#she's. so so shitty. it doesn't take much to not be a total piece of shit but she can't even do the bare minimum

[rextheravenous]

Shoutout to how shitty this roomate situation has gotten 🧍

Not even gonna hide my rant in the tags because I want people to see that I've been dealing with

-Before our campus shut down for the winter storm, I put a note on my microwave saying "stop slamming my microwave or I'm bringing it home" (this roomate had kept slamming it to the point where the door was having trouble opening)

-Next day, we find out she called her mom to come buy her a personal microwave

-During the storm break, we deep clean the common areas to see that she's removed all of her things and carelessly dumped all of our things out into drawers

-When the break ended and both of our roomates were back, she was suddenly giving us the silent treatment

-Silent treatment has lasted for days now. While it's nice not hearing her talk, she won't listen to anything we have to say

-One of the things we said: "we're going do laundry, please don't lock us out 🙏" and not once, but twice, she "accidentally" locked us out (we were only gone about 2-3 minutes per trip)

-it's been three days now, and she's been hogging up the common area literally all hours of the day blasting music, slamming doors, and singing (badly I might add)

-our other roommate talked with us while she was at a meeting earlier because I had brought up the lock-out incident and after we explained what she's been doing, she agrees that she's being really childish and petty

-after us 3 left the common area, she went right back to being loud in the kitchen

-it's the 3rd night now and I finally called an RA to see what I can do

-I can file a personal statement and get a neutral mediator to listen to all sides so we can come to a compromise (and if she breaks the compromises like the last few times she has, she can face serious trouble with the University)

-the three of us other roomates have a separate group chat and all of us agree that a personal statement would be a good idea

That is all for now but I'll keep this updated 🫡 if anyone knows any way I could get her into trouble so she rethinks the petty shit she's doing lmk <3

#what's a cool tag for this so I can come back later #um #fuck it #the roomate chronicles #we've had previous issues with her inviting people over too 🧍 all we ask for is a little warning and she can't even be bothered to do that #she's. so so shitty. it doesn't take much to not be a total piece of shit but she can't even do the bare minimum

[olderthannetfic]

Something that frustrates me about the Harry Potter conversation is a lot of people missing the point behind the motivation to boycott it. They seem weirdly focused on the content of HP when it's actually... not that bad? It's not perfect, in fact a lot of aspects are pretty fucking problematic and worthy of discussion, but not uniquely so by the standards of the fantasy genre. Yes, I know the goblins are clearly drawing on anti-semitic tropes. Yes, the house elf situation is fucked. Yes, lots of not-like-other-girls-style misogyny. Yes, Cho Chang was a fucking disaster of racism. I KNOW THIS ALREADY! I'm not an idiot and Harry Potter fans were talking about this for far longer than JKR has been a TERF. But I'm also a fan of the Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age and the Witcher and a shitton of isekai anime and tons of other fantasy medias which are so much worse. Harry Potter is only moderately problematic by the standards of most popular fantasy media, especially for the mainstream standards of the time period it was written. Worthy of criticism, but not dropping it entirely. And actually reading HP and looking back at JKR's behaviour at the time, much of it seems largely unintentional, just that JKR drew on a lot of fantasy tropes that she didn't properly examine as well as her own unexamined biases and she had some flawed understandings of progressivism that were fair for its day but don't fly now, but doesn't seem malicious. The actual authorial intent at least seems to be pretty progressive at least, even if the execution wasn't the best. And sure, it's not a masterwork but there's a reason it connected to so many people, even if a lot of it was luck and timing. We don't have to ignore that and doing so feels dishonest.

I'm just so annoyed when people try to shit on the contents because they're missing the point and confuse the actual problem in a way that weakens their argument. I don't give Harry Potter money anymore because JKR crossed some lines for me in real life, totally separate from Harry Potter as a piece of media, and I don't want to fund her bullshit because she is so influential it is hurting people. The content of her books is utterly irrelevant to this decision. She could have penned a goddamn magnum opus and it wouldn't have mattered. So I'm sick of people bringing up books that are "better" or ragging on the contents of Harry Potter because none of that is the point and never was the point and it comes across as just taking advantage of a shitty situations to dunk on a popular thing or those who enjoyed it. Yeah, it was a mediocre fantasy series. But it hit the right emotional escapist buttons in a lot of kids even if it had the moral nuance and depth of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles anti-drug PSA. Having to drop it sucked for a lot of people because it can't be replaced and yelling about how bad the writing was doesn't change that because it never was about quality. JKR's TERF transformation was in many ways a betrayal of JKR's intended audience considering how the text preached acceptance and love and starred an abused, unwanted child getting to go to magic school where he's special. Pretending Harry Potter should be dropped because its content has issues obscures the actual problem of a raging transphobic having money and influence and that not everything created by bad people is poor quality so boycotts might require giving up access to things you actually like or are valuable and that's not always an easy decision to make.

JKR was a probably decent person with fairly liberal politics when she wrote Harry Potter. The books, while imperfect, are not more horrible or full of problems a dozen other popular fantasy properties. JKR become a TERF later in life and while she may have had ingrained transphobia prior to this when she wrote Harry Potter, that is not the same as the virulent hate-movement she's part of now and we should recognize how easy it is for people to get drawn into hate-movements. Any argument to boycott should be about how she's using her money and influence to affect real life laws and attitudes unless you want to try and get people to also drop half the fantasy genre.

--

[jadeylovesmarvelxo]

🌸 Always

Jason is an asshole to you, Eddie can't stand seeing you dragged down by Carver and vows to show you how amazing you are.

Warnings; 18+, minors dni, Angst, tw for mental abuse.

This is a very personal story for me and I would just like to say if anyone is going through events as depicted in this story then please know you're not alone, you deserve to be happy and loved.

Please speak to someone you trust about what is happening.

Help is out there and you don't need to suffer in silence ❤️

🌸

Eddie doesn't give a shit that Jason is your boyfriend. He doesn't give a shit if he has to step on Jason's toes to make his interest in you crystal clear.

He sees the way Jason treats you and it pisses him off, you're the sweetest girl in Hawkins, kind as hell and so beautiful that it makes Eddie ache.

You were so much more yourself when Jason wasn't around.

However, when he was it was like a light switch flipped and you became quiet and distant. Withdrew into yourself.

He heard Jason shout at you, call you names or make every little thing your fault.

It chipped away at your confidence and Eddie hated it.

When he saw you crying two months ago because Jason had made you upset he had took it upon himself to make you smile.

He picked up some wildflowers for you and when he showed them to you, your eyes light up.

You kissed him on the cheek and he was a goner for you right then and there. From that moment made it his mission to show you how fucking amazing he thought you were.

He called you princess. That was his name for you and you alone.

" Good morning princess"

"Anything for you princess"

Jeff and Gareth teased the shit out of him, even Dustin got in on the act- total butthead.

But he didn't care as he was smitten and no matter how cool or collected he acted or tried to hide how into you he was, when you batted your eyes or smiled sweetly he would melt into a puddle

He loved when your smile was directed his way, he loved the way you laughed and how shy you would be in his presence.

It took you a little bit to overcome that shyness, to come out of the shell that Jason had made you retreat into but now you chatted away to him, completely relaxed in his presence.

You open up more about the things Jason says, how that makes you feel.

When Jason made you cry he's there every time drying your tears and making you laugh by being his usual dramatic self, his confident swagger and dimpled smile, big, kind brown eyes.

"I like being with you Eddie, feel like I can be myself, no bullshit, no happy couple show with Jason or pretending his shitty words don't hurt me" you murmur as he strums on his guitar, determined to teach you.

"I will always be here princess. None of the things Jason says to you is true. None of it. You're so amazing, it would take me all day to list all the incredible things about you.

You're special, you're no burden or waste of space. Never, ever listen to that asshole because he's talking shit, I'm here and if you need any help, anything then just say"

Tears roll down your cheeks and you cuddle into Eddie's chest as he strokes your hair.

Eddie wants to say more, a lot more.

He doesn't want to lose your friendship though. Yeah, he's rapidly falling for you and he's made how he feels obvious but he would never ever force you into anything.

If you wanted to be with him then you would tell him. One Day.

Then that day arrives quicker than he would ever expect. Jason comes storming up to him with rage in his features.

"What the fuck did you say to yn? She just dumped me on Friday, you pathetic freak. I bet it's you running your mouth in her ear"

Eddie rolls his eyes.

"I didn't say anything you piece of shit. I listened to her, and treated her like a human being instead of dirt as you do, she deserves miles better than you asshole"

Jason's sneering laugh twists him up inside.

"Like she would ever date you freak. Shit, this is why you've been hanging around. Stepping on my toes. Because you love her?"

Eddie's vicious glare renders Jason silent.

"I didn't give a fuck about stepping on your toes dude. You had an amazing, kind and beautiful girl, so special and you treated her like shit. She deserves to be treated like the princess... the queen like she is, you stupid fuck"

"I'm not a violent guy dude but if you don't get out of my sight then your losing teeth or digits, take your pick" he hears a gasp behind him.

When he turns around you're beaming at him, your arms slip around him and you will him close. Your lips meet his and he doesn't even hear Jason's yell of shock as he kisses you back.

All he sees are fireworks in his head, relishes the feel of you in his arms and your soft lips on his.

When you pull away and Jason has stormed of seething and ranting about freaks, he strokes your cheek, gazing at you in reverence.

"Eddie Munson, I love you. I love how I feel when I'm with you I love your gorgeous brown eyes and the way you laugh and your music and every little thing about you"

Tears roll down your cheeks.

"Jason made me feel like a burden. You make me feel loved. Like I'm home" he kisses your forehead and leans back down to gently your lips.

"I'll always make you feel safe and loved princess. Always, I love you"

❤️

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x female reader #eddie angst #eddie munson angst

[thenixkat]

Mundane AU!Laios thoughts

Note:

Probably contains spoilers

Mundane au= no magic and no fantasy 'races' (like... little people are a thing, they exist in reality, some people just have dwarfism. The elves are just skinny racist and xenophobic Europeans like? And there's already parralells made with the demi humans so if I do anything the orcs are Afro Native and Kobolds are somewhere African or Arab. And for the ogres... gigantism is a thing that exists in real like and totally a teen girl would just wear some horns.)

Thoughts:

The Toudens are European-born. From somewhere cold as hell, really isolated and conservative, that's close to some mountains, that's racist towards the local indigenous people.

(The sibs, but especially Laios got chewed out about some shit and has been trying to be better, slips up every now and then but takes criticism well so long as folks tell him what he did/said wrong).

Local weird kids put off vibes that the rest of the village didn't like, Laios and Falin grew up bullied and ostracized. Falin got sent off to schooling in the big city and later to a university in Italy where she met Marcille.

Laios dropped out of high school and joined the military as soon as he was able to b/c he wanted to get the hell out of dodge. Served for a few shitty years b4 just... deserting and backpacking across Europe just straight up homeless and working whatever odd jobs he could find. Man was going through it. Wound up in the same city where Falin was studying at a university in and decided to visit her. She took one look at him and refused to let him just go back to what he was doing, so Laios started couch surfing with her (very much against dorm rules but he looked terrible and Falin wasn't about to let anyone stop her from making sure her brother has a roof over his head and food).

Eventually, she takes him with her when she does a work-study in the USA for her ecology degree and they ended up staying/Falin kinda maybe sorta dropped out and got a job with a vet near where she was doing her work-study.

Laios and Falin are technically illegal immigrants but they're white so no one really questions their citizenship (their working on getting citizenship/papers)

Laios gets a GED. Does some self-study from Falin's textbooks and online stuff but that's about it for his schooling.

Laios definitely, like, lives in Falin's basement. Falin is the primary breadwinner in this household, Laios is aware of this and has learned to accept it even tho he would like to take care of his baby sister and sometimes feels bad about not being able to. They used to share a room in a cheap apartment but after building up enough savings they managed to buy a suspiciously cheap house in a rural town bordering a reservation and not far from a national park.

Laios still works odd jobs, mostly physical labor and stuff where they won't ask for a degree. Has worked retail, where his customer service was trash but he's darn good at just stocking and shelving shit.

Met Chilchuck while working retail, Chilchuck introduced him to the concept of a union which Laios thinks is really neat.

The town where the Touden's moved has a sizable population of people with dwarfism, Chilchuck is a notable member of the little person community in the area. The Touden's go to Chilchuck for help with paperwork (they pay him a small fee) and he doesn't ask too many questions about why they don't have this or that piece of documentation.

Laios enjoys doing citizen science and bird watching. During the tourist season, he runs a small wilderness guide giving campers and hikers tours in the local national park.

