#I did see a post once saying john needed to 'work on himself' that kinda cracked me up lol | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ourflagmeansgayrights · 7 months

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ofmd s2e4 rewatch where i pause to jot down my thoughts and other random shit

it's been a busy week since last thursday and shit's only gonna get busier for me after tomorrow so hopefully i can get through these two episodes out before i go to bed lol!!! anyway once again these posts are just me rambling so i can process the insane amount of information in these episodes and if u want to read them too that's fine.

s2e1, s2e2, s2e3, s2e4, s2e5, s2e6, s2e7, s2e8

rip everyone who wanted homoerotic sword fighting in the gentebeard reunion. have a headbutt as a consolation prize.

obsessed with stede holding raw room-temperature meat against his bruised face bc that's not even a little bit how that works. i love this show.

ok so jim saying "he'll probably get around to killing you after he's rested" in response to stede saying ed needs to regain his strength actually gives some pretty good context to why they want ed of the ship so bad. bc they DID fully try to kill ed and now he's here and alive and like. if i were jim i would be pretty worried abt ed holding a grudge abt that.

wont lie stede being like "we dont just banish people, that's not us!" makes me thinkg abt how they fully banished izzy from the ship in e6. i mean technically izzy banished himself on accident but. lol.

also izzy's absence in this scene indicating he is not yet considered part of the entire crew

roach: i need that steak back, it's dinner stede: (pulling the steak away) oh, right fang: maybe let's put the banishment to a vote? stede: (steak back on his face, apparently having forgotten he was literally just about to give the meat to roach) aw do we have to :(

ed chained to the ship is doing. a lot for me. i wont lie.

buttons saying he's been to the gravy basket a few times... how many times has this man almost died??????

it is deeply funny to me that they edit the split second flashback of the drowning and mermaid hallucination to look all creepy as if that whole scene wasn't set to an incredibly sappy 80's love song (said with immense affection)

OBSESSED with stede trying to be like. encouraging to izzy. and being like "he cant hear you he's got no head" about izzy yelling at the ruined figurehead. this fucking dork.

so ive seen ppl talking abt how the crew's in a deadlock abt banishing ed and which ppl they think were pro-banishment and which were against, but the scenes with the crew make it look like everyone's voting for ed to get kicked out. so tbh i think like either of the following interpretations are pretty valid: the crew is split 50/50 on if they should banish ed OR the crew 100% wants to banish ed and stede was gonna try and leverage izzy's vote to try and get more ppl to change their mind. doesnt rlly matter either way tho

also the fact that izzy was the one to keep ed's body is. interesting. the others must've known abt it and helped izzy hide the body in the secret room. but izzy being the one to be like "no we're not throwing him overboard" is. something. no conclusions abt this atm im just rotating this fact in my brain.

i also just have a lot of thoughts abt the mutiny and the fact that like, jim's a trained assassin and the others are also pretty experienced killers and they probably knew they hadn't completely finished the job. and there was plenty of opportunity for them to do something about that. but instead they hid his body and waited for ed to succumb to his injuries. it feels kinda like ed's "technically i outsource the big job" rule. idk. thoughtssss.

frenchie in this scene is so funny bc he seems both actually apologetic abt kicking ed off the ship but also very relieved/vindicated to see him go.

didnt realize olu almost said smthng to ed lol i thought ed was just saying "fuck you" to him for no reason ghfjkghjkfh

"first time i've ever been on this side of a walk of shame" wee john i have so many questions. how many times have you been banished from a ship.

obsessed with archie just being like "way to make this awkward brah." her shitty boss put her life at risk in an attempt to make her and her coworkers kill him in a weird roundabout suicide attempt and her summary of the situation is "well, this is awkward :/"

"shitty sailing with you" sick burn, jim

"you're making it really hard to look up to you, man" LOVE how black pete is still a blackbeard stan. despite everything.

just ONCE i want someone to appreciate roach's sandwiches :(

"dont you want your sammy" STEDE I WOULD DIE FOR YOU

also i disagree with the subtitles here im like 99% sure says "you're no fuckin mermaid" not "you're not a fuckin mermaid" but that's just me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

stede looks SO sad abt not being a mermaid

love how everyone in this episode just sort of nods and is like "yeah okay" every time buttons tells them he's turning into a bird

altho with stede in this scene specifically im convinced that he's just jumping at the chance to follow ed to the island. he was absolutely gonna come up with some shitty excuse to go ashore anyway but it's nice of buttons to give him plausible deniability

i love how much ed hates nature

why do the subtitles say "gyp-" this has been bothering me all week. the line is "like a drifter"

i also love ed's line delivery of "a wolf?"

anyway dumb posts abt the spider tattoo backstory: 1, 2, 3

i love to see ed getting hugs... wish i could give him a hug :(

ok also buttons talking abt the gravy basket made me think ed needed like some sort of spell or smthng to snap out of it but instead it just kinda wore off by the end of the episode (maybe, depends on how you read the whole buttons turning into a bird scene). this is very funny to me for some reason

anne rubbing the cup she's holding against her tit. queen.

stede bonnet idiot dumbfuck moments

i LOVE anne's line delivery of "eddie motherfuckin teeeeach" like yeah that's cj's girl alright. or was cj's girl. who knows.

SECRET HANDSHAKE im cryinggggg. i love them.

stede's voice sounds so weird when he says "i wasn't looking for you" and that's because he's fucking lying through his teeth

LOVE how anne and mary look at each other after the "shipmates" "former" interaction like they are immediately on the same wavelength. and that wavelength is fucking with ed and his ex. they sniffed out a messy relationship dynamic and were like "oh hell yeah we need more of this in our lives"

ed is SO bitchy this whole scene i fucking love it. ed's face when he says "him?" fdhjksgfjhdgkj

ed: whatever 🙄 anne: whatever? 👀 mary: whatever! 😈

wee john getting more goth is so good

drunk izzy rambling at the ship's figurehead is so funny to me tho i miss drunk izzy

ed's crew lady macbeth "out damned spot" moments

i like how there's a goat in the background of this scene in anne and mary's house and it is unexplained and also never seen again.

ed's face after stede says "that's romance" is soooo good this bitch is so pissed. like oh would you have met me at the docs if i peeled the guard's face off instead of just paying him off? is that what fuckin does it for you???? not that it matters bc i dont care. but. cunt.

yeah im just focusing in on all of ed's faces in this scene. "quite the shift going from wearing people's faces to antique collectors" gets ed to freeze in the middle of bringing his drink up to his lips and just kinda stare off into the distance.

"how did you meet" has ed kind of frowning for a split second before stede starts answering and then he rolls his eyes very dramatically and sighs deeply

ed immediately being like "actually i was gonna kill him myself!" trying to undermine stede's meet-cute story. also anne and mary nodding along in complete unison bc this is just normal pirate conversation to them.

~~~

also as someone who has been team "no ed was dead serious abt the plan to steal stede's identity" this was very vindicating for me. it's a bad plan and it doesn't make any sense but logistics literally dont matter in this show. what matters is giving this story the "falling for the mark" trope makes ed's character arc in season 1 that much tastier!!!!

ed and stede going back and forth telling their story i cant fucking wait until theyre happily together telling this story and instead of ed trying to downplay it and ruin the meet-cute-iness of it they're just building on each other and being sappy and adorable

"more like i relented" one of the biggest lies i've ever heard this man say fjhkgjkfdhk

"until he completely boned it" SAY IT. FUCKING SAY IT. SOOOOO TRUE ED.

auauhghgh the beard bit......... crying

THE!!!!! QUIETEST LITTLE "thank you" OF ALL TIME. TIED MAYBE WITH ED SAYING "thank you" AFTER "i think you're very sophisticated" IN 1.05

i dont blame stede for trying to get ed to open up right after that bc that was the first bone ed's thrown stede's way since he woke up. unfortunately ed is not in the mood to talk abt his near-death experience and mermaid hallucination sequence.

LOVE anne's little gesture when she says "rabbit" and the little hip cocking

stede being like "uhhhh we could leave" during the knifeplay exhibitionism moment

i giggle every time at the way the crew is instantly like "fuck closing our eyes we're doing any fucking surprises"

ngl idgw the crew yelled abt the piñata reveal. but ok

loooove stede's half of the crew just blowing past all the screaming and tension from ed's half. jim screams "STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!!!" abt the blindfold and roach is like "you won't want to stay the fuck away from this caaaake!" like roach fdhsjfgdhfjkghkj read the room?????

i love how much stede just. completely misses all of annie's flirting

ed coughing during the blunt session i love himmmmm

ok but ed's trying to be like "im totally over stede i dont even like him" and then ed reminiscing fondly with a distant smile abt the 1.06 stabbing scene

"and that was the... second time you left your wife?" underrated line

love how annie's been all quiet and seductive and then when she goes to make her move she's just like "WOUND THIS" and aggressively sits in stede's lap

also ok. "they're gonna be so jealous" is that annie talking abt ed and mary or is that annie using they/them pronouns for mary.

BUTTONS JUMPSCARE

also i love how they have that one medusa painting just. in their kitchen. im obsessed with the interior decor of this lesbian antique store that annie and mary live in

the way she's so touched by the poisoning attempt hjfgfjksghskjhgjkh

buttons being like "aahhhhhh do i give her... this bowl......????" fhjkghkfsjhk

"yeah, babe" TEALORANGES WIN

im honestly sad izzy's pathetic wet beast moment only really went for like three tiny scenes in one episode bc this shit was so funny to me. crawling away saying "you're born alone you die alone" over and over again. sir what are you even doing.

god buttons in this episode is so fucking funny bc i keep forgetting he's there. also why is he even there. like was he even invited to dinner or did he just sit down and annie and mary were like "oh ok i uh. guess we'll go make another plate??"

ed's face after buttons says the bit abt "i can tell this rabbit was intelligent" is soooo funny why is he so fucking pissed fdhsjkgyjdfkghjk

NO WAIT HE'S PISSED BC THAT WAS HIS FRIEND. THAT WAS HIS FRIEND THE WOLF HE WAS TELLING HIS SECRETS. NOW IM KINDA SAD :(:(:(

stede talking abt the sea when what he's actually talking abt is ed part 2 electric boogaloo

ed very calmly. standing up. and smashing the chair. im obsessed with him.

stede bonnet stupid dumbass moments

IMPROMPTU BLANKET FORT TIME

ed's voice is so quiet at the start of this scene he's not even yelling at stede until stede says "it's not fair" ohhhhhh my babygirl is so fucking sad........

"you ditching me without a note or anything" ed's literacy confirmed

"expecting me to just melt back into your arms" eddie my man. stede has not given literally any indication that he expected this at all. you are telling on yourself fhdjskghfkjshd

this scene is so fucking good i barely have anything to say abt it. just. u can rlly tell david jenkins wrote this ep himself lolll

"i was all in, mate. i was all in." IM SOBBING

oh nooooo i forgot that ed's line delivery of "im sorry my horrible naked chin disgusts you so much" isnt actually as sarcastic as the words itself make it seem. like it feels like ed wanted to say that all angrily and bitter but instead he just sounds sadddddd

ok ok but the way stede says "i love your chin naked or otherwise" and then after a pause (during which ed is keeping INCREDIBLY still bc u know otherwise he's just gonna burst into tearssss) stede whispers "ed" and ed is immediately like "don't" and then. stede going in for the "i love you" but like the way he's so slow with it?? he's literally like "i. love." and idk if it's bc he's trying to make this as clear as possible or if he's giving ed enough time to cut him off if he doesn't want to hear it

and ed DOES he DOES cut him off with "you don't get to say that to me" and he like. keeps glancing at stede out of the corner of his eye but not quite looking at him directly bc he knowwwwws it's like staring into the sun baby and ed knows if he looks at stede's face it's literally all over.

but also ed's face after stede pivots to "i love everything about you" he's SO pissed. he quietly groans and rolls his eyes bc this bitch. finding stupid loopholes to not being allowed to say "i love you." fuck this guy ed hates him so fucking much (lying)

oooooh when stede says "you don't have to say it back to me" ed's mouth opens and closes a bit before "not about to" bc this man is trying. SO hard not to cry (so am i but it's not working sorry there are tears on my face right now)

idk idk idk smthng abt "it's nice. feels good." makes me hurt so fucking bad bc the entire time since ed's woken up stede's been getting headbutted and snarked at passive-aggressively but stede's still like "i love being near you it makes me happy :)" brb i need. a fucking moment.

honestly tho how did annie and mary even overhear that bit bc they were on the other side of the room and stede was whispering SO quietly. opposite of when ppl in this show dont hear things despite the things being said like two feet away from them (1.03 geraldo and jackie talking abt how blackbeard was looking for stede, 2.01 zheng saying the indigo was worth way more than she spent on it)

LOVE how anne being like "stede likes the ladies" is how ed figures out "ohhhh wait ok theyre just fucking with us, got it" bc this guy??? liking women????? lmao

this also HAS to be why he gets over mary like his brain mustve gone "wait hang on why the fuck would he go back to her he doesn't even like women. guess maybe he really did panic huh" hdjksghfckghkjsh

obsessed with these TINY tiny details abt the ed/jack/annie/mary polycule dynamics we're given. ed would've expected as much from annie bc she's a fucking psycho. mary apparently used to not be like this. im putting the pieces together im connecting the dots.

ed and stede's knowing smug looks at each other. im obsessed.

annie being rlly sensitive to the word "bitch" im considering that more hints abt the polycule backstory

yayy fanny newspaper

"really? i mean she stabbed you, you poisoned her, and then she jumped on my face" stede this is all part of their very elaborate and deeply toxic sex life ok stop kinkshaming them

~~~

curious if ed and stede are too distracted by mary spelling out their worst fears to comment on all the smoke coming into the room

"everything must go" like a fucking clearance sale. this is such a silly line. this is a silly show. i love it here.

WHY DONT THEY MAKE OUT SLOPPY STYLE HERE THO

wait are they crying while they hug??? bro these girls are so fucking messy i love them

ed saying "see you guys" before he leaves them in their burning house. i would die for him

ok team arts and craft time while making a prosthetic for izzy. obsessed with how the b plot of this episode is literally "the crew struggles to get along but they eventually set aside their differences and work together when they realize there's someone even more cringe and pathetic than any of them"

"YOU ARE!!! HARASSING A CRIPPLE!!!!!!" is suchhhh a funny line im sorry im gonna miss izzy at his lowest fhsjkhjksf. literally they just knocked on the door my dude calm downnnn

obsessed with izzy being genuinelly touched and expressing it by saying "fucking cocksuckers." this man is allergic to having feelings.

stede and ed painfully talking over each other bc everything is awkward and difficult. i love them.

ed's face when stede offers to let ed stay. his very quiet "yis." the way he says "might be nice" and then VERY QUICKLY looks away

stede yelling GREAT at the top of his lungs fhdsjkguydfgfjkhl

i love when these guys try to play it cool bc theyre so fucking bad at it hgdfgvjfxdkgjjdkkgjhfdkh

stede bonnet dumb idiot moron moments

ed staring off lovinglyyyyyy

buttons jumpscare

also is that fucking sage. are we doing cultural appropriation here

buttons saying "Earth Wind and Fire i wanna go higher" hfjkhgfdjkhgjkh

i love how ed. does not question this "fuck yeah, brother. fly."

ed teach lovesick fool moments

i love how happy ed sounds telling stede abt buttons he sounds like his old goofy self for the first time all season.... im gonna cry

also i like how the crew adopts izzy as their new creature. 10/10

post credits scene is annie and mary at dinner with buttons. i guess it's after stede goes to comfort ed but before they go eavesdrop on that convo.

buttons enjoying his last meal as a human. and also he's like "there's too much fucking on that ship i need to get away from it all." and his way of doing this is becoming a bird. love that.

#ofmd s2 spoilers #our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd s2 #ofmd season 2 #edward teach #stede bonnet #crew of the revenge #anne bonny #mary read #izzy hands #gentlebeard #s2e04 #txt #mine #og #ofmds2rwwiptjdmtaors

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colonelshepparrrrd · 2 years

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002| John Sheppard

*Cracks knuckles* Here we go

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: More emphasis on his trauma, and how he deals with it. Especially post Remnants. More Shep!Whump there's a lot already but there can always be more, more shirtless John. Getting to see John going surfing finally (yes this is an excuse to see him shirtless in soaking wet low riding board shorts) I think JF would have liked that for him too. Another episode where John has to get himself out of a situation, or one where he has to save AR1 alone, he has to go to that dark place 'cause he has no other choice, and I want to see it. Not only John slitting some throats and shooting people in the head cause they're between him and escape and/or his team, being covered in blood, showing that he is truly a scary fucking guy. But, him after too, dealing with it, shoving that side back into his head.

my OTP: Again, don't ship, but Shepcest... I love shipping John with versions of himself. Thank that scene in The Daedalus Variations when he's flirting with himself over comms.

my cross over ship: John Sheppard x Han Solo

a headcanon fact: I could write a full psychoanalysis of John Sheppard, but it would take a long time. Here is my favourite though (which I include in every explicit fic I write); John's an exhibitionist. He will fuck anyone anywhere, he doesn't mind people watching, gets off on the risk. This is thanks to a particular fic where him and Rodney fuck in the control chair here. It lives rent free in my head. A non sexual head canon I have is John was a goth in high school/college, he hung out with other nerdy goth kids, being good at math and science, listening to metal and punk. He was a little rebel against his upbringing once he was finally old enough to be able to not have to go to rich people events. John is still a socially awkward weirdo though, but he is excellent at masking when work or the situation he is in calls for it, something he did pick up from his upbringing and military training.

How I feel about this character: I love him on so many levels it's ridiculous, and as lame as it sounds his character somehow "saved" me from a really shitty life situation and made me realize it's ok to be weird and awkward.

All the people I ship romantically with this character: Everyone, seriously. Though these are my go to's; Himself, Todd, Larrin, Rodney, Teyla, Ronon, Sam, Elizabeth, Carson (both versions), Radek, Jack, Daniel, Ladon, Lorne, Caldwell, Nancy (yes his ex wife I believe they really loved eachother), Jennifer, Vala

My non-romantic OTP for this character: Any or all of the above, and Ford

My unpopular opinion about this character: He's bad at some aspects of his job, but he tries! I think this is because he spreads himself too thin, doesn't leave anything for himself unless it's absolutely needed, or everything else is taken care of. Also being the Military Commander of Atlantis and still jumping at the opportunity for suicide missions can be considered something he does that makes him bad at his job, even though I really like this for his character. Also he can be a real inconsiderate asshole sometimes, but I think that's IRL writer issues and/or drama leaking into his character, or a result of the whole "product of it's time" aspect of the show.

Also, I liked John x Larrin, like a lot. They matched each other in wit and tactics and "little shitness" when they first met. In Be All My Sins they were so awkward and puppy dog eyed for each other at the end. Also Larrin tying him up and John clearly enjoying the interaction with her, he wasn't even struggling. He asks about her during Lost Tribe and looks disappointed then Katana says Larrin doesn't talk about him, but then after when she comes clean and says that Larrin does, John is so elated and excited, this kinda goes back to question one but I wanted more Larrin and more Travelers in the show.

Thanks for the ask!!!

#stargate atlantis #sga #ask games #john sheppard

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batarangsoundsdumb · 3 years

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guess fucking what? my inbox is so fucking full right now i'm unloading all of this shit in one post.

For the 11th gotham memes: gothamites react to bruce being jacked in a tiktok he made with kids, like super yoked, ripped as hell

fucking hilarious thanks. i think i did it in one meme post, but i genuinely don't remember which one

i dunno which of the batfam would do this but one time i was sleeping over at a friends house and ended up on the floor bc the bed was so very small and i just stayed there because the rug was soft

that's a drunk jason move i don't know what to tell you

tim and jason are "i listen to pop punk" solidarity. whenever jason highjacks the batmobile theyll go on long ass car rides blaring mcr and paramore and then never talk about it again

as they should!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! tim: no jason it's my turn using the aux cord i gotta put on my jams jason: don't you dare put on weird shit tim: don't worry, you're gonna love this *plays fearless (taylor's version)

hear me out hear me out, red hood stans 🤝 nightwing stans t h i g h s

holy shit yes.

SNL au: Bruce breaks character when pretending to superman and says something like "I'm not superman! You've seen his gps!! It's from 2001!!!" @sabeanybabe

superman flies past the snl building the next day just to say 'actually it's from 2005, i'm not a heathen'

does your back hurt from carrying the batfam fandom

it hurts more from the exotic rock collection i keep in my backpack, but thanks for the concern.

I love your posts by why would you always leave the best parts in the tags?

as a treat for the people that check the tags ;) (and also because i'm committed to the short post aesthetic)

somehow your playlist was everything i never knew i needed. i mean it. this is my new favorite playlist.

and don't you dare get a new favourite playlist!

babe ur stoner tim playlist is exactly too perfect, earth is literally blessed by ur existence

babe thanks so much! i love my stoner tim playlist because it's just my usual playlist but people think it's an artistic choice that i put taylor swift and britney spears in there, when it's just what i unironically like listening to

JANDKSKDK BILLY RAY CYRUS ON THE STONER TIM PLAYLIST I LOVE IT IT

again it's not even an ironic choice, i know every single word and i genuinely like the song

The last chapter of Fundamentals of Casework has me crying at work. Thanks I love it @dudelookitsalesbian

oh babe, i'm sorry, but also, not sorry i love chapter 4 so much it's my lovechild with the 'mental illness' tag

soooo....stumbled on your tumblr by some stroke of fate??? read your DC fanfic first. which is PHENOMENAL btw. then found all the batmemes; the funniest thing EVER bc everyone forgets about regular old gothamites. kept scrolling and your blog pops up as recommended. clicked on the ao3 for shits and giggles and waddaya know?!?!? it's YOU!!! you're LEGEND!!!! ever seen that meme? it's a video of a cat that got into a baseball field and the two announcers get really invested in his escape attempt and start giving a play by play of the cat instead of the game. memeable moment: "GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!"

i seriously think about this ask every single day and it's so fucking funny to me that i've never seen the meme you're referencing, but i still find myself going 'GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!' whenever i see something funny. but wow i'm glad you liked this steaming pile of garbage

Fav dc character overall? And fav batfamily character?

don't ask me to pick between the loves of my life, but i can tell you i've cried about every single batfamily member and also wally west (my beloved)

What's your opinion on fans having a problem with batfam being "too big"? And some even claim that batfam is just "Bruce Alfred Dick Damian" and the rest of them are just "friends and allies" (source: reddit) Personally, I like batfam because of this reason but idk

stupid. a family can never be too big. i'm not that big a fan of like huge batfam stuff with everybody from every single universe, because as much as it's funny for bruce to have like 30 kids, it just feels a little too OOC for me.

This is the best tag I've seen involving the batfam, thanks for thinking of it

This is canon now @nctxrejects

lmao yeah i think at that point alfred has had to sit through like at least a dozen coming out talks and just has a pride flag collection in the attic that he pulls out whenever a kid comes out

idk why batfam hits different as compared to any other superhero family

bc it's found family and usually the other superhero families are almost all genetically related in one way or another

I don't know if you watch the umbrella academy but I saw your last post about batcest and saw the similarities. But the thing is (although I think it's weird) in TUA, they addressed it by saying "they were raised as weapons, not siblings" or something along those lines, which is simply not the case with batfam.

yeah i watched tua but i also thought it was ridiculous and they still treated each other as siblings so i didn't like the luthor/allison thing, and am glad they stopped doing that shit bc it fucking sucked.

