#fun fact that i learned recently: jazz also wanted to be also be an accountant or a brain surgeon! so she's getting a little break from
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Childhood Friends Danny and Jason: Ch2 Remastered
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late at night when the stars don't look quite right
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there's something burning in the
empty room inside of my head
fill it up with doubt
let it in, let it spread
Jason nearly falls flat on his face when he sees the photo of Danny. He’s in a warehouse, finishing up with a gang selling drugs on his turf. The guys he’s got tied up are cursing up a storm at him, throwing every insult under the sun his way that he’s all heard before. His eyes drag over to them, and silently Jason adjusts his jacket to reveal the guns strapped to his thighs, his hand hovering over the handle of one.
They all fall silent, and Jason moves his hand away. His phone in his other hand, texting Oracle to alert the police. Jason hates that he has to; these guys will be out of their cells in a matter of months, and nothing will change.
But he’ll play nice.
And then his phone buzzes, and when Jason looks down he sees a banner from Tim. A message he planned on ignoring, but his eyes skim over the text on instinct, and suddenly the air is stolen right from his lungs, and his thumb is hitting the screen before he can really think it through.
[Hey Jason, your best friend just appeared in Gotham for the first time since your funeral.]
Impossible. He thinks, yanking his phone close to his nose, as if that will make it any less real or fake. Danny hasn’t been in Gotham in years, Jason checked. But then the image loads, and then he’s staring Danny Fenton in the face. And then he’s greedily tracing every minute, new detail he can find. The gang left half-forgotten in his mind.
Danny’s got an undercut, it looks self-done. It looks good. He looks taller. He’s got piercings in his ears, gold and jewels lining up the sides like a magpie’s find. He’s got an eyebrow piercing.
Something old, something new; Danny is smiling and it still looks just as Jason remembers it. Crooked, lopsided, warm like the sun and belying the mischief underneath it. He remembers to breathe in that moment, and the sound comes in sharp. Danny’s eyes are as blue as they’ve ever been.
(“I don’ get why books talk so much about peoples’ eyes.” Danny complains to him one day when he’s visiting the manor, his legs thrown over Jason’s back like an anchor tied to its ship. They’re sunk into the mattress of Jason’s bed, sunlight peering through the windows. “They’re just eyes! I don’t need t’know that they’re ‘as blue as the sky,’ or- or the ocean, or whatever blue thing in the world there is.”)
(Jason’s smile comes to him like breathing, and he twists around to lay on his back. His arms trap Danny’s legs to his stomach. “Pretty sure it’s jus’ for emphasis on how much they’re noticing the person’s face.”)
(Danny’s face scrunches up, and Jason’s smile splits into a grin, heart swelling three sizes on instinct. “I think it’s stupid, s’just some fuckin’ eyes.”)
(“Eyes are windows to the soul, Dan.” Jason retorts, barking out a laugh when Danny gives him a deadpan look. His hands creep for a pillow, one of the soft downy ones wrapped in silk, and he throws it at Danny’s face. “And besides, speak for yourself! Your eyes are the bluest thing I’ve ever seen.”)
But most importantly, Danny looks tired.
Hiding is something that comes free with the purchase of living in Gotham, and Danny’s good at hiding things, he always has, but Jason knows him like the palm of his hands. He looks tired, and Jason wants to reach through the screen and ask him why. There’s an age-worn look there, catching in the flint of his iris, where his smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
Jason gets the ETA from Oracle, then leaves as fast as his legs can carry him and his grappling hook can zip through the air. He needs to see Danny with his own eyes, to confirm himself that Danny was here, and that it wasn’t his mind playing tricks on him. Or that it was Tim playing a cruel joke on him — and if it was, he’ll have to rethink his whole killing thing.
Gotham’s air is warm and suffocating, but her winds bite at him as he soars through it.
It’s second nature for him to find the west end balcony, and Jason finds himself with his feet locked in place on the building beside it. Grappling hook in hand, and a balloon in his lungs, all swelled up and squishing the air out of him.
It’s just his luck —with whatever he has left— that Danny is there as well. In the same spot he’s always been, with a cigarette caught between his teeth. He’s stuck halfway, head tilting, eyes closed, with the shadows of Gotham on his back and the light of the gala at his front.
For a moment, for a fleeting, terrifying moment, Jason thinks Danny’s going to tilt himself back off the side.The thought has him blindly tilting himself forward with his heart in his throat. Hands reaching for his grappling hook, swinging down to drop down beside him.
Danny is staring at him before his feet even hit the ground, face nigh unreadable beyond the small, wary furrow of his brows. Danny’s never looked at him like that before, it feels like stumbling on the last step of the stairs.
Then, like fire to black powder something flashes and ignites in Danny’s eyes. Mouth curling, eyes burning, for a moment, just a moment, they’re kids again, getting into fights and turning soft hands punch-rough. Danny looks at Jason like he’s going to tear him to shreds.
Jason’s mouth runs dry like a desert in the summer, but his blood chills in fear cold in his veins. Why are you looking at me like that? His mouth opens, but his tongue is leaden in his throat, and no sound comes out. It’s me. Don’t you recognize me?
Danny yanks the cigarette from his mouth like it burns him, his free hand gripping onto the railing like it’s the tether to a leash, nails threatening to turn into talons. “Red Hood.” He says, voice low and timbre, smoke dripping from his lips like dragon’s breath.
Oh.
That’s right. Jason suffocates on his heart as it sinks and soars with relief. Danny doesn’t know it’s him. In his tunnel vision, he forgot that simple, easy fact. It’s not because it’s Jason that he’s angry. It still doesn’t explain, though, why Danny looks at him like he ought to sink his teeth into his throat and rip him open.
He’s half-distracted by that, and then distracted by the need to drink in the sight of Danny again. A photo is one thing; the real person is another, and with his fear subsiding, Jason rakes his eyes over his best friend and swallows him whole. His eyes are bluer in person, his memory and Tim’s photo doesn’t do them justice, and Danny inherited his dad’s height. He’s gotten so tall. They both have. They both used to be such scrawny kids.
So distracted is he, that he forgets to respond to Danny, to say anything. Not until Danny tries to dismiss himself, and Jason kickstarts into gear. White hot panic fills in his lungs, burning him up like magma. No, no, no, he’s moving without thinking, always when he’s with him, and he nearly latches onto Danny. Nearly wraps his hands around his arm to hold him in place. Don’t leave. You’re finally here; don’t go.
Danny stays, but he stares at Jason’s reaching hands like he’ll bite them off, stares at Jason with his eyes burning, watchful. Jason’s excuse is lousy and he knows it, but he wants, wants, wants to stay and figure out every new thing about Danny.
And he feels like he’s losing something. Time bleeds together beside him and Jason feels trapped behind a glass wall of his own making. Something old, something new. The distance of which Danny keeps him at is foreign to him. He hates it.
Tell me everything, he thinks, because he can’t find the words to say it. He hands Danny a cigarette instead, and hopes that it’s enough. Tell me everything and more, tell me what I’ve missed.
In the end, he still feels like he’s losing something, but he also feels like he’s missing something. Answers that are water, and that water is slipping through his fingers. Danny leaves him with more questions than answers; something that’s never happened before, and Jason watches him walk back inside with a spinning mind.
What do you mean you spoke to my ghost?
I told you that the Joker killed me?
Have I told you anything else? Have I already told you everything I’ve wanted to?
What happened while I was gone?
Is that why you’re scarred?
Because Jason isn’t blind, he’s never been. Not in Crime Alley, not as Robin, not now. And not when it comes to his best friend. He sees the silver lightning scars ripped jagged up Danny’s arm, sees that they disappear under his sleeves. He saw, faded as they were, invisible until the light hit right, as they spread like tree roots up his throat and across the side of his face.
Scars that Danny’s never had before. Scars he didn’t have when Jason was alive the first time. Scars he didn’t have the last time Jason saw him. Or — what he remembers to be the last time he saw him, because apparently he saw him as a ghost. He sees the curve of his ears and how they point more than a human’s should, he saw the glint of his canines, sharper than they should be; sharper than he remembers. Metaphorical fangs turned real.
Jason should’ve asked where he got them from, should’ve taken Danny by the front of his collar and stopped him from leaving. Who did this to you? He should have said, a fire burning in his chest and wrapping around his throat, pulling his voice into a snarl. He should have said, his guns weighing heavy on his sides; Who did it. I’ll take care of it. Just tell me who. Tell me everything.
Instead, something crawled into his mouth and died, and his tongue is glued to the roof of it. And he doesn’t say anything, because saying something means telling his best friend who he is. It means having to take off his helmet and mask. It means telling his best friend that he’s alive, that he has been. That despite being two halves of a whole, Jason spent five years letting him think he was dead.
He can’t tell him, not when he’s in too deep already. Not when Jason is so unrecognizable to who he used to be that if he told him, Danny would hate him.
And Danny is still grieving him. So plain as day mourning, still angry over his death. Angry enough that he wants the Joker dead, angry enough that he wants to hang the noose and kick the chair out himself.
Jason wishes he told him that he looks tired.
Instead he’s standing alone on the balcony, trying to get his thoughts in order as music blares muffled through the gold-light door. He’s left staring at the crushed cigarette laying on the ground, Gotham’s ambience at his back and a poem hanging in the air that he has no words for. It’s already there. Like stars on a painted ceiling.
And there are so many questions he needs answers for.
Like his ghost. His ghost.
What did Danny mean by his ghost?
Does he really want to kill the Joker himself? Was it just the grief talking? Jason knows — or thinks he knows — Danny like the palm of his hands. He’s been through everything with him, he’s seen him say something and then immediately follow through with it. He knows when he’s being serious, he knows when he’s not.
Danny wants to kill the Joker. Stealing is one thing; murder is another. And Danny wore a look on his face that looked like he meant it when he told Red Hood that he wanted to kill Joker. But saying and doing are two different things. Jason doesn’t know what to think.
Something old, something new. Danny is still the same, and yet he’s changed so much.
What did Danny mean by his ghost?
Jason doesn’t ever remember being a ghost. But Danny knows the Joker killed him. He knows how he killed him. Danny’s parents are ghost scientists, and Jason remembers the letter he got one day telling him about the portal they were building in the basement.
He remembers thinking about telling Bruce — this was something beyond the glowing green samples stored in the fridge, giving life to the food inside. This was beyond the weapons, the inventions they made that only saw the light of day when the Drs. Fenton brought them up to showcase them.
And he didn’t, because if he hadn’t told Bruce about everything before, he wasn’t going to start. He admits, it was part fear that Bruce might intervene and prevent him from seeing Danny that he didn’t.
Neither of them had expected it to work — but it sounds like it did.
(Jason has avoided Amity Park for a reason. He knows he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from going there if he didn’t. But now, he just might have to look into it. He’s missed too much.)
And Danny wants to kill the Joker, and Jason isn’t sure if he means it or not. Because the look on his face when he said it is oh-so familiar. It’s the one he wore when he needed Jason to distract the clerk while he snuck behind the counter to steal cigarettes from the shelves. It was the one he wore when an older kid cornered them near one of Gotham’s many alleys, threatening them over something Jason can no longer remember clearly.
(He remembers puffing himself up, rearing for a fight. Danny, with glass in his teeth and blood between his fingers, lands a square kick to the spot between the kid’s legs. His knees hit the ground, and Danny’s hand found Jason’s to drag them both out of there.)
It’s the look of a boy, Gotham-touched grime in his soul, soft fingers turned calloused and scarred, about to do something he’s not going to regret. It’s the look of a boy that has set his mind to something and is going to do it. Some might call it the eyes of a cornered animal, but Danny’s never been cornered, not when Jason’s been with him.
