#ooh nobody expected a direct sequel!

[curls-cat]

saw this on my friend’s Instagram and immediately thought “redbrina prompt?”

this became FAR less about mail and FAR more a direct sequel to three ain't company, even though I TRIED to write sweet love letter tenderness.

1.4k.

~

Sabrina always greets the arrival of the mail with bated breath these days. She’s trying to be normal about it, because nobody knows, exactly, what’s happening. Daphne definitely suspects something. She keeps squinting at Sabrina.

She’s doing it right now, because Veronica just said, “Has anyone gotten the mail yet?” and Sabrina shot straight up out of her chair and said, “I’ll do it.”

Daphne stands, too. “I’ll come with you,” she says.

Sabrina tries to keep her voice level as she says, “It’s just three floors down. I don’t need the company.”

“Don’t you wanna hang out with me?” Daphne says, giving Sabrina a mockery of her true puppy eyes.

Daphne definitely knows something’s up.

“Sure,” Sabrina says. “Come on.” She’ll just have to be sneaky.

There might not even be a letter. Sabrina sent her last letter off to Red less than a week ago. It’s too soon to really expect one.

But there might be.

She and Red have been exchanging letters since the end of summer, when Sabrina had to go back to NYC. Red has a cell phone, but reception is bad in Ferryport Landing, and Granny doesn’t have a computer at home. So this is how they keep in touch.

Daphne knows Sabrina and Red are dating, and Veronica has a suspicion, but Sabrina hasn’t told anyone else. Red might have told Granny and Mr. Canis, Sabrina’s not sure. They’re not keeping it a secret, per se, but, well. Henry has opinions about teenagers who are dating living in the same house. Puck wasn’t allowed to stay over when he and Sabrina were together, and it’ll be the same with Red. Sabrina won’t be allowed to spend her school breaks with Red. They’ll barely get to see each other. And they barely see each other as it is.

And it’s not like they’re having hot sex every time they’re together or anything. They’re taking things slow.

“Waiting on something exciting?” Daphne asks, once they’re in the elevator.

“No?” Sabrina says, as innocent as she can manage. Daphne has gotten a lot better at secrets than she was at age eight, but she’s still prone to blabbing about things that excite her at inconvenient times.

“Sure,” Daphne says. “That’s why you’ve gotten the mail every day for the past month. And why I saw fancy stationery in your backpack.”

The elevator dings open.

“You got me,” Sabrina says. “I’m doing really weird long-distance roleplay as a victorian gentlewoman. Have a pen pal and everything.”

Daphne bounces out of the elevator and swings around, walking backwards as she tells Sabrina, “You can just tell me you’re writing love letters to your girlfriend. I won’t get weird about it.”

“If I were writing letters to Red—” Sabrina starts, pushing past Daphne to get to the letter boxes in the lobby, “—it wouldn’t be any of your business.”

“She’s my best friend, and you’re my sister,” Daphne says, watching Sabrina unlock their box. “Of course it’s my business.”

“No,” Sabrina says, keeping her voice level as she reaches for the mail. “What Red and I do or don’t do to keep in touch with each other is our business. If she wanted you to know, she’d tell you.”

“You both think I’m gonna be grossed out by it,” Daphne says. “I know I was… surprised, when you told me. But I’m fine now! I promise! I want to know!”

Between the long narrow bills and the catalogs that nobody subscribed to, there’s a hint of a thick, cream-colored envelope. Sabrina spots it half a second after Daphne does, and before she can bury it in the pages of Basil’s newest issue of National Geographic Kids, Daphne has snatched it up and is dancing out of Sabrina’s reach. She’s outgrown Sabrina recently, and Sabrina can’t get any leverage without dropping all the mail.

“Ooh,” Daphne sing-songs. “Return address from Granny, but sent to you!” She holds it up to her nose, sniffs. “Smells perfumed. Since when does Red wear perfume?”

Red doesn’t wear perfume, but she’s been sticking dried flowers into her letters to Sabrina. Sabrina hasn’t found anything as sweet to send back. She thought about giving Red pigeon feathers, but that seemed kinda gross and weird.

Daphne rips into the letter, tearing through the little sticker Red had used to seal the envelope. Sabrina can’t even see what it was.