Hot take: Batcest shippers are the same people who believe adopted siblings are not actual siblings

smoking hot take: batcest shippers are the people who watch 'my sister got stuck in the washing machine' porn

Duke was adopted by Bruce?

not technically no, but do i, tumblr user batarangsoundsdumb, look like i care?

True story but I had to change my freaking name because it used to be "Damien" and most people would go "OH LIKE DAMIAN WAYNE" like please I'm just tryna live

true story, but i don't actually think of damian when i hear the name damian, literally the first thing that pops up is damian darkh like bruh what?

apparently dc comics company supported comic stores by giving out new titles and stuff during the beginning of the pandemic to help them run and I just think that's wholesome

ah yeah that's so fucking cool, still don't like dc, the company, because this world is a capitalist hellhole and we're all owned by warner brothers or disney with no in between.

ayo looking at tumblr head canons and finding out bruce is actually a terrible father is a punch in the gut

lmao yes, in like 50% of comics bruce is a terrible father and it gives me whiplash

oooh I just saw the jason todd vs winter soldier post and the real question is: batman vs iron man

while iron man has like hundreds of cases of armor, batman could throw out an emp and have the guy dropping out of the sky in 2 seconds.

dickfast = fastdick = quickdick = quickie

magnum hot take

hey bata(?) just thought I'd let you know I have copied the obnoxious emoji and Billy Ray post for use on simping men going forth

thank you 😘🌷 (@spacebarsidecar)

why would you do that to your followers???? i get why i did it, but why would you???

what is scarecrow made the nightwing funko pop himself, like those diy-ers that paint over other ones

oh god no, horrible take, horrible take, that's a disgusting thought oh no

I see your HC that Bruce and Oliver fucked and raise you this: Dick and Roy ALSO fucked

yes they did and it was a horrible moment for jason to find out dick has fucked both of his best friends

"at this rate bruce adds like 1 child to his family every decade or so" Duke is introduced in 2013, Damian as Damian, not as an unnamed child, in 2006. And he is already 14 years old, Robins rarely remain Robins after 16 😬 It looks like a new Robin and Batkid will appear in a couple of years

i mean i can't wait? but somebody will probably die first tho, we're due for another major character death. my money's on either cass or duke this time.

BRO you're so right all of your Bruce's ex headcanons are amazing but they aren't ships, that's kinda wild. Like I don't want any peeks into how their relationship was I just want to see everyone make fun of them

lmao YES it's just i love bruce being a slut, like good for him.

I am in love with your posts your honour thank you

omg thanks are we like,, gonna kiss now?

The justice league needs to have a meeting to discuss how many of their members/partners have slept with bruce. Because through a combination of cannon & fannon (if DC wasn’t homophobic) we have AT LEAST: 1) clark 2) lois 3) oliver 4) dinah 5) john

Thats not counting villains or random civilians @dudelookitsalesbian

yes yes yes, they'll have a yearly meeting about how many of their collective exes could be out for revenge and batman's list just keeps getting longer.

tim was like "i'm drake now" and everyone was like ahh so your fursona is a dragon and tim was like pffffft no. ducks.

and what about it?

when steph's fighting livewire and she zaps her with lighting and nothing happens and then they both just. stand there awkwardly for a second and talk. yeah i couldn't stop laughing at that batgirl steph is the BEST

oh yeah that was fucking hilarious and i think it would be so cool and sexy of dc to give steph a little comic series,,, as a treat

Hi I absolutely adore all of yours "Bruce and Oliver very badly pretending they didn't fuck each other" memes

lmao i do too

I need you to know that “Bruce Wayne had frosted tips” is one of my favorite Bruce takes of all time it’s so galaxy brained. you’re right and you should say it

he also painted his hair blonde once when he was travelling and in conclusion, this is why he's being blackmailed by the gotham gazette.

you know my thing about gordon being branded as the only good cop in gotham is its a load of shit like arguably he's a good person and not working to screw people over or anything but the fact that he also works w. batman makes him a shit cop. like yea batman is better than the mob but its still illegal its still an abuse of power he just not making bank

babe, all cops are bad cops. (but yeah youre absolutely right, working with vigilantes makes you a shit cop, but also working against vigilantes just makes you an asshole cop yanno?)

ruh roh i think i’m about to add “so not yeehaw” every time i don’t like something

that's a very good vocabulary upgrade

somehow i feel like steph already knew. like babs obviously knew but i feel like bruce got high/drunk in front of steph and started telling his boarding school stories and steph was just like “oh you fucked up i’m never gonna forget this”

steph and bruce have weird uncle/rebellious niece dynamic and they just hang out sometimes and bruce will be like 'i once broke my arm when i tripped over a hedge when i was drunk so oliver drove me to the hospital on an electric scooter' and steph will just have to sit there with that knowledge in her head.

Hello I just wanted to tell you you are So right in all your steph opinions bc she is, in fact amazing and I think that's very sexy of you. Ps. Your Bruce/Oliver fic is hilarious

babe, thank you so much and yes steph is amazing and i love her and she deserves the world and she's the best member of the batfam hands down. also thanks

In Supersons we see a couple of kids that are implied to be Damian and Jon's children and the boy has laser eyes and can fly, so I asume he's not adopted. The girl, who calls Bruce grandpa, can also fly, btw. So it's canon (probably by accident) that Jon can have kids and he must have married one of Bruce's kids. (I'm hoping for Damian, mostly because any other of his children would be waaaaaaaaaaaaay too old.) @artemisa97

lmao that was probably an accident seeing as jon is a 17 year old superhero in the year 3000 (by the jonas brothers)

You know, I'm a die hard fan of your memes, but I gotta say one thing: if Gothamites actually took gas mask everywhere with them, then the Scarecrow would just be a weird dude in a weird costume, and not a villain oh so scary. DC really should just takes notes from you.

bold of you to assume there's no gothamite anti-maskers

How does it feel being the funniest person on this app?

horrible, next question.

I can't listen to Green Day or Billy Joel without thinking of your post about how Bruce got arrested at a Billy Joel concert @nightwings-kid

yeah that's your mistake, i on the other hand can't enjoy billy joel without thinking about the glee rendition of 'uptown girl'

I've FINALLY been watching the Batman animated series and I gotta say, after watching "the gray ghost" I am CONVINCED that Batman is a closeted super hero geek who was 100% freaking out the first time he met Superman and is just REALLY good at hiding it.

superman: so what do you do in your free time? batman, thinking about the superman fanfiction he's writing on the batcomputer: i have no free time

bruce and oliver be like boyfriends to co-workers 401k (do the justice leagues get 401ks??? not that bruce and ollie would need them, but-)

lmao yes just 400 thousand words of bruce realising 'oh dip oliver is such a fucking dumbass' (also i don't know what a 401 k is but i assume they don't?)

Gothamites would totally boo superman as he saves Gotham while batman is out. @meenje

he's like 'okay think about that next time you want to be saved from an alien octopus'

I just took long break from dc comics and I come back to see ric grayson ??

i think it's very cool and sexy of dc to see dick and just think 'you know what? let's just give him a traumatic brain injury' and then didn't develop his character in any real way

SPEAKING OF RIC GRAYSON, gothamites making confused memes out of ric grayson is much needed

'dick grayson is my taxi driver? can anyone explain what the fuck happened he looks like an italian plumber?'

i hate to say it but batfam are def "marvel characters" in that sense they are characters who are human but become superheroes unlike most dc characters who are gods trying to be human maybe this is why I like batfam

fair enough

#this is only like half of it #but at least you can get like a few answers #yanno fuck it #bataranswers #ask #asks #anon

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asexualone · 3 years

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(pls take the time to read)

Signs I should have known I was aro: Disney edition

I think this topic has been stressed a lot already. But here is my take, anyway.

Of course, romantic love had been, is and will always be one of the main themes in kids' movies. Why, I can never fully understand. I'll explain below how I like other themes more.

Some time ago, I did a post on the kiss/hug scenes in Rapunzel which depicts how much more I value acts of showing love that don't include kissing.

Not only those two. I have a history of hating Disney on-screen smooches. As a kid, I thought, "Well, maybe, I don't like seeing these characters kiss because it's a grownup thing."

Could you blame me? When my parents were in the room and a kissing scene appeared on the screen, they changed the channel. So my toddler brain concluded that the reason I didn't like watching kisses was because I wasn't of age to like it. Or something.

At the time, I had no idea that I was hand-picking my favorite movies by the level of romance they had in. Or lack thereof. And I was a very judgemental kid. Let's go through my original thoughts on some Disney classics.

Snow White — No. Just no. She's a child, fourteen. Marrying an older guy she doesn't even know. After he kisses her corpse. NO.

Cinderella — The age difference is a little better, I guess. So is the age of consent. But they only talked one (1) night and he relied on that slipper to find her instead of asking to meet all women and see for himself. Fairytale logic I guess. I didn't like how she called it love immediately and kissed the prince at least once that same night. Or how they got married immediately.

The Sleeping Beauty — Must I even explain? Aurora didn't even know Philip that much, had only met him once (if you exclude the "dreams"). And yet, he's her true love, the only one who can revive her corpse. Ridiculous. And yes, kissing a comatose body, ew. Also, the arranged marriage trope pisses me off, royalty or not. Aurora was engaged as a newborn baby, come on.

Mulan — Cinematic gold. I didn't know it back then, but the fact that romantic love is such a pushed-aside aspect in this movie gives me life. The songs give me life. Especially when the trio dresses as concubines and "Be a Man" plays in the background. An absolute gem, lmao. The sequel however ruined the story somewhat for me, too much lovey-dovey stuff. I like Mulan more when she's fighting than when she's acting all sappy towards Shang, sorry not sorry.

Peter Pan — Loved it, still do. But I did dislike the mermaids, the image of fangirls who are petty towards other girls. And Pan's brief "relationship" with Tiger Lily was nauseating to me. I couldn't explain it but when Pan blushed at her nose-nuzzling thing, I always pulled a face.

The Princess and the Frog — In my opinion, (remember, always my opinion): Tiana, this hard-working girl who doesn't belong to anyone, was lost to love. Well, not lost. But falling for Naveen in the course of three days? Unrealistic and kinda unnecessary. Sweet, but still. I adored the "relationship" between Ray and Evangeline more. Either way, it's a movie that I enjoyed when love wasn't that prominent on screen.

Aladdin — I love this movie because of the Genie. The relationship between Jasmine and Aladdin is meh. She forgot his face and didn't recognize him until later. Their coming together is a lot like that trope "first guy who treats her right sets the expectations and wins her heart". Usually that's a thing, not only in Disney movies but media in general. The female lead settles for the first guy that treats her right because the bar is that low. A good movie, all in all. Love how Jasmine stands up for herself at least. Not a lot of princesses fight against the objectification of women.

Pocahontas — I used to hate this movie. I didn't sit right with me: the racism in it, the manipulation, the murders. And the romance, yes. Pocahontas fell for the strange man who tickled her curiosity in the span of two days. I also hated how her father just sold her to marry Kocoum like that. I know it's tradition. Heck, that's a tradition that still goes on in my country. Maybe that's why I didn't like seeing it on screen. And Pocahontas doesn't even end up with John Smith. The second movie definitely ruined the story. So yes, she's the first princess who fell for a man in three days, TWICE. Needless to say, only the songs kept me from blacklisting the movie entirely.

The Little Mermaid — I actually loved this movie for some reason. I can't explain why, maybe it was my obsession with mermaids. Yeah, that was probably it. But I was pissed when Ariel exchanged her tail for legs. Not to mention human periods and overall, all the bad in the world, for a man she'd only seen once. As I grew up I realized just how f*cked up that story was: Ariel giving her entire lifestyle, family and identity up for a guy she hadn't even spoken to. I don't know why I loved that movie, alright? Hell I still do a little. The sequel too. Say what you want.

Brave — (I know this is technically Pixar, shut up) Much like the paradox with Ariel, I didn't like this movie. I can't explain it. Maybe because Merida wasn't the typical Disney princess I had been used to seeing. Now though, I ADORE that story. No, it's not because Merida knows archery... Okay, yes maybe a little. I love the aro-arrow word play, alright? Anyway, the way Merida fights against being shipped to a husband like the "tradition" I aforementioned asks her to, has always had my heart, even when I didn't like the movie. The focus on the mother-daughter relationship is special, I love it. Stellar movie.

Tangled — One of my favorite Disney movies, my favorite princess. But her relationship with Eugene.... Well. Again, three days. That's all it takes to fall in love. Classic of Disney. Not only that, but Eugene is literally the first man person Raps has ever since, besides Gothel. The bar is nonexistent for her, she would have fallen for anyone. He lied to her and she still... Well, I won't stress that any longer. Their relationship in the end is sweet, one of the few cases where we are actually shown that they would risk their lives to save each other. Respect that. Mostly, I love her magical hair and Pascal. And the guys of Snuggly Duckling.

Moana — EPIC MOVIE. The story, the culture, the character growth, the plot twist, everything! Loved it at first sight, at second and forever. Even more when I became aware that there's no romance in it. I don't think I need to say more.

Frozen — My opinions on this movie have always been changing, accompanied by mixed feelings. So the relationship between sisters was cute, but Lilo and Stitch made that more realistic. Anna's relationship with Hans, ugh. I think that for a long time I used the fact that he was the antagonist to justify my absolute hate for the way Anna "fell" for him in one evening. Again, Anna sweetheart. This is the first man you've met. The bar is nonexistent for you too. God bless Elsa for forbidding her to marry Hans. And while it's cute to think Elsa as a lesbian, she has aromantic vibes. Sorry not sorry, but she's also a God by the end of Frozen 2. Gods are beyond attraction, I said what I said.

Raya and the Last Dragon — Loved it, still do. Say what you will about "dragon Elsa". Sisu is her own character, and I adore her. And yes, I love the lack of romance in the movie. Make no mistake, I shipped Raya and Namaari from the first moment they smiled at each other. I swear on my name that I paused the movie and screamed, GAYYYY, at the top of my lungs. Luckily, I was home alone. If only Disney directors would do the right fcking thing and give me a queer main couple!! I swear I wouldn't mind the lovey-dovey romance one bit.

Of course, I've left dozens of movies out. This post is already way longer than I wanted it to be. But I think that was enough to make a point.

While I'm not romance-repulsed, seeing animated kisses (and unnecessary relationships) on screen makes me uncomfortable. As a child and as a grownup. It just doesn't sit right with me. Not to mention all these princesses who identify with their princes and specifically their relationships with said princes when they're perfect on their. Wreck it Ralph 2 made them a favor, I think, by making them work together and showing their strengths. Another movie I love.

Friendship just makes an overall better theme to apply to kids shows, my opinion. Family, work, self-discovery, mental health, happiness. These are all better themes to portray in media dedicated for children. Which is, again, my opinion.

And yes, Disney has been getting better. They've fixed the age difference and the age of consent. The female characters no longer depend on the male ones, at least not as often. They understand the assignment, alright. There are still many questionable things about Disney's reputation though, things we all choose to overlook for the sake of the good movies. But who knows? They might change. Hopefully soon we'll also have an obviously queer couple in a movie. Hope dies last.

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maddiwrites · 3 years

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Secret Lives (Part 3)

Pairing: JJ x Reader

Summary: You and JJ never got along so your friends trap the two of you on a boat in the middle of the marsh to work it out. Only it doesn’t go as planned.

Note: Hey guys! Remember this little series I wrote? A lot of people asked for a part three and I truly had no plans to write one, but I came up with one for you if you if guys are even still interested, who knows. I don’t know how I feel about it. Kinda seems dramatic of me, but oh well. Its been in my drafts for forever so I’m finally posting it. Let me know!! If I tagged you, its because you were tagged in part 2 or asked to be tagged in part 3!

Word count: 6k

Warnings: mentions of abuse, drugs, violence, and death

Part 1 Part 2 Masterlist

The relationship you and JJ had transpired into something no one saw coming. Your friends thought your friendship was unsalvageable after what happened when they trapped you in the middle of the marsh with one another. You had reached your breaking point and they didn’t think you’d ever come back to them. But you did. Not only did you come back to them, but you came back to JJ.

The two of you, once closed off around each other, were now inseparable. You spent almost every day together. You followed him around his work schedule and he snuck through your window any chance he got because he didn’t want to spend one night without you. Your family was surprisingly very accepting of JJ. Your mother was first worried, knowing how men on the Cut can grow into something/someone no parent would want for their daughter. And Andrew knew of Luke Maybank from word of mouth and was afraid JJ might be just like him. But the first night you invited him to dinner at your house, your parents welcomed him into your family. He was polite, mature, and personable throughout the whole meal. You remembered that night well. The morning of, he called you panicking because he didn’t know what to wear. You told him to wear whatever he wanted, but he was afraid the Kildare County T shirt and cargo shorts wouldn’t send the right message. So you took him shopping on the mainland. Together you took the ferry and made him play dress up in stores you knew he couldn’t afford. He felt bad that you were paying for his new wardrobe, but you promised it was something you wanted to do because you would do anything to make him feel better about this night. That night he came to your door with a bouquet of flowers for your mother and a bottle of Scotch he told Andrew his dad bought for him for that night. Your little sister absolutely adored him, barely giving him enough time to kiss you hello or goodbye.

You and JJ were more alike than either of you could even imagine. Your temper wasn’t as short as JJ’s, but you weren’t afraid of a fight when it presented itself to you. Your mother always said that’s what happens when you grow up on the Cut. You learn to fight for what you want and need. Most of the time JJ liked that about you. Seeing you standing up for yourself was a huge turn on to him and he felt prideful when onlookers would watch impressed because they didn’t expect a girl from Figure Eight to fight like that. He never let it get physical though even though he always thought it would be hot to see you in a cat fight with some rich bitch from your school. He cared too much about you to let you get hurt.

You and JJ have another similarity no one outside of the Pogues know about. Although you hate it more than anything, you and JJ live through the trauma of having an abusive father. As if dealing with your father alone wasn’t stressful enough, he created a few fights between you and your boyfriend. JJ was constantly on your case when you were hiding a new bruise or silently frustrated from a previous conversation with your father. You tried not to find it overbearing because JJ was just concerned. You promised you’d stop seeing your father. It was easier for you than for JJ because you had another family to fall back on. A loving mother, a generous step father, and a boisterous little sister. The perfect family. Which is why you felt so guilty that they didn’t seem like enough. ‘Cause it didn’t matter how much money Andrew had, or if he said he loved you like his own, or that he promised you he would never hurt your mother on the day he proposed. He wasn’t your real dad. Your real dad was out there, living in filth and drugs. Without a second income, he couldn’t pay his bills or own a car to drive himself to work every day. He blamed that on you and your mother and you fell for his pity party every single time.

JJ knew when you were lying. You’d wearing more clothes on the days you were hiding your skin and quieter on the days when you were thinking back to the hateful things your father yelled at you the day before. He hated that there was someone out there laying their hands on you and there was nothing he could do about it. JJ knew the kind of damage that could happen if he tried to physically intervene and it didn’t work. Every time he brought it up, it would only start a heated argument. You would bring up his own father and how JJ wouldn’t let you say anything to Luke, even on the days you two were face to face at Barry’s home with your own father. You hated that JJ thought he could come between you and your father, but you couldn’t do the same. It was hard to believe you two were using your own father’s against each other to prove a point.

Today was no different. It was sunny, cloudless day in the middle of the summer. Which meant the perfect boat day for you and your Pogues. John B was excited to fish, JJ and Pope were excited to swim, Kie to tan. And you? Well you weren’t excited all at. Because last night was a particularly bad night between you and your dad.

He had taken you out to Barry’s again, forcing you to come inside so he could show you off like his own personal wallet. He drained you of another four hundred dollars after Barry threatened to shoot your father in the head if he didn’t get his money. And you hesitated. Not because you wanted your father to die, but because you had never had a gun pointed at another person in your vicinity. Ever. But that’s not how your dad took it. When you dropped him off, he had you come inside so he could give you his unpaid utility bills. When you least expected it, your dad shoved you hard into the countertop, the corner of it jabbing into your side. Even when you fell to the floor, your father didn’t stop kicking you in your stomach. He called you ungrateful and disloyal. He told you he wished you had never been born - how you ruin everything. You cried into the tiled floors until your dad tired himself out, grabbed a beer, and went to bed.

Your torso was covered in blue and purple bruises when you woke up. Even the warm water from you shower this morning felt like a million little needles pricking your skin. You contemplated texting the Pogues, telling them you felt sick and that you couldn’t go today. But when you looked out the window and saw the perfect day, you didn’t want to miss out on the sun or a day out with your friends. Your father’s taken a lot from you, but you wouldn’t let him take this.

You wore a one piece bathing suit you had no intention of showing anyone today. JJ greeted you first when the Pogue pulled up to your dock. His arm wrapped around your waist, his hand lightly squeezing your side. You inevitably flinched but forced out a giggle to make it look like JJ had only tickled you. Not hurt you. No one thought anything of it. No one but JJ. He watched you with a narrowed gaze as you said your hellos to the others and popped a squat next to Kie and Sarah.

When John B docked the boat, everyone immediately undressed to get into the cool water.

“C’mon, babe. You’re my partner for Chicken,” JJ walked up to you, the two of you the only ones on the boat.

You looked up and admired his shirtless, toned body. His tan skin glowed against the North Carolina sun and you couldn’t understand how you got so lucky to call him yours.

Then you remembered your predicament and looked out towards your friends to avoid his stare. “I’m not feeling that great today, J.”

“What’s wrong?” JJ asked but he didn’t need to. He already knew what was wrong. He just wanted to see if you would lie about it again.

“Just nauseous,” you said, “I think I ate some bad eggs this morning or something.”

“Some bad eggs, huh?” JJ scoffed.

“JJ...” you sighed. You knew he didn’t buy your lame excuse. You wouldn’t either if it was the other way around.

“You went to see him again, didn’t you?” It wasn’t a question it was a statement.

“Can we not do this here? Please.” You practically begged. You knew this argument could get heated. It usually always did. Neither of you meant to get mad at one another. In the end, it was your dad who was in the wrong. But you guys didn’t like seeing the other one hurt. It was both frustrating and exhausting.

JJ rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” He dove into the water head first and swam out towards his friends.

You dropped your head on the boat’s steering wheel, your forehead thumping against it. You wished cutting ties with your dad was as it easy as it sounds. But now you know that Barry would kill your dad if you didn’t show up for him with the money he owed. And you couldn’t let that happen. It would feel like murdering your own father.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A week later, you found yourself at another boneyard party with your friends. You tried your best to enjoy the night despite your boyfriend giving you the cold shoulder. He was still mad about the incident on the boat. The two of you fought about it when you got back to the Chateau. He knew you were holding something back from him. And you were. You never mentioned Barry or the drugs or the gun to him. As far as JJ knew, you paid your dad’s bills and took him out to lunch every once in a while. And you wanted to keep it this way - afraid of what he might think knowing you were spending time with not only a notorious drug dealer, but his own father.

“I’m gonna get another drink,” you tell Kie as the two of you watched JJ and John B play beer pong against two Tourons.

She nodded and kept her eyes trained on the winning Pogues.