(But Jason hasn’t been with him. Not for the last five years. So can he really say it wasn’t the eyes of a cornered animal?...Yes.)
Jason gets off the balcony before he can be seen, and he shouldn’t, but he loiters. He should get back to patrol, the night is never over. Not in Gotham. But he stays, hidden atop the roof nearby.
—---------------
An hour later, Danny walks out the doors with a man Jason recognizes as Vlad Masters — another new mystery for him to uncover. The paparazzi have long since left. Gotham’s nights are dangerous and everyone knows that, not even the vultures would stick around for a scoop, not unless there was something worth seeing.
A black limousine pulls up beside them, and Masters walks around the back to reach the other side. He’s bristled like an angry cat. “I thought I told you not to embarrass me.” He hisses, eyes snake-narrowed.
Danny, for the most part, just looks unbothered, his hands shoved into his pockets without a care. But he narrows his eyes right back, an expression made of stone. “You have a pretty low bar for what you think is embarrassing.”
Masters just scowls, “I don’t understand you, I would have thought you’d spend the whole time mingling with the Waynes, badger.” He says. Danny ruffles at the nickname, lips curling into a snarl. Jason finds himself unconsciously mimicking him. “And yet, I find you sequestered away in the corner like a little fly on the wall. Were they not up to your standards?”
‘Sequestered’ Danny mouths mockingly, eyes burning like he was going to claw his hand down Masters’ face. Instead, his hands dig into his arms. “I did talk to them, that’s more than I can say for you. You couldn’t even keep Mister Wayne’s attention for more than a minute.”
Jason frowns, and Masters scoffs, puffing up like an owl with its ego bruised. “Regardless, I am not the one losing here. Or did you forget what you promised me?”
Jason’s frown deepens. Danny doesn’t promise anything. At least, he doesn’t promise with just anyone. He deals; he repays; he indebts. But he does not promise. Promises were power, with only one side benefiting. It was trust to promise someone something. Danny doesn’t trust easily, neither of them do.
Something that hasn’t changed. Danny rears up angrily, mouth twisting, teeth baring, snarling out a fury sound. A wire cut live and sparking. He grabs the door handle and yanks it open harshly. “I didn’t promise you anything, Vlad.” He hisses, Jason strains to hear him. “I offered and you agreed. Do not fucking twist my words.”
There it is. Jason should’ve known better, guilt string-plucking in his chest for his doubt. Danny doesn’t promise things; not to people like this Masters guy, at least.
Danny grabs something from the car and throws himself back. “Don’t wait up.” He snarls, a wild thing just as Jason is, and yanks on a red hoodie over his arms. It zips up, and hangs off him, smothering the vest and button-up beneath. “I’ll meet you back at the hotel.”
Then he slams the door shut, shoulders hunched and with a scowl carved into his face. They’re both made of broken glass; independence — disobedience — and rebellion cut into them from every broken beer bottle shattered on the streets.
(Jason makes a mental note to look into Vlad Masters — Danny’s never told him about him, so they must have met after he died. The man leaves a rot in Jason’s mouth, and there is a greed festering inside him that Jason knows has left him in decay.)
(He doesn’t like how close Masters acts with him, doesn’t like the affiliations between them both. Masters reminds him of Luthor and every other rich socialite with their hands in something dirty. He hates even more that Danny is making deals with him. What has he missed?)
Jason follows after Danny, partially concerned that Danny is wandering Gotham alone. Regardless of what he can do, Gotham is still dangerous. It is bone-rotting, lung-choking and unforgiving. Danny knows this, Jason knows he does. He’s partially curious to know just where he’s going, and whether or not it was important enough to visit in the dead of Gotham’s bloody nights.
Danny surprises him — slipping between alleyways, sticking close to the shadows. Someone taught him how to be stealthy — or, at least, refined what stealth Danny already had. More new things that Jason needs to learn. More things he will never get to know.
Who taught you that?
Just what, exactly, have I missed?
I want to know everything.
Five years is a long, long time to be away from someone. If a caterpillar can become a butterfly in two weeks, then what can five years do to a human? It’s a long time to change, to become something else entirely. Jason’s become someone new, and he thinks, so has Danny.
Dread pools in his ribs, into his lungs, and weighs heavy on his heartstrings. The urge to drop down in front of Danny, to grab him by the arms and ask him to tell him everything, returns with a vengeance. This is why he avoided Amity Park.
Will I still know you like I used to? Jason trails behind Danny from the rooftops, like a ghost. Do you still love the stars? Do you still take tea over coffee? Will you tell me, if I ask?
And if he doesn’t? If he doesn’t ask, like he isn’t right now?
If he doesn’t ask about his ghost — something that still boggles his mind, because it means the Fentons were right and that portal might have worked, and Danny found Jason’s ghost? If he doesn’t ask what his ghost told him, if he told him anything else? Did his ghost tell you that he was Robin, like he always wanted to?
He will just have to keep his questions to himself. He will just have to tuck them into a folder in his mind, and file it under all of his other regrets.
He feels like he’s Robin again; keeping secrets and hiding things from his best friend because it simply wasn’t safe enough for him to know. It’s maddening.
Why has nothing changed since he died? Why has nothing changed, now that he was alive?
—---------------
Danny leads him to the Gotham Cemetery. Jason freezes outside the gates. Oh, he thinks.
Oh.
He thinks back to what he thought earlier.
What could possibly be so important that he’d go to it in the dead of Gotham’s night? The cemetery. Of course. Something old, something new, something bittersweet sets over his tongue that he swallows down.
Jason forces himself to follow.
“Hey.” Danny says as Jason settles behind a tree, voice gentle in foreign familiarity. He’s standing at Jason’s grave, his hands shoved into his pockets. The light is low but it doesn’t stop Jason from seeing the starlight-soft look in Danny’s eyes and his half-tilted smile, the smile that Jason is more familiar with than the wary scowls. “Sorry I’m late.”
Guiltish misery wraps its hands around Jason’s lungs. Pin-prickingly, stabbing at his heartstrings, Jason’s mouth moves on its own; “It’s okay.” but no sound comes out. Danny doesn’t hear him, and neither does Jason himself.
Danny sits down before Jason’s tombstone, groaning low and tiredly as his legs fold beneath him. He’s older than Jason, and immediately his mind switches over to all the jokes he used to lob him with.
(“Need help crossing the street, old man?” Jason, eight years old, asks with a grin so wide and painful across his face; giggles in his chest. He hooks his elbow with Danny, and keeps him tight against his ribs. “You’ll need all the help you can get in your ancient age.”)
(“I’m not that old.” Danny says, glaring at him before they scurry across the street with the light still green. Traffic laws are a joke in Crime Alley, it’s like a game of frogger as the sound of honking horns and screeching tires follows their heels. “We’re six months apart!”)
(“Six months and four days, actually.” Jason corrects when they reach the other side, snickering as they race down the sidewalk. Drivers lean out their windows and curse them out as they get away, Danny dodges an empty soda can thrown at his head. “Can’t forget the four days.”)
“I would’ve come sooner.” Danny tells him, pulling him from child-fuzzy memories and back into reality. Jason peers around the tree to see him running a hand through his hair, head ducked down. His palm splaying against his neck. “Sorry I didn’t. I got scared.”
Scared? Jason blinks, he leans against the bark and bumps his helmet against the wood. The thunk is loud in his ears, but Danny makes no indication that he heard. Of what?
But Danny doesn’t say what, he drops his hand and glances off to the side. He sits like a man who isn’t quite sure what to do, his mouth pressed into a thin line, his eyes scrunched. Grief carves into the lines of his face like a sculptor carving into marble.
“I was gonna get you flowers on my way here.” Danny continues. His voice cracks, begins to wobble, and Jason sees Danny’s jaw tighten and his eyes close for a moment. When they open, there’s a wobbling sheen on his bottom lashes; tears threatening to bleed.
Danny flicks at the tears with the nail of his thumb, it does nothing. It just makes his breath hitch. “Um, but they- uh, didn’t have any open on the way here.” He says, giving Jason’s grave a tremulous smile. “Sorry, I’ll make sure to pick some up on my next visit.”
Next visit. Jason’s heart squeezes uncomfortably, before he reels at the words. Danny’s going to be visiting again, after five years of being out of Gotham? Next visit, why are you visiting again? Was this the reason he came to Bruce’s little charity ball with Vlad Masters? So that he could come visit Jason’s grave?
It couldn’t have been. There are other ways to get to Gotham that don’t require making deals with shady rich men. Danny’s smart, smarter than Danny himself gives him credit for. He’s brilliant. Why did he need Masters’ help to get him to Gotham?
There had to be another reason why.
God, there were so many questions that Jason wants the answers to. He’ll find them, one way or another.
But, he focuses in again. Danny is only here for the night. One night, and he doesn’t know when he’ll be back again. Jason wants to commit every detail of his best friend to memory before he leaves.
“You like zinnias, right?” Danny pets the grass at his side absently, and yes. Yes, Jason does, and Danny remembers. Even five years from his death, he remembers. Of course he does.
“Yeah, you do. You used to pick the petals up off the sidewalk from those uh, fuck — the vendors. The Victorian flower language too, I think. Got a book on that somewhere. I’ll get you red an’ yellow ones.”
Grief traps in Jason’s chest, and he barely tamps down the bitter laugh forcing itself out of the chokehold of his throat. You fucking sap, you big fuckin’ sap.
Red zinnias. Steadfast beating of the heart. The irony. It’s got double the meaning now, now that he’s alive. But Danny doesn’t know that, so the heart that’s beating could only belong to him. But even with Jason alive, he’s hiding. Between the both of them, the only one here with a beating heart is Danny.
(Between the two of them, the only heart here is one that's made between the two of them.)
Yellow zinnias. Daily remembrance. Of course. That doesn’t need any explanation, the writing is right there on the wall. Raised, so that even the blind may read it. It doesn’t need to be said what that means, Jason can hear it on the wind, in the grass, in the trees. His heart crumpling like a rag being twisted out to drain the dirty water soaking in it.
I miss you.
I miss you.
I miss you.
I’m right here. Is what Jason wants to say. It’s what he should say. He should step out from behind the tree; should speak up and say something. To announce his presence. To do something to let Danny know that he’s speaking to someone who is more than a ghost (who feels like one anyways) and a corpse in the ground.
Here I am. Here I am. HERE I AM.
His feet are gravebound to the dirt, his tongue cut out of his mouth and shoved into a jar. He feels, in some way, like he’s clawing out of his own grave again, but the dirt keeps falling and his arms are burning. His lungs are filled with more soil than air. He’s not getting out.
Shame burns cigarette smoke in the back of his throat, shriveling up what little remains of his tar-filled heart. It should be his lungs, and it’s got that too. His feet are grave-bound to the floor.
Danny’s begun to cry, much to Jason’s horror. It should be more incentive for Jason to step out. He doesn’t. His best friend sniffles and scrubs at his face, soaking tears into his hoodie’s sleeve. “I’m sorry for not visitin’ sooner,” he says, voice spiraling with grief, “I don’t have an excuse. I should’ve come sooner. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Don’t be, Jason thinks. Finds himself surprised by the truth of it. He should be upset. Five years and not a single visit. He abandoned him like everyone else. Except he didn’t.
He’s not upset, he can’t be. Not when Danny’s finally here. Not when he’s still crying over him five years after the fact. Not when he’s going to put flowers on his grave that means he thinks of him daily. Not when Danny knows who killed him and wants him dead.
Jason isn’t sure of what to think of that still. He wants Bruce to kill the Joker. More importantly he wants change in Gotham. He wants something to be done. He doesn’t know if Danny is being honest or not — and honesty doesn’t mean anything if someone doesn’t act on it.
Danny continues talking to his grave, his voice full with sorrow. He talks about the gala, about running into Bruce and talking to him again.
