Evil Morty's ending

The main reason I wanted the Freaky Mortys Theory to be true is that it could be the start of Evil Morty's healing. Like, if he thought that it is, after all, possible for a Morty to be loved and cared for, and it's just a matter of circumstance if THIS or THAT version of Morty who gets to live in a loving family, and all Mortys are the same, and why should it not be Evil Morty the one who gets to have a happy family life...

...well, then that could have kickstarted his own healing process (after a lot of ups and downs) and led him to find true peace eventually, to be trully understood and appreciated at some point in the future. By surrounding himself with people who loved "him", he could begin getting the help he needs.

Now, that it is apparent that Evil Morty is still all alone in the edges of the universe, doing nothing but adding shield after shield separating himself from everyone else...

there's... there's no one who can help him.

Rick C-137 would be promptly attacked if he approached, because Evil Morty would immediately assume (not unreasonably) he does not have good intentions. Not to mention he is unable to take care not only of his own mental health, but of Morty Prime's. The best things he can offer Evil Morty are respect, understanding and pity, but Evil Morty could NEVER be adequately loved by Rick C-137. Morty Prime would always be the priority. If Rick C-137 ever caught whiff that Evil Morty had been abducted and needed help, would he REALLY attempt a rescue or would he seize the chance to kill Evil Morty to remove the Omega Device threat (like the SEAL Ricks team did)? And if he DID attempt a rescue, it would be out of pity or desire for them to be "even" since Evil Morty allowed him to kill his nemesis. Is this really enough?

Morty Prime might NOT get promptly attacked if HE approached (and if the Freaky Mortys - Unmorticken Edition Theory is true he might have some residual buried memory of Evil Morty's base and therefore theoretically able to teleport himself there). I also think that Evil Morty's offer for him to join him in escaping the Curve was genuine... but Morty Prime can barely take care of HIMSELF. He shouldn't be RICK'S morality pet, nor responsible for Rick's mental well-being, let alone another, even more traumatized Morty's well-being!!! I mean, even if genuine, Evil Morty's offer at escaping together was little better than pointing a gun at Morty Prime's head and saying "you can join me if you like". Evil Morty's best, most genuine attempt at vulnerability was basically coersion under threat of death (and it STILL backfired, OUCH. Talk about unwanted) although Evil Morty might not have done this deliberately. Imagine if Morty Prime had joined him; that would NOT have been a healthy relationship for Morty Prime. No, Evil Morty needs an emotionally mature ADULT. Someone who knows AND understands what he's been through and is willing to stand by his side AND who is able to put up the necessary boundaries that Evil Morty might otherwise consciously or unconsiously trample.

Beths... I do not think they have the neccessary emotional maturity. The domestic one does love her family, but would definitely put her "real" son's health and safety first. The space one seems unwilling to parent anymore and even if she took him with her in her rebel base, I think Evil Morty would believe that she wants him for his tech and intellect and not out of any genuine appreciation.

Jerry is really nice and I think he would be a positive influence, but... I'm not sure he could keep up with Evil Morty. I mean sure, he can, like, cook for him, take him for ice-cream, play videogames with him, listen to him rant, give hugs freely... but would he really be able to understand what was going on in the Citadel, or not be nervous about the fact that this version of his son is capable of killing him at a whim? If they got attacked, Evil Morty would be the one to protect Jerry and not the other way round. Not to mention Jerry already has his own life and family.

Summer is only a teenager, NOPE.

Then... who remains? Doofus Rick? Birdperson? Dr. Wong? These are all capable, mature adults who also all have a life of their own and little connection to everything that goes on. Letting one of them take upon this burden honestly feels cheap.

This is Rick's mess really, Rick should be the one to clean it up. Rick is the only one who could keep up with Evil Morty without needing anything from him, the only one who could both protect and respect him... But Rick fails to do all that with the version of his grandson that he loves. How could he possibly do this with Evil Morty?

And this all becomes more relevant now that we know for sure that Morty's maxed intelligence and charisma stats that we saw in the atribute slider (that would definitely fit Evil Morty) are Morty Prime's default stats. This means (among many things) that there's nothing special about Evil Morty. He's not more intelligent. He's not more capable. He is not, as Rick Prime put it, "an evil Morty; a clever one". He's a regular Morty.

Our Morty could be the one building forcefield shields to protect himself from getting shot, our Morty could be the one torturing other Mortys, our Morty could be the one exploding the Citadel in his way out in a desperate bid to escape.

Likewise at some point in the past Evil Morty would also have cried had he been abandoned all alone in the cronenberged remains of his home. He has the exact same emotional needs as Morty Prime does...

...only his remained extremely unfullfilled.

I can't see a way out.

@evilmcg sent: "I'd like for us to have dinner together. If you tell me your favorite food, I can make it for you." for Evil Morty

The request, as a few other before it, came as a surprise. By now, Morty had learnt not to show whenever they caught him off guard, but that didn't change the fact that, these days, it happened a little too often. He had never liked surprised, with very few exceptions. They made him feel out of control, unprepared, vulnerable either.

And those were all things he couldn't afford to be. Ever.

Unfortunately for him, Meg seemed to have made a habit out of catching him off guard with the last proposals he would have her to make to him. He gave back as much as he got and more, of course, taking her by surprise with gestures and sudden compliments and even a few presents, but that wasn't enough to even the score in his eyes.

"Dinner," he repeated in a flat tone, amber eyes carefully studying her face, as if he had been looking for sign of deceit.

He found none, as per usual. Not that he was expecting to. One of the most infuriating things about those offers was the fact that they were genuine.

"That's...acceptable. I'll make space in my schedule for it," he agreed, after one extra moment of silence. Refusing would have meant admitting defeat and he refused to lose, at any sort of game. "I'll take care of the drinks. No alcohol, of course."

His favourite food? That gave him pause once again, but this time for reasons that had nothing to do with Meg or their twisted dance. He had no idea of what his favourite food was. No one had ever asked him before.

"...Just make other me's favourite dish. It must be the same."

And he would leave it at that. No reason to expose himself more than he had already done.

Slow Burn - Prologue

Part I | masterlist

A/N: This is a “must read” precursor to the whole series. Please read it to know what the origin story is. 

Pairing: Y/N x Obi Wan Kenobi

Words: 2048

Warnings: None. Brief mentions of violence. Low self esteem.

I am always one to experience emotions at a heightened frequency. Dangerous for a Jedi in training I know, but the council never took it as a sign of caution, just a minor set back. Happiness is bright, and beaming, even painful. My cheeks hurt for days after, smile lines sculpting my skin too early in life. Anger is powerful, my skin becoming vicious, and hot. Ripping through me like a silver bullet, and tearing my already unrelenting gut apart. I am loud, I am violent, and most of all, passionate. I would later become grateful of this curse, turning it into a blessing. Sadness is so deep. Tears crash like an ocean, and my heart would ache in my chest. The physical symptoms of my despair become overwhelming, and make me sick.

A fresh eighteen myself, my graduation is only a year or so away. Compared to other padawans, ones that don’t deal with the same struggles as myself, have already been graced with knighthood. They make their masters proud, and have already completed more missions at sixteen than I think I ever will in my entire career. 

I had the choice to become independent, to take my morals by the throat, and shove them deep down inside me, never to be seen again- but it really just isn’t that easy. See, I’m taking this time for meditation, or even a “behavioral therapy” of sorts. I have meetings with other council members, more powerful, and more prominent than my own master, who is often off tending to matters elsewhere. A mighty general he is, but they see me as someone who would cause more of a distraction, so I stay here at the temple left to my own devices. Sometimes I think it may be because I’m a woman, and other times I just take a good look in the mirror and recall the outburst that has stained my face only minutes before. 

Today was like any other; wake up, meditate, exercise, study, combat training, study, try and find time to eat something, and study. I walked down the main hallway with Master Yoda. He spoke to me about how he once struggled with his emotions as well, but with enough meditation, learned how to keep them at bay. Looking down at him and his vacant expression, I was surprised he had ever even felt an emotion a day in his life. That was until seconds later…

Stopping in my tracks, my hand flew over my heart. I recalled feeling out of breath, like my heart had physically stopped beating in my chest, or at least was trying to catch up with the rest of my body. I was shaky, yet somehow managed to take a knee. Something was off, that feeling in my chest grew and grew until I was faced with the blackest black I had ever felt. The darkest emotion to ever run through my body, as cold as ice, and heart stopping. It was deep, I felt it within the darkest abyss in my soul. It wrapped around my insides and nestled itself a home deep within the most shielded corners of my subconscious. That’s when Master Yoda felt it too. His hand flying over his heart, and steadying himself on my own shoulder. His face morphed into a snarl, gasping at the sudden pain that now infected his unwavering calm aura. 

...

After a painstakingly slow recovery, I sat on the edge of my bed. My quarters were neat and tidy. My bed, usually made up in the morning, because I have always been one for a routine. My walls weren’t bare, in fact they were almost completely covered in photographs I have taken from my travels as a Padawan. I'd go to the library, and butcher borrowed books, clipping photos of different words, and alien fauna. But today, those bright colors capable of producing fantasies for hours and hours, seemed black and white. 

I had been staring at the floor for sometime, desperate in trying to heal the ache in my chest. It felt as if I had a cold, like the burn after a deep cough. I felt so tight, so tense, an actual living embodiment of rigor mortis. Yet, at the same time, I hardly felt all there. It was as if my existence was floating all around me, and my shell was sitting vacant on an uncomfortable mattress. The knock on my door was enough for me to engulf myself again. 

“Y/N, are you decent?” The voice asks. 

“Yes,” I reply, rolling my shoulders back. 

“The council has requested an audience. Please report downstairs within the next few minutes.”

I nod my head, as if whoever was behind the door could see me. 

“An audience,”  I think. “Let’s add another year to that training plan, shall we?”

...

Walking downstairs to the council room, I can’t help but feel that all eyes are on me. They cut through me like a hot knife, slicing me thin. I feel so vulnerable. Like everyone around me can feel what I feel, and if I’m being honest, they probably do. A good Jedi who is in tune with the force, and especially in tune with others, can sense an intense emotion from a mile away. I’m sure at this moment I pretty much equate to an open book. No reason to try and hide it, force knows I struggle with concealing even an inkling of agitation. 

Seeing the council room in sight, I take a deep breath. This is it. I’m done for. This reaction was way too over the top. I’ve scared people, I’ve scared Master Yoda. Might as well just turn in my saber now and call it a day.

I walk into the door. Only a few masters sit scattered around. Master Yoda of course perched dead center, Master Windu waiting patiently to his right. But my master was nowhere in sight. You’d think if they were going to terminate me, that maybe my own mentor would be among them? Shaking his head, sending me glares that one could only compare to fucking daggers. He was tough on me for sure, maybe he was too ashamed of what I’d done to even bear to see me in this moment. 

“Coming here so quickly you did,” Starts Master Yoda. “Grateful we all are.”

I smile and bow my head. 

“Y/N,” Master Windu starts. “We’re here to discuss the events that happened earlier.” 

Oh god here it comes. This is it. I’m totally done for. I can’t even keep myself calm now. My face, getting hotter and more red by the second, is going to be the biggest tell. At least let me go out with some dignity. 

“Your reaction, what you felt at least, was not just brought on out of the blue. Master Yoda had the same experience, as did all of us on the council, and most Jedi and padawans in the temple.”

“I don’t understand.” I say. 

“At around 1 Coruscant time, an enemy bomb was detonated on Nal Hutta.”

Then it hit me. My heart sinking, I began to shake my head. 

“Unfortunately, Unit 505, and Master Cato were all killed on impact.”

My ears ring. Slowly, I move over to a chair, bracing myself. 

“That’s,” I start, trying to find the words to say. “He would’ve felt it, all of them would, I don’t understand.”

“We have a feeling it was planted by a Sith. That’s the only way it would’ve clouded any judgement.”

I slump into it, my vision going black, my head spinning. 

Master Cato has been with me since I was a very little girl. Although rough, tough, and brutally honest, he has done nothing but be a father to me time and time again. Everything I do is a reflection of him. He had been so busy at war, fighting day in and day out, I caught myself missing the commands, and demands I once so passionately despised. I took our whole relationship for granted, and now, is this the price I have to pay? The last time we spoke he told me how disappointed he was in my outburst in my Alien Fauna lab. I was being stubborn, I was bratty, and rolled my eyes. We had argued that entire call. He didn’t even attempt to say goodbye. Now, for an eternity, I will have to face the catastrophic guilt of my actions. Live with the fact that I never, ever told him how much I appreciated him. And even, how much I loved him so. The closest thing to family in my life, gone, in the snap of a finger. 

Both Master Yoda and Master Windu continued to talk but it all felt like empty words. I couldn’t hear them anyway. 

“Although this situation isn't ideal, we and the rest of the council applaud you for being able to feel something most of us haven’t been able to experience yet.” Claimed Master Windu.

I don’t listen. I stand up again. 

“What am I going to do? I don’t feel comfortable with being knighted yet. I had- we were working on so many things I-,” I stumbled on my words. 

“You’ll get placed with a new master.”

“There are no new masters. And even if I had been trained a certain way, I don’t know how to learn otherwise.” 

There is silence. 

“The force works in mysterious ways. Meant to happen, I feel.” 

