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jaybird-redhood · 3 years

Text

propinquity

wc: 2.2k

pairing: jason todd // gn reader

The first thing you think when you see him for the first time is that he has the cutest smile.

That’s a lie, the first thing you think it that he is so incredibly in shape, and it looks great on him, but the smile thing sounds better in your head.

He's moving into the apartment across from yours a month after you moved into yours. Weird, because the two people in your building closest to your age are 2 and 63, respectively.

You suppose that some wicked twist of fate must’ve brought this upon you for missing your cousin’s birthday party last week, because the guy standing across from you is crazy hot. And looking right at you. And you are in the huge neon Wonder Woman t-shirt that your best friend got for your birthday last year.

Yeah. Karma.

“Nice shirt,” the guy offers, holding in a grin. “You’re really making it work.”

“I-”

“See you around, neighbor.”

And with a shut of a door and an awfully charismatic smirk he’s gone.

The next time you see him is a week later, and this time- luckily, you think- you’re dressed somewhat put together. You run into him while unlocking your door.

"What's got you in a twist?" he asks.

"Um," you start, "I just. Ugh I have so much to do. Like 3 hours of homework, a lecture tomorrow that I cannot skip, and I'm completely out of bread and eggs and can't even you to the store until, like, Thursday at best."

Once you start rambling you can't seem to stop. You slouch against your door. You're not entirely sure why you're telling a stranger all this, but he seems to be listening, so you suppose that’s a good sign

"I get the feeling," he offers, and you look up at him. "I'm majoring in English Lit and my classes are kind of kicking my ass."

You give him a small smile, "Glad to know someone in this building is struggling as much as I am."

"Jason," he says, and he reaches his hand out to you. "My name."

You shake it and tell him yours.

As you both turn back into your respective apartments you think that he maybe isn't as intimidating as you thought.

The next day goes by with a really boring lecture and another 3 hours of work you need to do.

The ride home from uni isn't that long, but it's long enough for you to contemplate all the ways that your life went wrong after moving to Gotham. And, maybe as payback for thinking mean things about the city, rain that you think should belong to a category 3 hurricane starts to whip around your car 10 minutes into your drive.

Your clothes are dripping water in literal puddles by the time you get back to your apartment.

Groaning, you start fishing for your keys in your purse while walking up the last flight of stairs.

When you get to your door you stop. Right in front of it there’s a grocery bag. Picking it up and looking inside you see a loaf of bread and a small carton of milk.

You pick it up smiling.

“Jason?” you ask, knocking on his door.

No response.

You shrug and turn around. Remember to thank him the next time you run into each other; you think.

That next time doesn’t happen to be that long and thank goodness for you.

“You know, we really need to stop meeting like this,” he says to you.

You’re sitting on the floor outside of your door looking rather pathetic, and he’s giving you the most awful smirk you’ve ever seen. (Not that it looks bad on him though. You seem to think that nothing could really look that bad on him)

“I swear I’m usually more put together than this,” you sigh to him. “You moving here jinxed me!”

“Yeah yeah. You’re locked out, aren’t you?”

You give him your best withering I’m going to kill you stare, but it must not be working because he just laughs even harder at you.

“This is completely not my fault it’s just I lost my second set of keys like right when I moved in and then today when I got home, I accidentally left them in my car, but my second set of car keys is in my apartment so now I can’t get them out, stop laughing at me!”

“God you’re a mess,” Jason says- finally finished laughing at you and maybe taking a bit of pity on how disheveled you look. “You couldn’t call anyone to get you in?”

You shake your head.

“My friend is the only other person with a set, but they’re out of town, and our landlord is being a dick and telling me it’s my fault in the first place, so I need to deal with it. I’ve been sitting out here for like an hour.”

“All I’m hearing is that it is your fault and now you’re just moping about it feeling bad about yourself.”

You tilt your head against the door so hard that it makes you wince a bit.

“Ok fine,” he says crossing his arms.

“What?”

“Wait right here.”

He goes into his apartment and comes back out with a skinny metal thing you don’t recognize.

You look at him in confusion and he just motions for you to scoot out of the way as he sticks it in your locks and starts to pick it.

You sigh in relief.

“Thank you thank you thank you. For everything. I swear I will get my life together, so you don’t feel like you have to keep cleaning up my messes.

“I don’t mind,” he says with a small smile, “Take your time.”

And with that he opens the door to your apartment and turns back to his.

“By the way, you should really get better locks. That was way too easy.”

You make a note in your head to get that done sometime. As you’re lying on your couch that night, you’re AirDropped a photo on your phone. Saving it up you see it’s a piece of paper with neat handwriting on it: a phone number and a smiley face, Jason’s name at the bottom.

You smile too and add the number to your contacts.

Over the next few weeks, you and Jason start talking more, both over text and through the various times when you run into each other outside your doors.

Each interaction is better than the next, and you soon start to realize that Jason isn’t just some hot guy with no brains. He’s sweet and charismatic, has a whole wall full of bookshelves, could probably quote any classical novel by heart, has incredibly good taste in music, and best (or worst) of all, would make incredible friend material.

It’s just that as you become closer friends, you start to realize that that might not be all you want.

It’s a stupidly cold Friday morning when he texts you, and you’re covered in blankets and wrapped in sweatshirts in your bed. Movie at my place tonight?

You text back your approval and a quick be there at 6 before getting ready for classes.

The day goes by slower than you hoped.

It might be the anticipation of seeing Jason again, or more likely the hours of lectures you have to sit through, but you’re elated when your final class for the day gets let out.

The hours in between are a blur.

A blur which leads to the two of you sitting on his couch watching Romeo and Juliet together, a blanket thrown over your bodies.

You have the obligatory bowl of popcorn resting on your legs, and every few minutes Jason reaches across your lap to take a handful.

The way you’re laying half on top on him is completely deliberate, as to take as much of his body heat as possible. Your landlord had turned off heating 3 weeks prior to ‘save money’ or some other bullshit.

Jason’s not complaining though.

Once your popcorn bowl is finished and your head is in his lap, he runs his fingers through your hair absentmindedly. It might be the nicest feeling you’ve ever felt.

Throughout the movie you exchange snide comments about the plot back and forth. You start trying to say funny things whenever you can just to hear how sweet his laugh sounds to your ears.

By the end of the movie, you’re only slightly in tears, or so you tell yourself.

“Are you crying right now?” Jason asks incredulously, wearing a teasing smile.

“It’s not my fault,” you half say half moan, “Leonardo DiCaprio just has that effect on me.”

He just laughs and pulls you upright until you’re sitting on his lap.

His eyes are a shade of blue green that you’ve never seen before, although you could swear their getting greener by the second.

You watch his gaze drop down to your lips before staring you right in the eyes again.

“Can I kiss you?”

“God yes,” you tell him, and kiss him right back.

The next week is somewhat uneventful, even though you and Jason had been meeting each other almost every night, rotating apartments based on whose house was warmer each particular night.

Tonight is your night, and you’ve been waiting the whole day to show him the film you had rented to watch together.

The walk up to your door is easier than usual, and you have a bounce in your step that’s making you feel even more elated than normal taking out your keys to unlock your apartment.

You open your door and your bag drops. The keys clatter when they hit the hardwood, and the silence that follows is deafening.

“You’re bleeding on my carpet,” is the first thing that comes out of your mouth.

There Jason is, bleeding quite profusely, and using your kitchen counter to keep himself vertical. He’s wearing what looks to be a torn half of a domino mask and an extremely hot leather jacket.

(Not that this was the time for noticing his fashion choices, but you filed that thought away for later.)

What really catches your eye though is the huge red bat symbol on his chest, and the red helmet next to it sitting on your counter.

He shifts a little to the side before stumbling through saying, “Um, so, I know this isn’t ideal and I’m really sorry to put you in this situation, but I seriously do not feel like bleeding out tonight and-”

“Oh my god this is great,” you cut him off with. “I thought you were a hit-man!”

“Wait what.”

“Shit no that’s not what I meant- kind of, hang on we should probably stop you from dying before having this conversation.”

You walk over to him to get a better look at his wounds.

“God Jace, you look like death warmed over.”

He just stares at you.

“You have a bunch of stuff in your bathroom, right?”

At least this elicits a reaction. He grimaces in pain but gives you a nod of his head in conformation.

“Ok I’ll be right back, don’t move.”

He gives you a look that says seriously, where would I go.

3 minutes later you’re back with a needle and thread, and some sterilizing spray.

“This should be fine,” you tell him, “I took a first aid class last year with my friends and passed with flying colors according to the nurse.”

“Just try to keep them tight and neat. I trust you,” he says, and your heart pounds just a little harder.

You respond with a nervous laugh but take a deep breath and start working.

An hour and a half later you’re done.

The combination of pain meds, bandages, and a whole lot of stitches eventually led to you and Jason laying in your bed together, both completely exhausted.

He turns his head to face you.

“Could we maybe go back to the hit-man thing?”

“Oh uh. Well I saw a bunch of shirts covered in blood in your laundry in the bathroom, not to mention all the weirdly specific first-aid you had,” you tell him.

“And also the assorted guns and knives you have hidden all over. I guess I just assumed? But the whole Red Hood thing is so much better,” you reassure him.

“You found all my knives?”

You smile up at him.

“I love that that’s thing you chose to focus on.”

“And you’re really not mad that I didn’t tell you about the whole vigilante thing before?” he asks.

“Jay, I had already resigned myself to life forever with some shady hit-man that also happened to be incredibly good looking. Red Hood is ten times better than that. I’m not going to run away from you just because you’re incredibly intimidating and probably could kill me. I see that as an added bonus,” you say, with as much charm as you can muster without yawning.

“Just. Be careful, ok? I’d hate to make this a routine.”

He responds by pulling you closer to his body.

“I promise,” he whispers into your head. “You really to remember to get better locks by the way, breaking in was still way too easy.”

You let out a small laugh and finally you let yourself give into sleep.

#luce writes #jason todd x reader #red hood x reader #jason todd x gender neutral reader #red hood x gender neutral reader #jason todd x y/n #red hood x y/n #jason todd x you #red hood x you #jason todd imagine #red hood imagine #dc imagine #jason todd fanfiction #red hood fanfiction #jason todd #red hood #dc

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thestarrynightslover · 3 years

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It’s a Good Day to Have a Bad Date

Pairing: Jay Halstead x Reader

Word count: 2,383

Warnings: Slight mentions of an OC with criminal priors, violent tendencies, and a juvenile record. A teeny-tiny bit of angst.

Summary: The reader meets Jay as she's trying to find out stuff about the guy she's about to go out with and ends up switching dates.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the One Chicago shows, or its characters, also not associated with it in any way or know anyone involved with it.

A/N: Just to make one thing clear: I did some research on Illinois's laws (not sure I got it right tho) and, apparently, this fic is very inaccurate. But I really wanted to pursue the idea, so just humor me, please 🙏🏻. Anyways, I had a lot of fun while writing this and thought about making a part two... But I'm not sure. Tell me what you think! 💗

| masterlist |

You inhaled deeply one more time before you walked into the police district. There wasn’t even a real reason for you to be so nervous about it. You weren’t a victim and you weren’t a criminal. So, what’s the worst that could happen?

The worst that could happen was, of course, you getting a bunch of cops mad at you because you went to waste their time with some pathetic whining. It was decided, you were gonna turn back around right now, while you still had time, and just go home.

On second thought, though, it was a matter of public safety. Your safety. Which was just as valid because you were just as much of a U.S. citizen as anyone else. So you went in.

Shit. The place was almost empty, which meant everyone would notice if you left. And they’d ask questions, so you figured you’d, at least, get ahead of them, as you walked shyly towards the front desk. There, you were met by an older woman who looked bored, and still, terrifying.

“Can I help you with something?” She asked you, while cautiously checking you out. Oh my God, she thought you could be a victim! You were such an idiot.

“Um, it’s, um, it’s actually nothing, really. I shouldn’t even have come here in the first place.” You told her while smiling a little. What you didn’t know was that what you said had only raised more flags in the sergeant’s mind, even catching the attention of a tall man writing some things down on a paper at the corner of the counter. The young detective stayed back because he knew that Platt would know how to manage the situation, but continued listening to every word of the conversation.

The sergeant, then, took her glasses off, setting them on the counter. “Listen, miss, my name is Trudy Platt and the reason why I became a cop was that I wanted to help people, in every way that I possibly could. So, if you need my help with anything, just tell me what it is. And, I promise, I’ll do everything in my power to give it to you.” She assured you and, as much as you felt this huge sympathy for the woman, you also felt even worse about making her waste her time. So you tried to fix things.

“Oh, my God! I’m so, so, so sorry! I’m not a victim in any way, thank God. I said that I shouldn’t have come here because I’m not even sure if what I wanted to ask is legal…” You told her with a nervous laugh. Hearing that, the Sergeant’s eyes sparked with curiosity.

“Well, then I probably won’t be able to help you.” She told you, stressing the ‘probably’ and making the man at the end of the counter shamelessly turn his face in your direction in order to better hear your conversation. “But… Since you’re already here, and it’s been such a slow day for the District, maybe you should just ask me whatever you want to and I’ll be the judge of whether that’s legal or not. After all, unless you’re some sort of lawyer, I should know more about the law than the average civilian.” The Sergeant skilfully baited you.

“Um, no, I’m not a lawyer.” You confirmed with a small laugh while tugging some of your hair behind your ear. “Actually, since I’ve just recently moved here to Chicago ⎼ to Illinois, really ⎼, I’m probably a lot below your average civilian.” You stated with a giggle. At that, the guy that had lost his discretion about eavesdropping started chuckling a little himself, to which the older woman responded with a look you’d absolutely hate having directed to you.

“So, Chuckles, you have nothing better to do than to stay here listening to other people’s conversations?”

“First of all, it’s detective,” he started in a mocked smug tone, “and, second: no, uh, I actually don’t. I came to fill this paperwork down here exactly because we were about to kill each other upstairs, just to get out of the boredom.” He added, raising some paper files he had in-hand. “Besides, you know how much I, too, love to help people.” He said while shooting you a charming smile. Okay, that guy was pretty handsome. “Jay Halstead, nice to meet you.” The detective informed you, holding out his hand.

“Right, um, nice to meet you too, sir.” You replied, shaking his hand. “I didn’t even say my name, what a clums!” You joked while patting yourself on the forehead. “I’m (y/n) (y/l/n).”

“Okay, just, please, lose the ‘sir’ with that one, otherwise, he’ll never let it go.” Trudy chipped back in the conversation.

“So, what was it that you wanted to ask the sarge? I can assure you that we’ll let you know if it’s illegal. After all, two judges are better than one.” He suggested, all smiles.

“Since when?” The sergeant practically barked at the younger man, just to add: “You know what? You wanna be here at my front desk, Halstead? Then be here, but be quiet and let the lady talk.” She bluntly ordered him, who decided to do as he was told.

“Alright, um, it’s just that this guy who I don’t really know anything about asked me out and I said yes, even though I got a bad vibe from him?” They just stared at you with their jaws dropped, so you added: “Pathetic, I know. But I didn’t really wanna judge him without any proof, or anything like that, so I figured that, maybe, I could try and check if he has any criminal priors or something.” You finished with a tiny embarrassed smile.

“And why on Earth would you think that we could give you this type of information?” The sergeant asked you, her expression being one of pure shock.

“I, uh…” You didn’t really want to embarrass yourself even more but felt the urge to explain anyways. “It’s just that I’m a small-town girl, okay? And, over there, everybody knew my family, so, whenever I wanted to go out with someone, my dad would just ask his buddies at the Sheriff’s office to look the guy over. And he always told me that that was really important, so, when I moved to the state’s capital, I just wouldn’t go out with anyone unless a close friend vouched for him. Because I was terrified of what I’d see and hear on the news. But here… I don’t really know anyone yet.” You blurted it all out, to two strangers! To two cops who probably had something, or somethings, better to do than to listen to your whining. “Anyhow, I’m really sorry that I wasted your time, guys. Won’t happen again.” At that, they exchanged a look, and the sergeant said:

“You know what? You’re right, kid. The world is a dangerous place. And, unfortunately, it is even more dangerous for us women. So I’m gonna look the guy up. But I’m not gonna tell you exactly what it says if something comes up.” She told you, much for your surprise, and, then, turned to the detective, saying: “If you say a single word about this to anyone, and I mean anyone, Chuckles, I swear to God that I’ll cut your tongue out myself.”

“Geez, sarge. How can you swear such an ugly thing like that to God?” He asked her, in a mockery tone, while making a hilarious expression.

“Ha! Keep that up and your tongue won’t be the only thing I’m gonna cut.” She threatened him again and you couldn’t help but burst into laughter when he made a shocked expression and put his hands protectively over his crotch.

“For your information, I wanna help the girl just as much as you, so I wouldn’t say anything. You didn’t have to threaten me.” He tried to recover, as you handed her a small piece of paper with your possible date’s name.

“Oh, I know. But I wasn’t about to miss out on the opportunity.” She shot back at him while typing the name on the District’s computer. “Okay, here it is... Wow."

"What? What is it?" You asked her, as you watched the detective perk himself over the counter to look at the screen.

"Jesus. This guy's got himself quite a rap sheet." He commented, making you shiver, thinking of what could happen to you, if you went on with the date.

"What exactly do you mean by that, detective?" You asked the man who probably noticed your discomfort, because he spoke again, in a tranquilizing tone:

"No, relax. It's nothing too bad, like violent or anything. But there's some pretty nasty stuff here." He told you, not really making you relax.