Jason listens in dutiful silence, soaking in Danny’s voice like a sponge. This is what he was expecting on the balcony; this easy conversation. Except it’s not a conversation, Danny is talking and not expecting a response. Jason feels like a stranger imposing on his own grave.He should slink away, let Danny have his peace on his own.
He refuses to move. He can’t bring himself to.
If he closes his eyes, he can pretend that he's sitting in front of him. He can pretend he’s thirteen again, with him and Danny crawled under the bed at the manor and trading all the stories they couldn’t fit in their letters. Danny tells him about another fight he had with Dash Baxter, eyes rolling but smug teeth flashing in a stifled smile. Then he tells him about something Sam and Tucker did; about one of Sam’s protests she led against the biology lab, and Tucker coding his PDA to play Doom. Easy, stupid middle schooler shit.
They’d sneak out to the balcony for their vices, Danny clutching a carton of cheap cigarettes in hand. Alfred always finds the ones Jason hides, so they usually share whenever Danny comes to visit. Jason tells him about Gotham Academy, about the people there and the classes. Prep school is another beast entirely, he likes seeing Danny’s reactions to the politics that goes on inside.
Or, further back, they’re eight again, climbing a rickety fire escape to the rooftop and hanging their feet over the edge to find Batman and Robin. Danny was in the lead before he left for Amity Park. Jason remembers it clearly; they’d spent all night outside on that rooftop.
Jason doesn’t close his eyes.
Jazz decided to change career goals; psychology’s become more of a hobby for her, and she’s going to go to med school instead. She’s thinking of doing an internship in Metropolis. Danny says he’s glad that it’s not Gotham, and when he told Jazz this, she laughed at him and told him that she was going to save that for later.
She’s Gotham-touched too, she knows it’s blood just as much as Danny does. She wants to help the people there, but knows what Gotham’s like. She knows what she can and cannot do. Determination doesn’t equate skill, it just means the willingness to learn.
Sam is staying in Amity Park and doing online classes for college, but Tucker got a full ride scholarship in software engineering. Danny’s thick with pride as he tells Jason’s headstone. Jason’s happy for him — they weren’t close, not like he and Danny were, but they were still friends.
Jason soaks it all in; tell him more. He wants to know everything.
"I don't know what I want to do." Danny says when he’s finally done talking about everyone else, his chin laying on his knees. “S’not like I can be an astronaut anymore, but there’s not anything I can see myself doing.”
The corner of his mouth coils, sardonic. “I’ve had five years to come up with somethin’ new, and I’ve come up with nothin’ at all.” He huffs. It’s a rough, bitter sound. Gotham has been steadily seeping back into his voice since he arrived in the graveyard, and now it comes out thick, like it never left.
Danny’s face falls slack, like a puppet losing its strings, and he sinks into himself. “I guess I…” He exhales slow. “I’ve just been distracted.” A faraway glaze eclipses his eyes, and before they close, tears begin to bleed onto his eyelids. Again, grief mars the lines of his skin, settling into the curve of his mouth and threading between his brows like second nature.
Fuck, it’d be so easy for Jason to just step out. Move. His best friend is grieving. He could save him the pain of it and tell him now. Move, move, move.
He doesn’t move.
For a while, there’s nothing but silence, just Jason hiding in his shame; a rat on the street would be bolder than him. Danny’s eyes don’t open. Eventually, his head tilts and slumps into his knees, Jason almost thinks, somehow, that he’s fallen asleep — but Danny’s hand threads into the hair on the back of his head, his finger beginning to tap an invisible beat into his skull.
It’s the perfect opportunity for him to slip away. Danny’s distracted; lost in his thoughts. He won’t notice if Jason slinks off now. He could go and hide away on a roof nearby, ensuring that Danny gets his rightful privacy without leaving him to the teeth of the streets.
Jason still doesn’t move.
Danny begins to hum. It’s a low, breathy sound, and it shakes unevenly. There’s no discernible melody, but a breeze picks it up and travels it through the air anyway, rooting Jason to his spot. His throat swells, and his back sinks into the bark behind him.
For a full minute, maybe two, Danny just hums. It’s a simple tune, but it fills the graveyard with the sound. When it goes up, he sharpens, when he goes down again, it flats, and sometimes it wobbles.
When he lifts his head, when he finally opens his eyes, he’s still humming. Soon it dies down, and the next time Danny exhales, it comes out tumultuous and slow. His hand slips heavy from his head and drops into the grass.
“Where’d you go, Jay?” Danny mutters, and despite his voice coming flat, he still sounds so tired. Danny’s eyes flick up, lifting off the grass to burn into the headstone. He’s not even looking at him, and yet Jason still freezes up, he still feels pinned under the weight of his stare. “I know you’re still out there, somewhere. I know it.”
Jason breathes in shakily, a sting deep in the back of his throat. He gives no answer; guilt is an animal with claws, and it burrows deep into Jason’s heart to make itself a home between the tendons. He’s right here.
Silence falls over them again, and this time it’s only the sound of the city around them that bleeds into the air. Danny stares at Jason’s grave, staring like he’s expecting an answer. He doesn’t get one.
Danny sighs out low, and stands. His knees tremble slightly, and he rubs his sleeve into his eyes, catching the stray tears falling from his lashes. Like breaking a spell, Jason jolts from the fog of sorrow hanging in the air.
“I’ll see you later, an’ I’ll make sure to bring you those flowers you like.” He tells him, and miraculously, a shadow of a smile flits over Danny’s mouth. “Y’better be here when I get back, alright? I’ll kick y’fucking ass if you’re not.”
Jason bites back a huff, his mouth upturning in a wobble. I will, he thinks, and watches Danny trail out of the graveyard with his hands in his pockets. He waits until he’s disappeared behind the gate before following.
Guilt is a thing with claws, and Jason leaves the cemetery with it eating his tongue. But he makes sure Danny gets back to his hotel safe before he slinks back to Crime Alley; he might not be a ghost anymore, but he can still trail behind Danny like he is.
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ayy i finally got chapter 2 of CFAU/TMWS edited/redone! It had to get rewritten because a lot of stuff became obsolete in the wake of the new chapter 1. and also it just kinda. fucking sucked imo lmao
(you can also read it here on my ao3!)
#dpxdc#dp x dc#danny fenton is not the ghost king#dp x dc crossover#cw swearing#dpxdc crossover#childhood friends au#cfau#dead on main#dp x dc fanfic#dpxdc fanfic#dpdc#banshee danny fenton#got to let jason be Slightly More Unhinged about Danny in this version which i had fun with. i love writing unhealthy attachments it just#adds a little spice ✨ im like an evil scientist marveling over their unethical creation. someone call me olivia octavia#fun fact that i learned recently: jazz also wanted to be also be an accountant or a brain surgeon! so she's getting a little break from#being the Therapist Friend. :]#jason @ danny: whose hurt you. tell me i'll kill them. talk to me tell me everything. don't leave my side please.#danny would be pr similar if he knew red hood was jason :P. uhh. after the initial shock wore off.
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Hello tumblr, my name is Lucy
(I go by she/her)
This is my first time actually posting consistently on this app and I wanted to make a proper introduction for myself.
This post was written in January of 2024.
I’m not new to tumblr but I am new to posting on here. This is a safe space for me to just write my thoughts since most people I know in real life don’t know about this account.
Basic things to know about me…
> my birthday is October 4th
> currently in highschool
> tea is my favorite drink, esp. genmaicha
> learning Japanese
Some fun facts about me are that I’m a huge music fan, I listen to pretty much any genre (with a few exceptions). Recently I’ve gotten back into anime so I listen to a lot of Japanese music. I also like K-pop, American pop, rock, metal, jazz, Latin/salsa, bossa, indie, or pretty much anything I find interesting.
I also love playing video games, my favorite kind being rhythm games. I play Project Sekai often because I do have a love and nostalgia for vocaloid.
Art has been a thing I’ve been into for a long time, so occasionally I’ll doodle and stuff. I’m not a major artist but it’s a hobby of mine. I also like anime and manga—my favorite show is actually FLCL. I watched that show all the way back in 6th grade. I loved the music that the pillows played and the theme song, Ride On Shooting Star, is my all time favorite song.
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All right! I’ll send a few names in, the ones I remember and learned while watching NCT world 2.0
It’s going to be randomly, and it’s completely okay if you have less to say about some members 😊
Taeil, Yuta, Johnny, Taeyong.
Quick fact: Taeil was the first name I remembered because it sounded so cool.
The first four I want to know about, I’ll send in next few names in a separate ask.
I also hope I’m not bothering too much
So you've chosen... the hyung line 😎 Let's start with~~
T to the A to the E to the YONG
-> the leader of NCT 127 and NCT as a whole
-> main rapper, main dancer (and always has a lot of suggestions regarding their choreographies), songwriter (he co-wrote or participated in writing lyrics for a lot of NCT songs)
-> also a member of SM's super band SuperM
-> most importantly though he's released several solo projects like the single Long Flight (under SM) and a mini-album worth of songs on his personal SoundCloud account (definitely check it out, he collaborated with EXO's Baekhyun and Red Velvet's Seulgi!)
-> will be participating in a dance show Street Woman Fighter (alongside Kang Daniel, Boa, Jessi and more!)
-> on stage he's in charge of the tough, the sexy, the bad and the growl, but in reality he is a shy fluff ball
-> sucker for expensive brand clothes (witness this on his Insta)
-> lover of animals in all shapes and colours, from bugs to fish to dogs (witness this here)
-> in love with sweet potatoes, Spongebob, videogames and Baekhyun
-> has couple rings with Doyoung, because they are very very close
-> is very creative, likes drawing or re-decorating while listening to chill jazz music or soundtracks
-> likes to keep everything clean
Master Chef MOON TAEIL lezgedit
-> main main vocalist of NCT 127 (yes, the double main is intentional)
-> you've heard the MAMA's performance, you know what this man can do, but if you're still not convinced, listen to Simon Says, Kick It, Chain or Coming Home (which is a lovely display of 127's supreme vocals)
-> actually, check his covers, solos or collabs
-> is a perfectionist while recording, will re-record every note up to the point where he loses his voice and then he still isn't satisfied
-> has trouble shooting MVs cause he can't stop laughing
-> is praised by everyone in the music industry for his vocals
-> literally evereyone on this planet is waiting for his solo album (I'm looking at you, SM)
-> the oldest member of NCT, but acts as a maknae
-> in charge of funny without trying, because most of the time he has no clue what's going on and says and does completely random things
-> does aegyo once in a blue moon, but every time he does it, the Earth shakes in its core
-> likes Stevie Wonder, EDM music and is generally the chillest NCT member (witness this here)
-> not good with technology, it was only recently he discovered he can actually read fans' replies on Bubble :)))))))
-> despite being sworn enemies with social media, he set up an Insta and broke the record for reaching one million followers under an hour
-> Haechan's favourite toy hyung (witness their chemistry here)
-> said to be sleepwalking
-> loves working out and has a special power move called Taeil's butterfly, his abs are yet to be revealed
-> rommate with Yuta and together they live in their own mess and filth :))))
-> has his own cooking segment
-> I love him
And I'm JOHNNY SUH
-> main dancer, rapper (listen to Misfit, Dancing in the Rain or Work It)
-> came to Korea all the way from Chicago
-> joined SM in 2008 and trained with EXO members but eventually ended up in NCT
-> had a radio segment with Jaehyun called "NCT's night night!"
-> loves performing, loves attention, loves showing off
-> likes DJing and did a house party once with Mark
-> produced and/or filmed Mark's QTAH and Doyoung's cover
-> loves taking pictures (especially with analog cameras), calls it "Johntography" and sometimes share it oh his Insta!
