#i drafted this way back when i first started reading the 2019 comics | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

xviruserrorx · 1 year

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Title: "The Rain Before The Rainbow"

Chapter 6/7: "Hurt And Grief But Don't Suffer Alone Engage With The Pain As A Motive" (DRAFT)

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This fic was originally written around late 2019-early 2020 ish, but was abandoned for reasons and now I'm gonna re-write it to but I have a no-delete rule so I'm posting all the original drafts here for anyone who still wants to see them. "But Virus these are terribly written" you may say and, yeah I know, this story was one of the first things I had written after a 5-6 year writing hiatus... But here they are terrible Grammer and all!

Fandom: The Umbrella Academy (Tv & Comics)

Relationship(s): Five | The Boy & Everyone

Character(s): Five | The Boy, Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves, Allison Hargreeves, Vanya | Viktor Hargreeves, OC - Ymir Cyprus

Important Tag(s): Alternative Universe - No Sparrow Academy, Comic Book Elements, Time Traveling, Five-Centric

Rating: Teen and Up

Warning(s): Major Character Death, Cannon Character Death

Word Count: 7,008/41,006

The Hargreeves return from 1963 and find they have averted the initial Apocalypse. The siblings return to life as it once was but now together and not expecting impending doom. Five begins to adjust to life with his siblings how it used to be but knows something is missing. By something, he means someone. What happens when Five decides to jump back in time and try to save Ben. Is he successful? Or will he face the consequences of his actions?

"The End To The Beginning, The Beginning To The End" - Tumblr | Ao3

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Five (POV)

Five started with the whole "7 superhero children who were adopted by an eccentric billionaire and raised together for the purpose to save the world."

Ymir stayed quiet the whole time mostly just focused on getting his wound to stop bleeding as he explained the unimaginable.

"Just imagine me with a black and white mask and jumpsuit." Five said now feeling slightly more lightheaded than before.

"So you're one of those Umbrella kids in the newspapers?"

Five adjusted himself and pulled up his sleeve revealing his tattoo on his wrist, "We were all numbered 1 through 7 and those were our names…. Hence why my name is Five."

"But your siblings all have names and you guys also have code names?" She said to Five making sure she got it right.

Five nodded his head, "Number Four's name is Klaus but his code name is 00.04 and is known by the public as The Séance; due to him practically being a human Ouija board."

She moved her hand behind his back and helped him stand up, putting most of his weight against the wall.

"So why don't you have a normal name?"

Five adjusted his weight to his right side and leaned his arm on the wall, "I just never wanted a name really, we were always just numbers, never anything more."

She sighed and glanced down at his wound, "We can go to the cafe under the house and I have a first aid kit in the backroom to patch you up." She looked towards where the sound of the sirens was coming from.

"We can sneak through the back door so we're not seen." She turned back around to Five who nodded his head at her. Her baby during all this had fallen asleep with the explaining of his atypical life.

She led the way as Five followed closely behind leaning on any wall he could be near for support. She led him through twists and turns of the back alley that made Five with his concussed brain confused about where they were.

The already setting sun made it hard to see exactly where she was going, even with the street lights flickering on it was still hard to make out her silhouette. The distant sirens were becoming louder and louder as they continued to walk, the piercing noise making his head throb worse.

He didn't notice when Ymir stopped and was looking back at him. He looked slightly down and saw her hand extended out towards him with her palm up. He knew what she wanted him to do… yet a part of him wanted to reject her offer. The last time he held onto somebody was when he brought all his siblings back to their timeline.

Slowly he lifted his hand and laid it in her palm, she held his hand as you would with a child when crossing a busy street. Her hand was warm and held onto his smaller hand almost like she was protective of him.

He came to a sudden halt when he ran into her, not noticing she had stopped walking. She gave him a concerned glance then moved her attention back over to what she was looking at.

"That thing you did earlier…..that's your power?" She whispered to him but her attention was still drawn to around the corner.

"Those are called spatial jumps or blinking as my siblings like to call it, I can teleport anywhere I want if my powers aren't depleted…… it's also how I got here." This really was a lot of explaining to do.

"Why didn't you try to leave before?"

Five swallowed and looked down, he didn't try to leave at any point, he felt like he could trust her for some reason. She had this parental feel to her and treated him like Diego and Allison treated him, despite him constantly reminding them he isn't a child. She reminded him of his siblings and where they were that was always home, never the mansion and all the cold memories it held but the 6 other people who he called his siblings even though they were all adopted.

Five didn't answer her question but instead leaned over and saw what she was staring at. Some police officers were already at the scene checking out the front of the shophouse, some going up the spiraling staircase that connected on the outside up to the front door of the house on top. The bottom part that was the shop was gated closed and had all the doors locked and lights off along with a sign that hung from the doorknob with the word 'closed' painted on it.

"We need to get in that door at the back," she pointed towards a door encased within the black gate they had run out of earlier. Five knew he could probably blink them to the area but it was risking it with the flash of blue it would create attracting all the officers.

Five hated cops, the only exception was Diego of course and his lady cop friend that helped out Diego. Their constant scrounging in the Umbrella Academy's business always made things extra hard for them. Five looked and saw no way of both of them getting over there without getting caught.

Five heard a gasp as Ymir pushed Five against a wall as well as herself against the wall too. Five could see from the corner of his eye two beams of lights getting closer to the place as he could hear the sound of gravel crunching underneath car tires.

'Who was there?'

Five heard the slam of a car door then a man's voice asking questions to the officers. Ymir peaked over the corner of the wall before suddenly whispering, "Now."

She pulled at his hand as he ran behind her towards the black gate. He turned and saw all the officers turned away and talking to a man in a business suit standing in front of an old beat-up mustang.

'The Husband'

She let go of his hand when they reached the gate and opened it letting Five in first before quietly closing it back up. She reached into a broken lamp that was hanging on the wall outside the back door and pulled out a key, sticking it into the lock and opening the door. Once again she pushed Five in first before stepping in and locking the door behind her.

It was completely pitch black aside from a digital clock that shone out brightly. The numbers 8:05 made Five realise how much time he had left to figure all this out to save Ben.

He blinked his eyes a couple of times as the whole place was illuminated revealing what looked like a backroom. Cots with blankets and pillows along with other chairs or bean bags were shoved into one corner of the room. The other side had a collection of cardboard boxes along with what looked similar to how their kitchen looked. A small fridge with a marble counter and cupboards stood against the wall that held another door which Five guessed went out to the main restaurant area.

There was another spiral staircase in the middle of the room that led up to a pull-down door. Ymir quickly went up the staircase and clipped the lock closed that was dangling from the handle.

Five saw her move over towards a cot covered in blankets and laid the baby down. She rushed over towards a cabinet pulling out a red box with the words 'first aid' printed on the top and walking over to Five.

She patted the flat counter, "hop up here." Five moved towards the counter but realised how tall it really was as it came up to almost his shoulders.

'Stupid 13-year-old body'

He saw a small smile creep up on Ymir's face as she moved a box over for him to step on. Five stepped up on the box and slid himself onto the counter, disposing of the blood-covered shawl, and shrugged off his blazer and vest. He would have to remember to scrub the blood out of all his clothes later.

Ymir motioned for him to lay down as he unbuttoned the very bottom buttons of his shirt and pulled his (once) white undershirt up just enough.

Five immediately wanted to close his eyes as his head hit the cool counter. His head was pounding and the throbbing feeling every time he breathed reminded him of his bruised ribs. Five let his eyes close for a second too long when a burning pain on his left where the wound was made him cry out. She was cleaning off the wound and mumbling something that Five couldn't make out as everything blurred.

"....ive."

"...H…..Ive," He tried to open his eyes at hearing something but failed and let them fall closed.

"Hey…..Five," the pain had subsided a little bit as he finally opened his eyes looking in front of him.

"Hey you need to stay awake sweetheart, does your head hurt?" 'Sweetheart', the endearment word made him want to laugh at the time Diego tried to get away with calling him that, but Five grabbed the closest thing to him (which happened to be a pair of heels that either belonged to Allison or Klaus) and chucked them at Diego.

He already missed them from what little time he was already gone. He didn't know if it was because of how delirious of the amount of pain he was in or his 13-year-old emotions taking over, but he felt like crying. He missed his siblings, he missed waking up in the morning to Diego making breakfast for everyone, Klaus' antics and rambling that never stopped, Vanya and her violin playing when she stayed over at the academy, Allison and her mother henning of the siblings, and even Luther and his grouchy attitude.

The thought didn't dawn on him that, that all was gone. Everything hit him at once and he never got a chance to process it all like usual. His siblings were dead, he had Diego's knife and Klaus' lighter in his pocket, they were gone and it was his fault.

Five felt the tears well up in his eyes as he tried to blink them away, swallowing past the lump in his throat as he nodded his head at Ymir's question. Eyes peered down at him with sympathy as he tried to look away from her glare, with his tears now streaming down his face.

He saw her with a needle and thread ready in one hand, probably to stitch the wound shut but she looked hesitant as Five brought his hands up to his face to wipe away the tears.

She carefully placed a hand on his shoulder, "I don't have any anesthetic on hand so this is gonna hurt a lot…… Ready?"

A nod of his head started the familiar pain of a needle piercing his skin threading and a thread pulling through it multiple times. He grimaced and winced at the action but he knew his tears were for something more than physical pain.

Five heard a pair of shears open and snap shut as the thread was knotted off and a white bandage was set in place. He pushed himself up so he was sitting, letting his now blood-stained white undershirt fall back down. He turned his head into the upper part of his sleeve, wiping the remaining tears collected in his eyes.

Silence filled the room as he buttoned up and tucked back in his shirt, grabbing his blazer and vest slipping them back over his head. He wanted to just save Ben and go home, two simple tasks yet they proved to be the most difficult.

"Where did you learn to do this?" He asked Ymir at seeing her perfect stitching compared to his that he'd done in the past.

She sat down in a chair, "My grandmother was a war nurse back in World War 1 and the Korean war, after World War One she had my mother but shortly after when she went out into the Korean war she was shot and killed. My mother followed after her and did the same in Vietnam but couldn't handle it anymore with so many young kids dying right in front of her. When I was born she taught me everything she knew."

Five remembered Klaus talking about Vietnam before but he never really got the details or bothered to ask him, "Why didn't you do the same?"

She quickly turned towards Five and let her expression soften a bit, "I was almost finished with nursing school when I met my husband and we both adopted a little boy. I had planned to finish and go into the nursing field but I got a call one day, my mother had passed away in a plane crash. After that, I used up all my savings and opened this cafe, a couple of years passed and I was considering going back to the medical field then I got pregnant December year before last……. We were all ecstatic to have another part of the family."

She stood up from the chair, straightening out her dress, and started rummaging through some boxes, "Five months into the pregnancy we found out it was a girl, and Pascal; our little boy who actually was about your age was so excited to be a big brother."

Five stepped down on the box and got down on the floor as he looked around, now taking in the whole area of where he was at.

"A week later he went into complete lung failure due to an infection in his port and was put into a medically induced coma." Five immediately stopped in his tracks and turned towards Ymir now listening more carefully than before.

"He had Cystic Fibrosis so he never had long but we never expected that to happen at that moment. A month passed and he never woke up, we chose to take him off the ventilator. After that everything went downhill, I don't think I ever want to do anything medical again." Five heard her chuckle on the last part but could still hear how her voice wavered through it all.

He wasn't good with comfort or dealing with others emotions that he himself could barely understand. They were never raised to be compassionate people or care about others but rather just save the world and be the best. He didn't know exactly what this disease was either so he had no way of knowing what exactly she meant entirely.

"Enough about me though…… you said you and your siblings are all the same age yet, not trying to be rude, you don't particularly look or act 16." He really should have started with the whole 58-year-old in a 13-year-olds body that is supposed to be 29 but time travel just likes to fuck things up………. Oh well

"I'm actually 13- well mentally and physically 13, I have the experience and conscious of a 58-year-old." She raised her eyebrow with a confused look on her face at him.

"Um... the time travel thing I told you I could do, the actual timeline right now it's 2019 and my siblings are all 29….. I time-traveled when I was 13 back in 2002 to the future which happened to be April 1st of 2019." Five paused and leaned up against a wall.

'This made zero sense'

"That day the Apocalypse happened where I remained the next 45 years give or take," Yup just keep going at least one thing will make sense.

"Eventually I was able to time travel back to March 24 of 2019 but because of the whole time and space continuum, I ended back up in my 13-year-old self again." Should he mention the 60s? Probably not.

"We had to divert the apocalypse twice but then we were able to return back to our timeline April 2nd the day after the apocalypse." He looked up at her expecting her to think he was crazy but instead, she looked serious.

"Okay, so how did you end up here in 2006?" She questioned him.

'Ah right'

"A couple of days ago I time-traveled from 2019 back 13 years because in….," Five looked down and checked the time on his watch.

8:40

"A day and 3 hours give or take one of my brothers die and I want to prevent that."

Another minute of silence filled the air as Five readjusted his weight onto his right side off of the fresh wound and stitches. He needed a plan of some sort and he needed to act on it soon and fast. So many things were racing through his head at having about a day to save his brother and figure out exactly how to do just that.

Ymir walked over to a door with no doorknob and pushed it open. Five trailed after her to reveal the rest of the small cafe. Small tables with two chairs on each side were placed at the corners of the cafe while much bigger tables and booths were either pushed to the walls or arranged simplistically. Metals shutters covered the see-through laminated glass walls most businesses had letting small streams of light occasionally peak through. Even with nothing being made the lingering smell of coffee and baked goods tinged the air as he followed her over to what looked like the kitchen.

They both stopped in front of a rather small door almost like something out of Alice In Wonderland while he saw her pull a ring of keys off of a nearby hook. A small bronze key was pressed between her fingers as she inserted the piece of copper into the lock turning it till there was a click.

She pushed it open and stepped back, "There's a spiral staircase in there that goes up the side of the shop and the house up to the roof in case we need to get out." She hung the keys back up but kept the door unlocked letting it close so it wasn't hanging open.

'Why were there so many secret compartments in this place!?'

They both looked up as they heard heavy footsteps followed by knocking on the house above them. Ymir put her finger over her lips and pointed back over to the door that they had both just came out of. Five walked back over to the door holding it so it didn't make noise as it swung shut until Ymir walked through and did the same, softly closing it.

His powers were useless at this point; he was too weak and had no energy, he just had to rely on running and walking like normal people. He knew Ymir wouldn't let him out of her sight so he already had to find a way to escape without her noticing.

Ymir led him over to other cots and blankets and pillows that were all on one side of the room with Imogen (the baby) asleep in one.

Five sit on the edge of one of them as Ymir stared down at her baby, "That man… was he your husband?"

Her eyebrows creased at the mention of him as she pursed her lips before nodding her head at him. He knew it was her husband but saying that right out of the bat without any prior knowledge other than what she told him was sure to freak her out.

"Why didn't you go to him and let him know you're okay?" He was pushing it but he still couldn't tell her that the same man she was married to ends up killing her and her baby. Her warm smile that was present the whole time slowly disappeared as the words left his mouth.

"It's…. A lot to explain," the hold back on her words was made apparent. Five didn't question it any further as she sat down on the cot in the middle of Him and her baby.

"We can stay in here tonight… my husband never comes down here to the cafe and even then he doesn't have any of the keys to the doors." She started laying out blankets on the cot and grabbed some laying them next to Five.

He couldn't stay here, he knew that yet the still occurring thought of her situation made Five uneasy. Five scooted back on the cot, pulling his feet up and crossing them in front of him.

Finally having a moment to take everything in he realized how itchy his cheeks were probably from dried tears that he didn't wipe away. His clothes reeked of blood and sweat which smelled all too familiar. Everything was calm and these small movements made him feel and process all that had happened.

His head throbbed and so did the rest of his body, as the thought of how many injuries his body had sustained over the small period. His head felt like it had been tumbling around in the dryer for some time, while he knew for a fact his ribs probably looked like an artist pallet with blacks, blues, purples, and reds.

The room had a crisp chill to it Five never took note of before as he looked at the blankets neatly folded up next to him. The top one looked to be some sort of embroidered quilt with different flower patterns all stitched into it creating multiple bouquets on the quilt. While the other blankets piled under were plainer and of a single color.

Across the room, there was a set of four lockers pushed opposite of the small fridge and cupboards. An awning window laid on top of the lockers that looked to be unlocked. Boxes surrounded the lockers like nobody had used them for quite some time.

Five knew he would be able to fit through the small window and not make much noise to possibly escape. Compared to the other way Ymir showed him to get to the roof, he didn't know the layout of the house and for all he knew there would be no ladder up there to get down.

He had to pretend to be asleep until she herself went to sleep, from there he could get out. Five looked up at Ymir and saw her just sitting on the cot with blankets she laid out, looking over her baby. Five turned and noticed close to her was a little boy in a picture frame, it wasn't there before she must have grabbed it from the boxes when she was rummaging.

The fact that he looked about 13, maybe older, and his jet black hair and eyes all made it apparent that this was the little boy she was talking about. Five wanted to question why something like that was shoved into a cardboard box to be forgotten.

The boy had pink highlights on the tips of his hair mostly on the bangs that curled up and hung down over the right side of his face. In the picture, he had his thumb up while holding a device of some sort in his mouth. A purple bulky looking vest was strapped around him like if he was going to go swim out in the sea. The only thing Five recognized was a nasal cannula that sat on the boy's face while the tubing wrapped in front of him off the frame of the picture.

"Is that your son," Five gestured over to the picture frame as he bent down to pull his shoes off, leaving him in his black knee-highs.

"Pascal, yeah that's him." He saw a smile return onto her face at the mention of him. She moved over and reached for the frame looking at it in her hands for a couple of seconds before offering it to Five.

Five took it in his hand and got a closer look at it. In the vest, some tubes came out and connected to a machine, while so were the other two things he was holding or connected to. The piece in his mouth had a clear tube going to a smaller machine that laid on the table in front of him. The oxygen was connected to a large blue machine in the background of the photo, while there was something else hanging out from over the vest with a clamp of some sort on it.

With all the tubes wrapped around him, he was still smiling into the camera of whoever had taken the photo.

"All the wires and tubes and everything is just his treatments to keep his lungs clear as possible," Ymir commented as Five handed back over the frame.

"So... it's a lung condition?" He really has never heard of what he had so this was new to Five.

"You could say that, but it's a gene mutation that causes all the mucus in your body to become really thick and sticky….which causes of course the breathing problems and many other things." She set the picture frame back down next to her as she laid down on the cot.

Five shrugged off his blazer and hung it on the end of the cot, but kept his vest and other things on. If he was gonna have to make a run for it he only needed to grab his shoes and blazer and not have to get fully dressed. Ymir's back was to him from the cot a few feet as he slid off his watch and faced it towards him.

9:17

Five struggled to keep his eyes open as the night passed and turned to the next day when the time ticked 12. Five grabbed his watch in his hand and sat up slowly so as to not make any noise. Sliding his blazer on he stood up and walked over to Ymir, peeking over and making sure she was asleep which she was. Five walked back over and grabbed his shoes and opted to just carry them as they would probably make noise.

He began making his way over to the boxes and lockers to climb up on to get to the window. Reaching up on his tippy-toes he slid his shoes on the top of the lockers and jumped on the first box looking back over making sure Ymir was still asleep. Crawling up on the next two boxes Five reached up and pulled himself up on top of the metal lockers. He grabbed his shoes and unhooked the latch from the bottom of the window pushing it open as far as it would go.

Five turned around where Ymir and her baby still laid asleep completely unaware of what was going on.

"I'm sorry," Five whispered to no one but himself as he put his feet first through the window and climbed through it.

Five tumbled to the ground outside the cafe, immediately remembering the stitches he had in his side as he hit the floor. He groaned as he pushed himself up trying not to make noise as the window was still opened. Slipping his shoes back on he looked around the area finally assessing it all.

He had no time or direction as to where the people who are planning to cause trouble for his siblings or to find them. He needed to get back to the academy and his only choice was to prevent them from ever leaving. Yes, it would mean waiting around for something to happen which method he wasn't very fond of. But if it allowed him to save Ben that's what he was willing to do.

Five found his way through the back alleys that he had gone through when he had gotten shot which originally started at the academy. He had to go the same way he got here, the same way back and it allowed him to stay out of sight.

