Nova shivers.

“Me too,” she whispers, not daring to take her eyes off of the helmet. She can see the bulge growing in his pants peripherally, but she’s determined to stay here, frozen in this position, until Din begs for her mouth, her touch, her warmth.

“More than anything,” he continues, voice rumbling low and deep, his hand traveling down the marks he left on her neck—the pulse points, the light imprints of hickeys in between—and Nova swallows, the air going starry and unhabitable, “I missed making you scream my name out here with no one to hear you.”

“Oh,” Nova gasps as Din slowly kneels down, parting her legs like an ocean. Faintly, somewhere in the distance of her logical mind, something is telling her to make sure Din doesn’t tear these trousers off her body, because they’re light and comfortable and didn’t keep the dampness of Ahch-To trapped against her skin, but as he hooks his fingers around the waistband, any protest fly out the window into the starry darkness. “What—fuck, what happened to fucking me in front of an audience?”

“I don’t want that tonight,” Din whispers, immediately. He lifts the helmet just enough to reveal his mouth, and as his hands are pulling Nova’s pants down to her ankles, his tongue writes a symphony on the soft, smooth skin of her inner thighs. “I want to be the only one to worship you.”

Nova gasps again, heart fluttering in her throat, barely even registering that Din’s pulling down her panties until the heat from his hands travels up, notching perfectly between her thighs. She slumps in the chair, everything in her electric and alive. It feels like years since Din’s spent longer than a few seconds down here, the warmth and wetness of his mouth lapping up her every orgasm. She pulls the helmet clean off by accident, but she doesn’t burn in embarrassment when it makes a loud, clattering noise against the metal hull of Kicker’s floor. She just tangles her hands in Din’s hair, knotting her long fingers in his curls, pulling him in closer and closer, teetering on the edge from just his touch.

“Are you going to cum for me, Queen of Mandalore?” Din rumbles against her flesh, tongue immediately sliding back in between her folds after the last word comes out of his mouth.

“No,” Nova manages, yanking gently at Din’s hair. Immediately, his mouth comes off of her, even though she didn’t say a word. She stares into his brown eyes, gorgeous and full of lust and darkness. “I’m not the Queen of Mandalore out here.”

“Then what are you?” Din asks, pressing his wet lips against her inner thigh. He adjusts his grip on her thigh, and she exhales, a staccato beat, complicated with how badly she wants his touch.

“Your wife,” she manages, “so devour me like I belong to you, Din Djarin.”

There’s something deeper in his eyes, a flash of something guttural and animalistic. His mouth is back on her pussy so fast that it knocks the wind straight out of Nova’s mouth, and she gasps, her moans loud and unencumbered. When he adds the pumping of two fingers, entering her like it’s nothing, like he owns every single inch of his body, Nova’s on the edge again. And then, without warning, he’s pushing her over it, again and again and again. Everything in her is both electrified and exhausted. The stars outside the window are spinning, she’s panting like she’s in Tatooine’s heat, and blood is rushing so powerfully in her ears that she can’t hear anything else. Nothing in the galaxy exists except for her and Din.

It takes a moment for her to realize, dazed and satisfied, that Din’s mouth has left her. “Hey,” she manages, her voice sounding disconnected and warbled, nothing like it’s coming out of her whole mouth, “where’d you go, it’s your turn—”

“Nova,” Din interrupts, his hands coming out of nowhere and bracing against both of her cheeks, instantly anchoring her in the moment, “your comm is blinking.”

“My—comm,” she repeats, head still feeling underwater with the aftershocks of her orgasm, and she blinks the stars out of her eyes long enough to look at the thing on her wrist, her vision slowly returning back into focus. Her eyebrows furrow down the middle, and Din tilts her head, still standing on his knees like she’s about to knight him. She swallows, pressing the button. “Hello?”

“Your shields aren’t up,” an annoyed voice relays through the comm, slightly muffled. “You’re Order bait out there.”

Nova rolls her eyes. “Bo-Katan, we just went for—”

“Alone time,” Bo-Katan interrupts iciliy, but the current in her voice immediately makes Nova realize she’s not annoyed with them for sneaking away, she’s panicked for something else. “We have a problem.”

“You’re repeating yourself, Bo-Katan,” Din interjects, gathering the panties tangled at Nova’s waist and gesturing her to lift her hips up so he can slide them back over her thighs. “What pirates entered Mandalore now?”

“Not pirates,” she snaps. “Not Mandalore, either.”

Nova rolls her eyes at Din, exhausted. As she sits up, pulling her trousers back over her thick thighs, the mountains of her hipbones, she cracks her neck to the left. The wetness of Ahch-To’s atmosphere sunk into her bones, and now that the warmth of Din’s mouth has evaporated, she’s suddenly freezing again. She nimbly picks up her discarded azure shawl, wrapping it around her shoulders, her neck, dipping the pooled fabric up over her head. Her hair is wild, hanging in her face, running out of the shawl like water. “Bo-Katan,” Nova chances, trying her best to not sound sour because of the very unwelcome interruption, “can you please tell us what exactly is wrong?”

