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pinkseas · 1 year

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[parasocial bestie] seeing that ask answered and speeding thru 382983 mph reading and the questions and i go >:] cracks knuckles eats em like french fries i read the answers and honestly i have no brains to answer back What than just to handshake back 4 times and it rlly made me happi!!! ALSO QUESTIONS TIME FOR ME TO ANSWER DAMN?

a) i dont think i have like a main?? but like back in 2.7 it literally. got me back to Loving xiao to the extent I Am Now and its my whole personalith for the 848274th time so i took every chance jsut to have him in the team so i can hear his jp voice (i am very biased at his jp voice i can never unhear him and im not regretting it) so like hes now the Main Guy in my exploration teams ever with yelan nahida zhongli peepaw and i think the others speaks a lot too LMAOOOO

b) the ones mentioned alrd part of the lil list of i will die for them forever <33 and those in my past asks too like the chasm crew gets me Thinking of them no matter how i Dont Know them a lot more than theyve shown themselves (or i jsut didnt bother to be chronically obsessed 2 read them I LOVE SHINOBU AS SHE IS BUT DO I WANNA GO TO HER HANGOUTS AGAIN AND PICK EVERY SINGLE ONE OF HER LINES FOR LORE IDT SO i kiss my love <33) tho ei is that kind of Fav more like that i can understand her flaws even if its unjustified and she can be a bit childish so i just. Look Away sometimes now that wanderer got his own solace and have a new life with nahida whos a way better caretaker/friend (i will Die for their dynamic), i still get a lil irritated of the asian mom memes she gets put in too. the lil hcs of her with xiao is very much the silly self indulgence i like and separates her and the shogun cus i still think she has her twin's influences!! just Bad at social cues (unperceives her first story quest tho. that is not the Bad At Social Cues or Living in general that im looking for they dumbed her down So Bad) ANYWAYS did u know i missed albedo's banner once and i spent a year mourning endlessly worse than xiao until his rerun and got lucky in 40 pulls if xiao is for lumine then albedo is for ME. kazuha my beloved wanderer i would put him in a burrito blanket but will also willingly throw him off the cliff for the fucking snarkiness he has. venti has an entirely special place in my heart like another category like i do for xiao and lumine and zhongli bc hes. idk!! i think hes a very Comfort guy to me that i look so far past his drunkard ehe flirty femboy common perception of him, which is how i got too passionate on that one unpublished too. hes not the Little Guy type of comfort hes the 'he has this indescribable feeling of closeness and comfort and warmth i want to have in someone that i will meet one day', and i could go On and On about the little things ive thought of him while at the same time i dont focus too much to dig his canon lore!! more like, i pick off the important ones for sure and can already see the core parts of who he is and stick there :((( <3 the major thing is that i love seeing him as a love-all typa guy with no preferences as a god of freedom and his vibes are just so. aspec. so aro so ace he Doesnt Care more than he cares for everyone. which is why the ships can Tick Me Off esp the most famous one!! LIKE JEEZ!!! anyway Again the guys i Find Cool and digging thru my brain 2 remember rn; diluc (my lil tall gentleman) kokomi (queen) dehya (i just dont like her exposed midriff design can u feel) jean (her and diluc kaeya as a trio is Such A Dynamic!! i love trios!!) klee (actually id die for her too for being the canon sib to albedo) qiqi (the same for being the Headcanon sib to xiao) alhaitham (asshole. also ive delved into analyzing a Little of his character and i like his sense of neutrality to some things) kaveh (his Fucking Existence being a funny spectacle + i only focus on his briefcase friend Mehrak) THERES PROLLY MORE BUT IM NOT SURE IF I CANT RMB

c) ppl say mondstadt feels very homey and since its the first region we're introduced to i can agree!! and its home to a Lot More Mystery regarding the traveler since its the least explored i still think about the upside down statue a lot. but i cant rlly say if i have a Certain favourite that doesnt tie to my favs than my personal taste (the chasm rlly ingrained a Permanent Influence on me regarding sentimentality of loss) so i cant rlly choose!! liyue's got my boy and his peepaw + chasm, inazuma is the start of Really Great World Quests despite how hard it is to thru the region in general + enkanomiya is so Pretty and such a concept, sumeru has the same reasons and the caves are Irritating before the underground layouts are finally integrated in their official interactive maps. i just like to explore!!

d) idt i have much expectations that doesnt feel Petty like the ongoing issue of hyv prioritizing aether as their poster boy that lumine barely has any official work EVEN as the abyss sibling, 'both twins canon travelers' my ass. i think i would very much like a trading system but i Can understand why that wont work profit-wise for hyv BUT BELIEVE ME NOW NY SOLE REASON FOR IT IS JUST ME NEEDING SWEET FLOWERS FOR MY SWEET DREAM ALMOND TOFU HOARDING. i need sugar so bad. i have 300+ in the making i can never reach 1k. i need another xiao-centric quest cus lantern rite doesnt rlly center him and the chasm was a cultural reset But I Get that chasm occuring once is exactly why ir should stay that way to be Infuential and not repetitve and def not abt xiao being hyv's favourite guy SO HOW ABT BRINGING ALBEDO LORE BACK THIS YEAR. nahida venti 2nd story quest when. i think they should buff the traveler so much they shouldnt be ranked B as any role of a team!!! it's kinda sad theyre fun At first in sumeru then not anymore. i think thats it atm!!

note to self swap to jp voices if you ever get xiao. just looked up the voice and OHHHHHHHHHHH MY GOD DO NOT BLAME YOU ONE BIT WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT THE FUCK. suddenly i am down bad oh my GOD.

and with yelan nahida and zhongli oh my god i Love that for you so bad that sounds like such a funky little crew..........

CHASM CREW <33333 shinobu especially youre so real for that like ohhhh my god. oh my God. love her so bad. fully understand ei being the fave tbh and also understand the looking away, im so mad at how they handled her story quests and her writing she deserved SO much better but the concept at least is There to think about and build off of and i love that for her... HAVING HER TWIN'S INFLUENCES so fawking good god i LOVE that.

"if xiao is for lumine then albedo is for ME" THIS MADE ME CACKLE I LOVE THAT FOR YOUUUUUUUU albedo is so. my baby my babyyyyyyyy. kazuha is my everything his Snark is also my everything i love him so bad for it hes soooooooo.

and venti !!!!!! venti. on god venti gets done SO dirty SO frequently i fucking LOVE the way you talk about him like. "he has this indescribable feeling of closeness and comfort and warmth i want to have in someone that i will meet one day" HELLO ???????? FUCK YEAH. and the love-all super aroace vibes YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS idk man IF youre gonna make him all flirty. at least make it flirting as a form of banter/teasing/friendship and still super aroace on top of it likeeeee <- says girl who is super aroace and flirts so fucking much with her friends. um. oops. Anyways. DONT BLAME YOU ONE BIT FOR BEING TICKED OFF im gonna think about this forever now im obsessed.. venti aroace KING............ bc yeah no the little guy ehe flirty drunkard is so. mmmmmmmmmmmmm. he's a whole ass character with a whole ass personality and a god on top of it GIVE HIM SOME FUCKING CREDIT GIVE HIM SOME RESPECT CHARACTERIZE HIM BETTER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (sent the venti bit specifically to one of the besties while writing this and pls know that they were so excited and enthusiastic and think you are so very based like they already ready most of the asks/answers but this especially made them so <333 it made Both Of Us So <333333)

diluc <333 KOKOMIIIIII she just like me fr. like so different in a few ways but So Similar in so many others i have so much love and respect for her... the healing the jellyfish the pastel vibe the being held to impossible standards still doing her very best to live up to them wanting nothing more than a) to not have to deal with people but simultaneously b) to make everyone happy.... DEHYA IS SO GOOD and huge agree on the design like. okay. w/e. thanks mihoyo. JEAN DILUC KAEYA TRIO BEST EVER I LOVE THEMMMMMMMMMM jean <3333333333333 klee my best friend klee.... another of the besties is a HUGE klee fan and i love her sm because of it i know so little about her and yet i would do Anything for her ever. qiqi my Everything absolutely feel you there, ALHAITHAM AND KAVEH ARE BOTH. together and separately god they are so fucking stupid i adore them. YOU ARE SO VALID I CAN NEVER REMEMBER FAVES PROPERLY ITS SO DIFFICULT THERE ARE SO MANY AND THEY ARE ALL SO BELVOED

no because ive accepted that hoyo way prefers aether traveler lumine abyss sib but. the way there's just So Much More Aether Content Than Lumine Content. idk man IDK MAN......... fucked up. im coming to terms with it and i almost prefer it just bc it gives me more creative freedom with lumine characterization but also man. MAN. TRADING SYSTEM WOULD BE SO GOOD IN SO MANY WAYS ON GOD id kill for that shit. characters weapons materials mora w/e id LOVE that so bad. let me gather ridiculous amounts of resources for my friends itd be so fun....

would KILLLLLLLLLLLL for another xiao-centric quest holy shit ohhhhh my god. give me my boyRight Now. AND ALBEDO LORE AND SECOND STORY QUESTS FOR NAHIDA AND V ENTI SO FUCKING REAL !!!!!!!!!!!!! BUFFED TRAVELER EVEN MORE REAL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! even if the traveler was like. idk a fawking healer. but a good one. id kill for that if ur gonna make the traveler more support make the mthe Best SUpport Ever Please they are my everything i want them to be the bestest <3 as someone who protjects onto the traveler and loves healer roles i am definitely not biased at all. not even a little bit. smile

why do you have the best thoughts ever i love hearing All of this i am exploding as we speak. on the ground in a million little pieces. blowing away on the wind. landing in the sea. evaporating into thin air. eventually falling down as rain. repeat. sorry my brain is fried again i am about to take my silly little adhd meds crack my knuckles and Get To Work

#parasocial bestie tag

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bookishofalder · 3 years

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The Captain’s Error

Summary: Steve Rogers is protective over his bookworm friend, until an attack makes him realize he failed his one objective. The question is, will she forgive him?

Warnings; Fluff, angst, and then a bunch of great smut. Wrote this for a friend. WC: 7,144

You had your head in a book again. It was one of the more endearing things about you, had been what captured Steve’s attention when you started working for Stark. If you weren’t working, you lost yourself in whatever novel you were reading at the time, full stop. He was sure he had never seen you reading the same book twice, now that he thought about it. And he did think about you a lot.

And while as much as he loved the sight of you strolling the hallways of the compound with your brows slightly pinched, hips swaying, entirely focused as you consumed every genre imaginable, it also drove him a little crazy. Or a lot crazy, depending on the day.

Because Steve Rogers was first and always a protector, whether he carried the Captain America shield or not, and you were giving him a run for his money when it came to near accidents. Ranging in potential severity, it was like you were programmed clumsy. He wasn’t sure he could handle the burst of fiercely protective and equally jarring adoration that sprung up each time you walked into a wall or door, tripped, or hissed in pain from banging your hip off of a corner. He’d seen you tumble down the stairs once, though thankfully Clint happened to be coming up them at the time and managed to catch you before anything bad happened, before Steve could get to you and demand you just sit in a chair to read.

He wanted to beg you to quit the habit, at this point. He may be super due to the serum, but he was certain you would be the one thing that could kill him, the stress surely too great on his heart. He couldn’t bring himself to do it, though, not just because he didn’t want to overstep. He’d overheard you tell Nat, a few months prior, that you needed to stretch your legs a few times a day when you could get out of Tony’s lab and away from your work. Nat had joked that you needed a protector, in that case, because you were surely a liability Tony can’t have had coverage for.

And it was Nat’s simple statement, her joke, that gave Steve the great idea to be just that. Your protector. Whenever he reasonably could, he’d be there for you, organizing his days around your clockwork-like schedule so that when you took those walking while reading breaks, he was around. He convinced himself it was simply his duty-you were an important member of the team, and it was the least he could do. But then, the knowing looks his fellow Avenger’s would throw him, or the way his heart would threaten to beat out of his chest when you would stop to chat with him, kind of gave away that there was a selfish aspect to the self-designed arrangement.

He liked you. And after months of getting to know you better and better, with daily conversations that would lead to movie nights or walks around the compound, he eventually started to love you. It was easy as apple pie to fall in love with you, the resident hacker, hardworking and brilliant and funny as you were.

You’d recently developed a habit of bringing along the copy of the book you’d previously finished, tucked under your arm, and offering it to Steve to read. And while his preferred hobby was sketching-actually, Bucky was the reader of the two of them, he found himself eager to consume the ones you deemed good enough to pass along. Though he didn’t get through them anywhere near as quickly as you did, he found himself in his room alone most nights, flipping through pages that smelled faintly of you.

If you had ever caught on to the reason for his sudden consistent appearances during your lunch and afternoon breaks, you never commented. Sometimes, you had a pinch in your brow that told Steve you were focused on the story, and he would give you space, though the one time he’d tried to back away completely you’d caught his arm, sending electricity shooting through his body, and wordlessly beckoned him to walk with you. He liked those days as much as the ones where you would hold your book open, but rather than read hold long conversations with him, sometimes to discuss the books he’d borrowed, often to just talk about anything and everything.

Steve had learned so much about you. He knew you liked to paint, that you were a fan of the beach but only if you could go into the water, not fritter away on the beach hiding from the sun (because skin cancer, of course), that Autumn was your favourite season and you wanted a dog one day. Your favourite book was The Hobbit but you were a sucker for a good steamy romance. The more he learned, the more he fell if he was honest.

And it wasn’t onesided-as much as he preferred to talk about you, you asked your fair share of questions with a stunning abundance of delicacy, mindful of his history, his life, his differences. And while you sometimes teased him (like when he’d tell Tony to watch his language in front of ladies and he’d see you shoot him a little smirk for it) you never made fun of him, never made him feel like the old man he technically was. And it was like...like you could empathize better than others, maybe because of all the worlds and minds you lost yourself to in the pages of the books, you were better equipped to consider his perspective. To understand why he became self-critical when the world was counting on him, and then gently coaxing him out of his dark thoughts to offer him a different point of view or a reminder that he couldn’t carry the weight of the world alone.

But Steve didn’t feel alone when he was with you.

It was coming up on a year since his new daily routine with you had begun. He tried not to miss both of your breaks in the same day if he could help it, but sometimes duty called and as much as he missed you during missions, he knew he couldn’t skip on them just to follow you around. You would probably lose it if he did.

Though it was tempting to ask F.R.I.D.A.Y to keep an eye on you, he hadn’t, but it was tempting. It was early fall, the weather still warm but a slightly crisp edge to the breeze that seemed to act as a siren call to you, your feet always pattering away and out of the building to wander the compound’s property. But there were more obstacles outside, more hazards that had him imagining you upside down in the fountain or covered in poison ivy from a tumble near the thicket on the east side of the property.

He’d been quick to have Tony call in special landscapers when he’d thought of this, just to remove all dangerous plants. It was a service to everyone there, really.

Today, he couldn’t spend time with you, because Nat needed him for a mission to nab a Hydra agent that you had managed to uncover the whereabouts of. It was a few hours, tops, but he was boarding the Quinjet when he glanced around and watched you wander out the front doors, head in your book. The smirk on Nat’s face was enough to prevent him from running back down the ramp and instead turn to hit the ramp recall button. He was being over cautious-it was a bright day and there were plenty of others on the compound property who would notice if you had an extended absence from your lunch.

When he entered the cockpit, his friend opened her mouth to tease and Steve cut her off by raising his hand in a wordless request for silence on the subject. She merely laughed and made no further comment. It wasn't like he hadn’t already heard her opinion on the subject.

The HYDRA agent in question was one known to Nat, so Steve let her take the lead on capturing him while thoughts of you fluttered in the back of his mind. He did give her a look when she punched him an extra time, the broken-nosed agent's hands bound behind him as he was strapped into the Quinjet. She rolled her eyes but relented. Once back in the cockpit, however, she started on Steve- ‘Just tell her how you feel...ask her on a date...you really think she’d say no to Captain America?’

Ah, but that was the question, wasn’t it? Because whether one saw him as Steve Rogers or Captain America, the reality was that he was forever both, each at the same time, which meant that dating him came with a lot of baggage. He knew you well enough to know that you saw him first and foremost as your friend, Steve, but all the same, you were as aware as anyone of what his title meant to the world, the duty he had to fulfil and the dangers that came with that territory.

And if he was protective over you simply tripping over your own feet, it was nothing compared to the fierceness of his need to safeguard you from any and all threats. You were already a valuable target-no combat training or powers to speak of, but a big brain that did some seriously complicated and involved work for Tony Stark and the Avengers-throw dating one of them into the mix and you would be priority one. Whoever took you would own the team.

You lived on the compound for this very reason. At the initial insistence of Tony himself once he’d found you (you were skilled enough to cover your tracks in your underground hacking over the years, but eventually Stark caught up with you and begged you to join the team). You’d told Steve you’d resisted at first, believing you could work for Stark without needing to remove yourself from your studio apartment and the routine you had in your quiet life, but then Loki’s attack on New York had happened and you happily moved, keen to avoid being stomped on by aliens.

A call came through the Quinjet then, a screen appearing over the centre console and revealing Bucky’s face over the caller ID. Nat answered as Steve focused on bringing the jet into the air, punching in the coordinates home.

“Hey Buckaroo,” Nat quipped as Bucky came into view with a tense expression on his face. Seeing as he often looked like this, Steve paid no attention and simply called his greeting as he put the auto-pilot on. “What’s with the long face? And where are you?”

“First of all, you can call me Barnes, I don’t like you enough for nicknames,” He began, and Steve smiled at the banter as his eyes took in the unfamiliar background just insight over Bucky’s shoulder.

“Aww, and here I thought we were besties,”

Steve interjected, “Bucky, are you in a bookstore?” It wasn’t that it was odd to think of Bucky in such a place, it was just the combination of him calling and the fact that the shop was empty of patrons that caught his notice.

With a sigh, Bucky nodded, “Listen, Steve, she’s alright,” Bucky replied, and Steve narrowed his eyes as his mind started reeling over what exactly that meant. You were okay, but...?

“What happened?” His voice was harsh, and he saw Nat flinch out of the corner of his eye. Bucky knew him too well to not expect his response.

“Well she came out to this bookstore an hour ago, and I guess someone has been watching her when she leaves the compound. Knew she liked to come here,” Steve’s fists clenched as Bucky spoke, “They tried to grab her today but she hit the panic button on her phone and one of our operatives happened to be outside and saw the struggle. He interceded until Sam and I arrived.”

“Was she hurt?” He demanded, willing the Quinjet to move faster. They were only minutes from the compound, but every one felt extended and torturous now because even as Bucky assured him you were more shaken up than anything, Steve wouldn’t believe you were alright until he could see you.

He realized his greatest error, then. In his efforts to ensure he didn't overstep when it came to you, he allowed himself to ignore the instinct that you should, at the very least, be assigned a guard when leaving the compound. And now you’d nearly been taken because you thought it was safe to drive to a bookstore. After all, you weren’t (and really, he loved this about you) programmed to see danger at every corner. He was, and he’d allowed his feelings to cloud his judgement.

“Stop brooding, Steve, Bucky said she’s alright. Sam’s with her back home right now.”

He bristled immediately, “Doesn’t make it any less concerning though, Nat. Clearly, she’s on people’s radars now, we should already have implemented safety protocols for her! She isn’t trained to protect herself, she doesn’t even carry a weapon.”

He could see the compound now and relaxed marginally, running a hand over his face in an attempt to steady and ease his racing mind. After a long pause, Nat spoke up.

“I’ll train her, to defend herself and to use a weapon,” Nat suggested, and he glanced at her in surprise, “Yeah, I don’t mind, I like her, care about her. And we’ll talk to Tony, see what we can do about ensuring she has protection outside of the compound. I’m right in thinking she’s good while in the compound, eh Steve?”