“That’s a federal crime,” Sabrina accuses, scanning the lobby for things she can use to get that letter out of Daphne’s hands. “Messing with the mail. It’s a felony.”

Daphne snorts. “You gonna call the cops on me because I read your—” she stops, and her hand goes up to her mouth. The next second her palm is in her mouth, being bitten hard. Around it, Daphne squeals, “zhadizzhocude!!”

Sabrina, correctly interpreting this as ‘that is so cute,’ takes the opportunity to snatch the letter out of Daphne’s hand. It’s folded in thirds, and all that’s visible is the last line:

I love you. And I love you. And I want to find out what that means together.

Love, Red

And yeah, that is pretty cute. Sabrina would like to melt a little bit, because she loves Red so much. She wants to see her. Wants to be close enough to touch, to kiss, to just hear Red’s voice saying those words instead of reading them in her simple script.

“I wasn’t done!” Daphne complains.

Sabrina stuffs the letter down her shirt, safe from Daphne’s grabby hands, which are getting up in Sabrina’s face. She glares at her sister. “It’s my letter.”

“Don’t you want me to be supportive?” Daphne whines.

Sabrina heads back for the elevator. “There’s a difference between supportive and nosey.”

“You don’t talk to me about Red!” Daphne jogs after Sabrina, craning around to try to make eye contact.

“If you keep reading my mail, I’ll never talk to you about her!” Sabrina presses the elevator call button

“Fine, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again, now how long have you been writing letters? Has it been since we came back in August? How often do you write each other? What do you talk about? Is it just sweet nothings and sap? Do you talk about me? Does she ask about Basil?”

“I forgive you, you’d better not, pretty much, like once a week usually? We tell each other about our lives. Red’s way better at sweet stuff than I am. Sometimes. And sometimes.”

The elevator arrives.

Sabrina side-eyes her sister. “Satisfied?”

“Nope,” Daphne says, angelic as always.

“Don’t tell Dad,” Sabrina says.

“I won’t.”

Sabrina pulls the letter out of her shirt and, with a sigh at Daphne’s pouting puppy-dog face, hands over the envelope, dried flowers still inside. Then she sets about reading her letter.

It’s very sweet. Red misses her. She’s been thinking about the future (in Sabrina’s last letter, she mentioned college applications). She knows Sabrina has been looking at upstate colleges, and she doesn’t want Sabrina to stay close by if there’s a school she really likes farther away. She’ll miss Sabrina, of course, but they have plenty of time. She doesn’t want Sabrina to feel tied in place because of Red. And then that closing line.

Sabrina loves her so much. She doesn’t know what this soft, kind girl sees in someone as jaded and rough as Sabrina, who never knows how to answer these letters in a way that doesn’t feel too straightforward and brusque. Doesn’t know what to do with any of it other than save the letters in a box under her bed, use the flowers as bookmarks, treat them so, so carefully.

The elevator has arrived. Daphne is holding it open for Sabrina, and she finally notices her sister standing there, arm in the door, a sprig of dried flowers in one hand. They’re little pinkish bells, pressed flat, running all the way down a curved stem.

When Sabrina exits the elevator, Daphne hands her the flowers.

“You really love her, huh?” she says.

“Yeah.” Sabrina pulls the flowers up to her nose. They’re so fragile. And they do smell nice.

“Good,” Daphne says. “I’d say ‘if you hurt her I’ll kill you,’ but you wouldn’t. I can tell.”

Daphne’s right. Sabrina would rather die than hurt Red. Still, she squints at her sister, stopping in front of the door to their apartment. “Aren’t you supposed to be on my side here? With the shovel talk?”

Daphne doesn’t say anything, and a long list of hurts sits, unspoken, between them. No, Daphne would be on Red’s side, if they broke up.

“Take care of her,” Daphne says, and unlocks the door.

Holding the flowers between her fingers as gently as she can, Sabrina follows her sister into their apartment.

#redbrina #sabrina grimm #the sisters grimm #sisters grimm #daphne grimm

[funnythingshere0-blog]

The 'Deadpool 2' Cliches That Aren't Part of the Joke

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/the-deadpool-2-cliches-that-arent-part-of-the-joke/

The 'Deadpool 2' Cliches That Aren't Part of the Joke

[This story contains spoilers for Deadpool 2]

The following is a spoiler-intensive conversation about Deadpool 2 — the new R-rated superhero film starring Ryan Reynolds as a sassy, fourth-wall-breaking, self-healing potty-mouth mutant. It’s the latest installment of a monthly series of chats between between Eisner Award nominee Alex de Campi and Heat Vision contributor Simon Abrams.

