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putaposyinyourhair · 10 months

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Slowly but Also Like All at Once

noah diaz x mirage (they’re… y’know 💅)

warnings: mirage keeps flirting like an asshole and noah’s still in his feels but it gets tender

arcee shows up (and you know she should come with her own caution label)

“So, um…” Noah pauses for a second, to think on his words before he says them aloud. “You look good.”

He physically flinches away from his own words— from his own stupidity— and squeezes his eyes shut, not able to stop himself from reaching up with both hands to dig his knuckles into his eye sockets.

Fuckin’ idiot.

But Mirage just chuckles at his expense and Noah forces the embarrassment away with a deep breath.

“I meant like— you look… new,” he tries to correct, even though it still sounds wrong. “How’d that happen?”

“Oh, you mean how’d they get humpty dumpty back together again?” Mirage drawls.

Noah shifts in the sand, pulling away from Mirage’s side— where he’s been resting for a while now— and turns to sit cross-legged in the sand, staring up at the bot.

Mirage is looking up at the sky. The stars are starting to disappear behind dark clouds but the moon is still shining brightly over the water, its light reflecting off of Mirage’s silver face plating.

“Yeah,” Noah alludes, curiously.

Mirage glances down at him, frowning softly for a moment— such a quick little moment that Noah barely catches it— before he shrugs.

“OP spent like ten weeks in the Mojave looking for one of our medics who crash-landed there,” the mech reveals. “Ratchet. Dude’s usually such a buzzkill but… he’s good at what he does. I’ll give him that.”

Noah’s brows arch.

A medic? A new autobot?

“How many of you are there?” he asks before he can stop himself. “On Earth, I mean.”

One side of Mirage’s mouth tugs up into a sly smirk and Noah rolls his eyes before the bot can even reply.

“I told you already, boo, there’s none like me,” he declares pompously.

Noah reaches out and attempts to shove at Mirage’s thigh guard, uselessly because it does absolutely nothing.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Noah tells him. “You’re one of a kind.”

Mirage sits up, grinning.

“You better recognize!”

Noah barks out a short laugh.

“You a one of a kind dumbass,” he snickers softly.

Mirage reaches out to poke at his chest playfully and Noah tries to bat the digit away fruitlessly.

“Yeah, but you missed me,” the mech teases. “You already admitted it. No take backs.”

Noah doesn’t know why the words pull such a visceral reaction out of him, but they do. The happy smile drops from his face and he swallows drily.

“I did, man,” he concedes, fisting the material of his jeans in his hands. “I really fuckin’ did.”

Mirage moves so fast, it almost scares the shit out of Noah. The mech reaches out and suddenly Noah finds himself settled on top of the bot’s lap, pressed against his chest plates with one of Mirage’s servos cradling his back— well, the backpack strapped to his back anyway— whilst the other gently presses Noah’s face into the junction between his helm and his shoulderpad.

They’re… hugging?

Noah feels kind of frozen solid for a minute, unsure of what to do in this strange new situation. Sure, he’s been… inside— for lack of a better word— of Mirage before, in different modes of him too. And Noah doesn’t think either of them are strangers to physical proximity, after all they’d stuck pretty close to each other the whole time in Peru.

But this is something else. Something… more.

It’s nice though. Really nice.

So he relaxes into it.

It’s warm. And he can feel that same hum emanating from underneath the bot’s plating, like a low-frequency vibration that seems to soothe and calm something deep inside of Noah— he’s almost tempted to call it his soul, as corny as that fucking sounds.

Noah’s face feels more heated than usual.

“You a hugger, huh?” he mumbles, reaching up to run a few fingers against the glossy metal edge of that baseball cap-esque piece that rounds the back of Mirage’s helm.

This close, Mirage smells faintly of motor oil and something else Noah suspects must be alien in origin because he decides there’s no earthly scent he can compare it to. Not any that do it justice anyway.

Mirage’s digits move against the back of his head, digging into his curls as the mech’s chest plate’s rise and fall with a small stutter.

“For you?” he sighs. “Always.”

Noah’s eyes widen, his jaw clenching.

And his heart is fucking… fluttering. He really hopes his friend can’t feel it.

Something’s wrong. With him. Or with Mirage.

Noah doesn’t know what it is. But this is…

It is weird. Or, maybe not weird. Weird isn’t the right word for it.

“Mirage.”

Noah pulls away from the mech so fast, a yelp bursting out of him as he nearly tumbles off of the bot’s lap— he’s sure he would’ve gone sprawling into the sand between his friends’ outstretched legs had it not been for Mirage’s servos keeping him upright. He reaches out and grabs onto one of the bot’s gauntlets.

And before he can look away— to locate the source of the newcomer’s voice, a newcomer Noah is pretty sure is Arcee— he looks up at Mirage.

Oh.

Mirage’s face is doing… something. The mech’s optics are darker than usual— not glowing as bright a blue— and the silver metal just beneath his optics is tinged with a bluish hue, something Noah’s never seen it do before.

Noah doesn’t want to assume but it almost looks like a—

“Aww, Arcee, why you scarin’ my boy like that?” Mirage whines out, throwing his helm back like an unruly child who’s been told he has to eat all the vegetables on his plate. “His heart’s beating so fast!”

Okay, so Mirage can feel his heartbeat when they’re this close.

Wonderful.

Noah huffs— mortified but unwilling to admit it, even though his cheeks feel so flushed he probably looks like he could be doing an impression of a tomato— and reaches back to gently push away the servo Mirage has at his back.

“I wasn’t scared,” he grumbles, grunting as he steps down from Mirage’s lap and back onto the sand. “Jus’ surprised… that’s all.”

Arcee steps closer, smiling softly as she glances between them for a moment.

“Sorry, Noah,” she has the decency to apologize. “I really didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Noah waves her apology off.

“Nah, seriously,” he stresses, reaching up to grab onto the straps of his backpack. “I wasn’t scared or nothin’.”

Yeah, he kind of was. But he was mostly embarrassed.

Was it normal for cybertronians to hug humans? To hold humans the way Mirage was holding him?

Arcee isn’t giving him any indication. So maybe it’s not as big of a deal as it feels to Noah.

The femme fixes her gaze on Mirage, one optical ridge arching as both servos rest at her skirt plates. Her lower body cocking to one side as she watches the blue and silver bot rise off of the ground, raining sand down all over Noah who groans and steps away, reaching up to sweep it off of his head.

He’s definitely going to need a good, long shower later to get all that sand out of his curls.

“I said I’d cover for you for a couple of hours, Mirage,” Arcee points out, then mimics glancing down at a watch on her gauntlet in a very human-like way. “It’s been six.”

Noah’s eyes widen, glancing down at his own watch quickly.

Six hours? Oh, he definitely missed dinner. His ma’s gonna kill him.

It’s nearing sunrise already.

“It’s time,” Arcee emphasizes. "Optimus will not be pleased."

A sharp wave of what can only be panic rushes through Noah. It’s so quick, engulfing him from head to toe. He feels exactly the same way he’d felt when he’d had to stand there and watch Mirage be taken away. He thinks he makes some kind of tiny strangled noise.

The overwhelming sensation leaves him blanched and breathless.

“Arcee!” Mirage chastises, dropping to one knee beside Noah. “You’re not helping.”

Noah feels a couple of his friend’s digits slip underneath his chin and he lets the mech tenderly lift his face so he’s looking up into Mirage’s now bright blue optics.

“W-what is she talkin’ about?” he manages to squeak out, despite the dread that feels like it’s got a physical hold of his heart in his chest.

“It's nothing bad!” Mirage swears, holding his other servo up, palm out. “I promise.”

Noah swallows the lump in his throat and exhales shakily.

“Okay,” he yields. “Okay, sorry.”

He feels kind of stupid about his reaction, childish, and pulls his chin away from the mech's digits. But he doesn’t look away.

Mirage gives him a look that Noah thinks translates as sheepish, before he stands, optics flickering about for a moment like he’s struggling to make himself meet Noah’s unwavering gaze.

“Okay, so, uh,” Mirage stammers, reaching up to rub at the back of his helm with one slightly twitchy servo. “Well, you see, what had happened was—”

Arcee huffs.

“Ratchet has yet to give him the all clear so Optimus expressly forbid him from leaving," she reveals. "So of course he snuck out of the medbay without permission to come see you tonight, Noah.”

Oh. Yeah, sure.

Noah’s heart doesn’t feel like it’s swelling with joy and about to burst out of his chest or anything.

He’s totally like… chill about it.

#noah x mirage #norage #noah diaz #mirage #mirage rotb #transformers rise of the beasts #transformers rotb #mirage x noah

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youkaiyume · 11 months

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So, Rise of the Beasts!!

I saw it twice of the weekend, and I want to put down my honest thoughts.

Overall, I had a great time and I definitely think it's worth watching. Ignore the critic reviews for some reason they are offended that a Transformers movie exists to sell toys. You know, their sole purpose since the very beginning of inception. But OF COURSE I have THOUGHTS so...

Spoilers under the cut!

I liked the human characters for the most part. Noah's sudden onboard motives for going with the autobots to Peru was not as convincing but adventure needs to happen so I gave it a pass.

Mirage is like, DTF with Noah. Like he is SO ready for that tiny bf bff. It's obvious that Bee spoke so much about Charlie (cuz it seemed he was the only one who did talk positively about humans in their group) that Mirage was just. HIS BODY WAS READY.