"There's something here, though." That caught the detective's eye again. "His juvenile record is sealed, the only thing I can see without a warrant is an observation from his caseworker. She says something about him having violent tendencies." She told you with a sigh, taking her glasses off again. "Look, I know that I can't tell what to do and what to not do, (y/n), but, as a suggestion? Stay the hell away from this piece of work. You seem like a nice enough girl, I'd hate to see you come in here as a victim someday."

“Oh, God, no! I heard you loud and clear, sergeant! Don’t worry about it, I’m canceling that date ASAP!” You exclaimed, agreeing with her.

“That’s great!” The detective spoke this time, sounding a little too happy about the fact that you were about to cancel a date with a man who had criminal priors and violent tendencies. So both you and the other woman stared at him. “Err, I mean because you’re not gonna go out with him.” You just giggled a little at the way he was digging an even deeper hole for himself. “Because he’s a bad guy.” He added, once again getting a glare from Trudy. “You know what I mean.” He finished, defeated, not looking in your eyes.

“Well, uh,” you started, trying to keep yourself from laughing too hard, “anyways, I can only thank you both. You guys got me out of something that could be really unpleasant, to say the least.” You told them, a bit more serious this time.

“Nah, don’t worry about it. Just glad we could help.” Detective Halstead said, smiling kindly at you.

“Yeah. This time, I actually agree with you, Halstead.” The sergeant half-joked.

“Aw, that’s very kind, but, really, thank you!” You restated your gratitude, then asking: “I should probably get going now, right? Stop wasting your time?”

“It’s not like we were doing much before you got here-” Trudy began saying, but was interrupted by the detective, who quickly told you:

“Yeah, you should go. You know, cause a police District…” You knew he was right, but those two seemed like really nice people, especially after having helped you dodge a bullet, so to speak, and you’d hoped that you were finally making some friends in the Windy-City. “Anyways, um, lemme walk you out.” He offered you while motioning to the door. At that, you and the sergeant shared a look that told you she also found it weird that the detective would wanna walk with you through such a minimal distance.

“Uh, um, o- okay.” As you and Halstead walked towards the exit, you couldn’t help but notice what nice features he had. Like, your mind just kept going back to what a good-looking man he was.

“So…” He trailed off.

“So…” You answered, not really sure about what to say.

“You know, um, it’s gotta be a hell of a bummer for you. Being here in Chicago without knowing many people. This city… It’s all about finding your community.” He told you in a sympathetic tone.

“Hum…” You breathed out as you thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, well, I guess that I can only hope I’ll have better luck at making acquaintances the next time I go out to explore it.”

“Right.” The detective agreed. “Uh, listen, I know that this may sound a little too forward, but, maybe, I could show you some of my favorite places, someday? I mean, only if you’re interested! Because I don’t want you to feel like-”

“Actually, I’d very much like that! If it isn’t going to be any trouble for you…” You cut him off excitedly.

“No! No trouble at all!” He quickly assured you. “Um, thi- this is my card.” He said, lifting up a small business card for you to see. “I’m gonna write my personal number on the back of it. Call, or text me when you have some time to go out. Or if you just want someone to talk…” The handsome man added with a smile. God, what a smile.

“Okay, um, thanks, dete-”

“No, please! Call me Jay.”

“Alright,” you acknowledged, a little nervous this time, “then, thank you, Jay. Just, be advised, I can be very talkative sometimes, which means you might regret giving me this.” You warned him with a sly smile while waving the card in front of his face.

“Huh.” Jay pretended to consider it for a moment. “Is it too weird if I say I have a feeling that I won’t regret it?” He then asked you with a cute shy smile.

“Well, it sure isn’t weirder than me saying that I really hope you don’t regret it.” You confessed to him with a wink.

“Hey, are you two gonna take that flirting elsewhere on your own, or do you need me to get you a room?” You heard Sergeant Platt call out, blushing immediately.

“I’m so sorry about that!” Jay told you, looking a little flushed himself. “You should probably go now.” He added with an apologetic smile.

“Yeah, I think you’re right..” You agreed, but, as you were turning around to leave, he grabbed your wrist lightly, saying:

“Just… Don’t forget to call.” Hearing that, you snickered a little.

“I have a feeling that I won’t.” You told him, almost repeating his previous words, which got some chuckles out of him.

Now you understood the nickname.

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cecilysass · 3 years

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Jackson Van de Kamp’s Not-So-Final Repose (3/3)

Read on AO3 | Previous chapter |@today-in-fic

A sudden shadow passes over Mulder’s face. He scowls. He picks up the menu again, tracing a finger along the text.

“Navajo,” he repeats to himself.

Abruptly standing up, a focused look on his features, he begins looking around the café as if searching for something. Jackson, confused, tries to follow the direction of his eyes.

“Platform 42,” Mulder points to a sign, suspended above them. He scowls again.

He walks towards a billboard lining the wall. It is advertising a planned community, with watercolor images of families standing in front of immaculate homes.

“The Falls at Arcadia,” he reads to Jackson.

He then walks along and finds another billboard farther along, that Jackson can’t see quite as clearly. “And look. Visit Beautiful Martha’s Vineyard. Done in a retro, seventies style.”

He walks back to sit down again at the table, facing Jackson. “I assume none of these details are from your book.”

“No,” Jackson shakes his head.

“Some of them seem like sort of American details for your subconscious mind to fill in for King’s Cross station, don’t they?”

“I don’t know,” Jackson shrugs, frustrated. “I just know I have never been to Martha’s Vineyard, and I don’t speak Navajo.”

“They aren’t details from your life. They are details from … mine,” Mulder says. He lifts up the glass of iced tea. “Right down to my favorite drink when I need to focus, mixed with the perfect amount of sugar, exactly the way I like it.”

Jackson is perplexed. “But … I didn’t know that. I didn’t know any of this. How could my mind have included your memories?”

Mulder scowls, takes a sip of his perfect glass of iced tea.

“The café chairs,” Jackson says, remembering. “Before, Bruckman said the pattern on the back of the chairs looked like a brain.”

Immediately interested, Mulder stands up again, circling around to examine the back of his chair.

“I don’t really see it,” Jackson says. The metal bars are shaped in an irregular, flower-like pattern. It is unusual, granted, but it doesn’t look especially like a brain to Jackson.

Mulder runs his hands along it. “Huh. I think it’s the shape of a brain being imaged, like an MRI,” he says softly.

“What?” Jackson shakes his head, staring at it. “Seriously? That’s so … freaking weird. Why?”

“I think it’s my brain, as a matter of fact,” Mulder says in wonder. He looks up. “I am starting to get this, I think.”

“Well, I’m definitely not,” Jackson says, indignantly.

“It isn’t details from my memories,” Mulder says. “Because I haven’t spent as much time, in my own life, looking at pictures of my brain. And my MRIs aren’t significant memories for me.”

“Huh?”

“I think these details are in your subconscious mind as a result of your connection to your mother,” Mulder says. “They are from Scully. They are little ... fragments of her memories of me. Impressions, pieces.”

Jackson looks around him slowly, taking this in.

“I think you created this dream space in your subconscious for a meeting with me,” Mulder continues. “Her memories helped you … well, decorate for it. Without realizing it.”

“You can’t be serious.” Jackson can’t imagine this is how it works.

“Right down to the drinks,” Mulder adds, softly, taking a sip of the iced tea with a smile.

Jackson doesn’t speak for a moment. Something about this doesn’t quite make sense to him.

“But … I didn’t come here expecting to meet with you,” he says. “I only decided to talk to you after I spoke with …”

He stops. “Clyde Bruckman.”

Mulder and Jackson look at one another. They seem to have the same thought at the same time.

“What if Bruckman wasn’t really ever speaking with me at all? What if he was just … my dream based on my mother’s memory of him?” Jackson says.

His voice sounds very small, almost a whisper.

“Do you think that could be true?” Mulder says, watching him closely.

“He knew things,” Jackson says. “He knew you were having a baby.”

Neither of them speaks.

“Which …” Jackson finishes, realizing, “obviously my mom knew, too. So that could have come from her mind.”

“That doesn’t prove he wasn’t here,” Mulder says.

“He said you were my father,” Jackson says, his panic rising. “But I... also saw that in my own visions, and I think deep down my mom thinks it’s true, too, so I could have known that already. He said the baby was a girl, but that could just be … a guess.”

Jackson forces a deep breath before he goes on.

“He said the baby would be important to me, that I would become closer to you and Agent Scully, that I would grow up to be happy … but that could just be me wanting those things to be true.”

“Jackson, those things can be true, no matter what,” Mulder says softly.

“He knew I read Harry Potter when I was a kid,” Jackson whispers. “He knew I was bi. But of course he would. It’s my own head. He knows everything I know.”

“Do you remember anything else he said?” Mulder says gently. “Maybe you can think of something he said that is a real detail, something that would really come from him, not from Scully’s memories or from your own.”

“He said you believed he was a psychic, back in the day. He said that he, uh, sort of trolled you -- said you were going to have an embarrassing death? He said you and my mother weren’t having sex back then, but you were thinking about it.”

“All of that would easily be in Scully’s memories,” Mulder says, looking slightly sheepish.

Jackson is silent. “Did he eat cookies when you knew him? Like some kind of cookies that started with an H? And sounded like Hydra?”

“Hydox,” Mulder says. “They’re like Oreos. And … no, not that I remember. He liked pie.”

“He said he missed Hydrox cookies,” Jackson says quietly. “Maybe that was something real, from his real life.” It doesn’t seem like very much to hold on to.

“Yeah,” Mulder says, rubbing his mouth. “Yeah, it definitely could be.”

“I want to believe he was really here,” Jackson says.

“Me, too,” Mulder says. “But —it also doesn’t matter, Jackson. Everything good that came out of this conversation can come out whether he was here or not.”

Jackson looks at the FBI agent, blinking. Mulder’s eyes are on him, concerned. The boy is worried he might be close to tears, which would be embarrassing.

“I might have some of my notes from the case Bruckman was involved in,” Mulder adds, watching him closely. “We had a fire in our office a few years later and some were lost, but I have the old digital files. You can come over to our house and look, see if you see something that rings a bell. You can ask Scully if she knew about the cookies.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jackson says, nodding.

“You all right?”

“Yeah. I’m fine,” Jackson says, tightly.

For some reason, this response makes Mulder’s face bloom into a slow, weary smile. He shakes his head, sighing, as if resigned to not knowing more. Slowly, he begins to look around again at the surrounding train station, his eyes drifting to each detail.

“So you’ve never been to London, huh?”

“No,” Jackson shook his head.

“Maybe we could go,” Mulder suggests, fidgeting nervously with the corner of the menu. “If you want.”

“To … London?”

“Sure. We could all go. Me, you, your mom. We could take your sister when she is big enough. See the real King’s Cross station, although it’s not really very exciting, just a train station. We could visit Oxford, too. And there’s, you know, tons of other things to see. Scully would like it, too, I think.”

Jackson tries not to get too excited thinking about this. He looks up at Mulder, his face a mask now, shrugging. “I don’t have a passport. I’m officially dead.”

“It seems like a kid with your abilities probably can figure out ways to work that out.”

“That doesn’t seem like a very good federal agent answer,” says Jackson, raising his eyebrow.

“Well, I think many would say I’m not a very good federal agent.”

Jackson smiles despite himself, takes a sip of his own iced tea, cautiously. “I’d like to go to London.”

“Okay. Well, then ... good,” Mulder says, pleased, as if it’s settled. He shifts positions in his seat. “What about the Yankees? You ever see them play?”

“No,” Jackson says, rolling his eyes. “But I’m not really into--”

“Don’t say it,” Mulder says. “You’ll break my heart. Pretend you’ll go see the Yankees with me.”

Jackson smiles again, conceding. “All right, fine.”

“You’ll like it once you’re there,” Mulder says confidently.

Jackson isn’t so sure, but Mulder’s enthusiasm is hard to resist. “It would probably be good to take my sister, too. Buy her a bunch of snacks and souvenirs and stuff.”

“Now you’re getting it,” Mulder says. “I can definitely make sure she is a Yankees fan, huh?”

“Buy her enough cotton candy, and she’ll be yours,” Jackson says wryly.

Mulder laughs a little. He looks down at the menu, swallows. Jackson can see the anxiety written on his face. “When do you think we will see you again, Jackson? Not in a dream?”

“Soon,” Jackson promises.

They make eye contact again.

“I won’t show up looking like me,” Jackson says. “Because of the danger. And because ... I’ll probably be a little nervous.”

“But you’ll show us it’s you, eventually?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Mulder says softly.

Father and son hold eye contact a moment more.

“And when I see you then,” Jackson says, in a voice that sounds much younger than he is, “will you say something right away to show me you remember this? So I know … this conversation wasn’t a dream, too?”

“I will say ‘iced tea,’” Mulder says. “Then you will know. All right?”

“Okay,” Jackson says.

“This conversation is happening, William,” Mulder says.

He closes his eyes, shakes his head. “I’m so sorry. I meant Jackson.”

“It’s okay,” Jackson says. “In my mom’s mind — that’s what she calls me a lot, too.”

“I am sure she does,” Mulder says. “It’s hard for us. But it’s important that we really know the person you are now. Not just the baby we lost.”

“Yeah.”

Jackson thinks about that. To the FBI agents, their long lost baby was something real that turned into their dream, the most important dream in their lives. Just like the mysterious red-headed birth mother was for him for a while.

And one thing he knows about dreams, from experience, is that they are not always harmless.

“Uh, Mulder?” he says to his father, calling him by his mother’s name for him without really noticing it. “I think … that I am about to wake up. I can sort of, uh, feel it coming. And when I wake up, I think you will probably wake up, too.”

“Okay,” Mulder nods, slowly, cautiously.

Jackson runs his fingers, nervously, through his hair. “Will you tell my mom ... hi for me? Tell her everything I said?” he says. “Tell her I will come see you soon.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Don’t forget,” Jackson says. “Iced tea. Right?"

"Iced tea."

They stare at each other one more time. Jackson blinks heavily, and he discovers his eyes are wet after all.

His father, shiny-eyed, too, smiles at him, abruptly grabs his hand. He only holds it for a moment.

Then Jackson wakes up.

Read on AO3 | Previous chapter

Thank you so much for reading this, dear reader! I am fond of it, but I know it's an odd one. Your feedback is all the more precious for this. I'm a bit worried about anyone ever reading it, hahaha.

#xfiles fanfic #the x files #fox mulder #dana scully #jackson van de kamp #clyde bruckman's final repose #todayinfic #msr #i don't know how to use tumblr

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themadauthorshatter · 3 years

Text

Just because Charles is home safe, doesn't mean this series is over😉😁

Super quick recap: While Galeforce's plan kicks into high gear, Henry further chips away at Charles, seemingly becoming succesful in coveting the pilot. Despite his efforts, Charles manages to escape, with help from Galeforce and a hair's width successful plan.

For much more context, and seeing that glorious action, escape scene that was so expertly written it deserved an Oscar (sarcasim), be sure the check the links provided:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4 & extention/revision

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

With all that said and done, let's go check on Charles!!

We find our friend sleeping on a really bed for the first time in forever, resting on his side, the one where he got grazed not the one with broken ribs and gash.

We can finally tell it's morning, too, because the sun is up, the birds are singing, and there's the rustling of trees outside as well.

Just as he starts to get a little fitful, hand reaches out to ruffle Charles's hair. He doesn't know who it is, exactly, but when he thinks he sees Henry, he wakes up INSTANTLY out of sheer panic, jolting off his side to sit up and back away as much as he can.

SYKE!

It's just Galeforce, who sits in a chair and holds up his hands. "Easy, son. Just me. You're alright."

Charles looks around and realizes where they are:

A log cabin in the woods(and not the murder-y kind either) that's cozy AF and is close to a river. There are glass windows, but they're not huge, everything has a very woods-punk to it, like antler lamps a few tapestries, and other stuff like that.

"Where are we?"

"Out of the city. It's better you stay low for a little while, until we know you're safe."

Charles relaxes and rubs his ear, which is bandaged; he has his ear muffs, but they're resting on the bedside table.

"How... How long was I out for?"

"Since we got you out. About two days. Here," Galeforce says as he passes a plate to Charles, as well as some ADD medicine(Turns out Galeforce is a good dad and stays up to date on what Charles needs.)"You look like you could use these."

Charles smiles and accepts his plate, eggs, sausage, and bacon(PROTEIN GAINS!!), and the medicine. "Thanks."

Charles indeed starts eating, and takes his meds, and it gives Galeforce a clear view of Charles's arms, wrists, and other injuries(he's wearing a thin-ish t-shirt), including some burns on his wrists from where he was electrocuted.

He also sees Charles tense up and freeze as he cuts up some eggs. It's only for a second, but Galeforce still catches it.

"Charelie, what'd they do to you?"

Charles is silent for a second before continuing to eat some breakfast. "A lot," he replies under his breath after eating.

"I'm sorry, General."

Galeforce gives Charles a confused look before Charles continues.

"He got the sapphire and the Captain got injured. And-"

Galeforce sets a hand on Charles's shoulder, now giving him a small smile.

"Canterbury's fine, just like everyone else. The sapphire's far away from here. Shipped it off a month ago. Trust me, Henry would have to be out of his mind to try getting it back."

Charles is so surprised to hear this, exhaling shakily, tears in his eyes.

Galeforce's smile remains as he pulls Charles close until the two are hugging, Charles semi-relaxing in the contact.

But there's still one thing on Charles's mind.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

The two pull away, that smile on Galeforce's face now replaced with confusion. "Tell you what?"