Using the walls for support he made his way through all the twists and turns until he once again stood across from the Academy. The normal residence of the Umbrella Academy stood in front of him yet something unfamiliar stuck out to Five.

Diego was outside probably on patrol duty which Five definitely remembered often having to do double shifts if he or the others misbehaved. What caught his attention was who came out the front doors of the Academy as they were almost unrecognizable. With a duffle bag slung over their shoulder and what looked to be a guitar case of some sort in hand, they walked over to Diego.

Five quickly scrambled behind a post box that was nearby hoping the two didn't see him as he continued to peak over.

The short black hair and black leather outfit made Five immediately think it was Klaus but found the height and frame for the person too petite for it to be their lengthy brother. They stopped in front of Diego and brought a hand up to remove the pair of sunglasses they had on despite it being night.

"You are gonna ditch patrol right?" The voice shocked Five as it was the same one he had heard when inside the Academy a few days ago.

Vanya?!

The short jet-black hair had completely slipped past Five when he first saw her. Having mostly just caught glimpses of it more than actually looking at it long enough to process.

The makeup and outfit made her almost unrecognizable to Five compared to the academy pyjamas he saw her in previously.

"I already told you, I'll meet you downtown at Spider's, then we take the cash and leave this place behind in the dust." The way Diego referred to the Academy and talked, Five once again didn't understand what he was talking about.

"Got it, don't be late this time hot-head." The nickname for Diego made Five snicker to himself a bit as Vanya started walking down the street away from the Academy. Five was curious about what they were both doing but knowing Diego was gonna be there later on, Five started to follow Vanya.

She quickly walked down the road and caught a taxi, throwing her luggage in first before hopping in the car. Five curled his hands into fists letting the familiar blue aura surround them as he blinked into a nearby taxi. Five fell lopsided in the back seat rather than in the passenger seat which he was aiming for, as that assured him not to use his powers anymore.

The guy freaked out and started rummaging through his glove compartment before Five reached into his pocket and pulled out his switchblade on him.

Pressing it to his the guy stopped moving, "follow that car or you'd be wishing you took the day shift." He placed his hands on the wheel as he began to follow closely behind the taxi Vanya was in.

Five glanced down at his watch as both cars came to a stop across from what looked like a nightclub. Five flicked the blade closed as he stepped out of the car and smiled at the man, "pleasure doing business with you."

The car quickly sped away while he turned his attention back towards where Vanya had just gone. He kept his distance behind her until she entered the club, Five wouldn't be able to get in there. Rounding the building Five caught sight of multiple people all with instruments or dressed up in a certain way. Vanya came out of a door as she met up with what looked like a chimp almost like Pogo. She quickly unpacked the instrument and started tuning it up while the other chimp drummed out a beat on the nearby wall with his drumsticks.

"Where's that brother of yours?" The chimp asked Vanya while Five tried to get closer to hear what they were saying over the loud music in the club.

"Don't worry, Body he'll be here." As Vanya said that a roar of cheering was heard inside followed by 4 guys coming through the door drenched in sweat and covered in black makeup head to toe.

A tall well-built guy walked through the door and approached the two Five was watching, "Prime 8's you guys are up in 30, get your gear on stage while the crowd is still hyped."

'Prime 8's?'

Both of them began grabbing wrapped up cables, amps, and Vanya grabbed her guitar as they went through the door everyone was coming in and out of.

'Vanya and Diego were in a band together?'

Five knew Diego was the one who did ever treat Vanya like she wasn't one of Klaus' ghosts but rather their sister….. But no one ever told him they were in a band together. Five couldn't even remember if he read this in Vanya's book either as it seemed this whole part she skipped over mostly cutting to the chase of Ben's death.

Five continued to watch as they both finished setting up and continued to wait in this backstage area. Vanya started to pace the area as she kept frantically checking the clock that was on the wall.

'Prime 8's!!!'

Five could hear the chanting of the crowd getting louder as the 30 minutes came and went. The same guy from before walked over to both of them looking quite frustrated, "You guys are on, where's The Kraken?"

"He'll be here I promise, Spider just give him a couple of minutes," Vanya pleaded to who Five now knew was 'Spider'.

"You got 10 minutes for him to show up till I throw The Azmatics on stage." Five had a hunch that Diego wasn't coming but he didn't understand why as it seemed he actually meant what he said to Vanya.

He saw Vanya walk over to a payphone on the wall and dialed a series of numbers into it. She tapped her foot for a while before taking the phone away from her ear and slamming it back down on the receiver. Her pacing and the way she held herself definitely reminded Five that this was the same Vanya from when they were 13 and currently 29.

A minute ticked by as she reached into her pocket, popped the top of a small colored bottle, and swallow the pills dry. He wanted to reach out and tell her to stop popping what she thought was anxiety medication like candy. The rest of the minutes flew by as the crowd got louder, most likely getting impatient and some of the other bands started complaining. Yet there still was no sign of Diego as the tall man, Spider marched out the door towards Vanya.

"You and your band are lucky I even gave you a chance, now go get your gear off my stage before I let it get trashed, you're wasting my time."

"Most of the people in there bought those tickets because we were performing, not because they wanted to see any of these other opening bands," Vanya yelled at the very much taller and buff guy in front of her.

"After what happened last week with your psycho brother, you probably both don't belong here." The buff man snarled at Vanya as he turned back around to the doors.

Vanya turned around and faced the chimp whose name was Body, "5 minutes Body, he probably just got caught up in something." The next band up started collecting their stuff running past Vanya as the chimp began to pull on a jacket.

"He might be right Vanya, you're good on that guitar you can find others to play with. But that hot-headed brother of yours can't even show up for a gig on time…… I'm sorry Vanya but the Prime-8's are through." He walked out the door, to get to the stage and collect the items. Vanya hurriedly collected her guitar and duffle bag before starting to walk away from the club.

'Shit!'

Five ran around the corner and hid in the crowd of people as Vanya started to walk down the street both things in tow. Taking random turns and twists it seemed she was just wasting time rather than going somewhere. Vanya reached into her pocket taking out a cigarette and lighting it she leaned up against a store window with the news broadcasting. Five stayed behind a far distance but close enough to hear what was going on.

"The Horror and The Sèance of The Umbrella Academy are injured in an encounter with a gang in their hideout. Then The Rumour and Spaceboy were subdued….all hope was lost until The Kraken came to the rescue saving everyone and knocking out the leader of the gang…"

'They were called on a mission'

Five almost questioned whether he should have stayed at the Academy to see what exactly happened. He heard a scoff from Vanya as she threw the cigarette on the ground, putting it out before walking off down the road. She stopped at a crosswalk and hailed a taxi.

Five got closer as the taxi came to a stop and she threw her belongings into the back seat, "To the airport please, if you step on it there's 40 bucks in it for you."

'Vanya was...leaving?'

She was leaving the day before their brother died. Why was none of this in her book, why had no one told him any of this!?

Vanya slammed the taxi door closed and it sped away from where Five stood, confused, still injured, and feeling things he wasn't completely sure what they were.

He looked down at his watch and it told him it was already 2:40 in the morning. The streets had begun to die down as the time got closer to 3 leaving Five still standing where Vanya had just left. It was technically already the last day before everything was bound to happen.

He had screwed up too many times to count already from leaving his own timeline in the first place to getting caught in a trap set just for him. He was lost in his head, and with tears already had been shed he wanted everything to just be a bad dream.

A night terror he would be screaming bloody murder from, completely unaware of his siblings' attempts to comfort him until he fell back asleep and didn't remember any of it in the morning.

Asleep in his bed, clothed in his academy pyjamas probably with Diego or Allison sitting at the edge of his bed with worry painted on their face. Then breakfast would be made as all 5 other siblings clomped down the stairs with Diego already in the kitchen being very much motherly (although would never admit it) and making the siblings whatever they desired.

Yet here he was standing, wasting time and being absolutely useless. He was mocked by Klaus for having an obsession with the apocalypse, but maybe he was just addicted to making sure his family wasn't hurt or even injured. Every time someone almost died or did die he reversed time and prevented it in one way or another never allowing them to pass away…….to leave him.

In a way, he was being selfish, yet he was given powers to manipulate time as he chose. He wasn't even sure if he would be able to properly cope with any of their deaths without being tempted to fuck with the timeline.

Five began to walk in a familiar direction but not the Academy. The stitches pulled every step he took causing him more pain as he was sure they would break open again if he didn't stop running around aggravating the wound. His unreasonable anger distracted him from the pain as he pushed himself to walk faster away from the area the taxi had sped away from moments ago.

He didn't understand why he was angry, he knew all the events surrounding everything with Ben's death were kept under lock and keep by his siblings. But he didn't know so many things happened that even the world didn't from what Vanya wrote so many years later that tore the siblings even farther apart.

Reading that stupid book was all Five had of a memory of his siblings when every living thing was dead and humanity was wiped out. He thought he had a piece of his childhood back from that book after missing 16 years of it. But apparently, he couldn't even have that as most of it seemed to be based on a lie like Allison's rumours.

Five didn't notice his nails digging into the fleshy part of his palm until he kicked a nearby trash can, running his hands over his face. He needed to be saving Ben not worrying about everything else, yet it seemed like everything was hopeless. He started to walk which quickly progressed into a full-on sprint. Every inch of his body screamed at his actions yet his mind felt it was just right.

He could feel blisters starting to form on the soles of his feet as they rubbed up against dress shoes which were not made for running. Yet he continued to run as every breath grew harder to take. The deep breaths quickly turned to sobs as he kept running, choking on his tears. He knew not to fuck with the timeline yet here he was in 2006 alone and finding out secrets he now knew why his family hid from him. All his emotions were getting tangled up like earbuds forgotten in someone's pocket or backpack.

He ran and ran and ran till he couldn't anymore. His watch eventually struck 4 then 5 then 6 and so on and so forth. The birds chirped as the moon switched with the sun as life bounced back to the streets. Yet somewhere tucked behind an old building The smallest Hargreeves laid there passed out, lifeless and unconscious…..

#virusfanfic

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tinyghostvirus · 2 years

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What if they met before Yuuichiro gave Rockman to Netto?

I mean, I can’t exactly picture both Haruka and Yuuichiro being fine with their children not even seeing each other (especially since, game-verse, they kind of reunited them as soon as they could since Netto was about five when he “got” Rockman if I remember well). So maybe, just maybe, before Rockman was fully completed...

So this is my headcannon, anime-verse. It took Yuuichiro some time to code Rockman’s frame (especially his ultimate program which, I would most definitely say, is his ability to just adapt to absolutely anything), so in the meantime, Saito was mostly hanging around Scilab using a prototype frame that was slowly updated as Yuuichiro was figuring out how to implement each and every single feature a navi should have in a way for Saito to be able to use them (I mean, according to what can be found in the game, I think he may have died between 1 and 4 years old, but I would need to read Japanese to be sure and I can’t, so he would already be “human wired” and would not think as an AI). Here, he dies at about 4 yo, and when the comic is taking place (before the time skip), they are about 9 yo, right before Saito has his memory locked so it looks like Rockman is a new navi (and that would explain why he never says anything in the anime, plus why Rockman feels so... robotic, in the first episodes).

(And why no helmet? Have you ever tried to put a hat on a child? A hat they can’t remove as they please? Because I have. They would usually throw it in the pool. Or throw themselves in the pool with the hat on... Or throw someone else in the pool with their hat on. Moral of the story : attaching a hat to a child’s head usually ends up with a wet hat :/ )

(Also, I may have started this thing back in 2019... And I forgot about it :/ So some drafts were from back then, and I corrected the lineart as I could because I am lazy, and the last panels were completely redone. And I tried to put that into a logical order. It was a pain. Past!me didn’t apparently think this through...)

#Rockman exe #megaman battle network #megaman nt warrior #saito hikari #hub hikari #netto hikari #lan hikari #comic #what is consistency #not one of my skills

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wellhalesbells · 3 years

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✨✨ TOP FIVES FOR 2020 ✨✨

2020 was, i think we can all agree, a massively chaotic year but i have never consumed as much media before in my life, so i thought others might benefit from my slothery uh, connoisseur.... ship? yes, that. below are the books, comics, shows, and movies that got me through!

B O O K S .

the starless sea, by erin morgenstern - i loooove this book because it loves me back. it says: ‘oh, you’re a reader, well i have just the thing for you.’ it luxuriates in language and story and riddles and fairy tales and it feels like an entire library in a single tome.

they never learn, by layne fargo - oh fuuuuuck, this was satisfying. i thought it might feel a little exploitative as it is very aware of the zeitgeist and likely would not exist without the #metoo movement but it never ever did. this was a fucking ROMP, period. reading about a woman getting away with murdering skeezy guy after rapey guy after shitty human just made me happier and happier.

moonflower murders, by anthony horowitz - this is the second in the susan ryeland series (and the first was hardcore good fun too) and really feels very classic mystery with the artful twist of catering to the literary community. mainly because: susan isn’t a detective, she’s an editor and she gets drafted in this time because the clue to what happened to a missing woman is in a book she edited, if she can find it. both of the books in this series have such an excellent coming together moment that is rare af to find.

the invisible life of addie larue, by v.e. schwab - the writing in this is just so good. it has that feel to me where i just want to drop the book and open up my own page and let my fingers fly. it’s that inspiring kind of writing that reminds you of all the things language can do.

crown of feathers/heart of flames, by nicki pau preto - aaahhh, this series is SO FREAKING GOOD! why is there not more of a fandom for it, why???? it is so many of my favorite tropes all resting perfectly together to the point where you almost forget they’re tropes because they just so naturally evolved there. ugh, it’s just.... it’s so heart-bursty good.

.... number 5, part 2? raybearer, by jordan ifueko - this was just so original and i was invested af. like, what a brilliant idea though and an even better execution?? i loved every character and am so looking forward to the next in the series so i can get to know them even better!!

honorable mentions (sh*t i still liked a whole heckuva lot): you/hidden bodies, by caroline kepnes // writers & lovers, by lily king // i’ll be gone in the dark, by michelle mcnamara // the faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home, by joseph fink & jeffrey cranor // girl, serpent, thorn, by melissa bashardoust // a little life, by hanya yanagihara // the guinevere deception, by kiersten white // obsidio (and the entire illuminae series), by amie kaufman & jay kristoff // the bone houses, by emily lloyd-jones // house of salt and sorrows, by erin a. craig // we hunt the flame, by hafsah faizal // savage legion, by matt wallace // blacktop wasteland, by s.a. cosby // crier’s war, by nina varela // the empress of salt and fortune/when the tiger came down the mountain, by nghi vo // upright women wanted, by sarah gailey // the monster of elendhaven, by jennifer giesbrecht // a deadly education, by naomi novik // you let me in, by camilla bruce // when you ask me where i’m going, by jasmin kaur // the lights go out in lychford/last stand in lychford (and the entire lychford series), by paul cornell // the devil and the dark water, by stuart turton // serpent & dove, by shelby mahurin // one by one, by ruth ware // ruthless gods (this was SUCH an upshot from the first book - it’s worth sticking with if you’re on the fence), by emily a. duncan // cemetery boys, by aiden thomas // the inheritance games, by jennifer lynn barnes // the fortunate ones (2021 release), by ed tarkington

C O M I C S .

cosmoknights, by hannah templer - the art was gorgeous, the gayness was glorious, and just.... hot HOOOOOOOOT lady knights in space?! a princess winning her own hand? find something not to love in there, i dare you.

don’t go without me, by rosemary valero-o’connell - wow. wow wow wow wow wow. the writing was stunning, so lyrical and atmospheric and deep, and rosemary has to be one of my favorite artists but even that managed to come as a beautiful surprise because it was just so freaking bold.

through the woods, by emily carroll - i loooove emily carroll, the convergence of spine-tingling horror and art that feeds into it, that is both visually and aesthetically pleasing, is hard to beat! p.s. i also read beneath the dead oak tree from her this year and it was also a BANGER.

the impending blindness of billie scott, by zoe thorogood - zoe is someone that i just want to follow. she’s just starting and i want to be there for every single step. i love her art style and her ability to tell a story with it.

above the clouds, by melissa pagluica - this was so unique, and such a baller concept, as nearly half the entire book is conveyed only through the art and yet you’re never once lost, never once confused as to what any character is thinking or feeling. it’s a story within a story and only one of those gets words though they both are chock full of emotion!

um.... number 5, part 2? crowded, by christopher sebela - everything about this series is fun af. crowd-funded assassination and a hirable bodyguard who’s rated like an uber driver??? and the chemistry between the two mains is so great and gay!!

honorable mentions: monster and the beast, by renji // long exposure, by kam ‘mars’ heyward // fence, by c.s. pacat // invisible kingdom, by g. willow wilson // ms. marvel, by g. willow wilson // heathen, by natasha alterici // not drunk enough, by tess stone // giant days, by john allison // die, by kieron gillen // be prepared, by vera brosgol // ascender (sequel to descender, which is also great), by jeff lemire // the unbeatable squirrel girl, by ryan north // bang! bang! boom!, by melanie schoen // gideon falls, by jeff lemire // life of melody, by mari costa // cry wolf girl, by ariel slamet ries // the tea dragon society, by katie o’neill // ptsd, by guillaume singelin // heartstopper, by alice oseman // solutions and other problems, by allie brosh // finding home, by hari conner // the magic fish, by trung le nguyen // something is killing the children, by james tynion iv // the weight of them, by noelle stevenson // spill zone, by scott westerfeld // skyward, by joe henderson // miles morales, by saladin ahmed

F I L M S.

parasite, dir. bong joon ho - oh it was satisfying, oh it was suspenseful, oh i had to watch some of it through my fingers but i loooooooved it. such a good story and so well made.

knives out, dir. rian johnson - okay, everything about this movie was amazing. every single character was fun as hell and i could’ve watched an entire movie about each of them. what a great fucking mystery!

blindspotting, dir. carlos lopez estrada - this made my heart hurt so damn much. what glorious writing, acting, and story!

portrait of a lady on fire, dir. celine sciamma - gooooorgeous cinematography, amazing chemistry, and such a soft, atmospheric film.

the farewell, dir. lulu wang - i cried and my heart felt so full and i love it so so much.

um.... number 5, part 2? someone great, dir. jennifer kaytin robinson - no part of me expected to love a netflix movie this much but it’s a love story that doesn’t get told that often?? the end of a relationship and the true love of friendship and i love these girls and i love jenny and nate’s broken relationship.

honorable mentions: eighth grade, dir. bo burnham // booksmart, dir. olivia wilde // midsommar, dir. ari aster // the curse of la llorona, dir. michael chaves // the secret life of pets 2, dirs. chris renaud & jonathan del val // jojo rabbit, dir. taika waititi // the invisible man, dir. leigh whannell // the favourite, dir. yorgos lanthimos // can you ever forgive me?, dir. marielle heller // troop zero, dirs. bert & bertie // ready or not, dirs. matt bettinelli-olpin & tyler gillett // brave, dirs. mark andrews & brenda chapman & steve purcell // the half of it, dir. alice wu // palm springs, dir. max barbakow // doctor sleep, dir. mike flanaghan // uncut gems, dirs. benny sadfie & josh sadfie // birds of prey, dir. cathy van // bloodshot, dir. dave wilson // the old guard, dir. gina prince-bythewood // enola holmes, dir. harry bradbeer // hocus pocus, dir. kenny ortega // always be my maybe, dir. nahnatchka khan // finding dory, dirs. andrew stanton & angus maclane // die hard, dir. john mctiernan

S H O W S .

black sails (2014) - this show, this shooooooooow. i cannot, it just makes me want to cry with how good it is. the characters, the EMOTIONS, the story, the plaaaaaan. like, the creators clearly had a plan for every single step of this show and it was a gOOD, GOOD PLAN.

the untamed (2019) - truly, cheesy good fun with one of the best gay romances ever. i love these characters and their relationships to each other and the way it glories in its own ridiculousness.

the righteous gemstones (2019) - one of the things that bothered me about my next choice (the ratio of female to male nudity) was so much more realistic in this one (i mean, we’ve all gotten five thousand dick pics and i know like three people? so the fact that there is so rarely male nudity in shows when there are tits everywhere..... no, how does that even make a tiny bit of sense?). this show was such great, wonderful, awful fun. they’re not great people and the show is under no delusion about that and it’s GLORIOUS!

the witcher (2019) - this was just hella fun, i loved the characters and the fantasy elements. i’m excited for the next season, it’s just entertaining swashbuckling through and through!

fargo (2014) - all of this was really very enjoyable with the through line being somebody fucks shit up and gets involved in something they really shouldn’t be involved in that’s going to swallow them whole. season one and season three were my stand-out favorites but they were all so violent, clever, and vicious!

um.... number 5, part 2? central park (2020) - um..... so many of the hamilton actors in a muscial cartoon drawn and written by the bob’s burgers team? WHAT ABOUT THAT DOESN’T SOUND AMAZING?! it was such a joy to hear daveed diggs and leslie odom jr.’s voices again!!

honorable mentions: schitt’s creek // the mandalorian // mr. robot // broadchurch // mindhunter // jack ryan // the good place // the end of the f***ing world // big little lies // elite // kidding // servant // letterkenny // curb your enthusiasm // i am not okay with this // ozark // buzzfeed unsolved: true crime/supernatural // you // runaways // dear white people // dickinson // brooklyn nine-nine // will & grace // 9-1-1 // dead to me // solar opposites // never have i ever // killing eve // what we do in the shadows // grace and frankie // avenue 5 // roswell, new mexico // the bold type // evil // tuca & bertie // impulse // the umbrella academy // watchmen // infinity train // corporate // search party // on becoming a god in central florida // a.p. bio // criminal: uk // the morning show // mythic quest // last week tonight // prodigal son // the great

#the starless sea #the invisible life of addie larue #the untamed #knives out #2020 favorites list!!#i tried to stick to shows i both started and finished in 2020 otherwise like schitt's creek and the good place would be in top five #same for comics #uh oh i've found the keyboard again

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lacktastrophe · 3 years

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Daisy MegaPost Pt1

Update: 3/7/2021

This one’s been in the shop for a couple of years now. I think I started this way back in 2019 but I just became just far too busy to work on huge posts again. I had anticipated to have all of Daisy written up during the break that BCB had, but I became in need of a break myself too. Part two was written up, but I never went further.