CHARLIE WAS MENTIONED!!! AHHHHH!!! That was the one tiny smidgeon of a crumb that I wanted and they gave it to me. Granted it was implied when Optimus says "I know one was good to you, Bee" But I was told that the Latin America dub had him say Charlie's actual name. There was a SCENE that was cut out according to the Hollywood Reporter--that Bumblebee had also pulled out a polaroid pic that Charlie took of them together from the first movie here to show OP. HE'S BEEN CARRYING AROUND HER PICTURE ALL THESE YEARS I DIE WHY DID YOU CUT THIS OUT!!!

Mirage's abilities seem very arbitrary. And I do not like this. He can turn into several alt modes which seems to be only a thing that he can do... he can mass shift--which I know mass shifting is a thing but when he turns into a truck to sneak past the museum security I was like??? I was always under the impression that the bots could turn into a vehicle relative to their own actual size so this just confuses me. There is supposedly an earlier cut of the film where it was more clear that the trailer was another illusion. which I wish they kept in. Also when he becomes Noah's symbiote suit at the end?? Like, as a shipper and rule of cool I am into it, but as a person who wants rules to ground my science fiction I don't like how Mirage is just a swiss army knife for the writer's convenience. It feels lazy instead of taking the time to actually worldbuild. Nobody else can do these things.

The arbitrary mass shifting of him being as big or as small as he wants (like when he becomes Noah's exosuit) really falls apart when they keep insisting that they need the humans because only they can fit into small spaces. Well, clearly not cuz you can just do it yourself. AGAIN, PLEASE BE CONSISTENT WITH YOUR RULES.

Airazor x Elena. Anyone else????

speaking of which, I am very upset about what happens to Airazor. And we never even got to see her transform. tragic.

Optimus sure was a negative nancy which--I understand why but I hope they ease up on edgy "i will rip everyone's faces off" Optimus because it feels disingenuous to his character to keep it going for too long. Like I get it, they killed your fave child so I will forgive you but also I want more of "Be strong enough to be gentle" Optimus. Not the edgelord Bayverse Optimus that they are clearly going for cuz the know certain :ahem: fans like that.

Beeeee. They put him out of commission which again, according to interviews they did just so they could make sure he doesn't steal the spotlight and give a chance for the other characters to shine lmao. He is too powerful. But also because we shots of him in the trailers, I was not too worried about Bee staying out of commission. But goddamn when if I still wasn't hyped as hell when he made his comeback. 10/10 he proves he's still the GOAT.

I hate Pablo/Wheeljack. No, after seeing the movie my opinion of him did not improve in fact it got so much worse. His design was the LEAST of his problems. Every moment he was on screen was deeply cringe. And he barely did anything!! He could have not been in the movie at all and it wouldn't have made a difference and I genuinely believe it would have been a better film. All this hullaballoo over Pablo and this is what we got. Wheeljack fans lost hard after all that defense I'm sorry this ain't it.

Hey speaking of bots that barely got any lines or screentime, wtf was up with Rhinox and Cheetor? My boys got shafted :(

There was a moment where OP is asking the bots if they detected the terrorcons and Arcee WHO IS SITTING in the pablo van was like "lol nope" and I was like GURL how could you, you're in a van. And it made no sense because don't you also have an altmode??? Shouldn't you be scouting outside to cover more ground???

I firmly believe the only had Arcee sitting in there like a dumb duck because they wanted Wheeljack to make a dumb joke in the original cut about how it was a long time since she was inside him. UGHUGHUGH.

Did I mention how glad I am that they cut the majority of Wheeljack's screentime since it was so awful especially his and Arcee's implied romance? Especially since they killed off the other femmes so the only one we got now has to have a mandatory romance. No thanks. Glad that nonsense is gone.

The Maximals' robot modes were very minimal. and they went by so fast I never got a good look at their designs.

I loved how the Maximals were harmoniously living with the native tribe--and speaking their language!

Scourge's face reveal seemed to be treated like it was a big deal but when we saw him it was just... guy without his wig on. Literally the surprise is that he is bald.

Noah x Mirage is very strong good. I have no doubt the fandom will be all over it since they seem to eat up BL romance much more readily and I am all for it. They also have all the great ingredients for it--flirting, drift compatibility, self sacrifice for the other. Another human x transformer ship for the books.

I'm sure there are some ppl who like the ending. but I.... did not. I do not want to see G.I.Joes in my transformers I'm sorry. I don't want the return of military propaganda or more introductions to several human characters that take away from the transformers. I don't want to see them exploited or used for our own human affairs--even if it's a fictional cult-- when they could be literally fighting Decepticons or Unicron or whatever. People might have wanted them in Bayverse cuz it was heavily skewed Military in those films but I don't want to see it again. It was a terrible, dark time. the Joes might be presented as good guys but I don't trust the military in general and I don't see their motives as altruistic--especially if their goal is to use them for their own purposes. Why would they help them get home? They wouldn't, if just to keep their best weapons--and Noah is bait. He is bait and he will fall for it hook line and sinker because they are bribing him with his brother's healthcare and the fact that he is struggling to find work elsewhere.I hope if they are to be involved at all it will be relegated to characters here and there but they stay in their own movies if they have to ride on Transformers coattails to revive an irrelevant struggling franchise.

There was minimal human injuries/death and I appreciate that. They did the DBZ thing where they took their fight to remote locations. This probably won't keep up if they introduce the Joes :/

Overall, 8/10. I had a fun time. I didn't love it as much as Bumblebee but it was definitely miles better than Bayverse (a low bar I know). The action was clear, the characters likable, the CGI mostly stellar. I have hope that they will bring back Charlie maybe. But hey, I took my parents to it the second time around and my Mom liked Mirage and my Dad did not fall asleep so I will consider that a stamp of approval.

#transformers #rise of the beasts #ROTB #text post #long post #read more under the cut #not so much a review as all of the thoughts i had while watching it

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holespoles · 3 months

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'Our life' embroidery by Juliana Damian, Llully Cooperative, Puno, Peru - co-op formed to ensure women earn fair wages

#Juliana Damian #embroidery

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dindjiarin · 2 years

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Sierra Six x Analyst!Reader

In response to an Anon ask, I give you this little one-shot. 🥰

Summary: As a CIA analyst, you've been assigned to help Sierra Six twice. This second time proves a little smutty for you.

Random Notes: Long-haired female reader, usage of words I feel weird writing, Six slighty OOC (hard to write that man as a lover sometimes) but I based him on how he is in Ballistic (Book 3).

TAGS: Smut, explicit sexual content, porn no plot, fluff(y), Six's uncontrollable angst, unprotected sex, bathroom sex, fluff, happy ending, ambiguous ending.

WORD COUNT: 5.3k

ANON ASK

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Six sits on a stone bench inside a cacophonous mall. His target is a mid-level trafficker: forties, American, good-looking. The kind of man who could successfully sell anything. The criminal sits at a table across the cavernous room, waiting for a buyer who will never show.

In D.C. for an op, Six is pleasantly surprised to hear a long-awaited voice over his comms.

"Good afternoon, oh-Six. It's very nice to see you again." He can hear your big smile.

"Considering I can't see you, I'll settle for saying that it's nice to hear you," though he wants to, Six doesn't smile for operational security.

He gets back to business, "I have eyes."

"I’m sure you've done your homework, Six, but I still have to tell you that there's an alley twenty meters behind the service doors, and Tally One will be using it to exit."

Six doesn't respond. He did do his homework. This was a run-of-the-mill mission. This man would be dead in that alley within ten minutes, and the world would be better off because of it. Six needed to exert no brain power over it. His thoughts instead drifted to taking advantage of being on the same continent as you.

Six months ago, he'd been in Peru for a week on an assignment. You'd been his analyst. However, your involvement had been remote - providing Six with data via phone calls. The sweetness in your voice couldn't be mistaken for anything other than a good soul. He'd enjoyed the warmhearted, personal way you'd spoken to him. He'd seen your file in the mission documents and noted your staff photo. Six was surprised to find himself looking forward to your phone calls. He'd thought about you often since Peru, hoping you’d be assigned together again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ten minutes later, Six stands above the body of the trafficker. It was as cut and dry as he had planned, and the man never even saw it coming. Six wipes the knife and tosses it next to the body. Typically, other members of the CIA would come clean house, but they were content to leave this guy for the locals.

You pop your head from around the corner of the alley, your hair swinging out like a pendulum. Six notices the movement and his head snaps up to address the threat, but a jolt shoots through him at the sight of you. Bizarrely, he wants to shield you from the sight of the body, so he steps in front of it.

You round the corner and smile gratefully at his chivalrous gesture.

"It is so strange. I’ve been involved in the deaths of targets, but seeing their bodies in person is something else.” You're contemplative, staring at the man’s motionless form.

He doesn't reply, too distracted by you being physically present. You had been in a CIA polo and your hair had been pulled back in your employee photo, but now that you were blending in in civilian clothes, he could finally, properly see you. His heart beats faster.

You hold out your hand, wanting to introduce yourself officially.

"This is my first time out in the field. I’m glad they set me up with a legend like you, Six." You beam at him, then your tone softens, “I enjoyed talking to you last time.”

"Being a legend isn’t very fun, let me assure you."