“Rebel girl,” a voice filters through, and Nova sits straight up, startled. The shock of Wedge’s voice is one thing, but hearing it through the same frequency—and, most likely, location—as Bo-Katan’s makes her heart start hammering for a very different reason. Din and Nova exchange glances—his skeptical, hers frightened—and Nova waits with bated breath for Wedge to continue speaking. His voice is low, full of foreboding, when it crackles across the comm again. “We have,” Wedge says, sighing heavily, punctuating the silence with his voice, full and intentional, “a problem.”

*

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as always, reply here or send me a message to be added to the taglist!!! (and if you’ve already asked me and you’re not on it, please message me again!!!)

if you would like to be taken off the taglist or put on it, send me a message/ask/comment!! <3

I HOPE YOU LOVED IT!!! we're about to dive headfirst back into where SM left off with the Order, ruling Mandalore, and the Rebels, and biiiiiiiig things are coming ;) hope this one tides you over until next week!

as always, i'll be here, on tumblr (amiedala), and on tiktok (padmeamydala) for even more Dinova/SD content, so come hang out! <3

CHAPTER 3 WILL BE UP SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18TH AT 7:30 PM EST!!!

xoxo, amelie

#something deeper fanfic #something deeper #SOMETHING MORE #SOMETHING MORE UPDATE #SOMETHING MORE FANFIC #DIN DJARIN X READER #DIN DJARIN X YOU #DIN DJARIN X FEMALE READER #DIN DJARIN X ORIGINAL CHARACTER #DIN DJARIN X ORIGINAL FEMALE CHARACTER #DIN DJARIN X OC #THE MANDALORIAN X YOU #THE MANDALORIAN X READER #THE MANDALORIAN X FEMALE READER #THE MANDALORIAN X ORIGINAL CHARACTER #THE MANDALORIAN X OC #DIN X NOVA #DINOVA #NOVALISE #MANDO X READER #MANDO X YOU #MANDO X OC #MANDO X ORIGINAL CHARACTER #MANDO X ORIGINAL FEMALE CHARACTER #PEDRO PASCAL #PEDRO PASCAL CHARACTER #PEDRO PASCAL FANFICTION #STAR WARS FANFICTION #THE MANDALORIAN FANFICTION #DIN DJARIN SMUT

[shrieking-aristocrat]

I posted 150 times in 2021

11 posts created (7%)

139 posts reblogged (93%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 12.6 posts.

I added 157 tags in 2021

#house of wax - 21 posts

#bo sinclair - 19 posts

#echoes of the outsiders - 18 posts

#mary mason - 16 posts

#american mary - 16 posts

#vincent sinclair - 15 posts

#leatherface - 14 posts

#michael myers - 13 posts

#house of a thousand corpses - 13 posts

#bubba sawyer - 12 posts

Longest Tag: 54 characters

#the only manga i've read from beginning to last update

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Love the blog name…

So, requests.

A reader getting the upper hand on bo and boutta beat the shit outta him before deciding to teach this dumbass how to life instead

- Lily

Thanks I wanted scream-queen but it's taken 😂 I like this one better now though

Reader gets the upper hand on Bo

Bo Sinclair x Fem reader

TW: light torture, threats, Bo is a bit of a masochist.

Things had gone sour quite fast. Whoever that Bo Sinclair guy was, he was more than the shamelessly flirty but respectful persona he put up when they arrived to the town. Being a hitchhiker meant taking quite a few risks, but she hadn't been expecting a serial killer, no, those were the kind of risks people who hitchhiked joked and told exaggerated stories about, stories people claimed were real but were actually just an urban legend at most, vaguely based on events that took place decades ago on the other end of the country.

This wasn't an urban legend. This was very very real.

The hitchhiker, that's what the folk she came with'd called her when Bo asked. Besides her, there were two ladies and two guys, none of them seemed to know much about her other than she needed a ride to some place that was close to where they were headed. He caught her looking his way once, and shot her one of his most charming smiles, being faced with a look that was almost judgemental before she turned back to looking around.

Her indifference got his attention more than the other two's flirty attempts at getting him to stop glancing her way and their boyfriends's glares could. It was why he'd decided to go after her first, lock her away and save her for last. That was his first mistake.

Catching them off guard was easy, people's first mistake when they arrived to Ambrose was not thinking much of Bo, and he made them regret that. The hitchhiker followed him into the basement with annoyed resignation, and by the time she realized just in how much trouble she was, he'd used the moment of realization to tackle her and get her cuffed to his chair. He left her there, going after the others so that Vincent wouldn't have all the fun.

Two kills and two unsuccessful chases later, Bo retuned to the basement, finding the door open and the chair empty.

"Damn that bitch," he cursed through gritted teeth. Something hard collided with the back of his head before he could turn around and realize he'd fallen into a trap.

When he opened his eyes, Bo's head was throbbing, it took him a minute to realize he was strapped down to his own chair, and as soon as he did, he began to trash and scream, much like he used to do when he was a child with parents who didn't know nor care to learn how to properly deal with his bursts of emotion. His chest heaved as he glared to the side, spotting the hitchhiker leaning against the wall, watching him as she held onto her own thumb in a way that confused him until a snap noise made him realize that's how she'd broken free: she dislocated her thumb and was now putting it back in place.

