#post-vulture fight | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mostlysignssomeportents · 2 months

Text

How to shatter the class solidarity of the ruling class

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me WEDNESDAY (Apr 11) at UCLA, then Chicago (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Audre Lorde counsels us that "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," while MLK said "the law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me." Somewhere between replacing the system and using the system lies a pragmatic – if easily derailed – course.

Lorde is telling us that a rotten system can't be redeemed by using its own chosen reform mechanisms. King's telling us that unless we live, we can't fight – so anything within the system that makes it easier for your comrades to fight on can hasten the end of the system.

Take the problems of journalism. One old model of journalism funding involved wealthy newspaper families profiting handsomely by selling local appliance store owners the right to reach the townspeople who wanted to read sports-scores. These families expressed their patrician love of their town by peeling off some of those profits to pay reporters to sit through municipal council meetings or even travel overseas and get shot at.

In retrospect, this wasn't ever going to be a stable arrangement. It relied on both the inconstant generosity of newspaper barons and the absence of a superior way to show washing-machine ads to people who might want to buy washing machines. Neither of these were good long-term bets. Not only were newspaper barons easily distracted from their sense of patrician duty (especially when their own power was called into question), but there were lots of better ways to connect buyers and sellers lurking in potentia.

All of this was grossly exacerbated by tech monopolies. Tech barons aren't smarter or more evil than newspaper barons, but they have better tools, and so now they take 51 cents out of every ad dollar and 30 cents out of ever subscriber dollar and they refuse to deliver the news to users who explicitly requested it, unless the news company pays them a bribe to "boost" their posts:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

The news is important, and people sign up to make, digest, and discuss the news for many non-economic reasons, which means that the news continues to struggle along, despite all the economic impediments and the vulture capitalists and tech monopolists who fight one another for which one will get to take the biggest bite out of the press. We've got outstanding nonprofit news outlets like Propublica, journalist-owned outlets like 404 Media, and crowdfunded reporters like Molly White (and winner-take-all outlets like the New York Times).

But as Hamilton Nolan points out, "that pot of money…is only large enough to produce a small fraction of the journalism that was being produced in past generations":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/what-will-replace-advertising-revenue

For Nolan, "public funding of journalism is the only way to fix this…If we accept that journalism is not just a business or a form of entertainment but a public good, then funding it with public money makes perfect sense":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/public-funding-of-journalism-is-the

Having grown up in Canada – under the CBC – and then lived for a quarter of my life in the UK – under the BBC – I am very enthusiastic about Nolan's solution. There are obvious problems with publicly funded journalism, like the politicization of news coverage:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/24/panel-approving-richard-sharp-as-bbc-chair-included-tory-party-donor

And the transformation of the funding into a cheap political football:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-defund-cbc-change-law-1.6810434

But the worst version of those problems is still better than the best version of the private-equity-funded model of news production.

But Nolan notes the emergence of a new form of hedge fund news, one that is awfully promising, and also terribly fraught: Hunterbrook Media, an investigative news outlet owned by short-sellers who pay journalists to research and publish damning reports on companies they hold a short position on:

https://hntrbrk.com/

For those of you who are blissfully distant from the machinations of the financial markets, "short selling" is a wager that a company's stock price will go down. A gambler who takes a short position on a company's stock can make a lot of money if the company stumbles or fails altogether (but if the company does well, the short can suffer literally unlimited losses).

Shorts have historically paid analysts to dig into companies and uncover the sins hidden on their balance-sheets, but as Matt Levine points out, journalists work for a fraction of the price of analysts and are at least as good at uncovering dirt as MBAs are:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-02/a-hedge-fund-that-s-also-a-newspaper

What's more, shorts who discover dirt on a company still need to convince journalists to publicize their findings and trigger the sell-off that makes their short position pay off. Shorts who own a muckraking journalistic operation can skip this step: they are the journalists.

There's a way in which this is sheer genius. Well-funded shorts who don't care about the news per se can still be motivated into funding freely available, high-quality investigative journalism about corporate malfeasance (notoriously, one of the least attractive forms of journalism for advertisers). They can pay journalists top dollar – even bid against each other for the most talented journalists – and supply them with all the tools they need to ply their trade. A short won't ever try the kind of bullshit the owners of Vice pulled, paying themselves millions while their journalists lose access to Lexisnexis or the PACER database:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/24/anti-posse/#when-you-absolutely-positively-dont-give-a-solitary-single-fuck

The shorts whose journalists are best equipped stand to make the most money. What's not to like?

Well, the issue here is whether the ruling class's sense of solidarity is stronger than its greed. The wealthy have historically oscillated between real solidarity (think of the ultrawealthy lobbying to support bipartisan votes for tax cuts and bailouts) and "war of all against all" (as when wealthy colonizers dragged their countries into WWI after the supply of countries to steal ran out).

After all, the reason companies engage in the scams that shorts reveal is that they are profitable. "Behind every great fortune is a great crime," and that's just great. You don't win the game when you get into heaven, you win it when you get into the Forbes Rich List.

Take monopolies: investors like the upside of backing an upstart company that gobbles up some staid industry's margins – Amazon vs publishing, say, or Uber vs taxis. But while there's a lot of upside in that move, there's also a lot of risk: most companies that set out to "disrupt" an industry sink, taking their investors' capital down with them.

Contrast that with monopolies: backing a company that merges with its rivals and buys every small company that might someday grow large is a sure thing. Shriven of "wasteful competition," a company can lower quality, raise prices, capture its regulators, screw its workers and suppliers and laugh all the way to Davos. A big enough company can ignore the complaints of those workers, customers and regulators. They're not just too big to fail. They're not just too big to jail. They're too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Would-be monopolists are stuck in a high-stakes Prisoner's Dilemma. If they cooperate, they can screw over everyone else and get unimaginably rich. But if one party defects, they can raid the monopolist's margins, short its stock, and snitch to its regulators.

It's true that there's a clear incentive for hedge-fund managers to fund investigative journalism into other hedge-fund managers' portfolio companies. But it would be even more profitable for both of those hedgies to join forces and collude to screw the rest of us over. So long as they mistrust each other, we might see some benefit from that adversarial relationship. But the point of the 0.1% is that there aren't very many of them. The Aspen Institute can rent a hall that will hold an appreciable fraction of that crowd. They buy their private jets and bespoke suits and powdered rhino horn from the same exclusive sellers. Their kids go to the same elite schools. They know each other, and they have every opportunity to get drunk together at a charity ball or a society wedding and cook up a plan to join forces.

This is the problem at the core of "mechanism design" grounded in "rational self-interest." If you try to create a system where people do the right thing because they're selfish assholes, you normalize being a selfish asshole. Eventually, the selfish assholes form a cozy little League of Selfish Assholes and turn on the rest of us.

Appeals to morality don't work on unethical people, but appeals to immorality crowds out ethics. Take the ancient split between "free software" (software that is designed to maximize the freedom of the people who use it) and "open source software" (identical to free software, but promoted as a better way to make robust code through transparency and peer review).

Over the years, open source – an appeal to your own selfish need for better code – triumphed over free software, and its appeal to the ethics of a world of "software freedom." But it turns out that while the difference between "open" and "free" was once mere semantics, it's fully possible to decouple the two. Today, we have lots of "open source": you can see the code that Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook uses, and even contribute your labor to it for free. But you can't actually decide how the software you write works, because it all takes a loop through Google, Microsoft, Apple or Facebook's servers, and only those trillion-dollar tech monopolists have the software freedom to determine how those servers work:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/04/which-side-are-you-on/#tivoization-and-beyond

That's ruling class solidarity. The Big Tech firms have hidden a myriad of sins beneath their bafflegab and balance-sheets. These (as yet) undiscovered scams constitute a "bezzle," which JK Galbraith defined as "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it."

The purpose of Hunterbrook is to discover and destroy bezzles, hastening the moment of realization that the wealth we all feel in a world of seemingly orderly technology is really an illusion. Hunterbrook certainly has its pick of bezzles to choose from, because we are living in a Golden Age of the Bezzle.

Which is why I titled my new novel The Bezzle. It's a tale of high-tech finance scams, starring my two-fisted forensic accountant Marty Hench, and in this volume, Hench is called upon to unwind a predatory prison-tech scam that victimizes the most vulnerable people in America – our army of prisoners – and their families:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

The scheme I fictionalize in The Bezzle is very real. Prison-tech monopolists like Securus and Viapath bribe prison officials to abolish calls, in-person visits, mail and parcels, then they supply prisoners with "free" tablets where they pay hugely inflated rates to receive mail, speak to their families, and access ebooks, distance education and other electronic media:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

But a group of activists have cornered these high-tech predators, run them to ground and driven them to the brink of extinction, and they've done it using "the master's tools" – with appeals to regulators and the finance sector itself.

Writing for The Appeal, Dana Floberg and Morgan Duckett describe the campaign they waged with Worth Rises to bankrupt the prison-tech sector:

https://theappeal.org/securus-bankruptcy-prison-telecom-industry/

Here's the headline figure: Securus is $1.8 billion in debt, and it has eight months to find a financier or it will go bust. What's more, all the creditors it might reasonably approach have rejected its overtures, and its bonds have been downrated to junk status. It's a dead duck.

Even better is how this happened. Securus's debt problems started with its acquisition, a leveraged buyout by Platinum Equity, who borrowed heavily against the firm and then looted it with bogus "management fees" that meant that the debt continued to grow, despite Securus's $700m in annual revenue from America's prisoners. Platinum was just the last in a long line of PE companies that loaded up Securus with debt and merged it with its competitors, who were also mortgaged to make profits for other private equity funds.

For years, Securus and Platinum were able to service their debt and roll it over when it came due. But after Worth Rises got NYC to pass a law making jail calls free, creditors started to back away from Securus. It's one thing for Securus to charge $18 for a local call from a prison when it's splitting the money with the city jail system. But when that $18 needs to be paid by the city, they're going to demand much lower prices. To make things worse for Securus, prison reformers got similar laws passed in San Francisco and in Connecticut.

Securus tried to outrun its problems by gobbling up one of its major rivals, Icsolutions, but Worth Rises and its coalition convinced regulators at the FCC to block the merger. Securus abandoned the deal:

https://worthrises.org/blogpost/securusmerger

Then, Worth Rises targeted Platinum Equity, going after the pension funds and other investors whose capital Platinum used to keep Securus going. The massive negative press campaign led to eight-figure disinvestments:

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-05/la-fi-tom-gores-securus-prison-phone-mass-incarceration

Now, Securus's debt became "distressed," trading at $0.47 on the dollar. A brief, covid-fueled reprieve gave Securus a temporary lifeline, as prisoners' families were barred from in-person visits and had to pay Securus's rates to talk to their incarcerated loved ones. But after lockdown, Securus's troubles picked up right where they left off.

They targeted Platinum's founder, Tom Gores, who papered over his bloody fortune by styling himself as a philanthropist and sports-team owner. After a campaign by Worth Rises and Color of Change, Gores was kicked off the Los Angeles County Museum of Art board. When Gores tried to flip Securus to a SPAC – the same scam Trump pulled with Truth Social – the negative publicity about Securus's unsound morals and financials killed the deal:

https://twitter.com/WorthRises/status/1578034977828384769

Meanwhile, more states and cities are making prisoners' communications free, further worsening Securus's finances:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Congress passed the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, giving the FCC the power to regulate the price of federal prisoners' communications. Securus's debt prices tumbled further:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

Securus's debts were coming due: it owes $1.3b in 2024, and hundreds of millions more in 2025. Platinum has promised a $400m cash infusion, but that didn't sway S&P Global, a bond-rating agency that re-rated Securus's bonds as "CCC" (compare with "AAA"). Moody's concurred. Now, Securus is stuck selling junk-bonds:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

The company's creditors have given Securus an eight-month runway to find a new lender before they force it into bankruptcy. The company's debt is trading at $0.08 on the dollar.