He takes your hand. You can't help another grin. His hand is much larger than yours, and he holds onto it a second longer than he should.

He continues inelegantly, “I’m also glad it’s you here today.”

"Our ride is in five blocks. Are you okay to go?" You ask in case he had been injured.

The genuine concern on your face makes him want to smile. No one ever cared unless he was visibly bleeding.

He motions for you to lead the way, and it's one of the least altruistic acts he's ever committed. Six shamelessly let his eyes rove. The knee-length sundress you have on hugs your waist perfectly, your hair swings as you stroll, and when you turn to look back at him, Six feels his heartbeat speed up again. His characteristic near-smile appears on his face, which causes butterflies to take flight in you.

He’s so intimidating, you think. What is he smiling at?

Two blocks after leaving the alleyway, you spot a group of cops standing around eating lunch. Six eyes them as they lean down to listen to their radios, and he knows the body’s been found. They collectively trash their food and begin to jog in your direction.

Thinking quickly, you grab Six’s hand and turn into him, placing your other hand on his chest. He instinctively puts his arm around your waist, and you tilt your head up, pretending to be deep in loving conversation.

The cops run by you both without a second glance. You take a steadying breath, peeking around Six to make sure they’re gone. Once certain, you look back up at him. His arms haven’t released you, and his face looks like you’ve struck him.

Six knows what you’ve done was purely tactical, but he feels like he’s just short-circuited. All thoughts of avoiding detection have left his mind, replaced by the feeling of you. He could smell the buttercream scent of your nude lipstick. He could feel your chest rising and falling against his own.

“We’re clear,” you whisper.

He nods and lets go of you unwillingly.

You notice his hesitation and your body tightens at the thrill. Sierra Six does not think of me that way. Be professional, you tell yourself.

Wandering through downtown D.C., you navigate the busy streets until the two of you reach a black SUV. Six gallantly opens the front passenger door for you, which he’s satisfied to see makes you blush. Six gets in the driver’s seat and pulls away from the curb. He’s navigating as deftly as he can, but this city is one of the busiest in the world, and Six is well-known for his poor driving skills. The CIA’s best asset is no match for metropolitan traffic. You decide to pass the time.

“Have you been enjoying being back in the States?” You ask timidly.

You’re fiddling with the hem of your dress, which does not escape Six’s notice.

“I am now,” he says.

What does that mean? “I hope you’re able to see family, or friends, or whoever while you’re back. I’m sure it’s difficult being away all the time.”

He doesn’t answer, which makes you nervous that you’ve touched a raw subject. You can’t know that he’s trying to work up the courage to let you in. To connect with you.

“I’m sorry,” you almost whisper, “I don’t mean to be too forward.”

Your hands twist in your lap. Six’s close proximity is making your heart thump wildly, and you feel self-conscious.

Six is fascinated by your incongruous personality. You are sweet and kind. How did you wind up in such a cutthroat, gritty workplace? So, he asks. In Six’s straightforward way.

“How do you work for the CIA?”

“Oh, I have a few degrees in communications, languages, and finance.”

He raises his eyebrows at you, so you add, “I couldn’t decide what I wanted to study, so I tried them all. And then my aunt - she works in Operations - said I should try for a position as an analyst.”

Six laughs, “I never finished high school.”

Because you hear the bitterness masked in his words, you kindly lay a hand on his arm. You feel the hard muscles tense beneath your touch, which was the opposite of your intention, but you aren’t aware of how touch-starved he is. His knuckles tighten on the steering wheel.

“I know enough about the Sierra program to know why you didn’t. I don’t know what happened, but I’m sure the justice system failed you given your age.”

The vehicle lurches to a stop at another red light. Six looks over at you, amazed at your desire to soothe him. No one had ever tried to cheer him up over his own crime - except maybe Fitzroy. His jaw is clenched as he sorts out his thoughts. Six does not want to drop you off at the Langley headquarters right now, so he finally emboldens himself.

“Have you eaten?” His face is unreadable. He grimaces internally, wishing he could’ve worded that more clearly.

Not getting the hint, and hoping your admission about his past didn’t offend him, your words stumble over each other, “Oh, uh, no. I haven’t. But, if you don’t mind - I hate to even tell you this - but analysts don’t get paid all that much, so I never eat out,” you explain. “My sandwich is back at the office.”

The light changes, and he’s forced to turn away, but he tries to clarify, “I’m- asking you out for dinner.”

Oh.

“You- what?”

Your heart feels like it’s going to pound through your chest. The blood rushes in your ears. No one had asked you on a date since you’d started at the agency, and the first person to do so was Sierra Six?

He tosses you a minuscule smile before returning his eyes to the road. Six should’ve known your diffident nature wouldn’t allow you to flirt, but he wasn’t any good at it, either. He chuckles under his breath at the comedy routine this was becoming.

A small, disbelieving giggle leaves your lips. “Okay, yeah! I’d love to, Six.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You’re seated at a nice restaurant. Nice enough that they had a coat check, and the bathrooms had antechambers with chaise lounges. Six wasn’t trying to impress you; he just liked the steak here. It never crossed his mind that you might think he was trying to show off his means. Despite his humble beginnings, Six hadn’t thought about money in nearly thirty years - thanks to prison and the CIA.

“This place is so fancy,” you laugh. “Am I going to get kicked out for my dress?” It has spaghetti straps, and you’re worried.

“Do they do that?” Six had no idea if this restaurant had a dress code. He was always in a suit, anyway. Six frowns at his own lack of knowledge and chides himself for getting lazy in the U.S. His words don't assuage your worry, but you figure they probably wouldn’t have let you in to begin with.

“I don’t see how anyone could have a problem with it.” He reasons, “I like it. It's very s-” He cuts himself off at the way you're squirming.

“Thank you,” you feel hot again. You shyly duck your head.

You are nervous. Six didn’t need his extensive training in body language to tell him that. Six wonders if a non-physical compliment might make you feel more at ease.

“You were kind to me in Peru. That’s uncommon in this business.”

You meet his attentive gaze, shake your head at his words, and sigh, “That makes me sad. I guess when you see the worst of humanity day after day, it does one of two things to people. It hardens or softens them.”

“What do you think it does to me?” He asks.

You hesitate, wondering if you should be honest. “I think you’re one of the rare exceptions where it does both.”

Six sits back in his chair. “Soft is a dirty word in my line of work.”

You smile, your confidence growing. You shift forward onto your elbows, “That’s the beauty of you. You’re the only operative I’ve ever heard of who is so -” You remember you’re in public, “So good at your job but selective about your targets. You’re like Batman.” You raise an eyebrow in mock conspiracy.

Six laughs, loudly, which surprises both of you. “Batman? Jesus, that’s a first.”

“You’re better, actually,” you continue. “The things you do can be terrible - certainly the ones you go after think so,” you laugh awkwardly. “But the reality is that those terrible things do more harm to you. And you do them anyway because it’s what’s necessary. You’re a good man. You put everyone else above you.”

It’s the most passionately he’s heard you speak, and he forces down the lump in his throat. Six did not agree with you. He was inside his own head, and he knew exactly how little the acts he committed affected him. He didn’t understand that that was exactly what you meant. That the coldness in which he insulated himself also froze him out from the warmth.

“There are things the CIA does not know about me,” he says carefully. He clasps his hands on the table. “And you would not think they were good.”

“You’re human, Six.” You soothe, placing one hand over his. “You aren’t perfect, and you shouldn’t hold yourself to a standard that no one else does.”

Six falls into your eyes for a moment, stunned by the grace and sincerity. His eyes start to tour around your face, appreciating your features, before stumbling over your parted lips. His own part involuntarily, and you feel a twist of tension in your gut.

His eyes don’t leave their target as he asks, “You really think I’m a good man?”

“I mean - I don’t know you personally, I guess, but… yes. Given what I do know and how I feel about you having met you.” You blush at your choice of words, but it was honest.

“Would a good man want to do the things I want to do to you?” It’s said in a thick voice.

He feels guilty for his lustful thoughts, but they just won’t stop. He's drawn to your goodness like a moth to a flame.

Your mouth goes dry, and you answer in a whisper, “I - I don’t know.”

He smirks in a self-deprecating manner. His eyes flick back up to yours. “I think the answer’s ‘no.’”

“Six -” you start, but the waiter comes by to bring your food.

You’re no longer hungry given the look in the eyes of the man across from you. All you want to do now is take him back to your apartment and show him what you really think of him.

You thank the waiter - twice while he refills your water - and he leaves the two of you alone again. You’re speechless now, feeling awkward, wondering how to suggest it.

Six feels more awkward. He was trying not to scare you away, but instead, all he seems to do was put his foot in his mouth. He decides to change the subject abruptly.

“Do you have family?”

“Oh, uh, yes.” You’ve got whiplash from the differences in subject matter, but you tell him about your family. You mention that you’re alone in D.C. “It gets lonely on the holidays. I try to bring in some cheerfulness to the office since there are others like me, but I feel like I don’t really make a dent.” You admit.

“I’m sure you do. I already told you that you made a dent for me six months ago.” Six tries to argue. He finds it hard to believe that you couldn’t lift anyone’s mood, but he also knows the kind of assholes that work at the CIA.

You don’t make eye contact, still feeling unsteady and surprised at the turn your day has taken. Six can read your body language, but his translation is off. He believes he’s offended you, and he’s already trying to manage his anger at himself. Six had waited half of a year to be assigned together again, and now he was blowing it because he had the social graces of a monkey.