"That look tells me this hasn't happened to you before," she hummed, pushing herself away from the wall and stepping towards him. "Rookie mistake, should have at least knocked me out."

"I don't hit ladies," Bo spoke, making another attempt at breaking free. "But I'll make an exception just for you."

She snorted, the noise only made Bo's blood boil. He considered dislocating his own thumb to break free, but didn't quite dare to do it, he'd dislocated it once as a child, while his father was trying to place him on the high chair, and he still remembered how much it'd hurt despite how young he'd been. It wasn't something he wished to repeat anytime soon.

He straight up tried to bite her hand when it moved towards his face, but her fingers went to a spot over his ear, fingers digging into an injury made when she hit him, making him curse through gritted teeth and struggle against the straps.

"Look at me," she demanded, grabbing a handful of his hair and making Bo tilt his head back to meet her eyes. "How many of you are out there?"

"Fuck you," Bo growled and once again cursed when her knuckles pressed hard against the injury on his scalp. "Just me, damn it!"

"Bullshit," she spoke, her tone calm yet stern in a way that made Bo's heart race. "You wouldn't be so confident about taking out five people if it was just you." her hand once again dug onto his injury before she let go of his hair, the now bloody bands sticking to his head.

"What are you, an expert?" he questioned, struggling and being met only with the chair's rattling as he watched her move to where his tools were.

It was as she reached for the pliers that he saw something familiar on her arm, a tattoo of a geometric butterfly in different shades of blue. He remembered finding a newspaper in one of their previous victims' car showing that exact same tattoo as an identifying mark for a criminal that'd escaped prison. It then clicked in Bo's mind that he might have met his match.

"Well shit, darlin'," he snorted. "and here I thought you were just some chick."

"Oh, I am," she hummed, moving over and taking a hold of his hand, placing the pliers over the first knuckle. "Just some chick that will start cutting fingers unless you start being honest."

Bo glared at her, the look in his eyes almost challenging him to try. He would kill her if she did– hell, he didn't even believe she would dare; he was the deranged one, the one that made people scared. But now, as he stared into the eyes of someone who looked at him with the same look of superiority he often looked down at his victims with, he wondered if this is what they felt. There was panic as the pliers began squeezing down on his knuckle, harder and harder each passing moment; and there was something else, something stirring in his lower belly.

"Okay, wait," he breathed out, his gasp turning into a sigh of relief when she paused. The pressure of the pliers was so far enough to make him thing there'd be a bruise. "It's me and my brothers. Two of 'em."

She stared at him like she could read him mind, or was trying to, and that stirring in his lower belly turned into a tightness in his pants that he hoped she wouldn't notice.

See the full post

61 notes • Posted 2021-09-26 04:03:51 GMT

#4

Vincent and a soulmate au holy sheeeeeit

Soulmate AU

Vincent Sinclair x Reader (GN pronouns)

You were alone when you got to Ambrose, a long walk after a falling out with the group of people you'd hitchhiked with. Coincidentally, their car was parked just outside the mechanic shop, with none of them in sight. You figured they'd had some issue and they were off doing whatever it was they were doing, after how they'd left you to walk, you didn't really care.

All the stores in town were closed, it didn't surprise you because it was the afternoon and small towns tend to be really vacant when it's nap time. This town was certainly small, to the point you questioned if it could really be called a town or if it was more of a village. While walking around, you ended up deciding to check out the Wax House.

The door was open so you let yourself in. After all, it's an attraction, people are supposed to go in and check it out otherwise it isn't profitable for whoever was showing their art there. The sculptures were uncanny, but you had to admit this Vincent guy had talent, you couldn't help but feel watched, but you blamed it on all the way-too-realistic statues. Little did you know that you were actually being watched.

Vincent knew the moment his eyes landed on you, and he hated it. He hated you, he hated himself, he hated the sudden throbbing and tightness inside his chest. He didn't want a soulmate, he didn't need one. Who could possibly want him when his face looked the way it did? Surely not someone who looked like you, no one normal could love him. That's why only his brothers loved him.

He cut the chase short, going straight to making an attempt on your life. Before you could even fully process what was going on, he was on you, a calloused hand to your throat and a knife hovering over your heart, but he couldn't do it, his knuckles were white from his grip on the knife and his hand was shaking, his pulse never failed him like this when it came to killing, wielding a knife was as natural as wielding any of his sculpting tools. He'd just met you and you were already ruining him.

You apologized, thinking you were trespassing, and he moved off you like just touching you hurt him. You moved away from him until your back touched the back of the wax couch, and he stated —or more like glared— at you, while you stared at him in a mix of fear and realization.

He couldn't kill you, but he also couldn't bear the thought of letting his brother do it or letting you go, of losing the person that he was made for and who was made for him.

Looks like you're stuck together now. Shit, what would he do with you?

67 notes • Posted 2021-10-13 23:11:56 GMT

#3

yautja x reader. sfw/soft!! maybe some cuddles that involve a dreaming yautja and getting kicked off the bed. 🤣 thank youuuuuu 💕💕💕❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

Yautja dreams are made of this

Jungle Hunter x reader (GN pronouns)

There were a lot of things you learned about the yautja you'd once known as Jungle Hunter. For starters, his real name was impossible for a human mouth to pronounce, but he liked being called Wiin: a name given to him by the locals, referencing a once human now monstrous creature known for its chaotic behavior. He'd spent decades in the Guatemalan jungle, hunting whoever was brave or stupid enough to not only enter his territory, but challenge him; but he was nowhere near old, and he liked to leave that clear with displays of his strength and youthfulness.

