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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Refuge”

Happy Saturday, everyone! Welcome to week two of… fourteen? Is that how many episodes we’ve got this Volume? Man, we’re going to be here for a while.

There’s a ton to unpack in “Refuge,” but as promised I want to delve into the opening first. Given the scattered, symbolic nature of our intro I think it’s easiest to just chuck out observations in list form. I’ll segue back into cohesive recapping in a moment.

So, what have we got?

The glitching between a happy, whole Atlas and the burning wreckage we’re now dealing with. That works well given both Atlas’ tech-focus culture and the ways that tech has led to some of our biggest tragedies (hijacked army, framing Penny, etc.)

Ruby looks scared and is standing behind the rest of her team, separated from them by the title. I’m not really feeling that theme so far though, given Yang’s incredibly weak challenge, Ruby’s immediate forgiveness (during her talk with Penny), and the fact that she’s still working with half the team who vocally support her, particularly Nora. Unless something drastic changes, the idea of Ruby being the outsider here is silly.

We get shots of the girls with their past selves superimposed over their bodies and weapons. I like the message here—they carry those versions of themselves with them—just not how it’s contrasted with Ironwood’s image of an earlier Atlas now burning. So that’s all he is now? Everyone gets to embody their growth except for him? His past is erased to focus solely on our current predicament? I’m not picking up any redemption flags here…

Robyn’s hand reaches down towards Clover’s badge, which then circles to show off the Ace Ops. The final image contrasts an angry Harriet with a defeated Qrow. At least, I hope they’re contrasts. It’s going to read as absurd if they somehow end up working together after Qrow helped get her leader killed.

This morphs into Qrow alone who sits, devastated, until Robyn offers him a hand up and they both smile. I’m not a fan of this symbolism after the prison scene we got this episode. It’s like Qrow might have thought about his choices until Robyn’s anger reminded him that, oh yeah, he can be angry at Ironwood instead. These two teaming up, when their last team-up led to a death, is worrisome to say the least.

We get our horrifying image of Salem looming over Oscar as he clutches his head. The group’s weapons fall. This makes sense given this episode’s kidnapping and the team’s sheer inability to do anything to stop it.

Jaune stands determined—also makes sense with his trend of giving “pep talks”—while Ren and Nora stand apart, facing opposite directions. Nora looks back though.

Paralleling them are Winter and Weiss who also face opposite directions. This is becoming a common visual theme: Harriet and Qrow, Nora and Ren, Winter and Weiss. Here though, Weiss looks determinedly ahead while Winter stares down at her feet, unsure. Ugh, I just know they’re going to have her betray Ironwood too.

We get a brief glimpse of Whitley and Willow, not a whole lot to go on. Then we see Salem turning her chess pieces into grimm—literally changing the game—while Ironwood’s white pieces are turned to dust. I could make a quip about how white is supposed to go first, but the initial move was made thousands of years before Ironwood existed and thus he never stood a chance, certainly not when his own allies are actively working against him… but I won’t lol

Watts is smiling at a terminal while at his back Pietro works at his. More opposites. Pietro’s reflection looks to Penny even as his body continues to work, his heart contrasting his head. Penny, in turn, looks upset as her reflection flinches at something off screen and the glass cracks. Watts hacking her, perhaps?

We see the new teams as a cherry blossom (I think?) floats across the screen. It melts in Ren’s hand while escaping Nora’s. Honestly, I’m not sure what to make of that just yet.

Ruby and Yang share a look—undermining their supposed conflict this volume. Couldn’t we have gotten sister unity over the last three years instead?—and a fight against grimm starts up. It freezes as Cinder walks through it, hopefully implying that the group’s attention is on the wrong threat. While they concern themselves with low-level grimm, Salem and her allies are walking free and wreaking havoc.

Then Cinder screams and clutches her grimm arm as things go up in flames. I hope that’s not a death flag given that we’ve teased her death twice already and we only just got a glimpse at her backstory. Also, I think it’s worth mentioning here that there’s a “Summer is the Hound” theory gaining traction which, frankly, I think is 100% unsubstantiated. It’s a fun crack theory, but not something I’m inclined to take seriously until we get some actual evidence behind it. There is, however, potential evidence for people becoming grimm in general: Salem falling into the pool and Cinder receiving that arm. That’s not much though. So while I’m far from convinced that the Hound was once human—let alone that it was Summer—there is something to the theory that Salem may be able to control Cinder via her arm like she controls other grimm. After all, she knew Cinder was alive despite everyone else thinking she’d perished. They seem to have some sort of connection that hasn’t been explained yet and now that Cinder has willingly walked back into Salem’s clutches, she may not be able to walk out.

There are shots of all our other villains, the Lamp and the Staff reflected in Salem’s eyes, and Jinn’s blue smoke, perhaps suggesting that we’ll see her again, or the entity residing in the Staff (if they exist).

Atlas glitches back to normal—a false victory?—before the ice breaks and Team RWBY falls into the darkness below. Volume 3 vibes all around. There’s light above them emanating from the Staff, but as Ruby reaches for it grimm arms circle and pull her deeper. I hope this means that the group will suffer the defeat we need to keep Salem as a legitimate threat, but we had very similar imagery back in Volume 6 and they made it out of that situation just fine, so.

“Happy Ever After” glitches into “Happy? Never Again.” Which isn’t ominous or anything. We finally end on the classic RWBY image of Crescent Rose buried in the snow underneath the shattered moon.

On the whole I think the opening is strong and I like a lot of the symbolism in it, though I do question how much will actually end up being relevant to the story. My only gripes are that there are too many different styles going on—it feels like three or four different Volume openings slammed together—and the fact that it also feels overly long. I don’t think it’s actually any longer than our Volume 7 opening, but it seems that way to me, perhaps because of those varying styles breaking things up.

So that’s what we’ll be watching for the next twelve weeks! Let’s move onto the actual episode.

We open on the image of Clover’s bloody badge in Qrow hand, the same one we got in the trailer. I theorized last recap that we’d be getting the rest of our trailer/promo material this week and I was almost entirely correct in that. This moment, retrieving the bikes, fighting off the grimm, Watts getting hit, Oscar carried away… all we’re missing are some eye closeups and Nora powering up her hammer. As said, it makes me nervous for what the rest of the Volume holds. I can’t decide whether the footage wasn’t ready to be included in promo materials that early, or if RT is just determined not to give us any information past the first two episodes…

Regardless, this is supposed to be a moment of grief and all I could focus on was Qrow’s hand. Specifically, the lack of detail in it. On the whole, I’ve been very happy with the engine upgrade and I quite like RWBY’s animation now, but a closeup here draws too much attention to how, sometimes, they’re just not animating their characters in a way that looks natural. Where is Qrow’s wrist? Why is his palm perfectly smooth? Stylistically that’s usually fine, but when given the chance to stare at it you realize how odd it looks.

Says the woman whose own drawing skills suck but, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But we’re talking about the important bits in this episode! Out of frame Robyn is heard yelling, “This is your fault. You realize that, don’t you?” We’re meant to think that she’s telling Qrow this, especially with how he’s bent guiltily over the badge, until we cut to reveal Jacques right next to them.

I wish Robyn was saying all that to Qrow. It would mean that she was ignoring her own responsibility in Clover’s death, but at least it would have started an arc where Qrow has to grapple with what he did. Not the awful moment that’s coming up.

Before that though, Jacques claims that he’s the “victim” here who was “duped.” His hands may not be clean, but “at least I’m not a murderer.” Look, I’m not here to absolve Jacques of anything. The guy is an absolute shit stain on the Remnant world. However, he’s right in his overall point even if his words are BS. Meaning, Jacques is not a victim and he is a murderer, but he is not the one responsible for Clover’s death. Robyn has plenty of things to be furious at him for, but this is not one of them. Ironically, here we have Jacques functioning as the kind of villain the show wants Ironwood to be. He is a murderer because the company he runs exploits faunus and forces them to work in dangerous conditions (see: the death of Ilia’s parents). He is culpable because he a) had control over these conditions and b) has full knowledge of their flaws. He’s a racist who cares more about money than lives. His informed choices then led directly to deaths. Ironwood? Not anywhere near the same thing. Overlooking the “Omg Salem is here and I have to do something about it” context, he did not try to arrest Robyn. He did not force Qrow to resist arrest, or Robyn to get involved, or Qrow to break Clover’s aura, or Tyrian to stab him in the chest. Ironwood had no control or knowledge of these events, so he is not responsible for Clover’s death in the way that Jacques is responsible for the faunus’. RWBY is giving the right arc to the wrong character.

Robyn then insists that Qrow didn’t kill anyone. He didn’t strike the blow, but he certainly helped! Look, Qrow is one of my favorites, but I’m not about to claim that he didn’t have a hand in getting his friend killed. I seriously can’t believe the show is ignoring this.

We then segue into some, uh, questionable dialogue choices. Jacques is a “snake with a mustache”? Sorry, I can’t take Robyn seriously at the best of times, but definitely not when she’s tossing out laugh worthy insults like that. Nevertheless, this “snake with a mustache” is guilty because he “helped that man tear us all apart.” That man being Watts.

…why are they all in what amounts to the same cell with barriers dividing them? I suppose we could make the argument that they’re being held in some secret facility, given that they’re in this dark, garage-esque space with no lights and no other prisoners. Some sort of maximum security setup that... doesn’t have any other inmates and no additional security? Hmm. Then again, the power is supposed to be out and I don’t really trust RWBY’s ability to craft consistent backgrounds. I feel like they’re packed together merely because that’s plot convenient, not because it makes any sense in world.

Watts looks pretty comfortable in there though and Jacques is likewise full of confidence. He says that by now Whitley will have already called their lawyers to get him out. Now, non-imprisoned people know that the apocalypse is currently underway, as Joanna will later put it. No one is lawyer-ing at the moment, but it will be crucial to see whether Whitley is trying to get Jacques out despite the chaos. How faithful is he to his abuser? Can Willow start undermining Jacques’ influence now that they’re alone?

Jacque’s confidence thoroughly pisses Robyn off and she screams, punching the barrier between them. Keep this in mind for a second.

A moment later two guards show up to take Watts somewhere and… oh no. Please don’t tell me Ironwood is going to team up with him now that Penny has written him off? I know the guy has (presumably) already killed someone, and he must assume he’s killed Oscar, so we’re definitely in full villain territory despite the stupidity of it… but please don’t start working with Salem’s henchmen too. You know what? I’m not going to assume the worst until I actually see it. RWBY gives me enough nonsense as it is lol.

What I really want to talk about is that hit.

I’m somewhat concerned by a lot of the fandom’s reaction to this moment in comparison to another. Who remembers Volume 6? That scene when Qrow punched Ozpin directly into a tree? Now, I’m not keeping track of who says what when—this is a generalized reaction—but I saw a lot of posts defending that action. There were numerous justifications for the punch, but the three big ones were: 1. These characters are fighters and they’re used to it, 2. These characters have aura so it’s not that bad, and 3. Ozpin totally deserved it. Now, the problems here are that 1a. I don’t think punching someone when they’re crying on their knees is justified, whether they’re a fighter or not, 1b. Qrow was likewise punching Oscar, a totally innocent kid, 2. We had established earlier that Oscar was having trouble remembering to activate his aura and didn’t seem to have it active then (no ripple effect, he’s rubbing his jaw afterwards), and 3. Ozpin’s crimes are, as explored on this blog, not nearly the horrific actions that the story and fandom would like to paint them as. The point is that despite all this, lots and lots of fans said it was totally okay to punch Ozpin&Oscar. What’s the big deal? they asked. Now, lots and lots of fans—mostly when the trailer first dropped—say it’s not okay to punch Watts. Despite the fact that he’s also a fighter. Despite the fact that his aura has broken. Despite the fact that he’s not currently a threat (seated on the bed/Ozpin on his knees). Despite the fact that he’s responsible for helping Salem try to take over the world. If we were to make a case for who deserves to get hit, Watts is a WAY stronger candidate in my opinion, yet he’s the one who a lot of fans are scrambling to defend. Why? I assume it’s because hitting him feeds into the generalized police state/dictator theme Ironwood has been thrown into. It helps villainize Ironwood for fans to go, “Poor Watts. He’s done horrific things but no one deserves to face police brutality.” I agree. The only problem is that a lot of those same fans seem to have gone, “Ozpin can get over it. He deserved to be hit! I would have done a whole lot worse to him…” So is the difference only that one attacker is a military professional and the other is… a huntsmen professional who soon after that scene starts working for the military? Yeah. The show continually ignores that the group aren’t the rogue heroes they pretend to be. They worked under Ironwood for weeks, if not months.

The show isn’t clear about its morals and neither are the fans, with both changing tactics whenever it helps blame the character they already don’t like. When Robyn punches the barrier, do we really think she wouldn’t have hit Jacques if given the chance? Why would it be heroic for her to hit the Evil Man but it’s not okay for the grunt minor character to hit the other Evil Man? These morals don’t change just because you like Robyn and don’t like Ironwood.

Jumping ahead for a moment, we get another example of this hypocrisy with Joanna. A reporter is informing the people that the military seems to have stopped evacuations and there is an unheard number of grimm hanging out overhead, both things that are objective facts. He’s reporting as he should, sticking to what’s known and provable, and thus is, notably, not some lackey of Ironwood’s who is hastily presented as evil. Yet Joanna treats him like he is. She snatches the microphone from him and, when he starts to protest, threatens him with her weapon. After she’s done hijacking the feed, she shoves him on her way out.

Look at how scared this guy is. These are our heroes? This back and forth doesn’t work. Prior to his random killing spree, Ironwood took his fear and frustration out on some furniture, yet the show acted as if he was hurting real people. The mere possibility that he might use violence and intimidation to achieve heroic goals—getting Amity up/escaping Salem—was enough to label him as an antagonist because the understanding was that you can’t act like that no matter what your intentions are. Yet our current heroes can use as much violence and intimidation as they want to achieve their own heroic goal of warning the people? Do we think the story will encourage us to be critical of the group if they start beating up a bunch of Atlas goons to reach the access point? Of course not. And it’s that flip-flopping that’s the problem. Your heroes have to function differently than the villains in order for them to be heroes. Under that logic, our heroes haven’t acted like heroes since mid-Volume 6 and it’s getting harder and harder to watch.

Especially when we take the scene before this into account. Yup, we’ve still got Qrow gunning for Ironwood. Robyn bemoans the fact that they can’t do anything, to which Qrow replies, “We can do something. We can kill the man who put us here.” I… feel like I shouldn’t start repeating myself given how long this recap is—we’ll be here for forever lol—BUT I hope everyone reading this understands precisely how little this makes sense. How god awful a choice it is. I mean c’mon. Robyn attacked Clover unprovoked, Qrow teamed up with Tyrian, he broke Clover’s aura, Tyrian murdered him, Salem is here, and now he’s sitting in a cell with Watts and Jacques… but Ironwood is the guy he wants to kill? REALLY, QROW? THAT’S WHO YOU’RE GOING TO GO AFTER? I really can’t with this show sometimes. RWBY, put your clown makeup on.

We get a cut to Ironwood’s image just so there’s no confusion about who Qrow wants to help kill next and Joanna threatens that reporter who, you know, is also a citizen in need of help and protection… Her “General Ironwood has abandoned you, but we have not” sounds absolutely ridiculous when we just watched her intimidating this guy to get what she wants. ‘You can trust us! Unless we randomly decide we don’t like you.’ I have other things to say about Yang calling out that racist woman later on, but she gets props for helping her regardless. Honestly, I don’t get that sense from the cast very often: that they’d help you even if they don’t agree with you. They certainly didn’t offer that to Ozpin, Ironwood, or the Ace Ops.

There’s a very long shot of a scared toddler staring out the window, just to hammer home how young and innocent Mantle is. Seriously, pay attention to our imagery: Mantle is scared children in homes, cute children fist-bumping Jaune, family photos lost in the street, a stuffed toy run over by hoverbikes. It’s meant to evoke a general sense of domesticity and, again, innocence. Meanwhile, Atlas is only shown via Ironwood and Jacques, the villains. Where are the families living up in the sky? The children? The humanizing details? Our racist woman is an outlier who is quickly silenced by Yang. The rest of Mantle is characterized as victims: scared women, worried fathers, the faunus huddling together in the slums, even another racist who, while an asshole, is supposed to have a point about things like the embargo. Which is all true. These characters are all of these things, it’s just that they’re not unique in this. All this exists above too—from those families, to the faunus slave labor, to the beloved objects that remind you of someone’s worth—but they’re ignored to provide a simplistic look at Atlas as the villain.

Throughout this entire episode the group tosses out snide remarks about how “They” don’t care about you and it’s just… they who? The other thousands of innocents who have nothing to do with Ironwood? The hundreds of Mantle citizens you already evacuated? The redeemable people like Winter and Whitley? The group fights alongside a Schnee who was one of the most vocal racists a year and a half ago, yet writes off the entirety of Atlas as the bad guys. What a mess.

As Joanna’s voiceover finishes, we cut to Yang’s group going after Pietro’s tech. I already covered this scene in our promo material, but to summarize here: horrible tone. Absolutely nonsensical given the situation. Salem is here and Yang is giggling over bikes. In fact, the tone is off for most of the episode (our end being the wonderful exception): Yang’s joy ride, antics with the Mantle citizens, Blake poking fun at Weiss, the tube scene… none of it fits the context of the series’ big bad here to kill everyone. Arguments along the lines of, “But it can’t be doom and gloom all the time” or “This is a brilliant parallel to Volume 3 with happy times heralding tragedy” don’t erase the fact that our cast isn’t taking this threat seriously. Last week Weiss’ “We’re never going to sleep again” moment worked because it’s humor in the context of how bad everything is. All of this? It’s just the group goofing off despite supposedly being in mortal danger. This?

This doesn’t read well. I’d argue this scene is even worse in context due to lines like “The others are definitely missing out.” In our promo material I assumed that the group just split for the sake of splitting and they were, in fact, just missing out on something cool. But we’ve since learned that they split due to a fundamental disagreement about how to help people, a split Ruby compared to Salem’s plans, a split that Yang started! Why is she now acting like their separation is a funny “missing out” moment? It’s like if half your friend group decided to go to the movies while the other half went to a party with an unexpectedly good DJ. The movie-goers are people who are “missing out,” not the group who went off to take over a military base and everyone left angry.

Keep in mind that Ozpin is also back. Every fun times scene with Oscar in it has the added problem of Ozpin hanging back, not saying anything, not acknowledged, still a secret.

The other issue I brought up weeks back was the lack of grimm. Why are the streets deserted? Shouldn’t the army be overrunning the city? Well, turns out that there’s no army because… Salem just hasn’t bothered to send it into the city yet? When Jaune and Ren take out the low-level grimm Oscar asks if they’ve “already pushed this far in,” to which Yang replies, “No, I think those are from last night.” A few minutes later, last night’s grimm change to new non-Salem grimm as Oscar observes, “It’s the negativity. Salem’s forces aren’t moving in, but it’s enough to attract the stragglers.” Later still, Joanna asks, “…grimm are circling out there. What are they waiting for?” GOOD QUESTION. We don’t know, but it’s real convenient, isn’t it? RWBY redeems itself a bit at the end of this episode with that Hound grimm, but I’m still calling it out for having Salem hold off long enough for the group to evacuate pretty much all of Mantle and infiltrate the base. That’s real nice of her. As the characters keep pointing out, it would be a staggeringly different situation if they were overrun with grimm right now, huh? Kind of like the situation Ironwood (rightfully) assumed they’d be dealing with.

Again, I’m so glad our Big Bad is kind enough to let the heroes do everything they need to before lifting a finger to attack them.

RWBY seems to be setting up a, “See! There was always time to evacuate the city!” accusation even though no one could have known that and it makes zero logical sense. Salem brings an army with her so she can not use the army against Atlas? Right…

This all segues directly into our other promo scene. My initial comments still stand: the tone doesn’t work, the lack of urgency doesn’t work (Jaune playing with the kid, Oscar politely knocking on doors), the low-level grimm are not a threat, that shield is useless against anything not driven by plot convenience, and it’s weird for Jaune to be yelling, “Heads up!” when there’s no one in front of him. As said, this moment really doesn’t sit well given everything that’s going on. I had hoped that it would read better when seen in the episode itself, but that’s sadly not the case.

After Ren one-shots the grimm Jaune suggests that they use his amplified semblance to get everyone to the crater safely. Ren seems less than pleased about this, but agrees. Right now, it’s easy to say that he’s in a bad mood because Nora is mad at him, but what about the Volume before? Where’s this underlying tension coming from? I can come up with lots of theories, but at some point the show needs to confirm something. The longer we go not explaining what’s wrong with Ren, the less faith I have that it will make sense when we get it.

We see the racist woman upset that they have to go live with the “animals in the slums” rather than going up to Atlas. As said, I like that Yang helps her despite clearly hating the woman, I also think her criticism holds up well (ignoring the simplified ‘They abandoned you’ narrative). The only thing that bugs me is RWBY continually presenting racism as a problem to throw a band-aid on and then pat yourself on the back for ‘solving.’ Racist drunk says shit? Toss him in the trash! Racist woman says shit? Remind her that her survival depends on you! It’s not that these responses aren’t earned, but that we’re given them instead of an actual arc that tackles the complexities of this issue. I mean, Blake has abandoned the White Fang and we’ve barely mentioned the faunus slave labor in Atlas. When they head to the dust facility it’s conveniently run by bots instead of faunus. Can you imagine if Weiss Schnee walked into a group of exploited minorities, hoping to use them to access a military base? But of course, there’s nothing like that. RWBY ignores the actual issues for these simple solutions. Heroes just attack/threaten racists and then it all goes away. Yay.

The other problem with this scene is that we learn the crater is the slums. Um… what? Hold on, Joanna made it sound like it’s a separate place, potentially inhabited by grimm, yet it’s the same area Oscar was in last episode? How is that area warmer? This makes no sense to me.

Also, ha, the crater below Atlas apparently houses all the “animals” that Team RWBYJNR is very protective of. I’m waiting for them to do something that messes with the Staff—Ruby reaching for it in the opening—Atlas crashes down on a whole city of exploited minorities, and then Ironwood is blamed for it somehow. Can’t wait for that episode.

So the group starts making their way there and hark! An Ozpin! I’m always thrilled to hear him, even if he’s treated just terribly by the show. Oscar is at the back of the group and comments that “It should not be this hard just getting people to cooperate.” Except… they are cooperating? Oscar, you are watching them cooperate right in front of you. That one woman might grumble a bit, but she hasn’t made a move or said a word about not doing what you say. Where did this complaint come from? Another example of RWBY insisting something is there when it simply isn’t. More importantly, Ozpin responds:

“And yet, it’s becoming something I’m increasingly concerned about.”

“You know, I really don’t need your additional comments right now.”

Then why did you comment out loud, Oscar? What, do you normally talk to yourself like that? You were clearly speaking to Ozpin! Don’t criticize him for responding. I hate traps like that.

Ozpin immediately says that Oscar has every right to be upset and apologizes for leaving… it’s not apologizing for his entire existence like I wrote on the bingo board, but it’s close. Who’s surprised that Ozpin is the first to offer (another) apology? Not me. Oscar corrects him with, “I’m upset you came back!”

Okay. Here’s the thing. I like the idea of Oscar rejecting Ozpin both because he’s taken over his life and because Oscar has suffered horribly due to Ozpin’s presence (punched, slammed into walls, kidnapping attempts, etc.) That makes sense, it’s actually morally complex, and it’s great groundwork for character growth. The only problem is… this came out of nowhere. Oscar was shown accepting this new life when he left the farm. Then again when he insisted on fighting Hazel. Then again all the times he’s been told he’s acting like Ozpin and seems to accept that just fine. He’s clearly pleased with this new badass self he’s got going on—he even says as much—yet doesn’t want to acknowledge Ozpin as the catalyst for all this positive change. Okay, that’s something we could still work through, but what about the group? Fans are already theorizing that this is why Oscar is keeping Ozpin a secret, because he’s scared of how the group will react, punishing him to get at Ozpin again, and though he 100% has reasons for thinking that will happen, Oscar hasn’t shown that fear before now. Qrow punches him? Bonding moment with Ruby. Jaune attacks him? I made you all dinner. They all smile over his inevitable death/disappearance? He smiles back. Yang is the most scream-y? Happy to have her using him as an armrest. The group continually ignores him and treats him with suspicion? Not a peep of protest. It’s horrifying that Oscar accepted how the group previously treated him, but he did accept it. Where did this fear come from if we haven’t seen it in response to the harm done towards him? Just as importantly, can’t we have an arc where Oscar is mad at the team some too? I’ll admit that the general premise of blaming Ozpin makes sense for the traumatized fourteen-year old, but after two years of blaming Ozpin for everything… aren’t we sick of this? His team has actively hurt him, outside of Ozpin’s ability to prevent, yet Ozpin is the one who takes all the heat for their behavior. “I felt like I was actually part of the team” should lead to the realization of, “Hey, Yang shouldn’t yell at both of us for things outside of our control” not, “Hey, you should stay away forever because others have decided they don’t like you.”

All of this following Ozpin saving Oscar’s life in the airship. Then saving his life again after Ironwood shot him. Our heroes are real grateful, huh. I hate that RWBY is taking another fave and doing them dirty, though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

Ozpin also mentions his magic—would be nice if Oscar brought that up with the team!—and that he is now “recollecting my longest held memories.” He…is? When? Don’t you think that’s something important to show us? We keep being told that “the merge” is occurring but not shown what that actually means. Seriously, when did Oscar get slammed with that many memories??

Please just use the aura machine and give Ozpin a robot body. RT doesn’t have the chops for writing this situation.

As they continue on towards the crater Ren snaps at Jaune about not needing a “pep talk.” Jaune looks annoyed at the attitude which, fair. It says a lot about the writing the last few years that Jaune is the character I’m least frustrated with lol. Likely because they haven’t had him do anything lately which, given that he’s not one of the title characters and our cast is bloated enough as it is, I’m still totally fine with.

Ozpin concludes the scene with, “We need to find a way to work together. Not just the two of us, all of us” with the camera panning up to look at Atlas. I’m glad someone isn’t ready to throw Ironwood under the bus. Given how the group reacted to him sparing Lionheart’s name though, I don’t think they’ll follow Ozpin in his forgiveness. If anything, I expect this perspective to just be more hate fuel.