There's a hermit that lives in the national park illegally (Senshi) that Laios and Falin made friends with. They love his cooking.

Laios is active in the online furry community. He does commissions, mostly of digital and physical art or people's fursonas and vore stuff. He does great ferals, and decent anthros, but his human art is not good (he's working on it).

Laios is decidedly chubby in this, his weight goes up and down depending on the season and how much physical activity he's doing. But ever since he reunited with Falin, she's been making sure he doesn't skip meals if they can afford to eat. And ever since he met Senshi he's gotten heftier since he loves that man's cooking.

#nix meows #dungeon meshi #laios touden #mundane au #just a few thoughts

[bonefall]

What irritates me so much about the Leafpool and the three situation is: it's Starclan's fault. It never had to happen in cannon. Squirrelflight isn't barren. If the Erin's wanted drama, they could have made the three Ashfur's, and had Squirrel pretend they're Bramble's. I'm glad in BB you made her barren, but it still just irritates me. Leafpool got done so dirty. If I was in her paws, and after Bramble had me forcibly step down, I'd ask someone to honor sire (maybe from a different clan?) kits for me then look Bramble straight in the eye as I started showing.

It's one in a long list of "retcons that happened to reduce the agency of characters because the warrior fandom will otherwise find any reason to fucking hate women." I don't believe that Po3 was written with the revelation of Leafpool's Wish in mind.

(leafpool's wish is where the "barren/StarClan telling Squilf to take the kids" Thing comes from)

In fact, most books that come out seem to completely forget the detail. Squirrelflight's Hope doesn't mention it. Bramblestar's Storm totally omitted it. Squirrelflight is never pissed that StarClan literally lied to her.

So it makes it really feel like a less egregious version of Spottedleaf's Heart; a poorly thought-out addition specifically aimed at the fandom misogynists who write screeds about how Brambleclaw/Thistleclaw Were Good Actually and their shitty behavior was just a Bad Woman Who Wronged The Poor Babies.

AND to be clear what I'm getting at with this comparison is that both these books are awful, because they're cowardly. They don't stick to their guns and say, "BLUESTAR AND SQUIRRELFLIGHT WERE RIGHT TO MISTRUST THESE MEN BASED ON THE REASONS THEY HAD." They badly retcon in EXTRA reasons for them to come to the conclusions they did.

They concede to the fandom misogynist. Their existence agrees that the original reasons they had were weak, so the writers shoveled in extra horseshit to make them "more correct" to do what they did.

"Don't worry guys, it's not that Squirrelflight took her sister's children to protect everyone involved, and that she's right to mistrust her mate who trained in HELL and never revealed any of his own secrets until his shitty half-brother killed her dad once. Nope! God lied to her and told her to. Told her she was barren, even. Now Squilf can remain morally pure while Brambleclaw abuses the shit out of her. Soblem Prolved."

So like... I don't even think that they should have been Ashfur's. This worked perfectly fine as it was in Po3. Just commit, assholes. Bramblestar's an untrustworthy piece of shit. Condemn him for turning on his children, confirming every terrible suspicion Squirrelflight had. Point out that the Three get treated differently when the secret comes out. Ask what, exactly, Leafpool could have done differently and have people have different opinions on this.

but like. keep squirrelflight being barren :/ Please let women just be unable to have kids sometimes. Please.

#bone babble #tw spottedleaf's heart #warrior cats analysis

[ymaohoh]

Max's relationship with Eddie and Chrissy headcanons?

This is a GREAT prompt. Thank you!

One of my favourite Hellcheer fic/prompts to read are the ones coming from other character perspectives (POV's). I've seen a few from Max's viewpoint and they are KILLER.

(I want to quickly link two fics in particular which stole my heart: 'still awake, playing chase with the sunrise' a oneshot by @cyraclove and 'she said to me forget what you thought' multi-chapter by @majicmarker)

So my thoughts (and this follows the 'Chrissy Lives AU idea')

Max initially minds her own business about Eddie and Chrissy's flirting because why should she give a rat's ass about the way he clearly goes all gooey and soft for her, and the way she gets all silly and pink and giggly? Dustin and the others LOVE it and drag Eddie to filth for his antics but Max is more reserved. She's got her own stuff going on, you know?

But she's good at observing. She's the first one who twigs Eddie's made up excuses to walk past Chrissy's locker a hundred times a day (which is NOT on his route) and the way his eyes are glued to a certain table in the lunchroom. She notices Chrissy peering at Eddie over Carver's shoulder and the way she giggles into her hand when he says something weird and wacky. She doesn't share these observations with the group because it's not her business but she rolls her eyes when they finally piece it together - 'idiots', she thinks, looking at Lucas fondly.

Max knows Chrissy speaks to Ms Kelley too but she never brings it up, nor does Chrissy. Following Chrissy's first encounter with Vecna, the party try and figure out connections between the victims but Max stays totally silent when they ask. That's Chrissy's business and she's sure as hell not ratting her out. Chrissy appreciates this and they share a knowing look before they both spill the beans that yeah, their lives suck.

When they realise how important music is to keeping them grounded (literally) and how it helps against Vecna's visions, they sit down together and create 'happy playlists'. Their music tastes are way different but it's an oddly fun way to spend an afternoon. She's kinda' glad someone else is going crazy too - makes her feel less alone.

Chrissy is right off the bat keen to be nice to everyone and show she wants to help (they don't expect much initially but she proves them wrong after demonstrating a killer dropkick and she's a crack shot - her dad's a member of the NRA). Max is reluctant at first - she doesn't trust easy - but Chrissy is persistent and Max finds herself opening up. It's nice to have another girl around and Chrissy is kind and honest and sweet. If she ever had a big sister - she'd want her to be like Chrissy, you know? She listens when Max talks.

(Chrissy wins El round too which helps. Max learns she can enjoy the odd girly moment and not have it diminish her 'tough girl' exterior - Chrissy paints El's nails bright purple and shows Max how to bluff at poker. Sometimes they team up with Nancy and Robin too).

Max gravitates towards Eddie more than Steve or Nancy (or the other 'adults'). Maybe because he's from the same crappy background or because he doesn't care about shitty family drama and require a million answers. She likes his Uncle Wayne too and his accent when he calls her 'Red'.

Max is (unfortunately in her view) the one who witnesses Eddie and Chrissy taking their...whatever it is...to the next step. She's hanging outside her trailer when she sees them hurrying out of Eddie's van. Eddie's hands are ALL over Chrissy as he practically carries her inside. Eddie spots her though, and later asks (with the cockiest smile ever seen) if she can keep it hush hush until Eddie and Chrissy figure out what this means exactly, but Max responds flatly, "cat's out of the bag, dipshit. Everyone knows already." Eddie flushes bright red but she doesn't think it's from embarrassment at being caught - he looks so crazy fucking happy.

But she thinks they're good together. She watches as they progress (quickly) from friends with feelings, to sucking face, to becoming honest-to-god soulmates. They work well together. Eddie brings Chrissy out of her shell and installs some of his notorious confidence in her, and Chrissy cares for Eddie and makes him stand taller. Max thinks that's what relationships should be like.

(she finds Chrissy upset at school when the cheerleaders ditch her after finding out about Eddie and Hellfire, and she tells Chrissy bluntly they suck and helps her dab at her spoiled make up. Those phonies don't matter - she's got real friends now. It's the first time she calls Chrissy a friend).

She's never seen Eddie look so serious as when it comes to Chrissy and her safety - which is different from his usual goofy dramatic self. When Steve suggests using Chrissy as bait (a Daphne, if you will) Eddie gets a real hard look in his eyes and tells him to think of something else before Chrissy says bravely yes "if it'll help". Eddie watches her, makes sure her ammo vest (which is way too big) is strapped on tight, and Max see's him fucking lose it when Chrissy comes this close to danger. When she gets back, safe, Eddie holds onto her hand like it's a lifeline. ('synchronized denial' by empress of snark inspired this one).

(Chrissy screams like a banshee when she sees Eddie being attacked by demobats. Max spots real fire in her eyes as she swings at it with her baseball bat).

She's never believed in soulmates (thought it was a gimmick for movies and love-sick tweens) but when she looks at Chrissy and Eddie embracing after Vecna is finally defeated? (the soft look on Eddie's face, the way Chrissy nuzzles into the crook of his neck), she understands Eddie and Chrissy are just meant to be together and would be in any alternative universe or dimension. Fucking Star-Crossed Lovers. She doesn't know if she and Lucas will ever be like that (she's still a kid, okay?) but maybe one day.

(Chrissy doesn't live)

Max doesn't know Chrissy personally but she knows she speaks - spoke (goddamn it) - to Ms Kelley too. Knew she was vulnerable and she was hurting. When the party are talking about connections between victims, Max remains silent (again). Fuck that. She's not giving up Chrissy's secrets even if she's no longer here. Chrissy deserves better than to be discussed like a throw-away character in some dumb horror movie.

As she grows closer to Eddie and the others, she notices the weight around Eddie's shoulders and the haunted look he gets when he mentions Chrissy and what happened in his trailer. He flinches every time her name is uttered. She wonders if there was more to their relationship then just a brief moment in the woods?

Thanks 'nonny

#chrissy x eddie #edssy #hellcheer #eddie munson #eddie x chrissy #eddissy #hellcheer headcanons #hellcheer fanfic #ymaohoh #chrissy cunningham x eddie munson #chrissy cunningham #chrissy and eddie #max mayfield #chrissy and max friendship #stranger things #eddissy headcannons

[vivelarevolution13]

moving like a river of trouble crossing

Rating: M | Word count: 10,260 | Tags: Set in the lead up to and right at the end of CATWS, Character Study, PTSD, Grief/Mourning, Dissociation, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug (And A Friend), Wait No Not That One, Going Down Memory Lane, SHIELD Has Shitty Therapists, Horrible People Still Acting Like People, Captain America Politics, Natasha's Love Language Is Surveillance, Folks Trained For Violence Engaging In You Guessed It: Violence | Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanoff, implied Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers/Brock Rumlow (non-explicit, but still reasonably fucked up by virtue of Rumlow being Rumlow)

(belated) fic for @catws-anniversary, day 2. Thank you so much for putting it together, guys! | march 27th theme: steve rogers | prompts: guilt, "it kind of feels personal" | part of a WIP to be published on AO3

and because I apparently can't help myself with the music-fic thing, playlist for this here

i.

Good morning Captain Rogers. It is 05:15 AM, EST. Up 'n' at 'em. Good morning, Captain Rogers. It is 04:41 AM, EST. Would you like me to set the blinds to a lower density? Don't you nuh-uh at me, sunshine - get your lazy ass out of bed. You're gonna be late. Good morning, Captain Rogers. I understand you are under some duress right now, but please do not be alarmed. It is 2:32 am, EST. The year is 2012. You are in New York City. You are safe. Please try to take a breath. Would you like me to call anyone?

Good morning, Steve. Good morning. You're gonna be late. You awake? You awake yet?

Sure. Sure, he's awake.

That afternoon he packs his bag, the single duffle that fits all of his earthly possessions. He tries to ignore the vaguely smug tone of Fury's voice when he tells him they already have an apartment set up for him in DC: ten minutes from HQ, real convenient, and has he ever been to see Lincoln Memorial? He'll love it, it's a nice spot for a walk, especially in the summers, or so Fury's been told.

Steve's been to DC, but he's never beeen to the memorial, never seen much of the city outside the confines of the hotel the USO booked for them. He thinks he can count the grand total of places he's gotten to see up close on his right hand, and half of them were in the European Theatre. The other half he's running from now.

He's sure it'll be grand, he tells Fury. Beats the smell of moldy brick in the heat and a patchwork city manifesting ghosts out the corner of his eye, he doesn't say. ii.

They get him a therapist as a part of his onboarding at SHIELD. It’s due diligence, they say, in the aftermath of New York – someone to help him transition into his new role. But it’s been almost nine months now, and Steve’s learning their language, the words that get caught up in between all the red tape: saying assistance when they mean overwatch.

“This is supposed to be a safe space, not an interrogation,” the woman says at the start of her first evaluation, meeting all of his unease with a reassuring smile, and something about the misplaced quality of it puts him on a knife’s edge.

He only pieces it together the second time he’s called in to meet with her, when he's a bit more clear-headed and a whole lot more impatient than during their initial encounter. It only takes a few perfunctory exchanges before he starts registering the image as a whole: the painstakingly nonthreatening, gentle demeanor, the conservative clothes she’s wearing; the pale complexion and the sharp features and the unmistakable lilt to her voice, soft and rolling and decidedly more old country than east coast.

