#but tumblrs stupid ten picture limit is a thing

[worstloki]

Top Forty Thor-Being-Thor Moments from Thor 1

just absolute dumb*ssery that this 7yr old kid’s life goal is to “hunt down the monsters and slay them all”. I’ll go easy on him here and let the Thor/Loki expressions do the talking because of “...just like you did Father” but seriously can his hands even fit around a sword handle??? this kid isn’t even punching the air right??? if there was a sword in his hand he would’ve cut his head with the way he’s moving???? pure tiny-himbo energy here just look at that >:o face he’s making. contrasts very nicely with Loki’s ‘,:|. 10/10. such a baby idiot.

“the jotuns must pay for what they have done! they broke into the weapons vault! if the frost giants had stolen even one of these relics!” thor. thor please. can you even name one of these relics. thor. hey thor. thor. shut up. “well, what would you do about this?” odin asks him. “march into jotunheim! like you once did! break their spirits! so they’ll never try anything like this again!” wow okay so we’ve fast-forwarded by like a thousand years and thor is still going on about genocide. huh. that’s funny, i thought loki was the genocidal one. hmm. i also just realized that the loki exclusive clip gives loki the same hairstyle thor has here so do what you will with that information.

0/10. horrible. terrible. i dont care how angy thor is about not getting to kill some jotuns or become king today this very instant, that is a tremendous waste of food. an absolute fool. how can he just remorselessly throw the bread to the floor. if loki stabbed him when he was 7 he would deserve it for this table flip alone. what a privileged white *ssh*le.

loki came skulking around a corner and suggested not to go to jotunheim and not only did thor not suspect anything but he also then went on to decide to go to jotunheim. 10/10 himbo material. 

if tumblr didn’t have a picture limit i would put every instance of thor smiling in this list because look at that stupid smile. he’s such an idiot. 11/10. this is the thor content i’m here for.

“I have no plans to die today” thor says with the stupidest open-mouthed smirking smile ever captured on film. right after he also told heimdall not to tell anyone they’re gone. he’s literally planned to strand them on jotunheim. thor’s grand plan was to strange themselves on jotunheim and also start a fight. i repeat: thor’s plan was to successfully slay all the frost giants and not need to return until they’re all gone. what an absolute d*mb*ss. this is getting ridiculous. this was originally a top-ten-thor moments list but i’m not even twenty minutes in so i’ll have to extend the list. thor. thor are you listening? thor, you’re such an idiot.

“HOW DID YOUR PEOPLE GET INTO ASGARD?!” thor you sweet sweet summer idiot, please, i am beggin,g you,, learn to rea,d , a room,, literally everyone else who came with you is regretting it, there is complete silence and only the rumble of the opposing king is meeting your “I AM THOR, SON OF ODIN”s, please, please take some notes from Loki, or, you know, literally anyone else in the room, since everyone is asking you to get out of this realm while you still can,

thor’s stupid smile makes an appearance after he gets called a princess and decides to fight a whole realm over it. you know what? thor is a princess. he’s the prettiest princess in all the lands. what’s thor gonna do about it? is he going to fight me too? I hope he does the stupid grin first. minus 15 points for the sexism. thor is a complete and utter sadistic fool who needs to get a hobby. seriously, he’s 1500 years old and still going on and on about slaying all the frost giants. boi, i hate to break it to you, but your dad is not the best or only example of greatness out there. i don’t think your dad even qualifies as an example of that. 

“THEN. GO!” 🥰 ahh yes, just thor thingz 🥰🥰 like when one friend has had his arm burnt 🥰 and another friend has been impaled and needs medical attention, 🥰🥰 and all the rest of your friends are yelling for you, 🥰 and your brother is telling you they must go, 🥰 and you decide to buy everyone time by laughing maniacally and killing more frosties because you care for them and dont find joy in destruction like a loon 🥰🥰🥰 

THIS is the iconic Thor moment that makes my day whenever I think about it. Just Thor, an absolute bumbering 6′6′’ giant boodlusting dummy sees Odin and just decides to yell “FATHAA!! WE’LL FINISH THEM TOGETHAAA!” as if the last thing Odin told him wasn’t “no, thor, we’re not going to do anything to the frost giants, do not go after them and try to kill them all.” 11/10 d*mb*assery right here folks, I couldn’t ask for Thor to be more of a fool. This is PEAK Thor energy. Look at that face. I feel like Thor spends half this movie with his nostrils flared. I love it.

okay i gotta give thor credit for rightfully calling odin “an old man and a fool” but also there was not even 1 frame of the scene where Thor had a decent face so now all i see is >:O >:| >:o >:[ when i watch that scene. yelling at odin was great, not yelling at odin after he HUAERGHed at loki was less great, but to be fair it’s thor and he is the definition of Peak D*mb*ss. 

thor literally GROWLS and starts yelling “HAMMAA?? HAMMER??” over and over. He was hit by a van, he fainted, he woke up and started growling. I don’t know what else there is to say about this.

“you dare threaten me? puny human?”. so. uhh. basically. Thor knew she was threatening him? He KNEW she had a weapon? instead he made a face and started yelling as he tried to walk his way closer????? thor you complete and utter dum dum. you frickin hairball-for-brains. im not even surprised darcy tasered him. with that kind of face, i’d taser him too.

when you wake up in an unknown place to a person smiling at you without a stupid smile, the first step is always to attack first and ask questions later 😌😌😌 (but seriously thor you imbecile why didn’t you ask where you were instead of throwing multiple people around the room and getting your butt needled. you clueless buffoon. you’ll remain a clueless buffoon if you don’t listen to anyone.)

just a quick recap but thor was knocked unconscious by a van and these people kidnapped him aboard and the next scene we see him in he’s checking himself out in  mirror after presumably changing right there in the open?????? these are the things that make thor thor. any other character and i’d question it so much, but this is thor, and i truly believe this is in-character for him. just change in the open because why not? thor is a beefcake and that’s his only redeeming quality and he knows it. 10/10 thor moment. 

I am now convinced that Thor saw Jane and “5k van-hitter to lover slow-burn height-difference himbo-scientist trope” flashed through his mind.

“but no more smashing!” Jane says, and then Thor proceeds to check her out and smile unlike an idiot and like a douche. was this his version of flirting???? i’m not one to decide, but yes, yes it was. He threw a cup to the ground and broke it, and she’s getting mad at him and berating him about it, and he’s liking it. y’all i’m sorry to break it to you like this, but thor has a canon fetish. i am so, so sorry.

im DYING. THAT ISN’T EVEN A KISS, HIS MOUTH IS OPEN. he SMUSHES his mouth around her knuckle???? WHY. I can’t keep noticing things like this. send help. please. Jane’s response makes so much more sense now; she’s laughs for a solid 3 seconds and shakes her head and is like “uhh, thank you? ahaha,” and then she keeps looking back longingly when walking away. they are doing this in PLAIN sight of EVERYONE. Darcy and Erik are standing RIGHT THERE, and Thor is doing weird things to her with his mouth. I’m out. I am done here. goodbye. 

return of the stupid smile AND the douche smile in quick succession through the entire trip. their entire dialogue is peppered with innuendo. “I’ve never done anything like this before. have you ever done anything like this before?” “many times, but you are brave to do it.” “I have nothing else to lose.” “ah but you are clever, far more clever than anyone else on this realm.” “realm? rEaLm?” “you think me strange?” “yes” “good strange or bad strange?” “I haven’t decided yet.” I AM DYING OVER THIS. plus, we get Return Of The Himbo with Jane asking after Einstein Rosen bridges and Thor is like “uh, actually, more like a rainbow bridge 😜🤪” i feel so sorry for jane here, didn’t know how much of a d*mb*ss Thor was when signing up for this van-trip and knuckle-sucking 😭😭😭 i also no longer have questions about how the trip that SHOULD HAVE BEEN A HALF-HOUR ONE turned into one that LASTED TILL THE SUN WENT FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE SKY TO SETTING by the time they arrived. I have no questions. please. I don’t want to know what they were doing in that van. please no. don’t make me think about it.

thor’s plan had 3 steps and they were 1. give jane his jacket 2. walk in and get his hammer 3. fly out. that was literally his plan. he had the first “I have a plan. attack.” moment in the MCU. pure concentrated 0-brain-cells energy right here. how can you not stan this king of d*mb*ssery. look at him, flaunting his big boy muscles. he’s about get his hammer and fly out, like he just told jane with a trademark stupid-smile.

crop-top hair-mop thor is my favourite thor. the way the entire fight scene parallels a hamster in a maze only exemplifies the thor vibes for some inexplicable reason.

“you’re big. fought bigger.” + Thor douche-smile + subtext from earlier + rolling around passionately in the mud = not a happy me. 

I swear i’m not making up this romantic subtext but it’s barely even subtext. the entire scene leading up to Thor’s attempt at lifting the hammer is actually filmed erotically. I’m not kidding. First there’s a shot where Thor pulls aside a hamster-cage-wall blind which mirrors a shower-curtain, and THEN he walks around the hammer while smiling douche-ly at it, we get a few close-ups to his face which are shot from angles slightly lower than himself, giving him an aire of superiority, plus the music adds to this, he reaches out for the hammer’s handle with a mud-covered arm in the rain, in non-slow-motion slow-motion, and he wraps his arm around it, like, he fully twists his arm, unecessarily sexually, around it as he grabs the hammer. This is not okay. On the plus side, it makes the movie much more entertaining,, on the down side,,.

im not going to call Thor dumb for not knowing he’s not worthy. im not going to. because odin literally whispered the enchantment to mjolnir after he’d thrown thor to midgard. it is very funny watching thor grunt in frustration though. he starts yelling because he couldn’t lift the hammer and just lets himself get caught. like, dude, get a life, go buy a new weapon from the store, seriously. he mourns for the hammer on-screen longer than he does for loki. he also looks like he’s in far more pain here. he becomes catatonic and unresponsive after this, but when loki dies he’s already feasting the same afternoon. 10/10 dum dum thor material. never change thor, never change. (that’s code for please change, thor, please,)

thor trying to establish dominance wherever he goes is the funniest thing because at this point he’s being a complete asgardian *ss about it and it’s reaching points of pettiness never seen before. side note: he is possibly flirting with selvig too. maybe. i’m not saying anything happened, but Thor’s openning lines when bringing him home carried over his shoulder are “he’s fine, not injured at all,” followed with an apology to selvig, and an explanation to jane which consisted only of “we drank, we fought, he made his ancestors proud,” and then he puts the man to bed and before he falls asleep erik says “i still don’t believe you’re the g*d of th*nder, but you ought to be,” so... your choice, i guess...

thor’s got his trademark stupid smile and stupidly takes jane’s life’s work notebook and starts doodling in it about trees. the last time his father told him this story about Yggdrasil was when he was 5 and he clearly hasn’t payed attention to any lesson about anything since and it shows so so much. thank you thor. very insightful knowledge you’re passing on hear. ‘i come from a world where [science and magic] are one and the same,’ ok great, now elaborate on that please. oh, right, you can’t because you’re thor, my bad, 20/10 thor behaviour. he couldn’t even doodle nicely. all his lines are wobbly. epic art fail. i wouldn’t trust him near my sketchbook with a 2B pencil.

THIS is thor’s realization face. in case anyone was interested in what ‘dawning truth’ looked like on him. 😰😪 THIS is the face of a thinker, of a man betrayed by his own beloved brother for unprecedented reasons. look at the nuance in his expression. 😩😩😩 so many emotions, I can’t even count them all 😩💯😪

stupid smile and “do not worry my friends, i have a plan,” he says, “i’ll just try and abuse the fact that Loki’s super selfless and kind and has no self worth to my benefit as i have countless times before which is exactly what he’s rightfully angry about this time,” he doesn’t think to himself because that is NOT the smile of someone who is thinking... like, at all. +10000 points to gryffinthor. the d*mb*ssery really jumps out.

“im sorry bro for whatever i did and whatever you’re blaming me for as an excuse to do this, im sorry bro, but you’re disturbing innocents that i don’t really care about but you’re the one making a scene in front of them so why don’t you admit you won’t kill me and are just having a temper tantrum and we move on? hmm?” and then he proceeds to get slam dunked in the face with a metal arm like yEAAAA BOI that’s what you GET for going up against the SENTIENT LAVA-SPEWING metal-man ya absolute dunderhead clod. thunderhead clod? yeah, that. he’s just so dumb, your honour, please, you must understand, the victim pleads guilty on all charges of d*mb*ss and d*mb*ss alone.

I can NOT describe the emotions I feel knowing that Thor is suck-kissing Jane’s knuckles. Like, his mouth is literally jelly-ing it up against her hand. There is suction there and it shows when he is placing and removing his mouth. I promise that’s what is happening. I’m not any happier than you about this. I regret everything. This is why Loki should be what is focused on and not Thor; Thor’s going around trying to frick frack everything in sight even if it’s just Jane’s hand. He’s maintaining eye contact with Jane while he licks her fingers. Why did I decide to rewatch this movie. 

i’m only adding this in as a thor moment because of how desperately and badly they kiss. seriously. 2/10 kiss. im not surprised jane broke up with him. they look like two actual seals fighting over an actual grape. while i’m here i’m going to criticize every fic ever that decided thor is an experienced gentle lover. what were y’all on when watching this movie. thor can and will f*ck literally everything in sight and he won’t even do it well because he is the peakest of peak d*m d*m. look at this man. look at his face. that is the face of an absolute himbo idiot, and it’s the face of an absolute himbo idiot who knows it. he’s been stranded on earth for 2 days, max, and his flirt-count is at 69 people because his name is one letter away from thot. i bet his terrible use of a pen from early means he writes his ‘r’s like ‘t’s and he doesn’t even care. 1000/10 thor moment. doesn’t get much more romance-thor than two individuals smooshing their faces together after some finger sucking. that finger sucking is gonna leave jane simping for years. and that’s true love babey. <3

“I’ll handle my Brother!” Thor says, as if Loki didn’t send a metal-murder-bot that quite virtually killed him less than ten minutes ago asdfhkhsdgsdjf Thor, you horrific himbo you, Loki’s weapon of choice is literally throwing knives he will literally kill you before you enter the room if he’s on his game and wants you dead which he just proved he would do and you’re just gonna???????????? jog on over to him????? Thor??????????? bruH???????????? buddy??????? pal???????? you really wanna go 1v1 the brother you very clearly underestimate and know nothing about????????????????? im loving the confidence, but, no.

Loki: “you literally can’t stop this from here.” Thor, immediately: “i’m going to hit it with the hammer and see if that works” and then it does in fact work later... technically speaking, even if it ends up causing chaos destruction and death and loki falling off the bifrost 😔😔😔 but Big Brain Thor is the Biggest Brained Thor!!! The plan worked!! in a messy-Thor-ish way, but it did!!!

“you can’t kill an entire race!!!!” Thor yells, teeth gritted, as he faces his brother, his coward pacifist brother, who has suddenly decided he wants to join the age-old family tradition of realm-destroying, when this is supposed to be Thor’s dream, Thor’s, not Loki’s. How dare he, Thor thinks to himself, fist clenched around Mjolnir in anger, the pain of the handle pressing against his palm perhaps the only thing preventing him from lashing out at this thought, that’s my planet of monsters to slay, he should go get his own! Loki hits Thor across the face with the back-end of his spear. “Now fight me,” Loki says, but Thor, well, Thor cannot fight, as he remains stunned that of all things Loki would dare steal his life’s ambition, and he is sent sprawling backwards across the observatory, slowly but surely sliding to a stop despite his catatonic, very symbolic silence.

the elegance, the poise, i see your time on earth has made you no less graceful, Thor. the simple magnitude of this sprawl. the spread of the arms. the turn of the feet. this is not a dude, this is a man.

sometimes your brother starts vehemently talking about he’s gonna kill the race of monsters and about how he’s only ever wanted to be your equal and about how he’s not your brother and never was and sometimes you just have to say “this is madness” instead of addressing the issues or asking for any of the  deets 🔥 👊💯😩

Loki is whipping Thor’s butt. Both literally, and metaphorically, Loki is whooping Thor’s d*mb*ss. Earlier he knicked Thor’s face, now he’s just pushing Thor around, he uses the spear as a pole and later kicks Thor’s face by kicking vertically up, and Thor, bless him in all his blond golden muscled glory, doesn’t think anything is up with this, gosh he’s such an absolute utter idiot

sometimes your brother laughs way too much and also cries too much in a fight and there are also too many of him so you just need to blast lightning so you get a shot at all of them 😌😌😌 and then put your magical infinitely-heavy hammer on his chest 😌😌😌 but it’s okay because Thor left holes in Loki’s container 😌😌😌

now THIS is the meat to Thor’s funny bone, just the pure unadulterated humour that is Thor saying that there will never be a “wiser king” or a “better father” than Odin, it cracks me up every single time without fail, just the way he says it with a straight face and— what do you mean he wasn’t joking

look at Thor’s stupid smile as he asks Heimdall to spy on jane every single day while conveniently never asking after Loki ever. This is Thor’s face in mourning after he attended a feast after everyone was celebrating after Loki’s death. Look at his stupid smile. I love him your honour. He’s just,, he’s just so frickin stewpeed, just Thor being Thor, just the purest of d*mbest of *sses. 

#listen #if people can interpret loki and the grandmaster as a thing when loki spends the entire time looking uncomfortable about every situation #then i can interpret thor as flirting with people when there are actual canon questions which get solved when other explanations dont work #so #dont mind me here #in conclusion: thor is a dum dum idiot and it's *chef's kiss* #thank you for coming to my ted talk #ThisPostIsLongerThanMyLifeSpan #TPILTMLS #Language! #language #im one of those people who comments on things through movies but you can't be mad because it's worth it and i've got points #obviously writing means i can get the full gist of the comments out without summarizing #but #like #my family is simply underappreciative and i'm a genius

[itsclydebitches]

YYH Recaps: Episode 4 “Requirements for Lovers”

Hello, everyone! It's been quite a while, huh? Ah, the endless cycle of wanting to write and yet, astoundingly, not writing. I know it well.

Good ol' writer's block has skedaddled for a time though, so let's make good use of that and dive into Episode Four: "Requirements for Lovers." 

Ohhh, YYH getting spicy with its titles 😏

Actually wait, I shouldn't be making dumb jokes just yet. First I want to acknowledge a slight change to future recaps: YYH, RWBY, and anything else I might try my hand at. Namely, a lack of pictures moving forward. A few weeks ago — months? I honestly can't keep track — tumblr implemented a new limitation where no post can have more than ten images in it. It's a move that, while I'm sure has its justifications, makes sharing analyses of visually-based media all the more difficult. I'll be doing my best moving forward to describe scenes as needed, as well as combining connected images together to stretch out my limit, but I'm not going to pretend that it'll be the same as getting the visual play-by-play we’re used to. 

Tumblr certainly is a website, huh?  

Anyway, we open on Yusuke once again lamenting the difficulty of hatching a spirit beast that doesn't immediately devour him from the head down. On the one hand this is an admittedly easy way to reset the story over the course of this arc — the storytelling equivalent of waking your character up each morning — yet I cannot deny that if I were undergoing a resurrection test, it would consume my every thought too. Can't really blame Yusuke for endlessly bringing the conflict up when the conflict is this deadly.

Well, deadly for a ghost, anyway.

Specifically, he's worried about how embarrassing it would be to get eaten by something that came out of an egg this tiny. I'm torn between reminding a fictional character that things grow — a pissed off chicken could kick my ass and it started out in an egg too — and just shaking my head over the absurdity of worrying about embarrassment when, you know, you would cease to exist. It's not even a matter of, "What if I die and then I'm embarrassed about it in the afterlife :( " Yusuke is already IN the afterlife. He's got nowhere to go but oblivion!

Luckily, Botan takes a more practical approach to these worries, pointing out that he'll be just fine provided he does some good deeds. Yusuke starts a rant about how do-gooders are only ever out for themselves.

Yusuke, you dumb-dumb, you're a do-gooder now. What was all that help for Kuwabara, hmm? As said, these early episodes exist in a semi-reset loop, where Yusuke needs to stew in his main character flaws for a while before any real growth starts to stick. Those flaws being, primarily, "I'm a pessimist" and "also I hate myself."

Case in point, Botan accuses him of always seeing the glass as half empty. Which, while true enough (outside of his confidence in fighting, anyway), by now we've got a pretty good sense of where Yusuke developed this attitude. He affirms this by talking about how Koenma's got him by the balls, "just another idiot abusing his power!" With an alcoholic mother and those teachers from last episode, it's no wonder Yusuke thinks this way. Mr. Takenaka's interest and Keiko's care aren't enough to combat the rest of Yusuke's experience, not when Takenaka is an outlier and Keiko is Yusuke's peer. Her desire to keep him on the right track reads only as an inevitability at best (the downside of having a perfect childhood friend), or a legitimate annoyance at worst. Or, as we'll continue to see in this episode, a way for them to flirt.

Is it any wonder Yusuke would sneer at Koenma's offer then, expecting the worst? The fact that Yusuke is still undergoing the challenge at all, no matter what he says, speaks volumes to me.