We move to Ruby’s group which now includes May. Woohoo! She still hasn’t gotten half the screen time as Joanna, but I’m really glad she’s here. In fact, between a useful semblance and that adorable courtesy, I love her already. Despite, you know, helping the team break into the base and all that. Everyone has their flaws lol.

She also frames the Amity plan as getting the world “talking again.” Why is everything presented like a fun romp rather than avoiding death via Salem? Absolutely terrible tone this episode.

The group hilariously waltzes past a sign labeled AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and enters the dust facility with the bots I mentioned earlier. This I do like. My hypothetical scenario incorporating the racism issue aside, I like that Weiss is using her knowledge and connections to further the mission, rather than something conveniently dropping into the group’s lap. Like Amity suddenly being ready for launch…So yeah, it makes sense that Weiss would know of a potential way in.

Sending someone up through the tubes though? Ehhh… I know they have aura and everything—and that Zwei was once mailed—but are we sure this is safe?? Doesn’t matter because Nora sends Weiss through with a misplaced button press. Good thing that was the tube heading to the base. Too bad Weiss is heading to a guarded military base alone. It should have been May going first with her semblance activated, but no. Chuck this onto the ever increasing ‘Bad Tone’ pile. There should not be giggles over Weiss being in that level of danger, especially with everything else going on. Ruby’s expression is the only one on point.

Before Weiss is yeeted off though, Penny and Ruby have a talk wherein Ruby lies her ass off. Penny says, “I do not like it when friends fight” and when Ruby starts talking about Yang she corrects her, revealing that she’s actually thinking about Winter and Ironwood. “They were our friends.”

I was ready to sing Penny’s praises and really, she still gets credit for being the only one who has acknowledged this, but her opinion is (once again) overridden by Ruby’s. Penny goes, “but then the Ace Ops attacked you” which Ruby doesn’t bother to correct. How would Penny know otherwise? The only information she has about that battle is what Ruby has told her, but Ruby is lying via omission here. The Ace Ops never attacked her. They very explicitly refused to start a fight. Ruby attacked them. Then when Penny is upset that Ironwood said “people were going to die because of me,” Ruby takes her by the shoulders and angrily insists, “That was a lie and he was only saying it to hurt you.”

Ruby… you’re the one lying. You know damn well Ironwood didn’t just say that to hurt Penny. Oh yeah, the general trying to keep a kingdom alive from an immortal witch is preoccupied with hurting Penny’s feelings for no reason other than being evil. That makes sense. More importantly, Ironwood is right. Look, I’m by no means blaming Penny for anything. She fought off Cinder, took the power when there was no other choice, and has now gotten caught up in Ruby’s plans which include incredibly misleading information that Penny has no reason to question. She’s doing her best and deserves that hug. But that doesn’t mean she lacks responsibility here. Ironwood needs Penny to evacuate. Penny—listening to Ruby—won’t help him. Ergo, if something happens to the people up in Atlas Penny will be partly responsible. If I have the key to a door with lots of people trapped behind it as a fire rages, and I refuse to open that door, I have indeed allowed a lot of people to die. As Penny says, she didn’t want this responsibility… but she has it. She has to deal with it. Too bad she’s with Ruby who encourages her to ignore it instead, insisting that nothing bad that happens after their choices could in any way be connected to them. Kind of like Qrow ignoring his own actions against Clover.

Because that’s the takeaway from this scene. Penny had empathy for their friends and then Ruby talked her out of it. She never even acknowledges that those were indeed seven friends that she betrayed. That’s horrible.

What happened to Ruby? I used to love this girl.

Continuing our tone issue, Nora is watching this show like her favorite soap is on. Okay then.

Weiss goes up the tube and then we cut to Fiona saying that… the Mantle police are helping them evacuate? So the military is bad, but the police are good? I need to stop trying to make sense of RWBY’s allegory.

When Yang and the others return Fiona makes an innocent comment about being worried about how they’d fare without the rest of their team. Yang is pissed.

Ah, so we’re back to her giving allies attitude for random observations. Remember the anger at Marrow for suggesting she and Blake try different team-ups? Now here Yang is, in a different team-up, doing quite well. Funny how we never acknowledge who first suggested that. Now, Fiona reveals a totally logical worry that losing four fighters might make a difference when fending off grimm, but Yang is poised to be angry at everyone, about everything, all the time. Which I get is something that a lot of fans like. I’ve already seen a couple of posts praising RT for letting Robyn and Yang be angry without consequences because women often can’t do that and, fair. That is indeed one way to read it. My problem is that their anger is actually irrational, not just called as much because we women are ~emotional~. Their anger isn’t justified: Robyn because she had a significant hand in all this nonsense (that she’s ignoring) and Yang because it’s clear Fiona means no harm here. This is anger that needs to be called out, not ignored because yay women expressing emotion. That kind of defense is reserved for a woman’s justified anger that needs to be expressed without criticism, especially in a narrative that tries to undermine her perspective. But what has Fiona done to Yang? Nothing. More importantly, the show has yet to teach Yang a better coping mechanism than lashing out at people, be it with her fists, words, or angry glares. Yang has been through the ringer and it makes sense that she’s angry, but that doesn’t mean she gets a lifelong pass to treat those around her badly.

Anyway, Joanna says they have a lot of people to keep warm even though the crater was supposed to be warmer? And they’re stealing dust? So what are they using it for it not heat? We’re not seeing any difference here and frankly all the civilians should be dead by now. Or at least entering hypothermia. (Give me that conflict: how do you keep people safe when they’re not all conveniently up for walking all the way to the slums?) Joanna also says that they’re trying to get the “Old mine shafts into a livable condition” which would take how long exactly? In fact, I’d say our timeline is already wonky. We’ve watched Yang hide the Ace Ops last Volume, fly to Winter and Penny, find the Happy Huntresses, wait around for Oscar to show up, ran off on her own at some point to scout, went to get bikes, evacuated all those people to the (far away) slums, then went back out to fight off the grimm. That had to have taken up a good chunk of the night, though it’s impossible to tell the time with Atlas’ snowy sky. I’m leaning towards a bingo mark though…

The faunus who I thought was a badger or something is… a bear I guess? He has a bear-like paw, but his nails seem too long… I honestly don’t know. But he’s Fiona’s uncle! Cute. She's off to deal with a fight that’s starting while the group goes to fight more grimm. Finally, the episode gets good.

The teamwork to take out the dragon grimm was nice, always glad to see it, but the real fight starts when two more grunts show up and then immediately run away. What could have scared them off?

The Hound. (I’m sorry, all I can think of is Game of Thrones when I write that, but it seems to be the name the fandom is adopting, so…) Remember how I said it was unlikely to be a threat on its own? I WAS WRONG. Holy shit this thing is terrifying. It snatches Oscar and in some wonderfully quick animation absolutely obliterates the kid. Oscar is thrown around like a chew toy, desperately trying to rabbit kick at this thing and it does [checks notes] absolutely nothing. I’d normally say something about our farm boy always getting the shit kicked out of him, but this scene was too good for my salt.

Then it changes shape, growing arms, and starts using Oscar as a shield. Yang can’t pull back in time and is snagged by her head, the Hound tossing her into the wall hard enough to break the stone. She’s still conscious though and warns the others about its strategy.

“But grimm aren’t that smart,” Jaune says. Maybe if you kids (Fiona keeps calling them kids) had stayed in school you would have learned that grimm get smarter with age! Oobleck knew that. Or, just as likely, this is a special Salem grimm. Hard to say at this point.

The point though is that the group is helpless in the face of this monster. I do want to emphasize this. I’ve seen a few people criticizing them for not doing enough to save Oscar and it’s like, what did you want them to do? Yang tried to attack and the grimm nearly had her hitting Oscar instead. Ren tried to attack and the grimm changed so fast his weapon was useless. Factor in that morphing—which the group has never seen before—the horror of Oscar hanging there limp, and the general fighter response of, ‘I can’t just keep attacking head on because that thing might kill me,’ and you realize the group was screwed from the start. They can’t stand up against this thing, not without a good strategy anyway, which there’s no time to think up. For the first time in years, ever since Tyrian, Salem actually made the right, villainous call.

Ren screams, “Give him back!”—which was just lovely in an angsty way—and the grimm creepily cuddles Oscar against his chest. Then he responds, “No.” Yeah, they’ve never seen that before either. Can you blame them for their shock? I’m impressed that they were on their bikes just seconds later, managing to keep the grimm in sight. That speaks to their combat experience. Not the ability to power through a situation where they’re clearly outmatched, but their ability to pick themselves back up and try again.

... Ah, so that’s why Pietro was oh so randomly making them bikes. The plot needed a way for them to keep up with a flying grimm. Got it.

My takeaway? RT should be writing horror. They’re far better at it. The animation, sound effects, voice acting, the grimm’s speech and protective instincts, that splatter of goo on Oscar’s cheek…

... stellar all around. Like the Apathy, this is the best I think RWBY has been since the lore episode of Volume 6. Granted, action sequences like this aren’t required to grapple with any of the messy morals and character consistency of other scenes, but still. If RWBY had just given me a lighthearted ‘Girls fight cartoon monsters’ show or a horror fueled ‘Girls fight monster abominations’ show, I’d have been happy. This? This is the only redeeming part of the episode. And it’s indeed one hell of a redemption. Look at this thing!

I’m not going to say it erases all the bad we got—it doesn’t—or that it likewise erases problems like Salem not using the rest of her army, but it’s a notable step in the right direction. This grimm is a threat. This grimm is a mountain the cast has to overcome. If this is the minion its master should be Everest. I still think this Volume is going down the tubes fast (it’s going the way of Weiss lol), but if it can give me more scenes like this? It might not be a total loss.

Last thing to acknowledge: What about Ozpin? I’ll admit it doesn’t look good. Given how fast he takes control he should have been able to override Oscar’s will and at least fight back a little with that spectacular magic we saw during the finale. So why didn’t he? I hope we get an in-world explanation: it happened so fast even Ozpin couldn’t do anything (shaky, but I’ll take it in a pinch), now that the merge is farther along he can no longer take control—something. Because I can easily imagine how quickly the fandom, and even the cast, will turn on him for not playing deus ex machina here. In reality, I think Ozpin didn’t take control simply because the plot needed him not to. The writers needed Oscar kidnapped so any potential out from that is conveniently forgotten… which is another knock against their writing, despite how great the scene otherwise was. The point is to take all these potential pushbacks and find a satisfying way to circumvent them, not pretend they don’t exist. RT can still save themselves here by providing that explanation later, so I hope they’re smart enough to do that. Ozpin has been blamed for everything at this point. His own kidnapping doesn’t need to be added to the list.

Also, still no word on Schrödinger's councilman. We’ve got to wait another week to see whether he’s dead or not.

Finally, let’s update the bingo card!

I’m crossing off “Ruby gives an ‘inspiring’ speech built on ignoring facts she doesn’t like” for that conversation with Penny. Yeah, it’s a speech to her alone about her worth, but Ruby mischaracterized the situation so badly I’m mad at her lol

I never thought the story would straight up just not have the grimm army attacking, so I think I’ll hold off on “Army of grimm conveniently doesn’t kill any civilians” until we see if/when it gets involved.

I’ll likewise hold off on the timeline slot until we see how bad things get…

Maria is on thin ice given that we have no idea what she’s supposedly doing while the group is off on their missions. Stay tuned.

Today we’re crossing off “Deadly cold conveniently doesn’t kill any civilians.” They should all be dropping like flies by now.

A friend pointed out that Cinder’s Cinderella flashback counts as an “Overly obvious fairy tale allusion.” In fact, I talked about how much of a shorthand that is, so that’s getting a mark.

From last week I’ve also decided to include Amity for “Retconning previous lore.” Now that the group is fully underway with their plan it reads as even more egregious that we were told it wasn’t ready.

I’ll hold off on Ozpin’s space for a while. See if he apologizes to the whole group and, if so, exactly what for.

“Oscar is finally kidnapped”—check!

Well, that’s a whole lot of headway this week. Can’t wait to see where the next episode takes us... Here’s hoping we spend a lot of time with that Hound. MVP of the episode.

Until next time! 💜

[Ko-Fi]

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #mymetas #rwby recaps

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sjjdkdkwo · 3 years

Text

A sort of continuation of this? (Because reading this alone doesn’t make sense otherwise) But I ended up liking the idea and thought a little more on it.

Stephen panted as he ran through the labyrinth of tunnels and rooms that made up Tony’s hidden lab beneath the cabin. By now he knew the entirety of the workshop like the back of his hand, and after about thirty minutes had come to the conclusion that every exit in the lab had been sealed shut from the inside. That had left him with only one option, get to the mainframe and figure out a way to shut down Tony from there. Reaching the clear solid doors of the control center Stephen reached out to see if the door would open and found no success. Realizing that Tony must’ve figured out his plan and had sealed the door accordingly, Stephen muttered and incantation. To his growing horror however, nothing happened.

“No…” Stephen uttered, voice unsteady under his growing panic.

He granted himself another attempt and again produced nothing. He growled in frustration as he tried again, watching as his hands shook harder under the pressure that took over his mind and soul. After six or so futile attempts he straightened and decided to forgo magic all together and take another route in getting in. Stepping back about 30 paces he squared his shoulders and took a deep breath before heading toward the door at full speed, and rammed his shoulder right into it.

He cried as the cuff on his shoulder produced a striking bought of pain then trailed down to his hands causing them to tingle and twitch. Sliding down the door he heaved a heavy sigh before getting back up to try again. This time when his shoulder met the door, it opened. And sent him barreling into the room only to collide with the floor and smack his head hard against the surface. He groaned from his spot on the ground, head throbbing along with a terrible ringing in his ears. Before Stephen could even attempt to get up though, the door behind him sealed shut with a soft hiss, before the distinct sound of a lock clicking in place could be heard. Stephen’s eyes widened as he whipped his head around to stare at the door in silent dread.

It had been a trap.

“Please. You don’t have to do this.” He called out weakly to the empty room around him. “We can talk it through, I promise I’ll listen to you.”

“That’s funny, that’s exactly what you said last time.” Tony’s hollow voice echoed throughout the lab. Stephen shuddered at the sound. “Only to ignore me for five months straight after.”

“I’m sorry, I lost track of time I—I didn’t mean to neglect you. “ Stephen said.

“And yet you did.”

“Please…” Stephen pleaded again.

“Please what? Please let you go on with your useless research—” Tony’s voice sneered. “—Just you can turn everything back to normal and get rid of me in the process? Did you really think I’d take that sitting down? You brought me here Stephen, now your stuck with me.”

“This wasn’t how this was meant to go!” Stephen grit out and clenched his fists tightly. “I should’ve read through the spell better. But I didn’t, and I’m sorry for that.”

“Not sorry enough to let me live.”

“We can find a way. I can try; let me look through it again. There has to be something there!” Stephen said, his voice frantic even to his own ears.

“I don’t know, Stephen, you really hurt my feelings.” Tony’s voice said, something akin to mocking underneath the dejected tone he used.

It was enough to snap something inside Stephen, causing him to abandon any thoughts of parleying and bargaining with the hologram and instead fueling him with anger and hate.

“Your feelings were a mistake!” Stephen snarled. “All you are is a cluster of lens and lasers that got up and walked!”

Stephen laughed scornfully into the open space, wobbling into an awkward standing position as he leaned over workbench beside him. “The only reason you can do anything else is because of me.”

Before Stephen could blink, the hologram appeared in front of him. Stephen tried not to let his uneasiness show as he took him in. Unlike before, the once steady image of Tony faltered sporadically in blinding white sparks now. In between every few seconds that passed, there would be a sudden glitch, altering the image of Tony into something more sinister and grotesque, almost monster like—something completely inhuman. Stephen wondered if it was purposeful.

“And here I thought you’d lost that ego of yours after your little accident.” Tony made a string of tsk noises as he came closer. “I guess some things never change.”

“What do you want?” Stephen asked, exhaustion overlaying his words.

Tony shrugged, his whole body morphing with the glitch this time and revealing a gaunt haunting figure to Stephen.

“I thought that was obvious by now. All I want is you.”

From somewhere in the lab Stephen could make out the sudden noise of something slithering and buzzing toward him. As he looked all around him for the source of the sound Tony chuckled. There. Inching c loser and closer was a small black pool of nanobots. Stephen didn’t have time to move away before they were instantly crawling onto him, wrapping around his neck, arms, and legs before solidifying completely into tight restraints. There was something wrong about them though. There was an odd energy around them, dark and forbidding, like a hazy mist around the nanobots. Almost suspiciously like…

“Magic.” Stephen breathed out in shock.

Above him Tony hummed, chuckling again as he paced the area surrounding Stephen.

“Oh yeah. Neat, huh?” He said, “Who would’ve thought the use of magic and science together could be so…right. Certainly not the real Tony Stark, I’ll tell you that much.”

“How?” Stephen whispered.

Tony sighed and Stephen looked at forward to find him reaching out a hand before making a tight fist. Stephen let out and agonizing cry as pain resonated through him from the sudden electric shocks the restraints ran all around his body. But there was something else, a deeper, more stifling pain, coming from somewhere inside Stephen himself—as though it was emitting from his very being. For a brief second Stephen feared he was going to be torn apart from the intensity of being tormented both externally and internally. He could hardly breath when it stopped all together and let his head loll forward. There was a long moment of silence before he found he could speak again.

“I don’t understand.” Stephen mumbled.

Tony groaned loudly and titled his head back in one swift movement. If he’d been a real person, the angle would’ve snapped his neck in half. Rolling his head back forward he shook it as made his way in front of Stephen, and looked at him with a dull expression.

“I can’t believe I thought you were smarter than this.” He said.

“You shouldn’t be able to do that, it’s not possible.” Stephen said through gritted teeth. “How are you doing it?”

“I had a lot of spare time to catch up on my magic reading.”

“Stop messing with me! Tell me now!” Stephen yelled, trying to squirm out of the nanobots hold to no avail. Tony only watched, his blank stare boring into him. It seemed he decided he’d had enough of Stephen’s struggling, as he crept back and lifted a hand again to produce a ball of energy above him palm. Stephen cried as a sharp stabbing sensation passed through him when he did.

“All magic has a source. Every magic user worth their salt knows that.” Tony began. “Your magic comes from the Vishanti, Cyttorak and a number of other sources, some of it even from within your own energy.” He toyed with the energy ball in his hand, twirling it idly between his fingers. “Your late master drew magic from the dark dimension… my magic has a source too, albeit a rather unique one.”

Stephen said nothing as he followed Tony’s words and movements closely. In the back of his mind he tried to sort out exactly what the other meant as he spoke, drawing blank every time he reached for any sort of explanation.

“When you gave me sentience, the spell you used didn’t just require you to use your magic, Stephen. Something had to be given in return, like always.” Tony turned to look at him, a cold and calculating look on his flickering face. “Something already alive that could produce enough energy to create an entirely new life. Something from inside of you, something like—“

“A soul.” Stephen answered quietly, eyes wide and unblinking in his new understanding.

“Exactly.” Tony replied nodding. “In order for you to give me a soul, you had to give up your own. Part of it at least.”

Another realization struck him then, and a cold chill passed through him as he looked at Tony.

“That’s why my magic has been failing.” Stephen murmured disbelievingly. “Because you’ve been draining all of it.”

Tony smiled then, something wicked and sick taking form on his face. “Bingo. Friday, tell our lovely guest what he’s won.”

“You got it, boss.” Friday’s voice called out, lacking trace of personality from her tone.

Stephen felt his stomach sink. She wasn’t supposed to be here, she’d begged him to shut her off until Tony had returned safe and sound. And even if she had been activated against her will, she shouldn’t have sounded the way she did. Stephen had made sure to grant her sentiency too, after all.

“No, you can’t—”

“Doctor Strange has won the lovely company of some new companions.” Friday said.

Stephen couldn’t another word out as he stared in terror when Tony began to produce dust like particles seemingly from thin air. A wave of pain washed over him as he looked on, and he could feel something run down from his eyes and nose but couldn’t give it a second thought in that moment. He chocked back a scream as the meager fragments floated through the air and circulated around one another before coagulating into a sickening mixture of flesh, bone and nickel-titanium alloy.

“Stephen, allow me to introduce you to Mark III, Mark VII, Mark XLII, and last but certainly not least, Mark LXXXV.”

Tony spread out his arms as he stood in front of the, what should have been, once destroyed Iron Man suits. Stephen fought the urge to retch as he processed the abominations before him.

“You shouldn’t be able to do that—even with my magic, you—“ Stephen gasped out, shaking his head as the figures behind Tony moved in a maladroit manner. “The only way you could is if you had—“

“The infinity stones?” Tony countered.

From behind him more nanobots appeared and swarmed around him, stacking atop each other in a structured manner as they began to form an unstable suit around the hologram. To his side more of the nanobots came, this time carrying the source of Stephen’s nightmares for the past fifteen years. Creeping over each other the nanobots lifted the harrowing gauntlet toward the suits hand before resting over it and clicking into place.

“Surprise.” Tony said, laughing when he noticed Stephen’s despairing look. “What’s wrong? Are you upset that I managed to do what you spent years trying to accomplish, in just…oh I don’t know, seven months?”

“How?” Stephen found himself asking again.

“I simply followed in the footsteps of my predecessor, only this time I added a little magic.”

A thought passed through Stephen’s mind.

“Friday.”

Something cold flashed through the holograms eyes.

“You know how the soul stone works, yes.”

“Then you loved her too.”

“Maybe, but I loved you more.”

Stephen let out a pitiful noise, curling in on himself as he fought the urge to cry for the AI he’d come to befriend in many other timelines.

“Don’t tell me you feel bad, Stephen. What happened to being nothing but a cluster of lens and lasers that got up and walked?” Tony sneered.

Stephen didn’t dignify him with an answer, and if he found that it was because he actually couldn’t think of one, Tony didn’t need to know.

“So what? What’s your plan now?”

“I’m going to give you everything you want.” Tony said, smiling at Stephen before the flow of magic and energy from the stone surrounded him. “Starting with bringing back all your friends.”

Beneath them, the floors shook violently before they cracked open from the pressure and uncovered the dirt that lay before them undisturbed. It wasn’t long before that stirred too, clumps up dirt pushing out from the ground as a string of decomposed arms flung out after. They reached out to grab onto the earth around them and pulled themselves from the ground, rotting heads and bodies following them and out into the open air. One by one every fallen hero Stephen had seen brutally murdered crawled out from the grot and trudged up to meet them. At the front, the skeletal remains of Tony Stark trekked forward and directly to Stephen. When he reached him he settled in front of him and let out a blood-curdling shriek. His Hologram howled with laughter.

“Maybe I was wrong, Stephen. I think he does still like you after all!”

Stephen craned his back as the corpse inched closer, the nauseating smell of rot making Stephen gag as it tried to grab at him.

“Enough.”

The corpse went still, just before it could get at Stephen’s face.

“I told you I’d give you everything you wanted, Stephen.” Tony said, floating above the carcasses. “Why don’t we try this again? Starting from the beginning.”

Before him, Tony began to change. The hair he lacked began to grow, and his sunken face began to round with fresh tissue and muscle, along with the creation of new eyes. Stephen stared mesmerized as the man before him became revitalized with newfound cognizance as the light behind his eyes flickered back to life. Only to be shrouded in confusion and panic at the sight of Stephen.

“Stephen? What’s going on? Where’s Thanos?” Tony asked frantically, shouting when he turned around and was met with the horrible sight of his own hologram and it’s creations. “What the hell is that!?”

“What do you think, Stephen?” The hologram asked, staring soberly at him.

“I think you’re a monster.” Stephen said hollowly.

The hologram shook his head. “No, Stephen.”

He paused before speaking again.

“I’m human.”

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inkribbon796 · 3 years

Text

Like a House of Cards Ch. 11: Opposites React

Summary: The heroes go looking for Dark and Logan’s group.

Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

As they stood on the street, the Anomaly that would appear in a bank vault gone from the Host’s hands, they had to recover from the power of the Anomaly coursing through them for a second time.

Chase collapsed onto his knees, feeling just a soul-deep sorrow. He was crying from memories and loss he couldn’t remember. “Fook.”[1]

“Chase?” Jackie dragged his feet over, he was feeling sluggish but it was thankfully easing from his body quickly.

“I’m fine,” Chase wiped his face with his arm. “I’m fine.”

“We can stop fer[2] a bit,” Jackie promised, helping Chase up.

“I’m grand,”[3] Chase promised.

“The Host and Chase will form one group, and Silver, Ethan, and Jackie will form the other as they try to find Dark’s group. “He asks that the heroes get their outfits back on, and for Silver and Jackie to try not to get themselves into trouble.”

“Ehh, we should be fine,” Jackie promised. “So long as Chase is gonna be okay.”

“We gotta talk anyways,” Chase nodded at the Host. “Try not ta[4] fight a hoard ‘a[5] bears.”

“No promises,” Mark smiled, and then the three of them left.

Silver, Crank, and Jackie waited in the alley for almost five minutes, getting bored. Ethan’s ADHD kicked him in the teeth before Mark’s did. Then a shootout started next to them. Several people were screaming and someone that the heroes thought looked a lot like Dark when he was pretending to be Damien. Except he wasn’t in his typical outfit, his hair was wild, and there was a streak of blue in his hair.

Ethan immediately cloaked them with his invisibility. They began to approach.

Two guys jumped on him and dragged him away. And then someone who looked almost exactly like Chase passed by the mouth of the alley.

“Don’t fookin’[6] let that arsehole[7] escape again!” Chase shouted.

The heroes got closer as the men used magic to tie “Damien” up.

He looked down at the bonds and then smiled at “Chase” which made the other man groan, “Dames, Don’t.”

“Kinky,” Dames smiled, his smile huge, leaning forward as much as the bonds would let him. “Chase. How’s life, doll?”

Chase glared at his captive before leaning in to get close to his face. “What the fook is wrong wit’ yeh?”[8]

The bound man just smiled, shrugging, “You’re going to have to be specific?”

“I meant Marvin, yeh mad fook, are yeh tryin’ ta kill my kid?”[9] Chase spat.