I scoff. “Meant to happen,” what an evil thing to say.

I begin to walk off, stopping of course, only to get in the last word. 

“Not only have you told me that my master has been killed, but you lack any empathy. There is no emotion in your eyes. Nothing.”

“We mourn your master y/n, just as much as you do. You know what we stand for. You know our view on attachments.”

“He's like-,” I choke. “He was like my father.”

I can’t even begin to explain the pain I feel. Disgust in myself, I should’ve been better. I could’ve been better. The last few years of our relationship I’ve just been behaving poorly and rebelling, and then getting angry at him when he made me face the consequences. Like I wasn’t aware of the job I was made to do. I should’ve been nicer, I could’ve been nicer. It’s all going in a circle, all the things I should’ve done just morphed into things I couldn’t do. Maybe I was too emotional. Maybe my tears that fell leading up to this moment was all part of the plan, the final kicker to show that I wasn’t apathetic enough for this job. My empathy, my burning passion will always be my biggest flaw. This hole that gapes inside of me will never be filled, and now it grows bigger. It’s like a disease. Am I enough? Will I ever be enough?

“Put you with Master Kenobi, we will.” States Master Yoda. 

Master Windu is quick in turning his head. He glares at him. 

“Master Yoda, General Kenobi has just finished his training with Anakin. It is far too early to give him a new Padawan, if at all.”

Yoda nods, almost giggling. 

“Yet so freshly knighted, a Padawan Anakin already has. Obi Wan will have no problem with taking on a student. Graduates soon, she will.”

“But General Kenobi and I have two completely different methods of combat, let alone ideals.” I scoff. 

“All Jedi have the same ideals.” Adds Windu. 

“He is a Jedi guardian, I am a Jedi sentinel-“

“Train with General Kenobi you will. Not long ago he also lost his master too soon.”

Master Yoda nods to me. He stands up and walks over to the large windows behind him. Looking out over Coruscant, he takes a deep sigh of relief. 

“Master Windu,” says Yoda. “Get in contact with the 212th battalion.” 

I watch on as my fate now rests in a stranger's hands.

SO WHAT THE HELL IS THE MORTIS ARC? After about the second time I watched this arc, my thoughts ran towards the idea this was Star Wars in a microcosm, the story of Anakin Skywalker’s fall in miniature form, as so many things in Star Wars basically come down to being about Anakin, whether literally about him or an echo and rhyme of the story that he is the very center of.  Which I think still has a good amount of merit to it, but in the rewatching of this arc yet again, there’s a bigger arc that jumped out at me so much more clearly, now that I’ve spent more time with the structure and lore of Star Wars. That this arc is entirely a metaphorical extension of Anakin’s internal struggle between the light and the dark. It’s a manifestation of the Chosen One struggling to choose between good and evil. Now, to be clear, the Father and the Son and the Daughter are all real beings that really existed, Dave Filoni has said that pretty clearly on podcast interviews, as well as said more than once that he and Christian Taylor specifically decided not to answer What The Fuck Was That!? about this arc, because they felt it would rob the viewers of speculation about it, as well as the questions that you’re meant to ask after watching it. There are so many, many moments in this arc that are call-backs to important moments in Anakin’s life, major events and choices he makes along his path in life, as well as commentary from the Father and the Son and the Daughter about who and what they are, what influences them. In “Overlords”, Obi-Wan and Anakin and Ahsoka find themselves stranded on a mysterious planet, immediately approached by the Daughter and asked if he is indeed the Chosen One.  All three of the Mortis lords are intensely interested in Anakin, each of them try to protect him, seduce him, or just try to understand if he really is the Chosen One. While he’s staying in the Father’s sanctuary, Anakin has a vision of his mother, which he’s deeply affected by, but realizes it’s not really her.  He storms out of the room and goes to confront the Father, thinking that these are Sith Lords.  But the Father says, no, we’re not Sith or Jedi, we’re bigger than that, like you are. His explanation is:  “We can take many forms.  The shapes we embody are merely a reflection of the life force around us.” In other words, they take the shape that Anakin’s presence imbues them with.  They’re real on their own, but their forms here are shaped by the Chosen One.

But the Chosen One is a myth, right?  Well, the Father would very much like to know.  So, the entire rest of the episode is about hurtling the characters--hurtling Anakin, as the Chosen One--towards a test. A test that isn’t just about “hey, are you the Chosen One or not?”, but almost every single time the Father says what he has to do--face your guilt and know the truth, you have to release the guilt and choose, only you can do this. It’s about trying to make Anakin look within himself, look at his guilt and fear and pain, and acknowledge them, face them, and choose whether he will embrace them or let go of them. Which is E X A C T L Y how the Force works, how the Jedi have always said the Force works.  It’s Luke having to face his fears in the cave on Dagobah, it’s the Jedi younglings having to face their fears on Ilum, it’s Ezra having to face his fears in the Lothal Jedi Temple, it’s Rey having to face her fears in the cave on Ahch-To.  [x][x] FACE YOUR FEARS, YOUR GUILT, YOUR ANGER.  FACE YOUR DARK SIDE.

The planet is the Force and that’s how the Force works. Anakin uses the Force to make the Daughter and Son let them go, but refuses to stay on Mortis (and, honestly, doesn’t really do any self-examination or releasing of his guilt, he hasn’t changed internally at all), so they try to leave, but they’re still trapped there. Which is where “Altar of Mortis” picks up.  Because Anakin is still giving shape to the manifestations of the Father, the Daughter, and the Son.

“You’ve chosen the dark side and allowed it to feed your anger and desire for power,” the Father says. “By bringing the Chosen One here, you’ve shown me my potential,” the Son answers. And then moments later, he kicks the Father down the stairs (because he’s HOLDING HIM BACK! by not dying fast enough) and screams:

Even aside from time not being linear in Star Wars, we’ll see later that this trilogy of episodes is very aware of Revenge of the Sith and other important moments in Anakin’s life.  This moment, screaming in rage, “I hate you!” cannot possibly not remind us of Anakin screaming the same thing at Obi-Wan in ROTS. Which is yet another moment that’s about Anakin, just as so many other moments are about him, cool little moments of echoes and rhymes, that Star Wars likes to make references and homages to itself, but there are enough of them done with such clear purpose here that I don’t think it’s just Rule of Cool, but instead an intentional narrative purpose behind them.

There are more, but those ones are the ones that really jumped out at me, important moments in Anakin’s story, ones that reflect his fall into the darkness.  The moment he caught the saber and attacked Dooku as a choice he couldn’t take back (and was itself an important moment because it was a mirror to Luke’s choice to not kill Vader in ROTJ, even after cutting off his arm in a rage, as Anakin did to Dooku as well) and the moment he very much intended to kill Obi-Wan on the Death Star, these are classic moments that evoke our knowledge of Anakin’s path. And what does all this do? It further feeds what’s going on with the Mortis lords.

Everything pretty much goes pear-shaped at this point, Ahsoka dies, the Son accidentally stabs the Daughter instead of the Father-- Which, in and of itself is an interesting parallel to Anakin, his sister the only one he professes to truly love, he’s the one that winds up killing her, despite his intentions, but then we see he also very much loves the Father, he doesn’t want him to die, he’s distraught when it happens, even though he was the one who engineered it, just like Anakin being the thing that really breaks Padme’s heart/causes her death even without his intentions to do so, just like Anakin in “There is Another” in From a Certain Point of View where his heart explodes with loneliness after Obi-Wan dies, so powerfully that Yoda feels it from literally all the way on the other side of the galaxy. --but Ahsoka is saved through Anakin being the one to channel the last of the Daughter’s energy into Ahsoka, while the Father guides him, the Son fucks off to who knows where, and “What the fuck do we do now?” knowing that the Son wants their ship to leave with. This is where “Ghosts of Mortis” starts up, and the announcement furthers our themes:

“A great weight has been placed on Anakin’s shoulders, for it is now that he must face who he really is.” Not just that he has a choice to make, about what to do about the Son or Mortis, but that this still has to be about discovering who he himself really is.  Because Anakin has never yet really looked inside himself or faced his guilt and pain. Which is when he runs into Qui-Gon’s ghost, as he’s trying to find the Son, and wham does it deliver on all of this:

Qui-Gon’s words aren’t just “bring balance to the Force”, but specifically this is indicated to be done through facing his demons will he save the universe. Anakin, sliding right by that point, asks if he should just kill the Son or just leave?  And Qui-Gon’s answer is that Anakin’s not looking at this in the right way, that there’s another way to deal with this and it’s exactly the one that the Jedi have been teaching for as long as we’ve known them, that the Force has constantly been throwing into the paths of the Jedi, because it’s so necessary to becoming a Jedi:  Face the dark parts of you and work past them. This is why Qui-Gon’s words are so important--it’s not just that this is an echo of Empire Strikes Back where Luke has to face the inner demon of the specter of Darth Vader (it wasn’t an external threat in that cave on Dagobah, that was all about “what you bring with you”, as Yoda says, that was all about Luke’s fears surrounding him), that it’s not just that Qui-Gon says Anakin has to go to a place strong in the dark side but he has to remember his training. Qui-Gon’s ghost visited Obi-Wan earlier, asking, “Have you trained the boy as I asked?”  And now he says, “Remember your training.” because this is what Jedi do, this is what they train themselves for, and why Qui-Gon says it to Anakin here.  This is what you’ve been taught to do--go to the dark place and face your demon.  That’s the Force, that’s how it works. And further to that, how the Force works, how Star Wars works, is that it’s about choice in those moments.  When you’re at the crossroads, it has to be your own choice.  You can ask others for advice and guidance, those things can be incredibly important, but at the end of the day, Star Wars is about “only Anakin can choose”.

So, Anakin does indeed go to face the Son in the place strong in the dark and the Son forces him to look within himself.  To know himself.

He sees his future self and actions, he’s so distraught by them, that instead of being able to face them and pass through those fears, he’s consumed by them, he agrees to help the Son, falling to the dark side--poison yellow eyes of the fully embraced dark side and all--to try to avoid what’s coming. The thing is, Anakin never really confronts his fears, demons, or guilt.  He’s consumed by them instead.  It happens because he’s trying to avoid it, but he still falls to the dark side all the same, because he listens to the Son dripping poison in his ear, because he sees an easier way out than the hard work of disciplining himself against the dark side (which George Lucas says is how you resist it, the only way to resist it), because the other way seems too impossible and too scary. Anakin’s story has always been about how he can’t bear to look at himself and his choices and then make the choice--and stick to that choice--to do and be better.  His story has always been about his fears ran rampant inside him because he didn’t want to let go of the feelings that made him “special”, he didn’t want to listen to the Jedi when they told him to get a grip, he wanted to listen to Palpatine who told him his feelings should be held onto instead of let go, that they made him special, made him better than those other Jedi, that his hate and rage and fear were justified in being held onto. And that’s exactly what the Mortis arc is--a reflection and shape of Anakin’s story, that each of them were about the internal struggle he faced. That Anakin didn’t make these choices in one bad day. He made this choice over and over again. When he chose to dig his fingers into his feelings and hold onto them, listening to Palpatine’s poisonous words. When he chose to do a monstrous thing on Tatooine to the Tuskens and their children, but ignored what that said about him. When he killed Dooku, unarmed and for the sake of revenge and his rage. When he chose to maim Mace Windu and lead to his death, choosing Palpatine and the Empire instead of the Jedi and the Republic. When he chose to attack the Jedi Temple and kill the younglings, leading him to feel unable to ever go back, that his actions had to be justified or else he murdered innocents for nothing. When he chose to Force choke Padme, which lead to broken heart and her inability to live, after the terrible things he’d done. When he chose to attack Obi-Wan again and again, despite being warned, leading him to the Darth Vader suit. When he chose to refuse to accept the vision the Force put in his head in Dark Lord of the Sith, that Obi-Wan still would have forgiven him and helped him, when he rejected that and said, “No.  [The dark side] is all there is.” When he, again and again, chose to reject acknowledging that all these Jedi took different paths that he himself��could have done (Jocasta Nu, Ferren Barr, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Eeth Koth, they were all paths he could have walked instead, even then). When he chose to kill Obi-Wan, despite that Obi-Wan had stepped back and refused to fight anymore. Anakin Skywalker desperately wanted to be good, there wouldn’t be a struggle or a story there worth telling if he weren’t.  The ending of Return of the Jedi wouldn’t have the power and impact it did, if Anakin hadn’t had embers of goodness in him that couldn’t be snuffed out, no matter how hard he tried. But I think Mortis is an arc that’s about manifesting the internal struggle, that these Force Lords took the shapes they did because they were feeding off him, as the Chosen One, the center of this massive web of destiny.  And that’s why Anakin’s choices on Mortis, his struggles and the warnings he receives, are the same ones that are part of the bigger themes of Star Wars’ Skywalker Saga, and just what the hell was going on. It was Anakin Skywalker’s struggle with the dark and the light--including that the dark won, with small pinpricks of hope and light left alive--literally made manifest and acted out with these players.

Alright alright alright digimon adventure: episode 21, go!!! Last week I was interested to see if the pretty vague ep 21 preview was gonna be a mostly dull fight type filler ep or if the reason for the vagueness was there was too much plotty stuff going on for them to reveal. It’s the latter, I’m happy to say!