Charles has a quick moment of, 'Do I really wnat to do this?' before remembering Henry's smug face and clenching a fist.

"My parents. Why didn't you tell me about them?"

Galeforce pulls Charles close again, but they don't hug this time.

"They didn't get a chance to. Never said I could either," Galeforce explains. "Regardless, Charlie, they loved you more than they loved each other. Hell, they loved you more than me."

Charles stares at Galeforce with wide eyes, on the virge of tears.

"Trust me, son. I would've told you, even if they didn't want me to."

"When?"

Galeforce shrugs and gives a slight chuckle. "Whenever you asked. For the youngest pilot, you're a little..."

Galeforce trails off and gives a 50/50 sigm with his hand, which Charles straightens at.

"Hey!" Charles half-laughs.

Galefirce laughs with him before sighing. "Regardless, once all this is over, I'll tell you whatever you want to know, alright?"

The two hug again for real this time, Galeforce glad to have his son home and Charles glad to be home, relaxing fully now that he's back.

Well, at least until we cut to the orbital station.

Henry is still pissed at the fact that not only did they get duped, but now Charles is somewhere back on Earth.

He knows Charles probably isn't at his house, because Henry has the file that shows his address, at the base, or at The Wall, considering what happened at both locations.

He contemplates it all while holding the bottle of pills he'd taken from Charles so long ago before shouting and throwing the bottle at the cork board.

Oh, yeah, and the file was updated in 2017, and it's 2020 now, in our time-line.

So, yeah, Henry's a little pissed off at the moment, and the glass sapphire prank from the government did not make it any better.

Regardless, Henry groans and plops down in his chair, running a hand through his hair.

He reads through Charles's file again, this time looking for Charles's phone number again, trying to find a way to contact Charles again, find and bring him back by whatever means necessary.

Best way to do that is by going to Charles's home address, but that might be a trap, maybe go to the base, but, again, it might be a trap, so now Henry's caught in a spiral.

He rests his head against his arms, groaning again.

Doesn't know how(yet), but he's going to find Charles.

That's when he gets an idea and remembers a gold mine that just finished mining and putting away some gold.

BACK TO CHARLES!

It's been a couple days now and he's having a lovely time at the cabin, sitting on the porch, which has a top on it to block the sun, and drinking some tea, enjoying the wind, water, sun, and everything he's missed while captuve in the orbital station.

That's when he hears something and races inside, pulling his tea in, as well.

Charles ducks behind the island counter and grabs for a gun under the table, sneaking toward the door and hiding behind the wall.

The door opens and someone walks in, loudly, at first, before slowing down, creeping as well, with two other footsteps following.

Charles swings out, ready to shoot, but is glomped by Calvin and Konrad, who could not care less he was about to shoot them.

"Charles! You're back!"

"We thought you died!"

"He didn't die. Don't be stupid," Calvin snarks at Konrad.

"I know he didn't, but you never know!"

"Alright, you two," Rupert sighs. "Let him breathe for a second."

The twins reluctantly let Charles go and Charles sets his gun down as his gaze good to Rupert, who smirks and holds his arms open.

"What? Forgot your best friend?"

Charles gasps as his eyes widen.

From his perspective Rupert turns into Henry, who lowers his arms to extend a hand to Charles.

Charles backs away from him, muttering, "No. Not here. How did you get here?"

"Charles?"

Calvin puts a hand on Charles's shoulder and Charles jumps out of his skin, snapping back into reality.

Both twins look very confused, but Rupert's confusion turns into solemn understanding and then to barely contained anger.

"They really messed you up out there, didn't they?"

Charles tries to form words, stammering as he turns to the twins and Rupert, but Rupert holds his shoulders.

"Don't worry. You're staying on Earth, from now on."

Charles gulps and nods. "Yeah." That's when Charles takes a look at the twins and Rupert. "What... are you guys doing here, anyway?"

Calvin and Konrad exchange a small smile and pull Charles inside by the hand, not the wrist because Galeforce gave them a heads up.

"Day off! We're babysitting you, for a little while."

Before Charles can fully protest, Rupert cheekily ruffles his hair.

"General's orders, Charlie. Besides, you need to tell us how you got this place, because we got lost the times looking for it."

All three stop their toying around when Charles's shoulders start shaking and his breathing becomes uneven.

"Charles?"

Charles looks up at all three of them, smiling as he cries. "S-sorry. I guess... I really missed you guys."

The twins smile back and Rupert sl8ngs an arm over Charles's shoulders.

"Dammit, don't get me crying, too."

All four walk further inside, Charles going back to lock the door.

That's when he notices the pocket of his coat, the one he'd been captured in, and digs inside it, blood going frigid at what he finds.

There are a bunch of pictures held together by a paperclip, all that are from a security camera in Charles's cell, one of a few. There's a few of Charles sleeping in his restraints, some of him sitting on the floor and staring out the window, some of him right when he's been punched and kicked, electrocuted, wearing the suit from dinner, and, most horrifying, Henry holding and kissing him, even posing with Charles while he's asleep gagged with the duct tape.

Charles's hands tremble as he flips through them, completely unable to breathe.

When did he take these!?

"Yo! Charlie! You coming or what!?" Konrad calls.

Charles quickly hides the pictures away in his pants pocket and rejoins them, pale and trying to hold it together.

Thankfully, Rupert is the one who notices first.

"You alright? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Charles shakes his head and nods. "Yeah, I... I'm fine."

Silly, Charles. Rupert can tell when he's lying, but won't push him; goodness knows Eupert and the twins have done that enough.

"Relax," Calvin says. "They're not goning to come here. Heard there was a raid going on at some mine a state over."

"Yeah, and if we had a hard time coming here, the toppats might, too," Konrad says as he tries to figure out the coffee machine.

I can think of a few things, Charles thinks as he helps out Konrad.

Good thing Charles is this on edge because we cut to Charles's house as the door opens, the lock having been picked open.

Henry walks inside, alone, and quickly takes his shoes off to hide any evidence he was inside as he looks around.

He moves very carefully, noting how everything is decently organized, not meticulous, but everything is where it should be.

Henry smirks at all of it, but spots the plants Charles has around, both wire and real, said real ones being a little droopy and sad.

He quickly picks up a small pitcher and gives the plants a drink, because he's a nice friend(NOT!!!).

He then continues exploring, checking out the bathroom, the laundry room, and even Charles's room, which he's much more 'thorough' with.

And by thorough, I mean he inspects the bed, the closet and all that freaky stalker stuff that just screams, "WE'RE NOT DEALING WITH GOOD GUY HENRY! THAT'S FOR NEXT TIME!"

Regardless, Henry lies down on Charles's bed, enjoying the scent of Charles(because it's freaky) when a phone rings, one of those wall house phones that connects to everything amd Henry immediately gets up to check it out.

Turns out someone's calling to check on Charles, who is not home at the moment.

Thinking quickly, Henry pickup the phone and punches in a number.

We return to Charles as he sits carefully on the couch with Rupert and the twins as they watch a comedy.

The phone rings and Charles jumps to answer it. "Hello?"

When there's no response, Charles gulps.

"Who is this?"

"Nice to hear from you, Charles. Miss me?"

Charles is dead silent as his eyes go wide as saucers.

He's desperately hoping that what he's hearing is just his mind playing tricks on him, maybe just his mind attacking him while he's listening to someone else, but Henry clears that right up:

"Charles? Can you hear me? Did you gwt the pictures I sent you?"

Charles instantly hangs up the phone, turns it off, and backs away, falling down as it very quickly becomes hard to breathe and he starts hyperventilating.

Thank goodness the twins and Rupert hear this and rush over to him.

"Charles? Hey, take a breath. You're alright," Calvin tries not to yell.

Charles pushes them back and pushes himself against a cabinet that's close to the floor, curling into himself as he holds onto his hair.

"I can't. No. No, no, no, no, no, I can't! I can't go back there! I can't! I can't! I can't! I can't!"

"What do you mean?" Rupert asks. "What's wrong?"

Charles takes a breath and gulps before speaking again. "He knows. He-he knows I'm here! He's going to take me back! He-he'll bring me back, I know he will!" Charles holds his head against his knees and groans loudly. "Why didn't I just shoot him!? I should've shot him, then none of this would've happened! Why didn't I just-"

Rupert holds Charles's shoulders and lightly taps on his shoulders to get his attention. "Charles? Hey, come on, look at me."

Charles's breath hitches before he turns his gaze to Rupert, and gives him a clear view of just how messed up Charles really is after this whole ordeal.

Calvin and Konrad, however, figure out what's up.

"Henry's here? Like, on Earth? Right now?"

Charles nods.

"But isn't the clan heading for the gold mine? That's where... we're waiting for them."

Charles's eyes dart from the twins to Rupert.

"He knows," Charles murmurs to himself. "He knows where-"

"Easy," Rupert says. "You're not going to be alone this time."

Charles nods again and Rupert helps him to his feet.

Charles, however, is wearing his thinking cap.

If Henry wants Charles, so be it.

CUT TO THE MINE!

The Toppats are on their way to get themselves some gold, led by Ellie, but are ambushed by the Government, and a very proud Galeforce.

"Evening, Ellie."

Ellie groans and holds her hands up, gesturing for the rest to do the same.

"You've got us, General. Well done. You arrested a small group of the Toppat Clan."

There's something very off about Ellie's words, and Galeforce catches it instantly, even as Ellie is put in cuffs and pulled away.

"Funny how Henry isn't here. Wonder where he went?" Ellie calls as she's hauled away.

Galeforce watches the Toppat members get put in a truck that is going to be sent to The Wall.

That's when it clicks, and we cut back to Charles, who's tense and trying to sit still until he stands up.

"Where you going?" Rupert asks, ever the lovely best friend.

"Just getting some water, don't worry," Charles replies with a smile.

Rupert eyes him before turnung back to the movie they're watching.

Charles takes this opportunity to pick up his phone and walk outside, dialing the number Henry used to call him with; the creep is probably still at his house.

Good thing I bring up Henry, because he is indeed resting on the couch as the phone rings.

He gets up and answers the phone, smirking at seeing Charles's number.

"You called?"

Charles gulps and clears his throat.

"What... Where do you want to meet?"

Henry's smirk widens. "I knew you missed me."

#henry stickmin #henry stickmim collection #henry stickmin au #ellie rose #charles calvin #toppat!henry #creepy stuff tw #breaking and entering tw #ptsd tw #scars tw #panic attack tw

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an0nymousghost · 3 years

Text

simblr asks v2

here are my answers! find the questions here.

i wrote soo much ahaha. like however much you think i wrote, i wrote more than that. imo everything i write is gold though

1. are you going to buy the new pack (cottage living) when it comes out? no, it looks really nice but i legit never ever buy packs at launch, especially cause this one is a expansion and it will probably go on sale at some point

2. do you p*rate your dlc or buy it legitimately? buy it legitimately 👌

3. what’s your favorite world? brindleton bay, it gives like seaside cottage vibes. willow creek is good but it’s boring.

4. if you use a queue, how many posts per day do you set it as? 3 or 4. i used to do like 12 lmaoo what even was wrong with me

5. do you watch sims on youtube? yes, i watch mainly malixa, oshinsims, and msgryphi

6. what are your thoughts on the most recent pack? (dream home decorator) those sectional couches look good! but honestly im kinda annoyed because now it’s even harder to have all the items filled in when i place lots from the gallery. like i’m just saying like a lot of builds will use that pack probably and if i don’t get it then i can’t really use builds/save files

7. how many packs/kits do you own? lemme count

expansion: all - 10/10 game: 5/10 stuff: 9/18 kits: none xo

24/38 - 63%

8. what’s your origin id? is it the same as your url? 🤗 it’s in my title, it’s celeschul. it doesn’t look that nice in my title but i use celeschul in my package files and i’m guessing people search things like, “celeschul penny hair” or something like that in order to find my cc- so i keep it in there so the search results are easier. i do want to change it though..

but no it’s also not the same! well i mean it’s the username i use for cc. my origin id used to be an0nymousghost but i changed it. i wonder if anyone’s taken that one?

9. is your simblr your sideblog or main blog? main blog ✌️ my old blog @stardze is a main blog as well.

my old old simblr was a sideblog but it had like 1 follower and it literally a bot so i don’t think that counts. i have a multifandom sideblog though

10. do you have a cc finds blog? i wish. i was thinking bout it earlier and that would be sooo neat but sometimes i download stuff that doesn’t have a tumblr post attached to it, and also it’s stressful to keep up with so nah

11. are you wcif friendly? yes sir. in fact i bring the trouble of wcifs onto myself but doing them even when nobody asked.

12. what’s your favorite sized household to play with? (ex. 1 sim, 4 sims) gonna have to think on this one, honestly 1 sim is really fun and stuff goes by so fast. doing stuff with astrid when she was on her own, it was much more efficient.

for families, i haven’t done that in a while actually. 5, 2 parents and 3 kids is cute tho. why did i write this this is honestly such a hard question

13. if you have c&d, do you play with pets? i feel like i haven’t played with cats and dogs in forever. honestly i just have no paitence. noelle fae was supposed to get a cat (there’s a food bowl + cat bed in her house) but when summer vacation started, the amount of time i spent playing ts4 decreased a lot. (this doesn’t really make sense, i have a lot more time. honestly it just has to do with my recent obsession with a certain anime/manga and some other personal thing)

i did random nightmares in may though and i had pets frequently. g5 didn’t because sofia scarlett lived in an apartment, but g2/3/4 had cici, and g1 had all the cats. but that was back in march so it’s been a while.

14. what lifespan do you use? i really want to do aging off but then i feel like it drags on. but aging legit stresses me out, sometimes i just want to sit down and do some cas stuff but i only have 2 hours in real time and there’s like 4 days left till one of my sims’ birthdays.

15. if you own a lot of packs, how many of them have you actually played through? just so everyone is aware this question was made for me

i feel like eps require a specific save made for testing them out, but the only save i’ve ever made for an ep is noelle fae’s get famous save.

that is literally a lie - i made a save for island living with one of my 100bc kids, maisie acapella. i did actually post it on tumblr BUT then i deleted all the posts BUT i reblogged them on my alt account BUT i privated my alt account so i honestly forgot about it

i have never played through discover university or watched anyone do it on youtube, i’ve read gerbits’ story about it so i think i’m pretty qualified. i’ve always wanted to do one with periwinkle acapella but i never got around to it

another ep i know nothing about is get to work

i tried doing a eco life playthrough but i hadn’t watched any videos and i was like..what is going on. so i quit lolx d ;;;;; i mentioned it but the whimsy stories legacy was the first time i had played with the eco lifestyle features so technically i think i know what im doing

i got outdoor retreat literally on monday of this week so i haven’t played through it yet.

jungle adventure i still don’t know what’s going on. i remember last year before i bought the pack i was brainstorming, and wanted to do a ja playthrough with luna and cedar, who are a couple who i did a random legacy with and it was all queued to post when i deleted everything (if you’re wondering why, it’s because my queue was literally 200+ posts). except this time i didn’t save them to my sideblog so i lost them.

i still havent had a restaurant in dine out

also never did the vet thing from cats and dogs

i have no idea what that rock climbing thing is from snowy escape but i did most of the other stuff because rn g5

city living i did through psc stage 5 and also it was the first pack i bought anyways

the rest of them are either stuff packs or i ended up playing them through casual gameplay (seasons, parenthood)

16. what do you do as you play sims? (ex. listen to music) i listen to music most of the time, or listen to commentary youtube videos because i am an alpha chad. i also used to talk with my friends on voice call but i don’t do that anymore 🥲

17. which sims challenges have you tried? random legacy, whimsy stories, perfect sim challenge, 100 baby, legacy (just the plain get-to-10-gens one), random nightmares, berry zodiac, astrology legacy, apocalypse

i feel like im forgetting some.. honestly most of the stuff i did before simblr was either 100 baby (i love that challenge) or random saves that lasted for 2 seconds.

18. do you like the new(ish) hair swatches? nah.

i do appreciate that most cc hairs have a true (ish) black, thank god! and the fact that the hair update is what inspired me to update and fix a bunch of hairs with different issues is pretty nice. but will i use them? no.

plus it takes up like 5 gb? depending on how many packs you have.

19. post the latest screenshot you took 📸

i live in cas

20. what is the cc/ingame hair that looks the most like your own? i think that dream home decorator side part hair looks a lot like my hair. honestly i havent see much like my hair but that one is kinda-? close

21. who is your favorite sim of yours and what is their story? noelle and alari fae i think!

link to post

noelle is blonde and has blue-grey eyes. she wears purple contacts pretty often though (because she wants to 😌)

alari has light brown hair that is kinda curly, and she’s got pretty vibrant blue eyes.

they’re sisters, alari is 3 years older than noelle. noelle was 19 and alari was 22 when they got spotted

they worked as models when they were young adults. their jobs involved dyeing their hair blue/pink, and they would model like clothes and stuff. anyways, they were pretty successful. like not ultra famous but they had enough money to not work for the rest of their lives.

their modeling group was made of 4 girls, the others were named paisley autumn and they were green and red, respectively. some things are:

paisley and alari started dating during this

autumn was a single mother to a little girl named destiny

noelle dated many people during this but never ended up finding the one <3

when their contract ended after like 6 years, paisley and alari went to go live together and noelle decided to get into acting. so thats when get famous playthrough started!

there’s more but basically they’re like oc’s with sims on the side. xoxo

22. if you use cc, are there any cc creators that you have like ALL of their items? this is such a good question! i hoard hair very heavily (my folder is 11gb) i so i have like 97% from most of the popular hair creators.

i think i had legitimately EVERYTHING from simstrouble though, i went through multiple times to check and i also have all of her retired stuff.

i have everything from ridgeport i think-? because of the fact that she uploaded all her stuff in one big zip.

i think that’s it.. for a long time i also had everything by clumsyalienn, but then i ended up deleting it and only keeping my faves.

and looking at my collection, maybe ah00b? i might be missing a couple but i at least have like 99%.