-> has a tremendously popular segment called Johnny's Communication Center that's been running for almost THREE YEARS
-> a sweetheart with abs and lots of tattoos
-> don't make fun of him though, he'll glare you to death
-> an only child and mama's boy
Oppa NAKAMOTO YUTA is here
-> main dancer, vocalist
-> Japanese Osaka's prince with a healing smile
-> used to play soccer professionaly
-> loves TVXQ and it was them who made him want to become an idol, check out his cover here
-> in charge of the bad and the dominant, unless he smiles
-> recently did a lovely colab for Tom Ford
-> has his own radio show Yuta at Home with various guests!
-> the biggest WinWin enthusiast (actually shares this passion with Taeil)
-> loves experimenting with styles, colours, accessories
-> paints his nails, wears earrings regularly
-> likes jrock, especially Hyde, L'Arc~en~Ciel
-> shares pics of various behind the scenes on his Insta!
-> loves drawing and reading, overall a very creative person (witness this here)
-> has sensitive hearing and can be waken up easily, so Taeil has to be extra careful around him when he sleeps
That's... that's it! Phew! Hope it helps, hehe. I didn't want to get into the boring details like "he first debuted in blah blah", I felt like saying some interesting info about them instead :)
Thank you for your ask, I had fun answering it, you are not bothering me at all ^^
#I am exhausted :))))))#I tried to cover as much relevant or interesting info as possible#I'm still kinda new too so eheh#these are members I actually kinda love but can you tell which memer do I love the most haha :))))#is it that obvious :))))))#I'll do the second ask tomorrow! thank you for this it's such fun actually I love it <3#asks#NCT#NCT 127#Taeyong#Lee Taeyong#Taeil#Moon Taeil#Yuta#Nakamoto Yuta#Johnny Suh
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Saturday Night Dead
A dull roar floods a small, derelict house and about a block of surrounding land all of a sudden, followed shortly by a piercing screech which acts as the conditioned stimulus to roughly 30-40 people between the ages of probably around 15 at the youngest, up to pushing-40, causing a mass salivation in response to the promise of real, proletariat, bullshit-free Punk Fucking Rawk™. Brando Murely himself sits on a cinder block outside the door, just enough out of the way of the crowd distractedly making its way inside, everyone in the middle of a conversation, turning around every few seconds to give their latest opinion on the eternal IHOP v. Waffle House crisis, shouting-match phone calls, drunken wobbling, stoned hobbling, and oh-that-sweet-cocaine's-a-calling. From Brando's arm dangles eazily-breezily a small bucket, perhaps formerly housing some domesticated plant, with the word "DONATIONS" written in sharpie on the side. He is only a few brainwaves away from REM sleep, that sultry temptress.
Avey and Fyo take their sweet time. The openers are about to play, now sound-checking, if you can really call it that (not to be rude, but the opening acts of these kinda shows were more often than not either local upstarts or local failures, and lacked some level of expertise in regards to acoustics, dynamics, levels and such), but they have both just lit a new cigarette. No worries, though; they've been around enough that they know the path straight to the front, if it should turn out that The Ushi Onis were worth front row listening.
Towards the back of the house stood in solidarity the introverts so in love with music, but so out of touch with people, the old farts who didn't really care anymore but still attended out of habit, the few (if extant) devout fans of another band on the line-up who just wanted to get it over with already, and the stray college kid; not any art or philosophy major, no, just some regular Joe (and hilariously enough, one independent study in "Crime and Punkishment", a locally famous zine, reported that 73.7% of these people were actually named Joe) who happened upon this utterly obscene proceeding via a stack of coincidence and misfortune--maybe they were there with some punk ladyfriend from class.
In the middle, by far the largest section, you could find pretty much anybody from anywhere. Regulars who still hear the heartbeat of the scene, newcomers enthusiastic but not enthusiastic enough to put themselves out for judgement if they happened to accidentally nod their heads a bit with the music (mortified.....), and that strange demographic that seemed to place itself starkly in the middle of all the aforementioned alignments; middle-of-the-roaders through and through, to the point where they have risen above the road, and the ideal of the road, and smugly glance at one another and then down to you as if to imply a transcendence which those of us who have ever experienced anything in extreme can never know of.
Front and center, ears blasted to bits and facial muscles entering anaerobic respiration due to excessive smiling, the All-Stars of the scene danced alongside strangers, either naïve or drunk. The frontmen of the most famous local bands, the influencers, both silent and megaphonic, the photographers, the beauties, the hype-builders, the next band, the people who arranged this show in the first place, all of them stood in almost equal amounts of admiration as the performing act themselves. The rich and famous of the DIY; the proletariat bourgeoisie; the broke stock brokers; the soothsayers and the fortune tellers; basically, the people you want to know.
"Hey, let's make a film tomorrow" says Fyo.
"About what?" from Avey.
"Who cares? Let's climb that billboard at the top of the hill. Let's hop on a train and record the city from like, some weird dutch angle, or something. Let's see how many cats can fit in one box."
"We could never find enough cats for that. All of our friends have like two cats at least, including me, and that still wouldn't be close to enough."
"Let's give the camera some 4-aco-dmt and see what happens."
"Easy on the Adderall, bub."
Fyo had a pretty publicly-known problem with stimulants, which he was recently combatting with a burgeoning benzodiazepine habit. Avey's personal dog hair was Kratom. Both of them partook in casual use of just about every recreational substance at this point, always especially eager to try something new. They still more or less had a handle on their sanity, but not without their eccentricities. Both had a deep love for consumption and creation of art, primarily music; between them they owned a veritable arsenal of digital and analog synthesizers, samplers, ancient MIDI keyboards, melodicas, and various novelty instruments collected over the years. Each had their own individual recording endeavors, as well as a joint operation making full use of their combined setup. They had played shows, Fyo more than Avey on account of having played in front of various kinds of audiences since the age of 15, from dull high school jazz band performances to the exact kind of venue they found themselves at tonight--in fact he'd played at this house several times already in the past year. “Holy House”, one of the few legit punk houses remaining in the city after a long string of misfortunes over the past two years lead to some places being shut down, others burning down, some simply forgotten about, living on only in the ink of flyers taped to the walls of just about every DIY art kid in the area--it was kind of like collecting baseball cards. Avey had played a couple of the more fleeting art spots once or twice, but was generally overcome with anxiety at the last minute.
Now three cigarettes in a row have been smoked, throughout yet more overly-anxious stim-fueled artistic brainstorming, both Avey and Fyo silently assuming that tomorrow would in reality consist of the same events as every other Saturday; recovering from the debauchery of the previous night, maybe with a half-hour or so of absent-minded musical improvisation.
The Ushi Onis had completed their set, and from what they heard from outside, it was agreed that their nonsense conversations were about on equal footing with the music, as far as time-wasting went. Not that they were bad, it's just.....it seemed as though they'd heard this same band hundreds of times, despite the fact this was their debut show. It seemed to Fyo, who had been in attendance for, shit, a decade now, that every show more-or-less went the same these days. You could even predict non-music related events. There was the guy who got way too drunk and was basically floating around the crowd, eyes only half-open, flailing around off-rhythm in a disconcertingly unhuman way during particularly intense performances--Fyo himself had been this guy on more occasions than he'd like to admit, as well as more occasions than he could literally remember. There was the creep getting kicked out for being creepy; that was a very strict rule for this scene, "NO CREEPS". You'd see it on basically any given flyer. House shows did tend to attract these creeps, what with the combination of pretty, young, and drug-addicted attributes of many of the female frequenters. Thankfully, Fyo had never been that guy. There was the kind of slapstick situation that occurred immediately after every band played, where the members of the other bands playing that night would come up and say "Hey, great set, what pedals do you use?" and then annoy the shit out of the poor guys just trying to fucking get their drums in the van, only for the same thing to happen to the original complimentary artists. Nobody ever learned their lesson. Nobody ever learned their lesson, forever and ever. This pretty much sums up the stagnation that Fyo has recently come to observe within the scene.
"Hey, I'm done here, if you are. Head back to my place?"
"Right you are."
The four-minute drive back to Fyo's apartment left just enough time to blair at obnoxious volume Avey's favorite song by The Mountain Goats (at least, his favorite song that day--the song changed frequently, but The Goats always remained Mountainous). On the way upstairs, Avey got a text from Tomie: "Beck pulled through. Pool party?"
So Avey said to Fyo; "Beck pulled through. Pool party?"
"Fuckin duh."
Tomie was a close friend as well as ex-girlfriend to both Avey and Fyo. Beck was their communal coke dealer. Fyo was the only person in The Crew whose apartment had a pool, and it was the deep depths of summer, so late night swimming was a common occurrence. Tonight, Tomie had brought Beck along (who surely had more coke, and anyone can see that hanging out with a coke dealer, who definitely had plenty of coke to spare, would certainly turn out to be a fun time--Fyo knew this from experience, as an old friend, Jericho, also happened to be a coke dealer before moving off to.....fuck-knows-where; Fyo wasn't sure WHY they hung out so much exactly, or why Jericho had given him so much free coke in those days; Jericho was gay, but Fyo didn't really feel like he could possibly be desirable enough to warrant such favor, especially with his [back then, at least] very socially awkward mannerisms, even after several lines of really honestly pretty great coke--although, Fyo [himself being hetero, this only now in the narrative needing to be made clear] usually thought the same thing about ladies he spent time with, and surprisingly often was proven wrong) as well as invited Fitch, who invited Les, who invited Beck, who invited Lil, who invited Vick, who invited.....
.....
Noujeff.
"Wait you say WHO the fuck is coming to my apartment???" Fyo demands answers.
"Shit, I'm sorry Fyo. I didn't know Vick was friends with him, don't know why he still is. We'll tell him to fuck off once he gets here, waste some gas at least. But hey.....The Crew here ain't gettin' any younger, so let's fuckin' get to it. Pick a record already."
The Crew was, in no particular order:
Avey, reserved but strong-willed and resilient, and disarmingly cunning; he once got Fyo, his on-and-off-again girlfriend Elise, and himself a free pass to this really exclusive music festival in what can only be described as an "experimental city"--FORM Arcosanti was the name of the festival (the town being just "Arcosanti"), located smack dab in the middle of the deserts of Arizona, where Fyo first glimpsed that now-out-of-reach image, occasionally dreamt or half-remembered, of a lone mountain, in the middle of one of the least forgiving deserts in an entire superpower-nation's worth of land, one of the hottest and driest places around, soaring so high into The Places We Cannot Reach, the great heights, the domain of myth and fiction more than anything, of a mountain seen from the road of a lonely desert which had a peak covered, even here in the frenzied peaks of July, the radioactive horror show burning of July, a peak covered in SNOW. Beautiful, nostalgic (and always nostalgic, for there was no "winter" in Arizona), almost, no yes certainly CLEANSING snow. The rest of the trip only got better. That is all we'll say of it, for now;
Fyo, the one whose thoughts we gain direct access to (to hell with a fourth wall; give me 50, 500, 5,000,000 more walls, and I will break them all), generally responsible, has a dependable job as a pharmacy technician, "almost" a real job, and two major flaws; here we move into
1.) Intense Manic Episodes On a Yearly, Predictable Basis
-----
Every year, in the period of time spanning between around March and June-Mid-July, Fyo would suffer an intense clinical episode of mania; he would become obsessive over ideas so obscure and opaque that he only sounded like a lunatic when describing them, and indulged in drug abuse as if suicidal, and more than once now had indeed proven to be so. Fyo would and did argue, however, that during these periods of admittedly (even by him) questionable ties to reality, his artistic output became noticeably higher in both quantity and quality than what was usually found in his "seasonal depression" (so-called) episodes during the months of October-February. No psychiatrist has yet explained this adequately.