I had come back to this recently and made some changes. I wasn’t too happy with the way I used to write and I’ve been editing this over and over, until I noticed it wasn’t keeping them. I’ve published it now since there wasn’t any point just keeping it in drafts and it’s more or less done, just not in this state I’m perfectly happy with, but it seems to be keeping my changes now it’s in this state. I anticipate I’ll still be making some edits. Before I continue on with Part 2. As for part 3 and onwards, I can’t give a time frame.

With the webtoons version way ahead of the chapters here, I’ll probably make progressive updates and start using those over the old Volume 1 art, I’d anticipate the webtoons version is a retelling of the story and thus there might be some retcons, like how Kizuna was replaced with Stacy. I’d anticipate some changes might make different meanings for the future.

I still enjoy examining the story and characters. I still plan to do some introspections to the other characters I haven’t come to, but it’ll be far fewer and in-between than years ago. I have other projects and those need priority.

But I’m happy that people still enjoy reading these.

---

We’re onto the main characters now, things are going to need to change with the way mega-posts are going to be published from this point forward. My previous mega-posts are usually just one long post, hence the name. Though they’re starting to become uncontrollable, and Tumblr is clamping down, or at least not really working with excessive word counts.

Uh oh. . .

Well, the old mega-posts can still be accessed but you’ll need a direct link, they won’t show up on the mainroll and I’d be surprised if they still show up these days, and I’d have to guess this has something to do with the anti-spam detection on Tumblr.

If you were interested in the previous mega-posts, they can be accessed on their own page from my blog’s front page. I just wouldn’t try reading some of the earlier ones on an app, it’ll struggle.

The other problem was with the word count, even without the characters being the prime focus, they’re starting to get long. Abbey’s alone was a 16000 behemoth. This surprised me, as despite him being a secondary character there was an awful lot to discover and talk about. Augustus, despite being a character who appeared much more in-between chapters but much fewer than Abbey, was nearly 21000 words. If there was that much to talk about with the secondary characters, the same method of just dumping as much as I can into one post is clearly not going to work when we start approaching the main characters. I had to split both of them up for my own convenience.

The main change is to make these smaller so they’re friendlier on the app and the website; maybe aim for 2000-5000 words without focusing too heavily on trying to get through on as many chapters as possible and see how far we go.

The plan from this point forward is to do a large collection of write ups but then deploy them progressively. That’ll also give anyone who’s keen a chance to give feedback or who wants to talk further about something.

Sound good?

Me too! So without further ado, let’s get a move on and have a look at Daisy.

----

So, our first protagonist, where do we start with Daisy?

How you’re first introduced to Daisy really depends on whether you read the book or followed the comic through the site. The book’s opening chapter, ‘Like a Bittersweet Candy Bowl’ introduces you to Daisy as a massive bookworm who does well in school. She’s pretty smart!

Book in hand, we’d pretty much believe that right off the bat. She appears like the most studious in this group of friends. And we’d be right! She even puts the ever-perfect Mike to shame. She’s nothing less than a perfect student.

‘Perfect’ could be an understatement, Daisy is a literal freak of nature when it comes to her academics; as when Daisy and the kids transition to Roseville high, we find her already in classes well advanced than her peers.

Daisy is just that incredible!

Through the website, ‘Simple Pleasures’ aims to introduce the kids in much the same way, but there is far less in the way of monologuing and we’re introduced as the characters interact. In much the same way as the introduction chapter in volume 1, we learn that Daisy is quite the bookworm and school-obsessed student, even during weekends. But that’s not the only thing dominating her thoughts, as when Lucy goes out on her walk, the first person she runs into is Daisy who is looking for someone else in particular!

You guessed it!

Oh GOD, does Daisy like boys! Can you guess who she’s got her eye on?

Of course it’s Mike. Are you surprised she’s got a deep crush on the boy who seems very perfect himself? Everywhere that Mike goes, you can be sure that there’s a shadow in the shape of Daisy not too far behind. . .

Wherever he goes. . .

Daisy doesn’t shy from showing her interest in him when the convenience calls for it. Ah, young love.

Eventually, Daisy would find love, though it wouldn’t be with Mike. It would however be the second longest running relationship in the comic if you consider Mike and Sandy, with an admirer of hers.

Still, suffice to say, even after every attempt gets shot down in the most spectacular way, Daisy bounces back -- Like a daisy. Her shining ray of positivity follows her everywhere. It’s all in the name, after all. Daisy still manages to rise up with her sunny disposition.

But not every time.

As the story progresses, little by little, we start seeing that there’s more to Daisy. We start to see that not everything is bright and happy like her name-sake despite appearances. Things would be far from perfect, and underneath that smiling face is a character suffering with low self-esteem in that very same area; her appearance; believing their Ragamuffin/Selkirk-Rex heritage is letting them down and putting them in misery. This tends to be particularly true on rainy days, when all the hours she spends of a morning brushing down her fur become undone when the droplets causes it to fluff up and the curls start showing. Daisy attributes these traits to the reason she isn’t quite as easily noticed by the boys as the other girls, setting up for a number of stories involving her in Volume1, and opening her to be taken advantage of in the pursuit of attention and affection.

Not all the characters gain admirers or attention and for most of these characters, this is fine. But Daisy is not one of those and this above all things has an enormous impact on her. She wants to be noticed and receive affection, particularly from Mike, and others to a degree.

It’s when faced with multiple rejections from her dream boyfriend we also progressively discover a side of her shown to be more envious if not resentful of a few others who have it so easy, particularly with one such character inside her friend circle.

As you can imagine, these weaknesses will eventually put Daisy in danger as she tries her best to come up with ways to cope and make changes in order to improve her life, especially if the means are at the cost of logical reasoning like taking advice from the seediest boy in the school to attain her goals. She isn’t infallible; Intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean smarts. Even with someone who does as well in school as Daisy does, there’s always room to grow.

But until that happens, Daisy often finds herself in trouble when her personal feelings, ambitions and dreams do the talking for them on pursuit of happiness, for herself and others.

And oh boy, doesn’t Daisy make more than her own fair share of mistakes.

Let’s move onto the story, it starts with Simple pleasures, the first chapter.

This chapter serves to introduce us to the main group of characters central to the story and so features the aloof and prickly Lucy, the playboy Paulo, the ever-perfect Mike and the bookworm Daisy. It starts with Lucy on a morning walk and progressively running into each of them. With Daisy specifically, it starts with Daisy coming across her first and greeting her by shouting ‘Hey’ behind her.

Except...Lucy ignores her, and we don’t know why -- Is Lucy doing this intentionally? She’s in a world of her own at the moment with her singing. Are they friends? Is she just so aloof she doesn’t realise she’s there?

Well, Daisy isn’t going to let herself be ignored so easily and she really needs Lucy for something. So she goes to get her attention by impulsively grabbing onto Lucy’s tail. This would turn out to be a very critical mistake that one of the other protagonists just can’t stop helping himself from doing, and because of that we notice that Lucy isn’t as aloof as she seems, and reciprocates by twisting around and kicking her in the face.

Only to find that the person she was expecting was actually Daisy, much to her surprise. There’s a reason she never noticed her.

The first chapter has a number of objectives, it serves to set up the tone of the comic by showing the dynamic between the main group of friends, but also displays their characteristics. We already learn a couple of things from Daisy and Lucy’s interaction here. We learn that Lucy has a short fuse when it comes to unwanted contact. She appears aloof, but the main reason for Lucy not acknowledging Daisy initially is through the understanding that she’s partially deaf, unable to hear out of her left ear in similar in characteristic with her breed, the Khao Manee. Many of the other characters will make this mistake too and often at times Lucy doesn’t make it obvious she can’t hear what’s going on around them and needs to ask about what transpired much later. Lucy’s aloofness will be questioned in time as we start seeing more of her.

Daisy had forgotten about Lucy’s disability because something else was more important. And naturally, we learn that Daisy has, no less; a bit of a crush on the forefront of her mind. And we learn here that crush is on Mike, one of their friends at school, and her reasoning for bothering Lucy is that she’s only looking for him. What we come to learn later is it’s a little known fact that wherever Lucy is, Mike is often not too far away. In fact Lucy is never off on her own by herself.

Sadly for Daisy, Lucy doesn’t know where he is, so Daisy runs off in the opposite direction. That’s about as much of Daisy as we see until the next chapter.

Before we move on, let’s talk more about their interaction. As brief as it was, the interaction gives off more in the subtext into the status of the relationships between these characters and the others. I anticipate as new readers many of the details of this interaction just fly over heads, accepting these two are friends and this is just how they are. But being as late into the comic as we are, I feel we’re already seeing some of the signs of what’s to come in the story through this short interaction. Not everything is as it seems.

Most of this payload of information is laid in the question that Daisy poses after Lucy asks her what she’s after. When Lucy states she hasn’t seen Mike, Daisy asks ‘Oh no, did you upset him?’

Immediately we’re given some insight into the triangle that exists between these characters and their relationship between one another, and insight into the state of these relationships.

Starting with Mike and Lucy’s relationship as the question is directed about the two of them, we learn that the friendship isn’t without it’s issues, and we’d be quick to pass this off initially as something that happens from time to time. Fight’s happen, it’s a fact of life, and it happens more so when you’re a kid and figuring things out, yourself and life. Reading through the story, we would find the two inseparable in the later chapters and we never look at Daisy’s question again. But reading through BCB again from as late in the comic as we are, we have to wonder why this question specifically.

What we learn much later in the comic as we progress through is that Mike and Lucy’s relationship is much more complicated than what it appears to be. Much later, we see that the two do argue from time to time, until we get to the point where the plaster and apologies aren’t mending the cracks. The friendship isn’t quite as clean cut as it was made out to be and we start seeing some back stories into the characters. What appears to be a competitive rivalry through volume 1 between two friends is really something more sinister. By the time we reach Volume 4, we learn these two are really anything but friends.

For the moment, Daisy’s casual interaction gives off a sense of normality in their environment and understanding the answer to the question would actually help plan out her next move if we were to consider that maybe there was some intent behind the question. But we’ll get to the nature of it soon.

Without knowing too much about the kids as early in the story. I’d feel we’d put our trust in the kids to tell the story for us, and Daisy does come off as being quite perceptive and trustworthy immediately being the positive bookkeeper she is, she would be the expert for us until such a time as we become the experts.

One thing we’d discover much later on our own is that the Mike and Lucy are inseparable. In one way or another, they will find each other and act like close friends again. And Daisy knows this too without specifically pointing it out. Already suggesting that they’ve fought, it would only be a matter of time before they made up again, whether that takes minutes or hours. No matter how big the town is again, so long as they’ve got each other in their thoughts, they’ll stumble upon each other in no time, almost like a six sense.

It could be said that this is for the sake of convenience in the story in getting them to interact faster in the comic and resolve disputes, and that would be right. But BCB takes this and turns it into a running gag between just these two characters. There are more than a few jokes that exist in Volume 1 to make this seem like these two are made for each other in the way that they will eventually run into each other no matter how big the town is. One such joke is seen in Volume 1 through Mike’s inability to surprise Lucy on her Birthday. It’s so powerful, even Lucy’s auditory disability doesn’t stop her from catching him just before he can do it, even if the hiding spot isn’t obvious.

We’ve only seen this fail once, and that was in ‘Its all in the mind’ when Mike does sneak up on her, but Lucy has very much moved on from Mike at this point, so we’d have to wonder if this is something to do with them both being in Sync, we might not know.

The question Daisy asks doesn’t just pertain to Mike and Lucy’s relationship however, it also begs the question to Lucy and Daisy’s relationship at the same time. In fact, if it wasn’t for Daisy’s sunny disposition and Lucy’s stone-faced responses, the entire interaction would appear quite rude; Daisy’s question isn’t whether or not she’s seen him, only if she’s upset him, shedding some poor light on Lucy’s personality.

It’s important to remember that while these two are friends at our current point in the comic, they did not start out as friends, especially when you consider Confrontation, as we’re coming up to. Daisy, while she was amicable around Lucy and quite hospitable to her in the friend group, has to contend with her as being this roadblock to getting to Mike. Lucy seemed more aloof around her, but there’s more than enough to suggest that Lucy had other mutual feelings.

Understanding now that there is a rivalry between the two (or a one-sided rivalry, take your pick), we can understand why that particular question had been asked. Its tent though is to give more reason to Daisy’s next move: If Lucy did divulge she had fought with him; then it would only be a matter of time before Mike showed up, as Mike would feel the need to apologise and through their innate ability, would find each other, it would just be a matter of time. If she hadn’t; then Mike could be just about anywhere.

It turns out to be the later. And too infatuated with Mike (or not interested in hanging out with Lucy, take your pick), Daisy does not simply stay with her to wait and runs off in the opposite direction, hoping to find him first.

It’s when Daisy is no longer in the focus, we can see that Lucy isn’t exactly as stonewalled as she initially appeared to be, blushing from the interaction.

As possible that Lucy is only reacting because of her stupid head-over-heels attitude for that other idiot, as Lucy is yet to realise her feelings for Mike, we could wonder if it might not also be because Daisy has rudely pointed at the elephant in the room in Lucy and Mike’s relationship. Who’s to say?

(2021 edit -- The webtoon has this piece of dialogue changed. This time Daisy asks ‘Awww, are you both fighting still?’, which makes this even more pronounced that things aren’t all quite sunshine already. )

Finally, Daisy and Mike. Now that Lucy’s interaction with Daisy is done, Daisy is running around town looking for Mike, for whatever reason it just can’t wait until school.

Ah love. I’m sure it won’t be a problem in the future, right?

Mike is a real nice guy; lending Daisy his math workbook to Daisy.

We really need to look a bit deeper into this. We know much later in the story we that Daisy is well in advance of her peers in her studies. When she starts Roseville high, we find her in no more than two ahead of the others in her grade, with the juniors, and Tess.

And in the first few chapters of volume 1, we learn that Daisy often tutors Mike, so there’s no way Daisy even needs that book.

Unless...

O---Oh. It wasn’t for Math after all.

We’d come to learn that boy troubles are generally the source for all of Daisy’s grief. We’ll find that Daisy’s crazed obsession over Mike is used to justify a lot of the actions she’ll take in the future and we don’t know how bad this is until the much later volumes. Volume one step over this lightly as just a girl wanting her crush’ affection. But it becomes more pronounced in the much later volumes, especially when Abbey makes a point out of it when Daisy is less inhibited to keep her real feelings secret after getting drunk off Alcohol at Rachel’s party in a very late chapter.

Getting back to the current chapter, Lucy will notice that Mike eventually did find Mike, but she’s not with him. So maybe that was all she really wanted.

We’d be saps for thinking that.

But without anything concrete, we can only presume that was it. So thanks for returning Mike’s book, Daisy.

Daisy appears again in Merry Snow Day, the following chapter. This is a very short chapter where the kids are going to school after Lucy (begrudgingly) accepts schools not out, and walks with Mike to school. Daisy appears not long after and the first order of the day is to talk about homework, including offering to tutor him. She’d do anything if it meant helping her fellow students.

It’s at this part we’re introduced to the subtle idea of the rivalry for Mike’s affection between Daisy and Lucy. It’s subtle since it’s very one-sided and Lucy and Daisy don’t directly interact with one another or show that they’re fighting. Their interactions for most of the early chapters happen through Mike like you can see above when Lucy adds herself into the conversation. We’d have reason despite Lucy’s aloofness that such a rivalry does exist subconsciously and there are some reasons to believe this we’ll touch on. But for the moment, we can be sure that Lucy doesn’t consider Daisy a threat for one main reason: Mike will come back, so there’s no problem.

Daisy wouldn’t make a point of the rivalry either but Daisy would take advantage of the convenience of Lucy being out of the picture to seek attention from Mike, as she does when Lucy continues to school, and Daisy directly copies what happened just seconds ago when Lucy was about to fall on the ice, and Mike catches her.

Nice.

This chapter also introduces Yashy, Lucy’s pet Lizard and her surrogate daughter into the story line. The earlier chapters of Bittersweet Candy Bowl are ripe with slap-stick humour, and Yashy is the general source of this with her outspokenness and wise-ass personality. She’s there to rile up the others and break all the ice with her innocent demeanour. This will be the case up until the kids go to Highschool when the comedy starts being turned down in place of focusing on the rifts coming between the kids.

Unlike the other pets, Yashy is integral to the plot involving Lucy and Mike’s relationship, as she’s partly the reason for the friendship going on as long as it has. Having known Yashy for as long as Lucy, Mike takes on the role of the surrogate dad in Yashy’s life and this ends up having Yashy taking on the belief that Mike and Lucy are an established couple. But this isn’t true, and it plagues Mike as this is anything further than the truth. But with Yashy’s innocence, he can’t find the means to break this to her.

Yashy’s insistence of Mike and Lucy’s eventual destiny of being husband and wife comes at Daisy’s expense, as despite Lucy not necessarily seeing reason to stop Daisy’s attempts at trying for seek Mike’s affection, it’s Yashy who perceives her as a real threat and will shout obscenities at her when she doesn’t get her way, with a particular choice of word in mind. Though it doesn’t stop Daisy. But we can’t help but wonder much later if those words Yashy chooses to throw don’t have some kind of an effect on her much later.

That completes this chapter. Daisy doesn’t have much of an impact in Unfit for Education, appearing more to just be a participant in Sue’s obsessive thoughts game. But she gets a larger role to play in the following chapter; Burden of Parenthood.

This chapter has the kids going through sex ed. and being given the responsibility of raising a robotic baby, which they will be graded on based on their performance. This chapter starts off quite unexpectedly, as when the teacher begins pairing off the students, Yashy’s expectations that Michael and Lucy will be paired together, doesn’t actually happen for a change.

This time, Daisy is paired up with Mike, and Lucy is paired up with Paulo.

As you could guess, Yashy isn’t thrilled in the least bit. But neither is Lucy particularly when she spots Paulo pleased at the results himself.

Again I still don’t think Yashy’s abuse is really doing much for Daisy, I can’t help but wonder what that will do for her self-esteem?

Oh, I bet she’ll be fine, she’s like a Daisy, remember?

It’s during lunch we find Daisy is positively happy with the result when she confronts Mike with their baby. Although there’s just one problem. The baby is a glaring defect, a very...interesting feature about it that has Mike freaking out.

And he’s not playing ball because of it. Even Lucy is having a hard time with the baby’s smile.

But Daisy, Daisy couldn’t care; it’s Mike’s child.