“Excuse me. I’ll be right back,” he pushes back from his chair and buttons his jacket.

You notice the look on his face as he gets up and turns away. While your training isn’t as thorough as his, your translation is spot on. You watch as he opens the men’s room door and vanishes.

You make a split-second decision.

Standing, you walk the fifty paces toward the bathroom doors. They’re rather far from the tables, you note happily. You swivel your head from side to side trying to see if anyone is watching as you pull open the men’s room instead of the women’s.

Inside, the antechamber is a deep red with artwork adorning every inch of space on the walls. You turn and see that the door locks with a deadbolt, so you throw it in place. Classical music is piped in, and a violin cries as you turn the corner to see Six standing at the sink, adjusting his jacket sleeves.

Six is visibly shocked to see you. He whirls around, pulls his gun, and races over to you.

“What’s wrong?” He’s immediately on alert.

You smile but it falters, your bravado beginning to disappear now that you’re face-to-face with him and he misunderstood your entrance.

No turning back now, you decide.

You grab his jacket’s lapel and pull him down into a kiss. His face remains impassive for several seconds as he tries to wrap his mind around what’s taking place. You part your lips, kissing him a second time, then a third time, before he finally starts to relax his own lips.

Once he reciprocates, you grab his biceps, pushing him backward in the direction you hope the furniture is. He lets you push him, which oddly makes the tension in your stomach coil faster. Six’s knees fold partially when they connect with the edge of the chaise; he sits down, grabbing your thighs in the process. His gun is discarded beside him.

Your hands frantically unbutton his jacket. He shrugs out of it. His white t-shirt leaves his scarred, tattooed arms bare to you. You rake your nails tenderly down his skin and he shudders. His lips move with yours. His tongue enters your mouth just enough to drive you wild. You lecherously note when his dick twitches underneath you.

Six’s hands come up to cradle your face, wanting to be delicate at first, but he’s ashamed to have initially thought this was a ruse. It makes him overcompensate. His hands drop to skate up your dress, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of your thighs, your ass. He pulls your body down against him roughly. Six smirks at the desperate noise you make. He wants to hear everything he can make you say.

You’re wearing the worst possible underwear, of course, as there was no thought in your mind that this would be happening. They’re old, thin cotton with holes in them. They were comfortable, but they were ugly.

Feeling frumpy, you pull out of the kiss to breathlessly tell him, “Wish I’d worn something nicer,”

You feel a jerk and hear a ripping sound as Six hooks his fingers in the elastic waistband and pulls them apart easily, his arms flexing underneath your hands.

He leans forward to taste your lips again, and mumbles, “Now I don’t have to replace them.”

Your fingers move to unzip his pants, and he groans when they graze his swelling bulge. You slide his pants down to his knees - you don’t need them all the way off, you just need him - before settling onto your knees. Your hips buck of their own volition, all-but riding his naked thigh. He clamps a hand over your mouth to muffle the cry you let out at the relief.

“Fuck,” he laughs softly, entranced by the blissful satisfaction on your face.

His laugh makes his cock jump, which reminds you of something you’d thought of often when regarding Six.

You stand, then drop to the tile floor on your knees. You quickly twist your hair into a bun, using your scrunchie to keep it out of your way. You trail your fingers down his muscular thighs, pulling his boxers down now as well. You pull his pants further (now you really do need them gone). You look up at him, wondering if this is okay.

Six is not breathing. His blonde hair is mussed from your hands. His white t-shirt is his only article of clothing. He’s looking down at the sight before him like it’s a cosmic event. His heart pounding, Six watches as your lips, the very same lips he felt depraved over earlier, wrap around his aching cock. He groans as your cheeks hollow and you start an agonizingly slow drag. His eyes close in bliss but he forces them back open. He does not want to miss a moment of this.

You cup one hand underneath his testicles as your other hand strokes along his velvety shaft, working in tandem with your mouth. Your tongue teases along a vein and Six’s hips jerk slightly. You hum, gratified. You wiggle around, your heels pressing into your clit to relieve yourself somewhat.

You relax your muscles, taking him until his tip hits the back of your throat and you gag quietly. Tears spring to your eyes as you make eye contact with him, and he almost cums right there.

“Fuck,” he says again, a strained whisper this time. He grasps your chin and eases himself from your mouth, explaining, “You come first.”

The back of your hand comes up to wipe your mouth, before you’re straddling his lap once more. His lips and teeth and tongue work at your neck, your chest, while his hands push down the straps of your dress to give him more access.

You can feel him, heavy and straining beneath you, and you can’t stop yourself from sliding your hands along his shaft. You tease the head of his cock against your folds, causing both of you to groan.

Suddenly, you’re on your back. The chaise scrapes the floor in protest. You almost lose your breath with the speed he’d tucked you underneath him. But you’re not complaining. He sheds his shirt, and now Six is completely nude.

He’s so beautiful. You feel so pleasantly small underneath him and his intensely warm gaze. Six is making you feel protected and admired. It’s an overwhelming feeling. Your fingers press against the pinup tattoo on his left pectoral as if to feel the ink impression.

I’m still dressed, it flashes in your mind. As you complete that thought, however, he rucks up your skirt and pulls the bodice down, leaving you exposed to him.

Six wastes no time palming your breasts, unabashedly enjoying them. He shifts closer to kiss you, while the movement edges his cock along your entrance.

Six barely leaves your lips, you can still feel his breath, but he locks eyes with you as he tilts his hips and pushes the tip of his heated cock inside you.

Your gasp breaks into a moan, your eyes wide. You grasp at his neck with one hand while the other flutters to his hip.

Six throbs at your reaction. He leans back more, settling his hands on your breasts again, and uses the motion to push himself deeper. You keen at the fullness and watch as his eyes close with a groan. They fly open, black in lust, when he bottoms out. You shiver in your own desire, and he bends down over you, thinking you’re cold. He pushes a lock of hair behind your ear, and you wonder how in the world he could think he’s a bad man.

His hand grabs your left hip, holding you still, while the other hand covers your mouth. His thumb caresses your chin. Six drags his cock along your walls, reveling in the hot grip around him. He pulls out completely before easing back in, just as slow. Six is absorbing every little expression, every ridge inside you, every little sound you make.

Your chest lifts, wanting to be as close to him as possible. He’s almost fully seated inside you again when he suddenly thrusts hard, letting out a grunt as he does so. A small scream is muffled by his hand. He does it again, and it sends a shockwave up your body. He continues, rocking his hips into you faster, hitting some spot inside you that’s beginning to make you feel lightheaded. You’re making sounds without a care, knowing he’s got you there, too.

He withdraws from you with a strangled sound and rolls you onto your stomach. He pulls your hips toward him, raising you onto your hands and knees. You giggle, arching your back for him. A deep groan rolls in Six's chest at the sight of you so willing and pliant for him.

You feel his hands grip your hips, his fingers curling into your thighs, as he slowly re-enters your body. The invasion feels even better this time. He pushes himself inside again, his body rigid at first, savoring the way your walls let him in. His balls swing against your clit sinfully. You feel like you're being split in two, and you bite your forearm to soften your cry. Six does no such thing. His broken moan is not loud, but it reverberates in the room, setting fire to your body.

Six rolls his hips dramatically, wanting you to feel every inch of him. He sluggishly builds his speed, mesmerized by the way your body moves with his. You throw an arm out in front of you, bracing against the arm of the lounge. Six reaches forward to masturbate you, and you press your face into the cushion to whine, your face rubbing on the fabric with his rhythm.

Six leans over you, his thrusts never stopping, and carefully rips the scrunchie from its place. He grasps your hair again, wrapping it around his fist, and gently pulls you back until your head is on his shoulder. You can feel him grunting and panting on your damp skin.

Your hands reach behind you for some purchase and you find it in his hair. His fingers continue to work your nerves perfectly. You feel the cliff approaching, and you open your mouth to tell him, but he hits a particularly sensitive spot and you splinter. Sheer, white-hot pleasure rips through you. Your toes curl viciously. Your knees buckle and Six falls with you. You clamp one hand over your own mouth to dampen the torrent of cries. Your walls clench around Six as he continues to plunge himself into you, though faltering slightly. He’s breathing heavily in your ear, and you finally recognize that he’s murmuring.

“So good. Fuck, you’re so good.”

It’s as if he’s not even talking to you; Six is just telling the universe. You’re pretty sure he’s not aware he’s voicing his thoughts. You tilt your head back in search of his praising mouth, and he understands, surging forward to kiss you from behind. He drops your hair, letting it fan out along your back.

His movements begin to stutter and his hands massage your breasts. Into your shoulder, he grunts with each laborious thrust. You feel lightheaded with bliss. You look back at him again and he notices the mascara running from your lust filled eyes. Six could not be more aroused than this and it finally breaks him. He groans as he buries himself inside your tight heat, coming hard in a burst of final thrusts.

You both sit in this position for several moments, trying to catch your breath and hoping you've not been heard. He kisses your temple as he carefully leaves your body. You miss him already.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Six was gone. It had been nearly two months since your tryst in the fancy bathroom. Immediately after dressing that day, he had been called and sent off to some far reach of the world, and you'd heard nothing from him.

