#back inner cover parody

[drstonetrivia]

Chapter 222 Trivia (Part 1)

Fun fact: this chapter is from issue #2 of WSJ's 2022 collection!

The Apollo mission had spacesuits tailor-made to each astronaut, but these days it's easier to use interchangeable parts and switch them out according to the size of the wearer, rather than having the whole suit fitted.

However, the gloves are always custom-sized for dexterity.

Vinyl fabric doesn't seem to have ever been used as part of a spacesuit, however spandex and nylon have, especially in the inner layers.

Outer layers include Teflon, Kevlar, and aluminized Mylar.

It's possible that rather than being used for the fabric, the vinyl is used for the suit's interior cooling tube system, and the aluminum is used for the Mylar rather than for the exterior metal parts, as pure aluminum is easily scratched.

You probably recognize this panel from the end of chapter 219. The only difference is Ryusui's head has been swapped with Stanley's.

Japanese doesn't have a "V" sound, which is why Chrome says "by" rather than "vi" or "vy".

Generally English words used in Japanese make this switch, for example "violin" becoming "baiorin" due to the lacking of "V" and "L" sounds.

This building may be where they're assembling the SENKU 11 rocket, however in this first panel it appears completed, but in later ones it's still under construction.

The PS5 was first announced in April 2019, and released November 2020. First images of the console were revealed on June 11th 2020.

The first global petrification happened in June 2019, so this person would know about the console but not known what it was meant to look like.

The robot maid request is most likely a reference to "Me and Roboco", another manga currently being published in Weekly Shonen Jump alongside Dr. Stone. It's a comedy series that follows a powerful-but-clumsy maid robot in a grade schooler's service.

(Later, Me and Roboco came out with a Dr. Stone parody for the 15th volume cover)

The vacuum tubes are back in the form of cavity magnetrons. These produce the microwaves that bounce around the microwaves' interior body.

The cooking effect was first discovered in 1945 when Percy Spencer noticed a candy bar had melted in his pocket after testing magnetrons.

Plastic wrap is vinyl that has been flattened to between 8-12 μm thick, (approximately 0.001 cm). For context, this is about as thick as a spider's web or the size of a droplet of water in fog.

The film Senku makes here is cellulose triacetate film, which is less flammable than earlier celluloid film, earning it the nickname "safety film".

The 8 mm part is the width of the film strip.

Unlike reusable hand-warmers that use supersaturated sodium acetate, these are one-time use and rely on oxidation to create heat. Once the packaging is opened, air penetrates the bag, oxidizing the iron. Vermiculite is added to remove moisture & salt is added as a catalyst.

Chrome's design wouldn't work properly because he uses iron sand rather than iron powder. Iron sand is mostly magnetite, which is already an iron oxide and thus won't have the oxidation reaction or create heat.

The fridge (or maybe mini wine cellar/fridge?) design is a parody of Smeg, a kitchen appliance brand.

You can also see the Senku-brand PlayStation, robot maid, and protein powder.

(Next part)

#trivia #dr stone #chapters #222

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 14/02/2024

Goodbye To Love

Season 4 Episode 2 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume for Nintendo 3DS

Ripped by Sarvéproductions

Requested by crickqt! (Discord)

Believe it or not, being eternally single kind of means that you end up forgetting about Valentine's Day whenever it rolls around each year. I got a sudden shock in the SiIvaGunner Discord when someone pointed out I was about to miss one of the channel's longest-running jokes, done each February 14th since the start of the channel. Events come and go, Seasons pass, the channel grows, yet each Valentines Day, the SiIvaGunner character remains lonely. Each year, SiIvaGunner says Goodbye To Love.

Bobby Vinton's Mr. Lonely is the kind of song that's damn near perfect for use in shitposting. Its a well-remembered, classic song, yet also one that's very inherently memetic, still able to convey the crux of its point almost perfectly no matter how much you trim it, no matter what context its put in. It is, in no uncertain terms, a sad song about feeling lonely. Many funny memers of the ages, and the SiIvaGunner team itself, have thus been able to leverage this simple message to tell narratives of sorts: Each annual Valentine's Day, in making rips featuring Mr. Lonely, we're made aware in a pretty funny way that SiIvaGunner himself is single, lonely, and feels left out. This long-running joke that occurred without fail in Season 1, Season 2, Season 3 and Season 4 Episode 1, finally reached a sort of climax in its fifth go about it - during Season 4 Episode 2, Valentine's Day went from a subtle ongoing joke to a full-on event.

The channel's profile picture was changed to perhaps the funniest variant it would ever have, an edit of an infamous panel of Kaneki from Tokyo Ghoul, expressing a sense of despair and resignation, inner sorrow expressed in a decidedly "anime-cool" type of way. The theme of the rips uploaded on the day was put into focus more than ever - Mr. Lonely was *everywhere*, and rips such as the aptly-named please god let me meet her feature full-on narration leaning into the joke. Being alone in the world is of course not a joke in of itself - the event, beyond playing on the building running gag from prior seasons, is parodying and making fun of a very specific kind of "incel", "doomer", "simp" culture found on websites like 4chan and Reddit - you've no doubt seen them if you're deep enough in the trenches to be reading a SiIvaGunner blog. Its the perfect culmination to this running joke, something that felt equally expected yet surprising in their commitment to the bit - all topped off with the finale to the event, Goodbye To Love.

The SiIvaGunner team must surely know at this point the emotional response that we as fans get from the use of Goodbye to a World - one of the channel's most famous rips from Season 1 used it to such incredible effect, at such a volatile and influential part of the channel's life, that rips using Porter Robinson and Undertale music in conjunction have become a running series of rips in the years since. Even looking past the Season 6 finale's incredible Fusion Collab in tribute to the song and artist, Aphex, Hopes and Divinity+ and Battle Against a True Porter are just some of the many examples of these that I've covered here already. Each one has resonated with us viewers in one way or the other, all calling back to that one Season 1 rip. Goodbye To Love uses that emotional attachment, that anthem of unabashed love for this silly meme channel, and attaches it to the aforementioned long-running joke - mashing up Goodbye to a World with Mr. Lonely for the most befitting finale possible.

I've meant to talk about the purpose and intent of the Circus rips on SiIvaGunner for quite some time, and I'll be getting to that in just a few posts from now - but to keep it simple for this post, rips of Circus from Five Nights at Freddy's allow rippers to completely obfuscate what the joke of the rip is going to be even more than the traditional rips already do. We already came to expect the event was going to have a finale of some sort, but to sneak it into a seemingly unassuming Circus rip, one of literally dozens upon dozens more on the channel, just adds so much more inherently comedy to it all. The mashup's extra lengths to reiterate on its own joke - including the aforementioned monologue from please god let me meet her, adding occasional melody swaps to Sean Kingston's Beautiful Girls, changing the "Five Nights at Freddy's" title to say "Zero Nights at Freddy's" halfway through the rip, and so many more details just make it such a deceptively fun listen, when the mashup itself was already genuinely very funny.

And like, it may be because I'm forever on a Sean Kingston high - this is now the fifth rip I'm covering with the meme after Crazy Noisy Beautiful Girls, Beautiful! ~ Curveball of Sean Kingston, Take You To The Desert and Electromeme Adventures, but...it alone just adds so, so much charm to the mashup. If you've recently heard anything of Beautiful Girls outside of the context of SiIvaGunner, it's likely from someone making fun of the absurdity of its lyrics - it is, in literal terms, Sean Kingston singing about how seeing a beautiful woman makes him feel suicidal. That absurdity just makes it such a natural addition to this long-running joke - one that started two whole years before Mr. Lonely and Goodbye to a World first became mainstays on the channel.

I've talked quite a bit about the larger events on SiIvaGunner - in the past few days alone I talked about the King for Another Day Tournament of Season 4 Episode 1 twice over in Unhealed and NIGHTMARESCAPE 〜Unrestrained HyperCam 2〜 (Final Boss Phase 2). Yet these smaller, one-day event are so much fun entirely in their own right - they're able to be focused, perfectly paced, and generally not overstay their welcome, whilst delivering the punchline perfectly with explosively well-done finales. And to all the lonely souls out there this Valentine's Day, rest easy knowing that SiIvaGunner himself is staying just as lonely himself - and it's quite likely that Mr. Lonely is, once again, set to appear in just a few hours on the channel's rips, for yet another year of this dumb running joke.

#todays siivagunner #season 4 episode 2 #siivagunner #siiva #Sarvéproductions #rip visuals #valentines day #porter robinson #goodbye to a world #mr lonely #beautiful girls #sean kingston #circus rip

[wyrmfedgrave]

Pics:

1. Photo of Nathaniel Ames, the most probable writer of "Symzonia" - at least, according to a computerized literary comparison program.

2 & 3. Covers for reissues of this odd sea adventure, Lost Race & utopian novel.

4. Back cover of 1 of the "Symzonia" reissues.

5. Cross section of this Hollow Earth. This chart is half of Pic # 6, which explains certain particulars on the cross section.

6. The other half of Pic # 5. It notes certain places on the cross section. Even, in 'fact', the angles of light - from the Sun & Moon - that light up this Inner Earth.

1906: The Earth (is) Not Hollow.

Intro: Just 2 years after J.C. Symmes started lecturing upon a Hollow Earth, "Symzonia, A Voyage of Discovery" was printed in 1820. It was supposed to be written by its hero, one Captain Adam Seaborn.

Its true author, however, is still a bit of a mystery. Through a meticulous computerized literary comparison, its most probable writer was found - one Nathaniel Ames.

However, several other authors (like Johnathan Seymour & J.C. Symmes himself) are still in the 'running'...

Author: Nathaniel Ames was the "black sheep" of his prominent family. (His dad turned down the presidency of Harvard.)

Ames said he was too wild for any college. So, he spurned family & fortune to become "Black Bill", a common sailor!

After 12 years at sea, he settled in Providence, R.I. - as a 'mere' merchant & author of 3 books of memoirs - with sketches...

Plot Wise: Adam builds the ultimate steam ship - specifically designed for polar exploration. He also gathers a suitable crew of sailors & scientists.

But, getting there isn't easy.

They face off against a treasonous crewman, nasty weather, food shortages & detailed bouts of sea charting, solar positioning & normal life aboard such a ship.

After visiting several run of the mill islands, they steam right thru the South Pole & into Symzonia.

In this internal continent, they find a # of subterranean animals & people. And, an exchange in cultural satire vs utopian ideals follows.

Adam represents a warlike, greedy & vice-ridden external world. Yet, the wise & peaceful Symzonians educate the Captain on their society.

Their social structure is basically, an extreme form of Marxism!!

Sadly, this is when racism rears its ugly head. These 'perfect' beings are all "alabaster skinned."

But, the external world bears various 'shades' of 'swarthiness!' The Inuit, for example, are sinful outcasts ejected into the icy Northern wastes.

The further you get from this interior world, the darker a person's skin - & the worse their 'habits' get...

Surprisingly, Adam advocates for the abolition of slavery.

Criticism: Some readers found this novel to be a long, boring comparison of a corrupt society vs an utopian one.

Others say this story engages in social satire. Or, that the book is just a silly parody.

Even that it's penned by a true believer is in question. The earnest silliness makes it hard to tell...

The best parts mix fear with the marvels of Symzonia. Such as the "portents of doom":

1. The compass spinning wildly as they pass the Pole.

2. A shipwreck of alien design.

3. An unknown mammoth beast.

4. The Symzonian's airships...

Anyway, Adam soon becomes involved in the Symzonian 'problem' with the Lovecraftian sounding Gnophkehs...

Legacy: It's said that "Symzonia" inspired Edgar Allen Poe to write 2 stories:

1. "Message in a Bottle" &

2. "Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym."

The last of which, in turn, inspired Lovecraft to write "At the Mountains of Madness."

"Symzonia" was reissued around 1979.

Then, Seattle KRAB radio station aired this book's only known adaptation - an 8 part, 4 hour series.

Plus, the New England Quarterly was the 1st to posit Ames as the possible author of "Symzonia."

Finally, the book sank back into literal obscurity. Ames, just like his fictional Captain Adam, died poor & forgotten.

#Earth Not Hollow #weird geology #hpl bio #history #fantasy #science #hollow earth

[canmom]

I'm trying to write my first isekai light novel. While I have a concrete idea of what I'm going to do, I want to be sure that I'm literate so to speak. Can you recommend a very short list of the key isekai works (whether manga, anime, or LN) that I should review to be considered well read in the genre?

Would that I could! Unfortunately, I am also not especially isekai-literate, so I suppose I shall throw that open to my dear followers in case they have suggestions!

As for me... the two like... classic, tropey isekai that I’ve personally read/watched are... well, first is Kumo Desu Ga, Nani Ka (So I’m a Spider, So What?). That’s a good example of the ‘Japanese student reincarnated as a low-level monster in a world with RPG mechanics’ sort of story, and particularly the dungeon arc where the protagonist gradually rises to be a terrifying monster was a lot of fun as a story of an underdog getting ahead by guile and trickery. It also is a little unusual in having a girl MC, whose inner monologue carries a lot of the story.

Of the many versions of this story... I started with the manga, before reading the LNs (in official translation) to what was available at the time, and later got the chance to catch a bit of the anime. The anime has the problem that the main character's dungeon antics - the heart of the story - were deemed too complicated for traditional animation, but unfortunately the CG used instead just doesn't have the charm, particularly the monsters. This does mean the team can lavish unusual resources on the human characters, but they're just not half as interesting as Kumoko. So imo, go with the manga or LNs for this one. The manga has, oddly, cut must of the human character interludes (although I'm not up to date, and that could change), but it's a great presentation of the rise of Kumoko. Honestly this story is very fun but not especially weighty in whichever version so don't worry too much about it though.

I’ve also watched a bit of the JC Staff anime adaptation of Shokei Shōjo no Bājin Rōdo (The Executioner and her Way of Life), which is a yuri one that caught some buzz recently; this one imagines a sort of roughly 20s-era magitek world where people are routinely isekaied from Japan, and follows a woman whose job is to execute them before their powers wreak havoc. This assassin is assigned to hit an isekaied girl with time travel powers she can’t kill, so they go together to a place where the girl can be killed, the assassin maintaining a cover story of sending her back to her homeworld. But of course, all is not as it seems, there are hints of conspiracies and time loops afoot, not to mention intersecting lesbian love triangles. I’ll probably watch the rest at some point, the premise is cute, but mostly stopped because the visual design and animation didn’t grab me.

Both of these works are definitely like... several generations down the line isekai works in that they presume you have a certain familiarity with isekai conventions. The protagonist of Kumo Desu is a social outcast who’s read isekai Lns and is thus very genre aware, while Executioner opens with a parody of the bland short-haired boy isekai protagonist appearing in the world before it gets to the substance of its story.

But you asked for the main landmark works not some niche lesbian ones lol. Definitely the behemoth in terms of sheer amount of popularity is the Sword Art Online franchise, which is a very standard power fantasy story: thousands of people get trapped in full-immersion VR MMO, and it follows a boy who’s just better at the game than everyone else as he travels around and builds a small harem of totally obsessed girls on his mission to beat the final dungeon so everyone can escape the game. I watched the anime adaptation of this years ago during an episode of depression and decided I hated it, so I never watched any of the sequels! To be honest it was probably an overreaction, I feel like I’d find it hard to be as bothered about like, the incest bit at the end these days.

I believe SAO is very much the codifier for what a ‘default’ modern isekai looks like. And by the same token, it does exemplify the problem I have with a lot of isekai: the protagonist is usually an audience-projection character, and if you don’t feel inclined to project onto that character, it will totally fall flat. “I just don’t care about this boy”. That’s the main reason I haven’t really gone much further than dipping my toe into isekai.

Your best bet for a starting point might be the history section on wikipedia, which mentions a few major works - although it somewhat conflates isekai (a modern genre which developed primarily in Japan within the last couple of decades) with the broader concept of ‘portal fantasy’, which captures the majority of early fantasy novels. It also notes some precursors; Spirited Away for example is technically an isekai, but not what people would normally think of when the word ‘isekai’ is used.

From that page, we might note that Mushoku Tensei (2012) is credited with popularising the reincarnation trope on the web novel website Shōsetsuka ni Narō, although it wasn’t quite the first to do it. There were a trickle of isekai works in the 80s and 90s, such as Tomino’s Aura Battler Dunbine (1983) and CLAMP’s Magical Knight Rayearth (1993), or indeed old-school weeb fave Inuyusha (1996). I would love to say more about any of these but I haven’t got that far in my explorations of older anime lol.

That said, the Gainax series Abenobashi Mahō Shōtengai (Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi) in 2002 might be one of the first isekai with the modern connotation, in that the main characters are otaku, and there’s an overt appeal to otaku interests and storytelling tropes as the underlying basis of the fantasy world. Is that really a fair distinction? I don’t know, but genre self-awareness definitely seems to be a key feature of modern isekai. It sounds like more along the lines of Gainax otaku soul-searching rather than like... ‘wouldn’t it be cool if you could go into an RPG world’.

As for some other landmarks, particularly ones that break from the litRPG fantasy world default... Dr Stone got buzz a few years ago, although I’ve only watched a couple episodes of the David Production anime (a small but evidently passionate studio best known for adapting JoJo). That one’s got a fun, stupid premise: everyone gets turned to stone, but a couple of highschoolers manage to break out thousands of years later, after which the science nerd one has to figure out how to rebuild industrial processes from scratch; he’s opposed by a ‘perfect primate high schooler’ who represents like, an extreme of physical masculinity. I didn’t watch very far so I’m not sure where they go with that but from what I saw it was mostly like, an excuse for the author to infodump about limestone kilns and such.