23. what’s one pack you think is underrated? dine out, it’s laggy af yes but it’s such a nice thing for my sims to do.

24. what are your favorite sims stories/legacies? melons by gerbits always and forever

this question was inspired by this ask anyways so

25. if you could change one small thing about ts4, what would it be? most of my suggestions are pretty complex but literally just - when you add tray files, they appear at the top. my life would be so much easier

this took me literal hours to answer

#replies #replying to MYSELF

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quillium · 4 years

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There’s not enough Birds of Prey content so HERE I AM:

Sometimes Helena gets nightmares about the night her family was killed and her reaction to that is always to just train but now that everyone’s dead she’s a bit lost and Renee and Dinah help her talk it out. Sometimes Harley gives a bit of a therapy session but it’s like... Harley. So. Sometimes there’s like good advice but a lot of it is buried in what feels like nonsense.

Batman meets with the BoP one time and the next day all three “mysteriously” get sent job offers from Wayne Industries

Oracle mysteriously sends them helpful files or tips and stuff and they’re like “who is this” and it’s a whole subplot

Meanwhile Helena’s trying to be like... human, instead of an assassin, because she’s got a lot of trauma that she just like didn’t face properly... so one time Renee or Dinah or ALL THREE OF THEM go to the library and Helena meets the really nice librarian Barbara Gordon who gives perfectly tailored recommendations and has really interesting thoughts and they think she’s their civilian friend but we knooow

Sometimes Harley drops by to help them with a fight but then one day she sees Ivy and they start hanging out more and, well...

Dinah accepts a job at Wayne Industries. I don’t know yet if Renee and Helena do, but Dinah does--she thinks it’s important to get a job yourself, and if a legit one is being offered to her...

Cass steals food from the BoP all the time

Also: Harley stores a lot of junk food in their fridge. Pizza pops, chips, you name it--Cass steals most of that, too

Helena trying a bunch of new things now that she’s fulfilled the goal that she’s been chasing for the past decade or so--just trying to find her place in the world

Renee’s visited by Commissioner Gordon one day with an offer to come back to the force as a captain. She says that she’ll think about it but she doesn’t want to go back to the disrespect

I’m trying so hard to avoid a B99 crossover here guys--

Dinah sings while she’s doing chores--while she’s sweeping the floor, washing dishes, whatever. Sometimes Renee joins in, and then over time Helena learns the lyrics, and the three of them are just doing chores and singing

Dinah gives Ivy the shovel talk when Harley starts dating her. Ivy rolls her eyes but allows it because she loves Harley, and Dinah knows that Ivy could probably kill her on the spot but doesn’t and that’s ultimately why she likes and accepts her

The moment they realize Ivy’s good for Harley: Harley makes some weird thing with all the roses Ivy’s given her over the years and accidentally kills the roses but Ivy’s not even mad, she’s just like do you want replacements? Sorry that your art got destroyed. It was cute. Want to go murder some people to feel better?

Yeah. I’ve got more ideas in mind (including more Babs and Catwoman) but there’s what I’ve got for now. Please add on, I’m so starved for BoP content.

#Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn #Birds of Prey 2020 #Harley Quinn #Dinah Lance #Renee Montoya #Helena Bertinelli #Huntress #Black Canary #ugh tumblr's not letting my tags show so reposting so sorry

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faejilly · 4 years

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I was tagged by @la-muerta & @facialteeth & @thedivinemissema for the WIP/Title Game

rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. send me an ask with the title that most intrigues you and interests you and i’ll post a little snippet of it or tell you something about it!

AND THEN by @shadoedseptmbr @msviolacea & @ravenclawnerd for the “stories you want to write... but for some reason haven’t yet”

so this will be a mish-mash of both? The WIPs will mostly have blurbs in this case (to fit the second meme) but you are still welcome to ask follow-up questions, if you’d like ;) Assuming you make it through the list, it is uh. Not Short.

Anyone who would like to play with their WIPs, please consider yourself tagged in either or both of these. :D

Misc Fic Folder:

“untitled document” - where I’m working on fictober fills so I have word-counts for my GYWO tracker. I am not working on these because Brains Are Dumb and also Going Back To Work Is Exhausting

I made a file called “YULETIDE!” which has nothing in it but I’m determined to finish this year so that is definitely technically a thing in the Unending WIP List of Doom worth mentioning. (Tho obviously that’s all I could say even if I had started, because anonymous.)

“coda-fics, rewatch!” -yes, that exclamation mark is important! it’s to keep me motivated! (it didn’t work). Much like untitled, this is for putting stuff so I can do word count tracking even if I don’t know what I’m doing. Currently I think it just says “MARYSE” because I was working on my SH 1x6 coda-fic and then got distracted and haven’t typed anything up yet. (Yay notebooks? Boo notebooks? Not even sure at this point.)

WNIP (works not in progress) Folder:

“TOG” - I had one vivid mental image of how Nicky & Joe met (blood-stained evil smiles?) but then no idea for a follow-up story and also the fandom is insane and I’m not sure I want to deal with all of *gestures vaguely* all that

“Shan Xia Notes” -for a TTRPG that never quite got off the ground; she was a semi-tragic selkie who was still in love with the evil queen/lady who stole her skin and I got to play her for like one session and she was surprisingly chaotic neutral, which wasn’t at all what I’d been expecting. But the game never really got off the ground, so I never had enough info to really delve into writing backstory fic

“post-Kruschev” -Kruschev’s List was the last episode of Scarecrow & Mrs King, and I was debating writing an epilogue in place of the s5 we never got, to try and tie up some loose ends, but the fandom’s three old-ladies in trench coats and I never quite worked up the gumption to get it anywhere

“Code Realize warm as silk sequel” -there is literally nothing in this file except “SEX! Only a little angst” because I wanted to write some “we can’t actually touch each other” smut but never actually did. 🤷‍♀️

BioWare (also all Not-In-Progress Anymore)

“seb/adelaide”, “Theia” & “DAI Erana” -these WIP folders were cannibalized for ficlets for the last few times I did fictober, and while originally I had ideas for longer epilogues for all three of them, at this point I don’t think any of the remaining bits could support a story any longer.

”whispers in the dark” -Maia Ryder never really got much fic at all; the cancellation of any further Andromeda stuff was really disheartening, and at this point I’d have to play the game again, and I don’t think I’m gonna manage that any time soon

”TSP” -a Mass Effect 3 Shepard AU collab project that kind of went off the rails, and our mutual brains/lives never quite seem to line up so we can try and rebuild it ”Ngaio & Tane” -my one truly ruthless Shepard (Alliance background, who romanced Traynor) whose father Tane Shepard was, I think, in PsyOps, and I wanted to figure out their complicated relationship but never really did know where I was going with it

”JE Zu & Yaling” -so I’ve rambled about my Tragic Sagacious Zu Romance Thoughts regarding Jade Empire more than once (#Icy Yaling should have most of it) but apparently I want to yell about it more than I want to actually write it? Whoops.

”CI sequel: 5 times fic?” -Cruel Intentions is a kinkmeme fill that I started and then it sat for like five years before I actually finished it, and I liked the ending, but it does leave a giant fucking question mark in terms of how those people got from there to where they are after the game, and I kind of wanted to write a proper h/c fic rather than just... leaving them wallowing in all that trauma?

But I didn’t. I don’t even remember for sure how I wanted to frame the 5/1 of it all, besides it being something sad about allowing people to see you or touch you in some way. (Prayers maybe, since I think there was definitely some Sebastian & Fenris & faith stuff going on in there.)

“candles” -Merribela prompt fill that I never was happy with? Not sure what I might do with it at this point, so it’s just sitting there all sad and lonely and neglected-like.

Shadowhunters

pt1: WIP LIST ONLY

“Persuasion” -so I keep trying to write Persuasion AUs in many fandoms because it’s my favorite Austen, but I think I like it too much, I have no real solid concept of how I’d transform it, and if I don’t have anything else to say about different characters within that framework, I have no push to actually write anything? Also this SH version of it suffered from MASSIVE scope creep when I started outlining and it got too big for me to handle so I like, killed it twice? Whoops. This one is really probably never gonna happen.

“oosdt sequel” -I wanted to write more about the Forest That Eats People and Magnus & Alec as Guardians Between Worlds, and also some background Magnus’ Found Family & Lightwood Family Feels (maybe some clizzy?) and I left a Madzie plot-thread dangling from the first one on purpose even but I think this one had too many ideas and not enough focus so it’s sort of sprawling all over a doc with a lot of “???” in it

“procedural-ish” -this was originally going to be a sex-farce. and then it turned more serious. and then maybe kind of copaganda which was uncomfortable in terms of the Everything That Is The News in 2020, and then maybe it was more a Mafia AU and at that point I had self-inflicted tone whiplash and I wished the voices in my head were a little more forthcoming about their plans so I stopped before I brained myself on my computer monitor in frustration.

“I had rather a rose than live forever” -I started a reverse!verse Malec (Shadowhunter!Magnus, High Warlock!Alec) for bingo last year, and I couldn’t quite get it together in time, so I made a moodboard inspired by the bits I’d started instead. I may see if one of my prompts from Bingo this year help me finish it?

“fall fright fest (practical magic au)” -exactly what it says on the tin! almost exactly a year old & neglected! IDEK ANYMORE (I talked about this one with the WIP meme last time tho: here)

“priest!kink theology?” -I thought it was gonna be smut? I like priest!kink. I have made other people like it and yell at me even! But then I kept diverging into demon!Magnus thinking about Priest!Alec’s faith and as usual, IDEK ANYMORE *laughs*

(If they’re remotely canon-adjacent or divergent, a bunch of these are in here because I need to rewatch the show to get the pacing/timing/tone right and I haven’t, and I don’t know why, because I enjoy the show, but BRAINS! Are Dumb! So I guess that’s it?)

“I do” -I have tried to write this damnable Malec arranged marriage fic like six different times. I have signed up for fic exchanges and bangs with it, I have rewritten massive sections, trying to change tone or structure or POV or whatever, and it basically comes down to they like each other too fast and I keep not gutting it enough to get back to a useful pace, but by the time I realized that I was on take six and kind of sick of it. I may get back to it eventually

“wing!fic” -canon divergent in early s1, trying to deal with the consequences of Simon’s kidnapping as the Truly Serious Event that it should have been. It uh. Got heavier than I expected with those consequences (considering it was originally just supposed to be Alec’s wings flirting with Magnus) and also see above re: rewatching for pacing.

“2x20 aftermath/date night/pandemonium porn“ -yes that is the actual wip title. It used to be “spite fic” because I was originally inspired by fighting against a lot of fic!Alec characterization that was clearly based more on the books and ATG syndrome than the Alec in the show, which is the Alec I know and like and want to read about. BUT, pacing and etc. again, I think. Also I have somehow entirely lost my knack for writing porn, which makes it difficult to finish something originally intended to be smut!fic. Or even teasing almost!smut.

“rubbish heap” -so this is about three different fics that I realized complemented each other really well so they’re now all in the same file as I try to turn them into the sequel of “with an if in its soul”. It includes amnesia, parabatai lore shenanigans, a s3 rewrite, and some truly awful Owl adjustments that make me wince in horrified authorly delight and pain. BUT, as with the other ones in this file, the scope is large and I normally write short-fic and I kind of just threw up my hands in exasperation. I may have to break it back up into the three different fics instead, if I ever actually want to write it. Them? But also I need to take better notes on s3 to make sure I have what I need in here.

SH Pt 2: Started posting or not yet in hiatus because it’s actually almost ready to be a thing in the real world! maybe!?

“kisses (firsts)” -I actually started publishing this one, a “series of firsts” that was supposed to be kind of relationship milestones and kind of an excuse for smut, and then there wasn’t that much smut and I lost momentum and also dear lords & ladies the timeline is stupid, wtf. I may not ever add to this one, tbqh. It doesn’t stop in a terrible place, and they’re all ficlets so they stand alone all right.

“clizzy epilogue” -this is blank atm, it’s more a reminder for me to keep poking away at my “girls who can’t breathe air, only fire” collection BECAUSE I WOULD LIKE TO ACTUALLY GET TO THE CLIZZY AT SOME POINT

"mer!alec" -pts 2-4 of a series, but apparently having an actual plan gets in the way of me *writing* the thing, and I haven't managed to throw the half an outline far enough away from my brain to be able to write again. Or something like that.

"ibhww" -if broken hearts were whole is a soulmate fic I started a million years ago, and purposefully set aside to finish some other WIPs because I thought they'd be quick, and now it's just buried under two and a half years of regret and shame so it's hard to get back to it

"iafy" -i am for you is a delightful & frothy semi-epistolary fluff piece that also just lost momentum because Life & 2020 & etc. It's far and away the most popular thing I've ever posted on AO3, which also makes me feel weird sometimes, and I feel like the fact that there's no grand conclusion planned, just a bit more fluff and settling in, might end up being disappointing? Basically, it's the first time I think I've psyched myself out about reader expectations, and until I get over that I'm going to have trouble finishing the last couple chapters. (There really are probably only two more chapters though. IT’S SO CLOSE, I wish I could just... write it. And yet?)

“fake-hating” -I do not like fake dating as a trope that much, I just do not get it, but I love outside POVs and arranged marriages and there’s this delighful tumblr post about how they wished there was more fic about people who were together but had to pretend they werent’, and uh. This may be that? Eventually? I’m not exhausted by my failure to finish it yet, so it’s still in the regular folder rather than the hiatus folder, even though nothing’s been posted for it.

AND I THINK THAT’S IT?

Not as terrible as it could be, but still. MANY WORDS THAT MAY NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY. Posting the equivalent of one’s old ratty sketchbook is always a weird feeling. :D

#on writing #writing memery #unending WIP List Of Doom

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thebibliomancer · 4 years

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #227: Testing... 1... 2... 3!

January, 1983

Welcome to 1983! And the year starts off with the greatest gift of all: more Captain Marvel!

Also, She-Hulk strutting, Hank pondering, and Wasp lunching.

Truly, this issue promises much for six dimes.You’re blessed these days to find a comic that promises half as much for ten dimes.

I’ve said before that I like covers that are just ‘hey here’s several things that are going to happen in this issue.’ And I still do. Is rad.

Also rad? We have our next long term Avengers writer starting in this issue. Roger Stern!

So last time (in Spider-Man), boat cop Monica Rambeau punched a science machine and got filled with science. She can turn her body into any kind of energy. She quit the boat cops and became a superhero in New Orleans for a couple weeks but then learned that she was going to explode. So she went to New York to try to get some science to fix the science.

Since Reed Richards wasn’t available, she wound up going to the Avengers for help. Hijinxes ensued as they must, but Iron Man was able to siphon the excess energy out of her by causing a lot of property damage to his own property.

Imagine the AU where Reed wasn’t on vacation and Monica ended up more tied to the Fantastic Four.

The issue starts with the Avengers and the all-new Captain Marvel hanging out in the combination lounge and science room.

For when you need to calibrate something but with an eye towards leisure.

Since Iron Man siphoned off a lot of energy from Captain Marvel, Wasp decided to test her to make sure her powers haven’t been affected.

The test has Captain Monica take off from Avengers Mansion and then hit a series of satellites as different forms of energy. One as light, one as microwaves, another as radio waves before returning to the mansion as x-rays.

And since she’s traveling at the speed of light, she gets back before the Avengers even take a breath. Although using the telemetry machines he assembled for the test, Iron Man clocks her in at under two seconds.

Cap notes that she’s so fast that she makes Quicksilver look like shit. Because running is fine, if you can’t turn into light.

And Wasp is so impressed that she instantly invites Captain Marvel to join the Avengers as an Avenger-in-training.

Cap frets about the Avengers’ government clearances but Wasp is ahead of him with the power of NETWORKING.

She already got a limited-security training program approved by the government. Because she and the First Lady have the same masseur.

It really is about who you know.

Cap examines the paperwork, sees that everything seems to be in order, and agrees that Jan’s plan is best plan. She-Hulk is all for it too. As is Thor. Only Hawkeye doesn’t voice support, but keeps his thoughts to himself.

So, Monica is in the Avengers! As an in-training!

With that established, Wasp leaves for a brunch appointment.

That Wasp and her brunching.

Cap and Iron Man start breaking down the Monica-Measuring-Machine while Hawkeye starts grousing.

Because Hawkeye.

Hawkeye: “Hey, am I the only one who’s noticed how bossy our boss-lady’s gotten lately? We didn’t used to get called in on the run just to screen new members.”

She-Hulk: “What’s the matter, Robin Hood? Can’t stand being around a few strong women?”

Captain America: “The calling of special meetings is the group-leader’s privilege, Hawk -- you know that! I think Jan is just growing into her post as Avengers chairwoman... and doing a great job of it, I might add!”

Hawkeye has not drunk much respect respect women juice around this point in his life. Putting aside his repeated kissing unreceptive women, he also went ‘haha i hope you learned feminism is pointless’ during the Evils of Feminism Halloween issue.

She-Hulk agrees with Cap’s take and then picks up the entire five ton machine and walks off with it, I think mostly to show off. Or strut her stuff, as the cover said.