He let out a broken laugh, shaking his head as Nat wiggled her brows suggestively at him. He had to give his friend credit, she did a good job of pulling him from his darker thoughts and refocusing him on the issue at hand. He needed to think of a way to thank her one of these days.

It had been a week since the attack and Nat had stayed true to her promise to train you. Now your lunch breaks were spent sparring with the redhead, who was teaching you the basics of hand to hand. Steve had been surprised at your excitement over the suggestion. Now he was pretty impressed with your willingness to learn.

When he’d found you upon returning to the compound, you were wrapped in a thick blanket on the couch of the main living room. Sam was handing you a cup of tea and Tony was on the phone from wherever he was, yelling his assurances that they’d find out who the culprit-currently locked in the compounds jail-worked for and nail them all to the wall. Steve had walked in just as Tony swore and interrupted Stark to remind him to watch his mouth.

You’d turned at the sound of his voice and given him a look so blatantly relieved that he simply pulled you into his chest and hugged you. When he heard your heart rate pick up in response, he told himself it was due to leftover adrenaline and not because of him.

Steve liked to come down to the gym and watch your sessions from a distance, though today there was an additional person in the room-Bucky. You and Bucky had always been close, happy to talk about books for hours on end, to banter and tease to the point where Steve had almost wanted to be jealous, only his best friend had pulled him aside a long time ago to tell him you reminded him of one of his younger sisters.

Now though, Bucky was there for a reason. He was dressed in gym clothes, his long hair tied back off of his face, and was currently waiting patiently as you repeated Nat’s instructions aloud while indicating where on Bucky you would be aiming for each maneuver. Steve realized Nat wanted you to learn to take on an attacker much stronger and bigger than you and internally agreed with the idea.

He smiled as he watched you, eager and almost hyper with focus and determination. Bucky was giving you a bemused sort of look as you repeatedly poked him in his flesh shoulder to illustrate a point. When Nat asked you if you were ready for Bucky to ‘attack’ you, your response was to fall into the relaxed stance with your back to him and give a vigorous nod.

This is where it became...complicated. Probably, it would have been best for Steve to sit this session out, or at least to have been warned of what was going to happen. And the thing was, he trusted Buck with his life. With your life, for that matter. But the moment his super-soldier best friend set his jaw and pressed up behind you, going into attack mode, Steve snapped.

He was moving forward before you’d even got past the first step in your offensive plan.

Being that Bucky was the only other super soldier in the room, he was the only one who knew Steve was watching. You and Nat were focused, Nat calling instructions to you, your head facing in the opposite direction he was storming over from. He grinned at Steve, immediately relaxing his stance and taking a half step back from you. While you turned around to question what Bucky was doing, Nat’s eyes found Steve.

“Well, shit.” She murmured, quiet enough that you probably hadn’t heard.

Bucky’s eyes were still on Steve, and he raised his hands in mock surrender while a knowing smirk tugged his lips up. You spun on your heel to see what he was looking at, just as Steve stepped onto the sparring mat. You had to tilt your head back to gaze up at him, a curious frown replacing your confusion when you saw the look on his face.

“Steve?”

He forced himself to smile, though he’d been tempted to give Buck a shove away from you. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” He replied, pulling his gaze from his friend to meet yours, “I was hoping to speak with you if you don’t mind?” He kept his tone light, actively working to relax because you hadn’t been in any real danger and he didn’t want to offend or upset you.

You hesitated, giving Steve a once over that told him you didn’t buy his friendly demeanour, before nodding, “Sure, excuse us, Bucky, Nat.” You said, sparing them barely a glance and missing the twin smirks they were both sporting.

“Thank you,” He gestured toward the exit and let you lead the way out of the room. He shot his friends each a glare over his shoulder, though they merely grinned at him, before returning his attention to you. Once in the hall, he wondered if he could have this conversation with you here, and hesitated.

Sensing his unease, you spoke up, “Can we go to your room?”

“Oh, yes,” He blinked, following you in the direction of the elevator. Once the doors closed, he asked F.R.I.D.A.Y to take you to the living quarters' floor and then fell silent, unsure of what to say now that he was calming down. He could sense you were mulling over a question and was proven right when you looked up at him.

“You’re upset with me.”

He glanced down at you in surprise, his heart stuttering at the sad look on your face. “No,” He said truthfully, and although he stayed rooted to the spot, he brought his hand up to rest on your lower back gently, “Not even a little bit, darling. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.”

He took a deep breath as you nodded, and had to focus his mind. Being a super-soldier increased his senses, and those abilities didn’t just come into play in the field. His taste, sight, sense of smell, hearing, were always advanced, on, and in moments like this, it could be difficult to focus on just one. He could smell you, the fading scent of your shampoo, the sweat on your skin, and a sweet scent he couldn’t quite place. He could also hear your heart beating, and didn’t miss the way it stuttered when he placed his hand on your back, nor did he fail to hear the slight intake of breath you had taken.

It could be too much, at times. It had taken some time to learn how to focus himself. To find grounding tricks that helped keep him from being overstimulated. But around you, it was another story and he hadn’t quite figured out how to relax around you yet.

And it didn’t help matters that you were reacting to Steve more and more in the close confines of the elevator; your pupils were dilating, your heart rate was increasing, and fuck, that sweet smell was increasing and it was driving him...a little feral.

It was a relief when the doors opened, pulling in a wave of fresh air that cleared his head enough to remember to move forward. He walked to his room with you in silence, clearing his throat at the door, which opened at his command, then followed you in. He remained next to the door, though you continued into the living room that separated open space from his bedroom. You looked around, eyes widening in surprise when you saw him so far away.

“You better not be about to give me really bad news, Steve,” You quipped, arching a brow at him and crossing your arms. “Seriously, who’s dying?” And here he had hoped that by giving you space, he would be easing any discomfort you might have with the situation.

He laughed at your words, grateful as ever that you seemed to understand him and knew how to diffuse the thick tension better than he ever could. Moving further into the room, Steve made a point of keeping his distance from you, almost edging around the space to give you a clear path to the door. You frowned as you noticed this gesture, your eyes narrowing, but did not comment.

“Can I be honest with you about something?” He finally asked, hands on his hips. You nodded and he continued. “I’m very...I care about you, a lot, darling. And I’m protective of you, and seeing you sparring with Bucky just-well, I didn’t like it.”

Your brows rose in surprise as he spoke, nearly disappearing into your hairline, and he worried he was doing a poor job of this. He faltered, unsure of how to properly explain without overstepping.

“You don’t trust Bucky?” You said, knowing the answer but pulling Steve from his silence all the same.

“Of course I do, and I know you can handle yourself. I’ve been watching all week.”

You held his gaze, your arms crossing over your chest, “Good, because once I’m done with Bucky I know Sam wanted to join in, and I’m pretty sure Tony could take a turn with the suit, see if I can handle taking punches from Iron Man-“

“Okay, enough, please,” He pleaded, each image in his mind of you fighting against men who could snap your neck in the blink of an eye now causing him great distress, “I promise it’s not about...about...”

You tilted your head, and even from across the room he could hear your heartbeat pick up a little as you took in his reaction. “Come on, Stevie, be honest with me here.” You finally said, worry flashing over your pretty face.

“I can’t-that is, I don’t like seeing you have to train like this because of my failings. You shouldn’t have to be spending your spare time-“

“You agreed to this from the start, Steve. Nat offered basic training because of MY mistake, not because of you!” You were stepping closer now, eyes never leaving his.

Steve nodded, swallowing heavily, “I did agree, yes, but you didn’t make any mistakes, darling. Everything that happened, that could have happened to you, that’s on me. I should be keeping you safe and I,” He closed most of the gap, now standing just inches from you as you gazed up at him with wide eyes, “I failed you, before, I let my...my feelings get in the way of my better judgement. You should have already had a security detail, then you’d never had been assaulted in the first place. I’m so sorry I let you down, darling. I’ll never forgive myself.”

You gaped up at him and Steve didn’t even blink, eager to watch every expression cross your face as you absorbed his words. His heart was about to jump out of his chest, but somehow he already felt a little lighter for what he’d confessed.

“Steve,” You finally broke the silence, speaking slowly, “You could never let me down. But I...you need to tell me what you mean, w-what feelings?”

Perhaps, had he not been keenly aware of your racing heart, your shallow breathing, he might have faltered, edged the conversation to more neutral grounds. Because admitting how he felt about you was terrifying, even as you looked at him softly.

“I love you,” He replied, the words bursting out of him and he saw the delight flash across your face before he even finished, “I’m in love with you, and I should have told you sooner. You were attacked the other day because I thought I was overreacting by thinking you should have security. I didn’t want you to be unhappy, either, so I made a bad call. Please tell me you’ll forgive me.”

“Did you just say...shit, Steve, of course, I forgive you-there’s nothing to forgive, really,” You were speaking quickly, your cheeks flushing. “I probably would have resisted having security before being attacked, if I’m being honest. Also-“ You suddenly cut yourself off, reached up and grabbed the back of Steve’s neck, drawing him down and crashing your lips to his.

You caught him off guard, but he barely fumbled, immediately kissing you back, one hand gripping your waist, sliding the other to cup your jaw. You pressed your whole body to Steve’s like you’d been wanting to do it for a long time and now that you didn’t have to hold back, you weren’t going to. He couldn’t help it then, he gathered you close in his arms and simply lost himself in you in those moments, the way you tasted, the softness of your lips, the sound of your heart thrumming like a hummingbird. The underlying sweet scent he was becoming more and more aware of.

Steve would have been content to remain like this, exactly here; holding you in his arms while his tongue traced over your lips and you parted them for him to lick into your mouth, your hands gripping his shoulders hard enough that were he not a super soldier, you might have left some bruises. He was a man from a time when it would take a few dates before a kiss even close to resembling this intensity could occur. He hadn't forgotten that part of himself. The part which demanded a sense of propriety, to treat you like the lady you were. To bring you flowers and write you letters and hope you’d say yes to another date, and then another, never lingering on the doorstep too long at the end of the night, and certainly not coming in for drinks.

But you weren’t from that era, and maybe that was one of the reasons he loved you; you were strong-willed and quick-witted, a woman more than capable of handling herself and making her own decisions. Even though you walked into walls and tripped over your own feet, Steve saw your strength and the depths of which you held empathy and kindness for others.

He thought he had an idea of who you were, now, after all this time as close friends.

However, when you traced a hand along his jaw and then let slip a quiet, needy moan, Steve Rogers quite literally came undone at your fingertips.

The kiss morphed then, a little more rough, teeth clashing as you struggled to pull in air but refused to pull away, your fingers sinking into his hair and gripping. He growled, a low rumble because the shift of your body let loose another wave of the scent of your sweet arousal and it assaulted his hyper-senses, his length straining painfully in his shorts, pressed between your bodies.

“St-Steve, I love you too” He grinned as happiness filled him. You sighed heavily when he pulled away only to move his lips down your neck, sucking the skin gently as he went. He moved slowly despite the desperation he felt to have more of you, to give you all of himself, and you seemed to read his mind and understand exactly what he needed to hear-your permission if you so wished. “More, Steve, please. I want you.”

“Fuck,” He groaned, because he knew you meant it and hearing it out loud was almost too much, he couldn’t be this lucky, this trusted. How could he have earned the right to touch you so? As if sensing his turmoil, you suddenly tugged at Steve’s shirt and he let you guide him...straight past his couch and through the open door to his bedroom.

If that wasn’t clear enough permission, Steve didn’t know what would be. With renewed passion, he picked you up and deposited you onto his bed, climbing over top your body and simply drinking in the sight of you, still clothed; sweaty and needy and beautiful, your hair fanned to one side across his duvet, and your hips-

Shit, your hips were rutting up into his, desperately seeking friction.

“Am I-I neglecting you, darling?” He breathed, face just next to yours. You shuddered as his warm breath brushed over your ear, then let out a moan when he placed a hand on your hip, stilling you.

“Stevie, please,” You whispered, and he loved the way you bit your lip, how your pupils were blown wide in desire. And as much as he wanted...everything, with you, he also kind of enjoyed teasing you. He saw no reason to rush, and he was going to take good care of you now.

“Something that doesn’t get spoken of,” He began, leaning his weight onto one elbow so that he could trace his free hand across your body. Skipping the most sensitive bits and making a point of touching only your thin gym clothing, “Is how the enhanced abilities of super-soldiers like me don’t just apply to battle.”

He let that sit between you, watching your face as you trembled under his touch before your eyes snapped up to meet his in surprise. “Like, you can hear my heart beating?” You asked, your face flushing even more than it already had been, heat rolling off of you in waves.

Steve nodded, lips tugged into a confident smirk, “Exactly. Among other things,” He brought both hands to the top of your leggings, hooking his thumbs in. He started to drag them down, “I can smell you, darling, how worked up you are. You smell amazing, you know.” The leggings came off and your hips moved again as you let out the filthiest little moan at his words.

“Fuck,” You were trying to push down your panties. Steve gripped them in his hand, bunching the fabric and, with no real effort, tore them off of you. He’d buy you more. You giggled then, as he tossed the torn remains behind him and then brought his lips back to yours, meeting you in another passionate kiss.

Once he had you distracted with his lips, he quickly slid his hand over your thigh and down your now very wet pussy, moving between your folds to dip two fingers inside of you. Groaning, Steve instinctively rutted his hips into the bed, his erection impossibly hard now. You whimpered, clenching around him as he teased you with slow, come-hither motions with his fingers. He moved his thumb to your clit and experimented gently, seeking out the right way to...yes, there it was.

“Steve!” You cried out, hips bucking as he brought you to the edge. Steve was enraptured by every expression, every sound you made. You were more than beautiful, you were everything.

“That’s it, darling,” He whispered into your ear, panting from arousal, “You feel so good, don’t you? I’ll take care of you. You can let go.”

You whined a little, eyes rolling and your hands now gripping the fabric of his shirt tightly, and he felt the first wave of your orgasm as your body stiffened before your head fell back and you let out a loud yell of his name as you came. He slowed his movements but didn’t stop, drawing the bliss out for as long as he could as you trembled and jerked in his arms. Even when you collapsed back into the bed, he kept going, until a stutter in your heart rate gave way to your overstimulation and he eased back with a grin.

“S-shit,” You gasped, your eyes opening and seeking his, “How the fuck did you do that?”

Steve chuckled, his brows knitting together in confusion, “Do what?”

You seemed to grapple for words, then gestured vaguely at your lower half, “Steve you made me cum with just-just your fingers! I can’t even do that!”

“Then how do you...”

“My vibrator, but after what you just did I don’t think I’ll be able to look at it the same now.”

Steve laughed loudly, then sat up and pulled his shirt off, eager to feel your skin against his. You watched him, eyes wide in anticipation. “You feel alright, darling? We can stop, just say the word.” He reached down and stroked your cheek affectionately. Focusing on your comfort helped Steve keep from becoming overwhelmed by you, your smell, your heartbeat, the fucking look in your eyes.

Your hand covered the back of his, holding it against your cheek firmly, “I never want to stop, Steve,” And then, before he could process the want in your tone, “Can I touch you?”

He groaned, jumping off the bed to tear off his shorts and briefs, baring himself completely to you. Automatically, his hand fell to grip his length, and then he tuned back into you on the bed. Your breath had caught, and Steve looked toward you in time to see your jaw drop, eyes on his body. “You didn’t say please.” He joked, and your eyes flicked up to meet his, a smirk tugging your lips up.

You sat up then, shucking off your shirt and bra before his eyes, “Please?” You said softly, tossing your clothes aside. Now it was Steve’s turn to gape as he drank in your every curve, “Please, Stevie, can I touch you?” You licked your lips. Fuck.

“Yeah,” He breathed, struck momentarily dumb, but when you giggled he realized he stood frozen at the edge of the bed. Clearing his throat, Steve sank to his knees on the bed next to you and pulled you against him, dipping his head down, “Touch me.” He whispered, then pressed his lips to yours.

You moaned into his mouth, swallowing his when your hand found his length and gripped him, stroking slowly. His hips bucked in response and Steve quickly brought his hands to your hips, holding you tight against him as he lowered you back onto the bed. Laying over you, Steve eased your legs apart and settled between them, his cock resting against your thigh. He broke the kiss and met your gaze again.

“I want you. I trust you.” You promised, your hand tilting him toward your core, “Please Steve, I want you so badly.”

“Fuck. Darling, you gotta tell me if anything is too much, alright?” You nodded, your hips now wriggling desperately. He drove his hips forward then, slowly parting your folds and sinking into you in one motion. “Oh, darling...” He sighed, eyes on your face.

“Steve!” You whimpered, and he could feel you clenching around him even as he stilled, waiting for you to adjust to him. You wrapped your legs around him, signalling he could move, and Steve started a slow pace, dragging in and out of you.

Dropping his head into the crook of your neck, Steve closed his eyes and focused-first, on the feel of you around him, of your curves pressed into his body, then onto the sound of your heart beating, the way the air puffed out of your lungs in little half gasps. He moved without thought, using you as a guide to decide his pace, happy to draw as many moans from you for as long as possible. He felt you rolling your hips slowly, the movement sinking him into you deep on each downward thrust, and he grunted at the perfection of the sensation.

“How do you feel?” His voice was a breath in your ear. He had propped himself up with one arm and now ran the other down the length of your torso, pausing at every curve to grip your soft flesh. You moaned out each time he did, your walls clenching him tighter. “Because I’ve never felt so good in my entire life, darling. You’re perfect.”

Whimpering again, your hands sliding over the muscles of his broad chest before coming to hold his shoulders. “S-so good, Stevie, I can’t fucking stand it, you feel so good,” Your back arched slightly and Steve dropped his mouth to your breasts, taking turns between them to lick over your nipples. You sunk one of your hands into his hair, pulling his face against your body, and then cried out and the same moment he heard your heartbeat swell, “I’m going t-to, oh shit, shit!”

“That’s right, come for me, let go again beautiful,” Steve sighed in content in the brief moment before you toppled over the edge, your barely open eyes meeting his before snapping shut.

Your entire body went rigid as you came, your cunt clenching viciously around Steve, begging him to follow you but he resisted, pulling his head from your chest to watch your face. The expressions that flashed over you, the way your lips parted to let out a continuous stream of moans and curses, were enough to drive him beyond wild. The resulting increase in wetness made it fractionally easier for him to move within you.

You were panting heavily, your body relaxing back into the bed and Steve pinned you there with his slowly thrusting hips. You sounded wrecked when you spoke moments later. “Need to take care of you, let me please,” You begged him, pushing at him.

Steve met your eyes, unsure of what you meant, “What do you want, sweet girl?”

He felt you trying to rotate your hips to no avail, pinned by his strength, “I know y-you’re holding back, I can take it. Please, Stevie, fuck me, I can take-“

Steve almost came at your desperate plea and stopped moving, taking a moment to gaze at you in wonder, before pulling back. With quick, careful movements he lifted you off the mattress. Walking on his knees, he held you in his arms, still buried inside of you, until he had your back pressed against the wall at the head of his bed.

He growled then, dropping his hands to roughly hold the flesh of your hips and then beginning a ruthless pace, pounding into you over and over as you cried out for more and he was fairly certain he’d never known pleasure such as this. You were trembling, letting his strength hold you against the wall, your hands now both clinging to his hair, drawing his face to yours to kiss, tongues fighting each other for dominance.

It was the hottest fucking thing. You were the sexiest, most beautiful fucking woman and it only took a minute more to find his release, pleasure rippling up his back before he slammed you into the wall-one hand cradling your head protectively, and roared your name as he filled you. He came long and hard, easily the best orgasm of his life. “Fuck, fuck,” He gasped, kissing along your jaw before nibbling down your neck, his thrusts sloppy and slow now as he floated down to reality.