One thing you never expected to learn about Wiin was that he had quite vivid dreams.

It was one of those nights where he'd appeared in your room, tired but content in a way that left it clear he'd been successful in a hunt– in case the spine the dropped on your bathroom's sink wasn't enough proof of that. He hadn't said much, just pulled you to the bed and nuzzled you until, sooner than later, he was snoring. It was not at all a cute snore, but you'd already gotten used to the noise, and you weren't tired yet, so you didn't mind continuing with what you'd been doing before his arrival on a now horizontal position.

That is until the snoring turned to rumbling, and the rumbling into growling. His legs moved, his knees bumping against your ass in a quite insistent way, for a moment, you considered the possibility that he was awake and playing some kind of prank on you, but upon turning in his arms to lie on your back, you saw that he was fast asleep, his eyes squeezed shut and mandibles tight but twitching against each other.

Then he threw his left knee back, body tensing in a way that gave you just enough of a warning on what was about to happen for you to shake your way out of his grasp and avoid the knee that kicked in your direction full force by a mere inch, hitting the air where your ribs had just been.

"Wiin!" you called out, and he startled awake, holding his arm up and then staring down at his forearm, caught off guard by the sight of himself unarmed. "You almost kicked the shit out of me!"

He stared up at you. Wiin couldn't speak any human language without his mask, he'd been trying to learn, but had only managed a few words so far. But the look in his eyes was a clearly apologetic one as he shifted, holding himself up with one hand while holding the other out to you.

You hesitated only for a moment before taking his hand, but instead of letting him pull you back to bed, you pulled him to get up.

"How about we clean your trophy and you tell me about your hunt?" you offered, and he seemed thrilled by the idea, pulling you by the hand the rest of the way to the bathroom like a child with something to show to someone they admired.

You hoped having something to do and talking about his day would calm him down enough for you to not end up getting kicked into next week in your sleep. Though you had to admit, up until that point, the growling and clicking had been quite adorable. You doubted he'd appreciate you calling him anything other than fierce, but hey, he couldn't be offended by your thoughts if you didn't share them with him.

The look of confusion on his face as he watched you grin at the memory was just as adorable.

142 notes • Posted 2021-10-06 00:59:02 GMT

#2

Something with our humble provider man?

Maybe the reader is with a group of victims and runs to him for protection from Hoyt even though Tommy is the one with the chainsaw because something about big chainsaw man protecting me does things

Running to Thomas for protection

Thomas Hewitt x Reader (GN pronouns)

Tw: Hoyt.

They say that there's nothing better than a roadtrip to solidify friendships. You were doubting the truthfulness of that statement even before you and your group ran into the family of cannibals. It all started innocent enough, a tire giving in to the scorching heat of the Texan road and popping in the middle of nowhere, hours spent sweating in the car or walking around nearby until a sheriff's department car pulled up and the Sheriff inside offered to take you and your friends to his home to spend the night because nothing was open that late in the evening.

The car was left behind, because no one had driven past besides the sheriff in those hours you and your friends spent stranded, so what were the chances someone would drive and would want anything to do with the car? That had been the sheriff's reasoning, and it'd been pretty convincing to a group of young folk on the brink of heat stroke.

It was an about twenty minutes long drove to the rundown farm that you wouldn't have guessed was inhabited if it wasn't for the man driving you calling it his "home sweet home". You and two of your friends had travelled in the back of the police car while your friend Ethan rode shotgun. Ethan didn't make it far. Almost as soon as he got off the car and went to open the door for you and your friends, a gunshot broke the silence and blood —Ethan's blood— splattered the window.

Everything went to hell after that. Your memory a haze from the rush after rush of adrenaline that coursed through you. Your body aching from each moment of struggling to break free of one of the family members's hold and of being chased around as soon as you'd succeed at that.

Sheriff Hoyt had it out for you, you weren't exactly sure what it was that you'd done or said during the drive there that made him single you out, but one thing was for sure: he had it out for you and wouldn't stop at anything.

Or well, perhaps someone could stop him.

You'd once again narrowly escaped the sheriff impersonator, rushing down a hall only to stop halfway because at the other end was the man you'd heard the family call Tommy, a tall, hulking man wearing a mask made of some previous victim's face, holding a chainsaw like it weighed nothing and revving it once, twice, grunting in frustration at how it wouldn't turn on while glaring at you.

"Get back 'ere you piece of shit!" Hoyt called out behind you.

The anger in his voice was enough to trigger your legs into motion again, desperation winning over logic as you ran towards the man with the chainsaw, not with the intention of attacking, but with a brewing plan that might as well be the death of you– not like you had much choice anyway, considering the other option was dying by Hout's hand. At least this Tommy guy wanted to kill you and not other disgusting things.

You ducked under his arms when he stopped revving the chainsaw to try and get a hold of you. But instead of continuing your way down the hallway, you stood behind him, wrapping your arms around his torso and pressing your self against his side when his hand grabbed your shirt and tried to pull you away.