It was really cool!! There was a lot of good stuff so YAY! Anything I write here will be a spoiler but let’s just say that T is a very important letter in the alphabet! multiple Ts, in fact!!

Cap of the day: my boy being AWESOME

Let’s get to it! under the cut as usual

Now last week’s episode was A LOT. We rescued Takeru who no one even knew needed rescuing, gained and then immediately lost the Holy Digimon, got him back in the form of a digi-egg, and then immediately lost THAT too. Honestly I get why it’s Chosen Children and not Chosen Adults - adults would be like “are you KIDDING me all this work with NO PAYOFF I am gonna SUE”

Patamon’s digi-egg has been abducted by this guy... Skullnightmon? It seems he was a Xros Wars character. I had to look him up because at first I tried “Scarlnightmon” because Idk I was thinking Scarlet Night??? like night of blood and death??? idk. and Google tried to autocorrect it to “Scranton.” Uh... yeah. Skullnightmon makes more sense because of the BIG ASS SKULL on his breasplate. -.-;

It occurs to me how little I know about any Digimon series other than Adventure X’D I mean, I’m not gonna do anything to change that, but.... yeah I’m gonna continue to mix up stuff like this. His loyal steed is Darkmaildramon.

Yamato, of course, is immediately like Protective Mode On.

So at first I was a bit worried that this ep was gonna just Move Things Along as usual and Yamato wasn’t going to react to his little bro randomly being in the digital world. Let alone in the clutches of pure evil up until just recently. When you’re caught up in battle it’s admittedly hard to find time to Talk about stuff but COME ON

Fortunately, thought we don’t get a lot of Talking, we do get a bit. Like this cute moment where Takeru tries to explain what happened and Yamato’s just like “We can talk later” and gives him this adorable head pat. Ok, fine. I can live with that. It’s better than nothing xP

They arrive at the creepy castle which Taichi recognizes as the place Ogremon directed them to. It looks very evil and in front of it is a giant equally evil moat.

They also find this sinkhole sort of thing which Takeru promptly rushes over to stand at the very edge.

Yamato: OMG kid I look away for ONE SECOND

le gasp! Takeru finds a shiny feather at the edge of the hole! It’s a sign of the holy digimon! We should go investigate!

Oops first we have to find this gross Garurumon knock off... Its name is Splashmon but I think it should be “MeltedCrayonGarurumon”

Splashmon is apparently also from Xros wars and can turn into liquid and take on the form of other Digimon... I don’t know if he’s always this shit at it though. Maybe being controlled by evil is the reason for all the meltyness because he looks pretty cool in his wikia:

rofl...

Splashmon showers them all with acid rain and Yamato protec baby bro :< *wibble*

He then carries him to safety like this. xP

Yamato: Takeru, hide!

Takeru: This bottomless pit that reeks of evil seems like an ideal hiding spot. Niichan will be so proud

No but seriously... looks like we don’t get cowardly, crybaby Takeru this season. The kids getting to y’know Be Human about stuff is a thing it looks like I’m going to continue to miss in this reboot. But on the other hand, I genuinely DO enjoy Takeru throwing his all into saving Angemon.

Skullnightmon sticks Angemon’s digi-egg here where it gets chained down by evil vines. Very evil. Also seems like overkill, I mean, it’s an egg, what’s it going to do, roll off the platform?

We then switch gears and rejoin the kids in the real world, where Koushirou has, apparently overnight, if not in the last five minutes, created an update for their digivices which enables them to always be in contact with their partner. I don’t really get the details but that appears to be the size of it. We also catch up with Mimi and Jou.

At first I thought this was a school, but no, IT’S MIMI’S HOUSE. She has a PERSONAL CHAUFFEUR. Like, 99 Adventure Mimi was well-off, that was especially clear in 02... but... WOWZA.

Mimi’s parents look as stupid as ever xD I love them. They’re joined by her grandpa. After having been gone for three days with no explanation, Mimi’s parents are just like “Don’t you want to take it easy at home today?” when she says she needs to go out. Mimi’s just like “I gotta do what I gotta do!” (ok she actually quotes her grandpa from back in her intro ep but) and leaves like nothing happened.

.... I think grandpa might be dead. He doesn’t move the whole scene. Doesn’t even change his expression. I guess his mouth is a bit more open but that could just be because rigor mortis hasn’t quite set in

Meanwhile in Jou’s (normal, average) apartment, we meet SHIN-NIISAN!!! He’s as much of a dick as ever. I love him. Jou’s parents were mad because 1) he was gone for three days, 2) he skipped cram school, 3) he lost his textbook. I think Shin’s basically like HECK yeah finally my little bro shows his cool side! So he decides to be an enabler. GOOD, seems like Jou needs someone to be on his side at home ;_;

Their Digimon partners are traveling in the interwebz like... this... -____-;

They end up tracking Calmaramon, who is indeed Calmaramon.

I remember from Frontier when Renamon evolved to Calmaramon everyone gave her SO MUCH GRIEF for not being sexy. Wasn’t there like this whole episode devoted to how beautiful Izumi’s evolutions were and then Calmara the Squid Woman shows up and everyone’s like “ewww gross yuck!!” And ok I know she’s evil here too. But guys I JUST THINK SQUID WOMAN IS WICKED AWESOME OKAY. Like that is a LOOK. Versace take notes.

Like can we get some body positivity??? There is NOTHING wrong with being half-squid. Zephyrmon is not better just because she wears lingerie! Bet she can beat everyone at the swim meet. Also tastes yummy fried or raw with soy sauce.

ok I’m done. I’m serious about loving Calmaramon though. I have so many Frontier issues I totally forgot about >_>;

*cough* so yeah Calmaramon and those little green Digimon virus things take control of some boat and Koushirou’s like Uh-Oh Danger Will Robinson. Piyomon tries to attack with Magical Fire and is surprised, for some reason, when it does not do much. They are very much outnumbered and Calmaramon is clearly a much higher level than them so WHY do they think child-level is gonna be enough??

So this is cool!! Koushirou appears to be learning to read digi-code! He sounds out Calmaramon’s name by himself. We still pretty much have the question of why Taichi could just read digi-code fluently (well, almost? he randomly couldn’t read everything at the fortress if memory serves) and Koushirou has to sound it out... will we get an answer to this or?? Like if it were Takeru or Hikari I’d just assume it’s their Magic Baby powers at work but it was never made clear if just Taichi can read like this or they all can, and now it seems like maybe they all can’t since Koushirou’s trying so hard here...

Meanwhile Takeru...

99 Yamato would never have taken his eyes off Takeru for so long lmao

though it makes more sense if this season’s Takeru is more independent which he seems to be

Splashmon turns out to be really tough to beat, because he’s lost his mind and therefore holds nothing back xP He crushes MetalGreymon and WereGarurumon to the ground, infecting them with miasma.

At this point I was disappointed that Taichi and Yamato were still so clear-headed... like when are you gonna worry about your partner dude?? He gets the Crest of Courage because he’s never felt fear in his life??????

But then, their next move fails and WereGarurumon de-evolves back to Gabumon, while MetalGreymon is still in Splashmon’s clutches. He proceeds to pretty much make MetalGreymon’s arm wither away...

And Taichi FINALLY looks worried. ABOUT TIME.

Takeru has made it to the bottom of the hole, where he is startled to find this giant eye. I would also fall right on my bottom if I suddenly came across a giant eye.

Giant eye seems interested in Takeru’s digivice, so Takeru politely lets him have a look. BLINGGGGGGG.

Giant Eye: Ow ow ow turn it down!!!

Takeru: Sorry it’s LED!!

Taichi runs to rescue MetalGreymon in the... most ineffectual way possible... I love him...

The miasma can even hurt humans, it appears. Even though he’s in pain, Taichi doesn’t give up, and we get to hear Yamato shriek “Taichi!” all scared and adorable-like.

Taichi passionately reminds MetalGreymon about what they’re fighting for and succeeds in motivating him to be less dead.

Taichi: GIMME A V DOT THE I CURLY C T O R Y VICTORY!! *CLAP CLAP* VICTORY!! *CLAP CLAP*

Yamato: Incredible... so this is the power of a Pep Talk...

Taichi’s Pep causes MetalGreymon’s arm to... fall off... but it’s ok because it sprouts a long wiggly band of light uhhhhhh which then turns into a Giant Gun. So all is well. because MetalGreymon didn’t already have enough guns

MetalGreymon succeeds in defeating Splashmon and we seem some purple crystal sort of thing disappear, my guess is that’s what was controlling him. Agumon falls from midair and Taichi catches him like this.

They cute. They also need a break. Well, Agumon needs a break, I honestly think Taichi doesn’t even have an Off button...

Just when you think things can’t get weirder... Giant Eye appears.

Takeru’s on top of him looking all cool! Till he immediately falls!

Yamato catches him somewhat more adroitly than Taichi caught Agumon xP

The eye belongs to ElDradimon!! I love “animals with worlds on their backs” so this is totally up my ally. My first guess about the eye was that it was gonna be one of the digital sovereigns but this is still pretty cool.

Sooooooo cooooooooool

Yamato doesn’t even lecture Takeru about going off on his own and not hiding like he was told. SO DIFFERENT CANNOT COMPUTE. But looks how happy Takeru is to be praised by his bro for helping ElDradimon. Awww.

I’ve got to now reevaluate how I think things will go down because I really expected Takeru to be something that drives a wedge between Yamato and Taichi. In the old days, Yamato was super protective but Taichi would let Takeru do whatever and Takeru got a little boy crush on him which fed into Yamato’s inferiority complex. But if Yamato’s not overprotective and Takeru is already capable on his own... New directions are good though. I won’t be sorry if they don’t rehash all that BUT I need it to be replaced with something else. Taichi can’t just always be serious, Yamato can’t just always be cool... I like the reboot but I am still on edge about the character stuff.

... Yeah so ElDradimon was mega cool and then... he opened up his VACANT head... bahahaha.... bahahahahahahahahahahaha

So what I really liked about this ep was what I saw as parallels drawn between Taichi and Takeru on the theme of “Do anything to help your partner.” Takeru can’t stop looking for Angemon’s egg, that’s why he goes into the hole after finding the feather. He might not know what’s doing but he’s still gonna do it. Taichi knows a bit more and he’s usually so calculating and strategic, but when MetalGreymon looked on the verge of defeat he threw caution to the wind and tried to save him himself. Okay, not the first time we’ve seen this, true, but it did seem to be the running theme of the episode.

I know I didn’t really talk about how apparently the kids can now update their partners with new powers/gadgets?? by believing in them enough... but y’know that just sounds like the sort of thing a kid’s show would do. I almost miss the card game from Tamers... it would be cool to see the kids have to think and strategically choose what they want to equip their partners with. That was part of the enticement of Tamers, where Adventure was more inexplicable magic, Tamers relied more on intent. Taichi is such a strategist (and of course there’s also freaking Koushirou) that it seems a waste to not involve the kids in the decision making more.

Next week’s ep preivew was a bit hard to follow but 1) the animation looks better than this week thank heaven and 2) it looks like fun. And we get more bamf Takeru! Woot. Can I still say woot in 2020? I can because of senior citizen privilege right?

The End of Year Awards Are Back... and This Time, It’s Personal!

And so we approach the end of 2020, the year that never really began. On paper, at least, it looked incredibly promising. There were lots of great movies slated to come out; culture seemed slightly less paucity-riddled and pointless than usual; good things were in the air. Then COVID happened, and basically fucked everything. Actually, that’s not quite true: my personal year has been fucking spectacular. I’m in a long-term relationship with a gorgeous woman for the first time in forever- no more abrupt trysts and stolen moments for yer humble narrator: I’ve got a sumptuously plus-size lady-friend who actually wants to spend substantial amounts of time me (and has knockers you could sled down, were you so inclined). I also started a Youtube channel where I upload performances of magic tricks I’ve designed and a few people seem to quite like it. Oh, and I’ve written four novels, with a fifth well on its way to completion. Unfortunately, that’s my life, not the life of our civilisation and culture as a whole. The fact that bugger all happened in that makes this end-of-year round-up a little hard to write. With that in mind, I’m going to hand out the gongs for 2020, but I’m also going to do my usual dodge of giving end-of-year awards to things that I discovered in 2020, even if they came out the year, decade or century before. It’s not like any right-minded person gives a hoot about my opinion anyway. Right then, everyone clear on the rules? Then let’s roll up our sleeves and plunge elbow deep into the fetid trough of our decaying society to ferret out the best and worst of the Things That Humans Have Done Recently.

The ‘I Like It Because It Confused Thick People’ Award for Best High-Concept Sci-Fi Movie... … Goes to the sterling Tenet, a spy film that used entropy inversion and symmetric, opposite-direction timelines within the same physical space the way most spy films use hacking and guns. Christopher Nolan films are always intricately constructed and meticulously-executed, but this one must have had Japanese Master Puzzle-Box Makers crying into their breakfast cereal. Is breakfast cereal a thing in Japan? I honestly I have no idea. For some reason, all I can imagine is a sort of dry kedgeree where all the ingredients that aren’t rice have been removed. But I digress. For all its intricacy, Tenet is actually really easy to follow once you’ve grasped the basic premise that there’s a machine that lets people move backwards through time, and that this makes them appear to move in reverse to the rest of the world while they perceive the rest of the world as moving in reverse. Nolan maintains a mastery of cinematic visual language that makes even the most abstruse concept easy to wrap your head around. Nonetheless, following Tenet’s release, dumb people took to the Internet on mass to complain that the film was confusing and stupid, never once realising that their inability to conceptualise time in non-linear ways was their own failing, not Nolan’s. I find that refreshing. It’s nice to see a sci-fi film that’s actually made for smart-cookie sci-fi fans and doesn’t give a hoot if it alienate thickos.