The Daisy x Mike compatibility really doesn’t take off as Mike wants absolutely nothing to do with the newly-named Alegria, which Daisy is quick to point out after keenly watching a maternally-skilled Lucy teach a very clumsy Paulo how to properly hold a child, something she learned when raising Yashy. Daisy is by all means entranced by the romantic exchange.

But where’s hers?

Trying to get Mike jealous by thrusting her baby in Paulo’s arms, and Paulo taking to the baby. Mike sees his chance and gets Lucy to ditch the two and work as a team again.

There is a momentary issue when the teacher discovers the pairs do not have their correctly assigned baby, and through a quick suggestion they were giving a realistic portrayal of divorce and custody, get extra marks on their assignments.

You’d think Daisy would be quite depressed with her chance to work with Mike not going the way she planned and the opportunity going out the window. But to receive additional credit on their work, she’s actually more than ecstatic at the results!

It’s fine, there’ll be more chances. There’s still 4 more years of school!

And in the meantime, Daisy x Paulo was born. One would have to wonder if it would bear fruits.

...Nah.

Daisy has a role to play in the next chapter; Prom Preparation. She’s tasked with organising the 8th grade prom.

The first order of the day is to survey the music selection for the evening, starting with genres. Daisy gets ideas from a number of the students, almost forgetting she hadn’t asked Mike yet.

Apparently Mike doesn’t have a favourite genre of music that comes to mind. Not being a fan of new music, Daisy fills the gap and suggests he’s into much older stuff which she tries to bond over, infuriating Yashy.

When Daisy asks Lucy for her favourite music genre. Lucy wonders why she should bother since she’s not planning on going. . .

Leaving Mikie easy pickings for the evening. Daisy sees her chance for a bit of romance that evening, and Yashy is not at all pleased about this.

It’s worth talking about Yashy at this point, as even though we’re technically focusing on Daisy, there’s something we might be able to gain from both Yashy and Lucy that might give more insight into Daisy and Lucy’s relationship. You might notice, (2021 -- Especially in the Webtoons version), during each outburst by Yashy we can see Lucy blushing as her child unleashes hell upon Daisy, and we’d have to wonder why that is, because Lucy doesn’t seem to be initially the kind of person to care too much about anything going on around them, right?

But what if Yashy was this mouthpiece of Lucy’s impulsive thoughts that she doesn’t act on, and that’s why Lucy appears to blush from embarrassment? Yashy’s impulses are not something she’s able to control, only her own through her own inhibitions. Later in the story we start seeing hints that Lucy’s stonewall-straight faced demeanour is very much a facade and she’s actually quite sensitive, but when she’s fighting her emotions inside and she doesn’t have the answer, a blank expression is all you get so she can’t be hurt in one way or another.

But having been raised by Lucy, we could assume that Yashy is very much Lucy’s child and we can expect that having been raised by Lucy, much like every other kid out there, sometimes kids pick up traits from their parents.

(2021 -- The problem of Yashy’s language was also bought up in the more recent chapter, Dinner time, when Lucy’s mum points this out as Lucy and Jordan are fighting. While the person who was called out for this was Jordan. Can’t help but think that despite Jordan pointing out something embarrassing about why Mike might not be over more, Lucy is instead more blushing over the problem with Yashy, as Yashy is still embarrassed at being called out over it too. It’s hard to imagine the problem is just Jordan as Lucy has quite opinionated language as well, and lastly, because Yashy spends more of her time with her. There’s just an awful lot of body language going on in that scene and it’s hard to tell.)

Yashy is quite innocent in the story as she is one of the fewer characters who meets with rejection and doesn’t undergo the same hardships that Lucy underwent in her youth, so where this language and outspokenness has come from, you’d have to wonder if it’s just a quirk, or something deeper at this stage. Like as if Yashy is actually Lucy without the inhibitions.

Daisy doesn’t back down from Yashy when the golden opportunity arises even despite the name-calling. It’s when Mike believes both girls are fighting over him for Lucy to set the record straight -- she isn’t; Yashy and Daisy were and makes a point out of it. This causes Mike to walk off embarrassed since Lucy doesn’t reciprocate the same feelings. It’s only a little later towards the end when Daisy is turned down along with several other girls who learn of Mike’s availability. That ends that chapter. No romance for Daisy.

The next chapter is Helping hands, this chapter stars Daisy and Paulo who appear to have become closer friends since their pairing together in Burden of Parenthood. The chapter begins with Daisy and Paulo walking through the street, with Daisy talking about how Katie had a sleep-over the previous weekend but wasn’t invited, she was sure she must have misplaced it.

Though why missing out on Katie’s sleepover is the highlight of Daisy’s weekend is anyone’s best guess, right?

Daisy screams out suddenly as she points out an injured bird on the road, appearing heartbroken at the events. Paulo points out an arriving car that is about to put it out of its misery causing Daisy to become further distraught by this. At the very last minute, Paulo saves the bird, almost putting his own life in danger.

Expecting her to be elated, Daisy is not at all pleased in Paulo’s recklessness and scolds him, before being otherwise thankful he did it to save the bird.

But the next question is, now what?

With a hospital being too far away, Daisy suggests instead to take it to Lucy’s house as a last resort. Bringing up Paulo’s crush however, garners a reaction from Paulo that, well. . . Daisy’s not to pleased at seeing.

Oh, we’re going to see more of that.

Daisy thinks about whether or not Lucy would end up adopting the bird as she has quite a number of pets herself. Daisy would herself although her mother wouldn’t allow it.

Suggesting Paulo could with how well Paulo did at looking after Alegria, Paulo finds the talk far too embarrassing for his ever-masculine personality. Daisy tries to persuade him that girls are into boys who can be shown to have a caring attitude. Sadly, Paulo thinks he’s already at this level.

Oh, how Paulo x Daisy is teased so.

The weather starts to take a turn for the worst and threatens to rain down much to Daisy’s horror, as we learn something interesting about how her fur reacts to the rain. Paulo tries not not to give this away but Daisy then realises and starts showing how self conscious she is about her fur, a fact we learn more of in an intermission, where Daisy spends quite a number of hours brushing it down. When Daisy asks whether he’s grossed out by her curls, he avoids the question by telling them they have to hurry, or the bird won’t make it!

Unfortunately for Daisy, Paulo isn’t the last person when they arrive at Lucy’s house. Leaving the bird in her care, Daisy immediately runs into the bathroom only to run into Mike, it’s an absolute nightmare scenario.

Feeling devastated, Paulo comes in with some saving words and tells her if Mike was really worth her time, he’d wouldn’t care no matter how she looked. Which does wonders for her esteem.

Lucy arrives down shortly thereafter and lets the two know the bird will make it, having only been attacked by another creature and not so much struck by a car. Lucy will nurse it until its better, much to the joy of Daisy and Paulo.

At that point, the conversation switches as that matter is taken care of. Noticing that Mike is at Lucy’s house studying with her. Daisy tries to invite herself to stay over and help out too.

It turns out, simply asking means you’re outstaying your hospitality.

Yeah, they’re not really tight friends are they?

On the Monday, Daisy and Paulo ask Lucy about the bird, first mistaking what Lucy says meaning that the bird passed away, it healed over the weekend and left the following day.

But not before giving them a gift.

After all, they’d need it for their baby. The bird seems to think they’d make a good couple. Ah, PauloxDaisy again. If only they both felt that way about each other.

Daisy appears in show and tell, in this chapter we are introduced to the specific breeds the characters are.

Naturally, Yashy is not at all pleased about Daisy when she arrives.

When it comes to Daisy’s turn, we find she’s Selkirk Rex cross Ragamuffin.

Which would explain a lot of Daisy’s features, Selkirk and Ragamuffins are both very people-oriented and akin to Teddy Bears. Both breeds can get along with nearly everybody.

And, well that’s true for Daisy.

Daisy appears in Pep Rally, a chapter focusing on the sports carnival. Daisy appears as one of the school’s cheerleaders next to Amaya, Stacy, and her rival, Katie, who is not at all happy that she’s not the captain. Daisy is not about to give up being the center of attention.

This chapter has more to do with Mike’s super sensitive hearing than anything else. Even so, Daisy is more than capable of being able to amp up the crowd, especially when Mike lands a win.

Daisy appears in the next chapter ‘Off to the Movies’, when Mike invites Lucy to the movies, only for Paulo, David and Daisy to show up at the same time and suggest they all go see a movie together (Lucy reluctantly agreeing). When it comes to selecting their preferences for movies, Daisy goes for the mushiest movie that’s available. Paulo and David wanting horror, Mike wanting comedy and Lucy. . .well, she wants to see a love story. It seems like they all can’t decide, but Lucy chooses the jack of all trades movie as a compromise; the ‘epic suspensful, romance thriller with lots of jokes’.

Win-win, right?

Daisy’s in heaven when the seating arrangements are chosen, right next to her crush, she couldn’t be more optimistic.

A number of things happen during the movie, but nothing got by Daisy when the movie ends as she notices Paulo on the brink of tears following its conclusion. Daisy offers to forget that she ever saw it, on the condition he explains his phobia to barking, something else that happened earlier when Paulo tried to steal David’s popcorn.

Predictably, Paulo is far too masculine to talk about his feelings.

Eventually Paulo balks to the peer pressure (from Daisy) and explains what happened. When the others make fun of Paulo over it, Daisy leaps to his defense and tells them off. There’s a lovely moment between the two as Daisy reassures Paulo that she appreciates his forwardness and openness to the things that bothers him. And Paulo decides to talk about everything.

The PauloxDaisy content just keeps coming.

But it’ll never work. I--I swear it won’t.

By the very end, the kids all say their farewells to each other and go their separate ways.

Daisy appears in the next chapter ‘Puppy Love’. Mike finds a love letter in his locker from a secret admirer (It’s Stacy). Mike chastises Lucy who finds the whole thing hilarious and reads the poem aloud. Mike wants to find the person responsible. Suddenly, and out from nowhere, Daisy appears suggesting they do some detective work, all in the name of romance. But Mike reveals he just simply wants to reject them.

With much similarity to Prom Night, this chapter is more to point out with how much of the school has an interest in dating Mike. It’s not just Daisy, but also Sue, Amaya, Katie, those three random girls. The only exception is dear old Lucy.

The next chapter is Confrontation. This chapter opens with Mike and Lucy doing what they do best when something unfortunate happens; they argue, with Lucy blaming Mike for having them miss their stop. Daisy begs Paulo to get them to stop, and they do, albiet, for a short few seconds before they start arguing again.

With no sign of it ending, Daisy and Paulo day-dream of a better alternate reality where they both get their desires. Mike and Lucy are just awful for each other. Things would work out better if it was just Mike and Daisy, and Paulo and Lucy, Just think of the romance. What could go wrong?

The kids get off at the next station which unfortunately for them turns out to be a bad idea as they end up in the roughest neighbourhood a few towns over from Roseville. With Lucy suggesting they find a phone to call their parents, they go out in search of an open store. With Mike and Lucy still at each other’s throats, Daisy tries to take advantage of the situtation by suggesting that Mike could in fact stay over at her place seeing as how late it was, especially if his house is a bit too far. hoping that Lucy having been quite bitter to him will cause him to think about coming around to her advances. But Mike rejects her advance. When Daisy becomes fed up enough to suggest he’d go to Lucy’s house despite their fighting, he agrees it likely would happen, frustrating her even more.

She loses her temper, exploding about Mike and Lucy’s friendship being just horrible and suggests any investment would never be returns. Prompting a reaction from Mike for a short moment, until Mike twists that around and tells her to stop chasing the same stupid feelings, walking ahead and leaving Daisy to sulk to herself.

She’s joined shortly after when Paulo’s escapade in trying to woo Lucy goes as well as anyone would expect. Daisy, frustrated in how Mike always seems to show some compromise with Lucy, argues with him over his bad taste in women too.

Daisy’s thorns are on full display here as she starts to openly show her resentment towards Lucy who has it all so easy with both Paulo and Mike due to her looks. Daisy’s frustrated that despite her best efforts to be more appealing in every other way; Lucy has the looks, and that’s all that matters.

With Daisy being too frustrated from being inhibited from displaying this side of her, it’s clear neither she nor Lucy are good friends at all. Daisy has shown such a low opinion of her because of her attitude, knowing full well that often times Mike gets beaten up by her. Lucy’s aloofness could be confused with disinterest and both of them suggest that Lucy wouldn’t really care if either of them suddenly caught alight.

But Mike overhears this thanks to his superhearing and tells them there’s more to her than what they know. But neither of them take the comment seriously.

Lucy also overhears, and is a little distraught at how the others think of her.

The kids find a bar and Sue manages to call ther mother to come pick them up. Problems arise when Mike takes on a dare to eat as many liqueur chocolates from a stranger, and is quite positively drunk out of his mind. Lucy comments on this having watched on and Daisy chastises her for letting him do it.

She might have wished she had done something about it, as Mike is all over her, uninhibited from telling her how he feels about her looks.

And that does nothing for Daisy who sucks at all the attention Lucy’s getting. The world’s just unfair.

Though, Mike notices Daisy’s state, and goes over to give her attention too. What would be a dream for Daisy is sadly shortlived, as Mike’s attention switches to ice-cream truck music, and suddenly takes off towards it.

The kids are find themselves backed into an alley, as the stranger who Mike took the bet from comes to get his money back.

The ordeal is quite terrifying to Daisy. Paulo tries to defend her. But he gets a little too in over his head, not realising these two were the people who created his phobia of barking .

When Paulo is kicked aside, Daisy goes to him and asks if he knows the two. But Paulo doesn’t recognise them.

Not considering herself a fighter, Daisy is only able to come to her friends’ comfort as each one is assaulted one by one. Paulo first, then Sue when she cops an arm to the nose.

She can only watch when Mike tries to defend them, actually having some martial arts experience, but being too drunk to be effective.

And finally Lucy, as capable as she was finds herself unable to fend off Alejandro. Daisy calls out, but Lucy tells her to be quiet, or to hide as Lucy bears the brunt of the assault.

Mike regains consciousness at the very last moment and saves her before both team up in a last stand against Alejandro. Alejandro realises he’s bitten off more than he can chew and runs away. Daisy watches on as Lucy breaks down having realised how close they all were to having someone lose their life.

Sue’s mother arrives and all the kids are on their way back to Roseville. Paulo can’t help but notice that Daisy is really in the dumps over the night. Lucy did something completely unexpected in coming to their aid at the last minute — the ever uncaring Lucy put herself on the line so no one else would get hurt. And she feels awful knowing she was wrong — about Lucy and what she said about her to Mike.

Paulo tries to reassure her that Mike probably doesn’t remember what she said, and that turns out to be true as Mike is willing to accept her apology the next day.

Things are back to normal it seems, luckily for Daisy.

Or are they?

I figure we’ll stop here and resume next week. Look at that! We covered 12 chapters of 127! There’s a lot more of Daisy to come!

#bittersweet candy bowl #bcb #megathread #daisy

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radramblog · 3 years

Text

Elder Dragon Highlander

Commander is a format of Magic the Gathering that has become almost completely detached from its original premise. Much of what the format is is built upon the concept of Elder Dragon Highlander- 21 Commander damage is lethal because that’s 3 hits from an Elder Dragon, the slow grindy format built to accommodate the original 5’s heavy mana investment and limited effects.

But that was a long time ago, and the designers at WoTC have opted to attach the moniker of Elder Dragon to a number of additional cards. 21 total cards hold the name, 4 cycles of 5 apiece with one straggler at the back.

What is considered “elder” is largely to do with lore, I think, but due to its association with such iconic cards, it’s interesting to see how and what the label is attached to.

I’ll, uh….do cube something next week? I dunno. But this is the Elder Dragons.

The original 5

The first elder dragon cycle is kind of iconic of Magic in general. Released in Legends, they were the first tricoloured cards in the entire game, were I believe the biggest and most expensive cards of the time, and all represented characters from the comics that I think just about everyone forgets existed.

They do not even remotely resemble modern design. Clunky is one thing, but the quintuplets are almost aberrant to what would be considered attractive Magic cards. A monstrous investment of mana in multiple colours that has a continuous upkeep of more mana, all for an arguably understatted flying creature with one extra ability. Chromium gets Rampage, a keyword that started in Legends, ended in Mirage, and doesn’t have reminder text despite being arguably confusing. Palladia-Mors gets Trample, making it arguably one of the best ones. Vaevictis Asmadi gets Firebreathing in all 3 of its colours, in case 8+3+3+3… wasn’t enough mana-shaped eggs in one basket for you. Arcades gets a bonus ability in toughness-breathing, to make up for it’s deliberately mediocre ability- the “oh cool I can use this with vigilance” eureka/fun brain moment quashed by its pointless limitation.

And then, of course, there’s Nicol Bolas. Somehow one of the game’s most iconic characters, in an art rendition that makes a powerful villain look like a gentle draconic geriatric. (EDITORS NOTE: still Rad here but I just now noticed this mf has a fucking dragon nipple, wtf?) I suppose Bolas becoming so well known was inevitable, if only because it was the only one of the most popular cycles with an actually cool and powerful ability. There are currently 210 more Bolas decks than any other member of this cycle, and that difference also happens to be twice what the other four have combined.

Bolas is arguably the only one that stood the test of time, the only one to ever show up independently of the other 4. I suppose we’ll see if any of the rest do the same, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.

(Elder) Dragons of Tarkir

The titular Dragons of Tarkir’s third set (Dragons of Tarkir) were a set I was excited to see as the cards were being spoiled. The lore of the plane was interesting, with Magic stepping into a plot with time travel and finally showing us what Ugin looked like after almost 10 years of curiosity. The dragons that would become the Clan leaders had appeared previously in Fate Reforged, and the editions that we’d see as Elders- 10,000 years older and in some cases even wiser- presented a powerful and exciting cycle. Unlike with the Legends dragons, I’m pretty sure all of these saw play somewhere.

Ironically, though, I’m pretty sure these were deliberately tuned for Standard rather than the format named after their typeline. Even outside of Kolaghan’s line of text that….doesn’t do a whole lot in the format, Ojutai and Silumgar were pretty obviously built to be the finishers in the Esper Dragons deck that ran them, Atarka a clear top-end for Gruul Monsters (and, eventually, Eldrazi Ramp), and Dromoka a potential menace in Dromoka’s Command-backed Midrange lists. These cards are all quite powerful, but they’re built for a different kind of game.

That’s I suppose the biggest issue with the Dragons of Dragons of Tarkir, they were underwhelming. The set as a whole was fairly middling, though I did truly enjoy the draft format. I’m pretty sure the most played card in the set is fucking Collected Company, one I kind of despise, followed with Kolaghan’s Command which is just a traumatic experience for me. And while 3 of these 5 are seeing more play than their past counterparts, including Dragonlord Ojutai being literally 10 times more commonly seen than Soul of Winter, that difference is largely a matter of power (or lack thereof), the Mythic Dragonlords being obviously stronger than their Rare originals. The rare ones are arguably more fun, though, and that’s what matters to me.

Legends…2! (aka core set 2019)

Part of the theme of Core Set 2019 was the story (read: retcon so the ending of War of the Spark makes more sense) of Bolas and Ugin in their youth, which meant that we got to get updated, modern designs of the original Elder Dragons (not Ugin tho lmao). And by Modern, I kind of mean postmodern, because we’re at the point where Commander cards start getting absurd All The Time.

Each of the Elder Dragons of Core 2019 (copyright WoTC 2018) have the benefits of updated design practices with 24 extra years of experience, as well as not having to have a million words on them for silly reasons like extra mana sacrifice triggers. Even Palladia-Mors, probably the weakest of them (and still pretty threatening!), gets to have flavour text hinting at a potential return (which hasn’t happened yet).

When you’re designing cards like these, though, it’s inevitable that some are going to be overshadowed by others. Baby Bolas, of course, was one of the flagship cards for the set, being a transforming Planeswalker with lots of abilities that wins the game in just the most classy way I’ve seen in a minute. And Arcades took a fun niche deck people liked and blew it wide open, making Defenders into one of the most disgusting Offensive decks in a minute.

But then there’s Chromium, a fairly powerful Voltron/Control finisher but not one that leads you in any particular direction. Vaevictis does lead in fun directions, but would then be completely dwarfed by the absurdity that is Lord Windgrace the same year and Korvold the next one.