This just sets off Hawkeye some more.

Hawkeye: “That’s another thing! I never used to have big, green broads challenging me to arm-wrestle everytime I walked through the door! Do you know what it’s like to... to... Aw, the heck with it! I have to get back to work!”

Cap: “Welcome to the future, Hawkeye.”

Hahaha amazing.

Razz the heck out of him, Cap.

Its possible that he’s exaggerating but I do believe that She-Hulk would do that, just to flex on Hawkeye. What with her muscles.

But I wonder if the reason for this bad Hawkeye mood is that in a rarely precedented turn of events, the Avengers have three women on the team.

That’s still four guys to three girls but since its usually one girl to every three guys, Hawkeye might feel suddenly outnumbered.

Because he is a fool.

After Hawkeye stomps off, Cap remarks that Hawkeye needs to learn a few new things about women.

But Iron Man is lost in his own women troubles. He beats himself up verbally for getting involved with Wasp without being honest with her about his identity.

He even wonders if it would be for the best, aka less awkward for everyone, if he resigned from the team.

Cap tells him that wouldn’t solve anything.

Captain America: “You made a mistake. We all make mistakes. The important thing is to learn from them... to bounce back. You can do it, mister! You’re an Avenger!”

Iron Man: (So was Hank, Cap... So was Hank.)

Interesting to see how the fall of Yellowjacket is still rippling in the pond.

But here’s what I’d tell Morose Iron Man: Hank didn’t learn from his mistake. He doubled and tripled down on it. If you learn a thing, you’re already off to a good start.

Thor has apparently been sitting across the room the whole time, listening to all of this. But he is also lost in his own thoughts.

He is also thinking whether he should resign from the team but so that he can focus more on re-establishing Donald Blake’s life. And even though some of his proudest moments have been as an Avenger, it is taking away Donald time.

Several floors below, She-Hulk casually carries that five ton machine on her shoulder. So casual that she reads the Daily Bugle while she walks.

She-Hulk, a Californian: “‘The Daily Bugle’ -- HAH! They call this a newspaper? New Yorkers wouldn’t know a real paper if it bit ‘em on their behinds! Sometimes I think I’ll go stir crazy in this town!”

There is apparently nothing for her to do in New York between Avengers missions. Nothing to do. In New York.

???????

But she does find a help wanted ad for a part-time instructor for a health spa that interests her.

You have a LAW DEGREE.

First off, how are you not in ridiculous law school debt?

Second, LAW DEGREE.

She’s so engrossed in the ad that she does Jarvis a fright, forcing him and Monica to squeeze up against the wall to avoid being smacked by the machine She-Hulk is carrying.

Jarvis bemoans that new Avengers are always a trial before hurriedly excluding Monica.

She diplomatically takes no offense.

Jarvis continues his tour of the mansion, taking Monica to the records room which has not only all of the Avengers case files but also cross-referenced files from the Fantastic Four, the UN, SHIELD, Interpol, and a bunch of federal agencies.

If the Avengers love anything its drama but if they love two things its reading up on stuff. Like how Hawkeye was like ‘ah ha the Taskmaster, I read your file’ in the issue where he shot Ant-Man on an arrow.

Monica Marvel asked to see the records room because she’s following up on the Thing telling her that someone else went by Captain Marvel before she did.

So Jarvis punches up the Avengers’ file on Mar-Vell.

That’s a bit of a neat touch. If she’s going to go around as Captain Marvel (and she has to, its a trademark squat) she’s going to be respectful and learn about the man that her name is going to evoke.

Meanwhile, in Central Park, Reed and Sue Richards?

Well, they’re on the cover so its not much of a surprise. They’re Wasp’s brunch appointment. A brunchment.

Sue decided that they should jog to Tavern-On-The-Green. Reed has decided that he hates jogging.

Sue: “Oh, no! It’s 11:59! I knew we should have started sooner!”

Reed: “I wish we hadn’t started at all.”

So when Sue complains about them arriving late, Reed goes heck yeah i can get out of jogging, scoops Sue up and does FANTASTIC LEG STRETCHING which is very different from jogging.

Good thing he made those jogging suits out of unstable molecules.

In mere seconds, Reed covers the half mile to the tavern to meet the nonplussed Janet van Wasp and the oppositely nonplussed waiter.

So, Sue and Jan are fast friends forever now because of that one time they had brunch.

That’s how it works in their circle.

And Sue called and invited Jan out to brunch. But not just to get her back, but because she’s worried about Jan.

Well she says “we’ve been worried” but Reed probably had to be reminded that Sue has friends.

Jan: “Sue, you’re a dear! But you’re worried about nothing! I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Sure, it’s taken awhile to get used to being single again -- but I’m fine! Really!”

And like someone who is totally fine, she insists that she’s fine and then immediately excuses herself to the bathroom to powder her nose.

Noses sure needed a lot of powdering back in the day.

And anyone that insists that they’re perfectly fine and then runs off to the bathroom is either going to cry or going to powder their nose in a more narcotics fashion.

After Jan heads off to the bathroom to powder her nose in whichever way, Reed and Sue talk about her behind her back.

Reed: “Well, she’s certainly putting up a good front -- !”

Sue: “Yes, but it’s just a front! She’s keeping everything bottled up inside her! And she’s been through so much lately... Hank’s expulsion from the Avengers, the divorce... and now that she’s become chairwoman of the Avengers -- ! I’m afraid for her, Reed!”

Reed: “We can’t help her if she won’t let us, Sue. Jan’s a strong-willed woman -- I just pray that she’s strong enough to bend with the pressure... and not break!”

So its not one thing Sue is worried about. Its all the things. And there are a lot of things.

I don’t know what Sue means by “now” when she says Jan became chairwoman of the Avengers.

That happened the instant she came back from her divorce vacation from the team. I mean, it is plausibly a thing to worry about that she’s taken on too much in too little a time and just putting a smile on.

But she’s been leadering the Avengers. Its gone okay.

Anyway, Jan did go into the bathroom to not cry in front of her new best friend, Sue.

Jan: “I won’t cry... I won’t! Maybe I don’t have Hank around to lean on anymore -- but I can tough it out! I’ll show ‘em... I don’t need him... Don’t need anybody! After all, I’m an Avenger! I’m the leader of the Avengers!”

And she walks out of the bathroom with feelings entirely managed and a smile back on.

I think the Avengers needing anybody is why the Avengers are Avengers, though. Bunch of usual loners teamed up once and realized ‘wait this is great.’

So like in the Jan and Tony are disgustingly cute together story, we get another glimpse that things haven’t been as easy on Jan as she lets on.

I don’t mind. This is what being a well-rounded character is, probably. I’ll see how things go.

It’s like... There’s this period of the Teen Titans book where Donna Troy became the team leader because Dick Grayson was having a lot of identity problems. And Donna suddenly started being like ‘I have no idea what I’m doing’ and making a lot of mistakes. And one could suspect that she was being set up as a less competent leader to make Dick look better. Kind of like how Shuri (initially) and Maria Hill exist to make T’Challa and Nick Fury look better in comparison.

As long as they don’t do that to Jan or something else like that, I’m fine for Jan to have a more complicated situation.

And it doesn’t seem like it’ll go that direction because I've heard she’s going to be the team leader for a while and mostly everyone (except Hawkeye) thinks she’s doing a good job.

But we leave brunch to the opposite of brunch, dusk. And at Ryker’s Island Penitentiary.

Recently, the government has been scattering all of the prisoners with superpowers to prisons across the country. Probably to avoid creating a powder keg situation.

*coughs in Raft*

The only superpowered prisoner left is “probably the worst of the lot.”

Because it’s Hank Pym.

Good dunk at his expense, prison guard.

But actually because “What could be lower than an Avenger who’s gone bad?”

And there’s a Dr. Paul Edmonds here to see Hank.

Hank is sorta blase to it, since he’s seen about thirty by this point. Presumably many of which have been paid for by Tony Stark’s guilty conscience.

Edmonds doesn’t say whether he’s from the prosecution or the defense (and Hank admits it doesn’t really matter to him) but he’s here to determine whether Hank is fit to stand trial.

What with his weird history.

Hank Pym: “Doctor, when I think back over my history, as you call it, I sometimes wonder if I was ever fit for anything!”

Wow, nice self-own, Hank.

Anyway, almost the entire rest of the issue is the Grand Fairly Exhaustive Hank Pym Backstory Exposition Dump.

Of course, with the fillering of the previous run, Hank has been in jail for a bit. And a lot of the relevant backstory stuff is decades past. And Iron Man’s recap of it is over a year ago.

The long-awaited trial is coming up soon so Stern has to get the readers refamiliarized with this stuff.

Lets try to breeze through?

Hank’s life? Sucks. A lot.

He received his doctorate while his friends were undergraduates because he was a workaholic and because “it was easier to deal with chemicals than with people.”

He probably wouldn’t have ever left his lab if his coworkers hadn’t managed to drag him to parties occasionally.

Hank met his first wife Maria Trovaya at one of those reluctant social occasions.

Hank: “She was beautiful, intelligent, witty... I couldn’t believe she was attracted to me! It was like some kind of miracle!”

Wow, another amazing self-own.

They fell so in love with each other that they were married in months.

And then tragedy.

Maria decided that the perfect place to go on honeymoon was to her homeland of communist Hungary where her father had been an enemy of the state.

Sooo. The secret police beat the shit out of Hank and took Maria off to be killed.

Dang.

Hank had his first breakdown when he heard. And the State Department had a hell of a time getting Hank released from Hungarian captivity.

When Hank got back to the US, he buried himself in his work. And the mad lad decided to invent a shrinking potion.

Hank: “It shouldn’t have worked, but I made it work!”

I like when people stop and realize how bonkers the Marvel universe is.

And that Hank put all this effort into inventing this thing and then in a moment of clarity went ‘holy shit I can’t believe that actually worked!’

This recap doesn’t mention that Hank poured his invention down the drain after having a bad experience in an anthill but either way, the invention led to him becoming Ant-Man!

Sort of accidentally! He didn’t really plan to become a “costumed crusader” he just sort of happened to do it.

Hank: “In a way, it almost felt good to be battling the kind of vermin who had killed my Maria!”

But he admits that he wasn’t ever truly comfortable in the role of superhero.

Vicarious catharsis for his murdered wife is possibly the reason why he can’t stay away from it though.

Although it mixes with Hank throwing himself into science so he doesn’t have to people. And Hank feeling insecurity compared to his peers in both superheroics and science so he keeps jumping unhappily between the two.

He’s got a lot going on.

Then his life changed forever again when he met a Dr. Vernon van Dyne and his daughter Janet.

Hank: “Though she was barely twenty, her physical resemblance to Maria was striking. And I soon discovered that Janet van Dyne was more than just a frivolous young debutante. Her father was killed... murdered, and when she tearfully vowed to see justice done, I saw a strength of will... so much like Maria’s!”

Hank revealed that he was the Ant-Man and offered to make her his partner.

So, yeah, maybe the relationship was kind of not on the healthiest footing from the beginning. There’s an age gap (Hank says she’s barely half his age although I don’t know that he’s supposed to be in his forties?). Hank is using her as a replacement goldfish. She’s probably clinging to him in a similarly unhealthy manner, having just lost her father and this guy goes ‘hey want some superpowers?’

(Interesting but obvious bit here is that Hank says that with his further research, he could give Jan better powers than his own. What with the wings and the Wasp sting and all, yeah its kind of obvious that her powerset was better. Its interesting though considering how insecure Hank would get later.)

It would have taken a lot of emotional maturity from the both of them to keep it from becoming the unbalanced relationship that it did and neither of them were that emotionally mature, I think. Hank doesn’t even like to people.

He also doesn’t like to Ant-Man. Even with a partner, the role makes him ill at ease.

Hank: “No one can truly know the fragility, the vulnerability of life, as I have. It takes a very strong man to shrink to the size of an ant and still feel sure of himself. And I was never that strong.”

And here there’s a nice bit of arc welding.

Back in Avengers #1, Ant-Man is the one that suggests that Ant-Man, Wasp, Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor become a team.

I don’t know what Stan Lee’s original reason for having Ant-Man be the one to say it. It might have just been a flow thing. Ant-Man had just spoken to explain how his ants have trapped Loki in a tank so rather than pivot to a new character, Stan may have had Ant-Man bring it up.

But in this grand recap of all things Hank Pym, Hank explains his motive.

Feeling ill at ease as Ant-Man, feeling unsure of himself from seeing the world at the size of an ant, he had found some strong allies that he didn’t dare to lose.

Interesting dots to connect.

But then Hank went ‘oh no i fucked up.’

Hank: “I soon realized that Ant-Man would constantly be overshadowed by the more powerful teammates -- at least one of whom the Wasp found most attractive!”

It’s Thor. Of course, it’s Thor.

Even though it may have been a ploy to make him jealous, Hank locked himself in the lab to improve his powers.

Of course, we know Hank Pym’s usual string of luck with locking himself into his lab.

So what happens next is incredibly obvious but no less funny. But its so funny that I had to look up whether it was how it was originally portrayed or invented for this extended flashback.

When testing his new growth formula, Hank smashes his own house like a sillier Alice in Wonderland.

And this actually happened in Tales to Astonish #49.

Amazing.

Hank really does have consistent luck with science.

And what makes it funnier is that according to this extended flashback, making himself super-strong and giant didn’t actually make Hank feel like a more valuable member of the team.

He felt clumsy and inept. Not to mention that testing an experimental formula on himself WAS REALLY BAD FOR HIS HEALTH.

And it was Jan realizing what was going on with Hank rather than concern for herself having been shot that made Jan suggest that the two retire from Avengersing (leading to the Kooky Quartet).

But Jan actually really enjoyed being the Wasp and Hank must have felt shitty pulling her away from it because as we know, he eventually ends up back on the team with more limited growth powers and a name change to Goliath.

He actually felt like he was pulling his weight around this time, though, because he was the most experience member of the team.

Of course, its also around this time that he accidentally created Ultron, which is a big whoopsie.

But he made what he considers a worse whoopsie.

Hank: “But even the responsibility for unwittingly unleashing Ultron on the world often paled in comparison to my trouble relationship with Jan. Having come into her full inheritance, she wanted to underwrite my research. I wanted to pay my own way, but I couldn’t find the words to tell her.”

Probably because he was more comfortable with chemicals than people. Open and healthy communication is essential in a relationship but its also difficult.

He also wanted to marry Jan but at the same time felt too unsure of himself to propose.

So Hank did what Hank do and retreated into his lab.

Where he accidentally spilled some chemicals and had another breakdown after getting high on fumes, becoming convinced that he was actually another person entirely.

I don’t know why but the panel of Hank declaring “So, Goliath won’t marry Janet van Dyne, eh? Then, there shall be no more Goliath!” cracks me up.

Anyway, Jan saw right through Yellowjacket and decided to play along and when Hank was shocked back to reality, he discovered he was married.

Which. Uh. Has gotten more scrutiny in the years after it was published. Including this year of 1983.

Hank: “I guess even some psychotic episodes can be beneficial.”

Dr. Edmonds: “Do you think that was the case?”

Hank: “I did then. Now... I’m not so sure. I know I wanted to believe it then. Jan and I were married. The circumstances didn’t seem important.”

After the honeymoon, things begin to sour. Hank tried to stick to small sizes as being better for his health. And he tried to stay away from the Avengers too but Jan wanted them to be Avengers together.

Hank: “I had to keep trying for her, even though my heart wasn’t in it! The pressure got to be too much, my work began to slide. More and more projects were ending in failure.”

He smashed up his lab to lash out at something, out of frustration that he had swallowed his pride to accept Jan’s money and was now wasting it on fruitless projects.

Jan started trying harder and harder to prop up Hank’s ego.

But he was still a walking emotional wreck so when Ultron returned, it didn’t take much to tip him over the edge into another breakdown.

This one came with AMNESIA! Hank though he was Ant-Man ant-again and attacked the Avengers because he didn’t recognize Vision, Scarlet Witch, Wonder Man, Beast, or even Captain America as being Avengers.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again and again. Ants is best power.

Hank: “It’s almost funny in a way. I took on the Avengers single-handed and nearly beat them! My finest hour as a ‘hero’... and I wasn’t even in my right mind!”

That does sour what is an otherwise pretty impressive stomp. When Spider-Man stomps entire X-Men team, its held up as one of his greatest moments. When Hank does it to the Avengers its like ‘welp there goes another Hank Pym breakdown.’

Iron Man was able to devise a variant of electro-shock therapy which undid the damage Ultron did to Hank’s mind which sure sounds like a thing electro-shock therapy could do.

Hank was getting back into the swing of things as Yellowjacket when Henry Peter Gyrich pulled the rug out from him.

As Henry Peter Gyrich is known to do.

With him as the government liaison, the Avengers were ordered to slim down the roster. And Hank got the boot while Jan was kept on the team.

At first Hank was glad for it because it gave him an excuse to leave the team and go back to his lab work.

Buuuuut as happens when Hank does do that, his lab work became fruitless and frustrating.

And with Jan on the Avengers, he could go days without seeing her. And he felt alone and lost without her.

Its the irony of his life.

Jan convincing Hank to stay on the Avengers isn’t good for him. Him not being on the Avengers while she is, isn’t good for him. And being kept from being on the Avengers isn’t good for her.

A possible compromise might have been to have him working at Avengers Mansion as an on-staff but uncostumed science advisor. But Hank may not have accepted that, what with the pride.