Securus's major competitor is Viapath (prison tech is a duopoly). Viapath is also debt-burdened and desperate, thanks to a parallel campaign by Worth Rises, and has tried all of Securus's tricks, and failed:

https://pestakeholder.org/news/american-securities-fails-to-sell-prison-telecom-company-viapath/

Viapath's debts are due next year, and if Securus tanks, no one in their right mind will give Viapath a dime. They're the walking dead.

Worth Rise's brilliant guerrilla warfare against prison-tech and its private equity backers are a master class in using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house. The finance sector isn't a friend of justice or working people, but sometimes it can be used tactically against financialization itself. To paraphrase MLK, "finance can't make a corporation love you, but it can stop a corporation from destroying you."

Yes, the ruling class finds solidarity at the most unexpected moments, and yes, it's easy for appeals to greed to institutionalize greediness. But whether it's funding unbezzling journalism through short selling, or freeing prisons by brandishing their cooked balance-sheets in the faces of bond-rating agencies, there's a lot of good we can do on the way to dismantling the system.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/08/money-talks/#bullshit-walks

Image: KMJ (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boerse_01_KMJ.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

804 notes · View notes

littlemclarennorris · 1 month

Text

KINGS DAY

Lando Norris X Reader Insta AU

—————————————————————————————

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Liked by Landonorris, Martingarix, ciscanorris1 and 45,678 others

@yourinstagram : Hey siri how do you say goodmorning in Dutch 🇳🇱

125,78 comments

@landosfloffyhead can Lando fight because…Dutch men are vultures 😭

@ynsno1stan oh she’s too gorgeous I can’t take it !!!

@ciscanorris1 after kings day consider yourself officially a Norris by BLOOD 🤭

@landonorris is your name amster ?? Because DAMN ❤️

— @yourinstagram thank god you’re handsome 😭 because baby that’s not…

— @landonorris can’t wait 2 see you <3

@martingarix i hope you have your uniform !!!

— @martingarix Orange isn’t my colour therefore I will NOT be attending the celebrations sarryyy 😋

—————————————————————————————

Liked by skysports, Romeo beckham and 379,876 others

@f1driversgossip : How it started 🆚 How it’s going….mclarens golden boy @landonorris seems to be letting loose this weekend as he parties all night celebrating kings day with famous Dutch DJ & Best friend @martingarix !! We’re unsure on how serious Norris’s injury is yet we’re also wondering where the drivers girlfriend @yourinstagram is seeing as she’s also in the country according to her recent post…🇳🇱 stay updated for more.

567,85 comments

@landoscurls BYEEEEEE Lando is a PR nightmare 💀

@ynsarmy does y/n even KNOW that her child is drinking

@lando04nation mr “I don’t drink” 🤨 beat his ass y/n !!!

@ln4loyalistt I’m sorry ? Is THEE Lando Norris… DRUNK 😭 this was not on my 2024 bingo card I fear

@yourinstagram so this explains why he hasn’t responded to me in hours 🧍🏽‍♀️

— @ln4whoree uh ohhhh 💀

@landosgoatee HELP NOT Y/N FINDING OUT THE SAME THROUGH INSTA LIKE US 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

@mclarensfirstwin I hope lando’s a fast runner because when y/n catches his 5’3 ass LMAOOOO

—————————————————————————————

Lando’s Instagram story

Yourinstagram story

—————————————————————————————

@landonorris : Paddle + Pizza + My Pretty Lady 🍕❤️🇳🇱Amsterdam you’ve been a blast …as for @martingarix you will pay for your crimes.

Liked by McLaren, oscarpiastri, Carlossainz and 78,890 others

@yourinstagram I love you stoopid head ❤️

@ln4 parents & paddle 🥹 love to seee it

@landosflooff *sighs* I just love them so much

@lando04loyalist she’s amazing and he’s there 🧍🏽‍♀️

@ynsupdates lowkey wish she grounded him 🫡

— @yourinstagram him and Martin are on time out from seeing eachother don’t worry !! Mum said NO 🫡

@martingarix same time next year ??

@adam_norris_pure_electric I think he got a smacked bottom folks lol !! Hope the nose is okay muppet son🥸

— @yourinstagram I made him sit on the naughty step too for not answering his phone.

@quadrantnation booo 🍅🍅🍅 put him in the dog house mother !!

@landonorris CAN EVERYONE STOP ENCOURAGING MORE PUNISHMENT !! I HAVE SUFFERED ENOUGH 🙃

@riabishh I say take away all his devices for underage drinking 👀 no 14 year old son of ours goes partying in the dam and gets away with it.

@maxfewtrell 🤣🤣🤣send him to the dog house !!! And throw away the key

@landnorris ENOUGH I SAID 🤺🤺🤺🤺

552 notes · View notes

decolonize-the-left · 5 months

Text

Everyone asks what I read and truth be told I learned a lot of politics through experience and listening to Black revolutionaries.

There is nothing- nothing- that I say on my blog that Malcom X or James Baldwin or Frantz Fanon or Thomas Sankara or Frederick Douglass didn't say first (and much more eloquently)

Further, their words have given me the tools to think critically about not just my place, but everyone else's and what we owe each other.

I myself, wouldn't have a Lot of the politics I do had I not been exposed to the ideas they talked about with such knowledge and experience. Whether it was by following activists or looking up things up or learning about them myself, they're influential and I would even say foundational to decolonization and dismantling white supremacy.

My usual recs are Wretched of the Earth and Braiding Sweetgrass, but those are just starters since people just usually ask where to begin.

So I wanted to make this post and for them to be Very Much credited for the following I have and my politics since I don't often mention them.

For example, I talk a lot about how the comfort of the privileged is an obstacle that stems directly from their privilege. How libs who only conditionally support peaceful protests don't understand what's necessary; that challenging the status quo can't be done comfortably and it's never been "peaceful" for the oppressing classes. How it's detrimental to progress to compromise on how we fight for our rights and to have been liberals telling us we demand too much.

Frederick Douglass:

Frantz Fanon:

Privileges multiply and corruption triumphs…Today the vultures are too numerous and too voracious in proportion to the lean spoils of the national wealth. The party, a true instrument of power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, reinforces the machine, and ensures that the people are hemmed in and immobilised.

Thomas Sankara:

Malcom X:

James Baldwin:

In a way, I owe the invitation to the incredible, abysmal, and really cowardly obtuseness of white liberals. Whether in private debate or in public, any attempt I made to explain how the Black Muslim movement came about, and how it has achieved such force, was met with a blankness that revealed the little connection that the liberals' attitudes have with their perceptions or their lives, or even their knowledge—revealed, in fact, that they could deal with the Negro as a symbol or a victim but had no sense of him as a man.

Bonus MLK Jr quote:

Over the last few years many Negroes have felt that their most troublesome adversary was not the obvious bigot of the Ku Klux Klan or the John Birch Society, but the white liberal who is more devoted to “order” than to justice, who prefers tranquillity to equality. In a sense the white liberal has been victimized with some of the same ambivalence that has been a constant part of our national heritage. Even in areas where liberals have great influence— labor unions, schools, churches and politics—the situation of the Negro is not much better than in areas where they are not dominant. This is why many liberals have fallen into the trap of seeing integration in merely aesthetic terms, where a token number of Negroes adds color to a white-dominated power structure."

Whether your medium is a PDF, a book, movie, clips, quotes, podcast, whatever. However you digest info easiest: learn about them and their words. Think about them. Talk about it and process it with friends.

That's how you shape your politics to be similar to the ones you find on my blog.

695 notes · View notes

ironcroft11 · 1 year

Text

In defense of Gwen in Across the Spider-Verse

Okay. First of all: This post is gonna be super long and have tons of spoilers so if you don’t want to get spoiled for Across the Spider-Verse then don’t read this post. I have seen way too many people hate on Gwen because of her actions and her behavior towards Miles in Across the Spider-Verse. I’ll show you why that hate completely misses her arc in the movie and her true intentions/relationship with Miles. This post will also delve into Gwiles/Ghostflower since that is a big part of what shapes her intentions. Many people say Gwen betrayed Miles and doesn’t really care about him. They say Miles shouldn’t forgive her and that she is a snake for what she did. I’ll show you why the opposite is true by going through the events of the movie in cronological order: The movie literally starts off with Gwen talking about Miles. She is drumming away, which is, mentioned by herself, a way for her to cope with her feelings. That opening from Gwen is a small glimpse into her head. We see how she feels and what she thinks. The interesting thing is that it’s basically Gwen broadly narrating the events of the entire movie. We even see glimpses of future scenes in that intro. The line of narration that is most important here is Gwen saying “I didn’t want to hurt him. But I did. And he is not the only one.” This shows us IMMEDIATELY that Gwen did not intend to hurt Miles AT ALL. Quite the contrary. It also shows that she is AWARE she hurt Miles. She knows she fucked up. That is going to be important later on when she needs to make the tough decision regarding Miles/The Spider Society.

We then follow her as she goes home, still thinking about Miles and then, of course, her Peter. Note that this is roughly 1 year after Into the Spider-Verse. 1 year after she met Miles she still thinks about him daily. “I haven’t really made any friends after that [Peter’s death], except one. But there is no way to get there.” She misses Miles and wishes there was a way to visit him. Obviously she still very much cares and thinks about him.

At Gwen’s home we are first shown what her conflict with her father looks like. That conflict is obviously one of the main aspects of her arc and what drives her actions later on in the movie. You can see it is strained but you can still see that they obviously love each other very much. Gwen struggles as her father is basically hunting her down without knowing its is actually her. What pains her the most, though, is that her father is convinced that Spider-Gwen killed her best friend, Peter Parker. That way he, without knowing, makes Gwen feel guilty about the death of her best friend. Gwen is trying to get over Peter’s death but is held back by her dad, unbeknownst to him.

Gwen caring and missing Miles a lot is brought up again when she sees the picture of her and Miles that they made in Into the Spider-Verse (which she had made into a polaroid so she can actually have it on her/in her hands). Her eyes look on with sadness and her color is dark blue. The colors in Gwen’s dimension are used to portray her feelings. Dark/blue tones for sadness and light/pink tones for happiness/comfort. At this point, seeing Miles again is probably one of her dearest wishes. Miles understands her and knows who she truly is. This is going to be important later on.

During Gwens fight with Vulture at the Museum we are introduced to Miguel O’hera, Spider-Man 2099, who saves her from Vulture. He introduces himself but Gwen seems unimpressed and uninterested. What she is very much interested in, though, is Miguel’s Dimension Watch. “You can go to any dimension you want with that watch?” She just met an entirely new Spider-Man and all she is interested in is his technology that might allow her to go and visit Miles. That is how much she misses him.

As the duo fight off Vulture Miguel calls for back-up and they are joined by Spider-Woman Jessica Drew. Her and Gwen have an immediate bond which will be very important later on. Gwen immediately looks up to her and sees her as a mentor from who she can learn a lot. Gwen impresses Jessica so much that she asks Miguel if they want to recruit her for Miguel’s Spider-Society. “What about her?” “No.” “Why not?” “You know why.” Miguel and Jessica studied the entire Kingpin collider event. They know who was involved and they know that Gwen and Miles are friends. Miguel doesn’t want to recruit Gwen because she is too close to Miles. Why that is a problem we all know. (Miles being the original anomoly) From the start they knew Gwen’s relationship with Miles might end up jeopardizing their goal of protecting the Spider-Verse.

We then go on to this scene. Gwen confronting her father and her father finding out that Spider-Woman, the vigilante he was dedicated to catching and locking up, is actually his daughter. This is a key moment in Gwen’s arc throughout the movie. Her father accuses her of lying to him. All Gwen wants right now is support from her father. She doesn’t get that, instead her father wants to lock her up for the murder of her Peter Parker. At this point she is immensely conflicted. “I don’t know how to fix this.” Jessica Drew notices that and convinces Miguel to let Gwen join the Spider-Society.