However, Botan is less than comfortable with his criticisms. She panics a bit at Yusuke insulting the (junior) ruler of the underworld so blithely. That, and the fact that he's carelessly tossing his egg around.

(Yes we’re using precious picture space for memes are you SURPRISED?) 

Anyway, Botan isn't just concerned for the sake of concern. She cautions Yusuke against speaking too freely because there may be investigators checking in on his progress. No sooner does he ask what those investigators look like than one appears.

Thunder! Lighting! An energy so intense that Yusuke is briefly blinded! It is, as he says, quite the entrance. What kind of being could possibly be at the heart of such an astounding show?

Why, this teeny-tiny cutie, of course.

Remember, few appearances in YYH coincide with the character's true self. Would you ever assume this is the all-powerful investigator who holds Yusuke's future in her hands? Of course not. That's the point.

The investigator introduces herself as Sayaka and immediately demonstrates that she has no more patience for Yusuke's attitude than Botan does. "These damn kids," he mutters and my brain briefly blue screens because Yusuke. You're fourteen.

Plus, Sayaka and Botan clearly have some sort of eternal youth situation going on, so there's that too.

Sayaka is, in a word, fantastic. She pulls no punches with Yusuke, teleporting away from him with what can only be described as a shit-eating smile, all while refusing to tell him what exactly she's investigating. “I’m sorry, but that’s a secret!” However, Keiko is clearly at the forefront of her interest. She refers to her as Yusuke's "girlfriend."

Botan is more than happy to point Keiko out — because of course they're still following her around! — and pulls a Et tu, Brute? on Yususke, leading Sayaka right to her. Like most of the Underworld, Sayaka is rather shocked that the pretty, popular, scholarly girl is supposedly into the delinquent. It's the power of childhood friendship, you fools! Specifically, Sayaka references the "positive markings" that Keiko has accumulated, but the audience already knows by now that such markings are suspect at best. Yusuke himself is proof of that. So if his terrible marks don't preclude him from being a young kid's savior, should we really view Keiko's as proof of superiority?

I mean, Keiko is fantastic, but that's not really the point here.

Starting her own investigation into Yusuke's life, Sayaka begins with one hell of a bombshell: "There's no point in doing [the resurrection] if the people closest to you don't care." WOW. Not only is that a harsh assessment, it's one I don't think I can personally get behind. The offer to restore Yusuke to life is built on the acknowledgment that their system is flawed (even if there's no work to change or dismantle that system): they thought he was worthless, his sacrificial death seems to have proven them wrong, and now they want further evidence, in the form of this trial, that Yusuke is a good person at heart. The whole point of this challenge is to give him a second chance, with testimonies like Mr. Takenaka's emphasizing that Yusuke has always been capable of more, so long as he applies himself. This, as we'll see throughout the series, applies to relationships too. The Yusuke with one friend he play-fights with, a distant mother, and a school worth of kids who are terrified of his very name is not the future Yusuke they expect him to become, so... why base his resurrection on what he's already (not) accomplished? Granted, the show is very unclear about what, if anything, Sayaka will do if she decides that Yusuke doesn't have a life worth going back to (even if I have my own theory discussed at the end), but the fact that this is suddenly a factor at all seems grossly unfair, not entirely unlike Kuwabara's rigged promise. We as the audience know that people love Yusuke. Yusuke himself is beginning to acknowledge that. But if this fourteen year old delinquent truly had no one that wanted him back from the dead... isn't that all the more reason to allow a resurrection and give him the chance to build a life where he would be missed? 

This stupid shonen got me thinking too much istg. 

Yusuke, ever the self-deprecating pessimist, bypasses all of the above thoughts and jumps straight to, "It's clear if [Keiko] had any sense she'd want me gone." I'd find that attitude incredibly sad if I wasn't distracted by how cute Botan and Sayaka are, sitting on the oar together. The spirit girls who fly together, thrive together! 

Botan starts teasing Yusuke about having a crush, which just feeds his temper and Sayaka's confusion. Deciding that she needs to gather more info, they follow along for an average day of school because these earlier episodes are, apparently, ghost-stalk Keiko hours. 

We see her reading aloud in class from Heart of Darkness (not the easiest book for some middle schoolers), scoring a point during volleyball practice, refusing to let one girl cheat off her homework, but happily helping another who runs up with a question. So she's pretty, athletic, and academically successful, the trifecta for any good love interest. Sayaka is impressed not just with her "nearly perfect" scores, but also the maturity that Keiko demonstrates, such as maintaining her morals about cheating while remaining compassionate. 

Actually, I really love the contrast this provides for us, the viewer. Meaning, Keiko is shown to be at her least mature when in Yusuke's presence. Not that her responses aren't justified, but watching her dramatically snatch gum from his mouth, slap him across the face, or pull crazed expressions as she yells at him is a far cry from this calm, poised, soft-spoken Keiko. It's a way to visually show us that she's comfortable in his presence, despite the suspect humor attached. Not that the Keiko we see at school is faking or anything — she is legitimately that kind and articulate — but we see that being with Yusuke allows her to relax in a way she doesn't with others. School!Keiko is, as Sayaka says, pretty much perfect, 24/7. Yusuke's Keiko is a little rougher around the edges, in a way that implies a multifaceted personality shining through. 

However, the only conclusion our trio draws is that, given Keiko's accomplishments, any attraction must be one-sided.

Poor Yusuke lol. 

In a plot move that is so ridiculously contrived, just as Yusuke is grappling with the accusation that Keiko couldn't possibly like him back, a "handsome boy" arrives to ask Keiko out. He says that he couldn't bear it when she stopped reading Heart of Darkness because he's fallen in love with her voice. "Will you be my girlfriend?" 

Please excuse me while I lose my shit over how ridiculous this is. I legitimately straight up cackled when I watched this scene. 

Luckily for Mr. Absurd, Keiko takes him seriously — and lets him down easy. She says she can't be his girlfriend and when he presses the "Why?", asking if she already likes someone else, Keiko confirms that she does. This is done through a shot of her feet. Not a POV shot given the angle, but close enough that it feels like we're stepping into Keiko's shoes (haha), shyly staring down at the floor in embarrassment and regret. 

Rejection complete? The guy screams. 

I mean he screams. 

I mean this nobody we're never gonna see again unhinges his jaw and lets out an unholy shriek the likes of which makes me shriek in utter GLEE. 

It's insane. It's wonderful. I'm going to use one of my coveted image spots to show you his face: 

Look at that and tell me this show isn't amazing. 

Okay, I'm focusing again. As Keiko runs off Botan and Sayaka start dragging Yusuke, teasing him about how Keiko chose him over that "charming handsome boy." 

...Please scroll up and look at that image again. I find YYH's definition of "charming" and "handsome" to be hilariously wrong. 

Yusuke, as per usual, throws himself into damage control, claiming that Keiko didn't say who she liked, so really it could be anyone. They're not buying it. “'I like Keiko' is written all over your face!” Botan crows. Meanwhile, Sayaka is scribbling in her little investigator's journal that feelings on both side are severely misunderstood. "Suggest serious counseling." 

Fantastic idea, Sayaka. I'd personally suggest counseling for the whole dying/best friend getting resurrected thing... but relationship woes work too! 

We cut to later when school is out and Keiko has gone over to Yusuke's. To say that Atsuko has done a poor job of keeping the house clean lately would be a serious understatement. 

Keiko points out the old food and broken glass specifically, cluing us in that this isn't just a messy environment, but a dangerous one as well. This is proven when she accidentally knocks a stack of books over and a used bowl falls onto Yusuke's face. What's interesting is that Keiko says that things are "back to normal" now, though I'm not sure if that's in reference to the state of the house, or just the note Atsuko left behind, asking Keiko to take care of Yusuke while she's out. I'm inclined towards thinking it's just the note, partly because of Keiko's shock when she first arrives, because the house wasn't shown to be in this state prior to Yusuke's death (first image above), and because the note is accompanied by a great voiceover that makes Atsuko sound quite sloshed when she left. That's what's normal, the drinking and carefree attitude, not the state of her home. If we buy that reading, it allows for another fantastic look into Atsuko's mental state. If she's already an alcoholic, the trauma of her son's death and the following revelation that he's coming back might make her struggle in other ways. Like finding cleaning to be an impossible task. 

She's depressed. It doesn't excuse the state she's left Yusuke in and, as previously acknowledged, YYH is definitely not a show interested in this nuance, but I still find it fun to take what little we've gotten and run with it. 

However, Keiko is firmly on team "WTF Atsuko." She hurries to make sure Yusuke wasn't hurt by the falling bowl, bemoans him being "covered in garbage," and says that leaving him in this state should be considered a felony. Knowing it's far beyond her power to fix Atsuko's failings, Keiko swears to come here after school every day until Yusuke regains his body. It's as she's cleaning him of the dust that's gathered that Keiko becomes entranced with Yusuke’s features. Particularly his lips. The soft lighting returns, their theme song swells, and Keiko gets thiiiis close to kissing Yusuke for the first time. 

Which is a little weird, right? I mean, we know why Yusuke is freaking out. Beyond the embarrassment of a middle schooler receiving his first kiss while two ghost girls eagerly watch on, he's made a hobby of denouncing his interest in Keiko to anyone who will listen. But for the average viewer — for Keiko herself — don't we care the he's, you know, dead? Or if not technically dead, very unconscious? Don't get me wrong, I fully understand the appeal of this situation in a generalized, cultural sense (with the side disclaimer that I'm reading a Japanese product through an American lens). Sleeping Beauty exists for a reason and there's definitely an element of that here: a gender-reversed setup where Keiko’s kills may break the "curse" of Yusuke's untimely death. Even his in-between state of being mirrors the "death like sleep" of the fairy tale. But when you strip away those Disney-esque thoughts, we're left with a girl about to kiss an unresponsive body, not as a common gesture of care (the parent who kisses their child while they sleep), but as a first time, romantic milestone. 

It's a little weird lol. 

But embrace the romance! As well as its inevitable interruption. Just as Keiko is about to land a peck, the neighborhood watch committee announces a heat and fire warning, startling Keiko out of her thoughts about Yusuke's "beautiful face." (There's another gender reversal for ya.) She gasps at her almost-action, conveniently remembers that her mom wanted her to do some shopping, and hightails it out of there before embarrassment can really kill them both. 

So she runs off for food... in a sweater? The outfit is cute and all, but I wonder what the animators were thinking, putting Keiko in a puffy pullover during an episode all about a heat wave. 

It's about at this point that the plot goes from cute romance to absolutely buck wild. The fires the neighborhood watch committee mentioned are not, in fact, due to the overwhelming heat, but an arsonist that's going around tossing molotov cocktails through open windows. Why is he doing such a thing? I don't know. Arsonists be doing arson, I guess. The important bit is that Yusuke's place is his next target, considering that Atsuko forgot to lock the windows when she went out. Within seconds all that garbage is set ablaze, quite obviously putting Yusuke's resurrection chances at an all time low. 

"Wake up, stupid!" he shouts at his unconscious body. Mood, Yusuke. That's me every morning. 

So this is a full scale emergency now and everyone is scrambling trying to think of something to do. Yusuke comes up with the idea to possess himself like he did Kuwabara — nice attempt at a loophole there — but since it would technically count as his resurrection, no dice. Botan decides to go get Kuwabara himself, even though he's too far away to do anything. It's still worth a shot. Sayaka, meanwhile, watches all this unfold with a somewhat clinical detachment. She's not quite indifferent and she's definitely not cruel... she’s just not as emotionally invested in this as the other two. Which not only re-emphasizes her purpose here, as an observer judging Yusuke, but also highlights the bond Botan is forming with him. As mentioned before in regards to her hanging out with Yusuke rather than ferrying souls, Botan is well past someone assisting Yusuke simply because it's a part of her job. He's her friend. 

We get some shots of the growing fire which includes a hazy texture to the animation I quite like and then we cut to Keiko several blocks away, shopping bag in hand. Word of the new fire spreads, with one bystander mentioning that it's the twelfth today. 

"This is eerie.” 

“Yeah, I can’t help feeling we’re under attack.”

That's because you are! Someone stop that man! 

Sadly, I don't think the arsonist is mentioned again, let alone captured. We'll just have to relegate that to my incredibly niche fic wishlist. 

Keiko also overhears that the latest fire is on fourth avenue, which of course is where Yusuke lives. Recognizing that he might be in trouble, she takes off at a run. 

Meanwhile, Botan finds Kuwabara practicing his kicks against a Yusuke dummy. Amazing resemblance, right? 

Watching for the purpose of recapping, I'm picking up on a lot of details in the animation I quite enjoy. I don't think anyone would claim that YYH, at this point in time, has the most impressive or flashy animation (the fight scenes later are another matter entirely), but there's a clear love for the product that shines through. The scared expression on Kuwabara's dummy. His unexpectedly dainty kick, complete with pointed toes. Botan's more translucent coloring to emphasize her supernatural status compared to Kuwabara. There are a lot of nice touches despite the overall simplicity. 

Plus, you can't forget the lovely irony of Kuwabara fighting a defenseless "Yusuke" while the real guy actually lies defenseless amidst a fire. We already know that despite his tough talk, Kuwabara would be horrified to learn that his friend rival had died (again) in such a manner. 

Capitalizing on that transparency, Botan runs a hand through Kuwabara's back to catch his attention. He gets his "tickle feeling" and instinctively looks around towards Yusuke's house, seeing the smoke. "Something tells me I should go that way." Gotta love a guy who drops everything to chase a vague, supernaturally induced hunch. 

As Kuwabara leaves we cut back to Keiko arriving at the house, staring in horror at the blaze. We get an audio flashback to her talk with Yusuke where she promised to take care of his body until he got back. So she tries to run in, only for a couple of the onlookers to snag her, quite correctly keeping her from undergoing a suicide mission. We learn later that Keiko absolutely would have died without Yusuke's sacrifice, so her "You cowards!" is born more of emotion than justified accusations. It's not cowardly to look at the raging inferno in a small apartment and realize that recklessly running in will only result in two dead teens, not one. 

I mean, the flames are already right there, licking the door. Even if Keiko somehow managed to avoid burns, the smoke alone would do her in. Still, Keiko tries to mitigate the damage by dumping a bucket of water over her head. As a kid I remember thinking this was the smartest thing ever. Utterly inspired. Keep that in the back of your mind, kid Clyde, for future reference. As an adult... I have no idea whether this would actually help or not lol. Any firefighters doubling as YYH fans? 

Recklessness and iffy precautions aside, I can't express how much I appreciate the story giving Keiko things to do. Yusuke recognizes that she's the only one with the maturity and open-mindedness to believe in his resurrection. She's the one picking up Atsuko's slack regarding his day-to-day needs. She never hesitates for a moment, heroically throwing herself into this blaze for Yusuke's benefit. Yeah, a lot of that still falls into the emotional/domestic sphere — what we expect of the love interest in a 90s anime — but too often action stories don't have a clue what to do with their non-action characters, not even when it comes to just supporting the fighters. They're simply... there. Keiko, however, isn't window dressing. Whether it's helping Botan survive an upcoming, supernatural plague, or cheering the team on at the Dark Tournament, Keiko is an important part of the story, despite lacking the fighting prowess of the rest of the cast. 

Just as important, this episode establishes a core equality between her and Yusuke. We just watched Keiko reject a (presumably) accomplished guy for him, telling the audience that these surface differences — academics, power levels, popularity, looks — don't matter to them. Yusuke is not Keiko's lesser just because he doesn't have the same scores in Sayaka's book and Keiko won't become Yusuke's lesser just because she doesn't have spiritual power like he does. The only important thing here is that they love each other and they're both willing to sacrifice everything for the other. In the span of about ten minutes, Keiko nearly gives up her life for Yusuke and, in turn, Yusuke gives up his resurrection for her. The level of care they show towards one another is balanced, despite those differences. 

They’re a good ship, y'all. Even if this recapping's got me noticing Yusuke/Kuwabara potential lol. 

To get back to the plot, a drenched Keiko charges into the fire, yelling Yusuke's name for the drama of it because we all know he can't respond. Despite the audience (hopefully) recognizing Keiko and Yusuke's equality, that memo hasn't reached Yusuke yet. "You're a lot more important to this world than I am!" he yells, hammering home that despite everything — knowing he instinctively saved a child, watching his loved ones grieve for him, helping Kuwabara just because he can — Yusuke still, deep down, believes that he doesn't deserve to come back; that he doesn't measure up to those around him. The self-sacrificial nature this insecurity produces shocks Sayaka. She points out that if Keiko doesn't save his body, he's not coming back. "What's the point of being alive if Keiko has to get killed for it?" 

Keiko means more to Yusuke than the rest of his living existence. Jot that down in your notebook, Sayaka! 

Kuwabara arrives and runs into one of his friends who informs him that Keiko just went inside. “Yusuke’s girl? The one we saved from those thugs?”

BOY does that tell us a lot about their rivalry! I mean yeah, we've already established several times over that Kuwabara — just like Yusuke himself — is not the cruel street thug he'd like to present himself as. If these characters actually wanted to hurt each other outside of a martial arts challenge, don't you think Kuwabara would capitalize on the "Yusuke's girl" bit? Everyone seems to know that they have feelings for each other, but Kuwabara never once wields that as ammunition against Yusuke. There are no taunts about him not being good enough. Or rather, I should clarify there are no serious taunts — Kuwabara is well known for his teasing. There's also no attempt to steal Keiko out from under him, the common treatment of the love interest as a "prize" that many stories fall into. Indeed, later this episode YYH will deconstruct this a bit. Yusuke sees Kuwabara grab Keiko's hand and yells that he better not be getting "fresh" with her. But it's purely Yusuke's worries shining through. The audience gets a crystal clear picture of the situation and knows, categorically, that Kuwabara has only the most innocent of intentions in holding Keiko's hand. 

(Well, running from the police isn't innocent, but...) 

I keep getting sidetracked. Plot! Keiko makes it to Yusuke's room and finds that he is already on fire. She then proceeds to try and put it out by patting it with her hands. I take back what I said about Keiko's smarts in this scene. Now we know where that supposed recklessness comes from though. Apparently they're both immune to fire! Nothing to worry about here, folks. 

JK she's actually in danger, despite the animation choices. By this point everyone, including Keiko, realizes that there's no way out: the fire has blocked the door. Sayaka then reveals that there is one way to save her. If Yusuke throws his egg into the fire, the energy of the spirit beast will release and guide her to safety. The catch? Hatch the egg early and it won't complete its intended function of guiding him back to his body. This beast is gonna guide one person and that is it. 

Cue Yusuke's near immediate decision to sacrifice his life for Keiko's. Granted, it's not precisely one life for another. Yusuke's resurrection was always contingent upon the beast not devouring him whole — something Koenma claims would have happened at the end of the episode — meaning that it's not technically a fair trade. Yusuke might have sacrificed Keiko's life for his own... only to fail to get that life back anyway. (There's a tragedy for ya.) To say nothing of how Yusuke is currently dead and has been for at least a couple of days, whereas Keiko very much is not. There's some sort of philosophical discussion there about potential being pit against current reality. 

BUT that's not the point! The emotional point is that he sacrificed his life for hers — the potential of his resurrection, the potential of that life he might have led — all technicalities aside. And I, for one, think that's very neat of him. 

A blue light shines as the egg's energy is released, providing a lovely contrast to the fire surrounding them. A path forms to the door and Keiko, recognizing Yusuke's presence, follows it. "We'll make it, Yusuke," Keiko says, which is one hell of a sucker-punch now that we know she's just carrying a corpse. Unbeknownst to Keiko, Yusuke is very much not making it. That's the only reason why she is. 

Kuwabara appears to help them the rest of the way which is also a pretty awesome thing considering that, from everyone else's perspective, the fire is still raging and blocking the door. Despite his spiritual awareness, Kuwabara gives no indication that he noticed this strange light, or Yusuke's hand in the rescue. Which basically means he lunged into a bunch of deadly fire for Keiko and doesn't question how in the world he isn't burned. 

Keiko's hands are fine, Kuwabara's whole body is fine... fire immunity must run in the friend group! 

Yusuke has another rare moment of vulnerability — "They're both okay" — and I cackle happily at the "both" because see. You love Kuwabara too, Yusuke! All this bluster about hating him and finding him annoying. The second he rushed into that fire you were crawling up the walls. 

Except then that happiness gives way to something that sounds a little more shocked. Devastated. "Well, I sure am... relieved..." Kudos to Cook's voice acting. You can hear the exact moment Yusuke realizes what he's done. Not that he regrets it, but the consequences are finally sinking in. He's relieved that they're safe, yes, but now he's never going to be able to rejoin them. 

As Yusuke has an(other) existential crisis, Kuwabara peels back the blanket Keiko had wrapped Yusuke in, revealing his face. “What are you doing with Yusuke’s body?! Are you some type of sick grave robber?” he shouts. God I love when a story actually keeps track of who knows what. Kuwabara, for all his recent involvement in the plot, doesn't actually know what's going on. From his perspective Yusuke died, he made a scene at the wake, he saved "his girl" from a bunch of thugs, lost a huge chunk of time only to wake up with her randomly hugging him (then slapping him), participated in a bet with his awful teacher and had a couple weird, Yusuke related dreams while studying, and has felt the presence of ghosts perhaps a little more frequently than usual. Now he's trying to help save Keiko from a fire only for her to reveal she risked her own life for Yusuke's body. Of course he's freaking out! What's she doing with that? 