It was terrible. You had no closure, no explanation on what that was or if it meant anything. You went about your job as usual. Despite working for the self-proclaimed intelligence agency, you learned nothing of Six. You knew he was okay - he was too strong, too lucky for anything serious to have happened. No, what you worried about was whether or not you'd ever see him again. And why the thought of never seeing him again made your heart break. You eventually pushed every thought of Six away, trying to block out the memory of him.

One quiet evening, you sit munching on crackers at your desk. Only one track of fluorescent lighting illuminates your office, and the other desks are empty. Everyone else has gone home, but you sit hoping for some news of Six. Normally, you don’t sit here after hours, but it's Friday - the only day you allow yourself to think about him - and you'll have to spend the whole weekend in the metaphorical dark.

He's the Gray Man, you dumbass. You need to get over him. You feel like crying over your inability to let go of Sierra Six, but crying makes you feel worse, so only a few tears make it down your cheeks.

You gather your things and sling your bag over your shoulder. Stepping out into the brightly-lit hallway, you see a figure walking toward you from the far end.

You swipe at your tears, but you're sure the person saw your motion which was just as obvious. Your eyes are blurred, but you realize it's a tall, blonde man in a gray suit. His steps are quick, determined.

Your stomach seizes up in nervousness. Is it him? Surely not, there's no reason for him to be here now.

But as you blink away the blurriness, you recognize the strikingly blue eyes, the reserved smile. You lift a hand up in a timid wave, unsure how this is going to go.

You're not left waiting long as he closes the distance within seconds. He doesn't exactly feel comfortable making the first move, but he knows from your body language that you're taking his lead. So, as he reaches you, his hand comes up to cup your damp cheek.

"Hi." Your voice breaks on the short word. Was the gentle touch him trying to get back in your pants? Or did it mean something more?

"You were crying?" His eyebrows furrow.

"I- It was a rough day." You answer lamely. Then you ask curiously, "What are you doing here?"

"Is it not obvious?" Six drops his hand, confused. He thought he had a flashing neon light above him: Six is In Love.

"Everyone's gone home." You tell him, meaning the upper echelon who ran the Sierra program.

"I don't care about them. I'm- I'm here to see you." Six says it cautiously, now concerned about what you'll say.

Your voice is little more than a squeak, "For some company?"

Six's eyebrows furrow again, deeper this time. He frowns. "Not that kind. You think higher of me than that, don't you?"

"I did. I do. But I haven't heard from you in two months, Six. I'm not sure what happened that day. I don't know what you want and I can't stop wondering what you want." Tears well in your eyes again.

Relieved now, Six's laugh is more of a sigh. He cradles your face in his rough hands.

His blue eyes burn into yours as he spells it out, "I want you. You and your soft kindness. I spent two months away because I had to. But I also had to come back." It's clear he means for you. "As for what happened, well… you came on to me in that bathroom." He smirks.

You smile up at him, joy sparking in your heart, your hands holding onto his arms. You had tried to forget Six, but he's the kind of man you can't forget - despite his Gray Man reputation.

"You're glowing," Six says reverently.

#sierra six #sierra six x reader #court gentry #courtland gentry #fanfic #my fics #personal #smut #anon asks #the gray man #the gray man 2022 #ryan gosling #six #court gentry x you #court gentry x reader #fanfiction

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huanted-dennys · 9 months

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i was rewatching rotb cause i’m having a bad day and i know we all understand that this version of mirage is very different then the idw and g1 depiction, when it comes to personality

g1 mirage is very aloof and proper and rotb is pretty much the exact opposite

so it’s natural to think they are different in other aspects such as his skills and stealth as an autobot and we see this in the way the other autobots talk about mirage

“mirage isn’t exactly known for being quiet” -Arcee (my queen )

“Way to be incognito” -optimus (and his general attitude towards mirage)

i’m sure there’s more quotes i had to stop watching half way through cause i had to do something

And at first glance you’d think they would have good reason to think that

rotb mirage gives off an air of not giving a shit about what people think, he’s loud, makes jokes and laughs at inappropriate times, and he has a goddamn Porsche as an alt.

on the other hand g1 mirage, as i said before, is quiet, aloof, and very stiff socially wise when it comes to other autobots and to top it off was in spec-ops (his entire job was to not be noticeable)

it also reflects in how their outlier abilities differs (as it’s often changed up from continuity to continuity)

you wouldn’t fault the autobots for thinking that mirage wouldn’t be very good at keeping a low profile

but when i was rewatching i noticed that, they’re very off the mark

yes he loud and gives off the annoying brother vibes but when it comes to laying low he does it very well

e.g

- when we first see mirage he’s hiding in his alt mode (a Porsche) and at first it seems like a bad choice but he hides in an area (rich person garage) where there’s heavy security and other just as flashy cars where not a lot of people would come through casually, so it’s not the worst hiding spot

- when noah first try’s to break in, he doesn’t freak out or try to scare him off, which he could’ve done cause it was legit just him and noah down there, just re locks his doors. when he does get in and starts to hot wire him he again doesn’t freak out and just lets noah think he’s a normal ass car. he only goes off when security comes up and points a gun at noah

- when noah and mirage are on the bridge running from the cops, the cop taps the back of mirage and swings him around and when noah freaks out and asks him to “do somEthinG pLeAse!” he turns his lights on FIRST so the cop doesn’t see and then transformers around noah

-before he uses his holograms when running from the cops he waits for a truck to block the cops view before he projects his holograms

- when the autobots are arguing over how to get the key from the museum it’s mirage that suggests they use noah “He can fit through one of those little doors take the key and leave a nice little “iou” :3”

-when noah and mirage go to break in noah starts freaking out a bit and tells mirage he has to “switch it up, turn into a boat or a helicopter or something” but what does mirage do? turns into a god damn garbage truck

-when elena noah and the autobots first get to peru wheeljack brings up the celebration that closes up pretty much the whole city cause there’s just so many people in the streets. it’s MIRAGE that suggests a night mission and it’s OPTIMUS that doesn’t want to (noah was the one to suggest he and elena go)

again i’m sure there’s more but i’m tired and i gotta finish rewatching it

i just love the idea that this stupid man is one of the sneakiest of the autobots stuck on earth

#transformers #tf #rotb #tf rotb #transformers rise of the beasts #rotb spoilers #mirage #tf mirage #plz let this man have a spec ops background like his g1 counter part

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keef-a-corn · 10 months

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Okay so Transformers Rise of The Beasts.

Thoughts?

Honestly 7/10

Spoilers!!

CGI? Slay.

Character design? Alrigh

Voice Acting? Slay-ish I’m sorry Liza Koshy as Arcee just.. didn’t fit. But everything else slay.

Humans? Alrigh

Maximals? Slay

Autobots? Slay

Character introductions? Weak. Too much on the humans, not enough on the bots. I dunno who the plane was.

Character relationships? Same dealio. Also totally cop out with calling Optimus a big brother. Like nah, a big brother would’ve lay Bumblebee’s corpse to rest in the location he passed in. Optimus pulled a grieving Orca mother and brought his son’s corpse to fraggin Peru + he grounded Bee. Mirage and Noah’s friendship (or romance to allow for you shippers) was very rushed.

Other comments:

I wish they had expanded a bit more on Optimus not trusting humans because there was a bit to it, but definitely wasted potential. Between the fact that Bumblebee was friends with humans and that Mirage is trying to get a human friend, there could’ve been more conflict. Especially with the idea that Optimus is kinda dismissive of Bumblebee’s perspective on humans and shuts him down by grounding him. Like imagine that Bumblebee and Optimus were arguing about the trustworthiness of humans, then there’s the fight where Bee dies to which the audience would be aware that the last conversation Optimus had with Bee was an argument. The idea that OP’s unwillingness, to keep a more open mind about humans, is the reason the last conversation he would have with Bee is when they were angry at each other- this would then be Optimus’s first driving force to bring humans along, because it’s what Bee would’ve wanted. He could still be reluctant and cold, but it would explain why he was doing it.

Then, despite being a 2 hour long movie, everything felt so rushed. Like you meet the Maximals, then the humans, then there are short snippets.

What would I add?

Like I said, an argument between Bee and Optimus, a moment of Optimus being a bit more protective of the bots and showing a few more protective traits. More of a relationship between bots and a bit more of a connection and rite of passage for Noah’s relationships with the bots.

Also just more Maximals, I wanted to see more of them. C’mon!!

Bumblebee dying was disappointing because he was kept out of the movie for such a long time, but it would’ve also aided more bonding between characters. And they should’ve called Optimus a father rather than a big brother- because then Noah could see parallels between him and Optimus, but could also understand that there was a sense of irrational thinking that Noah couldn’t understand because Optimus was more a parent than a brother- then that would’ve opened up a spot for Mirage to act as a brother which would’ve allowed more bonding between him and Noah.

Because Noah’s brother was sick there could’ve been a more solemn moment before they went to bed where Mirage and Noah sat by Bee’s body in the cave and were talking, the Mirage starts mentioning things and the exchange is like;

Mirage: It’s so.. weird.

Noah: Weird?

Mirage: I dunno how else to describe it- Bee was here when we came to Earth and it was like ‘woah, what’s up with your voice buddy’ heh..

Noah: Oh?

Mirage: Then he.. ya know- he pushed through and he kept the world safe.

Mirage: Seemed unstoppable. An immovable force. He never quit.