The David Leitch-directed sequel includes Deadpool newcomers Josh Brolin as Cable, a gruff military mutant from the future; Julian Dennison as Russell, the teen mutant Cable is out to kill; and Zazie Beetz as the ultra lucky Domino.

There are spoilers and discussion of superhero movie fatigue ahead.

Simon Abrams, Nimrod Devotee: Before we watched Deadpool 2, I tweeted a prediction of what the movie would be like. I hastily deleted that tweet because I wanted to maintain some semblance of professionalism. Still, it’s worth noting that I didn’t expect much from the film, despite kinda liking the first one:

— Zazie Beetz and Josh Brolin will walk away with the film, and Ryan Reynolds will do far better than many expect.

— The action sequences will be better than the first one, including at least one great, probably noisy set piece since the film is directed by David Leitch, one half of John Wick‘s co-directing duo, and the solo helmer of the under-rated soviet-era spy thriller Atomic Blonde.

— Otherwise, more of the same

— Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh’s Hindi-language dub [he voices Deadpool] should be available in all territories.

Almost none of these things happened, except two: 1) I still want to hear Singh —the guy who chewed up every scene he’s in of the controversial Bollywood period romance Padmaavat — dub for Reynolds 2) Reynolds is, in fact, terrific at what he does.

But that second point is what makes me most resentful of Deadpool 2: I was already going to grade this film on a curve — but I still didn’t walk away satisfied! 

Full disclosure: I used to love the look of Deadpool when I was a kid, though I never really read the X-Force comics. But when I was in first grade, I made a Deadpool-shaped paper-mache mask in art class. And when I was a teenager, I enjoyed comic book writer Frank Tieri’s take on the character. And later, in college, I thought that David Lapham and Kyle Baker’s more “adult”-oriented Deadpool — he breaks the fourth wall because he’s probably schizophrenic — was OK.

But holy crap, I walked away from Deadpool 2 feeling angry at Ryan Reynolds — a comedic actor whose work I’ve enjoyed since Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place — just because he did his job too well: giving emotional resonance to a lot of lousy ideas (which he co-wrote and co-produced) that are conceived without much inspiration.

I think the word “inspiration” is key because I spent much of Deadpool 2 worrying that I was not meeting this film at its level. I kept thinking, “This is as good as this sort of material gets.” Until Reynolds punched a bag of cocaine into his face and then made spirit fingers/jazz hands. Then he paused with great comedic effect after Wade “Deadpool” Wilson is shot to bits by Brolin’s dour future mercenary Cable. Reynolds even had great chemistry/banter with Brolin in that one scene where Wilson hugs Cable, and then notes that they’re dick-to-dick, which understandably leads Cable to reciprocate by poking  an off-camera dagger into Wilson’s nuts. In these moments, I knew exactly why I disliked Deadpool 2: nobody was working as hard as Reynolds to sell me this rancid bill of goods, and that includes the otherwise good Brolin, Beetz, Dennison, and Eddie Marsan.

At this point, I’ll let you explain why the film’s tedious shift towards semi-serious melodrama doesn’t work (because I agree with you, and think you have a great point). And I’ll do it with a wink because breaking the fourth wall, and being preciously “exhausting,” as one character describes Wilson, is all part of the Deadpool 2 experience. Take it away, de Campi!

Alex De Campi, Anarchist Aficionado: I was so excited to see this film. Do you remember? Finally we were seeing something I wanted to see! And I love Ryan Reynolds as a comedy actor. I’ve loved him since Blade: Trinity, which is up there with Bad Boys 2 and Crank in terms of Terrible Films I Adore. I want Reynolds’s films to be great, because he is incredibly talented and makes things more fun whenever he shows up. But dear God in heaven, can we please have a superhero film that’s not built on the backs of dead girlfriends and daddy issues?