Before you reached the keg, a hand wrapped around your wrist and pulled you away from the crowd, towards the water. When you looked up at who it was, you ripped your hand away and glared at the blonde Kook.

“Y/N -“

“What the hell do you want, Rafe?” You could tell he was high. His eyes wouldn’t stop flickering back between yours, his balance was off, and his pupils were dilated.

“I - I screwed up. I don’t have the money - I didn’t make enough money for Barry’s blow. He’s gonna kill me.”

“Hey, hey. Calm down,” you looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping.

“You need to help me. You need to sell this -“ he tried shoving small baggies into your hands but you pulled yourself away like he was offering your a lit flame.

“Are you out of your mind. Put that away!”

“I wasn’t - wasn’t keeping track of how many people were using my shit. And then there was this girl -“

“Rafe, I can’t do this.”

“JJ can help. Yeah? His dad -“

“JJ stays out of this,” you took another step towards him so you were face to face with the Kook and he could see how serious you were, even through his high state of mind. “You hear me? JJ’s nothing like his dad and I swear to god I’ll kill you first if you say anything to him.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Rafe raised his voice, frustrated that he couldn’t come up with any other ideas of how he was supposed to get his money back.

“Hey!” You froze when another voice broke you and Rafe apart. JJ walked up from behind you and pointed his finger at the Kook. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Get away from her.”

You let JJ pull you behind him but kept your eyes on Rafe, trying to warn him from saying anything to your already fired up boyfriend.

Rafe sniffled and took a step back. “Nothing, dude. Relax. Okay?”

“Didn’t look like nothing.”

“Rafe was just leaving,” you said and kept your eyes on Rafe.

“Y/N, you don’t understand. Barry -“

“Rafe!”

JJ’s head snapped in your direction and his brows furrowed in confusion. He knew that name. His dad’s mentioned that name before. It’s usually followed by coke prices.

Rafe just glared at you. “If I die, it’s on you.”

You swallowed the lump in your throat and looked down at the sand as Rafe walked away. JJ slowly turned to look at you as his brain scrambled to put the pieces together.

“Y/N...”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” You said quickly.

“How do you know Barry?” JJ pushed. He didn’t care if you didn’t want to talk about it. He was tired of letting you push him away.

“He’s my dad’s dealer, J. We’ve been over this.” You tried walking away from him but he grabbed your wrist to make you look at him.

“You been to his house?” JJ asked. When you didn’t answer, he took a step back and looked at you incredulously. “You work for him now?”

You glared at him. “Of course not!”

“Then -“

“My dad makes me pay for his shit, okay? And I can’t stop or else Barry will kill him.” You snapped. Tears pricked at your waterline and threatened to fall.

“Barry won’t kill -“

“He pointed a gun at his head the other day! I was there! I had to scoff up hundreds of dollars to save his life.” You shook your head. “And that still wasn’t enough to save myself from a stupid beating. So please stop telling me how much easier it is for me to escape him. Stop telling me how lucky I am to have such a great family to rely on. Because I don’t! If I don’t help my dad out, I might as well sign his death warrant myself.”

JJ’s heart physically cracked in his chest at the sight of you. You were falling apart. Here at a boneyard party, where you should be having fun and forgetting about your problems. But instead he pushed you too far, and although he was relieved to finally hear the truth from you, he wished it had been in the privacy of your home or the Chateau. When he looked over your shoulder, he saw the worried looks of the Pogues looking at them. He didn’t know if he heard them, but he hoped they hadn’t. He still needed time to process this without the pestering questions from his friends. Even if they meant well.

“Okay,” JJ said softly. “Okay. I won’t say anything. I’m sorry. Can we just - “ he sighed. “Can we just go back to the Chateau? I just wanna hold you.”

You sniffled and meekly nodded your head. You were angry and frustrated. But not at him. At Rafe. At your own father. At the world. And you just wanted your boyfriend too.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

That night, you fell asleep pretty fast. From your sore body, to the sleepless nights thinking about Barry and his threats, and the warmth of JJ’s body held against you, your exhausted state quickly took over you. You felt like you could sleep for hours.

JJ, however, did not. He stared up at the blank ceiling with his forearm tucked under his head as his other arm stayed wrapped around you. He couldn’t stop picturing you at Barry’s home with a bunch of old low lifes, scared and innocent. He wondered if his dad was ever there - if he ever said anything to you.

He hated that there wasn’t anything he could do for you unless your dad was gone.

Gone.

And idea popped into his head like someone flicked a light switch on in his brain. He turned his head, back and forth, looking for your phone. When he found it charging on his night stand, he stretched his arm out for it, careful not to wake up your sleeping figure.

He secretly knew your passcode after subtly watching you type it in a couple weeks ago.

His fingers tapped against your screen until he found the app he was looking for. Glancing down at you one last time, he shared your location with his phone.

When you squirmed in his embrace, JJ quickly put the phone back where he found it and pretended to be asleep in case you peeked an eye open at him. He hoped you didn’t feel his heart racing against his rib cage or his uneven breaths. He knew if you found out what he was doing, you’d be pissed. But before he fell asleep, he promised he was going to do anything necessary to keep you safe.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

On the day JJ knew you were going to be busy all day babysitting your neighbor’s kids, he rode his bike to Kildare County’s police station. He stared at the entrance for a long couple of seconds, hating every second of being in near proximity to this place. Basically going against every natural instinct he had to stay away and not trust the police.

But he was doing this for you.

He walked in, ignoring the couple of looks from officers he’s encountered over the years. They were mostly surprised he wasn’t being forced through the doors with his hands cuffed behind his back.

“I need to see Sheriff Peterkin, please.” JJ says politely.

The older woman looked JJ up and down. “Do you have an appointment?”

“It’s the fucking police station. Since when do you have to make appointments? You assume people are just gonna know when an emergency is going to happen?”

“Look kid -“

“JJ.” JJ turned and relief washed over him when he saw Sheriff Peterkin in the hallway looking at him confused but also concerned.

“I need your help.” JJ admitted. He hated cops. Probably always will. But he trusted Sheriff Peterkin. She’s always tried to help John B through his DCS struggles. She actually cared about what he wanted and never took the easy way out just to make her work load lighter. She remembered why she took the oath every day.

Peterkin never really liked the Maybank kid in particular, but she was able to see something in him pretty much every cop couldn’t. She saw the loyalty and the determination his friends saw. She could tell he didn’t want to grow up to be like his father.

She led him into her office and shut the door behind them for privacy. She gestured towards the seat in front of her desk and asked him to explain what was going on.

JJ’s mouth moved a hundred miles per minute. He told her how your mother didn’t know you would sneak out to see your dad despite the custody agreement. He mentioned the bills he made you pay and the bruises he would leave you despite your efforts to help him. He teared up when he mentioned his own dad - and how his father and your father had the same dealer. How your dad would make you go inside Barry’s home and use you like a a community bank account. He even told her about the gun Barry threatened to use on your dad right in front of you.

“Why are you tell me all of this?” Peterkin says slowly. She studied the boy in front of her who was slowly falling apart and felt sympathetic for the young blonde. It didn’t take a genius to know why JJ was telling her this.

“Because...y/n... she has a heart of gold,” JJ sniffled. “She won’t leave her dad behind to be homeless or killed because that man is her blood. It doesn’t matter if he beats her black and blue. She always goes back because she thinks she owes him.” He sighs. “I want him gone. I don’t care what you do to him. Arrest him, kill him. I don’t really care. Although the second choice sounds more strategic -“

“JJ -“

“And I don’t want her getting in any sort of legal trouble because it’s not her fault. She doesn’t do drugs or deal them or anything like that. She just stands there and watches her dad blow his money on coke and who knows what else. And her mom? Her mom has no clue what’s going on but it’s not her fault. Y/n is really good at hiding her pain. She forces a smile every day and -“ JJ’s breath hitched in his throat when he thought about how you faked your happiness every single day and how a girl like you should never feel as worthless as you do. “Her mom’s a good mom. And I don’t want people blaming her or taking Y/n away from her because they think she can’t control her -“

“Hey, look at me,” Peterkin says softly. She wanted to reach over the desk and squeeze his hand to comfort him. “I understand.”

“You do?”

“Yes. I remember having to visit their home when Mrs. Y/L/N was still married to him. Y/N mother’s a good woman. I wouldn’t let anyone come between them.”

“What about her dad? I tried convincing her to never see him again but she won’t do it. She’s afraid Barry will kill him.”

“I can’t bust into Barry’s home without probable cause -“

JJ stood up. “That’s bullshit! You know -“

“Without probable cause or evidence that proves Barry is holding drugs or being violent, I can’t barge into that home.”

“That’s -“

“Here,” Peterkin writes her number down on a post it note and hands it to JJ. “Without probable cause, I can’t arrest Barry and the men who work or buy from him.” She stared at JJ, hoping the boy will understand her hidden message. She points at the post it in JJ’s hands. “Now. If you need anything from me. Call that number and I will find you.”

JJ looked down at the number and slowly nodded his head, understanding what he would have to do.

“And JJ -“ the blonde turned. “Be aware of where your father is when you call me. I dont want you ending up in the same situation as your friend John B if that’s not where you want to be.”

JJ nodded. “Thank you Sheriff Peterkin.”

Peterkin nodded and walked him out of the station.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Three days later, JJ met his friends at the Wreck for lunch. He slowed his pace when he noticed the seat next to Pope wasn’t occupied and neither was the one next to Kie.

“Where’s Y/N?” He asked them.

Kie looked at the others with furrowed brows. They all got the same text. The one where Y/N apologetically told them that something came up and wouldn’t be able to hang out today. They thought JJ would have known that.

“She said she couldn’t make it,” Kie says. “We thought you knew.”

“Did she say why?”

Pope shrugged. “Just that something came up.”

JJ ripped his phone out of his back pocket and scrolled through his messages with you. You didn’t text him - you didn’t even answer his good morning text. He knew what this meant. You didn’t like to lie, so you’re way of dodging questions you didn’t want to answer honestly is to make sure no one can ask you them. By avoiding them all together. JJ knew that. It made sense to him.

“JJ, what’s going on?” John B asked his friends, recognizing the look on his best friend’s face. He was furious but also anxious. His leg hasn’t stopped bouncing up and down since he asked where you were.

JJ clicked on the app that showed your location and saw you were deep into the south side of the Cut. He recognized the area of his father’s drug dealer.

“We gotta go,” JJ stood up and motioned for his friends to follow. “Now. JB, you bring the Twinkie?”

“Yeah, but...” John B stuttered as he grabbed his stuff off the table. “What’s going on?”

“We're saving my girl from that douche bag she calls a father,” JJ says. “For good.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

John B pulled the Twinkie to the curb outside of Barry’s house, making sure to use the trees to hide his vehicle. The Pogues immediately recognized your car parked in Barry’s driveway. Confusion bubbled through their heads, but rage ignited in JJ’s.

“Why is she here?” Kie asked.

JJ didn’t answer. He picked up his phone and clicked on Peterkin’s name. “It’s JJ.” The Pogues paused as they listened to JJ to talk to the Sheriff. “I -” He stopped when the sound of a gun shot being fired silenced all of them into panic.

“JJ -” Peterkin called for him but JJ didn’t answer. He dropped the phone so fast and sprinted out of the van, towards the house. He didn’t care what kind of danger he was running into. He just knew he had to get you out of it.

JJ ignored the calls from his best friends behind him as he ripped open the screen door. He stopped, looking left, right, up, down - anywhere for you.

He heard the commotion coming from Barry’s living room along with shouting and glass smashing. The first person he saw was Barry holding a gun up to the ceiling, pointed at the hole he left above him only seconds ago. He was glaring in the direction of you and your father, barely taking notice of the new kid in his home. Luke Maybank was the first to notice his son and narrowed his eyes in his direction. JJ gulped nervously - he didn’t know if it was because he was afraid of the guy with the gun or his dad. But what he feared the most was you not being okay.

Your eyes grew wide with fear when you saw the new face. You looked between JJ and Barry nervously, not knowing how Barry would react to the new member in his house. He was already pissed as it is, threatening to shoot you in front of your dad because neither of you could fork over the money your dad owed Barry. He was getting tired of the same old bullshit, and Rafe didn’t help. He stood silently in the corner with his fingers racked through his hair.

“Who the fuck are you?” Barry pointed the gun at JJ when he finally noticed him.

“Hey, hey, hey, he’s good!” Luke came closer to Barry and said, “That’s my son.”

“What the fuck is he doing here?” Barry asked him.

Luke looked past Barry at JJ for an answer he couldn’t give him. JJ glanced from Barry, to his dad, to you and gulped again as he tried to come up with answer. That’s when you understood what was going on. He was following you.

You didn’t know if you should be mad or not. All you could focus on was the gun in Barry’s hand that’s still pointed in JJ’s direction.

“Look, kid,” Your dad said to Barry, gaining his attention all over again. “I’ll make it up to you.” He put his hand on your shoulder and shoved you slightly forward. “You want to have her for the night? She’s all yours.”

Your head snapped in your father’s direction with your mouth open agape. Did your dad seriously just try to pimp you out? You felt betrayed, vile, used, and worthless. This isn’t something you do when you love your kid.

JJ seethed and clenched his hands in fists, ready to rock the shit out of your dad. “You son of a bitch -”

Luke, however, caught him in time, holding him by the arm and pulling him away from your dad. JJ tried fighting him off to get to your dad or you - to get you out of this entire home. He saw the scared look on your face and it made him want to set the entire house on fire. He’d do anything to protect you - to keep you safe. And right now, he thought he was failing.

Then, red and blue lights flashed through the open windows, followed by loud sirens. Barry crossed the room to stand next to you and your father and looked out the window. When he saw the cops, he immediately swiveled around to point his gun at your boyfriend.

“You called the fucking cops?” Barry sneered.

“Stop!” You yelled to try and get Barry’s attention and away from JJ.

You dad tried to use Barry’s distraction to his advantage and snuck up behind him to try and reach for the gun. Barry spun around and tried pulling his wrist away from your dad’s grip. As they fought for the gun and an upper hand, you ran across the room for JJ who immediately wrapped his arms around your waist. He kissed the top of your head and motioned for the front door, mumbling about leaving.

You nodded and grasped his hand in yours. When he turned to lead you out of there, another shot rang out and you flinched closer to JJ as he ducked and pulled your head down with his arms and shields your body with his.

You heard a thump and the floor vibrated under your feet.

“Shit -”

“Fuck -”

“What did you do that for -”

“Jerry? Hey! Jerry!”

Everything kind of moved in slow motion after that. You turned around to see what had happened and that’s when you saw your dad laying on the floor with a puddle of blood growing around his body. Your feet moved faster than your brain did to get to your dad.

JJ tried reaching for you but you swiveled out of his grip and dropped to your knees in front of your dad’s body. His eyes were closed and his mouth open. You placed your hands on top of the wound in his stomach to get it to stop bleeding. You cried. You didn’t know why you were crying but you did. Hard and heavy, barely able to get your own breaths in. You didn’t pay attention to Rafe fleeing from the backyard, or Barry being stopped by the cops who stormed into the house with guns raised. You barely felt JJ place his hands on your shoulders to try and coax you up. All you saw and could feel was your dad’s dead body and his blood on your hands.

“Honey,” You felt another set of hands touch your back as they knelt down next to you. You didn’t look at her but recognized the familiar voice. “He’s gone. It’s over.”

“No -” You voice was barely above a whisper.

“I’m sorry. Let’s get you cleaned up. Okay?”

Sheriff Peterkin nodded at JJ to help you up and lead you out of the house. He was finally able to pull you up from your knees and placed a comforting hand on your lower back.

Your friends watched from the barricade the police set up around the house. When they saw you, all of them either started to panic or cry. They thought your were hurt until JJ nodded at them to tell them you were okay. But they could see in your face you were anything but okay.

Another cop lead you to the back of an ambulance. You don’t even look at Luke being handcuffed next to Barry or Rafe disappearing in the trees. All you can think about is your dad.

The EMT did a quick check up on you after realizing the blood on your hands was in fact not yours. Then they took a quick look at JJ and asked if there was someone they could call for you.

“My mom -” You whispered.

The EMT nodded. “Do you have a number?”

You told the EMT her number and waited patiently as she walked away to call her. When the two of you were alone, JJ turned to look at you and reached out for your hands and held them in his lap. He rubbed his thumb up and down over the back of your hand and waited for you to say something. He didn’t know if any words could make this right. He didn’t know how to comfort you after you just witnessed your dad died. It didn’t matter if you hated him or not. You literally watched him take his last breath. Your own flesh and blood. That shit’s traumatizing.

“I’m sorry,” JJ said when he realized you were not going to say anything. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I just - I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“This is my fault.”

“No,” JJ shook his head. “No. It’s not your fault. It’s Barry’s. He was the one with the gun -”

“I should’ve walked away. From my dad. From all of this.” A single tear rolled down your cheek. “I enabled him. I allowed it to get this far.”

“You were doing what you thought was best for your dad.”

“I got him killed -”

“He did this to himself, Y/N. You were more than the perfect daughter. You literally couldn't be more perfect if you tried.” JJ wrapped his arm around your shoulder and pulled you closer into his side and kissed the top of your head. “He didn’t deserve you. There’s nothing you could have done to prevent this.”

You cried into his shoulder, letting the sobs wrack through your body and your heart tear into millions of pieces. JJ held you tightly against him and whispered comforting words in your ears.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

JJ stood by you through your grieving process - through the good and the bad. He’s took your harsh words with a grain a salt when he noticed you were just trying to pick a fight, he held you when you cried into your pillow in the middle of the night, he was by your side for a hand to hold when you told your mother what happened and why you were at Barrys for the millionth time, and he was there to tell you he will always be there for you when you think he’s just going to up and leave like your dad did.

After your dad’s funeral, you stood in front of his tombstone with a solemn expression. Your dad was a piece of shit and didn’t deserve your love, money, and attention. You wished you could go back and time and never give it to him. At least that way you wouldn’t feel all these complicated emotions that made no sense. Love, hate, grief, relief. You didn’t know how to feel.

Coming up behind you was JJ. He weaved his fingers with yours and kissed your temple. You couldn’t believe there was ever a day where JJ Maybank was your enemy. You didn’t think you’d be able to get through this without him.

“JJ,” You said and looked up at him. “Thank you.”

JJ nodded. “I love you.” He would never admit this, but he was glad you dad was dead. Because now he knew you were safe.

“I love you more.”

JJ shook his head. “Impossible.”

Tag List: @allycat449-blog @zarahsloves @redknight9

#jj fic #jj x reader #jj maybank #jj maybank fic #jj maybank imagines #jj maybank x reader #outer banks imagine #outer banks fic #obx fic #obx imagine

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stxleslyds · 3 years

Text

NIGHTWING #81

UMM... HOW ABOUT NO.

Ever since Tom Taylor took over Nightwing I have only made a post about one issue of his (I will leave it here Nightwing #78), that issue was beautiful, it was a solid start and the little things that made me feel a bit icky were not mentioned in the post because the issue was good.

Then the issues felt like connectors or just very bland story wise. I had problems with the book also feeling like a Nightwing and (fake) Oracle book instead of just Nightwing. There were many instances where Dick alone could have gotten himself out of situations without Barbara, but because she was there the opportunity to show that he can do things was taken from him. I guess what I am trying to say is that the book has disappointed me but I didn’t feel like making a post because it was too early and this is an ongoing book that Taylor said he planned on continuing for a while, but now I can’t not make a post.

A few days ago, I finally read the Red Hood story in Urban Legends (I have a review for that one too I will link it here Red Hood part 4) and I couldn’t stand how OOC and disappointing the story/characterization has been. I am saying this because I am only reading these two books at the moment, ONLY these two, and all I have gotten from them is shit.

I know it’s still early to say that the Nightwing book is bad but…I hated this issue, I hated it with all of my heart. But now that I am a bit calmer, I have come up with some ideas of what is truly going on with the Melinda situation.

Anyway, let me give you my thoughts.

There are big Wilson Fisk vibes coming from both Blockbuster and Melinda Zucco. Those two will lie, manipulate and be evil every chance they get. They are working together to make Nightwing disappear. I know it. The whole “make us all much wealthier and to extend your power beyond the city” idea does not include Nightwing.

Melinda might not want to burn anything down but she sure isn’t a hero. This woman accepted the position of Mayor after watching Blockbuster kill the former mayor. I understand that talking with the BHPD isn’t the best idea but this woman feels way too comfortable in the presence of a killer.

She is cunning and she has plans, I strongly believe that she might be a villain and that she will betray Blockbuster and take all the power (if it reaches that point) to herself.

Heartless is just another weirdo, he tricks both Nightwing and the reader into thinking that he has a soft spot for kids but surprise! He doesn’t. There isn’t much to say about him, he just has very complex gadgets and doesn’t know how to fight. I don’t even have any ideas about who he might be.

What I know though is that there was absolutely no need for Dick to think that he had “underestimated” Heartless, my love you threw your stick at him while he was looking directly at you, there was a 50/50 chance of him catching it. I swear I don’t understand the need to write him thinking that mostly because Taylor then has Dick swiping the floor with the guy, not only is it a simple fight (for Dick) but it’s also boring for him. Taylor’s writing is so annoying sometimes, he just loves to write extra things that are out of place like the “Tim Drake. Thought of by many as the best Robin” why the fuck did he put that there? Honestly, what was the point of having Dick say that, I don’t read a Nightwing book to have Tim Drake praise. If it doesn’t offer anything to the story that is being told then keep the thought to yourself Tom...

Moving forward the scene in the pier was quite nice, mostly because it’s Dick’s quick thinking that gets everyone to safety, he knows exactly what to do and how to contact the Maritime distress channel.

He has hope for his city, he knows there is good in it and he believes help will show up when lives are about to be lost. I loved that, just like Heartless said, Nightwing IS Bludhaven’s Guardian Angel. Once again, I am having Daredevil vibes from Dick (like from the show)

After the fight we get to see consequences of Dick not healing properly from a shot to the head. He loses his consciousness which is extremely dangerous but luckily Tim is at arm’s reach to help him out of the pier.

There are many things I want to talk about from the scenes that happen after Dick wakes up in his apartment so here we go.

First of all, Bitewing is adorable, she loves Dick the most and was happy to see him awake once more, what a good girl!

Secondly, Barbara, honey, you do not have three names, you aren’t Batgirl anymore, you are a grown woman that needs to move on from a mantle that has other people that can do something else/better with it. And we all know that this Oracle is just the ableist version of Oracle. So yeah…all I ask is for Barbara to move on from Batgirl, Cass and Stephanie are right there, enough is enough.

In these panels we have Dick, Tim and Barbara being kinda dismissive about the homeless kids, and it has been happening for so many issues, what is the point, Taylor? You made Dick a millionaire and you just can’t have him say or think for a second that he will monetarily help those kids and make sure they are put somewhere safe? You are really going to wait up until you have Dick running for Mayor or something to help the kids? I just don’t get it. Kids living on the streets and each time they are mentioned the three heroes of the book act like it’s normal and doesn’t need fixing. What the fuck.

Then we have the gang finding out that Melinda Zucco is the new mayor, the woman has an FBI file and a redacted one! This makes me think two things, either things are like I thought in the beginning of the post (she is evil and very good at it) or this woman is actually FBI and she is undercover (this one is less likely because of what happens at the end of the issue).