The Award for Most Inexplicably Compelling Web Comic… … Goes to Questionable Content. I originally started reading Questionable Content because I’d heard that the female lead and love interest was a plus size lassie and that shit’s my jam. However, the art style makes everyone look like a skinny indie-type, regardless of their actual, in-universe size, so it doesn’t do much to titillate my Fat Admiring Titillation Centres. And yet, I’m over five hundred ‘episodes’ in and still reading. The thing is, I couldn’t tell you why for the life of me. Maybe it’s the hope that the art style will evolve to the point where the people look like actual human beings with different body types (but then, why would I care unless I was invested for some other reason). Maybe it’s the fact that when I get one of the many, many obscure band or pop culture references, I feel a little buzz of kinship with the writer. Maybe it’s the fact that it takes place in a universe where robots and superheroes are things that regularly happen, yet most of the strips are just normal people chatting shit in a coffee shop and the slice-of-life narrative/sci-fi setting appeals to my sense of juxtaposition. I don’t know, but I find it really compelling to the extent that I’ve pissed away entire days reading it. I have a horrible feeling that it’s a short step from this to really angsty hentai. If I start singing the praises of that, somebody please shoot me in the crotch.

The ‘Forest Gump Debating Peter Andre’ Award For Most Sustained or Elongated Instance of Stupidity… … Goes to Donald Trump. I was tempted just to award this gong to his entire presidency, but that wasn’t just stupid: it was also venal, corrupt, horrifying and punctuated by terrible moments of low cunning. So, instead, this award goes to his ‘soup’ rant. For those of you who missed it, the former President of the United States spent a really, really long time (in the run-up to the election) wittering on about protestors throwing cans of soup at police. What was dumb and weird about it was that he appeared to be extolling the virtues of soup as a siege weapon, going into really specific detail about how it was better than a brick because it could be thrown with more force, finishing with the utterance that protestors would just argue that “this is just soup for my family” if they were caught with the cans… which is phrased wrong in such a subtle and inhuman way it’s hard to imagine that anyone actually ever said it, at least in those words. I have no idea if protestors in America were throwing soup cans at police (which would be entirely justified considering how many innocent people American police have murdered in cold blood quite recently) or if this was a fantasy dreamed up by the former president in the cloudcuckooland that is his diseased little brain. Either way, the connected rant was balls deep in dumb.

The Most Disturbing Unintentional Impression of Vincent Price Award… … Goes to the narrator from One Step Beyond, a Twilight Zone-esque anthology of weirdness that purports to be based on true events and has to be seen to be believed. The stories are oft-disturbing instances of spooky-inflected human drama and can occasionally be quite disconcerting… until they’re book-ended by a dude who sounds like Vincent Price reading a children’s book in a really earnest voice. It’s weird and no, it didn’t hit our screens in Space Year 2020, it dates back to Ye Olden Times of the 1950s or 60s, when men were men, women were women and technincolour was a distant dream that could get you strung up for witchcraft. Nonetheless, I only encountered it this year, so it’s getting its prize. I warned you I was going to pull this shit, but you foolish fools didn’t listen.

The ‘It’s Not Gay If I Don’t Clench’ Award for Cognitive Dissonance… … Goes to Amazon Prime, the content-making branch of evil, tax-dodging, anti-monopoly-law-breaking megalith Amazon. You see, while Big Daddy Amazon is off being incredibly sinister and worrying, like a shifty vampire hanging off the economy’s throat, the creative people at Amazon Prime are busy making or acquiring some of the flat-out best TV ever committed to a streaming-service, from the extra-weird slice of fun-pie that is The Tick, to the entertainingly horrifying cultural dissection of The Boys to the utterly unique Carnival Row, to the superbly adapted American Gods. It’s a bit like discovering that Geoffrey Dahlmer single-handedly created a body of artistic work to rival Vincent Van Gogh’s when he wasn’t pouring acid onto the brains of emotionally vulnerable young adults. It gives me a headache.

The Clint Eastwood Award for Most Effective Older Gentlemen… … Goes to Joe Biden, for unseating dipshit in chief Donald Trump with the casual badassery of a Wild West gunslinger shooting a baddy (probably played by Leonardo Di Caprio) in the balls. I mean, he’s not the best Prez America could ask for but a) as a Brit I don’t have to care and b) anyone who ousts Trump gets mad props from me.

The ‘It’s a Pity Everything Else is Shit Now’ Award for Best New Ongoing Series… … Goes to my own Youtube series, Victor The Magician, in which I claim to be a reality-hopping, interdimensional wizard on an endless quest to… perform magic, basically. I’ll admit that the quality is super-variable (Youtube algorithms and their constant demand for fresh content be a harsh mistress, etc., etc.). However, when I’m good, I’m really good. If you’re looking for a punch-line other than the fact that this whole bit is a self-promoting plug, it’s this: my Youtube series really was the best thing to come out this year. Not because I’m great or anything, just by default. A promising year really did turn into a cultural wasteland the moment COVIDius Rex reared its scaly head.

The Zombie Ian Curtis Award for Most Crushing Disappointment… … Goes to Rick and Morty Series 4. As I think I’ve said before, it was still good, but it just didn’t reach the dizzy heights of nihilistic lunacy achieved in series 1-3. I think the problem is that the audience is meant to learn something from Rick’s poor choices, even if he doesn’t, because the creators saw the amazing success of Bojack Horseman and decided they wanted a slice of that sweet, tangy deconstructionist pie. It worked up to a point in the climax of Series 3, but having made their point, the showrunners probably should have moved onto a different point. They forgot that the appeal of Rick Sanchez is his combination of ‘entertaining car-crash of a human being’ and ‘unstoppable superbeing’. Push him through an arc and you risk breaking the thing that makes him and the show so endlessly watchable. Rick, unlike Bojack, just wasn’t built for heavy introspection. Also, the team hired on new writers who were less than familiar with the characters, setting and subtext, and that’s always an invitation to disaster.

The Special Sir Mixalot Award for Posteriority… ...Goes to… my girlfriend and glamorous assistant, Mystic Miss Terri, who’s arse is gorgeous and majestic.

The ‘Are They STILL Making That?’ Award for a Show You Forgot Existed And is Now Back… … Goes to Supernatural, which never technically went away and whose final series is apparently being broadcast on one of the 4 channels (though who knows which one, any more), It’s kind of nice to realise it’s still out there and be reminded that there are still people who care deeply about what happens to it. It’s like when you remember ‘oh yeah, [insert cute animal here] actually exists and isn’t just an internet meme. That’s nice’. Also, it’s good to see Jared Padelacki working steadily. It can’t be easy to find acting gigs when most producers just want to shoot you and mount your antlers over a fireplace.

The Irritating Magician Award for Something That Just Won’t Fuck Off… ...Goes to this blog entry, which is three pages long in Word. Good grief. Bye y’all! See you next year, assuming that the last few days of 2020 don’t culminate in a civilisation-destroying attack by giant space-ants. If that seems worryingly specific, let’s just say that- as Leonard Cohen would say “I’ve seen the future and, brother, it is murder”… by giant space-ants.

the battle at diagon alley // danielle goyle.

Mentions/features: Katarina Krum, Valeria Crabbe, Archie Fairfax and James Potter. Triggers: panic, psychosis, hallucinations, mentions of parental death.

To summarise: Danielle arrives at the battle masked and ready to prove herself. She gets hit by one of Katarina’s spells – a full body bind one – and is revived by Val, who is backed up by Archie. The three of them stick together for a while before being separated. She duels with James, which she ends up winning ( but she does not injure him gravely ). She comes out of the battle with a few minor injuries and a mild concussion. 

THREAD 001: Dani, Archie, Val.

DANIELLE GOYLE: Shit, shit, shit. If there's one thing that's unfortunate to be at a battle when you're a masked Death Eater at a battle, it's being fucking paralysed. Dani lies on the floor, hardly sure what even happened - she hadn't been dueling when this happened, just moving, moving, moving - praying for once that people don't see her, look away from her, ignore her. Dani does not like fear: it's paralysing, parasitic. Her thoughts are corrupted by the what ifs of the situation, all of them leading back to disappointment. She lies frozen, out of fear and magic, and hopes people think she's dead, as they step past, over, on her. 

VALERIA CRABBE: all this time and effort spent keeping her hands clean, amounting to nothing. valeria sees the mayhem building, building, building and as spells blast by left and right, she can no longer tell what’s magic and what’s festival lights. was that green in the distance a killing curse or just one of the booths? she knows this place inside and out now and maybe she’s a coward, but she wants to be gone. however, it’s a figure on the ground, bearing the tell-tale silver mask that has her pausing. “fucking hell.” time is no longer measured by seconds as she casts a spell to encourage people to look elsewhere if they happened to look in her direction, then crouches down to help. the figure is young, she can tell that much, and she thinks it’s dani. but she can’t be certain without taking the mask off, and that obviously can’t be done. “i’ve always been a bloody terrible healer,” val mumbles as she evaluates her, tries to guess what the worst of the problem is. locomotor mortis, maybe the body bind — she takes a guess. “finite incantatem.”

ARCHIE FAIRFAX: the air is saturated with screams, shouts, explosions. archie feels dizzy—too much to concentrate on—and yet, sure of himself. in the embrace of chaos and destruction, archie feels at home. but that in itself makes his stomach twist into knots of guilt and disgust. he's not sure if it's an advantage that he's so desensitized to the sight of blood and lifeless bodies. maybe it's that, or maybe it's the adrenaline that allows him to focus on two figures ( why's it so hard to focus? ) on the ground. two more silver masks like his own. that detail is enough to make him nearly turn and walk away. but another detail comes into consideration, their size. certainly not taller than himself, leads him to an anxiety inducing conclusion. what if it's someone i can't live without? they don't look older than me. now fueled by more than just bloodlust and adrenaline, anxiety crackling at his fingertips, archie approaches them, his not dominant hand finding the shoulder of the body crouched over the one on the floor. "get the fuck up! you can't stay here." not having observed enough to notice a body binding curse.

DANIELLE GOYLE: She knows that voice – she would know it in her dreams – and something like relief spreads through her, but also something that has nothing to do with tonight (Val's lips on hers, and all the things that followed after.) It's too much to think about, but in this frozen state it's all she can do. And then she's released, and Dani sits up, shaking, shivering, flexing her fingers. She registers Archie's voice – another one she knows so well – and her fear for her own life gets replaced with fear for them. "Val," she breathes. "Archie." Realisation hits her, then. "Fuck." Then, louder. "FUCK. My wand, my wand. I must have dropped it." A longing to leave overtakes her, for a second, and then Dani strictly tells herself that she has a job to do. Whether that job is following the Death Eater's instructions or keeping her friends safe, she doesn't know.

VALERIA CRABBE: her mind runs in certain thoughts: the first, she shouldn’t be seen with them without a mask. she prays the spell sticks and wishes she had time to pull together a better concealment charm. the second, archie was there. archie shouldn’t be in this situation. the third, her heart feels like it’s going to pound so hard that it’ll break right through the cage of her ribs. “are you hurt? was it just the body bind?” she’s remarkably calm. the spitting image of her mother in a crisis. “where? i can’t stay long, we have to get the hell out of here.”26 October 2020

ARCHIE FAIRFAX: the anxiety that previously only bubbled under his skin twists and reshapes itself into something more potent. he doesn't want his friends caught in this chaos, yet he has no say in it. his hand tightens on val's shoulder ( not that she needs any reassurance from him, it's more to comfort himself ) to ground himself in the reality of val is here to protect her too, i'm not alone. "shit. okay. shit. val, i'll be five minutes, yeah? you good for five minutes?" barely waiting for an answer before he turns the youngest of the group. "dani. where did you drop it? i'll go find it."

DANIELLE GOYLE: "I'm fine," she says to Val, hoping she comes accross reassuring. She's always been a good liar. Her eyes flit around the ground, panic in her chest. She has to find her wand: without it, she is useless, and to be useless is to be a liability. That doesn't fit. "It must be somewhere around here, I dropped it when I got hexed." Her voice is steady, calm, clear, while the rest of her seems to be trembling. She tries not to look at Val, because it's too fucking confusing to look at her face. She is standing on the edge of a cliff, and below it are the thougts she tries to void. Thoughts of what would happen if her wand was broken, what her father would say, how she wishes she could pull Val and Archie close and leave. "Try summoning it?"

VALERIA CRABBE: archie’s hand on her shoulder is warm but val feels like she’s running cold to the touch. “there’s a — a portkey, i was supposed to already be gone by now.” she can’t leave, knows that she can’t now that she’s found them. her mother’s voice rattles somewhere in her mind: stay calm, detached, composed. deal in facts, not emotions. but she’s all too aware of dani next to her, like she’s sucked into whatever orbit of gravity she created for herself — always, always, always attuned to her. val keeps her attention on archie. somewhere, behind her, valeria hears a boom! and stone grating against stone. instead of waiting to debate whether it would even work, she waves toward the battle. “accio wand.”