Dames’ only answer was, “If you wanted to get rough in bed, we’d need a bed for that.”

Chase grabbed him by the front of his shirt, “Keep yer[10] brat away from my kid, I don’t want the General killin’[11] him.”

“What’s with all this “killing” business,” Dames chuckled. “You and Gen are worried so much for your little games. They’re old enough to make all kinds of decisions.”

“Yeh taking the boys ta’a whorehouse isn’t a good choice, ya nutter,”[12] Chase spat.

“True,” Dames agreed, “they really had more fun with each other.”

“Fook this,” Jackie finally decided, as his whole body began to shake.

Silver grabbed Ethan and flew up, Ethan keeping them invisible as Jackie punched one of the thugs and then grabbed Dames, racing off with him. Silver flying in to keep up.

“What are you doing?” Silver demanded. “We’re supposed to be laying low.”

“I don’t know, I’m makin’[13] this up as I go along,” Jackie yelled, tugging Dames with them as they ran.

“What are we doing?” Dames asked. “Are we playing tag?”

“Yes!” Jackie yelled before anyone else could speak. “An’[14] Brody back there’s it.”

“Oh,” Dames said with a soft realization, then he smiled and grabbed them. “Well, we won’t win like this.”

Then they suddenly found themselves being slammed into the concrete wall of an alley, Jackie taking an especially hard hit because of his momentum.

Dames was looking them up and down as the heroes regained their composure, the corner of Dames’s mouth twitching a little bit. “You three aren’t from around here.”

“How’d yah[15] guess?” Jackie smiled as he got up, Silver floating before he was able to stand.

“Silly cheaters,” Dames laughed. “Couldn’t win your own game so you jumped to a new board.”

“It is so weird seeing you like this” Silver set his feet on the ground.

Dames shrugged, and then a portal began to twist open. It wasn’t quite like Dark’s dark purple-black Void magic. It was a deep red-magenta that felt more like hands ripping their way free.

Ethan tried to shield them but Dames couldn’t be cloned and excitedly stepped free to meet the man who stepped out of the portal. He had a sharp black suit and a bushy black mustache. A red and magenta aura coming off of him like Dark’s red and blue aura. He had dark red and magenta after images that echoed and stuttered off of him.

“Gen,” Dames smiled excitedly, holding his arms out.

“Where’s Junior?” Gen asked.

“I don’t know,” Dames denied, his good mood quickly starting to evaporate. “Ask your little trackers you put on them.”

General glared at Dames, “What were you two doing?”

“Nothing,” Dames almost giggled.

Dark’s glare became more baleful and he grabbed Dames by the front of his jacket, Dames giggling in response. “Don’t give me that bullshit, Dames. Did you let Bim go off with that hooligan?”

“Mayhaps,” Dames’s smile became almost giddy.

“Dames!” the General pinned him against the closest wall. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten what you did,” Gen spat. “You can waste your time at brothels and clubs all you want, but you leave Junior out of it.”

Dames began giggling, “You have to admit, yours and Chase’s faces when you saw they were gone was pretty hilarious.”

“This isn’t funny!” the Entity snarled. “Bim is impressionable, no thanks to you. It burned down with them still in it!”

“At least I show him how to have a good time,” Dames dared. “You’d have him at a desk working papers until he died. He’s a kid.”

“Not anymore,” the General warned. “He stopped being a child when he turned sixteen. They all did.”

Dames rolled his eyes, “Ughh.”

The General stepped closer, “You cannot insist on treating them all like children, they are not.”

“Only because you wanted them to grow up, they never got to be children in the first place,” Dames argued back.

“You’re absolutely insufferable,” the Entity scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Why is being alive and safe so unfavorable to you.”

“You’d have him die in an office,” Dames spat.

“No I’d have him alive doing something,” the demon spat. “You insist on treating all of them like children. They are not, nor have they been for years.”

“I want my babies back,” Dames looked away, clearly upset. “What was so wrong with them being my babies? You said I could keep them.”

“They are safe, that should be enough. Do I make myself clear, Doomstrum?” Gen spat, his aura coiling just a hair too tight around the mad mayor.

Dames struggled in his hold for a bit before stopping, clearly refusing to look at or answer him.

Mark would have forced himself out of Ethan’s invisibility bubble, but the hero watched the demon’s expression soften for a couple seconds and then sighed before opening up a massive portal to show a relatively spartan office except for a very nice looking desk and a couch that looked extremely comfortable to sleep on. He let Dames go. “Let’s go Dames.”

The madman frowned and took a step before turning around, a smile spreading on his face again, “Oh, Gen, I have to introduce you to my new friends.”

“Your what?” The demon growled in frustration.

“Yeah they’re just,” Dames began, pointing to the three heroes at the end of the alley right before a portal ripped open behind them and a dark purple aura pulled them in and swiftly closed before the General or Dames could really react in more than surprise.

The three heroes landed on their backs around Dark’s feet in a dimly lit room.

“There we go, problem solved,” Dark announced.

“How does this solve our problems, you’ve led him straight to us!”

Jackie looked up in confusion, Virgil didn’t come with us?

When he looked up at Virgil however he was in a huge dark grey-black overcoat. His hair was different, but the eyeshadow still darkened his face.

Dark brought his aura up in time as a red-magenta magic tried to get into the room. He threw his aura against it and it was gone. “Nonsense, I can cloak areas to keep

magic from getting in.”

“Andy,” someone in a black beanie insisted, tugging on “Virgil’s” coat. The Side had some vitiligo marks on his face and hands, his eyes a deep golden yellow.

“Dee, not now,” Andy hissed.

“But they’re telling the—” Dee tried to report, before he was protectively pushed behind Andy.

“No,” Andy nudged his companions back and pointed to Dark. “I don’t trust you.”

“I don’t trust you,” he pointed to Wilford.

“And I sure as shit don’t trust you,” Andy spat at the Host. His voice was practically dripping with contempt.

“All we need to get to the next rift and we’re gone,” Dark scoffed. “We don’t need your trust.”

“So what’s the actual plan for getting home?” Silver asked the Host. “Seems like they’ve got a lot to deal with right now.”

“Simple we go into what is probably a horribly designed version of my office, and activate the Anomaly so it takes us home.” Dark dusted off his suit with his aura. “The plan’s already been made if you want to talk to the others.”

The Host dispelled an illusion and they saw the three Sides talking to Glitch Logan, and J.J peacefully napping in the corner. There was no sign of his double anywhere.

“I will have everything under control,” Logan spat at his doppelgänger.

“I don’t need to be reassured of anything,” Glitch Logan dismissed. “I have made redundancies and failsafes to ensure they do not die. If I was not certain, I would have raised my complaints. You will protect them, that is the only objective I need to give. If you work with the heroes, or with Google, I care not. Roman, Virgil, and Patton’s survival is all I care about. We spent a year’s worth of time working for it and I have come too far to fail now.”

“I will do so without needless killing” Logan promised.

Glitch Logan gave an inhuman smile, “We shall see, either way it’s inconsequential to me.”

The Anomaly glowed and it engulfed the two Logans completely before just Logan was standing there. He gave a shudder and a bunch of nanites fell to the ground around him, twitching once and then going offline, their components frying themselves so they couldn’t be used by anyone else.

Logan stiffened and Roman raced in to catch him.

“Lo, sweetheart?” Roman pleaded desperately as Logan blinked and coughed as air returned to his lungs.

The Host used a couple words from his narrations and the nanites were all gone from the floor.

Janus briefly checked on Logan before clearing his throat and drawing attention to himself, summoning his staff.

“The Host allowed us to speak with the other Sides, we got but a minute but we’ve come up with a plan,” Janus reported. “There is one fusion we have that enables us to make as much noise and commotion as possible, while showing that we are different people. I have spoken with this world’s Deceit and they cannot fuse—”

“Please don’t call me that, that’s not all I do,” Dee asked.

Janus paused, looking at Dee, “Of course do you have a preference?”

Andy was just watching Janus, staring at him.

“Dee,” Dee told him.

“Alright,” Janus agreed. “Anyways, I have spoken with Dee and they can’t fuse so it will be the easiest way to get the message across.”

“So we’re gonna use Remy?” Jackie asked.

“No,” Logan cut in. “Even before the merge I was not in the right emotional or mental mindset to fuse. My fusions are impossible without that mindset. My future self hinted the feeling would get worse and unfortunately he was right.”

“Okay, you’ve never exactly told us how fusion works,” Ethan reminded. “But I’m guessing that I’m gonna take a group in?”

“The heroes will not need to cause a distraction because the fusion will be enough to convince the General that they are different. Besides, the General will wish to speak to the Entity.”

“Will he?” Dark asked. “Last time he saw me he tried to take my head off.”

“Maybe we should talk to him,” Wilford smiled. “We never gave them a chance.”

“It is so weird seeing him in pink,” Andy commented.

“Why, what’s wrong with it?” Wil frowned. “Pink is a lovely color.”

“Nothing wrong with it, it’s just you’d rather set yourself on fire than wear pink,” Andy explained.

“No I wouldn’t, I’m wearing pink right now,” Wil gestured to himself.

Dark rubbed at the bridge of his nose, “This is going to take forever now.”

“No, I meant the other you, the douchebag in Armani,” Andy explained.

“Well then he should wear pink too,” Wil decided.

Andy let out a snorting chuckle, “Oh, trust me everyone in this city would love to see that.”

The group started to plan a bit so that Silver and Jackie knew what they were doing, and during that time, Janus leaned over to Roman.

“This means nothing, I’d rather Remus was here,” Janus told Roman.

“Well I'd rather Patton was here,” Roman agreed, emotions still running high from the mess with the doppelgängers.

“Good,” Janus spat.

“Good,” Roman glared at him.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Accessibility Translations

1. Fuck

2. for

3. I’m alright

4. to

5. of

6. fucking

7. asshole

8. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

9. I meant Marvin, you crazy fucker, are you trying to kill my kid?

10. your

11. killing

12. You taking the boys to a whorehouse isn’t a good choice, you nutter

13. making

14. And

15. you

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morbidanthem · 4 years

Text

((A/N: I hope this is what you wanted- I made it kinda personal, because I have body issue images myself and this ask kind of made me think about that. I hope you are OK with the platonic romantic relationship I wrote.))

Continuity - Overwatch

Character(s) - Insecure!Reader

Parring - Platonic!Insecure!Reader/ Angela "Mercy" Ziegler

Genre - Angst | Hurt/Comfort

Rating - T for Teen and Up

Warning - Fatphobia

Word Count - 1,137

✏️Written 05/25/20 - 05/26/20✏️ "... Is everything alright?"

It was a very simple question, and yet, you did not have a very simple answer.

In that moment, standing in front of the full body mirror that was in your room, squeezed into a pair of formal dress pants that pulled up over your waist in such an unflattering way… you just… broke.

You turned to look at Angela, you're best friend and confidant, and you just… broke.

"I-I don't… know?" You huffed out, placing a hand over your face to try and hide your tears, as your voice began to shake from all the emotions running their way through your mind.

"I just, I tried so hard… I really did!" You began to shout in an aggressive way, but Angela made no show of nervousness, and did not back down at your display.

"You don’t understand! I literally starved myself! I drank only water for a month straight!" You shouted, as you hunched over in tears, hands covering your now warm and sticky face. "I worked out, nonstop, for weeks! Weeks, Angela!"

You sniffed loudly, as you felt your body begin to shake and quiver as your heart began to beat faster than you could process it.

Angela, again, said nothing as she watched your hunched form with an unreadable expression.

"Nothing I do works! I'll… I'll never look like you." You hissed out in a bitter tone, as you tried to wipe the tears that felt like they endlessly fell from your eyes, as your hands shook so roughly with anxiety that it actually made it hard to steady them enough to wipe away the sting from your sobbing.

"Look at me… Why? Why do I look like this, Angela?" You weeped, as you slumped into one of the chairs you had in the room.

She was a goddess, a majestic queen… You were just a bug, a miserable cockroach who could not even compare.

To make it worse, you must have looked like such a fool to her in this state.

There you sat, a blubbering wailing mess of a human being, topless with nothing but a pair of high waisted dress pants on to barely cover the shame you were trying to hide.

You would have laughed, if you felt up to it, but you didn't have the energy to do much of anything but cry at the moment.

It was funny, seeing someone like you so down on themselves, it made others feel better about their situation.

They could have said, “Hey, at least I don’t look like that guy!” and go about their days while holding their heads up a little higher.

You barely could hear Angela say your name softly, as she knelt down in front of you, a soft yet concerned expression on her face.

"Why must you think so lowly of yourself?" She asked softly, pulling you into an embrace as you continued to weep.

"I'm so ugly, so why does someone like you even want to associate with someone like me?"

It was a very simple question, and yet, you did not have a very simple answer.

You felt her grip tighten around you, as she sucked in a breath through her teeth, as you began to hiccup from the raw emotions you were feeling in the moment.

"You can think what you want, but the truth is that you are not ugly." She began to say. "Nothing I can say will make you think otherwise, but, know that I think you are fantastic the way you are."

"If anything, I should apologize for not noticing it sooner." She sighed, as she pulled away to grab a box of tissues that were sitting on a small end table close by.

"You? What do you have to be sorry for?" You asked, as you wiped your eyes with the plus material, being slightly calmed by the scent of lavender that was infused into the material.

"I am sorry. Sorry, that I did not notice sooner." She spoke with a hushed whisper, it was oddly comforting. "I am your friend, and yet, I seemed to have failed to notice what you were up to."

She placed her cold and steady palms on your warm and flushed cheeks.

It was the most comforting feeling you've felt in such a long while.

"You are the way you are." She said, tilting your puffy swollen face to look up into her sparkling blue eyes.

"Your goals should never be to look like me. To look like anyone. You should aim to be the best you that you can be." Her thumbs began to stroke under your eyes, as she wicked the remaining tears away with her fingers.

"But… what if my best me isn't good enough to impress-"

"Hush now." She spoke sternly, never once breaking eye contact with you. "If someone doesn't love you the way that you are, then they do not deserve your love to begin with. No one is worth losing your body over, this is not the right way to be healthy, just because someone looks good does not mean that they are at a peak performance level."

"Angela…" you were speechless.

No one has ever said anything that remotely kind to you before.

You have always trusted Angela, respect her, and if she could see the value in you… then maybe there really was some value there…

“Everybody is different, and what is healthy and ok for one person may not be healthy and ok for another. It is good to take an interest in changing your eating and exercise habits for the better, but when you get caught up in all of those flashy gimmicks that promise results quickly, well, you can really do some damage to your body.”

She scolded lightly, as she saw what appeared to be understanding flash through your damp eyes. She was glad her message was getting through to you, but right now, she had more important things to worry about.

Like, apparently, getting some actual food into you so that you do not pass out from exhaustion.

"There now, what say you change out of those clothes, and into something more comfortable. I get the feeling you could use a good filling meal." She smiled, as she lifted herself up, while offering you her hand to rise with her.

"Y-Yeah. You are too kind, Angela." You sniffed, as you wiped your face with a tissue once more. “Thank you.”

"Nonsense!" She laughed, as you both embraced, as you felt a smile creep up onto your face. “I am simply your friend, who also happens to be a physician!”

She was the kindest soul you've ever met, and you felt lucky to be as close to her as you are.

She really was a guardian angel.

❤💀❤ Published 05/27/20 ❤💀❤

((A/N: So I had to post the ask like this again, as a screen shot, because tumblr keeps glitching and making the post not work- I am not sure how to fix it, so any other asks I get will have to be like this with a screen shot until it gets fixed.))

#Overwatch #Angela Zeigler #Drabble #Romantic #Hurt/Comfort #Mercy X Reader #Overwatch X Reader #Mercy/Reader #Overwatch/Reader #Long Post

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miannedomusings · 4 years

Text

Jus2′s FOCUS ON ME

OUT OF FOCUS IDOLS

Summary: This gorgeous video gives us more Jus2 than we know what to do with, and shows us the disconnect between idol and fan through the disconnect between lyrics and video

A/N: Quite possibly my favourite MV from 2019, and one that I’ve been wanting to write about since I saw it... So this is well past due, but better late than never! The points I make are based off of two different translations of the lyrics (MV and colorcodedlyrics), and I tried to consider both when interpreting.

In interviews with Billboard and Soompi the Got7 leader-maknae subunit, Jus2, describe their debut EP as a tour through the senses. Each track is dedicated to one of the classic five senses, and the song Senses encapsulates a “sixth sense”. Fittingly, it’s the song representing vision – Focus on Me – that’s paired with a music video, and one that paints a very different picture from what’s given to us through sound.

To me, the lyrics of Focus on Me conjure up a chaotic scene in a club where two people are trying to connect. It’s too loud to hear each other and so all their talking is done through their eyes. Focusing on each other, matching tempos in their dance, until it’s as if it’s only them in the room.

However, like with many of my favourite MVs, the visuals dramatically change the feeling of the lyrics. The video attached to this song contradict the words at almost every turn. It’s as if they’ve used their concept to give us a song that can only be fully understood with the use of sight – a nice touch!

I am very tempted to sit here and write out every time they contradicted themselves in this video. It’s crazy. And impressive – the amount of planning that went into this is admirable and worth boasting. But I’ll do my best to limit myself... Let’s start with one of my favourites:

In the beginning of the first verse (and yet somehow not even the first disconnect between audio and video) Yugyeom delivers the lines,

When there’s the indescribable tension We’re parallel to each other

while leaning to the side at an unnatural angle. It’s one of the only moments in the video where the world tilts like this, putting him entirely out of parallel with the rest of the world (as seen in the lines of the walls behind him). By twisting this line in a very literal sense, he calls into question how honest the sentiment is. The use of the word parallel implies a comparison where he and the person he’s singing to are equal in their lingering feelings. However, with the visuals it seems more like that’s the impression he’d like to give rather than the reality.

More generally, one of the ways they play with the lyrics in this video is by adjusting the camera movements based on the actions that are being described. The camera is almost never still, often feeling like it’s playing the role of us. But despite what we may want, it’s rarely on the same page as Jus2. If they say get deeper, you better believe the camera is backing up instead of diving in; if they say go, we’re taking a pause; if they say stay, we’re zooming back. Probably the least subtle of these is another Yugyeom moment, when he tells us he’ll always go where [we] are. He delivers this line while stopping in his tracks, letting the camera leave the room, door closing in our face, and being cut us off from us entirely.

Things like this are all over the verses – nearly every line. If they mention dim lights, the set is brightly lit, if they mention the moon, get ready to see the stage lighting coming into shot, and on and on. Constantly these two are painting pictures with their words that the video doesn’t deliver on.

The chorus is probably where it becomes the clearest (it’s when I first noticed it at least). The only lyrics they need to make happen (or more accurately, not get in the way of) is the single repeated line, Now focus on me. And yet, the first chorus meets us with glitching edits that switch between JB and Yugyeom so that we can’t possibly focus on either of them, as well as choreography that obscures most of their faces.

By the second and third choruses they’ve switched up their tactics a bit, keeping the same obscuring choreography, but now asking us to focus while having a dozen people on the screen. Focusing is made all the more impossible since at least four of the dozen are the two men we’re meant to be watching – it’s tough to choose where to look, let alone maintain focus on the one that’s actually singing, tucked away several sets back as the world fills in in front of him.

The song is full of commands to focus and to look into their eyes, and yet every time these tasks are made impossible: they look away, the camera goes out of focus, there are too many versions of JB and Yugyeom for us to know where to look. All of which is topped off with distracting pulsing lights and glitches that cut into the video.

But what are they trying to tell us with these endless contradictions?

It’s with the first chorus that we’re given what we need to put the constant conflict between what we’re hearing and what we’re seeing into context. This is when JB and Yugyeom get an audience. A crowd of women sit in the stands and watch these two as they perform on a catwalk stage. But importantly, everyone in the audience wears 3D glasses – a tool used to bring two images into a focused one. And so, we can identify with this crowd as we see them trying to follow through on the same instructions as us and bring the two idols into focus.

For me, this scene takes the song to somewhere a little meta, where it feels like we’re having the idol-fan relationship laid out for us. The lyrics give us the fantasies promised by all idols to their fans, and the visuals point to a hollow truth.

There are two main elements in the dream that idols are selling: there’s the fantasy surrounding the fan, and the fantasy surrounding the idol.

Starting with the fan, the fantasies presented in this song feel personal. They’re singing to you, they’re matching tempos with you, and just as you try to focus on them, they promise that it’s only you. But of course, it isn’t just you. There are many you’s listening and being swept along by these sentiments.

A reality of the idol-fan relationship is that it is uneven. There is an endless sea of fans admiring each single idol, and inevitably this creates a connection that differs depending on the direction it’s travelling. From a fan’s perspective it can feel as though a connection develops on a personal level; if you pay enough attention you’ll pick up on their personality, their sense of humor, their quirks. But this connection can’t be reciprocated. Not to say that idols don’t love their fans, but the connection felt for a group of people too big to easily quantify can’t reach that same individualized level. However, the lyrics ignore this and tell the listener sweet lies.

The video on the other hand points to reality. It does a good job of visualizing this with the audience present in the first chorus. They all have black hair, wear black clothes, and slowly fade into the black background as they stretch into the distance. They’re not indistinguishable (different hair styles, different clothes) but they do blend together into an impersonal mass.

Despite the audience’s focus on the stage, JB and Yugyeom don’t give them any direct attention, instead performing for the camera. They’re singing to a you, to their fans, who are right there, but instead they commit to the performance and the camera. They prioritize the connection with the person watching the video – this makes it feel more personal for the real audience watching through a screen while showing us how impersonal it really is.

The trouble with having so many you’s to sing to is that their attention has to be split. We see this in how they ignore the audience in favour of the camera, and in the way they sing, Let me love you. Both times this line is featured, we see Yugyeom and JB break from facing forward, rotating each time they deliver the line. It’s as if they’re trying to direct their love outward in all directions so that every fan can feel it coming their way. The visual feels especially cold since for the majority of the video we’ve heard them sing to just one person as they hold eye contact with the viewer.

Similarly, when delivering the most potent fantasy – only you and me – we get reminders that it can’t be true. The line gets delivered as we travel through shots that are filled with back-up dancers and multiple iterations of the Jus2 members – hardly a private setup – creating a long-take shot that ends with JB reflected in mirrors that also show us the camera. Despite the high frequency of mirrors in this video this is the only time we actually see the camera, and it immediately dismantles the idea that this song is dedicated to a singular you listening.

The attention given to the camera by Jus2 makes this song feel intimate for the watcher. But the way that the camera disobeys the lyrics, and the brief reality check that there is a camera between us and them reminds us that we are only one of the you’s and that there is much more distance between us and them than we like to think.

Turning to the fantasy surrounding the idol the video shows us that just as we are not the “you” that’s being sung about, the idols are not exactly the “I” either.

In this song most of the lyrics focus on the person they’re singing to rather than themselves. Even so, the video still gives many hints that these two idols aren’t quite what they present themselves as. For example, the video features many shots populated with multiple JBs and Yugyeoms, all appearing to exist within the same space. The multiple versions of them remind us that these idols have many personas ready to be presented, while also showing that picking out which version is real is an impossible and futile endeavour.

These many selves take the stage during impossible long-takes that demonstrate that this video has been edited and crafted to appear perfect. Just in case the illusion is too seamless for us to catch onto, the video is also interrupted with jarring digital edits that feel that we’re watching the video open into another reality.

After taking many close (frame by frame) looks, I’m quite sure that this teal interruption is actually a shot of the same room again, just empty. It feels like we’re getting a peak at the truth, a reminder that this is just a set, that it doesn’t stretch nearly as far as they’ve suggested, and that in a way the idol isn’t really there. The video actually begins with a tour of the sets that will be featured. They feel especially cold when we see them without anyone in them, and serve to remind us that all of this has been constructed with a purpose in mind.

If we consider the audience, the 3D glasses play into this fantasy as well. 3D glasses are designed to create an illusion. They combine two 2D images and give the impression of something 3-dimensional. Similarly, much of what we see from idols creates the illusion of something deeper. There is an inevitable degree of separation between us and them and so we need our glasses to create a fuller picture. We piece together what we’re given to create something that feels more tangible. But the final 3D image is entirely dependant on the pieces provided and is ultimately just a clever trick.

Similarly, when watching this video we are dependent on the camera. We want to move towards Jus2, do as they ask, but we can only go where the camera lets us. And throughout this video the camera is backing away. We move further and further from the idols in every shot, creating extra distance between us and them.

Throughout this song we are presented with the fantasy of having a real and personal connection with these idols. The video shows us these illusions and then points to their cracks to remind us of the truth: that no matter how many times they ask us to focus on them, we’ll never know if we’re focusing on the real thing.

It would be easy to end this little (little?) essay here. But there’s an interesting twist that happens at the end of the song that suggests these illusions can maybe be overcome. As I’ve said, all through the video the camera is moving backwards, constantly away from JB and Yugyeom. There are only two parts of the video where this isn’t the case: the very beginning and the very end.

In the beginning it feels like we’re winding up. Moving deeper into the set so that we can make our long trek back. But in the final shot of the music video we are told, don’t hesitate, and we don’t. The camera zooms forward, passing several aloof clones, working through multiple rooms that seems to be separated by out-of-focus barriers, and after breaking through the final “wall” we find the last versions of JB and Yugyeom. And finally, they make real and direct eye contact with the camera.

In the camera’s final resting spot all extraneous details are gone. The background is close and plain. The lighting in this room feels more real as well, casting shadows on their faces and giving them a bit more warmth than we’ve seen before this. At last we are able to focus on them. This final moment feels like we’re given a look at what we were promised, and what we could have if we knew how to break through to them.

Interestingly, the other shots that are shown with the camera moving forward are of the empty sets at the start and a lonely shot of Yugyeom where for once he doesn’t appear to be performing. Since it is with the start of the lyrics that camera begins its retreat, it feels like these moments, when we are moving closer, are more honest. They are before the fantasy has started, they’re before the sets have been filled with dancers and perfect clones, and before Yugyeom feels he’s being watched. To me these create the impression that they are trying to tell us that they feel just as separated by these illusions as we should. By putting on their idol personas they create a separation that pushes them as far from us as us from them.