It was already easier for Steve to focus on you, his sense reaching out to ensure you were alright before he managed to lift his head and look at you. His serum-infused body was fairly unaffected by the physical aspects, he wasn’t sweating, hadn’t tired. But he was panting a little from the overwhelming intensity of his orgasm. You on the other hand were like Jell-O now, limp in his arms, body quivering and breathing erratic. When he finally looked up, his cock twitched at the blissed-out expression on your face, earning him another little moan as you felt him still hard inside of you.

“Good girl,” He breathed out, holding you steady. He eased out of you slowly, watching as your tight heat leaked out a mixture of fluids. You smelled heavenly, even with the layer of sweat, and he was tempted to lower you onto the bed and taste you. The small whimper you gave, however, warned Steve that you needed to be taken care of.

And so he took care of you, carrying you into his bathroom and helping you to the toilet, leaving you alone for a minute to run to his mini-fridge and pull out a cold glass bottle of water. You were attempting to stand when he walked back in, and Steve quickly put his arms around you, pressing the bottle into your hand, all while whispering sweet nothings to you. Words of praise, of love, comfort, encouraging you to drink the water and then, once he was satisfied with the decent amount you gulped back, he took you to his overlarge bathtub.

It was there that he spent the next hour, holding you in his arms in the warm water, his hands tracing over every curve and dip of your perfect body. You lay content and sleepy in his arms, your slow and steady heart rate enough to tell him you were relaxed until eventually, he thought you were about to fall asleep when you seemed to catch yourself, head raising from his chest.

“Stevie?” You whispered, your voice a little scratchy from overuse.

He brushed his hand over your face gently, smiling down at you, “Yes, darling?”

“Does this mean you’ll be training me from here on out? Because I have some ideas of scenarios and maneuvers I’d like to try...”

Did you enjoy this story? Please consider leaving a comment or reblogging to ease my inner turmoil as a writer 🤍

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sokkabackbender2021 · 3 years

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Now that I think about it, there isn’t a character (within the recurring cast) in avatar the last airbender that I don’t like find intriguing. I think it’s because they all have very different characteristics and history unique to their character, so we can form a separate connection to each character, whether that connection is a bad or good one.

Not only that, but both the protagonists and the antagonists are written to be very relatable and likeable people.

Aang is a pacifist monk who is a survivor of genocide. He has to somehow balance the weight of the world on his shoulders and letting himself be a kid. Everyone who watches atla knows who Aang is: he’s kind and fun, yet sensitive and forgiving. He can’t be impatient or even rude at times, but this helps to remind the audience that Aang is still just a 12 year old boy.

Like Aang, Zuko has his own history and things that make him notable as a character. For one, he’s a survivor of child abuse (something too many people can relate to), and he also has a very distinct scar on his face, a burn, as a symbol of this abuse. When you finish the show, you know exactly what to say about him: he’s impulsive, impatient, but underneath it all, he’s just a kid trying to find his way, and accept who he is and what he wants, even when everything and everyone pushes against him (andyeshewasandismycomfortcharacterok).

Katara is the motherly character. She wants to take care of others because she felt she needed to do so after she lost her mother. That struggle is completely unique to her, and how it affects who she is as a character: she’s loving, and very protective of those she cares about. What I love is her duality, and how she can be both a calming ocean or the crashing waves in a storm. But boy, don’t mess with her (come on, we all know Katara would kick our ass). Also she defeated the patriarchy so how can you not love her??

Sokka can easily be seen as the comedic relief, but man’s really is one of the smartest dudes in the show. We as an audience relate to him because, well, he can’t bend just like we can’t. He struggles to keep up, but makes up for it with his brains and creativity (not to mention he’s funny as hell).

For one, Toph is blind. The show doesn’t let you forget that, but they also connect it to her character in a way that isn’t just about how she struggles with her disability, but rather how she uses it. She’s the best earthbender in history because of how sensitive and precise her sense is, which is an example of her using her blindness to her advantage. She’s tough as nails and isn’t necessarily kind even to the people she loves, but like she said, that’s how she shows affection.

Honestly we don’t get a whole lot of Suki so she isn’t as defined as a character as the rest of the gaang. But who tf cares she’s a queen (who can literally scale walls like a cat), and she’s not just Sokka’s non-bending love interest, she’s a goddamn force of nature and that’s why we all love her (note: SHE ALSO DEFEATED THE PATRIACHY).

It’s easy to say that Iroh’s just a peace loving tea drinking kind old man. But the thing that makes him interesting is that he’s not just that: he’s done some not great thing in the past (well that’s an understatement). But he’s wise and loveable because he learned from his past, and uses that to help Zuko find his own way (id also like to note I only ever cried in 3 scenes of the show, 2 of which included Iroh).

Azula is arguably one of if not the most complex character in the show. She’s an absolute tactical beast and terrifinginly good at fighting (ngl Azula scared the SHIT outta me). However, underneath it all, she’s a severely unstable and ill girl, who I would say honestly needs therapy and a good psychiatrist (no I’m not talking about a redemption arc).

Oksoimayormaynotbeahugemaisimp but she’s a cool ass knife girl who honestly seems cold at first, but then you realize that she’s just been forced to put up her walls her whole life, which I think a lot of people (myself included) can relate to. Also ma’am was somehow rocking bangs so that automatically makes her a 100/10 character.

I think honestly no one in the fandom gives Ty Lee the attention she deserves (which is ironic because that’s how it was in the show as well). But SIS COULD TURN OFF BENDING!! And was actually super spiritual and observant, but also still had a very upbeat and pink attitude. I call that queen shit honestly.

My point is is that each character is so notable in how different they each are. They’re incredibly diverse in both their designs and personalities. Where Aang is kind, Zuko is harsh. Where Katara is motherly, Toph is rough. Where Sokka is clever, Suki is fierce. Where Iroh is wise, Azula is tactical. Where Mai is subtle, Ty Lee is colorful.

These differences make the characters feel so rich and real. They make you root for them, or feel for them in some way. They intrigue you and teach you in ways you could never expect. Their stories are tragic and triumphant and unexpected and beautiful, and I think that is what makes avatar the last airbender such a wonderful show.

#avatar the last airbender #zuko #aang #katara #toph beifong #azula #ty lee #avatar mai #uncle iroh #sokka #suki #i just think they’re all neat??#like I like some characters more then others but they’re all good #anyways most of them are kids so stop hating #I kinda started to ramble

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sanchoyo · 3 years

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danny phantom 14-20 thoughts!! I finished up s1 :D these last few eps were actually really really good!!!

-did. did tucker really just say esperanto was a dead language only spoken as a secret code between geeks. google says around 100,000 people actively speak it. oh my god...it being an auxiliary language doesn't mean its 'just for geeks to speak in code' ...it helps bridge gaps between people who don't have a language in common...

-danny really isn't pulling punches when it comes to fighting the ghost-cop possessed people huh. like he SLAMMED KWAN INTO THE CONCRETE SO HARD. HE THREW PAULINA INTO A BILLBOARD. will that...I mean it WOULD carry over to their bodies non-possessed, right? like if the ghost piloting their bodies gets hurt?? itd be so upsetting to be possessed, lose time, then wake up covered in bruises (and possibly, broken bones??) real horror movie stuff im sure wont be addressed in any way

-tuckers parents seem nice! I like them :)

-WULF IS CUTE AND I FEEL BAD. im so glad the gang realized he was only causing trouble bc of the shock collar walker put on him and helped. also, him wearing that big hoodie with the hood on, and thinking its subtle. we can tell youre still a giant wolfie :) THEN GETTING SUCKED INTO THE PORTAL AAAAH :( anxiously waiting to see Him Again....

-DANNY BLASTING HIS PARENTS THINKING THEY WERE OVERSHADOWED LMFAO GET THEIR ASSES. maddie marking how many ghosts she gets with lipstick tallies on the side of her portal gun? kindaaa iconic tho. (ALSO, SHE WAS LIKE, 2 FT AWAY FROM HIM RIGHT AFTER SHE TRIED TO SHOOT HIM. HOW DO YOU NOT RECONINZE YOUR OWN SON??? like sure, he might have diff hair/eye colors. but like, if one of my family members dyed their hair, and was wearing contacts, its not like id be like 'wHO IS THIS STRANGER!!!' ...he still has all his facial features!! same everything!!! I hate it here)

-paulina being #1 girl realizing danny's a friendly ghost immediately. smart queen. lancer and kwan ran away right after he made this sweet baby face at them:

which is hilarious.

-ok. im not saying his bullying is JUSTIFIED, but. dash looked so pleased with the (cute!) poster he just painted, and danny comes thru the wall and spills paint on his nice letterman jacket. his anger is justified maybe 65% of the time so far...(not the way he handles it, but STILL.) at least lancer is stepping in!! and them making a silly little bet was...cute?? until dash pulled out his GROSS UNDERWEAR AND SAID DANNY WOULD HAVE TO EAT THEM???? WHAT THE FUCK MAN. TUCKER WAS SO RIGHT ITS FUCKING WEIRD TO CARRY THOSE AROUND EWWW. THIS KID IS UNWELL. lancer was right, his animatronic setup was SUPER IMPRESSIVE?? hes actually pretty creative. danny meanwhile is stealing the fright knight's design...I hope dash is taking art classes or smth with his sports

-fright knight is the most bestest ghost so far i LOVE THAT DESIGN. I am biased towards knights, and characters with swords, but he fucks so severely. and should sue danny for copyright infringement for stealing his design for his haunted house. if some 14 yr old broke into MY house and stole MY sword, id also be pissed. his evil winged unicorn rules too with its FANGS. and he just CAN SHOVE THE PORTAL OPEN WITH HIS HANDS??? is he the strongest ghost weve seen so far? idk but hes my fav. SOUL SHREDDER IS SUCH A COOL SWORD NAME TOO. ANY NAMED SWORD ALSO FUCKS. 'flaming bedsheets of DEATH' funny king. ALSO he was polite to dash and tucker when just asking for directions and telling tucker 'oh maybe, just a suggestion, maybe be nicer to me and be more respectful :)' I LOOOVE HIM.

-I noticed this in the Ember ep, but jazz has an electric guitar in her room!! talent musical queen!! its cool to see hobbies just in the bg.

-fright knight's murder castle reminds me of the booby trapped murder castle in zexal!! another supposedly 'for kids' show with murder/trap castles! we love that. if you are a dp fan reading this, give yugioh zexal a try. its also got 13-14 year old protags and involves (alien) ghosts. the cardgame is just a vessel for the plot, which is really good. (I just want more people to watch my fav yugioh, man)

-danny. with a SWORD.

-danny doesnt NEED TO WIN this contest, dash didnt STEAL HIS DESIGNS AND STEAL A SWORD. he also got excited to hear lancer got sent to a dimension with his worst fears too just so he could win the contest? DANNY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!!! BRO MAYBE YOURE 14 AND HAVENT FULLY DEVOLPED YOUR WHOLE BRAIN YET, BUT...THATS FUCKED. this kid casually says the most deranged things, I do worry for my spooky son. once again, therapy needed. that judo toss was great tho. I wonder if he actually did pick up some martial arts stuff from his mom?

-danny can fly 112 mph!!! thats so fast! I love the lil montage of him and his friends testing his abilities and stuff, very cute and a good way to showcase what he can do by now and how much more proficient he's gotten from ep 1!!! I'm sure he's going to get more abilities :)

-im glad...maddie's at least TRYING this ep. I do feel for her because her husband is a man baby. but the fact it took 16 episodes to get a kinda semblance of any kind of real concern or attempts at bonding. hmm. jack's 'BACK OFF SHES A MINOR' @ the ghost trying to attack jazz. also was very funny. and him wanting to make an action figure of her? are the parents redeeming themselves to me? slightly. they gotta Work Harder

-THE GHOST. IS FLYING. THE PLANE.

-fenton machete. but she doesnt carry a PHONE??? ???

-I mean I expected vlad when you namedrop him earlier in the ep, and also the title card picture, and dalv corp being fucking vlad backwards. but seeing him just pull up on a golf cart made me bust out laughing. WITH the gift baskets prepared. why wouldnt you at least be suspicious. also, if he wants danny to be his lil sonboy, why is he so fucking malicious?? dude you are going about this in such a bad way. stop it. get some help.

-maddie not even hesitating to drag danny out. fucking good. danny is so right, go on the internet to date. get a cat. how do you spend...how many years?? has it been since college?? at least 20, right, since the parents/vlad are in their 40s? hung up on ONE girl. my god, man. incel drama queen. her kung fu IS impressive, but dude. 'we both know hes a creep' SO right. it sucks but they do need a phone and shit being in the middle of NOWHERE. also, just stealing his helicopter was great. <3

-'you must be exhausted carrying the weight of that mistake you made years ago' 'well we all make mistakes. maybe I'll make one now!' WHY DID THIS EXHCHANGE SEND ME. AND VLAD WITH THE BREATH SPRAY EWWW BITCH. 'OLD BAIT BREATH' SOO RIGHT. both danny and his mom playing him HAHAH hes so dumb. or rather, I think he thinks with his emotions too too much and is...actually pretty gullible? lmao he believed danny was ready to give in SO fast. (which is sad hes that hopeful, like you have SO MUCH MONEY YOU COULD EASILY GET ANOTHER GIRL WHO HAS A KID. AND WOULD WANT TO BE WITH YOU AND BE SUPPORTED. GET OVER THIS (1) WOMAN ALREADY IM GETTING SECONDHAND EMBARRASSMENT AAAAH)

-GHOST BEAR GHOST BEAR GHOST BEAR. it was also in the title card, but I still got very excited. we love bears here

-SAM'S BAT SWIMSUIT COVERUP!!! her outfits are simply iconic.

-'i'd tell you to go to the mens room, but I don't think you qualify' top paulina transphobic moments. :( and him wearing a tanktop to the swim park? hmmm! (actually I think she was overshadowed by then, so, KITTY top 10 transphobic moments??)

-kitty just piloting paulina around makes me feel SO bad tho, paulina's gonna wake up and be like 'wtf do you mean I was dating this rando' like youre leading danny on to make johnny jealous, and also just POSSESSING POOR PAULINA. dude take your relationship problems ELSEWHERE. last time we saw them, they seemed like such a cute couple!! wtf johnny!! I mean, she sucks for trying to make him jealous, he sucks for looking at other girls...maybe they need a break, but Not Like This. or, you know, just. better communication...

-and the A-listers having a full packet and a stamp system. who organizes this. kwan fucking owning being the new danny though, this is hysterical. THE TUCKER/KWAN FLOWER FIELD TWIRL. UNIRONICALLY ADORABLE. and him giving it his all for the poetry slam. bless his HEARTTTT.

-Star owns. actually, all of the extra characters are shining this ep and I love it.

-INVISO-BILL??? NOOOO THEY DID HIM SOO DIRTY. DANNY SWEETIE IM SO SORRY.

-johnny and danny bein friends and staging a fake fight (which danny takes too seriously, once again this child has aggression he NEEDS TO WORK OUT) I hope these three stay friends, I said it before but danny needs more friendly ghosts to hang with.

-at this point, Danny's ghost enemies are a lot like, I dunno, batman's rouge gallery is the first thing that comes to mind. they all have their own gimmick and unique designs, but most of them are easy to beat after learning the Moral Lesson. I still get excited when any of them show up again, though. 18 is another valerie episode!!!! :D skulker really said you two will get along if I have to handcuff you together <3 and the gym teacher really said, youre married now, have a flour baby! ngl, I'm not really watching this show for the shipping stuff (which I am very scared to look at the fandom for after I finish this watch through- I feel like there's probably discourse/arguing about ships...) but. I'm gonna put my opinion out there. valerie/danny > sam/danny. maybe I just really love the enemies to lovers trope. And the secret identity stuff adds Extra Flavor.

-SKULKER JUST HAVING THE BOX GHOST AND DANGLING HIM BY A STRING. HILARIOUS. and him watching them with binoculars and making his silly little commentary. AND MAKING THE SACK BABY CRY. LMAO. THIS DUDE IS A BABY KIDNAPPER. skulker is super fun

-danny, you just...collapsed the water tower. and then attacked the nasty burger machine...mascot thingy...out of anger..I KEEP SAYING HE'S GOT ANGER ISSUES BUT. HE REALLY NEEDS A LESSON IN MANAGING COLLATERAL DAMAGE!!! So does valerie!! They're both pretty focused on each other. I mean it's good of Danny to say he's trying to make sure PEOPLE don't get hurt, but... (I mean I guess it's not something 14 year olds WOULD worry about, but as an adult im like, who's going to fix that? how much money will that take??)

-TUCKER MAKING BANK. and sam and tucker being super emotionally attached to their flour baby and being pretty good parents. that's cute...also him just straight kissing her and being like. WAIT. O_O JDSKAFHD. his mom baking them into cookies was the funniest possible result. tbh I dont feel like this is on tucker, if anything the other kid's shouldve been more responsible! He was just taking an opportunity to get that $$ which I respect

-Danny being more understanding of Valerie's situation in the end (helping her at her job, too, and trying to keep that a secret for her!!!) And seeing them work together this ep, and also her letting phantom get her out of the ghost zone...was very sweet. LOVE that. more valerie eps pls

-me when I realize vlad's big stupid house exploded because of his own carelessness with changing the ghost portal ectofiltrator or whatever: *pointing and laughing*

-me when I realize it means he's gonna go make danny's life hell for it somehow: >:(

-SCOOBY PARODY!!! I feel like there's gotta be some scooby doo/danny phantom crossover stuff, right? also, 'guys in white' men in black wishes

-'oh, that's right! dad married the love of your life! you're bitter and alone!' DANNNNNYY GET HIS ASS ONCE AGAIN WE ARE POINTING AND LAUGHING AT VLAD

-'jack, you captured the ghost boy!!' UMM. he did nothing <3 'we have a weapon's vault??' YOU HAVE A WEAPONS VAULT??? and jack didnt put a handle on the inside. of fucking course he didnt! why would you leave that to your son!! or expect him to clean YOUR LAB when its where you work with probably dangerous chemicals and weapons and hes 14!! give him normal chores, like, I dunno, vacuuming, laundry, dishes...CMON. I hate it here. But I'm glad Jack is more chill about danny while he's a ghost, and willing to work with him for this ep. AND. I DID ENJOY JACK PUNCHING VLAD IN THE FACE. AND GENERALLY JUST OWNING HIM. the ghost punchy fists are actually amazing. like yeah, just punch a ghost in the face. that rules.

-ep 20 opens with the coolest fucking ghost lady design. her tattoos can come off and fight. MA'AM. I like ur nose ring and your cape maam hello 👉👈😳

-sam's grandma is hilarious and the most valid member of her family and I love her. thats my grandma now. and tucker covering for sam by dressing as her. thats true friendship <3 also skipping school to go to a goth circus. just bestie things! sam's parents are haters but for all the wrong reasons.

-'my family has controlled ghosts with this for generations!' WAIT. WAIT FREAKSHOW /ISNT/ A GHOST? I didn't expect that...he's just a fucked up guy controlling ghosts? anyway watching danny shoot at police cars and rob banks while mind controlled. its like, the most stereotypical 'bad' things lmao. (tbh an evil ghost circus troupe is a sick concept)

this gives off big deviantart emo edit vibes

(I'm going to assume evil circus reaper danny has a lot of fan content. people love an edgy au, except this one is canon (even tho its via mind control...having the protag go evil otherwise might be hard, I guess?) but au where he stays with the troupe...that has to exist, right?)