What's utterly fantastic though is that Kuwabara takes all of five seconds to process this and then enters immediate Ride or Die mode for Keiko. She's been hoarding Yusuke's body for undetermined reasons? Well, who is he to judge? The important thing here is that people are arrested for keeping bodies, so they've gotta skedaddle before the firefighters show up. 

Hence, hand-holding and avoiding arrest. 

As Yusuke starts threatening Kuwabara not to get "fresh" with her, Botan sadly reminds him that he no longer has a say in who Keiko does or does not fall in love with. The switch in tone is jarring. Whereas before Botan would have teased him mercilessly for the crush, now she knows that nothing can come of that — and it would be cruel not to remind Yusuke of that too. 

"Oh no. I didn't think..." Yusuke whispers, further establishing that he knew the risks of using his egg, but hadn't allowed them to sink in yet. Now they have. 

He gives a fake little laugh with, "Just when it was getting good" and I cry at the development in the span of just four episodes. Despite what I said at the beginning about the show resetting each week, there has been a lot of change thus far. Yusuke wants to live now! He wants to be there for Keiko! He looks down on his tiny family and screams at the unfairness of it all! They're talking about how they can't wait for him to come back and now that's never gonna happen!!

It hurts, friends. It hurts a whole lot. 

During this conversation between Keiko, Atsuko, and Kuwabara, we see that a couple of hours have passed (it's nighttime now, the fire is out) and Atsuko is apologizing for putting them all in danger like that. And by that I mean yes, she does technically apologize with an "I'm sorry" and everything, but it's also a one sentence apology pit against... well, near death for the three people standing (and sitting) before her. Atsuko seems just as concerned by Keiko losing her hair as she does Keiko nearly burning to death and she kneels by Yusuke's wheelchair, baby-talking to him about how he forgives her, right? I love Atsuko, she's great, but objectively speaking she is not a good mother. Not right now, anyway. 

Oh yeah, and just to reiterate that: Keiko's hands are fine after patting down Yusuke's on-fire body, but her hair, which I'm pretty sure never catches, has to be cut short. Ah, anime logic. Funny thing is, YYH isn't the only story to take the love interest and give her a cool, short cut thanks to a traumatic event. Anyone read Ranma 1/2? 

During this conversation we also learn that, sometime between the fire and now, Keiko filled Kuwabara in on everything that's happening with Yusuke. Makes sense. He kneels beside the wheelchair, joining the others in telling Yusuke that they'll wait patiently for his return. Yusuke, above them, continues yelling about how they're waiting on a dead man. 

“It can’t be helped. He made this decision on his own." 

Except it can, in fact, be helped!

Just as all hope is truly lost, Koenma appears and announces that Yusuke will be returned to life. Why? Because sacrificing his egg for Keiko is a better indicator of his worth than the egg itself could have been. Despite feeding on his negative outlook and heading towards biting Yusuke's head off — something the animation backs up by showing us teeth during the fire

— Yusuke's act demonstrates a tendency towards being a "decent human being" that is "so rare." Wow. That's depressing. Still, yay that Yusuke has those qualities! And this, to my mind, helps explain Sayaka's presence. Koenma recognized that judging Yusuke couldn't be left to the egg alone and indeed, Sayaka took note of his worth before he ever threw the egg into the fire. First it was questioning why someone as amazing as Keiko would go for him, then it was solidified through the shock of Yusuke announcing that coming back to life was meaningless if she wasn't in it. Even if Keiko had somehow, miraculously escaped the fire before Yusuke's sacrifice, I bet Sayaka's report would have tipped him in resurrection's favor anyway. 

Everyone is, of course, overjoyed and my heart swells at the intense gratitude Yusuke displays. My favorite part though is when Koenma cryptically says that “Your added experience with death could make you very useful" (a nod towards future events that goes right over Yusuke's head) and his response to this is a yelled, "YOU THINK I'M USEFUL?" This poor kid. The God of everything ever is chucking out revelations left and right, about resurrections and spirit beasts, but the only thing that really penetrates is the realization that someone thinks he's useful. Talk about relatable. 

You know, I've been thinking about why this moment works so well. I mean, there are a lot of other stories where undermining the consequences our hero faces — either with humor, or by erasing them completely — can feel like the audience was cheated. I think YYH dodged that with a couple of crucial factors. First, Yusuke's consequence isn't something new that he's now avoided, it's just a permanent extension of something he was already dealing with. We did get to watch him inhabit the space between life and death, grappling with whether he'd ever be able to return. The story didn't deny us that growth, it just confirmed something we all instinctively knew: this tale won't end here with Yusuke permanently going to some afterlife. Second, the Deus ex Machina fix doesn't happen too soon. Yeah, it's only a couple of minutes in a single episode, but we (and Yusuke) still get to sit with that outcome for a while, soaking it in before its removal. Finally, there's no doubt that Yusuke earned this reprieve. Koenma's timing might be sudden and (if you're not genre savvy) unexpected, but looking back at the series as a whole thus far, we're able to agree absolutely that Yusuke deserves this. Far from feeling like we were cheated, this solution invites just as much celebration as we're seeing on screen, for the simple reason that we can buy into Koenma's reasoning. We know now that Yusuke is a good person. We saw him selflessly sacrifice his future for Keiko. We agree that he deserves a second chance. 

Thus, the episode ends with Yusuke flying up to fill the screen in his joy, a far better, final shot than Harry Potter and The Prison of Azkaban managed 😰

And that's it for Episode 4, folks! See you later for Episode 5 💕

#YYH #Yu Yu Hakusho #YYH Recaps #mymetas

[dreemurrwoodz]

I hate NFTs

I genuinely hate NFTs. What is the point? Who is buying some low quality image of a generic looking monkey for seventy million dollars? I bet I could draw the same thing but ten times better and it would only sell for ten bucks. Plus, what is stopping people from just screenshotting the image? I’ve seen so many accounts who have that stupid ugly monkey as their profile picture to mock NFTs. Why are people buying these? How is this even legal? I have no clue. This reminds me of how rich people are so stupid, they will actually buy anything. Damien Hirst is a prime example. He has somehow made over three hundred million dollars selling literal polka dots. People say they represent “the harmony of where color can exist on its own”. Can’t we just watch baby sensory videos and get the same thing? Can’t we just look at individual colors without having to spend millions? Art critics need to step outside and touch grass, feel the wind on their face, inhale fresh oxygen. It makes no sense to me how people are still falling for this crap. Damien Hirst has many other wonderful pieces such as “Trauma”, which looks like a new tumblr pride flag that means something like “attraction to bees”. I think he does a great job in this piece of traumatizing the viewer by making something so remarkably awful it hurts. One of his “spot paintings”, or polka dot paintings, is titled “Cocaine”. I believe he was high on cocaine when he created this painting as it is so boring to look at, he had to have been on some sort of substance to think it was worth publishing. Art critics make me want to gag. They will critique amazing, beautiful paintings that must have taken a lot of skill to create by calling them “kitsch” and “post card art”, and applaud these absolute twits for “creating” what looks like something my kindergarten self would’ve thrown in the recycling. I could go on and on about Damien Hirst and NFTs, but I have a time limit and have other things to do. To summarize: NFTs are useless and Damien Hirst is a genius for scamming these rich, pretentious assholes.

[shattered-mirror-fanfic]

HAHAHA! I’M EARLY THIS TIME! Anyways, before you read: This is your warning about how in this chapter there’s mentions of child abuse, blood, death and scientific experiments on a child. You have been warned.

Ao3 Link: Chapter below cut for those who read it here on tumblr: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32206135/chapters/84899077

The walk home from school was dull as always, walking along the grey path, connected to a grey street, little color in the world. Despite being only six years old, Desdemona had many responsibilities, especially after their soul fully developed. 

The routine was simple: walk home, get homework done, change clothing, get a snack, curl up on the couch with the snack, a blanket, and their favorite doll until their dad got home. Usually on Thursdays like this, Desdemona feared when their dad would get home because he would yell at them and have them turn off the tv and get in the car. This new addition only started when their mom disappeared. One day, at 3:20 when she was meant to get home, she didn’t show up. It wasn’t Des’s fault, they were only a child and their soul wasn’t even fully developed, they were only wondering what if’s, it shouldn’t be their fault that it became real. 

No matter, they had other worries. They didn’t have any homework so they went straight up to their room, changing out of the light blue and white uniform shirt and white shorts into a comfortable black and white striped t-shirt and brown overalls instead. They grabbed a blanket and pink axolotl doll from their bed and went downstairs again. Before going into the living room, they popped into the kitchen and grabbed a bag of cheese puffs from the pantry that were hidden away at their height so their father couldn’t confiscate it. There weren't many of the puffs left so they took the bag with them. They went to the living room and climbed onto the grey couch, covering themself and their plushie with the blanket. They grabbed the discarded remote and turned on the tv, pressing random numbers until they got to the cartoon channel. 

Seconds turned to minutes, minutes turned to an hour, and the front door slammed open as the episode faded to black. 

“Turn that tv off right now! Get up and get in the car, traffic was held up enough already!” The tall man who entered had yelled. Desdemona hated their father on Thursdays, he was always so mean and would only let Desdemona eat stale animal crackers that tasted both bland and too sweet. Regardless, the child slid off the couch and went to the door, putting on some boots and grabbing their father’s hand to be led to the car.

They were set in a booster seat and buckled in with the stupid animal crackers and doll. Their father slammed the door shut and got in the drivers spot, driving off down the road to their destination. 

Roughly twenty minutes had gone by when the car stopped outside of a large grey building located along a dirt path. Desdemona dreaded this place, there were no good people there, only mean men in big white coats. The place was bland and basically greyscale, no pictures or paintings anywhere, it was like a prison. Desdemona’s father led them to a room with only a bed, a few chairs, some counters and cabinets. Without instructions, Des hopped on the bed and waited, swinging their legs while their father sat in one of the folding chairs in the corner of the room. The child held their plushie tightly, letting their dirty blonde hair fall in front of their face, hearing only their father wishing for a normal child before three of the mean men in white coats came in and began their tests.

~~~

Souls develop in a human by the age of five, beforehand their souls are usually white, empty and still developing their traits. For Desdemona, their soul didn’t develop correctly, and by the time the trait showed itself, it was too late to guide their soul differently. It was malformed and full of hate and malice, the only things they were shown before, not an ounce of KINDNESS was present in soul tests, the only trait that had developed into a positive range was DETERMINATION, and even then, it was very weak, and couldn’t manage being the dominant trait on it’s own. 

It was very rare for souls to be malformed, and even rarer to have all but one trait be malformed. Oddities like these seem to be caused from one parent having a malformed trait, which in Desdemona’s case, could be their father having malformed kindness, after all, he was a “businessman”. It could be possible for a soul to be malformed in another way, where all the traits exceed limits, the soul exhibits all traits to an extreme and displays all the traits equally among the heart. But this has only remained speculation. 

~~~ “Des, wake up.” They heard their father say. There wasn’t a clock in the room, but even then, they knew it had been at least five hours since the doctors gave them the medication that put them to sleep. Desdemona sat up and saw their soul was exposed, it was black and inky, with a little dot of red on the side where a doctor most likely had injected raw determination into their soul to make it normal. 

“Sorry dad, I’ll be better…” The child weakly said.

“Listen Des, I know you hate me, I’m just still upset about what you did to your mother.”

“I didn’t do anything! It’s not my fault!” Desdemona cried. Their dad sighed and picked them up and carried them to the car, putting them into their seat before settling into his own and beginning the drive home. 

“We’re having mac and cheese again, and I want you to behave tomorrow and remember…”

“No showing my soul to anyone.”

“And if someone asks?”

“Say it’s determination and dodge other questions...”

“Good, sorry the tests ran a bit late, your soul is just needlessly complicated.” 

The drive was boring as always, the sky was illuminated with the end of a sunset, but it wasn’t anything. Des fell asleep in their seat, only waking up when the car drove over a bump that jolted the end of it. 

Tomorrow is another day.

~~~

Stepping onto the schoolyard was a chore, it was tedious, unnecessary, the educational systems flawed anyway, and yet it is still done because in our minds we believe that we would not make it anywhere without wasting time here. Desdemona wished they could just stay at home and learn from the internet where they only learn what’s necessary for a future career.

But, no, the elder gods demanded that all children (which is all people under 18) are required to attend hell to understand what awaits them if they step out of line. Unfortunately Desdemona was not one of the “gifted” ones that were made to believe that they were smart when in reality it’s just a facade to let the parents know which kid needs therapy before 16. 

In reality, Desdemona was just standing paralyzed at the school gates, knowing nothing excited them. They were tired, full of hatred, and bored. They looked around, seeing all the happy friends playing chase and other games, no one was alone, this saddened the blonde child at the gate. Until a new face appeared next to them.

“Hi! Who are you?! Names [REDACTED]! What’s yours?!” A boy excitedly spoke. Desdemona stared at the white-haired boy, stunned. Someone wanted to talk to me?

"My name is Des...Desdemona."

"That's a cool name! Say friend, what's your soul trait? Mine's determination!" The boy continued to speak. Desdemona stared at [REDACTED] before answering.

"Determination...at least I think…"

"Well can I see?" Before Des could say no, the teacher came out and called the kids inside for class time. "Hey, we'll talk after class ok? Bye friend!" And the boy left. He was always interesting.

~~~

The school day was done in an instant, and Desdemona found themself walking back home. The clouds greying above, making the air cold and damp.

"Desdemona! You should wait here until your father can get you! It's going to be a downpour!" They heard the teacher cry. They were only a little out of the gate, so it probably was best to listen. They walked back to the roofed area that the teacher was under, along with their new friend [REDACTED]. "I'll call your dads, do you mind waiting here?"

Two shakes of the kids heads and she left.

"Hi Dessie! Can I see your soul now?" Desdemona's new friend asked. They were conflicted, but ultimately, they trusted [REDACTED]. They pressed and hand against their own chest and out popped the pitch black soul. "Wow! I haven't seen a soul like that before!"

"My dad doesn't like me showing my soul…" 

"It's cool though! Don't feel bad!" The comment made Des smile, it was great to have a friend that accepts their oddities. The two talked about all sorts of child nonsense afterwards. About ten minutes had passed when the teacher came back out, her face was one of distress.

"Desdemona, your father will be here shortly, [REDACTED], I'll walk you to where your mother is, ok?" The kids nodded. They waited a few minutes until a car pulled up and out stepped Desdemona’s father carrying an open umbrella.

“C’mon Des, I have to take care of paperwork before eight.”

“Dad! Can my friend come over? Please?” The blonde child asked, running up to their father.

“What?! N-...fine, whatever keeps you happy, but you know the rules. Ma’am, is that ok?” The grown man asked, directing his attention to the teacher.

“Well, I would have to inform [REDACTED]’s mother, but if she agrees, then it’s fine.” The teacher responded. Desdemona smiled and ran back to give [REDACTED] a hug while the teacher pulled out her phone again. 

~~~

The ride home wasn’t dull for once, this time, it was fun! Desdemona and their friend sat and chatted the whole time, talking about the most random of things. When they finally got home, Des bolted upstairs to change into their usual after school clothes as fast as they could so they could get back to their friend. They could talk and play for the rest of their short lives the whole night! It was so much fun, and it was only sunset when Des’s father said that [REDACTED] had to get ready to go home. 

“Des, can I ask you something?” Their father asked, leading them to the kitchen while their friend was packing their bag still. 

“Sure!” They had left the kitchen and went to the empty backyard with only a tree and some bushes. 

“When did you think you could keep it a secret that you showed your friend your soul?” Des choked at the sentence. 

“Father, I’m sorry, he didn’t tell anyone and no one else saw!” The child spoke, tears forming in their dark eyes.

“Well that’s where you’re wrong, as your teacher saw and informed me when she called to ask if I could come to pick you up.”

“Dad! I’m sorry! I’ll be better! I can make it up to you!”

“Too late, Desdemona.”

~~~

When [REDACTED] finished packing his bag, he slung it over his shoulder and looked around, not seeing their friend at all. 

“Hey Dessie?! Where are you?!” He asked to the open room. I should investigate! And off he went, looking around in every room for their friend, he never saw them leave so who knows where they went! Only after going downstairs again and seeing his friend’s father walk into the kitchen from the backdoor with red hands, did [REDACTED] figure out where their friend was. 

Into the back yard he went! Only after sneaking by Des’s father and opening the slightly ajar door, did his smile and his heart sank. There, laying on the ground in front of the willow tree, was Desdemona, unmoving, and in a puddle of a dark red liquid. [REDACTED] rushed over to kneel in front of their now deceased friend. 

“Dessie...please wake up, why won’t you wake up?!” He shouted while tears formed in his eyes. “Dessie! Please! You’re my only friend! Why can’t you wake up?!” He shook his friend’s body and noticed the black soul, shattered in half. The boy grabbed it and held it close. “Please wake up! Please wake up! Please wake up!” 

Then, the feeling of [REDACTED]’s skin being torn off in pieces hit, and he let out a sharp cry of pain. The shards of the black soul soared up and [REDACTED]’s red soul was drawn out. “I need you to wake up!”

Silence…

The screaming had stopped, the black soul was absorbing new determination provided by the red one. [REDACTED] fell onto his side and let his eyelids grow heavy. 