What we can see from the file that Barbara found is very little, but in these two pictures we can see that maybe she was put in foster care and x age? Also, she was apparently investigated in April of 20xx, the investigation must have been recent, why would the FBI investigate a minor or college student? What if these files were implanted by Melinda for someone to find them, and for her to have some sort of proof of her lies? If the file is about her being left in foster care or something while would the file be redacted? I don’t know, everything about her is shady and I don’t trust anything from or about her.

This could be a complex and very interesting character but Tom Taylor and DC really love to do stupid shit for shock value (more of this later).

All the new information (the Maroni, Blockbuster and now this very shady Mayor) has Dick saying that it is a bit too much for him and yeah, it is too much, you know who could help? Red Hood. I am of course not talking about current DC comics Red Hood, I am talking about the Red Hood that I would love to see, just yesterday I had an ask about who would I like to see working with Jason and I said Nightwing because Dick puts a lot of responsibility on his shoulders so it would be nice if they negotiated and each could work on different crime areas in Bludhaven, if only DC would hear me…

Anyway, now that we come to the end of the scene let’s talk about Barbara’s shirt.

That was unnecessary and not funny. That’s all it was. Yeah, I know it’s a meme and I know it was included for funny ha-ha purposes but I am not laughing. Bruce has been written as abusive towards his kids for so long, Jason, Tim and Dick have been physically harmed by Bruce and writers use it as just something that happens, there are never repercussions for the Bat. And this shirt sucks because Dick was Robin there and he was a kid, so having Barbara or anyone wearing a shirt with Batman hitting Robin!Dick right in front of Dick is just disgusting. What if someone wore a shirt that had Joker beating Jason with a crowbar in front of Jason, would that be a funny ha-ha too? What about Dick wearing a shirt with the Joker shooting Barbara, is that a funny ha-ha? The answer to those questions is no, it’s not funny.

The idea of that shirt shouldn’t have been pitched, drawn or included after the editor took a look at it.

The picture is a meme in our world, not in theirs. And the readers aren’t laughing.

Back to the issue, Dick is left alone in his apartment to rest (seriously? You think the man that showed up to help Bruce in Gotham with a knee brace is going to rest?) but he can’t, he just found out that Mayor Zucco might be trouble for Bludhaven and might be working with not only Blockbuster but the Maroni family. He is not waiting one more second to have a chat with her.

Dick is obviously still concussed so of course he grabs a mask that has a camera that Oracle can view, and of course he enters yet another window without being careful.

Melinda and Audre were obviously waiting for him.

But here is where the real bullshit begins. Dick is unmasked.

I am so mad; it’s been four issues and Dick gets his ass in a trap and is unmasked by a villain? Are you kidding me right now?

But that’s not all, after Dick breaks free and accuses Melinda of being the daughter of the man that killed his parents, she pulls out a uno reverse card and says that her actual father is John Grayson, and that she is his sister.

How about no. Absolutely not. Go away.

Let’s re-visit Melinda’s appearances in the book so far so we can start theorizing about her real intentions or if she could be saying the truth.

Back in issue #78 where she is first introduced to us, after Melinda watches Blockbuster kill the mayor, she goes home and tells her Audre that she is now mayor because Blockbuster did what he does, so she knows that this guy is trash and a killer. But that’s not all, Audre asks her if she came across Dick Grayson to which Melinda answers “I am not ready for him yet”. Audre suggests she talks to him sooner rather than later because she might not have “another chance”, and the issue ends with Melinda agreeing with her while she is looking at a Flying Graysons poster with a red circle framing Dick’s face.

That whole thing? Shady. Melinda, obviously, wanted to talk to Dick Grayson, probably to tell him that she is his sister, but why is there a time limit, why is Audre telling Melinda that she can’t wait too long? Is it because her undercover work is ending soon? Is it because it’s not real at all and she needs to tell that lie in order to move forward with some sort of plan? I don’t know…

In issue #79 Melinda (and Audre) are out in the open with Maroni and they are talking about her becoming the next Mayor, Nightwing was watching from afar so this is his first contact with her. And it might be the first time that Melinda and her friend see Nightwing in action too. I cannot tell if she is aware that Nightwing/Dick Grayson are the same person here.

In #80 she doesn’t make an appearance.

But now in #81 she is taking her place as Mayor of Bludhaven, there Commissioner McClean takes her somewhere she didn’t expect to go (she is shown not knowing that Maroni and Blockbuster were in the next room over). Once in the room she refuses to take the cash from McClean but she will take the money as a transaction (for a second I thought she wouldn’t take the money but she did because she is very corrupt) and talks to Maroni once more. Before I talk about what happens with Blockbuster let me say this, she acts so distant to Maroni, she calls him Mr. Maroni every single time and she comes off as cold and feeling no type of way while talking with someone that is part of the family that actually raised her, and this is not because she is in a room full of other people, she did it too in #79. It seems weird that she acts that way with someone that took her under his wing since she was eight years old.

When she sits with Blockbuster he says “tell us your plan for my city” to which she says all of this: “My plan, Blockbuster, is to make us all much wealthier and to extend your power beyond the city. But to do so in a way that builds on the good work you’ve already done I have no interest in burning anything down.”

At the start of the post I said she gave me big Wilson Fisk vibes and that right there is why. She is shady, she has plans on top of plans, she calls Roland Desmond Blockbuster to his face but says that he has done good work for Bludhaven, which is weird because Blockbuster destroys Bludhaven a couple of times a year…

As I said before whatever she has planned does not include Nightwing, and here is where I kinda start theorizing a bit more, what if Blockbuster told Melinda Nightwing’s real name, he used to know who he was once upon a time…

Later in this issue when Nightwing is going to Melinda’s place Audre is already waiting for him right next to the window (with a sword), so, was he making an insane amount of noise or were they told to be ready for him?

Melinda traps him and takes his mask off, she barely seems surprised about Nightwing being Dick, she barely reacts when he jumps at her. She is in complete control of the situation and proves that by disarming Dick, as fast as he accuses her of being Zucco’s daughter she tells him that her real father is John Grayson.

She is in complete control. She has to be lying, she put a stop to whatever Dick had to say and do in seconds. This woman is trained and she is manipulative as fuck!

And if she isn’t lying then fuck DC and fuck Tom Taylor, this woman is either younger or the same age as Dick, John Grayson was not a cheater, the man is dead, has been dead for so long, don’t throw dirt on his name at this point. I refuse to believe this is true.

I honestly think that she is evil, and knows more than we are aware of, her first appearance was shady as fuck, let's suppose that she didn’t truly know that Dick was Nightwing, why on earth did she have a Flying Graysons poster with a red circle on top of Dick’s face? That doesn’t seem like something a sister would do! And why would this be information that is so important that she NEEDS to tell him in a certain amount of time?

It’s fucking insane. Tom Taylor, if she is actually Dick's sister then shame on you. Disgusting, what is with writers and cheating, what the hell is going on? Dick doesn’t need to think back to his parents and see a cheater in one of them. This better be Melinda being a cruel and vile human being that is trying to emotionally hurt Dick/Nightwing so she and Blockbuster can do whatever its they want to do.

That’s all I have to say.

#dick grayson #nightwing #nightwing 81 #dc comics #dc infinite frontier #melinda zucco #nightwing and bitewing #bitewing #blockbuster

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ive-been-worse · 3 years

Text

Liable PT 2

Word Count: 2,419

Warning: Violence, blood, knives, hospitals, close calls, mentions of anxiety/panic, let me know if I missed any.

A/N: this is part two to a different post. It's long, I can't write cases, kinda angsty but it has a happy ending. Enjoy

“Can you believe it?” You point your spoon at no one in particular. “A ‘liability’! God!” You let out a sardonic laugh and viciously dig into your ice cream.

You, Emily, JJ, and Penny are having girls’ night. Yes, you’re a little tipsy and definitely not over anything.

Emily shakes her head while JJ pours more wine for everyone.

“Y/N/N, you know you aren’t a liability. You’re damn good at your job and Hotch was full of shit,” Em doesn’t normally bash the boss but she’s a little more than tipsy too.

“You know what it is?” Penny butts in, “He likes youuuuuuu.”

Her words elicit a scoff from you, “As if.” Heat rose in your cheeks.

“No, she’s right. Everyone can see it. Hotch totally has a thing for you!” JJ exclaims, spilling a little of her wine. “Come on, are you seriously saying you’ve never noticed how much he hovers over you?”

“Or stiffens whenever you’re with an unsub?” Em adds.

“Or how he almost flinches everytime you call him ‘Agent Hotchner’,” Penny giggles.

“And, you like him too!” JJ says with a sudden seriousness.

You shake your head. As much as you want to deny JJ’s words, you can’t. Your crush has been blooming for a long time. It’s part of the reason why you’re taking this sudden cold front from your boss so hard. If only you knew what to do.

***

“Aaron, you gotta tell her,” was the first thing Dave said after sneaking into Hotch’s office.

“Tell who what, Dave?” Aaron asked. He didn’t have to ask. Dave was talking about you, just like he has been the last multiple times Dave has sought him out.

“Y/N. You know she’s a good agent. She deserves to know that.”

“Is that all?” Aaron has yet to look up from his paperwork.

“‘Is that all?’” Dave repeats, “No, first, it’s affecting the team. Everyone can see that. There’s so much tension between you two. After you fix that, you should also tell her how you feel.”

“Enough, there’s nothing to tell,” Aaron pinches the bridge of his nose, “I’ll handle it, okay?”

“You better.”

***

Hotch had kept you out of the field for seven cases. Seven. Working from Quantico was killing you and you had a newfound respect for Penny. That’s why you jumped, literally jumped, at the chance to finally go on a case with the team. However, you’re confined to the police precinct. Not ideal, but you’ll take what you can get. So while the team is gathering information in the field, you’re working on the geographical profile.

Unfortunately, geographical profiles are not your strong suit. More unfortunately, you’ve determined that there’s not enough information to make one. With a sigh, you push yourself away from the desk and make your way to the mediocre coffee station.

A young officer approaches with a smile, “What a case, right?”

You look him over. This case is probably the worst he’s seen. He’s not too bad on the eyes. Not quite your type. You shake your head as the thought of your boss flits through your mind. Giving the officer a small smile, “That’s your opening?”

Red blooms across his cheeks as he shrugs and rubs the back of his neck. “I had to start with something. I’m John,” his hand comes out between you two.

“I’m Y/N, nice to meet you,” he grips your hand a little too hard.

The door to the precinct opens. Hotch, Emily, and Reid come in. They were at the latest crime scene.

Nodding your head at your team, “That’s my cue.”

You take your leave but John stops you. “How about you and I take some time and I’ll buy you a better coffee?”

“I can’t. We have to solve this case. That’s my priority,” It’s a little harsh but that’s what you’re here to do in the first place so that’s what you’re going to do.

“L/N,” Hotch calls.

“I’m coming,” you take your coffee and go to them. “What did you find?”

“Her friends report some guy talking to her at the bar they went to the night before she went missing. Apparently he kept trying to get her to go somewhere with him.” Hotch fills you in.

“Let me guess, she kept turning him down?” You fill in, earning a nod from your boss.

“How’s the geographical profile?” Reid asks.

“You’re welcome to take a shot at it but there’s not enough.”

This time it’s Emily who speaks, “We need another victim.”

And you got one that night.

The next day you're able to finish the profile. Right as you do, coffee is set on your desk. You look up to see John. “Thank you,” you tell him. Relief filling you at the thought of caffeine.

“You looked like you could use it,” he smiled at you. Taking a sip you looked up in surprise. The coffee was exactly how you like it. “I- uh - I noticed how you took it yesterday while we were talking.” John rubbed the back of his neck and you nodded.

“We’re ready to give the profile.” Hotch announced over the room to gather everyone’s attention. It didn’t take long for everyone to get ready.

“We believe that the unsub is a young male, in his twenties to thirties,” Hotch started.

“He’ll probably try to inject himself in this investigation if he hasn’t already,” Morgan went next.

Your turn, “Given the places the victims are taken from and the dump sites, the unsub’s comfort zone is in this area,” you gesture to the map, “Meaning he either lives or works somewhere in the area.” The rest of the profile goes smoothly.

After, you take a step outside, needing to clear your head. The door opens and there’s footsteps. You turn to talk to the person. A butt of a gun slams into your head. You feel the shock.

Everything goes black.

***

You come too in a dark place and you can’t make anything out. You can hear a flip get switched and the lights flicker on above you. Squinting against the harsh light, you try to orient yourself. You take inventory. You’re sitting. Killer headache, probably a concussion. There’s something wet on your temple. You go to wipe it away only to discover your hands are bound behind you. Ankles similarly tied but to the legs of the chair.

Trying to fight the panic setting in, you take a deep breath and look around. Knives line the wall in all different sizes. Pictures of the previous victims are hung on the wall with some sort of writing by them.

The unsub walks into the room. He has an old camera with him. It’s flash blinds you. You turn your head away from the flash. When you look back, the unsub’s back is to you and he’s hanging the picture he just took on the wall. He looks familiar. You can’t place him until he turns around.

John.

John with a knife.

John with a knife, and he's coming toward you.

***

“He uses a knife so he’s likely impotent but there’s nothing else that implies this is sexual for him,” Morgan rubs his temples.

“The multiple stab wounds are all done before the kill. So he’s sadistic,” Rossi adds.

JJ enters the room, a worried look on her face. “Y/N isn’t here. I’ve checked with the hotel and they haven’t seen her since we left. She’s not answering her phone.”

“What do you mean she isn’t here?” Rossi asks.

“No one knows where she went,” JJ says.

“Guys,” Reid enters the room, holding up a phone. Your phone.

“She wouldn’t leave with just anyone. Y/N’s careful.” Rossi scrubs his face.

“She probably didn’t go willingly. It’s broken.” Reid tells them, setting the phone on the table.

“I’ll call Hotch,” Morgan stands, leaving the room.

***

Coughs tear through you. Blood dribbles out, dripping onto your already ruined shirt. You turn your head and spit, trying to clear your mouth from the coppery liquid.

“You couldn’t have just said yes? It was just coffee. But no you couldn’t do that could you!” John lets out a deranged laugh. “You’re just like the others. So stuck up you won’t give anyone a chance.” The knife he wields sinks into your abdomen and you bite your lip to keep in the pained gasp. “We could have been happy together. You’d have to give up your job though. This isn’t a line of work for a lady.”

That line. You’d been hearing that line since you joined the BAU. You’re so tired of it. His face is so close. You spit and it lands on his cheek. A strange sense of satisfaction fills you as the bloody saliva trails down his jaw.

John wipes it off, “You’re going to regret that.” His fist hits the side of your head, sending ringing through your skull.

“No,” you cough up more blood. “You’ll regret this. My team will find you and you will pay.”

“Too bad you won’t be alive to see it.”

***

You were barely conscious when they found you. Your breaths are shallow. You don’t know what happened, what went down. All you know is that suddenly, you’re not in that chair anymore. You’re not there, and someone is being loud. Someone is yelling. You try to open your eyes to see who.

“Hotch,” it comes out weak. Barely a whisper. Your hand goes up on its own accord to wipe his tears, leaving a streak of red in its wake. “Why are you crying?” Suddenly your hand falls back to your side and you turn your head.

“Y/N! Hey Y/N! Stay with me!” His hand turns your head to look at him. His hands are so big. He’s warm. So warm. After you had been so cold.

“You’re so handsome, Hotch. So handsome,” it slurred out. Everything goes back once more.

***

The team is waiting anxiously at the hospital. Most of the cuts are shallow but the ones that aren’t caused you to need emergency surgery. They’re bad, more than enough to cause worry.

“She’ll make it. Y/N is strong. She’ll make it,” Emily sounds like she’s trying to convince herself.

Reid has his head in his hands.

Morgan is pacing.

Garcia rushes into the waiting room when she gets there, “How is she?”

“She’s in emergency surgery,” Rossi answers.

She collapses into a nearby chair.

Hours drip by. One after another. Someone convinces Hotch to change, get out of the bloodstained suit. Someone else gets everyone coffee, or a snack. No one touches those.

The more time passes the more everyone gets worried. When the doctor comes out, it’s too soon and not soon enough all at the same time. “She’s stable,” everything they say after is a blur from the relief. “You’re welcome to see her when she wakes up.”

It’s an hour later when a nervous looking nurse comes in the waiting room. “Are you for Y/N L/N?” Everyone stands nodding. “She’s- uh- she’s asking for an Agent Hotchner?”

“That’s me,” Hotch steps forward.

“Follow me. Uh- the rest of you can see her in a little while,” the nurse sent a smile to the rest of the team.

***

The light was bright in the hospital. The doctor was telling you what happened but you didn’t hear any of it.

The door opens and Hotch rushes to your side, “Y/N!” He scans you over, eyes stopping on every bandage.

“Hotch,” your hand covers his to get his attention. “What happened?”

“I- We almost lost you. It was bad. You lost a lot of blood,” he tries to fight back the tears.

“I’m sorry. I should have been more careful. I should have realized-”

“No!” His voice comes out startlingly loud. He makes an effort to soften it. “No. This isn’t your fault. No one blames you.”

You let out a self-deprecating laugh, “Sure. No one blames me. They all just think I’m a liability right?” The word slips out before you can stop it.

Liability. The same one he used before. It felt like a knife to the gut.

“No. No. No. You’re not a liability. It was wrong of me to say that. God, Y/N, you could never be a liability. You’re an amazing agent. You never would have made it if you weren’t. I never should have said that. I was worried. You were with that unsub all by yourself for god knows how long and could have been seriously hurt. It was wrong. I never meant it,” He was rambling. He knew. Hotch could also feel the tears track down his face.

“You mean it?” Your voice comes out small and weak, you fight back your own tears.

Hotch nods rapidly. “Every word. When this happened. I was so scared Y/N. I can’t lose you.” His head falls to the mattress, trying to hide the tears.

You take a deep breath and decide to try your luck. Today has to be a day of defeating odds. “Aaron,” that causes his head to shoot up. It’s your first time calling him by his name. “Aaron, look, I gotta tell you. I can’t just make it through that and keep quiet about this anymore, who knows about the time. Oh boy, I just- ah- I like you Aaron. More than I probably should, given that you’re my boss but it’s true,” you refuse to meet his eyes, scared of what you’d see.

“Y/N,” he pauses, “Y/N look at me,” his voice is gentle, coaxing you to meet his eyes. He smiles despite the tears. “I like you too. I’ve tried to hide it for so long. I did, but I can’t do it anymore.”

You laugh and then grimace from the pain radiating in your chest. You brush off Hotch’s concern. “I’m fine. If we do this though, we have to do it right. Not just getting together because of the high of relief that we both probably feel. Okay?”

“Of course, we’ll take it slow.”

Despite everything, you’re happy right now. On painkillers, and definitely traumatized, but right now, in this moment, you’re happy. It only gets better when the rest of your team, the best friends you have, flood the room. Everyone is high on the relief of survival and all-in-all, it could only be better if you weren’t stuck in the hospital.

#aaron hotch x reader #hotch x reader #criminal minds #angst #happy ending

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quwarichi · 3 years

Text

heard from your mother au - The Ripple Effect

this is my early birthday gift for @schmuzz1 Ever heard of the ripple effect? you probably did but let's go over it once more; the ripple effect is like if you took a rock and threw it into a lake. Where the rock would hit and sink a ripple would be created, and from there it would only grow bigger and bigger, taking over more space, until the water settles again.

HFYM is the ripple effect ficsonified. The premise is simple, for those who watched the episode Despair in the last season of Supernatural. Castiel confesses his love to Dean, gets taken by the Empty. He wakes up in 2003 in a motel room, without his memories and only a memory saying “Don’t do this, Cas” which helps him figure out his name is Cas, and that he’s a hunter. Simple.

Then he meets Dean.

Now, we’ve all read various pre-series fics, haven’t we? It’s a token when giving fans a time-gap that we don’t know much about, they’d try to fill it as best as their imagination limitations will help them. So what is so special about HFYM?

In a word; Cas.

Meet this angelic being, who without his memories fully believes his humanity, and drives around the US not looking for answers, exactly, but just trying to help out to the best of his ability. By putting Cas in a setting pre-series, and letting the readers know that this Cas is their Castiel, the story already kicks into gear with a race to see when and how Cas will affect the story.

We didn’t know about angels until season 4. We didn’t THINK there was a better way to kill demons other than the Colt until season 3. Characters and themes that we would’ve taken years to get to know in the show are being used and constantly appear throughout what HFYM would call season 0 (or is that just me? make some noise). But Cas changes all of that just by being. For this next part, I recommend you stop reading this post if you haven’t read this fic, go read it in its entirety, and come back here after you’re done and had time to adjust.

We good? Good.

Pamela Barnes, the love of my life and a five-episode cameo in the Supernatural show. In HFYM, she acts as Cas’ best friend most of the time, teaching him the highs (hehe) and lows of having what they all figure is a really developed psychic ability. Bringing Pamela in chapter 16 was not only a brilliant use of character but a ripple effect. But I get ahead of myself. To understand why Pamela is suddenly there, we need to identify the biggest ripple of them all; Dean fucking Winchester.

Dean and Cas, from the start, develop a sort of kinship. It’s reminiscent of their first meeting in Lazarus Rising, where Castiel rescues Dean but also has its own charm. Here, Cas has no idea he’s an angel, and that’s why humanity is so strange to him. Dean views Cas as a weirdo that is not to be trusted, and later as a weirdo that he can kinda trust but make sure to watch his back around him.

In a way, they’re mirrors. Cas’ effortless way of creating acquaintances highlights just how isolated Dean is from people because of John’s influence. Whenever they’re together, Dean finds himself surrounded by others too, but apart it’s clear that Cas (to much of my, and probably his, surprise) is the social one.

Quoting the fic tags: “like maybe if he [Pre-series Dean Winchester] got a boyfriend he would have calmed down” is the very abstract explanation of the ripple effect. By being isolated for so long, without even Sam to keep him company, Dean couldn’t develop properly, resulting in the Dean we get in season 1. But ripples (courtesy of Cas) reach him and that’s where it all comes together. By meeting Cas pre-series Dean is given two things; one, no more isolation, time to grow sunshine. Two, a romantic subplot.

Now I don’t know how much you know about media - but romantic subplots are usually very character forwarding if done right. The best thing about the romantic subplot in HFYM is that it’s not immediate. Fuck no. It’s built on months of friendship and a bond forged in hunting, in putting each other’s lives in the other’s hands like it’s nothing. When they finally get together (I did the math, they get together when the story is like, halfway over. 52% to be exact) it makes sense because you watched them forge the bond and thus pushing their character development further. Romantic subplots are one of the best ways to push a character to their limits (looking at you, chapter 49) and then break those limits. So the biggest ripple was basically Cas and Dean thinking “huh, lemme smooch” and then doing it instead of eye fucking for twelve years.

But that’s not what I’m talking about, exactly. The biggest ripple effect that Cas did with Dean is that when season 1 starts (did I mentioned this was a canon rewrite? We love multitasking), when Dean goes to get Sam for Jericho and everything is put into hyperdrive, Dean is different. It affects how people around him act, especially Sam. The first season is very Sam-driven, but the main character will be changed by changing the “supporting” cast. It doesn’t help that Cas ripple effect number 2932#: Save Jess has definitely quelled the grief-rage thing that Sam has going on in canon since she’s not gone, and is actually around them for a while before leaving to work with Bobby and Jo. Sam immediately notices that something’s different about Dean, but he can’t put a finger on it. Requoting tags: “he would have calmed down”. Gone is the aimless rage and loss that makes him reckless and drinking too much. Gone are the women chasing days because he’s in a committed relationship. Heck Dean has a bit of self-esteem now, having bagged that (points at frog-shirt wearing Cas) and it affects the story in the way he and Sam interact.