ANYWAY. excited to start s2!! lowkey surprised by how many notes some of these posts have gotten. I've gone back and tagged them all with 'dp thoughts' so they're easier to find on my blog! ^^ and I will probably possibly do (more) fanart on my art blog after I finish the watch of the whole show, so like. @sanchoyodraws follow my art blog :)

#sanchoyorambles #danny phantom #dp thoughts

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unironicduncanstan · 3 years

Photo

@alenoah and @icedancerhell did this and ik im definitely going to be cancelled for my taste but explanations below

prince of egypt: oh my gfucking god . bro the music. the ANIMATION. the story too like obviously its based on a religious tale but i mean the way its portrayed and interpreted and how it all comes across was so on point. and did i mention THE FUCKGIN MUSIC dude i would try to sing every song when i was a kid and i think attempting that literally improved my range growing up

shrek: ok when ur a kid literally all u want is to feel mature and cool. shrek was that in an hour and 30 minutes. all the adult humor. and even the shit that would fly over your head somehow still always registered as so funny. every line is burned into my brain bc i watched it so much it was so fuckgin funny and entertaining and the storyline was so depthful and important. shrek for president

sinbad: oh yeah he makes me wanna sin. Bad

rise of the guardians: oooohhg the plot was so cool and intriguing,,, the designs were so unique,,,, also i actually used to. cosplay jack frost when i was a teen osfkjskjfhksdjf i might have like One picture around here somewhere,

over the hedge: every character is perfectly designed and perfectly voiced and the humor was so good. me at like 8 years old watching hammy the squirrel drink coffee and frolic around in a slowed down world was the peak of comedy

madagascar: its just such a classic. another movie where every line is burned into my cerebellum bc i had it on dvd. id say out of this whole list this close to number one. idk where to even begin with how stupidly hilarious it was to me

httyd: lbr who didnt just do a full [lisa simpson face] when you got to the end and hiccup had lost part of a leg. the whole movie had this aura that it was like not tethered down somehow while still being great family friendly media. also im ace sexual and UHH big dragon

antz: unironically i think it deserves so much more than it gets. the anti war messages are great the designs are cool and it goes back into the shrek maturity territory where they get to say CUSS WORDS. p much my only qualm is that woody allen had to be there 😔😔😔

shark tale: ok dont cancel me but i really love the plot actually. i mostly love the mafia shark boy that dresses as a dolphin but even the will smith fish crash-and-burn fame hubris thing while annoying at times was rly intriguing. and the designs are the kind of thing that as a kid i loved but as an adult i do. struggle , w ith, a bit, but overall funny and entertaining story

el dorado: the music slaps so fuckgin hard thats another example of me tryna sing cartoon music to an embarrassing degree. also the Colorse . the designs . and the humor osjfsjdf the only downside is just a personal vibe bc the best friend conflict storylines make me anxious sometimes lol

flushed away: oh my god dont at me. some of the characters are so fuckgin annoying and some of the humor is just so much but i rly did like the worldbuilding and storyline. stupid posh ass rat was rly cool actually. also yet another mafia/gang violence plot in childrens media why is that so funny when ur a kid god

spirit: GREAT MUSIC GREAT STORY! i think the way the story goes like, its Better to be told with regular horses and narration rather than talking horses,,,, but my dumb whimsical child ass just didnt latch onto that style as much as the talking animal movies

shrek 2: rly good tbh all the new characters introduced are interesting and entertaining to watch, but i mostly remember it for i need a hero and human shrek. didnt rly hit the same mark as the first :/

httyd 2: another great movie with another great twist but it almost felt like too much at once for my little brain to handle. overloaded me with gay emotion

megamind: i love everything it stands for i just never saw it until like a year ago so its not that dear to my heart

kung fu panda: not my style of humor, i saw it once and can hardly remember it but i feel like the plot was wholesome and cute

the croods: so funny and good, ive seen it many times actually. but some of the humor just isnt my thing (its, well, crude, which also took me like 5 yrs to get that joke,)

bee movie: was pleasantly surprised the first time i watched it??? it was pretty good and it did kinda make fun of itself so idk why its so cringe to ppl. barry b benson entertained me unironically

chicken run: i saw it once when i was very young and it just didnt resonate with me also claymation most of my childhood terrified me

wallace and gromit: same as chicken run

entire never saw it tier: dotn hate me i just dont have a lot of time on my hands. i know i will be oppressed into watching peabody and sherman within the week and i accept the charges

monsters vs. aliens: someone got it for me on dvd and i hated it so much. its not even that bad its just a me thing like for some reason the part where the lady becomes a giant during her wedding or w/e was just like. the worst nightmare i could imagine i hated it and it made me scared to get married bc i thought that could happen to me. also none of the main cast is charming to me one of thems a bug and i have a bug phobia so i could never rly get thru it im sorry but i coudltn do it

madagascar 2: alex backstory was kinda good but the rest was forgettable for me

madagascar 3: visually kinda cool but. :/// felt really off compared to the previous movies, like an obvious cash grab. i mean who could forget the constant polka dot afro circus song advertisements

shrek 3: again mostly just remember it for the frog dad dying ,,,

shrek 4: i only saw it like 5 months ago for the first time. fiona being a warrior in an alternate timeline or w/e (if that was real and not a fever dream) was the only semi tolerable part for me

penguins of madagascar: the first few minutes with them as babies was cute the rest i physically could not keep my attention on. i dont remember anything else im sorry

#long post/ /#very long #original

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huntsman-ash · 3 years

Text

RWBY V8E3 LiveThoughts

Its Saterday and that means its time for everyones favorite post spam; Orca-mun bullshits about RWBY! And here we go.

On a personal note I barely ate anything today so my brain is jittery. I ate something before this of course but one does not solve low-food jitters instantly. So we’ll see how this goes.

Also the more that I hear the opening for this season the more I hear things that I have had Ash say before. “The hope to change the world is just a childish dream”. It comes off in the song as kind of a poke at Ruby and her team, same way as how V3s opening was all about loosing and falling, but here I cant help but hear it in the voice of Ash, caustic and sarcastic, angry at the world for his own issues and putting it onto the “blind, naieve Huntress’s” Ironwood now has his team focused on.

Actually again, a lot of the song is talking about stuff that is probably coming up in the show. “The path we tried to avoid is already here”. “Path home is suddenly clear”. Basically hinting RWBYs going back to Vale at some point. But we knew that already.

And again, the part with time stopping while Cinder walks among the fighting reminds me of a shittier version of the I Know You trailer for Halo Wars 2.

And now the episode actually starts. Apperently, riding the pnumatic tubes does NOT instantly kill you. Im...half dissapointed. At the same time it makes sense, they seem to be fully sealed so.

Doesnt seem like its fun though thats for sure.

Dear Blake; please stop being adorable.

Oh, and we get to see how Penny see’s the world too. Interseting. Wireframe with data...and shes unintentionally doing the Konami Code if Im not mistaken.

Also cool to see that the active camo semblance works exactly like Halo’s active camo, ergo; its bending light, not true invisibility, since you can JUST BARELY see the shimmer where they are.

And this moment is a painting I like to call; Five Lesbians and a Robot in an Elevator. Legit shocked Atlas doesnt have elevator music...

And we finally, FINALLY get some reference on the storm. Shorter Atlas trooper sayd “they cant get too close to that storm without getting shot out of the air”. Okay...so Salem actually has defenses against airships? Couldnt they have SHOWN THAT?

Also, props to the female VA for sounding like AN ACTUAL FUCKING SOLDIER. “CO can get us some answers”...hell yeah. And then Nora’s randomly a dick for...no reason.

Penny’s finger has a scomplink just like in Star Wars.

And they didnt think to remove Peitro’s security clerance, alright then. Someones gonna know they were there though since she used his ID...but maybe thats part of the deal. They get in and get out fast.

Central Command is so dissapointingly small. I HATE IT. ITs two rows of consoles and like...8 dudes. No, wait...three rows? For a place this big it should be six times the size and look more like NASAs mission control.

Nice to have some data on how Ruby’s semblance works though. She apperently breaks herself down to her component molecules and negates her mass and HEY thats how I said Ash moved! DAMMIT RT

Also I guess Remnant follows SOME laws of physics.

NGL Blake is suddenly being a better character now that shes not held down by Yang. Might just be me though.

“Busy” says Ironwood. In my head, the five minutes before this shot; EXECUTIONS EXECUTIONS ALL THE EXECUTIONS. MUCH PURGING, VERY CLEAN NOW.

Oh I LIVE for the sudden look of shock on Watt’s face. Bro KNOWS what Ironwood can do. That said, obviously hes going to turn on him because...duh. Its Watts. But hey, least hes a little afraid. Unless its an act.

His acid snark against Penny is refreshing. “Magic science project” indeed.

Oh, thats why hes so worried. FOUR DUDES AIMING GUNS AT HIM. Nice.

CALLED IT

“Authorization granted to handle any threats with lethal force”. GOOD.

Oh no, Nora’s got an idea now. Im worried.

I get the feeling the random office geek guy that Nora trips is someone from RTs office, hence the “#1 Dad/Dud” mug. Dumb

Home made sign. Really. REALLY. UGH GOD DAMMIT RT.

Funny sign though. Also the scream from the tech is so fake its not even funny

Wow. For fuck sake. Thats how they get through. Seriously.

Seems I paused at the right moment. Blake is very confused about being inside Ruby.

Nice to see that Atlas follows OSHA regulations and has railings on its weird catwalks.

Hardlight forcefield door? Interesting. I guess May went off to steal an airship or something.

Also this is something I JUST remembered but I thought Johanna was the trans member. Actually thats May. So thats my bad.

HAHAHAHA HOLY SHIT MINDJACK!

Why’re there holes on the base of Penny’s gloves...

No logiccal sense to half of Atlas’s tech, glad to see that hasnt changed any.

Blake is me when my dads working at his office and taking way to long to do anything.

Blah blah okay talk less do more shit. Character stuff BORES ME

Hm. Nora speaks the truth.

ANNNNDDD its the Ace Ops. Now lead by Hare. ...no cuffs. No heavy equipment. No gas weaponry. Nothing. They know exactly how strong these people are and instead they show up with ALL OF THEIR OLD STUFF. Are you fucking serious.

STOP TALKING AND JUST KILL THEM ALREADY DAMMIT! Marrows comment is how I feel. But I think hes lying. As does he, I think.

I like how its Vine doing the talking, and that they start by trying to REASON with them. They’re scared. They know they might not win again. They’re taking the cowards root. To no ones fucking shock.

UHHHGGGG all of this fukcing mind shit with Penny is really pissing me off.

Good, now the fighting starts. Thattttss why they;re on the platform.

Hey, actual teamwork out of the Aces, kinda. I guess their boss being dead helped.

Okay seriously how the HELL is she not fighting this easier? Shes a robot, surely she has predictive combat algorithms...

Man Marrows getting SHIT ON this fight.

Mmm. Hare thighs. I like

Weiss says the truth for once

And all the fancy work and fighting is ended simply by a beefy woman grabbing Penny. I like that honestly. Simplicity, brutality.

Wait never mind.

HAHAHAHAH OFF THE Wall and now she flies. No shock.

HAHAHAHAH YES

Good shit. Good work Marrow.

Well that works. JESUS FUCK Nora.

Yow they’re not DEAD. Excuse me

Oh look Nora’s...wow. Cool, scars.

Still mad Pennys swords are on wires, but hell. Wire funnels are wire funnels. Or would those be incoms? I dont quite remember the distinction.

Marrows quiet look is kinda sad. Oh good nora’s not dead.

But they are down a person and...ah. They’re letting them go. Death Star tactic.

New ship design, havent seen this one before. The whole top part opens which is interesting to me. And then she just GONE.

Ah. So thats what they were doing. Cool.

Obviously gonna backfire, but hey, who knows. Maybe RT will surprise us.

Annnddd thats it for the show.

#rwby #rwby v8 #spoilers #rwby spoilers

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feralhogs · 5 years

Note

1-50 ho

you got it ho

1. What’s your favorite candle scent?

I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED. ive been Purchasing various smelly candles for my gay divination activities, and i have a few nominees. i first thought of the candle i have now, a pink one with a very sweet vanilla smell, i love very sweet smells because it makes me think of candy which i tend to try to fill my inner void with. however im going to go with the first candle i bought, a dark orange one with a citrus smell. citrus scents are my next favourite and specifically this one reminded me of curiously smelling candles at my piano teachers apartment when i was very young.

2. What female celebrity do you wish was your sister?

idk. ive been listening to her lion king stuff lately. dont judge me i needed to hear remixes of lion king music i was lost in that sauce in high school. and i just think shes neat. i dont think she would aggressively make me feel bad about everything, UNLIKE SOME PEOPLE

3. What male celebrity do you wish was your brother?

Look……. i really don’t know???? what is the criteria?? do they need to be like my siblings? dare i criticize my arguably criticizable siblings by picking out my ideal siblings? if i pick an ideal sibling, what does that say about what im lacking in my life? do i pick celebrities i hate so theoretically my family shames them into becoming silent and self-defeating

4. How old do you think you’ll be when you get married?

50. i think im going to have to figure myself out for a long time, and achieve some personal goals first. thats my excessively confident prediction and PERHAPS educated guess

5. Do you know a hoarder?

nnnnnoooooooo????? not a real, cant function because of hoarding hoarder. i can see in a few family members, including myself, liking to hang onto things that maybe become sentimental/unnecessary clutter but that sounds like something many non-hoarders experience?

6. Can you do a split?

lemme try one sec

7. How old were you when you learned how to ride a bike?

Idk maybe 7? Or 11? i think my parents taught me at a children age and then i started biking for fun like, later, like pre middle school?

8. How many oceans have you swam in?

1. i dont really remember swimming in an ocean but i may have faded childhood memories of salty water and seaweed

9. How many countries have you been to?

2… i went to idaho for a band trip… my dad really doesnt like travelling

10. Is anyone in your family in the army?

HAHAHA

NO. ACTUALLY YES. but its funny because the specific brand of christianity we are supposed to be is super pacifist so ive heard. but then i remembered one dude apparently who joined the us military?????? it seemed like it was… an unusual choice. i dont really know anything else about this guy, not even his name

11. What would you name your daughter if you had one?

🙏 *inhale* buddy. oooooohhffffff i want to say something gender neutral honestly. i dont want to rock the boat being unconventional or something but im just thinking of all those years trying to live up to a feminine name

12. What would you name your son if you had one?

same i guess… why have i never thought about this????? was i preoccupied naming myself.

13. What’s the worst grade you got on a test?

hmmmmm hmmmmm trying to unlock the vault. i think i remember a 1 or a 0 on a math quiz. i think i got 30% or something very very bad (i dont even want to know) on my last english exam, but to be fair, i was having such a bad mental breakdown my professor did an intervention

14. What was your favorite TV show when you were a child?

like a very very small child? i was obsessed with the save-ums (?!?!?) for some reason. i would sing the anthem… no. theme song? i dont know. i guess it was catchy and there were lots of fun characters. OHHHH I SEE WHATS WRONG

ITS BECAUSE WE ONLY HAD A TV TILL I WAS LIKE 5 OR SOMETHING. what are you cultured people watching as children? what are the shows?

15. What did you dress up as on Halloween when you were eight?

>:(

My Halloween experience:

i dont even remember i probably had some kind of fairy wings? i think i remember fairy wings. we went to one (1) house. later on, since we werent allowed to go trick-or-treating, we were each allotted a certain amount of candy, and if we ate more than a designated amount per day, we were in trouble and wouldnt be allowed anymore. i do remember getting in trouble for this. i think i stole someones candy. sibling against sibling. finally we were allowed to go trick or treating, i went with my younger brothers and by then, was a teenager and felt too tall and really uncomfortable

LMAO I JUST REMEMBERED THAT LAST TIME WE WENT TRICK-OR-TREATING NOT IN A RURAL AREA, my dad drove us around in a van and watched us like a hawk i believe. it was very tense and methodical.

16. Have you read any of the Harry Potter, Hunger Games or Twilight series?

i read the harry potter series (I WROTE SIBLIGS LOL) more times than i could count while growing up. i read the first hunger games book and didnt fancy it for whatever reason, and i had an obnoxious twilight-hating phase.

17. Would you rather have an American accent or a British accent?

sometimes, though, im really genuinely worried about what accent i do have. im worried i read so much harry potter growing up, it rubbed off on me. when i was a server, people would ask about an unusual accent i apparently had, and once, when i was talking to a super british guy who called me luv at walmart, he was like STOP. WAIT. YOU HAVE A BRITISH ACCENT. and i was like WHAT UHHH BYEBYE AND HE WAS LIKE NO. I HEARD YOU. STOP and i was like that michael jackson meme where he covers his face running away and everyone else in the line was staring

18. Did your mother go to college?

i believe she went to a bible college where people put a grand piano on top of the roof.

19. Are your grandparents still married?

all of my grandparents are dead.

…. hmmMMMM yow. ok. my grandparents who werent estranged stayed married for as long as either of them were living… however, my OTHER grandparents, i mean the fucking kidnappers, my abuser grandpa… remarried? when he was… really really aging. im judging him for it because i know what kind of person he was.

20. Have you ever taken karate lessons?

I WISH. my parents didnt seem to like that sort of thing (surprise). im interested in it now but… as usual… i feel like its too late, im too old.

21. Do you know who Kermit the frog is?

….. i… i thought i did… hes blessed… thats all.

22. What’s the first amusement park you’ve been to?

ಠ_ಠ

*crickets*

how could you ask me this?

no wait! i went to the waterslides. then, later on, i was never allowed to go to the waterslides.

23. What language, besides your native language, would you like to be fluent in?

Spanish. ive been “intending” to learn for a long time, and a lot of people who have been really good influences on me and been genuinely kind to me speak it, id like to learn it

24. Do you spell the color as grey or gray?

grey

one sec

yup thats canadian!

25. Is your father bald?

on the top of his head, yes >:(

26. Do you know triplets?

no?

27. Do you prefer Titanic or The Notebook?

no? what is this straight stuff? i listened to the dramatic titanic song and felt nothing.

28. Have you ever had Indian food?

i guess so, at a friends house! i dont think otherwise ive gone to a restaurant and actually had indian food

29. What’s the name of your favorite restaurant?

*gazes tearily at my OWN FUCKING OLD WORKPLACE

the food was sO GOOD MAN. IT WAS SO GOOD. im just not saying because despite how stalkable i probably am already, i dont want to be specific

30. Have you ever been to Olive Garden?

no whats that

31. Do you belong to any warehouse stores (Costco, BJ’s, etc.)?

belong? whats bjs? whats a warehouse for?

32. What would your parents have named you if you were the opposite gender?

i decided at one point they would never tell me this and it was no use asking. i do know they almost named my brother a very fusty old fashioned name fitting in with the thomas the tank engine theme

33. If you have a nickname, what is it?

G is the ONLY one i will accept so far.

34. Who’s your favorite person in the world?

i……… hmmmm…. i really dont like picking favourites. each person in my life has a unique relationship with me (even though a lot of them arent very warm, trusting or close). because of unhealthy middle school friendships ive grown an aversion to ranking relationships as if they have material value.

35. Would you rather live in a rural area or in the suburbs?

rural, i think. i need nature in my life!!! but i also need to be able to have connections to people.

36. Can you whistle?

yes, but not very loudly or accurately

37. Do you sleep with a nightlight?

no, but ive always wanted a nightlight

38. Do you eat breakfast every morning?

ive started to, yeah! this morning i made a whole thing with bread and mushrooms and eggs, and coffee, and i ate it outside watching the traffic. im really trying to treat myself nicely you see. its what id do for someone else.

39. Do you take any pills or medication daily?

THAT

BOY

JUICE!

WELCOME TO MY BUILD A BOY WORKSHOP!