I’m done. I’m done with superhero films at this point. All I wanted was a big, dumb frat-boy movie with Reynolds being funny and some good fight scenes. And what I got was an X-men movie by stealth with Emotional Resonance (tm), boring, badly-paced fights, and maybe one joke in 15 landing. Oh and the girlfriend killed in the first five minutes. And sure, Zazie Beetz was in it (for about half an hour), and she was great. But hello, male filmmakers: throwing in a female supporting character does not make it okay for you to make the white male hero’s character actualization based on damage to female bodies (and/or black bodies, and/or queer bodies). Stop it. You’re not being daring, you’re just being puerile and lazy. You know what’s daring? Writing an established relationship where the woman is not damselled. Yeah, it’s HARD, isn’t it? But look at 1934’s The Thin Man, which is one of the greatest comedies of all time: Nick and Nora start off the film happily married, continue the film happy, and end it happily married! And their banter is what makes the film. If they did that eighty years ago, you can do this now, folks. I mean, there is the slight issue that Reynolds and Morena Baccarin have zero comedic chemistry on screen but hey, you cast it, you deal with it.

I have to admit I haven’t seen a lot of the recent superhero films. There are just too many, too often. Same with Star Wars, tbh — Han Solo is my favorite Star Wars character and I can’t even motivate myself to see that film because didn’t I just see a Star Wars film? I passed on Infinity War because it’s too long, has too many characters, and fave characters die at the end (yeah, I know, one of my most-loved films is Nashville, STFU). 

But here’s the thing: the superhero films that have really resonated with female viewers have either starred women (Wonder Woman), or been completely without dead love interests or daddy issues. We all know that the reason Cap: Winter Soldier did so well with female viewers is 1) great fight scenes and 2) because the traditional role of the damselled girlfriend actually went to a male character (Bucky) who was, because male, then allowed to come back stronger and save the hero, right? That was radical and interesting in the context of these films. Similarly in Shane Black’s Iron Man 3, Pepper is damselled but she comes back stronger, a main character/superhero in her own right, and saves Tony. In Black Panther, the female co-leads all had equal or greater screen time than Chadwick Bozeman, and storylines that gave them actual agency beyond being love interests, and ladies to be imperiled to advance the plot.

The other thing I’m 100 percent done with is screenwriters mining my childhood for brownie points rather than working to create a compelling story. My enjoyment of this film shouldn’t be predicated on getting who Shatterstar is, and understanding jokes about Rob Liefeld’s inability to draw feet, yet here we are. That’s why so many of Deadpool 2’s jokes don’t land: they’re not funny. They’re just about the film cozying up to you and trying to dole out little dopamine hits of “Ooh, I understood that reference!”. You can’t just set the Content Cannon to “Ready Player One” and batter the audience into submission with Alpha Flight jokes and Yu-Gi-Oh references. That’s not writing! 

Deadpool was a genuine lowbrow delight. But Deadpool 2 feels like Marvel Studios got its claws into it as a potential launch pad for other things. There’s a line near the end where Baccarin’s Dead Girlfriend tells Wade he can’t join her in heaven yet because “these people need you”, and I legit thought they were about to pan over to Ike Perlmutter and Kevin Feige like “Yo.” Alas, it was only a pan to Wade’s “found family” in the film. Ah, man, I can’t get over how much I wanted this film to be good, but ugh. I’m tired. The massive hype of these films, the poor writing, the dull, dull fights and then the fact that it always just ends up a bunch of white men doing stuff, with token diverse supporting characters. I’m done giving you folks money. 

Abrams: I’m with ya. The line in Deadpool 2 about “bad writing,” and about how “exhausting” it is to be around Deadpool — as he’s conceived in these films — set me off. A friend of mine argued that the dead girlfriend subplot wasn’t meant to be taken so seriously. But c’mon, so much of the plot relied on Wilson’s personal growth, no matter how adolescent/tongue in cheek the attendant one-liners may be. What’s next, the plot is only incidental? Then why have one at all? If Deadpool 2 is a joke delivery system, one with a rapid-fire, Naked Gun pace of gags, then how does one excuse the fact that only one in fifteen jokes land? Applauding a movie with fourteen dud jokes in about three minutes is a bit like fondling a treadmill, and arguing that the burn marks on your face aren’t as bad as they look.