2.) An Unhealthy Obsession With All Forms of Art, As Well As the Definition of Art Itself
-----
From a very young age, Fyo had shown great interest in art, and strangely enough but of course conspicuously naturally, surrealist art in particular. At 12, on a family vacation to Florida for the purposes of the (back then affordable even by the lower-middle-class family, with some planning) relaxation of the beach and the primal thrill of the Great Twin Amusement Parks, he devoted a day to visiting the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg, Florida; a couple years later, the very first band he was in (at 15 years old) was named after Dali's "The Burning Giraffe". Then he gradually caught on to the growing web of obscurities, myths, exaggerations, half-truths, genuine enigmas, and philosophical contradictions that were accepted by some as truth, and saw the art embedded in life; and in the mirror, he saw the reflection of such, and in that he saw things that moved him in ways he was naïve to previously. That's how he got older. That's how he saw that the waking life was just as absurd as the dream. All that mattered was which space he occupied at a given time;
Tomie, as mentioned previously was both a close friend and ex-girlfriend to both Avey and Fyo. Each relationship was separated by such distance (spatially and temporally) that it really didn't matter, everyone had moved on cross-country and it was just nice to have people just fuckin' caring about each other, you know? Tomie was not afraid to bite into you in a very personal way, as long as she knew it would help you. She was a great ally to have in the world, if sometimes blunt; but this bluntness was out of a genuine kindness and invariably proved effective somehow. If you trusted anyone's advice, it was Tomie's;
Fitch, constantly in-and-out of jail for something or other, after so many years the circumstances blurred out a bit. Being eternally and self-admittedly impermanent, he always seemed almost as if acting in repentance to the best of his abilities; but around people like this, hope for repentance was laughable;
Lil, probably the most adult of the group, an ex-girlfriend of Fyo from back in the day, had worked her way to a very well-paying analytics gig. She still found herself hanging around with these wannabe artists and revolutionaries, for whatever reason; she was certainly always welcome, and that gave her a warm, content feeling.....
"Pick a goddamn record" says Lil.
Every time The Crew got together for some midnight coke-fueled swimming, someone got to ceremoniously choose a record from Fyo's collection, off of which the cover of the cocaine would be inhaled. It was Fyo's night. He was having trouble deciding. The record that was chosen would also be played on the record player while the lines were being drawn and erased; the lines themselves were on the sleeve, the small but not ignorable visual component of the LP. He looked through his stack; Joyce Manor (played a show with them before they became big--frontman was kind of an asshole. No.), The Antlers (far too sad for shamelessly inhaled thrills), Talking Heads (no, we'll just end up putting "Once In a Lifetime" on repeat), no, no, no, no.....LCD Soundsystem? Hm. Yeah, this one. Sound of Silver, talk to me.
"Fuckin' finally. Okay let's get this train wreck a-rollin'."
Greed filled the eyes of everyone in the room. Along with record-choosing duties came the first line of the night. Fyo lays down one FAT fucking line, finely crushed almost down to the individual molecule it seemed, grabs the closest straw, leans over and looks down at the snowy mountain range here in the middle of the silver desert, and unflatteringly snorts with all his might, and feels each crystal immediately begin its own personal attack on his neurotransmitters, leans back to make sure everything falls into the mucous membrane, nothing wasted, except for Fyo himself, and steps back to fall comically onto the couch, a smile of contentment and even relief overtaking his facial expression as Nancy Whang chants "You can normalize. Don't it make you feel alive?"
This. This is the life.
#fiction#short story#drugs#punk#punk rock#diy#metamodern#metaphysical#arkansas#little rock#lcd soundsystem#surrealism#salvador dali#addiction
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AU Thursday: Lovecraft Jazz, Meet Deadly Premonition
All right -- I brought this up twice last week, both in a regular AU Thursday post and as part of a discussion of Hope's role in the Lovecraft Jazz AU (Hope, for those not in the know, is the Queen Wins!Victor's Pomeranian. He first appeared in an ask on my first Secundus!Victor RP account (I'd started Queen Wins as a separate universe there) as the Annoying Dog from Undertale, crashing through the window of Richard's shop; QW!Victor promptly adopted the pup, and he's stuck around doing weird things in anon asks ever since. I made him a Pom when I recreated the Valice pets in Sims 4 since that seemed to best mimic what the Annoying Dog looked like), so let's have some expansion on this crossover idea already.
First, for context: Deadly Premonition is a video game where you play as FBI agent Francis York Morgan (call him York, that's what everyone calls him), who goes to small town Greenvale to investigate the murder of a young waitress, and how it ties into some other murders he's been investigating, all linked by red seeds. Simple enough premise, right?
Trust me, this game is so much more. It's a flawed classic along the lines of Vampire: the Masquerade -- Bloodlines -- the game itself is janky and glitchy as all hell, but the story and characters are absolutely fantastic. My main LPer Helloween4545 did a LP of it recently, and you can watch it here if you want the experience without having to fight with the controls/deal with the game crashing on you. If you like the show Twin Peaks, or just really quirky and dramatic stuff with super inappropriate music at times, you'll probably enjoy it!
As for the crossover -- well, basically, beyond shifting the time period to the late 1920s, I'd be using my gang to fix some of the more depressing parts of the narrative. The details are going under a cut, because MAJOR SPOILERS. Seriously, huge ones. Tweaked for the time period a bit, but still. Read on only if you don't mind that. (Or watch the LP and save this post for later.)
-->The group first meets York as part of the Innsmouth mess -- he's one of the BoI agents investigating the "smuggling operation" going on there. They get along pretty well, since York is considered kind of a weirdo by his other agents, and he's the only one not particularly phased by Siren. (He's a little surprised, but gets over it quickly.)
-->Later on, while exploring the Dreamlands, Alice stumbles across one of York's dreams and says hello. York tells her he's on his way to Greenvale to investigate the murder of a young girl named Anna Graham -- Alice, upon realizing Greenvale isn't too far from where they are currently, says they'll meet up with him there and they can do a bit of reconnecting when he isn't busy with his case.
-->And then the group gets pulled into said case, thanks to a few key events:
A) Emily meeting the local policewoman, Emily Wyatt, and the two bonding a bit over having the same first name
B) Victor meeting Forrest Kaysen, and his dog Willie hating Victor's dog Hope on sight -- the feeling is mutual, and the two men just barely avoid a dog fight. Victor is baffled, as Hope seemed to like everybody before now
C) Lizzie visiting the club of Carol Maclaine, the sister of local policeman Thomas, and stumbling upon the weird sex dungeon downstairs -- and then being hidden in a closet by Thomas (dressed in a wig and red dress) before she can escape, letting her see that Thomas and the local sheriff, George Woodman, have kind of a -- fucked-up sexual relationship. Thomas apologizes after George leaves, and Lizzie, feeling really bad for him, says he can talk if he needs to and that "Thomas, just remember -- you really CAN do better"
D) Victor starting to have strange dreams of following Hope through a bright white forest -- and then, suddenly, coming across the murder victim! Anna tells him she's become a Goddess of the Forest and to pass along to her mother that she's okay now and she's sorry for getting involved with George.
-->That, plus a little more encouragement on Lizzie's part, gets Thomas to confess the truth -- GEORGE killed Anna as the first part of a ritual to make him into a "god," inspired by the legend of an old serial killer in the town, The Red Cape Killer. He also says local girl Becky was part of their little group and she's likely to be the next victim -- there's a race to her house, and they manage to catch George in the act of cutting her open. Some hasty field medicine from Bonejangles keeps her alive long enough to get her to the local hospital, and George is taken into custody.
-->However, while everyone's relieved that they've caught the killer, York isn't so sure his case is over. He reveals that the reason he's in Greenvale is because Anna's death is only the latest in dozens of murders he's investigating, all linked by the same strange upside-down symbol and red seeds. While he's willing to accept George committed the Greenvale murder, there's obviously more to this story. The gang do some digging, and eventually get help from Harry Stewart, the richest and most powerful man in town, who informs them of a dark incident in the town's past where someone covered Greenvale in a sinister purple fog that drove the local inhabitants to attack and kill each other. The Red Cape Killer was one of the affected (Harry's own father, in fact), and simply the most successful. The incident was buried in town memory, and the Red Cape Killer lived on as an urban legend.
-->While all this is going on, they also learn more about York's friend Zach -- a mysterious invisible figure who apparently came to York shortly after York's father murdered his mother, then himself. Alice wonders if Zach is like her Wonderland friends and offers to help him traverse the Dreamlands if he wants to get out more -- this leads to a rather interesting situation where they end up in one of Thomas's dreams, and Zach proves that, while York's into Emily W, he quite likes Thomas. Thomas, still a little raw from the situation with George, is thrilled by this turn of events, even if he's not sure how the heck any relationship between them would work.
-->And then Kaysen tries to kidnap the two Emilys, Victoria, Alice, and Lizzie. They manage to fight him off (though poor Emily W gets a mouthful of red seeds in the process and has to be taken to the hospital). Turns out he's the one behind the red seed killings, murdering innocent women by literally planting trees in them -- all for fun too! He's also the one behind the purple fog incident -- oh, and turns out he's the one who actually killed York's, or rather Zach's, mother, and his father killed himself out of grief. Yes, Zach is actually the original owner of the body, and York the Dreamland presence who came along to help him. Everyone's rather stunned by this revelation, as you might expect.
-->Oh, also, Kaysen's not human. He's in fact a minor eldritch creature from the Red Forest, an evil realm in the Dreamlands. Willie is his partner and handler, relaying orders from the Red Tree that "rules" the forest. When they're confronted, they warp into more horrific forms -- in Willie's case, a demonic Doberman-like creature.
And then Hope becomes a frigging wolf.
Yup, turns out in this world, Hope is a representative of the White Forest, the good counterpart to the Red Forest (and the place Victor's been ending up in his dreams lately) -- and he is eager to kick Willie's ass. Zach takes care of Kaysen while Hope defeats Willie, with some help from the other members of the group.
-->Afterwards, Hope brings everyone to the White Forest, where they receive some information on how to cleanse the town of the Red Tree's taint -- and, ideally, as a boon, Zach and York each get their own body so they don't have to work out some sort of weird timeshare arrangement for their respective relationships.
-->York reunites with Emily W, Zach and Thomas get together, and the group helps the townsfolk clean the soil and uproot every red tree they can find before planting some white trees in their place and taking their leave to help the next unfortunate place beseiged by abominations.
-->Basically, the whole point of this is to stop every main character besides Zach dying (although I guess York doesn't so much die as ascend to the same plane as the Goddesses), and to get my police boyfriends because damn it I shipped Thomas and York so freaking hard before the revelation that Thomas had been so broken by the murders and George's abuse he was willing to kill Emily W.
...Anybody else find it weird I'm resorting to a Lovecraft-inspired universe to get happy endings?
#lovecraft jazz AU#deadly premonition#spoilers#spoiler alert#obviously stuff will have to be tweaked if this ever becomes a thing#things refitted to the time period and suchlike#I'm keeping Emily W as a policewoman though#she's pretty awesome and I want her to stay that way#oh Thomas I so wish things had turned out better in your court#*sigh*#if you're wondering where Siren is I don't picture her involved in this one#she's probably in Arkham at the moment with her --#well that's the subject of another post :p#queued
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Consumer Guide / No.100 / Singer Nina Clarke with Mark Watkins.
MW : Planet Of Women - what happened next?
NC : Well, as you know, there was a point where Planet of Women were really set to take off; we had a major publishing deal with Sony, signed by the same person, Charlie Pinder, who signed The Darkness, we played the Download festival twice to rave reviews, we were being regularly featured in Kerrang, were the first band to sing live on 6 Music (for Bruce Dickinson’s rock show) and were on tour with Thunder and then The Quireboys.