ARCHIE FAIRFAX: psychosis/hallucinations tw / he knew something felt wrong, why the fuck were they here to begin with? they're not fighters. ( they're not Evil, like you are. )  the explosion catches him off guard, so focused on them but when he turns back around the wand is in val's hand and his nerves feel slightly less taught for just a moment. now he allows himself to kneel at dani's side, still painfully aware of their surroundings. "where do you feel pain? did anything hit your head? you don't have concussion do you?" he's nothing like val, panic stains his words and his fingers tremble ever so slightly before he eyes turn to the older of the two. "are you okay? why don't you have a mask?"

DANIELLE GOYLE: panic tw / She can feel panic and tears rising in her chest and she tells it to stay down, that this is not the time, but seeing Archie in this state makes her ache. And then her wand flies towards Val's hands, and she snatches it, fingers curling around the wood and holding on tight. "I don't know, I don't fucking know, okay? What the fuck does a concussion even feel like?" She's being useless, talking like this, but her mouth always runs faster than her mind when she's stressed. Empty words, that's all she is. "I'm fine. Just a bit beat up." And then her eyes travel to Val, and guilt crashes down on her. What if it's because of her, that she is seen now? Her position compromised, life endagered. She can hardly breathe, choking on her guilt. "You can't be seen with us."  

VALERIA CRABBE: "because i wasn't supposed to be in the fight, archie." if her hushed tone sounds clipped, he'll have to forgive her. if her body feels like a clenched fist, her tongue a lash, perhaps it's something they're already acquainted with. adrienne crabbe's cruel princess, with dirt smeared on the knees of her trousers and the knowledge that she, too, was part of this. much like lady macbeth, valeria doubts her hands will ever be clean again. "like hell if i'm leaving you two alone."  was it some poetic retribution for walking away that she was here, now, the one most vulnerable? a hand flexes as if to touch the other witch, the briefest tell of an instinct to pull her friends anywhere but here. "can you walk?"

ARCHIE FAIRFAX: "like—like—i dunno, man, you either have one or you don't." he's struggling to keep his brain on track, it's trying so damn hard to fall down tangents that will lower his guard, he can't do that, not with both of them still here. now he places his right hand on dani's shoulder, an instinct more than a conscious decision, a brief squeeze that could translate into i'm glad you're not in worse shape. val's words are sharp and he drops eye contact, but he thinks he probably deserves that tone. not to mention, by the time it reaches archie's brain, her clipped tone has morphed into something with more disdain, just another trick his brain decides to play on him. archie stands again, turning to face their surroundings, wand drawn and ready as the fighting gets too close. "where's the portkey, val? i'll get you two out of here but i can't leave." or does he not want to leave?

DANIELLE GOYLE: "That's fucking useless. I'll find out tomorrow, yeah?" Archie's squeeze grounds her for a moment, and she wishes she could be kinder, softer, but with this mask on her face she is a monster. Let the costume fit the role. "I can't leave either," she says in response to Archie's suggestion, and her words are clear and stern, but the look on her face behind the mask is something close to fearful. She wants to leave, of course she does, but when has what she wants ever mattered? She gets up, testing her legs as if she's a newborn. Fine, she's fucking fine. Bruises heal. "My dad's - my dad's here." And besides, Dani fucking Goyle does not disappoint: she is a star, who lives to expectations, even if they're horrifying. "We'll get you -" Val. "- to the portkey, and stick together, yeah?"

THREAD 002: Dani and James

DANIELLE GOYLE: In all truth, she feels rather lost. If life is a play, this is a scene that is too chaotic for her to wrap her head around: she needs a script, something to fall back on. When she sees James Potter, though, things become increasingly clear, as Dani considers how proud her father would be, how good this fit with her role of the Potter-hating Goyle. Vicious, cruel, devoted, ready to restore honour to the family name, to find glory once more. "Potter!," she shouts, her voice more confident than she feels. She's always been an excellent liar. She hates the words that leave her lips, but she's always considered words empty things anyway, so what does it matter? With this mask on, she is someone else. Whoever she is in truth, has long been buried. "Wouldn't it be really fucking sad if another one of you bit the dust tonight?"

JAMES POTTER: He wasn't here tonight simply to fight. He didn't want to protect or fight back or anything similar he was angry and wanted to avenge. It didn't matter who he was fighting, as long as they were in a mask they were the enemy and James was ready to attack. So hearing his name called quickly grabbed his full attention, head snapping towards the other person across the way. "It would be a pity." he said as he moved his wand arm, pointing it in her direction. "Almost as sad as when I finish you and you're entire little group of pathetic assholes."

DANIELLE GOYLE: Oh, it's so easy to slip back into that what she's always known. That the Potters are the enemy, those behind the fall down of the family she loves so very much. A nasty fairytale she was fed as a child, and no longer believes in until moments like these arrive. Then, it's easier to fall back into it all. "Oh, you're going to do it all on your own? That's impressive!" Her voice is loud, her enunciation clear. And her father said drama school was a waste of time. "Want to one up your late father? Kind of sad, to compete with the dead."

JAMES POTTER: He was seeing red. Everything around them was blocked out as the only thing James could focus on was the person in front of him. He raised his wand even more slightly, trembling with rage. "Don't you ever speak to me about my father!" he snapped, eyes narrowing in frustration. "Never."

DANIELLE GOYLE: She feels powerful. Dani is so used to people's words holding power over - those of Cassius, Diomedes, her father, her grandfather - that she likes being the one to lash out. "Or what?" She looks at his wand, daringly, defyingly. She feels better, fighting with words than with wand-waving, but she's ready if she has to. "What are you going to do about it? It's not going to make him come back."

JAMES POTTER: He was all talk. Always had been and it was one of the traits he disliked about himself the most. He had always talked a great game but it the end he seemed to fail to perform every time. Not anymore. He wasn't eleven years old and defending himself to a gang of third years who cornered him in the school hallway, he was a grown man who had lost his father because of this group of hateful sadistic people. Sometimes words weren't enough, this was war and sometimes you needed to fight. "If you don't shut up I'll make you." his wand arm was still shaky as he tightened his grip, blasting a spell quickly and carelessly in her direction. "Confringo"

DANIELLE GOYLE: She remembers joining Hufflepuff, and James being one of the people she shared a common room. Oh, how she had hated it. (Until she loved it, of course, but she has no room to think of the girl she had been, once, when Hogwarts had given her a place to grow. She's throwing it all away now, with every mean word, every curse.) "I dare you," she says, as if she's not in the slightest bit worried. As the curse blasts her way, she jumps aside, all fluid movements. She's a dancer after all, and this is her stage. Debris flies around her, for a moment, and her heart beats loudly in her chest. Her suppressed fear makes her messy, and her aim is off when she yells, "Stupefy!"

JAMES POTTER: This is no longer fear, it's a burning white hot rage and James is ready to fight with everything he has. Everything had started to blur together and for that moment he forgot entirely that there was a person under that mask, one who looked and sounded young, maybe someone he had known. Now anyone under that mask felt like one entity as if every person here tonight personally had a hand in Harry's murder and what little he had been taught about dueling and defensive magic flew out of his mind as he focused on vengeance. But a counter curse flew at him quickly and caused him to stumble, just barely jumping out of the way before turning the same curse back in her direction. "Stupefy!"

DANIELLE GOYLE: Oh, he's angry. To see what effect her words have is almost intoxicating to Danielle. Is this not what she wants? For her performance to influence those who listen? The world is her stage, and this is her best performance yet, so convincing it's driven someone to fury. She's smiling behind her mask, thinking that maybe, maybe she can do this after all, and she blocks his stunning curse. Not with ease, but with grace at the very least. She leaps, jumps, nearly twirls, a ballet dancer on a crumbling world. "Come on, then! Hit me!" She twists her wand and yells, "Flipendo!"

JAMES POTTER: His wand is still being held tightly in his hands, even if they are shaking as the two duel back and forth. He's opening his mouth to shout out another curse when one is shot in his direction, too fast this time as it knocks him backwards to the ground, causing James to drop his wand on the floor next to it. He scrambles to collect himself, reaching out quickly to grab his wand and begin to climb to his feet, shouting "Expelliarmus!" from his spot still halfway on the floor.

DANIELLE GOYLE: She only just dodges the spell, and Dani is reminded of those few moments where she was without a wand. Fear creeps in her throat, and she realises that maybe she shouldn't be here, that all her success is bravado and not real. "Come on now, trying to end this already?," she shouts, despite herself. She wants this to end, in all truth, but with her victory. To be defeated by James Potter, well that would just be embarassing. She twists her wand, sending a stinging hex his way.

year in review of parenting

thought i would try and record a few prime interactions ive had with my kids so i remember them as my 3 daughters are just so out there - daughter says shes interested in becoming an animator so i have to line up a list of animations on youtube i know were made by one person, including ‘no evil’ by betsy lee, dingo doodles sips and the karaoke of doom, ‘witches on tinder’, and piemations as examples of the kind of thing one person can reasonably do with a lot of dedication and if you pay close attention you can see how each of the animations are done differently - explaining what skaa was, twice - spending  time at gamestop just discussion how some funko pops make sense and some are super dumb. makes sense funko pop would be one of the main characters of a movie thats well loved, dumb ones would be the same but for a movie literally nobody likes but funko pops were released before the movie was so they will never sell, or having 40+ differnt versions of rick and another 50 of morty. even having 15+ different batmans doesnt make sense because given the choice do you want orange batman or classic batman? - no i cannot go to your school to beat up the kid who was mean to you. i mean technically im physically able to but thats not the point - explaining what the music style ‘scat’ is and why its unrelated to the same word used to mean ‘wild animal poop’ - i dont know how to explain to you who freddie mercury is because were in a car and i cant show you a youtube of bohemian rhapsody while im driving - explaining why i am irritated at the kid friendly versions of classic horror monsters, they dont get it so i have to go into detail a- is the wolfman scary? like just a dude thats hairy? no. no he is not. however imagine that someone you know, and you dont know who, may at some point in time turn into a ravenous monster who will attack their friends ruthlessly, its already happened at least once so everyone is on edge wondering who it is. however, secretly it is you that is the monster, living in fear that you could loose control and kill the ones you love most b- the frankenstins monster, just a big green dude with bolts in his neck? scary? no, hes just a larger zombie basically. however imagine someone at college going nutty and then starts to raid the morgue, the cemetery, butcher shops, and surgery wards at hospitals for the human parts he stitches together into a rude parody of a human being and brings it to life. but it doesnt stop there, because he abandoned this new creature that thing now stalks him out of revenge, one by one killing everyone they know - the kids now understand why the majority of the classic monsters are supposed to be scary as balls - explaining COPPA to them because several youtubers we watch together have started loudly announcing ‘not for children’, at which they unprompted start complaining about a youtuber called ‘ryans world’ where a very annoying screaming child tells everyone to buy shit and is repeatedly recommended to them by the algorithm because it knows theyre kids. i should have taken that as a warning so i wasnt surprised at just how much ‘ryans world’ merchandise was in stores this year, like ye gods theres more of it then there was starwars and harry potter merch combined he has his own cereal which is apparently frootloops and disturbing plush animals. we agreed its weird when on his merch theres four different characters but the pink cat girl looks like she was made by someone different then the others because shes got way better detail - explain to kids that ‘green eggs and ham’ was made on a dare, which requires me to recite the whole thing for them to count that there are exactly 50 different words 5 year old- “wheres my sister” me- “in the bathroom, why” 5 year old- “imma hug her” me- “nn.... wow youre - 14 year old in the bathroom- “GAAH!” me- “-fast” - i can do a perfect impression of the ‘huhuhuhuh’ sound sans undertale makes - its been 3 years of me using the phrase ‘sans undertale’ specifically and my daughter who has spent the last 3 years dressing like him and listening to his music hasnt caught on that the way im phrasing it is in fact a joke - kids accidentally stumble uppon a history meme i was part of and i have to explain thats a thing i do - explain to kids what the emu war was - explain to kids who rasputin was - explain to the kids what the problem with hitler was, given the 11 year old is supposed to only get this in the school curriculum this next year i can understand why she was shocked. 14 year old was also shocked becuase she is in the between part of ‘we briefly touched on that war’ and ‘okay now that you are old enough we can explain how shoving people into ovens works’ - they asked, they really did, and only then do i realize that despite it being something everyone should definitely be aware of... figuring out how old and how to explain it really is a tricky matter cause ho-damn most adults get queasy when you explain it and im sure those kids had bad dreams for a week - theyre also aware of the trump concentration camps and were able to draw the connections real quick - pun contest - kid asks me to acquire a daft punk song for her so i can put it on her mp3 player, i have never heard of this song despite her spending 5 minutes describing it and how their eyes are freaky. have to explain to her that when i was about her age daft punk released an entire movie made of music videos. we have to show each other different daft punk videos to understand each other - no, daft punk are the robots, not the blue eye people. literally nobody knows what they look like under the helmets they even show up to music award shows wearing them. the helmets can actually make words and emotes theyre really rad songs we have erupted into together - spooky scary skeletons - narwhals narwhals - another irish drinking song - hubba hubba zoot zoot

#SamLives - Chapter 4

“Paranoia”

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Also find the latest chapters of this story on [Archive Of Our Own]

It was on Day 11 that Jack got a message from Robin that sent a chill down his spine. He’d been sitting on the couch at the time, watching some Rick and Morty with Sam curled up asleep in his lap. The little eyeball was as comfortable as could be with Jack gently petting his “head”...and that’s when his phone went off.