Sam can feel that Dean’s hiding something from him (Cas) and it makes a rift between them because he doesn’t get who’s this hunter Dean hangs out with that is definitely replacing Sam in Dean’s eyes - the same guy who used weird powers to save Jess from a demon. Dean is still hurt over Sam leaving for Stanford and anxious about him finding out about Cas and John and everything. Basically, take season 1 brother dynamics and throw a live grenade in the mix. That grenade is Cas, btw.

Ripples, man.

Cas affects the story - he gets Dean to get back in touch with Bobby because he’s looking for an explanation for why he heals from mortal wounds like it’s nothing, why he doesn’t need sleep, and why he’s never hungry. Bobby connects Cas to Pamela, thinking Cas is an odd psychic, and Pamela becomes inherently important in the way that she helps Cas control his powers and provides his first real… non-platonic experience (off-screen, dw they’re friends) that later helps him discern what Dean is to him. Through Bobby, he also meets Ellen and Jo, in the Roadhouse. He goes on hunts alone, and finds a knife that helps him save a possessed girl named Taylor who is later a part of an actual episode (Hookman) and there’s recognition, she’s not just a standby person and that connects with Jess’ storyline, that connects with Sam’s storyline that connects with Dean’s storyline. By being him, Cas creates ripples everywhere he touches because he’s not supposed to be there.

The otherwise undisturbed surface is broken because Cas is there to break it and create ripples that connect with each other, all unknowingly, and the way it’s constructed is incredible.

I could add more about Dean’s bisexuality journey or realization, or how lack of trauma makes Cas a lot more narrative-free but it could all come crashing down on him if he remembers the past, or how Sam and Jess are so interesting like yes girl flesh out the revenge reason we see in three episodes, but this is getting long and I could always make new posts about this fic that I love so much.

Happy birthday, Jenn, you’re an incredible friend and writer and I’m so lucky to have found you in this mayhem of a fandom.

Go read heard from your mother (she don’t recognize you) on ao3, you magnificent people.

#happy birthday jenn #i couldn't think of what to get you so i wrote a fic meta about your fic that gives me life so thank you #i tried really hard to think about what drew me to the fic and ripples was the answer so here have some ripple effect drama #could i have written a fic? yes but fic meta is something that can be so personal sometimes #love finding themes in here that you probably didn't think about when you wrote this totally 50k fic #love you so much babe i hope you enjoyed this #heard from your mother au #hfym au #fic meta #destiel #spn #destiel fic

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rudypankwow · 4 years

Text

broken wrist | jj maybank

not my gif! (i’m not sure who it was posted by)

you break your wrist and jj freaks out (and also takes care of you)

requested: kinda lol

warnings: none! fluff

word count: 1.3k

masterlist

a/n: i usually don’t go crazy posting like every conversation but there was just so much cute stuff i couldn’t help it. as always this is not proofread. also i have no reason for this being all lowercase that’s just what i felt like.

kie, sarah, and yourself always made it a point to go out of your way to have a girl's night at least once a month. you were around boys all the time, and it was nice to get that time away. kie would steal you guys some beers (or vodka or wine, if that was the vibe), you guys would order takeout, and stay up all late chatting and doing whatever came to mind.

on this particular night, you were at kie’s. it was still pretty early, you’d only had about one beer. you were standing up to get another, but the conversation the three of you were having completely distracted you, and you tripped over a pair of shoes on the ground. you put your arm out as you fell, to break your fall, but heard an unpleasant noise followed by pain in your right wrist as you hit the ground.

“oh, no. are you okay?” kie asks immediately, walking over and squatting in front of you.

“i’m okay,” you say. “just i think my wrist might be broken.” you looked down at the wrist in question. it didn’t look horrible out of place, but the pain was intense, shooting up your arm.

“holy shit,” sarah says. “okay, i’m grabbing my keys and we're going to the emergency room.” she jumps up from her spot on the floor, grabbing all the stuff you guys might need.

kie reaches down to help you stand. “we’ll have to call jj in the car,” she says.

your stomach drops. “do we have to?” you joke. jj was protective, to say the least. you knew he’d be panicked and rush to find you at the hospital, even if it was something as silly as a broken wrist.

kie laughs, grabbing your phone off the ground and tucking it into your back pocket. “yes, you absolutely have to,” she says. “and if you don’t, i will.”

you sigh and let her lead you to the car. sarah’s going off the wall, asking you if you need anything and looking up if there’s anything they should do muttering about how “if she had just put the shoes away.” she grabs you an ice pack on the way out, and you rest it on your wrist.

if you’re being honest, you’re in a lot of pain. you just know getting yourself worked up isn’t going to help that, so you try to stay calm. you take your phone out of your back pocket, careful the keep the ice on your other wrist. you dial jj’s number and prepare for the worst.

“hey, babe, how’s it going?” jj says on the other side. “how’s girl’s night?”

“don’t freak out,” you say. “but i’m on my way to the hospital.”

naturally, he freaks out. “what?” he yells. “what do you mean you’re on the way to the hospital?” you hear him moving around, you assume rushing to get his shoes on. you’re pretty sure he’s at john b’s so he has access to the van. “what the hell happened?”

“i just tripped and fell and hurt my wrist,” you tell him, trying to keep your voice calm. “really, jj, i’m okay. it’s just a broken wrist.”

he mumbles something to john b about you being hurt and that he’s going to take the van to meet you at the emergency room. “i’m gonna meet you guys there, okay?” he says.

you don’t even try to convince him not to, because you know anything you say will be dismissed. so instead you just say, “okay, be careful driving.”

“i will, promise,” he says. “i love you.” and then the line goes dead.

the ride to the emergency room isn’t long, and you see jj sitting on a bench outside the door, despite it being a longer drive from john b’s house than kie’s. he jumps up when he sees you walking towards the door. he grabs your face in both his hands, kissing your forehead. “are you okay?” he asks. “are you in a lot of pain.” the worry is evident in his face.

“j, seriously, i’m okay,” you tell him. “it hurts but i’ve broken bones before. it’s no big deal.” you choose to not comment on his arriving before you, knowing he in no way drove safe.

he sighs in relief, letting his hand rest on the small of your back as he leads you in. he tells sarah and kie that they could go home if they want. they look at you, making sure it’s okay. you nod.

“okay, but just because i can see it’s already crowded in there,” kie says. “text us and keep us updated, okay?” she says, giving you a side hug, careful of your wrist. you promise to keep them in the loop, and they head back to the car.

jj deals with talking to the nurse at the front desk, telling you to sit down. the nurse comes over and hands you a new ice pack, and tells you it’ll be a few minutes before a doctor can see you and take x-rays.

jj sits down next to you. you can tell he’s still worried, but instead of letting you know he says, “hey, wanna watch some parks and rec on netflix?” you laugh and pull out your phone from your back pocket, handing it to him. he grabs headphones that you didn’t know he had and plugs them in, opening netflix on your phone and playing the show. he tucks some hair behind your ear and places one headphone into your ear, the other in his own. you rest your head on his shoulder, the pain in your wrist finally starting to catch up with you.

you only get through one episode before the doctor calls you in. jj moves the chair next to the bed, smoothing his hand over your arm. it’s more for himself than you.

after a few x-rays, the doctor determines that your wrist is definitely broken. he wraps your forearm in a cast and tells you to check in a few weeks.

jj leads you back to the van, opening the passenger side door for you and helping you in. you laugh and thank him, reminding him that it’s just a broken wrist and you can step in the car on your own.

“you can,” he says. “but you’re my girl and i’m gonna help you anyway.” he leans his head in and kisses your cheek and you smile.

he runs around to the driver's side and gets him himself, starting the car. “you could call kie,” he says to you. “i think she texted me that they were going to john b’s but i didn’t really check.”

“oh, shit,” you say. “i did tell her i would text her.” you pull out your phone again, dialing her number and calling her. you tell her the deal, that it’s broken and you’re in a cast, and she tells you that everyone’s at john b’s waiting for you. “that’s so sweet kie,” you say. “it’s almost two am you guys did not have to wait for me.”

“yeah, but we did,” she says. “so hurry up so i can squeeze you,” she says.

you laugh. “we’re on our way.”

you hang up and fall into a comfortable silence, except for the radio. jj’s hand is resting on your knee, his thumb rubbing circles on your skin.

“thanks for taking care of me,” you say, grabbing his hand in yours and bring it to our mouth, placing a kiss on his wrist.

“i’ll always take care of you,” he says. your hands stay connected, dropping back to your knee.

you pull up to john b’s a few minutes later. despite your protests, jj comes and opens the passenger side door for you, this time helping you out of the car.

kie didn’t lie, the whole crew was sitting in the living room, waiting for you to come. kie immediately wrapped you in a hug, the rest of your friends doing the same.

like you’d said, you were fine. but jj and all your friends being there to help you definitely helped.

#jj maybank x reader #writing #mine #jj #jj maybank #jj maybank blurb #jj maybank fluff #kie carrera #jj obx #jj maybank obx #kie obx #john b routledge #sarah cameron #pope heyward #rudy pankow #madison bailey #madelyn cline #chase stokes #jonathan daviss

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fallout4reactsblog · 3 years

Note

companions react to news of the institute christmas party courser revolution and the fact that the institute is now apparently populated entirely by festive rogue coursers in elf costumes and also what ramifications this has on the politics of the commonwealth as a whole. father's drowned corpse, still in his silly santa hat, is now impaled on the antlers of the fake reindeer on the sleigh prop by the institute's metaphorical front door as a warning and a symbol of their casting off chains.

Cait: “You have to at least give them some points for creativity.”

Cait pulls a face, but says, “I guess.”

“Come on, Cait. You could at least admit it’s a little funny. I’d have paid good money to be a fly on the wall that day.”

“It’s fucked up, is what it is. How are you so calm?”

“How are you so stressed?” They lean back in their chair, folding their arms contentedly. “They basically did our job for us. No more Institute.”

She sighs. “You’re nuts.”

“Maybe. I guess all we can do is wait and see what happens, huh? Maybe they’ll retreat to their underground hidey-hole and leave the Commonwealth alone.”

“Not countin’ on it.”

“You can be as pessimistic as you like. The way I see it, this is a good thing both ways. Either the Institute collapses without strict management- which would be good- the coursers decide they don’t believe in what the Institute was doing before and stop- also good- or we go in there and only have to kill half of what was there. A win-win-win situation.”

She shakes her head. “Whatever you say. I’m not buyin’ it.”

Curie: “The absurdity of the situation is certainly not lost on me, Madam/Monsieur, but surely there are still, ah, consequences for this?”

“Oh, sure, yeah, definitely. I mean, they’ve basically got my son on a pike on the CIT lawn. But, you know, don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things, as the old saying goes.”

“I... do not think this is a ‘petty thing’ anymore.”

They wave a hand dismissively. “We’ll wait for the dust to settle, then go check it out. Until then, I’m not jumping to any conclusions.”

“I am merely saying that, given the evidence, this seems quite disastrous, especially in terms of political instability.”

“Ah, who cares about politics? Unless they or someone else starts a war, it’ll be fine. Let ‘em live a little. Everybody’s gotta have a rebellious teenager phase at some point.”

Curie wasn’t sure this counted as being a rebellious teen, but if that was what brought sole comfort, she would let them have it.

Danse: Listening Post Bravo is quiet. That’s how he likes it, and how it’s going to stay.

Courser uprising. Of course, it was a courser uprising. What else could it have been? Those things are killing machines; death is everything they were designed for, and now they’ve taken the reigns and can do as they see fit across the Commonwealth with no masters to keep them in check.

He pulls himself a little tighter into his corner. God, what a mess. This is over. They needed to go back to DC and forget they had ever heard of the Institute. Tactical retreat. If Arthur wasn’t so far on his warpath, he might have even suggested it, but he was six feet deep in his “now’s the time to strike” speech with no sign of stopping to think about the hole he was digging.

Well, Arthur could do what he wanted. Danse has had enough of this, enough of the goddamn Commonwealth, enough of the synths, enough of it all. This was his home, now, and he was going to sit here and plant potatoes and forget anything that happened outside. Especially the fact that coursers even existed and could, presumably, come knocking on his door at any moment.

He was going to make an effort to forget that first.

Deacon: He lets out a long, low, whistle, then turns to Dez. “We should’ve thought of that one first, Boss. It’s genius.”

“It’s madness.” Desdemona pinches the bridge of her nose. “But I suppose it works in our favor, at least for now. There should be chaos in the Institute right about now.”

“Other synths probably saw the carnage.” Glory pipes up. “They might be getting some similar ideas. This could be our moment.”

“Who would’ve predicted this, though?” Deacon grins. “It’s so out there that I can’t even be surprised that it happened. I mean, tell me “Holiday Office Party Leads to Destruction of Commonwealth Boogeyman” doesn’t sound like a headline you’d see in the Publick these days. It’s the perfect brand of Commonwealth crazy.”

“The Brotherhood is going to want to get on this,” Carrington says, shooting a glare Deacon’s direction. “We need to act before they can get there.”

“I’ve reached out to our man on the inside,” Deacon replies, glaring back. “But until we hear back, we might as well enjoy the show.”

Dez shakes her head. “I suppose so.”

Gage: “Honestly? Can’t blame ‘em. That holiday party sounds like an actual nightmare. I’d kill someone if they stuck elf ears on me, too.”

“Damn. There go my plans for next Christmas.”

Sole’s tone is dry enough he can’t tell if they’re joking. “I’m serious, Overboss. You even look at me with a costume-”

“I value my life, thanks.”

“Just providin’ fair warning. I don’t think any of the others would take kindly to it, either.”

They shake their head. “Mason wouldn’t mind. He practically dresses up in a costume every day.”

“Are you shitting me? He’d be the one that hated it the most.”

“Absolutely not. Mags would hate it the most.”

He thinks about it a moment, then replies, “Fair point, but what about Nisha?”

Sole sucks in a tense breath. “Oh, that’d be a mess. A bloody, ugly mess. Moral of the story: no holiday parties.”

“Good advice.”

Hancock: “I mean, good for them?” He stares at the ceiling, still a little baffled. “I guess?”

“But what does this mean, John?” Fahrenheit lights up a cigarette across from him.

“Well, we’ll be fine. I have that on good authority. Everybody else...” He makes a face.

“Exactly. No one knows.”

“No one even knew this was an option.” Smoke hisses between his teeth. “I mean, it’s fitting that they’d go up in smoke because of their own arrogance, but still.”

“People are losing it.”

He snorts. “Think of the Brotherhood. They must be havin’ a real heyday over there. But us? We’ll be fine. That’s what matters, right?”

“That’s what matters.”

MacCready: “I honestly don’t know what to say.”

Sole shrugs. “Then don’t say anything. I’m still not sure how I feel about it myself.”

“This is a good thing, right?” He looks to them for some explanation. “Right?”

“It’s too early to say, yet.”

“’Too early to say’? It’s a courser uprising for crying out loud. Forget what I said. This is bad.”

“Could turn out to be good, though.”

“Okay, it could, but...” he shakes his head. “What the heck. You’re right. We’ll see.”

Still, it’s a messed-up way to go. The only thing worse than being killed by a courser, he imagines, is being killed by a courser dressed up as a holiday elf.

Nick: He blinks slowly, purses his lips, then carefully folds his newspaper and puts it to the side.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I know. Crazy, huh?” Sole pops the cap off a Nuka-Cola and takes a seat on his desk. “All it took was a Christmas party.”

“I gotta say, this wasn’t among the ways I thought the Institute would go. Up in a firey ball, sure, but at the hands of killing machines dressed as Santa’s elves?”

“That’s what makes it so great! No one saw this coming, the Institute least of all, I assume. Can you imagine the mess that must be happening at Boston Airport right now? The Brotherhood is shitting their pants as we speak.”

He just shakes his head. “We can close that case, I guess. I’m not sure if I should be happy for them or horrified at the circumstances. Still, we should be careful; it’ll be hard to know what a change in leadership means for us.”

“Sure, sure.”

“I’ll give ‘em credit for creativity, though.”

Piper: This is the best thing to happen all year.

For once, papers are flying off the shelves. She’s selling copies right off the press, selling them before they’re even printed. She’s on backorder for the story of the festive courser rebellion, which she’d heard all the details about from a Diamond City guard wearing suspiciously Deacon-like sunglasses. But forget him.

People have traveled to get here and get their hands on the Publick. There’s someone from Bunker Hill sitting next to someone from Cambridge next to someone who said they came from the Glowing Sea, of all places. The caps she’s making is more than she could have ever imagined, and she’s glad she faced sleep deprivation to make this one a Publick Occurrences exclusive. It’s been well worth it so far. Nat doesn’t even have to stand on the street to hawk the paper, people are coming right up to her door and knocking, no joke.

She knew the war would be profitable, but it’s made even better by the way it all went down. A holiday party gone wrong is the perfect headline, and if she could find a courser, she’d kiss them for their genius. Because this is the best thing to happen to her since she not-so-subtly implied McDonough was a synth.

Bless the coursers of the Institute for their impeccable sense of style.

Preston: “I have to say, I didn’t expect to be crossing ‘take care of the Institute’ off of my to-do list so quickly.”

Sole cocks their head to the side. “I mean, it’s not gone yet. Just... under new management.”

“New management, new threat in my opinion. You can’t really believe everything is going to stay the same after this. The Institute is going to change in at least a couple of ways.”

“Fair.” They lean up against the workbench. “Kinda crazy how it all went down, though.”

He chuckles. “I’d call that an understatement, General. No one could’ve seen this one coming. Trigger-happy Brotherhood goes on the warpath? I thought we might see that one, but blowing up from the inside?” He shakes his head. “That’s a new one.”

“They kinda had it coming, though. Who thought making killing machines play Barbie was a good idea?”

“Someone who came to regret it, no doubt.”

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steve0discusses · 3 years

Text

S5 Ep6: Joey Wheeler is on Fire, Yet Again

Came down with a little sickness-not the biggie, just a little sly guy. But I took some meds, I’m a little floaty, I’ve only been listening to baroque music all morning for some reason? And I hate baroque music usually? But I’ll leave it to bro to tell me if this is fluid enough.

Just so you know, these caps were kind of a hot mess for a while and some of them read like that Garfield in of hot eat the food comic until...today. So pls don’t judge me, Judge my damn DMV where no one was following Covid regulations because I’m pretty sure that’s where I got this damn cold.

We start off with Roland getting more attention than he ever has in his entire life. Like honestly, I don’t know what Roland’s job really is...but he’s got a very diverse set of very useless skills. One of which, is knowing how to announce sports games that aren’t really a sport, while those games he’s announcing slowly fall into chaos.

Anyway, Roland’s taking so long cherishing his sweet time before everything goes to hell, that he’s boring Joey, who’s kinda turned into a ball of stress in the waiting room.

A lot of this episode is us watching them watching Joey having a break down moment by moment, TBH.

(read more under the cut)

Yugi telling Joey to study his cards and straight up--what?

Like at this point they know what’s on the cards, right? Like there comes a point where even Yugioh cards have a finite amount of words and I’m just going to assume that like...Joey probably knows them all in his own deck, right?

(bro note: they have no limit on what they will put on a card)

Then again, maybe Yugi doesn’t know what “study” means?

Also, appreciate how some artist crosshatched the hell on Joey’s nose there and I zoomed out and ruined it.

Now for some reason every duelist is hanging out in the duel lodge, including our current arch-villain guy who’s brought a book. I want to know what book this guy even reads so no one could suspect he’s actually a hacker who uses computers. He’s reading romance, right? And I don’t think he’d even be into Twilight, I think he’s straight up into hard core Mom romance like a lame ass Nicholas Sparks over there reading “Dear John” for the millionth time because he is completely un-phased by anything else happening in this room.

Joey, our hero, just out there being an asshole for no reason.

After Tea is pushed into a locker or something screaming about her need for female friends (which she screamed in earshot of Rebecca again, who I figured was on friends terms with her after last episode...but I guess not) Leon hops up to remind us that we should be caring about the fact that his character exists.

And like, I love Leon’s hair color--that’s a good choice, and legit that is the color I tried to dye my hair at the beginning of the epidemic (it didn’t work PS, my hair cannot take dye for the life of it) but also like...he just kinda feels like a weak Rebecca as far as characters go. He’s young, he’s good at cards...I think he goes to a private school? That’s all I can think of about Leon.

He mostly just reminds us that the big prize of this tourney is to duel Yugi, who anyone could have dueled at any point even without the tournament.

On the way out of the...duel room? lounge? Area? Joey decides to like...make peace with Zigfried, and I gotta tell you, I kinda have to side with Zigfried, because Joey spent the last ten minutes being a freak in the dressing room/lounge/bathroom and at one point looked like he was going to hold the entire locker room in a stranglehold.

I would also want some space from Joey Wheeler, is what I’m saying.

After insulting Joey’s style (which honestly, Joey...has a style? He pops his collar, that’s his entire style.) Zigfried assures us that Joey’s gonna lose and like...

...probably, right? Just looking at the plausible direction this season will go.

Anyway, Joey is such a mess (which is the theme of the episode, that Joey needs to learn to chill in order to win at card games) that Rebecca is like “I understand if all of you leave me to go help our poor baby Joey.” And no one felt bad for her.

Mokuba comes over to tell everyone all of the Kaiba family secrets because Mokuba has no filter.

Seto has devoted himself to staring at a computer screen for the rest of this episode. I guess he’ll put their names into Google, realize that social media hasn’t been invented yet, and then just lie his head down on the desk and take a power nap until the tournament is over. Much like I did after taking Dayquil this afternoon.

I like how Seto dressed for success and then locked himself in the server room for most of this arc so far. Maybe he’s just...really tired, I dunno. I don’t really blame the guy, he’s had a hard time.

And then Yugi was like “DAMN IT MOKUBA, JUST ONCE CAN YOU NOT INVITE THE ILLUMINATI???”

And we had a weird scene where Yugi just started talking to the ghost and it was while he was talking to everyone else, and the show didn’t treat it like that’s a weird thing to do...but it was a weird thing to do.

This show does that sometimes, where I guess they imply that Yugi’s Pharaoh conversations are split second conversations but...they’re not, right?

Also this chick ain’t gone yet, and Mokuba is just failing at his entire job for not zeroing in on vibes coming off this chick like stinky cheeseman.

So listen.

Did the Kaibas make like 3 types of Blue Eyes Caboose to one up Noah? Because Noah made one choo choo dragon, and then Mokuba and Seto were like “how dare” and then made sure that everyone ride every single version of the blue eyes caboose just to see how proud of them they were.

How many months of troubleshooting was the train? Like how long in development did Seto and Mokuba spend on these? A lot right? Like most of the time?

I did not check the subs to see if Roland said Jumping or Champion but I like to believe that Roland thought it was a cool new name he gave him.

Then these guys all showed up.

Hey so...can we talk seating arrangements?

Tea decided not to sit next to Yugi after complaining about not spending time with him for like how many episodes? Or was it too awkward to sit on top of what was probably Pharaoh?