Outside of a few, this cycle feels like it got kind of lost in the shuffle, and I think that’s not really that much a reflection of the cards (except maybe Palladia, the Naya Problem rearing its ugly head again), and more the greater issue with Magic as a whole just shitting out cards constantly faster than most can catch up.

Welcome to Strixhaven School of Magecraft and Sideboardary

Our final cycle is the new kids on the block, the Strixhaven dragons. I suppose one way to make the definitely not Hogwarts Houses (they’re colleges, Clearly) seem important is attach a giant Fuckoff Dragon next to them.

A thing I like a lot about Strixhaven as a set is how it was introducing a new Thing for each of the enemy colour pairs to do- Golgari Lifegain, Boros Graveyard, Izzet Spells But Big Ones Instead Also Treasures?. The set came with loads and loads of cards supporting each of these themes, and having Commander 2021 alongside it and associated with it means they’re well supported by that as well. But, and this is the important part, the Elder Dragons aren’t as overshadowed because they too are doing something different, even if its rather slight in some cases, on their own- but each supporting or being supported by the Dragon in question.

Beledros is a Big Mana Golgari commander (normally seen in Mono-Green or Gruul) whose huge life cost is assisted by the Lifegain cards Witherbloom got. Galazeth helps ramp into the giant spells associated with Prismari while also making the alternate discard into treasure option some of those spells have a lot better. Tanazir doubles the power of Quandrix’s Fractal tokens, and makes them even more huge when attacking due to then natively being 0/0s. And I don’t really know what the idea in Silverquill is other than “Politics”, but Shadrix looks fucking cool and probably plays really nicely. It’s just a really fucking solid cycle.

It’s not really possible to tell how these 5 are going to play out- Strixhaven is still the latest Standard Set to release at time of writing. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the most successful Elder Dragon cycle as a whole assuming you’re looking at, like, mean Decks.

And then there’s The Other One

As part of Modern Horizons 2, cards for a set of characters from alllll the way back from those Legends stories were created- a new Dakkon, a Geyadrone Dihada, and the Elder Dragon that showed up in their story- Piru.

Piru is, obviously, a reference to the original cycle of Elder Dragons, but in a Wedge colour rather than a Shard. And with an extra keyword, which is something I missed, because it makes all the difference. I had written this card off, until I realised that Lifelink triggered from the death trigger, and when this thing dies it isn’t too hard to gain dozens of life points. That’s a lot and combined with clearing the board it’s not too hard to get virtually unkillable. I love leaning into the downside from the original dragons by adding a powerful death trigger like this.

Piru released very recently, and already has 112 decks to her name. I wouldn’t be surprised if that plateaus, but it’s still rather promising. 8 mana is a lot in non-green colours, but I like Piru, and I’d be happy to see her see lots and lots of play going forward.

While 2021 has so far had more Elder Dragons than any other year, they’ve been a very promising cadre with a lot of interesting ideas going on. With that said, I’m not sure that I want the trend to continue, because the more they make (the more Elders in general, really), the less special they get. But for now at least, it looks like we’re finally getting to a good place for Elder Dragons. Only took us 27 years.

#ramble #mtg #edh #commander #elder dragon highlander

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mychemicalaromanticism · 3 years

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things ive already established r on this post

besties this got so fucking long but heres a giant ramble about cherri

okay so. there are huge differences betwn cherri as a hyperviolent drac hunter and cherri as a friend of the four and cherri as the girls mentor. with the first one he was 17 and desperate to distance himself from his upbringing so he went all in on Being A Killjoy. he was always one of the first ppl to rush into a fight and he fought hard. he blew up his fuckin hand with that attitude. and all the while he was just racking up more unaddressed trauma and eventually he ran away from that, too. giving himself radiation poisoning was more appealing than facing his problems.

so as a teenager/young adult hes kind of constantly in a panicked state. hes scared the people from his past are going to find him and drag him back with them. so he lashes out and he runs away over and over again.

i said in another post that he has some past life shit goin on which usually would give him a connection to the witch that manifests early in life, but with all the stuff hes gone through he has been Preoccupied. he can become oblivious to almost anything that doesnt apply to whatever hes focused on. not in a hyperfocus way its likeeeeee. when u live on survival mode during prolonged periods of stress. hes immune to magic bullshit bc hes too tired and scared.

anyways around his mid-20s he finally has a little more stability (as much as the average person living in the zones can have, that is) and he finally notices that Weird Stuff happens around him. basically: out of my list of Powers People Connected To The Witch Have he has the prophetic dreams/enhanced intuition as well as a form of sensing ghosts where he can see auras and kind of like, echoes of past events in ppls lives. that look like auras. itz complicated and not of utmost importance so im leaving it at that.

anyways thats what makes him start writing poetry. just 4 funsies he'll describe his weird experiences and embellish them to make em pretty. just as a casual hobby n all that.

he would forget fun ghoul in between the times they ran into each other but its pretty easy to be reminded of who fun ghoul is. the most insane 10 year old cherri has ever met. cherri isnt a brother figure to ghoul. hes just. his friend that happens to be more than twice his age. its whatever lmao

to cherri, ghoul is kinda like a stray animal he keeps seeing. which is hilarious. ghoul actually goes and finds him to introduce him to jet when they start running together, and cherri meets party and kobra (spark and birdie at the time) when he drives the four of them to a party. because he has a truck hell yeah. so now instead of one stray animal he has, like, a feral cat colony that he drives around occasionally. i have no real-life human relationship equivalent to them because irl if some guy that is not related to any of you and isnt even a childhood or family friend and theyre hanging out with you? they are usually not a safe person lmao. but this is my fantasy land and im too stubborn to change anyones birth years even though ghoul being born in 2004 makes everything really hard to make not creepy.

so yeah hes a casual somewhat friend of the fab four. hed probably get more and more concerned as they got famous. the beginnings of any sort of protective feelings, awww :) that sets him up for becoming the girls mentor.

OH FUCK. THE GIRL..... i think if i was in my late 20s and i heard that the gang of 13-17 year olds had adopted a 5 year old kid i would go bananas. what the fuck. it is a LONG while before cherri meets her. but he has the strongest affection for ghoul (if you could even call it that) and ghoul absolutely adores the girl and swings her around under her arms like a cat to show her off to cherri and its very endearing and the girl is sweet and funny so its easy to be around her. and (unfortunately) she is somewhat used to interacting with weird easily agitated people so she kinda gives him space. cherri isnt quite the uncle figure the fandom usually makes him (i luv uncle cherri sm but he simply cannot exist in the universe ive created, f), but hes a little similar.

and then the four had to go and pretend to die. lol.

when the girl was kidnapped, fucking everyone who knew her was ready to storm the city then and there. like regardless of how little you knew her, if you had ever met her you would fucking die for her. she is pure childish charisma and shes precious. i love the girl. so cherris immediately on board with whatever plan the four make to get her back. ive already talked abt how it fucked up the girl tho; there was no way to tell her that the four werent actually dead, she sees the building collapse and she shuts down. and cherri has to fight against his instinct to leave the radio station and never come back when he sees an eight year old girl sitting dissociated on the couch. that fucks everyone up.

i just realized i havent talked about literally anyone else at the radio station. i think cherri started lingering around the station bc it was safe and sheltered while also not being a popular spot. there are less kids there (people pass through but its not a hangout spot). he was kind of just hanging around to get away from the heat and noise and dr d took notice. because that man can see ur soul and no one knows if thats literal or not. so theyd chat a few times a day and show pony was the one 2 get him out of his shell a little and also was the first one he mentioned his poetry hobby to. im making this all up right now as im writing bc i dont know anything about LITERALLY any of the ppl associated w the radio like im not even going 2 try with chimp n newsie i do not have the willpower to tackle all that. justttt. cherri pony n D become bros and live 2gether there.

back 2 the regular timeline. the rescue mission happens in 2019. the girl lives at the station until 2023. during that time she is very much depressed and withdrawn and is only happy when the four come to visit. none of the Adults know how to help her so they just keep her safe and cared for and hope she'll open up to them.

she does not. she takes the weird cat thats been hanging around and she runs away.

cherri does not see her for three years. shes still worse for wear in the mental health department and he can see all kinds of visions of what shes been through since the last time he saw her and he fucking hates the ultra vs bc they remind him of his past. he does not want her going down that path but its obvious that she isnt crazy abt the ultraviolence thing either so thats a relief.

they have a kind of tense relationship throughout the comics. he feels like he failed her and that spirals into feeling like he failed the four for not being a good adult to them and fun ghoul for not helping enough when his commune was bombed and all kinds of shit and that irrational thinking mixed with plain old, yknow, caring about the girl, is what makes him take a bullet (laser. whatever) for her.

i was trying to figure out the timing of each of their ghost experiences, but i want both of them to talk to the witch and im just gonna make it like dreams where a whole buncha stuff happens but irl its been like seconds. so its like barely a second while the girl has her Witch Convo and cherri FINALLY gets a straight answer, yes there is weird shit going on with him having powers. he doesnt have any story-significant past lives because im lazy, hes just an old soul. like really fuckin old. the amount of latent life experience and stuff his soul/energy/whatever has picked up along the way makes him VERY noticeable to gods n stuff. he fuckin lights up all the alarms like what the FUCK is that over there. she wasnt rly able to get to him or even properly notice him while he was a kid and a young adult so shes happy to finally see him again. he has a STRONG sense of familiarity with her. they know each other on a wild ass level that he cant really comprehend.

welp thats some more lore I'll have 2 think abt. anywayz

post canon is when he and val get to have the most awkward spiderman meme moment of realizing that they have the same trauma SOOOOO thatz fun lol /s sorry kings i thought it would be fun to give u something fucked up to bond over <3

not much changes in his personality. he has a better understanding of Weird Magic and delights in freaking out the ultra vs but for the most part he returns to his life at the radio station. i love him

THIS GOT SO CRAZY LONG I DID NOT MEAN 2 GO THROUGH EVERY PART OF HIS LIFE LIKE SOME WEIRD CHARACTER STUDY but here we are. this is basically a first draft like almost all of this is subject to change but u gotta start somewhere. so heres my start i love this guy. its probably obvious but i have not read ANY twitterverse killjoys stuff </3 maybe i will someday idk

#cat talks #lore #ok2rb but what a mess this post is

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dailyexo · 4 years

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[INTERVIEW] EXO - 191213 Billboard: “EXO Talk 'Obsession’ Album & Future: 'I Hope that the Name of EXO Can Grow’”

"It’s been seven years since EXO arrived with 2012's MAMA EP, and since then the boy band has spent much of its time atop of the South Korean music scene, with hits like 2013’s “Growl" and 2015’s “Love Me Right” setting them up as a dominant act throughout much of Asia. Last month, they unveiled their sixth LP, Obsession, ending the year -- and the decade -- with both a new sound and a hint towards what the future will bring for the men of EXO.

Fronted by a lead single also dubbed “Obsession,” the 10-track album is bookended by Korean and Chinese versions of the song, which turns the group towards hip-hop-inspired sampling and an intense Auto-tuning, blending their more typical R&B and electro-pop styling with musical elements that at first seem anachronistic and jarring. But it’s the perfect way to set up the story they’re trying to tell.

For EXO, the majority of their musical releases have been tied into fictive narratives revolving around the members and fantastical, sci-fi plot lines, ranging from the extraterrestrial to the supernatural. For Obsession, which peaked at No. 198 on the Billboard 200 chart dated Dec. 14, EXO presented oppositional sides to themselves through a series of teaser images and videos ahead of the album’s release, setting up an epic battle between EXO and their X-EXO clones, which played out in the music video for their single. The song’s apparent disjointment on first listen is meant to go alongside the visual elements, representing a dialogue between the two warring parties.

“Honestly, when we look into a song we think about what kind of performance will work and whether a song will fit the kind of performance we want to put on,” Kai tells Billboard. “So when we heard this song, we thought it was a really good fit in the sense that for the Auto-Tune it matched the idea of the two different EXOs, EXO and X-EXO. The Auto-Tune kind of gives us the vibe of communication between the two different parties having a conversation, so it was a very specific move that we took.” He said he thinks EXO will win the fight, eventually, “Because anytime you watch a movie or read a comic the hero does win. X-EXO is temporary so they’re going to disappear anyway.”

The idea behind the storylines that EXO utilizes to promote their music is to better get their music across to fans -- known collectively as EXO-L -- and also to better relay content in the age of digital media, where visuals are just as important as audio elements. It’s been something the group has been utilizing since their earliest days, and each member has supernatural powers associated with them that often are featured in their branding. “We’re not just a group that sings and dances,” says Chanyeol. “For people watching us, of course they know the storylines are fake. But like watching a movie, it's another way for people to fall for us more deeply. It gives people a back story about how we were formed. Our storyline isn't just incorporated into our music or videos, but it's incorporated really well into our concerts as well. We do feel that it really allows people to become properly immersed.”

Kai and Chanyeol are two of six EXO members that participated in the album, alongside Baekhyun, Chen, Sehun, and Suho, following the enlistment of Xiumin and D.O. in South Korea’s military, fulfilling the country’s mandatory draft requirements, and Lay focusing on a solo career in China. The six other members are expected to similarly enlist and take temporary hiatuses from the industry in the near future.

The new dynamic has given EXO’s members opportunities to explore different sides of themselves, and Chanyeol says that it’s also opened their eyes to how they work together and cover for one another in case of any issues. Each member "has to pull their weight so whether in singing or dance, there are parts that won’t be hidden,” he says. “It would be a really big problem [if we made a mistake] because it would be really obvious.” For Suho, who is EXO’s leader, the diminishing numbers makes him reflective. “The fact that we’re unable to perform with all the members is a little bit sad, so when we look at old videos we do feel like, ‘Oh, there are a lot of members in the group’ and we’d like to come together as a full group.”

As all able-bodied South Korean men are expected to take time off from their lives to fulfill the country’s draft requirements, EXO knows it will be seeing more such changes in the near future, and the act will likely not look the way it once did for sometime. But rather than dwell on the past, the men of EXO are looking towards the future, and 2019 saw many of them work on alternative projects, where it was releasing solo music, such as Chen, Baekhyun, Xiumin, and D.O., or working with new units, like Sehun and Chanyeol’s EXO-SC and Baekhyun and Kai in SuperM, along with numerous other professional activities. “We’ve received so much love for our units and solo projects, but at the end of the day the most important thing is the team and group’s performances,” says Baekhyun. “The fact that we’re able to show all these different sides to us also allows us to show different sides of EXO as a group and show how diverse we are, and how each of us have our own talents.”

When asked how they feel about their career over the past decade and what they hope for the future, Chanyeol responds that the members of EXO feel that they’re focusing on the present and facing each moment on its own. “To be honest, when we do interviews when we’re working we realize that as a group we’ve become very comfortable. Rather than us having to go out of our way to go do something, it’s become very natural for us. It’s grown with time and come naturally, this sense of maturity.”

Though EXO and X-EXO battle it out over the Obsession album, the duality of the release is also reflected in the members’ struggles to explore their identities as individuals beyond the act: how to be both a member of EXO and a man in his own right. As EXO have grown in their career, they have also grown up: youngest member Sehun debuted as a teenager but is now 25-years-old. Unfortunately ill on the day of the interview, he was silent throughout much of the discussion and his health hung over the act like a cloud, with frequent references to how, as they get older, they need to take care of themselves better. “These days, seeing that our physical health is part of our workload, I feel that a healthy life, health in general, is very important,” says Baekhyun. “Rather than thinking about more of what we can do to grow as a group, I feel that we all have begun to focus on seeking individual happiness. Right now, a lot of our focus is on how each person is able to find their own happiness and health, and use that when we come together as a group to move in the right direction.”

Suho echoes this, saying that their branching out as individuals beyond the group is a way to take care of themselves as individuals after years of focusing on the collective well-being. “In the past, EXO’s schedule didn’t allow a lot of individual talents to be focused on but starting from the beginning of this year we were given the time to really focus on ourselves, whether it was internally or externally. It’s not just us as a group, but I think everybody needs that kind of self-care. It was good for everybody.”

Even as they focus on themselves, the group is still the focal point of EXO’s identity. “We came together, got very close, and without the passion that we had as a group I don’t think we would have made it as far as we have come,” reflects Baekhyun. “When it comes to being satisfied, as people I think that we’re never 100% satisfied.” This passion towards improving and always seeking something closer and closer to perfection, but recognizing that is impossible and that there is always something more to be done, is emphasized by the members’ responses when asked what their obsessions are: Kai says he’s a workaholic, and Chanyeol says his competitive nature is to the degree that it could be considered an obsession. (Meanwhile, Baekhyun’s obsessed with games, and Kai jokes that Sehun is obsessed with alcohol, as it is well-known he’s one of the group’s members who enjoys drinking.)

One place where Chanyeol at the very least is satisfied in is EXO’s music. “When it comes to our music, I’m 100% confident that we release quality music,” he says with pride. “It’s almost like we’re not following trends but we don’t fall back behind either.” He and Sehun tried to push their artistic side in a new direction with EXO-SC’s What a Life EP in July, and there was a bit of a negative response from some fans over the title song’s music video, which featured the pair partying it up with female dancers. But he says it’s all good, as there’s no moving forward without trying new things, and it’s always good to hear differing opinions. “We wanted to do something drastically different. You could say it was so completely different from what EXO typically releases. It was a very dramatic challenge for us, and even though there was some backlash from fans, for me personally it was a big motivating factor, that I need to show more new sides and that there are many new challenges to take on.”

It’s important to EXO that their audience takes in all the different sides to themselves that they have to offer, and Chen says he hopes that listeners recognize that there’s a difference between an artist releasing a single and an album. “If you listen to the whole album beyond ‘Obsession,’ you’ll recognize that all of the songs are good,” he says; his personal favorite is “Groove.” “I feel that there is a tendency that people just listen to the title track, but it would be really great if people can listen to the whole album because every song is really great.”

Moving forward, EXO knows they’re shifting into a new era of their career, but they express a desire to always remain as one. “I hope that EXO is able to continue just the way it does right now, but beyond the group I hope that each individual member is able to find his own happiness,” says Baekhyun. “We may not go on music performance shows all the time in 10 years, but we hope that we can release albums here and there. In that we can all live our own lives and come together, happily, as a group.” He pauses, and adds with a wry expression, “I think that in 10 years, hopefully we’ll be able to release something like a ballad or an R&B-heavy song where we can just stand around rather than dance.” Other members quickly jump in and refute this though. “That’s not EXO’s thoughts, that’s Baekhyun’s thoughts,” Sehun says with a laugh, while Chanyeol adds that he hopes EXO is “a very cool group” 10 years down the road; Kai adds that he would like to continue dancing as long as his body allows for it.

“As time passes, like our members, our fans are going to start pursuing their own lives as well,” says Kai. “As they fall into their own lives, when they suddenly have a thought of EXO, I hope that one thought that comes to their mind is, ‘It was a really good memory being their fan.’” Suho echoes this, repeating “A good memory” in English with a nod of his head. Baekhyun agrees with this desire for their time together with fans to be thought of warmly, but follows up with the suggestion that the idea of being a memory, while heartwarming, is limiting. “I really hope that we aren’t a group that is remembered as a group that’s part of the past, because when you think of that you think about these groups that don’t really promote and they don’t really do anything as a team. I hope that, whether individually or as a group, we continue to promote and that the name of EXO can continue to grow.”"

Photo links: 1

Credit: Billboard.

#EXO #EXO K #EXO M #191213 #exo im #exo k im #exo m im #p:news #t:news #fs:billboard #comeback:Obsession

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clevercatchphrase · 3 years

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2020 Year Review~

2020. Pretty unique year, don’t you think? It’s the first year since 2002 to have only two different digits in it. After 2022, this won’t happen again until 2111. Yep. Absolutely nothing more interesting than that.

Anyway! It’s time I reflect on my 2020, look back on my yearly goals and rant about things that happened to me this year. I made a post like this last year, where I went over my 2019 goals and talked about what I accomplished and what I didn’t, and it’s only fitting I do the same again this year. Read more under the cut for a random stream of consciousness ramble!

