"Okay." Danny slowly laid the already cold body back onto the table, ready to slide back it into the refuge of cold storage. "Okay. Dead guy. Stay there."
The body didn't move.
"Fantastic. Now. Hang out while I pour the embalming fluid into the pump, alright? It should only be a minute."
And it usually did; working in a funeral home wasn't extremely glamorous, but it paid the bills, and Danny had already been used to the rhyme and rhythm of negotiating death with the public by the time he sent in his mortuary school application. It had been a transition that made sense. And in the end, the degree had only cost him a few extra years post-graduation and a little dig into student loans, and now Danny had a stable 12-8 job and health insurance valid in the state of new jersey.
Today, though, the pump had that decided enough was enough. With a bang and a boom, the pump spat out a cloud of smoke and clunked uncomfortably.
The dead body sat up.
Danny scrambled over to push it back down. "No. We talked about this. Dead people don't move. If you want to stay here and have me put you back together all the time, you have to stay put. Got it?"
Whatever the weird gold-eye corpses were on in Gotham, they at least listened to him on occasion. They weren't ghosts, per se— they never pinged on any of the ghost detection devices Mom and Dad had packed in his going-away-to-college bag— but they were, despite being occasionally animate, perfectly deceased.
Weird. Danny had never gotten used to it. Still, they came in droves, too eager to sit on the top of the basement stairwell and lurk in the corners and stare endlessly at them with their weird, avian eyes, and sometimes they heralded the arrival similarly weird-ass bodies that had lost their heads or their arms or their limbs through the more conventional channels.
"I'm losing too much thread to all y'all coming in all the time," Danny complained to the dead body, who, at the moment, was the only person present to blame. "Stop getting your limbs cut off. This stuff is expensive, you know. It's a specialty order."
The body didn't even have the courtesy to blink. Rude.
"At least let them bury you this time. Every time one of you darts off when my back's turned, my boss thinks I'm stealing corpses. My coworkers think I'm building my own Frankenstein or something."
The corpse neither verbalized nor blinked, but Danny hadn't expected it to; with a sigh, he rolled the corpse back into cold storage, locked its little door (not that locking it in had ever stopped it) and called it quits for the night.
It's not like anyone was paying him for the extra hours anyway.
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I'm begging people to please just learn to enjoy things, genuinely. Like yes, think critically while consuming media and stay alert, but also remember to allow yourself downtime.
I'm tired right now and probably won't be able to articulate this properly, but I just saw someone on Twitter complain that movies like The Menu and Glass Onion are shallow half-critiques that don't actually say anything radical about the rich/class systems, and I mean... Yeah? That's actually ok? They're entertainment products designed for mass appeal. And I'm not saying that something can't be entertaining as well as taking a clear, defined position, but I'm saying that not every piece of media has to be an in-depth takedown of social/political systems.
Both films had something to say, and do a good job of getting people thinking about our current society and it's issues. They aren't documentaries created for a niche group who have thoroughly studied these ideals, nor do they claim to be. Not everyone watching these movies will have the same knowledge of social systems, and most people certainly don't want to be flat out lectured by fictional characters.
Learn to enjoy things for what they are sometimes, without feeling the need to condemn them for every way they didn't live up to your personal standard
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New Zelda idea!
Ok, so this idea has kind of been simmering in my head but it’s getting entertaining now so I’m sharing it.
OC Zelda and Link!
Princess Zelda is a bold and beautiful young woman trying to prepare for ruling her kingdom. She is famous of her commanding personality, for her magical strength which comes as easily as breathing, and for being decisive. When a prophet speaks of impending doom and monster attacks are on the rise, Zelda goes to the Temple of Time with sacred artifacts to utilize the Triforce and stop the darkness before it can start.
However, when she tries to touch the Triforce it shatters into three pieces.
Zelda is stupefied and horrified. Why would it do such a thing? The Triforce only splits for those who are unworthy, and she of all people is freaking worthy ok???
But she isn’t. She’s left with only one piece: Power.