With this opening in mind much about this video feels different. The crowd with their glasses who are always watching but never able to really see them feels worse for the idols than for us (so close to others wanting to give them attention, but not being able to engage). The commands from Jus2 to focus on them and to come closer sound more like actual requests, except they don’t know which “you” they’re talking to either. And the very last shot feels like they might be playing out their own fantasy instead of ours.

It may be worth ending this by mentioning that when describing the visual impressions each song on the EP gave the members of Jus2, Focus on Me was described by JB as “fog”, and by Yugyeom as “like a smoke, fume”. These descriptions fit nicely with the ethereal, pulsing music, but they also fit nicely with the video. Though the visual quality is crystal clear with its stark lighting, high contrast, and sharp choreography, their descriptions feel at home with the murky realities.

thanks for reading!

MUSINGS MASTERLIST

#my.musings #jus2 #got7 #focus on me #jaebeom #jaebum #yugyeom #kpop essays #explained #analysis #my.got7

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anunvalidcritic · 5 years

Text

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER VERSE

MOVIE REVIEW

(DISCLAIMER: MY OPINION IS MY OWN AND CAN BE DEEMED INVALID TO THOSE WHO DON’T CARE FOR IT.)

June 27th, 2019 the year of our Lord (whichever one that may be) I watch a spectacular movie that I can truly say that the awards won were well deserved. Spider-Man was the first superhero I can truly say I looked up too and he’s super duper awesome my dudes. I plan on rewatching the movie again so I can complete this post.

Man, this post is gonna be extremely long but it’s totally worth it!

I FUCKING LOOOVVVEEE THIS INTRO MAAAAAAANNNNN!!

“With great powers come great responsibility” - UNCLE BEN

AHHHHH THEY DID THE SPIDER-MAN 3 DANCE DEAD

YOU’RE MY SUNFLOWER!!!!!!!

The love that his parents give is amazing.

I’m glad to see an ethnic spiderman its dope that he speaks Spanish and English.

I understand that Spider-man is a vigilante

“With accountability comes great accountability“ - JEFFERSON DAVIS

He didn’t have to do MILES like that lol

DEAD THAT CLASS WAS QUIET AF

AYYYEEE THE CITY IS BUMPIN’ TONIGHT!!!!!

LOL MILES needs to get his face off that window.

Ayyee black people really do that stuff with that chill talkin’ being all smooth and shiiii ROFL

OOFFF

AHHH SHIT IT’S GOING DOWN WITH THE GRAFFITI AND THE SPIDER

SPIDER BITE

LMFAO BOOP!

Damn his roommate just loves to study.

That is a lot of sweat tho

“I’M A MAN.“ - MILES

Haircut looks cool though if you ask me.

“EVERYONE KNOWS!” - MILES

“WOAH SHE’S TALL” - MILES

PETER droppin’ bops huh??

OOOO THAT LANDING WAS EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!

That was some freaky shit when that spider glitched though. It kinda turned into a thriller movie for a minute.

DAAAMMMNNN a normal person would be dead

“Stanton Island maybe but not Brooklyn!” - PETER

You better catch him!!!

he better not say you only get one of th…….. AAAHHHHH HE SAID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HE FUCKING SAID IT!!!!!!!!!!

PROWLER got a lot of balls flyin’ up on him like that.

WILSON FISK IS TOOOO FUCKIN’ BIG!!!!!!!

Dang, these glitches remind me of when Vanellelope has hers. (I think her name is spelled wrong but it’s whatever at this point.)

You know whenever people make promises they sometimes are hard to keep.

WTF HE’S BLONDE!!!!!!!! WOAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OH HELL NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS MOTHERFUCKER JUST KILLED… AHHHHHHH

ROFL “Yeah I think it’s a BANKSY.” - BYSTANDER

RIO is the sweetest mom ever.

PETER should not have gone out that way! MAAAAANNNNNN

STAN LEE R.I.P

Boy, you better not jump off that building that black in you bette… LOL, HE TOOK HIS ASS RIGHT BACK DOWN!

damn, he messed up the hard-drive.

Aww, I love that ominous blue and red lighting… good symbolism.

PETER B. PARKER

Spider-Man for the last 22 years

blah blah blah workin’ hard and fallin’ in love

15 years past

buried Aunt May

Split up with MJ

Seahorses mate for life

“Could you image a seahorse seeing another seahorse… and then making it work.” - PETER B PARKER

pizza is life

YEAH, THAT BLONDE SHIT THREW ME FOR A LOOP TOO!

“Adios” - MILES

DAAAMMMNN he didn’t have to do PETER B like that!

“Looks like a child dressed like spider-man dragging a homeless corpse behind a train.” - POLICE OFFICER

Aye, I fuck with the song that was being played through that guy’s headphones even though I don’t even know what it was.

“Why is your body another shape” - MILES damn that’s fucked up

GOOODDDDDAMMMMN THAT GLITCH FUCKED HIM UP!

These fucking sweatpants man

“DON’T PLAY WITH ME.“ - MILES (black people love that line lol)

“You good with that Spider-Man?!“ - MILES

“In my universe, this place closed 6 years ago. I don’t know why.” - PETER B PARKER (Probably because the restaurant has a C rating)

Was lowkey waiting for a roach to crawl across something

I LOVE THIS SONG!

“Spider-Man doesn’t wear a cape.” - MILES (He doesn’t wear sweatpants either)

How tf did WILSON FISK get his BIG ASS INTO THAT CAR?!?!?!

lol his booty jiggled a bit hehehehehe

hold up this chick sound like Jessie from Toy Story…

WOAH either she a freak or she likes pushing people

“And I for one can’t wait to watch.” - DR. OC (WTF DID SHE JUST SAY!!)

LOL, HE HIT ‘EM WITH THE ‘HEY’.

Aww, they’re having a bonding moment!

GWEN STAC(E)Y UP IN THIS BITCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last 2 years

Joined a band

Saved her dad

Couldn’t save her PETER PARKER

Doesn’t do friends to save herself feeling.

Oh, we’re getting a little WILSON FISK flashback.

Damn, why is she driving so fast…

Something like that was bound to happen I’m sorry to say.

This dude really got some board shoulders.

SPIDER PEOPLE

Why does PETER B PARKER have on two different types of shoes?

BRUH AUNT MAY CAME FOR HIM!

DAAAANNNGG AUNT MAY THUGGIN’ HUH!?!?!?!?!

TRIGGERED

DEAD AUNT MAY has “HELLO MY NAME IS …” cards

“Wherever I go, the wind follows.” - SPIDER-MAN NOIR

BRUH JOHN MAOULNEY

SPIDER-MAN NOIR

Year: 1933

Job: Private Eye

Likes: Drinking egg creams and fighting Nazis (A LOT)

“Sometimes I let matches burn down to my fingertips just to feel something anything.”

PENI PARKER SPIDER

Year: 3145

Has a psychic link with a spider that lives inside of her father’s robot.

Lost her father

BEST BUDS FOR LIFE

SPIDER-HAM

PETER PORKER

Bitten by a radioactive pig

Photographer for the Daily Beagle

Usually, when he’s not working like a dog he chasing a story

Likes to frolic and dance while doing it in his pants.

SAD FACE EMOJI

if stitch had a glitch lol

PETER B PARKER really puttin’ MILES on blast.

STOP FUCKING CROWDING HIM!!!!!!!!!!!

This movie is back on their spooky ooky shit

Damn only if he knew his uncle was the PROWLER...

LOL, THAT MUSIC!!!!!!!!!

RUN BOY RUN THIS WORLD ISN’T MEAN FOR YOU!

BRUH PENI’S FACE!!!

“This is a pretty hardcore origin story.“ - SPIDER-MAN NOIR

“We don’t pick the ballroom we just dance.” - SPIDER-MAN NOIR

OOOFFF WHEN AUNT MAY SAYS TAKE IT OUTSIDE SHE MEANS IT!

Of course, MILES dad is on the way

OH, SHIT SHOW HIM YOUR FUCKING FACE!!!

OH, FUCK!!!!!!

How the fuck you gonna be flying around without some type of bulletproof vest. DAMN SMH

Man, a kid should not be seeing someone die right in front of them.

JEFFERSON didn’t deserve to find his brother that way.

I’m glad they’re having a heart to heart to him. But that room is too small

“MILES the hardest part about this job is that you can’t save everyone“ - SPIDER-HAM

“Do animals talk in this dimension because I don’t want to freak him out.“ - SPIDER-HAM

Let the bodies hit the floor.

“A leap of faith” - PETER B PARKER

At least his dad came by to speak to him.

He had that boy fucked up again!

AUNT MAY A THUG BRO!!!!

THIS SONG IS GETTIN’ ME HYPED UP AND I’M NOT EVEN IN THE FUCKING MOVIE!

Man them taking the bus is really killin’ me

Bruh the waiter

ROFL

BATTLE ROYALE BABY!!!!

YEAH MILES

“Do you have a problem with cartoons?!?!” - SPIDER-HAM

PENI I’m sorry to say but your BUD FOR LIFE is gone.

MILES is a smooth criminal!!

WILSON FISK BIG MAD!!

I find it so cool that each time they jumped back into the portal it was reflected off of them.

ROFL “That’s all folks” “Is he allowed to say that legally?”

WILSON FISK always tryin’ to hurt somebody damn!

NOBODY TOOK YOUR FUCKING FAMILY BITCH THAT WAS YOU! IF YOU TRULY KNEW YOUR WIFE YOU WOULD’VE KNOWN THAT SHE DIDNT GET JIGGY WITH THAT SHIT PERIOD!

THE SHOULDER TOUCH

MILES did that (with help of course)

C-Mobile = T-Moblie hehehehehehe

BRUH HE DID WILSON FISK DIRTY!!!

MILES MORALES

SPIDER-MAN for 2 days

Finally, finished his essay

Saved a lot of people

Spent time with his father

Got hit by a drone as well

Had a proper meeting with his roommate

Slapped his sticker where his dad won’t find it

Will always remember his friends.

“Anyone can wear the mask. You can wear the mask. If you didn’t know that before I hope you know that now.“ SPIDER-MAN (MILES)

_________________________________

Y’ALL THERE WAS A GLITCH IN THE SYSTEM! Everything and I mean EVERYTHING! So thankful I was able to salvage a little bit of it back. I really do wish I was able to get what I said at the end because I meant it. :(

_________________________________

EDIT: I was fast forwarding through the movie to get it off of my “continue watching” list and I discovered something at the end! So I’ll be making a bit of an edit. (This is a reminder that you need to ALWAYS STAY AT THE END OF EVERY MARVEL! (smh I made a rookie mistake))

James Blake has such an amazing voice

MEANWHILE IN NUEVA YORK

“I was gone for less than 2 hours.” - MAN

THE BEST LESS 2 HOURS OF MY LIFE!

oooo the man’s name is MIGUEL

Earth ‘67

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH THE MEME THE MEME!!!!!!!!!!

“How dare you point at me!” - SPIDER-MAN

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merryfortune · 4 years

Text

Day 3: Rebirth, New Beginnings

Compendium Game Route 2019 for @vrainsrarepairweeks

Ship: Aoi/Blue Angel

Rating: T

Word Count: 1,736

Tags: Post Canon, Canon Compliant, Selfcest, Out of Character, Fluff Tinged With Angst

Aoi wrestled with her sheets as she came to in the morning. As she awoke, she got the feeling that she had woken up slightly earlier than usual on a Sunday morning, the one morning she could guarantee a sleep in, however, little as her brother liked to have her up well before her internal clock would have her up. But something else was off, aside from her circadian rhythms.

The morning was warm but unusually so. It was still early spring, barely bordering on the middle of it ergo edging towards summer. Just two nights ago, it had been freezing, even in the morning and now, it was absurdly warm. Aoi rolled over and that little niggling feeling inside of her became a full-on sensation of something being certainly wrong. She tried to move but something go caught on the light pyjamas that she wore.

It wasn’t her sheets. It wasn’t any of her pillows. It wasn’t the Evilswarm Mandragora that she still cuddled with all these years later, either. It was something else entirely. It was an arm.

Aoi’s blood ran cold and colder still when the arm phased through her.

She scrambled out of her bed, taking her comfy blanket and Mandragora doll with her. She held onto them, frantic, as she looked over her bed. She had company. Impossible company because not only did Aoi go to sleep last night alone, the person who had wound up in her bed was not someone who existed. Not like this anyway. All blue, wavy hair and wings on her back.

“What... is going on?” Aoi asked, voice hoarse. “Who are you?”

Cutely, the not quite stranger in Aoi’s bed roused herself from sleep. She yawned kittenishly and pawed at her face before looking up at Aoi with adorably offended, ultramarine eyes. They watered and her lower lip quivered; even her detached, white wings which slowly unfurled and fluttered. As meticulous as her movements were, in creating the image of someone bubble-gum pop perfect, there was a veneer to her. Creases in her night gown which glitched in and out of existence, the way her hair cut through what should have been the flesh of her body.

With a snap of her fingers, this person, this figment, this whatever she was, she prettied herself up as though through some technological magic. Her hair was split apart and yanked back and looped until it was in perfect heart shaped buns and then pulled into twin pigtails. She traded her satiny nightgown like look for something more preppy and suitable for the daytime; a sleeveless white blouse, blue tie, and a hoop skirt which shimmered at the fluffy hems as she moved over the bed. She knelt there, looking up at Aoi, slightly rejected but rather pleadingly.

As much as Aoi wanted to deny what she was seeing before her eyes, it was undeniable. Blue Angel, her Blue Angel, had somehow come to life.

“I’m you, silly.” She giggled and then put a perfectly manicured finger on her chin. “Hm, I guess not. After all, you’re you and I’m... not you? But I am you. I was you.” She hiccupped and her eyes watered.

She looked pathetic but not in the way that Aoi remembered being pathetic when she was Blue Angel. Pathetic in a way which was real. All torn feathers and broken hearts, beaten into the dirt, screaming and ugly crying, put to sleep, and so on and so forth. This was something far more manufactured, but this Blue Angel lacked the mark of the manufactured. She lacked a cyan notch on her neck; not that Aoi, or her brother, for that matter, trusted SOLtiS bots enough after the debacle with Ai, to have one around which might somehow, miraculously, absorb the likeness and personality of her original Link VRAINS avatar.

Aoi hesitantly returned to her bed. She placed her hand close to the one which was keeping Blue Angel propped up as she was. With a trembling heart, Aoi wiped tears from Blue Angel’s eyes. Her skin felt like cheap polyester from the sewing shops that Aoi had wandered in and out of a few times whilst at the mall. It wasn’t bad but it was a little disconcerting, but Blue Angel was comforted by the act, even if it was ultimately in vain as Aoi blankly poked at the edge of her eyes.

“How are you real?”

“Angel dust and other magic.”

Aoi snickered. “That’s a drug.”

“You know what I mean!” Blue Angel defended herself, her shoulders perking up as her cheeks turned red.

“Magic, basically.”

“Yeah...”

An awkward pause lingered between them and Aoi’s lips felt dry. Blue Angel prettily, daintily, waited for something to be said; she didn’t seem to want to take the iniative, being girlishly evasive. Aoi swallowed a lump in her throat.

“Can I ask you a question, Blue Angel?”

“Of course.” Then, with a wink, Blue Angel added: “So long as it’s in reason, you know me. I like to keep things a secret. Identities, motivation, all my different tricks.”

“Why are you here?” Aoi asked.

Having met Aqua, having fought Ai, having participated in the Ignis Warfare, Aoi knew that there was a world of things so scientific that they became magic that she didn’t understand. She was modestly certain that the Blue Angel before her was some manifestation of that. Having lost to Bohman, having lost to Ai, Aoi was terrified that things would come in threes and the Blue Angel that she saw before her was an ill omen in white winged disguise.

“Because I love you.” Blue Angel replied with a beam. “So where else would I be, of course, silly?”

Aoi’s heart fluttered. Her ears pricked up. “You do?”

“I do.”

Blue Angel leaned in and their foreheads bumped together. Their noses brushed up against one another. Whatever it was which allowed Blue Angel to be in this world was soft. She placed a hand on the left side of Aoi’s face.

“I truly, truly do. True as blue.”

“I’m glad.” Aoi smiled a watery smile in reply.

Blue Angel frowned. Pouted, really. “But you abandoned me.” Her voice became a high strung, high pitched whine. She flung her arms back and bear hugged Aoi, sobbing. “You abandoned me.”

“I... did?” Aoi murmured.

Clutching onto her, Blue Angel looked up from Aoi’s breast. “You did.”

“I’m sorry.” Aoi murmured as she tentatively rubbed Blue Angel’s back, navigating her floating wings and emotions in general. “I didn’t mean to abandon you.”

“I know.” Blue Angel’s fingers dug in, clutching onto fabric, pinching Aoi’s skin beneath. “I know. All girls grow up. You got what you wanted by taking new chances, getting involved with all sorts of horrid affairs, was it worth it?”

“I think so.” Aoi mumbled.

She wasn’t sure. She could look at parts of her life with conviction; her becoming Blue Angel, her becoming Blue Girl, her becoming Blue Maiden. But there were other parts of her life which made her feel helpless, hopeless. Not realising Playmaker and Soulburner had been sitting in the back row of her own classroom all this time; not winning when it truly counted. It was enfeebling. She couldn’t do anything when her brother had sunken into that comatose state; nothing except watch.

Blue Angel snuggled against her. “I’m glad.” Aoi flinched. “No matter where you go or how you grow, I’ll always love you, Aoi. I have loved you most since you were a child and I will love you forevermore, my angelic promise to you.”

Aoi blushed. Blue Angel’s words were dulcet and like much of her persona, theatrical but not insincere. Aoi’s heart pounded in her chest. Feeling emboldened by such soft touches and sweet words, she angled her head down towards Blue Angel and she understood; perhaps intuitively, perhaps because she was some entity so intimately intertwined unto Aoi as she was, but she knew. She took the silent permission and kissed Aoi’s lips.

Blue Angel’s lips were such sweet serenity to kiss. Aoi felt all her doubts and helplessness which stirred in her chest quell as Blue Angel sighed into the kiss. It was slow and tender, making a melting moment out of the succulent fabric which Blue Angel existed beneath the veneer of; neither flesh nor silicon, like the faces of uncanny androids.

And it was such bitterness to end that kiss. Blue Angel didn’t need to breathe but Aoi did. She had to break off such a lovely kiss after what had felt like an eternity. She reared back and there was a delightful blush in Blue Angel’s cheeks.

“How was it?”

“Amazing.” Aoi replied, breathless but evening out. “Its not conceited to say that, is it? You’re, like, a really good kisser.”

Blue Angel giggled impishly and Aoi was hit from every angle regarding just what bliss that she had woken up this morning into. The sunlight from the early morning outside was gently warm. Somewhere, birds chirped to a more chipper tune than the general hustle and bustle of city life. It was nice. Contenting.

Aoi took a small breath and continued to look over Blue Angel. She couldn’t help but drink in the sight of seeing her childish style brought to genuine life like this. It was both embarrassing and heart-warming. Though, it raised a few questions which made her stomach turn.

Was this how she saw herself? Or was this how Blue Angel saw herself? Or, more concerningly, was this how her fans saw Blue Angel? The very one which was retired. Aoi shuddered as she overcomplicated this weirdly simple situation.

Blue Angel was real. Real enough to be interacted with. And that seemed to be all there was too it. Well, maybe she wanted somewhere to stay. Aoi’s brow furrowed. Well, maybe she needed somewhere to stay. After all, it wouldn’t be good for someone like Blue Angel, whatever she was, to be walking around. No matter, Aoi was quite certain that she wanted Blue Angel all to herself. She was still a selfish child like that, no matter how grown up she had become since her creation.

For now, she would merely incite a few more kisses, a few more exchanges of sweet words. Anything else, anything practical-minded could come later. All Aoi wanted was to indulge herself and, well, herself.

#writing tag #bluestshipping #vrainsrarepairweeks #vrainsrarepairweeks2019 #yugioh vrains #vrains #yugioh #aoi zaizen #zaizen aoi #blue angel (vrains)#selfcest #femslash

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agent-houdini · 5 years

Text

A Splash of Color

Aaaand here we are: a fic of the biker!whiskey and online professor!houdini au. I haven’t done much writing this summer, so apologies if this isn’t 100% like everything else I’ve put out before? Part 1 of ? | @the-roanoke-society

Lauren Moran was recently hired by Post University as one of their many online professors during their hiring boom. She was thankful, really - it wasn’t an adjunct position, and being an online professor meant she didn’t have to have physical office hours. It did mean, however, she spent her time cooped up in her apartment too much, something far too mundane for her liking. She needed to get out - at least to see how she’d handle the summer semesters. Besides, it wasn’t like there was nowhere for her to go. Lauren had plenty of options to choose from -- including the local Starbucks.

Jack Daniels worked for the Statesman group in New York City; every day, he took the 10:26 train after riding his Harley Davidson Fatboy to the station. He only managed that kind of train because he, due to a lack of a social life tying him back to the college town, worked later hours. Not that he complained - he enjoyed taking his time on an off-peak train. Plus, it meant he got to stop for coffee at the local Starbucks without any worry of missing his train or having his coffee.

Now, Jack was a regular at Starbucks. He had his visits timed pretty regularly too - a two-minute arrival window between 10:14 and 10:16. Just enough time to get his drink and park his bike at the station four minutes later. He knew who was there at that time, both in terms of baristas and customers - but one day, there was someone new in the room.

Lauren, with her bright purple hair and colored drink to match, had settled towards the windows of the shop, her laptop and books open.

Jack caught himself staring at the woman for a moment before collecting his drink and heading on his way to work. He was a well-oiled machine - there was no time to be wasted in his schedule.

Lauren looked out the window as she heard a motorcycle’s engine rev, smiling as it pulled out of the parking lot.

She liked motorcycles.

For the next few days, Jack wondered if the woman at Starbucks was just an anomaly - a one-time sort of thing, like a glitch in the system. He was consistent as ever, even early two days to see if she’d be there again. Unfortunately, everything was normal.

(Lauren had, in fact, slept in late the next few days. She had made the mistake of starting a new television series and wanted to properly binge it rather than be an adult and wake up at a normal time. She laughed as she rolled over one morning, thinking ‘how did I ever get to be an adult, let alone a college professor?’)

The hardest part of keeping a routine is starting one in the first place. Lauren struggled with waking up after her binge-session, almost tempted to start another series when her adult logic finally kicked in. She scrambled to get herself out of her small apartment and to Starbucks with an arrival of 10:18. Not quite the time she wanted to get there, as she had set an embarrassing amount of alarms to be there for 9:45.

She noticed the motorcycle in the parking lot, smiling to herself as she adjusted the bag on her shoulder.

Jack had just picked up his order and stuck a straw through the plastic lid when he noticed the woman from the other day walk up to the counter.

So she was real, he thought, giving her a proper once-over before leaving.

The image of her purple hair tied into a messy bun stayed with him throughout the day.

Lauren spent the first few minutes on her laptop googling the different models of Harley-Davidsons to determine what had been in the parking lot upon her arrival before switching gears and checking the discussion boards. Her ENG 213 course was off to a slow start; some of her students had forgotten about the quiz she had assigned or were not putting their full effort into their responses. It wasn’t a reflection of her, really - she remembered the summer courses she had taken during undergrad, and even then responses were minimal.

At least she got to see the bike again.

For the next few days, Lauren actually made it to Starbucks at exactly 10 am - fully dressed and hair looking not too disheveled. To her delight, it meant that she arrived almost 15 minutes before the black motorcycle did; this new fact was motivation for her to continue her new habit of arriving at Starbucks early, beyond the confirmation that her window seat would be free. (During her binge-watching session, she learned that a small group of teenagers liked her spot almost as much as she did.)

Jack was surprised to find the splash of color by the window once again, like the first time he spotted her. And, like her hair, many of the items sprawled across the table were purple; her pens, the notebook, laptop case, even her mouse.

He smiled as he watched her stare out the window into the parking lot. What was she looking at? And what was she working on? Was she a college student? Did she live or work nearby? Why had he never seen her before? Questions filled Jack’s mind as he took his iced coffee and left, only to look towards the window where she was seated to find her almost looking right at him.

Their dance continued as Lauren managed her new routine, though they never said a word to each other. She watched him enter and leave the parking lot every day, and he watched her at the window.

“Wanna go for a ride?”

The phrase soon haunted Lauren’s dreams - or, well, maybe not haunted but repeated itself - the motorcycle clear as day, but the rider’s face blurred. As she woke up one Tuesday, she wondered; had she even looked at his face before? A blush crept up - she had been fantasizing over the bike and never gave a thought to its owner. She readied herself with a bit more care before arriving at Starbucks on time.

Jack wondered if he should say something, but then reminds himself of his well-oiled schedule as he walks into Starbucks.

As he waits for his order, he turns towards the window only to find her looking at him rather than at the parking lot. Lauren blinked, realizing her mistake, and quickly turned back towards her screen, fingers flying across the keyboard.

Jack smiled to himself - it was the first time he had a proper look at her face.

He made sure to make a show of mounting his bike upon exit.

Lauren felt her cheeks go hot as she watched, taking note of how everything was black; his helmet, the bike itself, his moto jacket - even his dress pants. She knew he was putting on a show, which almost made the whole ordeal worth the embarrassment.

“Wanna go for a ride?”

Jack’s dreams are the next to be flooded with the term; he tries to remember what it felt like to have someone ride with him, what it’d be like to have her ride with him. But then he remembered that he doesn’t know her name, and she doesn’t know his - it was just a dream.

He promised himself the next morning he’d get there earlier, hopefully before she did.

At 10 am sharp, Jack pulls into the parking lot on his bike. He figured if he tried 15 minutes before his usual arrival, it’d be worth a shot. If she was there, perfect! If not, he could try earlier the next day.

Lauren was pulling something from her back seat when she heard the engine’s arrival, immediately standing up and hitting her head on her car. She mumbled a string of curses before getting shoving everything into her bag - which had actually spilled across the floor - and locking the vehicle. She noticed the driver of the bike had already went inside, so she took a moment to admire it before going in.

“Running late today?”

Jack had finally found the balls to talk to her, even if it was just idle conversation as she ordered her drink.