Another one I’ve not seen, but I’m curious about if only out of morbid fascination is Youjo Senki (The Saga of Tanya the Evil, 2010), which sees a Japanese businessman get reincarnated as a young girl in a sort of fantasy version of Nazi Imperial Germany but uh with wizards or something. It sounds like... if you had to make up a premise to exemplify all the Bad Trends in anime, ‘salaryman gets isekaied as a loli in nazi germany’ is like, pretty close to a full bingo card lol. Anyway the selling point of this one is apparently that the protagonist is just totally unsympathetic and evil - although stories where the protagonist ends up the archvillain rather than the hero aren’t exactly uncommon now, I believe it was actually quite early in the wave of web novels, but only a few years ago got adapted by Studio NUT, a very young but talented studio which created the charming and stylish Deca-Dence. Is there anything of substance here with such a ‘charged’ premise, or is it just an exploitative mess leaning on the otaku fascination with Nazi aesthetics? I have no fucking idea, but if I ever get around to doing the deep dive into the treatment of nationalism in works like Attack on Titan and Kerberos which draw so obviously on Nazi imagery, I feel like such a work will be relevant to the analysis.

Moving on... it is not an isekai but a pure secondary-world fantasy, but I think Dungeon Meshi (Delicious in Dungeon) deserves mention as just a very good manga that takes your familiarity with the idea of an RPG dungeon delve as its basis. As well as the charmingly clear and expressive art style, Dungeon Meshi does a really brilliant job of imagining the ‘dungeon’ as an ecosystem, with the early chapters introducing you to the way various monsters live (and what they’d be like to eat!) while gradually setting up a very compelling story about demonic temptation. It is a story that really lets you feel like... humans are indeed animals, existing in a food web. It’s coming up to its finale now, so that’s very exciting. Also has one of the best catgirls I think I’ve ever seen.

Well, by this point I’ve exhausted my very limited knowledge, so I guess throwing it open to everyone else: any isekais - LNs, manga, anime - that stand out as especially interesting to you? Any historical landmarks that we should be aware of?

#isekai #anime

[vinylanswer]

One of these things is not like the other…. On the left, you have a 1978 picture disc of Boston’s classic self-titled debut album—a record so ubiquitous in its time that if you grew up listening to rock radio then, you knew every song on it purely from aural osmosis. But that little picture disc next to it…what the hell? I actually had to research that one—it is the last-gasp indie single of mid-90s shock rock/techno act Foreskin 500, covering Boston’s “More Than A Feeling.” I’m always a sucker for a novelty record and it doesn’t get more novelty-ish than this, which is why I picked up for $3 last week. My inner 12-year-old loves a good parody, and on the back is a great send-up of the essay on the back of Boston’s album. Humor where the A side is “More Than A Feeling” and the B side is called “Less Than A Feeling?” I’m there. As you might have already guessed, the look of this disc is the only good part, as the tracks are meh covers that don’t bring anything interesting to the table. It turns out Foreskin 500 was signed to a major label for one album before getting dropped, which figures—bands with names like that are never built to last. Apparently they were sort of a poor man’s My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, if you remember them (and count yourself lucky if you don’t). Still, it’s hard to fault folks for trying to make a living; one member went on to a career directing cartoons for Adult Swim, which makes sense as this record’s visual aspects are the only parts that work.

#boston #morethanafeeling #foreskin500 #parody #comedy #humor #picturedisc #classicrock #aor #rock #shockrock #techno #sleaze #pop #indie #vinyl #vinyls #record #records #recordcollector #recordcollection #vinyligclub #vinylrecords #vinyladdict #collection #collector #music #vinylcollection #vinylpost #vinylcommunity

[petnews2day]

Houston Arcade Expo returns as a celebration of pinball, Weird Al, 'Q8bert'

New Post has been published on https://petnews2day.com/pet-news/small-pet-news/houston-arcade-expo-returns-as-a-celebration-of-pinball-weird-al-q8bert/

Houston Arcade Expo returns as a celebration of pinball, Weird Al, 'Q8bert'

Getting their game on at the 2009 Arcade Expo in Houston. Photo by Keith Christensen.

Photo: Keith Christensen

What started as a small meeting for arcade and pinball collectors has turned into one of Houston’s greatest and most fun mini-conventions. The Houston Arcade Expo is back and bigger than ever.   For 21 years (skipping 2020 due to COVID), Keith Christensen has managed the ever-growing convention. The event capitalizes on the extensive collections of arcade enthusiasts while also showing how cabinets and tables stay relevant in the streaming era.   “I think there’s a kind of romance with the cabinet,” he says. “It’s bigger and a physical object. You lose that by just downloading everything. That’s the sacrifice we pay for convenience. Also, there’s the whole social aspect, which is why we have bands and seminars and everything. We like to make it an event. For older folks, there’s a romance for a bygone year, and a chance to treat your inner child.”   The floor of the convention features more than 200 games, all free to play. These include classic such as “Millipede” and “Q8bert” to more obscure titles such as “Moon War.” In addition to cabinets, collectors have consoles and PCs that are hard to find out and playable for visitors, including IBM’s from the 1990s and a rare Fujitsu console from Japan, the FM Towns Marty. There will be a fair amount of Oculus-based virtual reality titles to try, as well as free play on the MechCorp battle pods that many Houstonians have seen at the various fandom conventions around town.    Where the Expo really shines this year is with pinball. More than half of the games listed for play are pinball titles. Staples such as “Doctor Who,” “Elvira,” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” will be there, but the true prize is the Houston debut of “Weird Al’s Museum of Natural Hilarity,” made in Texas by Multimophic.   Houstonian Stephen Silver was the creative director and co-director on the table, their first licensed one after a series of excellent original concepts such as “Heist.” The game uses Multimorphic’s patented digital tables which allow for instantaneous changes in backdrops, and special editions include an animatronic of Weird Al playing the accordion along the top.    “He’s such a great personality,” says Silver. “This was one of my dream themes, and he is one of the best people in the world. He was in [the vocal booth] for three solid hours screaming and being enthusiastic. I kept checking in on him and he was one of the nicest people in the world.”   The table draws from Al’s enormous musical catalog and years of zany creations. While there are plenty of his famous parodies such as “Like a Surgeon” and “White and Nerdy,” the Multimorphic team used just as many of Al’s underrated originals. “Harvey the Wonder Hamster” is commemorated with an actual hamster wheel, and players can spin the Wheel of Stupidity from Al’s film “UHF.” Prizes can be jackpots or punishments like reversing the flippers.    Increasingly, the Houston Arcade Expo has been incorporating game-adjacent content as well as geek performances. Lance Guest and Catherine Mary Stewart of the film “The Last Starfighter” will be hosting a panel, and a custom “Starfighter” arcade cabinet with an actual, recreated version of the game from the movie will be playable.    Musically, the show welcomes back New Orleans mad scientist rock outfit the Consortium of Genius, who have been regular guests of the Expo since 2016. Known for their over-the-top depictions of insane megalomaniacs as they play songs, the band tones things down for their appearance in Houston.    “We do a lot of covers because of the general audience,” says founder and singer Lewis D’Aubin aka Dr. Milo Thaddeus Pinkerton III. “It’s less theatrical. We won’t be removing people’s brains…We fit in very well with a retro arcade considering how many different creatures that try to take over the Earth get fought off by pixelated spaceships. We’re very at home there.”

  Jef Rouner is a Houston-based writer.  

Houston Arcade Expo

When: Noon-2 a.m. Nov. 13, 10a.m.-2 a.m. Nov. 14, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Nov. 15

Where: Houston Marriott Westchase, 2900 Briarpark

Details: $30 – $95; 713-375-1801; arcadecenter.com

#Small Pets News

[horsemusicherald]

4EverfreeBrony - Copycat 2: Repeat After Me | Cover Album

4EverfreeBrony has been constantly releasing exceptional music since 2013, dozens of original distinguished singles, great covers, pony parodies and resplendent albums done by the multi-genre musician. Back in 2019 he released Copycat, a wholesome album doing covers of songs by brony musicians. Now in 2022 he has released Copycat 2 and featuring a range of musicians! This album is like a time capsule made with the respectful intent of bringing to light some of the lesser-known hidden gems in the fandom; some tracks on the album are more well-known, but many of them are tragically overlooked.

I'll Show You My Loyalty (feat. PrinceWhateverer) - original by PhonyBrony

Close your eyes and fall away 'cause this phenomenal rock cover featuring PrinceWhateverer with dashing nostalgia. Captivating hooks and sharp rocking guitars will have you soaring in their high-toned quality. Roll this extravagant jam in your car stereo and kick in your inner element of loyalty, singing along with the duo.

Bright Eyes - original by Ponky & Eccentrifuge

Who would thought that our wonky local delivery pony Derpy has her own fun, wacky anthem? Original composition by Ponky with a rap provided by Eccentrifudge, 4EverFreeBrony saddled up and delivered their style that pops. Sing together on key with the musician and let know to Ditzy Doo that she makes living happier for everypony and let know to 4EverfreeBrony that his music is like a fresh baked muffin.

My Sweet Peace - original by Woodlore

If you're a nature lover like Fluttershy and love to lay down and let the earth surround your soul, prepare for enchanting harp and melodic lyrics appreciating the landscape and an emotional build up as the acoustic guitar flows just like a river. You'll be set free and caress mother earth with your eyes through this natured tune that has life beyond our own.

My Cadence (feat. Koa) - original by Matthew Mosier

Intimacy and velvety vibes plus with the integration of Koa's flawless singing suitable for Princess Cadence, this soft ballad is a cinematical sound retelling the devotion of the love couple, Shining Armor and Cadence. Like romance at a leisurely pace it starts with a gentle acoustic guitar and glamour vocals individually doing their part till they unify in the mystique of the hooks while adding light-hearted piano and the charm of orchestral strings to fill this love blooming song.

A devoted 17 track album awaits for you on bandcamp to relive some of the fandom's recognizable jams and hidden treasures, freshly covered by 4EverfreeBrony.

#Cover #Acoustic #Country #Electronic #Chillout #Misc #Orchestral #Pop #Rock

[abybweisse]

This just sticks out to me as odd.

Fixed it?

Looks like he forgot how long his left arm is supposed to be.

#black butler #kuroshitsuji #sebastian michaelis #vol29 #volume 29 #inner covers #parody #back inner cover parody #where is the other hand #how long is his left arm #fixed it #kuroshitpost #kuroshit #shitpost #blackbutlercrack #my edit #oct 20 2020

[soundsfaebutokay]

So I've recc'd this video before, but it deserves its own post because it's one of my favorite things on youtube. It's a Tedx Talk by comics writer, editor, and journalist Jay Edidin, and I really think that it will connect with a lot of people here.

If you live and breathe stories of all kinds, you might like this.

If you care about media representation, you might like this.

If you're neurodivergent, you might like this.

If you're interested in a gender transition story that veers from the norm, you might like this.

If you love the original Leverage and especially Parker, and understand how important it is that a character like her exists, you will definitely like this.

Transcript below the cut:

You Are Here: The Cartography of Stories

by Jay Edidin

I am autistic. And what this means in practice is that there are some things that are easier for me than they are for most people, and a great many things that are somewhat harder, and these affect my life in more or less overt ways. As it goes, I'm pretty lucky. I've been able to build a career around special interests and granular obsession. My main gig at the moment is explaining superhero comics continuity and publishing history for which work I am somehow paid in actual legal currency—which is both a triumph of the frivolous in an era of the frantically pragmatic, and a job that's really singularly suited to my strengths and also to my idiosyncrasies.

I like comics. I like stories in general, because they make sense to me in ways that the rest of the world and my own mind often don't. Self-knowledge is not an intuitive thing for me. What sense of self I have, I've built gradually and laboriously and mostly through long-term pattern recognition. For decades, I didn't even really have a self-image. If you'd asked me to draw myself, I would eventually have given you a pair of glasses and maybe a very messy scribble of hair, and that would've been about it. But what I do know—backwards, forwards, and in pretty much every way that matters—are stories. I know how they work. I understand their language, their complex inner clockwork, and I can use those things to extrapolate a sort of external compass that picks up where my internal one falls short. Stories—their forms, their structure, the sense of order inherent to them—give me the means to navigate what otherwise, at least for me, would be an impassable storm of unparsable data. Or stories are a periscope, angled to access the parts of myself I can't intuitively see. Or stories are a series of mirrors by which I can assemble a composite sketch of an identity I rarely recognize whole...which is how I worked out that I was transgender, in my early thirties, by way of a television show.

This is my story. And it's about narrative cartography, and representation, and why those things matter. It's about autism and it's about gender and it's about how they intersect. And it's about the kinds of people we know how to see, and the kinds of people we don't. It's not the kind of story that gets told a lot, you might hear a lot, because the narrative around gender transition and dysphoria in our culture is really, really prescriptive. It's basically the story of the kid who has known for their whole life that they're this and not that, and that story demands the kind of intuitive self-knowledge that I can't really do, and a kind of relationship to gender that I don't really have—which is part of why it took me so long to figure my own stuff out.

So, to what extent this story, my story has a beginning, it begins early in 2014 when I published an essay titled, "I See Your Value Now: Asperger's and the Art of Allegory." And it explored, among other things, the ways that I use narrative and narrative structures to navigate real life. And it got picked up in a number of fairly prominent places that got linked, and I casually followed the ensuing discussion. And I was surprised to discover that readers were fairly consistently assuming I was a man. Now, that in itself wasn't a new experience for me, even though at the time I was writing under a very unambiguously female byline. It had happened in the letter columns of comics I'd edited. It had happened when a parody Twitter account I'd created went viral. When I was on staff at Wired, I budgeted for fancy scotch by putting a dollar in a box every time a reader responded in a way that made it clear they were assuming I was a man in response to an article where my name was clearly visible, and then I had to stop doing that because it happened so often I couldn't afford to keep it up. But in all of those cases, the context, you know, the reasons were pretty obvious. The fields I'd worked in, the beats I covered, they were places where women had had to fight disproportionally hard for visibility and recognition. We live in a culture that assumes a male default, so given a neutral voice and a character limit, most readers will assume a male author.

But this was different, because this wasn't just a book I'd edited, it wasn't a story I'd reported—it was me, it was my story. And it made me uncomfortable, got under my skin in ways that the other stuff really hadn't. And so I did what I do when that happens, and I tried to sort of reverse-engineer it to look at the conclusions and peel them back to see the narratives behind them and the stories that made them tick. And I started this, I started this by going back to the text of the essay, and you know, examining it every way I could think of: looking at craft, looking at content. And in doing so, I was surprised to realize that while I had written about a number of characters with whom I identified closely, that every single one of those characters I'd written about was male. And that surprised me even more than the responses to the essay had, because I've spent my career writing and talking and thinking about gender and representation in popular media. In 2014, I'd been the feminist gadfly of an editorial department and multiple mastheads. I'd been a founding board member of an organization that existed to advocate for more and better representation of women and girls in comics characters and creators. And most of my favorite characters, the ones I'd actively seek out and follow, were women. Just not, apparently, the characters I saw myself in.

Now I still didn't realize it was me at this point. Remember: self-knowledge, not very intuitive for me. And while I had spent a lot of time thinking about gender, I'd never really bothered to think much about my own. I knew academically that the way other people read and interpreted my gender affected and had influenced a lifetime of social and professional interactions, and that those in turn had informed the person I'd grown up into during that time. But I really believed, like I just sort of had in the back of my head, that if you peeled away all of that social conditioning, you'd basically end up with what I got when I tried to draw a self-portrait. So: a pair of glasses, messy scribble of hair, and in this case, maybe also some very strong opinions about the X-Men. I mean, I knew something was off. I'd always known something was off, that my relationship to gender was messy and uncomfortable, but gender itself struck me as messy and uncomfortable, and it had never been a large enough part of how I defined myself to really feel like something that merited further study, and I had deadlines, and...so it was always on the back burner. So, I looked, I looked at what I had, at this improbable group of exclusively male characters. And I looked and I figured that if this wasn't me, then it had to be a result of the stories I had access to, to choose from, and the entertainment landscape I was looking at. And the funny thing is, I wasn't wrong, exactly. I just wasn't right either.

See, the characters I'd written about had one other significant trait in common aside from their gender, which is that they were all more or less explicitly, more or less heavily coded as autistic. And I thought, "Ah, yes. This explains it. This is under representation in fiction echoing under representation in life and vice versa." Because the characteristics that I'd honed in on, that I particularly identified with in these guys, were things like emotional unavailability and social awkwardness and granular obsession, and all of those are characteristics that are seen as unsympathetic and therefore unmarketable in female characters. Which is also why readers were assuming that I was a man.

Because, you see, here's the thing. I'm not the only one who uses stories to navigate the world. I'm just a little more deliberate about it. For humans, stories formed the bridge between data and understanding. They're where we look when we need to contextualize something new, or to recognize something we're pretty sure we've seen before. They're how we identify ourselves; they're how we locate ourselves and each other in the larger world. There were no fictional women like me; there weren't representations of women like me in media, and so readers were primed not to recognize women like me in real life either.

Now by this point, I had started writing a follow-up essay, and this one was also about autism and narratives, but specifically focused on how they intersected with gender and representation in media. And in context of this essay, I went about looking to see if I could find even one female character who had that cluster of traits I'd been looking for, and I was asking around in autistic communities. And I got a few more or less useful one-off suggestions, and some really, really splendid arguments about semantics and standards, and um...then I got one answer over and over and over in community after community after community. "Leverage," people told me. "You have to watch Leverage."

So I watched Leverage. Leverage is five seasons of ensemble heist drama. It's about a team of very skilled con artists who take down corrupt and powerful plutocrats and the like, and it's a lot of fun, and it's very clever, and it's clever enough that it doesn't really matter that it's pretty formulaic, and I enjoyed it a lot. But what's most important, what Leverage has is Parker.