Robin: Hey Jack...did you have plans for the Egos that I didn’t know about? Lmao

Jack blinked, staring at the screen. He frowned and typed a message back.

Jack: No...? Only what we’ve talked about, but I thought that wasn’t until next month. Why? Robin: Nice job on the editing practice then. Looks like your Anti skills are improving.

And now Jack was very, very confused.

Jack: What are you talking about? Robin: That last recording you sent me, for Subnautica. It looked great!

Jack sat up straighter, making Sam stir from his sleep, but he barely noticed.

Jack: Robin, I didn’t edit that recording at all. I haven’t recorded anything for Anti in ages. Robin: What are you talking about it? I’m watching it right now. Jack: Send it to me?

A few minutes later, Jack was at his computer with Sam on his shoulder, watching the short clip that Robin had sent him, playing it on a loop. That...wasn’t possible. No. What the hell...?

“...heeeey Reefies!” On-screen Jack was saying. “Aww, I love you guys. Be back soon! Alright, heading to the Deep Down Dark Deep Down. Gotta visit my base, visit my lockers, ‘cause I’m a stupid who forgot all the valuable stuff and left it in a place that takes FUCKIN’ FOREVER TO GET TO! Fuuuuck it so muuuuuch! Heheh...” Video-Jack chuckled at his own reference to Simulacra, and it was at that moment that a shadow appeared, glitching, behind him on screen. Just over his shoulder, against the wall. A familiar face grinned from the shadows, and a high-pitched, distorted laugh played in the recording. The video itself glitched, Jack included. Then Video-Jack shivered, glancing over his shoulder, and the figure - Anti - was gone. It was so quick that he wouldn’t have caught it in his brief skim-through of the recorded footage before he sent it to Robin. And it looked just like all those hints he had dropped in his videos during October before Anti had first shown up in “Say Goodbye”.

Except...except Jack hadn’t recorded that. Jack hadn’t done that. Jack hadn’t...made that face, laughed that laugh. He hadn’t done that...and suddenly he felt very, very scared. Then rationality kicked in and he giggled hysterically, running a hand through his hair.

He was being stupid. He was being dramatic. Obviously Robin had edited this, and was making a joke of it. That bit with Anti...it had to be part of the unused footage from a previous project. It had to be. He shook his phone free from his hoodie pocket and tapped out a shaky text.

Jack: Haha, very funny. You got me! I was actually scared there for a second! Jack: You’re such a troll lol

But Robin’s next message didn’t make him feel any better.

Robin: Man I’m not trolling you. I thought you edited that?

Jack could barely keep his hands from shaking as he tried to respond. He swallowed thickly, a dull fear washing over him.

Jack: No, I didn’t. That...I never did that. Unless I’ve learned to edit in my sleep I have no idea how that got into the video

Unless...

“Belief. I’m talking about belief....and how it can do amazing, impossible things...”

The words Mark had spoken to him a few days prior were bouncing around in his head again, echoing and repeating and playing on loop. Mark had been about to tell him something, before the call had ended. Something about belief. Something about Sam, but kind of not. Something that he didn’t get to finish saying because...he swallowed, both hands clutching at his hair as he sank in his desk chair.

Because the call had started to flood with static, and then his phone had shocked him. Which he wasn’t even aware a smartphone could do, not when it was mostly unharmed like Jack’s was.

Another buzz from his phone alerted him to another message from Robin.

Robin: Wait, so you didn’t put that bit with Anti in the other video either?

Jack scrambled to pick up his phone, fumbling with it for a moment.

Jack: What video? Robin: The upload from this morning, the first one. The “Reading Your Comments” video. Robin: You were answering some question about the egos...? I thought you were just messing with the community so I left it in. Robin: But when I saw the second one in the Subnautica recording you sent me I thought I should ask.

Jack rapidly pulled up the video on his computer, scrubbing through it until he found the question Robin was talking about, because he already knew which one it was. He’d responded with something totally off-topic, something unrelated, just to be funny...and sure enough, as Video-Jack was reading the question aloud, there was a little visual distortion. Not much, but if you were looking for it, you’d see it. And way in the background, in the shadows in the corner...a silhouette. Brief. Barely there. A fraction of a second. A few frames, maybe. And it knocked all of Jack’s breath from him.

“Jack? Are you okay?”

Sam had bounced onto the desk, into Jack’s line of sight, and the little eyeball was eyeing him with a look of innocent concern. Jack took a breath. Then another. He forced a smile.

“Y-Yeah. Yeah, o’ course. Fine.”

“You’re scared.”

“...a little,” Jack admitted sheepishly. Sam could always read him, better than anyone. Having a mental link probably had something to do with it. “Sorry bud. I didn’t mean ta scare you.”

“Why are you scared?”

Jack had no answer for him, not really. He couldn’t think of a way to say it. So instead he thought it. He pictured Anti, pictured the videos he’d made with him. And he let his fear seep through...just a little. Enough for Sam to get the idea. And Sam...his pupil widened a little and he squeaked.

“He’s real too?”

“I dunno,” Jack shrugged, sinking further in his seat. He leaned forward, propping his elbow on the desk and burying his face in his hands, reverting to thinking from here on out. ‘I dunno. It sounds stupid, sounds impossible. But...I dunno how else he’s showing up in videos, unless Robin’s lying. And I don’t think he would. Not this far.’

Sam made a worried little noise and nudged Jack’s arm, nuzzling up against his hoodie sleeve. Trying to help. And it did, a little...because Jack managed to smile.

“C’mon, c’mon...” Jack was muttering at his phone and pacing, as though urging it on would somehow will the person on the other end to pick up the phone any faster. It was taking far too long. It was only as he finally heard someone on the line that it occurred to him what time it was in California.

“...h’lo?”

Jack winced, hearing the sleepiness in Mark’s voice, knowing he must have woken him up.

“Mark. Hi. God, sorry, I totally forgot what time it was over there...”

“Yeah, it’s...” There was a rustle of fabric, a muffled grumble. “...three in the fuckin’ morning.”

“Sorry. Shite. I didn’t think, I just called...I can...I can call back later...”

“Woah, wait, no, ‘s cool,” Mark mumbled. There was more movement on the other end, a light clicking on, a door opening and closing. A yawn. “Wassup?”

“...”

And now that he was actually talking to Mark, Jack began to realize how stupid he would sound the minute he opened his mouth.

“...Seán?”

“It’s...nothin’. Nevermind. I shouldn’t’ve called.” The words spilled out of him faster than he could think them, a hand dragging through his already-unkempt hair. Sam made a little noise of question from where he was sitting on the arm of the couch.

“Dude you sound like you saw a ghost.” Jack could hear the worried frown in his words. “Hold up, once sec...”

The call ended abruptly, but as soon as it had gone Jack’s phone was ringing again, this time for a Skype call. Jack sighed and answered it. His screen lit up with the rather sleepy-looking face of Mark, his hair a chaotic mess of bedhead and his mouth pulled down in a worried frown. Jack could only imagine how he looked himself. He’d been running his hands through his hair nonstop since he’d woken up, he’d had four cups of coffee, and he’d been jumping at shadows all morning. Mark blinked.

“Holy shit. You look like hell.”

Jack rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, thanks, I kinda figured that,” he grumbled, looking away for a moment.

“Are you okay? You seem...stressed. I’ve seen it in your videos too...”

Jack let a small, hysterical laugh bubble past his lips.

"I'm fine! Toootally great!” He said sarcastically. “I'm being held together by coffee and redbull and cookies and prayers! What could possibly be wrong?!"

“Jesus.” Mark stared at him like he was nuts. “The hell happened to you?”

And Jack just let out a slow breath, deflating.

“...just...a lot. Recently.”

“Is it Sam still?”

Jack didn’t even feel annoyed this time when Mark mentioned it, just sighing resignedly.

“...sort of. I mean that’s part of it, sure, but...” He trailed off, chewing his lip. Wondering if this was even a good idea in the first place.

“But what?” Mark asked. Jack looked at his screen again to see Mark sitting on a couch now, a soft light illuminating his tired features. Would Mark think he was fretting over nothing? Mark had his own dark persona on the internet, Darkiplier, and Jack was certain he was aware of Antisepticeye. But thinking that Anti was a real, living thing...or whatever Anti’s version of “living” would be...

“Jack?” Mark’s brow furrowed in concern.

“...I...eh...” Jack stared at his screen for another long moment. Then he sighed. “...I’m bein’ paranoid. That’s all.”

“Paranoid about what...?”

“Anti.”

A pause.

“...you mean, like, Evil-You? That Anti?”

“Yeah. That Anti. He...” Another pause, another sigh, a huff of frustration. Jack, running his hands through his hair for the umpteenth time. “...he’s shown up in a few o’ my videos, an’ I didn’t put ‘im there. I didn’t record stuff for it. I didn’t tell Robin to do it, an’ Robin claims he thought I was editing it like that. And I keep...I keep thinking he’s right behind me, right over my shoulder. And I started thinkin’ about what you were saying about “belief” before and I started to think it might be possible and I wanted to call you and ask and – you...probably think I’m absolutely off my rocker.” Jack flopped back onto the couch, his head thunking back against the wall behind it. He closed his eyes, expression strained. God, he sounded insane. Sam slipped off the armrest to snuggle up in Jack’s lap, out of sight of the camera. Trying to make him feel better.

“...would you call me crazy if I said I believed you?”

And just like that, Jack’s eyes were glued to the screen again, where he could see Mark avoiding looking at the camera, rubbing a hand over his mouth. Looking concerned.

“You’re joking.”

“Not...not this time, no.”

There was a seriousness to his tone that Jack wasn’t used to, that made him think maybe Mark really did mean what he was saying.

“Why?”

“Why do I believe you?” Mark asked, finally looking up to the camera. “Because I think–”

There was an odd, glitched distortion on the screen, the lighting around Mark changing and shifting for a brief, almost unnoticeable moment....and judging by the slight widening of Mark’s eyes and the way Jack gasped softly, they both knew that the other had just seen the same thing.

“...I think...I can’t talk about it. Not now. Not...” Mark glanced over his shoulder, his eyes landing on something off-screen, something near the ground. “You alright? It’s okay, I promise. I’m right here.” The camera’s angle changed, going lopsided as Mark leaned over to reach toward whatever was on the floor. Jack assumed it was probably his dog, Chica. Poor pup. He smiled softly in sympathy. Then Mark was back in the frame, and he looked a little strained.

“Look. I can’t...talk about it over the phone. Obviously he doesn’t want you knowing. But I’ll be in Europe for a tour soon. A few weeks from now. Just...hold out ‘till then, and we can talk then. I’ll stop by, or we can meet up–”

“Wait, who?” Jack interrupted, frowning. A minute fear seemed to build in his chest, a tension there that hadn’t been there before, and he found himself glancing over his shoulder despite the fact that it was broad daylight and he was sitting against a wall. Sam made a quiet noise of distress and cuddled closer to him, looking up at him. Jack’s free, shaking hand fell to his lap to pet the little eyeball. “Who doesn’t want me to know what?”

“Later,” Mark insisted. “Not now. It’s not safe.”

“Why?!”

“Later!”

And Mark hung up. Jack tried, twice, to call him again - but both times Mark ignored him. He gritted his teeth and held Sam a little closer, suddenly scared to be alone.

[A/N] I swear, when I began this story, this was not the direction I was planning on taking it. It was going to be a cute little fluff-friendship piece with Sam thrown into the mix, then...the story took on a mind of its own. So even I don’t know where it’d headed...but I promise there will be cutes ahead as well. That, at the very least, is still a part of the plan. <3

Also find the latest chapters of this story on [Archive Of Our Own]

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[Chapter List]

Fandom Page (Update 10/22/2021)

So I know some people have not been able to see my fandom page for tech reasons, so I’ve decided to just make a post that lists all of them! If you don't see what you’re into on here you can still ask me!

Added links so you guys can see what I've done already!

This list isn’t necessarily stuff that I will 100% make for but rather stuff that I have been interested in at some point in my life. If you don’t see something on here that does not mean I won’t do it. If you do see something on here I might not do it based on what character it is for ex. 