Gwen seeing no immediate solution to her problem decides to accept the invite. She is not yet ready to confront the problem and walks away from it, despite being conflicted. This will be at the back of her head throughout her entire arc and throughout the entire movie. Until she is ready to confront her dad who, remember, wants to lock her up, she CAN’T return to her home dimension. Her going back would mean her having to confront a problem she is not yet ready to confront.

The next time we see Gwen is after we are introduced to Miles again. This is Gwen seeing Miles again for the first time after 1 year and 4 months. Her immediate reaction is to tightly hug him. You can, in that hug alone, see how much she missed him. You can also pick up all kind of little things in this scene. One is how awkward Gwen is. She is cringing at herself for telling him he had a growth spurt. There are obviously some unresolved feelings between the two.

Gwen then goes through his sketchbook and finds Miles’ drawings of her. She is surprised to see so many drawings of her but plays it off smoothly. “Missed you too.” It’s obvious that both missed each other immensely. But we haven’t even seen the entire extend of how MUCH Gwen ACTUALLY missed Miles. We only find out about that a bit later.

Miles and Gwen then swing through the city and catch up. Their chemistry is on full display here. I absolutely adore this scene. Gwen tells Miles that the Spider-Society is really strict about where she goes otherwise she would have come to visit him sooner. What’s important here is that at this point Gwen KNOWS about Miles’ “condition”. She knows he is an anomoly and she knows that his father dying is a canon event. And at this time she BELIEVES in these canon events. She thinks they must be upheld or the multiverse collapses. That’s what Miguel told her.

During their swing Gwen uses a moment in which Miles is distracted to place her surveillance device for Spot. You can see, even with her mask, how much it pains her to keep the truth from Miles nd having to leave him in the dark. We find out: Gwen is not here because of Miles but because she is supposed to catch Spot since Spot is an anomoly.

What follows is one of the biggest Gwiles moments in the movie and also a very important scene when it comes to Gwen and her feelings towards Miles. They sit down at the Williamsburgh Bank Building and have a heart to heart.

Gwen tells Miles that it is always so great to talk to him and that he is the only friend she ever really made since Peter died. Miles, knowing about Hobie, says “Other than Hobie, right?” and Gwen answers “That’s different.” This shows us that Gwen’s relationship and feelings for Miles are different from the relationship she has with Hobie. That’s because she literally has feelings for Miles, and she knows that Miles, in some way at least, feels the same. “We’re the same, in the important ways.” Gwen then says a line that literally shows she has fallen for Miles, otherwise there would be no need for her to mention it. “In every other universe Gwen Stacy falls for Spider-Man.” This is Gwen telling Miles that she has feelings for him.

Hearing that reassures Miles and he moves his hand closer to hers.

This is important: Gwen sees this!

And then closes her eyes and flinches. She flinches because she wants to take his hand so bad that it literally pains her that she can’t. We find out why she can’t with her next words: “And in every other universe it doesn’t end well.” Gwen knows about canon events and knows they need to happen. She was probably being told that Gwen Stacy falling for Spider-Man and it not ending will is a canon event.

She then gives Miles a look that I can only describe as “loving”. She would probably love to tell him more about canon events and everything regarding the Spider-Society. But like she said: She doesn’t know how to. She doesn’t want to hurt him and she wants to protect him.

Miles then tells her “There’s a first time for everything, right?” which makes Gwen chuckle and smile at him. It’s the first time where Gwen is confronted with Miles’ philosophy of going down his own patch and not bending to the rules of canon. Even if canon dictates something, Miles believes there is always a way.

This rubs off on Gwen as she affectionately leans on Miles, enjoying the sunset with him. Not only is this overall scene incredibly beautiful and masterfully animated but its purpose is to show us that these two indeed love each other. They want to be together but Gwen, at this stage, feels like canon is against them.

Miles and Gwen then enjoy some food in quiet and keep talking about the Spider-Society and how Miles wants to be a part of it. Gwen, without being able to tell him the truth, shuts him down and lies to him. Again, she is not ready to tell him everything, the same way she is not ready to confront her father. These 2 conflicts go hand in hand as they are her 2 biggest conflicts that she has to overcome. Gwen then snaps at Miles because he was about to find the surveillance footage of Spot which would therefore uncover her true reason for being there. Gwen obviously doesn’t want that to happen because she doesn’t want to hurt Miles. She wants to keep him away from the Spider-Society because she knows he is an anomoly AND because she knows he wouldn’t be safe there.

After she snaps at him she immediately apologizes though. They both get REALLY close after that, closer than I had remembered from my first viewing. They also lock eyes. I’m pretty sure if not for Rio, Miles and Gwen would have kissed here. Rio interrupts them and they have an awkward talk. Rio and Jeff obviously think there is something going on between Miles and Gwen which is the source of the awkwardness.

Gwen then gets a signal from her dimension watch which is caused by the explosion that Spot caused. She missed her time window to catch him because she was having so much fun being around Miles. Gwen quickly leaves after that, having to lie to both Miles and his parents.

You can tell she doesn’t want to leave Miles. She wants to stay, but she can’t. She is conflicted. And she is conflicted throughout the entire movie. That makes her arc so interesting.

What follows is one of the most important interactions in the movie that show Gwen’s motives. She arrives at the explosion and realizes Spot escaped. Jessica Drew, who Gwen looks up to, remember, calls her and asks her where Spot is. Gwen tries to play the whole situation down, not wanting to be seen as a failure. That has one big reason: Since Gwen is a liability to the Spider-Society because of her connection to Miles she has to constantly prove her worth, otherwise Miguel will send her back to her universe. That is one of Gwens biggest fears. Having to confront her father again. She is not yet ready for that so she basically does everything that is asked of her, even if she doesn’t necessarily agree with it. Jessica notices that Gwen is nervous and asks her if she visited Miles. Gwen again tries to play it down but eventually admits she went to see Miles. Jessica gets angry with her and Gwen tells her she will never see Miles again. Her voice noticeably breaks when she says that. That interaction tells us one very important point: Gwen was not allowed to visit Miles. AT ALL. Miguel has forbidden Gwen to see Miles. He probably also told her why. Miles is an anomoly and him getting entangled with the Spider-Society might end up badly. And Gwen, knowing all that, knowing she might risk the multiverse, knowing she might risk getting sent back to her own dimension and having to confront her father, STILL decided to visit Miles. That is how much she cares about Miles. She literally risked the stabilty of the multiverse for the opportunity to see Miles again. Even if its only for one evening. This alone should end the debate about how Gwen “doesn’t care about Miles”. She obviously does. A lot.

This can be taken even further. “You never made a mistake? Never got too close to someone?” This is literally Gwen telling Jessica that the reason she went to see Miles is because she has feelings for him. Jess replies by saying she did but that she got over it, prompting Gwen to do the same. We, of course, know that she can’t.

This is one of the most emotional scenes in the movie for me. After Gwens dialogue with Jess she knows her only chance to stay on Miguels good side is to follow Spot to Mumbattan and catch him. She has to leave and knows she will never see Miles again. She longingly looks towards the rooftop she and Miles stood on just moments ago, not knowing Miles is invisible and right in front of her. She whispers a last “Goodbye Miles” as she heartbreakingly decides to leave. As much as it pains Gwen, she thinks leaving now without explaining anything to Miles might hurt him, but it does keep him safe and away from the Spider-Society. It’s a lose lose situation for Gwen. She is fighting a losing battle. On one side she has Miles and the desire to be with him, on the other side the entire Spider-Verse and the conflict with her father. The fact she is even contemplating shows how loyal she is towards Miles.

Miles follows her through the portal and catches her off guard. Gwen didn’t know he was listening and thought she would never see him again. Miles, being in another universe without a dimension watch, glitches and endangers both him and Gwen. Gwen then says that she “never should have visited” Miles. She obviously meant the fact that NOW Miles is involved and they can’t go back now. She didn’t want Miles to be a part of it and now regrets that she pulled him into this. She is more angry at herself than at Miles here.

When the canon event approaches Gwen tries to stop Miles from disrupting it. Again, a lose lose situation for Gwen. She knows (or at least thinks at this point) that disrupting canon events can cause universe to unravel. She also knows how dangerous canon events are and that there is a good chance Miles might die if he tries to intervene.

Miles, not knowing about canon events at all yet, intervenes anyway. (Because he is Spider-Man, duh) While trying to save Captain Singh and the little girl he gets covered by rubble. Gwen and Hobie go down to the scene and while Hobie immediately helps Pav to pull up the bus Gwen literally makes a dash for the rubble and tries to find Miles. All the while screaming his name, her voice breaking while doing so. The relief in her voice when she finds him alive and well is very noticeable. (Great voice acting by Hailee Steinfeld)

After disrupting the canon event, Miles asks Gwen what she thinks of the situation. Gwen, almost affectionately whispering to him, tells him that she always thinks that he is amazing. Another moment that makes these two get closer and it shows how much admiration Gwen has for Miles. Even after disrupting a canon event, Gwen thinks the world of Miles. This highlights her conflict again. While still believing in these canon events, Miles is slowly but surely changing her mind about them. He is not quite there yet but it’s coming.

We then go the Spider-Society HQ where Gwen introduces Miles to Miguel. Miguel immediately becomes hostile and blames Miles for disrupting the canon event. Gwen knows that Miles did in fact disrupt the canon event but still defends him. “He doesn’t know any better:” Miles has no knowledge about canon events or anything related to it so he can’t be blamed for what he did. Gwen knows that, which is also a reason why she tried to stop him.

Miles then finds out about the structure of the Spider-Verse and about canon events. Miles also finds out that Gwen did not only try to save him but also stop him from disrupting the canon event.

When Miles finds out his fathers death is a canon event that has to occur you can see Gwen frowning. She knew this and now Miles knows it. There is no easy way to tell that to someone. Not if you’re close friends and not if you haven’t seen each other for a year. It pains Gwen that Miles has to go through that, and on top of that she can relate to it as well, because...

... Gwen’s father is also a Captain who’s death is a canon event. This adds another layer to her inner conflict. She believes in these canon events and therefore also believes that her father has to die. Gwen, in that aspect, is similar to Miguel. She accepts it, runs away from it. Similar to how she runs away from the conflict with her father.

Miles confronts the other Spider’s and tells them he can’t sit back and let his father die. He then tells Gwen, referencing her earlier statement, that she was right and that she never should have visited her. Miles does NOT say that because he hates Gwen. He says that because he is distraught and because of the fact that if Gwen hadn’t shown up he’d still be in his dimension. (Where he wants to be to protect his father) Gwen starts to cry because this is OBVIOUSLY not how she wanted it to go and how she wanted Miles to find out. The fact is: There was never a right time or way to explain it to Miles. Gwen isn’t an emotionless puppet that never struggles or is perfect. She loves Miles and she simply couldn’t bring it over her heart to tell him that his father will die and that he isn’t supposed to be Spider-Man. She wants him to be happy and to be safe, and from her perspective the best way to do that is to keep him away from the Spider-Society.

When Miguel traps Miles to stop him from going home Gwen and Peter get really agitated. “That’s enough.” “Stop it Miguel.” They don’t want to be on opposite sides to Miles. They want to talk it out. Of course the chance for that is now gone. You can still see that both still very much are on “Miles’ side”. Gwen is put into a situation where she is forced to choose between her friend or the Spider-Society.

While they chase Miles, Jess confronts Gwen and tells her that even though Miles is Gwen’s friend, capturing him is the only way. Gwen then tells Jess that that’s not what her gut says. This, again, shows her conflict. She KNOWS she is supposed to be on Miles’ side. It’s what her gut is saying. It’s what her heart is saying. Her head is still thinking that the multiverse must be protected, and that canon events must be stopped from being disrupted.