Parker is a master thief, and she is the best of the best of the best in ways that all of Leverage's characters are the best of the best. And superficially, she looks like the kind of woman you see on TV. So she's young, and she's slender, and she's blonde, and she's attractive but in a sort of approachable way. And all of that familiarity is brilliant misdirection, because the thing is, there are no other women like Parker on TV. Because Parker—even if it's never explicitly stated in the show—Parker is coded incredibly clearly as autistic. Parker is socially awkward. Her speech tends to have limited inflection; what inflection it does have is repetitive and sounds rehearsed a lot of the time. She's not emotionally literate; she struggles with it, and the social skills she develops over the series, she learns by rote, like they're just another grift. When she's not scaling skyscrapers or cartwheeling through laser grids, she wears her body like an ill-fitting suit. Parker moves like me. And Parker, Parker was a revelation—she was a revolution unto herself. In a media landscape where unempathetic women usually exist to either be punished or "loved whole," Parker got to play the crabby savant. And she wasn't emotionally intuitive but it was never ever played as the product of abuse or trauma even though she had survived both of those—it was just part of her, as much as were her hands or her eyes. And she had a genuine character arc. My god, she had a genuine romantic arc, even. And none of that required her to turn into anything other than what she was. And in Parker I recognized a thousand tics and details of my life and my personality...but. I didn't recognize myself.

Why? What difference was there in Parker, you know, between Parker and the other characters I'd written about? Those characters, they'd spanned ethnicities and backgrounds and different media and appearances and the only other characteristic they all had in common was their gender. So that was where I started to look next, and I thought, "Well, okay, maybe, maybe it's masculinity. Maybe if Parker were less feminine, she'd click with me the way those other characters had." So then I tried to imagine a Parker with short hair, who's explicitly butch, and...nothing. So okay, I extended it in what seems like the only logical direction to extend it. I said, "Well, if it's not masculinity, what if it's actual maleness? What if Parker were a man?" Ah. Yeah.

In the end, everything changed, and nothing changed, which is often the way that it goes for me. Add a landmark, no matter how slight, and the map is irrevocably altered. Add a landmark, and paths that were invisible before open wide. Add a landmark, and you may not have moved, but suddenly you know where you are and where you can go.

I wasn't going to tell this story when I started planning this talk. I was gonna tell a similar story, it was about stories, like this is, about narratives and the ways that they influence our culture and vice versa. And it centered around a group of women at NASA who had basically rewritten the narrative around space exploration, and it was a lot more fun, and I still think it was more interesting. But it's also a story you can probably work out for yourselves. In fact it's a story some of you probably have, if you follow that kind of thing, which you probably do given that you're here. And this is a story, my story is not a story that I like to tell. It's not a fun story to talk about because it's very personal and I am a very private person. And it's not universal. And it's not always relatable, and it's definitely not aspirational. And it's not the kind of story that you tend to encounter unless you're already part of it...which is why I'm telling it now. Because the thing is, I'm not the only person who uses stories to parse the world and navigate it. I'm just a little more deliberate. Because I'm tired of having to rely on composite sketches.

Open your maps. Add a landmark. Reroute accordingly.

#Jay Edidin #LGBTQ #autism #mind and body #gender norms #why humans need stories #Leverage #Parker #Abby posts Leverage #my faves #Youtube #I did my best with the transcript #sorry for any mistakes

[twistedtummies2]

Count-Down: NUMBER ONE

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, EVERYONE! The hour has come. It’s the final day of October – the spookiest day of the year – and the last of my entries for Count-Down. I’ve been covering my favorite portrayals and reimaginings of Count Dracula from virtually every form of media. With so many to choose from, my selections weren’t easy, but we’ve finally reached my number one pick. If you don’t know who that number one is yet, I guess I’ll have to Hammer it in. NUMBER ONE IS…Christopher Lee.

It’s been six-going-on-seven years since Sir Christopher Lee left us at the ripe old age of 93. After all this time, I still miss him as if it was only months ago. I’ve honestly never missed an actor more in my life. Lee was one of the people who made me want to be an actor, and while he lived a long and very full life, the fact that I could no longer look forward to future appearances by him in anything was still rather disheartening, and will always be so. If there is any Dracula portrayer who can challenge Bela Lugosi for iconography, it is undoubtedly Christopher Lee. Lee’s relationship with the role was just as tumultuous as Lugosi’s, albeit for different reasons. Lee was actually a fan of the original Bram Stoker novel, and the popular Hammer Horror Dracula series – in which he featured as the Count - strayed much too far from Stoker for his liking. The first two films he basically did for money and glory, but by the time the third film rolled around, he was well-established and getting steady work from all sorts of other avenues, and didn’t want to continue the part. However, Hammer was able to entice Lee back again basically via blackmail: contract negotiations with Hammer’s distributors in the United States stated that Lee NEEDED to play Count Dracula in the films in order to have their backing. These distributors were a HUGE source of income, and without them, a large number of people at the studio risked losing their jobs. While there may or may not have been other extenuating circumstances that caused Lee to return to the part time and time again – not only playing Dracula for nearly all of the Hammer films in that lineup, but also in a couple of other pictures that were deliberate parodies of the Hammer Dracula – this, ultimately, was the main reason he claimed that he kept coming back to the franchise time after time. At least in movies, Lee has probably played Dracula more than any other person – almost a dozen times, seven of them being for Hammer Horror productions – and while Lugosi’s voice and certain aspects of his design may forever be iconic, Lee is just as responsible for the popular perception of Dracula. Firstly, it was with Lee that the idea of Dracula having a “true form” – a more monstrous appearance under a human façade – was arguably originated; this Dracula, seemingly depending on the shifts in his mood, would occasionally be seen with visible fangs and/or blood red eyes, while in other scenes he seems totally human. The blood red lining of the cape was also a Hammer invention; earlier Draculas usually had capes of pure black, or lined in colors such as silver, and in the very first Hammer Dracula film – released as “Horror of Dracula” in America – this was the same. Starting with the second film, however, “Dracula: Prince of Darkness,” the character was shown wearing a gigantic cape that was lined in vivid, sumptuous scarlet. In the Hammer films, Lee’s Dracula goes in essentially the opposite direction of Lugosi. Lugosi’s Dracula is similar to a Bond Villain (before Bond Villains were even a thing), or perhaps an undead Moriarty. He may be rather uncanny, but he is, at his core, a human being. He’s simply an evil one. Hammer’s Dracula is different: this version plays with the Count in a way that I feel is in some ways closer to the one in the books. This Dracula is an animal in a human skin; a bloodthirsty, violent beast who hides his inner savagery under a veneer of dignified humanity. Dracula says very little throughout all his movies; in the second film, in fact, he never says anything at all. However, it is Lee’s charisma and intensity that makes the character powerful; a towering, imposing figure of authority and danger, who is just as intimidating when standing perfectly still and statuesque as he is leaping at you with his gory fangs bared. When he DOES speak, you therefore feel it’s important, as Lee’s infamously resonant voice carries immense amounts of weight. While I love the Hammer Dracula, I feel another Lee portrayal deserves equal credit: as I said, Lee hated how far Hammer strayed from Stoker’s character and style, and longed to play a version of the Count closer to that in the story. In 1970 – the same year he did two of the Hammer films, “Taste the Blood of Dracula” and “Scars of Dracula” – Lee got his chance in a super-low-budget feature simply entitled “Count Dracula.”

“Count Dracula” – directed by the unlikely Jess Franco – is by no means a perfect movie. Its cheapness is pasted all over the place, and the script is something of a roller-coaster ride. Much of it feels very accurate to the book and captures all the necessary elements, but then other parts of it sag and differ considerably. It is helped immeasurably by its cast, and especially Lee as Dracula. In a way, I think THIS is the most book-accurate take on Dracula out there: not only is this the only live-action screen Dracula to look more or less exactly like the one Stoker described, but Lee brings to the character a personality and nuanced depth that one could argue is better than the film deserves, while never straying far from Stoker’s initial vision. This is by no means the most iconic Dracula, but he is perhaps the closest anyone has come to giving us the character the author always envisioned. This Count has the cold, calculating, corpse-like qualities actors like Frank Lederer brought to the role, as well as the power and refinement actors like Lugosi brought to it, mixed with the animalistic duplicity that Lee himself mastered in the Hammer films. He’s not a sex symbol nor a tragic hero, but he has just enough depth and attraction that you can still feel the gravity of the character come through.

There’s a subtle but palpable loneliness to Lee’s Dracula in ALL of his appearances, which Lee himself said was intentional, as he wanted to try and give the audience something that was – at the time – largely unexpected. Whichever take on Dracula you prefer – the powerhouse madness of Hammer, or the surprising complexity of the Franco film – Lee brought them both to life, and the role would forever be one that haunted him. Unlike Lugosi, however, Lee was able to shake off the shackles of the King of the Vampires to a degree: his career never really drooped, as he remained steadily employed all his life, and even appeared in major franchises long after Hammer shut down the Dracula series, with roles in things like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. No matter where he went or what he did, however, Dracula always dogged him. For Lee, this was likely a curse more often than a blessing…but however stormy the actor and his most famous role’s relationship with each other were, what cannot be denied is that he remains definitive for a reason. For me, and many others, Christopher Lee simply IS Count Dracula. For better or worse, that will never truly change. I hope you’ve enjoyed this countdown; thank you all for joining me.

#count-down #top 31 draculas #dracula #count dracula #halloween advent calendar #october special #number one #number 1 #christopher lee #hammer dracula #hammer horror #horror of dracula #jess franco dracula #franco dracula #count dracula 1970 #my revenge is spread over centuries #and it's just begun

[queenmuzz]

Heat of the Moment

A Dante x Reader Valentine’s Day Special!

Your mom had always told everyone, in a disapproving tone, that you were too impulsive for your own good.  You darted into the road to get a runaway ball.  You bought that awesome looking jacket, without checking to see if it was on sale.  And now, because you were craving pizza, and didn’t want to shell out the four bucks extra for delivery, you were in a mighty fine pickle.

You decided that taking the deserted looking street at near midnight, just to shave a few minutes off your walk to Angelo’s Pizzeria was a perfectly splendid idea.  So splendid, you didn’t notice the shadowy figures following you, until you were grabbed from behind, and a cloth covered with some sort of chemical was placed over your screaming mouth.

So now, here you stood, or rather...laid, on cold grey stone, that seemed to leech all warmth away from your flesh.  It was still dark, but illuminated by torches, you seemed to be surrounded by columns of stone, like you were in some knock off kid sized version of Stonehenge.  You immediately attempted to get up, only to find to your irritation, your wrists and ankles were bound by industrial grade chains.   

“The offering has awoken!” called out a woman’s voice, and from the darkness, like the damn Ringwraiths from Lord of the Rings, nine cloaked figures came out of the darkness.  You tried to make out their faces, but both their pitch black cloaks, and blood red masks hid everything about them.

“Brothers and Sisters, we are gathered here tonight to call forth from the very bones of the earth, a power far greater than any human can imagine.  The stars have aligned, the incense has been lit.  All now,” she motioned to the cultist beside her, who handed her a leatherbound book, “Is to speak the incantations, and complete the rituals.”

And then, with the help of her assistant, the group began to chant.  You had no idea of what was being spoken, but it sounded Latin. 

“Really... Latin?  Guys, there are a tonne of other languages you could use!  What happened to originality?!” you grumbled, but while you could feel their glares, none stopped their inane chants

Upon each pillar,  a letter lit up, one at a time.  You couldn’t recognize the script, but it looked like a five year old’s attempt to write Hebrew. For some reason, that irked you. This makes no sense.  Latin is an Indo-European language, and Hebrew is a totally different family! These idiots are mixing everything up!.

But the incantation seemed to do the trick, and the flames grew, and changed to a sickly green colour.  And now, all these cultists raised their arms in exultation 

“Lord of the Underworld, we present you this offering, a Virgin Offering, for you to consume!” The lead cultist chanted.

“Wait!” you blurted out, in a desperate attempt to avert your fate, “I’m not a virgin!  I’ve had sex before, dozens...no, hundreds of times!”

Her assistant leaned over you, their mask barely concealing his skepticism.

“Name one person you have laid with,” he tested.

“Well…” Your mind was blank, and so you went with the first thing that shot through your brain.

“Your mom, for starters.”

You could have slapped yourself for such a dumb comeback, had your wrists not being tied up, but you needn’t have worried about not getting slapped.  The cultist’s lips twisted into a snarl, and you felt white hot pain radiating from your cheek, and the taste of blood filling your mouth.  Even though it hurt like hell, one part of you was mentally high fiving at that comeback.  His hand raised up one more time, to give another strike, but the leader quickly grabbed his wrist.

“Calm yourself, brother… the offering must remain undamaged. Besides,” and you could swear you  heard a smirk in her voice, “It’s not their body that must be virginal, it’s the blood.”

Well shit, you thought, as you placed your burning cheek against the cool stone to relieve the pain.  

The ritual continued.  “We humble servants provide both the firstfruits of this offering to open the way.”  The woman took out a jet black dagger, and approached you with steady steps.  Would she cut out your heart, Temple of Doom style?  Rip out your entrails?  Slit your throat?  All you could hope was that it would be quick and painless.  

What you hadn’t expected was for her to grab one of your restrained hands and with surprisingly gentleness placed the edge of the obsidian blades against your palm.

As she dragged the razor sharp edge, a line of crimson bloomed, like a trail of bubbles.  It almost didn’t hurt, but you couldn’t help but get upset.  All this pomp and ceremony, and they were just giving you a cut that would irritate you for weeks...if you lived that long. Whatever happens, you said as the cultist began using your blood to paint the two largest stone pillars, in a perverse parody of the Passover ritual, I hope whatever these bastards are summoning crushes them.

“COME FORTH!” The whole group chanted in unison, “Taste the blood… DEVOUR THE FLESH!”

And without warning, the blood...YOUR blood, burst into flame, racing up the pillars as if gasoline had been pumping through your veins.  At the top, the flames connected and  formed a gateway...a hellgate.  And within it, an orb, an inferno expanded...and a roar that sounded nothing like any earthbound animal emanated.

And then, an explosion of heat and sulfur knocked down the stones, and the cultists, sending the leader flying back several feet.  Only you, chained to the granite altar, remained in place.

You squinted as the searing light dissipated.  Among the now dying flames stood, or hovered… a demonic sight.  You could swear you saw the air distort from the heat that seemed to generate from within his chest.  Four leathery wings splayed out, the inner skin swirling designs constantly shifting, almost hypnotising.  And the horns!  A good foot long that curved  and twisted, glowing like charred wood both above and around his face. A face that reminded what was in front of you.  A demon.  Teeth as long and sharp as paring knives, eyes glowing like the pits of hell.  As if Satan himself had come up from the depths.  And for all you knew… he probably had.

You heard the sound of crumpled paper.  “Oh man,” the demon rumbled, his voice distorted by the sound of the exhaust coming from between his teeth, “I was just getting to the good part…”

“Oh Great and Powerful Lord…”  the devil stared at the surrounding area, at the the cultists that had recovered began following their leader’s motions and bowed prostrate on the ground, and you still chained.  It was hard to make out his expression, but it seemed like...surprise?

 “We are your most humble servants,” the leader continued,  “All we ask...is a scrap of your power...a trifle for one such as you, as payment for summoning you..My Lord?”

The demon didn’t even spare a second glance as he strode past her, past the other shrouded forms, and made a beeline towards you.  This was it, you thought, time to come up with a witty parting remark. But of course, your impulsive nature wouldn’t cooperate right now.  At least the demon seemed to be the ‘fire and fury’ style, he would probably consume you quickly.

He towered over you, and even now, the stone, which had been ice cold the entire time, began to heat up beneath you...sweat, both from terror, and the inferno looming above you,  beaded on your forehead.  

“My Lord?” the assistant asked, “Is the offering suitable for your arrival?  They have a wicked tongue, but they are perfect for summoning.

“I think you got it all wrong buddy,” the demon turned his eyes on the unholy congregation, and strangely, a chill appeared in the air, “You guys didn’t summon me….” A razor claw extended out and pointed at you, “THEY did… and if they summoned me…” the cultists slowly became aware of what he was implying, the quicker ones started making a run for it, “YOU guys must be the offering!  Who’s volunteering first?”

The answer was nine sets of panicking feet trying to sprint out of the stone circle.  The demon glanced back at you, “You might want to cover your eyes for this, it’s gonna get a little messy,” and with the speed of a racing forest fire, he charged, blades of superheated air swirling around him.  

The scream of the lead cultist was enough for you to clench your eyes shut, and then followed by a multiple of cries of terror and death, as the coppery scent of blood, not your own this time, scented the air.

A few minutes later, there was nothing but silence, except the sound of boots on gravel.  You couldn’t help it, you took a peek.

Instead of the cultists, or the demon, there was just a guy, shaggy white haired, with a worn t-shirt that clung juuuuust right against his broad chest, and a smile on his face.  You looked around, trying to find either a surviving cultist, or the demon, but all you could see in the darkness were void black shapes, lying on the grounds, their robes moving slightly in the breeze.

“That can’t be comfortable, let’s get you out of there,” the man said, and without a hint of effort, he gently grasped your hands, and with the other, he gave a quick yank.  Immediately the sound of snapping metal, and to your amazement, your arms were free.  And if you had thought he had done a sleight of hand with those chains, the way he effortlessly ripped the chains around your ankles off immediately clued you in that this man was more than he seemed.

You rubbed your wrists as you slowly sat up, staring at him. “Who are...you?”

“Ah, yeah...forgot to introduce myself in the whole hubbub.  Cultists always ruining get togethers.”  He stuck out his hand, “Name’s Dante.”  And as you shook his hand, with your uninjured one, you noticed that for a brief moment,  his eyes momentarily glowed red, like embers.  Embers that had once been blazing coals.

He must have seen the flash of panic in your eyes, because he backed away, his hands raised in surrender. 

“Don’t worry!  I ain’t going to hurt you… yeah, I’m the demon those jackasses called for” He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, “but I’m not the ‘MUST RULE THE WORLD’ type, I usually am the one people call to get rid of what was being summoned, not actually BEING the ‘sommonee.’  Wait, is that the correct term?”  He paused for a moment to think it over, before he seemed to come back to the present. “Anyways, I was just relaxing in my office, reading a magazine, and then POOF, I’m in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by people with horrible sense of fashion.  Speaking of my magazine...where did I put it?”

You saw the magazine, its pages fluttering in the wind, and picked it up.  A copy of ‘Half Cocked’, and on its cover, a buxom young brunette was getting a bit too friendly with a revolver,  alongside a well toned man wearing little more than a bandolier.