Or did Mokuba go like “please, Tea, I cannot sit next to the others because I’m pretty sure one is a mole that is about to go cray” and was Tea like “Good, I need female friends, these ones are driving me crazy!” and then was Mokuba like peering desperately over the edge of his self made dragon train prison realizing he has to listen to Tea complain about boys for the rest of his ride across molten lava?

Headcanons abound about this weird seating arrangement that the animators drew for the reasons they did...but reasons I cannot fully understand. That and the Dayquil is making me overfixate on random stuff.

And also, Tea is kind of the Kaiba’s security’s understudy. Just there to always protect Mokuba with her ass because she’s the strongest woman alive.

PS I missed the tumblr wars because at the time I was trying to like...run a proper business on blogger. When Blogger died and I jumped over here it was like a weird ruin where everyone was like “tumblr is the most toxic place alive” and...I’ve had a really nice time here, actually. Completely missed that civil war period and I have no regrets.

Now I was there for the Petz wars (warz, I guess) where people were very militant about Petz abuse (abuze?) where apparently people were using the spray bottle on their catz too much and people were very, very upset about it to the point that they were like campaigning about it on their angelfire websites with the most bizarre grassroots campaigns that I still recall, to this day because they were like...well they looked like this:

PLAPA. Not only am I 100% positive that only this one guy ever called this movement PLAPA, but I’m 100% positive that not only are Catz not real people, but also this wasn’t actually happening and we never had any proof that it was. Either way, if people knew or suspected that you hadn’t deleted the spray bottle from your game (which at the time I had no idea how to do because I was a wee child) they would basically assume you were on a one way road to being a mass murderer in real life.

In real life we were 7 years old so like...thanks?

But that’s the closest I got to toxicity and at the time I was too young to make an email account and actually converse with these people. I was just there to download their Petz hexes, and I already made a post about how wonderful and incredible Petz Hexing was.

And y’all, I heard, just now after a little deep dive into the Petz Abuse debacle (which yes, is on the wiki), that apparently, like gardening, Petz Hexing came back in a big way during the epidemic--and I have found an active Petz forum in this the year 2021. The only problem is that I no longer remember how to use old timey forums...and I think I’m locked out of seeing most of these threads (and like this forum is so old I think I have to send them a letter in the physical mail to apply). But, I’m pretty sure they’re hosting a picture contest for who’s dogz poses the best. And I’m pretty sure someone created a hexxed Pickle Rick. Or it’s a photoshop that was made to look like a hexxed Pickle Rick.

Dammit why did it have to be Pickle Rick? That’s not worth re-installing Petz and getting it to run on Windows 10...

Guys is this the Dayquil? Is this really happening? I feel like I’m losing my mind for so many reasons...

Anyway, speaking about useless hexing it’s about time that our villain did something that was actually dangerous, so Zigfried decided to install a new virus that does more than turn off the lights. (it still turns off lights)

the Spreadsheet Virus!

Confounded by the spreadsheet software, it...um...it does this:

Straight up how does Excel make a volcano erupt? Is that why I have to pay for Microsoft office now?

All this because Joey made fun of Zigfried’s naturally pink hair? Which is the most normal hair on this series outside of like...Tristan?

Hey guys...Joey’s fine, right? Like how many times has Joey been on fire? And once in an iron cage next to like...a Fire Golem?

Joey’s fine.

MAN I miss Fire Golem. He had a good mug.

And then we just kinda watch chaos go across the park, chaos that includes: Too many ghosts in the haunted mansion (which honestly--you’ll get your money’s worth, sounds great!), the Ferris wheel goes kinda fast and thus might accidentally be fun, the lights turn off at some concert stage that only had 2 people on it (so it might just be motion detector lights and not even a virus), and um...literal fire and magma are going to set Joey Wheeler on fire.

Just...one of these events does not seem like the others. In fact most of these things sound like good improvements to the park and they should just hire Zigfried at this point.

Roland puts down his microphone and jogs across the stage, about a mile through the audience bleachers, and into the staff lounge, to go and bother Seto Kaiba, who is in a room that has a hi-def classical painting copy-pasted on the wall and I can’t look away from it.

I almost did a Google search on this painting but then thought better about it. There’s like...a billion classical paintings that look exactly like this, and they wouldn’t use like a Monet, they would have to do something that’s harder to catch to avoid copyright issues (because yes, even old ass paintings have copyright issues, but no one tell NFT’s which are going to be so freakin screwed and was such a bad idea, that I can’t even start).

Anyway, I have no idea who it is and it is legitimately driving me up a wall, but I’m on too much meds to do the effort of putting it in a reverse google image search.

Plus, a reverse google image search would only pull up Seto Kaiba.

So Kaiba takes us on a little flashback to his weird ass past, a weird ass past that just...doesn’t follow any of the established timelines, but I assume was shortly after adoption but before Seto got into a phase where he wore his school outfit everywhere and tried to shove his MMO off onto his Dad as a business model.

Seto is like 8 for some reason. I don’t know why, they kinda drew him younger this season anyway, like maybe they got a lot of fan mail and realized “Hey I think we made the 16 yo boy too sexy?” And they just toned Seto the hell down. That, and it’s a different animation team, and maybe they looked at Seto’s character design and were like “we don’t get paid enough to draw this well.” So...since Seto actually looks like a teen again, I guess his 12 year old self has to look like he’s in Elementary school.

Also, I only recognized this, because at some point in S3 as I was roasting Noah Kaiba’s weird fashion:

I remember distinctly roasting that little bow tie. I don’t remember when I wrote it, I think there was a version of this outfit that was in color...but I don’t remember where.

Anyway, it’s not the same jacket...but man that’s kind of awkward, ya? Like the maid who dressed Mokuba deffo got fired?

He um.

Turned the lights off a little bit.

Guys this villain is like...

...why does he think lights are scary? Like look at little Seto here. The boy is already bored. Seto duels on the edges of cliffs...he doesn’t care about the freakin dark.

We had a guy who killed everyone on the planet last season, and this season we have a little fashion gremlin standing in the corner and flicking the light switch going “wooooo you never catch me!” and it’s like...

...I’m starting to think this guy isn’t a witch.

Like we’re at Episode 6, there’s still time for this guy to be a witch...but I really am starting to think this guy is just...straight up not a witch. It’s everything Seto wanted, a rival who isn’t a freakin magic person...and sets Joey only fake on fire instead literally on fire like last time...

and Seto is just completely unhinged by it.

Anyway, I’m off to go drink a bowl of soup and pass out. If you’re new here, this is a link to read these in chrono order.

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

#yugioh #yu gi oh #ygo #S5 #Ep6 #Yugi Muto #Seto Kaiba #Joey Wheeler #Tea Gardner #Tristan Taylor #Mokuba Kaiba #zigfried von schroeder #rebecca hawkins #I talked about catz again #leon #but not the kings of leon guy #I mean he could be

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collecting-stories · 4 years

Text

The Crush - ep. 04 - JJ Maybank

Summary: It turns out it wasn’t on accident Rafe showed up to the party. Some secrets are revealed amongst the pogues.

A/N: I don’t know if you’ll have seen this twist coming...

The S’week Masterlist | Outer Banks Masterlist

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

“It’s a known fact.” JJ huffed, crossing his arms behind his head as he looked up at you. He was laying in your bed, much like the night before only this time he was beneath the covers, no clothing on, and you were sitting beside him, facing the head of the bed with your legs crossed, your right thigh pressed against his side. 

You were naked too aside from his cut-off, navy blue shirt. The one he’d been wearing on the beach when you found him. 

“It’s a known fact that you’re a brat.” You replied, pressing your lips together as you tried to fight off a smile. “This cannot be the worst senior week ever.” 

“You’re right, once I hooked up with this girl-“

“Oh my god!” You laughed, shoving him away from you though he didn’t budge. Instead he grabbed your wrist and held your hand in his. 

“Let me finish the story!”

“Okay, okay, your hooked up with this girl.” 

“Yeah, it was her senior week and John B and I went to this party. Anyway, we hooked up right, and all the sudden her boyfriend burst through the door and just starts pounding on me. If it wasn’t for JB, I would be dead right now.” 

“I would’ve had sex with a ghost?” You teased.  “Very Patrick Swayze.” 

JJ gave you an exaggerated frown and shook his head like he had no idea what you were talking about. You grinned, leaning down and kissing the bridge of his nose and then his lips.

“It’s a movie? Ghost...he dies and then comes back to haunt his girlfriend. There’s a freaky scene where she makes pottery...we’ll watch the movie.” You decided. 

“Eh not my kinda movie.” 

“It’s good for a laugh.” 

After you’d taken a turn skinny dipping in the ocean the both of you had haphazardly thrown on clothing and walked back to the house, sneaking upstairs with the bag of alcohol to continue the party together in your room. 

You’d had every intention of polishing off at least the pinnacle of vodka but the bag sat untouched where you’d dropped it at the door when JJ had grabbed your hand and led you to the bed. 

JJ shifted in bed and scrunched his nose up, “I need a shower, I’ve got sand like up my ass or something.” 

“Oh wow, there’s a turn-on.” You teased as he flung the blankets back and stood up, completely naked, to look for sand. “Oh my god,” you leaned forward, pressing your forehead into the pillow, “you really are having the worst senior week ever.” 

“Tell me about it.” He huffed, making his way into the bathroom to start the water for the shower. 

“Your back looks good by the way. You can probably go to the beach today, if you let me put sunscreen on you.” You called, getting up and walking over to lean against the open bathroom door. JJ was standing in front of the full length mirror, still trying to determine if he had sand anywhere. 

“On one condition-“

“Is it, that I shower with you?” You asked. 

“See, great minds and all that.” 

“No, I’ve just spent more than ten minutes with you so I know what you’re like.” 

“Either way, you agreed to shower sex and there are no take backs.” He announced, before looking over at you and adding, “I mean obviously if you changed your mind-“ 

“I got it.” You laughed, “now get your sandy butt in the shower.” 

“I told you, didn’t I tell you!” JJ practically shouted as you pushed him into the shower. You pulled off his shirt, tossing it by the door and climbing into the shower after him. 

JJ pulled you under the spray of warm water, kissing you and trying to back you up to the wall. You pulled away, holding his face in your hands as if that would ward him off.

“Shower.” You insisted, “I promised Kie last night that we would actually do the beach with them this time.”

“But-”

“No.” You shook your head, moving your hands to shake his in time with yours, “no sex. Just shower.”

“I get shower sex post beach then.”

“You got shower sex post beach last night! JJ!” You laughed and squealed when he surged forward, burying his face in your neck and sucking on the skin there. “Stop!”

“Never!” He teased fingers dancing along your sides and making you squirm.

“Okay, okay. Post beach shower sex.”

“Do you feel like Sarah is being weird?” Kiara asked as you walked to the beach, Pope and JJ already a few feet ahead of you. “I mean she practically begged us to come down here and she’s been avoiding us all week. I thought it was John B too but he told me last night that she’s been weird.” 

“Yeah; somethings off.” You replied. “She’s been weird with me too.” 

You had been friends with Sarah since you were kids and you were used to her push and pull behavior when it came to friends but this was something entirely different. She acted like she wasn’t even on the same vacation with the four of you and was dominating all of John B’s time and attention. You’d barely said five words to him in the time he’d been down here. 

“Hey, try to keep up,” Pope called, leaning against the umbrella stake as he and JJ waited for you and Kiara to catch up. 

“Sorry,” she apologized as the two of you picked up the pace. You pulled your sandals off and walked barefoot the rest of the way to JJ, who was grinning smugly as he watched you. You were still wearing his pelican marina cut-off, using it as a cover up for your bathing suit. Pope had grilled him about it on the walk up while you and Kiara talked about Sarah. 

“Dude, I literally asked her yesterday if anything was going on with you and she said no and now she shows up in your shirt? Not to mention where the hell did you disappear to last night?” Pope had whisper-shouted, a specialty of the Heyward's. 

“A lot can happen in 24 hours?” JJ had asked, shrugging his shoulders. He had glanced back at you, laughing at something Kiara said, looking totally happy, and he was pretty sure he knew exactly how John B felt the one time he got drunk and tried to explain his feelings for Sarah. 

When you had looked over at him you stuck your tongue out and then smiled and he was slightly derailed off his conversation, missing the end of what Pope was saying. 

“...get involved.” 

“What?”

“I said, don’t forget she’s Rafe’s ex...do you really think it’s a good idea to get involved?” Pope had asked, genuinely concerned for his friend. The last thing he wanted was JJ putting himself out there only to be let down. 

“That’s over.” JJ replied, tone filled with so much certainty that Pope didn’t question it further. 

You hadn’t told JJ everything about Rafe but he’d seen the way Rafe had talked to you last night and, though everyone was always ready to write off JJ as being oblivious, he could pick up on body language better than most. It was a necessary skill when he lived with his father and he hadn’t missed the way Topper put himself between you and Rafe. He might’ve still gone after Pope but he had been protecting you. JJ’d only been a jerk about it when you came up to him at the beach because he was pissed to be the last person to find out that you had dated Rafe and he was a little worried that Sarah had been telling the truth when she told Kiara you were going to get back with him. 

“Okay, I’m not walking another second, my legs are killing me.” You announced when you finally reached JJ and Pope. 

“Well I’m not putting the umbrella down here, this is a terrible spot!” Pope complained. The sand was still soft and a little too dry for his liking. He wanted to go further down the beach, closer to the water.

“Fine.” 

Kiara laughed as she walked passed you, “you’ll make it, don’t worry.”

“Hey how much do you want to carry me down there?” You asked, eying JJ. He’d stayed put while Kiara and Pope walked down the beach.

“Barely at all.”

“Please, I’ll buy lunch.” You pleaded, pouting at him. 

JJ pressed his lips together and furrowed his eyebrows as he pretended to be deep in thought, “lunch and whatever I want on the boardwalk.” 

“Okay.” You nodded your head and held out your hand, “deal.” JJ spit into his hand and shook yours, laughing when you pulled away immediately. “Oh my god, ew!” 

“You didn’t complain about my spit last night.” 

You pretended to gag at his words, only sending him into another laughing fit as he turned around to let you piggy back down the beach. You wrapped your arms around his shoulders and he hoisted you up. You kissed just below his ear in thanks. JJ kept his hands on your thighs as he walked down to where Kiara and Pope had set up the umbrella and blankets. When he got over them, he let go of your legs in an attempt the drop you but you held on tighter in shock as your legs fell, pulling both of you down on the blanket. 

“Good job JJ.” Kiara teased, pushing at him until he rolled off of you. 

“She didn’t let go!” 

“So you could drop me?” You asked, sitting up and moving closer to Pope, “no thank you!”

“Hey, give me your phones, I’ll put them in my bag.” Pope held up his black jansport, shaking it for emphasis. 

Kiara handed hers over and you fished JJ’s out of your bag, digging for your own with no luck. “Mine’s not in here.” 

“Did you leave it plugged in?” Kiara asked, leaning over to look in the bag too. 

“Maybe.” You shrugged, “I know I had when we went back to the house.” 

“Probably in the bathroom or something.” JJ said, “now, more important...sunscreen me. I think I’m already burning.” He held the sunscreen bottle out to you and you rolled your eyes, moving over to sit behind him.

He pulled his shirt over his head and settled in front of you, letting you rub sunscreen into his back. You kissed the back of his neck before smoothing some across there too, pushing some of his hair away so it wouldn’t get oily. Kiara and Pope headed down for the water but you stayed behind with JJ.

“Not going in yet?”

“I’m gonna work on my tan.” He replied, laying down on the blanket and putting his sunglasses on.

You pulled your coverup off and JJ glanced over at you. “You saw me in my bathing suit this morning before we left.”

“I forgot how good you looked on the way here.” He replied, smiling at you.

You rolled your eyes at him and tossed his shirt over his head. When he pulled it away and pouted you could only laugh, leaning over and kissing him.

“I don’t know if this is the best place to have this conversation but...I don’t wanna chicken out or anything and I just wanted to reiterate that I don’t want this to be like, a casual, here for s’week thing.” You explained, pulling your knees up to your chest. “I also wanted to ask if you wanted to stay with me an extra week? Everyone could stay too, it doesn’t have to just be us-”

“It could just be us.” JJ replied, “I’d be down.”

“Even after your terrible week here?”

“I guess it hasn’t been so bad.” He admitted. “And like I said, it’s not casual. I swear.”

“Good, because Pope told me about your s’week plans.”

“No, come on!” He groaned, standing up and dropping his sunglasses on the blanket.

“What are you doing?” You laughed, standing up and following him down to the beach. He ran into the water, jumping in and swimming over to Pope. Kiara shouted when he splashed her by accident, jumping on Pope’s back and sending them both down into the water.

“Dude!” Pope laughed, surfacing and trying to dunk JJ underwater at the same time.

“He knows I know about his ‘JJ does s’week’ plan.” You said, laughing at the two of them wrestling in the water with each other.

“I can’t believe you told him.”

“What plans?” Kiara asked, looking between the boys and you.

“JJ was gonna have sex with a bunch of girls this week.” You explained, keeping your voice low as a woman and her two kids waded passed.

“Oh my god! JJ!”

“What? I only had sex with one!” He practically shouted. The woman whipped around, looking startled by the four of you and JJ bit his lip to stop from laughing at her expression as Pope apologized for him.

“What a lucky one I am.” You muttered as the woman pushed her kids further away.

“You know it baby.” JJ winked at you.

“Ew, can we just have a normal day please?”

John B was already talking about another party after dinner, as the six of you stood and sat around the island eating straight from the boxes of pizza that were sitting there. JJ was standing next to your seat, his hand on your stool and you angled toward him. He leaned over and kissed just below your ear.

“I think I’ll stay here.” He announced glancing over at John B.

“JJ Maybank, turning down a party?” Kiara said, “do my ears decieve me?”

“You guys go.” He shrugged.

“We can go,” you whispered, leaning into him. “I don’t care.”

“Nah, I would-”

“Your phone’s buzzing.” Sarah cut in, looking at your phone vibrating against the marble countertop. It was laying facedown and you picked it up, angling it away to look at it.

It was right where JJ said it would be when you got back to the house that afternoon, sitting on the bathroom counter charging. When texts from Rafe had started to come in you had looked back through your messages, confused, only to find that someone had sent pictures and texts to him from your phone. You hadn’t told JJ that you were getting texts but you’d been ignoring them since they started.

“Who is it?” Sarah asked, leaming across the counter.

“No one.” You shook your head and put your phone down again. You turned back to JJ, knowing that the texts were getting too out of control now and you’d have to tell him. “Can I talk to you?” You whispered.

“Yeah, sure.” JJ nodded. He backed up to let you out just as your phone buzzed again. Sarah was out of her seat, rushing around the island and grabbing your phone off the counter.

“Sarah!”

“What the hell? I thought you said things were over between you and Rafe?” She asked, holding the phone up.

“They are!” You insisted as she passed the phone to Kiara. She shook her head, not wanting to look at it.

“Well I don’t send guys I’m not with pictures like this.” She scrolled down to one of them and held it up so everyone could see the phone this time.

You turned in your stool, trying to reach for the phone. “Sarah!”

“What the hell Sarah, give her the phone back!” JJ said.

“I didn’t send those, I swear to god.” You looked back at JJ as you spoke, “they were sent while we were at the beach.”

“So what? Someone else sent them?” Sarah replied. “Are you accusing one of us?”

“I didn’t send them.”

“I guess it wasn’t you that told him you made a mistake and JJ means nothing to you? That’s he just a loser pogue and so are his friends.”

You clenched your fists, digging your fingernails into your palms and trying to stop yourself from crying. “I would never say that. Why are you doing this?”

“She didn’t have her phone at the beach Sarah,” Kiara grabbed the phone now, scrolling through to check the time stamp, “I saw her bag I know she didn’t.”

“So who did?” JJ asked, not a hint of malice in his voice as he put his hand on your back.

“Are you suggesting one of us did?” Sarah asked, looking between the two of you.

Your eyes met Sarah’s as JJ’s hand came up to squeeze your shoulder and you saw the way her jaw tensed and she clenched her own fists. “Oh my god.” You gasped.

“What?” Kiara looked away from the phone and over to you.

“It’s JJ...the guy you liked before John B. The one you told me you still had feelings for? It’s JJ isn’t it? That’s why you’re doing this?” You accused.

“You’re insane.”

“Don’t hurt him, we might not get along but he’s John B’s friend...what a load of bullshit!” You said. “So what was your plan for senior week? Come down here and get him back?”

“It’s not JJ.” Sarah insisted.

“You’ve avoided spending any time with us...you invited Rafe to the party last night didn’t you?”

“Look-”

“What a shitty person! God, I can’t believe you!” You pushed away from the island and got up. JJ grabbed your hand but you pulled away from him. “I have to go.”

“Wait!” Sarah reached out for you.

“No, just stay away from me! You knew I would say yes to you guys coming down here. You knew I liked him, I told you.” You said, glancing back at JJ before looking at Sarah, “you knew about Rafe.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Don’t play dumb Sarah. Even Topper knew.” You left the room, running up the stairs. Kiara got up from the table and followed you to make sure you were okay.

“Sarah, what’s she talking about?” John B finally spoke up, looking between his girlfriend and his best friend.

“Sarah and I hooked up before you guys started dating. It was just some party...it wasn’t a big deal.” JJ explained to John B.

“It wasn’t a big deal?” Sarah whipped around to look at JJ, looking absolute devastated.

John B’s chair scrapped against the tile floor and he got up from the island, grabbing his phone from the counter and heading for the back door. Sarah called his name but he only shook his head before letting the door slam shut after him. JJ, Pope, and Sarah were left in the kitchen.

“I’m gonna...” Pope said, grabbing a slice of pizza and heading for the basement where the theatre room was.

“I didn’t...” JJ let out a breath, running a hand through his hair, “I’m sorry if you felt like...there was something here but...why date John B then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, maybe it’s something you should think about.” JJ said, making his way passed her to the stairs.

“Where are you going?”

“Making sure she’s okay.” He headed up to your bedroom where Kiara was sitting on your bed. You had locked yourself in the bathroom and you weren’t coming out was how she explained it before going to find Pope.

“All I wanted was a drama free week.” Kiara said.

JJ shut the door behind Kiara and walked over to the bathroom, knocking gently. When you didn’t answer he tried the doorknob, closed in but not locked, he came in to find you sitting on the closed toilet seat, head in your hands, leaning over to your knees crying.

“Hey,” He spoke soft, kneeling down in front of you and placing his hands on your thighs. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t get it...like, we’ve been friends since kindergarten, I don’t know why she would do this.” You said, lifting your head to look at him. “She has John B, like he’s crazy about her...”

“As much of a catch as I am,” JJ said, making you stifle a laugh, “I know that’s not the whole of it.”

“The last time I broke up with Rafe it was because he thought I was talking to someone about him...I like to party but Rafe...is on a whole other level. And he’s paranoid when he’s high. He freaks about everything and-”

“It’s okay.”

“I thought he wasn’t gonna stop. He was pissed because I broke it off and Topper and Kelce knew he could...get physical but they never saw it. But Top drove me to Rafe’s and I was just sitting there on the couch while he screamed at me. He called me a whore and a liar and told me I was worthless and then he just...Topper had to pull him off me.”

JJ put his arms around you, guiding you off the edge of the toilet seat to sit with him on the floor. He pressed his back against the bathtub and held you while you kept your face in his neck, tears wetting the skin.