So, first things first, let’s look at my 2019 goals;

Finish paying off that last student loan

Put more stuff on my redbubble

Illustrate my own fan fics

Sew at least one stuffed animal

Make an enamel pin

Read one new book a month

Write one page a day/Complete at least one new fan fic

Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make

Finish fully scripting Ghost Switch

Boost my patreon

Paying Off My Last Student Loan: Going down the list, I am proud to say that I FINALLY paid off all my student loans! (and not a moment too soon. The last payment I made was literally days before the first quarantine rolled out). It took me roughly 4 years on my part-time paycheck to pay off all my loans, and once I finished, I had no money to my name (literally; I had less than 1k as emergency money in case of car troubles or health issues). Heck, I’m STILL living at home as a save up for a place of my own. Finally paying off all my student loans DID activate my secret 2020 new year’s resolution, which was to adopt a cat! I did this too, literally a week later! She is the best thing that’s happened to me this entire year and I love her so much and she is the snuggliest cuddle bug I’ve ever met. I’m so happy she’s in my life now~

Put More Stuff On My Redbubble: ah ha ha ha… I thought I did this, but then I went and checked, and it turns out-! I did not. I made art I intended to go on my redbubble, but haven’t put there yet. They are all drawings of some OCs from a game I want to make, but because I haven’t progressed on making the game this year, I never got around to putting more stuff related to it on my redbubble. At the time of writing, there are 7 days left in December, so I guess I could go and put it up on my redbubble right now, but without context on where the characters are from, there wouldn’t be much point, now would there?

Illustrate My Own Fan Fics: Another goal that I was so stoked to actually do… and then just didn’t. Gee, I wonder why I couldn’t find the energy or motivation to do it this year? Truly a conundrum. (Hey, you know what? If Ghost Switch counts as a fan fiction in a visual form, then I am doing GREAT on this goal. 2.5 years in, 1 of ~4 arcs done, and still going steady~)

Sew At Least One Stuffed Animal: Okay, I have a valid excuse for not doing this one. I even knew which stuffed animal I wanted to make, and had the pattern drawn out and everything, but I had no money for materials because I had just paid off my student loans. And then, by the time I did have enough money again, quarantine was in full effect and I couldn’t go out to the fabric store. I’m still trying my best to stay out of public places even if the rules are laxer now, because I don’t want to catch the plague even if everyone in my goddamn city thinks and acts like the problem is over already. Even if they’re all wearing masks, even if they’re staying 6 feet apart, I still don’t want to risk it. I will stay inside until health experts give the all clear, and when that day comes, then I will buy some fleece and make a plush.

Make An Enamel Pin: I ACTUALLY DID THIS ONE. TWICE! Halfway through quarantine, I was feeling anxious and depressed about my job and how they were planning to have me work with the public despite climbing infection rates and positive covid cases. I didn’t quit then, but in a desperate move to try and become self-sufficient, I went to madebycooper and made two enamel pins based on some butterfly dragons I drew last year. They’re on my etsy store now! I even went out of my way to open a P.O. box just to start a small business! I haven’t sold a single pin yet, and I’m actually really nervous to sell my first because I don’t trust the efficiency of the postal system thanks to the actions of the GOP that really screwed them over this year! (If you would like to see my enamel pins, click here!)

Read One Book A Month: I did this! With dragon books I bought a couple years back! In fact, I read FOURTEEN dragon books, and still have more books for next year to read! The 14 books I read this year were:

The Hive Queen

The Poison Jungle

Wings Of Fire Legends: Dragonslayer

Dealing With Dragons

Searching For Dragons

Calling on Dragons

Talking to Dragons

The Bronze Dragon Codex

The Brass Dragon Codex

The Black Dragon Codex

The Red Dragon Codex

The Silver Dragon Codex

Dragon Strike, and

Hatching Magic

To be honest, I had read The Red Dragon Codex years ago when it first came out, but completely forgotten what it was about. I remembered liking it, and I knew the reading level was on the lower side, but the whole dragon codex series was pretty good! So far, the Silver dragon codex was my favorite, and black dragon codex was probably the worst! Hatching Magic was also really slow and bad and had plot points that went nowhere, but the book was written in the 80s, so I don’t know what I expected. The Dealing with Dragons series was very charming and great for the most part, save for one line in the last book that really rubbed me the wrong way, and all the Wings of Fire Books go above and beyond in this third arc. The second legends book could be a little tighter, though (sky and wren are the best duo and I want a book solely about them, but I honest to god do not care about leaf and ivy’s stories.)

Write one Page of any story every day/ complete at least one fic: I… did this? Okay, I kinda cheated near the end of the year. I was keeping up the one page a day thing for the first four months, but then the world went to shit and my schedule and habits got disrupted and I fell off my good track record. I completed 7 out of roughly 12 one-shots I had planned for this year (my goal WAS supposed to be one short a month, but… you know how it happens) I kept trying to catch up on this goal all year, but the days kept piling up…. Until November hit. I managed to write over 250 pages for Nanowrimo, and I consider this goal a win. 365 pages of fiction in total, which averages out to about one a day~. SHUT UP IT COUNTS.

Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make: Another goal I didn’t have the mental energy to commit to this year. Truly a mystery to where all our willpower went in 2020.

Fully Finish Scripting Ghost Switch: still haven’t done this one yet! The Snowdin arc is completely planned, but I just haven’t gotten around to getting the other areas. I’m not worried, though. I know all the major plot points I gotta hit, it’s just weaving them together in a way that flows nice is the final task. I’m not too worried though. I don’t expect to finish the Snowdin arc for another year and a half, at the bare minimum.

And my last goal of 2020, Boost My Patreon. I did this at the beginning of the year, but then very intentionally stopped about a third of the way through. It didn’t sit right with me to tell you guys to donate to me when suddenly EVERYONE was financially strained from layoffs or being furloughed. I told my patrons the same, and if you ever need to stop donating to me to take care of yourself first, then by all means, please do. I would feel much better knowing you’re using your money to see yourself fed and housed instead of given to me (where it is pretty much only used to buy gas for my car, honestly)

Welp! That was all my goals for 2020! I achieved 4 out of 10 goals plus 1 secret goal! Pretty much the same ratio as last year, but now this time I can blame all my failures on the pandemic! I don’t feel so bad about myself anymore~

ON TO 2021!

I have 11 goals for the new year, again some rolled over from this list, and some from even older years. They are, in no particular order;

Read 12 new books (roughly 1 book a month)

Finish the first draft of 2019’s Nanowrimo project and rewrite it

Script TDV

Finish Scripting Ghost Switch

Build A Comic Buffer

Sew 1 Stuffed Animal

Finish 1 Song Comic

Make another Enamel Pin

Finish 2 short original comics (this one counts as 2 goals)

Finish the 5 remaining one-shot fics

Now to go into depth on each one, more for my own sake, really. I want to know exactly what I have planned for each goal this year, and sometimes just looking at a short list doesn’t capture all the smaller details.

1)Read 12 new books. Same as last year! I The only difference is I might not be able to make it all dragon-related books. (I try my hardest not to buy from amazon anymore, but half-price-books doesn’t always have the obscure stuff I’m looking for)

2)Finish 2019’s nanowrimo project. If you read my 2019 year reflection, you’ll notice I said I wanted to do some original writing. And I did! The story I wrote for nanowrimo back then was a story I’ve been toying with since 2017, but it was only last year I finally got pen to paper. Now, you may find it odd that the keyword says “finish”. You may think, “but isn’t that what you’re supposed to do for nanowrimo?” and to that I say, WRONG! I wrote 50k words for nanowrimo, but the draft was only about halfway complete. I was kinda discouraged about what I had written last year, because I didn’t like how it was coming out, but I did manage to get it half done. Now it’s time for me to bite the bullet and just finish the thing so I can finally revise it and make it into something I DO like. (It’s still gonna be hella long, tho. That’s what I get for trying to write an epic fantasy, I guess.)

3)Script TDV. TDV is the abbreviation of the game I want to make. I… still need to do so much for this project OTL… In addition to getting the story solidified, I still need to draw art and game assets, and learn how to code for it, both of which are no small task. I keep having some sort of new year’s goal related to this on my list, and every year I just don’t hit this one. Will 2021 be different?

4)Finish Scripting Ghost Switch. (Or at the very least, get the waterfall arc completely written out). I have a plan to break this down into simpler steps, by focusing on just one arc for a month or two. Every major arc has 2 to 3 parts, broken up by flashbacks, and if I can just finish one section a month, then I should have the entire thing scripted by the end of the year. It’s not a difficult pace, but seeing if I stick with it will be the real challenge, as it is will all my goals it seems.

5)Build a Comic Buffer: I’m actually working on this one right now! Since I paid off my last loan and got a new job this year, my current Patreon goals are kind of out of date. They had all been centered around me paying off that last loan, and working towards full-time employment, but those are both completed now! So instead, I would love to get to a place where my patrons could read pages at least a week ahead, and to do that, I need to build a buffer. And since I’m working 5 full days a week now, I can’t afford to fall behind. But you can’t fall behind if you constantly stay ahead! I would like to have… a 10 to 12 page buffer. That’s roughly 3 months’ worth of pages to always have on hand in case I get swamped with work, or something. Right now I currently have a buffer of 3, which will cover me for half a January, which is better than not having anything at all, but still not the best. (ultimately, I would love to have a buffer so big, I could queue them up for the whole year. Wouldn’t that be something?)

6) Sew one stuffed animal: same as last year. ASSUMING the plague gets under control in 2021, I don’t expect to get to this goal until the summer at the earliest.

7)Finish 1 song comic: I have 7 song comics planned. One is a gift, one possibly for wandersong, one is a collab that’s currently in the works, but I’m waiting on a friend to do their part before I can continue mine, 2 are UT related, and 2 (well, technically 3, but one is the collab) are KH related. It’s one of the UT ones that will probably get finished, if I’m being honest. It’s completely story boarded, and now I just need to ink and color it. I would like to get it done for UT’s 6th birthday, since I made a song comic on the fly for the anniversary this year, and it was fun, and I’d like to do it again! So, look forward to that next september~

8) Make another enamel pin: I have a dolphin design I’d like to make because dolphins are cute, if not little murder machines. (need to save up some expendable income first, tho. THESE THINGS AIN’T CHEAP TO MAKE.)

9 and 10) start and finish 2 original short comics: I’ve got some comic ideas I want to do, but I need to get them written out first. I don’t think either would be too long. Each maybe a couple “episode’s” length, if envisioned on a website like webtoons or tapas. They’d both be heavy in allegory, but not overly drawn out (hopefully)

11)And lastly, Finish the 5 remaining one-shots I had planned for this year but never got around to. I’m going to try to write one every other month. Pure self-indulgent shipping fluff. If I finish these 5, then maybe I’ll ask other people for more prompts and ideas, which I’ve never done before. We’ll see how it goes~

Also, Like last year, I’d like to look at everything that’s happened to me this year, though to be honest, I’m not sure how much I remember/how accurate it’ll be. God, I don’t even remember what January was like. Who was I back then? Who were we all back then? I guess I’ll start my yearly retrospective in march because, heh, god we ALL know what started happening in march.

Firstly, I paid off my last student loan! Then a week later on March 18th, I drove half an hour out of my city to adopt a cat and I love her and it was the best day of this year for me. Spring break is just beginning this weekend, but the attendance at the zoo is shockingly low this year. Apparently, a lot of people watch the news, and they’re all taking precautions about social distancing. I wasn’t too disappointed. Fewer people at the zoo, the easier my job is for me. I was looking forward to getting some free overtime on spring break, since I’m broke after paying off that loan, and I’m a cat parent now and have a furry child to feed. Monday rolls around. My manager calls me and tells me that the zoo is going into lockdown until further notice. I worry for the birds I take care of, but understand it’s for everyone’s safety.

For two months I sleep in and watch way too much YouTube. I join a couple writing discords. I have nightmares about my birds escaping their enclosure and I dreamed one of the security guards I really like at the zoo gets covid and has to go to the ER. I woke up really upset.

I started and finished BBS for the first time. I also replayed and finished KH2 final mix for the first time. It had been about 5 years since I last played KH2 before my PS2 died, and it was like coming home~ I also finished tearaway, and played and beat Ryme for a second time (which I can’t remember if I did that last year, but it was a fun experience regardless)

Mid-June, and I’m allowed to start going back to work, be it on reduced hours. The zoo is still closed to the public, but I’m loving it! I get to work with full-time keepers and do full-time keeper things. It’s so much fun not having to deal with the public. August starts to creep up and there’s a rumor that the zoo will be opening to the public again, which I’m not stoked about. I don’t want to go back to standing in one exhibit all day, talking to guests who don’t listen to the rules or to me. 2 of my younger coworkers (who had both only been there a couple of months) get chosen for full-time positions, while I get passed up which really pisses me off. My other 2 coworkers quit when they think we might be reopening because they cannot risk catching the virus due to at-risk family. I am now the last keeper in the interactive bird exhibit.

I keep working, the zoo slowly opens, but with me as the only interpreter in our interactive bird exhibit, we can’t open because I can’t run the entire exhibit by myself. So my exhibit stays closed. September comes and goes, and then October starts. Now there is more serious talk of opening my exhibit before the end of the year because the zoo expects to bring in larger crowds for the Christmas lights event in November/December. I ask if I get hazard pay or health insurance since I’m doing full-time hours until they hire more staff. They say no.

I immediately start searching for a new job feeling incredibly indignant/hurt/slighted/insulted/used/abused/ALL the negative feelings at my job. I had been there for 4 years, but never got a chance to work full time, while the two newest hires who had only been there 2 months both got moved up. I can’t help but feel they were holding one mistake I made two years ago against me and never wanted to give me a chance. (that, or they knew I was reliable when it came to showing up for work in such a volatile position that sees a lot of new faces, and they didn’t want to bother going through the process of hiring someone new) I don’t want to risk my life working around guests who don’t wash their hands and don’t properly distance. I don’t want to gamble with my health when they won’t offer me health insurance because I’m part time.

Mid October, I get an interview for a full time job and get hired on the spot. I peace out at the zoo 2 weeks later, literally 3 days before they planned to open my exhibit to the public. It was a close call for me to escape before they opened to the public (and pettiness was only partially the reason I dipped out so close to opening). Sorry new hires who are now in charge of the bird feeding exhibit. I taught you the best I could in the short time I had. If the managers are struggling with what to do with one less person, I can’t say I feel bad. I can only hope they delayed opening/closed you down again for your own safety. You are not lightbulbs. I really hope the higher ups stop considering you as replaceable as one. Will I go back to the zoo to visit? Probably. But not for a year at least.

I started my new job the very next day after I quit the zoo, and have been there ever since, (which isn’t that long yet, tbh. Christmas day was my 2 month anniversary). It’s full time, but it’s also a small business, and everyone’s hours this year have been on the short side due to the plague. I understand, though. They don’t want us to work if they can’t afford to pay us. Everyone is nice enough, though some people smoke and it’s hard to avoid them with how frequently we have to go in and out, and I really don’t want to get lung cancer, sorry not sorry, please and thank you. Also, with such a small team, gossip is certainly harder to go undetected, so it’s a relief knowing people don’t talk behind one another’s backs.

I participated and beat my 4th nanowrimo in a row, I made TWO apple crisps on thanksgiving, and made baklava on Christmas and both of these recipes were my first time making them, and they both came out adequately! I voted the first day of early voting, and I did an art trade/collab with two of my friends for my birthday! (normally we would have done monthly “art days” where we get together and do art projects for fun because we’re adults and we can spend our time together however we want, but the plague said otherwise this year) We drew pokemon and it was fun! (hopefully I can show you all the results soon. At the time of writing, I’m still waiting for the last two colored parts to get back to me)

I reached 100 pages on my undertale comic, and finish the first arc out of…! (im not sure. It’s either going to be 4 or 5, I haven’t decided yet)

Over all, I managed to stay healthy as far as I know. I wasn’t as productive as I wanted to be this year, but then again, who was? (don’t answer that. I don’t need that kind of comparison in my life right now)

Will 2021be any better? Honestly? I don’t think so. Not right away, at least. Just because a new year is about to start does not mean the slate is completely wiped clean. The change of the calendar year doesn’t magically make all our current problems disappear. Covid will still be here and cases will still climb when January starts. Small business will still be strained when the month rolls over, police will still go on murdering innocent civilians and getting away scot free, amazon and disney will still be monopolizing all consumer goods and media, and I can’t help but feel like there’s an impending shit show about to go down on inauguration day. I do hope things will get better, though. It’ll be arduous and unpleasant, but I do hope things will improve, because sometimes hoping is all you can do.

Good night.

#long post #new year's resolutions #year review #year retrospective

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thoseindarkness · 4 years

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DtD News Nov 2020

Thank you to anyone who came back for this nonsense. For brevity I have an announcement that I want to make up front. I didn't have room for it last month so I pushed it back, but I can't anymore. I had to make one major revision to the published story. I want people to know about it.

This is the TLDR version. I tell a more in-depth story at the end.

ANNOUNCEMENT

The summary: I had a bad outline walking into writing Mistrust Goes Both Ways. I ran into a problem mid-story. Instead of stopping and taking the time I needed, I challenged myself to creatively solve my way out of my problems. I re-started with about half of what I'd written, published Mistrust Goes Both Ways, and restarting my outline with high hopes. I was proud of myself for rising to the challenge.

Despite my best efforts, it didn't work out. In the end, I had to scrap my outline. I was able to structure the end I was going for and spent the end of 2019 trying to link the first two stories to the ending I wanted. It wasn't working. Then TRoS. Then COVID. Here we are. In June, I started experimenting with scrapping Mistrust and restarting from Read Between.

Mistrust Goes Both Ways will not be part of the finished story when I'm done. I know some of you love it. I love it. I have no intention of taking it down. I might, for a short time, when I'm posting the final story. I'll let you know if that happens and it will go back up afterward. I don't have specifics as there's no point planning for it now.

For right now, nothing is changing on my AO3 account. Feel free to read and comment to your hearts content. I promise it will stay up forever to remind me that some mistakes are worth sharing with others. I learned good lessons from this mistake. It stays.

That being said I think I owe you an actual update on the progress of this story.

WHAT THE HELL I DID THIS MONTH

After my first update I needed to re-integrate with Reylo friends. Funnily enough, that pulled me into another fic. I've been working on that between following this election. Now that it's called I can get back to writing. I tried a couple of times since I voted on Oct 30th, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted to be thinking about.

Thankfully, I've also begun doing more social/political essays lately. I'm not sure what overall form or shape those may take and I haven't published any. Still, I was creative and I did plenty of writing. Interestingly, all this political focus is good for Deceive the Deceiver. Spinning and listening to conspiracy theories is a big part of weaving a world like this one. A great deal comes from my thoughts and perceptions of the real world.

WHERE DTD IS

As of right now I am in the process of first drafting the entire story with Read Between as the starting point. That is, every one of the short stories in the series. What I'm doing is somewhere between a history, an outline and random scene writing. All of these elements are currently strung together in one long, continuous, chronological, first draft. It's everything from the history before Read Between (which starts in the 1930's), all the way to the final scene of DtD.

I'm taking all the good ideas I've created in the last couple of years and re-organizing them into a first pass. It's the skeleton and some of the meat now. I'm slowly building out now that I have a blank-er slate. It's about choosing what works and what doesn't.

I call it accordion writing. It just gets bigger and bigger. This outline will later level up into the first full story drafts for each part. I've got so much history when I finish this I might… I'm getting ahead of myself. Don't want to give too many clues away.

Another interesting thing that's happened recently is I've started pulling bits of other fic ideas that I’m just not gonna finish. A big chuck of the history I stole from a modern/academia AU where Ben and Rey are history students specializing in the ancient Jedi religion. Another was a complication between characters came from a canon story where I wanted to paint the relationship with a new layer. We'll see if I can pull that off.

I spent a lot of time prior to this year focusing on the heroes but my villains hadn't gotten much love. Filling in the history has given me a chance to flesh out the villains. All their moves and countermoves, woven through the bits I already have, are spinning a pretty tapestry. Oh, the villains are so much fun to write!

This other fic came together in the same sort of accordion fashion and it's been fun working through the kinks in the process now that I've seen some of the weak points on a scale like DtD. I think I've mentioned, but this is a writing experiment for me and I'm most invested now in improving my process and clue-threading with DtD. This other fic is helping me test it on a smaller scale.

Not that this needs to get any longer, I'm just going to throw pretense out the window and go with complete vanity. If you don't give a wet shit about my life (and I don't blame you) you have reached the end of your journey. I hope to see you next month. If not, then I leave you with this parting:

May we meet again in our next fandom, through mutes and not as rival shippers.