Humiliated but not defeated, she decided that she must seek out the bearers of the other two pieces so they can bring peace to the kingdom. This causes friction with her mother, who has been trying for years to reel her daughter’s pride in.
Zelda: I have to seek them out so I can fix this!
Queen: You can fix this by fixing yourself. The Triforce deemed you unworthy, incapable of handling such a task.
Zelda: Are you saying that I’m incapable of this?
Queen: The goddesses are saying you are incapable.
Least to say, their relationship is a bit strained.
On her journey, she seeks out young men named Link. Legend says that was the hero’s name, and clearly he probably has a way to either help her find the missing Triforce pieces or he bears one of them.
Of course, the problem is that half the kingdom names their sons Link.
Zelda naturally thinks she can figure this out with her powers, so the first Link she finds she basically chaotically strong arms into joining her.
Zelda: So your name is Link, right?
Link: Uh… yes, Your Highness.
Zelda: Perfect! You’ll help me with my quest.
Link: Um… I’m not exactly a hero, Your Highness.
Zelda: Nonsense! I can sense the magic within you. You’re stronger than you know. Now, come along, destiny is calling! There is darkness looming and we must stop it.
Link: I’m, uh, a masseuse.
Zelda:
Link:
Zelda: Well I could use a massage anyway, so come on!
So Zelda and her legendary masseuse travel across the land seeking other Links, though none of the others seem to stick like the first one does. Zelda can sense that there’s something different about him, though she doesn’t know what. Maybe the fact that he’s Gerudo makes a difference? Meh.
Anyway, they eventually end up in the Lost Woods because legend claims that the Master Sword is there. Link’s not about this place, naturally, but the pair goes in. They find a dungeon and both nearly die while screaming and holding each other because Zelda relies solely on her magic and Link is… a masseuse. But just as they’re about to be killed a man comes in and saves them. He escorts them out, alongside his trusty doggo, and bids them adieu despite Zelda asking him eighty thousand times who he is and if his name is Link.
Yeah, his name is Link. No, he won’t go on your awesome Quest To Save the World. He and doggo are happy in the Lost Woods, thanks. But Zelda is determined, and poor Masseuse Link gets dragged into her schemes to try and recruit Mystery Link. He’s a fighter and she can sense something about him too.
Long story short, Zelda has the Triforce of Power, Ganondorf Gerudo Link has the Triforce of Courage, and Actual Mystery Link has the Triforce of Wisdom. Zelda has to learn to become a better, more well rounded person to be able to wield all three pieces. Link the Masseuse has to learn to face his people’s past and his legacy. Link the Wanderer has to learn to love life again.
Anyway. Yeah.
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Little but Fierce VI
She winds up… there's the pitch…
Poor Nick. It never stops being funny. I'd feel sorrier that this happened to him but he's such a bastard in his introductory episode. It's like karma in advance.
Heheh. Kar-ma.
Meryl and Wolfwood behave very much like siblings to each other, while Vash and Roberto treat them like their awful terrible kids. Roberto does actually try reach out to Vash as a mentor once or twice, but of course Vash is fuck-off old and doesn't need that kind of assistance, so he's gently deflected. Roberto is old and wise enough to keep his distance. Nick, for his part, enjoys pissing Roberto off, and Roberto is for his part duly pissed off.
Still, Vash is the reason they're all even there in the first place and Meryl shows him concern. And Vash, in his way, fusses over Nick the way Roberto feels responsible for Meryl. A lot of what Vash does, he's doing pretty much solely for Wolfwood's benefit. I mean, look at this pathetic wet kitten of a man - you can't tell me he doesn't need it.
I've already talked at some length about why exactly Vash is like he is about Wolfwood, but what's he like about Meryl?
Pretty much exactly as fond. He's just quieter about it. To my read, he's confident she and Roberto can look after themselves and each other. That's really endearing to him, but not something he has to do anything about. And Meryl's not suffering the same kind of identity crisis as the Punisher/Wolfwood/Nico. Meryl knows exactly who she is, she's just trying to get everyone else to acknowledge it, and Vash does so from the first - she's never anything but "Meryl" to him, not "newbie" or "little lady". She never has to demand that of him.