I think one of the main things that happened was that “Classic Rock” didn’t take off again the way the industry at one point expected. We were billing ourselves as a classic rock ‘Aerosmith meets The Supremes’ band, so I think the industry became nervous of pushing us.
In all honesty, it just kind of fizzled out. The big opportunities stopped coming, there were some we didn’t want to take (we were asked to be the featured band on T4 Sunday each week for example – it was something half of the band wanted to do and half didn’t so it was a difficult one, but I am glad we didn’t do it. It would definitely have made good watching for TV I am sure (!). Overall, I am not really interested in a reality TV car crash version of what we were; I want to be able to hold my head up high in public for one thing!
Probably, the final nail in the coffin was me becoming pregnant with my little girl, Isabella. I moved back to Solihull to be nearer my parents and then, despite intending to carry on, I think we all knew that the moment had passed.
I still keep in touch with everyone from the band (and I am now married to the drummer, Martin – which is funny because we weren’t all that close when I was in the band; we got to know each other many years later). Jolene lives not too far from me in The Midlands with her family and Jade and I chat regularly on social media. Pete, the guitarist, comes over every now and then and Jason the bass player’s wife, Trudi, who is a phenomenal band live photographer, has taken photos for me several times (one of her photos of my wedding is on my wall in my lounge!).
I have been very active musically since Planet Of Women (other than under lockdown!). I have travelled the world singing with my Abba Tribute Band, 21st Century Abba, and The Tarantinos (places including Mauritius, India, Libya), have albums of library music published (songs used for Heart FM, Friends on Comedy Central, Coventry University) and done a lot of session work too (including duetting a few times with Jamie Oliver, the celebrity chef).
Jade still performs mainly within London collaborating with fantastic musicians and still sounding great. I had the real pleasure of singing backing vocals for her at a jazz festival in Corsica twice, which was wonderful and just like old times (Pete and Martin were also there). Jade still has her phenomenal voice; she has such a unique style. She has been entertaining us all with live performances from home under lockdown. I owe Jade a lot; she taught me how to (as Wayne’s World fans would say) ‘wail’! I honestly wouldn’t be where I am today without learning from her.
Pete still writes songs constantly and his library music is used all over the world. We have collaborated on many songs together (as has Jade and Pete). Pete is a brilliant songwriter – he taught me a lot about how to create a good song and whilst I now mainly collaborate with other people, I always love working with Pete.
Jolene is the social media queen; she honestly should write a book from her blogs – they always make me laugh. She is the one pushing us to do a one-off Planet Of Women reunion gig for old times sake, which would be great fun.
Jason, the bass player, is an avid music fan and he and Trudi travel the UK and Europe to attend festivals and watch bands. Jason has recently picked up his bass again and started playing live, which is great to see.
Russ was the original drummer and he now is the drummer for Uriah Heap, touring the world.
Magic (Martin) the later drummer got the best deal of course, because he married me (ha ha ha... he will kill me if he reads this!). Martin has toured with Bewitched, The Bay City Rollers, Jo Harman and also tours with me with The Tarantinos and 21st Century Abba. He is also a lecturer at BIMM Institute Birmingham and does a lot of session work in our studio at home too. He is endorsed by so many brands (Sonor, Paiste for example) and is such a talented, versatile drummer.
MW : Tell me about backing Graham Bonnet...
NC : Ah, he was such a lovely man, he really was. Very humble and kind. I was very nervous to meet him because he was a real rock legend. Even though Rainbow were big before my time, I grew up listening to an Ultimate Rock Songs album which I played to death, and ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ was one of my all-time favourite songs.
Graham was so friendly when we met him; he really put us at ease and was fun to hang around with after the show too. I still have the caricature picture he signed for me saying I did a great job. I can’t tell you how amazing it felt to be singing backing vocals for him – something I will never forget!
MW : Do you have any favourite songs of Graham's?
NC : It has to be ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ from 1979 – it’s an all-time classic! I really enjoyed ‘Night Games’ too; a song originally from 1981 that I hadn’t known until working with Graham.
MW : Tell me about your ABBA covers band...
NC : I have always been a huge Abba fan, in fact I think I may have been named after the 1970s Abba song ‘Nina, Pretty Ballerina’ (I always remember my uncle singing it to me). My nan had the Super Trouper album (released in 1980) and I used to play it every time I went to her house. I felt a connection to Agnetha on account of us both having naturally long blonde hair and I idolised the band.
Once I moved back to Solihull, to have my babies, I still wanted to be involved with live music and also needed Part Time work. I saw an advert for an Abba tribute band in The Stage and auditioned. I was very proud to get the part!
Since then, I have switched Abba bands a few times. My Abba tribute band now, 21st Century Abba, was only set up last year by myself and Marcus, who was the Bjorn with me in a past Abba tribute band. In our previous Abba tribute bands we won the UK’s No.1 Abba tribute band at the National Tribute Awards by the Agents Association GB every year from 2013-2018.
The only thing was that the keys weren’t live and the harmonies were on track, which always made us feel like a second rate band. So we set up on our own with a live keys player and myself and Indrija, who plays Frida, sing all the harmonies as Abba sang them, and it feels like we have raised our game. It's great fun – we travel all over the world (I have been to India, Mauritius, Libya to name but a few places).
I honestly feel so lucky to be doing this as a job.
MW : What covers are most requested by your ABBA fans?
NC : ‘Dancing Queen’ is the main song that people request - I don’t think we would be forgiven if we didn’t play that song in our set! Although perhaps that is because we pretend to finish the show and then it’s our big encore, so people start cheering for it when we go off stage.
Honestly, it is so hard because there were just so many huge Abba hits and it really is impossible to fit them all into every show! We do try to ensure for a private booking that we play that person’s favourite song though.
MW : List in order of preference your Top 5 Tarantino films, and say something about your No.1 choice…
NC :
5 Inglourious B*stards (2009)
4 Jackie Brown (1997)
3 Reservoir Dogs (1992)
2 Kill Bill, Volumes 1 & 2 (2003 & 2004)
1 Pulp Fiction (1994)
Wow, this is a difficult question! I love them all!
Pulp Fiction has been my all-time favourite since university – I had posters of John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson on the wall. It is such a clever film – the chronology of it is all over the place but it all ties together at the end – brilliant. I just fell in love with the way Tarantino, unlike any other film, adds detailed chat that is not necessary to the story of the film – the fact that assassins could be casually discussing cheeseburgers on the job is both hilarious and disturbing.
MW : Do you sing in the shower?! What songs?!
NC : Of course! The acoustics are fab!! I have always sung ‘Andante, Andante’, the Abba song from the Super Trouper album (it's actually a Frida song so shh!). It was always one of my favourite songs off the album and nobody had ever heard of it until Mamma Mia 2 came along recently. I was so happy that finally other people were also raving about the song!
I also sing ‘Crazy’ by Patsy Cline – a huge 1960s country hit. it was one of the first songs I had to learn in a function band I was in when I first moved to London.
MW : What was the last good book you read (or are reading)?
NC : I am a sucker for a good psychological thriller. Currently reading ‘Sleep’ by C.L. Taylor which I can’t put down (I am a bit of a bookworm!). Only a few weeks ago I read ‘1984′ by George Orwell; I knew so much about it, even watched the film, but hadn’t actually ever read it. Absolutely brilliant – so many films and books today have been influenced by George Orwell; fantastic!
MW : Any celebrities you keep in touch with, or are on your radar?
NC : Martin (my husband) was drumming for Bewitched for a while, and one of the twins, Keavy, came to our wedding. Dennis Stratton (of Iron Maiden) was also at our wedding as a joint Best Man too (along with Knuckles from The Tarantinos). It's funny because I don’t see them as celebrities; they are genuinely nice people and we consider them friends.
A few years ago, I was presenting The Black Country Rock Show for Guitarist TV and had the pleasure of interviewing people like Tony Clarkin (Magnum – see You Tube for the outtakes of our interview – we couldn’t stop laughing!), Brian Tatler (Diamond Head) and Al Atkins (Judas Priest). It was great fun and as part of that, I sang on an album, soon to be released. I sang lead on my version of ‘Still Got The Blues’ by Gary Moore, with Dennis Stratton on guitar, Harry from Thunder on drums, Nick from Magnum on Bass and Mike De Jaeger, my co-presenter on the show also on guitar. It was recorded at Mad Hat Studios in The Midlands and was great fun.
Luke from Thunder - at first I kept in contact with and he offered to write together on some songs, but, and I really regret this now, this offer came just as I had had my first child and I never did anything about it!
There was also talk of Planet Of Women doing backing vocals for The Quireboys again at their big shows in September 2020, although due to Covid 19, it looks like this now won’t happen, which is a real shame.
MW : What about meeting Jamie Oliver?
NC : The Jamie Oliver thing started when I met a music producer, Leigh Haggerwood, when I was performing a pub gig in London years ago. He said he liked my voice and then called me out of the blue to ask if I could do a piece of session work for him which I then found out was a duet with Jamie Oliver to be performed when he was the featured chef at The Good Food Show at the NEC (you had to pay extra for his show, which was in a separate auditorium, and he cooked to the song). Jamie was a drummer before he became a famous chef (funnily enough the bass player in The Tarantinos, Andy Tolman, was the bass player in their band) and so he wanted to incorporate music into his show.
The first song was a cover of Nelly’s ‘Hot In Here’ and was called ‘Cold Out There’. My main line was ‘I just love this soup, it really makes me hoooorrrrrnyyyyy’!! The following year I was asked to sing the duet again, and this time the song was about fish stew, and the main line was ‘I Wanna Fish Stew’. Yes, it was intended to be rude! The funniest thing was Leigh and Jamie sniggering like school kids while writing lines and then asking me to sing them. Jamie did a spoof You Tube video using the song (look it up!) and then for his 40th birthday the staff of all his restaurants lined the streets of London cheering him, and there was a gospel choir singing a gospel version of our song!
Around that time, I went to several of Jamie’s parties, both at his home and in local pubs. I went to a barbecue at his country home when they had only just bought it (which was filmed for The Naked Chef). I really got on well with his wife, Jules – she was so friendly and down to earth. And Jamie was just one of the lads – really good fun. I sang at Jules’ 30th birthday party too which was great fun.
I do have signed recipe books by Jamie, and I genuinely do love his recipes – they are perfect for me – really lovely food but not too posh or fiddly that you end up either failing or feeling hungry after!
He really is a very talented chef and a really good guy.
MW : How good are you at Maths?
NC : Ha Ha! This may sound strange, given I am a singer, but I actually have a 1st class Mathematics and Business Studies degree from Warwick University, and I am also a qualified chartered Accountant!
I was always very studious at school and even though I loved singing, I was too shy to really push myself. It was only when I went to university, joined a gospel choir (which I ended up running in my third year) and then set up a band that I started to really enjoy performing live. My first band, The Sally Gardens, were terrible when we first started out! We were all new to performing and our songs were very average. However, three years later (and a few changes of members) and I think we were really putting out some great songs. I was performing more and more solos with the gospel choir and I realised that I wanted to carry on singing even when I moved into the “Real World”.
I took an Auditing (Accounting) job in London mainly so I could be in the centre of London, and try to get into the music scene. I had all sorts of adventures before hooking up with Jade in Planet of Women.
After moving back to Solihull, I started working for Hilton Hotels in Finance (I am the main finance person for several hotels). People find it really strange that I have two very different, equally important jobs, but I think it is the perfect mix. I get the perfect balance between brain work and creativity, and I genuinely get to earn money from my two passions!
MW : What are you most looking forward to doing once ALL the Coronavirus restrictions are lifted?