It would feel almost perverse, he thinks from a distance, if it wasn’t already painfully transparent and tactically inept to boot: this attempt at the same trick that didn’t work in their favor the first time around. He supposes he can’t blame them for trying to fill in the gaps between what they could scrounge up from paper and old photographs with something predictable and comforting, something expected of his background and what is now probably regarded as an antiquated time period.

He also knows that going off of little information when dealing with a potential threat is dangerous. What’s even more so, he thinks as he nods politely along to the lady's explanation of their work together, is believing you know more than you do, and that’s the easiest mistake to exploit.

Here's a fact probably still recorded somewhere on a faded death certificate: Sarah Rogers never lived long enough to get gray in her hair like that.

Here’s another, probably only still recorded in his memory and nowhere else: his mother had been fiercely caring, yes, and compassionate to a fault, but her kindness had never translated to docility, and it sure as hell had never translated to softspoken dishonesty.

So when the shrink bearing a near-painful resemblance to her starts asking incisive questions enshrouded in unoffensive words and indulgent tones, Steve packs his entire reality into a series of half-truths without batting an eye and doesn’t feel an ounce of guilt.

Yes, he’s eating. Yes, he’s sleeping well. No, he’s not on edge – sure, it gets hard, sometimes, but exercise helps, meditation, music. Going out into the world, meeting new people. Trying new things. Yes, he’s ready to be back in the field. No, not so much so that he’s itching for it. Yes ma’am, he’s doing fine, just fine, thank you for asking. iii.

“I heard Hannah’s single,” Romanoff's saying, and it’s not the first time his brain is latching onto the fact that she’s keeping pace with him without losing too much breath, without any discomfort in the cool air that's just starting to roll in as fall bleeds into the city, painting it in darkening evenings and dimming colors. “You know, from forensics? Glasses, leggy, science-y type. Blonde – you like blondes, right?”

“I’m starting to think you only have one thing on your mind,” Steve pants, pushes harder ahead until his calves start burning, just to see if she'll allow herself to follow. Keep moving, keep moving. You awake yet? “Gotta admit, it’s making it kinda hard to enjoy all this quality time we spend together.”

“What, you’re going to stop inviting me on runs? Aw, Rogers. Break a girl’s heart, why don’t you.”

“It’s not really an invitation if you just show up without me letting you know where I’m going, you know.”

She shrugs. “I needed to burn some energy, and you’re not exactly the most unpredictable person in this city.” Her ponytail whips over his shoulder as she follows his sharp right turn around the War Memorial and passes him towards Constitution Gardens, too close and competitive. “Brunette, then? There’s a girl in operations, real tough, good with a gun – at least your propensity for that type has been well documented, but I guess you didn't really have enough time to enjoy it, y'know, all the way –”

Steve knows she’s talking about Peggy, he does. It doesn’t help the hard-wired alarm bells going off in the back of his head any. He digs his heels in, skids to a stuttering halt over the wet pavement, and somewhere in the back of his consciousness he’s quietly pleased that it catches Romanoff off guard a little.

“What, too far?” she jokes, but her eyes are quick over his face; cataloguing the boundaries, the places she can still push.

He's sure it's well-meaning, as much as a blatant handler can get. But some habits are just harder to shake than others. That, he's intimately familiar with.

“If I say yes, will you stop? Or at least stop tailing me?”

“I don’t tail you. That’s below my paygrade,” she says, mouth quirking up at the corner like that’s all the punchline she needs as she types something into her smartphone. “I’ll text you her number. She likes spicy food and old movies.”

“Sure, fine. Great.”

“It is. You'll see.” The phone disappears back into one of the many hidden pockets of her skin-tight leggings. The marvels of modern technology, Steve thinks. Natasha quirks a challenging brow. “Now can we start the actual run finally or have you reached your limit, grandpa?”

He's all but ready to chicken out of the date all week, fighting the urge to cancel at the last minute, but he figures the girl doesn't deserve his bad manners just because he feels like spiting Romanoff when she tries to play his puppetmaster.

In the end it goes...surprisingly well. As Romanoff described, Lina’s beautiful and sharp and a little closed off, tough as nails and maybe even more rigid in her approach than him, but once they get over the initial hurdle of awkwardness and expectations the conversation flows with relative ease. They swap the basics, they talk interests and habits and what moving to DC's like, fun little stories from growing up; he tells her about the butcher on his block when he was a kid that kept a rooster in the backyard, and she tells him about the kid on her floor at community college that set the dorm on fire trying to boil an egg. They talk SHIELD and her work training the new recruits and there’s a spark in her eye as she dives into giving him a breakdown of what he should look into, BJJ and MMA and gyms around town that would be discreet enough to take him in.

“SHIELD’s got plenty of hand-to-hand experts,” she says in a pensive tone over the dessert, “but it can get a little…”

Steve chuckles around his spoonful of the sticky rice, the sweetness of the mango across the back of his palate soothing the previous burn of the spice. Turns out he likes Thai food, too. Who would’ve thought. “Intense?”

“Testosterone-riddled, I was gonna say,” Lina grins, conspiratory. “And paranoid. Not the best scene if you just want to learn,” and he nods along because it’s true, and because it’s a relief to have someone else say it for him.

So it’s nice, and sweet, and ultimately entirely impersonal. He walks her to her door and she gives him a kiss on the cheek, and when she explains how she’s not really looking for anything right now her dark eyes are warm and honest but not overly apologetic. It’s a gesture he’s grateful for.

“Besides, not to be blunt, but you don’t seem all that…” She trails off, waving her hand.

He winces. “Interested? I am, really, but...” And that’s just it, isn’t it. He’s interested; she’s wonderful, just his type, seems to like him well enough. But.

“Look, I get it. We’ve all been there. Can’t really avoid it in this business.” She shrugs as if to say what can you do, smiles up at him knowingly. “Wrong place, wrong time, right?”

And Steve thinks, yeah. Yeah, something like that. iv.

“–piece of shit, every time, wet sand all up in the fuckin’ thing. Goddamn Kandahar all over again,” Rumlow’s muttering, agitated and half to himself, and Steve doesn’t ask about the last part, just dumps his own gear on the rack and drops down onto the bench. They might be friendly, but they’re not friends – Rumlow doesn’t owe him his history. “I get sent to the fuckin’ desert in this weather one more time, I’m gonna start missing New York winters.”

The jet’s engines hum at his back, adrenaline leaving his body in slow pulls as he watches Rumlow work, notes the intermittent scarring over his hands as they strip the jammed gun down like it’s muscle memory, quick and capable. There's not a spot on him that seems unmarred, really - the scars are a continous, scattered motif up to his face, moving faint in the dim light of the jet.

Loved being in the ring, he'd said once with a wry grin, as far back as I can remember. Might've gotten the shit kicked out of me more than was strictly necessary, though. Accounts for me ending up here, in any case.

He’s drawn this exact scene, it occurs to Steve before he can push it away; down to the boxer's shoulders, down to the complaining, and more than once.

“You from the city?” he offers, an easy distraction that Rumlow seems grateful for.

“Yeah. Yeah, born and raised right off of Arthur Ave.”

“No shit?”

“Yep. Good old Belmont.” He looks up, gaze turning sharp at whatever he catches on Steve’s face before he can look away. “Wouldn’t think you’d know where that is. You ever even been past Central Park?”

Steve gets a flash of washed-out color and brilliant light, of Art and Charlie and the rest of them from the Y dragging him up to Harlem; thinks of the queens with their elaborate glamour and loud, unapologetic laughter and that last wet spring before the cops started shutting everything down, of stumbling tipsy towards the A down 155th Street with empty pockets and Jeanie giggling into his shoulder about some honey-eyed daddy that gave her a sweet kiss goodnight. A well-insulated secret, a fleeting memory of feeling like he could swallow the world whole.

It’s not what Rumlow’s talking about, he knows. He nods anyway.

“Loved that neighborhood. My folks moved us out to Staten when I was in high school, though,” and Steve must make an involuntary face at that because Rumlow chuckles and says, “Alright, tough guy. Not all of us had the privilege of living within two blocks of Prospect Park.”

“Neither did I, but it sure beat Staten," Steve snorts. "And it wasn’t even as much of a privilege, back then.”

“Yeah, I think you’ll notice a lot of things’ve changed.” He tilts his head, scratches contemplative at his stubbled chin. Steve wonders if he’s projecting the bitterness in Rumlow’s voice. “A lotta things’ve gone to shit in that place. Food’s still way better than fuckin’ DC, though. Not nearly enough Italians over here.”

“Yeah. All that white marble and not a single decent, roach-infested deli. Real shithole. Should put that on the tourist brochures,” Steve says after a moment, testing the waters. It gets another laugh out of Rumlow, low and maybe a little surprised, and the sound settles like molten lead in Steve’s stomach, grounding. v.

One morning in November he gets a phone call from a Washington Post journalist asking for his statement on the newly planned Captain America exhibit, and then in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it feat of persuasion it’s three days later and he’s somehow been roped into a grand opening ceremony, a speech and a press conference at the Smithsonian.

It lasts for-fucking-ever.

By the time he's back in his neighborhood his ears are ringing with leftover noise and applause, his cheeks sore from a constant smile that'd felt more like a slashed tire than a friendly gesture even as he was forcing it. He'd reverted back to the Best Foot Forward, Always mentality of the bonds circuit quick enough - but at least back then it felt like it had a marginal purpose, no matter how flimsy or false. Back then it didn't drain him this much, he doesn't think, no matter how frustrating. Best Foot Forward these days feels more like sleepwalking his way off a cliff than anything else.

The second he's through the door he shrugs out of the tie and starched shirt chafing at his neck, tries not to think about how he still would've preferred all the commotion and the pretense to the unfamiliar silence of the otherwise big apartment building. Tries to give the feeling resurfacing in him now that he's got attention enough for it a name other than unbearable.

Here's the thing: pain, Steve knows on an intimate level, is something you get used to. It's not to say you forget it exists completely: you just subsume it, you learn to expect it. It’s less about it becoming a habit and more that it becomes a part of you when you’re not looking: fills up all the empty crevices it can find and creates a mold, and that’s the shape you start to take if you live with it long enough. The problem with that is that the longer it goes on, the less space in you there is for other things.

He was five the first time he got really sick. It'd started simple enough – the winter of ’23 came early and sudden, and New Year’s Eve found him in bed with a fever that earned the dreaded prefix scarlet soon enough when the spread of dotted red started taking up more and more space on his body. He'd spent two weeks feeling like someone's dangling him off the edge of the unknown, and much longer than that after with his mother's watchful eyes following him from the window whenever he left the house, like she couldn't force herself to look away.

But he made it. Despite all indications, little Stevie Rogers didn't die, and it was a miracle with a capital M. All he had to do is make peace with having a somewhat faulty heart as a keepsake of his survival and maybe never playing for the Dodgers, which is not to say it stopped him from trying.

But then next year it was the whooping cough so bad it cracked a rib, then his left ear giving out on him after a prolonged sinus infection, then the asthma he barely even noticed amidst everything else until it layed him out flat midway through a game of stickball bad enough it landed him in the hospital. The minor league dreams dissolved fairly quickly after that.

In ’25 he missed more school than he attended. The kids from down the block came round to call on him less and less, and it wasn't too long before they forgot completely and it was just him and a handful of toy soldiers left, with names like Joe and Jack and occasionally if he allowed himself, Steve. Their neighbors started smiling at him more. The grocer started handing him a fistful of candy under the counter every time they came in, looking at his mother in a way that said sorry for your loss and that Steve hated with a passion, least of all because he couldn't even enjoy the pity because hello, here comes diabetes. Then it was the pernicious goddamn anemia and months and months of the liver-fucking-everything diet followed closely by its sworn enemy the ulcers, and then the growing pains, and then the bad back, and then the bum joints –

Here’s the thing about pain: the longer you carry it, the more you forget you’re doing it in the first place. You ignore it because it’s the only way to survive it, because what the hell else are you supposed to do? And that’s when you start thinking you have it under control. You start to think you’ll be ready when it comes for you again.

Here’s the other thing about pain: you’re never ready. It comes as a surprise each time. He wasn’t ready in ‘30 when the neighborhood suddenly started reeking of despair and death and he wasn’t ready in ’36 when his ma went and he wasn’t ready in ’44 when he got shot in the neck and thought oh, so it can still hurt like this. I can still bleed.

Then '45 rolled around and a new thought followed, a miserable dot at the end of a sentence: maybe bleeding out would've hurt less. At least it would've made us even.

None of that experience and understanding stops him feeling it now, again, still, like an interrupted line from that first fever chill to here, standing in the middle of his living room with a glossy brochure full of dead faces in his hand and an exhaustion so deep it roots him to the spot.