She then listens to her head and tries to grab Miles with her web. The look on her face says it all. It’s pain, love and an apology all in one. Miles destroys the web, symbolic for their trust. Miles breaks the net, he is saying that he doesn’t trust Gwen anymore. Gwen knows that, which is why after Miles breaks the net her look is one of complete sadness and disbelief. Not disbelief because she couldn’t imagine Miles not trusting her but rather diesbelief because she can’t believe it has come this far.

She continues the chase for Miles because she doesn’t know what else to do. When Miguel calls for every Spider-Man after they found out Miles’ location you can see Gwen having a look of dread and defeat on her face. She did’t want it to go this far. She still wants to talk it out and make up with him. She feels sorry and is slowly starting to regret her choices.

While on the train Gwen and Peter keep calling out to Miguel, telling him that he should stop and to take it easy on Miles. Miguel doesn’t listen.

This scene is where the trust between Miles and Gwen is broken completely. Miles finds out that Gwen knew all along that he is an anomoly and that his father is supposed to die. He finds out that Gwen didn’t know how to tell him that and that that’s one of the reasons she didn’t come to visit him.

Gwen then tells Miles that its for his own good, a lie she told herself to make her feel better. She full on regrets her choices by now. She knows she made a mistake but feels too distraught to really do anything about it. Her world slowly comes crashing down on her.

Miles is able to overpower Miguel and sends him flying down the train. The way Gwen looks down at Miguel is really interesting. Its a look of pride and relief. She is proud of how far Miles has come that he is able to escape from Miguel and reliefed that he was actually able to.

While Gwen thinks that now the way is free for her and Peter to get to Miles and explain everything to him, Miles just gives them a look of hurt, sadness and betrayal. He then says “Goodbye Gwen”, again mirroring Gwen’s goodbye earlier in the movie. Both were sad but for very different reasons.

The change of expression from Gwen says it all. This goodbye from Miles, in his eyes, is final. He feels betrayed and hurt and just wants to get home to save his dad. While Gwen and Peter probably want to just talk to Miles and explain everything, Miles may think they want to capture him, too. And Miles can’t take that chance.

After Miles decides to jump Gwen, again, has an expression of relief on her face. This time the relief is because Miles managed to really escape Miguel and the other Spiders. She knows Miles will be safe, for now.

Miles manages to escape and Gwen is furious with Miguel. Furious as to how he treated Miles and how he managed the whole ordeal.

She speaks up and Miguel blames Gwen for the Spider-Society losing Miles. This is where Gwen starts to see that she actually doesn’t have the Spider-Societies back and that she should have taken Miles’ side from the beginning. She slowly realizes the true extent of her mistake.

Gwen then proposes to talk it out with Miles, on her own. Miguel refuses, saying they tried that already.

She goes on to tell that Miles is her friend and is starting to question the whole “Canon event” topic. “Do you know for certain what happens when he breaks the Canon?” She is starting to fully side with Miles.

Miguel tells her he knew from the beginning that her relationship with Miles was a liability. Gwen looks to Jess for support but doesn’t get it. She is now on her own, same as Miles.

Gwen gets sent to her home universe, the thing she dreaded most. The last thing she tells Miguel is that they are supposed to be the good guys. That shows where she stands in regards to the conflict inside herself. She now knows that what Miguel and the Society does is wrong. She was on the Society’s side, now she is on Miles’ side.

She immediately tries to go to Miles’ dimension but she is locked out from using the dimension watch. Miguel denied her access. Gwen is furious and now trapped in her home dimension.

She returns home and wants to collect the polaroid of her and Miles. She doesn’t want to confront her father yet, but we all knew it was inevitably coming.

Gwen confronts her dad and opens up to him. She pours her heart out and tells him how she really feels. Remember, Gwen is a 16 year old girl. She carried the burden of her rensponsibility and the conflict inside her while still always trying to do the right thing. But she says it best in this scene, “She doesn’t know what right or wrong is anymore.” The entire time she believed these canon events to be absolute and followed through with the Spider-Society’s plans because she thought it was the right thing to do. In the process she hurt and betrayed the only real friend she had. And that was the straw that broke the camels back. Her intentions are now clear.

“I can’t lose one more friend.” She doesn’t know whats right or whats wrong, all she knows is that she can’t lose Miles.

During her speech her father decides to quit his job as captain, freeing him from the canon event. This is when Gewn realizes that canon events might not be absolute and that they can be disrupted without dooming the dimension. She realizes Miles might have been doing the right thing all along.

After making up with her dad the only thing left to do for Gwen is to go and find Miles. With the help of Hobie’s watch that is actually possible now.

Gwen arrives in Miles’ universe and finds out that Miles is in the wrong universe. She overhears Rio and Jeff talk about Miles. They mention Miles lighting up when he is around Gwen and that they hope she doesn’t get him hurt. This is where the full realization of her actions become clear to Gwen. She hurt Miles and didn’t help him when he needed her the most, and she hates herself for that.

She blames herself for what happened to Miles, even though it is not her fault entirely.

Gwen tells Rio and Jeff that she is going to find Miles and bring him back. She also tells them what she learned from Miles. “All is possible.” This is the lesson Miles gives Gwen in this movie. It is a lesson she needed to learn. She now fully believes that anything is possible. This will come into play in Beyond the Spider-Verse when they are going to try and stop canon events from happening.

She resolves the conflict with her father, parts ways with the Spider-Society and has only one goal left now: To find and make up with Miles. In her arc Gwen faced the conflict of choosing her friend or the greater good. On one hand is Miles, who she obviously has feelings for. On the other hand there is the Spider-Society who tell her how the multiverse works and how dangerous Miles and other anomolies are. In the end, her friend won, though it was a harsh process that damaged their trust and relationship. Gwen is not perfect and isn’t always right. She is a 16 year old girl with tons of complex conflicts going on. She fights a constant battle with herself and her feelings. She makes mistakes, as do Miles, Peter, Miguel and the others. The important thing is that Gwen learns from these mistakes. This also shows that she doesn’t hate or not care about Miles like some people have said. If anything her actions show to which lengths she went for Miles to be safe. She knows she hurt Miles and is going to make up for it in Beyond the Spider-Verse.

#across the spiderverse #Spiderverse #gwen stacy #miles morales #spider man #spider gwen #spiderman #gwiles #miles x gwen #miles and gwen #ghostflower #beyond the spiderverse #across the spiderverse spoilers #spiderverse spoilers

2K notes · View notes

ohnoitstbskyen · 23 days

Note

Do you think Riot will make more seasons of Arcane in different regions post-s2, make more shows with different names that are set in the Arcane universe, or secret third option?

Yes and no.

To start with, yes: Arcane has been by far Riot's most mainstream successful media project ever (even outstripping K/DA), and there is literally no way in hell that the company isn't going to want to keep milking it until it is as dry, stale and withered as the PROJECT skin line.

So I predict that, absolutely, we will see new seasons of shows set in the League of Legends universe, probably animated, and hopefully with some of the extremely good animation partners Riot has managed to cultivate over the years.

The ARCANE branding is incredibly valuable now, and I wouldn't put it past Riot to do something stupid like name a show set in the Freljord ARCANE: True Ice or something unbearably stupid like that, even though the name relates extremely specifically to the setting and story of Piltover/Zaun and the Vi/Powder/Viktor/Jayce character group.

On the other hand, Riot might be the company on earth I trust the absolute least to effectively capitalize on and carry forward a success in creative arts that can't be monetized with skins and event passes.

Riot has an absolutely astounding history of tripping on their dicks when it comes to telling stories about their characters, in no small part due to its leadership quite simply never valuing storytelling as an end in itself. If it doesn't sell cosmetics or drive Engagement™ with the core League of Legends product, good luck getting Riot management to spend a fucking dime to make anything real.

Passionate people inside the company have to go to war, every single time, to make anything good happen. Legends of Bilgewater, the Spirit Blossom visual novel, the Marvel comics collaboration (RIP), Riot Forge, and very much Arcane, were absolute passion projects pushed over the line by people who literally put their jobs (and in many cases their health) on the line to make them happen.

Alex Yee and Christian Linke are old hands at Riot with a lot of clout, a lot of friends at the company, and a lot of goodwill to cash in, and if that hadn't been the case, there is literally no way in hell anything like Arcane ever gets made.

The behind-the-scenes documentary Riot themselves produced obviously goes out of its way to let Riot leadership suck themselves off about how much they contributed and how much they believed in the project, but make no mistake, they would have axed Arcane on the spot if there wasn't creatives fighting pitched battles every other day to keep it alive.

This is true of K/DA as well, by the way, there was a lot of internal resistance at Riot to that project - and to Star Guardians, and to Heartsteel. Anything cool Riot has ever made? Just assume that someone internally was shitting on it in meetings and trying to get it shut down.

Which is why I am intensely worried about Arcane in the long term. Not so much about Season 2, since it is mostly being produced by the same group of people, as far as I know, but that project is also going to be absolutely besieged by C-suite jackoffs trying to worm their names into the credits, making themselves Stakeholders™ and offering Feedback™ and voicing Concerns™, and I don't envy the showrunners the battles they are going to have to fight to keep these vultures away from the product.

But I am fucking worried about whatever Season 3 becomes. I am fucking worried about what happens the moment any of the key creatives behind the first two seasons resign, or get headhunted to new jobs. I am worried what's going to happen when Riot decides that the showrunners are "being difficult" and standing in the way of what leadership wants to do with the now very valuable ARCANE branding, and either corporately mandates them into roles of diminished influence or just outright fucking fires them (it'll be publicized as a mutual decision of course, it'll be publicized as a much celebrated retirement or "it's time to move on to new adventures").

Riot is a company with absolutely infinite capacity to fuck up a perfectly good thing for absolutely no fucking reason except some kombucha-chugging, suit-jacket-over-a-graphic-tee-and-sneakers-wearing, keeps-his-job-despite-multiple-sexual-harassment-allegations-because-he's-bros-with-the-C-suite, motherfucking "I am a player so I know what the players want" platitude-spouting "themes are for book reports"-ass Silicon Valley libertarian piece of shit decided he knows better than the artists whose work are the reason he takes home six figures a year.

#tb answers #arcane #riot games #league of legends

334 notes · View notes

hollowsart · 2 years

Text

if my spiderverse had a game, stealth missions would be a lot of fun, I like creeping around and hiding unnoticed. not even bothering to incapacitate the various enemies littered about, just scuttling about without being spotted while making my way to the destination.

also, imagine.. having Otto as a secondary playable character. his stealth missions would be less like mine for clear reasons, and more like regular spiderman style stealth missions in which he has to incapacitate the enemies as he goes through without being spotted, picking them off one-by-one until he reaches the destination as well.

Lol imagine playing and a cutscene happens and you turn around to see Otto walking in with like 3 guys hanging from his arms, looks over from the arms surprised at you, tosses the guys off screen and retracts his arms like “aha, yes. we’ve made it here safely. no one noticed a thing! haha..” no witnesses.

#Ghostie mumbles #it's 3am and I am having thoughts instead of sleeping. help.#but anyways these are good fun thoughts tho so I can't complain #there's a slight hint of Otto having that 'aren't you tired of being nice' hiding inside him. but he is fighting for his life against it.#and he is mostly winning for the most part..... except on the days in which is mental exhaustion is unstable just enough #it's FINE Tho. it's fine. Adrian and I are able to help him if that happens.#......Game function wise that's like web of shadows and using vulture as transportation until he gets assimilated with a symbiote--#--and you gotta fight him to free him from it Lol #except Otto has an accident at some point and he ends up being a boss battle like in that one post of mine. he loses his control--#--and you gotta fight him or fight to get close enough to him to try and help. call back up from Adrian probably.. for tech repairs n stuff #after all. adrian would know that sort of thing better.