The following is the ridiculous story of my ups and downs with Deceive the Deceiver. I figure if I explain to you how much I'm invested in this story some of you will stop worrying that I'm going to abandon it. Trust me. I'm not.

This tale stretches from NANOWRIMO 2018 and the prompt that started it, through the ups and downs of 2019 and 2020, to the writing of last month's letter. Buckle up. I love bumpy rides.

DtD: from NANO '17 to COVID-19

This story truly starts in December 2017 when I drenched the seat beneath me during Last Jedi. I'm a TLJ shipper. I got caught on the thirst train. It hit a time when writing was becoming a really big part of my life. I've been writing since I was a kid. I stopped for a while and came back to it. It's a long story. Ultimately, I'd started writing a lot a few years earlier. A mix of fic and originals but I was running into problems so I start reading a bunch of books to get better. TLJ lit the fires. NO joke TLJ came out on the 15th. I have pages of writing from the 20th.

2018 was Reylo year! I was already on Tumblr for my previous fandom (Batman comics). I found Reylo AU week which is in August. I submitted a story for that. It was the first fic I published for Reylo. Fast-forward August to November. I'm in the Writing Den on Discord and someone throws out this spy prompt. People start running with. Throwing ideas around. One of those was the snuggie in Mistrust! I have that conversation saved and story spots for each crazy thing they threw out. Finally, I said I'd do it!

Mind you, this is November 2nd. Nano has just started and the event is about "turning off your internal editor." This prompt consumed me. I was trying to keep up with SpaceWaffleHouseTM that first year. I did, btw. We both crested 100,000. It was my first Nano. Word count is not my problem. Organizing my crazy ambitious ideas is my problem. Some of that 100k was other stories, like Custard which I wrote half of in November and the other half Jan/Feb 2019. Most of it… probably 80k of it… was DtD.

Read Between the Lies is currently 33,710. I wrote at least 20k of that during that first Nano, as well as outlines and scenes for what I thought would be the starting point. I remember wanting to write Read Between to "get into their headspace" by writing their first meeting. I didn't think it would become a whole story. I was just going with it then. Any idea that came to mind.

I took December 2019 off for a few reasons. Some personal. Some burnout. I'm one of those people that can use writing to relieve stress, but I was so exhausted from that month-long writing sprint. By the last week I was dragging to get the final four or five thousand words to hit 100k.

Also, what I had by the end (no internal editor) was a bird nest of ideas that had too many beginnings, not enough middles, and endings to go around. I knew one thing right away: I knew I had more than one story. There were so many fun ideas. I figured, what the hell. I knew another thing right away: the prompt was at the end of the story. Like, the very end. Like, the last short story. Or the second to last short story, at the earliest. That hasn't changed. Ever. That's just where it ended up.

Between January and April of 2019 I touched DtD a few times. I kept coming back to it, reading through it, trying to untangle it. I made new notes on the stories. Expanded ideas. Tried to structure it. I figured out a bunch of good notes, but no real substance. The hardest thing was figuring out where to start! Did I:

(1) Start shortly before the prompt with Ben/Rey's relationship established and fill the story with the history?

(2) Start a lot earlier and build Ben/Rey's relationship from the beginning I'd written in Read Between?

If I'm being honest, Read Between was a lot better than I thought it would be and I didn't want to get rid of it. For a while I was thinking of publishing it last as a "prequel" if people liked the series.

Funny enough, the turning point happened May fourth weekend 2019…

In the week leading up, I was struggling through another story and decided to take a break for the weekend. I'd start writing again on Sunday when I met with my writing group. I met them through Nano. We used to meet at Panera. Now they meet on Discord. They mostly sprint though and I'm not a sprinter. I miss Panera. Anyway.

May 4th was a Sunday (look it up). I gave myself a writing break for the weekend and marathoned Star fucking Wars. It was nerd weekend. I was going to nerd out. I wore exclusively SW gear all weekend. I remember it well. It was the start of something fucking magical in my life.

Have I mentioned recently I really love this story. Trust me I will fucking finish it. Oh my god the demons won't leave until I do. Get them out of my head…

I had a pretty rockstar weekend. I believe the reason I skipped the PT that weekend was because I'd watched it the month before or so. Right after finishing the Clone Wars animated series (which is awesome and I strongly recommend both it and Rebels). I skipped them and SOLO.

Starting with R1, I went through in chronological order. I stopped at RotJ. I was with my family on Saturday and they were playing RotJ in the living room during the party. We talked about my marathon. My mom came over to my apartment after. We watched RoTJ properly. Then Force Awakens. It was too late by then to watch TLJ. I know I went straight to bed after my mom left on Saturday night.

Somewhere during or right after TFA I started thinking about Deceive the Deceiver. I don't remember what sparked it. I went to bed thinking about DtD. I know this with 100% certainty because I woke up thinking about again on Sunday and I thought it was quite odd.

I dream about this story in a way I have only dreamt about a precious few. Technicolor folks. It keeps me up at night.

I went to my writing group with (a) no plan for what to write, (b) a gordian knot that I had yet to untangle, (c) a sudden urge to re-read it. I opened my notes and read DtD through all our sprints. I read most of it during that writing session. We go about three hours.

That night I had Game of Thrones at my parent's. It was the (spoiler alert) episode where Arya kills the Night King. I remember because two minutes into the episode my brother's car broken down a few blocks from our apartment and we had to go help him. Derailed the whole night (this is foreshadowing).

Side note: I live with my younger brother and he's the best roommate I've ever had in my 35 years of life. Love you, Mo!

The episode was recording so we ran out. Had to leave the car in a parking lot. Someone had already helped him push it out of a puddle but my brother was soaked to mid-calf and the engine was shot. We dropped him off at home and I rode back to my Momma's crib to watch GoT. It was only the beginning of a wild night.

I went to bed late. I had to get up a few hours early to deal with the car before work started for either of us. I guess we were both hoping to avoid taking the day off. That wasn't going to happen. I drove home but I couldn't sleep. That crazy episode and the fact that my brain was already on fire with DtD.

I spent the wee hours finishing my re-read through the rough draft of Read Between the Lies. It saw my starting place. I started writing. I wrote through waiting in a parking lot, for the tow truck, in my car, at 6 am, with no sleep. I did a voice recording as I drove from the parking lot to the mechanic where the driver was taking my brother's car. I thought about it the whole way back. I sat on the sofa a wrote some more when we got home. I went to bed at 11 am and I'd written 10k more words for Read Between the Lies.

Somewhere between the chaos of May 5th and the official publish date on June 5th, Read Between got written. I know it didn't take too long. I remember sending it off to beta (by my amazing beta team on 1 & 2: Em, Jen, and Sai) and immediately pivoting to my outline. I slapped that together far too hastily and kept moving. I was going on holiday in the UK (I'm American and I'm ashamed) in early August so I planned on trying to publish Part 2 when I got back. At the very least I wanted it ready for beta.

Also some to admit, around the middle of 2019 I was fatigued with the fandom. We were hitting a lull. I was psyching myself up for the end and the exit. I was trying to clean house. I wanted to push out unfinished fics. To make them work. There was a lot of that mood from me in 2019. I was trying to make everything work. It's why Read Between came out, and that was a good thing. It's also why Mistrust came out, and that was a bad thing.

With that mentality looming, tough outline in hand, I started writing Mistrust before the end of May. I hit my snag sometime during the period I was publishing Read Between because by the time it was all done I knew I wasn't going to have a finished story by the time I left for London. I would figure it out when I got back. I picked up another project to distracted me from my problems for a little while. That is going to be an original if it's anything. One day…

At some point after I got back I started focusing heavily on problem solving. I had two stories already and a number of plot threads I had to resolve. I have heavy, heavy, heavy notes from September to December of 2019. Lots of possible ways to run this story. It sucks that a lot of that stuff isn't going to make it, but I'm recycling shit every day and I learned so much about the characters/story in that four month period. It really shaped the finished product in an important way.

This period is where I started to look at the bigger structure and how I was going to solve specific plot problems in each short story to bring the whole together. That focus on the different parts is important because it was the last thing on my mind when TRoS happened.

December 20th (the release date) is my birthday. My ass drove up to one of those Reylo-only screenings and I was surrounded by amazing people as I watched a movie that ruined my 35th birthday. Thankfully, I spent it in incomparable company. Thank you to all the hosts and super special thanks to Jen. Not only was she a DtD beta on both, she invited me. Thank you love! You are the reason I still remember that trip with joy.

Side note: I no longer hate TRoS. I've made my peace with it. I'm a far happier person now.

Needless to say, the only Reyloing I did in January of this year was venting frustration. Then I took a few weeks away from the fandom. I'd done my purging into the void. I knew other people still needed the space to vent but I had to get away. Once the toxin is out I couldn't let it back in.

What occurred starting in February of 2020 was a series of situations in which, every time I logged into Twitter I was faced with the kind of vitriol in the fandom that I don't need in my life. Some of it was still TRoS stuff, even as late as May. I'm not judging, I'm just saying, with the world on fire (literally), I didn't need it.

I don't think I have to explain why I've avoided social media like the plague since early this year. I live in America. If you heard anything about our recent President I don't have to explain any further what this year has been like. That has been par for course all over the world.

So here's my secret to happiness. I don't fux with the trolls. Do not engage. Sometimes that means radio silence. I'm breaking that silence because I want you to know 2020 has not destroyed DtD. It's only leveled shit up.

I have pretty much been working on this story consistently since March of this year. I go back and forth with reading, history, documentaries. I'm learning to wield many new weapons. They take time to settle in. DtD is the de-stressor I go to in between the real shit.

Sometime in June I was screwing around with the order of the parts. I had worked out the end but I was trying to bridge the gap between the ending I was certain I needed to get to and the two beginning stories I'd already published. I couldn't bridge the gap. It had been a year since I published Read Between and it wasn't working. Then I had an epiphany.

What if I got rid of Mistrust? Read Between is a pretty blank slate. I didn't want to re-write it and I still don't. I have no intention of getting rid of Part 1. I may clean it up and add some stuff at the very last minute, but it will be right before the new stuff drops as a pre-cursor to the flood of subsequent stories. I may add a few new clues or alter a scene or two, but I have plenty of room to move with it exactly the way it is.

What does that mean for Mistrust Goes Both Ways? To make a long story short, there was no good way for me to continue with what I'd published and still write the story in my head. I'm sure there are cool places to take the existing story, but that's not what I'm trying to do. In truth, I should have left 1 and not published 2 when I hit a snag. Lesson learned.

In June I basically threw Mistrust out and asked myself, "Now what?" I have months of great ideas rife for reshuffling and no restrictions on how to bridge the gap from 1 to the ending I wanted. But the end had shifted.

That brings us up to speed. The last thing I did before taking a much needed break was get through 90% of the history in my accordion outline/draft. I poured the foundation that was missing. I walked away in early October and let it set. I'm going to button up this other fic I'm working on and then go back to DtD and check the foundation I laid.

I'm very confident that not only will it hold, but that with fresh eyes and the fun side stories I've had the chance to lay to rest, I will finally be able to start building the finished products on top of it.

IN CONCLUSION

I'm still as excited as I've ever been for this story. It frustrates me all the time, but that means the medicine for my soul is working its magic. Change it painful, but pain is transformative. I've embrace changed. That ache is just a sign the muscles are getting stronger. Growing pains. As I learn to live with them in my family, my country, and my job, I find that life's lesson's often end up reflecting in every place in our life if we but open our eyes to look.

Growing pains exist in my writing process too. They are as transformative in this corner of my life as they are in every other. They have revealed as much about me as a person in my writing as they have in my politics. They have taught me how to compromise with my family as I learn to compromise with my characters. As I consider how people treat each other I am reminded that struggles in understanding our fictional counterparts may shine a light on our struggles to understand our truer selves.

Take care of yourselves. Once you've got that covered, if you can, take care of each other. Feel free to poke me and say hi. If not, until next month.

Fari.

#deceive the deceiver #reylo #reylo fanfic #reylo fan fiction #modern au #spy au #fan fic #fan fiction

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claraxbarton · 5 years

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MCU Bucky Barnes

So here’s the thing.

I’m a costume designer by trade, and one thing that I actually really love about Captain America: The Winter Soldier (okay, among the things I love) is the costume design and the rhetorical value given to the clothes and, well, costumes in this movie.

For example - when Sam and Steve have their heart to heart on the bridge that ends with Sam saying “but he doesn’t even know you” and Steve saying “he will” before going to steal his old uniform - the one Bucky last saw him in when he was Bucky. There are some other great costume points in this movie, actually a LOT of them (costumes, not wigs, don’t at me because I KNOW).

But one thing that has always stood out to me, and not in a good way, is the “I’m with you til the end of the line” flashback.

Now, here’s the thing, it’s not JUST about the clothes. We’re in MCU verse, so it’s MCU canon - obviously, the Steve and Bucky duo is drastically different in Marvel comics canon so - and Bucky starts this scene by saying his folks wanted to give Steve a ride to the cemetery.

Which is super cool and nice. So one, we know Bucky’s dad is still alive - and his mom, but two, we know they have a car.

So this is supposed to be when Steve is around 16? So it’s... 1936 (according to MCU wiki it totally is)

So cars.

Crazy popular ever since they started having closed bodies and all that. BUT, were they crazy popular in CITIES in 1936? Especially in the middle of the Great Depression?

There’s some evidence that actually no, that car ownership in a city like NYC was something like 1 car per every 43 people. Then again, looking at the NYC.gov 2015 Mobility Report we see that the population of NYC in 1936 is something like 7.2 million, and the number of registered vehicles in 764,000... or roughly one per every 9.4-ish persons. Which is a pretty drastically different number. This doesn't, of course, account for taxis or fleet cars being registered - so the number might seem inflated. I still think it’s probably something closer to 1 car per every 20 than every 43 but... I’m too lazy to dig that much deeper at the moment. Plus I'm sick, which is fueling this in the first place.

So, anyway you slice it, Bucky’s family was in 11%, 5% or 2.33% of New Yorkers who own cars in 1936. Which says something, I think, about Bucky Barnes that we don’t always - ever? - think of in fandom.

I’m not going to say that Bucky Barnes was loaded. Maybe his family owned a garage or a grocery store or a delivery service or a funeral home...?? or something. So, the vehicle could be occupational as opposed to private usage - but either way it’s a statement. Bucky’s family has money and/or Bucky’s family has steady employment.

I’ve been there. I’ve read the fics where Bucky works at the docks to put Steve through art school and get him his medicine. I love those fics. I love that head canon.

But I... don’t think it’s realistic in light of some evidence showing us that, actually, Bucky wasn’t doing too badly for himself.

Let’s now actually look at CLOTHING. Here’s the whole scene via youtube, if you want to follow along with what is about to get RIDICULOUS.

Actually, before I dive in, who is the costumer for this movie? And should I be like... reading into all this as much as I am?

Judianna Makovsky - fellow New Jersey..Ian?ite?no clue - 3 time Oscar nominee and designer of 5 MCU films and a lot of other big budget movies, including quite a few period pieces dealing with issues of race and class (The Legend of Bagger Vance, Seabiscuit, The Little Princess.. and also like Harry Potter and The Quick and the The Dead.) So, should I have some faith in Judianna Makovsky’s designs? I’m gonna go with yeah, yeah I should.

So, back to the movie. The scene.

This is post funeral. We’re in 1936. As a general rule, the dress, colors and style of mourning wear was pretty much formalized in the early Victorian era. There was a great - read PHENOMENAL - exhibit at the MET a few years back on Mourning-wear and I’m still reeling from how lovely everything was - but the gist of it is this: you wore black when someone died. If you were a lady, and especially if you were a rich lady, you then went through a few different colors (dull black to SHINY black to purple/mauve and gray and white and then back to color within six months to one year). By the 1930s only the really rich were sticking to the actual rules of mourning - or like, really old people. And, of course, really old rich people. Really old rich WHITE people. Because it needs to be said: these are WHITE customs. I'm not saying people of other ethnicities didn’t follow them, but these are basically British Victorian practices that were assimilated into American culture.

I’m not going to go off on a huge sidebar about American fashion following in French dressmaking and British tailoring, but I need to say at least that much. Everyone who was anyone knew you got your dresses made in France or in the French style and you got your suits made in England - Savile Row in specific. I am NOT implying Bucky’s got himself an English suit, fyi. I just... have to be thorough.

BACK TO THE SCENE:

We’ve got our boy Steve. STEVE. Who just buried Sarah Rogers and what is he wearing...?

For starters, he’s wearing a windbreaker, check out the 1933 ad below, he’s the guy almost giving us the Fonz finger gesture, or maybe guy in the fedora on the end.

This thing isn’t falling apart at the seams, but it’s a very nondescript not really gray, not really blue - maybe was at one point. It also doesn’t FIT Steve. It also, in the ad above, would cost about $165.40 in today’s money.

My guess? It’s Bucky’s old windbreaker. Because it’s not cheap and because it’s just a bit too big on Steve.

He’s also wearing a shirt that is maybe tan? And a brown tie and maybe - MAYBE black trousers. And if those trousers are black, it’s the only black thing he’s wearing. Not even a black tie, or a black arm band (which I’m pretty sure - but also pretty aggressively atheist so I don’t know - the Catholic Church would have provided for chief mourners and pall bearers right?). We also have our depressing as all shit Depression surroundings to clue us in: Steve Rogers ain’t loaded. Steve Rogers is poor as dirt. Side note: boys. Hiding a key under the ONE FUCKING BRICK on a walkway is not like... a smart idea???

So we can guess a few things here, we can guess that Steve and Sarah were really struggling - this checks out with the rest of MCU canon (wearing newspapers stuffed in his shoes, even when he had nothing he had Bucky, etc.) - and that all money probably went towards Steve’s numerous ailments, food and then the TB medication or treatment, as it was, that was available to Sarah.

We can maybe guess that Steve and Sarah weren’t very religious -but I don’t feel qualified to impart anything except my own agenda here so I’m not taking that stance. But like, real talk, not even an arm band??

But, well, let’s move on to the point of this whole long ass thing anyway?

Then we go to Mr. Barnes, looking dapper AF. Also, hey, check out this ad from 1933 featuring... pretty much exactly what Bucky is wearing down to the god-damn two-tone shoes:

If you’re curious, yeah $24.98 in 1936 is $475.44. I'm not suggesting Bucky Barnes went out and bought a brand new suit for Steve’s mother’s funeral - for one thing, this ad is from 1933. BUT, that suit fits Bucky. Quite well, and it’s in good shape. He’s also sporting that super stylish mid-late 30s into 40s deeply angled collar shirt - as is our dude up in the ad - and so we know these clothes are at least new-ish. We also can see that the suit is definitely of the mid-30s moving into the boxy silhouette of the later 30s and early 40s and NOT the look of the 20s and early 30s, which has an almost bell-bottom fullness to the legs instead of our straight-leg here (though we can debate nuance if you want to hit up my DMs.)

I should note, Bucky’s shirt is not bright and pristine white - it’s kind of grayish? And I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be an old-timey sepia thing or an indication that Bucky can’t afford to... bleach a white shirt? So that’s an odd choice for sure because we’re still in an age when a crisp, white collar shirt means something (Hey, if you want to hear me go on about the democratization of men’s fashion via shirt collars and 19th century Victorian suits, let me know because I am READY).

All this is to say: I don’t think Bucky Barnes is a poor dock worker. I think Bucky Barnes of MCU canon. Okay, so the MCU wiki on Bucky/The Winter Soldier is an actual mess (because it tells us that Sarah died in 1936 and that’s FINE but I’m not going back to change my math because I’m SICK so just... I went back and changed it. She died in 1936. Fine. The damn wiki also says that “a year later, during their art class, Barnes and Rogers found out that the United States of America had joined World War II. Which, like, I’m sick, but there are a few years between 1936 and December 8 1941... just... I’m no rocket doctor but...

ANYWAY. Bucky is a three time YMCA welterweight boxing champion by this “year later”/ 1941-1942. He and Steve are also in an ART CLASS together. Bucky also trained Steve in boxing at Goldie’s gym before the two of them went to enlist - Steve rejected and Bucky, again quoting MCU wiki, “drafted” (which I'm gonna take to mean he didn’t try to enlist when Steve got rejected, they went home and Bucky got called up later but... hey, who knows?!).