Which leads me to your talking point about being done with superhero films. I used to sneer at film critics who wrote about feeling exhausted by these films. But it’s a crisis-intensive, never-ending cycle of emotionally and humorously lightweight entertainment. And after a while, I came to realize: just because you and I expect — or maybe just hope — for more from these films doesn’t mean we have to feel bad for disliking them. People who don’t write about these films understandably don’t care about this kind of thing, but I have to agree with Bilge Ebiri when he argues that “For the moviegoer — or the film critic — who dutifully trudges out to these pictures all year long, the effect is a seemingly ceaseless, soul-eating series of global and cosmic calamities that mostly stopped being bracing or suspenseful or even all that interesting some time ago.”

Simply copy-and-pasting that quote makes me feel defensive, like I’m the mean-spirited hater who’s over-thinking it, over-analyzing, over-simplifying, etc. Many critics are even, by this point, downright resentful of the same blockbuster-loving readers that they rely on for feedback. Because who wants to be constantly dismissed for picking on a mega-production that was made by people with more money than God, and have little need and less concern for our criticism? Who wants to criticize films that, after a while, start to feel critic-proof?

Deadpool 2 isn’t as bad as the Marvel movies have gotten lately, but it bored into my head with its consistent mediocrity. And for two hours, I felt like a drunk stand-up comedian was wiggling his fingers in front of my face, and boasting about how he’s not touching me, he’s not touching me. This guy used to be funny, but his act sucks now, and he’s feeding off of the energy of the room, who are — like the auditorium-full of moviegoers at last week’s screening — totally into his new loutish schtick. So for a while, I felt like I had been taken hostage, like I had to just smile politely, and then grade this childishly ineffective button-pushing act on a curve.

Then I remembered that I liked Deadpool, and thought “No, no, it’s the children who are wrong,” I mean, “No, no, this movie is just bad, and I need to focus on accounting for the many ways that it is bad.” So here we are. 

Can we talk about the lousy fight scenes? And the stuff about how, as you said, a good chunk of the jokes rely implicitly on comics fans’ knowledge of super-tropes, and fan-service-y Easter Eggs, like DP’s momentarily grey costume, the taxi cab’s Alpha Flight ad, and the orphanage’s M-Day posters?

De Campi: You know, when you’re a woman in a male-dominated industry, like comics, the first thing the harasser dudes say to you when you call them on their behavior is, “Can’t you take a joke?” Oh, the dead girlfriend’s a joke, what’s the matter Alex, can’t you take a joke? Nah. And I especially don’t have to pay you money for the joke. But then it’s like the film tries to talk out of both sides of its mouth at once, since the ha-ha dead girl joke is also the underpinning of the entire film’s emotional arc: Deadpool’s search for redemption, in the person of a young mutant with anger issues who is gratingly unlikable, and whose own emotional arc also falls flat. But enough about that. Let’s talk about fight scenes and CGI.

Look, there’s no nice way to say this: the film looks cheap. The lighting is rough as old boots, the costumes and makeup look bargain-basement, the CGI is barely above “mobile gaming” standard, and just…Colossus. Colossus doesn’t work. Every time he’s on screen, I’m not thinking, “Wow, cool,” I’m thinking, “Eesh, that looks bad.” Beyond that, the fights are dull, with bizarre pacing that involves stopping in the middle for no reason. The fight choreography is nonexistent, which is a surprise, coming from one of the John Wick guys. It seems the directors can’t manage the amount of characters they have in the fights that are scripted. Deadpool had great fight scenes; Deadpool 2 doesn’t have a single memorable one. There’s not one shot I’d steal. And hey, it’s fine to not have a big budget. Then you just focus on doing simple things well, rather than big things very badly. I learned this lesson shooting music videos, and believe me, it’s the most important lesson in the business.

There’s also a lot of failures of internal logic in the film. On the one hand, it’s Deadpool, who cares. On the other hand, the one scene where I laughed until I cried was the baby-legs scene, itself a derivative of one of Deadpool’s best gags. But why, when Deadpool blew himself up early in the film and woke up in the X-Mansion, did he not have baby appendages? And when everyone starts going back and forth in time near the end, there’s only ever one of that person. So Deadpool goes back in time to fix a mistake by Past Deadpool, but it’s like Past Deadpool vanishes while Time Travelling Deadpool steps into the scene (except for once). Why aren’t both Deadpools in the scene? It would have been funnier, and then maybe they could have cut some time off that lingering and not-funny extended death scene. 