SHOTS!SHOTS!SHOTS!

and im really fortunate to be in pretty good health, and have access to things i do need

40. What medical conditions do you have?

I dont think… i actually have any. id say gender dysphoria but i think it was informed consent. (im VERY lucky)

im pretty sure there are SOME mental conditions running around undiagnosed. MY BRAIN IS NOT WORKING PROPERLY

41. How many times have you been to the hospital?

for myself? once… when i got hives and started swelling up all over, but otherwise was fine. i really wonder what that was. other times was visiting sick/dying relatives which has made me feel sad and apprehensive whenever i enter a hospital or smell the food

42. Have you ever seen Finding Nemo?

yes! i had a gerbil named nemo!

43. Where do you buy your jeans?

i dont … remember … really nowhere special i actually have yet to find some jeans i LOVE. sometimes there is a pair of jeans that sparks joy. i do not have such a pair

44. What’s the last compliment you got?

my sister said my pants looked good on me. they are actually their pants, which they left on the floor in my room for an unknown reason, and they want them back. of course.

but because im excited about it and want to brag, the real compliment was when i made borscht and my sister not only ate it faster than me, but wanted a second helping. and my roommate stuck his face in the steam and said it smelled good. hell yes. i put fucking cilantro in it. fcking beast mode.

45. Do you usually remember your dreams in the morning?

yes. theyre usually really emotional and symbolic. if ive been talking to my parents, theyre usually nightmares. ive been reading about dream interpretation for a long time to deal with some of the ominous images that can come up

46. What flavor tea do you enjoy?

red rose reminds me of wheni was little my mom would make really sweet sweet red rose tea for me (thats the kind she drinks all the time) and it brings me those good feelings. otherwise licorice spice really appeald to me for some reason.

47. How many pairs of shoes do you currently own?

LMAO UHHH…brb

six. because of social pressure.

48. What religion will you raise your children to practice?

i never thought about this kind of thing…. i really don’t know….. id just want them to know how to be kind to others and themselves and thats literally it.

49. How old were you when you found out that Santa wasn’t real?

i was one of those edgy kids trying to spoil it for everyone. guess what other common fun thing my parents didnt do

50. Why do you have a youtube?

i dont! so i dont know what this question means! :)

HOLY SHIT I MADE IT THRU HIGH FIVE

#rambling #WOW #bug

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sontagfag · 5 years

Text

ok quickly before i go to bed, thots on be more chill:

- the production design and choreography are both very fun and campy, i like it

- they have a THEREMIN in the pit which is like... how to win me over in 0.2 seconds

- the main character i found to be super super whiny and not relatable at all, like not outright annoying but he can be a straight up selfish asshole not even w the squip

- it’s super cliche which is not neccesarily a bad thing but it hits basically all the plot beats you expect it to and all the characters are just not real people

- to that point though, they do camp it up to a level that makes it fun to watch even if it feels totally unrealistic not even with the crazy brain computer shit

- rich burns down the house... so fuckin funny... id like the show a lot more if they embraced the absurdity of the situations like in this number

- justice for michael tbh... michael in the bathroom is the best song and a big ass mood. once they got to that song i got a little angry bc it made me realize george salazar has a good fucking voice that is way underused

- just in general i feel like theres a good story here but the writers gave up halfway thru and just forgot to write compelling characters

- also i soo wish that jeremy got some consequences for his actions... like in my hypothetical rewrite of the show i would have had christine end up w jake and reject jeremy because tbh he barely fuckin knows her and not every girl you like will like you back

- also in my version by the end of the show michael doesn’t forgive him. he gets a new friend who isnt such a piece of shit

- when rich goes at the end “actually im bi” i literally wanted to barf this entire show is like exceedingly heterosexual but this part in particular. like crazy idea but maybe theres a way to add a gay character without doing it in the last 5 minutes and then playing it as a joke

- OH i must say i loved the squip as a character tho and how he gets more badass costumes as he goes on... that guy is great. also i love how it gets all fashy at the end thats cool.

- speaking of the sequence where hes describing the pill and theyre all in the crazy suits dancing was greattt like thats what i mean about playing up the absurdity those r the best parts

- in general the best parts of the show were the comedic or the absurd parts. none of the emotional beats except for michael in the bathroom hit 4 me. also i like big musical numbers so that but i’m just a gay person that doesnt mean its good

- also as soon as i found out will roland is 30 i wanted to scream... literally hello fellow kids .jpg

- justice for all the female characters... depth? never heard of her, we only have two bimbos, a gossip, and an “lol so RANDUM” girl

- seriously though christine was a terrible character she has no personality outside of being weird, liking theater, and being jeremy’s crush. like does she ever even have anything in fucking common with jeremy? the one time they connect its bc hes drunk and says nonsense noises lol

ok thats all im schleep folks

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oneweekoneband · 6 years

Video

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DON’T STOP

It would be easy to assume that everything not only true but even possible to articulate has already been said. Or, alternately, that there is no reason to discuss it because it belongs to the past—the ugly, false past—and we are here to discuss the sparkling, honest present. Certainly in the seven years since, this song has been tackled from almost every conceivable angle in the various avenues where opinions collect themselves like rainwater in a gutter. And certainly we hear it differently now, knowing what we know; the darkness that always simmered thrillingly under the surface has slunk closer to center stage. Certainly that incongruously gorgeous, haunting bridge will never sound the same. You build me up, you break me down.

And yet. And yet I find myself coming back to it, and coming back, and coming back. There were days in the summer where I would decide to listen to the new album and instead, or first, play it through not once or twice but over and over, an album’s work of Tik Tok, insistently pressing itself upon me the way it did on all of us that year, our initial confusion over how to hear it giving way to understanding and joyful surrender. I had to reabsorb it, to give myself not a blank slate but context into which to understand the new. Hours and hours, like I hadn’t since that first fall, listening and listening: for what was different, sometimes, but often for what remained. Eventually, listening for what, after everything, I had to say—listening in fact for why I kept hitting play, just one more time.

I so badly wanted—we all wanted—to be able to say this year: look at what Kesha made now that she is free. And I still hope, one day, to say that—to shout it from the tops of fucking skyscrapers from a bullhorn, raining glitter on the streets below, to paint it across my arms, to throw a party in celebration and toast a Jello shot in honor of Kesha and her hard-won freedom.

But we can’t, yet. Her legal battle against the man who both abused her and produced this song churns forward unresolved; although specifics have not been made public, it seems incontestable from the available facts that he continues to financially profit from her artistic output. Delineating yet again the painful history of exploitation and injustice that has been revealed across headlines for the past several years would at this point be both redundant and contrary to Kesha’s own current public stance; we all know this awful, too-familiar story, and if she’s not going to speak further on the matter, neither am I.

Still it’s worth stating: Rainbow is not the album Kesha made once she was free. It’s the album she chose to make in spite of the fact that she isn’t. It’s an album of celebration that exists inextricably entangled with that from which it is breaking away. The physics of a rainbow reflect this: they appear to us not across cloudless blue skies but when we stand between the sun and rain.

Listening to Tik Tok now—a song I love, forged under a series of circumstances I would erase from time if I could—in an infinitesimal way, it feels like this too.

I’M ALREADY HERE

There’s a narrative that has emerged since the release of the album’s first single if not before, one succinctly encapsulated by Katherine St. Asaph: “that what Kesha escaped was not abuse but electro-pop, that in the minds of more people than would admit it, “Tik Tok” was as much of a sin as anything else [he] did.” You can hear this beneath Facebook threads and casual conversations about the album, the fact of her exploitation serving as absolution for her failures of old: look at what she can do now that she’s not being forced to make that Autotune bullshit, a retroactive forgiveness that rests on assuming Kesha herself, suddenly and newly revealed as both a victim and an artist, would never have made such trash on purpose.

And it’s true that she’s distanced herself from some songs, and complicated her relationship with others. In a New York Times Magazine profile last year, she said of the writing process for this one:

“I remember specifically him saying: ‘Make it more dumb. Make it more stupid. Make it more simple, just dumb.’ ” She tried, joking around with some lyrics she found silly. “I was like, O.K., ‘Boys try to touch my junk. Going to get crunk. Everybody getting drunk,’ or whatever, and he was like, ‘Perfect.’”

But even though no one could blame her, even though she’s shared her story such that her fans would more than understand, Kesha hasn’t renounced her previous work at large. She still performs Tik Tok live; three weeks ago, when that discordant riff filled Hammerstein Ballroom, we lost our fucking minds. And no one could have been there, with all of us shrieking along, watching her strut and dance and jump across the stage, watching her keep us at fever pitch, and still believed what was so often said about this song back when it first appeared—that all its magic stemmed from the clever manipulations of a savvy producer. No one could have witnessed her and still doubted what she told us from the very start: the party don’t start till I walk in. It was always her party, her world. Her voice even when it was splintered and caught, her words even when she wasn’t the only one writing them: these things belong to Kesha. This song is hers as much as anyone else’s; it always was. To act otherwise is essentially to recreate in part one of the conditions of her exploitation: the lie that her success always rested squarely on someone else’s shoulders.

It matters that we’re clear on this: Kesha has always been an artist. If you couldn’t hear that in Tik Tok—separate from personal experience, speaking solely of the recognition of deliberation and craft, the awareness of performance—that’s on you.

SEE THE SUNLIGHT

There’s an interview from that first round of persona-establishing press that I can never find when I need it. Kesha was asked about her relationship with her fans, one of those really standard softball questions on pop sites, and in talking about being overwhelmed by the response, she mentioned being approach by a girl who said that her boyfriend had died and Tik Tok was the only thing making her happy.

I think about that all the time. Partly it’s because it such a sharp and poignant expression of that John Darnielle quote that makes the rounds every now and then, about how some of the value of pop music lies in its ability to remind us of our own potential for joy. Partly it’s because at the time that I read it, it resonated so specifically with me. Kesha, like many of the things we love most dearly, came into my life exactly when I needed her: an autumn I remember always in darkness, shuttering into a winter I only saw from inside of my room. I hadn’t lost anyone, except myself; I wasn’t alone except that I believed myself to be. I was left tracing circles in the dust. And into this came Kesha, loud and like nothing I’d heard, thumping and slurring in a way that bypassed entirely my defunct brain and reminded me that I was still a body. It wasn’t that she showed me the way out but that listening to Animal on the train, in my room, first thing in the morning, at night when I couldn’t sleep—it made me feel temporarily like the kind of person who could find a way out.

I’m telling you this because Rainbow is an album, through its context and in its text, about surviving, about what it looks like on the other side of something that needed to be survived and what it took to get there; a rainbow, after all, is a symbol of survival, the promise that the storm has been weathered and soon we will step into something new. But for a lot of us, loving Kesha has always been in part about survival. And some of that is the pop-music-joy thing, the miracle of feeling for three and a half minutes at a stretch something other than whatever it is we are living through or with, and some of it is about the fact that loving anything with your whole self is a way of reminding yourself of the fact of your heart.

But there’s also always been something about Kesha that gave her that magic, for those of us who needed it. It’s almost funny, because Animal isn’t and has no ambition to be an album that inspires. It’s concerned with our titular creaturely selves, the hulking id that stalks through the night careening through desires and bad ideas, which is to say, yeah, it’s an album about going and getting shitfaced. I read arguments that it was glorifying a self-destructive party culture and rolled my eyes, thinking, she doesn’t even sing about, like, weed; I read, later, the idea that it was all some big ironic display actually highlighting the depressing nature of whatever I literally don’t care, and thought, that’s not right either; it didn’t at all align with what it felt like to actually listen to the album, to experience its gleeful crassness, its visceral thrills, the explosions of delight and pockets of laughter.

There are ways to be in on the joke without being above the joke. And that was the thing about her: she seemed to see things as they were. She said once that she wrote songs the way people talk over a drink, and that always rang accurate to me; damn, Jeannie, why you gotta tell the secrets ‘bout my sex life? still makes me laugh. Her hedonistic playground was by many standards really quite tame (dancing while wasted is practically the national pastime of twenty-three-year-olds); it came to vibrant life in her snarling, smirking delivery and in her affectionate details. One of my favorite lines is when she rhymes and I’m gonna get laid / and I’m not the designat/ed driver, because it’s funny but also because it meant that Kesha’s world was one like ours, with things like designated drivers and overpriced club drinks you were too broke to buy, and the distinguishing feature was attitude. It was fantastic, but not fantastical; it was intoxicatingly glorious precisely because she wasn’t pretending it was anything it wasn’t. On the title track she sang I am in love with what we are, not what we should be, and it always sounded to me like she was talking about our teeming human mess: in love, sincerely, not with an imagined perfection but with the tangibly imperfect—the puke in a garbage can, the drunk texts sent, the glitter on the sticky, filthy floor.

There is always power in honesty, in looking at the truth of things and plunging right in. There’s power in seeing the ugliness of life and deciding to love it anyway. When she said tonight I’mma fight till we see the sunlight, you could believe she knew what it might take, some nights, to make it through.

KICK ‘EM TO THE CURB

There’s one more thing, and then we will, I promise, get to the good stuff. When Kesha burst onto the scene in a cloud of glitter and whiskey, I had, as indicated above, a lot of time on my hands. I followed her early press pretty closely. In interviews and videos, I saw someone who was obviously smart, in ways that had nothing to do with her SAT score or Barnard acceptance; someone who loved animals and glitter and stupid dick jokes, and disliked the rules of decorum and when people were mean; someone a little weird in some ways, and refreshingly normal in others, whose weirdness seemed not like a put-on but like the outgrowth of a commitment to doing what she liked; someone who said some pretty fucked up things, and some pretty wise things, and some boring or stupid things, and a lot of really funny shit, most of which did not precisely take the form of a joke. I saw someone who seemed, ultimately, like someone I might know, someone I could easily imagine I might enjoy talking with over a drink or six (hey: I was twenty-three, too).

Kesha felt, in other words, completely legible to me. And it stung in odd ways to see how baffled she made other people: the things they assumed were an act, or a lie, that I found wholly plausible, the contradictions they perceived that felt to me like just the typical mismatched knickknacks of personhood. Years later I still struggle to find words for how crazy-making it was to see the endless head-scratching around the stupid fucking line, kick ‘em to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger, the insinuations of irony or disbelief that someone of Kesha’s age and gender might use maybe the most iconic male sex symbol of all time as shorthand for exactly that. Like girls existed outside of culture, like it was so fucking hard to believe that they too might have a parent’s crate of records, or a cool older friend, or access to the internet and its many message boards, or any of the other rites of coolness we grant so easily to men. It would take a long time before I could articulate why it hurt, as a woman within a year of Kesha’s age who doesn’t give a shit about rock’n’roll but knows that Mick Jagger means sex, like, come the fuck on: it hurt to be confronted so starkly with the paucity of our collective imagination about women’s interiority. It hurt to be told, essentially, that aspects of myself and my knowledge that I took for granted were to many people so alien, so outside the bounds of any allowable feminine type, that they were literally inconceivable.

Now, of course, after the Dylan covers and the Iggy Pop feature, no one doubts Kesha’s rock cred. But I hate, still, that that’s what it took to get here. And I hate that this too has become part of the narrative of Rainbow, like we’re all finally seeing the authentic artist and actual human being under the ersatz mask of glitter and whiskey breath, instead of considering that maybe these things can coexist. That maybe the people you dismiss out of hand can also have complex inner lives; that a silly party girl can be other things on different nights, or even all at once. That same profile from last year included the following passage:

The problem was, she said, there was no balance. Every song was a song about partying, and yes, that was who she was, Kesha says that was definitely who she was, but she’s a real person having a complete human experience, and she wanted her album to reflect that. “To this day, I’ve never released a single that’s a true ballad, and I feel like those are the songs that balance out the perception of you, because you can be a fun girl. You can go and have a crazy night out, but you also, as a human being, have vulnerable emotions. You have love.”

You can have both; you can be many things. Of course Tik Tok was not, could never be, the entirety of Kesha, but no song ever is. That a portrait is incomplete, exaggerated, selective, doesn’t make it a lie, it just makes it art: a piece created, by someone, to express something. Kesha is showing now parts of her we haven’t seen, but we shouldn’t have needed to see them to believe they were there. Even before, she was never as simple as was often assumed; even on this song, she slides from bratty nasal tunelessness to tongue-in-cheek flirtatiousness, from fist-pumping marching orders to open-eyed vulnerability.

That’s a rainbow, too—not the transformation of light, but its refraction: a shift in angle that reveals that what appeared simple was in fact all along much more beautiful, and much more complicated, than you assumed.

—Isabel

#rainbow

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emjenenla · 6 years

Text

What You Don’t Know... [A White Cat Fanfiction]

Title: What You Don’t Know…

Author: Emjen Enla (Fanfiction)/emjen_enla (Wattpad)/emjenenla (Tumblr)

Teaser: …will probably come back and get you at some point. Or an AU where Philip and Barron are trying to protect Cassel not use him, because that’s all I wanted from this book. Written without reading Red Glove and Black Heart.

Rating: PG-13/T

Canon/Timeline: AU, probably set earlier than White Cat is in mainstream canon

Dominant Characters: Philip Sharpe, Barron Sharpe, Cassel Sharpe, Anton Zacharov, mentions of various other characters

Pairings: Philip/Maura, perhaps VERY subtle undertones of Cassel/Lila if you squint

Warnings: some violence; pretty much everyone is intentionally OOC because this AU wouldn’t work if they were all in character

Notes:

-Two questions: 1. Does anyone remember what the name of Philip and Maura’s son is? 2. What kind of worker is Anton?

Disclaimer: I don’t own White Cat by Holly Black or Advil.

“Excuse me,” the teenage boy said to the guard. “Is this the way to the bathroom?”

Philip Sharpe peaked around a corner to get a better look. His younger brother, Cassel, stood before the guard, his posture rumpled and anxious, his gloved hands picking at his sleeves. He was almost unrecognizable, and Philip couldn’t help but be impressed. Since Cassel wasn’t a worker, it was too easy to write him off as useless, but Cassel was one of the best con-artists Philip had ever met. It was almost terrifying.

“How did you get back here, kid?” the guard asked. “This is a restricted area.”

“He’s going to blow it,” Anton Zacharov grumbled from behind Philip. “We should have had Barron do this part. He’s the luck worker.”

“Cassel can do it just fine,” Barron spoke up from the back of the group.

“I’m looking for the bathroom,” Cassel was saying to the guard. There was a touch of a childish whine in his voice that didn’t sound anything like Philip’s brother. The kid was an amazing actor. “My stomach doesn’t feel good. I must have eaten something bad.” He wrapped his arms around his middle and hunched over, looking decidedly pathetic.

“Oh,” the guard said eyes darting around nervously. He cared more about not having to clean up vomit than the rules, just as Cassel had said he would. There was a reason they’d picked this particular guard. “Well, there’s a men’s room this way. Come on.” His arms twitched like he was considering put a hand on Cassel’s back to guide him and then stopped for fear that Cassel had the stomach flu or something.

The guard lead Cassel down the hall. Philip watched as they stepped into one of the poorly designed hall’s many security camera blind spots. The instant they were out of sight of the cameras, Cassel straightened up and lunged at the guard, slamming him into the door of a janitor’s closet and holding him in place with a forearm across the throat.

Philip was moving instantly. He darted down the hall, sticking to the blind spots and reached Cassel and the guard. The guard’s eyes got big when he saw Philip’s fake guard uniform. Philip grinned at him in a very specific, creepy “worker-ish” way he’d learned from Mom and pressed an index finger against the guard’s cheek. He felt skin through the slit he’d cut in the fingertips of his gloves and sent a pulse through the man’s nervous system that overloaded it and dropped him into instant unconsciousness.

Cassel stepped back and let the guard drop to the floor. “How long will he be out?” he asked.