I wonder about it though because Hank will later join the West Coast Avengers in a strictly support capacity for a while.

Anyway, Hank having a bad time in the lab coincided with Captain America reorganizing the roster.

Hank: “I began to think that maybe ‘Avenging’ was all I could do. As Yellowjacket, I pinch-hit for other members whenever possible. And when Captain America invoked executive privilege to further pare the team down to a more workable six members, I jumped back on board. I had such high hopes. The ‘new’ Avengers were practically the original group. This time, I thought I could finally be the kind of man Jan wanted me to be. But I was only fooling myself. By then, I was in no state of mind to be an Avenger!”

Because, yeah. This is the part of the Hank Pym Lore Dump that we hit the Elf-Queen incident.

And then the court-martial.

Hank: “I had to redeem myself somehow! I became desperate! In the hours that followed, I must have cracked completely!”

Enough that building an indestructible kill-bot to kill his friends to make them realize how useful he is seemed like a good idea.

It wasn’t.

The robot kicked the crap out of Hank before he could hit the secret shut-down switch and Jan saved the day by hitting the switch instead.

Hank: “Jan divorced me, threw me out... Not that I blame her! Did you know that I actually struck her on the day of the court-martial?! Lord, I must have been out of my mind! I had compounded one mistake with another, and my whole life collapsed like a house of cards.”

Dr. Edmonds asks if being estranged from his friends and broke was why he tried to steal the federal reserve of adamantium but Hank denies this last bit.

He was played a fool by EGGHEAD!

Hank: “But I’ll tell you this, Edmonds, I won’t play the fool any longer! I’ve learned so much about myself -- the hard way -- in the last few weeks. I’ll have my day in court, and I’ll beat those charges!”

Dr. Edmonds: “I see. And in that way, you think you’ll win back your wife?”

Hank: “No. I thought that was possible once. I don’t any more. I’ve lost her. It hurts, but I’ll just have to accept it. Now, all I want back is my dignity.”

Oof.

I’ve been kind of low-key snarking at Hank for acting like he’d be able to easily win Jan back given what went down but it hurts a little to see him give up on that hope, even if he seems resigned to it.

LATER, Dr. Edmonds returns to his office and calls his SECRET EMPLOYER

Its Tony Stark. Of course its Tony Stark.

We already knew that Tony has been throwing a lot of money at the problem of Hank to assuage his guilty conscience. And that it included making shrinks available.

Dr. Edmonds: “Dr. Pym has been through more than any two men should! He’s suffered at least four nervous breakdowns in the last decade! He has a massive inferiority complex -- but the man is fit to stand trial. Moreover, I don’t think we can swing an insanity plea. Despite his insistence that this Egghead person set him up!”

I wonder if Iron Man was trying to swing an insanity plea. Get the case dismissed. Wouldn’t put it past him!

And honestly. What would you think if you friend had a nervous breakdown, built a kill-bot to kill you, wandered off and disappeared for a while, and re-emerged after heisting a whole bunch of adamantium and claiming that Egghead made him do it?

Dr. Edmonds asks whether it is possible that Egghead was involved since he is a serious psychiatrist man and doesn’t keep up with the superhero biz. But Tony tells him that Egghead died in an explosion in Defenders #42.

Edmonds ponders that may indicate an even deeper delusion, while not suspecting that his pencil has been bugged.

BY EGGHEAD!

Its not a great bug in the sense that it seems to have a bright flashing light. But in the sense of ‘how the hell did you get a bug in a pencil, Egghead?’ its a very great bug.

Egghead, presumably taking a break from his plan to invent eternal youth to get infinite money and then buy the world to save from having to do the Effort of taking it over, hears Dr. Edmonds say “Still, Pym seems convinced he’ll be exonerated, Mr. Stark.”

Egghead: “Ha-ha-ha! Henry always did have faith in the legal system! I suppose I shall have to shatter that faith for him! I knew it was a wise move to let the world think that Egghead is dead! No one searches for a ‘late’ fugitive! Just as no one will suspect who is truly behind Pym’s ultimate disgrace -- when my plans ruin his day in court!”

WOW! You are super petty, Egghead!

Follow @essential-avengers because I’ve finally caught up with my backlog. And because I’ll never bug a pencil nor even annoy one. Like and reblog too or I’ll bother a pen.

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muesliforbreakfast · 3 years

Text

Fabian Tactics

Part 1?

This one got a bit of traction on the sub, but is actually more of a salvage job of stuff I’ve had written down for YEARS but couldn’t get to work.

What are they running? Picture the Frontier Buccaneers by Johnsonting except with like a thick mesh cape type thing, and the rifle looks kinda like an RM277.

This doesn’t really matter, but I did a bunch of worldbuilding I’ll probably never get to use :’(

On an unrelated note - Look at this one by the same artist. If this dude had an EF88 I would actually lose my shit.

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

Cadet Ralek was the only one in his company behaving himself before the lecture. He came from a military family. Growing up he was steeped in discipline and tradition. But that wasn't his only reason for attentiveness. This weeks modules were focused on counterinsurgency, and todays lecture on the greatest insurgency of all, on that Ralek's uncle had been on the losing side of nearly two hundred years before. The Terran insurgency.

“HOLD FAST!” An NCO called, at the front of the lecture theater. The hall, full of chattering cadets fell silent as they all braced their upper limbs on their desks, whilst some officers went through their rituals, transferring command of the cadets over to the officer, who introduced himself.

“I am Second Lieutenant Orion, of the Federation Marine Corps. As part of today's module we have a very special presenter – Corporal Felix, of the Terran Heer.”

The class perked up at that – Terrans no longer had an army of their own; they hadn't had one for one hundred and seventy four years. The exact date that every race had been accepted into the Galactic Federation had been drilled into each and every one of them. They watched as an old, frail man was wheeled into the lecture theatre, ashy, paper thin skin hanging from his face. Civilian clothes in the Terran style, with several medals pinned on the left of his chest.

O1 Orion bowed politely and they whispered to each other. Then he pinned a microphone to Felix' lapel. He began to speak, with the thin, frail voice of a man nearing the end of his twilight years.

“Good evening cadets. I'm getting straight to the point because there's just one thing the Armed Forces of the Federation want you to learn from me. And because I want to deliver it to you. Before I drop dead.” The old man struggled to get enough air between his words.

The class laughed nervously. The old man gathered his strength, eyes closed, breathing slowly.

“We Terrans had inferior numbers and technology, and we were fighting a war of extermination, but we still beat the Empire. How did we do it? You.” Felix pointed at a cadet in the fourth row, with a bony, wavering finger. A Kelress, who looked like a four foot red panda.

“Sir, because humans are physically tough and aggressive apex predators, sir.”

Only the Ji Te who were in the theatre laughed at that. Only some of them. And only a little.

“Don't fucking swear at me, cadet. I'm a corporal, and I'm retired,” The whole class giggled that time, “You. You think that's funny. What do you think?” He said, as his frail finger pointed at one of the closer Ji Te, a hulking reptiloid in the second row.

“Because humans are sly, intelligent and patient, mister Felix. Your kind came up with tactics we simply couldn't counter. Over time frames we didn't anticipate.

“You could and you duh...did, cadet....... The empire was fighting a war of extermination; they blocked out our sun. And it only took us three years.”

The class had no answers to that. Felix pointed at another of the Isae in the room.

“You. Have you got answers for me?”

“I agree with the other cadets, Mister. But I would like to add, humans are willing to do anything to survive. Uh. Mister Felix,” The Isae replied.

“Mmmmm... A better answer. Maybe I should ask someone who knows,” The old man pointed at one of the Terran cadets scattered throughout the lecture theater, “You, young lady. What do you think?”

“Mister Felix,” she began, “In guerilla warfare and insurgency operations, all you need to win is to not lose. Classic Fabian tactics that go as far back as the Punic wars. Classic Maoist tactics of the 20th century. Deny the enemy resources and deny them battle unless it's at a time and place of your choosing. As long as someone survives, you haven't lost. Mister Felix.” The old retired corporal seemed to relax somewhat. He paused for a long while. His threat of dropping dead seemed like less of a joke by the minute.

“Straight from the pam. Good drills cadet.” He finally said, before pausing again.

“I was barely nineteen when the empire invaded. I was fresh out of basic training when the sun shield went up... I was lucky... I was evacuated by arkship less than a year later. By then we had been on less than starvation rations for months.”

The class exchanged looks. They were all thinking of the human reputation.

“What do we taste like?” Cadet Ralek couldn't help but ask.

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

Private Felix' section was running Personal Radios and Line of Sight communicators but for now they were doing it old school. Hand signals. They were patrolling their sunless planet, towards the location where the latest enemy incursion had been reported. As point man he was the first to see the glow of the enemy in the distance.

>Take cover

>Enemy contact front

>Enemy Squad 8-2-0m North North East

>Come here

His squad slowly lowered themselves to cover, and his squad leader made his way over to him.

“What do you see?”

“One of those wide slow walkers, being protected by a team of hunter-killers, I count 9. They're using spotlights and floodlights, they may not have optics.”

“They might have a team on overwatch that does”

“What do you think they're doing?”

“Science or harvesting, or drawing attention...” His section commander paused for a moment, “This kind of walker goes back to their smaller bases with a load, drops it off then leaves again... Stay here on overwatch, radio silence. Wait out for further instructions.”

His squad leader flashed hand signals, and left two of his squadmates with him, while they watched and waited.

Around half an hour later they had their orders.

Recon. Then kill them all, destroy the walker. Booby trap the bodies, hide and observe. Develop the situation.

His section commander flashed the hand signals for their orders. The squad took their positions across the walker and they awaited the signal.

A purple beam silently lanced from the squad commander's Modular Infantry Laser Rifle; the beam both squealed and thudded as it burst through one of the hunter-killer robot's bodies. The robot had barely begun to fall when each of the squad members rifle also lanced a robot body with their own beams. The robot corpses clattered and rattled lifelessly to the ground. The squad's aim then played across the legs of the walker where they attached to its thorax. It dropped to the ground with a prolonged thud, and then silence aside from the hydraulics within the walker trying in vain to move its legs. The squad took an all round defensive position around the area while the squad commander finished off the walker, his rifle punching a hole through the side for him to throw a plasma-grenade into. That done, they placed trip bombs under the HK bodies, accounted for everyone then moved off to their predetermined form up point less than half a kilometer away.

The whine of a dropship's engines steadily increased in volume over their whispers – the HK team's backup had arrived, in the form of another sixteen HK's, one of the nine foot tall crocs and a twelve foot tall mechsuit. The croc and the mechsuit was a lot of firepower. The squad quietly deployed from their form up point, crawling low and slow through the withered scrub towards the site of their previous victory. It had become easy to move quietly in the sunless dirt with the plants long dead. Their Matte Adaptive Camouflage absorbed a variable amount of light from the EM spectrum, from low energy IR to high energy UV. On their sunless planet, they were basically invisible.

A sharp crack filled the dark, and the croc dropped to the ground, briefly flailing in the dirt.

<honorless/shameless><brutes/thugs> have trapped bodies leave bodies be, take positions, bring <leaders>

The HK team had positioned itself in a perimiter around the fallen walker, the mech-suit stood lifelessly by it, and a pair of the three foot slugs were sliding towards the wreckage. One began to cut into the side of the walker with a plasma torch, while the other examined the legs that had been sheared off by laser beams. Not even the robots attended to the croc, which seemed to have bled out.

Felix looked to his squadmates and commander for orders.

>Squad rifles target HK's on my signal fire at will

>Squad heavy weapons target Mech on my signal three high impact rounds

>Extended File 10m spacing

Felix took his position in the formation and they began to close in on the invaders.

The squad commander's beam lanced out across the battlefield, scorching a hole through a robot body, and the squad unleashed a controlled burst of hellfire. In less than four seconds the hunter-killer team had been annihilated. Four seconds after that the mech-suit had been shorn it half at the waist by repeated high impact lasers.

The squad closed in on their hapless victims.

“Felix! Ballistic rounds on the slugs, fire at will! Heavy Weapons! Peel that Mech, kill the pilot! Alpha! Suppress! Bravo! Security!” The Squad commander was yelling now.

“Ten four!” He acknowledged his order, then drew his vintage Browning GP-35 as he closed in on the invaders.

mercy <owner/master/ruler> mercy let me live mercy

His universal translator filled his helmet with the slug's pleas for mercy. He sauntered to their cowering forms, their desperate clicking and screeching audible over the translation of their words.

He pumped three rounds into each.

“We eat tonight.”

At the mech, his squad had used their lasrifles to shear off the mechs arms and an ablative armour panel. A feeble, raccoon like creature about four feet tall had sprayed out the viewport with its small kinetic machine gun, but Zahn had responded with a short squirt of pepper spray. When the spray of kinetic fire stopped he simply reached in and dragged it out by the throat, its soft velvet fur ripped out through its ruined uniform as it raked past the broken viewport. Its screeching and whining unintelligible even to the universal translators. He drew his clearing knife and sliced across its throat, before driving its head against a corner of the broken mech once. Then twice. It fell limp, as if deflated, with the last sound it heard being Zahn's voice echoing into the dark “We eat tonight!!”

The Squad regrouped at the edge of a re-entrant, in the shallow valley the walker had been traversing.

The Commander quietly addressed the squad.

“I've called it in – we won't be rationed in for another week. Their reinforcements will be here within two hours, probably less, so we need to hustle. Zahn, Vorhut, store the badger and slugs. Forget the croc it's ruined.” The members of the squad fell out as they received their orders. “Kaiser, Ulan, Water and ammo. Felix, Erik. One AA mine and AP mines on that ridge there. The rest of you all round security. Ten minutes, Then we move.”

Felix and Erik both clambered up the hill with a sense of urgency, uncomfortably warm in their heat and light absorbing camouflage armour, despite the temperature being close to zero. They both hadn't eaten in days. Despite the bitter, earthy taste and the slimy, gelatinous yet tough texture, Felix was looking forward to his share of slug.

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

“You Isae taste absolutely vuh... vile...” He stammered out, then pointed at the Ji Te, “But you... You taste like salmon.”

#HFY #Humanity Fuck Yeah #Fiction #An Exercise in Writing

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cruddyborderlandstheories · 4 years

Text

so i’d really like to finish my guardian takedown lore analysis, but honestly the game isn’t really fun to play at the moment anymore (even with the health debuffs they added) so I think im going to be taking a break for now because I’m just not having fun anymore.

this game has a lotta mechanical problems i think need to be addressed so im gonna summarize it as bullet points below. I’ll play the new dlc when it drops, but idk if i’ll be on more than that (grinding, end-game stuff) until they make some serious changes. I’ve been playing (near) daily since launch, followed the patch/hotfix notes every single week, and my patience has finally, FINALLY run dry, especially with that really disappointing Phase 1 Patch and then the hotfix this week not adding anything else. What is the balancing team doing??? 😩

tl;dr: FIX THE VAULT HUNTERS!!!!

anyway. That’s all I needed to get outta my system. I might log on to this blog every now and again to post some random shit that pops into my head (probably with regards to my AU), but I’m not going to be actively playing and posting for the time being. Goodbye (for now), and here’s hoping the new DLC is good!!

guardian takedown only problems:

there’s a lot of waiting around, and sometimes it’s not explicitly stated that you’re waiting for something, so you’ll be lost on what to do next (not sure if that’s a dialogue glitch or not)

the crystal charge insta-death is bull. just. what the hell. at least make it so you just have to start over. killing ur players for failing a “puzzle” that they then have to fight all the way back to is so infuriating.

dying because you fell off a platforming puzzle is also bull.

i remember playing the first DMC on my playstation in middle school and having a conniption over the part in the observatory(? it’s been a hot minute since I played DMC 1) with the disappearing/invisible platforms. I h a t e jumping puzzles. why are they in a section of the game where death is semi-permanent and a detriment to your teammates. i tried the takedown 2x with friends and both times one friend didn’t make the first big jump to the temple and had to wait for our inevitable deaths. that’s so unfair to them.

there’s absolutely no reason for a boss to have 12 fuckin immunity phases. 4 per health bar with 3 health bars? Who the fuck designed this? *pumps shotgun* i just wanna talk.

i appreciate a tasteful immunity phase every now and again (the ones in the Valkyrie fight are actually p reasonable), but christ. that is overkill. I don’t mind the main boss fight, since u can end those early through certain actions, but jesus. the mid-boss fight is annoying as hell. you spend more time running from the immunity phases and finding the damn boss than u do actually shooting it.

drop rates are crap, which I guess should be expected given what happened with the Maliwan Takedown and the handful of months it took for them to fix that, but also you think they’d have learned.

in the maliwan takedown there’s a sense of progression thru the facility after you kill each area’s batch of enemies, but in this one it’s... dampened by the crystal charging sequences. you kill all the enemies in an area, press a button, and now you have to kill 3x that number of enemies in the same area, expect you’re just standing there motionless. It’s not fun.

the crystal charging stuff is just not fun in general. standing in a square is not entertaining. it’s worse that it was clearly designed for 3+ players when a majority of people play/grind solo

i gotta admit the boss fights just aren’t as fun as the Maliwan Takedown fights overall. I felt like a real badass fighting Wotan for the first time, but the main boss for this Takedown is kind of a bitch. Wotan’s fight is chaos, there’s so much shit happening at once and you don’t really have time to process everything and I love it. This one is p meh...

This would be fine and I’d 100% not care that much if there weren’t all these OTHER problems

General Issues with the Game

There’s no endgame stuff to play outside of the takedowns.