“Oh thanks!… that” he quickly snatched it out of your hands,  “I read it mainly for the articles…” he explained lamely, before hurriedly shoving it in his back pocket, as he looked you up and down. “Besides...I got a feeling I won’t need it much anymore…”  And in the flaming remnants of ritual, you swore you saw him turn a shade of pink...although that could just be the fire.

“Welp,”  He stretched, “You ready to blow this popsicle stand?  All that work made me famished.”

You had no idea where the hell you were, but you were still ravenously hungry.  Which reminded you how you got into this mess in the first place.

“I could go for some pizza or-”

You felt a blaze of warmth, and suddenly you felt your legs swept under you, and you looked up at Dante, now back to his demonic form carrying you bridal style.  But no longer did it strike fear in you, just a sense of awe...and admiration

“You truly know how to get to this demon’s heart,” he practically purred, and with a slight grunt, he leapt up and started flying towards the nearest collection of lights on the horizon.  “Pizza it is, then!”

Despite the remnant of chill from spending God knows how long on that stone, and the brisk breeze of the upper atmosphere blowing past you, you didn’t feel a little bit cold. It was like being held by a flying furnace.

“You know Dante….” you spoke, barely audible above the wind.

“Hm?”

“You’re pretty hot.”  Instantly, you realized what you had said, and would have preferred him to just drop you to your death at this very moment.

You heard him chuckle.

“Yeah, this form runs a bit warm….”

And even though he didn’t say it, you were almost certain he knew exactly what you meant.

#Devil May Cry #Dante #dante x reader #dante x you #Valentine's Day Special

[ddarker-dreams]

Bride in White. Yan Giorno x Reader [COMM]

When you had fantasized about this day in your youth, this is not what you had desired.

In those days, you pictured how you would count down the days until your wedding. Mulling over a dress you wanted to wear, one that was within your budget but pretty nonetheless. Maybe an outdoor venue, friends and family alike joining together to witness your union. There’d be butterflies in your stomach as you held onto your bouquet, breath hitched. Most important of all, the one who would be waiting for you at the end of the aisle. 

A person you truly loved. 

Eerily, certain lavish elements align with what you would’ve wanted. Almost as if he peeked in your mind and stole it for himself. The venue you were to be wed reminded you of a whimsical fairy tale, indulging you in its architectural beauty. A cathedral with warm, earth tone colors with tall ceilings that reached to the heavens. Colored sunlight shone through broad, mosaic windows, illuminating aisles of wooden pews. 

“I’m not a pious man,” Giorno had claimed, as he monitored you with his eyes. He must have mistaken your wide eye look for acceptance of the situation. “But it feels right.” 

But it feels right.

Those four words haunted you the moment they left his roseate lips. He couldn’t have expressed the gravity of your situation, the living nightmare of your life more perfectly if he had tried. Every freedom he readily plucked from you like a flower petal, all the undesirable parts of you that he trimmed away, planting you wherever he saw fit to soak in your beauty. The single difference you can find is a flower will eventually wither away to nothing and wilt. 

Whereas Giorno, your ever dutiful lover, cruelly refuses to let you meet the same fate. 

All of this was thrusted upon you because it felt right to him. He’s assured that this is what love is and you’d be a fool to think otherwise. What happened in his past to delude him into believing this sick parody of love is right? Questions like this will remain unanswered, Giorno skillfully dodging them with ease when presented with your numerous concerns. 

Freedoms you were generously given did little for you. Giorno took care of a majority of the planning, considering what minuscule input you offered. Whether it’s because he envisioned your union in a particular way -- or he was tired of your lackadaisical responses to wedding detail questions -- he stopped asking. The illusion of choice he presented you with was insulting in your eyes.

You don’t want to choose the flavor of cake, what orchestral arrangements are to be played during the reception, or what kind of veil you’ll wear. It’s as macabre as preparing for your own funeral down to the letter, you concluded. No, none of those frivolous things will bring you the true desire of your heart. 

Living your life as you did before meeting the Don of Passione.

“I-is it to your liking?” 

A young woman around your age asks, pulling back to allow you to see your own reflection. The person working on your hair continues in silence, the pair only speaking to you when absolutely necessary. It’s not like you can blame them, you think bitterly. Treading carefully and minding your mannerisms is an all too familiar dance. 

“Yes, thank you.” you offer in response after brief deliberation, to which she lets out a shaky sigh of relief. A fluffy brush dances across your face as she continues her work, blending together your foundation or making small touch ups when necessary. Seeing your own somber reflection being dolled up stirs unknown emotions within you, almost prompting you to laugh humorlessly. 

Your hair has been pulled back into a loose braid. Woven into your hair are flowers, likely created by Gold Experience. From light pink juliet roses to white hydrangeas, all stunningly beautiful despite your inner hatred for what they represent. It’s not that Giorno can’t afford to obtain flowers from other sources. The act of claiming you is what this represents. 

Highlight that compliments your skin color is set upon your cheekbones and lightly dusted onto your nose, cheeks subtly rosy from blush. The color of your eyes is brought out by smokey eye shadow, eyelids covered in flecks of gold then finished with dark winged eyeliner. Lastly, in the color that Giorno had picked out himself, your lips plump and covered in a deep pink.

As for the dress, Giorno considered your minimal input when deciding on it. Weeks of fittings and measurements in his private villa come flooding back to your mind, the irritating experience bestowing upon you an extravagant dress. A sweetheart neckline, with a mermaid silhouette that extended past your feet. It has a bare back, with a long cathedral chain behind you. The fabric clings to your curves beautifully, made of lace and tulle. 

It’s hard to justify messing up their work, as much as you’d love to. As innocent bystanders in this entangling mess, you loathe the thought of them getting in trouble for your tantrum. Knuckles tightening by your sides until your nails press painfully to your skin, you stop only to realize how it’d displeasure Giorno to see your beautiful skin tainted by crimson. 

A door opens behind you, the sound of fine orchestral accompaniments growing louder. In the mirror, you’re able to see one of your bodyguards, Fugo. His normal outfit riddled with holes replaced by a coal black tux, gaze serious as ever. 

“She walks out in five minutes. Is everything done by now?” he asks in a way that leaves room for little argument. Fugo has always been a no nonsense type of man, the stress from keeping a monumental event like this safe and moving along weighing down on him. Your hairdresser doesn’t look back while she responds, adding final flourishes while time allows.

“It will be. We’re just wrapping up now.” 

Fugo runs a hand through his hair, sighing but nodding his head. For privacy he closes the door, likely standing by it for added security. The comfort of this room will soon be left behind you, as much as you want to stay hidden away forever. All you can think is this aspect will be over after today, though a much crueler fate awaits you with open arms. 

After what feels like a too short amount of time, they begin prompting you to stand, handing you your bouquet of expensive and vibrant flowers. Your grip on which is weak, hands shaking too much to gain a proper grasp. Taking in a deep breath and closing your eyes, you do everything within your power to quench this stifling anxiety. 

With no rest for the weary, Fugo once again opens the door. He meets your gaze, lips set in a tight frown but not commenting on your aghast expression; likely in an act of mercy towards you. He silently offers you his arm to steady your teetering figure, to which you shake your head. You’ve made it this far on your lonesome, the rest of the world failing you at every opportunity. 

It’s more of a symbolic act now since you’ll have to take his arm later, Fugo being the one to give you away in the stead of your father. This is one of the conditions you presented to Giorno in return for your full compliance, that he leaves your family alone from all mafia related circumstances, this included. He seemed more than pleased at the time to accept his beloved’s request.

Wedding veil gingerly placed atop you, all the preparations steps have been completed. There’s no other acceptable excuses you can present at this moment, the calling before you beckoning. Fugo prompts you to walk out with him, a hallway not long enough for your liking in front of you. 

Each step takes every ounce of your willpower. All you can hear, like a mantra within your own mind, is that you need to get yourself together. That’s the deal you made with him, the one that you need to stick by in spite of yourself. For the safety of those you care about, you must present yourself as a perfect and overjoyed bride. 

Two intimidating looking men dressed for the occasion stand on either side of the large doors, ready to open the gates of your own personal hell. Fugo nods to them, his authority within the organization prompting them to open the doors to the chapel. At the very second of doing so, the orchestra changes their song to the bridal chorus.

Rich sounds of the organ flood your ears, lips quivering at the crushing sound reverberating within these tightly packed walls. The sensation of hundreds of faceless strangers staring at you makes your knees go weak, all of them now standing out of respect for your soon-to-be husband. None of them mean anything to you, but you’d be a fool to not acknowledge their importance. From politicians to fellow mafiosos, all eyes are on you. 

Sensing your hesitation to continue walking, Fugo gently nudges you forward. The act breaks you from your momentary stupor, allowing you to continue down the aisle with faux grace. Running out of other sights to look at, your gaze hesitantly falls onto Giorno, who grows closer by the second. 

He’s composed, as you’ve come to expect from him. There’s an image of rigidness that needs to be maintained with being a Don. His lips curl into a content smile when your eyes meet. Every ounce of your being screaming, pleading, for you to look away. To run away. Yet you can’t, the logical side of your brain being won over by the intensity of his presence. 

Your body moves in a trance-like state towards him, drawn to his serene expression and loving eyes. Otherworldly is how you describe him in this moment, sunlight shining against his golden hair which is loose from the normal braid. No expenses were cut on his own outfit, wearing a luxurious navy blue Givenchy suit. 

There’s no denying that the devil incarnate is nothing short of beautiful. 

Fugo goes to shake Giorno’s hand, instead of your real father. He gives you one last look before descending down the stairs and taking his seat in the front row. Now feeling all on your own, you feel the anxiety from before returning in full force. What frightens you the most now is how gentle Giorno’s emerald eyes are, how much heartfelt love shines within them for you. It feels like his gaze pierces through your being, capable of reading every thought. 

Offering him a smile that you pray he finds satisfactory, Giorno lifts the veil over your face. 

“I’ve never seen someone so breathtaking.” he mutters under his breath, only for you to hear. Goosebumps dot your skin at his affectionate proclamation. 

He then turns to look to the altar. You mirror this action, seeing an eldery man who must be the priest. Seeing his lips move, you faintly process that he’s addressing the two of you. All the world slows down as your fate is sealed, head growing dizzier by the second. This stifling atmosphere all but grabs you by the neck, suffocating you. Body on autopilot, you respond only when prompted to do so. 

Now time for rings to be exchanged, Giorno grabs your hand with utmost care. He smiles at you, one that’s different than normal. One that doesn’t have hidden intentions behind it, an agenda to manipulate your feelings. No, this comes from the depths of his soul. From his overflowing love for you, that drowns out any other sensations.

He places the ring on your finger, expensive diamonds and gold band sliding on with shackles. “With this ring I, Giorno Giovanna, take you, [First], to be my own. To have you by side and support you until I draw my final breath, to love you with everything that I am and more. Let this be a symbol of our union that will last until the end of time itself.”

Words flow from his mouth with practiced ease, silver tongue threatening to draw you in. Your heart rate hammers away as you realize it’s your turn to speak your own vows, no longer protected by having to repeat someone else’s words. Giorno required of you to write it yourself, one of the cruelest things he could’ve had you do. 

To speak of an abundance of love for someone you have nothing but deep abhorrence for. 

Giorno’s eyes flicker at your lack of response, muscles of his jaw taut. A darkness momentarily seeps within his expression, one that you recognize all too well. This is the Giorno that you know. Lightly clearing your throat in mock sentiment, you pass it off as being choked up. Placing Giorno’s ring onto his ring finger, you shiver as your skin brushes against his. 

Recalling the dishonest words, you speak them through a forced smile. “With this ring I, [First], take you, my dearest Giorno, to stand by you through the trials of life. The joys of my life are brought to me by you, and now I wish to return the favor. Allow me to repay you by being yours, and may nothing stand between us.” 

Any signs of malice have melted away, a beaming expression taking their place on his countenance. Every word brought bile to your throat, numerous lies spilling from you like sweet venom. Your impeccable acting goes unnoticed, as he draws closer to you. Or maybe he does notice it but wants to delude himself into believing you’re being honest. 

“By the power vested in me by God and man, I pronounce you wife and husband. What God has joined together, let no man put asunder. You may kiss your bride.” 

Warm hands on both sides of your face caress you, the pads of his thumbs rubbing circles into your skin. What’s meant to be a tender moment causes your blood to run cold, hairs on the back of your neck standing at the realization of what this next action means. Giorno leans forward, long eyelashes fluttering shut. Soft lips mold against your own in a chaste kiss, your body tingling and scent of his rich cologne enveloping you. 

He lingers for a second longer, before pulling back a few inches. Golden locks tickle your skin, his warm breath fanning against your flustered face. Giorno greedily drinks in the unfolding events in front of him, wordlessly portraying to you the depths of his obsession. You can only imagine what he’s thinking, and what it means for you. He feels like he’s won, that this victory will cement your place with him. 

Closing his eyes once more, he offers you his arm. Understanding the gesture, you take it without protest. The smile never leaves his face as he turns around to face those who have gathered to the ceremony with you at his side. 

Meaningless cheers erupt behind you, a once in a lifetime event of witnessing the union of Passione’s Don filling the air with palpable electricity. As you assume he wants, you follow Giorno’s lead by walking out towards the large wooden doors. His grip on you is tight, both physically steadying and emotionally unsettling you. 

Going through the motions, is what you decide this detached state of existence is. Pushing through the numbness that threatens to take hold, you smile your best dazzling smile. It all happens in a flurry, crowds parting to allow for your safe passage. Once you walk out the Cathedral doors, you’re met with grains of rice fluttering onto you from either side and more delight. 

All the faces that go by you like a blur appear overjoyed, paling in comparison only to Giorno. In the time you’ve had to share with him, you’re incapable of recalling seeing him this thrilled. The day is long from over, an outdoor reception already set up for you to sludge through. At least for this aspect, you doubt anyone will speak to you directly. Or if they do, it’ll be a predictable conversation that you already have designated answers to give. 

Their attention will mostly remain on Giorno, congratulating him on the union. You wonder if some poor soul learned through experience that it’s unwise to have their eyes linger on you for too long. Giorno is a walking contradiction, wanting to both present his beautiful lover yet setting boundaries to prevent people from getting too close for his liking. 

As you predicted, congratulatory words are shared hundreds of times. Hours pass of the same, monotonous routine. The one aspect that causes you to subtly stiffen every time is when an individual addresses you as Mrs. Giovanna. It feels like a part of your identity has been stolen, among all the other things he has taken from you. 

“Do you need to rest? We’ve been standing for some time.” Giorno whispers into your ear, after a mafioso expressed his regards to his Don. You shake your head, not wanting to be alone with him. With all these people around, you oddly feel safer. Though none of them would stand up for you as it’s a certified death wish. 

“I’ll be alright,” you respond to him with a sigh, lowering your head to look at the tile underneath you. “It’s just been a lot.” 

Giorno considers your words, searching for emotions that aren’t there. You distract yourself by looking around, feeling content that these people are having fun even if you’re not. Families speaking amongst themselves enjoying the fine catering, partners dancing and almost everyone holding a wine glass. Asking him never felt like a priority, but you do wonder how much this spectacle cost. 

As the evening progresses, the sun lowers into the sky. Beams of orange and yellow mixing together enrapture everything in sight, the scent of delicacies and wine mixing together. Milan is an enrapturing city. All day you’ve had no appetite, Giorno having to convince you to eat something. Looking down at the plate that he brought you, a slice of buttered focaccia is what you settle on.

Speaking of Giorno, he left your side for the first time in hours to speak to some security. You feel like it’s easier to breathe outside of his presence, though the respite won’t last much longer. As expected, he returns to you and extends his hand. You hesitate before grabbing it, to which he helps you up.

“We’ll be heading to our hotel now.” he instructs you, leading you to the curb where a limousine awaits. Ever the gentleman, Giorno opens the door for you to take your seat before sitting next to you himself. A final group of cheers for the new couple break out, before the crowd is behind you. 

Only the low drum of the engine fills your ears, your lap holding your interest. Feeling emotionally drained to the core, you don’t offer any resistance when Giorno lays his hand over your own. Working up the courage to look at him, you’re met with a serene expression. He loosens his tie some, upward curl of his lips never faltering.

“Cara… you looked troubled,” he squeezes your hand reassuringly. “Is something bothering you?” 

“Ah. I’m not used to all that attention and socializing.” you admit in truth, a sheepish smile of your own creeping up. Giorno is the only person who you have contact with on a regular basis. You forgot what it was like to converse with strangers, even in passing. Giorno seems to understand, bright green eyes softening.

He reaches to a pen in his jacket, and before your very eyes, it turns into an impressive burgundy rose. Giorno’s ability is a mystifying one, no matter how many times you witness it. He quietly laughs at your wide eye look, before tucking it behind your ear. 

“We’ll be alone soon enough.” 

It’s a phrase meant to soothe you, yet it has the opposite effect. A hidden meaning glimmers underneath the surface, one that you anticipate. 

Still in a dreamlike state, you eventually arrive in a luxurious suite. This is one of the finest hotels in Milan, with a vast view of the historic city. Placing your hand to the glass of the window, you hear footsteps approaching you from behind. Not feeling the need to turn around to greet your husband, Giorno makes up for it by wrapping his arms around your torso. 

He presses himself against you, head lowering to the crux of your neck to take in your scent. A perfume that he chose for you. His lips ghost over your pulse, appreciating how it gains speed at his teasing touch. He knows this body well. This is a culmination of all he’s desired, the payoff of you before him. Giorno’s hands hover up to your shoulder, where he plays with the straps of your dress. 

You close your eyes.

Lifting his head to your ears, you shiver at his low declaration. “Now, give all of yourself to me, mio bellissimo amore.” 