“Two hours, maybe three,” Philip knelt down next to the guard and began removing his security clearance card, ID and keys from the various loops and pockets of the uniform. “Depends on a number of factors: age, health, family history. Plus, some people are just more resilient than others.”

Cassel shook his head. “Just asked for a number, Philip; didn’t need the lesson.”

Philip couldn’t keep from smiling. “Whatever.”

He and Cassel quickly tied the man up and stuffed him into the janitor’s closet. They made their way back to Anton and Barron by way of the blind spots. Then Cassel stripped off the hoodie and sweatpants he’d been wearing to reveal the guard’s uniform underneath. They stuffed his old clothes into the small backpack Barron was carrying. Now all three Sharpe brothers were in guard uniforms. Anton was in a suit.

“You actually didn’t mess that up,” Anton said, condescending. “Amazing.”

Cassel’s face turned red and he opened his mouth to retort, but Barron broke in, “We should get moving. We are on a schedule here.”

“Yes,” Philip agreed. “We don’t have time for this squabbling.”

“You’re not in charge here, Sharpe,” Anton growled, and Philip was once again left wondering why he’d bothered putting up with Anton all these years. His life would have considerably less condescension if he’d simply found a way to separate himself from Anton when they’d been ten.

“We should get moving,” Anton went on like Philip and Barron hadn’t just suggested that. “Turner won’t be here all night.”

Abraham Turner was a physicality worker who had recently tried to get out of his contract with the Zacharovs by appealing to the government for a full pardon in return for all the information he had on the Zacharovs. Tonight, was the night that Turner was supposed to meet with several members of the Licensed Minority Division to hand over the information. Obviously, that meeting couldn’t be allowed to happen so Philip, Barron, Cassel and Anton had been sent to make sure Turner wouldn’t be talking to anyone.

Cassel normally wouldn’t be helping on a job like this. Because he wasn’t a worker he couldn’t be a part of Zacharov’s gang in all real capacity, but Philip and Barron sometimes let him help on smaller jobs. The trick had always been keeping Zacharov’s daughter, Lila, from finding out, especially as it became increasingly difficult to convince Cassel not to tell her about it.

Still, Cassel was here tonight with Zacharov’s blessing. Because Turner had been a longtime member of the gang, he knew the faces of just about any agent who could be sent after him. That was where Cassel came in handy. Since Cassel wasn’t a worker and not a member, no one besides Anton, Lila, Zacharov and a few others had ever seen him. Most people weren’t even aware that Mom had three sons. Cassel’s face was unknown to Turner, but he was still close enough to the Zacharov family that his loyalty was ensured. He was the perfect person to lead Turner into the trap Anton was setting for him.

They walked quickly but not too quickly through the halls of the convention center. The LMD had set Turner up with a ticket to the evening gala being held here tonight. The Sharpe brothers and Anton didn’t have tickets at all, but the guard’s ID and security cards quickly got them through locked doors and into the part of the building where the gala was being held. They marched through the halls until they reached a small conference room without any observation windows that they’d picked as the perfect place for the job.

“Get on your part of the mission,” Anton told Cassel. “And if you mess up; I’ll have your hide.”

Cassel rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’ll be fine.”

He walked away leaving Anton visibly fuming at the implication that he was worried. Barron snorted, and Anton whirled on him. “What are you laughing at?”

Barron held up his hands. “Nothing. Just clearing my throat.”

Anton looked like he wanted to strange Barron, but Philip stepped in. “Let’s get inside before someone starts wondering why we’re just standing out here,” he suggested.

Anton nodded sharply and pushed his way into the conference room. Philip and Barron followed. The room was had boring beige walls decorated with pristine whiteboards on three walls. A potted plant that came up to Philip’s shoulders stood next to the door and a modern table filled the room surrounded by chairs. Anton strode across the room and settled himself into the chair at the head of the table. He arranged himself in the chair in a way so much like a villain in a movie that it was somewhere between funny and pathetic. “Barron, stand in that corner,” he motioned to his left. “Philip, over there,” another gesture to the right corner.

It was infuriating to be bossed around by Anton like Philip and Barron were just hired muscle with no brains of their own, but there wasn’t a whole lot that could be done about it. Philip took his place in the corner and glanced across the room at Barron who rolled his eyes with a small smile on his face, all in all looking considerably more good-natured about the whole situation.

They waited for almost ten minutes for Cassel to return with Turner. Anton drummed his fingers on the tabletop, Philip fought to keep his foot from tapping. “That kid’s going to blow it,” Anton announced.

“He’ll be fine,” Barron soothed. “Just give him a few more minutes before you start panicking.”

Before Anton could get angry the doorknob rattled and they had half a second to pull themselves together before the door opened and Cassel ushered Turner inside.

Turner took two steps into the room before he caught sight of Anton. He jumped and turned towards the door to escape, but Cassel had already entered the room and closed the door. He stood against it with his hand on the handle, staring impassively at Turner.

“You-” Turner spat. “You-You-” he didn’t have time to come up with something to something to say because Anton cleared his throat.

“Well, Turner, it appears this is the end of the line,” Anton said. “You really should have realized the LMD couldn’t protect you from us.”

“I’m-” Turner stammered, Philip could see him struggling to find an out. “This is all for a job. I’m going to infiltrate the LMD and-”

Anton held up a hand. “Please,” he said. “Save your breath. No one’s going to believe that.”

Turner began to say something, but Anton spoke over him, “I really don’t feel like drawing this out. Abraham Turner, you’re found guilty of treason to the Zacharov family, your execution will happen immediately. Philip.”

Philip took a quiet breath and stepped forward. Turner’s eyes went wide. He tried to back away, but almost instantly Barron and Cassel where on either side of him holding his arms, careful not to touch any skin. Turner writhed trying to escape, but they held his fast as Philip crossed the room. He moved slowly; part of the punishment was in the waiting.

“Please…” Turner begged, a quiet, pathetic whimper from a man who had once been a worker for Zacharov.

Philip didn’t even bother responding. He wrapped his fingers around Turner’s neck, pressing down until their skin came into contact through the slits of his gloves. He didn’t wait to act; Turner could work Philip right now too, skin on skin contact didn’t only run one way. Philip reached out with his power; it only took a second to overload and burn out Turner’s nervous system until it couldn’t possibly recover. Turner slumped in Barron and Cassel’s arms. Dead.

Philip took a step backward, and Barron and Cassel let Turner’s body collapse to the floor. Anton rose to his feet and crossed the room. The four of them stood over Turner’s body looking down. “Are you sure he’s dead?” Anton asked.

“No one can survive their entire nervous system getting burnt out,” Philip said.

“Then we should get out of here,” Anton said heading towards the door. “We’ll leave the body here to send a message to the-” He trailed off because he’d opened the door and an unfamiliar man in a suit was standing outside.

Anton’s mouth dropped open. He started to step back and began raising his hands, but the newcomer produced a nightstick and swung before Anton had a chance to defend himself. He dropped like a stone, either unconscious or close enough.

The suited man nudged Anton’s body with his foot and looked up. “Well, I assume this is Anton Zacharov,” he said. “And you two are Philip and Barron Sharpe,” he eyes focused on Cassel. “But who are you?”

Cassel didn’t respond, he just lunged at the man fists clenched. His attack got nowhere, because the suited man was much bigger than he was. Within seconds the man had Cassel in a headlock.

“Alright, enough of that,” the man said. “This will go so much more smoothly if you all just hand yourselves in.”

“You’re the LMD agent Turner was supposed to meet,” Philip said.

“Correct,” the agent said. “I’ve been keeping an eye on him since he arrived, and I couldn’t just let someone walk off with him without following.”

“Sorry,” Cassel croaked. The bare skin of the agent’s wrist was digging into Cassel’s bare throat and cutting off his air supply.

“It’s a pity you already managed to finish him off,” the agent continued, ignoring Cassel. “He had information that would be valuable to the LMD.”

“People don’t betray the Zacharov family and get away with it,” Philip replied. His eyes kept darting to the doorway behind the agent. That was the only way out of the conference room. They had to get past him.

The agent must have noticed his frantic planning because he smiled. “There’s no way out. The four of you will pay for your c-” his voice broke out into a panicked shriek.

Philip followed the man’s gaze and gasped. Where the agent’s bare skin had been touching Cassel, his wrist had turned into melted wax. Cassel pulled away and darted towards Philip and Barron. The agent dropped to the ground screaming and cradling the melty stump of his left arm.

There was only one type of worker who could what had just happened, but transformation workers were so rare they practically didn’t exist. Besides, Cassel wasn’t a worker at all, how had he…

Cassel looked up at Philip, a look a petrified shock on his face. He looked almost as scared as the agent did. Philip and Cassel stared at each other for one moment that lasted an eternity then Cassel’s face contorted and he dropped to the ground with a shriek, fingers digging to his scalp.

“Cassel?” Philip dropped down next to him. “Cassel, what’s wrong?”

Barron knelt as well, “Must be the blowback.”

“Are you sure?” Philip looked at him.

“Do I look like an expert on transformation workers to you?” Barron snapped.

They both looked back to the writhing form of their baby brother on the ground. A transformation worker. Philip tried to wrap his mind around the knowledge. Cassel couldn’t be a transformation worker. He was too old to develop powers. They would have known. Philip felt a little like he was going to pass out.

Cassel twisted on the ground and let out a horrible, animal-sounding moan. Barron jabbed Philip with his elbow. “Philip, do something.”

Philip shook himself and touched Cassel’s neck, feeling his brother’s skin through the slits in his gloves. He pulsed Cassel’s nervous system the same way he had to the guard he’d taken down in the hall and his little brother went still.

Philip sat back on his heels, ignoring the needle-like pains that were starting to the shoot through his bones—the beginning of his own blowback. It wasn’t bad now—sort of like growing pains, maybe—but he knew it would get worse, especially if he had to do more working today. “We need to get out of here,” he said.

“My thoughts exactly,” Barron said. “I’ll carry Cassel, you take this.” He took off the backpack and handed it over. “We might need you to have your hands free to work someone else.”

Philip pulled the backpack on and stood up. Barron maneuvered Cassel over his shoulders and stood as well. “Let’s move,” he said.

They stepped of the agent’s moaning body and out into the hallway. There were footsteps coming towards them. Philip turned his head to see a squad of security guards heading towards them. “What happened?” the lead guard asked. “We heard screaming.”

Philip took a steadying breath and sized the men up. There were a lot of them, but they didn’t appear armed with anything but nightsticks and tasers. No lethal weapons, which put them at a distinct disadvantage to Philip who had carried a lethal weapon inside of himself since the day he was born.

“A couple meetings didn’t go as planned,” he said in a careful voice. He probably didn’t sound as calm as Cassel could have in this situation, but it would have to be enough. As he spoke, he slowly, carefully peeled off his gloves; he’d need more than a couple slits of bare skin for this. “I think it’s mostly taken care of now.”

“We heard screaming,” the lead guard said. “Is someone hurt?”

“Nothing life threatening,” Philip finished pulling off the gloves and moved to put them in his pants pocket. “You don’t need to worry.”

The sudden bending of Philip’s arm caught the guard’s attention. He looked down to see Philip’s bare hands and his eyes widened. He looked back up. “Please put the gloves back on, sir,” he said shakily. “There’s other ways to solve this.” The rest of the guards began drawing their tasers and nightsticks.

Philip glanced at Barron who was standing just off his right shoulder. “Stay right behind me,” he ordered in an undertone. “Don’t fall behind.”

Barron nodded.

“Put the gloves back on and get on your knees!” the lead guard ordered leveling his taser at them.

Philip gave his best “I’m an evil worker” grin and charged across the space between him and the guards. He brushed his fingers along the lead guard’s neck and dropped him with a surge of bone melting pain. Two more guards were behind, and Philip took them down as well. He plowed through their midst, hands outstretched, fingers reaching for skin. He didn’t try to kill; that would take too much focus. He just needed to slow them down.

He burst through the guards with Barron hot on his heels. They pounded down the hall and skidded around a corner. They retraced their steps to the quieter parts of the building with the poorly placed security cameras. Once there they tried to stay to the blind spots as much as possible. Philip wasn’t sure how long they had before even more security was sent after them. They needed to vanish before that could happen.

They skidded around a corner into a long hallway. Philip clung to the wall under the security cameras until they were halfway down the hall. Then he slid to a stop and bent down next to a specific floor tile. The tiles were a little wider than Philip’s shoulders and this one had a little ridge in it to make it easier to lift. It still took Philip several precious seconds to pry it up because his hands were shaking with a mixture of fear and adrenalin. He finally got it up to reveal and access hatch underneath. This hatch swung downwards to reveal a dimly lit passage; one of the building’s many maintenance hallways.

“You first,” he told Barron.

Barron nodded and set Cassel on the floor. He climbed partway down the ladder attached to the hatch, then grabbed Cassel again and dragged him down as well.

Philip looked back. He could hear sounds of pursuit now. They only had seconds to finish vanishing. He scrambled partway down the ladder and dragged the tile back over the hole, blocking out the light from above and leaving only the dull orange light of the maintenance hallway. He closed the hatch and dropped down the rest of the way to the floor.

The maintenance hallway stretched on in either direction. This was the way they’d gotten into the building. “Let’s move,” Philip panted to Barron.

Barron nodded and took off down the hall. Philip moved to follow, but he only got two steps before the blowback that had been threatening since he’d knocked out Cassel hit with full force. Philip’s bones turned to fire, his muscled went limp. He sagged against the wall gasping in airless breaths through clenched teeth. You don’t have time for this! Get up!

“Philip?” he heard Barron’s voice as if from very far away. “Philip, we need to go.”

“Go ahead without me,” Philip said around a thick tongue and numb lips. “I’ll catch up.”

“No way,” a hand grabbed his elbow and dragged him upright. “Come on, Phil. You can do it. Let’s go.”

Philip didn’t remember much of the rest of the escape, only that Barron’s white-knuckle grip on his arm was the only thing keeping him upright and moving. He didn’t remember transferring from the maintained hallways to the sewer system. He didn’t remember trekking through the sewer for blocks and then climbing out into the parking garage where the car they’d driven here was parked. He didn’t come back to himself until Barron practically poured him into the passenger seat of the car.

Philip leaned against the seat painting from pain and the nausea that came with it. He heard other doors opening and closing as Barron dumped Cassel’s limp body onto the back seat and got behind the wheel.

“Pull your feet in and close your door,” Barron ordered as the car hummed to life. “We need to get out of here.”

Philip hadn’t even realized that his legs were still hanging out of the car. He pulled them in and managed to close the door even though his arms felt like overheated lead. Something was digging into his back and he realized that it was the backpack. He worked the straps off and let it fall to the floor by his feet. He squinted blurrily up at his brother as Barron leaned over and began undoing the buttons on Philip’s guard uniform shirt. “Don’t want to draw attention to us,” Philip muttered. “We don’t want them to make the connection between this car and us.”

“I know,” Barron said. He worked Philip’s arms out of the shirt and tossed it onto the floor in the back. Philip was wearing a normal tee-shirt under it for precisely this eventuality. He realized that Barron had already removed his shirt and a quick glance back confirmed that he’d done the same for Cassel.

Barron buckled Philip in and patted his shoulder. “We’ll be fine, Phil.”

Philip didn’t quite believe him. After all, they had just attacked a member of the LMD and a bunch of security guards. Plus, Anton…

Philip’s aching, struggling heart nearly stopped when he realized what they’d overlooked. The mistake they’d made that would make any trouble they’d have from the police look like a picnic. A mistake that might spell their bloody, painful deaths.