The only other thing he could remember from that day were police sirens, an ambulance, and being paralyzed, forced to stare as his friend was covered in a white blanket, and carted off. 

~~~

That was the last of Desdemona, a child born with a destiny to die at the hands of a cruel father just because they had an imperfect soul.

Not even time remembers the life it took, the only one who could remember the blonde child was the one with their soul. The boy grew up on a quest to bring back their once friend, no matter how much their hate and death corrupted them. 

#shattered mirror #undertale #thsc #the henry stickmin collection #toppat recruits #post-pacifist ending #CrossOver #fanfic #fanfiction

[todisturbtheuniverse]

FIC: Set All Trappings Aside [8/9]

Rating: T Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition Pairing: f!Adaar/Josephine Montilyet Tags: Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, Class Differences Word Count: 5000 (this chapter) Summary: After months of flirtation, a contract on Josephine’s life brings Adaar’s feelings for her closer to the surface than ever. It highlights, too, all of their differences, all of the reasons a relationship between them would not last. But Adaar is a hopeful woman at heart; if Josephine can set all trappings aside, then so can she. Also on AO3. Notes: While the context for this story is the Of Somewhat Fallen Fortune questline, some of the conversations within it didn’t quite fit for this Inquisitor. The resulting fic is a twist on the canon romance. This Adaar and Josephine have featured in other fics, so you may miss a little context if you haven’t read Promising or Truth-Telling, which both come before this one. Chapter-specific note:  All of the remaining chapters are up on AO3; they’ll be posted more slowly here on tumblr so as not to clog your dashboards.

Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

"She's late," Bull said.

Dorian rolled his eyes. "You don't say."

Cassandra, ignoring them both, continued to look toward the village through her spyglass. Josephine watched her, hands clammy. They were all awfully comfortable with the idea that something had already gone wrong. Perhaps from long practice. 

Josephine, unfortunately, wasn't practiced at all.

Cassandra lowered the spyglass. "That's the last of them."

"Really," Bull said, doubtfully. "All of 'em in the tavern?"

"Or standing around outside it." She tucked the spyglass into her belt. "Ten, all told. A few in older gear, but otherwise well-equipped."

"I'd've left some men out in the field. They have enough to spare for that. Catch us off-guard when we're in the middle of cracking heads."

"I believe they hope that if they are all in one place, you can be prevented from doing that," Dorian said dryly.

"We'll see how that works out for them."

"No change to the plan, then," Josephine broke in.

They all looked to her, as if they'd forgotten she was there. Fair enough. She wasn't usually here when they did this kind of thing. And after this experience, she hoped she never would be again.

"If she wasn't fast enough to observe without being made, none of us are," Bull said. "So either she's injured or worse, and we need to ride to the rescue sooner rather than later—"

"Bull," Dorian said, not exasperated now, but sharp. Maybe Josephine's face had given away something of how she felt about this hypothetical scenario.

"—or she's just tied up, and we might as well get on with it," Bull went on, perfectly even. "We're not going to figure out more about these people by standing out here with our thumbs up our asses."

Dorian glared at Bull. "If they've gone to the trouble of luring her here, she's probably the picture of—"

"She'd rather know the score than listen to me lie," Bull interrupted.

"We don't gain anything by waiting," Cassandra said, taking over. "She is very good with those daggers, but not good enough to handle a dozen opponents at once."

"She lacks the reach," Bull agreed.

Josephine looked to Cassandra again, who looked back at her, frowning. "They're not Red Templars," she said, not reassuring—that was not Cassandra's forte—but simply conveying facts. "I'm certain of that much. Well-outfitted, but no identifying regalia."

"Professionals, then," Bull said. "Not hungry folk."

"I just imagined I would know more about them than that when I walked into this negotiation," Josephine said.

"We always knew that we would have limited information," Cassandra pointed out. "Besides, you have worked miracles before. I have watched you change the mood at many a meeting in a single blink."

"To you, it may certainly seem that way. There is a lot of groundwork before we reach that point." Josephine took a deep breath. "And the stakes here are higher."

"Nah," Bull said. "Just think—usually we have to do this part without you."

Dorian looked torn between outrage and amusement. "You are creating more and more problems for future Adaar, you know."

"She can handle it," Bull said easily, and winked at Josephine. Well, maybe he just blinked. It was hard to tell.

"Very well," Josephine said, ignoring all of this regardless. "Let's waste no more time."

They took the wagon-rutted road on foot, leaving the horses tied at the turnstile that marked the highway. Josephine took the opportunity, as they walked, to unwind the chain of office that had been packed carefully away in her saddlebags and don it again.

"If they are as well-researched as they seem," she said, to Cassandra's questioning look, "then best they know who they're dealing with from the outset."

Cassandra's mouth twitched toward a smile. "They may be so distracted by the idea of all the money they don't know that we don't have that it will all be over before opening remarks."

"You would like that," Josephine said mildly. "Given your distaste for wasting time."

"Mmm," Cassandra said, noncommittal, but still she smiled. She hadn't drawn her sword, but her hand rested on the pommel; she watched the fields, eyes seeking any sign of movement.

Josephine spoke more quietly this time. "Do you think she really could be injured?"

Cassandra's gaze flicked to her, just for a moment. She hesitated before answering. "Yes. Anything is possible. If this is a hopeful grab for money, though, they would be stupid to seriously wound her." She let out a barely-audible sigh. "As long as she keeps her mouth shut. But if these people know her...if they wish to harm her because of some personal vendetta...well, she is resilient. She will recover."

Adaar had once told Josephine a story too terrible to be false. Now she had a hard time forgetting it, the images it had evoked: the close cellar, the tortured sawing of blade against horn, the just-in-time arrival of the Valo-kas.

She'd promised Adaar that no one would do that to her, ever again. She hoped that she was not too late. 

"And if it's worse?" Josephine asked, swallowing the lump in her throat.

"She would fight," Cassandra said easily. "To her dying breath. We would already have heard the ruckus." She paused, considering. "And if she got the opportunity, she would run."

Josephine held onto that through the long walk down into the valley, where the light from the Dancing Star still gleamed, brighter and brighter, resolving clearly now into firelight, not a star at all. The others didn't talk much, either, all preparing in their own way: Cassandra, steadily alert; Bull, whistling a low tune; Dorian, fingers tapping out a rhythm on his staff; and Josephine, combing over the possibilities, trying to think of what she'd missed, trying to guess at every angle this adversary might arrive from.

Five mercenaries stood just outside the tavern building, bright with nervous energy. They perked up when they saw the group. "Nice of you to finally join us," one of them—a lean woman with her hair braided tightly out of the way—called out. "No funny business means no mages." She pointed at Dorian. "Give up your staff."

"Of course, good woman." Without any apparent hesitation, Dorian threw the stick at her, maybe a touch harder than necessary. She fumbled the catch a little.

"Boss wants to talk to someone agreeable," she said. She leaned the staff against the wall behind her. "Amenable, like. Just one."

Some might call the diplomats, merchants, and nobles Josephine dealt with mercenary, but she had rarely dealt with actual mercenaries. Still, they were just people, in the end. People she wanted something from, who wanted something from her.

So she had gotten through many moments like this. She had just not been bargaining for her heart, then.

But her head took over. Like Adaar's long years of practice with a blade, Josephine had honed her craft until it was muscle memory, until it was second nature. She did not hesitate.

"Lady Josephine Montilyet," she said, stepping forward. She did not curtsy. "Chief Diplomat of the Inquisition. I believe that I will serve." Before they could get halfway through their uneasy looks to one another—maybe they hadn't bargained on quite so high an officer—she pressed ruthlessly on. "I must insist, however, that I bring some protection to the table. Cassandra will accompany me."

This was important; they would have a hard time inside, at the crucial moment, if only Adaar and Josephine were on hand to deal with the number Cassandra had marked going into the tavern—or, worse, if Adaar wasn't in there at all.

The woman said, "Boss said just one."

Josephine smiled, unthreatening, polite. "Two is not so different than one. We come in good faith; our mage has already surrendered his weapon; this is the nature of compromise."

With a scowl, the woman flung open the door to the tavern. Josephine heard the murmur of conversation through the thin walls. She listened with half an ear in case the words became discernible while she observed the others.

One of the men, standing a few feet to the right of the tavern door, had paled. His eyes flicked from Josephine's chain of office to the tall, tall points of Bull's horns. His armor was older than the rest, not as well-fitted or well-maintained. The mercenary standing beside him wore a similar outfit, but his jaw was set. He did not look at their group at all.

The woman reappeared, a sour twist to her mouth. "You two, go in." She gestured to Josephine and Cassandra. "You two, stay put." She pointed at Bull and Dorian. Bull made a display of scratching his belly and yawning.

"Thank you," Josephine said pleasantly, and led the way into the tavern.

It had been mostly cleared. There were a handful of small tables in front of the hearth, where three of the mercenaries stood; one of them broke off, following Josephine and Cassandra to the table that stood apart from the rest, where one man sat.

Adaar was on the ground behind him.

She still catalogued the rest of the room, took in all the information she could: a third mercenary near the hearth with lopsided leather armor; the old man behind the bar on the wall opposite, shoulders hunched, watching the room from beneath a furrowed brow; the man at the table, tossing one of Adaar's daggers idly as he watched them approach.

But she spared a heartbeat for Adaar, to feel the relief that she was alive, even if she couldn't allow it to show on her face.

Adaar knelt on the tavern floor, a mercenary to either side of her, their weapons already drawn, guarding. The neutral expression on her face spoke to how deeply annoyed she really was; Josephine had seen it now and then, when a visitor to Skyhold got too pushy with their demands. But her dark eyes met Josephine's, and they were steady, unafraid. There was a suspicious red shininess around one of her eyes, but she appeared otherwise unharmed.

They'd bound her hands behind her back, a problem she was likely already working on, especially now that the mercenaries were distracted by newcomers. Josephine would need to buy her time.

"Ah," Adaar said, breaking the silence. "The cavalry."

"Shut up," the man at the table said, eyeing Cassandra. "Moiraine failed to mention that your bodyguard is the bloody Hero of Orlais."

"I assure you," Cassandra said, in a tone that no one would have believed, "tales of my exploits have been greatly exaggerated."

It would be best to remove attention from her, immediately. "I don't think it's unreasonable to enlist such a chaperone," Josephine said, "considering the number of soldiers you have in this room."

Six, by her count. Just one more than Cassandra had marked. Bull and Dorian would have their hands full outside once it all began, and in these quarters, she would have a hard time keeping out of the way. It was several feet to the bar counter; she wondered if she would be fast enough to dive behind it before the mercenary standing behind her could act.

She sat. The man at the table still held one of Adaar's daggers, though he'd stopped tossing it. The other lay on the table in front of him like a trophy. She heard the mercenary behind her settle into position—no weapon drawn, and within reach of Cassandra, but the casual threat was clear.

"I assume your lieutenant already introduced me," she said. The man across from her glanced at her chain of office, as if in acknowledgment. "Who do I have the pleasure of dealing with?"

He sneered. "Ellis Koster," he replied. "Of Koster's Carvers."

The company name didn't give Josephine much confidence, but she pressed on. "I wish we'd made this acquaintance under more pleasant circumstances, but we must make the best of what we have." She folded her hands on the table in front of her. "So, to business: what do you want?"

He pulled a folded slip of paper from his breastplate, placed it on the table, and slid it across to Josephine under the point of his forefinger. There was a smug look about his face, every movement slow and exaggerated, as if he'd always dreamed of doing it—holding all the power, dictating to others.

She had been afraid, waiting for Adaar's return, realizing she wasn't coming. But now—now, seeing this foul man put a price on the head of the woman she loved, seeing him crush it beneath his insignificant finger, she was angry. She was furious.

She took the paper, unfolded it, and read the sum with a carefully schooled expression. Even had she been seriously considering the ransom, it was a preposterous amount. No one could be under any illusions that the Inquisition had such deep coffers.

She adjusted her understanding of his intelligence.

"What offense has the Inquisitor made against you to make such an amount appropriate?" she asked, looking up again.

A little surprise tugged at his features. "Against me, personally? None."

"Then I find it hard to believe that you demand this payment seriously," Josephine said, setting the folded paper delicately on the table.

"This ain't a court, Ambassador. I've got something you want; you've got something I want. I baited a trap, and this is the tax you pay to get out of it."

"I see," Josephine said. "Well, then I think you know that this is far too much to demand for one person."

A little of the lurid anticipation fell from his face. "That so."

She did not elaborate; she simply waited, keeping all eyes on her. She had learned early in her career that silence was a powerful weapon. Even now, she saw it doing its insidious work: sowing doubt, planting second thoughts—not just in Koster, but in his thugs.

One, in particular. The woman by the hearth with the ill-fitting armor. The rest of them showed discomfort in other ways, in a hardening of the brow, a shifting of weight, but this one had panic in the twist of her mouth, in the nervous flex of her fingers.

The barkeep, by contrast, had stilled. He glared—not at Koster, Josephine, or Adaar, but at the nervous woman across the room.

Interesting.

"Because it seems to me," Koster said, breaking the silence, "that there's not much of an Inquisition without an Inquisitor."

Josephine felt the flush of a minor victory. He hadn't been able to outlast her, and now, whether he understood it or not, she had reclaimed some of the power he had tried to hold over her.

"The Rift is closed," Josephine said, choosing her tone carefully. Bored, relaying outdated facts. Her attention already turned to other, more serious things. "The days of paying off common thugs so that we can retain the Inquisitor's services are past. There is the matter of Corypheus, certainly, but we will be able to make do, I believe. After all," she gestured to Cassandra, "we are among esteemed company."

She sat back, physically signalling her disengagement, ignoring the discomfort of putting herself any nearer to the thug behind her. Adaar was no longer looking at her, she saw; she was instead focused on the mercenary by the hearth, the woman the barkeep was glaring at. She avoided Adaar's eyes. Her hands had curled into fists.

The barkeep knew this woman, Josephine realized. And so did Adaar.

"That's too bad," Koster said, drawing her attention back to him. "Too bad for you, I mean."

Josephine tilted her head to the side, as if vaguely curious. "Oh? How so?"

He put the dagger down on the table and leaned forward. "You can't imagine I'll let you leave, Ambassador, if you don't give me what I want. The next person to sit in that chair might be more interested in playing ball if we have half your war table in our cellars."

Josephine allowed a beat of silence, and then she brought a hand to her mouth to cover an amused laugh.

"By all means, Messere," she said, twisting the honorific into a taunt. "Show us to our accommodations. We will see who decides to negotiate with you next. For your sake, I do hope Nightingale does not take an interest."

Finally, he betrayed a twitch of unease. She'd guessed correctly; his mercenaries had recognized her, and he had recognized Cassandra. Not a small leap to imagine he'd heard of Leliana—and some of her less savory methods of doing business.

Sometimes it was good to have questionable friends.

"Perhaps it's time for us to move on, then," Koster said, staring Josephine down. "We'll take what we need from these fine people and make ourselves scarce." He had an ugly, unkind grin. "Wouldn't do to leave anyone to tattle on us, though, would it?"

"You said no one would get hurt!" a new, shaking voice broke in.

Josephine judged it acceptable to look toward the woman. She'd taken a step forward from the hearth; the other mercenary, a few feet away from her, put his hand on the pommel of his sword, frowning.

"Vilya," Adaar said, her voice low, "don't—"

"I told you to shut up," Koster snapped over his shoulder. He pointed at Vilya. "And you—"

The situation was rapidly escalating out of her control, but Josephine had bought enough time. Adaar's gaze swept the room, cataloguing and assessing, muscles tensed on the verge of movement. She was ready.

Josephine caught Cassandra's eye and gave the tiniest of nods, one that Koster, distracted by a room of unraveling threads, wouldn't notice. Cassandra's sword made a magnificent, ominous sound as she pulled it from the sheath. All eyes went to her.

In that moment, Adaar was meant to act. Josephine was meant to dive for cover. 

But Josephine wanted more than to cower in a corner while others took care of this creature. He had made it necessary to say untrue things, words that had left such a sour taste in her mouth. She would play a small part more in his demise.

She snatched up Adaar's daggers.

"Catch!" she called, and threw the blades to Adaar.

Adaar was already moving. She had one foot planted on the floor beneath her; her hands, trailing snapped rope, reached up to pluck the clumsily-thrown daggers from midair. Her rise was graceful, effortless, and as she straightened to a height taller than either mercenary flanking her, she left a dagger in each of their chests. She never took her eyes from Josephine.

"Duck," she replied.

The room erupted. Josephine scrambled under the negotiation table. She heard the whistle of a near miss above her; the mercenary standing guard over her had acted, but too late. Only a second later, his body thudded to the ground behind her. Cassandra's sword had found an opening.

Three down, she thought, pulling her knees tight to her chest, so as to present the smallest possible target.

From her vantage point, she couldn't see much. She saw Koster's boots and Adaar's bare feet, moving, in and out, back and forth; she heard the snarls of his rage and Adaar's eerie silence. When she dared glance over to her right, she saw Cassandra's greaves, the occasional flash as the firelight reflected off her sword—and her opponent's. She kept him crowded near the hearth, blocking his path to his commander.

Vilya's was the only face Josephine could see. She'd backed into the far corner, huddled on the ground behind the tables and chairs.

Josephine returned her attention to the fight in front of her. She stared at the light way Adaar's feet moved across the dirty floorboards. Her footing was so sure, so graceful. Koster lunged and hacked, and Adaar, without the benefit of armor or boots, moved fluidly out of his way—and yet, at the same time, closer. Trying to get inside the reach of his weapon. There was a yelp—she'd made contact—and then an angry bellow; her points made, Adaar slipped out of reach.

But Koster was not ready to give up. Josephine had hoped that the blood now dotting the floor would slow him down; instead, he stopped swinging so wildly, waited, focused. She heard him give a mean, breathless laugh, and her blood ran cold.

"I've heard tales of your skill," he said. "Glad you measured up to the challenge. But someone got the better of you once. Maybe I'll take the other horn, as a trophy."

Adaar didn't rise to the bait. Josephine had seen her temper, secret, boiling. But she directed it as she liked; it did not direct her.

Josephine could hear the smile in her voice. "I've been saying for years that I'm just not symmetrical anymore."

The battle rejoined. Their feet moved faster now, the movements so quick they left Josephine breathless. She clenched her fists and watched, not daring to blink.

Now and then, she saw the length of Koster's sword, just barely sweeping into view. It was after one such upswing that she heard a dull, sickening thud.

Adaar had frozen in place, her stance unbalanced, wobbling. Koster gave another nasty laugh. Josephine tossed a panicked look toward Cassandra, but she was still occupied with the other mercenary.

She cast around frantically for a weapon, found her guard's fallen sword, and snatched it up. Then she crawled toward the fight, the scene coming into view as she peered out from beneath the table.

Koster's sword was stuck in Adaar's horn. Josephine's heart seized, but Adaar was smirking, and after a second's panic, Josephine understood why: the sword was truly stuck, about a third of the blade's width trapped in the horn. Koster pulled and pulled at it, the look on his face transforming from triumph to concern, and Adaar only turned her head in a way that made pulling it free harder.

"Sorry, is the angle bad?" Adaar asked, all innocence.

The next time he pulled, she pulled too, away from his sword. The sudden release of the blade threw him off-balance; he caught himself on the backfoot, but not fast enough. Adaar had used the moment to move in, lightning-quick, daggers extended. She crashed into him, toppling them both to the floor.

For a long, terrifying moment, they both lay still. Josephine could not move, could not breathe— 

Then Adaar, with a hard exhale, rolled off Koster's body. The hilts of her two daggers stuck up from his torso. One had left his breastplate askew, no longer protecting his ribs; Adaar must have cut the leather fasteners that held front to back, at his sides, on an earlier pass.

The other, she'd left in his neck. Blood was still pumping from that wound, though sluggishly. Josephine's stomach turned, but she ignored it. She scrambled out from beneath the table, around Koster's body, and to Adaar, who still lay on her back, breathing heavily, mouth twisted in a grimace of pain.

Closer now, without a sword in the way, Josephine saw why. Koster's sword had clipped the pointed tip of Adaar's ear in its doomed arc toward her horn; the wound was still bleeding.

"I don't think he understood symmetry," Adaar said, fumbling to feel at her ear. She smiled at Josephine. "Were you going to duel him?"

Josephine stared at her, uncomprehending, then remembered the sword in her hand; with a noise of disgust, she tossed it away with a clatter. She caught Adaar's hand instead, pulling it away from the wound.

Footsteps approached from behind, and Josephine tensed, but then Cassandra asked, "Are you well?"

"Fine," Adaar said. "Thanks for the rescue."

Cassandra snorted. "What will we do with this one?"

Josephine turned. Cassandra held Vilya by the shoulder. The woman stared at the ground. The other mercenary lay dead on the floor beside the hearth.

"Herah," a reedy voice said—the barkeep, shuffling toward them with the aid of a walking stick. "I mean, Your Worship—"

"Don't start with the holiness stuff, Hammond." Adaar sat up with a grunt, holding fast to Josephine's hand. "Please."

"Well." Hammond cleared his throat. "You're not going to hurt her, are you? She's been awfully stupid, but...she didn't fight."

Adaar looked at Vilya and sighed. "I don't want to. But I do want to know what's going on. What happened, Vilya?"

For a moment, Josephine was sure that Vilya would keep quiet—but then she spoke, low and fast, not looking up from the ground. "Trade's been bad. Crops didn't do well this year. Everybody says the war's coming this way, if we don't starve to death first, and when Koster came along, he said he could help us. Get the Inquisition to protect us."

"You knew he was going to lure me here," Adaar said.