#giorno #Giorno Giovanna #giovanna giorno #yandere giorno #giorno x reader #yandere giorno x reader #yandere giorno giovanna x reader #yandere #yandere jjba #jjba 5 #JoJo's Bizzare Adventure #jojo's bizarre adventures #yandere jojo's bizzare adventure #yandere imagine #yandere scenario #my stuff #commission #yandere commission #commissions

[paragonrobits]

“I’ve been thinking,” Doctor Banner said, ominously. “About what gamma transformations mean.”

He didn’t mean to be ominous. Kamala had gotten used to his eccentrics, and she’d figured that he just got like that when he was comfortable around you. That meant a lot; Doctor Banner had, according to what she’d heard from people who’d known him before the Accident, always been a tightly wound nervous wreck wildly swinging from vitriolic outbursts to constant terror of social interactions. If he was being open enough to indulge in his favored aesthetic of ‘Morally Ambigious Mad Scientist about to do horrible things with your brain and a straw’, it meant you registered as a non-threat. And this was a man who got startled by flies landing near him.

Okay. A fly that landed on him last Tuesday had actually been a demon sent by the dread Beezel Bub, surly lord of flies, envy and macho posturing, assigned to drag him into hell. Again. So maybe his paranoia was justified.

Now Doctor Banner wheeled back on a spinny chair towards a wall covered in photos; of known gamma mutants, and people Kamala hadn’t known were gamma mutants; she saw the Canadian hero Sasquatch, and linked to him was a photo of a popular football player turned physicist. There was Bruce’s cousin, Jennifer, and her outrageously gorgeous and buff alter ego, She-Hulk (whom for some reason, was centered right in the middle, as if the whole theory rested on her). And then, there was Bruce’s wife... and her own gamma transformation, a huge and crimson-red harpy snarling at the camera.

A photo of a scowling general with a distinctive mustache, and a much larger red brute, built on broadly the same scale as the Hulk Kamala usually saw, and only the connection between the two indicated they were the same. A Russian soldier with an aloof expression, Emil Blonsky scribbled beneath it, and then a grotesque thing, a shambling parody that was only barely human in basic shape. Next to this was Rick Jones, the Hulk’s friend, and his own blue variation on that same transformation. Perhaps it was just that Kamala knew him, a friendly and affable teen hero, but somehow even his abominable transformation looked less horrific and more... soft, somehow.

And of course, Bruce himself. Given the nature of his own transformation, he didn’t have just the one comparison. There was himself, and the more well-known Hulks. The Savage Hulk himself, green and bellicose and looking strangely vulnerable. The Professor Hulk, looking so much like Bruce that it was easy to miss that he was an idealized image of Bruce, the Bruce that he most desperately wanted to be. Joe Fixit, in both versions Kamala knew of; an incredibly grotesque gray-skinned brute with cracked skin glowing green from within, and Bruce himself, or at least Joe taking the wheel. Both of them wore the same kind of nice suit, and had similar devilish grins.

Scribbled beneath that were a few notes: ‘Phases of Moon??’ ‘Only fully transforms at night = feelings of shame? Repression??” “mystical associations of lunar transformations?? BRUCE DID YOU MAKE A WEREWOLF THAT IS AWESOME - Joe”

There were a few others there too, with sparser notes. But now Doctor Banner was talking again.

“Gamma mutation takes a wide variety of forms; its not just getting big and green. Oh, it was never like that. Certainly, the green is a theme... who knows why? It’s pretty obvious that whatever I called down in the desert, it’s more magic than actual gamma radiation. Mystical associations; narrative thematics, the hidden parts of ourselves we don’t want to admit are there. That stuff I called gamma lets it loose...”

He tapped a pen nervously against his hand. Ink splashed against his skin, and his eyes were too blinded by the light of inspiration flooding in to notice.

“So why do I become a big green man with just enough differences from a human to look wrong, and why does something like Blonsky happen? And Rick?”

He pointed at Sasquatch. “Take Walter, now. Why does he look like an ape-man? I always knew he had an affinity for cryptid stories, and I know that not long after he changed, something from outside got into him. Some kind of... spirit, not dissimilar from his own form. Maybe it influenced him.

But then, Walter always hated that no one wanted him for his mind. They only wanted a meathead. So when he tried to become like me, he dropped down that ladder, into something like an ape, magnifying the whole... idea that he was just a brute force beast.”

Then, he rotated his chair, towards Emil Blonsky.

“Emil, Emil,” he said, distractedly, as if trying to remember the man that had been there. Had he ever really known Emil Blonsky? Had there been anything to know, or had the man always just been playing a part, biding his time to act on his agenda? “Jekyll and Hyde. That’s you. A man who so desperately wanted authority, power and influence... but at the same time, you hated the restraint. You wanted to cut loose... and then the power to fight me on even ground came up, and you couldn’t resist. You let yourself become a Hulk, too, and it made you into something no one could ever attach to Emil Blonsky. You could be the beast you wanted to be, without consequence; just another bully, smashing up anything he liked.”

Bruce leaned in. “But you liked it too much, even if you couldn’t admit that to yourself. It was harder and harder to change back, return to the comfortable and respectable and boring life of Emil Blonsky. And then, that monstrous shape was the only one you could keep. Consequences remained after all.” He leaned back.

He examined the whole thing.

“Is it me?” He asked aloud. “Was I some kind of template that everyone else got modeled after, deliberately or otherwise? Or am I just the first example, and gamma is supposed to warp people into these reflections of their inner selves?”

Kamala piped up, “I heard Doc Samson thought that you somehow transmitted your condition to other people. He called it Hulk Syndrome.”

Bruce laughed out loud at that. “Samson’s great with dealing with people, and figuring out psychological solutions... but everyone in this business is a little bit cracked. Even the therapists, I suppose.”

#marvel #hulk #bruce banner #emil blonsky #mostly some ruminations on blonsky here #i really like this jekyll hyde vibe for him #i considered him just using a meat suit like Immortal Hulk Abomination #that he bonds with permanently and his body fuses to it #but it was a complicated thing and not really fitting the context #if so it would be known WHY he looks the way he does #my writing #fics

[fandomlurker]

A Ponderous Rewatch: Bubba Bo Bob Brain and Cameo

Can I just say that I think I’m somehow getting worse at keeping the screenshot count down?

Neither the cameo nor the main episode in this post are animated by TMS, so that’s not the reason for the surprisingly high screenshot count. However, the regular episode is animated by Wang Film Production, who are the same folks that animated the very first PatB segment and have done most of the episodes I’ve covered so far, including the previous one. I can tell they’ve gotten a better handle at animating our main duo in the skit we’re looking at today, especially Brain. Wang Film Production is no TMS, but they’ve gotten very, very good at expressions. They’ve also seemed to settle into a rounded and soft design for Brain, something that they’re kind of known for among fans if I recall correctly. Pinky can still be a little…off at this point in time, though.

Moving on, the cameo that we’re starting with is animated by Akom Film Productions. They’re the folks who usually do the animation for the Chicken Boo and Goodfeathers episodes, and they usually do a pretty good job with those characters. As far as our mouse duo go, though, Akom has only done “Opportunity Knox” so far. You know, the one with the oddly nightmarish Brain close-ups. Thankfully we get none of that since it’s only a short bit.

So yes, onto the cameo in “Noah’s Lark”!

So this is actually a Hip Hippos episode, but luckily we don’t have to deal with them at all right now. The premise is the story of Noah’s Ark, obviously, but the character of Noah is done as a parody of the stand-up comedian Richard Lewis, who was somewhat popular in the 80s. The most modern and notable media he’s been involved in that people on Tumblr might know him from (or at least, what I think folks here might recognize, it can be a little hard to gauge that since both millennials and gen z folks are the main demographic of this site) are Robin Hood: Men in Tights where he played Prince John, and Curb Your Enthusiasm where he plays himself.

Noah is rounding up two of every animal to go onto the ark (which is a popular depiction of how the story goes, but is actually false: it’s supposed to be seven male and female pairs of “clean” animals of each species and one pair of “unclean” animals of the same species, but that’s as far as I’m going into that topic). He’s nearly finished the list and has just been mauled by the wolverine pair, and…

“Lab mice?...”

The fact that he’s specifically asking for a pair of lab mice raises a lot of questions that I don’t think we have time to unpack.

The pair of lab mice that he gets is, of course, Pinky and the Brain.

And Pinky is, for the very first time in the series, crossdressing, presumably to pass as a female mouse so he and Brain can survive the great flood by boarding the ark.

…This is also a lot to unpack.

“Check!” they both exclaim, although Pinky does it in a very deep voice for some reason.

Wow, look at the surprise and then hostile suspicion on Noah’s face there!

Their outfits are very 1950s, with Brain even carrying a suitcase. Anachronisms aside, these two really went all out for the “we are a normal, heterosexual pair” ruse, didn’t they? Not only is Pinky in a dress and a blonde wig, but Brain even put on a little bowler hat. Why did he feel the need to do that? Did he feel left out of dressing up otherwise? Was he afraid he wouldn’t look “manly” and hetero enough without it? I have so many questions…

“Whew! These pantyhose are killing me, Brain!”

Wow, for once it’s Pinky physically hurting Brain, even if it’s a relatively minor tug on the ear.

“I think I prefer knee-highs…”

…Pinky, you’re not even wearing pantyhose. What the hell are you talking about?

Assuming that this is just the result of an animation oversight (which, honestly, I’m certain it was), we now know that his disguise went so over-the-top as to include pantyhose which Noah wouldn’t normally see…and also it’s a type of pantyhose that Pinky doesn’t even like wearing, which implies to me that this is something Brain acquired for him.

There is just so much going on in cameos like these if you think about them for even a few seconds.

Also, I agree with Pinky. Knee-high pantyhose are much less uncomfortable to wear.

BONK!

So the mice are allowed to board and the audience is left to think that their little ruse worked, but immediately after the two run off and are out of listening range Noah rolls his eyes and says

“Who am I to judge?”

Heavily implying Noah completely saw through it and let them on anyway. Wow.

That’s the end of their cameo. Who’d have thought that this little scene would be the precursor to Brain having Pinky crossdress to disguise him as Brain’s wife so many times in the series? And who’d have thought that this very first time wouldn’t fool anyone at all?

But now let’s move on to the meat of this rewatch post:

We open to Acme Labs at night, as usual, though I’ve never noticed until now how lonely and eerie the place seems if you ignore our mouse duo.

“Pinky… I believe I have conceived my most brilliant plan to date!”

Oh boy, we have another first for today! Brain is very much a fan of using temporary mind control for his plans. It’s the method he falls back on the most, which is very interesting when you consider his various psychological issues involving having control taken away from him all his life.

“I shall use subliminal mind control to take over the world!”

“…Pinky?”

The hand-on-hip pose here is great.

“Today’s inside story is country mega-star Willie Ray Cypress!”

Uh, Pinky? Considering that this is pretty much the expression you had while looking at Pharfignewton, I am very, very worried about you looking at the Billy Ray Cyrus parody the same way.

“Don’t tell my head, my empty hollow head!~”

“You know I wouldn’t understand!~”

Same, Brain. Same. It’s just like Pinky to enjoy a song as earworm-y as this (not to mention how relevant this parody is to his everyday experience with Brain��s plans), but lord was the real song this is making fun of annoying as hell back in the day. Like, I was a small child at the time this song came out, and I still hated how often this would be played on the radio.

Luckily, Brain pounces on the remote’s off button and puts an end to the nonsense.

But oh, the look of sad betrayal on Pinky’s face is heartbreaking! I’m sorry, sweetie!

“It must be inordinately taxing to be such a boob.”

Heh, Brain said “boob”. /inner six year old

“You have no idea…”

“Pinky, do you know what a subliminal message is?”

“Something you leave on a subliminal telephone answering machine?”

Nice try, Pinky.

“No. It is a recorded message perceived only by the subconscious human mind.”

Two things here:

This diagram bothers me because my mind always interprets the way they’ve drawn the bottom of the cerebellum as the person shutting their eyes extremely tightly.

Brain using his own tail as a pointing stick is very, very cute and I love this detail.

“I have recorded such a message.”

He’s still holding his tail, aaaa!~

“Citizens of the world, you are under my control. You will do whatever I say…”

“Nice mix, but it’s not exactly danceable, is it?”

Oh, Pinky. Only you would sincerely compliment Brain’s incredibly dry mind control message and then immediately point out a flaw that has nothing to do with its purpose. Bless you, you stupid and wonderful little mouse.

I like how Pinky’s interjection startles the hell outta Brain for a moment, too.

“If people heard this message enough times, they would succumb to my control and we could take over the world!”

Notice that despite Pinky being a minor annoyance and despite the fact that Brain claims that everyone will be under his control, yet again it’s still both of them taking over the world.

“What do you think, Pinky?”

And he still wants Pinky’s input. It’s small and scattered and very, very subtle, but in my opinion this is Brain’s most frequent way of showing that he cares about Pinky. Brain likely isn’t even aware that he does it. Pinky might not be aware, either.

“I think I’m getting dizzy and I rather like it! Ahahahahahoo!~”

“Sometimes you hurt my head, Pinky…”

And yet, Brain. And yet…

“The only problem: How to get this message repeated worldwide airplay…?”

Offscreen, Pinky turns the TV back on and startles Brain again, but only for a moment.

Another great pose and expression here: Mildly annoyed, but interested and on the verge of an idea.

“I just adore Willie Ray!”

“I listen to his song twenty times a day!”

I…really don’t know why they chose to have this shot done with Brain walking over the “camera” towards the TV so we get a brief close-up of Brain’s mousey behind. It made me laugh, though, so I thought I’d share.

“Pinky… Are you pondering what I’m pondering?”

I’m also kind of obsessed with this brief expression of Pinky’s I unintentionally managed to capture. It’s a bit of a smug, knowing, and yet endeared look. I’m sure it’s completely unintentional on the animators’ part, but I love the idea it gives me of Pinky knowing exactly what Brain’s thinking but purposefully saying something entirely unrelated to playfully tease him.

“Well, I think so, Brain, but burlap chafes me so.”

To be fair, Pinky, I think burlap chafes everyone. And were you thinking about doing a potato sack race? That’s the only connection to burlap I can think of that would be in any way relevant...

“Country music, Pinky. I will go to Nashville and become the biggest country music star of all time! Everyone will hear my record and my subliminal message and I will take over the world!”

In all honesty, that would probably be easier to do in the early 90s when this takes place since country music wasn’t such a…well, “dead” is a bit of an exaggeration, but country music as a genre is incredibly unpopular nowadays with the occasional notable exception. In the early 90s? Not so much.

“Egad, Brain!”

This is the most enthusiastic swoon I’ve seen and heard from you yet, Pinky.

“Oh! But no, no… It takes people years of hard work to become famous, Brain.”

Well, that or they’re born into a famous family. Or they’re just rich.

“Why, take Kathie Lee Gifford for example: She did community theatre, and—“

I actually can’t find anything via Googling about Kathie Lee doing community theatre before she became famous. She seems to have studied music and drama in university, and had a folk music group in high school, but the only reference to theatre I can find is professional musical theatre in the late 90s.

It’s possible Pinky’s right, though.

BONK!

BRAIN! …Wait, where did you even get that tiny club?

“Stop talking, Pinky, I must think.”

You… Brain, I think I’m starting to see why some fans believe you may be as neurodivergent as Pinky is, but in a different way. I can’t in good faith elaborate on that myself, since I haven’t been diagnosed as such and it would be completely disrespectful of me to do so, but if anyone wants a good little theory on that, try here.

“I have calculated every ingredient necessary to become a country music mega-star. Read me the list, Pinky!”

He’s typing by hopping from one key to another, aww!

Eeeh, the lettering work on that computer is pretty bad, though.

“A cowboy hat.”

“Check!”

“A southern dialect.”

“Check, ya’ll!”

“Nice, Brain.”

The way Pinky says “nice” here reminds me of this meme. Also, aww, Pinky’s always ready with the compliments.

“Working class values…”

“I enjoy beef jerky and the comedy stylings of Gallagher. Check.”

His visible cringe at having to say he enjoys Gallagher is wonderful. I first heard about Gallagher through My Brother, My Brother and Me, but for anyone that doesn’t know, Gallagher is a frankly terrible prop comedian whose most famous act was smashing things on stage (usually fruits of increasing size) with a large mallet that he called the “Sledge-O-Matic”, ending with smashing a watermelon. It was apparently a mildly popular bit of comedy in the south. Does that sound entertaining? No? Yeah, that’s…that’s why Brain is cringing so hard.

“A song.”

“Check!”

A song titled “A Song”. Brain, sweetheart, I think you’re going to need to put in a little more effort than that.

“A name consisting of not less than three words.”

“From now on, I shall be ‘Bubba Bo Bob Brain’. Check.”

I would make fun of him for this name, but honestly it’s kind of genius in its bland simplicity.

“And…a height of at least six feet!”

“Aaa--guebuh…”

Whoops. Forgot about that one, huh?

“Drat!”

“There must be some way for me to increase my height…”

Gee, if only you had a fully operational mechanical human suit just laying around.

“Hmm, let me think…”

“Don’t hurt yourself, Pinky.”

He is trying his best!

“Faster, Pinky! Faster!”

…Why does Pinky have to spin the thread? The whole point of sewing machines like this is that they’re powered electrically, Brain. Are you just making him do this so Pinky feels included?

Oh. Oh no…

Brain’s “WTF?” face is great. He’s surprised and yet not at the same time, because things like this just happen when you have Pinky around.

“You amaze me, Pinky.”

“I do my best…”

A very cute exchange.

So instead of using the mechanical human suit they usually fall back on in times like these (maybe it’s under six feet tall?), the mice instead come up with…this.

“Proceed, Pinky.”

I have to give them some credit, regardless of how ridiculous this is, as sewing denim to make a very bizarrely thin and tall pair of jeans must have been an absolute nightmare.

“Ki-yi-yippee-yi-yo. How do I look?”

I’m getting flashbacks to the similarly deadpan singing of “Camptown Races” from last episode. Brain’s really on a western kick lately, isn’t he?

“Oh, very nice, Brain!”

Your finger-framing may be focused on the back of Brain’s head for some reason, Pinky, but your pupils are definitely pointed a bit…lower.