Noah: Brother’s are like that sometimes.

Mirage: heh.. I hear ya.

Then Mirage would carefully hold Bee’s hand the same way Noah held his brother’s earlier on in the movie.

#transformers #maccadam #tf rotb #transformers rise of the beasts #review #spoilers!#optimus #rotb spoilers #rotb optimus #rotb #rotb bumblebee #rotb mirage #I mainly talk about Optimus and Bumblebee #rotb noah #critic

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kp777 · 9 months

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By Jake Johnson

Common Dreams

Aug. 9, 2023

"To avoid the point of no return," argued Colombian President Gustavo Petro, "we need an ambitious transnational policy to phase out fossil fuels."

The leaders of eight Amazon nations closed out a two-day summit in Brazil on Wednesday without reaching a shared agreement to end deforestation by 2030, a failure that stemmed in part from disputes over oil extraction in the critical ecosystem.

Colombia, represented by leftist President Gustavo Petro, pushed for an end to oil development in the Amazon, whose status as a key carbon sink has suffered severe damage in recent years due to the deliberate clearing of trees, corporate exploitation, and runaway planetary warming.

"Are we going to let hydrocarbons be explored in the Amazon rainforest? To deliver them as exploration blocks? Is there wealth there or is there the death of humanity?" Petro asked in a speech last month. Colombia is home to roughly 10% of the Amazon.

Colombia's fellow Amazon nations rejected Petro's call.

A joint declaration issued by Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela states that the South American countries agree "urgent action" is needed to "avoid the point of no return in the Amazon" and combat deforestation, which has surged in recent years.

But the declaration stops short of a cooperative pledge to end deforestation entirely by 2030 and contains no mention of fossil fuels. Individual nations, including Brazil and Colombia, have pledged to take their own steps to end deforestation by decade's end.

Colombia this week also became the first country to back an Indigenous-led call to protect at least 80% of the Amazon by 2025.

"Indigenous territories and Indigenous rights are a critical tool for the long-term protection of Amazonia," said Alicia Guzman, Amazon program co-director at Stand.earth. "As Colombia and other countries move forward to protect the Amazon, protecting current and establishing new Indigenous Territories will be an essential element of protecting 80% of the Amazon by 2025. Amazonia for Life: Protect 80% by 2025 centers the importance of Indigenous Territories, and also encourages national-level debt forgiveness, local economic development, and an end to extractivism."

Environmental groups voiced outrage that Amazon countries were unable to agree to cooperate on ending deforestation by 2030.

"Temperature records are broken every day," said Márcio Astrini of the Climate Observatory. "It's not possible that under those circumstances, the eight presidents of the Amazon nations can't include a line in the declaration stating, in bold letters, that deforestation needs to be zero, that it won't be tolerated anymore."

"To avoid the point of no return, we need an ambitious transnational policy to phase out fossil fuels."

Reuters reported Wednesday that "tensions emerged in the lead-up to the summit around diverging positions on deforestation and oil development."

"Bolivia and Venezuela are the only Amazon countries not to sign onto a 2021 agreement among more than 100 countries to work toward halting deforestation by 2030," the outlet noted. "A Brazilian government source told Reuters in the lead-up to the summit that Bolivia, where forest destruction is surging, is a hold-out on the issue."

Reuters added that "Brazil is weighing whether to develop a potentially huge offshore oil find near the mouth of the Amazon River and the country's northern coast, which is dominated by rainforest."

Petro has implored Lula—who has overseen a sharp decline in deforestation—to rule out the fossil fuel project, which would be led by Brazilian oil giant Petrobras.

In an op-ed for the Miami Herald last month, Petro warned that "even if we get deforestation under control, the Amazon faces dire threats if global heating continues to climb. To avoid the point of no return, we need an ambitious transnational policy to phase out fossil fuels."

Researchers have estimated that one in nine tanks of gas, diesel, or jet fuel pumped in the U.S. state of California comes from the Amazon.

"To avoid the point of no return," Petro argued, "we need an ambitious transnational policy to phase out fossil fuels."

To that end, Petro called on "Amazon countries and our partners in the 'Global North' to commit to phasing out fossil fuel development, and to do so in a way that protects our right to a just transition to a post-carbon world."

#amazon rainforest #deforestation #indigenous peoples #phase out fossil fuels #gustavo petro #colombia

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miloscat · 18 days

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[Review] Avatar: The Last Airbender: Quest for Balance (PS5)

This show deserves better than this cheap and sloppy tie-in.

Peru-based studio Bamtang are the latest to be granted the Avatar licence, after making some decent kart racers for Nickelodeon. Quest for Balance is the result, and although it’s functional this revival game struggles to live up to the predominately Australian-made tie-in games that were contemporary with the show (and movie).

My expectations were quite high for this given the advances in technology since 2006-2010. But there are always other factors at play in game development, like budget, time, and the experience of the dev team, that are potentially lacking here. What I'm saying is the game feels cheap, from the bland level design to the simple combat to the abundance of rough edges.

Quest for Balance covers all three books of the original show... more or less. The six levels in each try to hit the major points while some episodes and events are skipped over; if you're lucky these will be summarised with a cutscene. But even the significant stuff is dealt with perfunctorily. I did like the side quests in the more hublike levels, with named NPCs and items to find that expand on the world a little bit, although it doesn’t amount to much.

The core gameplay isn’t too different from child/family games we have known such as the Traveller’s Tales Lego games. You explore a level, break objects and interact with interactables, get into fights, and solve some puzzles. Locking the fights into little battle arenas reminded me of the first two Avatar DS games, while the puzzles (maybe the strongest part of the game) recalled the third DS game. I still think I liked those better though.

These gameplay elements are often sectioned off, and the levels are mostly a flat and uninteresting sequence of rooms. There’s an inventory which I barely touched, and an upgrade system that incentivises finding goodies by improving your combat powers. I did get through most combat by just mashing with the most effective characters (Sokka and Toph as far as I could tell) but there is some depth when you’re not just getting stunlocked. Like most of the game it’s just let down by a pervasive clunkiness.

Co-op is available… most of the time. A fatal flaw is not letting a second player participate when the story requires a solo character’s involvement, as well as being unbalanced. That is, when the maximum three-character party is present, player 1 can swap between two of them while player two is locked to only one. These choices hamper its viability as a multiplayer experience (also, my spouse just thought the game in general was subpar and so left me to it).

I’d like to circle back to the cutscenes, as they represent the ramshackle feel of how the game is put together. A mere handful are in 3D, using the game models with some decent animation, which despite being prerendered can chug heavily when a lot of stuff is happening. Some are in 2D, going for a motion comic look but with distressing animated png warping. This includes a cute framing story where Iroh, Bumi, and Pakku are recounting the tale to a Ba Sing Se playwright. Others are brief in-engine dialogue scenes where the characters stand motionless. Or you might just have one of the aforementioned three recounters summarising exposition over a paragraph of text. Even with these various methods of varying levels of effort, they will at times neglect to properly set up the next gameplay portion. It’s frankly a mess.

I also have to mention the voice acting, which ranges from decent soundalike performances (eg. Katara or Toph) to… “an attempt was made”. As far as I can tell from a quick search of Behind the Voice Actors, the only VA that returned was Dee Bradley Baker for creature noises, and even his mastery in the field is undermined when you play one of the dull Appa autoscrolling segments and notice that they appear to have forgotten to apply any pitching down or treatment to his voice?? It sounds bizarre and unfinished. I do have to give the game credit for casting a higher proportion of actors of Asian descent though which is nice to see.

Let it be known that I 100%d Quest for Balance… minus some trophies like the one for completing boss battles hitless. In this janky combat engine and with the bosses as boring as they are, I couldn’t face it. But the game is just competent enough and revisiting stages is streamlined such that I didn’t mind going back for the side stuff, which is my favourite aspect anyway. On the whole though I can’t really recommend this game except to superfans; the old tie-ins are frankly of a higher standard and by virtue of having dedicated instalments for each season, do a better job covering the material on top of having more depth and variety. Plus the first one has an original story! This could have been a triumphant revisit of a beloved story, but it ended up a cheap cash-grab. Oh well.

#avatar #avatar the last airbender #avatar the last airbender quest for balance #bamtang games #review #ps5

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yeahimwiththeband · 2 years

Text

-> with the band chapter 10

tell the truth (part 2)

warning: romance, drugs, ptsd, drugs, anxiety, drugs. don’t do drugs, kids.

A/N: such a short chapter! izzy learns some things, and shares some things. the tour takes a dark turn.

word count: 3.3k

The co-op house party was boiling and Izzy never wanted it to end. They were in the back garden, and the sky above them was big and open and clear; Izzy could see the stars. Seth strummed Tara’s guitar and Mitch danced with Lydia under the wisteria.

Izzy knew they were supposed to leave for Chicago in the morning, just a few hours away. Chicago, then California, then Mexico and Peru. Izzy had never been out of the country. She imagined gardens with mango and papaya trees. She imagined staying with George on the beach, and hearing Harry’s voice as it had sounded the first time, everything back to normal.

“Have you ever tried them?” Olivia asked. The mysterious woman from the kitchen had followed them outside and was hovering beside Olivia.

“No,” Izzy said. “I haven’t tried any drugs. Except weed.”

“Sticking to what’s organic,” Seth said. “What comes from the earth. Like your boyfriend. I see the connection now.”