"He made it sound so easy! Made it sound like you'd just pay up and be on your way. He said you wouldn't miss it. And the Inquisition wouldn't leave us vulnerable again, after that." Her voice was thick with tears. Josephine felt a pang of sympathy. Here were their desperate folk, driven to desperate things.

"Who else?" Adaar asked.

"Just Cossus and Herbert. I swear."

"They came in one night with those Carvers," Hammond said, "leading the way. No one in town's spoken to them since. They've been sleeping here." He shot a look at Vilya. "Not by my choice."

Adaar rubbed her unbloodied hand over her forehead. "Well, Vilya," she said, "you—and Cossus and Herbert, assuming they were smart enough to surrender—have two options, the way I see it. You can beg your families' forgiveness, work off your guilt here. Or, if you really want the protection of the Inquisition, you can work for it."

Vilya finally looked up. She swiped at her eyes with a fist. "Can we...can we think about it?"

"Think fast. I'm not staying long." Adaar nodded to Cassandra. "See if Bull and Dorian need help. And keep an eye on her and her friends until someone else can."

"Come," Cassandra said to Vilya, pushing at her shoulder.

"Herah," Vilya said, still tearful. Now that she'd looked up, her eyes were fixed on the blood streaking down Adaar's cheek, down her neck. "I'm—"

Adaar waved her off. "Don't say it til you mean it."

Cassandra prodded Vilya along to the door. When it opened, noise poured in: Bull in the midst of a lecture on company ethics; fire crackling beneath the occasional yelp. The door swung shut again, muffling the sound.

Adaar let out another deep, bone-weary sigh. "Sorry about the mess, Hammond."

The barkeep scoffed. "We'll set Vilya and her friends to scrubbing. The blood'll be out in no time, or we'll have them laying a new floor. I'll get you a rag for that bleeding."

"My bag—"

"They took it downstairs. I'll fetch that, too."

Hammond shuffled off behind the bar. Josephine waited until his footsteps had faded, and then she asked, quietly, "Are you all right?"

"Could have been better," Adaar said. "Could have been worse."

"That does not answer my question."

Adaar met her gaze. "I don't think I can leave this place unguarded. There are other Kosters out there." She shook her head. "And other Vilyas. I'm sorry. I know we're stretched thin."

Josephine brought her other hand to cover Adaar's and squeezed. "We will make do."

Adaar's lips quirked up on one side in a tiny, crooked smile. "You know, when you say that, no matter how impossible the task seems, I believe you. Especially after that display." Her eyes danced. "It's a pleasure to watch you work."

"Oh, that man was insufferable," Josephine said darkly. "I could have carried on for another quarter-hour and still found more ego to chip away at!"

Adaar laughed. The sound, bright and joyful, was infectious; Josephine found herself laughing, too, on the verge of hysteria, all her relief pouring out in a flood.

"That business with the little piece of paper," Adaar choked out, between gasps, "can you believe…"

"You didn't see his face," Josephine said, wiping at her eyes. "He was so sure—"

"You showed him."

"No, my dear, I think you showed him, in the end."

Adaar pulled her hand free from Josephine's grasp, but only to reach out, to sweep Josephine fully against her as their laughter died down to chuckles and hiccups. Josephine wound her arms around Adaar in return, pressing close to her welcome, living warmth, savoring it.

"You shouldn't have grabbed the daggers," Adaar admonished. 

"You shouldn't have gotten caught!"

Adaar let out another chuckle. The sound rumbled pleasantly beneath Josephine's cheek. "Fine. We're even."

Adaar pulled back, just enough to look down at her. She tucked an errant strand of hair behind Josephine's ear.

"Thank you," she said softly.

Josephine's heart leapt. Gone were her old doubts; she recognized the intent in that look, the affection, and leaned a little closer— 

"We can put you all up in some of the rooms, Herah," Hammond said, and they both jumped. He hoisted Adaar's pack up onto the bar counter and brandished a wet rag. "You'd better get that wound seen to."

"Right," Adaar said, and with a rueful smile at Josephine, she gently pulled away and got to her feet. She offered a hand to help Josephine up. "Getting blood everywhere."

"You ought to stay," Hammond continued. "For a few days, at least. People'll be happy to see you. You take your sweet time between visits."

"Yes, I was a little preoccupied with the giant hole in the sky for a while—"

"You been Inquisitor for ten years?" Hammond interrupted.

Adaar stared for a moment, then shook her head. "No, messere," she said, much more meekly.

"I thought not. Now, you get yourself cleaned up, and we'll have a proper homecoming." He made for the front door of the tavern. As the door swung shut, Josephine heard him barking names.

"You hear that old codger?" Adaar asked wonderingly. "I lose a piece of my ear, and he wants to have a party."

Josephine tried very hard not to burst out laughing again. She almost succeeded.

#josephine montilyet #inquisitor adaar #f!adaar x josephine #f!adaar/josephine #dragon age #inquisition #friends to lovers #class differences #mutual pining #developing relationship #universe writes

[bangzhasanxiety]

Puppy meets Human Puppy

This is one of the works I’ve posted on my AO3, it’s pretty short and not my usual style, but I started appreciating that kind of light writing a lot more! I don’t know how formatting  on tumblr works so hopefully I didn’t fuck it up! You can definitely go and read it on AO3 if you prefer of course, the formatting is better there.

.

Princeton is a happy bastard. He’s the happiest bastard around and Eddie is pretty sure that if he continues grinning like that he’s going to explode. 

They are on a scene, a minor emergency that isn’t dangerous for any of them. The caller is already being taken cared of by Hen and Chimney, Bobby is talking with passerby and supervising the scene and Buck and Princeton are all cosy. The blond firefighter has the prettiest smile on his face, he’s literally glowing and Eddie feels blessed by that sight. Seriously. However, Princeton is here, receiving all of Buck’s attention—which, rude.

Eddie hates it with a passion. He would have preferred to be the one receiving that smile because that’s how it should be. It’s written in the books, the stars, somewhere. Princeton is not supposed to be in the equation. It’s supposed to be Buck + Eddie not Buck + Princeton and right now it’s all wrong. He knows it, Princeton knows it, Hen and Chim—judging by the smirks he can sense— know it, Bobby knows it, everyone but Buck, bless his heart, knows. 

So why the hell is Princeton getting what Eddie should be getting? It does not make any sense whatsoever and he won’t stand for it. But he refuses to make it obvious, knowing it would make Buck frown, or worse, notice, so he glares. He glares so hard that if eyes could kill, Princeton would have died at least ten times and then combusted in fire, but they don’t so the fucker is safe.

Anyway, Princeton is a lucky, smug and happy little bastard, as well as an attention stealer and Eddie wants him gone.

Fuck.

Of course, he would be jealous of a stupid dog.

Ah, yes. Did you know Princeton was a puppy?

.

Puppy meets human puppy

.

It’s stupid. It’s completely, ridiculously stupid. And maybe a little sad too. That’s what Chim tells Eddie once they arrived to the firehouse, Princeton in tow. The puppy is happily playing with their human disaster downstairs. Bobby, Hen, Chimney and Eddie are all seated at the table, talking. Or more like the other three are talking and Eddie is brooding. Now that’s something he would totally deny if asked because Eddie Diaz does not pout or brood. Never. 

Chimney and Hen and Bobby—which, once again, rude—are mocking him, he can feel it. They are totally being little shits, something he will never say out loud, and laughing about his pain. No. Eddie is not being dramatic. Eddie Diaz does not do dramatics, that’s Chim’s and Buck’s scene. He really is in pain. 

“It’s a dog, a puppy. What did you expect?”, Hen isn’t even looking at him, the magazine in her hand more interesting than whatever is going on with him.

“Right? Buck is almost a puppy himself, they were bound to like each other.”, Chimney adds with a teasing smile.

“Princeton is a golden retriever.”, Bobby finishes, as if it means anything. It kind of does.

“He’s a nuisance that’s what he is.”

“Now I know you don’t mean that Eddie, that’s just the jealousy speaking.”

“I’m not jealous.”

“Sure.”

Buck appears before he can answer, that pretty smile still on his face and maybe, just maybe, Eddie softens just a little. Maybe.

The blond rounds the table, pats Eddie’s shoulder and flops down in the chair beside him. He steals the cup of coffee in front of his best friend and take a sip.

“You know you could have just, I don’t know, made one?”, Eddie says with a smile.

“I could have but why do that when you made one I could steal?”

Hen and Chimney both snort and Bobby has that soft, teasing smile of his. They all know. Eddie always makes a cup of coffee, not for himself, but for Buck. No he never told him it was for him, he will never tell him. What Buck doesn’t know won’t kill him. Eddie is perfectly fine with letting him ‘steal it’. 

The moment is broken by a small bark, and seconds after, Princeton is there, looking at Buck with his big brown eyes. The blond is won over and already out of his chair, dropping on the floor to pet the happy golden retriever. He didn’t even finish the coffee. 

Eddie hates Princeton. 

“Who’s a good boy? You’re a good boy right Prince? You’re the best boy.”

Buck adores him. 

.

It’s Friday night. Bobby and Athena invites everyone over for a small gathering. Everyone is here. Karen is animatedly talking with Athena, Hen is holding Nia while she catches up with Maddie and May. The children are all running around outside. Bobby and Michael are also outside and Chimney is with Eddie, beers in hand. 

Buck would have normally been right with them, being his happy, loud self and bickering with Chimney at any given chance but no, the man is too busy paying attention to Princeton. Yes. The dog is also here. Eddie doesn’t know how Buck managed to convince Athena to let Princeton at her house. In fact he doesn’t even know why his best friend thought it was a good idea to bring him over but it’s too late to wonder now. The attention stealer is already here and he’s already getting all the Buck love. 

At this moment, Eddie doesn’t only hate Princeton, he also hates Athena’s soft spot for Buck, his friends perceptiveness—because he knows they all know—and Buck’s love for the dog. 

Eddie is definitely jealous of a dog and it’s not pathetic.

(Except that it kind of is and he knows that.)

They soon get to the table for dinner and the golden retrieved, aka Eddie’s arch nemesis, is forced to stay outside, which, good. Buck does pout, but Athena’s soft spot for Buck has a limit and she doesn’t let his puppy dog eyes fool her. If she gives him an extra big slice of pie when they get to the dessert, it’s nobody’s business but hers.

If you must know, during the dinner, most of Buck’s attention was on Eddie and Christopher. Of course, Eddie basked in it, accepted each smiles as the blessings they were, had as much contact with him as he could and talked as much as he could without looking suspiciously needy for attention. All of this to say that Buck’s attention was on him and not on Princeton. 

Eddie counts it as a win. Take that stupid dog.

.

Princeton is everywhere. At the station, at Buck’s loft, at Maddie’s. Everywhere. Eddie draws the line at having him at his house. And by that he means that he pouts the whole day because one, he’s too weak to say no to Buck, two, Christopher is way too happy when he sees the puppy for the first time and three, the image of Chris, Buck and Princeton all happily messing around outside is precious, so precious and so pure that Eddie wants it to be burnt into his retina. The feeling of being a family is very strong and warms his heart.

Eddie still hates Princeton.

.

Princeton is sad today. Eddie is also sad today. The pathetic picture of sadness they make together is as adorable as it is ridiculous. Chimney is terrible for laughing at the two of them and calling them drama queens—how dare he? He went on a whole rant one day because someone drank the apple juice he had brought. Turns out, he was the one who had drunk it and he had forgotten.—. Hen is terrible for encouraging his behavior and taking not one, not two but multiples pictures of the two of them. Bobby is terrible for not stopping them and for participating in their mockery. Eddie doesn’t know when they corrupted him but they did and he doesn’t like it.

“Look at you two, both missing your best friend!”, Hen is way too happy by the way things are.

“First of all, he’s my best friend. Mine. Not his.”, Eddie points at the dog who has his head in his lap, “Understood dog? Mine, not yours.”

Princeton doesn’t even acknowledge him. He’s too sad for that.

“Wow. And Karen calls me possessive.”

“Let him be Hen, he’s experiencing withdrawal.”

Withdrawal. Yes. Buck withdrawal. The reason of his shared sadness with Princeton is the notable absence of one Evan Buckley. The poor guy is down with a very high fever and a terrible cough. Maddie, who thankfully doesn't have a shift today, is currently with him and keeps them updated via messages on the group chat they all share. Princeton, who was brought this morning by Chimney, and Eddie are the one who are suffering the most, both unused to the blond’s absence. So of course the two would pout.

“You know we get off soon right? The moment our shift is over you can go to Buck and stay with him. I don’t recommend it because I don’t need another sick firefighter but knowing you, you don’t care about my advice. You will have to take Princeton with you though.”

And he does. The moment they get off, he’s racing to his car, Princeton on his tail, under his teammates amused gazes. When he arrives, he meets Maddie at the door. She tells him that her brother is awake, wishes him good luck, pats Princeton’s head and leaves with a wide smile.

Eddie is thankful for his Abuela agreeing to take care of Chris tonight, he knows Buck would have love to see the kid but they will have to wait until he gets better. 

Princeton makes a beeline for the top floor and Eddie follows. He’s greeted by the sight of a grinning Buck, buried under a heavy blanket, running his hands over the overly excited puppy. Buck’s grin widen when he sees him and Eddie is quick to join them. 

Yes, Princeton gets a pat or two from him.

Time passes by, Eddie heats up some soup Maddie made earlier, Princeton eating some dog food not too far from him, and brings it to Buck. They end up talking quietly about everything and anything and they are joined by the golden retriever later on.

Buck’s head drops on Eddie’s shoulder, his eyes are glassy and dropping. He’s tired. Princeton is curled up at the end of the bed, already asleep. Eddie is about to leave them be, still debating between staying and sleeping on Buck’s couch or leaving all together. As if sensing his inner conflict, Buck stops him from going anywhere.

“Stay?”

And how can Eddie say no when he looks at him like that?

They all sleep well that night.

.

Eddie kisses Buck on a Sunday. Princeton is here, so are Christopher and all of their friends.

Eddie kisses Buck on a Sunday and it’s perfect. Everyone is happy and smiling and cheering, and Buck is beaming.

Eddie kisses Buck on a Sunday, Princeton is running around, Bobby is tearing up because that’s his pseudo-son finally getting the love of his life, and Maddie is giving Eddie the most ridiculous and weirdly threatening shovel talk—she can’t stop smiling. Athena is getting money from Chimney and Hen and Karen because she won the bet. 

Eddie kisses Buck on a Sunday and knows he will do it everyday.

He doesn’t hate Princeton anymore, he never really did, and now he gets the attention he always wanted. But he does whisper to the puppy that he won. Because he totally did, fair and square.

Princeton is still a happy bastard.

Eddie + Buck is still the better equation. 

And yes, Eddie + Buck = Love.

#911 fic #evan buckley #Eddie Diaz #Princeton the golden retriever #Buddie #fluff #my writing #Leen writes #fanfiction

[ask-de-writer]

Genii’s Junk (1 part) – A tale of the Bizarre Borderland

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to the Bizarre Borderland

GENII’S JUNK

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

© 2014 by Glen Ten-Eyck

2581 words

Writing begun 06/19/14

From an idea by Alte Seely, who wondered what a Bizarre Borderland junk yard would be like.

All rights reserved. This document may not be copied or distributed on or to any medium or placed in any mass storage system except by the express written consent of the author.

//////////////

Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights. They may reblog the story. They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions, provided that such things are done without charge. I will allow those who do commission art works to charge for their images.

All sorts of fan activity including but not limited to art, stories, musical compositions, plays or anything else is ACTIVELY ENCOURAGED.

///////////////////////

There were a few old, gnarled trees out in front. The building itself was totally unremarkable. Just an old, cheap sheet metal structure. The peeling, sun-faded sign read “Genii’s Junk – Worth anything or not, I buy it or sell it. If you need it, I have it. But it may need work!”

I parked in the shade of one of the trees and strolled into the slight gloom of the cool interior. There were dozens of racks holding the multitude of things that Genii wanted to keep out of the weather. The sun in Border County is infamous for destroying anything that it shines on, if it shines long enough.

It had obviously not shone on Genii enough to do any harm! Lovely young looking lady. Appearances are deceiving. She is lovely enough to look at, yes. Young? Define your terms. I know for a fact that she helped to found the Ottoman Empire. Lady? Try calling her human if you want an earfull of excellent profanity without a single sleazy four letter word.

Like everyone in North or South America, if you trace back far enough, there are immigrants in the woodwork. Genii is one, sort of. She has been in the same location since at least 1530. That is the year, not the time on a 24 hour clock.

She told me herself that Cortez was one cranky customer.

Today, there was a slight individual with a large head hidden by a bigger hat at the counter. Genii had the oscilloscope and a big, hundred function multimeter out on the counter and three big power leads with clamps and adapters.

A long, too many jointed finger pointed at a stud on the device sitting on the counter. His (?) somewhat squeaky voice demanded, “Positive One go here! Not over there, stupid human!”

Genii’s lovely face curled into a snarl, showing her many fangs. “Watch who you call HUMAN, you gray trash!”

Settling some, she explained patiently, as if to a retarded three year old, “This is the anti-gee element of a 1942 Star Sweeper. From 1951 on, you are right. For any earlier models, if you want to do that test hookup, put your gold on the counter now. You will not be alive to give it to me later but you WILL have destroyed the unit.

“This is from one of the two that US Airforce took down outside of Roswell in 1947.” She turned to a LONG shelf of manuals and other books that sat on top of the massive number of scroll pigeon holes. Taking down a much thumbed manual, she expertly flipped through pages and pointed to a picture for the customer.

“There. Manufacturer’s Manual for the 1942 Star Sweeper. Hookup diagram and warnings…” The Gray examined the manual in something like shock.

“Where you get this? I give you two pound gold for it.”

With a sour expression Genii pointed over her shoulder at a sign in at least a hundred languages. One of them was the same as the one in the book. It read, “NO WRITTEN MATERIALS FOR SALE AT ANY PRICE!”

He (?) started to say something more, while trying to put the manual under his (?) coat. Genii, with a disgusted look, leaped over the counter like an acrobat. She hit the customer with both feet at shoulder level, flattening him (?). She took back the manual and hopped back across the counter to put it away.

She also took the device off the counter and lifted the oscilloscope back to its rack of test equipment.

The test leads and other gear went neatly back to their places. Brightening, she turned to me.

“What can I do for you today, Jimmy?”

Flipply I replied, “You could sell me your bottle, my dear, but I have heard a rumor that your personal home is not for sale.

“Actually, I was looking for a carpet. Something that isn’t a Belgian knock-off of a real carpet.”

Lighting up, she asked, “Hand loomed and knotted or machine made?”

“Hand knotted, I think, Genii.”

“What about a dubious one? I have one out on Aisle 34, about a four or five hundred yards down. I’ll loan you a yard wand to get you there. It is between the NC-2 and the De Haviland bomber. There is a rack there. I am sure that you will have no trouble finding it.

I snickered. “Anything on YOUR aircraft rows is fun. What do you have that is new to you?”

Genii grinned in delight. How about an X-B70? It needs a little work!”

I chortled, and asked, “Which aisle? I should have no trouble seeing a Valkyrie if it is anything like reassembled.”

Genii handed me a wooden pole with a wide bicycle type seat and handlebars on it. With a grin, she said, “Aisle 36! Have fun!”

Leaving the disgruntled Gray behind, I took the handlebars, activating the “Yard Stick” and took off. In only moments, I found the Aisle 34 marker and swooped around the turn, scooting down the Aisle.

The NC-2 was a great locator. The giant WW I sea-going biplane was totally intact. It had a 103 foot wingspan. For wood and wire technology there were few that ever matched its sheer size and NONE that could match it for range and load.

It was meant to launch in Maine and fly antisubmarine patrol all the way to the Florida keys, non-stop. The Great War ended before it and its three sister aircraft were finished.

Congress canceled the contract without payment. Curtis (the C of NC-2) went ahead and finished all four planes on their own dime, while Congressmen all got on the “They will never fly” and “defrauding the War Department” band wagons. When all four launched from the factory in Virginia and flew up to Maine, the world was astounded.

When they refueled, they took on as passengers those few Congressmen and Navy personnel still championing the NCs as practical aircraft. They then flew, non-stop to the Florida Keys, exactly as designed, except that they were carrying almost a 20% overload in passengers, instead of bombs and depth charges. That feat blew away the whole world at the time.

It also shut up the NC program critics more effectively than if they had been hit by the bombs that the planes were designed to carry. Congress quietly tried to pass Curtis the money that they were due, so that the US Navy could claim the aircraft.

Later, the four made a trans Atlantic Flight. The NC-1 disappeared in thunderstorms. Some wreckage was found. The NC-3 was forced down at sea. It was taxiing on only two engines when found. The tow to the Azores caused enough damage to the plane that it could not continue.

The NC-2 got to the Azores a day before the NC-4. It refueled. The weather being good, it took off for Lisbon and was never seen again. The NC-4 landed in the Azores, refueled and later landed safely in Lisbon harbor, the first airplane to fly the Atlantic. It is now in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

I made a note to ask Genii how she managed to get the NC-2 and set my yardstick down by the rack of carpets. They followed that old law, 90% of everything is crap.

Genii, as usual, was right about it not being hard to find the one that she had spoken of. It had a clearly later, and phony, Antwerp label sewed on. The work had been carelessly done. The metal needle used to sew the label on had damaged the port side lift and control spells, unless my Pocket Dowse and Spell Strength meter was wrong. Judging by the fringe and warp damage, it must have been some crash.

As I rolled up the carpet and strapped it to the Yardstick, I heard a warning siren. It was coming from the vicinity of the X-B70, whose huge nose and forward canards jutted above the intervening aircraft.

No chance to look at it, then. I headed back in to the shop. I got there just before the unearthly scream of the six monster jet engines being fired up. It sounded like the X-B70 was a live bird. If Genii was going to that much trouble, she very likely had a cash customer for it. I wondered who it was.

Sometimes Genii would talk about customers and sometimes not. It was never wise to pry. There was someone new at the counter. The Gray was still there. Still complaining.

Genii turned her back on him and told him, “You are right. I did not sell to you. I will not sell to you. You tried to shoplift PRINTED MATERIAL from ME! I have not let any written things go since Caesar screwed up our deal and BURNED the Library at Alexandria! You have only seconds left to get out of here alive! Go!” She was reaching under the counter when the Gray left - - at a waddling run.

Turning to the new man at the counter, she smiled very professionally and asked, “Sorry about the scene, General. What can I do for the Air Force today?”