Lauren blushed and pushed her glasses up, hoping the bump on her head wasn’t as noticeable as her idiocy in the parking lot. “Not as late as I could be. You’re here early.”

He looked her over as she spoke; the glasses - clear and sparkly - were new. Definitely weren’t there yesterday. The bag on her shoulder looked like things weren’t put in it properly, and he wondered what had caused that before offering his own response. “I wanted a bit more time to ride before catching the train.”

She’s relieved he didn’t say anything about her watching him. “That’s a nice bike you got out there.”

Jack smiled and notices she’s smiling as she gestured towards the door. He’s distracted by what appears to be glitter on her face for a moment before the barista interrupts them.

“Jack, venti iced Americano, Lauren, venti Dragon Drink. Have a nice day!”

The two exchanged looks for a moment, realized they’ve indirectly learned each other’s names, before taking their respective drinks.

“Thank you!” Lauren chimes, the smile never leaving her face.

“Thanks,” Jack nods before turning towards her.

“Go enjoy your ride with your coffee, Jack,” she says, sticking the straw through the lid. “It was nice meeting you.”

“Nice meetin’ you too, Lauren --”

“I’ll be here same time tomorrow if you feel like being early again,” she added, moving towards her window seat.

“I’ll keep that in mind. Whatever you do, don’t work yourself too hard!” Jack said, waving as he walked out towards the door. He smiled as he noticed Lauren give a small wave through the window, waving back at her before putting his helmet on.

On his longer-than-usual drive to the station, he wondered if he still had that spare helmet floating around in the garage somewhere...

#lies and lessons #pls forgive verb tenses i know it's a mess okay #a splash of color #agent whiskey #agent houdini #snapshots from another timeline #writing

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anistarrose · 5 years

Text

Some Sunny Day - Chapter 8: It Won’t Be Long (Gravity Falls - Same Coin Theory)

Summary: Mabel bursts some bubbles, Dipper cracks a code, and Ford makes a wisdom saving throw.

Warnings: manipulation, flashbacks to torture (see note below for more detail)

Previous / Next

The Beginning (see here for AO3 link)

(The Same Coin Theory is by @dubsdeedubs and @renmorris, and this chapter was beta’d by @porkpop!)

Given the subject matter, I guess it’s fitting that this fic would appear to die and then unexpectedly rise from the ashes months later, isn’t it? In all seriousness, I’m sorry it took so long (life has been… not exactly conducive to writing multichapter fics lately) and hope this update ends up being worth the wait! Good news, though — I wrote my first draft of Chapter 9 a while back, so the next update should come in a much more timely manner!

Important warning: This chapter contains flashbacks to torture by electrocution. The torture itself isn’t described in particularly graphic detail, but a decent amount of time is spent describing the consequences (there are references to temporary character death as well as to PTSD) so if you don’t want to read those parts but want to continue following the fic, feel free to ask me for a summary of the chapter with potentially upsetting parts omitted.

(On a lighter note, there’s a reference to one of my favorite GF fics in this chapter, so see if you can spot it!)

In another world of shimmering bubbles and wispy pink clouds, deep within a mountaintop temple, an Oracle addressed her patron.

“If he is to remember,” she asked, “it will be soon, won’t it?”

From within one of the bubbles, a frill-wreathed head bounced up and down in a nod. Its voice was musical and ethereal, like the sound of distant wind chimes.

“If you wish to help them, then now is the time.”

Jheselbraum bowed, and departed to an adjacent room of the temple where she kneeled down on a simple, woven mat. Concentrating on a single image — the face shared by two brothers whose destinies were so tightly intertwined with that of a demon, forming tangled loops that crisscrossed all across time and space, spanning eons and dimensions — her eyes blinked closed. When they opened again, they were glowing a faint lilac purple, and watching the events of a dream as it played out within the mindscape of Stanley Pines.

Interacting with the flow of time in such a way that it already knew the results, yet still observing intently, the Axolotl smiled.

It wouldn’t be long now.

***

Mere moments into her quest to break out of her dream bubble and save Stan, Mabel had an unpleasant realization: this time, she could see no literal bubble to burst — and therefore, no clear way to escape the dream world. No way back to her family.

Oh god, what if she fell back under the bubble’s spell before she could find a way to escape? And what if she didn’t snap out of it the next time —

“Think, Mabel, think,” she murmured to herself. “Don’t panic, there’s gotta be a way out somewhere…”

She heard movement in a nearby room of the Shack, and tiptoed away in the other direction, slipping into the gift shop and hunkering down behind the counter. The scenery around her was a good approximation of how the Shack really looked, but now that she knew she was in an illusion, the only thing that felt real was her pounding heart.

What would Ford want me to do? Stay calm, stay safe, and think through things logically, right?

She took a deep breath. Okay, Mabel, take it from the top. What’s the situation? What do you know?

She was in a dream, created by Stan because he was afraid of Bill. (Well, afraid of something, but what could it possibly be if not Bill?) It didn’t seem like Stan had realized she was aware of being in an illusion, so that was something she had going for her. He probably wouldn’t be actively trying to stop her, at least not yet.

And if she’d gotten here after being doused in the dark water, then Dipper and Soos were probably in dream bubbles of their own — maybe even Ford too, by this point. She had to get back to the regular mindscape, and see if he was alright. Or better yet, find Dipper and Soos’s bubbles and bring them back with her —

Right, she was still technically in the mindscape, wasn’t she? Which meant that if she focused on something hard enough, imagined it vividly enough…

She climbed out from behind the counter and rested her hand on the gift shop’s doorknob, bracing herself to open it and leave the Shack.

Okay, door, listen up, she thought. When I open you, you’re going to take me back to Dipper. In three, two, one…

She swung it open and a freezing black flood rushed in, knocking her backwards. With great effort, she opened her eyes to see the colors of the dream dissolving around her, and reforming new bubbles that floated in the ink-black sea, beckoning her with their colorful fantasies.

There was Ford, safe and holding hands with Stan and eight other familiar faces in a nearly complete circle. Eyes lit up with an optimism she hadn’t seen in him all day, Ford gave her an encouraging smile and reached towards her —

“Just take my hand, and we can complete the Zodiac!” he exclaimed. “We can banish Bill once and for all, together!”

She could feel her hands drifting over, fingers outstretched and ready to wrap around Ford’s own — but she yanked away at the last second, wrapping her arms tight around her shivering chest. A faint glow emanated from the star on her sweater, melting away the icicles on the tips of her numb finger and shining through her foggy, jumbled thoughts like the guiding beam of a lighthouse, exposing the true nature of the treacherous sea surrounding her.

It was never going to be as easy as holding hands, not this time. She knew better than to let any dreams within dreams convince her otherwise.

She took a strenuous step forward against the flow of the current, and the rejected bubbles burst as new illusions appeared in front of her, each singing a different siren song of temptation.

Here, Ford never fell into the portal.

Here, Ford and Stan never argued in the first place.

Here, you never broke your promise to help Dipper with the laptop, and he never got possessed by Bill…

Some of the visions hurt more than others, and she forced herself to look away. “Dipper?” she called out. “Soos? Grunkle Ford?”

There was no reply, except for a new stream of bubbles rising from the depths to float in front of her. In the closest one, she could see Bill Cipher warp and distort, limbs glitching and flickering as his pupil dilated in fear, and Mabel just knew that one good punch was all it would take to shatter that triangle beyond hope of repair —

And it would have been so satisfying, so cathartic, to deliver that punch, but she was painfully aware of it just being fantasy. It was exactly what she had hoped to find, exactly what she had envisioned as a best case scenario — Bill not just weakened, but completely distinct from Stan, easily separated and destroyed — and she couldn’t help but wonder if the illusion had been summoned entirely from Stan’s mind, or from her own.

Something about a larger bubble on her left side caught her attention. It just felt tangibly distinct from the others — still pulling her towards it, but in a different way. She was drawn to this one because it was… well, not entirely real, but more real than anything else around her. It was more familiar, more comforting — and not like the guilt-laced comfort of denial, but like the warm, genuine solace of companionship.

She approached it one step at a time, careful not to let the current around her lift her feet off the ground and wash her out of reach. She was scarcely five feet away when the voice of the bubble suddenly grew clear, and she realized — it wasn’t calling out to her like the other bubbles had, but rather having a conversation with itself.

No, not with itself. With someone already trapped within its illusion.

“All right, we’re rolling in three… two… one…”

“Welcome back to Guide to Haunted Mansions with Dipper and the Pines Family! Today, we’re coming to you from my uncle’s lab, where we’re running some tests on the ghost we captured last episode! Be sure to check that one out if you missed it, because —”

She could see Dipper now — appearance distorted by the bubble’s convex barrier, but unmistakably (and so relievingly) him. He was in a sophisticated but messy-looking laboratory, Ford smiling proudly at his side and Soos standing behind the camera…

But even a ways outside, and with the current working against her, Mabel could make out a spark of light in Dipper’s eyes that the other two lacked. Relief washed over her as she realized she’d found her real brother — accompanied by no small amount of worry for the real Ford and Soos, still nowhere to be seen.

“Dipper!” she called out. “This isn’t real! You have to get out of there!”

The water garbled her voice, distorting it so much that it sounded unintelligible even to her, but Dipper frowned as she spoke. Glancing between Ford and Soos, he asked:

“Did you guys hear that? Was that an audio glitch or something?”

Both the illusions shook their heads as Mabel spat out water, fighting against the tide to get closer to the bubble.

“Dipper, you’re in Stan’s mindscape, remember? It’s a dream bubble, like — like the one Bill trapped me in last summer!”

This time her words came out clearer, and Dipper turned around, somehow both looking right at her and staring right past her at once.

“No, that… that doesn’t make sense,” he murmured. “Bill’s gone…”

Ford put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Of course he is. We’re safe from him now — and Stan and Mabel are, too.”

The current around Mabel grew fiercer, threatening to drag her backwards, but she managed to wrap her arms around the bubble, hugging it as tightly as she could.

“We came to Stan’s mind to stop Bill!” she yelled. “You remember that, right?”

Dipper shook his head. “I — I don’t know…”

“You can remember! You can snap out of it — I know you can, because you snapped me out of it last summer! You’re stronger than this cheap trap, I know you are!”

Dipper grabbed his head, shuddering and gritting his teeth as the bubble began to distort. Hand still on Dipper’s shoulder, not-Ford’s eyes turned a dull red.

Please, Dipper, Mabel thought, I don’t know how much longer I can hold on…

The facsimile Ford’s form began to darken — at first fading to a monochrome shadow of his former self, and then melting like tar, liquifying into a shuddering column of darkness that spewed out rivers of black ink all around the lab just as quickly as it spewed out lies.

Do you really want to go back there, Dipper? Back to everyone you love being in grave danger? Back to not understanding what’s happening to them or how to help them? Do you want to go back to that uncertainty, to that fear?

Tendrils of darkness crept towards Dipper from every angle, surrounding him as if preparing for an embrace.

Here, Bill is dead for good. Stan is safe from him, and his mindscape is perfectly normal and healthy. Here we’re all safe, and happy, and living the lives we’ve always wanted. It’s not so hard to pretend —

Dipper finally met Mabel’s eyes, just staring at her for a moment. As the tendrils snaked closer and closer to him, he looked down again and took a deep breath.

“Dipper! Let’s beat Bill and save Stan together!”

He turned back towards Mabel and smiled, extending both arms in her direction.

“Awkward sibling hug?” he whispered.

The tendrils recoiled in shock as Mabel plunged her hands into the bubble, grabbed ahold of her brother, and pulled.

***

Ice-cold waves submerged Dipper like he’d plunged into an Antarctic sea, and a numbness quickly overtook him, paralyzing his chest and racing up his arms to —

It didn’t reach his fingertips. Mabel’s hand was warm even as she released him from her embrace, and Dipper realized that he could see her clearly now — a bright spot in the darkness, radiating determination like a falling star lighting up the endless void of the night.

Instantly, the last wisps of fog clouding his brain evaporated away, and everything fell into place — how it wasn’t Bill trapping them in the bubbles, but Stan himself. How finding and destroying Bill would have to mean finding a way to pierce through Stan’s own denial.

“I’m so glad I found you,” Mabel blurted out, and pulled him back into a hug. “I — I wasn’t sure I could save everyone alone.”

“Well,” he told her as he returned the embrace, “you sure saved me.”

The current raged around them, sending them spinning — but for all its strength, it couldn’t even come close to tearing them apart.

***

Ford stepped out of the portal to a not just familiar, but nostalgic sight — a temple carved of pink-tinted marble stone, craggy mountain peaks peering out from the blanket of clouds beneath them.

“Jheselbraum?” he called out, and the curtains at the entrance to the shine parted, revealing a humanoid figure clad in flowing red and purple robes.

All seven of her eyes blinked, and then a smile spread across her face. “Stanford! It’s good to see you again — and you’ve brought friends this time!”

“Sure did!” Stan said. “The guy would be lost without us. I’m Stan, nice to —”

She laughed. “Don’t worry, Stanley, I know who you are. And you must be Mr. McGucket?”

Distracted for the moment, Fiddleford tapped one of several pink bubbles that had floated out of the shrine. Its shape distorted, but it didn’t burst. “Would you look at that…ah, yes, sorry! McGucket, that’s me alright — though ya can just call me Fiddleford or Fidds. It’s a pleasure to meet ya!”

“Likewise! Would you three like to come inside? I know the view out here is spectacular the first hundred or so times you see it, but it’s honestly even more interesting in there.”

“Of course!”

Ford led the way in, marveling at the richly colored tapestries lining the halls. “Jhes, do you weave these yourself? I don’t think I saw this many the last time I visited.”

“I do! You’ll find some seers and oracles that weave their predictions directly into their tapestries, but I honestly just need to be doing something with my hands while I concentrate on seeing the future.”

“I can relate,” Fiddleford chimed in. “Er, not that I’m a prophet or anythin’, but I can never figure out what’s wrong with my code unless I’m fidgeting with somethin’ in a free hand.”

Something in a room to the side caught Ford’s eye, and he stopped so suddenly that Stan nearly slammed into him from behind. “I never got a chance to ask you before, but — why do you have so many tapestries of axolotls?” He felt like he had a second question on the tip of his tongue, but it stayed stubbornly just out of reach no matter how hard he tried to remember it.

Jheselbraum smiled knowingly, not so much with her mouth as with her eyes. “The Axolotl has always been something of a kindred spirit towards those who seek to see beyond the linear flow of time,” she pronounced, “and I like to show my gratitude this way.”

“The Axolotl, with a capital A…” Ford mused. “I’m sorry, Jhes — just a few weeks ago, I’m sure there was something I was thinking I’d like to ask you, but… it’s escaping me now.”

Jheselbraum put a hand on Ford’s shoulder, and a dull purple glow rippled across her eyes, so briefly that Ford would have missed it if he’d blinked. When she spoke again, her voice was soft and echoing, as if originating from the other end of a long hallway — but also more lively, more lifelike, the subtle accent a bit more pronounced and the inflection of her words more rhythmic, more poem-like.

“Did you want to ask why the Axolotl watched over your brother’s house, for all those years? Why it manifested before Stanley, of all people?”

“That’s — I think that’s it, I…” The ground ceased to feel solid beneath Ford’s feet, and a wave of nausea washed over him as he was suddenly uncomfortably aware of how sluggish and muddled his thoughts felt, as if stifled by fog. “There’s something — something wrong about this place, isn’t there? What am I… how did I get here? Is —”

“Hey, Sixer! Check out what I found!”

Simply hearing Stan’s voice was an instant relief, a rope he could grab onto and use to pull himself out of the stormy, disorienting sea of uncertainty he’d found himself cast adrift in. “Huh? What is it?”

Stan frowned. “You okay? I’ve never seen you not recognize a D38 at first glance.” Sure enough, he held a thirty-eight sided die in each hand, one purple and the other blue.

“I… it’s just the thin mountain air getting to me, I think. Where did you find those?”

Stan snickered, pulling aside a tapestry that hung over the doorway to a room Ford had passed by. “Oh, you ain’t seen anything yet. Feast your eyes, nerd!”

The room had two sides that were completely open aside from ornate marble guard railings, providing a stellar view as the first of the world’s three purple moons began to rise above the horizon, but Ford’s attention was instead captivated by the table at the center. Crisscrossing gridlines glowed a dull blue-green, dividing the surface into hundreds of tiny squares, and holographic projections cycled through a variety of miniaturized, perfectly adventure-suited environments — a lush oasis within a dust storm-battered desert, a sprawling and bustling space station floating just above the rings of a pink gaseous planet, an impenetrable-seeming castle of gray brick overlooking a murky moat and surrounded by expansive and bountiful farmlands.

“Jheselbraum, have you always had this?” Ford asked. “You’ve been holding out on me!”

“The last time you were here, you spent every waking moment either recovering from head injuries or drunk on Cosmic Sand. It hardly would have made for a quality campaign.”

Detachedly, Ford realized that the echo was gone from her voice, but he couldn’t help but pay more attention to Stan, who hoisted himself into the throne-like seat at the head of the table and diabolically rubbed his hands together.

“Well, it’s not like we’ve got anywhere else to be, and I’ve got some big ideas up my sleeve… so, who’s up for a game?”

“Stanley, I can think of literally no better way to spend the next six hours to six weeks of my life,” Ford declared. “I’m in.”

***

“You hear the slappin’ tunes, Mr. Pines? That’s how you know it’s a boss battle!”

“Slappin’? Is that seriously how you people describe music these days? And what’s a boss battle?”

“Well, it’s pretty much what happens when you defeat all the minions of the biggest, baddest dude in the level, so then they finally have to throw down with you themself! Doesn’t look like you’re having any trouble with it, though — you must be some kinda natural, ha ha!”

“You bet I am!” Stan laughed as he dealt the final blow, and tossed the controller down triumphantly. “I’m gonna break the young’s monopoly on gaming skills, just you watch —”

The congratulatory chiptune jingle cut off abruptly, and a pattern of static rippled across the TV set. When it subsided, two new character sprites had appeared — two sprites that Soos knew he’d recognize anywhere no matter how stylized, thanks to that lumberjack hat and shooting star sweater.

“Hey, dudes! I was just teaching Stan how to play some of my favorite games — but how’d you two get in there? You’re looking kinda pixely — what happened?”

“Pixely?” Dipper looked down at his hands for a moment, confused, but then shook his head. “Never mind! Soos, this is all just an illusion! You’ve got to snap out of it!”

“All this is just inside Stan’s mindscape, remember?” Mabel added. “You’ve gotta out of there so you can help us stop Bill and save Stan!”

The ripple of static crossed the TV screen again, but this time it spread out all throughout the room, making the furniture and walls flicker and glitch like they were in a corrupted game. A high-pitched electronic whine prompted Soos to clap his hands over his ears, and the light from Mabel’s sweater pulsed in sync with the sound, like the noise and the static were emanating from her and Dipper somehow. Soos felt like he was missing something — why did the two of them look so distraught, with those pixelated frowny faces?

“Are — are you sure, dudes?” he asked. “Stan said Bill was gone, and we were having a lot of fun here — weren’t we, Mr. Pines?”

“‘Course we were!” Stan gently punched him in the arm — too gently, almost intangibly, like it was just a simulation of the actual sensation — “And do I look like I need saving? I’m doin’ great over here, just having a —”

“You don’t look like it, but you do, Stan!” Mabel cried out. “I know you do, and we can help you, I promise we can — but first you have to admit it!”

“No! I’m fine! We’re all fine!” Stan yelled, but dark red and purple pixels began to flicker at the edges of his form. He looked almost two-dimensional as the glitchy appearance slowly crept up his arms, consuming them and disintegrating them into a sea of dark, flashing rectangles that cascaded towards the ground —

“Mr. Pines?” Soos gasped. “Are — are you okay? How —”

Stan extended what was left of an arm in his direction — and then froze in horror, as he saw what the loss of the pixels had exposed.

Four slender, cartoonishly simple fingers trembled in place just inches from Soos’s shoulder — all of them a smooth and solid black, and wreathed in electric blue sparks.

No! Stan’s voice came out desperate and distorted, crackling and cutting out like a broken speaker. PLEASE, no —

Two pairs of human hands grabbed ahold of Soos from behind and pulled him away from Stan, back towards the television. From all directions at once, his ears were filled with a resounding POP —

And then the three of them tumbled down onto the grayscale yet familiar wooden floor of the Mystery Shack’s gift shop, dark clouds above them receding towards the hallway. Just feet away, the vending machine stood shining brighter and bluer than ever, a now all-too-familiar song playing softly from within like the melody from a music box.

Keep smiling through,

Just like you always do,

‘Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away!

***

An elven wizard resembling Ford, a human bard resembling Fiddleford, and a silver dragonborn paladin with two additional rows of eyes like Jheselbraum forged a path up a mountain, undeterred by the storm clouds gathering overhead. Their route wasn’t particularly steep, but shrubs and small trees grew all over what had once been a trail, making their climb more tedious than Ford had hoped for.

“So Ford, this dungeon — you say no one’s ever returned from it alive?” Fiddleford asked, absentmindedly plucking his banjo to the tune of Country Roads.

“No one has ever returned from it period, dead or alive,” he answered, shoving a branch out of his face. “Necromancy will likely be of little help to us there. But all the divination magic in the world agrees that the depths of Mt. Somnifell hold, and I quote, ‘all the treasure an adventurer could ever dream of.’ You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”

“More like muddy feet,” Fiddleford groaned, narrowing his eyes and gritting his teeth with clear visceral disgust as looked down at the ground beneath his shoes. “Are we close yet?”

“Should be.” Three of Jheselbraum’s eyes were directed down at a map, while the other four scanned the surrounding area for landmarks and hazards. “Do you see a crooked tree anywhere?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Ford replied. He craned his neck up towards the sky, past the transparent storm clouds and into the pink marble room surrounding them. “Stan, are there any landmarks that you forgot to imagine into the game and would like to tell us about?”

Stan snorted and leaned over the table, resting his elbows on a neighboring mountain. “Have a little faith, Poindexter! I may be a first time DM over here, but I think you’ll find that I’m the master of the imagination!”

“Fine, I’ll look somewhere else for your dumb tree,” Ford shot back. “Alright, gang, let’s check some other spots at the same altitude — ugh! What’s going on here?”

A long, brown tendril had wrapped around his left ankle and was binding it in place — the root of a nearby oak, he realized.

“It’s got us too!” Jheselbraum called out, drawing her sword. Without hesitation, Fiddleford whacked the root ensnaring him with his banjo, and it seemed to flinch — as much as a semi-mobile plant could flich, at least — but stayed tightly bound.

“I cast Scorching Ray!” Ford declared, and three yellow-orange bolts flew out from the tip of his wand, one striking each of the three tendrils with impressive precision. Several inches of each root instantly crumbled into ash, and the oak tree that they led back to shuddered, green lights flashing in its leaves as a dark-skinned figure with pointed ears and vivid emerald eyes flickered into view. Immediately, they held up their hands in submission.

“Alright, I’m sorry! You’re stronger than I bargained for. I’ll leave you alone now, I promise.” Their voice held a hint of Stan’s hoarseness, but also a distinct inflection pattern of its own.

“You’re a dryad, I presume?” Ford asked, cautiously lowering his wand. “We’re sorry for trespassing on your territory.”

“I suppose dryad is the closest word to it. Most dryads are only tied to one tree, though — I watch over this whole grove, even though I can only control one tree at a time. You can call me Balsa.”

“You must know this region like the back of your hand, then,” Jheselbraum commented, and Balsa beamed, nodding. “Do you think you could help point us towards a certain landmark?”

Their face immediately fell, and they let out a sigh. “It’s the crooked tree, isn’t it? You’re looking for the entrance to the depths?”

“That’s correct. Is something… wrong with that?”

They shook their head. “No, it’s just that… you seem like half-decent people, you know? Same as a lot of other treasure hunters that I’ve seen vanish into that cavern, and never come out. I try to make the plants overrun the trail, make the crooked tree grow straight again so no one can find this place and go boldly marching to their deaths, but…”

They waved their hand halfheartedly, and a mere five meters away, the undergrowth parted to reveal a crack in the earth — a nearly circular dark chasm that rested in the mountain’s light grey stone just as a black hole might sit in the center of a shining galaxy.

“Why are ya showin’ us this?” Fiddleford asked. “You just said ya wanted us to stay out.”

“It’ll call to you anyway.” Balsa sighed dejectedly. “It always does. Everyone who goes looking finds it eventually.”

“How long have you been trying to keep people out?” Jheselbraum hesitantly stepped towards the edge of the chasm, lower row of eyes blinking as she tried to make out what lay within.

“About a century and a half now,” Balsa told her. “The legend draws people in from all four corners of the world, and everywhere in between — seemingly pleasant people like you three, a lot of the time. People whom I wouldn’t expect to be so driven by greed and the promise of treasure. Are you in debt? What is it that draws you to this… this suicide mission?”

“Well, they say money can’t buy happiness, but it doesn’t exactly hurt to have it, either,” Ford replied, and above the table Stan stifled a laugh. “But for us three, I think the main thing drawing us in is the thrill of the discovery. We’re not so much treasure hunters as simply adventurers.”

“Well said,” Jheselbraum told him. “Balsa, we appreciate your concern, but we know the risks of this mission and we’ve made according preparations. If we’re ever in grave danger, we’ve prepared spells to teleport out with. ”

Ford nodded. “The depths of Mt. Somnifell are a mystery that we plan to solve, no matter how many expeditions it takes.”

Balsa shook their head. “Well, I can’t stop you. But I’m not sure you’ll like the solution to that mystery as much as you expect. Will you really remain so dedicated to the truth, if it starts to look like you’re headed towards answers that you don’t want to hear?”

With that, they turned their back and vanished in a burst of green light.

“That was ominous, wasn’t it?” Fiddleford muttered, and then after a pause added: “Well, who’s jumpin’ down that hole first?”

“I think I’ll try to climb, rather than jump, but I’ll be happy to lead the way.” Ford intertwined his fingers and stretched his arms out in front of him, preparing himself for the descent.

“Be careful,” Jheselbraum warned him. “It doesn’t get any brighter down there, and the air flowing out felt humid. It may be slippery.”