I’m still mad at this movie, Simon. I feel like they had to work really hard to make it this mediocre, squandering one of Hollywood’s best comedy-action talents in the process. 

Abrams: Yes, I’m increasingly upset about the sheer laziness of Deadpool 2‘s jokes and wink-wink crass-ness. Because, like we said after we saw the movie, this kind of nerd-pandering shouldn’t be so nerve-shredding. We are the target audience. We know who Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld is, and even get the in-joke about how he can never draw feet well. But do you remember when Shrek was a huge deal, and many critics understandably complained that its success established a  trend for the use of pop culture references as punchlines? It’s the same problem that many people (including me) have with Family Guy‘s frat-guy gags, only their jokes hit two out of fifteen times, despite being so proudly retrograde that they make you not want to wade through the other thirteen. 

Deadpool 2 has the same problem: so many of the jokes conclude where they should develop. I didn’t even like the baby legs joke because I thought that routine didn’t work as a sight gag, despite the fact that it never seems to end. As if the very idea of a computer-generated baby dick is hee-larious. The Basic Instinct reference that’s embedded in this routine is bad, but the fact that one character calls attention to it is even worse. Please stop nudging me, movie, I get the joke, I just don’t think you’re good at telling it.

Same thing with the action set pieces. Like you, I was disappointed by the fight scenes given how cluttered and busy they were. CGI Colossus was bad, but I expected that after the first film. Juggernaut was worse, I think, since he looked like he came right out of the Marvel video game advert that preceded our advanced screening. I’m also 100 percent with you about how the film has too many supporting characters, and therefore too many sub-threads to cross-cut between during the big fight scenes. That said: I laughed during the terrible “Thunderstruck” montage, where a handful of established X-Force members die horrible, premature deaths. That was funny. But, well, one in fifteen, right?

A fun parlor game for you: what comes next for the R-rated super-film now that Wolverine’s dead, and Deadpool’s already had one sequel? There are bound to be more R-rated Marvel films after Deadpool 2 rakes in a ton of booty. Also, they practically have a mandate to make more of these things now that Logan‘s Beyond–Thunderdome-Meets-Mark-Millar script got an Oscar nomination. Will Marvel/20th Century Fox stick with soft-R mutie stories, or expand to the superhero universe? Maybe we’ll get a Foolkiller story, or even a Death’s Head II programmer (stop rolling your eyes, I can see it through the Internet) Or, and maybe this is a better question: will more ever really mean more in these films? Because these films keep attracting talented performers, directors, screenwriters, etc. But lately, nothing extraordinary seems to come of it. 

De Campi: Oh, please, the filmmakers have already teased an X-Force movie. This wasn’t a sequel so much as it was a platform, and boy did it feel like it. I think what I mourn most about Deadpool 2 versus Deadpool was that I was hoping for a small, focused movie with a few characters that was heavy on the funny and the action. Instead, I got another bloated Marvel film with 800 characters bouncing in and out of the story too fast for me to care.

I have this thing I call The Unified Theory of John Cassavetes: certain filmmakers do a difficult thing so well, they make it look effortless. Think about Johnny in the 1970s, running around shooting pretty, well-framed handheld in New York with Ben Gazzara and his pals improving away. Now think about all the terrible, terrible American indie film that that style spawned. Not every filmmaker is Ryan Coogler, or the Russos/Markus & McFeely, able to juggle eighty hojillion characters and make it look easy.

I just wanted to trim so much fat off of Deadpool 2. The R-rated superhero films that work are small, focused films, allowed to play in their own little fenced-off playground. But Deadpool 2 tried to go big, and that’s where it suffers: it tries to do too many things, too quickly, and in the end doesn’t do any of them well.

Deadpool 2

[rejectedusername-trashfics]

Minequest- Ender Eyes: Chapter 3- Where is Ryan

Despite Achievement Hunter collectively agreeing to never touch the Minequest mod again, Ryan decided one day to try and explore the mod again. Before he officially starts, the mod literally calls out to him and asks for his return. He accepts thinking it was just a new quest, passes out, and awakes again literally back in the Kingdom of Achievement. The rest of the hunters discover Ryan’s passed out body at his desk with Minequest up on the screen. They need to go back into the mod after him to bring him back. But, Ryan will not be the same when they find him.