20 notes · View notes

chaotic-minds-think-alike · 1 year

Text

Biiig image hopefully it like translates well but oughhg vultures,, Info/hcs about them below: (warning- long/wordy post)

General information:

Their entire lifecycle is based off bugs and thus they go through instars or larval stages of growth before they eventually cocoon and pupate and finally emerge as fully fledged adults

Through some strange modifications to their genetic and biological code, the ancients were able to make them grow their own biomechanical components through ingesting inorganic and organic material

Much more detailed under a microscope, their biomechanical structures are layered as if they were 3D printed on, but include interwoven organic components such as nerves and blood vessels

Vultures are opportunistic and will even result to cannibalism

Hatchling / 1st Instar:

multiple hatchlings will hatch all at once in a single clutch and immediately fight each other, eventually killing and consuming the loser, thus resulting in only a few grubs surviving

Nutrients gained from their siblings and material eaten from the environment around them is used to form the headpiece as quickly as possible

the modified head is used as its primary defense in the larval stage, calling adult vultures in hopes that it'll deter it's attacker- though the vultures that do arrive are most likely not the parents and will eat the grub at any given chance

5th Instar:

By now the grub has eaten as much nutrients as it could and will soon undergo pupation

The grub's first four legs have elongated to aid in travel as they will seek refuge in high perches where they will hide away and cocoon

They are swift and hard to spot in this stage because of their grime covered coat

Pupation / Near emergence:

After spinning its cocoon, the silk hardens and thickens into a tough ball

The silk is woven in with specific nutrients that promote plant growth to further hide the cocoon

After an undetermined amount of time, the cocoon gradually expands as the pupa grows into the adult form; the expansion leaves translucent areas where the silk is thin

Adult Vulture:

The engines and mask are a result of a mixture of bone-like material and metal-like material and are very hard to break

They are aware of how strong their own mask is so they stray from fighting each other, only ever attacking another vulture if they've lost their mask; this is an instinctive behavior both driven by their opportunistic nature and seeing a maskless vulture as sick or injured

As with the majority of creatures, the skin of a vulture is smooth and porous, but instead has patches of hair-like protrusions

Through a mysterious process, vultures are able to synthesize various chemicals to aid in flight, namely helium gas, which is pumped into the feathers

This process brings toxic byproducts: chlorine and iodine gas, which is forcefully expelled alongside the helium through the engines and out of the creature

A vulture's engines are raised occasionally to allow more airflow and a faster exchange of gas as standalone they accumulate these chemicals regardless of exertion

The feathers of a vulture are akin to swim bladders and are inflated with helium gas to allow the creature to fly, the feathers retain their flat shape but the skin is expanded and shows the true colors of the wings, when deflated the feathers are black in color

When on the ground, the feathers of a vulture are deflated and much tougher, their wings will curl into "fists" as they walk, occasionally extending their wings to grab ahold of things with their prolegs

Previously as a grub, they had 4 developed legs before they pupate, the mid legs turned into a pair of weak grabbing arms, mainly used to preen the creature

The grub's last pair of legs became fat reserves

The jaws of a vulture are pretty animal-like and only have a top and bottom jaw, they also have pedipalps which are used to preen, grab, and feel things

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

King Vulture:

Unknown as to how they originated, bear slightly different genetic coding compared to normal vultures, namely noticed with the mysterious brand on their masks

the vulture is larger to accommodate a second pair of lungs solely used to power the harpoon mechanism

The harpoon is shot via a swift expulsion of air similar to a sneeze, through the cables that they stiffen and expand, sending the harpoon flying at dangerous speeds

Relaxation of the cables allows them to slowly retract back on their own

#myart #rainworld #design #concept #rainworld vulture #vulture #king vulture #bugs #insect #rainworldbuilding

1K notes · View notes

cherryfennec · 8 months

Text

'Lovers, brothers, killers.'

Aka the "Bad End Trio", [REDESIGN]

aka firefly vs gothic lady vs homeless man

I know there's no way for them to ever canonically interact so it's a good thing I'm an artist and can just

I should probably mention that my Paper Mario and TTYD knowledge consists of:

Paper Mario: the opening cutscene, the vulture fight you can skip by saying you're Luigi, Parakarry, Luigi's diary, the name Goombario, Star Spirits(?), Kammy

TTYD: Hooktail, Luigi's Adventure, the look of the final fight, Koops, Doo_liss, Peach talks to a computer, Vivian, Bowser's there (???)

With that being said, In the theoretical scenario where they met though I'd say:

SQ Peach would have Bowser wrapped around her little finger, it didn't need much convincing he's just like that.

Bowser would try to imitate the smoke from Peaches cigarette to try to impress her, making rings and stuff.

While she doesn't care about these antics she'll sometimes show fake gratitude so he doesn't turn against her. It's good to have allies, especially above average ones.

In the beginning they both thought the little guy was pathetic and while Bowser stayed in his egoistic mindset Peach soon realised that while she could beat The Koopa King, she would not win in a fight with CH Luigi. After that realisation her attitude towards him didn't change (not to raise suspicion) but she knows to keep distance just in case.

At some point she might've tried to manipulate him to her side as well but while he does look silly he isn't stupid.

One day Luigi will be friendly and jolly, the other cunning and mischievous. It's tough having two personalities. Same with Peach, power hungry and egoistic yet dainty and a flower fan. Bowser's the only one who is just plainly a brute with short temper that will do anything to get his way.

In summary: Bowser only wants Peaches attention (thinks he can gain it with power) and doesn't care about the runt unless he annoys him, SQ Peach knows that Bowser will do anything for her and takes advantage of it while also trying her best to play around the other nuisance to her benefit, CH Luigi does whatever he wants because he knows they cant do anything to stop him in the end and Mario is living his fever dream.

I could probably think of more ideas but then this post would be much, much longer. So yeah I redesigned them slightly for funsies and while working on the art I've also came up with some dynamics that I wanted to share. It's a little different from my usual stuff ,as I mostly try to stay relatively close to the canon, but I had fun with coming up with these!

#paper mario #spm #super paper mario #paper mario ttyd #super mario #princess peach #bowser #luigi #myart #BadEndAU

725 notes · View notes

foxstens · 9 months

Text

maybe rubicon isnt that bad

#my posts #gameblogging #liveblogging rain world #just kidding it's a terrible area #but i got to the third shelter #and it was kinda fun #i mean after an entire campaign of no combat being able to one shot everything is c o o l #but when there's miros vultures or hard-to-traverse level design its kinda ehh #the thing is the visual design of this area is really nice #it has a very interesting atmosphere and its later parts are great #but its too longggggg #and i dont like being forced into combat since that's just not my playstyle #especially not as saint bc why fight when you can tongue lmao #however i have seen the ending and ughhhhh i wanna get it so badly #bc i do really really really love saint :(

0 notes

adventuringblind · 9 months

Text

Sunrise

Oscar Piastri x Autistic!Reader

Genre: Angst

Summary: The fans and media get to Oscar’s girlfriend in a way he’ll never forgive

Warnings: SUICIDE AND SH depictions, toxic media, death threats, lack of communication, anxiety, Oscar is a mess.

Notes: …. We’re not talking about my patterns alright. I swear I’m in therapy.

Masterlist

Oscar is not normally an irrational person. He prides himself on his calm and collected state. Something that his neurodivergent counterpart loves because it makes him easy to read. Everything is clear to her with him.

He adores his girlfriend. Plans to eventually marry her one day. He doesn’t care that her body isn’t the ‘standard’ for beauty because he finds her stunning. He doesn’t care that she has deep passions for her interests and could talk for hours about it because he loves listening.

So why is it his fans don’t get that same thing? Why do the vultures have to attack her for doing nothing wrong?

He ponders these questions as he sits in the hospital waiting room. Fingers crossed he got to her in time.

She’d turned off all her notifications on social media. She had to. For some reason now that Oscar and McLaren are on track and fighting again, people are seeming to notice her more often.

Gone are the days of sneaking off into the quiet corners. Numbered are the days she’ll be able to spend with him at this rate.

The death threats started a month ago. To many things she’d rather not think about. The name calling is flat out unnecessary and something she doesn’t understand.

She knows logically nothing can come if it. But the nagging at her brain won’t stop for some reason. She hates it, being empathetic. She just feels so extremely that she can’t decipher if the words hurt her or if she’s angry and why she feels this way. It’s to much for her mind to process.

So she turns everything off. No social media for her.

She’d simply told Oscar the hate was to much and she needs a break from the internet. Which isn’t a lie, but she didn’t want him to worry about her and start doing poorly because of it.

Instead curled up underneath her blankets with music and switched off the world.

Oscar is feeling alright with fifth in Hungary. Not exactly where he wants to be, but it’s still considerably better then where he was previously.

As is routine, he gets into the garage as quickly as he can. The one thing he managed to negotiate for with his PR team: the he gets to check in on his girlfriend before he does media duties.

He peers inside. It’s mostly empty due to the incoming podium celebration. But there is no sign of her. Nothing is the garage or his driver room or Lando’s room, or the bathroom.

His heart thuds in his chest. This is routine, and she always sticks to her routine. If she’s not here then something must be terribly wrong. Oscar pulls out his phone to see he has a text from her and the weight on him lessens just a tad.

‘Sorry I won’t be there for the end of the race! I was feeling incredibly sick so I went back to the hotel room! I love you so much! 🧡🖤’

And suddenly that weight is back. If she left then something is clearly wrong. She’s stayed through blurry vision from migraines, endured hours of overstimulation for him, even dealt with his fans pushing her around. Yet she always stayed. If something caused her to leave then it’s definitely something to worry about.

He ended up missing the podium celebration. His PR manager is looking for him. But he could care less and heads straight for Zak.

He gives a brief summary of what’s going on and defines is as an emergency. That word was what made Zak let him go as long as he promised to keep everyone posted.

Then he ran.

Race weekends have come to be one of her favorite things. The consistent hum of car engines stimulates her brain in a way that she loves.

What she doesn’t love is the fans. She wonders for a moment if all the WAG’s have this kind of hate. So she sets off to go find Lily and ask. She’s become close with her over the course of this year. She’s also passionate about things and it’s fun to listen to her get excited over her interests. Something the female can relate to well.

When she neared the Williams hospitality, she saw Lily and waved her over only to be stopped in her tracks by a few fans in McLaren gear. She instantly took notices of the very blatant disregard for personal space and the negative energy they carried with them.

Then they out in some fake smiles and handed her an envelope, walking away without a word.

She was left confused and stunned. But also curious. The envelope in her hands had some weight to it and she can’t help but wonder what’s inside.

She doesn’t hesitate to open it. Her eyes scanning over the contents. Every second she looks at it makes her feel sick to her stomach.

Someone had been stalking them. Not just her and Oscar, but Lando as well. Addresses, pictures, personal information, even images from intimate moments where they are very clearly without clothes.

She could see the possibility of her and maybe Oscar being stalked if these are the same fans who have been harassing her for a couple months now. But Lando as well makes her feel dirty and upset in a way.

It’s to much. She feels to much. It’s overwhelming.

She stuffs everything back inside and finally gets to Lily. A brief excuse leaves her lips that she’s going back to the hotel cause she’s feeling sick. She takes note of Lily’s instant concern and the female does her best to fight back every emotion. It’s utterly draining. She has no energy to sort out her feelings and other peoples feelings when she can’t understand any of them anyway.

Lily lets her go on the condition she texts her when she gets back to the hotel.

She agrees. She'll be messaging everyone when she gets there.

Oscar gets into his car and fumbles around for the keys.

He left them with his stuff. His stuff that he doesn't have. Now he's going to have to run all the way back.