“Barron,” he breathed. “We left Anton.”

~~~~

The highway stretched on before them. Barron tried to keep his hands steady on the wheel and his mind focused. There were not words to describe how badly this job had gone, and that was even without thinking about Cassel…

Philip shifted in the passenger seat. “Barron,” he grunted. “Pull over. I’m going to be sick.”

Barron glanced over. Philip had the back of one hand pressed to his mouth. He’d actually managed to turn green, which Barron hadn’t known was possible. “One second,” Barron pulled over on the side of the highway probably a bit more dangerously than he should have and slammed on the brakes.

Philip swung the passenger door open and leaned out, puking into the gravel. Barron winced and looked away trying to give his brother some privacy. Philip’s blowbacks normally made him nauseous, so it wasn’t like Barron wasn’t used to waiting for his older brother to get ahold of the contents of his stomach, but it was still awkward.

Philip continued emptying his stomach for what seemed like forever. Finally, he wiped his mouth on the back of a hand and leaned back into his seat with an audible moan. His face was completely bloodless and soaked with sweat that plastered his hair to his forehead. The hand that he brought up to pinch the bridge of his nose was shaking, his other arm was wrapped tightly around his stomach.

“Phil?” Barron ventured.

“I feel horrible,” Philip said, his voice rough and acidy from vomiting. “This might be the worst blowback I’ve ever had.”

Barron’s stomach sank. Philip’s blowbacks gave him the symptoms of a bad flu mixed with chronic pain and could last anywhere from a couple hours to days. While Barron knew he shouldn’t exactly be surprised that this blowback was bad—he had never seen a physicality worker work their way through as many people at once as Philip had with those guards—they were going to have to deal with the fallout of all this, and it was looking like Barron would be the only one capable of doing so.

Barron dug around on the floor of the backseat and found a half empty water bottle. “Here,” he said offering it to Philip. “Rinse out your mouth.”

He waited while Philip swished the water around in his mouth and spat it onto the gravel outside. When he pulled back into the car and closed the door, Barron asked, “Are you okay to keep going?”

Philip sunk lower in his seat and his eyes closed. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely.

“Okay,” Barron turned off the hazards and put the car back into drive. “If you need to throw up again let me know.”

He drove for twenty or thirty minutes before he saw signs for a rest stop. He turned onto the ramp and slowed down. Philip—who Barron had hoped had dozed off—shifted and opened his eyes, squinting at the gas pumps and convenience store. “Why are we stopping?” he asked.

“We need some supplies,” Barron said. “We’ll get some Z-Up for your stomach and some Advil.”

Philip smiled vaguely. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “That sounds good.”

Barron pulled up into a parking spot a little way from everyone else and turned off the car. “I’ll go in,” he said. “You can wait here.”

“No, I’ll come in,” Philip said swallowing heavily. “I need to use the bathroom. Besides we need to decide what to do about-” he jerked his head at Cassel’s still, unconscious form in the backseat.

Barron looked back at his little brother. “How long is he going to be out?” he asked.

“Maybe another hour or so,” Philip said. “We’ll need to have a plan of action when he wakes up.”

Barron nodded. “I suppose you’re right.”

Before they left the car, they had to change pants and shoes because they couldn’t just walk into a convenience store in the pants and shoes of a security guard when their descriptions were probably going to be all over the news in the next couple hours. After changing into jeans and tennis shoes they got out of the car and headed into the convenience store. Barron gathered up Z-Up, Gatorade, granola bars, sandwiches, water and Advil while Philip used the bathroom. Barron had just finished paying (in cash, obviously) when Philip staggered back paler and shakier than before.

“You okay, bro?” Barron asked, and Philip gave him a look that told him to drop it.

They stepped outside and commandeered a picnic table within sight of the car. Barron sat on the tabletop facing the car with his boots on the table’s bench seat. Philip also faced the car, only he sat on the seat and draped his upper body across the tabletop.

They sat in silence for several minutes then Philip spoke, his voice muffled by the cocoon of his arms, “So, Cassel’s a transformation worker.”

“Yeah,” Barron said tightly.

“I didn’t know that,” Philip said. “He must have used his powers before now; why don’t I remember it?” He lifted his head and gave Barron a look that didn’t make sense for a couple seconds before he made the connection.

“Oh,” he said. “I didn’t work you.”

Officially, Barron was a luck worker; only Philip, Grandad and Mom knew that he was actually a memory worker. If Barron had told the Zacharovs he could have gotten more work than just being the insurance to Philip’s jobs, but the blowback made that a bad idea. Every time Barron used his powers he was trading away some of his own memories. If he wasn’t careful, he would work himself into premature Alzheimer’s.

“Are you sure you didn’t and then forgot?” Philip asked.

“Yes,” Barron said. “That’s something I would have written down in my journals.”

Philip accepted that with a nod. “Still,” he said. “He’s seventeen. This can’t be the first time he’s displayed powers. It would have started when he was younger, which means…”

“Someone did work us to make us forgot,” Barron finished. “All three of us.”

“You’re sure he didn’t know?” Philip asked.

“You saw his face,” Barron replied. “He didn’t have a clue.”

There was a long pause. “Do you think the Zacharovs knew?” Barron asked, cursing the unsteadiness in his tone.

“No,” Philip said. “If they knew Cassel’s a worker this powerful, we’d never have had to work so hard to convince Anton he wasn’t a deadweight. Mom and Grandad on the other hand…”

Barron’s stomach clenched. “They can’t know. They would have told us.”

“They must know,” Philip used his elbows to lever his body into a mostly upright position. “Someone decided we’d be best off not knowing and had us worked; probably multiple times. They’re the only options; they’re the only ones close enough to us.”

“But why?” Barron asked.

“I don’t know,” Philip said, then looked up at Barron, face serious. “But until we understand it, we can’t trust them.”

“We can’t go home either,” Barron said. “Even if we could trust Mom and Grandad either the LMD or the Zacharovs are going to be after us. We’re going to need to go under the radar. Especially if we’re going to protect Cassel,” he paused and realized the assumption he’d made. “We are going to protect Cassel, right?”

“Of course, we are,” Philip said in a tone of voice that suggested that he couldn’t believe Barron had asked. “He’s our baby brother, just because he’s suddenly one of the rarest workers in the world doesn’t change anything.”

“Good,” Barron heaved a sigh of relief. “Then we probably should get moving. We need to put as much distance between us and that conference center as possible before the police have time to really mobilize against us. Even more once Anton inevitably gets bailed out of prison.”

“Yeah,” Philip agreed and began to try to heave himself to his feet. “Might be a good idea to make sure Cassel doesn’t have the option to run before hearing us out when he wakes up too.”

Barron ended up needing to help Philip to the car, but they were still back on the highway within minutes. Philip shifted in the seat then leaned forward to rummage through the pockets of the backpack. “What are you looking for?” Barron asked.

“We have a burner phone in here, don’t we?”

“Yes,” Barron said. “Why do you need it?”

“I’m going to call Maura and tell her to get out,” he said. “The house is under her name, so someone’s bound to show up there eventually.”

“Should we call Grandad?” Barron asked.

“You can if you want,” Philip said. “I’m not.”

Barron knew he wouldn’t either. If they involved Grandad in this, it would be too difficult to keep their new knowledge about Cassel secret. “I’m not calling him either,” Barron said.

Philip straightened up and nodded in something that was either approval or simple acknowledgment. He was holding one of the cheap, prepaid burner flip phones they’d bought for the job. Barron watched out of the corner of his eye as Philip dialed Maura’s number from memory and raised the phone to his ear.

“Maura?” he asked after a minute. “Are you alone?”

There was a pause as Maura answered, then Philip went on, “The job went bad. Catastrophically bad. You need to leave. Chances are either the police or the Zacharovs will be showing up at the house in the next couple hours and I don’t think it’s a good idea if you’re there when that happens.”

Another pause. “I’m fine, just a bad blowback. Barron and Cassel are fine too, but we let Anton get arrested which is why the Zacharovs might be after us soon.”

Pause. “I don’t think Zacharov will have much trouble there,” Philip answered. “Regardless of what the politicians say about cracking down on the crime families, there isn’t a prison in the country that will hold Anton Zacharov for more than a couple days. So, it’s not like this is much of a setback for Zacharov; it’s more that we left Anton to get arrested in favor of saving our nonworker little brother.”

Maura responded, then Philip said, “That’s why you need to get all the essentials into the car and get out of the state. Remember to change the plates before you leave and whatever you do don’t tell Grandad or Mom that you’re leaving.”

Philip listened to Maura’s question, then said, “I can’t explain over the phone. I’ll tell you when we meet in person. Speaking of which, there’s a burner phone in my sock drawer; take it with you, and I’ll call you on it in a couple days so we can find a place to meet.”

Maura spoke some more. “We’re all fine,” Philip said. “No sign of pursuit thus far, but we aren’t going to take any chances. I’ll talk to you in a couple days?” A pause. “I love you too. Stay safe. Goodbye.”

Philip hung up and leaned back in the seat. Barron looked over at his brother’s pale, sweaty face, lax mouth and drooping eyes. “There’s Z-Up and Advil,” he said. “Then you should try to sleep.”

“Yeah,” Philip agreed tiredly. “That’s probably a good idea.”

~~~~

They drove and drove and drove. Barron kept his hands clenched tightly on the steering wheel, his eyes glued on the road, ears tuned to the radio which was playing news, listening for every mention of the incident. So far, their names and descriptions had not been released, but it was only a matter of time. Barron considered where they could go that would be safe and what they would need to do to foil the police descriptions of them. They couldn’t go anywhere Mom and Grandad knew about or anywhere Zacharov, Anton or even Lila knew about. It had to be somewhere entirely knew, and Barron was grasping at straws.

In the passenger seat, Philip slipped in and out of fitful sleep. He shifted restlessly and grunted whenever he was jarred by a bump in the road. Barron wanted desperately to get them a hotel room so Philip could rest in an actual bed, but doing that would be like asking to be found and arrested. Since they’d abandoned Anton, Zacharov wouldn’t bail them out and the Sharpe family didn’t have the money or connections. They needed to stay free or everything was over.

The sun was beginning to rise when Cassel finally stirred in the backseat. Barron’s stomach twisted into knots as he listened to his little brother work his way back to consciousness.

“Wha’ happen’?” Cassel muttered thickly. “Wh’ ‘re we…” Barron gritted his teeth and waited for the explosion.

He didn’t have to wait long. Cassel jerked upright in the backseat. “Wait! I-I-” He sat up straight and Barron saw his angry glare in the rearview mirror. “You lied to me!”

“Cassel?” Philip shifted awake and turned to look at their little brother. “Good, you’re awake.”

“You’re a liar!” Cassel snarled. “You’re both liars! You told me I didn’t have any powers, but I do! What happened to that agent; I did that!”

“We didn’t lie to you,” Philip said, his voice steady but with an undercurrent of strain, either from stress or from the blowback. “We didn’t know. We thought you weren’t a worker too. We would never keep something like that from you.”

“I don’t believe you,” Cassel snapped.

“I’m not lying,” Philip said. “I didn’t know you were a worker. I swear it on my life.”

“I swear it too,” Barron said. “We’re on your side, Cassel.”

“If you two didn’t know anything,” Cassel said. “Why is this the first time it’s ever happened? That’s not how working works.”

“We might have all been worked by a memory worker,” Barron said. A quick glance at Philip confirmed that they were going to keep Barron’s true identity as a memory worker quiet for the time being. “Someone must have decided that we were better off not knowing you were a worker.”

There was a pause while Cassel thought that over. “Mom and Grandad,” he said.

The kid was even quicker to that assumption than they had been, Barron wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or worried. “We’re not sure,” he said. “But it’s a definite possibility.”

He watched in the rearview mirror as Cassel thought it all over. “I’ll trust you two for now,” Cassel finally said, “but if I discover even one little thing that could imply you’re lying to me, well…” he lifted a hand and his eyes narrowed. “I’m know that I’m not defenseless now.”

“A logical strategy,” Philip agreed.

They lapsed back into silence, the radio droning commercials in the background, until Cassel spoke again, “Where are we?”

“On the fast track to the middle of nowhere,” Barron said. “Things only went farther south after Philip knocked you out. We ended up attacking a number of security guards and then running to evade arrest. We’re kind of hot news right now, and we’ll need to go underground until this all blows over.”

“Okay…” Cassel said slowly, thinking it over. “Where’s Anton?”

“Arrested,” Philip said. “We…may have panicked and forgotten about him.”

Cassel snorted. “Bet he’s happy about that.”

“It’s going to be a real problem,” Philip said. “He won’t be happy when he gets out, and the whole Zacharov family will be after us.” He finished by shifting in his seat and moaning out loud.

Barron freed one hand from the steering wheel and patted Philip’s shoulder. “You’ve got about forty-five minutes before you can take more Advil,” he said. “Just hang in there.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Cassel asked, sounding just a little scared.

“Blowback,” Philip grunted. “I’ll be fine.”

Cassel frowned, deep in thought. “We’re in deep trouble,” he said, then his voice became quiet and a little scared. “What happens if the Zacharovs figure out I’m a worker? What happens if the people who worked our memories figure out we know?”

Barron and Philip looked at each other, each trying to come up with something soothing and reassuring to say. In truth, neither of them knew what would happen in either of those situations. “Nothing bad will happen to you,” Philip finally promised, perhaps a bit rashly.

“We’re your brothers,” Barron agreed anyway. “It’s our job to keep you safe.”

That’s probably not the best ending in the world, but I’m running on four hours of sleep, so you’ll have to forgive my lack of creative brain cells. I suppose this could be the start of a bigger story, but I’m nearly 100% positive I’m not going to continue, so I suggest you don’t hold your breath.

I’m almost done with part three of the Angsty Kaz FanfictionTM, so hopefully you’ll get that soon. I have a couple other ideas too, so we’ll see what happens. The one thing I will say is that I’m sort of in the process of shifting fandoms, so expect a lot of variety, but probably not a lot of Star Wars.

Anyway, if you’ve read this, thank you! I’m honestly not sure if anyone will see this.

Please favorite, follow and review!

Emjen

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starsandsquids · 6 years

Text

His Husband’s Ghosts

Surprise! Here’s more writing! I just posted this story for class which means I can post it here now too! Echo is a newer OC so here’s my way of introducing you all to him. I know it’s a day late for Halloween but still!

Also if you want character art going into this, here are Echo and Chad, and here’s chad with his brothers!

The End of The Cadiz Crew: Notorious Criminals Dead in Botched Bank Heist

Philip Coulter (31), Devon Strand (32), Caesar Silva (31), Tyrel Woodside (30), and Lucas Wakowski (26), a band of notorious criminals commonly known as The Cadiz Crew, have finally been brought down, releasing their stranglehold over Los Cadiz, CA. An attempted robbery of the 6TH Street branch of Acotane Bank ended in a bloody shootout with Strand, Silva, and Wakowski killed on site. Though Woodside was apprehended, Coulter is still in the wind […]

Correction: Woodside has since died in police custody of apparent suicide.

The newspaper clipping hung in a frame on the bedroom wall, where it could be read from the leather armchair.

“So I don’t forget them,” Chad had explained the first time Echo asked. “I couldn’t do that. They don’t deserve it. It’s my job to remember them.”

Echo never knew what to say when his husband got like this, almost wistful for the years he’d spent as a career criminal.

He was like that now, staring off at the newspaper clipping, and all Echo could think to say was, “You don’t look like a Philip.”

Chad grinned.

“I know,” he said. “That was the idea. When I filed all the paperwork so they’d stop calling me a chick on legal forms, I changed my name to something stupid. That way the criminal record wouldn’t be under my name.” He laughed. “I told the boys if they ever called me Phil I’d punch ‘em in the nuts.”

“They didn’t, did they?” Echo asked.

“Caesar did, once,” said Chad. “He was drunk. Sobered up pretty quickly afterwards, though.” Echo could still see the sadness in his eyes, creeping up behind the laughter like it always did when Chad talked about his brothers.

“Tell me a story,” Echo said. “Not one of the robbery ones; you’re a good man now. Don’t tell me a story about the crew, tell me one about the family.”

Chad looked at him with so much love.

“Of course, doll,” he said, flopping down beside Echo onto the plethora of pillows that lined the headboard of his bed. He was shirtless and Echo found himself staring at the four names of Chad’s brothers tattooed over his heart, just above the scars on his chest. “So I’ve told you how Lucas was the baby, right?”

“Many times,” said Echo.

“So yeah, Lucas was our kid brother. We babied the fuck outta him. So we were casing this bar—okay, who am I kidding, the place was a club, swanky one at that—because we’d been hired to rob the place that weekend by some guy with a beef with the owner—”

“Honey,” Echo whined. “I said no robbery stories.”

“It’s not a robbery story, doll,” said Chad. “But we’d already paid the entrance fee, so when our work was done we said fuck it! Let’s get smashed. Except Lucas, because no matter what his fake ID said, he was still eighteen. So Tyrel bought him a Sprite and called him designated driver, we said he could get wasted at home. So imagine all our surprise when little Lucas hits it off with this chick at the bar who’s clearly also there with a fake ID. I mean, Lucas was cute but in a ‘I wanna pinch your cheeks and give you a cupcake’ kinda way, not in the way that you wanna give your him number and take him home. But I’m biased, he was our baby. So when we found out shit, apparently the kid’s got game, we were legally obligated to embarrass him.

“At least for his sake we all did this at once instead of coming up to the poor guy four individual times to give him the same god-awful spiel. Basically, we decided we were gonna give him the worst sex talk ever. Like high-school-health-class-that-doesn’t-give-a-shit bad. We’re reading off Wikipedia pages, we’re pulling up diagrams, Tyrel’s showing him how to put a condom on a banana because he’s the fucking team Dad and of course he brought fruit to a nightclub in his man-purse, and anyway the poor kid’s dying. Like he’s hiding under the table and yelling that he’s gonna leave us there to walk home and the girl thinks the whole thing’s hysterical. It was all in good fun and he still got her number so I guess we didn’t fuck up his chances too badly.”

“You guys had a lot of fun together, didn’t you?” Echo asked.

“They were the closest thing I had to family from the time I was fifteen on. They’ll always be my brothers.” He kissed Echo’s forehead and turned off the light. “Get some sleep, alright?”

“Can do,” said Echo.

And sleep he did until some ugly, remote hour of the morning just south of three a.m. when he woke up needing a glass of water. Having grown up in small town Kentucky, Chad’s massive house had seemed like a TV millionaire’s mansion to Echo when they first met almost three years ago. Even living there hadn’t really accustomed him to the sheer amount of space. He’d always felt like something might be lurking down a dark hall at night and he remembered that now as he slipped down into the kitchen.

“It’s Echo, right?”

He just never thought he’d actually see one of those somethings face-to-face.

“Please don’t scream.”

That was easier said than done, considering what was standing behind him didn’t have a head.

Not all of one, anyway. His left eye was still there, most of his too-big nose, his mouth, but the entire right side of his face was gone. What was left of his auburn hair clung to his head, matted with blood, and when he smiled his mouth pulled at the skin in a way that Echo’s brain couldn’t quite make sense of. What was perhaps scarier than the gaping hole in his skull was the fact that Echo knew his face. He looked so young. He always looked so damn young in Chad’s photo album. “Cute like I wanna pinch your cheeks and give you a cupcake.” He was supposed to wait in the car that day, Chad had said, but panicked when he saw all the police cars, only to get killed by a SWAT sniper as soon as he ran through the bank’s front door.

“Hi,” the ghost said. “I’m Lucas.”

“What the actual fuck,” was all Echo could think to say, even though he didn’t like to swear.

“Sorry,” said Lucas. “I know I look pretty bad.”

“Uh, yeah,” Echo said, steadying himself against the kitchen sink. He was vaguely aware of his Kentucky accent coming back in full; he always got especially southern when he was nervous. “What do you want? Are you trying to possess me or—?”

“Oh, shit, no, nothing like that. I don’t even know how to do that. I can’t even touch you.” He tried to clap Echo on the back only for his hand to fall through his arm.

“Please don’t do that again,” Echo said with a shudder.

“Really now,” came a deadpan voice from the direction of window. “We told you not to go say hi. You’re missing half your face, you shouldn’t be the one to introduce yourself.” Echo couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment he realized there was a tall, skinny man with an obviously broken neck sitting on the kitchen table.

“Oh, come on, Tyrel, I just wanted to say hi to him is all!”

“And you’re scaring him.”

“So what the hell kind of name is Echo anyway?” said the man with slicked back hair half-leaning through the kitchen wall. Out of all of them so far, he looked the most alive, save for the bullet wound right through the heart. “Been wondering that for a while. Isn’t that a girl’s name?”

“My parents are kinda hippies?” Echo said, though it came out more like a question. “I have a twin sister who’s a few minutes older, they thought it would be funny. What do you mean a while?”

“What Caesar means,” said the one sitting on the table, Tyrel, “is we’ve been looking after Chad for several years now. When you came along that included you. So yes, we’ve been wondering ‘what the hell kind of name is Echo anyway’.”

“Well, there’s your answer?”

“Sweet.” The last of them stood in the doorway to the kitchen and briefly Echo wondered how he fit through the narrow kitchen entryway with his broad shoulders before remembering he wasn’t actually alive. The bullet wounds across his torso that’d reduced him to Swiss cheese were all-too-obvious indicators of that. “Caesar thought it was because you must’ve parroted stuff back at your parents as a kid and I said that was bullshit, nobody waits until their kid starts talking to name them.”

“Devon, I’m gonna come over there and kick your ass!” said Caesar.

“Then get out of that wall and make good on that!”

“Am I dreaming?” Echo interjected.

“Do you want to be?” said Tyrel. He shrugged and it made the horrible angle his head hung at look worse.

“Can I ask what all this is about?” Echo asked. “Because I just wanted to get a glass of water and go back to bed.”

“Chad always gets so down this time of year,” said Lucas. “On the anniversary of…yeah.” He awkwardly scratched at what was left of the back of his head. “We wanted to check in, I guess.”

“So you’re talking to me and not him because…?”

“We can’t show ourselves to him,” Caesar said like it were obvious. “As much as he misses us, it would kill him if he found out we were still hanging around. We don’t want him wallowing, trying to talk to us again. He’s still got a lot of living to do.”

“I killed myself so he could get away and live,” said Tyrell. “We’re not letting him waste that, no matter how much Lucas may want to talk to him sometimes.”

“He’s just so mopey,” Lucas said. “But yeah, he has a life to live.”

“We don’t want to be seeing him again for a very long time,” said Devon. “But actually we have shit to tell you.”

“Me?” said Echo.

“Yes, you, white boy,” said Devon. “You’re married to our brother.”

“Devon means well,” said Tyrel. “That’s just how he shows affection.”

“What he’s trying to say is thanks for taking care of Chad,” said Caesar. “You remember what he was like when you met, right?”

Echo nodded.

“He was so…cold,” he said softly, remembering that day. Chad’s brothers had barely been dead a year, though Echo wouldn’t find out about his dark past for months. He’d just seen an attractive, well-dressed man sitting across from him in a too-crowded coffee shop, and, blushing like a giddy teen girl, Echo had worked up the nerve to ask that attractive man for his name. He’d brushed him off and Echo had wilted under his cold expression and that had been that—until he ran into him again.

Brushing him off had made Chad realize how lonely he was, as he’d finally told Echo after a few dates, and apparently Echo had a very cute face. Echo had gone redder than his hair at a compliment like that from someone so handsome, but even now he still blushed when Chad called him cute.

“Yeah, he was a sad sack of shit,” said Devon, interrupting the trip down memory lane.

“And then you and your pretty face came along,” Caesar said. Echo wasn’t sure how to take a compliment like that from a dead man and just looked down at his glass of water. “And he actually started smiling again.”

“So thanks for that,” said Lucas. “For taking care of him. He’s a good guy these days, he deserves to be happy if we can’t.”