“Izzy seems all hard edges and practical, but she’s a gentle soul,” said Olivia. “She needs gentle things.”

Izzy asked where George was. She wanted to do whatever they were about to do with him; where was he? Where the fuck was he?

“He’s with Ryan,” Jess said. “Strategy session.”

“It’s not a strategy session,” Izzy said. “It’s past 3 in the morning.”

“Your vibration is getting higher,” the woman told Tara, holding her hand in front of her chest. The mystery woman was maybe 28, but seemed much older. She was wearing layered jersey fabrics and a bandana, giving 90s yoga teacher vibes. She and Seth seemed to know each other; she lived at the co-op. Izzy’s phone buzzed. “But you’re restless now,” she continued. Tara nodded.

Then the woman turned to Izzy.

“You are a child of light,” she said.

“Okay,” Izzy said. Tara giggled. The woman’s eyes crinkled as she smiled at her. Izzy felt like she was watching herself from a distance, looking into a parallel life: college, co-op housing, in person classes. The life she would have had if she had made just a few decisions differently. It didn’t feel like her real life—what she did here didn’t seem to matter to her, as much. She felt freer. The co-op belonged to another timeline.

“I like your bandana,” Izzy tried. She did love her bandana. She loved everything there. Was it possible to get high from second hand weed smoke?

“I like your boyfriend,” she said.

“Thank you,” Izzy said. “I manifested him.” She really felt like she did, sometimes. All her daydreams became a person.

“I can feel that,” the woman replied. “He doesn’t seem real. Are you going to try it too?”

“I don’t think Izzy wants that,” the Starer said.

“There’s a spot of darkness in you, right here,” she said, pressing into the space under Izzy’s rib cage. “Right there. You’re hiding something. Shame? Fear?” The woman could see right through her, like all the walls Izzy had built up around her were made of glass.

“Try what?” Izzy asked.

“Open your mouth,” the woman said. Izzy opened her mouth.

“You are hiding from the truth and in that hiding there is chaos. Just like your sister. But I think you’re through the worst of it. She isn’t, yet.” Izzy checked her phone: missed call from Meg. It was probably just a butt dial. Meg never called her.

“My sister…?” She asked the woman.

“Lydia. She is truly wise beyond her years,” the woman said.

Izzy closed her mouth. There was a pill on her tongue.

“I hope this helps you. Because you know it wasn’t your fault, the accident.” The pill in Izzy’s mouth had dissolved and the people in the room had changed. Izzy was standing in front of the same woman, but time had passed. She had told her about the accident.

The co-op’s garden seemed to fold up and out from itself, stretching over everything she knew.

Izzy stretched her hands out in front of her, squeezing and unsqueezing them. They were numb. Tara’s hand was on her back.

“Tell me the truth,” Izzy heard herself saying. “I only want the truth. I don’t want anything else I don’t understand. Where’s George?”

“Oooh, this is a fun game!” Lisa said.

“Truth or dare?” Jess said.

“Just truth,” Izzy replied.

“Sometimes I think I’m surrounded by children,” Olivia said. Izzy was surrounded by the band again, sitting around the coffee table in the co-op living room. She looked up and saw the flags strung from the ceiling flutter above her.

“I feel that,” Tara replied. “I’m sorry.”

“I love you. You’re not the one I meant,” she continued.

“I hate all the lies, too,” Tara said. “I wish I could tell the truth.”

“Tell me! Tell me the truth!” Izzy pleaded.

“You first,” Jess said.

“I’m not some fashion heiress,” Izzy said. “My mom owns one store. I’ve never even had a boyfriend, until now. I had all these plans and they got crushed.”

“Crushed by what?” Jess said, tenderness in her voice.

“I’ve never had a real boyfriend either,” Lisa cried. “Men hate me! Everyone thinks I’m a lesbian! Not that there’s anything wrong with being a lesbian.” Izzy couldn’t help but laugh, even in her daze she couldn’t believe it. This ugly shame she had been holding in… other people had it too?

“That’s not it,” Olivia said. “That’s not all of it. Tell the truth, Izzy! This is so fun!”

“Jess is in love with Harry,” Tara said.

“We’re almost broke,” Lisa said.

“Harry doesn’t love her back,” Olivia continued. “I’m sorry, Jess. Or he doesn’t, yet. And it’s not that you’re not worthy or something.”

Jess sighed. Izzy nodded, taking it all in. It wasn’t the truth she wanted, but Tara seemed liberated for saying it. Somehow, it was all things Izzy already knew.

“I’m worried Eddie won’t stay sober,” Olivia said.

“Me too,” Izzy said, suddenly worried. She didn’t know he had ever had a problem.

“He’s safer off the tour, don’t worry,” Tara said.

“I’m worried Harry’s music will die,” Jess said. Izzy hadn’t noticed she was there. “I’m worried he’ll quit the tour. Ryan is killing him. He’s saving us, and killing him.”

“I hate that we need him,” Tara said.

“Me too,” Olivia said. “It makes me feel like a fraud.”

“I’m so worried about the money,” Lisa said.

“I’m worried about Lydia,” Izzy said.

“Me too,” Jess said. “All the time. You don’t even know, Izzy. And I can’t tell you.”

Izzy felt the vines in the garden curl around her arms, pulling her into the earth. Lydia was beside her: she grabbed her hand. Mitch was on Lydia’s other side. The three of them held hands and sank into the grass together.

And she was back there. Back at the day after.

...

pov: you’re 18, just turned 18. your bags are packed for school. you just took the tags off your shower caddy. one bag is open, because you had to open it to get out a new pair of underwear and a new outfit. but you’re not at home. you sit on the floor of your cousin’s your cousin’s colourful bedroom that she painted with flowers all the way up to the ceiling with her mom, dotted with glow in the dark stars just now peeling off. your cousin sits across from you, head in her lap. her whole body shakes with sobs. you’re frozen with indecision, you don’t know what to do. you put some music on on your phone. Days Like These comes on and wraps around the both of you. the shaking slows. her dad isn’t home. you don’t know where he went. your parents are at the hospital. you were the one who had to take Lydia home. you can’t take the truth of what has happened, and Lydia is part of that inescapable truth. you turn the music up. you put a hand on her shoulder. you sit across from her and say nothing.

pov: all the bags to college are empty, turned upside down. clothes are all over your room. you had to go through them all to find something black for the funeral. you can’t look at the coffin at the funeral. you look at the grass, the trees. a willow rounds its shoulders over a bench, cloaking it in a curtain of its leaves. this is where you sit after the funeral, alone. your parents take Lydia and her dad back home. you want to cry where you are hidden, where no one can see you, where the rawness of your grief is hidden even from yourself. this is where you’ll sit again in a few weeks, for another funeral. and you’ll cry for everyone who left, and also for yourself, for what you’ve lost, and then in rage and shame for how guilty you feel thinking about yourself.

pov: you’re 19, driving Lydia to school, and she’s blasting a band you haven’t heard of, beach bunny or something. you guys barely talk on the drives but you share music. she sits in the passenger seat like a stone, not moving, so different than the kid who used to dance around the store. your knuckles are white on the wheel, driving the same street where the accident happened, and the entire way you urge yourself to talk to her, to ask her how she’s doing. but you don’t speak. you drop her off, then go to your morning class, then sit in the store and study for the afternoon while your mom is at work - she’s still trying to do the accounting firm and the store at this point - and then you close up, and pick up Lydia from school, and ask her how she is. she says she’s fine. she puts her music back on. she says nothing else. you say that your classes are hard and you feel like you’re failing one of them, like you don’t have enough time with the hours your mom wants you to put in at the store. you feel instantly terrible for complaining about your mom. lydia’s mouth is a hard line. she doesn’t trade any information back. you drop her off, make dinner, then do your assignments late into the night. your mom does the dishes robotically, missing her mom and her sister. you wake up, get in the car, and drive over to Lydia’s to pick her up for school. but she isn’t there. she’s gone, with a bag of her stuff. her dad sits on the steps, holding an envelope with To Dad written in Lydia’s beautiful cursive. that’s when Izzy checked her phone. 3 messages from 6 am.

i’m going with molly’s band, lauren’s older sister, doing their socials

i’m fine

you should come with me

izzy only saw the messages just then, when Lydia was already gone. she had sent them in the morning, when Izzy was doing inventory. “I failed her,” Izzy’s mom said when she found out. “My sister’s daughter.” that’s when she quit her job to manage the store full time, surrendering to her guilt. when Lydia came back six months later, she was more like the person she was when she was a child, before the accident. she wasn’t wearing black anymore. she came back just to maybe enrol in classes again, but she couldn’t stand her old room, the store where she had played with her mother. so she left again, this time with Jess Harper’s band. she had been on the road ever since. six years.

...

“Tell the truth!” Olivia said.

Izzy forgot where she was, then came back into the room. She was back in the co-op. She was trying to get away from her life, from what had happened, but the deeper she went into the tour, the closer she seemed to get to it, to the truth of what happened. Her hiding places here and there were the same; she was always brought back to the same spot.

“I can’t,” Izzy said.

“What’s going on?” Tara said.

“We’re doing an exorcism,” Olivia said.

Izzy wasn’t in the garden anymore. She was standing in the living room, on the coffee table, hair brushing the flags hanging from the ceiling. Both her hands were in Olivia’s.