He gets out and heads straight to the McLaren garage. Ignoring the strange looks.

He even tries pulling his phone out to call her. Straight to voicemail. Twenty times.

Halfway there, he runs into Lando. The Brit is winded and carrying Oscar's things.

"I'm driving."

She can't believe she's actually going to do this. It's not that she's never thought about it before. Feeling alien on your own planet will do that to you. But she feels like she has no other choice.

It's too much. The fans want her dead, and they are willing to do horrible things to get it.

She can't handle it. The feelings of all of it are overwhelming. She can't tell where her emotions end and someone else's start. The letter written to her only points out further.

The last few months have been beyond her limit. She doesn't feel safe in her own skin. Everyone is telling her she'll never be enough. That she is not meant for this life.

She'd thought about her friends as she wrote those damn notes. The blank looks when she says something lnnapropriat for the conversation. The times she's had meltdowns and they had to deal with her.

She thinks about Oscar, too. His note is three pages long. It's intimate, and she hopes he can understand it. Words she's written countless times the last months to make sure he understands her decision.

She lays it out where she knows he'll see it and then locks herself in the bathroom. The bathtub is filled with ice-cold water and not filled all the way to the top. Just enough to make things easy.

Is she really doing this because those damn fans are going to leak everything about their lives tonight if she doesn't? Certainly a factor in her decision. It seems the logical solution if she's to fix the problem. She hates herself for this; that she can't just be what everyone wants.

That thought brings the first cut.

She didn't bother taking off her clothes. She hates the feeling. They cling to her skin and it makes her want to peel her skin off.

The second cut is for her clothing.

Then the third.

And a fourth.

The fifth makes her dizzy.

The sixth causes her vision to dance.

The seventh and eighth she can't even register.

Everything is numb by nine and ten.

Then nothing.

Oscar and Lando take three steps at a time.

Apparently, Lando had run into Lily and found out what had happened. The Brit also felt his stomach drop with the feeling something is wrong.

Oscar sprints down the hall when they make it to the right floor. Fumbles around with his key card. Then, finally, he gets the door open.

He scans the room. There is paper stacked neatly on the table. An envelop almost thrown to the side.

He looks at the note addressed to him, and he chokes. Lando is searching for any sign of life but the Aussie can't see past the fact that there are fans asking her to kill herself. And that she felt the need to say yes because now they have stalkers.

He'll think about it later. Right now, Lando is screaming for him.

He barrels to where the voice comes from. Again, he chokes. This time on frantic tears.

Lando is looking like he might pass out, but the Brit is staying strong for his teammate and friend. He tries to get Oscar to help him.

She may be passed out, but the Aussie registers Lando saying she has a pulse. That she's still breathing even if it's shallow.

They work together to drag her out of the water. Her make it so that when they set her down, she immediately is sliding on the tile. They wrap her arm in wash rags. The only thing they can find to slow the bleeding. But the cuts are too deep. It doesn't slow.

So they call an ambulance.

Oscar doesn't register much after that. Listening to Lando instruct him on what to do, including breathing. Riding with her to the hospital. Watching her be taken away. Meeting Lando in the waiting room.

Now he has nothing to do but wait and look through everything he missed.

Her socials are where she's being threatened, sure. But it's the contents of the envelope that got Oscar angry. Way past the point of livid.

"Lan, I- what the hell." He shows everything to his teammate, and terror stretches across his face.

And then she was left with a ticking clock and an ultimatum. Disappear or have all this and more released to the public. What better way to disappear than to do it permanently.

It breaks him. He can't breathe past the thought of not having her around. He can't live knowing she left because the world is suck a cruel place. And he feels utterly selfish for wishing her to stay with him through it.

Somehow, he ended up on the floor, sobbing dramatically into Lando's sweatshirt.

But then others start to appear. It's not just the two of them because there are so many people that care for her.

Max shows up first with a certain Monegasque in tow, followed by Alex and Lily, the latter of which looks about as broken as him. Then George and Lewis appear, followed by Logan.

They explain what happened. Everyone is shocked, and there are no words between them for a few minutes as everyone processes.

"I don't understand why someone would do this." Pipes Max. He knows about death threats fairly well, but this is a new level of extreme.

"We could say something. Make a statement about it and start a suicide awareness campaign." Lewis suggests.

Oscar knows a campaign probably won't do much against whoever sent this, but a statement might. He wants to say everything on his mind.

And that's exactly what he did. His PR team be damned because this takes precedence.

She wasn't expecting to wake up. She wasn't supposed to wake up. So how is she awake?

She cracks her eyes open just a tad to assess her surroundings. Her arm is bandaged and she's underneath some of the worst textures to come in contact with.

The thing that catches her eye is the brown locks of a specific Australian. She moves her hand to them and runs her fingers gently along his scalp.

he shifts around a bit before relaxing into the feeling. At least she could give him this before she ruins his and Lando's life.

She's not sure how long they go on like this until Oscar sits up and yawns. He blinks a few times and adjusts himself to the florescent lights.

She's not sure she's ever seen Oscar cry before. Once at a really sad movie, but even that was just slight. Now he's crying tears for her. The sound makes her tear ducts spring into action as well.

"Please, don't ever do that again." He rasps. His voice crackles with the sound of sobs.

She doesn't say anything. She can't say anything. So instead, Oscar crawls into the bed with her. He just cradles her body into his.

"I'm sorry." Is all she manages to say. And after a few more breathes she continues. "I didn't want to be the reason you and Lando lose your jobs. Or be the cause of your stress. And then everything felt like it was too much, and I just wanted it to stop." She feels pathetic.

"I promise that I will never be upset with you for something like this. The fans pushed and pushed and then drove you into a corner. But in the future, you have to come to me. I can't help if you don't communicate with me."

"What about racing? And Lando? And all your personal information?" The weight she'd had before has made a sudden return.

"Should be taken care of. We beat them to the punch and made a statement about how someone close to McLaren had been threatened and the person responsible would be posting personal information." Oscar explains. She feels better knowing they didn't say it was her name. "I also said I would be taking a break from socials for personal reasons... and also said something about how much I love you."

The news came out eventually. It's not every day that F1 driver's campaign for mental health. But they've all been incredibly helpful. She is on the road to recovery and Oscar intends on being with her through every step of the way.

526 notes · View notes

niningtori · 3 months

Text

to know him is to love him, and i do | chapter one: do you not love me? like at all?

pairing(s): choi beomgyu x you, kang taehyun x you

summary: you love beomgyu more than anything. you just wish he loved you, too. or you finally break up with beomgyu and move on, but as for him? maybe he's starting to realize too little too late.

genre: romance, angst, angst with a happy ending (?)

word count: 2.1k

notes: hi friends! ... r u mad at me? be honest (*´ｪ｀*) i'm sorry i've been gone for so long, but i've had the worst writer's block with my other story. i decided to just post this because i couldn't get the idea of toxic!beomgyu out of my head. don't worry, he will suffer. anyway, i hope you like it!! if not, please don't hurt my feelings i beg.

"i told you it was nothing. why are you freaking out?"

"she was fucking you with her eyes, beomgyu!" you exclaim in frustration.

"and that's my fault how?"

"it's not your fault, but i'm sick of you entertaining women, let alone your actual fucking ex, while i'm standing right next to you!" his ex is just another fish in the barrel, or at least that's what he says, but the thought that they were intimate together at one point still makes you feel sick. truthfully, your boyfriend is handsome, so you've spent the better part of the past 10 months warding off the women who circle him like vultures. you wouldn't mind as much as you do if he seemed at all interested in helping you do so, especially when faced with his ex that you suspect he still has feelings for, but he does not. quite the opposite, actually. it's like he thrives off of the attention and god it hurts.

"i'm not entertaining anybody. i told her i have a girlfriend now," he, well, you would say argues, but it's said so nonchalantly it doesn't warrant the term.

"a girlfriend you proceeded to ignore while she hung off of your shoulders and laughed all night! i just don't understand how you don't understand how much it hurts my feelings. i'm a human too! how would you feel if my ex, who was very clearly interested in me, hung around me right in front of you?" and it's like you're explaining empathy to a child.

"me? i wouldn't give a fuck because it's not that serious," he replies with a slightly irritated shake of his head.

it's always like this. always. you're always the one who cares more between the two of you. you were the one who asked him out in the first place. you were the one who initiated your first kiss. your first fight. hell, even your first reconciliation. you're not stupid, you know he doesn't feel quite the same way you do, but he has to feel something, right? otherwise, why would he say yes to you when he's rejected so many other women? your brain hurts trying to wrap your head around it all.

"you're missing the point! if you were me, you would—" you begin frustratedly, but you cut yourself off. "you know what? i don't even have the energy to explain this to you. i don't understand why i have to explain basic human emotion to you and i really don't understand why i have to beg and plead for you to care about how i feel!" you all but shriek.

"you don't have to do shit, just leave if you're that fucking unhappy," he spits out angrily, which is the first real emotion — besides mild annoyance — you've seen out of him this entire conversation. he gets impatient when you're like this, which usually results in you relenting, but not tonight. you're far too hurt to let go so easily.

"you're right! i am unhappy! i just — why don't you care that i'm unhappy? what can i do to make you give a fuck about me?" you have a brave face on but you can feel your eyes getting hot and your voice trembling ever so slightly.

"you could try not being so damn needy, maybe that'd help."

your eyes redden even further and your lips unintentionally twist themselves into a sour frown. you hate it when he calls you needy because you do need a lot from him, it feels like. his time. his care. his attention and affection. yet you never seem to get it.

"do you not love me? like at all?" you ask. all of the venom in your tone has been sucked out mercilessly and you sound more helpless than angry.

"do you not realize how fucking crazy you sound?" he scoffs as if he can't fathom why you'd be upset. as if he's not watching you break down in real time.

"why won't you give me a straight answer?" you question, voice softer than it was before.

he does nothing but scowl and you know beomgyu well enough to know that he's avoiding your question. that's enough of an answer as it stands, really. he doesn't care. never has. probably never will.

"then why'd you even say yes to dating me?" you truly don't understand. you thought you were different. you thought he saw something in you he didn't see in his harem of other suitors, and trust that there were many.

"i dunno. i was just bored, i guess," he answers with a shrug and your world as you know it collapses. the man you love sees you as nothing more than a way to kill time. he's picking you up right now just to toss you away when the next shiny toy presents itself. and so far, you've let him drag you around because you love him. that's how much you love him. but looking at him now, at how unbothered he is, you wonder if you've even got anything left to give.

"i really do love you," you manage to squeeze out with a bitter smile. your poor heart is on display for the naked eye to see and it seems like he really couldn't care less, but that won't stop you from asking. "does that mean anything at all to you?"

"well, i'm sorry you feel that way," he says simply, "but that's not my fucking problem."

your heart sinks to your stomach and you feel like you're going to throw up. in this moment, as you watch the love of your life dismiss you like you're a fucking dog begging for scraps of food, you feel an overwhelming sense of clarity as you realize he doesn't love you. he doesn't even like you. he probably hates you, actually. like a mental montage, every moment in which he showed you that exact sentiment plays all at once in your head.

all those times you let him choose everything from movies to dinner because the idea of a compromise was inconceivable. all of those occasions, special and otherwise, where you were supposed to go out on a date, but he'd bail without a word and you'd forgive him with no apology. when you'd offer him your share of dessert because he ate all of his and you knew he wanted more, and he'd take it without so much as a thank you. how you'd sit and listen to him tell stories about how amazing his friends were, but he'd never even ask about your day. when those same friends would jokingly call you the perfect girlfriend and you thought it was an indication of how good your relationship was, but in reality, it was a way to tease him because the thought of actually being with you was so abhorrent and ridiculous that it must be a joke. all those times you told him you loved him and he'd just smile and kiss you deeper. memories like these flood your brain with a vengeance so cruel it makes your head ache, and in a way, you realize it's ridiculous to be surprised when there was so much proof of his feelings in the first place.