And then there’s the anger, of course: equally familiar but much more muted, less expressive than it used to be, dancing around the edges of everything else. He looks back down at the crumpled pamphlet, to where the folded-unfolded-refolded creases cut through the title:

Captain America’s team: the top tier of the World War II effort and a leading example of integration! 

As if they were somehow Captain America's or even the US army’s to begin with; as if it was encouraged and Steve didn’t have to stand around in moldy tents arguing his brand-new, star-spangled ass off with Major Whatshisname and Colonel Whoever-the-fuck for days on end just to keep them eating in the same mess hall and sleeping in the same barracks. Nothing about any of the ugly parts, about the blood and the bureaucracy and the bullshit. Nothing about any of them, either - no mention of Dernier's politics or Gabe's professorship or Morita's writing. Not a single inch of space left for their families or their own stories except as a footnote in Steve's own, a way to make it picture perfect.

Nothing about Bucky other than the barebone facts: he was Steve's friend, he was a good soldier, he died. The meat and blood and soul of the person, left out; the fact of whose fault it ultimately was, conveniently gone.

And that name – the Howling fucking Commandos. The bunch of them would’ve busted a rib laughing at it, laid out all grandiose like that. For one, it’s still as ridiculous as it was back then – sounds more action novel than historical account and distinctly less bureaucratic and arbitrary than the Specialized 107th, which is what they were strictly called in the paperwork. Personally, Steve always thought that out of the variety of nicknames they’ve been awarded, the Invaders was by far the most fitting. Truer to wartime, to what it was they really did, and far more threatening if it ever reached the other side of the line. Then again, from what he’s gathered so far, it seems like America’s done far more than its fair share of invading since. It definitely accounts for the 180 degree change in branding.

Turns out it’s still all about selling comic books and war bonds. And Steve, too caught up in his own sorry wallowing, is just going along with it.

Jesus, he thinks, the tone of it coated in a wry, familiar voice nestled in the back of his brain but much harsher than it ever was in reality, drop the philosophy for one goddamn minute. Anybody ever tell you idle hands are the Devil's playthings? Get moving, Rogers. Trade the speeches in for something useful.

So he does: chucks the paper into the empty white fruit bowl collecting dust on the countertop, turns the TV on to a random channel to break the silence. He doesn’t recognize the title of the movie playing but it’s soothing, the background awash with static and the accents just familiar enough to make for pleasant white noise. He heats up his leftovers, sprawls out on the couch and gets to reading the reports Fury had unloaded on him, tuning in every so often to the witty back-and-forth dialogue. It’s maybe half an hour of squinting at indecipherable bureaucratic jargon before he finally gives up, lifts his head to rub the sleep from his eyes.

One of the men on screen – Nick, Steve thinks, or maybe that one’s Mikey, he hasn’t been following along all that well, to the work or the film – is trying to dissuade the other from visiting his mother’s grave in the dead of night.

It’s 1 in the morning.

That makes it nicer.

It doesn’t make it anything, Nick. A grave is a grave. There’s not a religion in the world that says a person’s soul is buried with them in their grave, the man argues, and it’s like whiplash pulling him out of the serene lull, the memory of a name over a plot in Greenwood he’d never gone to visit, and he thinks, a little disoriented – of course there’d be no soul in that patch of land. The grave itself is empty.

They’d given him reports in the beginning, too: a neat stack of papers, most of them stamped DECEASED in glaring red letters, and the single mocking MISSING IN ACTION. At the very end there’d been a laughably short list of contacts; among them a phone number and address for one Rebecca Barnes-Proctor.

God help us all, he can imagine the voice of George Barnes saying even now, jokingly abject, our Becca’s married a Proddie.

But there had been briefings, then, and the shitshow over Manhattan, and in between all of that the days where he couldn’t even find the will to leave his apartment block, let alone go to Brooklyn. Over and over, he’d given himself the same excuses as with Peggy – it would be too much, too soon, too selfish to usurp her life like that.

Of course, the truth of it all was much simpler. All too cowardly, too, in a way that has the guilt blooming with a vengence somewhere in the pit of his stomach: he didn’t have the guts to look Bucky’s baby sister in the eye, no matter her age, and say, I’m sorry you didn’t get a body to bury. I’m sorry the one time he needed it I didn’t do the job he spent his whole life doing for me. I’m sorry I left him behind when it should have been me down there in the first place.

He watches the two men stumble around in the muddy dark of the graveyard and yell and bicker in a way that strikes Steve as bitterly melancholy, the familiarity of it unmooring.

Mike, y’know what? Now that I’m here, I don’t know what to do, Nick finally admits at the foot of the tombstone, wild-eyed and devolving into a rambling laugh, and ain’t that a kicker. Welcome to the club.

It’s very hard to talk to a dead person, we have nothing in common. Hi, ma.

Nick, you’re making me forget the kaddish, Mike chides with mounting frustration as Nick keeps giggling and it’s not funny, it’s really not, the whole premise of it deeply morbid, but Steve finds himself laughing right along with Nick’s hysterical hiccups, his childlike plea of I don’t wanna die, ma.

You don’t get a choice in the matter, his own mother had told him when he was maybe 8 or 9, faced with the concept of death the first time when Mrs. Kowalski from 4C got sick, if that’s the way the chips fall, then that’s God’s will. But what matters is the middle, what you choose to do with it. Do you understand?

He didn’t, really, not back then, and ten years later when they’d lowered her into the ground all he could think was: what is the point of it, anyway, of all those right choices, if all that happens is you end up dying alone?

Steve hadn’t been, of course. For all of the isolation he’d felt during those last few months of his mother’s illness, he’d never been really alone. There’d been the Barnes’ and the old ladies from church and even some of the folks Sarah had helped treat at the hospital coming by and Bucky, Jesus Christ; Bucky crying at the funeral and saying kaddish for months like Sarah was his own and letting Steve rage and lash out until all the fight had drained out of him, his arms like a vice around Steve’s shaky frame.

And there’s the actual goddamned truth, he thinks, bone-weary. The only truth that matters, the one that’ll never get written on any museum walls: Steve was only ever as strong as the people propping him up.

I think that’s the reason we’re such good friends, Nick is saying to Mike when he tunes back in, and Steve’s not laughing anymore, hasn’t been ever since his throat had gone tight a long few minutes ago, because we remember each other from when we were kids. Things that happened when we were kids that no one else knows about but us. It’s in our heads. That’s how we know they really happened.

What are you talking about? I know what really happened when I was a kid.

Yeah, but no one else does, Nick says, painfully earnest. I mean, everyone we knew as kids is dead.

He shuts the TV off with a soft click, waits a long while before the heartbeat pounding in his ears has settled. Thinks about what it really means, then, to embody the final resting place of all your ghosts.

Maudlin, Bucky’s voice echoes in his head again, fills out the crevices of the silent apartment like a slow bleed. Always gotta be so maudlin, Rogers, like you’re Scarlett O-fucking-Hara. Just get up. Get up, Steve, c'mon.

“Yeah,” Steve sniffs, wipes a rough hand over his eyes; laughs again because it’s a damn joke, all of it, and he can afford to lose the plot in the privacy of his own home. “Yeah, fuck you too, asshole. Go haunt somebody else.” vi.

"Heard you had an eventful weekend," Rumlow comments when they all pile into the locker room the following week, a little roughed up and beat and stinking of iron and sweat but otherwise in decent spirits. "Seemed like a good time, all those pretty girls throwing themselves at you to shake their babies and kiss their hands or whatever."

"Shows how much you know. The pretty ladies were all balding men over the age of 50," Steve says, only half-joking, shrugging into his civvies with a wince. There's a cut on his side where he fell a little too close to a protruding piece of rebar that's already reopened twice by the time they've gotten off the jet, but despite the sharp sting of it he's feeling better than he did just a mere twelve hours ago.

Idle hands turns out to be true enough. Wryly, he thinks he might owe sending an apology up to Sister Andrea, although he figures anyone that enjoyed using a ruler on little kids that much wouldn't have ended up in Heaven, anyway.

"But sure, it was alright. A little too much attention all at once, if I'm being honest."

"Oh yeah?" Rumlow huffs. "Big talk coming from someone who dresses like you do. I hope you didn't show up there wearing that."

Steve frowns down at the faded jeans, the fitted grey shirt – one of many pairs that came with the closet in his apartment. It rubbed him the wrong way, at first, but it's easier in the end; not having all that wide array of choice dumped over his head all the time. "What's wrong with my clothes?"

"Nothing. I just get worried they're gonna start cutting off blood flow at some point, y'know," Rumlow grins, his teeth very white in the bright fluorescent lights. "God forbid we go to a bar one of these days, I'd have to mind every creep from here to Dupont tryna get a peek down your shirt."

"Fuck off," Steve huffs, feeling heat flush down into his neck despite himself. Yeah, blood flow really isn't the problem. He gestures at Rumlow's own undershirt, all slick black and skin-tight, motion packed in. "Look who's talkin'."

"Yeah, but I don't dress like this out there. This is all for you guys," he yawns with a stretch, all exaggerated bravado. "I got one of those, y'know - work-life balances. Out there I clean up nice. You, I imagine you sleep in that shit."

Steve snorts. "You'll be happy to know I clean up just fine. Got the one suit and everything."

"Is that right? They get you decked out in some bespoke threads for the parade, Cap?" He chuckles at the face Steve makes when the word bespoke fully registers. "See if I believe that without any evidence."

Steve digs out his phone reluctantly. He does have pictures, is the thing, woke up the next morning feeling like a sack of potatoes tossed from a great height just to see his phone light up with an email from SHIELD's HR with an attachment sent over for approval - like he was a celebrity ending up in a tabloid, he thinks again with distate, like he should care much either way what he looked like. He thumbs through his email to the one labeled FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION, and shoves it over at Rumlow before he drops onto the bench to sort out the rest of his pack.

"Looking good, you weren't kidding. And the mural's all heroic," Rumlow comments lightly as he scrolls through. "Wait, don't tell me - the little mustachioed, scruffy looking one is the frogeater, yeah?"

Steve laugh comes easier this time. "The little mustachioed, scruffy looking one would've kicked your ass six ways from Sunday if he'd heard you call him that. Yeah, that's Dernier. Gabe, next to him," he lists, trying not to think about how it comes across that he's memorized the order, "Dum Dum - he didn't like that nickname, either - Bucky, Monty, and Morita."

"Sure were big on callin' each other everything other than your names, huh?" The joke is followed by a stretch of quiet, and when Steve looks back up Rumlow's frowning at the phone a little, a flicker of uncertainty over his face that Steve doesn't get to figure out before it's gone. His face smoothes out into a mostly neutral expression, an undercurrent of something unnerved and white-hot, and Steve can't help himself.

"What?"

Rumlow passes him the phone back with a shrug. "Nothing, just - haven't seen those pictures since I was in high school," he says, a little distant like the memory's faded to oblivion since, and hell if Steve'll ever stop finding it strange that all of them ended up in dusty old school books, long obsolete. "Long time ago, now. Guess I just remembered all of you being much older, is all."

He leans back against the wall of lockers, pensive, watches Steve fumble with the zipper of his hoodie where it keeps sticking for a minute. "You must miss it, though. The good old days. Your people."

Steve clears his throat, yanks at the cheap piece of plastic again. The fit and cut, he might've gotten used to - but he'll never get over the waste; just how quickly everything falls right apart in the future. "Yeah, well. Like you said, it was a long time ago."

"It was, wasn't it. Longer for some than others, though," he says cryptically, and Steve really has nothing to say to that that won't land him right back where he was two days ago. He doesn't have to, in the end, because Rumlow throws a curt nod at his front, and it takes a second too long for him to interpret what his zeroed-in expression means, to register the dotting of blood through the thin fabric of his shirt. "You're bleeding all over the place again."

"It's fine. Don't feel it much," Steve says. Something's different. What's different? Wake up.

"Sure. Never do, do you," he says, gesturing to the hoodie with a thoughtful expression that's inching away from the easy banter. "That shit's gonna stain, though."

"I was gonna throw it out anyway."

It should be enough, and in any other situation it would be. Any other situation he'd shrug it off with more conviction, Rumlow'd call him a tough guy with just the right amount of mockery, and the tension would pass. Except that Rumlow had to lead them into uncharted territory and Steve hadn't been quick enough to notice before he was flailing, too exposed.