“Sarah knew though,” you said, “she saw me leave with Topper, he told her what happened. She knew. I don’t care about...whatever boys and shit, no offense-”

“Very offended but you can make it up to me later.” He teased, kissing the top of your head.

“She knew about Rafe, I don’t understand why she would try put me in the position again.”

“Let's skip the party tonight,” JJ suggested, “I think the alcohol bag made it back to your room.”

You nodded, closing your eyes and holding JJ a little tighter.

“Hey, is Sarah still here?” You asked, standing on the last stair and watching John eat cold pizza. It was somewhere near three am in the morning and you were having trouble sleeping.

“All her stuff is gone. I think she went over to stay with Rafe.” He shrugged. “I thought...I don’t know. I guess I thought things were really good between us.”

“I’m sorry...I didn’t mean for all this to happen-”

“It’s not your fault.” John B insisted. He pushed the pizza box down the island toward you, “cold pizza.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” You walked over and grabbed a slice, standing at the island next to him. “I feel like we haven’t gotten to hang out a lot. Like I’ve barely seen you all s’week John B.”

He laughed and nodded his head, “I know, I know. I gotta change that.”

“Well, I think we’re going to the waterslide tomorrow if you’re interested in that?” You offered. “I’ll ride double so you don’t have to go on alone.”

“Thanks I appreciate that.” He said.

You turned to face him, smiling. John B looked at you for a moment before leaning in toward you as if he was going to kiss you. You backed away from him just as he pressed his lips against yours, eyes wide and John B seemed to lurch back in surprise.

“I-” He choked on an explanation for what he had just done.

“What’re you doing?”

“Sorry, I just...”

“I’m just gonna....uh, thanks for the pizza.” You said, dropping it into the box and heading back toward the stairs. “I’ll...see you in the morning.”

“I’m sorry! Shit.” John B cursed, scrubbing his hands over his face in frustration.

taglist: @maplelattes22 @poguesrforlife @freckled-and-daydreaming @chasefreakinstokes @millie-753 @fangirlwithme @alex12948 @howdyherron @katherine097 @tangledinsparkles @tragicmisfits @carbonated-beverage @mariofgreengables @damonsalvawhore27 @dopedoodes @dolanfivsosxox @belledutchess @poguelifeeee @jjsthumbring @faded-blue @parkerpetertingle @thebookwormlife @summer-clouds-and-long-days @jellyfishbeansontoast @minigranger @louisolos @hoewkeye @love-someone-special @finecelle @vitaminekabc @tiredfeels @g4bster @strangerthanfanfiction713 @the-only-nana @tomzfrog @mozz-are-lla @vindictive-hearts @poguestyleskye @ssprayberrythings @pensysto @jenahbell @beautyandthebleh @lavenderxraindrops @gothackedalready @teenwaywardasgardian @sarahcxmeron @hvitost @haha-fuck-you-thot @stillbelieve398-5 @rewindlr @queenniccimicci @kissessforharryyy @thedarkqueenofavalon @alytavzla @bqmblebee @linniep @nerdypartytrashpsychic @xxchxrryxx @spencer-reid-is-a-cutie @mirjanak @kwjune @danielladreaming @obx-saltlife @youngestxhearts @spnobsessedmemes @wowitswondergurl @siwiecola @regev1408 @celestialmaybank @mybnkjj @averagxfangirl @mysterious-adventurer @justawilddreamerchild @rhyetaylor62 @calm-rejects @99sxuxii @oh-annaa @katiaw2 @aiifandomsunite @marteenuhh08 @x-lulu @kitkat0609 @ceruleanjj @yoxsh06 @wicked-laugh @obxwriterfan @justkeepdreamingswift @allie-mcginn @pcterparxer @literarycharleton @khiaraaa-in-spacee @crushe-s @teamnick @daydreamlilys @poguesnobx @collectiveuniverses @activist-af @mdgrdians @buckys-sunflower @vindictive-hearts @copper-boom @jolomez @timotaychalabae @babycakes00 @pixelated-pogues @booksandshish @lopineapples @ponyboys-sunsets @prettyyboyspence @obxlife @downbytheouterbanks @pancakefancake @danicarosaline @sspidermanss @k-k0129 @apoguecalledjj @annedub @thatjohnd

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kandi-pendragon · 4 years

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The Extras in Merlin Deserved Better

I don’t know why, but I am like. In love??? With the extras on Merlin??

Elena, Mithian, Queen Annis, Daegal, Tyr Seward, Gilli, Will, Sefa, Freya? I just love all of them <3

Except Kara. We don’t talk about her here.

And something that pisses me off the most? Some of the extras (most only appeared in ONE episode) got more character, and more LINES than someone like Percival or Elyan. Like what kinda shit is that?

Daegal was just a mislead boy who lost his mother to Uther, just trying to survive, but at the last moment, just wanted something in his life to be good. To make a difference.

Tyr Seward was a simple boy, optimistic, trusting, and loyal. He would do anything for his mother, and even when he was arrested by the knights, he was able to look the king in the eye with nothing but respect, and a little bit of confusion/anxiety. Not a trace of anger or betrayal. He was so trusting that he walked right up to the bars when Gwen asked him too, which is what got him killed. He’s baby. Don’t even try to change my mind.

William of Ealdor was Stubborn, mischievous, and had a heart of gold when it came to his loved ones. He liked to pretend that he was all for himself, but when it came down to it, there was nothing he wouldn’t do for Merlin or his village. He died protecting someone that he didn’t necessarily like, and had enough life left to spare that he used his remaining time to get Merlin out from under the threat of being discovered. His last words before death were: “Merlin. Merlin, I’m scared.” He wasn’t peaceful or accepting, or brave in the face of death. He was scared. And if that isn’t heartbreaking, I don’t know what is.

Elena was a clumsy, lovable mess, who was insecure when comparing herself to other royals. “I’m not the perfect princess, am I?” Once the Shide left her body, she was more coordinated, and more level headed. She understood when Arthur said he didn’t want to marry her, and told him she felt the same. We didn’t get to see her becoming her own person, but she was probably just the same. A young woman who loved riding horses because it made her feel closer to her mother, hated high heels with a passion, and began to learn that she is just as valuable (if not more) as the princesses of other kingdoms. (Her and Mithian would have gotten along great, too, I think.)

Mithian is our next point. She was... (my bi ass wants to write an essay on how beautiful she was but that isn’t the point of this post) ...Incredible. Her father raised her so well, no doubt telling her that she could be anything she wanted to be. Raising her to care for her subjects, until she grew into the woman we met. She loves hunting, and sports, and is friendly to everyone she meets. She gives them the benefit of the doubt, and lets be honest. She had so much fun watching Arthur trip over his own feet. She isn’t afraid to speak her mind, telling Odin exactly what she thinks of him. She loves her father, to the point where she lead Arthur into a trap just so her dad wouldn’t be harmed. She’s rebellious, tried time and time again to escape Morgana, or alert someone of her presence, despite the threat to herself. And at the end of the day, she just wants someone to love.

Sefa just wanted to make her father proud. She never wanted to hurt anyone, but her father was her father, and she would always love him more than life itself. She was shy, and kind hearted, and more than a little frightened of her dad. I like to think that after her father passed away, she considered joining Morgana, before ultimately deciding that she didn’t want to be part of all that bloodshed. No longer living under her father’s wing, she explored Albion, meeting strangers, taking her time to grieve, and eventually finding herself in places she never thought she’d see. It’s what she deserves.

Queen Annis was a strong woman, living under the shadow of her husbands death, but still managing to overcome her bitterness and grief, and seeing the promise of a young King’s future. She was a trusted ally for many years, and could always be depended upon in Camelot’s hour of need. I just think she’s neat.

Gilli just wanted to be noticed. And not looked down upon. He resented his father, not for not using magic, but being a stubborn man who let himself get killed, leaving his young son behind. He was stubborn, and took quite a lot of persuading, (and wrestling with some self-searching and dare I say self-loathing on Gilli’s part) before he finally realized just how strong his father was. He left Camelot with the intent on being better. and that’s really all that matters.

And of course we can’t forget Freya. This girl was so damaged, so frightened, so sure that she was a monster, that she was worth nothing, and Merlin managed to show her that she was in fact, a person capable and deserving of love. She cried when Merlin was late to visit, because she thought he abandoned her, just like everyone else did. In the span of a couple days, Merlin managed to worm his way into Freya’s life to the point where she recognized him in her animal form, and was able to control herself, when it should have been impossible. She is such a complex character, with past trauma, that shows itself in the way she always thinks she needs to be alone, leaving Merlin before he can run away with her. Not to mention, its my personal headcanon that the man that attacked her, the one who she killed, the sorceress’s son? I think that he tried to sexually assault/abuse her. “I didn’t mean to hurt him, but I thought he was going to kill me.” I just think that Freya was a character that a lot of people who have been sexually assaulted, or abused, could relate too. And it’s really unfair that we only had her for an episode.

Honorable mention? Mary and John, from the episode: Lamia. (S4 E8) Like, How do they know Gwen? I headcanon that Mary was Gwen’s godmother. She was best friends with Gwen and Elyan’s mother, never wanting children of her own, but falling in love with Gwen and Elyan the fist moment she held them. She would watch over them when they couldn’t go with their mother to work. Sometimes they would be able to stay with their mom while she was working for Leon’s household, hence the childhood friendship formed, but sometimes, if their mother was too tired to watch them and also do her job, Mary would take care of them >.< Idk I just think its cute.

I could write an essay about basically every minor character in Merlin. And now I kinda want someone to write a collection of one shots focusing solely on all the Extras that we met.

#bbc merlin #merlin #queen annis #will of ealdor #princess elena #princess mithian #gilli #sefa #tyr seward #daegal #merlin extras #this was a long one #freya

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felassan · 3 years

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Dragon Age development insights from David Gaider - PART 6

This information came from DG on a recent SummerfallStudios Twitch stream where he gave developer commentary while Liam Esler continued playing DAO from where they had left off in Part 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. I transcribed it in case there’s anyone who can’t watch the stream (for example due to connection/tech limitations, data, time constraints, personal accessibility reasons, etc). A lot of it is centered on DAO, but there’s also insights into other parts of the franchise. Some of it is info which is known having been put out there in the past, and some of it is new. There’s a bit of overlap or repetition with topics covered in Parts 1-5. This post leaps from topic to topic as it’s a transcript of a conversational format. It’s under a cut due to length.

The stream can currently be watched back here. Next week LE will be streaming a different DAO playthrough with commentary from another guest. Two weeks from now LE and DG will return to continue this playthrough for another stream session like this one. LE will be uploading the previous streams to YouTube at some point as they are now gone from Twitch, before the end of the year. It’s on his to-do list! Do note that they’ll be taking a break from their weekly/fortnightly streaming schedule over the holiday period.

For the first chunk of this stream they discussed the BioWare news of Mark and Casey’s departure, and that in relation to DA4.

[wording and opinions DG’s, occasionally LE’s; paraphrased]

DG on Mark Darrah and Casey Hudson’s departures: “The big news.” He knows a lot of people were pointing at his surprise on Twitter (second from the top) as if that makes their departures somehow more significant, but “honestly, don’t look at that as anything but the fact that David Gaider is out of the loop”. He still has friends at BW but no longer lives with someone who works at BW, so it’s not a day to day thing, and of course currently the pandemic means that he’s not going to casually come into contact with them either. “So my surprise is only just, I had no idea that that was gonna happen and I reacted to it on Twitter, the same as anyone else and that’s it.” He also knows that a lot of people were like “Oh nooo!! Dragon Age, Dragon Age...” (worried about what the departures mean for the franchise and the upcoming game) and he can speak relatively freely as he no longer works for BW and hasn’t done so for 5 years now: “I have nothing to fear so what you’re hearing now is not corporate speak.” He says he would say that people should take the “omg this is the end of DA” stuff with a big grain of salt.

Some people have said that Executives don’t make games, and that is true. On one hand, Mark was the project director of DA which is a very powerful position as you set the overall tone for the game. In that position you don’t make the game but you make a lot of important decisions. Mark always had a really light hand with DA in that he liked to give a lot of authority and ownership to his leads, for good or bad. “The fact that he’s moved on and is going to be replaced by someone I don’t know, the fact that I don’t know him doesn’t mean that it’s automatically going to be bad. People forget, when I left, I left DA a year before I left BW. It wasn’t because I didn’t love BW it’s because I was done. That’s what happens sometimes with people, they get done and they move on because they think ‘you know what, it’s probably better if I go’. And that’s how I thought.” At the time DG felt that if he kept working on DA he wasn’t going to produce good stuff. It was feeling like he was repeating himself and he didn’t feel like he had any stories left for the world, “so somebody else [should] come in with a fresh take and do much better”. It doesn’t mean that the new person will automatically do better of course, “I don’t know him, I don’t know what his goals are”. But DA is an established thing. “He was the EP on Anthem, and whatever he was doing on Anthem it was to make Anthem a better Anthem”. But that doesn’t mean he is automatically going to bring Anthem stuff over to DA (as again, DA is pretty established).

If he does, well, that would be different, but sometimes it’s time for a fresh voice. “Maybe it was that in this case. Maybe something went on. I honestly couldn’t tell you. Gaider is out of the loop. And nobody who currently works at BW would give you a straight answer in either case, because that’s just, you just don’t do that. You don’t give the goss on the inside, that doesn’t happen, you’re never gonna get it. Unless of course Mark or Casey decide to speak for themselves, and they certainly can.” He imagines that a lot of people inside of the company don’t actually know what happened - this often happens. Inside you’d hear the rumor mill, but the rumor mill inside a company the size of BioWare and EA is pretty inaccurate. “You’d hear things that people would swear were true, and then later on when you talked to the people actually involved they’d be like ‘no, that isn’t what happened at all’.” So, “I wouldn’t read too much into it. The writing team that I assembled is still there. PW is still there. John Epler is still there. Karin is still there. Matt Goldman is still there.”

DG didn’t always get along with Matt Goldman, but he believed that he [Matt] knew what DA was about and that he held its best interests at heart. They just had occasional differences of opinion in terms of how exactly that would be relayed [in the art direction], but he knew that deep down Matt believed in the same DA that he did. “So these are the people that will be making DA. So don’t lose hope just yet. I mean if anybody would have reason, I mean listen, if anybody would have reason to start crying into their beer and to start worrying that DA might not be awesome, it’s kinda me ok. This is my baby, I want to see it do well, if I was really worried - for the sake of the people I worked with before I might say nothing, I’d hedge my bets, but I certainly wouldn’t lie to you [us the listeners] and say positive things. So don’t go gloom and doom just yet, that’s my suggestion. There’s a lot of stuff that can happen between now and release.”

At this point LE chimed in: He thinks it’s really important to remember to give everyone a chance and remember that everyone is generally trying their best. We should give everyone who is coming into the new leadership a chance to do their best work. That work might be different from what has come before, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing. In fact, he’d argue that often, trying to repeat the same thing as before is often what makes games terrible. He’s excited to see what happens and what this brings to DA. Remember that a lot of the core team is still there. The project is unlikely to suddenly rapidly shift gears.

DG: “Unless that was their marching orders, like unless say EA came to Mark and/or Casey. Although Casey is [was] the studio director, I don’t think they’d be involved in day to day, and that he’d be that involved, but who knows, who knows. Maybe they came and said ‘we’d like to change DA to [this or that]’ and Mark/Casey were like ‘fuck that, I’m out’. That’s possible but I really have my doubts that EA would reboot DA yet again, that would be really strange. But I guess we’ll see. We have this new guy, maybe he’s like ‘awesome I get to work on DA’, maybe he loves DA, I dunno. I guess it’ll be interesting to see.” New leadership! “Although I say a lot of the team is still there, they will have to do what they’re told. When DG was on DA a lot of people assumed ‘DG is in charge of everything relating to the setting and can do whatever he wants’ and “that was never true. I always had people over me.”

The higher you go up in the hierarchy or food chain at BioWare (at BioWare, not talking about EA), the more of your time is taken up dealing with EA (this is DG’s understanding). Someone at the Aaryn Flynn or Casey Hudson level is spending all of their time in meetings with EA doing very high-level stuff. So like, for example, if Aaryn Flynn had something to say that would affect the game project they were working on, that was probably being filtered down from above. He would never say it directly, he’d say it to their leads, people like Mark. Then Mark would meet with the project leads and he’d say “this is coming down the pipe and we have to do this.” And by the time someone at DG’s level or below got the info they’d have no idea that it had even come from Aaryn.

LE: “There is some anti-EA sentiment in the chat and I wanna - publishing is very complex. The relationship between a studio and a publishing arm is often very complex and it’s rarely as simple as saying that the publisher is always the bad influence.” It’s always complex, sometimes it is the publisher saying that they have certain expectations, but often it’s also the studio. If a publisher sets a series of expectations, the studio then makes decisions in order to try and meet those expectations. So it’s not like there’s always one party is at fault. “That is so rarely the case.”

DG: “In my experience the publisher is always willing to absorb, you know like, be the bad cop. They’re like whatever, it’s fine. And I find that a lot of times the problems were happening at the studio level. By the time EA gets involved, those problems were already sorta existing. I mean I think that in the past, and maybe there’s an element of this to BW too, I dunno, but in the past EA took on a troubled studio. They bring them on and those problems still exist, but from the outside it looks like they only existed once EA bought them and that’s generally not true.” There’s a bit of corporatization where EA do what seems natural to them, where they want to make the policies and the pipelines at the studio match that of EA. So they’re like ‘we need to change the way your management structure works to follow the way we do things’. That’s when the changes start and there is an element of “Now people whose time is taken up dealing with EA become sort’ve, as insulated from the reality of the project as the people at EA.” This insulation is where DG thinks a lot of those decisions get made. In his experience the people at EA all mean well and are all just trying to do their best. “I really don’t think, in my opinion, that EA deserves the bad rep they’ve gotten, and I worked for them for 5 years. The kinds of things that people lay on their shoulders are the kinds of things that happen in all big companies just by virtue of them being giant behemoths where the right hand doesn’t always know what the left hand is doing. But they get extra visceral hate for it because the corporate stuff that affects companies happens to affect companies that gamers love and attach a lot of feelings and ownership towards. Often those gamers weren’t even aware that there were problems at a studio before EA took it over so they’re like ‘big bad EA came in and destroyed everything’.”

LE: It’s also the job of the publisher to cop the flak and be the bad guy, because someone has to be and often it’s easier and better for the publisher to take responsibility for that.

Regular dev commentary

LE and DG have a rule that they won’t talk about DeepLore (tm) on these streams. Anything that’s not public knowledge DG won’t say. DG knows what the DeepLore was when he left but that was 5 years ago. Stuff that hasn’t been made public yet the current devs are pretty okay with changing if they need to. DG recalls that when he was there they didn’t change it very much as he had a fairly firm vision, but his is not that vision anymore, so they may have decided to go in a different direction, he has no idea. If he told all the deep dark secrets his old friends would hate him and they’d change it all immediately anyway (due to the need to come up with new surprises). And that could be extremely expensive. Or they may have decided to do another story since then and “then I would literally be talking out of my ass and lying to you”. He is no longer subject to an NDA anymore though.

When Matt Goldman started on DA2 as Art Director after the DAO Art Director moved over to be the head of BW Montreal, they had maybe 1.5 years to produce all-new art assets OR they could just go ahead and use the accumulated library of assets that they had accumulated in DAO, even though some of the stuff didn’t look that great. “Imagine his conundrum” - if he used the existing library that meant they would have a lot more variety, but it would also mean that everything new they produced would have to follow the same look, feel and color scheme of the original or else it would look out of place. “Also original art meant a lot less art.”

Sheryl Chee always wrote the best lines for Purple Hawke. When they play through DA2, DG will point them out. Sometimes they’d be wondering ‘hm what do we do for the sarcastic option here’ and SC would just quietly pipe up in the background with her idea and they’d all die lol. DG recalls people asking on the forum at the time if they could romance Teagan. Jowan was almost a party member. Narrative designers are halfway between an animator and level/story designer, straddling both sides - the narrative and the art. In a conversation they’re the ones doing camera shifting and animations etc. At its height DAI’s team had about 120 people. Throughout the middle parts it was 70-80.

For a long time during DAO dev they didn’t think they’d be able to get enough models on-screen at once. That was always an issue with that engine. DG would be like “I need to do a city” and they’d be like “well, we can fit maaaybe 10 people on-screen at one time”. DG: “And it’s like what the fuck engine is this? That was always my comment but I have no idea honestly how this stuff works.” They kept telling him this is as many as they could fit, “and I’d bitch and bitch and go home and play a PS3 game where you’re a photographer stuck in a mall and fought giant hordes of zombies. And I’d be like ‘omg how is this even possible’. But it’s not like I know. And I will say it’s not that people weren’t trying really hard. The programmers were doing everything they possibly could and there’s a difference between engines designed to have massive crowds and ones designed for something else.” It’s never simple and there’s always so many things to weigh up. A big part of the tradeoff is the fact that we have parties in these games. In DA the parties take up so much processing, it’s the most intensive thing on screen and has the most different pieces that it could be. Every armor variation etc kind of all exists at once, and the fact that you have a party means that this part of the game is basically 4x in terms of all the requirements.

There’s a pretty big difference between writing for dialogue lines that won’t be voiced and ones that will. You [the writer] get to rely on the voice acting a lot more in the case of the latter, like you no longer have to have the character say “I am angry”, because the VA can deliver a line angrily. This actually took them a little while to get the hang of. In DAO they were still getting the hang of this. It wasn’t really until DA2 that they really grasped that they could rely on the VA to impart what they were trying to express. They also had to learn to read their lines out loud as they wrote them, otherwise they ran the risk of getting to review and reading it and realizing it doesn’t sound as good out loud as it did in their heads when they wrote it.

It’s a mistake that Zevran couldn’t pick locks when recruited. Not until DAI did they think ‘we should try to align the abilities that the characters have with what they talk about’. At some point they thought all rogues should be able to pick locks and at some point someone was like ‘we have [should have?] rogues that are more pick-locky types and ones that aren’t.’ “Nobody told me and it was just one of those things that sort’ve fell off the radar.”

The HoF didn’t appear in DAI because giving them a voice is just asking for trouble. For about half of development they tried to have the HoF be the Warden across from Hawke in that DAI plot, but it was just too weird. “We were like, everybody is going to be really upset at this. We can’t make them look like they did in DAO, we have to give them a voice, everyone is going to be upset. Late in the day we had to cut it and boy did that require some fancy writing on PW’s part to write around that.” The thing they had for the longest time was that right at the point where the HoF would come out from the back, the player would be popped over to CC and be made to recreate their Warden, which kind of ruined the surprise. That was so heavy on the GUI requirements and they were so worried that it would be really strange, and then how do you account for people who never played the previous games or the fact that the Warden is from years and 2 games ago by then?

LE highly doubts that any of the previous PCs are going to appear again in any future games. It’s so incredibly complex and just not worth the effort most of the time, especially with CC. CC is so difficult to replicate because the art style changes completely between games. It’s very difficult to make the new system automatically replicate your char’s face from the old system, then you’ve got the VAs potentially to bring in - like 8 different VAs potentially [in the HoF’s case], just for one or two scenes. It’s a huge investment and then everyone will still be like “that’s not my character”. [Hawke’s reception in DAI is kind of an example this.]