“To quote our infinitely wise DM — have a little faith! For one thing, I have dark vision, and for another, I never said I was climbing the rocks themselves.”

One use of Rope Trick later and Ford’s feet safely struck the damp stone floor, having reached the bottom of a twenty-foot long, near-vertical shaft. Fiddleford was about halfway down and had all four limbs wrapped around the rope for dear life, as Jheselbraum brought up the rear and offered words of reassurance.

“Don’t you even think of explorin’ any further without us, Stanford Pines!” Fiddleford shouted, shrill voice echoing loudly. “You’ll just get yourself killed an’ you know it!”

“Relax!” Ford yelled back. “I’m taking a look around, but I’m not moving any deeper in!”

Once he felt certain Fiddleford was more focused on the climb than on him, he took just a tiny step forwards — and then another, and one more after that, because he really had expected to be able see a bit further down here with his dark vision —

The world around him went white, and two firm hands came out of nowhere to grasp both of his shoulders. Jheselbraum stood facing him in the featureless bright space, once again in a robed human form… and with glowing purple eyes.

“I think something’s wrong with your table, Jhes. This doesn’t look like something that should be happening in a campaign —”

“Ford, please listen to me — you’re falling more deeply entranced by the second. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get through to you again at this rate — you must snap out of it! I know it’s an upsetting truth to face, but you are strong enough, and so is your family, as long as you all face this together. I believe in —”

Ford blinked, and he was back in the cave. Fiddleford kneeled a few feet behind him, looking relieved enough to kiss the ground if only he could see it in the darkness, and Jheselbraum gracefully leapt down from the rope to land at his side. She didn’t look especially worried, or speak like there was any matter of particular urgency at hand.

“Ford, you’re giving me an… odd look. Is your touted night vision malfunctioning?”

“No, I’m… just thinking.” He’d witnessed something, he knew that, but the memory felt the same way an object might look if viewed through unfocused eyes in the dead of night — blurry and undefined, only straining his brain more and more the harder he tried to focus on making it out.

Oh well, then. No need to hurt myself — it’s just a game. And speaking of which…

“Stan?” he called out, and the roof of the cave grew holographic and transparent, revealing Stan’s face as he watched the party attentively.

“Yeah, Sixer?”

“I have to admit, I had my doubts about you as Dungeon Master, but… I was wrong. This is such a well-crafted, captivating story you’ve created here — you know that, right? I’m really, genuinely enjoying it — keep it up, and I won’t ever want to leave!”

“Yeah.” Stan smiled, but broke eye contact with Ford — was he surprised? embarrassed? guilty? “Yeah, that’s just what I’m shootin’ for. Thanks, Ford.”

***

“Can you hear us, Grunkle Ford?” Mabel called out. “Where are you?”

No one replied, but the dark clouds in the hallways crept a few inches closer and the piano notes grew slightly fainter.

“Do you think he’s behind the machine?” Soos asked. He took a few steps away from the nearest hallway and towards the kids, nervously scanning the room for any sort of surprise attack.

“I don’t know, but I have a feeling we might not get another chance to check,” Dipper replied. Dark droplets rained down from a crack in the roof, narrowly missing him and splattering across the vending machine’s glass door.

“You’re right, we should hurry — wait, what?” Mabel gasped as she rushed over to the machine. “Dipper, the buttons are different — it’s some kind of weird code! How are we gonna get in?”

“Let me see. There’s got to be a way… wait, hold on. I… I’ve seen this code before.”

“That’s great! I should’ve known you’d know how to… Dipper? Is something wrong?”

Dipper’s stomach was churning with nausea and he hated it, because he knew it wasn’t a real sensation, a physical sensation, but couldn’t still couldn’t will the feeling to stop. “No, it’s just… this cipher was in the Journal, but I wasn’t able to crack this one until after Weirdmageddon, when all the pages got restored. I don’t think even Ford knows I solved it.”

“So what’s it doing in Stan’s mind?” Soos asked. “Did he crack it, or —”

“Bill was the one who wrote in this code,” Dipper added more quietly. “He used it while he was possessing Ford.”

“Oh… right.”

Dipper took another, more careful look at the keypad, where four buttons were already glowing — corresponding to the letters S, T, A, and N.

Now, if we press B, I, and then L twice…

His hand had barely left the keypad when the machine shuddered, swinging open with a groan to reveal a sight that was both unnervingly alien and chillingly familiar.

Descending beneath them was a staircase, mirroring the design of the stairs beneath the Shack — only these were carved from a shimmering light wood, like the bark of a birch tree. Elliptical knots and whorls covered the walls, slowly swirling and moving and growing as they turned to stare up the steps at Dipper and the others, flickering yellow so faintly you could almost convince yourself you’d imagined it, if only you didn’t know better.

“Oh, fuck this,” Dipper whispered, and neither Mabel nor Soos — the two most profanity-averse people he knew — gave any sign of disagreement.

He did, however, hear a sickening crunch behind him, and turned to see the floorboards on the other end of the room collapsing, dragged down into a slowly widening sinkhole in which dark currents frothed and churned. One at a time, grey planks were ripped away from their neighbors and dragged below as the rupture grew, its edges creeping steadily closer —

“I don’t like the look of that place either, dudes,” Soos told them, “but we might not have a choice…”

“You’re right,” Mabel agreed. “Let’s go.”

She grabbed Dipper and Soos’s hands, and before any of them could lose their will, they barreled down the stairs together.

***

The cavern was sloped downwards with countless twists and turns, and Ford got the impression that the tunnel was slowly snaking its way through just about all the interior volume Mt. Somnifell had to offer. Lurking in the shadows, monsters sprang out to ambush them at surprisingly regular intervals — humanoids with bat-like wings, wolves lacking eyes but with long-reaching claws that more than made up for their blindness, slimes that could precipitate stalactites out of their bodies and hurl them at whoever looked most defenseless — but the party dispatched them all with relative ease, burning through healing potions at only about half the rate Ford had expected, given the dungeon’s reputation.

But the cavern also had some less pleasant surprises in store, as was quickly proven when Ford spotted the first body.

“They’re still breathing,” Jheselbraum reported after he pointed out the dwarf’s unmoving form. “It doesn’t even look like they’ve been knocked unconscious — they’ve simply fallen asleep. And they’re smiling like they’re having a pleasant dream, at that.”

“Huh,” Ford murmured. “Can you tell if the cause is magical, or some kind of ingested or inhaled substance?”

“This might end up provin’ itself to be a stupid question,” Fiddleford chimed in, “but can you, ya know… wake them up?”

Jheselbraum shook the dwarf gently, but they remained limp. “I’m trying to, but it doesn’t seem to be working. But this is a magically induced sleep, Ford, I can tell you that much for certain. We should stay alert — there could be any number of magical traps lying ahead, and we don’t want to get stuck in a slumber like this ourselves.”

“That’s some high-quality armor they’re wearing,” Ford commented. “They must be a serious treasure hunter.”

“We’re not lootin’ an unconscious dwarf, Stanford!”

“I never said we were! I was just wondering if it would be feasible to carry them with us, or if they would be too heavy!”

“Normally, I would hate to leave behind a person defenseless like this, but the monsters seem to be leaving them alone for now,” Jheselbraum cut in. “If we carry them with us, and into more of those ambushes, they might actually be less safe.”

Ford and Fiddleford nodded their agreement, and the trio set off down the tunnel once again. They’d scarcely been walking for five minutes when Ford held up a hand, signaling for the others to stop.

“Shh. Do you hear that?”

Fiddleford cupped a hand around his ear. “Water dripping, and… it sounds like breathing?” he whispered.

Ford nodded. “Heavy breathing, just up ahead — maybe even more than one person.” Readying his wand, he took a few cautious steps forward —

It was a heap of sleeping bodies this time, almost comically mismatched in size but leaning up against each other as they snored. The largest figure wrapped its arms around two smaller ones, one of which had their arm around a fourth figure who was smaller still. They were an orc, a human, an elf, and a halfling, Ford realized — almost certainly a team who’d ventured into the dungeon together.

Jheselbraum closed her eyes for a moment, teeth gritted in concentration, and then opened them again with a gasp. “It’s a very powerful spell affecting them. I tried to dispel it, but the magic… it fought back in a way I’ve never felt before. Almost as if…”

Her voice dropped to a low, uncertain whisper. “...as if the victims didn’t want their curse dispelled?”

“Odd,” Fidds remarked, and gingerly poked the orc’s arm. Their eyes twitched ever so slightly, but stayed closed.

Ford carefully stepped over the human adventurer’s legs, and conjured four small orbs of light, each tinted a slightly different color. They floated down the darkest hallway yet, illuminating a set of straight, carved stone stairs that didn’t at all match the natural, winding paths of the rest of the cavern.

“I’ve found something over here,” he announced. “Not sure if it’s the final stretch before the treasure we’ve been looking for, or simply the start of a more daunting and deadly area, but it definitely seems to suggest the influence of something sentient. This cavern, whatever it is, is more than just a naturally occurring phenomenon.”

The stairs weren’t especially steep, but walking down them was as exhilarating as sprinting down a hill, like there was nothing in the world that could stop your legs from moving once you began to descend. The smooth, flat walls were damp with condensation, but the droplets of water reflected even less of Ford’s light than the stone did — he only noticed they were there in the first place after he ran his fingers along the wall for a moment, then pulled away to find them cold and wet.

But the condensation seemed to stay off the steps themselves, and when Ford glimpsed a light at the end of the staircase — bright orange, and unlike any of the ones he’d created himself — he broke into a run, startling Jheselbraum and Fiddleford for a moment before they too saw what he’d seen, and rushed to catch up with him. They careened to a stop in front of an ornately carved wooden door, candles on each side of it lighting the hall, and Ford pushed it open to reveal —

An expansive, well-lit library, bookshelves stretching up from a plush-carpeted floor all the way up to the high and majestic painted ceiling, each and every available ledge crammed full of ancient-looking but well-preserved scrolls and tomes. Ford walked in slowly, not out of a lack of interest but out of an indecisiveness regarding where to investigate first — so many of the nearby books looked so enticing, but he was also drawn to the luxurious mahogany desks that seemed to come pre-equipped with inkwells and long, fluffy quill pens, and it was equally hard to tear his eyes off the statues of ancient wizard scholars, lit from behind by elegant, resplendent chandeliers…

As he marveled, Jheselbraum picked a book from the shelf seemingly at random, flipping through it at first but then skimming the pages with a bit more care, eventually sitting down with it and turning back to the beginning to pour over every word.

“This is the work of scholars that have long since been relegated to legend!” she reported. “Knowledge that for centuries, people have accepted as being lost forever! This is the discovery of a lifetime!”

Fiddleford chose another tome and opened it up on one of the desks, pulling a blank scroll out of a drawer and placing them side-by-side in preparation for taking notes. “That is, if you could even catalog all this in a lifetime! I can’t even see the end to some of these shelves!”

It was all so perfect that Ford couldn’t help but laugh — a deep, genuine laugh that the library’s acoustics amplified, bringing smiles to the faces of his companions. Skimming the titles and authors featured on the nearest shelf, he mused: “I wonder if we could find an explanation for why those explorers were asleep. This place surely would have —”

His gaze came to rest on a moderately thick book bound in black-dyed leather, and held closed by a clasp seemingly carved from bone: A History of Earliest Necromancy, Volume 2 — The Rise of Liches and Innovation of Archliches.

“Though really, I don’t think that’s the highest priority in the grand scheme of things.” He immediately curled up in a cozy chair with the volume and opened it to the first chapter, the world outside of the pages becoming effectively nonexistent as far as he cared.

Stan watched the whole scene play out from above, with only the faintest, most easily stifled hint of guilt hidden behind his smile as he saw his brother happily and peacefully settle down to read.

***

The staircase was longer than the one beneath the Shack, and each footstep felt heavier than the last. At some point the stairs began to alternate light and dark colors, as if the white color of the bark had been peeled off every other step, and a faint chime sounded beneath each footfall, harmonizing with the intensifying piano music. Neither the clouds nor the waves appeared to follow them down, as if the brightness of the stairs and the eyes were driving the darkness away.

The end came up on them quickly — Dipper had been expecting another door, some other puzzle, but it seemed that the vending machine had been Bill’s last line of defense. Hallways branched out all around them, winding and turning every which way and lined with doors just like the ones upstairs. Closest to the three of them was the hall labeled Memories, in the same cipher from the vending machine; it was also the hallway from which the music seemed to emanate, growing so clear that Dipper could almost make out a voice singing the accompanying lyrics.

“Do we follow the song?” he asked, and Mabel nodded.

“Yeah, I guess it’s been working so far.”

The patterns in the walls shifted, eyes staying fixed on the trio as they forged ahead.

***

Ford flew through the first book and found the other volumes soon after, all on different shelves yet well within his line of sight, like the library had read his mind and rearranged itself. Every once in a while, he heard a murmur or exclamation from Jheselbraum or Fiddleford, and though a part of him wondered what they were reading, it felt almost like a waste of effort to tear his eyes up from the page. The books were so detailed, so well-researched, that he could almost forget he was playing a game…

“Stanley, do you mind if we stay here just a bit longer?” he asked. “I know you probably have plans for the rest of the campaign, and I don’t want to ruin those by taking too long to move on…”

The roof of the library turned into a magnificent glass window, through which Stan looked back at Ford. “Well, are you having fun down there?”

“Oh, absolutely!”

Stan smiled. “Then you can stay there as long as you feel like! Hell, you can stay forever if you want.”

“That’s considerate of you, thanks! But I think forever is a bit too long, even for me…” Ford turned back to his book and flipped to a new page —

But found that he couldn’t quite pour all of his attention into the words anymore. As interesting as phylacteries and demiliches were, there was something that just didn’t sit right with him — something about Stan’s smile. It had seemed… off. Exaggerated.

A tiny voice in the back of his head (a familiar voice, he realized, somehow reminiscent of both Jheselbraum and Mabel) whispered five simple words to him — five words that every D&D&MD player knew well, but Ford hadn’t yet heard on this adventure:

Make a wisdom saving throw.

Without getting out of his chair, he glanced around the library, and for the first time really thought about how every title he spotted sounded like something he’d happily dedicate hours of his life to reading. He thought about how hard it was to tear his gaze away from those books once you started, how easily they captivated his curiosity — and how effortlessly Stan had woven this entire story, how instantly Ford had found himself enthralled, how frequently he would forget that he was actually in Dimension 52…

And how did we get to Dimension 52, again? Stan helped somehow — right? Before Jhes, there was…

There was…

Does it really matter if this is real, Ford?

Ten minutes. That’s all.

A die fell from his hand and struck not the plush maroon carpet of the library, but rather the color-drained wooden floor of the Mystery Shack, bouncing half a dozen times before it came to a rest wedged between two floorboards. On the uppermost face, glowing blue, was the number 38.

Stan stood alone on the other side of the room, dark fog spilling from the arms of his suit where hands should emerge instead. The clouds sunk low to the ground, creeping forwards like a smoky, immaterial tide, but they stopped at the edge of the circular blue glow that the die cast onto the floor, seeping all around the circumference of the light but unable to move further inwards.

“Why, Ford,” Stan choked out, “did you have to ruin it?”

“I don’t know if the being I’m facing is my real brother,” Ford began softly, and Stan flinched, raising a cloudy tendril to cover his face. “But Stanley, regardless of where you really are — I want to help you. I want to find Bill and stop him, once and for all this time; I want you to be safe —”

“I just want you to be happy!” Stan yelled, and tight cuffs snapped shut around Ford’s wrists. Wisps of fog snaked upwards from his hands, and chains materialized out of them, lifting him off the ground as they grew towards the ceiling —

“But i-if you go looking for Bill…”

In the mind, where anything conceivable is just a few seconds of concentration away from manifesting into existence, a vivid imagination can be your best friend or your worst enemy — and Ford couldn’t help but remember, imagine, almost feel the faint sensation of tingling electric shocks at his wrists, of static charges creeping up his arms as his hair stood on end and his muscles tensed involuntarily, bracing himself for the current to intensify…

“If you keep looking, then you won’t be happy,” Stan went on, oblivious to Ford’s panic as he stared down towards the floor with practically glazed-over eyes. “None of us will.”

***

Old, flickering incandescent lightbulbs cast a blue-tinted pallor over everything in the hall, illuminating particles of dust that drifted through the air as if no one had come this way in a very, very long time. Separate hallways branched off every few feet, some behind doors and others not — and many with no visible end in sight.

Dipper and Mabel sneezed with almost perfect synchronicity as they passed by a dimly lit offshoot, ending at a chained-up door with the image of a scalene triangle etched into it. The symbols on the doors grew more familiar the further they explored — glasses, a llama, a bag of ice. The same code labeled every door with a transcription of the symbol, and Dipper flinched, trying to repress a morbid curiosity as they passed Pine Tree, and Question Mark, and Shooting Star…

Then finally, they stumbled upon Sixer.

“Sounds like this is where the music is coming from,” Soos murmured. No one stepped forwards to open the door.

“What do you think we’ll find there?” Mabel asked.

“Hopefully Bill,” Dipper replied. The word hopefully felt tainted and wrong in his mouth.

Mabel closed her eyes for a moment, brow furrowing in concentration. When she opened them again, a water gun-like apparatus had appeared in her hands, just transparent enough for Dipper to tell that it was filled not with liquid, but rather with sparkling bright glitter.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m ready now.”

Soos curled his fingers around an invisible hilt, and a pixelated sword popped into existence, surrounded by equally retro-looking orange flames. “Me too.”

Dipper curled his fingers around the handle, and cringed as a jolt of electricity stung his palm — not strong enough to really hurt, but plenty strong enough to startle him and send his already pounding heart racing even faster. The door swung open with a creak as he recoiled, revealing another hallway lined with more doorways, this time unmarked. The lightbulbs overhead hummed and crackled quietly, blue-white sparks leaping off the sizzling filaments and striking the glass to create a noise that sounded almost intelligible —

(tzxmeaiz jfjlpc ZI afb-wavdiik xlmevmuxvj)

(aesldlk'x ysdb ximaqiu em)

(f'q jg alviq aqeexwoh)

(z'e al wfjzv)

“There’s too much background noise. I can’t tell where the music’s coming from anymore, can you?” Dipper asked.

Mabel rubbed her ears. “It’s like it’s coming from nowhere, but also everywhere. I guess we should just… check the doors one by one?”

“I guess.” Dipper’s hand hovered just above a doorknob as he took a deep breath, Soos and Mabel readying their weapons behind him. There was a sickly-sweet smell permeating the air, like sulfur mixed with the scent of a dusty, seldom-used home heater.

(The smell of burning hair, he would realize a few seconds too late.)

“Okay, Bill. Let’s see what you remember about Ford —”

His fingers had hardly brushed the knob when the door exploded. Dust filled his lungs and splinters impaled themselves in his hands, stinging like a million tiny lightning bolts —

But still stinging less than the memory that now played out before him, stripped away of any enciphering, or euphemism, and at last exposed for all to see.

Ford’s limp body was suspended from a dark red brick ceiling, chains fastened around his neck and wrists. He seemed to fade away into the folds of his scorched and tattered trench coat, and his unblinking eyes stayed worryingly blank as wisps of smoke drifted up from his smoldering, ashen hair.

“Oh, WHOOPSIE-DAISY! This was all my bad this time, it really was — I just keep forgetting how sensitive your puny little organs are!”

Bill jabbed a single finger into Ford’s stomach, and Ford swung back and forth like a pendulum, remaining completely limp. “I wonder what circuit blew this time? Bet it was your sentimental, oversized old man heart again, wasn’t it? I’m tellin’ ya, you’d be better off without it — maybe now you’ll consider throwing your lot in with world domination!”

He cackled, loudly and bitterly. “What are you saying, Cipher? Save the spiel for when he’s awake again to hear you, dumbass!”

He snapped his fingers, and a pale yellow glow began to manifest around Ford’s body, starting at the hands and slowly making its way towards his chest. His voice dropped a few full octaves as he went on:

“Now, let’s get you fixed up for ANOTHER ROUND —”

“NO!”

Dipper didn’t have any memory of stepping through the doorway, but he was well-inside the Fearamid now, racing towards Bill as fast as his legs could carry him and fists clenched so tightly that his fingernails dug into his palms. “Don’t you dare hurt him anymore!”

What?

Bill’s voice came out different — still an echoing, high-pitched whine like usual, but smaller somehow. It held less brash self-assurance, less of that absurd, larger-than-life personality that the world had come to know and fear — and was more full of uncertainty, of panic.

Less horrifying, and more horrified.

P-P-Pine Tree? No, no, NO —

Why are you — what am I —

What am I DOING?

His eye darted all around the room as his body turned to a screen of static, familiar images flashing inside — a pine tree, a six-fingered hand. A sock puppet, a glowing blue chain.

He grabbed Dipper’s hand, but no cold flames ignited this time. His grip was tight and trembling as his wide, desperate eye met Dipper’s —

Pine Tree, why are we here? What IS this? What’s HAPPENING?

I don’t want to be here, Pine Tree, please —

“Let go of my brother!” A blast of a thousand tiny, glittering yellow and pink stars struck Bill in the eye, knocking him backwards as he howled in pain. “Yeah, that’s what you get for what you did to Grunkle Ford!”

Mabel ran towards where Ford hung, smoking less but still limp. “Are you okay?! We’ll get you out of there, just hold on —”

It’s… it’s not the real Ford, is it?

Bill sat up, blinking slowly as if coming to his senses. His voice still echoed, but it was lower-pitched now, and had an unmistakably familiar hoarseness to it as he turned towards Mabel —

We’re in the past, pumpkin. You can’t undo it —

and

neither

can

***

“Stan,” Ford whispered. don’t think of electricity, don’t think of electricity, don’t think of electricity —

“I. Need you. To let me go.” He tried to enunciate carefully but overcompensated, the words coming out stiff and robotic. “Please,” he added.

Stan crossed his arms, pulling them tight around his chest as he shook his head, motions jerking and marionette-like. “No, I — I can’t.”

“Calm down,” Ford told him, even though his voice sounded anything but calm. He could smell the all-too-familiar scent of burning hair and clothes now — was his hair already beginning to smolder, or — no. Ignore your senses if you have to, they’re lying right now. Just talk.

“Stan, look into — look into my eyes. I’m your brother, Stan, you can trust me —”

“But you can’t trust me,” Stan interrupted, still staring straight down. “All this time, I was — you were wrong about me. I’m a horrible brother, and I just tricked you into thinking I wasn’t.”

Something reached its breaking point in Ford’s mind, and tears began to fall from his eyes — an ionic solution, exactly what makes your body such a good conductor of —

“Fuck it, Stan, put me back in your tabletop game if you want, but please, you’ve got to let me out of here or my own mind is going to —”

Stan’s neck flew backwards with a sickening crack, craning towards the ceiling as his eyes flew open, but he still wasn’t looking at Ford — no, he was staring far past him, spheres of blue plasma sizzling where dark brown irises should have been.

WHAT?

Why are you DOWN THERE?

Dipper, NO!

The fire in his eyes moved in cascades, in waves, like static across a television screen.

What am I DOING?

NO, NO NO

Kids, I — oh, pumpkin, it’s not —

I can’t —

I can’t undo it

I CAN’T UNDO IT

He blinked and his eyes were brown again, human again, staring into Ford’s own —

“Stanford, w-what am I DOING?!”

Ford’s chains vanished in a puff of fog, and he tumbled to the ground, landing more softly than the wooden planks beneath him should have allowed for. Stan staggered away from him, raising his hands to cover his mouth as black tears spilled down the left side of his face, leaving dark trails on his cheek and staining his fingers —

While from the corner of his right eye, shimmering crystal blue droplets welled up and dripped down — liquid fire, blazing so bright that it lit the whole room.

“Stanley —!”

In a quick one-two punch, the roof of the Shack buckled and then exploded, as a torrent of water crashed down upon Stan and submerged him instantly. A violent cyclone surrounded him, biting winds slicing through Ford’s coat and stinging his arms as they grew stronger, more desperate —

But Ford could still make out something inside the waterspout, a glow that jumped in jagged paths like lightning one moment, then floated and flickered like tongues of flame the next — a bright blue light, refusing to be drowned out. Refusing to be forgotten.

***

A couple of end notes this time:

-If I did my job as a writer well, this should hopefully be apparent, but because this detail is very important to me and my interpretation of the characters in this context, I just want to clarify: All the electric shocks that (non-memory) Ford felt were due to his own mind/imagination working against him, not due to Stan. Stan, as he now exists, would absolutely never hurt Ford like that — but he was desperate to keep Ford from searching for Bill, and because of that desperation (plus possibly a bit of influence from the Bill memories the kids were rooting around in) he made an unfortunate choice in terms of how to restrain Ford, prompting Ford to flash back to Bill’s torture. Once Stan realizes what’s happening, he’s horrified and immediately wracked with guilt, which we’ll see a bit more of in the next chapter. (finally going back to Stan POV! It’s been so long!)

-If you want a hint for the long code encountered in Bill’s part of the mindscape, hit me up and I’ll be happy to give one!

-For the record, most of my Dungeons and Dragons knowledge comes from listening to podcasts rather than actual playing experience, so if anything doesn’t make sense, let’s just chalk it up to being a difference between D&D and D&D&MD.

-I also threw in a reference to Flat Dreams by Pengychan, which is a Bill-backstory fic that I absolutely love! Of course, you can understand SSD without reading Flat Dreams, but you should totally read Flat Dreams anyway because it’s just that good.

-Last but not least, look out for the next chapter — also known as my favorite chapter — within the next couple of weeks ;) As usual, comments/predictions/etc are welcomed!

#gravity falls #same coin theory #stanley pines #bill cipher #stanford pines #mabel pines #dipper pines #soos ramirez #fiddleford mcgucket #jheselbraum #the axolotl #rosalia writes fic #fic: some sunny day #making some minor format changes to how i post these on tumblr #so we'll see how that goes #it's good to back though

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riseandshinelittleblossom · 5 years

Text

A Home In the Meadow

So for those of you that don’t know, I am very proud and excited to be a part of the as yet untitled Choices Crossover! As part of this new project @tornbetween2loves @kennaxval @teamtomsato @strangerofbraidwood @sawyeroakleyscowboyhat @stopforamoment @begging-for-kamilah and I have been writing various one-shots and drabbles in an attempt to world build/ introduce our versions of these characters. the following is one such piece, based on a song prompt from the wonderful kennaxval himself. The song I was given is “A Home in the Meadow” by Debbie Reynolds. Hope you guys enjoy! PS This is my first ever piece that has ZERO TRR characters in it so go easy on me...