Except that instead of a quip what he gets is Rumlow's stepping into his space, the casual slouch of his shoulders replaced with something more deliberate when he reaches for where Steve's hand is still holding onto where the teeth of the zipper have gotten all gnarled. In a heartbeat Steve's back to square one: keenly aware of the proximity and every inch of his body in the cramped space; back to that first day in the elevator with Rumlow's dark eyes turned on him with a questioning look and a twist to his mouth that said it's a pleasure, Cap but meant I've been here long enough - you don't impress me any more than any other kid I've seen this place chew up and spit back out.

It'd been enough to get his spine straightening of its own accord back then, too; the sheer challenge of it, pushing at the boundaries of hierarchy. It makes him want to pull away now, want to put the usual distance between them, to get the hell out of this stuffy locker room. Makes him want to push forward until he meets something immovable and solid. Want. want, want - too much and for things that were unreachable. That's always been his problem, hasn't it?

The sound of the zipper is too loud in the mostly empty space when it gets yanked loose, pulled up and over the slow spread of the stain, and Steve realizes with a start that he didn't notice the chatter die down as the few stragglers left the room. Realizes that he hasn't moved a muscle in a good minute, like a butterfly with its wing pinned.

Rumlow's touch lingers, just the barest pressure under his Adam's apple, and Steve's breath catches. Rumlow makes a considering noise.

He snapped a guy's neck with those hands not two hours ago: a thoughtless, instinctive thing in the middle of the ambush that was waiting for them. It's not that Steve's forgotten it; Steve's aware of it to the point of failure. It's just that it got bound up with everything else, the easy reliance and the ribbing bordering on rough and the adrenaline under his skin like a necessity.

Wake up.

Rumlow's eyes on him are sharp, a little curious. Less surprised than they ought to be.

Wake up, get moving, get out of sight. We've been here before.

Steve swallows. "Thanks."

"Sure." Rumlow steps back to hoist his bag over his shoulder and the moment breaks as quick as it came on, the whole uninterruped line of him lax and easy again, surface friendly. "Now you won't scare the guys at the front desk."

And then he's off down the hallway, leaving Steve to lean on the cool metal of the wall and do everything but think about the sudden feeling of being off balance, a little too tight in his skin in a way that only half has to do with the too-quick beat of his blood, the lingering smell of Rumlow's cologne.

vii.

Funnily enough, the Christmas gala almost slips his mind – an extraordinary accomplishment, considering that he spends most of December thinking up viable excuses not to go, dodging Romanoff’s questions and sideways looks with the agility of a man running for his life.

“We can hang out with the civilians. Break the record of how many weapons contractors you can piss off in one night,” she says one brisk and sunny afternoon when she manages to drag him out to a coffee shop barely across from SHIELD, the steam from her tea swirling up in billows to fog her opaque sunglasses. “It’ll be fun.”

“I don’t know any civilians,” he says, deliberately obtuse. It’s a joke; he can’t help that it’s also mostly true.

“What about Kate?”

It’s not a surprise anymore, really, that she knows everything about his life, that she has no problem making that clear to him when she wants to. He’s fine with it, he has to keep reminding himself. Maybe it’s a control thing, like when she acts like she’s not holding back when they spar, a holdover from some other life. Maybe this is the closest they get to trust, and it doesn’t matter. Much like the tails that he pretends not to clock, the check-ins and evaluations and this whole neatly preordained life someone else's drawn up for him – it comes with the package, and what difference does it make, anyway? It’s simpler like this. He can do his job, and if thinking that he’s a situation she has a handle on makes Romanoff feel better, then that’s fine, too.

“What about her?”

“You talk to her yet?”

“I talk to her all the time,” he points out. Natasha cocks her head, the rest of her expression as obscure as her shaded eyes.

“It’s for a charity. The gala.” She keeps switching lanes. Trying to get him to stumble, he thinks.

“Yeah, Ms. Potts said.” Two can play at that game. “You want a date so bad, why don't you pester Barton this much about it?”

“Clint doesn’t need pestering. It’d be good publicity if you showed, you know.”

He scoffs; there it is. “For what, the charity or Stark Industries?”

“So it is about Stark, then.”

He takes a sip of his coffee, over-sweetened and dark. 100% pure Colombian arabica, apparently, and with the price tag to reflect it. The acidic taste sticks at the roof of his mouth. “I don’t have a problem with Tony.”

He doesn’t. Stark’s a good man, he thinks, despite having inherited all of Howard’s arrogance and none of his approachability. Whatever tension was there in the beginning had dissipated, though, the second Tony plummeted thousands of feet from the sky after having, for all intents and purposes, blown himself up to save all their sorry necks. They’d broken bread, shaken hands, parted ways.

For the best, probably. Good man or not, Tony has a singular way of getting under his skin.

And then there’s also the fact that being in Manhattan just doesn’t feel right, not with the destruction still settling over everything like a cloud of noxious dust, the fenced off craters and leftover vigils scattered every few blocks like an improvised graveyard. Good morning, Captain Rogers. It is 4:47 AM EST. It is a new day. Do you see it? Do you see it yet? Are you awake?

It’s not new, this sense of loss: looking at the city and feeling grief, compounded.

“Not what I said.”

“What are you saying, then?”

“I’m saying SHIELD throws shitty office parties.” Natasha frowns and chugs half the scalding cup in one go before pushing up from the table, checking her phone. “I have to go,” she says, gives him a long look that he can’t really decipher, unusually lingering and far too serious by Natasha's standard. “Come to New York, Steve. Or at least think about it.”

viii.

He goes to see Peggy again, because of course he does. She greets him at the door with her most pleasant, polite smile this time, the kind reserved for strangers – Time for my medicine again, is it, darling? – but it’s alright, he understands. They’ve explained it to him, the good and bad days, how there’s rarely any constant. He’s grateful, anyway: just so grateful to have her around, as much as he can. Which is why he doesn’t flinch when she cries, when she calls for him like it’s been another seventy years, why he holds her brittle hand in his until she gets hazy around the eyes again and he feels a nurse’s gentle tap on his shoulder, hears her suggest that he come another time.

He takes the Harley out on the highway and drives aimlessly for the rest of the evening and well into the night, down and out and then back again until the traffic has thinned out to semis and the rare leftover commuter. He watches the speedometer kick up to 80, 90, a 100, the bike struggling, feels the rumble of the engine all the way up his spine when it skids unbalanced over the odd ice patch and thinks, grateful, grateful, grateful.

ix.

“You’re up late.”

“Hey.” Most of the building’s emptied out by now – he’d thought he’d find some privacy in the abandoned atmosphere of the holidays, and instead here Rumlow is when he was meant to be three states over, strolling through his periphery looking like he’s got nothing but time on his hands. “Thought you left with everybody else.”

“Nah. Had some business to take care of.” He settles against the wall opposite Steve, watches him shake out a one-two-three pattern that has the chain of the bag groaning. “Thought you’d be at Stark’s fancy party and putting that suit to good, promotional use.”

He never gets a chance to think about it, it turns out, getting called in two days before Christmas and ending up sending Ms. Potts – Pepper, please, call me Pepper – an overly apologetic, last-minute message excusing himself from the night. It’s a good call, in the end. The last thing he needs tonight is to be stuck in a room full of obscenely drunk, obscenely rich people expecting him to gush over the hors d’oeuvres and play at appearances.

He feels as though what he’s doing right now isn’t much different, though. It takes a whole lot of effort and posturing to dredge up a wry smile for Rumlow, anyway. “Well, it’s been busy here. Couldn’t fit it into my packed schedule.”

Rumlow snorts. He gets that expression on his face, sometimes, that same brand of amusement that makes Steve second-guess whether he’s actually in on the joke or just the punchline of it, that gets him hot under the collar in all the wrong ways. The punching bag chooses this moment to finally release its desperate grip on the physical realm, flying off the chain with one last pitiful creak and sending sand spraying across the floor. Rumlow’s eyes track the movement with unabashed fascination.

He walks over to the neat row of bags Steve’s lined up and picks one up with relative ease, a casual show of strength. “So you gonna talk about it,” he pipes back up, handing Steve the replacement, “or do I have to keep standing around here until you’ve run the rest of ‘em into the ground?”

“Talk about what?”

“Whatever’s got you shredding through these poor fuckin’ things at 11 pm on Christmas Eve.”

He wants to point out that he could be asking the same question – that there really is no reason for Rumlow to be here this late when he’s still technically on medical, to be in his usual tac clothes and looking as wired as Steve’s feeling. You ever take a day off? he considers asking, but that’d be prodding. What’s worse, it’d be hypocritical.

“Nothing, you know how it is – mission ran long. Had some leftover energy.”

“Yeah, Rollins mentioned you guys ran into some kinks.”

It’s not exactly the word Steve would use to describe the shitshow of that morning, utter failure avoided by a narrow margin because it was an old school lab, Christ, still had extracurriculars on the weekends and everything, and they just charged in half-blind.

It’s rigged, naturally. The room blows as he’s getting the janitor out, tears the face of the building open towards the sharp drop below, and all Steve can think is what a stupid, avoidable way to die. The electrical fire smell lingers for a long time after the explosion, the patter of the wet snow through the blown roof nowhere near enough to put the flames out.

They’re told to avoid detailing the collateral in the report, after: SHIELD had no way of knowing the complete situation beforehand, they say, short and brooking no argument, and Steve’s getting real damn tired of hearing that. By the time they wrap up cleanup he’s shivery and exhausted and when he finally dozes off on the long flight back with his ear to the monotonous drone of the engine, it’s to vague, uneasy bursts of the taste of ash in the mouth and many small, cold hands dragging him deep into the frozen ground.

Absurdly, the first thing he thinks of when he startles awake is Dugan’s thick mustache chained solid with frost, lips blue with the cold and grumbling under his breath.

"Gee, you're looking awful familiar there, Dum," Gabe'd say, biting off the ends of his sentences with the chatter of his own teeth. "Made this snowman that looked just like you when I was a kid - all white and lumpy with a great big bush over his lip. 'Cept his carrot nose was half as long and he never ran his fuckin' mouth this much."

And despite the cold and the misery, Dugan would elbow him and Gabe'd elbow back, obstinate. And Bucky'd laugh, Bucky'd call them all a bunch of fucking morons, and do they really want their last to be the Germans hearing them squabbling like two bitter old biddies out on the steps of the church for the whole neighborhood to see? Think of the image of our troops, golly gee. God forbid.

He strips out of his wet suit at the compound by rote and doesn’t think about the numbing cold of December among towering trees, of snow burning his fingers raw, clinging to his lashes. He runs until his lungs burn and it’s nothing like that thin, strangling air of the mountain range, nothing like warm skin sticking to icy metal, muscles all locked up and tears hot like bile in the back of his throat and the wind screaming in his ears, and –

Winters are warmer now, somebody’d told him at some point. Something about northern lights and the ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere.

“Kinks, right.”

He smooths out the edges of the tape that’s come loose over his knuckles, tries to tuck it in where he’s spotted red through the fabric. Suddenly he’s all too aware of the seconds lumbering on in silence, the eerie, empty quiet of the building; Rumlow looking at him with a single-minded intensity that makes the back of his neck prickle with heat, gets him on edge in a way he doesn't want to parse, doesn't have the energy to hide from.

It'd be no use, anyway; sometimes he thinks Rumlow can smell it on him, blood in the water.

“Alright, then.”

He aims a perfunctory jab at the bag and lets it swing back to catch it mid-air, brand-new vinyl creaking under his fingers, and considers ignoring the man altogether. He's not feeling generous with his words tonight. “Alright what?”

When he turns back around Rumlow’s ditching his holstered gun on the bench. Steve didn't even notice he was armed. “You said you got some energy to burn – so let’s go a few rounds.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Come on,” and it’s his voice in the end, if he’s being honest with himself, that makes Steve fold; the cajoling tone and those long, tightly rolled vowels that curl and hook into the sheltered space behind his ribs. “C’mon, man, it’s been a while. I could stand to let off some steam, too.”

Come on, do it for me, Bucky had said in dozens of different iterations over the years and then only once after when it had meant something, only once when he was really asking, back up against the hard bark of the tree with his hands dangling between his legs like a man who had no more use for them. You gotta promise me, Steve, he’d tried, low and worn thin, and Steve didn’t, couldn’t find the words to that wouldn’t be a complete lie and a betrayal. Instead he’d leaned harder into his side, hand at the back of his neck, and wanted and wanted and wished like hell, not for the first time, that he could drain the misery and exhaustion out of Bucky’s body at every point of contact.

Come on, Rumlow says, and Steve goes, Pavlovian.

He rewraps his hands in silence, waits for the other man to tape up before he steps into the ring.

“Y’know, it could’ve been worse,” he says, circling Steve, tone casual, “No casualties is better than what we get most days. So you might as well stop with all this self-flagellation bullshit, Cap. It’s no good.”