Nor is she in directly a victim of his godawful brother, which thankfully means she isn't his responsibility to help - or at least, no more so than any given human. Also, it's Vash. What's that? Someone is invested in his well-being? Golly, that sounds suspiciously like he's being cared for (which of course he doesn't deserve), or (more reasonably) like someone vulnerable to being caught up in Knives's manipulations. Or just someone vulnerable to Knives period. Stampede out!
I though you guys were buddies./I thought you three had something special.
No way./Yeah, not really.
Too bad for him, he's met his match in Meryl Stryfe.
In direct contrast to every other character around Vash, she's only one there not because she has to be, or because she needs or wants something from him, but because she decided to be. She's one of the only characters with agency, after all.
Real people aren't monsters like that./He's a man, not a monster.
But I won't give up, no matter how unreasonable the assignment!/I won't abandon an assignment just because it's silly.
We can't just leave him hanging here./No way. We can't just leave him here.
And she's also decided he needs help. So come hell or high water, this man is getting helped.
It's her knack for finding the truth without quite knowing the reasoning behind it. In physical terms Vash really, really doesn't need help, and it's the mistake Knives always makes; that because Vash ostensibly doesn't have powers like him, he's in need of a defender. (And because this is Knives, that means it's up to him personally, and he's entitled to Vash and his exclusive love/loyalty/devotion in return. Any protests Vash makes are clearly just human corruption.) But what Vash actually needs is something his brother has never, in any version of the story, demonstrated the capacity to give him. Even sensitive little boy Knives back in Maximum relied on others for reassurance up until the moment he decided he couldn't.
Vash is more inclined to be someone others rely on, to the point of being maladaptive. It's being unable to help that gets to him, especially when he's held responsible.
What he needs is emotional support. Or, well... faith.
Wolfwood gives that to him eventually, but it takes some serious work, and it comes with its own attendant difficulties, like the fact that Nick's not in a position to extend Vash help himself no matter how much he might want to. Nick is, like Rosa and like Vash, a pragmatist. Do what you have to do.
Meryl has never needed that kind of direct demonstration. To her, Vash is a person, and people always need help, and she's not going to be prevented giving it. End of discussion. And despite being mistaken on some particulars, on this point she's more right than even she knows.
The contrast with Wolfwood is incidentally why Meryl hitting Woofwoof with the truck isn't just fucking funny, it's the perfect way for him to be introduced. He can't catch the same bus as Vash by happenstance because this time Vash is his actual target. He can't have Angelina II because personal transport is autonomy he's not permitted to have.
Instead, Meryl's own autonomy and narrative significance had her run the plot right into him, completely ruining whatever plans were laid for his entrance. Notice Roberto tries to steer Meryl away from the collision course they're on, to no avail, and Vash winds up flipped over. Fantastic.
Wolfwood is getting dragged around; Meryl is the one doing the dragging. When she discovers Vash's secrets, she works to accept them and integrate them into her worldview - which means that the moment she learns he's a Plant, she doesn't reject him or become fearful of him. She instantly accepts that must mean the Plants are also people. That gives her a fuller understanding of the conflict, and especially Vash's view of it, than most. It's not a matter of "Whose side are you on?" It's "How do we move forward together?"
Wolfwood's knowledge has all been filtered through the Eye of Michael, so he's more aware of the details, but can't disentangle his true beliefs from the ideology driving them.
Meryl has a better understanding of the abstract. And that, in turn, entitles her to learn what the available methods are, and judge them...
...But it also entitles her to something more precious: Vash's unquestioning trust.
It's certainly much less dramatic than the demonstrations between Vash and Nick, but I have to say: any amount of exposure to Knives and his histrionics would leave me, at least, pretty relieved to have it.
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VII
Part VIII
Part IX
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