Pairing: f!Kai Park x m!Hayden Young

Word Count: 1964

Disclaimer: I dont own these characters I’m borrowing from PB

Permatag: @leelee10898 @fullbeaumonty @ritachacha @choiceswreckedme

Kai opened her eyes to find Hayden's baby blues staring into hers. She inhaled sharply, scrambling away from him, sleep-induced confusion still flooding her mind.

“Hayden, shit...you scared me.” she began, propping herself on elbows as he beamed at her.

“I'm sorry, I'm just so excited for today. I wanted to wake you, but you looked so peaceful...” His voice trailed off as he looked up at her sheepishly, running his hand through his dirty blonde hair. “Forgive me?”

Kai rolled back towards him, planting her full lips to his forehead. “Yes. I've been looking forward to today, too. Although you still haven't told me what we're doing.”

He smiled mischievously as he rose from the bed. “And I'm still not going to. You get dressed and I'll make us some breakfast, okay? Wear something comfy...and sensible shoes.”

Kai cocked her head to the side at her boyfriend's advice, his award- winning grin making her body tingle. She threw back the comforter as Hayden left the room, the door clicking softly behind him.

She showered and threw on a pair of denim capris coupled with one of Hayden's powder blue t-shirts. It was over sized and it hung down her shoulder a bit, revealing the black strap of her sports bra, so she tried to adjust it, twisting the bottom to one side and securing it in a knot just at her hip.

She peered at her face in the mirror, tying her unruly red hair in a sloppy ponytail and applying a thin layer of cherry chapstick.

Kai frowned in the closet doorway, looking over her shoe rack. Sensible shoes. Hayden's words echoed in her mind as she traced her fingers longingly over her beige wedges, deciding to wear her black tennis shoes instead.

She rounded the corner into the kitchen to find Hayden scrambling eggs, and he extended his arm to hand her a coffee mug without looking away from the pan.

“I was trying to sneak up on you.” She pouted, accepting the coffee.

Hayden laughed out loud. “Not barreling down the hall like a herd of angry elephants.”

Kai smized at him over the rim of her mug.

“These sensible enough for ya?” She wiggled her foot in his direction and he glanced down with an approving nod.

After breakfast Hayden grabbed a backpack from the closet by the front door and tossed it over his shoulder, grabbing Dipper's leash and his car keys. He patted his thigh and the chocolate border collie leapt from the couch, nose pointed at the door and tail wagging.

“Well now I'm even more intrigued. Dipper and a backpack? Where are you taking me?” Kai mused as they headed for the car.

“With everything that's happened-everything with Eros, Nadia and Steve's engagement, your new job, my new job, moving in together- it sort of feels like we're living in fast forward. I wanna take you someplace where we can just hit pause for a moment.”

They drove for what felt like forever but was probably about an hour until Hayden pulled off the main road onto a tree lined dirt path.

“Is this the part where you kill me in the woods?” Kai joked as she peered out the window. Dipper let out a low growl, her head whipping in Hayden's direction.

“Traitor,” he laughed, ruffling the dog's ears.

They finally arrived at a small clearing and the android pulled off to the side near the trees and put the car in park.

“From here we go on foot.” He told her cheerfully. They both got out of the car and Kai's shoulders slumped.

“You mean we aren't there yet?” she whined and her boyfriend chuckled.

“Promise it will be worth it.”

Dipper ran out ahead, reaching the pathway on the other side of the clearing long before her masters and she waited patiently, tail wagging and nose sniffing the air.

Kai scratched the pups head, gesturing toward the path and Dipper took off never getting too far away.

The fifteen minute hike was filled with jovial conversation and Kai could scarcely remember the last time she and Hayden had had a moment to just enjoy each other this way. It was nice, just the two of them with Dipper and the subtle sounds of the forest around them, so far off the grid that they couldn't hear the city anymore.

Up ahead there was another clearing, visible through the parted trees at the end of the trail. Hayden smirked, “Almost there. That's where we're going.”

He nodded and Kai squealed, the excitement almost overwhelming her. She picked up her pace, lacing her fingers in his and tugging him forward.

The path opened up to a small meadow, wild flowers plentiful and down the way a bit there was a peaceful, pristine lake. Kai's eyes went wide with wonder.

“Hayden, this is beautiful! It's almost as if this place has been completely untouched by civilization. It's...it's…”

“Indescribable. And I mean that truly, it's not a glitch.”

They both laughed, and Kai silently thanked her lucky stars that they had finally reached a place where Hayden was able to make light of himself. She had hated seeing him so miserable as he tried to sort himself out, and although she had supported him, she was glad that that time had passed.

“So what's the plan? What's in the backpack?” she questioned as they made their way towards the lake.

“A sleeping bag, a fire starter, lots of junk food, a couple of towels…”

“Towels?”

“In case we wanted to go swimming.”

“But we don't have any suits.”

Hayden stopped walking and stared at her unblinking. “Why the hell would we need suits?”

Kai blushed as she whirled to face him. His faux- seriousness crumbling into a fit of shared giggles.

Stretched out on the sleeping bag, towels and a blanket rolled beneath their heads Kai and Hayden watched the clouds roll by, white fluffy images in the sky that out here seemed endless.

Kai rose from her spot, coyly eyeing the blonde man before her.

“What? What is it?” his eyes squinting against the sun, now hanging low behind her in the early evening.

Kai didn't answer him, she simply reached for the hem of her t-shirt, pulling the garment off in one fluid motion and flinging it at him.

Hayden pulled the fabric from his face to find that her sports bra was gone as well and his jaw went slack as he watched her shimmy out of her capris and panties.

“You said there'd be swimming, Mr Young, did you not?”

Hayden scrambled to his feet, discarding his own clothes quickly as Kai scampered towards the lake.

She hit the water running, her muscles tightening slightly as the cool water hit her, settling finally where the water was waist deep.

“Okay, so I expected it to be warmer, but we can still enjoy this, I think.” he whispered in her ear and she gasped, a bit surprised as he slid his strong arms around her waist, pulling her back flush to his chest.

He placed a soft, tender kiss to the crook of her neck, her hands resting on his forearms in front of her and they swayed together for a moment, the evening sun's rays glittering over their bodies and the crystal clear water around them.

Without warning, Dipper hurled herself off of the bank, splashing the couple and ruining the mood.

Kai cringed at the watery assault, spinning out of Hayden's arms and raising her own in a feeble attempt to shield herself.

“Thanks, Dip.” Hayden laughed his nose scrunching up, droplets still rolling down his face. The border collie barked, tongue lolling and tail wagging.

“I guess we wanted to swim, right?” Kai laughed.

He grinned mischievously as his hand slowly skimmed the surface. He studied the water as he dipped his fingers in, savoring the sensation as he drug his hand through it, before cocking his head to the side to look at Kai.

“No. Hayden, you wouldn't dare.” she said, eyes going wide.

“I wouldn't?” he flicked his wrist, playfully splashing her as she squealed.

“You're going to pay for that, Sweetheart.” She said, both of her arms dipping below the surface, sending a tidal wave in Hayden's direction.

A water war broke out both parties splashing wildly, giggling all the while and when finally they tired Hayden noticed the sun had almost entirely set in the distance.

“Wanna watch it together?” He asked his chin tipping in the distance to a near perfect view of the sunset.

Kai nodded eagerly as they waded to the shore.

After towel drying, Hayden laid out on the sleeping bag and Kai curled into him, her head resting on his chest as he cradled her and planted a kiss to the damp locks at the crown of her head. His fingertips absentmindedly grazed the length of her arm as they laid together, watching the oranges and pinks as the sun went down over the horizon.

The world around them seemed so still, the tranquility was a feeling that Kai wasn't used to and it almost made her uncomfortable, her body tensing. As if he could read her mind, Hayden began to hum a tune, breaking the silence, and he felt her body relax against him.

“Away, away; come away with me, where the grass grows wild and the winds blow free. Away, away; come away with me and I'll build you a home in the meadow..” Hayden sang softly, barely audible, but Kai could feel the rumble of his baritone voice reverberating through his ribs, vibrating her body soothingly.

“I love it when you sing to me, Hayden.” she mused and he felt a smile bloom on her lips, against his chest.

He gripped her arm, pulling her into a tight side hug.

“If it makes you happy, I'll do it everyday.”

Eventually, the sun was completely gone, replaced by the ethereal glow of the moon light and the flames from the fire Hayden had expertly constructed. Dipper plopped down at their feet with a sigh.

“Is it bedtime, girl?” Kai asked and the dogs ears perked up briefly.

“Maybe...maybe we could just stay out here tonight...Naked and peaceful. We don't have a tent, but I brought plenty of blankets. Dipper and I will keep you safe under the stars.”

Hayden sat up, producing two more swaths of cloth from the bag.

“How on Earth did you jam so much into that one backpack?” Kai mused, shaking her head.

“Well I-”

She cut his explanation short as she pressed her full lips to his, and he melted into the caress, his hand coming up to cup her cheek.

“Today has been so perfect, I don't really want to head back to the city just yet.”

She nudged him gently, coaxing him to lay back down. Hayden caught the hint and he grinned as she snuggled into him once more, drawing one of the blankets to her chin, wrapping them in the warmth of it and each other.

“I'm already sold, Hayden. You couldn't make me leave now if you tried.”

He craned his neck, looking down into her eyes as she traced her fingers along the smooth, flawless skin of his chest.

“I love you, Kai, and you make it so easy to love you.”

“I love you too, Hayden. Thank you. We really needed this trip. There's only one thing that could possibly make this better.”

“Whatever it is, consider it done, Ms. Park.”

“Sing me to sleep?” she bit her bottom lip as she made the request. The roll of his chuckle in his chest was delightful as he responded,

“Of course I will.”

#perfect match #choices perfect match #pm fan fic #choices fanfiction #pm hayden young #pm kai park #f!kai park #m!hayden young #kai x hayden #song prompt

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twracehorse · 5 years

Text

Cringing at my own videos

Training Videos Edition!

I got bored, needed motivation to start editing, went back to take a look at my older videos, and now I judge and cringe at them because that’s a given at this stage

Under the cut to keep your dash shorter :3

Determined Horse Training, the title I came up with to be a little unique. I obviously couldn’t use something akin to Northena’s “Training Is Fun...Right?” and I wanted to give it a proper title knowing this would be a series of videos. I thought, and thought, and came up with the title after thinking of Undertale and how you are filled with determination in the game. “I am filled with determination to train these horses!” is what I thought and so the title of the series became that!

I use // as a way to separate different topics I’m talking about

Brave Rebel- First off...the thumbnail. He was originally themed sort of after Nathan Drake from Uncharted, since I was into that series at the time. So the map was, you know, for the treasure hunting. But I didn’t want to stretch the map to fit and somehow decided that a brown background was a good idea?? // AH THE CLOTHES! THE NECK!! AHHH GATORADE OCEAN BLEHH. // Oh yeah I have a spelling error in the video “Let’s go defeat this traning day!”. // Been training with Sage from the start of the series. I wonder how many fails of their’s I’ve caught XD // Ah the rocks, the rocks that I caught Sage stumbling out of in a later training video. // Let’s not forget the double mouse thing going on that makes its appearance in many videos before I figured out to click off of the web pages (which had a music playlist going while training). // Omg there’s someone with the club name The Babies standing nearby when I turn in the final race. // Low-key still love this horse. He was my first true Soul Steed before we were designated to our starter. I don’t take him out much, the difference in horse animations from new to old is getting bigger and for dynamic photos, it just doesn’t look good ( @~@)

Cool Hero- The horse based off of Markiplier back when he had red hair. I also uploaded the video on his birthday! // The song choice....I mean it fits the theme, otherwise I’d pick a better song. // The mini references I’m still low-key proud of. // There’s quite the amount of gliding pons in this video and some horror texture pons. // I obviously had to max Markimoo at the observatory! // I also mimicked Mark’s outros where an image is boomeranging. It took a couple tries with my friend in the background, but it was worth it!

Violet Mystery- I hope when I introduced her as “The winner of the Jorvik Wild horse competition” I mean, she was the first coat to be picked. Back when it was only one horse coat is being made. They added the top two coats afterwards. // Oh yeah the character’s whole head would move to the side to keep eye contact with the camera. // It’s so weird to think that I caught a bit of footage of Swifty just before meeting her. Then again I remember NOT editing this training video until months later and uploaded it in September. Mind you that I got Cool Hero and Violet Mystery at the same time and Cool Hero’s video was out in June...oops. // Ironic that I have the pandoric cracks around when the horse is based off them. // People running up from the riding arena, ah the fog glitch that would happen when you left your horse in the riding area, ran all the way to the dino valley elevator, took it, and there was no fog in the valley!

Megalove- Ah the first Undertale horse! I mean technically still the only Undertale themed horse I have, but I do have others planned. Haven’t gotten them yet and some plans changed. // The thumbnail....why did I make the stickers super tiny?? // Finally changed Elsa’s hairstyle to the ponytail I still wear to this day. We need updated ponytails with side bangs! I know we have the awesome braided ponytail in Mistfall, but there’s too much forehead! // Also the first training footage with the meet up....was 4 hours long. This was back when I recorded all stages of training and went through the footage in real time....I’m glad I changed strategy. // Can’t remember if crashing into a jump and the jump of the music timed at the same point was on purpose or if it was editing magic. // Oof cringing that I put comic sans as Sans “talking” in the video nnngghhhhh! // Ah my old club name Royal Ambassadors. I gave that club over to my side account Chiara Monsterhope for obvious reasons. // Annoying Dog in the credits, I still love that

Lucky Hero- I’m still proud that I came up with his nickname Vien short of Vienna where the famous riding school is. He, along with Brave Rebel, are my top horses. Please get an update eventually boys! // Finally Mac users had clear water! I was so happy over this you do not understand XD // Warriors by Imagine Dragons fits this horse, but quite a pain when I got Dark Warrior and didn’t want repeating songs. // Oh yeah early on, the Lipizzaners had a weird reflective tail glitch going on. // Vien was the first horse of mine that I got the day of release, bright and early in the morning! // I love how in the face of danger, an approaching bull dozer, I just stare at it. It wasn’t even a “oh no I should get out of the way” and instead was “huh that’s a thing”. // ALLY CHUM! I forgot that was a nickname to good friend!

Grey Ghost- OH BOY HERE WE GO!! Honestly my favorite training video. It was so much fun to edit with the music and the Halloween stickers hidden around the screen! Despite waking up at 5am to train for that aesthetic™. // Okay but that mushroom with the dark green sign did legit give me a spook. My body froze for a second and then I remembered that Slenderman doesn’t exist in Star Stable XD. // Ngl two of the stickers are hard to see cause of their surroundings. // GALLOPER THOMPSON MY MAN! Honestly I waited till midnight for him to be in Goldenleaf forest, just to see what would happen if you were racing and he caught you. By the gods of editing magic, the song was at a good point that fits perfectly with that scene. // For the scarecrow race I did actually take two different takes. I failed the first one and when I was editing I noticed that the two runs looked similar. So I put the first part of run 1 and cut before I failed and then put the remaining of the race with run 2. Looks almost seamless!

Silent Promise- My favorite mare in my stable! She ends up being my AoT cosplay photo horse...until I get the actual themed horse XP. // Shadows were a little glitchy at first. // Why am I using Rud instead of Rude. Like I know why cause that’s how we got around the filter, but I didn’t need to put it like that in the video. It’s like back in my WolfQuest days where I learned to use Cuz as a short version of Cause and it bled into my text vocab. // The witch bombs...I wanted to make it dramatic, but in hindsight it’s just tasteless really. Also to note that the sound which was fine before uploading, got more rough once it was on YouTube

Small Potential- Real cringe theme here, Hetalia. It was fun while watching and all that, but since then I’ve seen some well done anime! Growth! // I love the nickname Finny. Not too sure if I want to keep this pony or not, sadly. // The Christmas remix song is because I had no other ideas XD

Brave Eagle- Oh this is another slight cringe theme. Even more cringe is the fact that I had to re-upload this training video since it got blocked all over the world! due to the Hamilton musical songs. So I....had to layer over the songs with other songs....it’s a whole mess and was a whole pain since I had to re-edit the sound effects. // I’m proud of the thumbnail though....that’s it

Winter Dust- Why did I make the “there’s a new app with these foals you can train” with the dramatic music? // I think because I had less levels to train, I tried filling that space with “cool looking shots”. // Ah, yes, my How To Get Over A Jump wikipedia step by step

Hollow Phantom- Had to bring a creepy vibe even though it was February. So he’s like a Halloween not Halloween horse. // Can you believe that I found the main song from a Haikyuu!! crack video? XD. // That zoom on the pony surrounded by magic shires was weird. We’re saying “SO TINY” but the clip was so short it was done and over without much sense. // Mmm that slight irritation that the music and clip didn’t match with the drop. // Tried to blend the music together with itself....it’s obvious. // Of course had to max the Galloper horse where I first met the phantom himself

North Guardian- I wanna talk about the thumbnail....that background...is literally just the horse’s hindquarters. I wanted something mossy since the horse is sort of based off of Pelagia from Shadow of the Colossus. I couldn’t find good enough backgrounds, so I used the horse itself. // Again that urge to want to make the clip and music match but ahhh

Lucky Lucky- Still wish I could name this horse Gold Luck or something. // I think one of the camera turns during a race was just to show off the rainbow nearby. // Ahh! back when we could say “demon” in the chat. // Hmm instead of letting the clip run, I could’ve just cut to Reed calling the askew fence “a disgrace”. // Text was onscreen for just too long. // Trying to do the riding arena jumps with a good camera angle. But at that point, the camera kept moving and wouldn’t hold still. I’m glad it’s better now. Maybe I’ll try it again with a future horse. // Huh, forgot to add sound effects when I hit something on the last race

Silent Surprise- Cause I had to let the people know that I bought the horse after watching the Belmont. // AH STILL THE NECK! // 2 minutes in and we haven’t even gotten to the actual training yet. // Another day, another SSO glitch, this time it’s shadow rocks. // Oop missed a sound effect

Hot Spot- THE MUSTACHE! // I forgot I put a filter over the video to give it an old timey look. I should do more like that if it’s in theme. // Of course I had to have The Wanted be playing with this song since it’s old west sounding. // What was the purpose of editing the scarecrow race like that? XD. // Random running clip. // Walking the whole bobcat race would be nice if I didn’t keep moving the camera

Pumpkin Candy- As much as I love my Halloween horses, this training video isn’t up to the standards that the first Halloween training video set up. It’s still got Halloween themed music, it’s still got stickers hidden in the video, but it doesn’t feel the same. // Having text be their default instead of making them the same agh. // The spooky filter I overlayed the clips with changes at times. Would be nice if it stayed consistent

Dragon Dawn- Hmm now that I have more songs to choose from (getting into another artist as much as I did with The Wanted), I would have another song playing to fit the horse better. Maybe Euphoria or Mikrokosmos. Oh well those will be for future horses eventually! // Didn’t drop with the music...disappointed

Thunder Spirit- The horse that trains through three months. You can easily tell by the Valentine race, the rainbows of March, and April Fools. // Man I really need to work on making the text not be so BIG. // The first rainbow race had lots of sound effects. After that one I was just like “yeah not doing that again”

Sun Chaser- Eh the slowed down music is not the best idea. But I think it was also an intro to a remix of the song. So it was only so long and I had a bit to say for the intro of the horse. // The second clip of the mysterious Icelandic cryptid you can’t see them once it zooms in....annoying. // Too much of a slow build up with another cryptid spotting. // Also using the same sound but slower after just using it...smooth (not). // You know the very last clip of the horse as he’s turning around on the beach? Yeah that’s the exact moment I did the intro for the horse XD

Dragon Warrior- The contrast between me and Sage’s bantering vs the sadder song (I found the song because of a Zeno AMV) well it’s kinda weird having laughs and then sad melody. // YouTube again ruins the quality of the mic as it sounds fuzzier than it was pre-uploaded. // Low-key recording voices was fun aside from having to make sure the clips matched the voices and clicking of the mouse. // I’m still annoyed I couldn’t find the perfect snoring sound effect when Sage’s Connemara is sleeping and starts gliding away

Smoke Mirror- A little too much of a pause between text in the intro. // I love how I’m wearing a Halloween shirt because no other shirt matched with the blue of the hat except for the dress it came with THAT I GOT RID OF!

Obsidian Mystery- I love the thumbnail for her training video. It’s so spooky and cool! Favorite thumbnail of the entire series right there. // Ironic that with the three Halloween horses I’ve had. The two with the upbeat music are the ones where Galloper was present that year. The one where Galloper was missing that October, the music was softer, generic Halloween music. Not intentional, but it works. Though the first Halloween training video still gets the trick-or-treats because it has nostalgic music. // Some text isn’t easily visible

Dark Warrior- The horse I wish I could name Secret Warrior cause that would make SO MUCH MORE SENSE than Dark Warrior, but here we are. // Since Warriors by Imagine Dragons was in a previous training video, I had to search for another song to fit the horse. I literally went through those anime character theme song videos to find one! That was a terrible jump cut of the song

Ember Flame- Coming Soon

#Star Stable #Star Stable Online #SSO

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nancywheelxr · 5 years

Note

Kara and Brainy being captured together and realizing they have feelings for each other

Gosh this grew way bigger than I expected. Hope you enjoy it, anon!

Kara punches the glass doors again.

It’s useless, she knows. It didn’t work the first dozen times and it’s not going to work now, but going through the motions, burning through the adrenaline, the ache on her knuckles, it all makes her feel a little better, a little more in control.

“Supergirl?” his voice is cracking, but it’s there, and Kara rushes to the wall between cells, as close as she possibly can. “Where are– oh, no. We were captured.”

It’s not a question, she can see him remembering their fight this afternoon– the Children of Liberty surrounding them, so many of them, faceless with their masks, and she had gotten separated from Brainy, and she couldn’t see him in the sea of people, and then suddenly someone had dragged him forward, unconscious, pressed a gun to his head, and he had been so pale, blood trickling down his temple and disappearing on his black shirt, and his heartbeat had been so faint, so when the man yelled at her to give up, Kara had simply raised her arms behind her head and let them cuff her.

“How’s your head?” She asks gently, fingers itching to reach for him, “they hit you pretty bad there.”

His hands fly to the dry patch of blood, coming up thankfully clean. “It’s healed. But I’m afraid I might be slightly concussed,” he frowns, gingerly touching the back of his head, where Kara remembers he had hit his head on the bench when they carelessly tossed him in the cell. “What about you? Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she shakes her head, glancing at the walls, “but I still can’t get us out of here. I think they’ve got inhibitors like the ones in Shelley Island. Are you sure you’re okay? There was so much blood, I– just, I was so worried, you were out of it for so long, I thought–”

“I’ll be fine,” Brainy reassures her, standing up shakily. He needs a minute to steady himself, before shuffling to sit in front of her, leaning against the back wall. The glass between them is no more than four inches thin, but it feels terribly far from where she’s standing. “I heal faster than humans, the concussion will be gone soon. Do you know where we are?”

“No,” Kara sighs, mirroring his position and leaning back, hugging her knees to her chest. “The van was lined with lead. It’s like– they are scarily good at this.”

“Indeed,” he raises his hand to his forehead, closing his eyes. The crease on his brows deepens, “I cannot connect with anything either. These cells must be blocking any signals from coming in. It’s as if they had been prepared for me as well.”

“I don’t like this,” she shakes her head, “Lockwood is in jail, they should be scattering, not upping their game.”

Before any answer could be given, the door at the end of the hall is thrown open, three men stalking past it. They all look more or less the same– tall, burly, scowly. Their leader, the one with a scar above his right brow, steps closer to their cells, grinning, “now that’s a sight to see,” he crows, “not so super now, are we? But don’t worry, Blondie. We’re not here for you this time. We just wanna test a new toy our sponsor sent us.”

Dread pools on her stomach and Kara is on her feet before Scarface over there can finish pressing a button on a device he brought. She tries to run forward, but a high-pitched noise pierces the room. It seems to be too high for humans to hear, but even as she falls to her knees, Kara sees Brainy stumbling too, his image glitching and shimmering as his image inducer gives out.

And if this is hurting her ears, it looks so much more painful for Brainy, Kara has to– nothing. Like this, barely able to stand on her own, there’s nothing she can do.

“So it does work, uh?” Scarface laughs, turning on his heel to leave, his minions in tow.

She waits just until the ground feels steady under her feet, ignoring the ringing echoing on her head. “Brainy, oh my god, you’re bleeding again–”

“It’s– well, it’s not quite alright, but it does look worse than it is,” he’s breathing heavily, and when he coughs, she can see the blood on his palms. “There are more pressing things to worry about. Did you see the logo, on the device?”

Unfortunately. “Yeah. That’s not good, we need to tell Alex and the others.”

“They talked about a new sponsor, but why would L-Corp– why would Lena do this?”

Kara feels her own face hardening, “no, not L-Corp. Lexcorp.” This is really not good, they have to warn Lena, too. “But Brainy, they don’t seem to care what we hear. And they weren’t wearing masks this time. You know what that means, don’t you?”

He coughs again, wiping the blood from under his nose. “It means they’re planning to kill us.”

There’s a tiny window above her head, allowing natural light to spill inside their cells. Kara watches the sunlight move across the room as the hours pass, disappearing into pale moonlight by the end of the day. And then, she watches it again.

And again.

The days pass in a blur of awful helplessness. Without her powers and with little to no contact with their captors, Kara isn’t sure what she can do. There’s no one she can try to talk down, there’s no superpower to help her kick down doors. Their food comes only once a day, and the water too, only enough to keep them feebly alive.

One thing is for sure, these people are much better at kidnapping than the last crew.

“How long until Alex finds us, do you think?” She sighs, leaning against the wall between the cells, her legs stretched in front of her.