Bold means it’s newly added 

Bold means the status has changed

:/ means bc of recent news i don’t like it anymore lol

Anime

Aggretsuko - havent seen s2

Bleach - only interested in minor characters

Eyeshield 21 - only interested in minor characters

One Piece - Never watched/read but I know everything

Fullmetal Alchemist 03 - never finished/dont prefer it 

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Hello Kitty/Sanrio

Hellsing Ultimate 

One Punch Man - not caught up/ not planning on it

Ouran Highschool Host Club - Gonna rewatch

Please Tell Me! Galko-chan

Pop Team Epic - not caught up 

Puella Magi Madoka Magica - haven't seen in years

Vocaloid

Books

Fairy Tales

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, planning on reading CO series soon 

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream - Short Story/Game

May Bird Series

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children - Gonna reread

Percy Jackson and the Olympians 

Heroes of Olympus

The Kane Chronicles - Gonna reread

Cartoons

Adventure Time

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Ben 10/Alien Force/Ultimate Alien

Bob’s Burgers - not caught up/ not planning on it

Courage the Cowardly Dog - nostalgia

Ever After High - nostalgia

Gravity Falls

Hilda

Kid’s Next Door - nostalgia

Legend of Korra

Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir - not caught up/not planning on it

Monster High - nostalgia

Over the Garden Wall

Powerpuff Girls - nostalgia

Rick and Morty - not caught up/not planning on it

RWBY - not caught up

Scooby Doo

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

Star vs. The Forces of Evil - not caught up/not planning on it

Strawberry Shortcake - nostalgia

Steven Universe - not caught up/not planning on it

Storm Hawks

The Dragon Prince - caught up to season 2, not watching s3 till show continues coming out

Trollhunters - not into the other shows

WordGirl - nostalgia

Comics

DC Comics - more into the Batman universe

Marvel - kind of into

Games

Among Us

Animal Crossing: New Leaf/Happy Home Designer/Pocket Camp/New Horizons

Apex Legends- haven’t played the quests/lore stuff yet

Bendy and the Ink Machine

Cookie Run: Ovenbreak/Cookie Wars

Cozy Grove

Cube Escape/Rusty Lake

Cuphead: Don’t Deal with the Devil

Dead by Daylight

Doki Doki Literature Club

Dream Daddy

Firewatch

Five Nights at Freddy’s 

Ghost Trick

Gris

Hatoful Boyfriend

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Life is Strange/Before the Storm/Farewell 

Little Nightmares

Neko Atsume

Night in the Woods

Overwatch

Ooblets

Oxenfree

Pokemon - games, anime, most movies included!

Poptropica

Slime Rancher

Smile For Me

Speed Dating for Ghosts

Spiritfarer

Stardew Valley

Super Mario Bros. - Completed Odyssey and LM3

The Amazing Adventures of Captain Spirit

The Arcana - not caught up/not planning on it

Undertale - not caught up/not planning on it

What Remains of Edith Finch

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine

Yearwalk

Movies

DC - Only seen Wonder Woman 1/Birds of Prey/New Suicide Squad

Disney Animated Movies/Channel

Don Bluth Movies - ask me which

Dreamworks - ask me which

Harry Potter - :/

Heathers + musical

Laika Films -  ask me which

Les Miserables

Mad Max: Fury Road

MCU - hate it nowadays :/

Over the Moon

Pixar Animated Movies -  ask me which

Star Wars - movies/EU/semi-clone wars + rebels + mando (not caught up on clone wars/not planning on watching rebels)

Musicals

Hamilton

Legally Blonde

Wicked

Other Stuff

American Girl Doll

LGBT+

Holidays/Seasons

Podcasts

Alice Isn’t Dead

The Adventure Zone - Halfway through Amnesty/not continuing 

The Magnus Archives - never listened but know everything

TV Shows

American Gods - not caught up/not planning on it

A Series of Unfortunate Events - not caught up

Game of Thrones - oof

Lucifer - not caught up

Mindhunter

Preacher - not caught up/not planning on it 

Queer Eye

Stranger Things

The Haunting of Hill House/Bly Manor/Midnight Mass

Web Series

Nyan Neko Sugar Girls

The Most Popular Girls in School - not caught up/not planning on it

Slenderverse: Watched MH/EMH/TT, but :/ on TT 

Villainous - not caught up/not planning on it

This was done long ago by a lot of artists. I have just caught up. In that selfie I would like to remind people I am Welsh, therefore sat in the passenger seat. Don’t use your phone and drive!! So yeah, hey there; this is me.

Rick and Morty headcanons list (part 1)

I know there’s a reality for every possible or even impossible thing but it’s fun to just state the obscure sometimes so here’s some Rick and Morty Infinite Reality headcanons!

(ps if anyone wants to draw, write, or add to these I’d love to know!!!)

Rick is a superhero

better yet, Beth gets superpowers when she’s a teenager and hides them from him (as all teens do)

she grew out of being a superhero when she realized it was difficult to manage kids and the career she wanted but just got back into it right before Rick came back into her life

Morty gets super powers and Summer is his sidekick

Morty gets super powers and Rick is his “guy in the chair”

Morty gets superpowers and his arch nemesis is his dad- both know it’s the other but have to keep it chill at home

Morty gets superpowers and suspects his dad is evil but can never prove it

evil beth

okay now moving on from superpowers

Morty can shape shift and does it either to make Rick look more appealing at home so he can stay (like by doing chores and such) or go out to get drunk while looking like Rick

okay I lied, but now I’m really done with the superpowers

Reality where everything is the same except digital games (like video games) were never a thing on Earth so Rick and Morty become Blips and Chitz zombies

Rick leaves Beth because he finally has the opportunity to become a male ballet dancer (ultimately making a choice similar to what he gave Beth- following his dream or maintaining his responsibilities)

Rick leaves Beth because her mother was a parasite like from Coraline who used Beth to lure in children and he couldn’t do much about it because of the emotional pain and her mom seemed to be taking care of her

all he did before he left was download mad fighting skills to Beth’s subconscious and eventually she killed her mom and forgot all about her (thanks to a protocol Rick installed)

Rick is surprised when he checks in on Beth and realizes she’d actually defeated her mom

Rick is worried though that one day Beth will turn into her

Rick goes to the Citadel after his wife went crazy and killed Beth

She’s still back on Earth killing other children or maybe she finally got caught, who knows, Rick tries not to think about it

Rick goes to the Citadel after he accidentally caused his planet’s atmosphere to change, from his ship he watched his wife’s skin melt from her bones, Beth was just a baby in her arms as the same happened to her

Like the Hunger Games except Rick had Beth at a young age, he was chosen and survived too well, he became a slave for the game to make it better with the life of his family on the line. He does this for years until one day Morty is chosen and he can’t take it anymore- he breaks into the game to save Morty.

Summer fights her way to the Capital and helps them escape in the end because she’s a badass too.

Beth is a wizard who was placed in a home with strangers when young because Rick had left her, he was a scientist and muggle.

Beth is super smart just like him, but without knowing him she studies science as well and when she discovers she’s a wizard her ‘parents’ are very supportive

She becomes a prodigy student but is mocked for her mixtures of science and wizardry.

She knew she was adopted but it was only in her second year when she was looking more into recent wizardry history that she learned a muggle had flown too close to the sun trying to learn more about wizardry, he “accidentally” went crazy and is in permanent holding at St. Mungos for risk of exposure of the community.

After looking into it more she’s sure this is her father.

The rest of her school years she gathers friends to try and help break him out as well as cure him and hunt down the people who did this

Speaking of flying too close to the sun, Morty is Icarus, the GRANDSON of a master craftsman (Rickalus) but he doesn’t die at the end, or does he…

Ugh this is super long but I got carried away, I’ll definitely put together a part 2 and 3 and 4 because this is just too much fun and if I hadn’t made these super detailed or plot-related I would’ve liked to draw them, alas I’m not at a comic stage yet so these are totally up for grabs (just let me know because I’d really love to love your work- whatever it may be)

Part 2

Convenient

“Actually I do have a request! Rick finding his kidnaped Morty? But it was another Rick that took him!” - @sminkut

Ok, so here it is! I kinda got a little carried away and took some creative liberties with this, but the premise is still what the reader asked for, just in a round about way. I also left this off in a way where it could be continued??? do with that what you will. Hope you like it!

Warnings: Swearing, drinking? (I mean it is rick), very slight mentions of porn

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

Rick really wasn't used to this sort of thing.

Not knowing more than everyone else, yeah, not familiar with it. So when rick stumbled back into Morty's room in the very early hours of the day only to find his grandson missing from the home entirely, well to say he wasn't taking it smoothly is a bit of an understatement.

"Wha-what the fuck Morty? Morty?" Rick wasn't known to care, but the way his voice rose as he frantically searched the teens bedroom for clues as to where he went said otherwise. Then he spotted something that sent shivers down his back.

Rick picked up his grandsons laptop, with a fair amount of questionable content still open for the viewers pleasure. This wasn't good, very not good. Morty would never leave all these tabs hanging out! No, Rick knew his little sidekick, and he knew the boys social anxiety was far to intense for him to be this careless. He wouldn't have done this unless-

Rick's phone went off in his pocket.

‘ya know C-137, Ricks who don’t take care of their pets tend to lose them rather quickly…’ he read the message a few times over.

“wh- eruup- oo the shit? Fuckin- fuck this shi-it, I don’t have time fo-or this.” giving up on figuring out who this was, he knew what to do. So Rick, in his very Rick like manner, devised a plan.

Well ok, maybe not a plan, but a concept really. It would only take a few old pieces he had in the garage. As he made his way back down the stairs and out into his work space, he told himself a few times over that he wasn’t doing this because he cared. He just needed to keep Beth off his back, and to do that he needed Morty safe. Yeah, when he thought about it that way it’s perfectly logical. He doesn’t care. Rick Doesn’t give a damn.

But that still didn’t stop a few stressed breaths from slipping out when he thought about what the boy might be going through.

Once he was done tinkering with the homing device, made out of an old police scanner and parts from his last broken portal gun, he plugged it into his phone and hit reply to the previous text. if all went according to plan, which Rick knew it would since he made the damn thing, this thing should hone in on where the text came from and portal him directly there.

mere seconds passed before the phone exploded, and with it came a green portal splashed across the garage door.

“Yes! I’m mother fucking- eruuup- Rick Sanchez bitch! Get wrecked!” and with that, he grabs his blaster and jumps into what is likely to be certain death. What he finds on the other side, however, isn’t at all what he expected.

It’s nothing. he walks through to find himself in a pitch black room. ‘If only I had the flashlight from my phone’ he thought, ‘I’ll have to get a new one of those when I get back.’

It seemed like he was in some sort of sensory deprivation room, and without his senses Rick was just going to have to wing it. He began to walk in the direction he originally portaled in, feeling around for a wall or anything to set him on track, when suddenly he heard a whimper off to his right.

By now he had sobered up a bit from earlier in the evening. He knew that by calling out, he could risk his safety. He wasn’t really ready to do that, so he took a few more steps towards where he thought the noise was coming from, only to hear it again but louder this time. He was sure it was a Morty. Whether it was his Morty or not he couldn’t tell, but any Morty is better than no Morty.

“Morty is that you?” he called into the darkness. he heard shuffling, like someone trying to stand up.

“Rick!? Ah, thank God! Rick what took you so long!?”

“You can s-say-say- you can thank any false deity you want later Mo-orty. Right now we gotta get out of here. Where are you?” He put his hands out in front of him and came in contact with something soft and curly.

Rick froze. Something wasn’t right. Just then a hard thing was released against his forehead, and for a moment Rick swore he could hear Morty laughing.

——Time Skip——

“Fuck!” Rick woke with a start as he rolled off his bed, tightly wrapped in the crumpled sheets.

‘Why did I drink so damn much? fuck me.’ With closed eyes, and afraid of how nasty his hangover would feel, He climbed back onto the bed and searched for the pills he keeps by his bed.

“looking for these?” He heard Morty say as the boy cracked open his bedroom door. As the boy closed his curtains, he managed to crack open an eye to make sure that everything really was just a dream. Morty handed him the pain meds and a glass of water- or was it vodka?- and he swallowed them quickly. He took a good look at the curly haired boy, who was giving him a passive look.

“so uh, what are we doing today anyway? I mean not that- that I’m expecting anything or whatever, but considering this space travel stuff is usually an every day thing I just assumed-“

“Shut up Morty. No-nobody gives a shit what you think Morty. You know that right? You know that no one really cares, because this universe is far to vast for a-all of it to care about you and-“ He stopped. That same feeling he had in his dream, if it even was a dream, it was back. he squinted at Morty. Something wasn’t right, but what?

“What is it Gramps?” Morty never calls him that, but before he could even pull a gun on the fake Morty the body flew into the nightstand with a thud, and dropped to the floor, a blaster shot to the head being apparent as it bled out. A small set of wires hung from it’s right eye. Rick looked to his doorway where he saw his morty. Beaten, bruised, and heaving in air like it was the first time in years, his morty leaned against the door frame for support and held an already cocky and ready blaster in his hands, ready to shoot again at the first sign of movement. After a few seconds he dropped the gun.

Rick dropped to his knees beside the boy as he collapsed onto the carpet.

“SHit Morty, that was some good aim. Maybe you-you-you have learned something after all. Maybe I haven’t been wasting my time on you.” He sounded harsh, but Morty knew he was concerned when Rick started checking his whole body for injuries while he was talking. He wasn’t going to call attention to it.

“I’m cool Rick,” he stood back up after he caught his breath, “just really tired.”

Later on they were watching tv in the living room.

“Uh, hey Rick?”

“Yeah what’s up?” He said without turning from the tv screen. There was a replica of the Fast and the Furious on except everyone was shoes.

“uh- well I was wondering- I mean- what I think is-“ He huffed as Rick gave him an annoyed look. “ I saw you with the other Morty this morning. You know I don’t have curly hair right Rick? I mean- It- It’s obvious right? You remembered didn’t you?” Rick gave him a knowing look. After all, he did notice something was off, he just couldn’t figure out what at the time, but it wouldn’t do them any good for him to say that.