“You wanna keep talking,” Steve goads him because it’s worked in the past, because it really has been a long day, “or do you wanna fight?”

They start off slow, Rumlow testing the waters and Steve pulling his punches by habit by now. He manages to land a few hits that don’t really scratch the surface, doesn’t pull back in time to avoid Rumlow’s hook. His blood rushes at the first, second, third collision, zings up his spine and sharpens everything out, bright Technicolor; it’s good, doesn’t even hurt, he’d almost forgotten –

It gets real brutal real quick, after that.

“C’mon. What, you gettin’ bored already?” Rumlow says the third time he gets past his guard, an edge of something mean and frustrated in it. He strikes out again just to skirt off Steve’s belated block, more provocation than actual intent. “Jesus, you fallin' asleep on me? Fight the fuck back, old man.”

“Look who’s talkin’,” Steve gets out, putting distance between them. “Ain’t you supposed to be passed out drunk on eggnog in Staten Island right now?”

“You ever stop running your mouth? No wonder you were the neighborhood punching bag, kid.”

“I weighed a 100 pounds soaking wet, I had to compensate. What’s your excuse?”

He’s slow this time, too. Rumlow’s not someone who signals. The kick to the plexus sends Steve stumbling back and something pops, loud. He coughs once, twice; shakes it off.

“Aw, there he is. You’re alright,” Rumlow says, deceptively sweet, dismissive. “You’re just fine. Come on, Cap. You gonna quit being a pussy or what?"

Here’s the thing: he’s not sure he likes Rumlow all that much, really, can’t read him all the way to be able to say for sure; isn't sure that he wants to. They don’t know each other, not in a way that counts – it’s only been a handful of times that they’ve even worked on the same team in the time Steve’s been in DC, even less they've gotten to have anything that counts as a real conversation outside the single locker room incident, but he’s been leading men long enough that he can pick up on the patterns. He can see the way Rumlow commands respect among STRIKE, knows the type, besides: collected and confident and purposeful, committed to the cause to the point of failure. Violent, too, sure, shooting for the head when Steve’d still be asking questions; a little too rough around the edges, sometimes, yes, but so what – Steve’s seen his fair share of that. Steve’s lived it, felt it on his own skin, inside and out, been in it for three whole years. So what. He’s not about to run away screaming.

It isn’t even the first time they’ve done this, beaten the shit out of each other after hours in the deserted facility. It’s not the first time he’s seeing Rumlow in this light, eyes dark and focused; liking it a little too much, maybe, liking riling Steve up and drawing blood. A natural progression to all the things about him Steve maybe didn't want to notice and all the things that had his full attention since the second they met.

It’s fine – Steve figures, this body can take it. It’s what it was made for, anyway. Steve figures better here than out there, and out there Rumlow’s all brutal efficiency and casual competence and Steve trusts him to have his back, get the job done, which is the only part that matters. Steve trusts him, is the thing, and that carries more weight likeability ever could.

Rumlow’s fist connects with his jaw and he feels it rattle up into his teeth, the dull pain like a live current through his body, whiting everything else out: you awake, Steve? You awake yet? Is it enough, to still be able to bleed?

So sure, maybe it’s the violence that gets him. Maybe it’s that Rumlow fights just dirty enough and doesn’t pull his punches with Steve, grins at him sharp when he spits blood from his busted lip and squares back up. Maybe it’s just that he’s not afraid to touch him or look at him wrong. Everyone else seems to be.

He blinks sweat out of his eyes and creeps in close, lands a few swings in quick succession that have Rumlow easing off, head snapping to the side.

“Yeah. That’s it, there you go. C’mon,” he laughs, pushes damp hair out of his face in a well-worn afterthought of a move, and Steve –

Steve has to remind himself, is the thing. Every goddamn day of the week he has to keep reminding himself of where he is. Eventually, he thinks, it might stick – but God, he’s sick and tired of it.

They don’t even look alike. For one, Rumlow’s much older than Bucky ever got to be. Has the scars and the experience and the too-mean edge to his voice to prove it.

But in the end, when he's got Steve face down on the floor, breath hot down his neck, it turns out it doesn't really matter all that much.

He bucks anyway, if for no other reason just to prove a point to himself, just to feel his bones grind together. You're still moving, you're still just going forward, heart pumping like it's gonna burst with it. Rumlow twists his arm further up his back, grip iron tight. “I said stay down.”

“Yeah, fuck you,” Steve pants into the mat. “Pretty sure this ain’t within kickboxing rules.”

“Pretty sure there was no talk of rules in the first place. I keep tellin’ you, don’t I, you gotta get that or else people’ll think you’ve gone soft. Someone might take advantage.”

“You ever quit talkin’ shit?” Steve throws back at him.

“Nah.” Rumlow shifts, the weight of him heavy and hot, too close. Steve can’t catch his breath. Rumlow’s knee is still pressing into his back and he can already feel a bruise spreading at the bottom of his ribs that’ll be gone in the morning. He doesn’t even feel it all that much. He never even – “See, I don’t think you’d want that.”

Steve could break the hold with ease. He could throw Rumlow off and still walk away with most of his dignity intact. Steve could do a lot of things.

He’s fucking tired, is the thing. He’s in his body and buzzing hard out of his head and it hurts, Christ, it hurts so bad, has for such a long time now, and it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter one bit.

Keep moving, keep moving. Maybe he doesn't want to. Maybe it's alright if it's not him, anyway; a river of trouble, cross currents, carrying him along.

It’s just easier, in the end, to trust someone on his team. That’s all there is to it. It's easier, it is, it's getting there at least, Steve keeps telling himself as he lets Rumlow take him apart in more ways than one.

Eventually, he thinks, he might even believe it.

x.

He meets Sam Wilson on a humid day in late May when the sun's barely made its way up, the sky an overripe color and all of his bruises already healing or healed or tucked neatly all the way back under the surface. Like many things with him these days, it starts off as muscle memory; then a shot in the dark, then relief when it works.

It still takes all of his willpower not to physically retreat when he's hit with the familiar, tired refrain:

You must miss the good old days, huh?

But then Sam cuts straight through the middle of it: Sam calls his bluff, quick as hell but with kind, serious eyes and an outstreched hand, and by the time the sleek black car rolls up to the curb with a roar Steve's got another title in his little book of the future and a chest that feels slightly lighter than it did when he jolted awake at 3 in the morning.

Romanoff pulls them back out onto the street without a word, and he doesn't even mind the knowing look she casts his way all that much. Just looks out the open window, the spring air whipping past as the speedometer ticks up 40, 50, 60, and thinks about whether the farmer's market will be open when they get back in: having some fruit in that goddamned fruit bowl might be nice for a change.

(epilogue)

When all is said and done, he thinks he really should have seen it coming. There was no talk of rules, and it's Steve's own damn fault for not listening. When the dust settles and the Potomac still reeks of a gasoline fire, when Steve's switched back onto battlefield efficiency despite the nightmares creeping into his subconscious with a vengance, it really shouldn't feel personal.

Except for the memory of Rumlow's slick grin in the too-bright, too-close space of the elevator, except for the phantom feeling that he can still sometimes smell scorched skin on his stomach; except for the way Bucky's horrified expression is burnt into the backs of Steve's eyelids like a brand, like a scar that won't heal fully.

Except that it's nothing but personal, in all the ways that matter.

Sam looks at him in question when he pauses in the middle of breakfast, eyes glued to the closest thing that passes for a modern TV in a roadside diner in Bumfuck, Iowa. Hospital breakout, the breaking news states, three dead, seven injured, dangerous fugitive on the loose. Be advised. Do not engage. Do not engage.

Yeah. Too fucking late for that now, isn't it.

"You alright?"

That's a loaded question, he thinks. I'm not sure what that really means and I don't know if I have for a while, he thinks.

You awake, Steve? You awake? You see it yet?

"Fine," he says, and digs back into the cold, gummy pancakes. "You think they got any blueberries in this place?"

Sam's face cracks into a smile, dubious and slow and then all at once. Sure, if you say so. Sure, I see what you're doing, but I'll trust your lead. Prop me up, I've got you right back. "Man, I don't think they even have hot water, but. Gimme five minutes and a Captain America name drop, I'm sure we can figure something out."

xx

#this got very long jesus christ #I overthought it so now I'm just hoping it fits the event and the prompts??? anyway #so unbeta'd. my apologies and also enjoy! I hope! #catws10 #catws anniversary #steve rogers #brock rumlow #natasha romanoff #don't wanna tag sam because he only shows up for a blink of an eye but. he shows up and also I love him<3 #idk if it’s actually an M rating but. just to be safe #cw: violence #(but only barely) #gaslighting #by sheer virtue of the bastard involved #stevebucky #steve rogers/brock rumlow #I don't know the tag for that and I kind of don't want to know #this was really interesting and challenging and ultimately very painful to write ngl #my fic

[jakeperalta]

On my third listen to ttpd and I am for the first time changing opinions on the mh affair. When the news of the rebound came out, I was extremely shocked and disgusted, because he truly is a piece of trash. I think listening to her music, I can put myself in her place more easily, because I too once fell in love with a guy who was a complete idiot (at the time I was truly blind and just too young). Then I thought about some family members who have awful political opinions and with whom I'm always annoyed, but whom I still love dearly simply because we have a history together, a bond and they did generous loving things for me as well and helped me when I most needed. I think in the end human relations are complicated and complex. Flawed people who are objectively idiots sometimes find their way into our hearts because of a series of (mis)fortunes. Everyone is nuaced and our relationships especially. All of this to say that in the end we are sometimes so chronically online that we forget that they are real people and that we don't know them at all, their stories and motivations, yet feel like we know how they should act. I am coming to the conclusion that I will probably step away from the fandom for a while to be able to enjoy things without completely putting so much my opinion and energy on them. Idk I'm having an existential crisis bestie and wanted to know your opinion since you also took a step away. Do you maybe understand what I'm trying to say?

I totally understand this! I do agree I think it was clearly a bad time of bad decisions and whilst it's never going to not give me the ick (particularly that quote that was like "she doesn't care what people think because she's on top of the world!" 😬) I can appreciate that sometimes people do just date shitty people that don't necessarily reflect who they are (the description of it in the prologue poem as a mutual manic episode and self harm says a lot about the decision making or lack of). similarly some of the lyrics of but daddy I love him are offputting but I know that her radar of what is valid criticism and what's just miserable haters is totally skewed (not that it's an excuse and I do think it's something she could do with being better on, but it does help understand it). like you say, people and their relationships are complex and flawed sometimes.

I think it's always a good thing to take a step back from fandom spaces at times — I know the past few days I've been a lot more in it but overall I've found that being a bit less immersed in every bit of discourse and debate makes it easier to just put that time and energy into simply enjoying the music!

#answered #anonymous #taylor swift

[borzoilover69]

> BORZOI: READ HOMESTUCK LIKE ITS 2011 (PART 5)

We pick back up after [S] END OF ACT 6 INTERMISSION 1 (page 4390) with a fucking spectacular music number (Infinity mechanism - Thomas ferkol). I'm such a big fan of the beat that comes in when we get to see Jane looking out her window, you have no idea. Also I didn't cover the intermission because i didn't say much. I appreciate and love the beta kids and trolls but I just have more gears turning where the alpha kids are involved because they're not so clear cut and dry emotional wise as the betas. I'm pretty sure greater analysers than me have said all there needs to be said for the beta kids. All I have to add is this piece of dialog from 4359 that I liked:

KARKAT: ALRIGHT IF YOU'RE REALLY GOING TO GO KARKAT: JUST KARKAT: BE CAREFUL KARKAT: NO MORE POINTLESS BLOODSHED, OK? THAT'S AN ORDER! KARKAT: WAIT FUCK KARKAT: I'M NOT LEADER ANYMORE KARKAT: ROSE CAN YOU ORDER HER TO DO THAT? KARKAT: SAY WHAT I JUST SAID, REALLY ANGRILY KARKAT: ASSUMING YOU CAN EVEN BE ANGRY. ROSE: ...

I really love how clingy Karkat but also accepting of his friends decisions goes. It's one of his great points as a knight of blood, but it also leads to some pretty funny turnabouts as he contradicts himself and fights himself on it.

4394 GIRL LOOK OUT

4397 (call back to page 4107) Oh wait I've seen this before. That's neat.

4400: Get this shit outta the way. You're a busy bureaucrat. The clock is ticking, and time is dead kids.

Dead kids you say?

4405 Well dead kids it is. These scenes.. when i read these scenes.. with such shitty sketch lines.. in my mind I hear Buy Somethin Will Ya? from the Earthbound OST. Or Hi Hi Hi (Theme of Saturn Valley).