Jess glared at her. “I’m serious,” Olivia said, answering the glare. “And I’d like a closed room for this, if that’s possible.”

“What did you guys take?” Harry asked. Harry had appeared below them. Izzy wasn’t sure if he was really there or not, or if he was just another face in the crowd at the arena, with her on stage at the microphone, her voice calling out for something that was gone. Her voice, that voice. She recognized the longing. Izzy remembered the first night on the tour: hearing him in the dark, like he was singing only to her, meeting George, waking up on the plane.

“Jess, honestly, just go back upstairs.” Tara said.

“Say it out loud,” Olivia said. “Say it out loud. Expel it.”

“I can’t,” Izzy said. That’s when she saw the mirror again. Far away, it felt like miles away, she saw Ryan bend over a mirror, using a credit card to form a smear of white powder into a fine line. He sorted it using a rolled up dollar bill. Jess followed, copying his movements. They were across the hallway in the kitchen. George danced madly around the kitchen table with Lydia and Lisa. His nose twitched.

Izzy watched blood run down Lisa’s upper lip; her nose was bleeding. It was cocaine. They had been on coke the whole tour. That’s why George wants to leave with me, Izzy realized. That’s why he wants to run away together.

“You have to tell us what happened,” Olivia said.

“Three years ago today, my aunt, Lydia’s mom, died in a car crash,” Izzy said. She felt the words fly out of her mouth faster and faster, like water through a crack in a dam. “I wanted to go to this restaurant for my birthday, and I never asked for anything much, so my mom agreed to take us after we went to the beach that morning. It was a drive—we had to drive to get there. She was so beautiful, my aunt. And I don’t mean the way she looked. She made everything beautiful. Lydia is her daughter 100%. She was so kind, and so incredibly smart—she knew everything about everything. All the constellations, the names of every plant and flower. She got a degree in astronomy. She worked at the university. She stayed close by: that was her compromise. She would stay close by and help her mom, my grandmother, run the store. So my mom could work somewhere else. And then she died. And my grandmother died of a heart attack two weeks after,” Izzy was aware that her face was wet. She explained that this is how she got stuck.

She cleared her throat and continued: “I didn’t know it would be more painful to watch my mom’s heart break than it was to feel my own break, but it was.”

Izzy had been on the stage, but she woke up in the grass, next to Harry, as she finished her last sentence. She was wearing his jacket. She drew it around her and put the sweater—that odd woman’s sweater—across Harry’s chest. Harry watched her intently.

“‘M sorry,” he said. He looked different, but familiar somehow. Izzy couldn’t place it. His voice was softer. “I’m sorry that happened to you. To you and Lydia.”

“Thanks, Harry.” Izzy said. In the face of tragedy, even the worst people could be kind.

“Wha’ else?” Harry said.

Izzy closed her eyes. She could hear the jangle of the car keys; she wanted to plug her ears.

“There’s more. That wasn’t the whole thing, was it?”

Izzy shook her head. Images from that morning played in her mind. She tried to stuff them down, but they wouldn’t go down.

“Tell me,” Harry said.

“I—I was supposed to drive. I was supposed to be the one driving. I had gotten my license the year before. I had been practicing for a year, a whole year. I knew the tricky intersection. We had just been on the beach and were supposed to go to the restaurant from there.”

Harry waited. Izzy saw a flash of Lydia’s glitter nail polish in that morning’s sunlight.

“But Lydia wanted to drive. She just got her learner’s permit and she was so proud. She loved tearing around the city with her friends, picking them all up and dropping them all off, me in the passenger’s seat, blasting music with all the windows down. She asked if she could drive.”

The wind blew leaves over them. They couldn’t hear the party anymore.

“And I let her. I let her drive.” Izzy could just barely get the words out. She was whispering.

Izzy saw Lydia’s 17 year old hand open in front of her, chipped glitter nail polish on from the pervious weekend glinting in the summer sunlight. She watched herself place the heavy car keychain in her palm. Lydia’s fingers closed around it before Izzy had even let it go.

“We were t-boned when she made a left turn, coming from the other way. The driver was checking his messages. I blacked out, but she was awake. I woke up in the hospital. It wasn’t her fault, but she thinks it’s her fault because I let her drive. And that’s why she ran away. And didn’t finish school and—”

“And you think it’s your fault because you let her drive.”

“I know it’s not her fault. She’s trying to fix my whole life by bringing me here but it should be the other way around. She got this insurance payout, from her mom, in her name, and I’m worried that she’s spending it all away. What will she do when the tour is over? If I had taken better care of her…”

“But it’s neither, Izzy. Neither of you is responsible. It’s just that other driver, if anyone. I think that if either of you were driving—anybody in the car—the same thing might have happened.” There was so much pain in that might; all the misery in her life hung upon it.

Izzy was watching herself from a distance. She saw Lydia skip toward the car, her mom clapping her hands together, saying “be careful. No music.” She just wanted to put her arms around herself, her and Lydia.

“The same thing would have happened. You said it was a long light, right?” Harry asked. He sounded far away. “So even if the other one had gotten there 30 seconds before or la’er, you would have still met that car when you got into the intersection.”

Izzy could see herself doing the best she could, sitting under that tree in the graveyard just days later. She had just been trying not to make her mom feel any worse, so she tried to cry alone. She didn’t want to burden anyone—it wasn’t that she was cold, refusing to reach out, refusing to take care of people. She was trying to help them, help them by not asking anything of them. Helping them in the best way she knew how. Maybe it wasn’t all her fault.

Izzy felt light, as if she were made of paper. She lifted her arms up and put them back down. She felt like she was floating above the grass. She turned; Harry was still there. Her vision was clearer, now. She could see the stars above her, too. Harry’s face came into focus, green eyes glinting hard through his thick lashes. She hadn’t really noticed them before.

“And you,” Izzy said. “I can see you.”

“Not really,” Harry said. “You’re so high.” He sounded tired.

“There’s more with you, too. What are you hiding?”

Harry took a deep breath and said nothing.

“I know we don’t get along, but you can talk to me,” Izzy continued.

“Magari,” Harry sighed. If only it were true.

“Who...?"

“Jess taught me. She said you taught her.”

“I really like Jess,” Izzy said. If this was an olive branch, Harry couldn’t wrap his hands around it.

Izzy tried again. “Tell me one truth. Anything.”

“One?”

“Anything.”

“I almost became an addict,” Harry said. “Early on. I was using pretty often.”

“Easy enough to do when you become famous that young. I’d be hard pressed to say that’s your fault.”

“Eddie is the one that pulled me out.”

“Eddie’s pretty great,” Izzy said.

“It’s easy to get addicted, Izzy. At first it’s a bump before each show...”

Everything Izzy knew about addiction, she knew from A Star is Born; she was lucky in that way. That movie, and now, maybe Lydia. “I’m not going to run away with George, Harry,” Izzy said. “I think I can help him. I’ve never... aside from tonight, I haven’t tried any of that stuff.”

“That’s good,” Harry said.

“I don’t think it’s your fault that you started using before,” Izzy said. “You were a kid.” She was surprised; he always seemed way too proud to come close to admitting any sort of vulnerability.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Tell me another truth.”

Harry laughed. “Another?”

“Anything,” Izzy said.

“Alright,” Harry said. His voice was lower, closer. “Only because you're out of your mind right now and won’t remember any of this tomorrow.”

He turned away from her momentarily. Izzy thought she saw his cheeks turn red.

“You going to tell me?” Izzy said.

He didn’t turn back.

“I’ve never been in love with anyone,” Izzy said. In a lower voice, she added: “At least not someone who loved me back.” She was thinking about Roger, and the sort of infatuation she had with him, which definitely wasn’t returned.

Harry turned back. His smile was gone.

“Wha' about George?” Harry asked. Izzy shook her head.

“Not yet, anyway. I really like him, though. And I think I can help him. Sometimes I wish I was more like Lydia,” Izzy said. “Taking everything so lightly. I don’t think she’s ever been in love either.”

Harry smiled painfully and stood up, leaving Izzy with his jacket. He explained that he was going back to the hotel, and Izzy said that she wanted to stay in the garden. She felt the vines twist around her arms again, and the stars above her were spinning. As Harry walked away, Izzy could see the tour ending. She could see herself renting an apartment with roommates, with another job that wasn’t at the store.

Izzy drew out her phone. Two more missed calls from Meg. She put the phone to her ear, and it was suddenly ringing to her home number, but she didn’t remember dialling. Her mom still had a landline.

Izzy left a message: “Hi mom. It’s me, Izzy. I’m with the band in Austin. It’s so beautiful here. We’re going to Chicago next, then California. I wanted you to know that I love you. And the accident isn’t your fault. It’s not your fault for going to the restaurant, for anything. I’m sorry I hid myself away after it happened. I didn’t want to burden you. I didn’t know how to help you. I’m sorry. Don’t worry about me. I’m happy now. I love you.”

Izzy felt herself floating up and away from the garden. She felt so serene. Unburdened. She fell asleep on the grass in that floating feeling, wisteria petals in her hair, smelling jasmine.

chapter11

#love on tour fanfic #love on tour fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fanfiction #love on tour au #harry styles au #harry styles imagine #anxiety #personal growth #trauma #angst #harry styles angst #don't do drugs kids #drugs are addictive #it's never worth it

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