"oh. okay," you say with what you hope is a soft and unbothered laugh, but comes out more as a choked one. "i guess there's nothing left to say. i'll get my shit and go."

you hesitate for a few excruciatingly awkward moments before collecting yourself enough to start gathering your things, which are scattered haphazardly around his apartment from his bedroom to his bathroom. it's like a walk of shame, almost, and you feel even shittier when he plops down on the couch with a long suffering sigh as he begins to massage the bridge of his nose. you feel so small in this moment — like a petulant child who just got done throwing an unsuccessful tantrum — and you're now soaking in the sobering aftermath and sitting with the thought that he just watched you have a meltdown like he was watching a monkey putting on a show. how much more is he going to humiliate you? enough is enough, you think, so before you can actually finish collecting all of your belongings, you're scurrying out of the apartment. before you go, you glance back at him one last time. "beomgyu?" you ask tentatively, tears clouding your eyes.

"yeah?" he replies with a sigh. this is it, you think.

"i don't want to see you ever again," you say firmly. before he can reply, if he ever intended to in the first place, you slam the door.

there's a lot to love about beomgyu. for one, he's handsome, which is obvious, but he has a certain allure you could never help but be drawn in by. he's always been a charming man, but even more so when he's talking to a woman he's interested in. as interested as he could be, that is. he's funny and comically pompous when he wants to be, but still somehow down to earth despite it all.

he's been described as a mood-maker, and while he grew to resent that term, you thought it was at least partially true, if only in the context of your relationship. when he's sad, you're devastated. when he's happy, you're over the fucking moon. his feelings are your whole world. or were, you guess, since all that's over now.

it wasn't all bad all the time, you think. there were times where you thought he really might reciprocate even a fraction of what you felt for him, and most of the time, that was enough. you could work with that. love looks different for everyone, you would reason. maybe he just had a funny way of showing it.

there were days where you'd laugh together and end the night lying in each other's arms while you'd cradle him like he was the most precious thing in the whole world because, to you, he really was. he was normally so boisterous when with his friends, but while he would never admit it to anyone else, he'd tell you about some of his insecurities while you gently combed your fingers through his long, silky hair. he'd speak of regrets and longing for people to take him more seriously. he'd never say it, but he wanted people to see you like you saw him. the real him. you'd let him cry while your hands cupped his cheeks and you'd shush him while he fiddled mindlessly with your hair like a child. you'd kiss his the tip of his reddened nose until he laughed instead of cried. times like those, you'd really think you were someone special to him. but now you realize you were wrong. you were just an outlet for him, and anyone willing to be an emotional dumping ground would do the trick too.

after a few weeks of moping, your sadness has begun to morph into anger and resentment. you spent nearly a year of your life trying to make an emotionally stunted man care about you, and that's not even counting the years of pining over him before you finally worked up the courage to ask him out. it was difficult to see it in the moment, but after being away from him for so long, it's crystal clear that he was honestly just an asshole who didn't really like you. nothing more, nothing less. maybe he'd find someone to change for someday, maybe he'd even work things out with his ex, but for whatever reason, you weren't her. that's just the way it goes, you guess. what really bothers you are the "what if's" of the situation. what if you were prettier, or smarter, or kinder. would he have seen you for who you really are? would he have grown to appreciate you if you had given him more to appreciate?

either way, there's no use crying over spilled milk now. you won't be going back to him any time soon and he certainly won't come crawling back to you. you'll continue to think of him less and less until your time together fades into a distant (and unpleasant) memory. you smile at the thought.

294 notes · View notes

vhstown · 10 months

Text

time out (part 1)

[boxer au] — 42!miles g morales x gn!reader

summary: Miles Morales makes boxing history. Your boyfriend isn't there to celebrate.

warnings: angst-ish, description of (boxing) injuries, self-destructive behaviours, briefly implied death, pov switch (yay), gtranslate spanish

word count: 3.9k

a/n: ive never written 42 miles before but he's a cool lil guy split into two parts cuz it was too long 😭 semi-edited (for the millionth time)

PART 2 → / THE AU

"Just six rounds in, Miles Morales knocks out the Vulture!"

Screams and cheers exploded from your phone as you laid in bed, watching the recap of your boyfriend's boxing match. Your eyes were straining from how close you were holding the screen to your face; this was probably the third time you’d watched Miles’ win. After training to hell and back, he’d made it to the national league with you and Aaron to support him. He did more than just “make it”, in fact. His “revolutionary” victory was plastered all over social media and the news. Everywhere you looked was: “17-YEAR-OLD NYC BOXER OVERTAKES LIGHTWEIGHT CHAMPION ‘VULTURE’ IN US NATIONALS”. Miles Morales — your boyfriend — had made boxing history.

The giddy grin on your face only grew wider as he came up again on screen, sporting the stoic expression he'd perfected over the last few months behind the overly-done editing and animations of the recap. As much as you'd wanted to go out and see him live (though begging your family to let you go to Vegas wasn’t exactly feasible), he'd made it clear he didn't want you, or anyone for that matter, in that arena. It was something about having "total focus" — and it must've worked, you thought, as you watched him give his post-fight interview.

“I jus’ hope you watchin’, cause I’m here. Miles Morales made it!”

Despite his boyish, adrenaline-fuelled shout at the mic, the quiet laugh you let out was one of pride rather than embarrassment. He had every right to celebrate, and you were watching, even if it wasn’t live. Everything he'd done up until this point was well worth it: the constant training, sparring, the late nights and early mornings — maybe even the countless unanswered texts and missed calls too. Miles had worked himself to the bone, and while it might've worried you at the time, it was nothing compared to the satisfaction you felt while watching him on screen. He knew what he was doing; Miles was semi-professional at this point. You had to let him do his own thing, even if that meant letting him go for a while.

Right now, though, Miles was home from Vegas. Tapping out of the video, you scrambled to your messages. The last ones were from you, sent weeks ago, a "good luck" and "i love you" read and without a response. Your fingers kept missing the keys, and you frowned at yourself until you finally were able to hit send.

CONGRATS BABY!!! Not delivered

IM SO PROUD OF YOU Not delivered

You tried resending them, only to be met with the same red message.

why arent my texts sending Not delivered

miles??? Not delivered

Not delivered? It'd almost been three days since the tournament; Miles always had his phone on.

"To leave a message, please press one—" The call went to voicemail for the third time. Your stomach swirled with something like uncertainty. It didn't even ring at all. Miles made it a habit to always be available, so why...?

Boxers needed time to recover, he was probably just tired and turned his phone off. Or he could be busy with an interview; Miles Morales was sort of a celebrity right now — who wouldn't want to talk to the 17-year-old boxing prodigy? You knew you wanted to, prodigy or not.

It was probably because you hadn’t seen Miles in so long, but possibilities kept forming in your head, disappearing just as fast. What if he blocked you? Or he could’ve changed his number. Were you over? No. Nope. No way. Not like this.

There was one other reason that made some sort of sense, but you decided to think against it. Miles had made it to the semi-finals in entire the National League. It was over; he'd gotten what he wanted. He was supposed to be resting right now.

Miles wasn't that stupid, right...?

You pulled up Rio's contact. It was better to be safe than sorry.

Riiiiiiing, riiiiiiing…

Better for him to be safe than sorry — or stupid.

"Hello?"

"Hola, tía, uh, could I speak to Miles?" You felt just a little crazy as you held the phone to your ear, but there was no harm in calling his mom.

"Ah, he's not home right now — said he was going out with his tío."

"Oh… Do you know where they went?"

"I'm not sure. Something important. About a... contract?"

"Contract…?" you muttered to yourself. “Okay… thank you.” It wasn't like you knew anything about a contract, though it wasn't like Miles would tell you anyway. At least he was safe, and with Aaron. It was probably important, official — something that didn't involve you. Not a lot of things in Miles’ life involved you, it seemed.

"How have you been?” Rio's voice interrupted your thoughts. You had called her out of nowhere, and after a while. "Have you eaten yet?"

"Oh, um..." The last time you'd talked to Rio was… right before Miles had left for Vegas. Well, you hadn't exactly talked. All you remember is just comforting her in silence. "Yeah, tía. Have you?"

"I have, but I've just been all over the place recently. So many reporters…" Rio's voice lifted up slightly in exasperation. You could only imagine what it was like for her. Your feelings suddenly felt a lot less significant, and you were back to your comforting mode all over again.

"I see. Must be exhausting." You attempted a polite laugh, which came out more like a sigh. If only you could be as patient as Rio…

"I'm so proud, though." Her voice warmed with a smile. If your chest ached with melancholy or empathy, you didn't know. "I didn't want him to leave home so soon. I still think this whole… professional thing is a bit too much, but… I want to trust him also."

"I'm sure he'll be fine, tía. If he's in the nationals already, he's probably getting a lot of support." It was more like you were trying to convince yourself. "I'm sure he has great coaches... and he's got me and Aar— uh, his uncle, too."

"I know…" For a moment, you weren't sure if either of you had anymore to say.

"…If not, I'll have to go there myself and give them a piece of my mind, eh?" she continued. You weren’t sure if it was a joke, but a smile formed on your lips anyway.

"Yeah…" A quiet laugh leaving your mouth at the image of Rio cussing out Miles' poor manager, in two languages no less. No wonder he was such a good boxer — Rio must have passed down her fighting spirit. "Maybe you'd even get signed,” you joked, the image of that even more amusing (and a scary possibility.)

Rio let out her own laugh, and your smile only grew; talking to her always made you feel better. "Me? Boxing? Nunca (Never.) — I'll work in that hospital until the end of me."

There was another stretch of silence. You thinned out a sigh, trying not to let the smile leave your face, even if she wasn’t there to see it.

"Come over for dinner tomorrow. I'll tell Miles to come and get you."

"Sure, tía, I'd love to." He probably just needed a break. Not from you specifically, but in general.

"You know tú y Miles sois mi vida, ¿bien?" (you and Miles are my life, right?) It wasn’t often Rio said that, but you always remembered every time she did, and how it made you feel — like you were family. Rio was pretty much a second mother to you. It made you wonder what Miles' father would've been like.

"Well, it's getting late, and I have a lot of laundry to fold." Rio's tone had a fake sort of enthusiasm — tiredness? You couldn’t really tell with her; the woman was always upbeat. "Take care of yourself, okay?"

"I will." It was late, you realised, and the sky outside your window was a lot darker than it had been before. "You too, tía."

“Descansa, ¿sí?” (Get some rest, yes?)

“Sí, tía.”

The call ended, and you were left facing your messages, a bittersweet feeling hugging you from behind. Right now, Miles was out with Aaron, about some contract, probably to do with boxing…

But why weren't your texts going through?

miles are you ok? Not delivered

im really proud of you Not delivered

i wish i couldve seen you live Not delivered

It wasn’t like there was much point, but…

i love you Not delivered

Maybe it was just out of habit; maybe you just missed him. Your reflection frowned at you behind the messages, thumb hovering over the power button to shut your phone off, until your phone pinged with a notification — Aaron was texting you.

Hey man

Out of town

LMK if miles breaks in

You sat up immediately, fingers floating uselessly above the keys for a moment.

sure Read at 11:24PM

are you out of town already? Read at 11:25PM

Ping!

Yeah

@ Queens

Miles was with Aaron about some “contract”... and Aaron was in Queens?

You knew Miles hadn't blocked you, or turned his phone off — he had no signal. And there was only one place in Brooklyn you could think of that had no reception, and that MIles had any reason to be in. It was also the one place you didn't want him to go to: that damn warehouse.