Self-importantly, he replied, “What was that? It sounded like a jet engine test!”

Serenely, which is a bad sign with Genii, because it means that she is absolutely certain of her legal footing, Genii replied, “It was. X B-70 engine test. Starboard #2 engine began to develop vibration, so we aborted the test.

“It is ALL covered in my salvage contract. Do you need a copy?”

Sourly, the General replied, “Why bother? You can’t sell it if it is operational. Mass weapon laws.”

Smiling with her fangs but not her lovely eyes, Genii replied, “Loophole big enough to fly a carpet through, General. If I am not selling it on Earth, the laws don’t apply. I am not selling it anywhere that you have any authority.”

Voice hardening and chilling some, like maybe a glacier, she asked, “Do you have any actual business here?”

“Where are those ten computer stabilization systems that we ordered!” More a demand than a question. Bad way to make points with Genii.

Her face froze. “I have been forced to cut off all credit to the United States Armed Services. Proper notices were sent according to the contract. The reason given is failure to render payment of the agreed form or amount. Further, the Military Procurement Office has sent formal notice of refusal to pay and stated that I will receive only 1/10th of the outstanding total and that only by a check drawn on the Government.

“This has totally canceled our contracts and agreements. I filed a notice of repossession for all of the following items.”

She fished out a file box and gave the thunderstruck general a list. She also handed him a file of correspondence.

“That file and notice are copies of the originals. You may keep them or return them. Neither you nor any other armed service gets anything until I have my gold on the counter.”

I will give the General this. He took the whole file and settled himself at a large table. He began at the front and started working though it. Soon he was on a cell phone.

I was walking beside the Yardstick, guiding it with the handlebars. I brought it up to the counter and asked, “Got a Merlin S-multimeter, Genii? I want to check this out pretty carefully. I am certain that this is a Second Caliphate carpet but as near as my Pocket Dowse can show, the counterfeit label was sewed in with an Iron or Steel needle.

“Looks like that caused the control failure that made it crash.” I shook my head at foolishness. “Can you believe knowing enough to get a carpet like this and then sewing in the phony label for tax dodging with a steel needle? It shorted or blew out all the port side lift and control spells.”

Genii grinned hugely which showed off her big fangs wonderfully. She hopped across the counter again. She had five different willow wands and a very well worn Merlin in her hands.

She helped me to unroll the carpet. I showed her the weave and fringe damage that led me to think that the carpet had collided with something pretty solid at high speed.

Genii nodded agreement and plugged the biggest of the wands into the Merlin. Between us, we made sure that the original starboard spells were all intact.

The port side was a total loss. Between that steel needle and the impact damage that distorted the weave, and with it the spells, it was going to have to be totally reworked from fringe to fringe.

She looked up, shaking her head. “I got this out of the Lord Carleton Estate. I just paid a flat fee for it all. I was pretty sure of what this was but that was a LOT of stuff to sort. Drove my Yard Imps nuts.

“I just set it over in aircraft and hoped for the best. You lucked out, Jimmy. This IS a genuine and restorable Second Caliphate. I already have it priced.

“Yours for only five ounces.” She grinned again. I may be weird but I like Genii’s grin, fangs and all. She was holding out her hand.

Like a true gentleman, I dropped in three one troy ounce Krugerands and two Chinese Pandas. Genii, being Genii, closed her hand about them. When she opened it, the coins were gone and a receipt was in their place. It looked for all the world like a magic trick. Which it was. Real. Not slight of hand.

With the General expostulating fiercely into his phone in the background, Genii helped me roll the carpet snugly and secure it with straps for transport.

Carpet over my shoulder, I walked to the door. Looking out, the Gray and a companion were going over my rig, big jumper cables in hand.  They were trailing down from the nearly antique Type A saucer hovering overhead,. They were trying to find the hookup points for a jump-start. One was gabbling in Gray, “No Anti-gravity! How it fly?”

Door partly open, I called back inside, “Genii! The Grays are trying to swipe my rig from your parking lot!”

Snaring her fiercest, Genii came barreling out past me. She had what looked like a shotgun in hand. The double boom sounded like a shotgun all right. The result was not your normal shot shell hit on the tough hull alloy of the Type A saucer overhead.

The blue fire blast was something to behold. A visible hole about a foot across started to trail smoke most impressively. The saucer tilted some and sailed across Genii’s Yard Fence. A few moments later the array of crashes and the crunch of failing metal announced the end of the saucer, and probably, some expensive junk. The Grays ran like rabbits while Genii was reloading. Definitely not normal shotgun ammo.

I stowed my find and climbed under the cloth sunshade of my rig and, taking out my control wand, lifted my old Mohgul Carpet and took off for home. As I flew, I reflected that if Genii had lost some junk in the crash, she had gained a whole, nearly intact Type A saucer for salvage. I think that she was going to come out ahead. As usual.

–THE END–

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to the Bizarre Borderland

#GENII’S JUNK #Bizarre Borderland #modern fantasy #Written by De Writer

[vyraxhaalas]

Hello, my old Tumblr blog. Haven’t used you in a while. But Twitter is getting increasingly difficult to look at with the way my mental state’s been lately, and I want to write about something that I definitely would not be able to fit within 280 characters.

I’m quiet and Tired™ almost all the time anyway, so I don’t know how obvious it’s been, but something pretty traumatic happened to me in November. I’m still getting hit with aftershocks and probably will be for a while.

The gist: I was in my first car accident in November, it affected me deeply, and things haven’t yet been sorted out.

I don’t expect anyone to read the ten-thousand-character write-up I spent this morning getting out of my head, but if you want to, here it is:

So.

It's mid-November. Daylight hours are short now, so I've been habitually leaving work as early as possible so I can avoid rush-hour freeway traffic in the dark. But I can't do that today. A bunch of work has gotten piled up—I don't know how; other people were supposed to be handling some of the stuff, but it didn't get handled—and it needs to get done today. So I stay an hour overtime to make sure we meet our deadlines. It's dark when I leave, and it's started to rain. This will be the first night this year, actually, in which I’ve had to drive home in the dark.

My usual route home involves getting on I-405 and then almost immediately getting off it again to get onto WA-520. Soon after my lane joins WA-520, it turns into an HOV lane. I'm a single driver; I need to get out of the lane. And I don't have very long to do it before the HOV lane starts and I could be fined for being in it.

Changing lanes is the worst part of driving. Doing it in the dark, in the rain, during rush hour, and on a freeway is about the worst it gets. I turn on my blinker before I even move to leave my lane, and I leave it on while I check and double-check and triple-check that the lane I'm trying to get into is clear. It looks clear. I start to change lanes. I take half a second to check my blind spot one last time as I make the transition. I look back out in front of me and realize traffic is suddenly at a dead stop. I slam on my brakes. I am not fast enough.

At 5:52 p.m. on November 19, 2019, I lose the ability to say I'm a driver who's never been involved in a car accident as the front of my '05 Celica—my baby, my life-blood—slams into the back of a 2019 Volkswagen Atlas.

It's dark and it's raining and I'm in the middle of a freeway and cars are still moving by on both sides of me. The Atlas makes it to the shoulder. My car won't move. It's dark and it's raining and I'm in the middle of a freeway and cars are still moving by on both sides of me and my car will not move. I stumble through a 911 call, and then I just have to sit there in the middle of a freeway and hope I don't end up causing more accidents behind me, which could potentially involve someone rear-ending me.

Every moment feels like an eternity, so I don't know how long it actually took for the highway truck to show up to assist. All I remember, really, is how I didn't have power steering anymore and how crushing it felt that my car needed to be pushed off the road and how scared I was of how much damage it would take for the engine to be knocked out like it was.

The police report says the officer arrived at 6:10 p.m., less than twenty minutes after the collision. I'm not sure I believe it. The officer arrives, and she's decent enough as she explains that I'm by default at fault in this case and that I'm getting served with a ticket. It's hard to tell if the tiny bit of sympathy was real or just a practiced response to dealing with a woman who's clearly shaken and has obviously been crying, but I appreciate it. I don't appreciate that the law says someone must be ticketed. I'm notorious for bothering family members by leaving “too much” space between me and the vehicle in front of me, so despite the officer's gentle delivery, getting a ticket for “following too close” still feels like a kick in the teeth on top of the evisceration that is the knowledge of the state of my car.

Since I don't have a dashcam to figure out what actually went wrong and I drive a Hot Wheels car that you would look at and guess is never driven below the speed limit, I assume everyone else involved—the officer, the other driver, everyone who had to deal with my dead car blocking a freeway lane for a few minutes—believes that I'm a reckless idiot.

The officer calls a tow truck for me, and soon she and the Atlas are gone. It's just me then, sitting in my dead car on the shoulder of WA-520 while other cars zip by at freeway speeds less then ten feet away. I fill the time by being on the phone with family members who were probably five or ten minutes away half an hour ago, but now I won't be home until sometime around 8:00. The tow-truck guy is really pleasant, though. I appreciate that (and how he tries to give me a discount for, I guess, also being pleasant to deal with; his boss doesn't allow it, but it was still a nice gesture), so I make sure to give him a big tip. He says I bought him dinner, and I hope I did.

I take the next day off work, both because I'm still rattled as hell and because I need to get my car on the path to being drivable again. I send pictures to my insurance, and they estimate at around $3,000, which is fine, because I have collision insurance. My cost will only be my max deductible of $1,000, and then my car will be fixed, and everything will be okay again. I have a phone conversation with a guy from my insurance who gets blindsided by how much of my claim I've already handled, reading off parts of his script that involve things I already did and then laughing and apologizing as he realizes that. He says that he hears about accidents of the sort I described happening all the time and agrees it's unfortunate but unavoidable that I was declared at fault.

I'm feeling a little bit better about things at this point. The view to having my car back seems clear. I just need to find a trustworthy collision-repair shop. I get a recommendation from my mechanic, and we get my car dropped off with the recommended shop. They say they have a backlog and won't be able to start until the end of December, but I'd rather wait than get a bad repair, so that's fine. They also say that they might be able to start taking a look at it earlier if some time opens up before then.

Around 10:00 a.m. on December 17 (which, funnily enough, is the third Tuesday of the month, just like the day of the accident), I pull out my phone while I'm at work. I don't even remember why at this point. I'm distracted away from whatever I was going to do by a notification that I have a missed called from my insurance. I think, “Oh, maybe the shop has been able to get started earlier than expected.” I get up from my desk and get into one of the noise-insulated booths strewn around the office that people can use to make phone calls. As I open up my missed calls, I see that the caller ID is not listed as just the name of my insurance, as it was on the notification. It's listed as “State Farm Total Loss.”

So now my mental state is completely shot. While I'm at work. At 10:00 a.m. I have to play phone tag and try very hard not to cry throughout my work day. At the end of that day, all I know is that State Farm will pay out about $5,000, but the total repair estimate is now “over $10,000.” I don't have any idea by how much, so I spend most of my day being terrified that it'll be not just “over” $10,000 but way over. I'm amazed I didn't go cry in a bathroom for fifteen minutes. (Instead I did that in the driver's seat of the truck I'm borrowing from a family member immediately after parking in the driveway at home.)

I call the repair shop after I manage to stop crying and get out of the truck. The final estimate is around $11,000. I tell them to go ahead with repairs. I think about how lucky I am that I have the ability to drop about $6,000 on car repairs. I think about how guilty I feel about how “privileged” I am to be able to drop $6,000 on car repairs. I remember how I was told soon after the accident by family members and a guy at the repair shop that I probably would have avoided the accident entirely had I reacted half a second faster, and I think about how bitter that tastes.

Things seem settled once again until I open some mail on the last day of my holiday break and discover that when a car is declared totaled by insurance, the state of Washington treats the car as if it's been destroyed, regardless of whether you repair it or not. Not only has my car's registration been canceled but so has its title. I'll have to redo the entire process of titling and registering my car before I can drive it again. It would have been nice if State Farm had warned me this was coming. I'm so tired.

On top of it all, it feels stupid to be so attached to a car, as if by virtue of it being an inanimate object I'm not “allowed” to be as attached to it as people get to a beloved longtime pet. Sometimes I feel like a bad person for wanting to drive a car at all, because of all the bad things associated with the American lifestyle of everyone owning and driving cars. But I'm a thousand-percent serious when I say that I was stuck crying for, like, fifteen minutes this morning, nearly two months after the accident, just because I was looking over the paperwork associated with things I still need to handle in regards to getting my car back.

Having to read the words “total loss” again. Know that my car currently is illegal to drive even if it were repaired. “Please see the enclosed notice of options available to you regarding the Insurance Destroyed Vehicle.” Looking at my car's title and thinking about having to write “TOTALED” along with the “date of loss” across it before I “surrender” it for “destruction.”

I feel stupid even posting this, because I expect people to read it and go “That's all? It's just a car. And you're wasting money fixing it—money you're lucky to have when a lot of people don't.”

But I've had this car nearly half my life. It saw me through the hardest times I've ever had. It is freedom, autonomy, escape mechanism, comfort zone. I've had breakdowns in grocery-store parking lots in this car. It's, like, a third of who am I. I feel like part of my soul has been missing since the evening of November 19, 2019, and I have been constantly two negative thoughts away from crying since then. I’m able to drive the stretch of road the accident occurred on, but rarely without at least feeling the urge to tear up. Hell, I can’t even drive the truck I’m borrowing without the experience being depressing simply because it’s not my car.

I don’t know how to end this off, because there’s no pretty pink bow to wrap it all up in yet. Things seem like they’ll turn out okay in the end, but it’s not the end yet, so who knows. I’ll just have to get through it, whatever happens. So, there you go, I guess. That's what's been going on with me lately.

#personal

[notimetoblog]

Summer Plans (Pt.4)

Summary: Planning a trip with Bucky takes a turn when someone new comes into his life. Will it all change or can you still manage to have the perfect summer you planned?

A/N: HI!!! This part switches between reader and Bucky’s perspective. I hope you guys like it!! We get to see how Bucky is going about  sharing his feelings with you (or not) and how you react (or not). Tumblr is being a jerk and hasn’t been notifying me when I get tagged in some things, so please let me know if you’re also not being notified. I got a couple of requests (!!!!) and am super excited to get to write those this week. Thanks for reading!!! HOPE YOU GUYS HAVE AN AWESOME WEEK <3

PART 1 / PART 2 / PART 3 /  MY STORIES

Two weeks had passed since your day at the park with Bucky. That day had been fueling your dreams every night. It was impossible for your thoughts not to wander to the way the soft light of sunset had made him glow. To that hug, that had a magical aura to it. The way he had held you close, almost as if memorizing the way you felt, made you happily sigh whenever you remembered it. You could still feel his warmth and your mind thought the perfect time to remind you of it was just as you were trying to sleep. The never-ending sounds of the city, unable to drown out your thoughts.

You could also easily spend all day conjuring up those images, imagining possible scenarios where you were brave enough to confess how you felt. Where you poured your heart to him and he would reciprocate your feelings.

It had also been two weeks since you’d had a full conversation with him. He had texted you the pictures of the park he mentioned but replied only in short texts after.

You had been excited to share your thoughts, but you noticed he wasn’t as interested in the conversation, so you tried to change the subject, asking about his day and what he was up to, but his responses had been the same. Never more than “just busy”, or a “running a few errands”, or simply a “can’t talk right now, sorry!”.

Your constant daydreaming of him needed to stop now. If he wasn’t answering you, it was most likely because he was spending his time with Jen and that was fine. He deserved to be happy. He was a great guy who deserved a great girl. One that could make him smile, one that could give him all the love he deserved, who was as equally kind as him. If he believed that girl was Jen, then you would be happy for him.

You knew this was coming. Knew it since the moment he had mentioned her name and seemed so hopeful she would be the one. Knew that he would slowly be pulling back from you, too busy with his thoughts of another to spend time with you. It had been silly to allow yourself to rejoice in the way he had seemingly treated you different that day in the park because truth be told, your crush on him had probably distorted the way things happened. Just like it had so many other times before.

Two weeks without talking to him seemed like the perfect indicator of what was happening with Jen and the perfect cue to become determined to once and for all move past your feelings. Your heart was already going through hell picturing him with Jen, so you could not wait to deal with your emotions until after things got even more serious between Bucky and her. These feelings needed to be overcome, especially if you wanted to be able to go on the trip with him next summer. A whole trip with him and still suppressed feelings did NOT sound fun.

And it was easy to convince your mind this was the way to go. Sure, you could be happy for him. He was your friend, whatever made him happy should make you happy for him.

He likes her! you constantly reminded yourself as your heart refused to give up the thought of Bucky. He doesn’t think of you the same and the faster you realize that the better.

You needed to stop the constant thinking of Bucky. His absence only made him seem so much more special and that needed to stop for the sake of your heart. You were not going to let your misplaced feelings for him, ruin the possibility of keeping his friendship as he fell in love with someone else.

Waking up one Saturday morning, determined to finally begin getting over Bucky, you sat up in bed, with your laptop on your lap and planned the heck out of the rest of the trip. It had been set aside thinking you would finish up when Bucky had time to plan. After finishing, you picked up your phone and sent a quick text; beginning your “Get Over Bucky” Plan.

Hey! Itinerary is done! Everything is booked and prepped. No more planning, you’re finally off the hook.

Step 1 of the “G.O.B” Plan: Cut off your go-to excuse to hang out with Bucky.

Spending time away from Bucky had been difficult, but it was time to see it in a more positive light. If you were away from him, it could mean you could think more clearly without his handsome face clouding your attempts to get over him.  

You heard your phone buzz and your traitorous heart leapt at the thought that it could be Bucky.

You need to get your act together stupid heart, you mentally chastised it.

This was going to be much harder than your hopeful and naïve-self had made you think this morning.

Awesome 😊 FINALLY!, read a text from Bucky.

That was it. That was the full extent of his text, and suddenly the determination from this morning came pouring back to you. 

But then, your phone buzzed again.

Can I see you today? I know I’ve been MIA.. sorry ☹

Oh, for fuck sake!

You put your phone down. You had to be rational about your approach to this. You couldn’t avoid him forever, hell you hadn’t even BEGUN avoiding him. You wanted to be friends with him, his friendship meant the world to you. But, if you met up with him it would mean delaying getting over him, because you just knew that seeing him would only make your heart that much more determined to keep torturing you with images of Bucky and you, together. On the other hand, avoiding him today would create a pattern. It was easier to avoid an issue than face it head-on. Avoiding him today could possibly lead you to avoid him more and more often.

So, what was it going to be? Hang out with him and delay getting over him or avoid him for today and risk developing a pattern.

For ten whole minutes you just stared at your phone, unable to come to a decision.

Finally, you typed your response and sent it, not giving yourself any time to debate it.

Step 2: Cut off ANY excuse to hang out with Bucky, until your heart got its act together, you figured.

---

No worries.. and sorry but I cant today.. super busy.

Fuck, Bucky thought after reading your text.

He had called Nat and asked if she knew of a possibility of you feeling something more than friendship towards him, but the redhead had refused to comment.

“Grow a pair and ask her your damn self!” she had told him. “I’ll lend you mine if you can’t.”

So, he had spent two weeks trying to do just that. His phone would buzz with an incoming text from you, and he felt like a boy facing his first crush. His heart would beat fast, as if he hadn’t had multiple conversations with you before. He found himself needing to limit his words  in order to avoid saying anything stupid, wondering how he hadn't realized his feelings for you sooner. 

After speaking to Jen, everything had become much more real. She had understood, saying it was important for him to be honest,not just with her but also with himself. He still saw her at his office and they would still be friendly towards each other. She really was a great girl. Without the guilt of seeing her while thinking of you, he was able to fully delve into his feelings for you and boy was he completely head over heels for you! Playing back all the times you had spent together put the biggest smile on his face. That smile only grew when he thought of the perfect summer you had planned for next year. He had been an idiot being oblivious to his feelings, and he knew it was time to act.

Today had seemed to be the perfect day to set his plan in motion. The weather forecast for the weekend was just the way you liked it, the sun out without a cloud in the sky but not melting everything under its rays. And to top everything off, there was a farmer’s market a block away from his place set up for the weekend.

Waking up today, he felt a sudden sense of determination. It had been two weeks, long enough to truly miss you and finally grow the pair Nat had suggested (more like ordered) him to grow. Today would be the day. He had had enough of simply dreaming of you, he needed to know if he had a shot at the real you.

But… you were busy. He’d just have to try again tomorrow.

Busy today? He texted you the next morning, a Sunday. The anticipation of seeing you again had been waking him up early, even on the weekends.