"Help me," you begged, looking up at the masked man with teary, desperate eyes as you clung to him like a scared child to someone they trusted. "Please, help me."

Thomas's eyes were wide under the mask he wore, lips parted into a surprised exhale as he tried to make sense of this situation, make sense of you. Pretty little things like you didn't go to him for protection, they went and hid behind the conventionally attractive guys that had also been unlucky enough to end up falling into the Hewitt's trap. But you– you'd chosen him.

"Atta boy!" Hoyt exclaimed, staring at you like a wold eyeing its next meal. "Hand 'em over, Tommy, I'll teach this bastard some fuckin' respect."

His hand on your back tensed, grabbing a fistful of your shirt, and for a moment you thought he was going to yank you away and push you towards Hoyt, but instead, Thomas pushed you back, further away from the fake cop, with a growl that came from somewhere deep in his chest.

It felt unreal, you were certain that this was an hallucination and you would wake up still tied in that hellish butchery with your friends being bled out like pigs and the only reason why you hadn't joined them yet being that the Hewitts didn't have enough hooks. It felt even more unreal when Thomas got a hold of the back of your neck, making you walk in the opposite direction while Hoyt stomped after the both of you, being called off by Luda.

"Leave my boy alone, Charlie!" the woman called out. "Y'all never let 'im pick first. Go do somethin' useful!"

You didn't get to hear Hoyt —or Charlie, whatever his name was—'s response to that because you were led through a heavy metal door and down to a basement that somehow looked even more terrifying than the butchery. Thomas's hand didn't leave the back of your neck until he forced you to sit on a chair, his hands coming to your face and touching it all over, two fingers forcing your mouth open and checking inside like a veterinarian inspecting the health of cattle.

"Tommy," you spoke when his fingers left your mouth, your heart hammering inside your chest as you tried to think of a way to not end up as this people's next meal. "Tommy, please."

Once again, you caught him off guard. He pushed you just hard enough to have you stumbling off the chair, and you stepped away the rest of the way until your back touched the wall. Thomas stared at you with an intensity that made you want to run and at the same time made your legs feel weak, then he turned to his work table, beginning the process of getting things ready for his next craft.

His gaze suddenly snapped back towards you over his shoulder. Staring at you then at a vinyl player closer to you than it was to him, you didn't need to be told twice, moving slowly towards the device and playing one of the records on, setting the needle on a random song because, truth be told, it was hard to see what you were doing. Your shoulders sagged with relief when it began to play an old tune and he let out a content hum.

God, what did you get yourself into?

180 notes • Posted 2021-10-10 06:46:14 GMT

#1

Thomas hewitt eating you out a little different than normal ;)

I mean, his normal is cannibalism so I'll assume this means in a sexy way.

Leatherface eating you out

Thomas Hewitt x AFAB reader

You'd learned many things from your time with the Hewitts: like not to question anything about Luda Mae's cooking unless you want to be told a limb of yours will end up in her next dish —an empty threat because Thomas would never allow it, but a thread nonetheless—, and to never go anywhere near Charlie for way too many reasons to count, but the one thing that stuck was that Thomas stressed very easily; and the one thing he learned while with you was that he had the perfect way of de-stressing right between your legs.

It wasn't hard to tell when he's stressed, he'd walk into the room you two shared and stare at you, switching glances from you to the bed if you weren't on it already. This time around, he caught you reading some book Luda Mae gave you, the title something along the lines of "Cooking for your family", her not-so-subtle way of telling you that she wanted grandchildren. Yet another thing that stressed Thomas out, the constant pressure to make the family bigger. But he didn't have to worry about that with you, you'd both agreed it was not the time for that.

"Everything alright?" you asked, watching him as his shoulders slumped with a heavy sigh, his feet dragging as he walked in and closed the door behind himself. There was a light click that told you he'd locked it too. Which he only did when he didn't want anyone to interrupt whatever he was planning to do.

You left the book aside, it wasn't an engaging read anyway, and watched him get one knee on the bed, towering over you and placing a hand on your chest before he slowly, gently, began pushing you down to lie down. This was his way of asking if you were in the mood, leaving his intentions clear but giving you time to tell him no before your back touched the mattress. You shifted to lie down faster, and that was all the permission he needed before he rested a hand over your neck, keeping you pinned to the bed as he dragged his masked face down your clothed torso, pushing your shirt out of the way with his free hand to nuzzle his forehead against the softness of your belly. Gentleness was put on hold as he took your pants off, your underwear soon to follow.

He stared down at your sex, dragging one thick finger between your folds and letting out a heated groan when he felt the dampness gathering there.

His hand on your neck left you with no choice but to stare at the ceiling, Thomas didn't like you seeing his face without the mask, no matter how much you reassured him that he was perfect just the way he was. But he couldn't do what he wanted to do with his mask on, so he'd found another way, his hulking size allowing him to hold you by the throat while his mouth was busy down south. You only knew his mask came off when you head it hit the mattress beside you. Thomas's free hand held your right thigh, his head coming to rest on your left thigh as he began lazily licking, sending small jolts of electricity up your spine.