“It’s ‘Bubba Bo Bob Brain’.”

“You are my manager, Colonel Pinky.”

This is a reference to Elvis Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, who was honestly quite the bungler when it came to managing Elvis’ career. I honestly don’t think Brain’s making a subtle jab at Pinky’s competency here for once because Brain’s grasp of pop culture he’s not already interested in is surface level at best most of the time.

“You discovered me playing the guitar on the front porch of my humble pig farm. Any questions?”

“Oh, just one: When you farm humble pigs, how far apart do you have to plant them?”

“…If I could reach you, I would hurt you.”

Hey now, you’re the one that asked, Brain.

“But for now, on to Nashville!”

“On to Nashville!”

BONK!

“This is a pain that is going to linger…”

That’s what you get for rolling your eyes at Pinky’s enthusiasm.

No perilous car trips this time! Instead, the boys are getting bus tickets to Nashville.

“Two tickets to Nashville, please.”

“Ooh-wee!~ You’re a tall drink a’ water, aint’cha, darlin’?”

…Ma’am? Excuse me, ma’am? Ma’am, are you flirting with The Brain?

Like, sorry, that “tall drink of water” saying is not just to point out that someone’s tall. It’s specifically for flirting with someone who is tall and gorgeous and a refreshing sight to see, like a tall glass of water on a hot summer day.

This lady is flirting with a mouse on stilt legs.

I know that Brain’s disguises are prone to inexplicably work even when by all rights they shouldn’t, but…

“Actually, I am a lab mouse on stilts.”

Brain does his usual bold and plain truth shtick and I’m a little surprised that he didn’t react to what she said beyond that. Then again, this is Brain and he’s quite terrible when talking to women in general, so maybe we dodged a bullet here.

“…At least he didn’t ask me to pull his finger.”

I’ve worked in retail and food service for years, ma’am, and if that’s the extent of your experience with unpleasant men, consider yourself lucky.

“EGAD, Bibby-boo-bop-Brain! Round trips are so exciting!”

“It’s ‘Bubba Bo Bob Brain’, Pinky.”

“Right! Sorry. Zort!”

Honestly, Pinky’s version is much cuter.

“Concentrate, Pinky, concentrate!”

BONK!

“YES! This pain will definitely be with me a while.”

Brain out here looking like a bad Minecraft texture.

Hello again, Warner Siblings! Gosh, that little fringed western skirt on Dot is cute.

“’The Rowdy Ranch Nightclub’… What are we doing here, Boobie-baa-baa-Brain?”

I checked the official subtitles for this and yes, that is exactly what he mistakenly calls Brain here. We have had both of these two call each other “boob” or some permutation of it this episode.

Pinky and the Brain sure is a show that exists.

“…It’s ‘Bubba Bo Bob’ Brain. And according to statistics, and inordinate number of country western superstars have gotten their start at this very establishment.”

You probably didn’t need me to tell you this, but there’s no Rowdy Ranch Nightclub in real life. There is, however, “The Rowdy Ranch”, uh, ranch in Texas.

“Egad! [gasp] Do you suppose Minnie Pearl performed here?”

“One can only hope…”

Man, Brain, you are really laying the sarcasm on thick this episode. Come to think of it, he’s been slightly more sassy towards Pinky than usual this episode as well. I suppose he’s still sore about the end of the last one. You know, for reasons.

BONK!

At least he’s getting some karmic punishment for it, I guess.

“I am a telephone repairman from this area!~”

This little ditty this man is singing has bugged the hell out of me for quite a while, as it certainly sounds like it’s a reference to something but I never knew exactly what it was referring to until just now thanks to an old Animaniacs Usenet group from way back in the day: It’s a parody of the song “Whichita Lineman” by Glenn Campbell. The writers are really giving it their all with the pop culture references this time.

“When I give the signal, play the subliminal message tape.”

“Right-o, Bippie Bebop Balloola!”

“…Sometimes you frighten me, Pinky.”

Why, though?! Despite it being a mistake it’s honestly a goddamn adorable one. Why must you fear affectionate, innocent, unknowing malapropisms, Brain? Pinky’s still going to do what you told him to.

Anyway, Brain is ushered onto the stage as a newcomer and he’s…not exactly any more eloquent than Pinky was just now.

“Howdy, you all. Here’s a little…ditty I wrote. Hope you enjoy it…you all.”

Here’s the thing: Brain’s not one to get stage fright, and while he’s not the best actor he’s still usually better than this. He was saying “ya’ll” and getting the country-isms perfectly fine beforehand, although he was still doing it in his deadpan Brain way.

Now, suddenly, after hearing Pinky cutely screw up his fake name and going on stage he’s starting to mess up. It’s like Pinky’s error is still in the back of his mind and flustering him enough to throw him off for a bit.

He gets back into the swing of things when he starts singing his song, though.

“I am a lab mouse, I escaped from my cage

Never had a job, never earned minimum wage.~”

“He ain’t half bad.”

“Ain’t half good, either.”

OUCH. That’s a little harsh. Sure, the lyrics are kinda blah but he’s a decent singer here. Really, it’s just not a genre of music that his voice fits very well.

Also, lady? You’ve got a suspiciously busty doppleganger in the back there. That’s got to be a bad omen for you.

“But you will respect me, YES, once my plan is unfurled!~

You will call me your leader, I’ll be king of the world!~”

Careful, Brain. Your complicated emotional complex is starting to show in those lyrics.

There’s some more nice facial expressions here too. I can’t really capture it with still images, but Brain’s got a very tender demeanor when he sings about being king of the world.

“Now, Pinky!”

…I just noticed that Pinky’s wearing a completely different outfit here at the nightclub than he was when boarding the bus to get to Nashville. He was previously in an all-white colonel outfit and now he’s in a more generic yet very sweet cowboy get-up. Did you make yourself an entire wardrobe, Pinky?

Another minor detail is that while Pinky’s cowboy hat is a generic tan colour (although before, it was white), Brain’s hat is completely black, which as per western film traditions marks him as a clear villain.

You and I know he’s not really a villain and is, at worst, an anti-villain…but I thought this was worth pointing out anyway.

“Citizens of the world, you are under my control. You will do whatever I say.”

I love how he does this completely unneeded strum on his guitar in the middle of his subliminal message. It's for the drama!

“Buy my record and listen to it twenty times a day.”

Corporations be like…

Who am I kidding? Corporations nowadays would have you pay a fee monthly to have a song on your phone playlist and you would never really own a copy.

“Let’s buy his record…”

“And listen to it twenty times a day…”

Lady, that doppleganger is still over there. Do you need a distraction while you sneak out the back?

This smug lil’ jerk. Gotta love him, though.

And so Brain’s cassette tapes fly off the shelves at record speed.

Man. Cassette tapes. I feel so fuckin’ old…

“I don’t know ‘bout ya’ll, but I can’t get enough of Bubba Bo Bob Brain. Let’s hear it again!”

JFC, that spittoon. Blegh! And just what do you need that rope for?!?

“Well, he’s the hottest thing to hit Nashville since my mama’s jalapeno grits! Here’s Bubba Bo Bob Brain!”

Having just recently learned what exactly “grits” is, I am very disturbed by the idea of jalapeno grits.

“I’m your biggest fan! What d’you say to that?”

Hi, Dolly Parton! I’ve gotta say that the animators nailed the caricature of 90s Dolly here pretty well. She’s instantly recognizable, unlike some other celebrity parodies Animaniacs does. It’s not just because of Dolly’s, uh…most renowned physical characteristics, either. That’s a very Dolly Parton smiling face.

Not much to say here other than that Dolly’s a sweetheart of a woman, from what I know about her, especially for a celebrity. She’s a staunch supporter of Covid relief and Black Lives Matter as well.

That said, she’s sadly—both in the 90s and now—most well known for…

“I’d say puberty was inordinately kind to you.”

BRAIN!

Well, yeah. That.

I guess now you can see what I mean about Brain not being very good at talking to women. Like, he’s definitely not ogling her here. In fact he’s just kind of…stating something he’s noticed and looking absolutely done with this whole celebrity thing. But Brain you don’t just make a joke like that about a woman’s bust size no matter how deadpan you do it, you ass!

“Haha, go on.”

She takes it well, though, just like Dolly seems to in reality.

Still, though! Brain, you retroactively deserved all those run-ins with doorframes.

Continuing on the buxom southern women thing this episode has decided to run with (seriously, what’s going on here?), we now have a brief parody of a Hee Haw skit.

“Hahahahaha!”

“Hey, Bubba Bo Bob Brain, I just got back from France!”

“How’d you find it?”

“I used a map.~”

“Hahahahaha!”

Yeah, that’s an accurate depiction of Hee Haw style humour.

“And the Country Tune Award for best male vocal goes to…”

“Bubba Bo Bob Brain!”

Here we have Garth Brooks and Crystal Gayle emceeing this awards ceremony. I had to look up who these two were supposed to be, though, since the caricatures are pretty vague this time.

“EGAD! YIPPEE! Narf! Ah hahahahahaha!”

Aww, he’s so happy for Brain! And oh, is that yet another outfit I see? And a much more appropriately sunshine-y yellow and flamboyant one at that! Pinky really went all-out for this.

Again with the tongue hanging out too, except this time it’s more understandable.

“You’re embarrassing me, Pinky.”

And you’re continuing to be a jerk, wow. Someone needs a nap or something.

“Pardon my effervescence, but your accolade is more than any bucolic mouse merits.”

“What’s he sayin’?”

“I don’t know.”

Yes, Brain just used the word “effervescence”, much like in that one Tumblr Twilight meme. To those reeling from the fact that this compares Edward to Brain via their shared pretentiousness: You’re welcome.

Also, a Brain-to-common English translation: “Pardon my bubbly enthusiasm, but your award is more than any countryside mouse deserves.” Would that have been so hard to say, Brain?

“…I’d like to thank my mama and Elvis.”

I wouldn’t thank Elvis. He was an asshole. But that’s probably not wise to say at a 90s country music award show, so I guess it’s understandable.

“Oh, how nice!”

“Well isn’t that nice!”

“I’m outside the Grand Ol’ Opry, where tonight’s concert featuring country music sensation ‘Bubba Bo Bob Brain’ is being televised worldwide.”

“In two words: Bubba is hot!”

I… That’s twice in this episode where a human woman thinks a tiny, big-headed mouse on stilts is hot.

Furries, come get these poor, confused women.

“You gotta know how to cut ‘em

Know how to shuffle

Know how to deal the cards, before you play Fish with me.~”

Hello, Kenny Rogers. I only know the song parodied here, “The Gambler”, again through “My Brother, My Brother and Me” and the long and hilarious conversation about it.

It’s kind of weird to have a song that was made famous by Rogers in 1978 sung like it’s a recent hit in an early 90s awards show, but ehh. Maybe the shelf life of hit country songs is a lot longer than songs of other genres.

And then you die in your sleep~

“Do you realize what will happen if the world hears my song just one more time?”

“An angel will get its wings?!”

If only, Pinky.

“NO, Pinky!”

I think all this country stuff is really getting on Brain’s nerves. He’s being snappy and irritable and lashing out an abnormal amount ever since arriving in Nashville, and there’s not a lot of joy in the minor successes he’s had so far. Like, compare Brain smiling and praising Pinky for his work during the alien encounter spoof they did together, the last episode with Brain cheerfully singing to himself when he was certain he’d win the race…to now where he’s yelling at Pinky for minor mistakes that no one but himself is aware of and being joyless and faking pleasantries and rolling his eyes at the country stars he’s surrounded by. This mouse is crabby as all hell, and I don’t think it’s just because he finds the whole country western thing stupid and below him. This is a mouse who’s done and will continue to do degrading things to achieve his goal of world domination without this much jerkishness.

I think he’s still fuming about the whole Pharfignewton and Pinky thing, and the current plan being a very rural, country-focused plan like the last one with the Kentucky Derby is just exacerbating it by reminding him of it. Like, you don’t even have to take it in the gay way I am and instead take it in a “how dare that goddamn horse take the complete attention of my friend/world domination partner away from me and my plans, this sucks and I can’t believe Pinky’s just being his usual dumbass self like everything is fine and the same” sort of way.

But the gay way makes way more sense, fight me.

…Okay, don’t fight me, I’m tired and old and I really don’t want to get in internet fights about cartoon mice.

“My subliminal message will take permanent hold, and the world will be under my control!”

Ooof! We’re back down to “my” control and not “our”. Jeez, Brain. You really are spiraling right now, aren’t you? Your attitude has quickly devolved from the beginning of this episode...

“Oh, that.”

And dang, even Pinky’s enthusiasm is starting to get deflated.

“Now, do you remember what you have to do?”

“Yes. I need to make a dental appointment. I have horrible plaque buildup!”

Pinky, you do realize that unlike a regular, non-sapient mouse you can just brush your teeth, right?

“The tape, Pinky, the TAPE!”

“Oooh, right! When you give the signal, I play the tape.”

“And now, I’d like to introduce…”

“This is it, I’m on.”

“Good luck, Booba Bip Bop Brain!”

Folks, I swear to you that I tried to get a decent screencap of Pinky slapping Brain to figure out if he slapped his back or his ass and for the life of me I could not get it. The slap goes by just that fast and I’d honestly have to go frame by frame if I wanted to get it, but my video player will not go that slow.

Either way, Brain is certainly startled by the contact but is fixated more on the continued mangling of his fake name.

“How many times do I have to tell you, my name is--!”

Uhh, Brain? Getting a liiiittle close there.

“—Bubba Bo Bob Brain!” exclaims Kenny Rogers. And oh boy are these screencaps exploitable. Again, you’re welcome.

“Yee-haw! Let’s start this hootenanny!”

Better than last time you came out on stage to sing at a show, at least.

This time the crowd even sings along with him, and they’re not even hypnotized yet. Much better.

“Now, Pinky!”

“You are under my control, you will do whatever I say…”

“I will do whatever he says… Whatever he says… Whatever he says… Whatever he says…”

A confusingly consistent detail here: Every woman in the crowd has swirly red hypnotized eyes and every man in the crowd has swirly green hypnotized eyes. Why? Who knows!

“Way to go, Blubber Boo Bean Brain. Narf!”

Heh, that hand flip.

It looks like Pinky is trying hard to suppress his verbal tic here for some reason? Or maybe he’s just realized that he’s messed up the name again and is cringing in anticipation of Brain yelling at him? Either way, poor guy… You really don’t deserve any of what’s coming.

And what’s coming? Well, given Brain’s heightened pissy attitude and his mental issues with not having things go exactly the way he wants them to, plus his obsessive need this episode to correct Pinky on this one thing that doesn’t need to even be addressed because no one else hears it, plus other repressed emotions…

“Do me a favour and forget my name. While you’re at it, forget you ever knew me!”

Holy shit.

…Now you fucked up, Brain. Now you fucked up.

Man, I hate the one thick facial hair on the dude in the middle. It’s so unsettling.

“Hey, who’s that skinny guy on stage?”

“Who is he?”

“Get him off!”

“Boo!”

“We wanna see someone famous!”

Yup. Look at what you did. You messed this up all because you were having a temper tantrum about Pinky messing up your stupid false name. You hang that head in shame. And you apologize to Pinky.

Later...

“Tonight’s inside story: A complete unknown somehow made it on to the stage at the Grand Ol’ Opry.”

“…Turn that off, Pinky.”

You know what? Keep it on for a bit, Pinky. Let Brain wallow in this humiliation just a bit more. He needs to have the lesson set in.

“I’m trying to concentrate on a better plan for tomorrow night.”

“Why, Brain? What are we going to do tomorrow night?”

“Same thing we do every night, Pinky:”

“Try to take over the world!”

Hey wait just a minute! You can’t just reuse this excellent ending from “Win Big” on this episode! Brain doesn’t yet deserve to get back to being cocky and determined after being such an ass!

Ahh well. He does get better, folks, I promise. This is just a rough patch. Brain is… He’s going through some things, I think. He’s not processing his emotions in a healthy way and it’s really coming back to bite him.

Listen, I understand this whole thing with Brain being extra grumpy and hostile after the whole Pinky dating Pharfignewton thing is largely coincidence. We don’t actually know what order these episodes were made in, after all, and the Animaniacs writers were not big on continuity.

Here’s the thing, though: I still find it fascinating that these episodes were aired one after the other…especially with a random cameo with Pinky and Brain disguised as a married couple in between. It makes for the beginning of a strange sort of arc that occasionally reminds us that, hey, these two mice are a duo and something is amiss when that duo is broken up or there is a strain put on that relationship.

I’ve read that after a while, network executives at the time tried to push for these mice to settle down and have families and for the skits and the eventual spin-off to largely abandon the whole world domination thing. They wanted it to be more sitcom-like to rival and imitate shows like The Simpsons.

That obviously doesn’t work. It can’t work. The writers, especially Peter Hastings, very much pushed back against the idea. When you have a duo of characters who fit together and play off one another so well, when the basic premise of a story is of a pair of characters working together to achieve a goal, and when those characters just mesh so perfectly and basically complete one another…trying to add another main character just puts the entire story completely out of wack and/or changes it into something unrecognizable. You can add reoccurring characters off to the side, sure. You can have a nemesis or two pop up and return every now and again. But with something like Pinky and the Brain where the main story is a small pair against incredible odds working towards a singular goal, disrupting that core relationship is going to cause a domino effect that will ruin the whole thing.

All this to say that I like this approach that’s going on here much more, even if it was completely unintended by the creative team: There is the element added of Pinky, off-screen, dating someone. It’s not something that’s brought up a lot and whenever it is brought up, Brain is irritated. We’ve seen at the end of the last episode where this development was introduced that Brain is unusually snappy, and now in the next episode he continues to be angry more often than he was before. It’s a more subtle and smooth way of seeing how these characters react if something or someone threatens to come between them, in a way that doesn’t immediately break the entire premise to pieces. Of course, it helps that Pharfignewton is…largely absent for all this and is only brought up every now and again. It’s not a perfect way to explore this kind of thing, but it’s preferable when compared to something like Pinky, Elymra, and The Brain.