And for hours there had been no response. He checked his phone multiple times to see if he had accidentally missed the ding of his phone letting him know he had a text.

Finally, around 4pm he heard his phone ding. He had tossed it as far away from him on the couch as possible because the sheer sight of it made him nervous. He threw himself over to the other end of the couch, grabbing his phone and brought up the new text.

Hey man, you in for the game next week? We need wings.

Sam Wilson. It was only Sam Wilson and his heart began to settle in his chest again after racing at the thought of it being you.

What could you possibly be doing? He searched his mind in the hope of maybe remembering you saying something about this weekend. Maybe you had an event for work? You hadn’t traveled back home, at least he didn’t think so. If you had, you would’ve told him yesterday when he had asked to see you. Were you upset with him? Shoot, had he actually said something stupid while he was trying his best not to?!

He scrolled through the thread of texts you two had been exchanging over the last two weeks, but he couldn’t find anything that could have made you upset. All his messages were short, not leaving any room for messing anything up.

He texted again, maybe you’d missed his first text.

there’s a farmer’s market by my place... wanna go?

You loved farmer’s markets, always looking for homemade cookies and other baked goods. He hoped your love for them could entice you to finally text him back.

He nearly dropped his phone when he saw three dots pop up on his phone letting him know you were typing. FINALLY!

Cant.. sorry B. Have to get things done for work tomorrow.

He sighed. He missed you and needed to talk to you, start looking for clues on whether or not he might have a chance.

I can get you some food from the farmer’s market… drop it off at your place??

He had to try one more time.

That’s really sweet, but I already ate and really should get back to work. Talk to you soon ok?

Well this wasn’t off to a good start. The work week was starting off tomorrow and if you were swamped with work over the weekend, his best chance at seeing you, it didn’t look likely he would see you over the weekdays.

Could he really get through another week with just short texts to you? 

NO HE COULD NOT!

---

Seemed like Jen is busy this weekend, you thought as you put down your phone with a sigh. If she wasn’t, he’d probably be hanging out with her and not wanting to meet up with you.

Bucky had always been sweet so his offer to bring you food from the farmer’s market was not something unexpected, especially after saying you were working. But you couldn’t focus on his sweetness now. You needed to focus on yourself and your determination to work through your feelings and finally leave them behind.

Grabbing your computer, you went back to what you were doing. Not working, like you had told Bucky, but watching all the John Mulaney comedy specials you could get your hands on.

Step 3: Distract yourself enough with John to stop thinking about Bucky. 

So far, not so good.

That man and his charm were making this almost impossible. Even John and his charm were having trouble competing. You needed help, you needed Nat. 

Just as you were going to call her, you heard a knock on your door. Not expecting anyone, your brows shot up in surprise. 

You approached your door and looked through your peep hole.

Fuck! 

It was Bucky. 

PART 5

---

Bucky Tags! (Let me know if you’d like to be added to either list!)

@camillechan @just-add-butter @buckyisthepuresthuman

 @carry-on-my-fandom  @creideamhgradochas @sixweekcure4dreams @verycoolveryunique @dugan365 @jitterbuck @buckysmusculararm @headinthe-fridge @buckybarnesappreciationsociety @hedwigthelegend @sappybarnes @sold-my-soul-in-2016 @coal000 @the-soldiers @natcad @winters-beauty @dixonsbugaboo     

“Summer Plans” Tags

@sweet-barnes @angieptt @lilypalmer1987 @pinkfairyfluff @lordemjay 

@softhairbarnes

#bucky barnes #bucky #bucky fanfiction #bucky fanfic #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky x you #bucky barnes x you #bucky reader #modern!AU #marvel fanfiction #bucky fandom #bucky barnes fandom #stories by notimetoblog

[littlemissmeggie]

instead of being a whiny little shit and crying to myself about how nobody would even notice if i left tumblr because some weird mood came over me in the last half hour, i’m going to make a list of the best parts of my 2018... (and i’m still going to do the 2018 picture tag thingy @catrinahartsnarry tagged me in eventually!)

i went into new york city with my boyfriend three (3) times this year! we never get to do overnight trips together—i usually end up going alone—because his work schedule is stupid. but we went three times!

one time we just went and hung out and went out to eat and had sundaes in all different places.

one time we went to brooklyn to see the vaccines at the music hall of williamsburg and had dinner at a cool french bistro and lattes (chai for me) in the courtyard garden of a little pastry shop.

the third time was when we went to see twenty one pilots at madison square garden and it was one of the best concerts i’ve ever been to and i laughed and cried and wore a trench-inspired costume and we had dinner at a super cool korean barbeque place in koreatown.

my boyfriend and i got coordinating (i suppose i could say “couple”) tattoos—his is an illuminated professor lupin wand and mine is steve harrington’s nail bat from stranger things—and they’re inspired by the twenty one pilots song “my blood.”

i went to firefly music festival in dover, delaware and it was one of the most amazing experiences of my entire life. i saw so many different acts—arctic monkeys, portugal. the man, alt-J, eminem, vance joy, foster the people, jimmy eat world, alice merton, kendrick lamar, the killers, betty who, jade bird, lights, mgmt, everything everything, and so many more i can’t even remember—and just was alone in a crowd of tens of thousands and it was just such a remarkable feeling. i worked as part of a work exchange program and got all kinds of free things. i drove myself to and from, which helped me conquer a major fear i’ve had since i started driving eight years ago.

i drove all over on record store day to find niall’s 10″ mirrors ep, which also included driving on highways and was part of what gave me the courage to do the drive to delaware. (i got the record, by the way!)

i saw harry at madison square garden the first night!

i saw niall at the meadows in hartford in september! probably goes into my list of top five concerts i’ve ever been to, to be honest.

i saw marilyn manson (and rob zombie) at the meadows. it was a totally different atmosphere than i’m used to and was a lot of fun.

i got my kiwi tattoo. it’s super fun and was my first colour tattoo.

my family did our 58th annual “laurel picking” (the best holiday of the year) despite a lot of health issues with my grandfather, uncle david, and aunt sue.

my boyfriend and i discovered (more like started going to, because we knew it was there) harney & sons’ cafe and have gone there for lunch many times in the last six months. we both try a different tea every time and i buy a different tin of tea each time.

we had my grandfather’s 95th birthday party this year and it was lovely!

i made my aunt’s wedding cake and it was beautiful! i was very proud of myself.

i catered an event for 120 people with very limited (i.e. my dad, stepmom, and a few of their friends) prep help. thank god my sister’s boyfriend came to help me do the actual dinner service! the event was excellent and, again, i was really proud of myself.

i posted 140,530 words on ao3 and am still working on the last two chapters of all the time before i knew you!

my boyfriend and i bought a new living room set and we’re redecorating our apartment.

i received so much support from so many people throughout the year, encouraging me to keep writing and not letting me give up on my fics! i can’t think of everyone but thank you to @catrinahartsnarry, @pastelfrio, @narryshippingqueen, @niallandharrymakemestrong, @lindsayvalliere13, and @narrymybed. thank you to the group chat because you ladies are my bffs. and to anyone who has sent me an anonymous ask or left a comment on all the time before i knew you. 

i’m sure there were more highlights of 2018 but that’s all i can think of for now! it’s a long list and i love you if you read the whole goddamn thing! 💕💕

#meggie talks #2018 in review #concerts and writing and tattoos oh my! #a summary of my year

[stressedoutteenager]

Uhm halla i loved your youtube!au for yousana and your writing in general could we get a sequel maybe about the fact that people are still annoyed at sana and they look stuff up about her like what happened at Urra and sending her and her friends hate (fangirls be wild lmao look at tumblr) and the boys trying to figure how they are supposed to deal with it because if yousef and sana weren't dating that is still elias baby sister,,, so yeah pretty please 🙏🏽🙏🏽

Hey :)Thank you for your prompt! 

Before you read this I want to say that I know that this topic is something very serious and I hope I handled this in a good, or okay, way. If I didn’t and something bothers you, please tell me and I’ll change it. I also didn’t write down any of the hurtful messages Sana reads because it might upset some people.

So here it is; please let me know what you think!

—————————————————————————————————–

Part II of this Balloon Squad as famous Youtubers AU.

(The parts between the dotted lines are comments Sana reads.)

There were only afew limited times the boys have seen Sana cry. Even when they were younger shewouldn’t cry in front of them. Even then she didn’t like to lookweak. 

So when Adam, out of all people, walksin on Sana crying he is overwhelmed. He can’t remember when the last time wasthat he saw her cry or if he has ever seen her cry. He just wanted to ask herif she had a waterproof pen for their next video and forgot to knock on herdoor before bursting in. He usually forgot to knock but her door was not lockedeither.

He froze in his spot but once Sana turnsaround, and he sees her smudged make-up, he instinctively walks towards her.She is sitting on her bed, facing the window.

“Sana, is everything okay? Wait,stupid question. What happened?" 

Sana doesn’t look at him and hides herface in her hands. Usually, when Adam says something stupid like that, Sanawould answer sarcastically and they would end up bantering for a while. But nowSana’s shoulders are shaking and she doesn’t look at Adam. He is overwhelmed,to say the least. 

"Sana, how can I help? Hey,whatever it is, it’s going to be fine.”, Adam is crouching in front of herbut is not sure what the right move is. His heart breaks seeing her like this.He wants to see the confident, sarcastic girl that he loves like a sister. Heknows how to deal with her. Adam reaches out slowly and puts a hand on her kneeto sooth her somehow. She doesn’t react and he honestly doesn’t know how tohelp.

He is very glad when he hears the restof the boys come down the hall and sees Elias and Yousef stand at the door.

“Dude, you only had to ask for apen. What’s up?”, Yousef says, without realizing what is happening at thesame time in the room. The boys wouldn’t let Yousef go get the pen because hewouldn’t have come back for a while. 

Elias and Yousef realize that Sana iscrying at the exact same time and both enter the room. 

“Adam, what did you do?”,Elias immediately asks even though he knows that Adam would never intentionallydo anything to hurt Sana.

Adam just shakeshis head, eyes wide, and doesn’t even know how to answer. With that both,Yousef and Elias, know that Adam didn’t do anything. He would have reacted alot different if he did. Yousef makes a move to go to Sana but Elias puts ahand on his shoulder and shakes his head at his best friend. 

He is Sana’s brother and whatever madeher cry would need to be dealt with by him. Elias ushers Adam out of the roomand quickly goes to sit next to his sister. Sana doesn’t cry often. Seeing hersob, shoulders shaking makes Elias’ gut twist.

“Sana.”, is all he has to sayfor her to look up. As soon as she hears the voice of her brother she loses itcompletely. She buries her face in her older brother’s chest as he embraces herin a tight hug. She is sobbing and Elias feels like he needs to go punchsomething, or someone. Whoever made his baby sister cry like this. A lump formsin his throat and all he can do for a while is hold his sister.

Yousef is just standing there, frozen.Seeing Sana like this makes his heart ache and not knowing why she is in thissituation makes it even worse. As soon as his eyes fell on her, crying, hewanted to rush over to her. But he also knew that him being her boyfrienddoesn’t mean he’ll be the one she needs right now, not if her brother isthere. 

He watches how Elias hugs her tightlyand knows that he can’t do anything. It’s hard to leave the room and not beingable to do anything but he decides that the siblings need their time alone. Hecloses the door to Sana’s bedroom slowly and sees Adam, Mikael and Muttawaiting in the hallway.

“What happened?”, Mikael asks.

Yousef just shakes his head, with asinking feeling in his stomach: “I don’t know. Elias is with her.”

While the three of them go back to theliving room, Yousef can’t bring himself to do the same. He paces back and forthin the hallway.

Elias hugs and lets Sana cry for awhile. He doesn’t want to push her to tell him everything now. Finally, aftermany sobs and tears, Sana looks up at her brother. Her chin still quivering.She wipes away the tears with the back of her hands. 

Elias searches her face for any signs,anything that gives away why she is crying like this. Sana takes a few deepbreathes and tries to say something but every time she chokes on her tears.Elias reaches out and strokes her arms in a calming manner. 

“I ruined your shirt.”, arethe first things Sana says. She had wiped all her make-up on her brother’swhite t-shirt. 

“Screw the shirt, Sana. Whathappened?” Elias can’t stand to see his sister like this. His babysister. 

Sana looks him in the eyes for a secondand then at her hands. 

“It feels like back at Urra.”,she mumbles. Still, Elias hears every single word and his blood starts boiling.He only has to hear ‘Urra’ from Sana’s mouth and he sees black. She hassuffered so much in middle school. She didn’t deserve that. 

“What feels like that?”, Eliasasks and braces himself. If it wasn’t for Sana he would be freaking out now.And trying to find whoever made his little sister feel so horrible.

Sana waits for a second. Should she showthis to her brother? He would just get mad but wouldn’t be able to do anythingabout it. But she needs to talk about this with someone. From the past sheknows that bottling up only makes it worse. She unlocks her phone and hands itto Elias.

“They have screenshots of stufffrom even back then. And the stuff with Sara, but all of that was deleted longtime ago. How did they even find it?”, Sana tears up again and can’tcontrol her tears. Why can’t she ever escape that? Is she not worth forgettingthe horrible times she had being bullied? Why do these people do that to hernow? They don’t even know her personally.

Elias reads through the screenshots, butonly shortly. Then he clicks back and sees that these pictures are on a twitteraccount with a username that definitely shows that this is a fan-account forHei Briskeby. But the content of this account is all hate. Not towards theboys, no. Towards Sana. Not only do they have screenshots of horrible thingsbeing said about Sana on the Internet from the past. They also write a lot ofnasty things themselves. Attacking Sana for being with Yousef, being in the HeiBriskeby videos and even judging her and saying she is a bad Muslim. 

Elias, rage-filled, stands up and feelslike he needs to shout or do something. He needs to do something about it. Hecan’t let this happen to his sister, especially when it’s indirectly his fault.If it wasn’t for his YouTube channel she wouldn’t be exposed to this now. Hetakes a deep breath, rubs his eyes and turns around to his sister. Sana issitting there, tears rolling down her cheeks and his heart breaks oncemore. 

He kneels in front of her and wipes awayher tears. “Sana, please don’t cry. It’s not worth it. These people justdon’t have anything better to do with their lives, you are so much better thanany of them. I promise you I will do something about this. This can’t behappening. You didn’t do anything remotely wrong here.”

Sana shakes her head: “Elias, I’llget over it. It’s okay. It all just got overwhelming for a moment. But thosepeople are your fans. What are you going to do? Some of your fans are just madthat I’m with Yousef.”

“I don’t claim those people as ourfans! I don’t care! This..”, he lifts Sana’s phone which is still in hishand. “… is far more than just commenting that they wouldn’t like youand him together. This is far more. They’re getting real personal! We’ll dosomething. If you weren’t Yousef’s girlfriend you are still my baby sister andwould still be in our videos, in our lives. I won’t just sit around and donothing when this happens to you.”

Ten minutes later the boys and Sana sitin the living room. Elias standing in front of them like the leader he is.Aside from that he took it upon himself to find a solution to this. 

“Elias, it’s okay. I’ll deal withit on my own.”, Sana says, desperate for him to listen by now.

He is set on doing something but Sanacan’t imagine anything that he does being worth it and changing anything. Atleast changing the situation for the better.

“Sana, this is not okay. And you’renot on your own and don’t have to deal with it on your own.”, Yousefobjects. He is sitting next to her, hand intertwined with hers. 

“It’s not a big deal! I can manage!Stuff like that happens.”, Sana says and is not sure if she is trying toconvince the boys or herself. 

Adam who has been weirdly quiet thiswhole time speaks up. “Sana, it is a big deal. You know, I don’t think Ihave seen you cry, ever! And crying is nothing bad but for you to cry it has tobe a lot!”

“Plus, this..”, Mikael liftshis own phone. Elias has given them all the name of the account to report andthey will try to contact someone from Twitter later to get it removed instantly.Mikael is the best with computers so he’ll try to see if there are otheraccounts like that, specifically made to spread hate. “… isunacceptable. They spend their time trying to hurt you and you’re not even aYouTuber yourself.”

“We get hate, too. It happens.Doesn’t make it right but it happens.”, Mutta says, “But this ishonestly a whole another level.”

“And you’re not even a publicfigure! You shouldn’t be afraid of hanging out with us, with your friends, yourbrother or your boyfriend because people might write something bad.”,Elias concludes all of it.

Sana sighs and stands up, lettingYousef’s hand fall out of her own: “Guys, it’ll only get worse if you tryto do something about it. I know what I’m talking about! You shouldn’t get in aconflict with your fans because of me.”, she stops for a second butdoesn’t give any of the boys a chance to say something before she continues.“You see now why I never cry around you?”, she says and quickly runsout of the room. All of them stand up at the same time and Yousef is ready tosprint after her. Again, Elias stops him.

“Dude, what the hell? Let me gotalk to her!”, Yousef almost shouts at his best friend. Yousef is not likethis, ever. But seeing Sana obviously hurt and not being able to do anything isthe worst feeling he has experienced. 

And Elias knows this. That’s why hedoesn’t say anything about that. Instead he says: “Yousef, I know. But Iknow my sister better than anyone here and she needs a little time to calmdown. She isn’t this open with many people. It took a lot of her to even tellus about this!”

All of the boys nod, including Yousef.He sighs and turns to his friends.

“Okay, what are we going todo?”

–

Turns out this one was the only accountthat is dedicated to make Sana miserable. Thank God. What the boys did mightnot be much. And having one account like this might not seem like much but hatespreads fast, especially when people are misinformed or not informed atall. 

Sana finding this account wasn’t acoincidence either. It was send to her by people that wanted her to see allthose hateful comments. 

Neither of the boys would just sitaround and not do anything to stop that. When they started their YouTubechannel they didn’t think it would get this big. So big that it affects theirfamily and friends. It’s not okay that people think it would be okay to sendhate to anyone, really. But sending it to someone just because she is thegirlfriend of someone they like a lot, that’s wrong on so many levels.

Yousef knocks on Sana’s door. He canhear loud music coming from her room but she still somehow hear his knock.Turning the music down, she shouts: “Who is it?”

“Me, Yousef.”

Yousef has left her alone for the oneand a half hours the guys tried to do at least something. Now, he can’t take itanymore. He needs to see if she’s alright.

Sana opens the door, her face bare ofany make-up now. She lets Yousef in and closes the door behind them. As soon asshe turns around she wraps her arms around his neck and hugs him close. Hedoesn’t waste anytime embracing her in the hug.

“I’m sorry for going off at youearlier.”, Sana mumbles into the crook of his neck. 

Yousef leans back a little to look athis girlfriend. She genuinely looks sad about that. He chuckles lightly andmakes Sana look at him confused. 

“Sana, are you honestly sad aboutthat, right now? It’s cool, really.”, Yousef explains why he laughed. It amazeshim how she can be this caring even after being in such a bad mood, for goodreason as well.

They go to sit down on the bed and Sanaleans her head on his shoulder. She probably never has been this happy that herparents aren’t home. If they got wind of this whole drama they would be worriedsick and she really doesn’t want that.

“Yousef, I was being honest. Youguys shouldn’t do anything about this. It’s just some coward hiding behind ascreen.”, Sana starts. 

Then she takes a deep breath and continues:“It just hit me pretty hard in that moment because … well, I told youabout Urra. It just felt like I was back in middle school and being bullied forsomething that I won’t choose to change. I didn’t choose to take off my hijabthen and I’m not choosing breaking up with you or taking off my hijab 'becauseI’m not a good enough Muslim’ now.” The last part Sana says in a mockingway.

Yousef turns his head a little andkisses the top of Sana’s head. 

“I envy how strong you are.”,Yousef says. Sana’s head shoots up and she smiles at him lovingly.

“But..”, Yousef continues andSana narrows her eyes at him. “You don’t have to face everything alone.You have me, Elias, the boys, your girl friends. We’re all here, anytime.”

Sana presses her lips together, tryingnot to tear up again. She just nods and leans her head back onto his shoulder.

They sit in silence, comforting silence,for a few minutes. Until Yousef can’t wait any longer.

“Okay, before you get mad. Pleaselisten first.”, Yousef announces the change of topic. At this point in theday Sana is too tired to even give him a big reaction. She nods and waits forhim to talk.

“We know that we can’t control theInternet but the guys and I have reported that account, which seemed to be theonly one of that sort, and also tweeted out for our actual fans to do the same.Which so many did that that account has already been deleted.”, Yousefexplains and waits for a reaction from Sana. She doesn’t say or do anything atfirst. She only listens and finally lifts her head off his shoulder and looksat him.

Sana looks him in the eyes and smiles alittle. Even this small smile makes Yousef’s heart burst with excitement. Eventhe smallest smile from Sana is better than her blocking him and everyone elseoff.

“Thank you.”, she simply saysand hopes he understands how much it means to her. And he does. He knows.

“That’s not all.”, Yousef sayswith a smirk.

Sana just raises her eyebrows at him.She really isn’t ready for a surprise today. She won’t be able to take it, she’sexhausted.

Yousef takes out his phone from hispocket. Before he unlocks it, he looks into Sana’s eyes again while telling herthe rest of the story.

“Like I told you, we all tweetedfor our fans to report that account, which they did.” Sana nods. That hehas said already. “Well, that’s not all our fans did.”

He unlocks his phone and hands it toSana. She knows that he wouldn’t show her more hurtful things but it takes hera few second to be able to look at the screen. Yousef just watched her with asmall smile.

———————————————————————————————————–

“ Why would anyone spend so much oftheir time doing something so stupid? That’s so stupid AAAHH”

“Wait!! There are people who don’tlike Sana?? How? Why? I want her to be in your videos all the time!”

“omg, please tell Sana that thosepeople who created that account are just cowards that don’t represent the HeiBriskeby fans at all! I’m so sad for her.”

“I’ll fight anyone that hates onthat precious cute girl! Honestly, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE???”

“I hope Elias’ sister is notaffected by this bullshit. it wouldn’t be worth it.”

“Do people not understand that YouTubersare not their viewers’ property??? WTF?! Honestly, that is so stupid! That poorgirl!”

“Oh God, I hopethat Sana doesn’t care about any of that! None of that is true. Ignore that,girl!”

———————————————————————————————————–