Sequel to Minequest

Chapter: 3/15

Word Count: 1,503

First / Previous / Next / AO3  

The following morning seemed to be the beginning of a typical day at Achievement Hunter. Michael and Jack arrived to the office in a timely manner. Jeremy showed up soon after, followed by Gavin. Geoff was the last to arrive.

“Good Morning,” he greeted as he walked into the room.

Michael looked over to Geoff. “I’m kinda surprised you didn’t call us sluts, this morning,” he joked.

“Are you kidding me?!” Geoff exclaimed. H pointed over to Gavin. “Gavin’s girlfriend would probably be weirded out if he slept around.”

“Meg would be surprised if I was a bit of a tart,” Gavin said.

“Jeremy and Jack have wives,” Geoff continued.

“Who we love, dearly,” Jack added.

“Hell, you and Lindsay had a baby, relatively recently.”

“So, you decided to be nicer because the men of Achievement Hunter are faithful to their wives and girlfriends?” Michael questioned.

“It’s not me being nice, it just wouldn’t make a lot of sense to call you that. The only two of in Achievement Hunter who could even try be sluts at this point and me and Ry,” Geoff paused to scan the room for Ryan. “Where is the guy anyway? Is he in the bathroom or something?”

“I haven’t seen him this morning,” Jeremy said.

“Me, either,” Gavin agreed.

“Did he call in sick or something? Cause I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have anything else going on today,” Geoff said.

“No, he didn’t call in sick. And you may have forgotten if he actually did have something else going on,” Jack pointed out.

“No, I’m sure I would remember something like that so we could all plan around it.”

“I mean, you didn’t remember the girl from the RTX.”

“Okay no, don’t hold me to that!” Geoff interrupted. “First of all, she doesn’t work here. Second, she openly said she only expects Burnie to really remember her. Where did that even come from? Anyway, Ryan does work here, and as his boss, it’s my job to remember when he’s taking off.” He walked over to his desk, sat down, and rubbed his face. “Should I call him?”

“It’s not a bad idea,” Michael said.

Geoff nodded and pulled out his cell. He dialed Ryan’s number and waited for him to pick up. After a few seconds, a voice started. “Hello, you have reached the voicemail of Ryan Haywood. I cannot get to the phone right now, so please leave your name and number and I will get back--” Geoff hung up the phone.

“Was he not there?” Gavin asked.

“It went to voicemail,” Geoff groaned.

“Why didn’t you leave him one?” Jack chastised.

“Ryan doesn’t listen to that shit.”

“Well, what were we gonna do today? We can’t need Ryan for all of it,” Jeremy pointed out.

“GTA.”

“Ryan’s in that,” everyone pointed out.

“Battlegrounds.”

“That too.”

“Heroes and Halfwits, but I know Ryan’s in that. Play Pals?”

“This week was supposed to be a Battle Buddies week, so he’d be in that,” Jeremy explained.

“Fuck.”

“Any other ideas?” Michael asked.

“I’m gonna call him again,” Geoff replied in a slight panic. He called and it went straight to voicemail again. “FFFUUUCCCKKK!!!”

“Geoff,” Jack started.

“Running away from work isn’t like him. And if he is sick, I wanna make sure he’s okay.”

“So, go check his house for him,” Michael replied.

“I would. But the only problem with that is, I don’t know his address.”

Gavin’s hand shot up and he waved it about, excitedly, “Ooh, I do!” he cheered.

“And we can all go take care of sick Ryan,” Michael suggested. Jack and Jeremy nodded their heads in agreement.

“Guys, no. Only Gavin and I need to,”

“Geoff, please,” Jeremy interrupted. “Wouldn’t be good for Ryan to know how much his coworkers care about him?”

“He already knows how much we…” Geoff paused to sigh in defeat. “Whatever. It might be crowded, but I can fit all five of us in my car. Let’s go,” he finished as he got up to walk back to the door.

“If it’s too crowded for the lads in the back, we can always throw Gavin in the trunk,” Michael joked as he got up to follow Geoff.

“Oi!” Gavin protested.

Geoff rolled his eyes. “No, Gavin’s up front with me to help me navigate. You, Jack, and Jeremy can arrange yourselves in the back.

Gavin stuck his tongue out at Michael. “Suck my nob.” The rest of the group followed Geoff out to his car and loaded in the back of it with Gavin up in the front. After a thirty-minute drive, the group arrived at a townhouse complex. Everyone unloaded themselves from the car and followed Gavin to the right townhouse.