However, after this episode Brain’s temper begins to de-escalate, and we won’t pick back up on this accidental “arc” for a few episodes. So to folks who are maybe a little bit bummed out about his behaviour here: don’t worry. We’re getting quite the breather next time with a very odd alternate universe skit courtesy of the Warner Siblings  messing around with character placement, as well as an entire Animaniacs episode devoted to a Pinky and the Brain skit…fantasy style!

#Pinky and the Brain #PatB #Bubba Bo Bob Brain

[flutteringphalanges]

             Night of the Living Dead (And Then Some)

Summary: It’s 1897 and the world as we know it has become overrun by zombies. An unlikely pair, a former nun by the name of Agatha Van Helsing, and a bloodthirsty vampire, Count Dracula, have formed an alliance in the hopes of surviving this debacle. Can the two learn to coexist or will they end up as just another mindless cog in life’s maniacal wheel?

Ship: Dragatha

Rating: M

Chapters: 1/2

Read on FFN and AO3

A/N:  An odd two part one shot that came to my mind. I wanted to do something Halloween-ish. I guess in a way this is a parody because it is Dracula and there are also zombies?! Anyway, hope you like hope it turned out! -Jen

                                                    Part One

Surprisingly, he hadn’t taken notice of the damn thing until her arrow nearly took him out. Dracula watched as the undead beast faltered briefly before falling still on the ground. Right in the center of the forehead. She was getting good. Perhaps too good. Nostrils flaring slightly, he rounded about to face her.

“That could’ve easily hit me.” He attempted to argue as Agatha strode forward to pluck her prized arrow from the corpse. “What if I had moved just a bit? That weapon of yours could’ve struck my heart.” 

“And then I would have one less problem on my hands.” She replied simply, not so much as giving him the benefit of a look. “I knew what I was doing. If it hadn’t been for me, it would’ve gotten you and Lord knows what would happen if you were to get bit. There aren’t exactly many vampires about that we’ve seen cases of.”

“Must you bring God into this?” Dracula sighed, running a hand through his hair. “What do you want me to say, Agatha? Thank you?”

“That would be rather nice.” She sighed, cleaning off the grimy arrow. “But I have a feeling that I’m not going to get such a response from you. You are, as one might claim, a bit pig-head.”

“Pig headed?!” The vampire let out a humorless laugh. “Pig headed?! Why how your insults have grown since our first encounter, Agatha. If anyone is pig headed, it’s you for insisting we go to Brasov--which, I’ll inform you, was very overrun!” 

“Everywhere is overrun, Dracula.” The former nun sighed, finally turning to look at the man. “Romania, Holland...it’s like a cesspit of flesh eating monsters that, well…” She paused for a moment. “Make you seem like a mere mosquito.” 

The vampire’s eyes narrowed as the woman tossed her bow over her shoulder. Sometimes a small part of him felt the urge to end her right there. It would be so easy. But the bigger part refrained from that. Perhaps if he could read her mind at this very moment, she too felt the same way. Bickering was always better than dead. It was a good reminder to them both. 

“Come on.” Agatha’s voice pulled him from his thoughts. “It’ll be daylight soon and the last thing I need is for you to burn into a crisp.”

“If I’m not mistaken, I could’ve sworn you said  you’d have one less problem without me.” Dracula countered with a smirk. 

“The idea is becoming more tempting.” The woman replied with a huff. “Now come on, there is no telling what awaits us.” She gave a nod with her head. “This way then.” 

The memory was still very vivid in his mind as he was sure it was in Agatha’s. The night he slaughtered every nun in St. Mary’s Convent but her. How the woman gave up her freedom, her life without a second thought in order to save meek, little Mina Murray. He’d had plans for Agatha. Devilish desires involving her blood. And in a way, perhaps she thought that somehow she could take advantage of him. Oh how the fates change when Death knocks at your door. A new side of unrest that he hadn’t seen in his several centuries of life. 

“I don’t know about you, but I am quite parched.” Dracula said, breaking the long silence. “I haven’t had a human since...well...does tasting you count?” “You’ve survived years without drinking, I’m sure you can continue on just fine.” Agatha said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve been drinking river water and consuming squirrels and you don’t see me complaining. You don’t have to worry about dysentery.” 

“I suppose having you become ill and me carrying for you would put a damper on our little excursion.” He smiled when he saw the glare on Agatha’s face. “What do you suppose would happen if I were bit? If I were to become “undead” undead? Would it reverse the process? Would I be human again? Or would I be a raging animal the likes of which this world has never seen?”

“I’d prefer not to think about either of us getting bit.” The former nun expressed. “We’ve seen what happens. How they turn. It isn’t pleasant.” There was a brief pause before she added. “...If I were to be bitten, I would highly appreciate if you would kill--”

Dracula stopped in his tracks and turned to face his partner. “Your death--at least in the way you are proposing it, isn’t at the top of my list.” No, losing her in that matter was not certain. “You will remain alive, Agatha...at least until I deem it otherwise.” 

“Your version of being undead is only slightly less repulsive.” Agatha exclaimed, shaking her head. “Now hurry along, we’re losing nighttime.” 

“Always so eager and demanding.” The vampire tutted with a smirk. “I have yet to decide exactly how I feel about that with you.” 

The former nun merely rolled her eyes once more, a small smile gracing her features. “My complexity is one of my more charming qualities.” Her gaze flashed up to the full moon. “Perhaps there will come a day where you decide. Or not.” Agatha’s attention turned to the vampire, a look of amusement crossing her face. “And maybe, if you are lucky, I’ll look forward to your answer.” 

“Perhaps.” The Count agreed. “Until then, it seems we are left to put up with each other.” 

A low growl came from within the bushes nearby. Agatha and Dracula turned to see a creature stumbling out from the brush. His skin, just like his clothing, dangled in rags as he hobbled over to the two. Without so much as a second thought, the vampire produced his treasure saber and brought it swiftly through the zombie’s head. Even after centuries of going untouched. Years of battle it’d been in. The Count’s weapon of choice was rather practical--even if it wasn’t as secretly impressive as Agatha’s bow.

“A clean hit.” The former nun noted. “You’re improving.”

Dracula let out a laugh. “As if you know anything about true combat.”

“I was raised by Abraham Van Helsing.” She countered, folding her arms. “And I know you well enough to know that my grandfather was quite skilled.”

“He was no warlord.” Dracula commented, cocking one of his brows. “Now, while I’d love to have a friendly duel with you, I’d rather not run into any more of our acquaintance’s friends. As you were saying, we are losing time. Best keep moving.” 

And Agatha was not one to argue with that. 

                                                       XXX

Cold. Dark. Musky. The dilapidated hunting shed they’d come across at least didn’t stream a single beam of light in. Agatha didn’t know why she agreed to this. Her clothes being used as a means to cover the floor. Protect her from splinters. As Dracula’s pale, naked body moved against her’s, the only warmth she felt was from his cape underneath her bottom. Fucking the vampire was hot in the word sense, but icy from his touch.

“Just a nibble…” He purred into her ear, teeth lightly grazing her earlobe. “It won’t hurt.”

“I said...no to biting…” Agatha panted, her back arching as the pad to one of his thumbs ran across her hard nipple. “Rules.” “Rules are for sheep and conformists.” Dracula growled, his hand sliding down to just barely rest on her groin. He smiled as she stiffened knowing she was throbbing deep inside. Aching for him. “Last time I checked you were far from that, Agatha.” 

“If you can’t control yourself, then I am more than happy to stop.” She offered, earning her a dark glare. She knew he was already hard. Cock pressed against her inner thigh. This wasn’t the first time they’d had this debate during sex and it wouldn’t be the last. “I’m not your bottle of wine, Count Dracula. No biting or no sex.” 

“You are a temptress.” He grumbled, his mouth set in a look of displeasure. “A tease.”

“I am merely the apple on the tree in The Garden of Eden and you are both Eve and the snake. You are your worst enemy.” She chuckled at her own analogy knowing well enough that her comparison to religion was not looked kindly upon by the vampire. “Isn’t my touch enough?”

She let her fingers travel down to where his cock rested against her. Dracula had been the first and only man she’d ever been with. Every sexual experience had been with him. And despite what she at first thought it’d be like, she loved it. Craved it. Especially when she whittled him down to his last nerve. Agatha gingerly touched his head, feeling the droplets weep from their prison. Over four centuries old and with just a few decades herself, she could still make him squirm. 

“With you, nothing is ever enough.” He said through a breathy whisper. “Never. Never. Ever.” And without a warning, he pushed a finger deep inside Agatha causing her to yelp with surprise. So wet. Two could play at that game. “There is a vein that runs down the length of your inner thigh that is particularly delightful.” Dracula explained, kissing the former nun hard. “It would be nice for the both of us.” 

“You’re a pig.” Agatha gasped as the vampire touched her sensitive spot. There were stars and her vision blurred. Dracula seemed to realize this too and probed the area thoughtfully. She struggled to speak. “Stop it!” Don’t stop. Keep going. Faster. “I...I could...scream…”

“Worried about the undead in a time like this?” Dracula snorted. “My dearest Agatha, I believe you could shout as loudly as you desired and no one would hear. And I quite like that idea.” He could feel her hand grip tighter around his cock as if in response. It took everything in him to hold it together. “If you won’t give me your blood, at least let me hear you cry out my name. You owe me that much.” 

Agatha gazed up at him with fury, but lustful blue eyes. He was winning this one. She hated when that happened. Though they were still shrouded in darkness, the former nun could still make out the glint of his smile as her hand released him and he positioned himself at her entrance. She bit down hard on her lower lip. Not because she anticipated the pain. No. She anticipated the pleasure and what was to come. 

Dracula was rather unpredictable when it came to his part in sex. He could be soft, almost caring and considerate. Loving. Or he could fuck so hard that Agatha’s head was left spinning and she had bruises the next day. And if she were to be quite frank, she didn’t have a favorite. The vampire was always so good. So damn fantastic that with every thrust Agatha felt herself shaking deep from within her very core. Part of her wondered if there was a possibility she could become pregnant. It hadn’t happened yet, and they’d had quite a lot of sex. Still, it was always on the forefront of her mind when his seed spilled inside her. 

“Say my name.”

The commanding voice pulled her from her thoughts and Agatha was dragged from the whimsical land of euphoria and to the wooden, shed floor. Dracula leaned over her, his lips curved into a smile. The former nun reached out and wound an arm around his neck to steady herself. She knew that he had her. He always did. But it helped. 

“Say mine first.” 

The words escaped out as a moan which did not help Agatha’s case. She was growing close to her climax, and Dracula could tell. His thrusts began to quicken, deepen as she buried her face into the crook of his neck. Then without thinking, she bit down on the vampire’s skin. That immediately stopped the man in his tracks. 

“Did you just...bite me?” He asked breathlessly, grinning widely. “Oh, Agatha…”

There were no marks. Of course there wouldn’t be. But she was so caught up in the moment. Suddenly, it dawned on her as they lay there still in the throes of passion. A silly little thought that made her smile too. 

“You.” She gasped out. “You said my name.”

“What?” Dracula interjected. “But I...that doesn’t count…”

“Still said it…” Agatha smirked, chest rising and following. “I win.” 

“Oh, we will see about that.” The vampire chuckled darkly. “I’m just getting started.” 

                                                   XXX

Though he’d said her name, Agatha had finished first. Twice even before Dracula met his limit. They fell back on their makeshift bed of clothing that they’d be putting on later. Her head resting on his chest, the woman watched the door quietly. Though she felt sleepy as the adrenaline rush began to fade, a part of her wanted to stay awake. But she knew how important it was to remain diligent. Especially at night. 

“Romania has fallen to whatever caused this plague.” Dracula said softly. “And we don’t know where else it has stretched. Perhaps there's a chance it’s only here.”

“And Holland.” Agatha reminded solemnly. “We’ve been roaming around aimlessly. Seen less and less humans.” She was silent for a moment before she craned her head up to meet his stare. “I do realize how it affects you.”

His fingers ran down the base of her skull and followed the path of her spine. She closed her eyes as he stroked her back. It was soothing, though the conversation at hand was not. If humans were going to become like an endangered species, then what of Dracula? After everything she was taught. Everything she’d seen. Agatha knew deep down her feelings for the vampire weren’t right. But even deeper down she didn’t care. Not in the least bit. 

“I have a proposition.” Dracula said after a moment’s thought. “And I have thought about this quite a bit. Much longer than this disease has been going on and much, much longer than my meeting you.” 

Agatha sat up from where she lay. “What might that be?”

“England.” Dracula said simply, sitting up as well. “Where we’d go in England, it’d be more advanced than the villages we’ve gone to. Perhaps the virus isn’t there or even better, they have a cure. It is better than nothing.” 

“England.” Agatha repeated as if she heard him right. “But we don’t even have a ship. That’s at least a few weeks' sail from the coast to the bay. How do you expect us to get there?” The expression on his face said it all. “...Is there no other way?” Not telling him no. Not forbidding him. It was as if in desperation she was accepting of the terms. “Is it the only way to be done?”

“Blood is lives, Agatha.” Dracula said, expression still. “Information. If we want to get across then I’m going to need the blood of someone who understands sailing among other things. Someone healthy--or at least not riddled with disease.” He touched her hand, surprised she didn’t pull away. “I’ll take only what I need.” The Count promised. 

“And what if there are no survivors at the port?” The former nun whispered. “What if they’ve all turned?”

“Then we keep going.” The vampire sighed, leaning back. “You should get some rest. It’ll be a long journey to the port if memory serves correct. I’ll take watch.”

“You took the first watch last time.” Agatha countered, sitting up straighter. “And if you know where we are going, then you should be the one with the clear mind.” Dracula opened his mouth to interject, but she continued. “I’ll be fine. Trust me. I’ll wake you up in a few hours. Besides, I am considerably more accurate with killing the creatures than you are with that ridiculous saber. You needn’t be so close with a bow.”

“Ah, you say that now but wait until those flimsy things split in two and your string breaks. Then you’ll be wishing you were brandishing reliable steel.” Dracula chortled. “Honestly, of all the weapons to choose from…”

“Go to sleep you warmonger.” Agatha snorted, resting a hand on his head as he lowered himself down. “There will be other times to debate weapons. Get some rest.” 

“Wake me if anything happens.” The vampire said with sudden alertness. “I am not playing, Agatha. At any immediate threat of danger, you must wake me up. Even if the sun has yet to set.” 

“You have my word.” The woman promised as the Count���s body relaxed. “Sleep.”

                                                    XXX

Agatha didn’t wake Dracula up after a few hours. Instead, when she was sure the sun was setting just enough as to not be so bright, she covered the vampire’s body as not to expose it and slipped outside. She inhaled deeply, enjoying what little light was left. She missed the day--though she kept that knowledge from Dracula. It was harder at night. Finding food. Water. But the few times she could escape. Sneak out without him worrying--those were good times. 

Thunk!

The partridge didn’t even see the arrow before it pierced straight through its body. It was an instant kill, one Agatha wished for every living thing she killed--maybe, if she thought hard about it, she’d feel the same about the undead. Picking up the decent sized fowl, she couldn’t help but admire it. After a good plucking and cooking, this would last her a few days. Especially if she could come across some salt and preserve it. Now that would be true luck. 

As Agatha walked over to what had perhaps once been a sort of fire pit, she took a seat down in the ground. Yank off handfuls of feathers, her mind kept wandering back to Dracula. His own need for food. Something he hadn’t been as fortunate to get. And maybe he deserved it. After all of the evil he caused, maybe this was fate’s punishment. But Agatha’s judgement, though questionable, began to consider something that maybe was pushing the bounds of her sanity even more.

Abandoning the bird for the time being, she made her way back into their temporary housing. Dracula was still fast asleep--he was odd like that, how deeply or not his slumbering was. Retrieving one of the jars she used for water, she returned outside. There truly was no means to prepare her hand for what she planned. Nothing to clean it with--she was out of water. But taking her arrow, the blood from the bird now smeared down her pant’s leg, she sliced her palm wide open and held it over the jar. 

It burned. Ached. Maybe she’d gone too far. Too deep. And as her blood flowed, she half expected Dracula to be roused from his sleep and attack her simply because he was in such dire need of the crimson fluid. But instead, everything was still silent. She bit her lip, her eyes pricked with tears as the bleeding thankfully began to stop on its own. A good sign that maybe she had injured herself too horribly. Careful not to spill a drop, she tore off a piece of her sleeve and bound her cut hand.

If there was to be a good deed done, this would certainly qualify for Agatha. That was, at least for today. 

                                                     XXX

“Well out of all outcomes, I certainly didn’t expect this!”

Agatha’s nostrils flared as Dracula, though his eyes burned that frightening shade of black with hunger, did not take the jar immediately from her. Instead, he stared at her hand looking equally as upset. When he reached out to take it, she yanked it back almost tempted to spill the blood all over the floor. 

“Well out of all the outcomes, Agatha, I can’t say I expected you to slice your hand open for me!” He tried to grab for it again, this time managing to catch her wrist. “Let me see it. Did you even try to clean it?” 

“Why can’t you just drink the blood?” Agatha sighed as he studied the wound. “I was trying to be nice. You talk about being oh so thirsty all of the time and craving me during sex. Well, this is what you want, yes? A true taste of me?”

“Not when it involves you injuring yourself!” The Count let out a dramatic huff. “You’re lucky this isn’t too terribly deep. As I recall, you need both hands for your weapon. We’ll have to watch it and make sure it doesn’t get infected.” The vampire shook his head. “And you went behind my back and took my sleep shift.” 

“I was enjoying the daylight!” Agatha hissed, now getting annoyed. “And I caught myself something to eat! I didn’t have to rely on someone else! Not to mention be appreciative of it!” She slid the jar over, watching Dracula’s Adam's apple bob as he swallowed the liquid whishing within. 