Thomas always started slow, but it never lasted long, once the scent and taste of you overwhelmed his senses, it was like a switch was flipped.

"Tommy," you moaned when his tongue went deeper, his nose pressed right against the hard bud of nerves, breathing you in like he wanted to memorize your scent– as if he hadn't already.

His ministrations were always thorough, but this time it was like a man starving, like he thought he'd never get to taste you again and wanted to make the last time the most memorable of all. He was a man on death row and you were his carefully picked last meal. His grip on your neck tightened when your chin touched the back of his palm in an attempt to look at him, the growl he let out making you throw your head back and cry out in pleasure, back arching off the bed as your toes curled.

The mattress sank when he shifted, lying on his chest between your legs as your legs were placed over his shoulders, framing his face, and his free hand joined his tongue in pleasuring you. Two thick fingers massaged you before slipping in, speeding your thighs, soaked walls for his tongue to further explore.

Your heels dug onto his shoulder blades as you tried to grind your hips against his eager mouth, but he was not that eager for this to end. Thomas growled, going back to slowly licking at your folds until it was left clear that you had to stay still and let him do the work if you wanted to come. So your strategy changed, your hand went to his hair, stroking his scalp as you moaned.

"You're so good to me, Tommy," you praised, a smile pulling at your lips as you heard the way his breath caught in his throat. "So damn good for me."

The springs of the mattress creaked when he began to move his hips against them, seeking a friction that went in tandem with the way he stimulated you. It didn't take much praising before he was back to eating you out like a man starved, your thighs shaking as they squeezed his head to keep him there. He didn't seem to mind, if anything, the louder creaking of the old springs told you he liked it.

The family'll hear, you thought in a brief moment of clarity as you felt the cooling pleasure in your lower belly tighten, threatening to unravel any moment now. But it was a short lived thought, followed by a careless: fuck it, as Thomas's tongue drove you to climax.

You moaned his name as you came. But his licking didn't stop, or course not, he wasn't done yet. Eating you out was a means to an end, this was his reward. He licked you clean, didn't stop until your hand came to push his face away due to the overstimulation becoming too much. Your chest rose and fell as you panted, hearing his own labored breaths before he licked his fingers in a way that sounded so obscene you almost looked, but you'd promised him to respect his one boundary, and you wouldn't break his trust.

It wasn't until you heard him strap his leather mask back into place that you stopped pretending the humidity stains on the ceiling were interesting and looked at him, watching the way he knelt at the bed's feet, adjusting himself in his pants to try and be comfortable.

"Come here," you breathed, voice still hoarse from your orgasm. "It's my turn."

280 notes • Posted 2021-09-26 20:04:31 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review

[softysuho]

under the sea (prologue)

First installment of ateez at sea

Pairing: San x fem!reader

Genre: fantasy+pirate au

Warnings: character death

Synopsis: The legend of Davey Jones has always been just that. A legend. Or was it?

San knew the story well, listening to the elders read it to the children of the town. The notorious sailor and his tragic story. He never liked the story, after the first listen, his hate for the Sea Goddess was obvious.

When people asked where his hate for her stemmed from, he always simply said "It may be a story, but a sick one. She took his human life from him, promising she would spend one day with him on land every ten years, only to leave him waiting for her." Most who listened to his rant thought he was a little on the crazy side, nodding before awkwardly leaving the fuming man.

He knew it was a story, he knew it was silly to have such a burning hate for the Goddess. He couldn't help it.

ㅡ

He sat on the boat with his father, fingers brushing the water to create small ripples. It was another Saturday evening, fulfilling his promise to taking his father fishing every weekend.

They had been out there for several hours at this point, still have yet to catch anything. San sighed loudly, smacking the water several times before sitting back up properly in the boat. "We've been out here for ages and still haven't caught anything, Father." Expressing his frustrations with another sigh.

"Well, stop disturbing the water and maybe we will." He father said softly, staring up at the sky with a wistful smile. After San's mother had passed, he decided that taking his father out onto the boat would be good for them both. Knowing his father was happier out there because he 'could see his beautiful wife in the sky waiting for him'.

It was nearing the end of his father's life and San tried to stay happy each Saturday for the sake of his last remaining family.

Before he knew it, it was near sundown. San figured it was time to head back home until something stopped him. What is was? He had no clue, not until the hair on the back of his neck stood up, a violent shiver running down his spine as he whipped his head back.

His father was standing in the boat, a bright smile on his face as he looked into the clouds. "I'm coming honey, you'll be in my arms once more soon enough." He chuckled, stepping off the boat and into the water. San was frozen, watching his father sink further in the water.

"Father!" He screamed and gripped the side of the boat trying to find where he went. Tears were welling in his eyes. He stripped himself of his shoes and shirt, diving in after his father in the hopes to save him.

He couldn't see, at least not well. He saw something shiny before it zipped away, swimming in the direction he last saw his father. The salt water burned his eyes, legs slowly tiring as he swam deeper. His heart was beating in his ears, trying to find some sort of movement. He was scared, frantically searching for a figure in the water.

He didn't know how long he had been under, a few seconds, minutes? All he knew was that he couldn't breathe, water filling his lungs as he refused to swim up. He couldn't give up on his father, not now, not ever.