“Of course I did buddy, I know you like the back of my hand Morty.” He ruffled the boy’s hair a little bit, and turned back to the tv once Morty seemed satisfied with the answer.

He let a small smile settle onto his features. Ok so maybe he did care a little, but only when it was convenient. He knew this wasn’t over, and that Evil Rick and Evil Morty must still have a back up plan lying around somewhere. But still, convenient wasn’t so bad, from time to time. He could make it work.

Kevin Cage of @spotlightsaga reviews... Rick and Morty (S03E02) Rickmancing The Stone Airdate: July 30, 2017 @adultswim Ratings: 2.859 Million :: 1.48 18-49 Demo Share Score: 8.5/10 @cartoonnetwork @danharmon TVTime/FB/Twitter/Tumblr/Path/Pinterest: @SpotlightSaga *********MINIMAL TO NO SPOILERS********* Change is fucking hard. When something as monumental as divorce goes down during your childhood, whether it be at a very young age to all the way through to your later teen years and even beyond, it's never an easy adjustment. While it's true that i don't have a father, biologically speaking (I do but he literally has NEVER contacted me - lines open, pussy, redemption is just a call away), I was lucky enough to see my mother stand by her husband, a man whose rightfully earned the title of 'Dad' in my life. Don't trip, I'm not getting mushy here, I know my cartoon audience! Parents fuck us up, then they nag, then they don't speak to you, then they smother you (sometimes with a pillow). It's a vicious cycle, really. Seeing my mother stand by a man who literally almost completely destroyed himself and nearly took everyone down the dark and treacherous rabbit hole of addiction with him was extremely confusing. I harbored feelings of anger and resentment at first, but after awhile he made spectacular & unexpected life changes for the better. Suddenly I realized he wasn't some shit sucking asshole, he was just human, something we're all guilty of in one way or another. People make mistakes, and they sometimes self-destruct for no reason at all, and most everyone's first 'Fight or Flight' reaction is to pack up your shit and fucking RUN. I'm so glad that my mother didn't do that, we have our differences, but my Dad is one of the few male role models I have, that actually taught me something real in this world and given things I can really use and apply to real life situations. Sometimes you have to step away from people for awhile, but if you really love them, you never give up. I'm not sure if 'Rick & Morty' is the best place to pull out my existential bucket of ooey-gooey fun, maybe sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't... That's the incredible thing about this series in general! Where a great toon like 'Mike Tyson Mysteries' is frankly all fun & games, 'Rick & Morty' is layered (like a fucking onion, y'all) and far more than just a slapstick cartoon for stoners. People are finding that not only is this series funny beyond all reason, it's also incredibly endearing and real. The series main character, chemical friendly & artist of intellect, Rick Sanchez (Justin Rowland), would never admit it, but underneath all the multi-dimensional murders and lowbrow side effects from his chemical hobbies is a regular, mad scientist type Grandpa with a big ol' heart. Don't get me wrong, Rick has every right to tell Jerry (Chris Parnell) to fuck off... The whole 'tiny planet' fiasco and selling Rick out just wasn't a good look, it was a pathetic disaster, a true low point, and it landed Jerry in a job where he's paid in pill supplements and is basically a cuckold to the invading alien race... Oh, and then there's that god-awful windbreaker. Most straight men have problems dressing themselves after a separation or divorce, but damn... Can't nobody tell Jerry 1992 has long since came and gone, even though I wish it hadn't!?! Beth (Sarah Chalke) and Jerry had already been on the outs for two seasons, so this whole divorce thing was a long time coming. As much as I hate Gary's new post-relationship windbreaker, I am so in love with this new, improved, 'no fucks given' Summer Smith (Spencer Grammer). I feel like the place that Summer is at in her life in this very moment is the exact same place I would be and the exact same something I would do if I had an evil/heartwarming genius Grandfather, like Rick, who could travel back in time & space and alternate dimensions... And spend extended time in another realm ala Turbo Kid (2015), Doomsday (2008), or Escape From New York (1981 - Prepare for more Post-Apocalyptic film references). Not all R&M fans are happy tho, but that's because the show is expanding and going deeper... We're seeing an important evolution of the show and like it or not, it's a road that's necessary for the series to take so that it may spread its wings, giving us something new every time. R&M isn't a show that just pops us often... It's sacred, there's nothing on tv like it. It's literally a revolutionary metamorphosis for the #animatedseries genre. It cannot keep giving you the same ol', same ol' and hitting that one note that caught our attention in the first place and still survive with integrity... There's so many goddamn different and unexpected notes that this show can and will hit, both in the near and distant future, that it's completely unfair to ask it to remain stagnant so that we can have our normal R&M laughs. Shit just doesn't work like that, bruh'. Morty is terrified of this new Summer... But I don't think it's purely 'genuine concern'. Sure, that's a part of it, but already in S3 we are seeing Summer kind of inch him out of his co-anchor or sidekick spot with his Grandad. It's never easy to share the attention and affection of the ones we love, especially when the 'one that's loved' in question can literally make the impossible completely and totally possible. Morty has his own shit he's dealing with though, hell even Rick is feeling the toxic effects of the biggest divorce ever broadcast on animated tv. Weird, but true. In 'Rickmancing The Stone', Morty, Summer, and Rick all head to a 'Mad Max', post apocalyptic, style universe where men wear buckets on their heads, killing is for sport, and ultimately a place where you have to fight for all the things you want, to the death... Basically the literal opposite of what Jerry is doing with Beth. It's all a fantastic juxtaposition of the very life back at their original 'Earth 1' that they are trying to escape from and it's incredible to see this 'Nihilistic Wasteland' through three different sets of eyes, each character gaining something different from the experience. Spotlight Saga's Cartoon Fans are incredibly strict when it comes to spoilers, so I'm not here to spoil the episode (Spoiler Free! Yayy). I know that there are many of you, outside of TVTime, that read these articles for the content and don't necessarily watch the show. I'd love to take you deeper on this one, but I simply can't. We can give you the rundown on the basic plot, but trust me, anything beyond that and Cartoon Purists will legit crucify all of us over here on a broken telephone pole. Besides, when we tell you that 'Rick & Morty' could possibly be the greatest American Animated Television Series of All Time... We fucking mean it. This isn't a show that you want to miss out on, so those that are avid readers (and yeah, we fucking love you for it), know that this is one of the special ones that you need to set your DVR, buy the season on #Vudu or wherever you can access it and give it a thorough once, twice, three or even more times over. I, myself, have personally watched this particular episode 4 times already, and it won't be the last. The series, as a whole, is still holding strong at #7 on #IMDB's user rated list of Top Rated TV Shows (of all time), holding a 9.3/10 with nearly 138,000 votes and counting. That's some seriously heavy shit for an Adult Swim cartoon to find itself smack dab in the middle of a comprehensive list of all the greats w/series like GOT, Breaking Bad, The Wire, and The Sopranos. It's seriously everything that everyone says it is and more. Really. Those that ARE watching and are a little taken aback by the show suddenly taking a new direction and tackling serious issues through brand new avenues, give it a chance. This show has done right by you so far, it's definitely not going to let you down. I rarely put my stamp on a series outside of praising a season, or certain episodes because you never know what kind of hard turn a show is going to take... But let me tell you... I believe in 'Rick & Morty', and wherever this fresh faced S3 is taking us, I want in on the fucked up, Science Fiction laced, blood soaked, LSD inspired shot storm of a road trip fully stocked with McDonald's Mulan Szchuan Sauce... ESPECIALLY since the show is clearly embracing a bit of #existentialism and stirring it up in its big bowl of psychedelic, 'what the fucks', never-ending, unpredictable journeys... All while continuing to turn old tropes into something that feels incredibly new and progressive. Wabba Lubba Dub Dub!

Blood For Blood - Miami Rick Sanchez/Miami Morty Smith - SFW

Title: Blood For Blood Author: Donnie Fandom: Rick And Morty Setting: Miami Verse Pairing: Miami Rick/Miami Morty Characters: Miami Rick, Miami Morty Genre: T Rating: Romance/Humor Chapters: 1/1 Word Count: 887 Type of Work: One-Shot Status: Complete Warnings: Gay, Slash, Yaoi, Miamicest, Granddaddy Kink, Incest, Grandfather/Grandson Incest, Bad Revenge Plots, Fluff Disclaimer: I don’t own anything. Summary: “There’s an old saying, ‘Before you go down a path of revenge, dig two graves.’ You’re lucky I’m willing to dig yours for you.” AN: Fanfiction-Friends’ Weekly Writing Prompt is back! And I got so into this idea that I couldn’t stop, even if I feel really out of it. It’s good to get more done. I’m pretty proud of myself. ; u; Anyway, this week’s prompt is revenge, and I had a lot of fun with the idea of using the Miami verse, where Morty’s a bit more spiteful and petty. I hope you guys enjoy!

Rick And Morty Fic Masterlist Blood For Blood ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ “Morty,” Rick’s voice was sharp and cold, and his frown was the first thing Morty saw as he rounded the corner, “Did you do this?” Holding his pink suit, mostly untouched, he turned it just right to show off the red, crushed and melted lollipop on the lower right lapel. 

Large, honey brown eyes peered up innocently over the top of his sunglasses, crossing his thighs a little tighter underneath the magazine over them. “...No?” He tried, smiling sweetly around the lollipop caught in his lips. “Are you asking me, or telling me?” Shifting his weight to one leg and pressing his hand to his hip, he held it out again. It was probably some kind of intimidation tactic, but the nineteen year old in his bean bag chair was nonplussed. “I guess I’m like… Telling you?” He finally said, shifting the lollipop until he could lick it, watching Rick with a mock-innocent expression. “I don’t know, sometimes I talk and everything sounds like a question.” “Sometimes I talk and everything sounds like a question!” Rick mocked almost cruelly, making the teen before him pout. “Mortimer Scott Sanchez.” This time, his voice was a dark growl, “Are you lying to me? You always have these damn things in your mouth or my pockets. How do I know you didn’t do this on purpose?” “How do you know you didn’t clean your pockets?” Clearly put out, Morty sighed and rolled his eyes. Truthfully, he was getting back at Rick for being an asshole to him in public, but he wasn’t about to say that out loud. “Because this suit isn’t machine washable, so I check them before they go in the bag for the dry cleaners.” There was a slant to his eyes that made it into his words, and Morty scooted his butt back a bit, leaning his chest closer to his magazine. “M-maybe I did, but Rick, you-- I didn’t know that one was--” “Don’t.” There was that cold tone again, “You’re lying to me, Morty, and we both know that I do not like to be lied to.” Stalking a little closer, he grabbed the bottle blond’s jaw and forced him to look up at him. The sudden jerk had the magazine falling to the floor and his legs spreading a little. “There’s an old saying, ‘Before you go down a path of revenge, dig two graves.’ You’re lucky I’m willing to dig yours for you.” With that, he pushed the other back into his bean bag chair and left the room. He desperately needed a way to get his suit cleaned. It wasn’t quite two weeks later when things started to happen. Rick would insist on making Morty’s protein shakes, would insist on helping him with food and drinks. It was odd, sure, but in the end he really liked the fact that he could just laze about in the living room while his grandfather prepared his meals. However, he’d started getting a little heavy, started being too big for his sheer tops and tiny bottoms, and it was growing concerning. “Rick?” The teen practically slid into the room like a dog that knew it had done wrong, “I… I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve started gaining like, a lot of weight.” He pushed at the slight pudge in his lower belly, “Do… Do you think you could help me?” Rick’s rather evil smirk played over his lips just right, and he stood up, striding over to heft his little princess into his arms. “Mm, I suppose I could, Doodlebug.” Rick began, kissing the other’s golden nose, “Though I might need an apology, first.” “Wh-what?” He frowned a little, a pout coming over his lips shortly after, “Y-you did this to me? Like, o-on purpose?” Great. He was so upset that his stutter was coming out. All of those speech coach lessons and he still couldn’t control it all the time. “Mm, perhaps. They do have these shakes and powders for people who can’t gain weight to help them be healthy.” The elder male looked like the cat that caught the canary as he proudly strutted back to his bed, laying the other out over the soft duvet. “Now, where’s my apology, baby boy?” “I-- I’m s-sorry, Granddaddy.” Leaning up to try and meet Rick’s lips, Morty whimpered when the elder withdrew a little, shaking his head. “Nuh-uh, Morty. What are you sorry for?” That look was back, fiery and angry and intense. “I… I’m sorry for wash-washing your suit with a lo-lollipop… And taking it out of the dry cleaning bag to do so.” Brown eyes turned down on his own bare belly, he sighed a little.  “That’s a good boy, baby,” Rick started, leaning in to press a soft kiss to the soft roundness of Morty’s stomach, “You know, I think I just might feed you other things, now. You don’t really need to bulk up… You’re at your best when you can move easily.” Crawling over Morty to kiss his nose, then capture his lips, he pet his face gently. “Will you be a good boy for your Granddaddy?” An emphatic nod was all the answer he needed, and Rick dove in to partake of the feast that was his grandson. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ AN: Woo, my first Miami fic that I finished and posted! I hope it’s good, I wrote this while half asleep. xD It was fun, though!