I assume they’re working on the first raid given some stuff I found in the Guardian Takedown files, but I really wish they’d keep the seasonal events/areas. They give us the option to disable/enable them while they’re ‘active’, just give us the ability to do it whenever we want.

when i hop on i either run through Athenas (my favorite map), or farm a boss or two. I have all the loot i really need from the maliwan takedown/elsewhere, and the guardian takedown just... isn’t fun atm, so i have nothing to do.

I’ve reset my playthru multiple times to play the main story at m10, but u can only play it (and the dlc) so many times

Mayhem levels and modifiers are a hot m e s s

a majority of the modifiers just aren’t fun to play with

they incorporated like 2-3 fun modifiers (from the community), then added a bunch that straight-up aren’t. I’m fine with the game being more difficult, but at least give us modifiers that make it more entertaining to play at a higher level instead of more annoying. I like the ones that have trade-offs or add new ‘enemies’, but I hate the ones that just straight up reduce your damage output.

a majority of the weapons with the mayhem 10 anointment (scaling) do not work on mayhem 10 (we’ll go more in-depth with this later)

Player Characters (Vault Hunters!!!) are also a hot mess and a lot of problems plaguing them haven’t been fixed SINCE LAUNCH

theyre literally the basis of the game and its balance. why havent you guys fixed them yet. stop adding new content until they’re fixed. no new skill trees until the base 3 trees work ON EVERY CHARACTER.

seriously. Why is amara p much limited to using Phasegrasp. Why does Iron Bear not matter to Moze except to proc anointments. MAKE ALL ACTION SKILLS EQUAL AND HAVE HEFT.

i wrote an essay here about it bc i feel that strongly about this

SERIOUSLY FIXING UR VAULT HUNTERS WILL MAKE BALANCING SO MUCH EASIER PLEASE IM BEGGING YOU THEY ARE THE BASE OF UR BALANCING WOES

ZANE IS STILL UNUSABLE WITHOUT THE SEEIN’ DEAD CLASS MOD!!!!!!!!!!!

MOZE IS SCREWED BC HER DAMAGE IS TOO RELIANT ON ASE ANOINTMENTS!!

AMARA DOESN’T HAVE A FUCKING MELEE BUILD AS THE ADVERTISED MELEE CHARACTER???

FL4K’S HEADCOUNT SKILL IS S T I L L BROKEN EVER SINCE THE RELEASE OF THE MALIWAN TAKEDOWN

ARE YOU GUYS LISTENING TO THE COMMUNITY *PLEASEEEEEEE*

BUFF AND FIX THE GODDAMN VAULT HUNTERS

Anointments were a mistake. Damage end-game is wayyyy too reliant on them

anoints should have a maximum of, like, a 20% damage bonus. the damage necessary to kill enemies *should be coming from the VHs themselves*. i don’t care if you have to revamp every single Vault Hunter’s skill trees and buff them all by 9000%. THEY DESERVE IT AT THIS POINT

at the moment in m10 there really isn’t much build diversity *even between Vault Hunters*. We’re all using the same 5 guns (OPQ System. Kaoson. idk. fuckin brainstormer? is that still a thing? jesus fuck) with the same 3 anointments (100% on ASE, cryo while SNTL, and 300% while 90%).

you want to diversify builds like you said during the gameplay reveal???? you want our choice in Vault Hunter to actually fuckin matter???? FIX THEM!!!! THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO DEAL DAMAGE WITHOUT STUPID POWERFUL LEGENDARIES AND ANOINTMENTS!!!

Anoints also shouldn’t be common. At all. They should be, like, Pearl rarity. To let that happen, their damage needs to be tuned way the fuck down (again, 20ish % bonus MAX) and ALL ANOINTS NEED TO BE USEFUL IN SOME WAY

NOBODY IS GOING TO USE THE AIRBORNE OR SLIDING ANOINTMENTS JUST REMOVE THEM ALREADY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

obviously these changes can’t happen because they fucked up and buckled down with everything being anointed in m10, but still

imagine a world where the VHs actually did damage on their own without anointments and the damage buff from them was just an incentive to grind for the 100% perfect weapon and NOT A REQUIREMENT TO DEAL DAMAGE

>:(

A majority of gear is borderline worthless at M10

I’m fine with the difficulty of M10, i should let it be known. The enemy health isn’t really the problem IF ALL GUNS ACTED THE SAME AS THE OPQ SYSTEM

ffs.

you know, if you fixed ur vault hunters so they all did damage with just purple weapons (abt the same damage as legendaries w/o special effects) and removed the anointment requirement from late-game play, balancing your guns would be sooo much easier. you know. just saying.

right now only 10% (im being generous) of guns in the game are viable. 90% are worthless. We need AT LEAST 60-70% viable at M10. WHERE IS MY BUILD DIVERSITY. WHY ARE ALL LEGENDARIES NOW JUST “HEY THIS GUN IS STRONGER THAN THE LAST 4 WE RELEASED. HAVE FUN”

how to fix this problem? do as above: BUFF YOUR PLAYER CHARACTERS. MAKE ANOINTMENTS LESS STRONG.

then, at least the 10% already strong weapons would be stupid strong and OP as fuck, BUT AT LEAST WE COULD HAVE BUILD VARIETY!!! I don’t care if other people are dummy strong one-shotting everything in sight. I don’t! so long as they don’t play with me, I couldn’t care less!!! I want to be able to play with the unique, interesting legendaries. instead of the OPQ System. which, by the way, I dislike compared to the normal Q-System. let me use the frozen heart shield and the infiltrator mod. I don’t wanna be chained to the Seein’ Dead anymore :(

honestly at this point im starting to think removing slag was a mistake bc then at least we could use guns that aren’t solely damage-based guns. you know how fucked up you’ve got me that im thinking maybe slag wouldn’t be so bad this time around??? YOU GOT ME FUCKED UP B A D.

FIX THE GAME

IM TAKING A BREAK

MAYBE I’LL BE LESS UPSET WHEN I COME BACK FOR THE DLC BUT HOT. DIGGITY. SHIT.

#borderlands #bl3 #whelp #i needed to get that out #still frustrated...#just... fix the game #please #its so disheartening to see this STILL going on #like i know bl2 had the same problems #with the balancing #remember when they nerfed zer0 and buffed salvador?#but like christ at least they were messing with the vault hunters #now they're trying to brush their problems under the rug and it's really sad to watch #you would think they'd have learned from bl2

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aharris00britney · 4 years

Photo

ASKS 19

It’s 6am and Brandon woke me up when he got up to go to work so now... i answer asks bc i cant sleep.

@mileyzangel said: Can you please make a Harley Quinn hairstyle from both Suicide Squad and Birds of Prey?

I went and watched Birds of Prey the other night and it was really good. Brandon went to sleep I think tfgvhb. But I doubt I’ll try doing her hair from either of the films. @enriques4 is working on one for her Birds of Prey look if you are interested in that <3

Anonymous said: is tiny living worth it? im leaning towards the gameplay although i love cas. is the gameplay as bad as people say?

I honestly don’t think the new beds do anything. They’re... there. Lmao I think the CAS and buy items are very nice. If we get some cc murphy beds then that would make them a lot more usable tbh.

Anonymous said: how do you and ayoshi keep making some fantastic collabs?? y'all are literally the first people i go to when I make a fresh install and I can't wait to see what you do next

Anonymous said: AxA CC KINGS!!!

Anonymous said: you guys didnt have to snap like that on AxA

Anonymous said: I LOVE EVERY SINGLE PACK U AND AYOSHI DO PLEASE KEEP MAKING MORE

Anonymous said: another iconic ah00b x ayoshi collab YAS LESSGOOOO

We put a bunch of cc ideas (hair and clothes) in a discord server we have together and then work on the stuff together on call usually so each item is the way we both want me. Like for example i’ll be meshing the Ivy top while he works on texturing the ribbed version. We also only do collabs when they happen, we didn’t plan AxA 2019 or this new set, mainly just made cc starting in May and wrapped it up in July to release in August. Then this time we started making stuff late December and got most of it done by the time I got done with my break. Having a planned collab/deadline makes stuff less stressful and the stuff usually turns out better imo

Anonymous said: hi! ur sims are so prettyyyy what skin texture and eyes do u use?

Anonymous said: hi! wcif the eyes of the sim in the edit that Dogsill edited for you please? thank you!

Anonymous said: Hi! I really love the way your sims looks so, I was what skin and eyes you use?

I actually am changing my default eyes so I need to update my resource page soon ;n; but the skins they use are all listed for each sim on the resource page here

Anonymous said: you always name axa packs by the year but this one was named after a season those that mean.... 👀

We are wanting to do something in the fall, just not sure how our lives will be then ya know? There’s a chance that this will be the AxA 2020. Since we weren’t sure I didn’t want to label it that if 2 AxA’s release this year lmao

Anonymous said: what game is the pokemon thing you're playing!? pls help a guy out i'm in love with the art style

Pokemon Sword and Shield (I have shield) for Nintendo Switch. I’ll prob post more pics once I get some new shinies :P

@kristabunny said: lol is it bad that when I saw your Santana hair I read it as Satan Hair XD

tbhhhhh it was lowkey referencing that lmao. I made the hair in October for a speed meshing video and since it was around Halloween I was like “lemme give her an almost demonic name” also Santana from glee is a queen

Anonymous said: Tbh I absolutely adore your female cc but I LIVE for your male cc!!!

Thank you! lmao the only thing I can take full credit for is the AxA male hairs. I mesh the clothes for packs but ayoshi does the texturing for them.

Anonymous said: Could you have a go at the updo Dua Lipa has on the cover of her Future Nostalgia? The high bun with a flick in it and the strands of hair down the sides. Thanks if so :)

I’m not the biggest fan of the hairstyle tbh ;n; but we will see. (Physical is a serve, just saying)

Anonymous said: So ive never played pokemon before until my friend gave me a copy of pokemon moon. I love cats so of course my starter was a litten, but i had no clue about evolutions or anything like that. I was heartbroken when my cute litten turned into some big man cat :(

omg noooo ;n; yeah Litten is a cutie... incineroar is... well I got used to him tbh and kind of like him now? I absolutely hate scorbunny’s evolution (and most of the SWSH starters final evolution) so I think that made incineroar slightly better in my eyes. My shiny litten will be staying a kitten however :)

@multifandom-slytherin said: Hello! I love your cc! Would it be possible for you to make the bangs from your Bree Hair a separate accessory that you can put with other hairs (for example the BG low ponytail)? Thank you so much!

Anonymous said: have u considered making or allowing someone to make an acc version of your handmade bangs?

I have thought of doing accessory bangs tbh, I just like... don’t like using accessory bangs myself. So I’m not sure if I’ll end up doing it. I might try it for myself and see how many hairs they work with, and if it is a decent amount I’ll release.

Anonymous said: First off I want to say how amazing all of your hairs and collabs are! Second I was curious if you ever thought of going back to your old hairs and updating their thumbnails / display indexes so they matched your stuff now?

I really really wanted to have all my 2019 hairs updated by 2020. It was only January 2019-April 2019 that needed updated (thumbnails and display indexes). But I just lost motivation for doing it. I will focus on it next time I have a big break from school. Also planning on updating select stuff from 2018 and 2017.

Anonymous said: please put Sophia Barker in the gallery. PLEASEEEEE it's the most beautiful sim I EVER seen! >:3 PLEASEEE!!!!!!!!!!

She should be on there? I think? Make sure you have CC enabled and if you can’t find me through the gallery her tray files are here

Anonymous said: Hi! After the recent patch I started having a small issue with Bree hair(without bangs), when I zoom out it looks like a completely different hair, something similar to that one basegame hair that's layered with tips pointed outward but longer. Thought I'd let you know, maybe others have had a similar issue or maybe I need to change a setting or something. Love your work so much!

Really surprised this is the first time someone told me about this lmao. The hair should be updated now on SFS/Patreon <3

Anonymous said: I tried to look around for this on your "Asks" portion before bothering you (so sorry), but do you have a link perhaps for all the lips you use on your models? Are they in game or a cc you create? Thanks so much! Love all of your work! I'm super new to cc stuff and I found yours like 2 days ago and have been going nuts with downloads lol

like presets? None of my cc models use a lip preset. I do use this slider on some of them though. For lipsticks, that is listed for each model on my resource page <3

Anonymous said: i’ve been looking for a hair like lexi that i actually like forever and now i find it but it’s for paterson peeps and i’m like actually broke and i’m like :/

im sorry ;n; at least it wasn’t too long of a wait? :/ I hope you liked the hair

Anonymous said: I can't find your jisoo ponytails in your downloads?

they’re in my retired section... may they rest in peace. scroll to the bottom of my downloads and youll see ‘RETIRED.’ click that for the retired download page.

@eclypt-0-sims said: Hi, I recently started making MM hair and I know you're probably an expert at this but; every time I go into CAS to test a hair, all of my accessories clip with the hair. Like the hair texture would cover some glasses if my sim was wearing glasses. I don't know how to fix it, someone told me to delete an eye weight in blender but I don't really understand weight painting that much, any suggestions? love your content btw

this is a late as hell reply i’m sorry. I think that you have texture where the glasses texture would be. Hair texture should only be in hair section or hat section (if you don’t want it hat compatible). Here is a UV map layout that I use for making hair textures. It shouldnt have anything to do with weights

Anonymous said: Do you use reshade when you take previews for your cc? and also is the tropical punch ombre overlay a palette or did you make it?

I do use reshade when I take cc previews. It adds a bit of saturation to my sims and gives them some shadows under their chin/clothes. Nothing major. Also, myself and @imvikai came up with the tropical punch palette together.

@little-eris said: You probably have answered this before but who drew your tumblr icon? I’ve seen the same art style with other simmers 👉🏼👈🏼 it’s super cute!

thank you! here is their twitter

Anonymous said: The male sim in your Tiny Living review looks soo familiar; was there inspiration from anyone IRL? The person he reminds me of isn't even famous so I don't even know! He is very pretty though *-*

He was a gallery sim that I just revamped a bit so I’m honestly not super sure lmao. But he is very attractive yes I agree

that concludes this ask ceremony please collect your things and move to the exit to your left. fvghbjn if you sent something I didn’t answer and it was off anon I’ll get to you soon (person who asked what beards I used for AxA... I see you)

#asks #not me spending an hour doing this #im actually kinda tired now but do i sleep #or do i just stay up... i have class at 12 #it is 7am now

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pendragyn · 4 years

Text

Thanks Freddie!

Or: Inspiration From The Great Beyond

AKA: When Queen songs pop up on my very not Queen station on Pandora.

So in the long ago and far off land of 2019, I read this book, you probably haven’t heard of it, called “Good Omens” by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, that was made into a 6 part miniseries. And it took over my life. I was reading fic and meta and all that when Joy ( @thebibliosphere ) posted something (at this point I don’t remember what) that sparked an idea: What if the Discworld Witches lived in the GO universe? I don’t imagine she’ll see this, but thanks Joy!

That was in maybe the beginning of June-ish ‘19? And I stewed on it for a while and finally started writing my very first fanfic at the end of June (the 23rd to be precise because I started tracking my progress). I called it “Ineffable Bastards”. It was going to be short. It was going to be light and fluffy. I wasn’t planning on posting it anywhere... Do you hear that? Faintly, in the distance? Yeah, sounds a bit like maniacal laughter, doesn’t it...

[image id: screenshot of the properties of the “Ineffable Bastards” Libre Office document showing the creation date at 06/23/2019, 13:57:20 and the last modified date as 06/23/2020, 08:50:34. Total editing time is 1410 hours, 40 minutes 54 seconds (that’s 58 days) and revisions is numbered at 18420. /end id]

So, having already failed utterly at short and angst free, I started a pre-fic fic for worldbuilding called “In The Garden” that also wasn’t going to be posted anywhere. (It’s going to have it’s one year anniversary on AO3 on July 22.)

ANYWAY, while writing I like to listen to music and the genre? I guess? I settled on was the P!atd and Fall Out Boy and 21P type music, AKA White Boys Yelling Politely. The stuff Pandora sorts into that genre sounds zero% like Queen IMO.

So, imagine my surprise when I’m writing on July 19, 2019 and a Queen song pops up. Not once, but twice. And I was like, weird but awesome, thanks Freddie! Then it happened again on the 22nd. And it kept happening. And I find this random happy little accident really inspiring.

I’m not looking for explanations why it’s happening. Honestly, while I’m sure it has perfectly mundane reasons, I prefer to see the magic of the situation. And no, I didn’t favorite any of the songs to make them more likely to pop up, you can see in the screenshots that they aren’t marked with a star like favorites are.

On the days when the “whybothers” are at their worst, having a Queen song pop up sometimes helps me get out of the funk. Last night was an extremely bad night. And I had 5 Queen songs pop up - I’ve never had 5 before. On the other hand, I hadn’t realized it was the one year anniversary of the first time a Queen song popped up.

[image ID: a screenshot and a gif. The still image is of an open file browser with a bunch of the screenshots in question, with the Pandora app open beside it, showing that Another One Bites The Dust by Queen is going to play. The gif is showing the file browser being scrolled to show that there are a lot of screenshots accumulated over the past year, all named “inspiration from the great beyond Queen” with a date at the end. /end id]

So here’s some Stats for other nerds:

it’s happened over 180 times in the past year, including one today while writing this post. I got screens of most but a couple were on my phone.