Then, without another word, Dracula lifted up the cup and gulped down the contents in less than a second. When he set it down, his eyes fixed on Agatha and a chill ran down her spine. Cold. Hungry. Lack of recognition. She could hear the vampire’s breathing becoming heavier as he moved closer. Was this it then? Had she given him a wine tasting that led to the draining of the whole bottle. 

“D...Dracula?”

Her voice was soft, shaking as she scooted backwards. She looked around the room for any sort of weapon in arm’s reach. Conveniently, his saber was on the opposite wall to her and the bow and arrows were out of sight. Agatha swallowed and tried to remain calm. If this was truly the end, she’d rather it’d be by his doing than that of one of those creatures. Instinctively her eyes closed as he loomed over her, the former nun waiting for his attack when a pair of arms pulled her in. 

“I’m sorry.” His voice was gruff, breathing more labored than intense. “I’m okay…” 

Agatha looked up only to come face to face with Dracula. She could see her own blood smeared across his lips, smelled it's strange rusty scent. How that was appetizing to the vampire, she did not know. 

“I thought…” She began, quite unsure what to say. “After you drank my blood, I thought that you would…” 

“Given our current circumstances, my ability to remain in control might be a little rustier than I thought.” He gave her a small smirk. “I suppose it was a good thing that I didn’t bite you during sex. Could’ve led to a less than pleasurable end.” He was silent for a moment. “Thank you. For your blood. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.” Agatha said simply. “I wanted to.”

“And I must say, you are quite gifted with your weapon abilities.” The vampire said with a small smile. “Abraham, though we had our...differences...trained you well. Though, I have to admit you were pretty talented with that Pattern 1853 Enfield of his. Where did it come across a rifle-musket like that? Couldn’t have been easy, especially due to the legality of it.”

“I think we should make a new rule now that you’ve consumed by blood.” Agatha said, folding her arms over her chest. “You don’t bring up any details you’ve received from my blood--unless, of course, I offer them up in conversation.”

“Pity.” Dracula said, letting out a fake, long sigh. “I have so many.” 

“You should have thought about that beforehand.” The former nun exclaimed. “Questions that go unanswered can be such a bother.”

“Like an ex nun wielding a gun better than the average soldier.” The vampire replied, with a small, lopsided grin. 

“Careful.” Agatha warned. “I might’ve not had practice in a few years, but I am rather sure that if I were to pick up a said rifle of my choice, my aim would be fairly decent.” She exhaled, running a hand through her hair. “You should finish dressing. The sun has set enough for us to leave.”

Though she knew that their decision was the right one, part of Agatha didn’t want to leave the shack. Despite how messy and unkempt it was, it had proven to be safe. But staying anywhere too long, they had learned, didn’t always end up so. The former nun exhaled and glanced towards the rotting door and tried to push past what horrors awaited them. 

                                                     XXX

“La naiba!” Dracula cursed in his native tongue as he peered over the hill. “Trebuie să glumești…” 

“Maybe speak in English?” Agatha said from his side. “Ik spreek een klein beetje Nederland.” She hoped that her attempt at light humor would cause him to smile, but the serious expression did not leave his face. “What is it?” 

“A horde.” He hissed under his breath. “By the main entrance into the shipyard.” 

“Can you tell how many?” She replied, straining her eyes. Agatha could see movement from down below, but not much else. “...Do you think there is anyone even alive?” 

“At least ten.” Dracula answered, trying to hide the defeat in his tone. “And I don’t know. Not with a group like that lurking about. And who knows how many are separated from the main herd? We could try to kill them and then look around.” He turned to meet Agatha’s stare. “I am far as one can be from a man of prayer and I know you are unique in your beliefs, but we could really use one of your mystique rituals...without a cross would be appreciated.” His attempt at a failed joke. 

“We’ve come all this way.” Agatha said, moving to grab her bow. “We might as well try.” A small grin flickered across her features. “I should’ve taken the gun from my grandfather. My brother never learned to shoot anyway.” 

Together, as quietly as they could, Dracula and Agatha slid down the hill. As they moved towards the horde, other zombies began to amble out from abandoned buildings. Their moves were quick, swift in killing the creatures before they could alert the others. When they drew nearer, the vampire grabbed the former nun by the forearm and pulled her in close. 

“Fall back a little and find higher ground. That way you can aim better. I’ll be fine down here.” She didn’t seem so keen on the idea as he placed a kiss on her lips. “Go. Now.” 

Agatha’s footfalls were soft against the dirt ground. When she stopped in her tracks, she glanced around at the sight before her. How could anyone be left alive after this? It was then she saw a pile of rubble against a collapsed building. Perfect. But just as Agatha approached her access point, she was caught off guard by a zombie. The creature made a grab for her and knocked her flat on her back. The former nun struggled, gritting her teeth as she shoved it off. With a powerful smack, she struck it with an arrow through the head. The thing fell limp and the woman scrambled to her feet. 

Heart still pounding, Agatha shook her head and looked towards the direction of the horde. Dracula hadn’t seen what had just occurred and for that she was thankful. Refocusing on the house, she made her way to the debris and scrambled up. It was then she realized that while the vampire had a point about her having a higher shooting range, making him out in the midst of the ravage was too risky. He wouldn’t be happy about it, but he damn well needed her if he didn’t want to end up...something other than his usual “undead”. 

“Agatha!” Dracula snapped in surprise as a zombie’s head collided with his shoe. “What the hell are you doing?!” “Saving you!” The woman declared, aiming her bow towards one of the creatures. “Clearly you need it.” 

“I told you to go up somewhere high!” He insisted, lobbing off another head. “For once can you listen to me?!”

“You forget I don’t have night vision!” Agatha hissed, hitting a zombie straight between the eyes. “I don’t know why you worry so much about me. I--”

She didn’t realize the thing was behind her until it sunk its rotten teeth deep into her forearm. Agatha cried out in a mixture of shock and horror as blood spurted from the wound. Almost instantly the creature’s head lay at her feet, the horde now completely destroyed. A look of horror was etched across Dracula’s face. One she had never seen before. The former nun grabbed her injury tightly, her heart banging so hard that her chest ache.

Christ, she’d really screwed up.

I hope you enjoyed part one (of two)! I know it is a different kind of story! Dracula was saying in Romanian: “Dammit” and “You must be kidding” while Agatha said in Dutch: “I speak a little bit of the Netherlands (or Dutch).” Anyway, feedback is greatly loved and appreciated! Motivation helps so much! Until the next part! Stay safe and healthy! -Jen

#Dracula #Dragatha #Dracula 2020 #Agatha Van Helsing #Dracula x Agatha #BBC Dracula #Dracula on Netflix #Night of the Living Dead (And Then Some)

[ambrial-blog]

Love is complexed. Blitzo is fighting his inner demons.

His inner demons are unwilling to let Blitzo wake up to fight against the agents who kidnapped him.

They appear to gather around the long, winding staircase, not allowing Blitzo to ascend as they stood their ground against an idolized version of Stolas. Whose manacled golden chain comes to clasp around his neck.

Long after Dealing with the agents of D.O.R.H.K.S, Moxie and the gang bring Blitzo to the human world hospital hoping to wake him. It was their only option. Stolas carries the crimson Imp into the hospital. His eyes are glowing red. He is inconsolable and fueled with murderous rage.   he made sure the Blitz was comfortable in the hospital bed, he disappears out the window,  for once not caring about his status as he went on a murderous rampage, cutting anyone down who looks at him twice.  Searching for the remaining two cooky agents he had thought nothing of -but now, was the only thing he could think of.  Unsure of how he could help, his little Imp.

With the help of Stella, Striker appears at the hospital. Nightfall. He sneaks past Millie and Moxie, who were curled up on a couch waiting for news about their boss.  And is halted by a night nurse, who asks if he would like to see him, unwilling to turn him away.  Believing Striker to be his husband from the pictures of the harvest moon festival she saw when she seized the patient’s wallet to get to know him better.

Loony stiffens upon seeing the snake imp approach. He aims the gun at her head.  as Loony growls, her body covering Blitz. Striker’s arm moves back to his side. gritting his teeth. knowing something like this would happen.

The Cowboy talks to Blitz, surprising the hellhound. As the nightmare version digs his claws into Blitz. Striker is by his side, stroking his hand with his thumb.

Loony growls as Striker disconnects the machines. Lifting Blitzo into his arms, he walks out of the room; Only to be thrown into the wall by a well-placed roundhouse kick by Loony.

They don’t have what he needs here growls the Cowboy. Aiming his gun and firing. Loony dodges and the wrangler keeps firing his arms, tightening around the boss.

A bullet buries itself into Loony’s leg, embedding into her. She howls in pain. As Striker gets up, kicking her in the face. He points the blessed revolver at her face, a snarl pulling at his lips.

Blitzo's body jerks, but he cannot wake up.

There are tears in his eyes. But no matter how hard he tries. They keep dragging him further and further away into a muddy nightmare.

Fizzuroli has him wrapped up in his expandable arms.

No one will ever love you like I love you, BlitzO!

Verosika has a vice-like grasp over his hips, her head over his chest.

“Why do you push away the ones you love, BlitzO! I LOVED YOU, BLITZ-O!

. A dark chuckle emits from somewhere behind him as Striker appears; his hand caresses the back of his horn. Shudder races down his back Striker stood behind him as a golden manacled chain tugs at his neck. The owl Prince winds it around his clenched fists.

But is stopped by three entities unwilling to let go.

Willing to fight for what was theirs.

“You filthy blue blood, he ain’t going anywhere with you, he is staying here, this is where he belongs growls Striker. Draping an arm around Blitzo’s shoulders.

“You need to wake up Blitzy. This is all a hallucination. Speaks Stolas.

Your daughter is in trouble, my little Imp.

Striker wiped the blood from his pistol.

Loony was lying in a puddle of her own blood.

A bullet buried deep in her side.

Her body shakes and quivers as her lifeblood spills onto the floor.

She sees her father.  

Fear swells in her gut as she claws at the floor, dragging her limp body towards her comatose Imp.  Striker stood over him with a dripping syringe.

“What did you do! She accused, blood dripping from her mouth. As she crawls across the boss imp to protect him.

He has a fighting chance to wake up. What the fuck did you just give him? she gargled.

There was something different about this Striker, something terrifyingly nightmarish.

You’re going to go through me to get to him, she growls, rising to her feet. Standing over Blitzo, she let her chain blade fall and clank to the ground, a vicious snarl on her lips.

You’ll get him over my dead body!

Striker’s eyes widened in surprise as she brought her weapon down. He moves to the side, whips his tail. She snaps her jaws at the long appendage throws him into the door.

Striker buries the nuzzle of his gun into Blitzo’s side, stopping Loona in her tracks.

This ends now, little girl, he growls, his eyes swirling with insanity- so long as he is fighting- in here he taps Blitzo’s head-. he  still has a fighting chance out here.  

but this place is unsettling.

I’m taking him back to wrath, finding that Grimoire and shredding its pages through the nine rings of hell! But you had to fight me on this. Blitz isn’t yours- he is ours. The floor moved out from underneath her.  As The walls warped and ooze mud; the hospital crumbling away before her eyes.

And that’s when Loony saw him- dressed in his boss’ attire.

Blitzo- twisted in Fizzourli’s arms.  Verosika Mayday, clinging to his hips a hand resting in his open shirt. While Striker’s face buried into the crook of his neck, his teeth scraping across candy apple flesh.  A golden manacled chain around his neck.

Blitzo can’t turn away, feeling Striker slide a knee between his legs. A bloody throne.

Twisted and bent owl feathers lay scattered across the floor.

Blitzo cannot look at his daughter. His eyes are glued onto the horrific scene of molted feathers and the mutilated body of Prince Stolas.  

Who was unsuccessful in waking his little Imp.

A bullet whizzes in the air Verosika screams as it buries itself into her spine. The succubus’s hands slip away as Fizzourli’s grip tightens.

From the lurking shadows, a tail fizzes as a pair of glowing green eyes pierce right through him.

Loony stumbles back, clutching her side, as a burning pain rips through her body and drops to her knees.

This was too much, too fast.

Her head twisted back and forth.

There were two of them, but one was from the hospital. Which one did  Loony need to take down?

Striker’s tail coils sliding up Blitzo’s shirt, rubbing at his chest. Blitz gasps, falling to his knees as Fizzourli’s slid down his pants, twisting around his upper thigh. Blitzo bows his head, trying to catching his breath. His body burns as the Outlaw’s clawed hand reaches up to cover his eyes.

Fizzouroli’s hand caresses his chest as he takes Verosika’s place.

Another bullet rips from the looming shadows. Ricocheting off the stairs, followed by a fizzing sound of a rattler as it pierces the heart on Fizzouroli’s head, the jester crumples to the ground. His arms, spiraling outwards, lay limp at his side. A smoldering hole in his head.

Blitzo fights, his mouth running dry as Fizzourli’s tail slides out of his pants, the dead jester’s eyes staring back at him, laughing maniacally.

His mouth opens as Striker’s tail coils around his neck.

Brown mud swirls splattering across Blitzo’s face. His clawed hand digs into his chest. As Striker uses Blitz like a shield.

His voice is a high-pitched parody of the Cowboy.

The rogue could feel Blitzo’s heartbeat pound against the palm of his hand.

His face a wild expression as he sees the steely green gaze of the Original Striker poised, his deadly weapon aimed at the distorted version of himself.

“it’s time to wake up, Blitz.”

“There is nothing here, that isn’t me who holds you.” Striker shouts, missing his hellish twin by a hair.

The golden chains and the manacle that kept him in place disappear.   Only to be replaced by a dirty rope as the hallucination sinks back, twisting the rope with a sardonic smile on his face.

He’s right, you know, came the roughed up voice of Blitzo: his throat burning after being unable to speak.

A muddy portal drips.

Everyone knows where it leads.

A skewed version of Millie’s farm.

Distorted figures of Millie’s family members.

He grips Striker’s tail. But the snake Imp just flicks him up into the air, firing his gun at both Loony and himself before catching Blitzo and holding him up by the neck. He squeezes him, drawing him tight against his body.

“Your nothing but tangible fear, a single fear! He chokes at the Hallucination screams at him, claws digging deep he drags Blitz: the boss, Imp’s body, is covered by mud as he is pushed closer to the portal.

“Your Nothing! Blitz shouts, wiping the mud from his mouth.

This world isn’t real. It’s all in my head!

The Outlaw draws closer to his double.

“Keep it up, Darlin, and I’ll have you home by morning light.”

Blitz screams as the hallucination covers his mouth, twisting the rope around his jaws.

The only being to hold any sway over this world. His tail tightens as he presses Blitzo into the portal. His claws are scraping like mad.

Loony leaps off the ground, tackling the two to the ground, Blitzo groans in pain as Striker hisses. Loony grips Striker by the vest; snarling, she grips his throat and lifts him into the air.

The Nightmare’s tail tightens around Blitzo’s throat.

Release me, hellhound, or your master dies.

Blitzo claws at the tail around his neck. The rope tight across his mouth.

Blitzo drops to the ground as the hallucination whips Loony across the face.

Sending her across the muddy plains.

The Outlaw is beside him, wiping the mud from his face. Blitz looks into his face, humiliation dripping off his body.

The jingle of spurs draws closer as Striker shields Blitz.

He had to keep him away from the portal.

Help me stand! Calls Blitz, trying to move. The only way I see us getting out of this is if I stand and face him.

The surrrealness  of the moment is not lost to him.

Striker clenched his jaw as his own tail, wraps around his neck.

His body is hoisted off the ground, his eye is snapped shut as he got sprayed in the face by mud.

His arm quivers and shakes as he aims the gun at himself.

But the other, with a twist of his tail, causes Striker’s weapon to fall to muddy ground.

Striker sinks his claws into the pale tail. Before being whipped across the air and into the mud, to land next to Loony, who was wiping the mud from her muzzle.

——-

The Cowboy’s tail lashes out, slapping Blitzo to the ground before winding around his throat. He drags the Imp through the murky mud, and with mud dripping off his body, his tail fizzing like mad.

His eyes are swirling, hypnotic spirals, his fangs snap with venom.

Unwilling to release his victim.

Your nothing! Blitz snaps, nothing real Blitzo chokes.

His eyes are tearing as Striker’s hand replaces his tail.

His tail cracks Blitz across the back.

Striker pulls Blitz taut against him, his hand resting on his hip as he grinds into his ass.

Silence! I am better than anything here, and that includes you, Blitzy!.

I am addicted to your body; Stolas’s little plaything has just gotten a new master. And I want to break you, like breaking the spirit of a wild horse. I’ll ride you like a bronco into submission.

You're not even the real Striker! Blitz hisses. As the hallucination gave a sharp thrust, causing Blitzo knees to buckle.

You're telling me you’d prefer a treacherous snake over a wet dream, like me! The hallucination growls, grabbing his tail. Blitzo coils his tail around his wrist. as Striker unbuckles his pants.

Needing to subdue Blitz,.

Blitzo's eyes widened as he tries to make his escape, but the wrangler twists his fingers in Blitzo’s tail, pulling the Boss imp to him. Blitz snaps his tail, throwing mud in his eyes. He could feel himself being impaled from behind as Striker’s tail wraps around his waist. The thrusts were deep and penetrating as Blitzo chokes on his own tongue..

His face was pressed into the mud as he was made to take in a lungful. His body writhes, his legs curl. as pain twist and tears through his body. A tail cracks against the mud, Blitzo claws at the mud, snarling at the grinning snake imp above.

He could feel the pressure build as the sounds of a pair of spurs approach.

The Cowboy, the original Striker, appears behind the distracted rogue, covered in blood and dirt.

One eye was bleeding, snapped shut. A snarl on his face. As he listens to Blitz cough up mud. Blitz cries out, feeling his hot seed enter his body. His stomach coils in repulsion As Striker bite down on his neck rutting.

The Cowboy cocks his handgun back, with a look of disgust and murderous intent

Repeat it with more conviction, Sugar

This NIGHTMARE IS OVER!

Bang!

#Hellvua Boss #Nightmare world #Episode 6 #Striker/Blitzo #Protective Loony