At one point they were actually torn between Richard Madden and GDL for Solas, and then finally GDL was available. They were torn because originally Solas was going to be funnier and Richard did the funnier bits better. And then they were like “Why don’t we just rewrite Solas?” So Solas was originally meant to be a low-key, funny type character but was rewritten for GDL, who speaks with gravitas. PW heard GDL and was like “I wanna make him more serious now”. DG: “So it changed. And I can’t even imagine now what it would be like if Solas was funny.” Solas’ iambic pentameter was PW’s idea. PW is very good at verse. The fact that PW was able to write so much of Solas like that is a remarkable achievement, DG at the time didn’t realize that they had done that. “For the longest time I was like ‘Solas has a particular lilt to the way he talks, it’s so odd, is that because he’s Welsh?’” The editors were not particularly pleased with PW for this lol. Editor Cori May was very good with voice as a voice editor, chars with very specific voices could be given to her. She’d softly read lines over and over again to make sure they had the right sound and number of beats etc. “I gotta hand it to the editors, KW, Cori, Ben Gelinas, for all the fact that writers do good work it’s editors that make it shine.”

DG can’t take sole credit for Dorian. The writers rely on each other for writing assists and there’s a lot of people who will touch their characters. Also the VA brings a lot to the equation too, giving life to the char that isn’t in the writing. The person who did the visual language for Dorian, from his Mercury mustache to the asymmetry of his garments - if he looked different he’d be a different char. All those things come together. But he understands that the words are what players experience so that’s what people tend attach the importance to.

There was an initial draft where Cassandra was very sanctimonious. It wasn’t very appealing so DG went to rewrite her and was trying to figure out ways to have her have some more humanity. He saw online a little comic where Cass was reading smutty literature and he laughed and was like “What if... she was a fangirl?” This is how Cass’s smutty literature/secret fangirl side came about.

2 of the DA2 basegame romances are bi for sure, 2 you could argue are “playersexual”. DG doesn’t really like that word but it’s fair. A lot of times bi chars weren’t real bi rep but a matter of convenience. When they went into DAI they had a long discussion: “do we want to do the all-bi thing again?” There was a pro and con list there, for each option. They felt that them having their own orientations gave them more agency, that they had desires and existences that existed separate from the player. He understands that some players just want to be able to romance whoever they want and gets that, but that’s not what they (the dev team) are here to provide with these games.

You can tell that a narrative designer had a lot of time to work on the “HoF reaches Connor and Isolde in Redcliffe” scene. There was some simple/rudimentary mocap done for DAO but not much. There was no performance capture for DAO though, which is a kind of different thing. Isolde did wrong but there were extenuating circumstances. DG was disappointed by how this plot turned out and feels that he made a mistake by giving the player the possibility to have an optimal ending. After he was done the plot initially, he doesn't remember how it came up exactly but it was like ‘What if you could go to the Circle and get their help and this was a way you could avoid making the terrible decision?’ At the time he thought this sounded interesting and he thought of it as something like an Easter egg, as in if players did things in the ‘right’ order they could get this option. But the way it worked out in the fanbase is that it’s the only route people take usually because it’s optimal, naturally - you get everything while risking nothing. This destroyed the actual requirement to make a choice, which was the whole point of the plot. “So I allowed you an out which actually destroyed all the emotional fallout.” “In the end I undercut the effectiveness of my own plot.” He believes in happy endings but they should be earned and you should have to give up something to get them (not necessarily a literal blood sacrifice though lol).

DG was asked in the chat about the things EA are reported to have forced BW to do, like forcing them to work on Anthem, the crunch time and forcing them to work on a complicated engine etc. He responded that the person was mixing up a lot of what EA was doing vs what the internal BW folks were doing. There’s a lot of layers of responsibility when it comes to things like that, broken schedules, bad management etc. It’s a complicated question and you can’t really shuffle all that stuff to the publisher. There’s shared responsibility. It’s safe to say that a lot of people meant well. What he heard was that as time went on there was a lot of pressure on the team that became extraordinary, there were a lot of what’s called ‘stress casualties’ (people going on stress leave and getting ulcers and stuff). This is something that gets pretty bad and is a problem across the industry that needs to change, it’s not just specific to BioWare. EA is a public company so they don’t have traditional-style investors who can really influence what goes on, at least not in the same sense that a private company would. Instead their goals are largely driven by money. LE: “If you wanna blame something, essentially, blame capitalism.”

They usually go for authentic accents but DG thinks that in Isolde’s case it wasn’t. For Zevran they tried for the longest time to get an actual Spanish speaker, they went through so many auditions. They struggled to find one with the tone they wanted and one that would suit the genre. They tried people from Spain but the sound was different from the one they wanted, so they thought ‘let’s just throw open the casting and see what we get’. “I was honestly trying to find a legitimately Spanish person. And then one day it was like oh, this guy sounds like Antonia Banderas, kinda sexy, quite clear, and then I went to LA to meet him as part of the initial rundown, and I walk in, knowing nothing about him at all, and he’s this 6 ft 2 kind of Scandinavian looking motherfucker. God, you played yourself David.” At this point in time Freddie Prinze Junior wasn’t doing this kind of VAing yet, to his knowledge anyway. But had they known he was an option back in DAO he’s sure they would have tried to reach out to him, because they were trying to find the authentic thing and not a mimic. As time went on there became more importance attached to finding the authentic thing, so that the actor could concentrate more on the acting and less on doing the particular kind of voice that they wanted.

This was initially a problem for Morrigan, in a sense. When she was first cast the guy they had at the time had an image in his head where she was 18 years old and so initially Claudia had to pitch up her voice to sound younger. This blunted her because she had to constantly think about it, and it affected her performance, so 2 sessions in Caroline was like “fuck it, at this point they [the overseeing people] won’t be listening anymore”. So this is why when you first meet Morrigan she sounds higher-pitched than she does later on. Her later deeper register is Claudia’s natural voice. “When you first meet her she is doing the customer service voice and then she just can’t be bothered anymore” [this was a joke]. Claudia had never done VAing before so on the first session she wore a really loud shirt - a rookie mistake.

There were a lot of quests that didn’t make it into DAO, which he regrets, although it’s always the case. One of the biggest for him here is the one in Denerim where the player went to the Orlesians and it involved the Queen and we learned a lot more about Loghain. The cutting of this plot is why he ended up writing the first novel. “You don’t learn this stuff anymore in there so I wanted to put all this lore that you would have learned in that plot into a book.” Talking about cut stuff is always funny because fans sometimes take what’s said the wrong way: “In their mind the cut thing was this perfect, perfectly-working beautiful plot and that we must have just suddenly taken and thrown out for no good reason like ‘What?! Why would you do that?!’ And I guarantee you that this is almost never the case.”

DG feels that Isolde’s performance at the “Filthy murderer! He is an innocent boy!” bit is actually quite heartbreaking. (This is the killing Connor route). It broke his heart when she did the “Don’t kill my baby, I beg you” part in the soundbooth. DG remembers the awkward moment when they had to have a conversation with the artists where it was like, “Ok, Connor has been brought to this point because of his desires, his desire to help his father, so it is a Desire demon. And then one day they got the models and they were like ‘oh’. Well... I hope you know that this is the demon that has taken over Connor... And there was just this sort of blank look.. Ok, that’s how we’ll write it.” (Context: Desire demons were supposed to be gender-neutral Sandman-style, not overly sexualized.) He saw the scene where Connor flails around and the Desire demon comes out before the PC fights them when he was having that talk, and was like “Alright, well ok, let’s do it.”

At one point Fiona was on the list of potential DAI companions. “I remember talking about Fiona as the Grand Enchanter.”

Mary Kirby wrote Merrill as having a stop-start, stuttering way of talking. “I remember when I read that, that kind of writing is great to read but it’s basically death for VAs, as they have to very naturally try to replicate the stuttering, which can be very difficult for actors to do. It usually means we have to do a lot of takes for each line until the actor figures out how they want to do it.” Eve Myles though, she came in and was like “I read the character and I understand, I get how she feels, let’s go for it” and launched into it and was amazing at it from the get-go, “wow”. Eve is on DG’s [very short] list of “chars for whom I got my number one pick of VA”. When people do dream-casts of actors it’s usually a lot of A-List actors/unrealistic choices that they could never afford. Caroline for each char would sit down with DG at the outset and be like “If you could have anyone for the part, anything you wanted at all, who would you have?” DG would never go for A-List names but when watching shows and stuff, if someone had an interesting voice he’d be like ‘oh they sound really cool’ and would tuck it away in the back of his mind. When they switched elf accents over in DA2 to Irish and Welsh, they included the Welsh specifically because DG had 2 Welsh actors he really wanted to see in a role. One was Eve Myles and the other GDL. They couldn’t get GDL for DA2 but he obviously came on for DAI.

BW sometimes committed the cardinal sin of combat design of having a boss battle which introduces mechanics that aren’t used anywhere else, “that we haven’t actually trained you to deal with or for which the current tactics which you used to play the entire game suddenly don’t work. I hate those.”

There’s no golems in DAI because they didn’t have time to make a model.

Caroline is very good at getting VAs to the emotionally sad places they need to be in to record such lines, but after they’re done she gets all quiet and is like “ok, let’s take a break everyone”.

The level designers kept putting cemeteries everywhere in DAO and DG was like “No, why, they don’t bury people.” “Maybe they burn them the bury the ashes?” “No, why would you do that?!”

There’s a whole bunch of elements from Arthurian legends sprinkled throughout DAO. “They’ve been significantly filtered but if you look carefully it’s like ‘oh you lifted this right out of Arthurian legend didn’t you. Morrigan, Morgan le Fay, sleeping with her brother, the Holy Grail. Not all that clever David. You’re just a thief’.” Initially when DG talked about the world before release, he had a lot of trouble realizing how many people equate inspiration with copying. “I don’t know if it’s because they don’t know how inspiration works, I don’t think that’s true, but it’s like. They say ‘where did you draw inspiration from?’ and you’d say ‘Well I drew it from X, Y and Z’ and they’re like ‘Oh, so it’s JUST like X?’ No, it’s inspired by X. It’s a starting point.” “Some of the things if I told you where the inspiration came from you’d be like but they have nothing in common. Well, maybe nothing you consider important but there would have been this one aspect that I liked that came from there, and that’s it.” He eventually had to stop talking about it because people would say, for example, that an in-game culture was inspired by a real-world culture and be like “therefore they are exactly the same. It’s like, no, that’s not what I meant. That’s a difficult conversation to have.” So some of the DAO elements were originally inspired by Arthurian legend, but it changed from the original point on a daily basis to the point where in cases it’s not recognizable at all, “that’s how we roll”. [source]

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]

[‘Insights into DA dev from the Gamers For Groceries stream’ transcript]

#dragon age #bioware #video games #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #anthem #solas #cassandra pentaghast #my lady paladin #lgbtq #morrigan #queen of my heart #next mass effect

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archetypal-archivist · 3 years

Text

My Beloved, Penis

Fuck it. I was infected by Penis SMP by @demonboyhalo reblogging a bunch of it and the lack of consistent lore bugged me, so I somehow banged out 2000+ words of fanfic about the Penis SMP and how it got started. Lots of internet humor and classic MInecraft shenanigans in this one folks. *slaps roof* This baby can fit so much crack treated seriously, lol. This is also up on my AO3, Zazibine, if you would prefer to read it there.

_-_-_-_

It was never supposed to get so big. It was just an SMP with a couple friends of his he had met from the Hypixel discord server, where he had logged on simply to trash talk the absolute asshole who had dared to kill him last minute in bedwars, only to stumble upon said asshole- going under the name shittyfartbaby69 of all things- complaining to his girlfriend(?) Milfboss in the voice chat. Thirty minutes later of awkward hellos and the manliest of bitching at each other (with Milf chiming in every once in a while to roast them both), and PenisUnavailable had perhaps his first Minecraft friend in, like, forever.

Then Admiral_Anus had entered chat, bitching about his competitor in ABBA Mining and his bullshit bad luck and the whole process repeated. By the end of the day, Penis had three new friends, a private discord server for the four of them, and a promise to meet up with them in Hypixel next Sunday for the ultimate round of bedwars.

The game went spectacularly. Somehow, Admiral had some of the best bridging skills any of them had ever seen, and between Milfboss' terrifying Scottish screaming and pvp and Shitty with his clutch TNT skills, the three of them almost made up for Penis' awful depth perception. They still lost around forty percent of their games, but that was certainly better than Penis' own abysmal record, not helped with his habit of walking off the edge at inconvenient times.

And it was... fun. Usually bedwars was just him playing in his bedroom alone for an hour before he rage-quit and went back to survival for a bit before he died to fall damage and rage quit that too. But shittyfartbaby69 would crack dirty jokes that he'd never even heard of before, and Milfboss would roast him for looking it up on reddit and Shitty would cuss her out as he tried to prove that no, he was being original- all while Admiral would comment of them as if they were a sideshow display. Then Admiral_Anus would turn around and knock an enemy player off their island with some clever pvp and they would all hoot and holler and swear for a while before going back to their conversation, joking about forgetting the topic and starting up a running gag about something new.

And their accents, mmm. PenisUnavailable would never say it, but he really was as American as white Wonder bread and Milfboss' Scottish brogue, Admiral's smooth British snark, and Shitty's shrieking in Australian, well. Ear candy, you know? Even if he teased them mercilessly for pronouncing shit wrong, like "buhguhr". Ppffttt, it still cracked him up how Milfboss had threatened to murder him after the dictionary app on his phone had proved him right that it was actually "Bur-gur", even if Admiral kept insisting it was pronounced "bruh-girl".

Four hours and twenty-eight wins later, they had agreed to meet up the next day to play again, preferably at an hour that wasn't two am for Shitty again. (It was two am for Shitty again, although that was because they played for six that time.) Eventually, it just became a regular thing, them playing bedwars and competing at ABBA Caving- the one game Penis was unnaturally good at, much to Admiral's annoyance- to the point where they ran out of funny jokes about their competitors and the game itself and started talking personal anecdotes.

Milfboss owned a motorcycle. Admiral, entirely independently, also owned a motorcycle, as that was the only vehicle of reasonable speed and style that could actually handle the London traffic. Shitty couldn't drive at all, something about never passing his driving test. Admiral ate cheese at breakfast. Shitty liked to burn his garbage in a metal oil drum in his backyard. Milfboss posted herself singing covers of shit over on Youtube. And it wasn't just real life stuff either- their minecraft skills were also on the table for them all to collectively roast.

Admiral had never seen a single Minecraft Championship. Milfboss thought a flat cobblestone roof was entirely acceptable. Shitty's favorite block was the flint and steel. (That's not a block, sixty-niner. Shut up, is too. OoOh, real clever, 'shut up'! Uh, how about no? How about I fuckin' make you, ever think 'a that? No nono nonono, I'm on two hearts! I'm on two hearts, stop!) It made him curious, honestly. He wanted to see Milf's builds for himself, get revenge on Shitty, see if Admiral really could beat the Ender Dragon with a knockback stick like he said he could.

So he made a minecraft server. And they all joined it. (And stuck PenisUnavailable with the bill, suckaaahhh~!)

Predictably, it all went to Hell in a hand basket pretty quick.

See, it's one thing to play with nutters like his friends in a structured set up like Hypixel games, it's quite another to try and keep a semblance of order in an open world survival server like the Penis SMP. The first five minutes had been him trying to explain the rules and teleporting everyone back to spawn over and over as they tried to "escape the cops," ie, him. The next five minutes was Shitty scream-laughing "scatter!" and other John Mulany references down the mic as everyone ran off to start their houses. Penis, as he was still "god" at that moment, used admin commands to find the closest flower field biome to settle into, hoping for some- ha- peace and quiet.

Shitty, inevitably, ended up trying to settle in the fucking Nether. Like a mad lad, you know, as you do when you are apparently obsessed with all things lava. Milfboss ended up making an oak plank box of a "tree house" in a dark oak forest, while Admiral_Anus picked a nearby swamp for his starter base. Outside of that, they just kinda vibed in discord as they tried to fend off the mobs and get enough resources to try and build up houses that were a bit more than cobblestone towers and wood boxes- er, mostly. Milf kinda just fucked off to go mining, found a skeleton spawner by chance, and made a set of iron gear to stand in the dungeon room with to just chill and kill mobs for a while. She ended up with something like 45 levels and burned her only diamond on an enchanting table so she could buff the Hell out of her iron weapons and armor.

Penis, rather typically, he though to himself, put together a basic sheep farm and started work on a cute little cobblestone cave base. He managed to get a whole twenty by twenty block room done and fully furnished before he noticed the chat full of Shitty's death messages and went to go investigate. After nearly dying in lava twice, he managed to find Shitty's pile of items floating on a basalt pillar about a hundred blocks out from his... base?

It was a soccer ball. Shitty's base was a perfect fucking spherical soccer ball made up of quartz blocks and basalt. Just. What. The Fuck??? Then out popped shittyfartbaby69 and it was PenisUnavailable's turn to misjudge a jump and plummet right into lava. Fifteen minutes and much shrieking later about losing his diamond pick, and it turns out that Shitty didn't really care about his lost items, as he really only had four gold picks, a stack of dark oak, two furnaces, a bucket, and thirteen cooked mutton to his name. Not even a bed, the fucker. He just ran back to his portal from spawn every time he just burned to death, taking the chance to gather resources on the way back each time.

And no, he wasn't following a tutorial for his "football" base. Jerk. (Although Penis did have to admire his determination...)

The day ended on Milfboss, Shitty, and Penis reconvening back at spawn to try and hunt down Admiral_Anus, who they found later having built a thirty block tall castle of all things. Out of cobble stone and the windows weren't quite even, but still, it was pretty impressive. And of course, when presented with a castle, what can what do but siege it? So they lay siege to the castle and Milfboss curb-stomped Admiral in pvp and laid claim to the throne, crowning herself queen before summarily throwing the rest of them out. It was a good day.

And the day after was a good day. They played dodge ball crossed with hide and seek in forest around Penis' house with arrows supplied by Milfboss. And the day after that, too, where they had a building competition using nothing but cobble stone, specifically to spite Milfboss, who had kicked all of their asses the day before. In fact, three wonderful weeks passed of doing normal Minecraft shit and being friends passed by, and every bit of it was great fun.

And then came the fucking role play.

PenisUnavailable would have liked to preface that with he only participated under duress, but really, Milfboss had been queen for too long and nobody wanted to risk TNT cannoning any of Shitty's nice builds, so. Well, the castle was better than his drafty cave, alright? It was cold and wet and didn't have a proper door because aesthetic (and because it usually took him several tries to work an iron pressure plate door), so there were far too many mobs wandering in at night and spawn camping him. He and Shitty had almost the same number of deaths and Shitty lived in the fucking Nether.

So yeah. Castle time, baby! Daddy needs a new home! And Admiral obviously wasn't happy living out of Milf's awful tree house hot box where they all did drugs together on day fifteen and it still smelled of burnt wheat seeds, aka "weed." It was only obvious that they teamed up to try and take back the castle.

The battle itself didn't exactly go great, but it wasn't exactly horrible either. A lot of shouting shit at each other for fifteen minutes, the majority of which he wouldn't remember until it was too late- something about server unity?- only to find out that it wasn't two on one girl boss, it was two on a girl boss and her "baked out of his mind" henchman, also known as Shitty in a squirrel furry skin.

The ears man. Those stupid (cute) ears.

And then they were running for their lives because Milf had somehow gotten her hands on a flame bow with infinity enchants.

It all culminated in a dramatic stand-off in front of Shitty's Nether Soccer ball, Milf on one side, diamond axe in hand, not a bit of armor on because of an unfortunate run in with lava, Penis and Admiral on the other, picks in hand, threatening to tear down shittyfartbaby69's base. Shitty wasn't online just then to comment, but they could all hear him click-clacking away on his keyboard so he obviously hadn't gone to sleep just yet like he said he had. At an impasse, and unable to justify letting her teammate's home be used as collateral, Milfboss stood down and gave up her "crown," an enchanted golden Prot IV helmet she had gotten off a skeleton from her spawner.

Then the great betrayal, the beginning of the end. Shitty came back online. 96-Cam joined the game, not that they noticed in the chaos. Admiral-Anus cackled wildly and PMed Milfboss the message that Shitty had sent him, giving Team Gay Sex permission to tear down his base in the name of winning the war if it came down to it- making Milf's sacrifice worthless in the end. Penis gave another dramatic speech, circling around Shitty, who was acting weirdly apologetic to Milf about betraying her and still wearing that fucking squirrel furry skin.

"You see Milf, there's one thing more powerful than a girl boss, and when it comes down to wars between kingdoms, there's something you need to remember!" Penis got out his golden ax, helpfully labeled 'Piss Off'. "And that's a dilf with something to lose!" An enderpearl in his off hand and he teleported behind Milf, catching on fire from the lava but still landing the last hit needed to finish her off. She puffed into a cloud of EXP, swearing up a storm, and then Admiral and Penis turned their gaze to the cheering Shitty.

"AAAAAYYY, LET'S GO DADDY!" the squirrel man screeched, wild laughter shorting out the discord voice chat, making him go quiet in patches when the volume overloaded the client. Behind him, Admiral quietly started building a chair out of birch fence posts and slabs.

"Not so fast, shit-ty-fart-baaaaa-byyyyy~, this isn't quite over yet!" Penis fucking chirped, barely holding back his laughter. "You're still a fucking traitor and we can't have you backstabbing us too. Get in the chair for Daddy, okay baby?"

Admiral finished the chair just in time for Shitty to turn around and see the completed monstrosity, shrieking dying off immediately. "Oh screw you, that's just mean. The Hell man? That's not a chair, that's illegal. If you want an electric chair or some shit, just ask. That's just sad." Mentally shrugging, Admiral lit up his work with a flint and steel while Penis pillared up above where Shitty was building an electric chair out of iron bars and trap doors. Admiral nudged Shitty into the chair, Penis dumped a bucket of lava over the edge of the pillar so it flowed over him, and Shitty started giving a soliloquy about how betrayal and how his love for his "Daddy" still "burned strong".

Like his dick. Apparently.

By the time the lava finally hit the floor and burned Shitty to death, Penis was crying with laughter, shrieking down the mike and banging on the desk hard enough to make him forget that his was still on the mouse, making him mine the block under him with the bucket and sending him hurtling to his fiery death too.

It was a good day... almost.

Because, as it turned out, shittyfartbaby69 was actually a tiktokker of some renown and his cam account had record everything. And he had uploaded the bit to tiktok, as you do, where it went viral, where it wasn't supposed to. And Milfboss, who had recently been uploading covers of herself singing old classic Minecraft songs, had attracted the Minecraft fandom kids to her twitter, where she had gone to post her rage about the events of her dethroning and Shitty's execution.

Penis SMP had gotten on. Fucking. Trending. And now everyone was demanding the full clip, their names, their Twitch streamer handles, their characters' backstories.

The masses wanted lore.

Penis watched in disbelief, head in his hands and mouth agape as sugar crash played over a clip of him killing Milf on loop.

They were making memes.

...Oh god. They were screwed.

#penismp #penis smp #fanfiction #minecraft #my writing #crack #crack treated seriously #also on ao3 #penisunavailable #milfboss #shittyfartbaby69 #admiral_anus

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