His heart was breaking, legs giving out after the lack of oxygen. San reached out, attempting to call out to him while he knew it was no use.

It was the end for them both, eyes slipping shut as his heart slowed. San gave one final small smile, his world slipping into darkness before unconsciousness took over.

Before San's body finally succumbed, warm arms secured him to their body. A pair of soft lips connecting to his deathly cold ones. After a painfully slow minute, life breathed through his body, his black hair fading into a soft silver. San peaked his eyes open, senses coming back to him as his vision focused on the closed eyelids.

Mind hazy with exhaustion, he pressed closer to the being. Mouths molded together, it felt as though his body was attaching to another soul, one that felt like home and comfort. He held on and let himself slip back into unconsciousness, trusting whomever it was holding him.

She didn't mind the human clinging onto her body, simply enjoying and relishing in the fact that she found the one she'll worship until the end of time.

She felt him slip back into a peaceful sleep, and detached her lips from his so she could gaze at his perfect face. "Welcome home my Prince, I've missed you.."

ㅡ

a/n: sooo, i was inspired by @chasingatinydream's Pirate King to start a series of ateez at sea. each member has their own story line, some are pirates, some are mythical beings. every story is different. this one is based specifically on the story of davy jones and calypso and I'm actually excited to write it! i hope you all enjoy <3

#ateez au #ateez reactions #ateez angst #ateez fluff #ateez san #ateez #ateez seonghwa #ateez yunho #ateez yeosang #ateez imagines #ateez fanfic #ateez fantasy #pirate #ateez pirate au #ateez pirate king #choi san #choi jongho #jung wooyoung #song mingi #kim hongjoong #jeong yunho #kang yeosang #park seonghwa #hongjoong #seonghwa #yeosang #yunho #wooyoung #mingi #jongho

[afoxysunny]

Robbie as Bullock

This post will probably differ from the others in structure and be a lot longer for one big reason

When choosing Miraculous for the Lazytown characters i really wanted to only use ones that we've already seen in use in Miraculous Ladybug and know how they work from there.

For Robbie i broke that rule. I don't really remember what first made me consider it but it probably had to do with the fact that i think the Ox Miraculous, just aesthetically, would fit Robbie perfectly!

So for this one i had to start from scratch completely, no reference for a canon hero design, no idea what power or weapon he'd get, no clue what the phrase to transform could be.

Of cause i used the most references for him but here are the ten i found most important

Obviously i don't expect any of my speculations to become even remotely canon once we find out what Stompp, the Ox Miraculous, actually does but i hope it at least makes sense for now.

I like how I've drawn all the others standing head on to face the camera and Robbie just leans there. That's because you have to think he doesn't care, the little Tsundere

Concept Overview:

In the Miraculous Ladybug episode we meet all the Kwamis, including Stompp, he is the most actively concerned about Nooroo so now that the Butterfly Kwami is back I'm sure Stompp would want to stay around him. With Sportacus partnering with Nooroo, teaming up Robbie and Stompp made the most sense to them.

Design Notes Incoherent Thoughts I had to justify what I'm Drawing:

Purple and Blue - it amused me no end that with the choices i made blue Sportacus got a purple Kwami and purple Robbie got a blue kwami. I did kinda dislike at first how little blue the costume has in comparison to purple but i decided i don't have to make a decision because apparently the canon show can't make up its mind about Stompp's colour either. The blue and purple can always be swapped if i decide i don't like it

Harness - Ox' are hard working animals, mostly used to pull heavy objects. For that purpose they get strapped into a harness. Obviously i had to include that in this design, the chain hanging from the collar around his neck has a similar purpose (it only occured to me way too late how kinky it looks please ignore that)

Cape? No cape? - because of the imbalance in colours i briefly considered giving him a cape like a Matador would have but only for a second or so. I wanted to keep Robbie's iconic body shape untouched by a bunky cape, also the few times he wore a cape in the show he really struggled with it and also i think it would've clashed with the tail

Tail - speaking of which, an ox' tail has that frizzy end to it but i really liked the chain as his tail so to emulate the thicker part at the end i hung a padlock there. And that really worked. Not only bc that's just how bulls and ox are kept in check with their strength but also because the oblong shape of a combination lock makes for a fitting shape and can be used in universe. You see, Robbie is not that good with just saying what he wants or expressing how he feels. This four letter combination lock is magic and kinda betrays and helps him at the same time. It spells out any given four letter word that fits his mood best at any given moment

Miraculous Nosering - if a Lazytown character would unironically get a nosering, it'd be Robbie. I'm sorry, i don't take criticism on that

Horns - he needed horns. He just did. Look how good he looks with horns! But for real, in Miraculous Ladybug Chat Noir gets actual cat ears so he can get actual horns, also like Chat he the white parts of his eyes turn yellow like Stompp's while keeping his signature grey iris

Hair - ox' are mostly shown with like bangs covering their eyes so i couldn't resist ruffling his usually so perfectly done hair up to make it fall a little like that