“Plus I don’t think anyone ever thought he’d settle down,” Devon added, somehow managing to lean against the wall without falling through it. “Like you should’ve seen him back in the day, dude could get it in any gender—”

“He doesn’t want to hear this about his husband, you idiot,” Tyrel said, rubbing his temples like he had a headache. Echo wondered how that worked with ghosts but thought it would be rude to ask. “But yes, thank you for looking after him. Keep him safe for us, keep making him happy.”

“I’ll do the best I can,” Echo said. “Even if that’s just letting him tell his stories. It seems to help.”

“It does,” said Caesar. “We can tell. We’ll always be looking after him and we can see what you’ve done for him.”

“We’d try to hug you as a thanks,” Lucas said. “But…” He gestured to his gaping head wound.

“Yeah,” Echo said. “I’d rather y’all didn’t do that.”

“Fair enough,” Lucas said. Echo didn’t notice whether they’d faded out of sight or disappeared in a blink, but one minute they were there and the next he was alone in the kitchen once again.

“If I’m dreaming, I have one hell of an imagination,” he said to himself, drying off his glass and returning it to the shelf.

“Oh, and one more thing!”

Echo jumped at the sudden noise from behind him. He was grateful he hadn’t screamed as he whirled around. The rest of them were gone but Caesar remained, having extricated himself from the wall he now sat on the kitchen counter. Echo knew that, of the four of them, he was the one Chad had been the closest to. They’d grown up together, their crew had started with the two of them and they’d built it from the ground up. Their birthdays were a week apart so the other three called them the twins, and he was the one Chad had the most stories about. Echo couldn’t imagine what he had to say to him one-on-one and suddenly he was convinced Caesar disapproved of him, that he was about to threaten to haunt him for the rest of his life for not being good enough, that—

“He’d never say so himself, because he wants us to forget he was ever that stupid, but you can tell Chad that Lucas is sorry he stole a toilet brush that one time,” Caesar said. “I’m sure Chad’s told you that story—”

“Caesar, I swear, don’t bring that up!” Lucas’ disembodied voice whined from somewhere Echo couldn’t quite place. “He doesn’t need to know how stupid I was back then!”

“Yeah, yeah, sure he does!” said Caesar, turning back to Echo. “Alright, it’s late. We’re done now. You should go back to bed.”

---

Echo woke up to the morning sun slipping through the blinds and Chad’s weekend’s-worth of stubble tickling his face.

“Morning, doll,” Chad said when he realized Echo was awake. “You sleep alright?”

“I did,” Echo said as he sat up, attempting to corral the tangled mess that was his hair in the morning. “I had the weirdest dream, though.”

“You’ve always had a very active imagination,” Chad said, ruffling Echo’s hair and only making it fluff up worse. “That’s what makes you such a good writer. What was this one about?”

“Your brothers,” Echo said. Chad paused and cocked his head like a dog listening to a far-off sound. “Your brothers were ghosts and they were in our kitchen. And they all wanted to hug me and thank me for making you so happy.”

“Maybe I should stop telling you stories about the dumb shit we did right before you go to sleep,” Chad offered. Echo shrugged.

“Maybe,” he said. “And…Caesar, it was Caesar who said Lucas was sorry for stealing a toilet brush? Whatever that means. My brain is weird.”

“It’s cute, just like the rest of you,” Chad said before planting a kiss on his cheek. “You want coffee?”

“Sure,” said Echo. “You make good coffee.”

“I’ll bring it up then,” Chad said, not even bothering to put on a shirt before heading downstairs to the kitchen. His husband had always had a very active imagination and normally he would’ve written it off as just another instance of that, except for one little detail. It was such a trivial story and not even a funny one at that, which was how he was so sure he had never told Echo about the time Lucas stole a toilet brush.

“If you guys are here,” he said to the empty kitchen, “you picked a dumb story to tell him.”

#Quinn's OCs and Things #Echo Kimble #Quinn's writing #Also for anyone confused by a few throwaway lines at the beginning: CHAD IS TRANS AS HELL

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jessicanjpa · 7 years

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do you think the cullens have any running jokes or little familial nuances they bring up that happened like fifty years ago? (i'd like to imagine emmett trying to make a joke out of some of the renesmee drama later down the line)

I am sure that after so many years together the Cullens (especially the “kids”) have accumulated all sorts of hilarious nicknames, inside jokes, and things they won’t let each other live down. See, this is the kind of thing SM could have sprinkled into the books now and then- just a few more per book- and it would have given so much more depth to the history they have together. But I can only think of a couple examples, like Emmett calling Edward “kid” which I’m sure he’s done 1,000,000 times just because it makes Edward roll his eyes and point out that Emmett is actually the youngest Cullen (pre-Bella). There are a few other lines that kind of gave me the impression of “they’ve said this a thousand times,” like Jasper’s “You truly are one frightening little monster” to Alice, or Carlisle’s “But I can’t help my thoughts, can I?”

I would have loved to see some more detailed examples, that actually refer to things that happened over the past century they’ve lived through together, you know? (which again, would really help fix the “The Cullens didn’t exist before Bella/ have no lives apart from Bella” feel) The big one that comes to mind is not pleasant at all- Edward’s “Yes, Rosalie, we all know how proficient an assassin you are.” Even though that’s a sad one, at least it does refer to an event and give us some information about the relationship between Rosalie and Edward- especially because of the snarl and hiss that were exchanged. Hopefully that particular line has not had occasion to come up before, but the whole “Edward snarls an insult, Rosalie hisses back at him” template (and its reverse, no doubt) is obviously there, and is very telling- and even though it reveals a negative side to their relationship, it’s also very endearing and give a more realistic texture. So I wish we had more examples of this, whether it’s positive, negative, or neutral, because little lines like that can pack a big punch, characterization-wise. It can show a lot about relationships and serve as a nice springboard for fanfiction.

The same thing can be accomplished without dialogue, though. Take Emmett and Jasper’s modified chess game with the eight interlocking boards: the fact that they’re playing it without having to hash out the rules or the design implies that they’ve played it many times before (as does the fact that they even have eight interlocking boards). That tells you something about their relationship: they like playing games together, they like strategy, and they like modifying games so that they’re more challenging to the vampire brain. So naturally the reader wonders “hmm I wonder what other games they’ve modified? Maybe sports too, modified for vampire strength?”

So I wish Bella could have “overheard” more scenes or seen more objects in the books that could communicate to the reader like that. We do have a few: Rosalie working on cars, Esme’s blueprints, etc. And maybe it’s just because my fanfiction is mainly concerned with the prequel years, but I would have loved to see way more, and it would have taken up hardly any page time. Like Bella can sit there studying for her finals while Edward is opening his mail and happens to get a letter from the realtor who manages the house in Chicago. (mail could be especially telling; see this post) Bella could say she hasn’t seen Carlisle in a while and Edward could be like “oh he’s locked in his office- it’s tax season, you know, and we have about 27 identities and the accompanying tax IDs going at the moment…” Alice could be perched on top of the couch reading the Wall Street Journal. One really neat addition in the movie was the collage of graduation caps- kind of risky to let the humans see that, but it’s a really significant piece of art, you know? And of course there’s that whole question of whether the Cullens do any sort of philanthropy, which I'm sure they do. (I actually HC that each of them does, though that’s partially because Carlisle made them lol) That could have easily been communicated in a heart-wrenching way by having a whole wall covered in crayon-drawn cards from one of the orphanages or medical clinics they fund.

And what about idioms? Rosalie’s “over my pile of ashes” just opens the door for a whole world of hilarious (or tragic) vampire idioms that could theoretically exist. Some would only work for veggie vamps and therefore be an inside joke with the Denalis, whereas the one like Rosalie’s would work for any vampire.

And yes, I definitely imagine Emmett is the one to blurt out things that probably should not have been blurted out, or to turn something awful into a joke later on to ease the tension. (I think the latter is a calling he takes pretty seriously, actually) So at some point Bella is finally going to find out about the whole Family Meeting scene because they’ll be having a family meeting and Emmett will just randomly be like “kinda reminds me of the day Rosalie and Jasper almost killed Bella lol” or if someone has a bad idea about something he’ll say “dude that’s almost as bad as Edward’s Puppy Plan” and everyone will get reeeeeeally quiet and all this drama will ensue. But once it blows over “the Puppy Plan” will be this punchline that just comes up every now and then, which is still inappropriate but once a century passes it’ll just be one of the family jokes that elicits equal amounts of eye-rolls and laughter. (actually I’m sure a whole new load of these jokes will result from events in the Saga) I can see him joking about Edward’s soullessness and Calgary and other things that are sort of irreverant/inappropriate, but I also imagine him coming up with really funny nicknames for random plans, events, and mishaps. And I definitely HC that he’s always coming up with an Operation Something Or Other.

#headcanon #cullens #emmett #emmett has a capitalized term for every hilarious and terrible thing that's ever happened to this family #Anonymous

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my-abibliophobia · 7 years

Text

Favorite Leverage TV Quotes

(After the team finishes their first mission and gives the money away to a hospital) Nate: Anyone who wants to walk away can go right now. (Dramatic pause) Eliot: One more... Hardison: Maybe two...

Nate: (climbing into his new Tesla roadster) Just because you're the good guys now, doesn't mean you can't have a little fun along the way.

Sophie: I never thought I'd say this. Ever. But that is too much money to steal!

Alec: I got to get back to the office. I just remembered something. Parker: What? Alec: I just remembered gravity...and the squishiness of all my manly bits. Parker: I designed this rig myself. The line is carbon-fiber, five-point harness, weight support here, here, here, auto-breaking resistance on the main pulley back here. Alec: Okay, okay, cool, so it's tested? Parker: Not yet. Alec: Not ye..? When the hell were you going to test it? Parker: (pushes Alec off the roof) Big baby.

Parker: They changed the lock. Alec: Just do what you do. I mean, whatever, what do you need?(Parker produces a plastic explosive) Alec: No. Mm-mm. Stop all that playin'. Mm-mm. Hell, no. (runs for cover)

Eliot: The tall one, the way he used a knife, Ex-Marine, probably force recon. Alec: You IDed the guy off his knife-fighting style? Eliot: It's a very distinctive style.

Eliot: 5.56 NATO rounds, mixed in with some 9-mils from the submachine guns. Insurgents would have used AK-47 with 7.62 ammo. Has more of a crack. Contractor shot 'em up alright. Parker: (impressed) You IDed the weapon from the gunshot sound? Eliot: It has a very distinctive sound.

(on their money from their first job)Parker: I put all that money in a Swiss bank account. Eliot: Millions of dollars and you didn't buy anything? Parker: I don't like stuff. I like money. Sophie: I bought a little retirement home in Ireland... and Dubai... and Tokyo. Parker: What about you? Eliot: Yeah, I'm not about to tell two known thieves what I did with a multi-million dollar payout. Sophie: Don't you trust us? (laughs)

(Parker has "medicated" Grant to help shake him up) Eliot: You gave him speed? Alec: He beat up a priest. (Elliot shrugs)

(While discussing how to "steal a miracle") Hardison: Long as I don't have to do anything immoral. Nate: No not at all. I just need you to figure out how to, you know...fake a miracle. (Eliot chuckles) Hardison: (long pause) We're all going to hell.

Alec: (to Nate) You...you're a Catholic who wants to fake a miracle. I'm pretty sure that puts us in mortal-sin territory. Eliot: So what...now you're religious, too? Alec: No, I'm not denominational. It's just, I never do anything my Nana said "don't do".

Father Paul: Nate, no more lies! The Vatican's here! You and I both know what that means. Nate: Yeah, break out the grappa. Father Paul: Does my getting defrocked amuse you? Nate: No. Listen, listen, I just...let me explain this to you, okay? I just, this is...in here. (Nate moves toward the Confessional booth) Father Paul: Oh, there's always a loophole with you. (Nate enters the booth) That's my side!

Father Paul: I'll count myself blessed and take my miracle. Nate: Ah, but there was no miracle. Father Paul: Nate, five thieves saved my church.

Nate: (sarcastically) Yeah okay, yeah. Let's go rob Nicki Masconi. A guy who kills people and lives in our city. Yeah, let's do that.

Cheryl: I have been working my butt off on this account. But Steve? No, he's just sitting back, waiting for me to fail so he can swoop in and save the day. I swear, it's like he's a rogue and I'm a mage and we're part of the same guild, but secretly, he's at work with the Alliance to undermine us. Hardison: For the Horde! Cheryl: For the Horde! You play "World of Warcraft"? Hardison: You kidding? Did you get the new expansion pack? Woman, I was up all night. Now, look, I mean, "Burning Crusade" was great, but this new one is mind-blowing. Nate: (over comm) Hardison? You bailed on the job because you were up all night playing a game? (Hardison opens a cupboard to hide himself and talk back) Hardison: (quietly) First off, "game" is hardly adequate, okay?

Parker: (reciting to Nate things she has found searching the luggage on the plane for a bomb) ...hatbox full of Euros, pouch of blood diamonds, a stolen Stradivarius. (musing) I've never lifted one of those.

Sophie: How did you both know there would be an extra uniform in the bag? Nate: Everyone knows flight attendants are required to carry extra uniforms in case they get called to work unexpectedly. Eliot: Or if something happens to the one that they're already wearing. Sophie: How does everyone know that? Nate: Worked airport security. Eliot: Slept with a flight attendant.

Parker: (to Hardison) What are you doing? Hardison: Oh, I'm just remote accessing a plane's electrical system from 3000 miles away. You know what? If you were a geek, you would be really turned on by this.

Eliot: (after unsuccessfully trying to wake up the hitman) When I knock people out they tend to stay knocked out.

Parker: (referring to Nate's behavior) Is it me or is he getting creepier?

Nate: Somebody find me a brain. Parker: Oh yeah, he's definitely getting creepier.

Parker: (Crawling through the air duct) Looks like Parker's gonna have to crawl through the air duct again. God forbid anyone else would have to learn how to frickin' crawl on their stomach through a tiny space. It's not rocket science, people. Eliot: (On comm) Parker, you realize that we can still hear you?

Derrick Clark: No, no cops. If they find out we contacted the police, they'd kill her. Sophie: They're not cops, I promise you. They're friends of mine, you can trust them. Derrick Clark: Why should I trust you? I don't know who you are. Sophie: I'm a thief. Derrick Clark: Okay,...I'm not sure what to do with that!

Eliot: Let's go, man, you have it? Hardison: No, not yet. (Over comms) Sophie, we need that scene, are you finished with it yet? Sophie: It's in the box on the back of the truck. Hardison: Sophie, seriously Sophie, it was supposed to be a two page scene between Irina and a boy. Sophie: That's still the heart of it. Eliot: The heart of it? There's like ten pages here. You have a stunt? You have special effects? Parker: (takes script) Sister Magda crosses and gets a loaf of bread. Who's sister Magda? (Sophie arrives in full nun garb) Hardison: (To Eliot) Tell me you didn't see that coming.

Hardison: Woah, woah, woah. I'm getting a bunch of calls to the police. What the hell is going on down there? Eliot: I'll tell you what's going on. Parker just stabbed her guy with a fork!

Hardison: Woah, woah. I haven't slept in three days. I had a showdown with two different gangs, who, now, by the way, now know my face. I sat on a bomb. And all this could've been avoided had you gave the man a taco?

Nate: Sophie, how--how do you catch mob guys? Sophie: Uhh...two glasses of Chianti and a story about my grandma in Sicily. Nate: How does the government catch mob guys? Everyone: Taxes!

Leary: I was tricked. I was tricked! It wasn't, it wasn't me. You understand, I... Bonanno: Somebody tricked you into bringing a briefcase full of evidence of your own crime straight to the police? Come on, Mr. Leary. Nobody's that smart.

Eliot: (about Parker) She's dressed that way 'cause she's doing a con. Nate: What, you thought she was dressed like a nun for no reason? Eliot: She's Parker. Nate: Ah, fair enough.

Eliot: That's why the businesses are clean; they're dirty from the inside. Nate: Well, yeah, I mean, if you have a body in the trunk of your car, you're gonna drive under the speed limit, aren't you? Parker: You know, when you're sober, your metaphors get creepier.

Nate: Now if you'll excuse me, I am gonna go call a professional killer who tried to murder me and arrange to meet him in an isolated location.

Room Service Operator: It's chicken-fried steak. Sophie: It's what? Chicken-fried steak? Room Service Operator: Yeah. Sophie: Let me just tell you, meat should never be used as an adjective.

Nate: Can I get this straight? Okay, you two couldn't rig a gym class and a spelling bee, and you two run into the only FBI agents on the planet that recognize you? Eliot: I gotta be honest with you, I think we broke the kid even more. Sophie: We are the worst fairy godparents in the world.

Nate: Who's that? Hardison: Oh, the kid. Kid's from her first marriage, Widmark. Eliot: I'm sorry what? Widmark? Hardison: Rich people, man.

Parker: Door alarm's got a Takashita 500 with redundant infrared. Window's easier. Alec: The window? The window that's 20 stories up? Parker: Like I said--easier.

Eliot: Hardison, we got a problem. Hardison: What kinda problem? Eliot: They're MRI'ing my pizza and their stance says ex-CIA. Hardison: You can tell somebody worked for the CIA just from how they stand?! Eliot: It's a very distinctive stance!

Hardison: You were scared to fight a girl. Eliot: She'd mop the floor with you, Hardison Hardison: I don't care. Eliot: Seriously, she actually killed a guy once with a mop. It's a funny story, actually. She broke the mop and took... Hardison: Eliot, Eliot.

Tara: I checked you out, Mr. Ford. Half my sources say you're a vicious thief. The other half claim you're some kind of high-tech vigilante. Nate: I like that. I should put that on my card.

Tara: What are we supposed to do, steal the wake? Nate: Whoa, have some respect--borrow the wake, to save the bar.

Nate: All right, good news, bad news. Tara: Good news? Nate: The mayor's hooked. We're in the pinch. Tara: Bad news? Nate: I think we lost Eliot until the playoffs.

Sophie: Someone explain to me, what the hell is a Steranko? Hardison: Steranko's the toughest security system in the world, in the universe, in the multiverse, whatever. Eliot: How do you not know this? Sophie: I am a grifter. If I'm doing my job right then the mark just, click, turns off the alarm for me. (As Hardison alters Moto's photo) Eliot: That's nice, make him--make him look drunker. And then richer. Hardison: What you want me to do, give the man a pet tiger? Eliot: Can you do that?  Fake FBI Guy: FBI, sir. That young lady's in our custody. Hardison: Aw see, you made two mistakes, bro. First, you flashed that fake ass FBI badge at me. Second, you spilled his coffee. (Pointing at Eliot)  Nate: Where's Eliot? Hardison: Oh, he had to change his shirt. He got coffee on it. And some blood and some teeth.  Parker: Who knew a sedan could hit 140? Sophie: Parker, you are never to get behind the wheel of a car again, okay? Never.

Parker: (noting a statuary in a vault) Oh, hello. Last time I saw you was at the Louvre. Well, actually you were in the back seat of my car, but before that you were at the Louvre. Nate: Parker, focus! Parker: Okay. 

Hardison: Small one is land purchases--old manor houses up for auction, all within the last two years, all in Scotland. Ha! Places like, uh...Loch Glengorra...and Loch McGr-r-r...I'm not even gonna try to pronounce it, man. It's just a bunch of random Gs and Ns. 

Nate: The name of this con is called "The Mummy's Tiara." Hardison: Come on, man, that can't be real. Parker: Am I gonna have to steal a corpse again?  Parker: I still don't know why Sophie's not doing this part of the con. Nate: Well, the con requires a carrot and a stick. I need her to be the stick. Parker: Well, remember that time I was the carrot and I stabbed somebody? Nate: I do. 

Parker: You know, I'm really starting to like tasing people. Is that a problem? 

#Leaverage #leverage #tv #quotes #funny

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