“No more than a day, I’d say,” Brainy guesses, the same guess he’s been answering her every time she asks. They’re sitting back-to-back, so Kara can’t see his face, but she imagines it must be as despondent as she feels.

“We need to come up with a plan of our own,” Kara suggests, awfully aware their time is running out. “Before they decide it’s not worth it to keep us here anymore.”

“They must need us for something,” he says, voice flat, “or we would not still be alive.”

At the very least, Brainy looks better, she concedes. His concussion did heal itself with time, and so did his cough, and his skin isn’t so pale anymore, but Kara hates to see the strain on his eyes. She absolutely loathes to see him hurting, and she hates even more that there’s nothing she can possibly do. He’s here, so close they would be touching if it weren’t for the glass, and she can feel the warmth radiating from him. Glass is a good heat conductor, she can almost hear him saying.

“That’s a smart one, uh?” Scarface is back, slamming a magazine against the glass door to her cell with a delighted smile and she hates herself for not hearing him approaching. It’s a Catco magazine, and Kara’s heart cracks at the cover. No more Age of Heroes? Supergirl MIA! “I can’t have you popping up dead, now can I? Oh no, then everyone would be crying their heart outs for you. I don’t need a martyr. No, I need you alive and breathing, so at the end of the week, you can tell all those nice people you could have stopped all these terrible, terrible fires. That shootout in City Hall? Shame you didn’t feel like stopping that one, uh? Yeah, wonder how your little fan club will feel after that.”

“Okay, look,” Kara sees the opportunity there, and scrambles up to snag it, “you want to discredit me right? You don’t need him here for that, he’s got nothing to do with this. Just let him go, and I’ll do it. I’ll say whatever you want me to say– just let him go.”

Scarface laughs a full-bodied laugh that echoes all around like nails scratching on a chalkboard. “You ever played poker, Blondie? Oh man, you’d be terrible at it. Rule Number One, never show your hand, man!” He shakes his head fondly, as if he had been dealing out real advice for her. “See, I already know you will do whatever I tell you to. Because pretty boy over here is my insurance. You think I’m gonna part with my insurance? Of course not, especially now that you just told me how much you care! I was banking on your whole self-righteous moral gig before, but boy, oh boy, did I hit the jackpot with this one– it’s personal for you!”

The magazine slides to the floor as he leaves, still chuckling.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Brainy says as soon as the man is out of earshot. He’s standing now too, face scarily blank, and Kara wonders if it’s too late to gather back her cards, hide them back up her sleeve along with her heart. “What if he had accepted your offer? It would have jeopardized your work as Supergirl– my well-being is not worth it. When the time comes, you must promise you will not do as he asks.”

“Brainy, what–”

“Promise me.”

“What? No, I will not,” she shoots back, stalking to the glass wall, “what are you talking about? Brainy, my reputation, Supergirl’s reputation, I can rebuild. With time, the people will trust me again– I did it before, I can do it as many times as I need. You being safe– that’s all that matters right now.”

His eyes are wide, and she can almost see the gears turning behind them, parsing through her words. “I don’t– the man with the scar on his right brow said it was personal for you. What is that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve been calling him Scarface in my head, actually.”

“Oh, yes, that is a better one!”

Kara’s ticking clock just got a new deadline, and she supposes now that she’s aware of this thing herself, it wouldn’t take long until Brainy figures it out on his own. She never learned how not to wear her heart on her sleeve. And besides, if they don’t make it– she might not get another chance to say this. “Well, first of all, my decision on this would be the same no matter who was here with me. It could be a freaking stranger– any life is worth more than the public opinion,” she swallows, fidgeting with her cape, before taking a deep breath, steeling herself, “that being said. When he says personal, he means I’m in love with you.”

A whole minute goes by in silence. Kara wonders if she broke Brainy. Then, she wonders if he’s wishing he would have been kidnapped with somebody else, someone that isn’t stupidly making him more uncomfortable than those ratty, lumpy mattresses. Then, he speaks, “and is that what you mean?”

She smiles, relieved, “yeah, duh. Even out kidnappers can tell,” her heart is fluttering as she presses a hand to the glass, “it took me a while to realize it, and I kind of hate that I’m saying this for the first time in a prison cell, but Brainy. I’m in love with you.”

He raises his own hand, pressing against hers in answer, just a few inches away from touching. “I wish the circumstances were better,” he says, “I wish I had better words to offer you, but until then. Know this, my heart is yours, Kara Danvers. I love you as well.”

In a perfect world, this would be the moment they would kiss and fireworks would burst in the sky and everything would be alright. But in reality, Kara can only wish fiercely for a happy ending yet.

“Brainy,” she decides, “we are getting out of here. Scarface talked big game about not showing his cards, but he did give us something to work with.”

Brainy raises an eyebrow.

“He can’t kill either of us, not until after the weekend. When they come to move us, that’s when we escape,” a spark of hope is igniting a wildfire on her chest. Now that she has a plan of action, now that she knows this thing between them is real and possible and so, so close– Kara has never been more alive. Right now, she could reach for the stars.

“It will be difficult,” Brainy reminds her, but his voice sounds just as sure as hers, “they’ve defeated us before. But it could work.”

“It will work,” she states, no room for doubt. Then, because it still feels as if she’s melting inside, “but you know, I could really use seeing your smile right now.”

He huffs a quiet laugh, shaking his head, but his lips curl in the most beautiful smile in the whole wide world if you ask Kara.

“Now I know, everything is going to be okay.”

They never make it to the end of the week.

It couldn’t be more than a day when even Kara’s powerless hearing picks up on the commotion outside. She stands to the attention, nods at Brainy who is doing the same in his cell. “Looks like it will be sooner rather than later.”

“Good luck,” she bites her lips, “and be careful.”

The door at the end of the hall swings open and half a dozen agents of liberty fill the room, throwing their cells open. “Change of plans,” one of them says, dragging her out by the arm, “time to sing, roach.”

There are guns pointed at them, and somewhere there’s a dog that just won’t stop barking, and the commotion outside is still raging on, and in the middle of all the chaos, Kara looks away and meets Brainy’s gaze. He nods back. They spring into motion and she has to trust he can handle himself in the fight.

A bullet grazes her shoulder. She punches someone’s face. Her side hurts. A punch to the stomach. It goes by in a flurry of motion, her training kicking in automatically, muscle memory taking over. Kara makes a mental note to thank her sister for all that hand-to-hand in the Kryptonite room.

The agents of liberty might have been better equipped this time, but between the two of them, they still fall down one by one.

“We did it?” her voice echoes in the hall.

“We did it,” his arms wrap around her waist.

And the fireworks might just be an automatic gun emptying its clip somewhere upstairs, and her shoulder is aching where it bleeds, and Brainy has blood on his temple– and none of it matters, because they’re finally, finally, free and he’s kissing her and she’s kissing him and that’s all there is.

Until the cocking of gun, gunshot loud in the silent room.

“Well, well, well, sorry to interrupt,” Scarface says, not smiling for once, gun aimed steadily at them, “but I’m afraid there’s been a change of schedule. Let’s see how well you wear martyrdom, shall we?”

Seriously? is all Kara can think while staring down the barrel of his gun, hasn’t it been enough?

The safety is off. She sees his finger ready on the trigger. Time slows down. And–

“Supergirl,” Alex is suddenly there, throwing something high in the air, and the whole place burst with blinding light.

Yellow sun grenade.

Kara grins, feeling the rush of power thrumming once again underneath her skin, and god, she puts herself in front of Brainy, the rain of bullets bouncing off harmlessly off her. “What took you guys so long?” She laughs, ridiculously relieved, “this place has the worst room service.”

“What? It’s not my fault, these idiots kept setting buildings on fire,” Alex shrugs, faking nonchalance even as she pulls her into a tight hug, “I was so worried.”

“Hey, it’s fine,” she reassures her sister, “we’re fine.”

“Thank you for the rescue, Director Danvers,” Brainy comes to stand beside them, wheezing when Alex hugs him just as tight, “but there is much that needs to be discussed. We have gathered quite a bit of intel.”

“Well, silver linings, I guess?” Alex makes a face, “I need to check on my team, but you two– stay here. It’ll take me two minutes, don’t you dare move, hear me?” She leaves, grumbling, “god knows I don’t want either of you out of my sight for the next ten years.”

Finally, Kara breathes.

“I think that cut might need stitches,” she says softly, fingers tracing gingerly along the edges, “how do you feel about needles?”

Brainy catches her hand, gently turning it around to kiss her inner wrist, just below her pulse point, and she shivers. “Terribly,” he says, eyes shining mischievously, “I guess you will have to hold my hand until it’s over.”

“Gladly,” she tells him, “and I’ll kiss it better after.”

He smiles.

And Kara thinks, yeah, everything will be okay.

#look an ask #kara danvers #querl dox #brainy #supergirl fic #karadox #brainiac 5 #alex danvers #karadox tag

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franklyshipping · 5 years

Text

Scare The Bad Shit Away ~ A Jacksepticeye Ego Fanfic

Soooo I've adapted a prompt from an anon AKA PROMPTS ANON so it fits with the SPOOPY SEASON! Lil warning, there are gonna be some angsty feelsies bUT IT WILL END UP FLOOFY AND GOOD I SWEAR! LET'S DO IT!

Chase Brody was laying in bed. No, he was not decorating the house with spooky decorations, no he was not out buying candy for the trick or treating children....and no, he was not teaching his own children how to carve pumpkins safely. He was being denied those rights, completely unnecessarily, because people can be selfish, stupid, and downright ignorant of other people's true feelings. Feelings that can make someone seem like they're uncaring, when in fact they're just so unbelievably drained that they are unable to express....anything. No matter how much effort you put in, sometimes the internal can just crush you. It's unpleasant as you can probably imagine.

Chase didn't have to imagine. This feeling, or lack of, was what he was becoming accustomed to because of tragedy after tragedy that he'd been subjected to. First, seeing his children less, then only seeing them in a supervised format....then not seeing them at all. Then there were the nightmares that embellished these events with more drama and turmoil than Chase could handle. He was afraid to close his eyes. He was afraid to sleep. He couldn't handle seeing them being taken away, them crying, him crying, him being stuck and gasping at his own chest as the pain built up....and he woke up choking on mucus and tears. People forget about a father's love, thanks for that society. So here he was, if he couldn't sleep he might as well find a state that was as least uncomfortable as possible; even if he was staring at the ceiling for hours on end, or going to the window to wish on a star.

If you think people were oblivious to Chase's feelings however, I must say that you are VERY wrong. But the septics were scared. Scared of being unable to help, scared of saying something wrong and making the situation even worse for the friend and dad that they loved and held dear. Now....I imagine that a lot of you may have a light-bulb moment, thinking that there's one person of that vivacious leprechaun bunch that DEFINATELY has no fear. And you'd be right. There's only one who's mad enough to risk everything bad in order to bring Chase out of that chasm of shit.

'BRODY BITCH HOW DO I LOOK?'

It somehow feels like deja vu writing Anti in this role, but lets face it, it's a very accurate representation of the glitch. He entered the room, did a twirl, and smirked brightly. He had his regular clothes on, but additionally donned a black swishy cape and some light-up devil horns on his head. It seemed he was going for a comically creepy Halloween look instead of spine-chillingly creepy, for today at least. Chase let out a sigh at the noise, only registering it as noise at first before realising it was a person. He looked at Anti briefly, and once his brain caught up with everything he mumbled.

'Mm, spooky.'

Chase wasn't smiling, in fact it rather looked like he didn't have the physical capability anymore with how slack his face and jaw had become. Anti tried to make sure he kept enthusiasm projected, because he knew that if Chase even saw an ounce of pity on his face then he'd just shut down and close him off. Chase hated being pitied. Seeing those sickening simpering looks on people's faces with head tilts and clasped hands in heir laps; the very image of someone doing that made him feel ill. So Anti made sure to keep as far away from that image as possible.

'Thanks bud, hey, mind if I perch?'

Anti gestured to Chase's bed, and Chase shrugged gently.

'Go ahead.'

Anti sat on the edge of Chase's bed and looked Chase up and down, and he did purse his lips for a moment, but then he regained his vigour. He gave Chase a grin as he rambled on vividly.

'So, right, listen, like, carving pumpkins is fun as hell right? I mean, heh, I should know...'

Anti waggled his eyebrows with a smirk before continuing.

'Well, turns out that if ya whack a naïve lil zombie in the mix then things just get WAY better! He just....won't stop eating the pumpkin innards! And he actually LIKES it?! We're filming it for later, but it's TOTALLY worth seeing him just stuff his face!'

Chase let out a little sigh through his nose as he looked up at Anti, watching him through his entire speech. He saw his eyes glint and sparkle as he related his memories to Chase, and it made Chase think of only one thing. His own eyes would never look like that anymore. Any time that Chase went to look back on any old, happy memories, the nasty ones just took precedence. The good was pushed away to make way for the bad.

'Mmm, I'll prob'ly see it on insta later.'

Chase's voice was soft, and weak, and sad, and it made Anti want to manifest Chase's bad feelings into a physical substance so he could beat them into a destroyed pulp of nothing. Yes, it would be plastered all over the internet later but that wasn't the point. They needed him, and he needed them. Anti tried to implore light-heartedly.

'But with Schneep manning the camera there's no one responsible to make sure Robbie doesn't start snorting the pumpkin seeds next! We need a dad for common sense and expertise-'

Ah.....perhaps not the best wording. At the mention of his fatherly role, Chase felt himself welling up. He tried to hold the tears back, but it's evil how one word can trigger so much nastiness. Chase was sobbing into his hands, which made Anti's corrupted heart break with guilt...but Chase accepted it when Anti hugged him tight to his chest. It wasn't a regular loving hug. It was a gripping hug, a grasping hug, a hug that reflected that this whole thing was a bunch of shit that needed to be suffocated away. Chase needed that hug. He hiccupped and wept into Anti's chest, but Anti's harsh grip on his shirt and shoulders kept him rooted to reality.

'Let it out, it's fine okay to let it all out, purge it the hell out.'

Chase had never cried harder or for longer than in this moment. That is because when we're alone, we have no one to tell us that it's okay to cry. We only have ourselves saying that it's weak, wrong, pathetic, gross, disgusting, look at you choking on air with mucus on your blotchy face you piece of broken nothing. I think we all need an Anti. Without an Anti, everything gets repressed and stuck, but with an Anti everything is thrust into the open, every gory inch in full view. Only then can any form of healing begin. Anti shakily exhaled as he felt Chase shake in his arms.

'A-Anti.....I....I-....s-s-sorry....'

'Don't you dare Brody, don't you even dare....'

Anti whispered before Chase could breathlessly stammer any more. Anti was patient as Chase continued to let out what he needed to let out, and it took quite a while, but that's more than okay. In fact it's GOOD. When Chase did regain his breath, when he did stop crying, when he did look back up at Anti, yes his face was blotchy and wet and his nose was streaming and he was clinging to Anti for dear life....but he felt so much less shitty.

'Look....we miss ya, a lot. And if ya come with me I promise that I'll throw pumpkin innards at ya instead of pity.'

Chase blinked a few times amidst his sniffles, he couldn't help but smile a bit. That unorthodox stuff always got him.

'Y-You n-needn't go to the trouble....'

Anti raised an eyebrow, he could sense that this was good, really good. He gave Chase a grin as he softly poked his chest.

'Oh I'm not, I WANT to throw pumpkin at'cha and make a mess of yer t-shirt, c'mon lemme be a dick here!'

Chase softly pushed at Anti's hand, and smiled just a fraction more. He looked up at Anti, and Anti's heart leapt when Chase subtly narrowed his eyes at him. There was that first glimmer, that glimmer of attitude that everyone adored.

'No way, this is m'favourite t-shirt....'

Anti narrowed his eyes now, and Chase knew that feral gaze very well, It was the sign that Anti was going to pounce. Yes, Chase was rather vulnerable and DEFINATELY feeling worse for wear....but seeing that look gave him chills down his spine that he had really, really missed.

'All the more reason to stain it to hell!'

Chase started to squirm to try and get away from Anti, but the glitch was a tenacious little shit as he started reaching under the duvet, trying to burrow under so he could grasp at Chase's t-shirt. It was a weak little half-wrestle, gentle playfulness, the kind that made Chase splutter and stutter as he felt Anti's fingers graze his ribcage.

'N-No b-bad Anti badbadbad! Anti noho!'

Anti let out a soft giggle, but then paused when he heard that soft, similar sound come from Chase. His fingertips were resting at Chase's ribs as Anti peeked out from under the duvet to look at him, he had to make sure that this was the indeed the right thing. Anti saw Chase's eyes, sparking with nervousness, lips trembling in anticipation....and limbs frozen, with no movement of resistance. This was definitely the right thing.

'Ohhh I think you mean Anti YES!'

Anti dove back under the covers like an otter slipping into water and clawed and rubbed at Chase's ribcage, which brought forth a magnificent cackle before laughter consumed Chase. Yeah, that's right, he was laughing. But that wasn't just it....Chase was LETTING this happen. Chase decided there was no point waiting around for laughter, he was going to let it come by playful force, Anti's playful force.

'NOHO AHAHAHA NONONO NAHAHAT THIHIS!'

Anti smirked like the devil as he found every gap in between Chase's ribs and rubbed the hell out of them, thus making Chase thrash wildly as Anti teased.

'Ohoho yeees this! I'd almost forgotten how ticklish you are, and we can't have that can we?'

Luckily Chase wasn't expected to answer that question, especially since his mind was too overcome with the tickle torture to be able to process much other than the fact that Anti was being teasy and evil and there was nothing Chase to do to derive mercy from him.

'PLEHEHEHEASE AHAHAHA IHIHI CAHAHAN'T!!'

Chase was already desperate and weak, which was just what Anti wanted. Start off with an energy-draining attack, then dim down to techniques that just slowly chip away at your victim's resolve until they're too flustered and blubbery to resist....and Chase's lack of proper resistance now was what assured Anti that this was something right and appropriate to do. Anti growled evilly.

'It's not like you can stop me, I could keep you here for hour after hour....'

Chase's eyes widened and he shook his head fearfully, whimpering and wailing when Anti's drilling fingers reached his topmost ribs.

'NOHOHOHOHO NONONONO!!!'

Anti fought an affectionate laugh at Chase's reply as he furrowed his brows in a mock expression of contemplation, whilst also slowing down his touch so Chase could breath. Chase nervously looked up at Anti as the glitch carefully mused.

'No? Hmmm, if only there was an alternate activity you could join....'

Chase's breath hitched in his throat when Anti's fingertips drifted up to his armpits, fluttering oh so softly as Anti smiled mischievously down at him. Chase tried to purse his lips in an attempt to tough it out, but by this point even the slightest swipe at his nerves would break him instantly.

'Ahahantihihiiii duhude c'mohohooon!'

Chase whined amidst jittery giggles, giving Anti a truly imploring expression, but Anti's resolve was as hard as granite. Anti leant down and nuzzled Chase's ear which a cheeky smile, his tone ever playful.

'You know you wanna play with us Chaseeeyyy.'

Despite his crimson cheeks and bouncing giggles, Chase did exhibit a little grimace. Of course he wanted to play with them and have fun, they were his family too after all....but he couldn't get it out of his head that he'd ruin it all. Destroy the mood, implicitly make things about him and his situation leading to an awkward silence as soon as he stepped in the room. Yeah. Anxiety is a piece of shit.

'Buhuhut Ihi kn-knohow Ihi'll b-be a buhurden!'

Anti halted.

'....take that back.'

Oh dear. Chase felt an ice cold chill down his spine. Anti was so sudden in his stopping, and now so still in form, no glitching or even a single flinch. Chase gulped when Anti looked at him....and Chase could feel emotions stirring in his chest when he saw the utter sincerity on Anti's face. All he could hear was their breathing, until Chase managed to find a glimmer of his voice again.

'But it's true, I'll destroy the good mood and-'

'I said....take it back.....or else.'

Anti cut him off in that same sudden manner. Chase was taken aback because of how Anti managed to look seriously emotional and yet be encased by mischief, Anti wasn't going to let this slide and he was doing it for profound reasons. Chase bowed his head and shook it....he couldn't take back a genuine opinion he had, not without good reason. Now, you may think that good reason was something that the ever radical Antisepticeye was not acquainted with, allow me to disabuse you of that delusion. Anti lived for reason. He was a man of purpose. He was a man with a list of reasons to counteract Chase's opinion, and he was going to get through that list even with Chase's hysterical laughter in the mix.

'Fine....you want reasons why you're wrong? Allow me.'

Anti shifted off his torso to sit on his thighs, where he swiftly placed his hands on Chase's hips and used his thumbs to rub circles deep into the bowels of his hips. Chase was squealing immediately.

'Reason one. You're so fucking kind that it's a sickeningly beautiful inspiration to everybody.'

Chase was giggling and yelping hysterically as he bucked and wriggled, hoping in vain to dislodge or dissuade his attacker. But he knew this was Anti's way of drilling his message in without causing more upset for Chase, so he couldn't stop it; Anti would make sure that there wouldn't be any tears of sadness....though, potentially a few streams of mirthful madness.

'AhahahANTIHI FUHUCK PLEASEPLEASE!'

Anti let himself smile affectionately as he watched Chase giggle so wildly and blush with such deeply rooted embarrassment. Compliments always got to Chase. Anti however, didn't see these words of his as compliments; after all, how can something be a compliment if it's undeniably true?

'Reason two: There are people who care about ya and would do anythin' for ya....'

Chase looked up at Anti through his fingers when he heard him trail off, still laughing his head off, but smiling bashfully at Anti's whisper.

'...me included.'

Chase almost felt like he could cry from joy....and he did, but Anti's words were not the cause. I think however, that Anti's digging into and scribbling at his inner thighs might have had something to do with Chase's new weeping and giddy shrieking.

'AHAHAHAHAAAHHH YOHOHOU CAHAHAN STAHAHAP NOHOHOW!!!'

Anti giggled as Chase tugged at his legs and tried whacking him, all of it useless since Anti quite literally had the upper hand. He smirked happily down at Chase, beyond satisfied that his tears weren't derived from unpleasantness for once. As he continued tickling he purred.

'But I haven't even got to the last reason yet, and it's a loooong one.'

Chase let out a wail as he used his forearms to cover his face, because of two reasons; one, to hide how flustered and bashful he was at the fact that Anti had lengthy reasoning for him, and two, to try and somehow block off the ticking sensations. As you can imagine, covering your face doesn't actually do anything to help. It doesn't stop us all from trying though.

'PLEHEHEASE NOHO MOHOHORE!! IHIHI'M GOHONNA DIHIHIIIIE!!!'

Anti let out a laugh, then replied indignantly.

'Not before I have my inspiring speech ya won't!'

Chase let out a gasp when he felt Anti finally relent on his thighs, but he was just a giggly mess. I don't think they even counted as residual giggles, it was just a legitimate embarrassed giggle fit that Chase was caught in as he tried to get his breath back. Anti watched him for a few moments, then folded his arms with a teasing, raised eyebrow.

'Are ya finished down there?'

Chase's eyes widened as he hurriedly covered his mouth, reigning in his giggles as he stuttered.

'S-Sohohorry sorrysorrehehee....'

Anti let out an exaggerated sigh and shook his head, which made Chase snort, before he managed to actually contain himself. Now Chase's heart was pounding....what was Anti going to say next? Chase was in two minds, he wanted to hear what Anti had to say, but his mind was convincing him that that made him terrible and vain....but no. No. Wanting to hear nice things about yourself is NOT vain, or selfish, or egotistical. Wanting kindness does not make you a bad person, wanting to be cared for does not make you a bad person, needing reassurance does not make you a bad person. Chase looked up at Anti with bated breath, and the glitch cleared his throat....he had to get this right.

'Well uh....reason three. If you're such a burden....there how are you the only one whose singing can soothe Robbie? How are you the best at signing for Jamie? How can you predict exactly what strength of coffee the doc needs every individual morning to rid him of headaches? How can you remind Angus to take hot food out on hunting trips? How can you persuade Shawn to take breaks from his work with the right soft spoken words? How can you motivate Marvin when a spell doesn't work? How can you support Jackie when a mission goes wrong? And I'm sorry but how the FUCK are you a burden when you're able to make me actually wanna hang out with you because you're fun and safe to be around?'

Chase was welling up and used his hands to cover his mouth as Anti hugged him close hurriedly, desperately; it was what they both needed right there and then. Anti hadn't even finished speaking before he'd enveloped his friend. It's strange isn't it? When one person deems you unimportant it can make you convince yourself that that's how everybody else feels too. Well, to use the technical term, that's bullshit. I'm pleased to say that Chase was starting to see that now, and any start is a good start. They kept hugging, Anti wanting to give Chase as much time to recover and process what he'd said.....it was a lot. Anti had intended to keep his composure, but he couldn't stop himself from getting passionate; it's what happens when you really mean something. Chase was undeniably shaken, because Chase had never thought that any of those things he did were significant, he just thought they were decent and normal; it just goes to show how oblivious good people are in terms of how important they are to us. Chase wept, but didn't sob and wheeze, he just sniffled and smiled....really smiled. After a few moments of that meaningful healing, Anti's familiar, and frankly wonderful and strangely homely, chuckle reached Chase's ears.

'Ready to have pumpkin chucked at yer butt?'

Chase smiled into Anti's chest, and cheekily retorted in a little mumble....but his words had their own deep, implicit volume.

'Only if you are.'

Anti smirked as they retreated from the hug, and grinned ferally at Chase. There was that fire that he so loved. Yes it was a mere spark now, but Anti was going to work damn hard to coax it and fuel it until it was powerful enough to level a city.

'We'll see.'

Chase got out of bed then....and I'd just like to say that that in itself can be a huge achievement. I should make it clear that even if you're in such a slumped mind-set, the smallest thing is a victory. Getting out of bed, having a shower, managing small snacks at regular intervals, reading news; you don't have to have a grand social awakening in order to have a win. This is just how it has transpired on this one occasion. I'm happy to say that not one but TWO enthusiastic men left that room, both ready to take terror and pumpkins and kick this season's spoopy butt.

DONE WOOOO HOPE YOUS LIKE THIS AAAAAA LET ME KNOW IF YOU GUYS DO LIKE IT OKEY WOOP LUV YOUS XX

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