Sana and Yousefleave her room to join the rest of the boys in the living room. But they don’tneed to walk that far. As soon as Sana opens the door her eyes fall on the fourboys. All standing at the wall across from her door, in a line. When she opensthe door, they all push themselves off the wall and look at her expectantly.

“Thank you.”, is all Sana saysbefore hugging them all one by one. Well, that was the plan.

Adam is the first one in the line sohe’s the one getting a hug first.

“Sorry that you saw mecrying.”, Sana whispers in his ear and hears him laugh.

“Sorry that I didn’t know how toreact.”, Adam whispers back and makes Sana laugh.

When they part from the hug they justsmile at each other, both coming to an agreement to not talk about thisanymore. Ever.

Then she hugs Mikael but Mutta can’twait for his turn and joins them, making it a group hug. When Elias sees thathe is quick to join the group hug, same as Yousef and Adam. And Sana issquished in the middle of it. 

Well, maybe she really doesn’t have toface everything alone. She has people in her life that care for her deeply.

#skam #yousana #yousef acar #sana bakkoush #elias bakkoush #adam malik #mikael overlie boukhal #mutta tatouti #skam fic #yousana fic #balloon squad #youtube au

[aion-rsa]

Marvel's X-Men Relaunch Explained: What to Look For

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What do House of X and Powers of X mean for the future of the X-Men and Marvel?

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Jonathan Hickman’s ballyhooed X-Men relaunch has finally arrived! Both House of X and Powers Of X have seen their first issues released into the wild, and as the site that dug through Hickman’s entire body of Marvel work for Secret Wars, we felt it was important to get in on the ground floor of what is so far a 12-issue weekly series that blows out into six different books come October.

So with that in mind, and in the spirit of the books, here are X things we’re watching after issues 1 of House of X and Powers of X (get it, because it’s actually “Powers of Ten”?).

WARNING: This article contains EXTENSIVE spoilers about the first issues of House of X and Powers of X. STOP READING NOW if you haven’t read both comics.

I. The Art

There is no greater sign of the depth of Marvel’s commitment to this relaunch than RB Silva and Pepe Larraz handling art duties on the two books. If this relaunch was meant to be a short term spike for sales and a way to get people talking about the X-Men again without making any substantial changes to the line, there are plenty of monster names that could have handled six issues of art and sold a ton of books. Larraz and Silva, however, are only superstars in the making - staggeringly capable artists who absolutely blew away these first issues and will probably become superstars on the basis of what they’re showing in these books. Putting them on House and Powers of X gives them the space to grow into superstardom with the additional recognition.

Every page of House of X is a home run, and most of the attention is going to the sequence with Jean tearing up at the Professor’s welcome to Krakoa, but while that’s a great strip, it doesn’t capture the breadth of Larraz’s skill. He can go from that small moment, to the grandiose intimidation of Omega Sentinel on the Dyson Mastermold, to the blistering action sequence with Mystique, Sabertooth and Toad in the space of six pages. He’s been extremely good since Uncanny Avengers, but this is him taking his game up a notch.

read more: The X-Men Movies You Never Saw

Likewise for RB Silva. His art on Powers of X is superb all the way through, but what I found utterly shocking was how much emotion he put into Nimrod’s hands. Think about how ridiculous that sentence is: Nimrod, the pink and white Final Boss Sentinel from the future who just Terminator walks at Rachel Summers for like, 4 issues back in the early ‘80s, and RB Silva made his hands as expressive as Jean Grey’s eyes. As excited as I am to find out where the story goes, I’m just as excited to keep looking at the stupid good pictures.

II. What’s Left From The Old Continuity

House of X/Powers of X has been billed as a relaunch without a reboot, which implies that the old continuity will continue to exist. And in a way, it does - we’ll talk later about how much these books rely on older stories to build off of. But at the same time, it’s a pretty clean sweep from what came before.

After being reverse decimated post-House of M (if they were actually decimated, one of every ten would have died, instead of one out of every ten keeping their powers), the mutant population has been slowly creeping upward. Old mutants were put back whenever there was a narrative purpose, and mutant births started again in the last few years. But House of X goes full Morrison - humans will be outnumbered by mutants soon and extinct not long after that.

As far as recent continuity goes, there’s not much. Most of the deaths from the past year or so of Uncanny X-Men have been undone or are about to be. Xandra, Charles and Lilandra’s bird child from the delightful Mr. & Mrs. X, is destined to become Empress of the Shi’ar in 100 years. And that’s all we saw so far.

III. The Bad Guy Plan

The story is split across two books. Powers of X is looking at the scope of mutant history, starting with Charles and Moira meeting 10 years in the past (X^0), carrying through today (X^1), 100 years in the future (X^2) and 1000 years down the road (X^3). House of X so far is only focused on the X^1 timeframe, gathering the mutants on Krakoa under the leadership of Professor X and Magneto, and setting up mutant embassies around the world. And...um...I think the Professor is the bad guy.

The central conflict of the X-Men has usually been some variation on the Professor’s students fighting to protect and peacefully integrate with a world that hates and fears them, and Magneto and his followers either trying to completely dominate that world or separate from it entirely. In House of X, there’s no peaceful integration. It’s more like “threatening coexistence.”

The Professor has three speaking scenes across the first two issues: the EXTREMELY creepy scene with the pod people and the only slightly less creepy scene when Jean arrives on Krakoa in House of X; and the scene with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in Powers of X. There he talks about sacrificing for a new future, and I want to reiterate, *with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants*.

read more - The Essential Episodes of X-Men: The Animated Series

Ignoring the fact that “Charles” never takes his helmet off and looks like The Maker, the minor villain of Secret Wars; and the joy Magneto expresses through both issues (seriously, nobody is happier about this relaunch than him); all of “Charles’” interactions are creepy as hell and hard villain-coded.

IV. The toying with genetics

Breaking news: X-Men comics contain a great deal of genetic engineering science fiction talk! We also have film of the sun rising in the east, and documentary evidence of water being wet. Stay tuned, dear reader.

Seriously, though, these two issues are heavy on the genetics even for an X-Book. There is the obvious example, in Powers of X when we see the combination of mutants that made the Rasputin who has been tearing up the internet since the teaser image was released (for the record, it’s Unus the Untouchable, Kitty Pryde, Quentin Quire, X-23, and “Rasputin” DNA, which explains the metal but not the Soulsword).

And then there are the pod people in House of X, one of whom has very prominent red hair, and one has red energy bubbling out of his eyes. These are probably central to the big mystery of the story, and if you want blatant spoily speculation on what that all means, jump down to number X.

V. Omega Mutants

In yet another example of bad guy coding ruling the day, both books treat Omega Mutants like uranium: a dangerous natural resource to be exploited at all costs.

House of X goes into great detail about the definition of Omega Mutant. The previously commonly accepted definition in the comics was “extremely powerful,” but here it shifts to “primary power has no conceivable upper limit.” This both makes perfect sense - Iceman has been an Omega Mutant for some time now, and he’s basically an ice elemental, reforming himself from ambient moisture (or Havok’s piss that one time) - and is a terrifying new concept when you pair it with the revelation in Powers of X, that at some point in the near future, Mr. Sinister is going to start fiddling with omega powers to create super-chimerae who will collapse Mars in a singularity.

There are a handful of surprising names on HoX’s omega list - Jamie Braddock, Psylocke’s brother who has been off and on dead for 30 years is apparently alive and kicking again. Legion is around but unaffiliated, and Mister M (from the post-Decimation District X Bishop/detective book) is listed as unaffiliated. And Franklin Richards is flagged in red…

VI. References to Hickman’s Old Marvel Work

Avengers was as a concept basically outlined as a powerpoint, so the volume of infographics that Hickman and designer Tom Muller put into the two books is entirely expected. And because they’re very good, we get a lot of info just out of the way these infographics are presented.

I won’t go through all of them, but the two most important seeming ones at this moment are the list of Omega Mutants, and the reading order. Franklin Richards is the key to a lot of theories of the Marvel Universe (when you finish this article, go google “Franklin Richards + Marvel Time”), so it’s worrisome to see him mentioned so prominently in House of X. At least it should be to the people inside it.

The reading order, which appeared at the back of both books, highlights three issues in red: House of X #2, House of X #5, and Powers of X #6. Those three issues are supposed to be the paradigm shifts, and the first one comes next week!

read more: Best X-Men Movies Watch Order

And beyond the design elements, there’s a lot from Hickman’s old Marvel work present in these first two issues, and a lot that we can expect to come. Cyclops was notable in Avengers, but underutilized and eventually went out like a chump in Secret Wars. He gets more play in House of X, and it feels a little like Hickman finally getting to do with Scott Summers what he wanted to do with him before. Franklin Richards was a huge part of his Fantastic Four/FF run, and he’s very notably lampshaded in HoX, as are the Imperial Guard in PoX (Hickman introduced the human Superguardian Smasher for his Avengers). Apocalypse is almost certainly coming soon, and he was notable in S.H.I.E.L.D. There should be more throughlines as the story goes on.

VII. References to Old X-Men Comics

All the promotional materials for this relaunch talked about it being the next in a line of universe-shifting X-Men comics, following on Giant Sized X-Men #1, X-Men (vol. 2) #1, Age of Apocalypse, and Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s New X-Men #114. The books certainly feel like they belong there, and are self-consciously referential of those four books. Krakoa was the villain of Giant Sized, and Powers of X feels like a bold alternate reality in the spirit of AoA. And House of X is basically an homage to Morrison’s entire run, with mutants developing their own culture and Magneto spending the entire issue with the Stepford Cuckoos walking past various Xorns. But the continuity and thematic debts don’t end there, and there are two key stories that I think are more important to understanding these runs: Days of Future Past and the Utopia era.

Nimrod and the Hounds are hugely important villains in Powers of X, and they are straight out of Rachel Summers and Kitty Pryde’s futures in DoFP. It is the prototypical dark future, where mutants are all killed off by robot hunters and mutant traitors, and that is the world that is presented to us in this week’s comic.

Meanwhile, Utopia was a little bit different than Krakoa is presented here. Utopia was the floated remains of Asteroid M in San Francisco bay, a refuge for the 200 living mutants to try and survive. It leaned very hard into the paramilitary school subtext that’s always there in X-men stories, but was also political in a very different way that most of its predecessors. It’s my favorite era of X-Men comics because of how cohesive the line was (and because Second Coming was like a perfect X-Men action movie), but because it was a small number of mutants fighting for survival and not acceptance, it wasn’t a great example of the line over its history. There are a lot of strong parallels here, with the biggest difference being it’s no longer mutants struggling to survive, but mutants fighting to dominate.

VIII. Apocalypses

Not blue pencil lipped Rocks-Of-The-Eternal-Shore Apocalypse, but the ones where things end.

Hickman is no stranger to the end of the world, having destroyed the Marvel multiverse once already. But his X-catastrophes feel less like Secret Wars and more like another of his comics: East of West.

East of West is a biblical, American end, where Earth’s history diverges at the civil war before technology rushes forward and the Book of Revelation begins in a technological utopia. It is very smart (and incredibly gorgeous thanks to Nick Dragotta’s Sal Buscema-drawing-Akira looking art), but it’s very American and very specifically Christian. That is surprisingly all here, too, starting with the mutant decision to place their embassy in Jerusalem.

read more: Complete Schedule of Upcoming Marvel Movies

There is a strain of Christian belief that says that the end times begin with Israel’s geography being set in a particular way, and that includes Jerusalem being its recognized capitol. This has real world political implications, but it’s also been the source of a lot of good fiction. Putting Magneto, the arch-villain of the X-Men saga, in a Jerusalem embassy telling people that they have new gods now is essentially casting him as the Antichrist and setting the world up for the end times. Nothing about the war in the future of Powers of X indicates that this read is incorrect.

IX. The Timelines

We don’t just get multiple timelines represented in Powers of X: we get events sequenced across it and House of X, and things happening simultaneously in multiple time streams. Take, for example:

Sabertooth, Mystique, and Toad spend House of X breaking into Damage Control and steal plans for something (looks like Sol’s Hammer, the Dyson Sphere laser that Iron Man used to blow up an invading army in New Avengers, but that could be a fake out). Meanwhile, 100 years in the future, four mutant chimeras are caught stealing from the Man-Machine Alliance’s mainframe, and Percival (the Cypher-looking dead one) is repeating “Charles’” quote from House of X.

Is it possible we’re looking at the X-Men equivalent of “The Best of Both Worlds?” Where the same event is unfolding simultaneously across multiple times?

X. Our speculation.

Finally, it wouldn’t be a deep mystery without fanboys speculating wildly about what’s going on. So we’re absolutely going to do that. If you take all of this into account and where do you land?

Charles isn’t actually Charles. He’s Sinister.

Nobody has won more from this relaunch than the master mutant geneticist. He, along with the other brightest minds in mutantdom, couldn’t figure out why mutant births ceased after House of M, and couldn’t figure out how to get them back. Now, he’s got thousands of mutants to choose from and the ability to experiment however he wants. He can exist in off-books literal Black sites on Krakoa, cancerous growths undetectable to the rest of the island. And if he’s posing as Charles, he gets to steer public events to his liking. He gets to direct policy like “protect omega mutants at all costs,” or “Hey Magneto send the old Brotherhood to steal plans from the Fantastic Four please.”

Whether we’re right or not, Charles is almost certainly not Charles. He isn’t telekinetic, so lifting the thumb drive away from Mystique was a flag. And keeping his Cerebro helmet on at all times is a BIG sign that he’s a bad dude and not who we think he is.

Sinister works here. If he gets his hand on reality warper DNA (remember, Mister M, Legion, Jamie Braddock and Franklin Richards are all in the wind as of issues 1), he can do pretty much anything he wants. He could easily be covering up his forehead ruby with “Cerebro.” It makes sense, and we know he’s coming back.

For more on House of X, Powers of X, Bedhambers of X, Multiples of X or any other X-Books, stick with Den of Geek!

Read and download the Den of Geek SDCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Feature Jim Dandy

Jul 31, 2019

Marvel

X-Men

Jonathan Hickman

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#aion-rsa #Books

[icharchivist]

So! New sessions with friends! we watched from 105 to 117! So we watched the first part of the attack on the castle session, from Knov infiltrating the palace  up to after the “Since it’s none of your business” scene and Knuckle coming back to fight Youpi!

A. is Her, T. is Him.

-A: “I’m trying to avoid the spoilers of your blog. It’s hard it’s like Hisoka avoiding Gon’s punch. So far all i know is the last thing about Kurapika, it was hard to ignore… i know Leorio is getting some place with i dont know what and Zodiac stuff, i dont know what it is. and i know Meruem died like he lived: heterosexual”

 -T: “Knov’s plan is good… but it’s as tight to play as that other guy’s thong.” T: “….. it’s gonna end up on tumblr right?” 

 -As knov uses his power to behead an ant, T: “fuck thats cool!! if you could do that in assassins creed…”

 -A, at the begining of Morel v Leol: “i knew Morel was a Metalhead. it showed.” 

 -A: “i want a blog full of out of context picture of hxh” 

 -A: “why are they fighting on orangina”

-they squeed when ikalgo was back. T finds his hat cute akdhkd 

 -T: “TAKE THE OCTOPUS WITH YOU” A:“DONT TAKE HIM WITH YOU KEEP HIM OUT OF DANGER” 

 -A: “please tell me nothing happens to the octopus”

 -T: “I seriously love this octopus. he’s an exemple for us all “

 -Pouf started to be overdramatic and they stared in horror like A: “… is he okay? the ultimate dramaqueen omg. its like a shojo”

 -as Youpi looking at Pouf’s breakdown T: “*voicing youpi* the job is great but the colleague, no so much” 

 - A: “Don’t bother going with a plan against the King, just play gungi against him until he rips all his limbs. like Gon, don’t fight him, just tell him to jump off a cliff and he will”

 -A, at Pouf: “arent you done being the third wheel”

 -A: "It’s not easy for Youpi to be with both Pouf and Pitou at this point…” 

 -They started laughing at the King asking for his name to the royal guards

 -when the king says he’s King and dominate everything: A: “meanwhile you get completely controlled by a blind girl. and i thought he was getting better, but hes just a moron” 

 -Narrator : “one day before the selection…” A: “....and the king is more straight than ever” 

 -We made a pause to prepare some tea. as we did i joined T. in the kitchen and he jumped bc he didnt hear me come. direct reaction: T: “tf why did you supress your nen”. my friends are dorks 

 -Morel: “who could have hurt the king? ”  A: “himself, like a huge moron” 

-A: “omg Pouf is a Butterfree ” 

 -A: “i don’t think I’m reassured to see “you can try” on the old man”

-T: “where the fuck is the old man, he’s supposed to be the one attacking the King and we’ve never seen him again, we’re ten minutes to the attack on the castle” 

-As the king is giving the order to lift the En:  A" “hes a moron. but he makes it easy for everyone…” 

 -A: “I’m just saying that if you let them all three more weeks, the king will tears away all his limbs, Pouf will kill himself and you’ll just need to stop the selection and the other two and everything will be fine. or Youpi will end up killing Pouf because he can’t stand the violin anymore” 

 -T: “It’s the plan: Gon has no plan so he could adapt to any situation” 

 -Killua: “why would the king hurt himself?” A: “because he’s as stupid as Gon” 

 -A: “i like Morel. he’s the cool guy” T: “he’s like the cool uncle” A: “it’s good a character with some nerves” T: “at the same time with all the weed….” 

 -A:“why do Knuckle even remove his jacket? it must be a condition for his power. be shirtless.” 

 -A: “I’m curious who Netero brought… it couldn’t be Ging right??? it would be a mess T: “its probably someone op af” 

 -they screamed when Zeno came on screen, they didn’t expect him -

when Zeno recorded message starts, T: “dont tell me it’s his sextape” 

 -A: “Zeno is a vlogger” 

-A: “Netero was good looking when he was young” T: “True” 

 -A: “I love interesting old characters” 

 -At Netero’s training: A: “what was his motivation, did someone break up with him” 

 -T. considers Netero’s fighting style is really too cool. he loves it. they both argue he’s really good looking while young 

-Netero: “I’ll teach you if you give me stuff to eat”, T: “god thats me” 

 -as the attack starts: A: “Chloé i don’t like your smile i’m scared” 

 -A: “Killua is like in Good Omens: “It’s a family business. we gotta go” 

 -they were extremely quiet at the realization Komugi was wounded, during the scene we discover it. They were really into the intensity of the moment, it was seriously chilling

 -T: “it’s fun because after all those slowmo the opening of the episode is like at normal speed”

 -A: “i don’t mind the slowmo. they make clear that it is because too many things are happening at once. although i do hope it speds up a little…” 

 -they find Youpi disgusting and they yelled “no” when they thought he was gonna kill Morel

 -they really like Morel and Knuckle and Shoot and when Shoot hit Youpi to get Morel’s weapon, they cheered and want them to be safe forever 

 -Me: “it’s interesting how killua kept telling Gon to stay focused on Pitou but still go out of his way to protect Ikalgo while Gon stays motivated, you would expect the opposite”  A:“tbh i dont care as long as the octopus is okay” 

 -when Killua kills the guy to protect Ikalgo, T: “you call that supressed their ability to fight, I’m calling that murder. he overkilled.” 

 -A: “Pouf kinda looks like Kurapika.” Pouf: *acts dramatic* A: “okay no never mind” 

 -A: “no but Pouf is pretty and it’s a fucking butterfly I’m jealous” 

 A: “couldnt they teach him another music to play with his violin im.” 

 -Narrator: “pouf is at the limit of fanatism” T: “ye, on the other side of the limit, he’s totally into it” A:“i’d say he’s in love”

 -A: “i almost pity Pouf” T: “well he’s the least cruel one..” 

 -as Gon sees the king A: “no Gon!! it’s too big for you!!” 

 -same scene: A: “i don’t like Gon’s look… Killua if you want to knock him down it’s now”

 -T: “A DRAGON. I always side with the dragon. *sings* calm on my dragon ” 

 -in the “let’s go” scene: A: “i dont like Gon’s look… i dont like Killua’s look… I’m so scared of what’s gonna happen it’s… scary.” 

 -A: “i don’t like the idea that they’re gonna have to chose if they want to kill Pitou and Komugi or not… I don’t like the idea they’ll be in the same room as Pitou anyway…” 

 -A: “Pouf is a fucking pokemon”

-Narrator: “Shoot fights recklessly withot caring for his life” A: “at the same time when you learn from Gon…”

 -T: “let’s be real tho we’re just all waiting for the fight between the king and the sensei” 

-A, at Welfin: “i… honestly don’t know what to say about that thong tho.” 

 -Gon and Killua just arrived in Pitou’s room. they are scared at Gon’s eyes  

-Killua: “Pitou is like a mother protecting her kid” A: “*immiting Killua* “oh the complete opposite of mine” 

 -as Gon’s eyes are empty: T: “he’s really scary…” A:“he reminds me of illumi…” 

 -They are seriously scared for Gon. now they understand why i’m upset the anime removed Kite. They realize from what I explained that it was a stronger blow for Gon and the audience to know Kite from the start.

 -The “since it’s none of your business” scene just happened. (also it was well translated in the French sub version so yay). They are. speechless. but they react the same way i did the first time, ie, more worried for Gon’s mental state than anything. 

 -Gon: “I’m fine” T: “he’s not fine” 

 -We discussed a bit about Gon’s and Killua’s mental health so far and development and they really agree with me. they are concerned for both, since eventually it would have been solved if they talked, since neither talked about their troubles up to that point. but they feel for both of them and see how this happened, and i didnt have to argue too much about it, I’m glad. 

 -We rementioned the gi arc. T: “oh the good old times where the only problems were bombs.”  Me: “Do you get now why i laughed when A. said the gi arc didnt have lot of stakes” A: “now we have them……” 

 -They miss Kurapika and Leorio still. we all agree it would have been better at least for the kids’s mental health if they had been there… 

 -T: “why the FUCK Zeno is coming back home by feet” 

 -Cheetu teasing Zeno, saying he’ll fight against Zeno, A: “no but i almost feel bad for cheetu seeing how unfair and unballanced it is”  

-they gasped as Silva arrived. A. had her hands on her mouth in amazement. A: “that’s not even an ability it’s just summon the son” 

 -As Shoot and Knuckle talk about going back to fight Youpi : "they have... a really misplaced pride" 

 -Shoot: "Please hit him for me" T: "no no you misheard he said bring me to the hospital. go see the octopus" A: "I know an octopus, he knows a guy"

So we had to stop, and it was... amazing. They were invested in the fight, understood the struggles, and are truly looking forward to more, it makes me happy!

It was a nice day dkfjhf

#ichablogging hxh2011 #ichatalks about hxh