You should be pleased to know those nuts were super deadly! Though to be fair he doesn't know if he died from the poison, or just choked on a bunch of barely chewed peanut bits. You know what else is super deadly, you say? Knives. Sharp deadly knives you stick in people's soft torsos to make them bleed until they die.

He doesn't have anything to say to that.

Dude i love this guy like deadass him and his whimsical hats and umbrellas and whatnot. I think he's my fav besides DD.

4408

Lifey thing..

4413 IVE SEEN THIS BEFORE. HOLY SHIT!!(3220)

4419 I really like parallels in homestuck. They make the world go round, you could say, because you read things and dont feel as lost because in a way it's strikingly familiar! Which is what happens here.

4422 Oh hunny.. nobody understands how whimsical. Jane crocker is to me. Look at her. ooo. That's a face. :o. õoô She is the whimsy.

Nobody takes into account how many batshit things Jane sees and she hits them all with the ,':| ....

You guess you should feel grateful toward him for saving your life, but you know he's just as likely to rescue you from an explosion as he is to randomly teleport you across town, forcing you to call your dad and ask for a ride home, while you spend all day standing in some random field in the pouring rain while you wait hours for your dad to come and pick you up after he gets lost because he plugged the wrong place into google maps.

I really like the small bits of background we get about Jane too. Like this! Its such a nice scene. But it seems.. that uh oh! Guardian jumpscare.

He tells you to get inside this instant.

Goddamn. Now where have i seen this before.. 4430 referencing 212.

Except in this case, it's no case of magical happenstance gone awry with a server player losing internet, but a dad being.. a *tad* more serious than given with how you're so totally grounded. No wonder Jane is so stubborn!

As long as you just got done paying the piper, you might as well get busy eating all this goddamn crow. Oh so much of the stuff has gathered on your plate.

Eating the crow:  to admit that one was wrong or accept that one has been defeated.

paying the piper: bear the consequences of an action or activity that one has enjoyed.

These sayings are sooo cool too. Like I've never heard anyone use them but they're really neat!

#homestuck #hom3stuck #homestuck meta #borzoi meta #borzoi reread #borzoi talks #jane crocker #jade harley #jake english

[herofics]

Heyy, I'M OBSESSED with your Dabi x teen reader fics. So I was wondering if u could do Dabi x teen reader that has heavy trauma from her mother? (Like she was emotionally abusive towards her) So now she has really low self esteem and even though she doesn't mention it to Dabi he kind of notices... Like what would he do in his own hands off way?

Tyy (P.S: If ur uncomfortrable w this request please don't be forced to write it!!)

Thank you, I’m glad you like my writing! So I’m assuming you mean this post and this post? I wrote more in the same theme, focusing more on the abusive/neglectful mom angle and how relatable that would be for Dabi. One of the previous ones is already about Dabi as a big brother of sorts, so this is not as much about that. This would be set before the roommate post that’s linked above, if there has to be a timeline

•You never really had a good relationship with your mother

•No matter what you did, you were never good enough, nothing you ever did was enough for her, no matter how hard you tried

•This of course didn’t do any favors for your mental health and the trauma just kept accumulating

•You’ve spent most of your time with the League for a while now and you avoided going home at all cost

•You’re not the most open type, but what little you did say about your mother, painted a very negative picture

•Dabi isn’t really the type to open up either, but he does like to complain, a lot

•He hasn’t exactly opened up about his past, but you do know he didn’t have a good relationship with either of his parents, especially his father

•As your self-esteem deteriorated, you started acting more carelessly and by the time you met the League you were in a pretty bad way

•Dabi ended up taking note of this, and while he didn’t really give you more confidence or anything, he complained at you and scolded you when you did stupid shit like got too careless around cops or something

•It’s his way of showing he cares

•Dabi does care quite a lot about the League and its members, some more so than others and he does consider you a friend and someone he wants to protect

•He knows what it’s like to have a shitty parent and while he doesn’t like playing therapist or anything, he will lend an ear if you’re having a particularly hard time, but that’s a pretty rare occasion

•He’ll listen, but the only advice you’ll really get from him is “Why don’t you just kill her, or ruin her financially or somethin? Your mom’s a piece of shit”

•He doesn’t really care if you think he’s too harsh, because he feels like you need to hear that your mother is actually a piece of shit and that she’s not allowed to treat you like that, just because she’s your mother

•Opposed to what a lot of other people are telling you which is “She’s your family, you need to get along” or some other crap like that

•Dabi doesn’t really believe blood means much when it comes to family, you don’t need to be related to be family

•Besides, his experience with family and parents is that they eventually let you down and that he too was better off finding his own people

•He doesn’t think everyone’s family is total shit, but he’s convinced a lot of them are, because that seems to be the experience of everyone around him

•You appreciate his honesty and hearing that you don’t deserve to be treated like shit just because it’s coming from someone who supposedly loves you, is kind of freeing

•Even if it comes with offers to burn your mother, her house or both

#bnha #mha #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #dabi #bnha dabi #mha dabi #bnha headcanons #mha headcanons #mha x reader #bnha x reader #bnha fanfiction #mha fanfiction #comfort

[onewholivesinloops]

oshi no ko is such a painfully unfunny series except for that one moment where that aqua mf acts like fucking light yagami. MY GOAT MY MC 🐐🐐🐐🔥🔥💪💪💪 (not really)

...it’s so light yagami core but it also feels so fake bc LIGHT YAGAM IS ACTUALLY FUNNY. LIGHT YAGAMI HAS SO MUCH HOMOSEXUAL SWAG EVEN THOUGH IT’S UNINTENTIONAL BC WE ALL KNOW WHAT OBATA AND OHBA ARE LIKE.

(death note is really misogynistic and it’s the least bigoted thing they’ve written LOL. shout out to bakuman for having one of the male protagonists be like “this girl is smart bc she doesn't act smart as it's wrong for girls to come off as intelligent” which goes unchallenged and platinum end’s iconic homophobic rant which is totally NOT the writers inserting their own opinions!!!!!!).

anyway aqua is just too straight..light imagay you will always be famous. my icon. this fraud has nothing on you.

^this is an insult to light yagami btw

the problem with aqua is that he’s such a manipulative piece of shit who’s always getting off scot-free with everything shitty he does and the series still wants you to like him. he’s also boring too. he’s not even a fun asshole to watch smh.

if oshi no ko were good mengo would take over, and akane and kana would be kissing like this instead (in this hypothetical kana isn’t such an insufferable character bc as things stand akane is too good for her)

#gamo.txt

[blenderchildren]

What clue aren't you getting?

What mating sugnal are you getting that I'm not sending you?

You would not do that to any other stranger's car.

Why do you think it is tolerable with me?

Because some bitch that thinks she's all that can get aggressive with me?

You don't know me. You've never seen me before outside of your other nosy fucks that like blindspotting and spending too much time in another person's peripheral vision.

It's well after dark. 10pm.

Are you stupid? Do you like unknown people that might shoot you for trying to get up in my business?

Hanging out in blindspots is like begging to get punched in the least. You'll never learn to correct your behavior otherwise.

Its 10 pm, after dark, you don't know me, im behind tinted windows.

Did you think it was acceptable for a stranger to get up in my shit at 10pm to inspect what I'm doing in my car behind tinted windows with my vent open through the moonroof?

What do you need to see before you stop staring at me.

A middle finger? Some occult hand signal?

Was I supposed to initiate conversation with you?

What made you think I wanted to talk to you?

I think you're intentionally making a peaceful situation into a shitty one to taint the spirit.

I think you are intentionally trying to piss words out of me, turning my life's relaxation time into needless work, nigger.

Maybe your "master" doesn't like me, maybe he thinks he's untouchable and can act aggressively at my legal boundaries and around my things, like some faggot predator trying to grabass and mark territory.

You're parked head in.

I backed into my space.

NO, not "69" dude. Try 86.

You have your red car door opened as far as it will go, pinning mine from being opened for several minutes as I ignore you and pretend your psycho bitch ass isn't there.

Was that supposed to help me "relax" and remove muscle tension, faggot predator?

What the fuck do I think you were doing?

Not arresting me.

What did you think you were going to catch me doing, in my car, with the moonroof vented, and obviously occupied by the owner nigger?

Did you think you were going to call 911 over a d.u.i? For what?

What makes you think that anything illegal is going on in my vehicle?

A nosy fucking catholic's glory and browbeating into explaining my conduct to some piece of shit forced confession nigger?

It's none of your fucking business. Maybe I'm already getting my dick sucked in my car. Take a number.

I think you're trying to photograph a person that doesn't want to be photographed sitting outside their apartment.

Who are you a fucking snitch for?

Who's telling you to be that rude, disrespectful and fucking ignorant.

Is having some random dumbfuck hang around in your blindspot and stare at you in the victims peripheral vision supposed to be tolerated as if it's some alpha faggots signature move?

Is it supposed to have Taoist relevance symbolizing the peripheral field of vision?

Some stupid devil horns?

So that means I'm supposed to be okay with strangers acting like groupie faggots humping a celebrity's car at 10pm where they are not welcome?

Did my sister tell you to be that nosy and disrespectful, or did some dickhead satanists?

OR Maybe my faggot uncle Phil?

That would totally be in character for his militant dickhead goon, abuse of power, CONTROL FREAK, faggot ass.

Documented spousal abuse, three divorces, two estranged children from his first marriage. Because he was such a "loveable" guy, right?

Physical conflict problems in the domestic household and familial pecking order between Phil and myself. Nevermind the drama or violence that his first two kids that estranged them from the family. Nevermind the times he put his second wife in the emergency room and hospital for a broken jaw and broken ribs.

Especially considering the Temple of Set and their lies, deceit, and satanic practices, and the Egyptian faggot rapist uncle and incest-driven mythology behind the mortal enemies of Set and Horus.

YOU WOULD think you have the confidence to step up into my personal space at 10pm to pin my door shut with yours so you can stare at me inside while you try to photograph me or what im doing inside.

You don't know me. It's going to stay that way. You don't know if I have a gun. you don't know if I have a knife.

Jeep driver. Phil used to drive a jeep suv too.

I don't give one fuck if the US president sent his flying monkeys to check up on me.

You don't have the right to stalk and harass me.

You have the right to politely ask like a normal, respectful, peaceful and safety-minded human being when amongst strangers after dark. or fucking disperse.

It's 10pm.

Social distancing NIGGER.

[thattimdrakeguy]

The Flash isn't all all-around horrible movie. There's a lot of good things in it. The problem with the movie is a bunch of stuff that eventually all comes together by the end and just wrecks the fucking thing like a ball that wrecks--Some sort of...wrecking ball if you will.

So seeing people online try to talk like Harvard graduates having a discussion about the prospects of the movie Flash by scrambling to the scattered pieces that were wrecked and trying to tape together something that made it seem good, is really funny to me.

There's some parts of that movie I thought were legitimately great. Some parts made me laugh my off.

I hated most of the "Hi, I'm Barry, an awkward, loser, virgin" humor. Since for a good chunk of the film the main Barry doesn't act like that. It's like it's hold back from Justice League movie Barry that people seem to have agreed to hate.

The movies main fault besides Ezra Miller being in the news so much for not so good things, is simply that it can't help itself.

The logic for multiverse travel makes no sense. The movie basically says "it's fate" at a certain point, and that's after the scientific explanation that makes no sense.

Why does Bruce Wayne look like the dude just for later on to look more like Bruce Wayne ever has before in the previous Michael Keaton appearances. (The costume department did a stellar job.)

The Lasso of Truth doesn't work like that.

People keep reacting to things the way people would not react to things.

The Chrono-Bowel, looks cool, but functionally it doesn't make any sense when the idea of Flash's time traveling is just running really fast. Trying to visualize that with a place were he can stand totally still sort of takes away the SPEED part of the speed-force that's necessary to be related to speed. Perhaps in another movie it would've been great beyond the shitty CGI that made things look like statues.

Most of the things that make it a multiverse movie would probably be better without it story wise, for the sake of simplifying things, even though I think Michael Keaton was at his best as Batman in this one. ignoring the really weird "You wanna get nuts" line, that doesn't work, because that's not exactly a thing he says. It's a thing he said once in a specific context.

The movie's version of time travel as it's previously shown to work no longer works, and they break it several times. Making it have no logic, which makes following things confusing, because things aren't happening the way they explain previously.

Supergirl hardly does jack shit, and says hardly jack shit. Her presence in the movie is so small, I sometimes forget she's in the movie. Her parts aren't bad. She just gets hardly anything to do, and feels like a tossed in character to go "Oooo, multiverse".