The place he’d spent training all those weeks — what reason did he have to be there right after finishing the tournament? Putting on your jacket, blinking back the sleepiness and collecting the fleeting remains of patience you had left, you could only hope that Miles had even a shred of common sense with him.

THWACK! THWACK! THWA— Crack!

"Mierda..." (Shit...) Miles hissed, drawing his glove away from the punching bag. His hand was paralysed for a moment, a deep, gnawing pang running through his fingers down to the rest of his arm. The tight gloves only suffocated him more, doing nothing to ease the pain as he gritted his teeth and waited for it to dull down.

Why was he even here? It was over — that Norman bastard had blown him off hours ago. It felt like a couple minutes, the words still fresh in his mind. Searing pain shot through his hand when he tried to flex his fingers, the rest of his muscles starting to ache too. This was going to hurt after the adrenaline wore off. Damn it, Morales.

The walls flashed white all of a sudden, a faint rumble of thunder interrupting the pounding of his heartbeat as he tried to straighten himself out. It was quiet, except for the sounds of the incoming storm. The playlist he was listening to had finished ages ago — your playlist. If he didn’t want to think about you, he wasn’t doing a good job of it.

Rain blasted quietly against the windows, and Miles’ eyes stung with dryness as he squeezed them shut. There was no way he'd be able to go back now, not to you, definitely not to his mom. She'd probably go on and on about how he should've taken his jacket, how he ruined his hair in the rain again, maybe how he wasted his damn time being a boxer...

It was probably fair; his mom had enough on her plate trying to support them both — especially him right now. She’d done everything in her power to make sure he got to Vegas, and he’d just left her alone again right after. But how was he meant to face her now? He was supposed to make her proud, make his dad proud, but it wasn’t like he had any pride left after he’d lost his contract. The Green Goblin had probably set the record for fastest knockout when Miles lost to him. Of course just the semi-finals weren’t enough; Norman Osborn was the big shot of boxing, and if Miles lost to some rookie in just about 15 seconds, then maybe he wasn’t worth the investment.

It didn’t make sense — nothing about The Green Goblin (or “Harry”, whatever they liked to gossip about) made sense. He’d just debuted, but didn’t even look like a boxer; he didn’t stand right, his style was inconsistent, his head movement was all over the place, but his punch had almost knocked Miles’ brain straight out of his skull. It was almost superhuman. Even with no openings, the freak of nature had forced his way through like an animal. And he was scrawny, not nearly as built as Miles at least, like he should’ve been in the weight class down. Either way, the asshole was being celebrated, and Miles was out of a contract.

And Miles had just stood there, while Norman berated him and tore Miles’ dream apart right in front of his very eyes. Maybe he’d hoped too much as an “amateur” boxer. That’s all he was, apparently — no matter how hard he worked, or what he achieved, or what he promised.

“Why should I keep you? The Vulture was destined to lose at his age.”

“Even rigged matches wouldn’t get you anywhere.”

“I mean, you’re as good at fighting as one of those street kids.”

“That’s all you were before I decided to give you a chance, no?”

The image of the Norman’s uncanny, sneering face sent his good fist reeling towards the punching bag. Should’ve pummelled his pelirojo (redhead) ass to the ground—

"Miles!"

The glove crumpled mid-air against the bag, arm going rigid. It was silent as he let out a breath through his teeth — he wasn’t hearing things, was he?

The rush was starting wearing off, his mind starting to cloud and pain faintly radiating again from his other hand. His good fist tightened inside the glove, pushed against the bag which was still and awkwardly tilted.

You’re losing focus, just punch the damn thing—

"Miles, what the hell are you doing here?"

The noise of the door shutting made him turn around, floor squeaking under his stumbling feet. It was you by the door, breathing just as heavily as him and dripping head to toe with rain, in a jacket that was way too thin for any sort of weather.

Dios... (God...) He knew he couldn’t be hallucinating that disapproving look on your face.

Rain was pattering gently against the glass as he pulled his arm away away from the bag, letting it swing in front of him before his eyes met yours.

"It's midnight, what are you..." A sharp intake of breath interrupted your words — a shiver.

"What’re you doin’ here...?" Miles asked instead through a grimace. His voice came out wrong — hoarse. Cold sweat was clinging to his skin, and his throat was dry and tightening. A mess — that’s what you were talking to right now, barely your boyfriend. All he could do was stare as the rush died down and his senses were coming back to him. The fog in his mind made it hard to speak, even harder to look at you.

"My texts and calls weren't going through— You weren't with Aaron or your mom, I just..." You sucked in another breath through your teeth; raindrops were glistening on your skin. He should’ve just stayed home, damn it. "Was just worried."

Well, he certainly looked worrying, even more so than you. Swallowing back his breathlessness wasn’t helping; it was like he’d ran a marathon with his fists. The pain from his knuckle was starting to bleed into the rest of his hand so much so that it might’ve been broken.

"'M good... You, though?" He let out a bit of a growl to clear his throat before deciding to cut straight to the chase: you’d come here in the middle of the night, in the rain, by yourself. As much as he was being an idiot right now, the amount of times he’d told you to not do any of those things, pleaded with you even, was making you look like the delirious one in his eyes. Miles was being stubborn, but he knew you were worse.

“You insane…?” he muttered, taking a step away from the bag. “Did Aaron tell you to come here or sumn’?"

"No, he was supposed to be with you," you shot back, eyes narrowing at him from under your hood before thunder bellowed from all around. The rain was growing into a loud static noise, and your voice was muffled as your expression grew more exasperated. "You came home 3 days ago and you didn't even text me. Yeah, I probably should've texted you, and I tried, but now you're here training alone again when your mom thinks you're with Aaron and—"

"You come here to scold me?" His jaw crunched a little as he tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice. Miles wasn’t trying to be mad at you — he was just mad in general. It just so happened to be in your direction right now.

“Huh? No, I came here because you scared the hell out of me — and Aaron told me to not let you break into his place.”

If it was supposed to be funny, the laugh he let out was anything but amused. At least Aaron wasn’t here for him to disappoint too, or get a weirdly-phrased life lesson from, or both. “Well I’m not breakin’ in, and I told you, I’m good, so I don’t get why you’re still here.”

You stepped a little closer, and Miles’ heels dug into the ground to keep himself from moving. “Isn’t it obvious? Or are you just being difficult on purpose?”

“Difficult?” he mirrored dryly, trying to push back the growing exhaustion clouding his head.

“Can you not just take a break for once? It’s over, Miles; you already won—”

“I didn’t win.” The walls echoed with his voice, words having escaped on their own. It wasn’t at you, but he didn’t know what he was mad at, resolve fading as he watched your face straighten with realisation.

“Don’t tell me that’s why you’re here…”

His fingers unconsciously clawed into the boxing glove, pain shoot through his hand. Nothing came out of his mouth, but his silence was loud — incriminating. That was the reason, right? That he didn't win?

“Kid didn’t stand a chance.” What was the point of you being here?

“A one-punch concussion — on a newbie, no less.” It was over, like you said.

“It’s a shame, I bet on him too.” Everyone had given up on him.

“You should be resting right now— you’re shaking, Miles.” So why wouldn't you?

“No ‘m not…” is all he could muster, flexing his shoulders uncomfortably. Your hand was on his arm before he could realise, and he was met with a stern look as he tried to keep his gaze from shaking too.

The velcro on his gloves crunched as you started undoing them, and he couldn’t bring himself to stop you. It’s not like he had the energy.

“You coulda’ got hurt on your way here.” The croak in his voice made him sound more hopeless than reprimanding as you slipped off the first glove, pausing half-way down his palm. His bare palm.

“…I could’ve got hurt?” Miles held back a sigh as he was made to look at his own hand. Bruised, blackened, branded with anger — it hurt more to look at it than anything. “You didn’t wear your wraps?”

The other glove slid off, revealing the fresh, festering swelling coming from his middle knuckle — the aftermath of that sickening cracking noise. You took his curled hand, easing up his middle finger and making him hiss under his breath.

“Think you can straighten it?” you muttered, gently trying to do it yourself only to lose his hand from your grip.

“’S gonna be fine,” he mumbled, eyes fixed to the side as his hand closed back up.

“It won’t if you can’t move it properly.”

“You a doctor now?”

“Nah, but your mom’s a nurse.” You carefully held his hand by palm, thumb tracing over the tender, split skin, his fingers wrapping around the side of your hand in futile protest. He’d have to bother his mom again — he didn’t even think about that. “You basically just punched yourself.”

Everything you were saying was right — it always was. He hated that fact.

“You a boxing expert too?” he thought to retort.

“Thought that was supposed to be you.” Miles’ eyes narrowed, and yours narrowed in response. “I don’t get it, baby...” you sighed, shaking your head a little as you put down the gloves to the side.

Baby. His breath almost hitched. You were dating, and it didn’t even seem like it anymore. Not after all those weeks apart. The word didn’t even feel endearing, it was condescending, like he didn’t deserve it. Maybe he was being a baby, and maybe he always had been. You were the one who always had to drag him out of this make-shift gym. Right now was no different, except…

“…Why are you still doing this?” he heard you mutter, still turned away with his hand in your grip. You didn’t even know the half of it.

“Why are you still here?” His hand tried to slip away again, but you only took it by the wrist instead, now facing him.

“Why won’t you answer my questions, Miles?” Your voice deadened into a whisper, only serving to frustrate him.

“I don’t know why you care so much.” He let out a quiet huff, staring at your hand when your grip ceased to relax.

“I care because you look like you’re about to pass out and I can’t let my boyfriend kill himself over something stupid—”

“I’m not killing myse—” A pained groan escaped his mouth as you ruthlessly pushed up his injured finger.

“Don’t push me, Miles.” Oh, you were serious.

“You’re pushin’ sumn’,” he strained through gritted teeth. “Mierda… quit it already.”

The pain tore on another moment, and he was just now realising how bad it actually hurt. All you were doing was staring at him, brows knitted together. “Cariño, please…” he whispered, a wince forming on his face.

Your hand loosened, and he let out a quiet, frustrated, somewhat relieved sigh.

Still a sucker for nice words... He didn’t say them as much as he would’ve liked.

“You need to take a time out,” you stated after a beat of silence. The expression on your face was serious again, killing any sense of tenderness you might’ve shown.

He freed his hand from your grip with the opportunity, before giving you a dubious look. “Like, for kids?”

“Like for boxers, dumbass.” Your gaze followed his retreating hand for a moment before falling back on his eyes. “But if you want me to treat you like a kid…”

“I’m good.” Another roar of thunder rang out before he could add anything, and the rain was so heavy that anything you could see from the windows became a blur.

“…You got your jacket?” you suggested, without much hope.

The idea only made Miles’ eyes squeeze shut again. A shallow exhale left him, and he tried not to let his fatigue cloud his judgement. If he kept talking stupid to you, he’d probably have worse to worry about than a broken knuckle. “You think imma go outside?”

All you could do was sigh. It seemed like the two of you would be in “time out” for a while.

🕸️🔭👾

thank you for reading part 2 soon but then again its not my fav fic in the world 💔 i rewrote this like 8 trillion times and it still wasn't clicking for me 😭 idk i just got sick of editing it again and again

this isn't as short as my usual fics because i felt like i needed to add context... I've never written an au or anything remotely original so this is just yeah... im tryna figure it out! i have . too much lore for this au

reblogs appreciated lmk if you did like it (i hope this is someone's cup of tea lmao)

catch my atsv masterlist here !

#miles 42 x reader #42!miles morales x reader #42 miles morales #earth 42 miles morales x reader #miles 42 #earth 42 miles x you #miles g morales x reader #earth 42 miles x reader #miles g morales #miles gonzalo morales #atsv fanfiction #across the spiderverse #atsv x you #42!miles x reader #atsv #prowler miles x you #prowler miles x reader #prowler miles #vhstown

701 notes · View notes