NC : Of course, it has to be performing. We were lucky enough to do a theatre show on 14th March 2020, just before lockdown, but this now seems a lifetime ago! All of our festivals have been pushed back to next year and hopefully our dates abroad will get rebooked next year too. The very sad thing is that some of the venues that we were really enjoying working with have unfortunately had to close, which is really upsetting. I do hope that the government urgently helps venues so that they aren’t forced to close. I miss my Abba and Tarantino's families!
I will miss all the time I have had writing songs and doing session work though – it has been great to get really creative with writing. I have albums published with Justin Bryant through BMG (Teen Pop Sensation Deep East Music) and , as I touched on earlier, our songs were used to advertise Friends (yes, the comedy series with Rachel, Ross and Joey), Heart FM and Coventry University to name but a few, plus I am signed to Long Lunch Music in a collaboration called Sequoia (with Chris Garfield from Jimmy James and the Vagabonds and Marcus Tate from 21st Century Abba).
We recently filmed a video (‘Where’s This Thing Going’ Sequoia – on You Tube) for one of our songs. The video was filmed under lockdown, which was great fun (although it's always embarrassing watching yourself on screen!).
MW : What have you learned most about yourself during lockdown?
NC : Hmm... at first I learned that I don’t have to rush around; that there is so much to enjoy right in front of my nose…the garden, my neighbours, chilling with my children (Izzy and Jack) and my husband. However, I must say, after three months, I started to get a bit stir-crazy….I do think I am built to work…if you know the famous poem, I am a Saturday’s child so I work hard for a living!
MW : Where do you see yourself in 5 years time?
NC : Ooh... great question! I would still love to be performing live (when it's good there is nothing like it) and travelling the world (never gets boring). I would also like to be writing more with my fabulous co-writers. The joy of getting the quarterly email from PRS (Performing Rights Society) to see where your songs have been used just never gets old.
MW : How can we keep in touch?
NC : I keep Facebook and Instagram private, but you can always reach me via my band websites :
www.21stcenturyabba.co.uk
www.thetarantinos.com
www.sessionvocals.co.uk
or the Facebook / Instagram sites :
https://www.facebook.com/21stcenturyabba/
https://www.facebook.com/TheTarantinoscom/
https://www.instagram.com/21stcenturyabba/
https://www.instagram.com/thetarantinosofficial/
(c) Mark Watkins / July 2020
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What’s it Like?
Trying something a little new. Instead of third person it’s straight from Danny’s pov
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What’s it like?
I always find myself getting asked this, whether it be from Tucker, Dani, Sam, or hell, even Valerie sometimes. And while it doesn't upset me, the question itself is hard to answer, and is tiring to do so after having to do it so many times.
So what is it like living with the Avengers?
It’s indescribable, really. It’s fun, and annoying, and stressful, and happy, and so many other words, so I think the only way I can properly tell you is if I list them all off one by one.
Well, let me tell you.
First, I guess I should start with the host himself, Tony Stark. Though you probably know him better as Iron Man.
He’s everything people say he is, and more. He’s selfish and sarcastic, and is stupidly smart. Yeah, he’s also a playboy, and he never focuses on the important stuff for his company. Instead he pays with desk toys in important meetings.
Like all of us, Tony has a lot of baggage. We all have our demons, but Tony’s are arguably the worst. Yeah, I fought my older evil self and the ghost king, and Steve was in World War II, but compared to Tony it was a cakewalk. Because Tony’s been through a fucking blender. He’s got serious PTSD from the Incident, from the cave he was tortured in, and a few other things. He copes by drinking unhealthy amounts of coffee spiked with alcohol and monster energy drinks while building several more Iron man armors, all with their own special skills and weapons.
He also has really bad attachment issues due to his father was never really around, and the father figure he did had tried to kill him. So.
However, despite all of that, Tony is probably the most caring person on the team. And that’s including Steve. He just doesn’t know how to express it with emotions. So instead, he uses his actions. Thor mentioned one time that he needed to get more lavender (?) shampoo because he ran out, and now there’s a cabinet full of them, just for the thunder god himself.
There was another time when Clint’s hearing aids got blown up on a mission, and Tony made him everything-proof Stark hearing aids. Clint hasn’t needed a new pair since. And he made Steve and Sam’s rooms soundproof, so that when fireworks go off they can still enjoy the view, but now with less gunshot sounds.
Tony also really loves to nerd out, which brings me to my next friend, Dr. Bruce Banner. He’s pretty soft spoken, until he starts talking about science. I remember the longest conversation I’ve had with him was when we were talking about space and NASA, which somehow ended up on a conversation of the horrible structure of hot dog buns? Not really sure what happened there...
Bruce always has great advice, and is always in like, a zen sort of mood. He’s not nervous all the time like most people think. No, he’s only fidgety around stressful people, like Fury or Ultron. Which is perfectly understandable considering if he gets to angry or freaked he starts looking a little green around the gills.
That being said, Bruce also makes the best tea on the Compound. Nobody knows what he does to it, but if you’re having a rough day or something he’s got your back. And he’s always got Tony’s back, too. I There was one time when Tony had been up for almost four days and Bruce had come in and put some headphones on Tony, and he passed out immediately. I helped him get Tony to his room, and Bruce kind of took it from there.
Hulk is pretty nice to. Though, to be fair the first time I met him he was pretty pissed because he couldn’t hit me. But after he calmed down enough, I told him a couple of jokes and he kind of warmed up to me.
And I told him I could help get the glitter out of his hair.
He still doesn’t know that it sparkles sometimes when crime-fighting. Nobody else has either, but that’s only because they’re to busy kicking ass themselves.
Steve is kind of like everybody’s dream guy, even if you yourself are a straight guy. He is 240 pounds of All-American beefcake with a heart of gold. His hair is pretty soft too.
He’s caring, but I’ve recently learned that he;s a little shit.
You would expect Captain America to be the perfect man, soldier, superhero, whatever. But he isn’t. I don’t even know where anybody got that idea.
This guy has a police record that’s longer than a list of Mr. Lancer’s book-swears. And he has the worst mouth on him. He stubbed his toe the other day and was cursing up a storm. However, he was cursing in Gaelic. I asked him about it and he said it was his first language due to his parents being Irish immigrants. I hadn't known that before, so that was really nice to know. But it also explained his accent. He had a lot of Brooklyn in it, but every now and then the Gaelic would slip through with it, making for a weird verbal cocktail that never sounded quite right.
He also has the worst mind out of all of us. It’s worse than Tuckers. His mind may be the gutter, but Steve’s is the fucking sewer. He was telling me about how he thought fondue equaled sexy times, and like? Literally, where did you make that connection? How many other foreign words has he heard and thought it was something sexual?
It shouldn’t surprise me though, considering he was in the army.
I could go on and on about Steve’s mouth and reckless behavior, but he, like Tony, has serious PTSD. A lot of it is from the war. He doesn’t like fireworks or loud, sudden noises unless he’s on the battlefield. There was one time I saw him mute a movie during a scene with a train, and I was going to ask him why, but then I saw that far away look in his eyes. It wasn’t my place to pry.
There’s also something about the sound of Tony’s repulsors powering up, too. It makes Steve tense up like a cat every time he hears it.
His coping methods are a bit healthier than Tony’s. He likes to draw his thoughts and feelings out. He’s damn good at it to, and while that’s a great thing, sometimes he falls asleep with them open, halfway done, and the shit he draws is so dark and depressing. I kind of worry about him sometimes.
But Sam’s been helping him though a lot of it. He was stationed overseas for a while before coming back to the states, only to get caught up in the fight again a few years later. He didn’t really seem to mind though. In fact, he seemed happy to do so. Whether or not that was from Captain America asking him to, or because he missed flying, I had no idea.
But I’ll be damned if I ever go to the park with him again.
His name is Falcon. He has cool metal wings he uses to fly. That all makes sense, right?
So how the fuck is he talking to pigeons?
I am genuinely worried that one day Sam till take over the world with birds, and h will have them shit on people’s cars and peck out the eyes of Hydra. Or something on the lines of that. However, if he is actually going to do that I think he needs a cooler bird.
Like a Falcon.
And as weird as that was, it doesn’t match up to the awkwardness of meeting Natasha “Million Alias” Romanoff. She’s as deadly as she is beautiful, and if I was into her in any way I would probably pay her to beat me up.
It never actually occurred to me that she’s not always being a spy? I mean, yeah, she’s always looking at the ulterior motive, because anyone with her background (which we will not speak of, so don;t even ask) would do the same. But she’s also a shitposting meme generator and has a really popular vine account even though vine is dead? Then again this is Natasha we’re talking about. I don;t wanna know how she does what she does.
She also steals clothes. SO far she’s stolen one of Tony’s hoodies, a pair of Clint’s sweatpants, a scrunchie from Thor, and one of my old Dumpty Humpty shirts I got at a concert. She also cheats at Monopoly and Cards Against Humanity. I haven’t figured out how she’s done it, but I know she does. Nobody, and I mean nobody, can just fucking win seventeen times in a row. You;d have to be a mind reader to do that shit. Jesus.
She’s terrifying, and honestly, every time I see her glare the fear of Thor runs through me, but a good portion of that goes away when she’s around Clint. And honestly> I can’t blame her. Clint, out of all of the Avengers I live with, is probably the one I hang out with the most. He’s super chill, and covered head to toe in bandages and has to have an entire pot of coffee just to stay awake. Also, he’s deaf? I had no idea during the Battle of New York, but later I found out that it was because they had broken and his new ones hadn’t come in yet. He’s taught me a lot of sign language so far, and Tucker makes fun of me for practicing it when I’m back in Amity.
Clint also has a lot of nests.
He has one on top of the fridge, in the A that’s on the outside of the building, a couple of key spots in the vents, and a board room on the 27th floor under the table because nobody ever uses it and it has a nice view of the sandwich shop right across the street. I’m sure he has more, but those are just the ones that I’ve found.
Also, his dog is not cuter than Cujo, don’t listen to that asshole.
Even though Clint chooses to keep his hearing aids out half the time, he still knows when Thor has come back from Asgard. Every single time, no matter where we’re at in the building, he just knows. It’s like a sixth sense. His head perks up, and he gets a dumb grin on his face, but then it quickly falls when he remembers that he ate the rest of the thunder god’s poptarts.
Thor is really fun to be around. And while I haven’t had a lot of quality bonding time with the dude, Dani has. They sit around and braid each other’s hair all the time, talking about flowers and giant monsters and space. Really, they’re best friends. And it’s adorable.
Don’t tell Jazz I said that.
There are aspects of Thor that remind me a little bit of all of the Avengers. Like Natasha, he can be cunning when he wants to. He’s always got the munchies like Clint, and has great advice like Bruce. Similar to Tony he also struggles with his own demons. But he seems to be most like Steve.
That being said, they are both huge little shits.
See, Thor likes to prank people. Half the time he uses Mojo (I don;t know how to pronounce the hammer’s name, okay) to fuck with us. I remember he and Natasha handing different house members his hammer while Natasha video taped it. He gets a huge kick out of watching us fall over. I remember when he did it to Steve, who was to zoned out in his paper to even realize what Thor had asked him to hold. He was gobsmacked for a whole week.
He hasn’t done it to me yet, and I have no idea if that’s because he hasn’t gotten around to it or because he’s still obsessed over me technically being royalty since I beat Pariah Dark, the former king. The first time we met he got down on one knee and bowed. It was the most surreal experience of my life, and that’s including when Tucker had to wear a chicken costume to a Dumpty Humpty concert because he lost a bet to Sam.
Every time he comes back from Asgard, we shake. But we don’t shake like normal people. It’s a sort of cultural thing. Instead of shaking hands we grip each other’s forearms and squeeze. I kind of like doing that better than a handshake. It seems way cooler.
So, you ask me what it’s like to live with the Avengers?