“So, is anyone gonna ask why Gavin knows Ryan’s address or…?” Michael began to ask.

Geoff ignored the question and rung the doorbell. A dog started barking, inside the home. Geoff’s eyebrows furrowed and he went to ring the doorbell again. Jack grabbed his arm before he could. “Geoff, wait a couple of minutes to let him get to the door.”

After a few minutes, nobody came to the door, and the dog continued to bark. This made Geoff ring the doorbell again, more furiously.

“Geoff, what if he’s not home?” Jeremy asked.

Gavin began digging around in his pockets as Geoff sighed. “I’m not sure what we should do.”

“Well, we don’t actually know if he’s missing yet, so it’s too soon to file a missing persons report,” Jack pointed out.

“My first thought was breaking in,” Geoff admitted.

“Why do you know…” Jeremy started.

“GOT IT!” Gavin exclaimed as he held up a key.

“What’s that?” Jack asked.

“A key to Ryan’s house,” Gavin said as he walked towards the door.

“Why do you have a key to Ryan’s house?” Michael asked.

Gavin stuck the key in the lock. “It’s Meg’s. She dog-sits for him when Achievement Hunter’s away, but she’s in Germany this week, so she gave it to me.”

“Oh, what kind of dog does Ryan have?” Jeremy wondered.

“Well,” Gavin unlocked the door and opened it. A large St. Bernard came barreling out the front door, knocking Gavin over, and ran to a tree in the front yard to pee. “BEOWULF! YOU KNOW HOW RYAN FEELS ABOUT YOU USING THE POTTY IN THE FRONT YARD!” The dog finished up, trotted back over to Gavin, and lowered his head. Gavin sighed as he got up to pet him. “It’s okay, we won’t tattle,” he reassured the dog.

“Guys, back to looking for Ryan,” Geoff called to the group to get their attention again.

“Right,” everyone said as they all walked in.

“RYAN!!! ACHIEVEMENT HUNTER CAME TO CHECK UP ON YOU!” Geoff yelled to see if he could get Ryan’s attention.

“Maybe you could try yelling louder,” Jeremy suggested.

“Or, we could split up to look for him,” Jack said.

“Good idea. Lads, you go look around upstairs. Jack and I will go check around somewhere else,” Geoff ordered.

“Come on, lads, let’s go look in Ryan’s bedroom to see where he, Meg, and Gav have their kinky sex,” Michael teased as he and Jeremy walked to find the bedroom.

“Oh, come off it,” Gavin whined as he followed behind them.

“We should check his office,” Jack said to Geoff.

“He likes computers and stuff, so that’s a good idea,” Geoff waved Jack along as they walked to the office, Beowulf followed behind. They got to the office to see a plain looking room with videogame posters on the wall. Beowulf walked over to the desk and whined as he rubbed up again a man sleeping at it. They took a closer look at the man and saw that it was Ryan, passed out at the computer. “Ryan, oh my god!” Geoff exclaimed as he ran in. Ryan didn’t move in the slightest. “Ryan, come on,” he said as he shook Ryan’s shoulders.

Jack walked in to Geoff and glanced at screen. He did a double take to make sure he actually saw what he thought. “Uh, Geoff…”

“What?” he asked. Jack directed Geoff’s eyes to the screen, which read Minequest. “Fuck,” he said, quietly. “LADS, I FOUND RYAN!”

A few moments later, the lads came into the room. “What, what is it?” Michael asked. He paused, spotting the passed-out Ryan. “Is he dead?”

“No, look at his screen,” he said.

The lads obeyed, and Michael and Gavin looked twice to make sure they were seeing what they thought they were seeing. “Shit,” Michael cursed.

“I--I thought we all agreed never to play that mod again,” Gavin stuttered.

“I don’t see what the big deal with a Minecraft mod is,” Jeremy said.

Gavin ignored Jeremy. “Geoff, what do we do?”

“I…” Geoff sighed. “I think we have to go back into the mod to bring him out.”

Most of Achievement Hunter groaned. Play the cursed mod again to go rescue Ryan’s dumb ass? It was another adventure that nobody really wanted.

#mqee #ragehappy #rt fanfic #fanfic #minecraft au