Killer Queen is top song at 60 plays

Don’t Stop Me Now is technically top song, if I add the 3 versions together at 91

DSMN = 21

DSMN (with long lost guitars) = 24

DSMN (...revisted) = 46

We Will Rock You trails in at 3rd with 15 plays

I Want To Break Free played 2 times

Hammer To Fall played 2 times

Seven Seas Of Rhye played 2 times

Keep Yourself Alive played twice, the first time June 1, 2020 which felt like A Statement

Single Plays:

I Was Born To Love You

The Millionaire Waltz

Flash

Love Of My Life (7/19/20)

Radio Ga Ga (7/19/20)

Another One Bites The Dust (7/20/20)

Here’s a couple of the screenshots. First time with Don’t Stop Me Now (...revisited) and We Will Rock You, the IB document open in the background:

The other songs in the screenshot below amused me with their serendipitous names. “The Crown” “The Fall” “Walk On Water”

If anyone is really curious, I can share a link to the screenshots uploaded to postimg.

I hope it continues, and that I’m able to keep writing in spite of everything. It’s a little bit of magic in my life and I’m very grateful for it. I like to imagine Terry and Freddie petting cats and sipping banana daiquiris in a very curious library somewhere. Or perhaps it’s an odd old book store with an even odder owner.

Thanks Freddie. Thanks Terry.

#Ineffable Bastards #Queen #gnu Freddie Mercury #GNU Terry Pratchett #inspiration from the great beyond #long post #Good Omens #Good Omens fanfic #writing #finding magic #Discworld #very long post #Neil Gaiman #happy 1-year anniversary #images and words

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cyberloops · 5 years

Audio

Cyberpunk/noir writing prompt:

It was nice to have a quiet day. No gunfire nearby. No sirens. Even when you’re down so low that you can’t see the sun, sometimes you get reminded that not every day is crap. Sometimes it’s just another day.

Originally posted on my personal blog

Almost done remastering these original writing prompts. There were 30, and this is the 27th one.

It’s kind of amazing to me to see how far I’ve come. The first writing prompt I ever did was a long, meandering mess that I originally made just to try and experiment with making a cybergrunge style set of digital instruments. Eventually I started to learn what to DO with the instrument set with some more experimental tracks. Which eventually led to some of tracks like this at the end of my Digital Inspirations. At first I was oscillating between depending on synths and effects to get the feel I wanted, and using actual musical growth and change to get the feel I wanted. Towards the end, I was finding how to use both to augment each other.

This track never really jumped out at me as a favorite from my Digital Inspirations, but I think it’s a great example of my growth as a composer. Where there’s repetition, it’s used to build and grow. Where there’s innovation, it’s used to create something better and not just break up the monotony. Where there are interesting instruments and effects, they’re there simply to enhance and augment. Nothing in this piece feels like a crutch that I used to cover up a lack of ability.The pulsing synth with a flange on it builds atmosphere and adds a rhythmic pulse to it, but it wasn’t there to cover up a lack of actual rhythm and percussion. It just makes it deeper. The changing lines between instruments allows for natural shifting and growth all the way through.

I’m listening to it now as I’m writing all this. Maybe it is one of my favorites.

And of course, these last few Digital Inspirations tracks inspired me to start doing my various cyberloops tracks. And got me to spend some time looking through some other unpublished or just older tracks.

Which led to me resurrecting my Neon Streets idea... which now has 14 tracks with a 15th on the way that I started working on instead of working on actually releasing it as an album.

If you couldn’t tell by the fact that 95% of my posts all come at the same time of day, I don’t usually post live. In fact, I usually only log on every few days to update and put a bunch of whatever I’ve been working on or nifty posts I’ve found in my queue. I don’t have a queue right now. I’m posting this just to make sure I have some music out there while I’m at work tomorrow. I’m writing this at about 2 in the morning, and I really should get to bed. I have to be awake for work in just a few hours.

But I’m listening to some of my more recent stuff now. Not even the high-fidelity lossless audio versions that I have on my harddrive and that I’ve been putting up on Bandcamp. Just the 192k and 128k mp3 files I’ve uploaded here.

When I first started my Digital Inspirations, I only really enjoyed listening to a few of my own tracks. Now with the Neon streets stuff, I’ve been going back and listening to it. Not just to critique it, or get ideas for what needs remastering. Just... listening to it. Going backwards through my own blog.

The smooth saxy sounds of Sly. The focused finality of Homeward. The beat driving everything down the Digital Highway. Beat Streets. Oh, boy. I tried to start that one a dozen times. And it never worked. But lucky number 13... well, if I hadn’t kept trying, that one wouldn’t be in the upcoming track list for Neon Streets. Lost Moments found itself when I overlaid the Cybergrunge and Analog variants together. Slow Motion was something I churned out in one session, something to give thanks for hitting 5k followers. That was two months ago... and now I’ve doubled that number of followers. (Although to be fair, if you account for porn bots, I’ve probably only just hit 8 or 9k...) I made Holding Pattern because right then it was what I was feeling. I was out of work. I was being creative, but I didn’t quite feel like I was... contributing. Is that the right word? I don’t know. At this point it’s getting closer to 2:30 in the morning. And I spent the last few hours of my work shift today writing out a mind-numbingly long manual for how to do my job. Because after my supervisor retired at the end of last year, I’m LITERALLY the only one who knows how to do it. So I’m rambling. Words are just kind of pouring out.

The end of the year last year was when I wrote Sync. My job was coming to an end. I had to quit my other part-time job because an old knee injury kept flaring up, and I just couldn’t be on my feet for hours at a time. I didn’t know what I was going to do over the summer. I was out of sync with myself. I had a long stretch of nothing ahead of me... and even at my most lazy, my most depressed, my most uninspired the idea of doing nothing is anathematic to me.

Towards the end of the year before that I was stressed out. I was worried about the upcoming summer. About not having a job for a few months. About not having money for a few months. About dealing with a work situation where I wasn’t given the tools I needed to do my job. I didn’t know what was going to be up in a few months. I didn’t know what was going to be down in a few months. I felt like nothing was quite making sense.

Not that everything had been Smooth before that, of course.

That was right around the time I started listening to my own music at work sometimes. I don’t know if it calmed me, focused me, or just made me feel better. Summer was coming. Nothing was coming. But I was making something. Something that I actually liked.

And, of course, there was Prowl. This was what really did it. Prowl was the piece that made me realize that I could put together a Neon Streets album. Something that mixed my Cybergrunge style with a more Analog 80s/early 90s vibe. The rough draft of it is one of my most popular posts. Over 300 notes right now. And it was posted when I only had maybe 2k followers.

I stopped by my office last Friday to start setting it up. Just for a few hours. And I had a genuinely stressful experience. I found out that there were some changes going on that could literally prevent me from doing my job. My job may not be grandiose. In fact, it’s pretty damn dull. But it’s mine, and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to do it right.

Thankfully my new supervisor, who at that point I was meeting for only the second time actually listened to me. Realized that I knew what the hell I was talking about. And he got the right people on the line and told them in no uncertain terms that some things had to be fixed. By the time I came into work on Monday, not only was the upcoming problem fixed... but another huge problem that I’d just been living with for the last year and a half was also fixed. My job is still going to be boring. I’m still going to spend a lot of time just sitting at a desk, not doing a whole lot. But at least I have a job. At least I can put earbuds in and listen to music. Even if I’m doing nothing but checking people in and out, while writing long-winded descriptions of what I do on a daily basis.

Towards the end of the day today while I was writing out a description for how to do the job I’ve been doing pretty much on my own, alone in a room away from all of my coworkers for the last two years, I pulled out my earbuds. But the only thing I felt like listening to... was Neon Streets.

#cyberloops #digital inspirations #cyberpunk digital inspirations #cyberpunk #cyberpunk aesthetic #cyber punk #aesthetics #writing prompt #cyberpunk writing prompt #neon streets #cybergrunge #synthwave #retrowave

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gandrewheadcannons · 5 years

Text

Drabble 1 (angst) (open ended)

I wrote a drabble that’s angsty like I’ve been recently.

Andrew doesn’t wish often for things. He prides himself on being reasonable. Pragmatic. He’s meticulously organized and often not caught up in frivolous thoughts that would have him desiring for something he could just create with a well-thought-out plan to achieve. He lived very much by the notion of ‘if you want it, go for it’ and liked that about himself. It kept him grounded, kept him level headed. Made it so he could breathe easier when he was anxious. If he stayed far away from wishing then he had less to add to his mix of doubt and insecurities. But right now, very out of character, he found himself sitting alone at two o’clock in the morning wishing.

Ryland had stopped filming hours ago and Shane had retreated to the editing room to work. Andrew had declined working in the same room as him feeling squicked by the copious amount of lip gloss Shane had been smearing across his mouth. He was left to his own devices in the spare bedroom when a picture had appeared across his twitter feed that had stopped him in his tracks. It was an old photo of him and Garrett, something someone had screen grabbed from a video where Garrett’s eyes are twinkling and Andrew’s got a soft smile as he stares at the boy. The person had tagged them both and added a message of ‘soft bois’ with a bunch of emoji hearts. It had been shared and liked a good number of times but it wasn’t the picture itself that had him stopping. He’d seen it so many times that at this point it didn’t surprise him to see the way he was watching Garrett in it.

No, what had him stopping was the top tweet underneath it that read, ‘Im sad they don’t seem to hang anymore…used to ship but now I hope Garrett finds people who can appreciate him. The squad definitely doesn’t’ That tweet had almost as many likes as the original, a list of people agreeing. He hesitates to click the profile and then decides against it, exiting Twitter completely and then opening his messages and scrolling to find the conversation with Garrett. It had been a few weeks since they’d texted and Andrew feels a bubble of guilt building in his stomach fluttering amidst something else that Andrew realizes is desire. He misses Garrett. He could easily admit that to anyone who asked. He didn’t to see him as much now that Shane had moved and Andrew spent the majority of his time here. But what he wasn’t sure that he was so readily able to admit would be the fact that, even though it’s just a brief moment, he wishes more than anything that Garrett was there with him.

Looking around the guest room it feels lonely and isolating with the glow of his phone and computer screen the only lights. Biting the corner of his thumb nail he hesitates as he figures out what to send. It was late and though he knew Garrett was awake he found himself, for one of the first times in their friendship, unsure of how to start a conversation with him. Thinking back to the horoscope Shane had read him he blushes despite being alone with his intrusive thoughts. He knew he adored Garrett. Had always done so from the moment they’d met in person and Garrett had shared his cold brew and spoke excitedly about a puppy he’d seen on the way to meet him.

Garrett was his go to guy for any anxieties he might have, his favorite person to get lost with in conversations, but he seemed so far away as of late. He hadn’t wanted to be a part of the series this time. Had explained it softly to them back in February that he’d rather take time for himself and to be with his family. It had felt like a slow bandaid being pulled achingly from Andrew’s side; the comfort of laughter and ease not being present in the long days of filming for the past nine months. He was tired.

Bypassing the messaging all together he bites the bullet and hits the call button, the screen enlarging with buttons and ‘calling G’ scrolling across the top. He’s about ready to hang up and send an apology text with each uwhen all of a sudden Garrett picks up. It’s loud in the background of wherever he is. Andrew hates that he doesn’t know.

“Hey!” Garrett’s voice shouts loudly. “Give me a minute, I’m trying to go outside.” There’s clinking of glasses and someone shouting as music suddenly blares and then it all fades into a quiet hum like something pulled from a movie. “Sorry!” Garrett sounds breathless and laughs a little. “It’s wild in there. What’s up? Are you okay?” His voice going from laughter to concern, the volume lowering into a normal speaking tone with Garrett’s quick pacing sprinkled into the tone.

“I’m good.” Andrew already feels the constricting in his chest lightening some. “Where are you?” A nervous laugh bubbling over and spilling between his lips as he says, “it’s like…way past a Garrett Watts approved party time.” Garrett lets out a manic laugh and Andrew finds himself craving to see the reaction in person.

“Oh I know! It’s so silly. I really did want to leave like three hours ago but now I’m kind of stuck because I got too drunk to drive back home.” Andrew can detect a hint of slurring to confirm the statement. A drunk Garrett was one of his favorite versions; overly tactile and honest with whoever he was with. Andrew could do with a hug.

“Are you okay? You want a ride?” Being forty minutes away was a stretch of an offer but Andrew found that he was up and walking towards his shoes. He’d drive it if it meant spending one night with Garrett.

“Oh Andrew that’s so sweet!” Garrett coos, “I’m really okay, it’s fine. You’re probably at Shane’s anyways?” Andrew hates that he’s so predictable now. Misses when he was only down the street.

“Yeah I am.” He sighs. From his window he can see one of the driveways with his car in it. “I don’t mind, Garrett. I can come.” He presses further. Garrett makes a booing sound and laughs again.

“It’s fine!” Then he drops his voice. “Actually, can I tell you something?” He trails off like he’s to giddy to contain the giggles that erupt. “It’s so crazy, Andrew. But oh!” He lets out another nervous laughter. “I kind of…maybe met someone.” He’s breathless, slurring together the last of his words into one quick session.

“What?” Andrew feels blank. Garrett had met someone. It wasn’t like this was different. Garrett had met so many people and Andrew had picked him up from countless of dates that hadn’t gone well but the last he’d heard; Garrett wasn’t interested in dating anyone. “Like…a someone?” His throat feels painfully scratchy like if he speaks any louder his hammering heart might claw its way up it and out through his mouth. Pitiful. The best way to describe himself in the moment.

“Yeah!” Garrett is whispering. “His name is Ron. We didn’t even meet through Tinder I just like… kept seeing him at the same diner as me at the same time and we ended up eating together a few times. I thought we were just friends but it turns out he thought we were on a few dates!” Garrett laughs. “I pretty much suck at this.” He admits but he doesn’t sound as despondent as he normally would with the statement. In fact, he sounds more amused.

“Wow.” He’s stilted in his commentary. The hopeful feeling that had warmed his body was slowly drained and replaced with something akin to regret. “How…uh.” He clears his throat annoyed that he feels like crying. “How long?” He wants Garrett to say a week. Wants him to say that he doesn’t think it’ll go anywhere.

“A few months,” Garrett says hastily. “I dunno. We aren’t like…it’s not super serious. But I really like him.” He’s enraptured as he says it.

Nine months of almost no time together save the odd weekday coffee now and then had Garrett in a relationship with someone for more than just a week. Andrew is definitely going to be sick.

“That’s great,” It isn’t. Nothing feels great. Andrew wants to hang up the phone. “Hey, actually, I have to go.” He tries to not let his disappointment seep through his gritted teeth. Garrett doesn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of his regret.

“Oh.” Garrett's disappointed. “Are you sure?” Andrew doesn’t want to. Wants to stay on the phone with him for hours. Wants to lay on his brown leather couch and watch an obscure western Garrett had found on Vimeo. Wants to drink English breakfast tea as they watch the sun rise because they’d stayed up too late make stupid videos he’d saved into a special file on his hard drive.

“Yeah man, I didn’t know you were out and stuff.” He doesn’t want to be that guy, unsure if he means the one who keeps a friend on the phone during a party or the one who is desperate for that friend to pity him enough to do it anyways. He’s not sure he cares that he’s both.

“I don’t mind, Andrew.” Garrett sounds surprisingly sober all of a sudden. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Andrew nods then remembers that Garrett can’t see him through the phone.

“Yeah.” He lets out a breath to loosen the constricting around his throat. Please stay with me threatens to pour out but he manages to keep it contained. They’re quiet.

“Megan Batoon get another boyfriend?” He knows Garrett is joking but it’s that comment that has him realizing why Garrett had gone and found someone knew. The slight under bite coupled with the reminder that Andrew wasn’t supposed to be interested in Garrett like that.

“No boyfriend.” He can’t bring the joke to life either. “Not her at least.” It falls flat. The noise from the background is completely gone now and Andrew wishes for the distraction of it back. He can hear Garrett’s breathing through the phone, heavy puffs like he’s starting up to say something then thinking better of it. Before Andrew can continue and apologize for whatever weird, standoffish twist their conversation had taken he hears someone calling Garrett’s name in the background. There’s a shuffle and then hushed tones before Garrett is back on the phone.

“Hey man.” He clicks his tongue disappointed. “I gotta go but maybe we can meet up for coffee sometime soon? Catch up.” He doesn’t sound like he had before. Sounds like he’s making an obligation to save whatever it is they have.

“Yeah.” Andrew wants so badly for that to happen and for them to climb back into each other’s space. “I really want to.” He knows it’s just a formality at this point. He only has a few weeks before the first episode drops. Coffee soon was looking like November if they both really tried.

“Cool! Yeah, that’d be good. Talk to you later,” Garrett doesn’t hang up quite yet, like he’s waiting. “Love you.” He tacks on as if he’s embarrassed to be saying it. It’s rushed.

“Love you.” Andrew’s slides out easily as if it was simple. A phrase both of them accustomed to saying. It shouldn’t be so hard. The phone goes quiet and when Andrew finally grows the will to pull it down from his ear it’s just his home screen. His heart sinks at the lack of Garrett.

Sadness envelops him like a blanket as he curls deep into the crevice of the bed with his hood pulled tightly up. Steering clear of Twitter he opens up Netflix on his phone and tries to fall asleep to an episode of The Office, Michael Scott’s antics soothing his mind. His dreams filled with images he can’t recall being real or not, Garrett’s name on the edge of his tongue; a sloshing wave of regret in his stomach. He makes a promise to himself then- no more wishing allowed, developing a plan to fix them before the year was up. It was what he did.

#gandrew #drabble 1 #angst drabble #open ended drabble #i might continue it if people wantedddd #i'm just in a mood lol #hope u enjoy ;)

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