Living with them, it feels familiar, like it;s the one thing I’ve been missing my whole life.
It’s family.
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Also, OC week submissions are open officially if you want me to write them in with a DP and marvel!
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Financial Management in a Marriage with a Ukrainian Wife
Money is a taboo topic in western culture. But in many other countries, money is not a taboo topic. Frankly, because money is a taboo in the West, people avoid talking about it. Consequently, a lot of people in western countries don’t have a good understanding of personal finances. If you are going to marry a Ukrainian bride, you may want to read this article today.
Have a money date with your Ukrainian wife every two weeks.
If you get paid every two weeks, you should have a “Money Time” fortnightly. That means when you get paid, you sit down and organize your finances carefully.
When you get married, you probably need to sit down with your wife and look at your finances together. Let’s call it “a money date”.
On the money date, you create a romantic ambiance first. If you do it at home, you can have a money date while drinking champagne! You may even want to put on some jazz music in the background.
Then you sit down with your Ukrainian wife and do the following tasks together:
Check how much money you’ve received from your employer or your business.
Pay yourself first (save as much money as you can).
Check the transaction history of your bank accounts and review every transaction & receipt. Get rid of receipts that you don’t need to keep.
If you have any online income via PayPal, you can transfer your online revenue to your business bank account. (This is very common nowadays because a lot of people have side hustles on the Internet.)
Complete bank reconciliation if you have your own business.
Pay your bills.
Note that successful people always pay themselves first and pay their bills last.
Clarify Want VS Need:
There is an effective way to manage your money – only buy things you need; don’t buy things you want. Whenever you are about to buy something, ask yourself, “Do I need this? Or do I want this?” If you want it, don’t buy it; if you need it, you can buy it. That’s a great way to save money if both you and your Ukrainian wife are frugal.
Nonetheless, what you want isn’t always unnecessary.
Actually, if you buy something that you absolutely want, that usually means you will use it. Therefore, you aren’t really wasting your money. I would argue that money enjoyed isn’t money wasted, as long as you have a practical financial plan and you can stick to it. Similarly, time enjoyed isn’t time wasted either.
It’s not beneficial to save all your money when you are young. Let me explain.
Learning how to save your money is certainly useful in the long term. Nevertheless, if a 25-year-old person is always thinking about how to save 50 cents while buying a T-shirt, chances are this person will probably still think about how to save 50 cents while buying a T-shirt when they are 35, 45, …. What I’m saying is you have to invest in yourself when you are young (e.g. investing in your education & buying things/experiences that can benefit you in the long run). In fact, a financial expert even claims that you might benefit more if you spend all your money in your 20s on the right things so that you don’t have to worry about how to save 50 cents in your 30s, 40s, …. Yes, knowing how to save money is important, but you should only focus on saving money when you are older, not when you are 25 years old.
Those who dare not spend money also can’t make real money. You have to learn how to take a calculated risk. When you are still young, you can afford to be involved in high-risk, high-reward activities (e.g. hiring a mentor). Invest in yourself now if you are a young man under 30 years old. If your Ukrainian wife is an intelligent woman, she will agree with this idea.
If your Ukrainian wife doesn’t have a job yet because she just moved to a western country recently, you may help her find a job.
Now I’d like to talk about how to stand out from the crowd during a job interview.
Many NLP experts have recommended this strategy:
Some candidates don’t know where to put their hands during the interview. A basic principle is: do not even think about your hands when you are having a conversation with the employer. hence, an advanced principle is: you should follow the employer’s habit – if the employer is animated, you should also use more gestures; if the employer doesn’t have any gestures, then you should move less! This is because people like those who have similar habits and behavior.
Obviously, this principle comes from Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) which is a well-respected modern psychological concept, and it can be utilized for a job interview as well!
Therefore, if your Ukrainian wife is attending a job interview which may bring more income to your household, she should assess the employer’s habits/gestures and then model herself on them!
Furthermore, this strategy will help your Ukrainian wife stand out from the crowd and get the dream job that she deserves.
Lastly, I’m going to end this article with a final suggestion regarding why you should have more than one skill.
You’ve heard the popular saying “Don’t be a jack of all trades.”
Certainly, this idea is valid. Yet I’d like you to really think about this: If you only master one skill, is that really beneficial in this day and age?
In fact, the time when you graduate from university and find a job to work for 40 years until you retire is already gone. Nowadays, more and more people are freelancers! Certainly, if you are a freelancer with only one skill, that means your risk is very high because you probably only have one source of income.
Therefore, in order to lower your risk, you should consider mastering some different skills and combine your skills in creative ways.
For instance, you know two languages. Great. Become a translator and an interpreter.
Consequently, if you know the translation, consider becoming a writer as well.
Hence, diversifying your revenue sources is the best advice in modern-day society because this will make your career more sustainable in the long term.
Today you may ask yourself, “How many skills do I have or should I develop? How am I going to combine my skills creatively?”
Certainly, your Ukrainian wife will probably like the above-mentioned recommendation as well.
Bonus tips:
“Manage your finances with your Ukrainian wife and achieve financial freedom together.” Taking breaks is just as important as working hard. Certainly, making money is important, but looking after yourself is much more important.
We actually learn more while having fun. More relevant, when education is combined with entertainment, a much bigger impact is created. Consequently, we always remember the most humorous teacher at school and the fun textbook we read. That’s why I mentioned that you should make your money date fun!
Doing more stuff creates a gateway to new opportunities. When we get stuck, one way to get out of it is to do more stuff, because stuff leads to stuff (Sorry for not writing it in a more elegant way). Hence, just do stuff! Then we’ll see new opportunities rock up.
“Manage your finances with your Ukrainian wife and achieve financial freedom together.”
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Congratulations, Bru! You’ve been accepted for the role of Lexine Paul. Please make sure to check our checklist, and you have twenty-four hours to send us your character’s blog. We’re really happy to have you in our family!
Stop being so great, we get it, you’re an amazing writer. But really, this is an incredible application, as it also was when you applied for Leon, and we’re certain you’ll do a great job with Lexine and we can’t wait to play against them. So, welcome (again), and now make the account.
IC INFORMATION
Desired character:
Lexine Paul.
Faceclaim:
Paulina Singer
Why did you choose this character?
First and foremost, their species. I’ve been wanting to play a werewolf for a while, but I hadn’t found one who had truly spoken to me until I read Lexine’s bio. I loved everything… from their Alpha status and the way they were brought up in this life, taught how to embrace the gene as a gift more than a curse, how they from a young age had managed to master the full moon transitions which, in my opinion has a lot to do with embracing the gift, to their worried mother traits… always having a soft spot and looking after the wounded and the abused. It’s not a reality they’ve known and it’s
Being a werewolf to Lexine isn’t a choice, it’s their whole existence. They were born like that, it’s how they feel the most at ease, it’s the only reality they’ve ever known and despite their father’s wrongdoings, teaching Lexine to love the wolf inside was the best choice their parents could’ve ever made, so getting the chance to play someone like that will be amazing to me.
I love family dynamics and I have the feeling that this is what I’ll get to explore with Lexine and their relationship with the Mensah pack. From their relationship with Emmanuel, to the way they act around Rex, Petra and even Isabel. I’d like to think that Lexine cares deeply about Isabel, too.
Para sample:
The rain was falling on their back, painting their caramel fur a darker shade of brown. They had left their clothes under a tree not so far from where they were, and it was probable that their dress and shoes were soaked by now, but Lexine didn’t mind. Their paws marked the earth they walked upon as they feasted on the mere fact that they were free to be themselves in this island they had learned to call home. Things were good there, they reckoned… as good as they could be, but Lexine wasn’t someone who spend their lives worrying about things before they presented themselves in their lives.
The pack was preparing itself for a trip to Louisiana, the check in on the Bayou wolves that had stayed behind, like they often did, so this would be the last time Lexine would shift in these woods for a while. They had found someone to keep an eye on Lunar Bar while they were gone and things seemed to be carrying themselves rather smoothly (sometimes, too smoothly for their taste). Upon returning to the spot where they had left their clothes, Lexine took their time to shift back to their human form, forgetting about the pain that came with the transformation, as well as the dirt that now could be spotted upon their skin.
They had just fastened the strings of their dress around their waist when the wind switched its direction and they could scent Emmanuel’s presence in the woods. It would be impossible to miss it, everyone in that pack carried a distinct scent, and their Alpha’s was the strongest one. They thought of home whenever they caught that scent.
“Came to pick me up, old friend?” They let out a fun, careless chuckle as the scent grew stronger and Emmanuel’s steps were heard among the fallen leaves. Emmanuel might not have been the oldest friend they had, but he was certainly the one that had been in their life the longest. “Really—you shouldn’t have.” They kept their playful tone, being mindful of the fine respectful line that separated appropriateness from the rest. They turned around to face him, hands up in their hair picking out little twigs as they tied their curls up into a loosened ponytail. “I’ll swing by the house and call in on my little ones. We’ll meet you by your house in a few.”
It did seem odd that Emmanuel had gone there just to remind Lexine of their trip, which, was the reason why the younger werewolf dropped their act and arched one brow, silently asking themselves why was their Alpha there, before the words left their lips. “What’s troubling you?” They reached over to his arm, their hand gently brushing against the exposed skin, recently kissed by the forest rain. “Tell me how can I help.” It wasn’t a question. Well—not in the sense of offering help, that was. More like, a plea to receive orders to how to proceed. Lexine had the soul of an alpha, but their connection to Emmanuel made this look and feel like a partnership. If there was something in his mind, they’d do anything in their power to help, they just needed to know what.
EXTRA
Personality traits:
POSITIVE ( loyal, protective, lively )
NEGATIVE ( temperamental, cynical, blunt )
Headcanons:
NICKNAMES: Although they love their name, Lexine doesn’t mind nicknames. They prefer something that comes off their name, like Lexie and Lex, but if someone close to them would like to call them by something else, they wouldn’t mind that much.
SMELLS, TASTES AND SOUNDS: The years they spent in New Orleans really shaped Lexine into the person they are now. Their tastes in music, clothes and food were highly influenced by the Big Easy. They love dancing around to good ol’ Jazz and can often be seen wearing light dresses that flow easily around them whenever they’re caught dancing. They would’ve preferred walking around barefoot, but whenever that’s not possible, Lexine can be seen wearing boots. They love lively colors and there are several paintings around their bar that make reference to the French quarter.
PACK MENTALITY: Ever since he helped their pack, Lexine has felt connected to Emmanuel and they never hid their admiration and respect for the alpha. They appreciate the place he’s given them in their pack and also doesn’t hide how protective they are of their Alpha. That protection extends to everyone else in the pack, of course, but there is little to nothing that they wouldn’t do for Emmanuel. They also care deeply about Isabel, because they know how much she means to their Alpha.
WAY OF LIVING: Once the pack moved to Moon Island, before the times of war, Lexine tried to find something to occupy their mind and their time with. They heard about the previous owner of Lunar Bar wanting to sell the place and Lexine saw in it a good opportunity. It’s a good way to meet the supernaturals in town, to keep an eye on people and report back to Emmanuel in case there’s any need to. They’ve added a lot of Jazz to the background music and some Cajun food to the menu.
MOMMA WOLF: Due to their connection to both werewolves, Lexine lives with both Petra and Rex in a house not too far from the Lunar Bar. Obviously, this would have to be discussed whenever we get a Rex, but I feel like they’d like to keep both of their children around.
HOWLING OUT TO YOU: They’re very much comfortable in their own skin, but if they could choose, Lexine would possibly be a wolf for the most part. They really love being in their wolf form. They don’t even mind the pain anymore, because the reward of being out in the woods and experiencing the nature around them is so much superior to the pain it takes to get them there.
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