Weapon - my first thought of "Miraculous takes cliché traits for animals to base their powers on so i guess bullfighting is the way to go here" made me really sad. This "Sport" is so disgusting i wanted to cry and puke while reading about it. I'll spare you the details but in addition to the Matador in the arena there's other guys too to weaken the bull before the Matador kills it, one of them throws knives. Miraculous Ladybug likes combining weapons with toys so I'm giving him darts. They are fastened to the front of his harness and i think how they can be used is along the lines of, once he zhrows them with his super strength and they pin into something they can only be removed when he allows that, also like the ladybug's jojo they can fly how long and whatever direction he wants, and probably also is able to just manifest them back to himself if ever one gets lost

Miraculous Power - again, just pure speculation here, but the powers we so far know of are all loosely based on an exaggerated cartoon trope of each animal so for the ox that is hard working and persistent and for the bull that'd be aggression and tunnel vision. While typing this i get the urge to add blinders to his mask but i digress. So i made up an exaggerated power that'd fit both but when i told my test group (two people) one said "oh, kinda like Bloodhound from Apex Legends" and the ozher said "so like hunter's mark from DnD" i play neither so i don't know but maybe you do do that's the short version of the explanation xD his power is based on the cartoonish depiction of a bull seeing something that bothers him and then charging at it for as long as he can until he gets it. Once Robbie focuses on an enemy or someone running away or someone he is following for whatever reason he can use his power to keep track of them. No matter how far away they go or where they try to hide. It sounds OP as shit but think of the Snake and Bunny who can both time travel and then say that again. The catch is he needs to use it while that person is still in clear sight for him so i think it balances a little better

Name:

Do you know the difference between a Bull and an Ox? Well, let me mansplain it to you anyway

The reason i kept switching between drawing inspiration from bulls and ox' is because it's the same animal. Those are both names for an adult male cow. The only difference being that an ox is castrated and a bull is not. Stompp is the Ox Miraculous so tough nuts Robbie, literally. But making babies isn't really on his to do list anyway with Sportacus as his partner so who cares.

Anyway, I had the design done and like always i struggled a lot with naming it

But then i learned a Bullock is not only a cool word that seems to be a mix of bull and lock like his design is but it also is the official name of a male cow too young to be castrated yet! Isn't that just perfect? I think it is

Also I'll include in this section the phrases one needs to speak to have Stompp transform them into this Ox themed Superhero and for the power to activate. If you think of something more fitting for either please let me know!

Transformation:

simple version - horns up / horns down

More detailed - time to charge / time to loaf

(charging is when a bull starts running blindly at something; loafing is the professional farmer term for a resting cow)

Power: Target Charge, Locked On, or my personal favorite option Head-On. Again going with the more in depth terminology, that's what the running style of a bull is called when he's chatging at a target

Story:

Robbie lived in Lazytown but when the kids grew louder and older and he got more annoyed wih not having his peace and quiet he just up and left. He spent a lot of time traveling around, living wherever it was comfortable and leaving when it wasn't anymore. Thanks to being an inventor and overall talanted crafty person he got by pretty easily as there was always a company running on "hire a lazy person for an important job, they'll find the easiest solution for the most complicated problems" so he never really had to worry.

Whether by coincidence or fate Robbie and Sportacus run into each other and despite Robbie being a little difficult they both immediately feel strangely drawn to one another. With time going by they meet more often, at first more or less by chance but eventually they plan to meet up regularly. They might have very different ways of doing it but they share a common lifestyle: helping out others to live a comfortable and fulfilling life.

Only after Sportacus was chosen to be the new Guardian of the Miracle Box he finally asks Robbie to join him, full time by his side traveling in his airship around the world wherever they may be needed. Of cause only for moral support and such, obviously. You see, they always enjoyed each others company and sort of over time eased into a relationship like coexistence but neither of them ever really acknowledged that. Only when Sportacus got Nooroo's power to sense other people's feelings that barrier of miscommunication fully fell. Robbie is incredibly bad with conveying his emotions but now Sportacus can sense that he has potentially the most powerful and purest emotions he ever encountered. Not only is each feeling of his powerful but when there is more than one at play they don't mix together and muddy each other but instead boost even more. He knew before that he wanted Robbie to join him but that discovery made it a necessity.

Despite not being able to actually say so Robbie is thrilled to come along. Only over time and with a lot of painfully slow conversations they manage to agree to make their relationship official.

Stompp, the sassy Ox Kwami, regularly bursts out of the Miracle Box to want to check on Nooroo and slowly he and Robbie bond over telling Sportacus and Nooroo to go easier on themselves and let a little responsibility get taken off their shoulders so eventually they team up and Bullock is created.

Thanks to Robbie's hard work to better himself with Sportacus' help, Stompp's magic transformation provides him with a tail that conveys his feelings for him.

When they hear that Lazytown has been wiped clean of grown-ups Sportacus immediately flies them over there so Robbie can check on his hometown. Finding only a few children, now teens, left there Robbie recognizes them and the two form the plan to give them Miraculous' too so they can help to find their lost family, friends and neighbors and fight together to bring them back.

Wow that was so much to read and you did it! I'm so impressed and thankful! You deserve a pat on the back (if you want one) and a cookie and/or sportscandy on your way out

#Lazytown #miraculous ladybug #Lazytown au #Miraculous Lazybug #revive the lazy #Robbie Rotten #sportarobbie #mentioned #Stompp