And it's mostly these things fans of the film keep showing going 'LOOK, IT'S GOOD, IT'S GOOD' even the visuals, which can at times get good. I think at first the visuals stink rotten ass, but do genuinely get better at a certain point just to get sort of hard to follow during the final act again.

So even if you really liked the movie. Why are you trying to excuse shit, that's shit no matter how you spin it?

'Oh, this scene with the baby is showing his intelligence and is very creative.'

It also looks fake as fuck and uncanny valley babies freak people the fuck out.

Despite how I don't think I can qualify the movie as a good movie critically speaking, I still think there's a lot of good stuff in the movie. It's just--no one really talks about it, at least much. It's strange.

It feels like no one saw the movie that says they liked it.

[qlventingspace]

Korn and the mystery chess game

(rant ahead)

One of the things that left me completely 'gaping-like-a-fish surprised, confused, whatthefuck, idonttrust anyone' about the last ep was the brilliancy of Korn vs. Karn/Kan/Gun/Vegas dad.

For my part, until Korn woke from dead and Karn told the mom story from his pov...I totally trusted whatever Korn said (in czech you can say sežrala jsem mu to i s navijákem=i ate everything he gave me, even the fishing rod xD).

In the second reenactment of Nampheungs "death", I didn't believe Karn at all. It felt so out of the character to see Karn so distraught and soft and desperate. P'Ex did amazing job though, because even though I didn't believe Karn's overacting, it did start a seed of doubt in me.

With all the abusive shit he put Vegas through, I was 200% ready to kill him and not trust a single word he says. And yet...

Korn's actions seem dubious at best. And while he compels me to trust him with all the talk about protecting Porsche, Chay and mom, his speech has many, MANY, holes in it.

Starting with: "I wanted to protect my nephews."

Are you sure? Really? REALLY?

You did shitty job with Porsche and even shittier job with Vegas. And offering Vegas his 'love' after shooting Karn? Did he really think Vegas would accept his 'fatherly help' (Korn would gain another chess piece, but would he leave the power in his hands? Vegas is to unpredictable for his taste) OR did he expected and wanted Vegas not to accept so his bodyguards could shoot him and Korn would neatly get rid of the competition?

I don't think he predicted Pete though. (I need to rewatch it to confirm but I think Pete's hesitation was a surprise for him)

I like to think that Korn knows Pete good enough to recognize, that even though he was loyal to major family till now, his loyalties have shifted completely towards Vegas. And even though Pete says he'll be always loyal to major family, I think Korn knows it not to be true. I think the moment anyone would move to actually shoot Vegas, Pete would have shot them AND Korn for putting the order. To support my opinion about this, just look at the scene where Vegas is really shot. Pete didn't even hesitate. He Exploded with rage.

So Pete has become another unpredictable volatile person Korn needs to eliminate from the game. But he's still playing, because even though king is defeated, the queen still stands. So he plays the part of a kind boss who looks after his people (remember Pete's 'khun korn is not cruel, give up to him') and ends it with 'look after Vegas'. Maintaining the facade and ensuring, that if it would come to it, Pete would have at least a sliver of doubt in him (same as Kinn) to sway Vegas not to go against him.

The whole ordeal with Porsche's mom...*sigh*

I really don't know what to even think. What is the truth? Where is the truth? What actually happened?

She trully might be in a shock and not remember anything, not responding to anything, but really Porsche, honey, my dumb naive idiot, doesn't it look too weird and suspicious to you?

The not responding part especially freaks me out.

The whole ep ended somewhat happy. Seemingly everyone got happy ending. So why does it leave a disturbing unsettling feelings in me?

As much as I'm gratefull and 'I'll kiss you on the mouth with tongue' ecstatic about the end VegasPeteMacau scene, I wonder if it wasn't there just to lead our minds away from the mistrust and questions from the Actual last scene - the very suspicious Korn's line and most importantly the empty look from Nampheung.

History is indeed written by victors.

Korn has now two chess pieces he can move how he wants and both of them stand on his side now. Kinn is emotionally attached to his father and Porsche is attached to Kinn. He can manipulate the minor family how he wants.

But. But...

You cannot tell me that all of minor family would be dedicated to Porsche now. I think that at least some fraction of minor family will want to side with Vegas, make him take the reigns after Karn. Just look at the last meeting with 'clan leader' Kinn. Not all of them wanted to follow him. And not all of them will trade Vegas for Porsche.

I am incredibly confused and suspicious of everything about the KP ending.

But I think it's neat, that from the very start, Korn was shown playing chess like nothing, like it wasn't foreshadowing the kind of person he is.

Good job.

#kinnporsche the series #kinnporsche meta #kinnporsche ep 14 #vegaspete #kinnporsche #vegas theerapanyakul #pete phongsakorn #kinn theerapanyakul #porsche kittisawasd #korn theerapanyakul #it's the chess symbolism #i literally screamed at Kinn for stopping Porsche from killing Korn #fuck you kinn #fuck you #that man is dangerous #he has some BIG plans #but he's fricking oblivious #i have so many thoughts about the plot #fuck #here is the promised bus analysis #I'm feeling so sick from reading and writing in a bus #but alas #i needed to get this out #character analysis #kinnporsche spoilers

[initiumseries]

Please not people trying to say that half the folks that don’t ship Miles and Gwen are ‘black women who don’t like the idea of black men with white women’…Lord 😭😭😭

LMAOOO. Okay, they need to fucking relax. I'm tired of tragic arrangements on tv for a LOT of reasons, but in REAL LIFE? HA. Please. I don business bm/ww together. 10/10 the bm in question is not one that I would want even sharing the same air as me so they can just calm their tits likkle bit.

My thing is, it doesn't even matter what the fandom is. If there is poc and BP in a film/show and there's a white woman anywhere in the mix AT ALL, the white and white identified parts of the fandom are going to IMMEDIATELY get deeply, DEEPLY stupid, uncritical and moronic. I don't have patience for it, because I'm not obsessed with whiteness to the point that I can't form a cogent thought that is critical of a white person's behaviour in any piece of media, but ESPECIALLY in a piece of media like Spiderverse, where it's SO CLEAR how intentional they are? They don't beat you to death with the race aspect, they don't even mention race at all, BUT the coded language Rio uses, and is used throughout the movie, a movie, btw which is about belonging, finding your place and coming into your own, and they DELIBERATELY chose Peter and Gwen, the only two white people in Miles' life, to betray him. His thing with Gwen (while annoying) was underscored in the movie, and then she spends most of it breaking his heart with betrayal after betrayal. Peter lets Miles down, sure. But Gwen very literally lies to his face AND by omission. OVER AND OVER again. The one person she spent all this time telling us, was her only friend. She tells him there's only a small elite team of spider people and so he can't be in it. Come to find out it's an entire WORLD of them. She makes it seem like she's just here to see him for a bit, she had a whole mission she was there for. She makes it seem like she's worried about him, but she was trying to stop him from disrupting the canon event. She KNOWS his father is going to die and expects him not to do anything about it while hers gets to live. She KNOWS he's the original anomaly and doesn't say anything. She tries to reason with him about letting his FATHER DIE, in the name of this institution they've erected. She CONSISTENTLY hurts him! And then you have EEDIATS on here like "gwen's been through trauma." SO? Miles is in the middle of a traumatic event, spearheaded by her deceit. Trauma doesn't permit you to be shitty.

And after all that, the two people that actually help Miles? Are not only people he doesn't know (Hobie, Spiderbyte), but they're young Black people. Again, a deliberate choice was made here. Because take it however you want, when you're talking about a young Black boy going through that period where he's trying to find himself and where he belongs, race is gonna be part of that. How many Black folks have been let down, disappointed and just plain harmed by the white people we called friends? Come on now. So after ALL that, these dummies STILL want to SHIP MILES, with someone who hurt him so much? For what reeeeeeeeeeaaaason?

Like I've said before, this movie isn't even ABOUT ships, which is another part that annoys me. These people can't even engage with a piece of media without trying to find some romance in there. Let it go man. It's totally okay for Miles to not end up with anybody, but it's ESPECIALLY weird to ship him with someone who was so terrible to him.

[pokckygamewithbatman]

I watched My Adventures with Superman

The title sounds like a porno.

Oh… It's so bad… It's so unbelievably terrible. I really wanted to have faith that it would at least be decent. Even if it was a copy paste of the 1979 animated series that would've been fine with me but this is actually trash. HIS POWERS MANIFEST WHEN HE'S A TEEN, HE'S NOT SCARED TO MEET HIS HOLOGRAM ALIEN PARENTS, HIS PARENTS ARE SUPPORTIVE OF THE FACT THAT HE'S ADOPTED, LOIS IS COOL AND AN ACTUAL PART OF THE PLANET, JIMMY IS NOT SMOOTH. What are they doing to these characters I don't care that Lois is Korean, and that Jimmy is black, I honestly don't give a shit just make them good characters SHOWING DIVERSITY IN SHITTY SHOWS DOESN'T AUTOMATICALLY MAKE THE SHOW GOOD IT JUST GIVES A BAD REP TO DIVERSIFYING CHARACTERS.

I am so sad they sped up his backstory, I'm so sad they're starting with all 3 of them as interns, I'm so sad that Clark's powers are manifesting so slowly, I'm so sad that he doesn't make his suit, why can't he control his strength that's the power he's had the longest, why are they completely ignoring his super hearing, why is Lois a tomboy, why is Jimmy so into aliens, who is the lady who stole the robots? Is she supposed to be Metallo? If not then where is Metallo? Why hasn't the superpowered character actually defeated any villains yet, why is Superman so weak?? Why does he get a black eye, why do his powers fully manifest when Lois is in danger, why so they speed up the chemistry of Lois and Clark it takes YEARS before they get close and start dating and get married. Why is Jimmy pushing Lois and Clark who hard, how old are they supposed to be exactly? Also why are they making all the superpowered villains kids with tech? That angle is so crappy and takes away so much of the awesomeness? Why is Silver Banshee a preteen with a magic helmet she's not Elmer Fudd why am I here.

One thing that super pissed me off is Ivo. THIS SHOW IS TRYING TO TELL ME THAT 1. IVO IS A DOUCHEBAG 2. HE CREATED PARASITE 3. PARASITE ISN'T THE RESULT OF BIOCHEMICALS BUT IS ACTUALLY A TECHY ASS SUIT 4. THAT RUDY JONES ISN'T PARASITE 5. THAT PARASITE DOESN'T ABSORB POWERS BUT SIMPLY REFLECTS THEM BACK AT THE OPPONENT. Also the suit itself doesn't make any sense and is a total rip off of Green Beetle's design in Young Justice, just trust me, also why does it look like an insect? Parasite doesn't have ties with insects, like kinda in the way that he's resilient I guess, but that's about it yk. But wait something that's actually interesting happens: For some reason, completely unexplained (maybe the assistant/Lois and Jimmy messed with buttons), the suit turned on Ivo and when Superman ripped it there was a shriveled man underneath omgggg BUT we don't even get to savour that bit of somewhat interesting plot bc OH MY GOD LOIS FIGURES OUT SUPERMAN IS CLARK KENT ON EPISODE 4.

Side note: the animation and art style is so lazy, and the S that symbolizes peace or sumn I don't remember on his suit is barely legible?? Also where's the S shaped hair piece because that shit is iconic.

Look at these two designs. Just look at it.

Here's why the title "My Adventures with Superman" is the worst possible title for this show: This isn't from the audience's perspective, it's from Superman's perspective, and he's not having adventures with himself, also Adventures implies an episodic series, and this is definitely trying to have a long running plot; key word "trying", also adventures with superman makes him sound like your friendly neighbourhood hero, man could crush a mountain easily he's no neighbourhood nothing and It also implies he's not even the main character; that a self insert audience character would be but like I said that's not the case. Superman: The Animated Series is straight forward, not fucking around we're doing a show about The Man, it's animated, there you go. This show however is so dumb it hurts my brain. They've done nothing right.

I enjoyed Steve. Steve is at least halfway accurate, I'll give them that.

I fucked up and deleted like half of my post and it won't come back, so even thought there's SO much more about how stupid Lois is, why Amanda Waller is keeping close personal tabs on Superman is she's the leader of Cadmus, why are there Teen Titans villains in this show (ie, Slade/Deathstroke and The Brain and M. Mallah), and why is Wheatley and therapist gorilla in this show, who are they? Are they meant to be my beloved assholes Brain and Mallah?

I had to stop watching after I saw the Brain and Monsieur Mallah, it hurt too much. They took away my machine gun beret monkey.