So, I can’t easily find the prices of gym memberships in NYC in the 1930s right now because I don’t feel like wading through all of the articles complaining about Equinox pricing in 2019. But I do know that part of Roosevelt’s WPA (Works Progress Administration) building projects included building more public gyms - as well as libraries, auditoriums, pools, parks etc. Check out your local public buildings - if they are WPA projects they will have a cool plaque like my local NJ library does! All that is to say, there were free or very cheap PUBLIC options where Bucky could have trained Steve.

Bucky trained Steve in a private gym. Do I like to think that this is the same gym Steve and America’s ass are working out in in The Avengers? Yes, Yes I do. Do I like to think that Steve likes to box because it reminds him of Bucky? Yes, yes I do.

But moving on: it’s another sign of wealth.

So is this “art class.” Whether we are in 1937 or 1941 - we’re still in the Depression. Steve still has all of his health issues and presumably accompanying “medication” (wanna talk 1930s medicine? Again, slide into my DMs or shoot me an ask). So Steve either has a side job making enough to cover all of that, rent? and enrollment in an art class.

OR maybe Steve is teaching the art class and Bucky is his model for life drawing instruction (yeah, it’s a fic bunny I’m sharing with the world).

OR maybe... Bucky is paying the rent and other things or Steve is living with Bucky and can afford the class and meds... somehow or...

OR I'm not saying that Steve is Bucky’s kept man because Steve Rogers would punch anyone who dared to say such a thing.

All I’m saying is, Bucky Barnes was not a poor dude. Bucky Barnes... had some money.

And also I’m about to be late for my doctor’s appointment so I gotta run.

At me with your thoughts!

#Bucky barnes #James Buchanan barnes #winter soldier #Steve rogers #captain america #marvel #mcu #meta #head-canon #costume design #character thoughts

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siarven · 4 years

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2019 Recap + 2020 Goals

Soo.... 2020 here we come--Happy New Year everyone! <3 I hope it’s a good year for us all and the world we live in, and that it treats all of us more kindly than the last one did :’)

I haven’t really been very active on here the past few weeks (the holidays were great but also filled with lots of things) and I’m 50 tags behind, according to my emails x) I’ll do my best to catch up! So, for 2020 I’ll try to be a bit more active and share more things and stuff like that. I’ve never done a post like this despite existing on tumblr (in some form or another) since a few days before the mishapocalypse XD those were... days XD So this is my first step in that direction :D

Lots of things happened last year!

1. As Dreams Collide & (Camps) NaNoWriMo

Dreams became a trilogy! Those are temp covers, but they were still a lot of fun to make XD ... back in april. Forgot to upload them x)

I finished the second draft of Dreams in January, and then proceeded to spend the rest of the year figuring out more of my worldbuilding, adding Elinor as a POV character with a new subplot, and changing some other major things about the story and characters :3 So even those who read Draft Two will probably be surprised by some of the changes :D

I also started writing the Draft Three during November/NaNoWriMo, and finally figured out how the new subplot and Elinor’s involvement would shift the events of the story! And I wrote 35k of words that I still like! Which I’ve edited a bit, sure, but I still like them. (We won’t talk about the rest of the 126k, they’re trash xD but they helped in figuring things out, so that’s ok)

My plan for 2020 is to finish Draft Three and get Dreams to a point where I can start editing instead of rewriting (and throwing it at everyone who wants to give me some feedback) <3

2. Hope Beyond & Inktober

I also participated successfully in Inktober last year! And actually managed to make art on all days for all prompts!! IN INK!!! Despite there being a conference to attend!! I never managed to actually do that before, even though I tried two times, and I also wrote short stories for some of the art! :’) I love Hope Beyond so much, ahhhhh :’)

And the best thing about it was that I developed my newest WIP through inktober, and that its characters have truly become people in my mind, and that there are so many wonderful creatures I didn’t know of before <333 I doubt I’d have had all of these ideas without it :D

My goal for 2020 is to make a detailed outline for Hope Beyond, and to create concept art of the characters, creatures, and locations! And, most importantly, to find the style for the comic aspect, and to get Hope Beyond to the point where I can seriously start making/publishing it in 2021. My plan regarding the publishing is to do so weekly on wordpress and tumblr @hopebeyond :) Which is why I will need a good plan beforehands :D

Also, if you want to see the inktobers properly (and read the short stories!), here’s my inktober tag <3

3. My art

I know I used that pic in the inktober collage, too, but it’s just one of my fave artworks from last year and this is my post so :’)

Art-wise, I did a lot of things last year, even if it was less than I wanted. Not sure how much progress I made, but there must’ve been some ;D

I also graduated from uni! Post-graduate life is scary but despite all my various crises I am probably going to figure things out. :’) life only goes forward, after all.

I have a ton of art-goals for this year!

First of all, I am going to try to participate in a procreate art challenge called Making Art Everyday by Lisa Bardot and it will probably kill me but I hope I’ll also learn a lot. And that’s another thing! After a year of not getting along with it, I have finally tamed procreate. :’) There’s a lot of art I did over the holidays, in various mediums, and I can’t wait to show you!

The biggest thing will be to make a proper concept and illustration portfolio, and I’m going to combine that with my hope beyond things, so I hope I can show you all of that during the coming months :3

Also, I think I am now going to actually use that art collection tumblr I made a while back, and upload art from there, so it’s easier to find. Not sure if it’ll make a difference but we’ll see :) It’s @siarvenart ! Hope to see you there, too <3

As for the decade...

That’s my art progress from 2009-2019! I came pretty far, I should say :D And I took a detour over realistically copying portraits/animals with pencil on my way to draw things from the imagination again, I guess :’) Still shocked at the pencil things I did, back between 2013-2014. That captain jack sparrow one was january 2013 and the dean winchester one in summer 2014, after I’d graduated from school... quite a skill-leap. But then again, what else can you do when school is boring but spend 10-20 hours drawing portraits xD

I’m glad I’m now firmly in the “draw your own thing instead of copying photos” area (since end of 2015, I guess) but it’s a lot of work and I wish younger me had sat down and learned the basics like perspective and anatomy because then I wouldn’t have to learn all of that stuff now XD

Practise does pay off :) this call-out is directed @me, specifically, but also everyone else who needs the reminder

I’m tagging some mutuals and friends below the cut <3 Thanks for all of your support <333 It means a lot :’)

I guess I will now try to catch up to the things I got tagged in over the past month. :’D

#2019 recap #I really hope things will work out #I've had so much anxiety last year #let's make sure this one is better #happy new year everyone #<333

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geek-gem · 5 years

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Joker 2019 Sequel Cast And Ideas

This was a draft I’ve been working on for a long while now. I forgot when I started it. Maybe two weeks but I’m not sure. I’ve seen Joker three times. The film has made a billion dollars. Including Joaquin Phoenix seems like he wouldn’t mind being the Joker again. Also Todd Phillips has said he wouldn’t mind a sequel unless the story is right. Which I agree with him.

I just wanna mention I really like Joker 2019. Especially the Arthur Fleck interpretation of the Joker. Including you can see the popularity among Tumblr especially women. XD But yeah to be honest I’m both ways. I don’t mind if it’s just a stand alone. But also I loved this version of the character. It’s the version that got me to appreciate the Joker as character. Which may sound stupid.

Especially despite what Todd Phillips has said....I want this Joker to meet his Batman in his universe. The idea of a continuation to Joker has been on my mind for a long time now. Yet the problem and I have mentioned it before.

A half of it is like, “Yeah this is the kind of a movie that's the perfect continuation to Joker. It’s artsy and has lots of meaning”, but also it feels like, “What the hell is this? What’s with so many characters in this story? Why are there many references? This doesn’t feel like the kind of film Joker 2019 was”.

Including I have wondered it feels like a movie that would deserve a super cut. Something like Batman V Superman with it’s ultimate edition(Which added more scenes that explained things). Or even the It supercut I’ve read about. Which is basically the two It films put together with I think more footage too. Including it being 7 hours.

But the main focus of this story was between the relationship between Bruce Wayne/Batman and Arthur Fleck/Joker. Including it’s about the end of the Joker. But also for Arthur Fleck, giving him a proper send off. So a franchise wouldn’t be built.

I am planning on making a synopsis of the general story. It’s what I think a sequel should be to Joker. But I would trust with what Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix would want to do with a sequel. This is just my fan fiction of wanting to respect of what had came before. Expanding upon Arthur’s journey as the Joker. Including to give this character a emotional conclusion as he meets the Batman and Bruce Wayne during his final week or more of living.

So this is all rambling. I’ve been hesitant to post this because again it’s just rambling and notes. But I think I should share this. Be warned there are spoilers. Including if you have been going in deep in the theories about Joker 2019. You may be disappointed by possible choices I’ve made in this. Because doing this kind of sequel may disprove certain theories or confirm certain theories. I’m deeply sorry this is very long.

Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck/Joker.

A mentally ill man disregarded by society and became the, “Joker” in 1981. 20 years later, now 50 years old and known mostly as his alter ego. An anarchist with no motive wreaking havoc in Gotham as much as he can with followers behind him.

But as years gone, things have changed. With more people are slowly stop believing his cause. Including with this, “Batman” helping the police closing in on him. Old emotions have started to flow through Arthur again. Bringing back memories of why he became this way. Even if he does not fear death, he thinks his final days are probably upon. As each day he grows older and the world is moving on without him.

Including just like his final days will like how in 1981 will forever impact him. Once he crosses paths again with Bruce Wayne. Along with who people thought was a urban legend, “Batman”. With Arthur realizing he isn’t the only freak in Gotham who suffered so much.

Notes: The story of this Joker continuation is something. I’ll be honest I want to respect the legacy of these old comics characters. While also putting them in this world Joker 2019 created. But also the direction I’ve been thinking about for Arthur/Joker may bother a lot of Joker fans.

Mainly considering this story where it’s basically what I call, “Jokers Downfall” because it’s final days or week or so on. While showcasing 20 years the man who was once Arthur Fleck truly changed. Becoming an, “Agent Of Chaos” creating destruction wherever he can.

It’s this time in his life as he meets people old and new that causes him to act differently. In some ways you get the evil Joker that you usually think of. But for this story kind of has a, “Softer” Joker. Because of his meeting with certain people, especially Bruce Wayne and Batman. The man that was once Arthur Fleck is still there. Including as Joker becomes less of how people see him, being honest of who he had killed, and other things.

But including to make sure this doesn’t turn into a long running franchise. Even though I have thought this feels like the third part in a trilogy. This story is a way a definite end for Arthur Fleck. In his own and for the best of everyone a ending that only suits him.

Yet this doesn’t mean he doesn’t get redeemed at all or you condone his actions. It’s more like a proper ending to a man who had good intentions, but because of how society treated him and the choices he made. It’s an ending where the only, “Happy ending” probably for him is his death. But also the addition of maybe along the line some how, he gains a best friend. Someone who understands him. Showcasing he’s not alone. Especially proving Murray Franklin’s words, “Not everyone is awful”.

But the tragedy in all of this. This revelation happened 20 years later. Because Arthur has destroyed his chance of returning to who he was. Or even change for the better. The best thing for Arthur/Joker in this situation despite this sounds rather harsh. Is for him to embrace death as the world around him has changed. But also to as he reaches closer to death. He truly that he wasn’t alone, one spot or more empathy from someone in the likes of Bruce Wayne/Batman and whoever else.

Including the other thing. Confirming whether or not Arthur is Bruce’s legitimate older brother. Considering there or theories based upon the flies Arthur had taken. It’s something I need to think about.

Jay Ryan as Bruce Wayne/Batman.

A young man who lost his parents during the riots in 1981. Traumatized by his parents deaths. He vowed to bring vengeance upon criminals. It’s been 20 years since that night, now 28 years old. He’s been mostly keeping a low profile as the, “Batman”. Fighting criminals and stopping the mobs. Gaining the trust of the citizens and even the police. Despite them being suspicious still. While making sure no one figures out it’s Bruce as this vigilante.

Because of him and the Joker being now out in the open more. He’s set his sights on the man who inspired the man who murdered his parents. Yet what Bruce figures out as he looks more deep into who the Joker is. Including who was Arthur Fleck, and what made him what he was. Bruce discovers that his father, someone he looked up for all his life. Finds out his father wasn’t truly the greatest. Including was one of the reasons for Arthur’s decent into madness.

Along with trying to hold back his anger as much as he can as he learns more information and not wanting to kill. Bruce slowly uncovers what made Arthur how he is now. Which results in not just wanting to bring Arthur to justice, but to even try to save this man who suffered so much.

Describing his batsuit: To fit the aesthetic and tone of this world that Joker 2019 is featured in. Including to compare with next to Arthur Fleck's Joker attire in Joker 2019. With the help of a friend named Lucius Fox. Bruce's batsuit could be similar to the likes of the batsuits from The Dark Knight trilogy.

But mainly in a weird way to fit this more realistic world. The batsuit seems similar to the likes of the outfit worn by Hunk and Vector from the Resident Evil series, and also the likes of SAS soldiers. But without the likes of a gasmask unless if needed for any necessary situation.

Especially like the 1989 batsuit, there is body armor on the chest to protect Bruce from bullets.

This batsuit is basically personally accustomed for Bruce Wayne's needs and his war on crime. It still has the cape, the bat ears, and the spikes on his gloves.

The concept of Batman in the world of Joker 2019: This is something that's been on my mind. Because reading the process behind Joaquin Phoenix's Joker outfit of how he would look. But also the idea of Joaquin Phoenix's Joker is basically supposed to be what if the Joker existed in real life.

Before Joker 2019, The Dark Knight Trilogy was maybe the best example of showing how the Batman mythos could exist in reality. The challenge for this Batman was to try that again. But this time not recreate what Christopher Nolan had did basically copying him. Yet the idea of it is how would Batman realistically look in this universe.

It's a interesting challenge. Mainly the design is what makes me think. While I know the concept of a Batsuit looking like something similar to the likes of SAS and the other examples I mentioned. It's to compliment the realistic approach taken for Joker. Basically how Christopher Nolan did for Batman and Joker before.

Including to me we've had comic accurate Batmans and Jokers before so to me it's okay to change things up a bit, be creative. Yet I understand a direction like this would get hatred. Especially how people were reacting to Joker at first.

But I keep telling myself this. The concepts I keep thinking is it's like a smaller version of Batman 1989 and The Dark Knight. Because both Batman and Joker were two major characters in those films. Yet there have been ideas of showcasing a Batmobile. The biggest challenge of that is how would that look realistic. Yes we have the Tumbler as a example and that's good.

Including the training Bruce had in this universe. After talking with a friend and making some funny jokes. Alfred in this universe was part of the SAS when he was younger. Bruce did some smaller forms of training(Such as karate as a friend mentioned as an idea) before having Alfred help get connections to get secret training from the SAS in the United Kingdom. Including any other possible special forces training that Bruce may need in his war on crime.

I have wondered of using Batman's first appearance as an inspiration. But I have thought of other inspirations like Ben Affleck's Batman, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Batman Arkham Origins, the Telltale Batman series. I just wanna make the best realistic Batman I can make.

Especially for this take including I remember hearing Ben Affleck’s take on Batman would of been about his mental state. This is kind of familiar. But it’s also showcasing that this Bruce Wayne is the anti thesis of who his dad was in Joker 2019. Showcasing the good Bruce does when he’s not Batman. Such as using his wealth to help those around him. I do think people might dislike the idea of a, “Softer” Batman. Yet considering the direction of this story. It’s something I wanna take and it seems fitting for a sequel to Joker 2019. Especially as a conclusion to Arthur’s story showcasing after he became Joker. The events in 1981 started a chain reaction that changed Gotham City. Including the lives of Bruce Wayne and Arthur Fleck.

About Jay Ryan as Bruce Wayne/Batman: This is something that’s been bothering me. Casting Bruce Wayne/Batman is such a huge deal. While yes all of this is fan fiction right now. Originally Jay Ryan was my choice for the DC Black Clark Kent/Superman. But I decided to have him as Bruce Wayne/Batman.

From what I’ve read he’s gotten experience from shows like Beauty And The Beast(Where he plays Vincent Keller the beast), and Mary Kills People(Where he plays a detective named Ben Wesley). Mainly my experience of seeing him in something was in It Chapter 2 where he played the older version of Ben Hanscom.

Mainly my biggest concern is not just his age. Yet he looks quite young anyway and there are similarities with Dante Pereira-Olson who portrayed a younger Bruce Wayne in Joker 2019. But also his performance next to Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck/Joker.

Which is interesting a younger Batman against a Joker who’s been doing his thing for 20 years. A weird similarity between the DCEU’s Superman and Batman. I have thought of Nicholas Hoult. But I think people may not like the choice.

Yet when I look at it. The direction of this Batman isn’t meant to be something like Batfleck. Who had been Batman for 20 years. This is a Batman in this universe started being Batman(like in the comics) at the age of 25. Starting in 1996. Yet he’s still young and learning. Including like I mentioned he’s a, “Softer” version of other versions. Who’s the reason why Gotham is doing better now. By donating his wealth to the people of Gotham. Basically what his father never did in this universe maybe.

Brad Pitt as Jim Gordon.

The commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department. Who was present during the riots of 1981. A good cop who is trying to help everyone the best he can in Gotham City. Especially with corrupt cops being around. He’s been on trail of the Joker for some years now but without any luck. With Batman helping more he’s close to catching him.

Little does Gordon realize the chaos that might ensure when Joker and Batman finally meet. Which will result in something more greater than the riots in 1981.

Notes: Originally actors like Bryan Cranston(who voiced the character in Batman Year One), and Tom Selleck. But considering Bryan already voiced the character, and Tom seems like it would be type casting. Because of his character’s role in Blue Bloods. Brad Pitt was chosen because of the early reports of him being James Gordon in Matt Reeves The Batman 2021.

Especially to give the cast that, “Oscar” feel or so. Considering the last film had Robert De Niro. I wanted to give Brad Pitt that chance to shine.

Sophia Lillis as Barbara Gordon.

The young daughter of Commissioner Gordon. Only 17/18 years old as of now. While her father is concerned of trusting this, “Batman” vigilante. She believes Batman is trying to do the same thing as her father. But just on the other side of the law.

An intelligent and also brave young girl who wants to help people. While wanting to help this case somehow by trying to be a detective. She never expected that in her life she would get this deep in this search for the Joker.

Especially when she ends up meeting the proposed, “Clown Prince Of Crime” himself. Someone she has only heard stories about, but never thought she would meet.

Zazie Beetz as Sophie Dumond.

A young women Arthur had fallen in love with during 1981. But then Arthur discovered he had been hallucinating his entire relationship with her. With Sophie now in her late 40′s. While not close to Arthur. Because of the, “Batman” trying to find out answers about who Arthur Fleck was. Sophie discovers a bit more about how Arthur felt about her. Especially with Joker remembering her again and maybe some how can restart what they had.

Notes: There is this idea of when Batman decides to investigate who Arthur is. He tracks down anyone who may of had a connection with him. With cameos from characters like Sophie, and Gary are in this film. Because they have met him before. Mainly with Gary knowing a bit more on Arthur because of working with him.

Just a important detail, Sophie doesn’t die. But I wanted to bring back these certain characters that had met Arthur during his transformation into the Joker. Including in this story. I decided to do a little retcon(Unless it could still be in there) by adding in the scene from what I heard about the old script. Of Arthur in his Joker outfit meeting Sophie one final time before leaving to go meet Murray Franklin. Basically apologizing to her about the incident of him being in her apartment, giving her flowers, money, and telling her he’ll be on the Murray Franklin Show.

While this may seem weird. It’s this idea that because of the road he was taking, and knowing he might not see her again. He just wanted to say something one final time to her. Despite in the movie they never had a actual relationship.

It’s this idea that after 20 years. Joker still had these feelings for her and telling her the truth of how he felt. Including how he was feeling about her. But Sophie being honest with her after everything he’s done, it probably wouldn’t work. Yet he doesn’t get angry. It’s more like he understands because she’s right in this case.

This was a character I wanted to bring back somehow. Again these are all just my ideas. Especially this was the, “Softer” Joker I’m talking about. Because it’s at this stage, he doesn’t seem to care. Because Arthur is slowly coming back and Joker just doesn’t care anymore.

Mark Hamill as Jack Napier.

The old boyfriend of Penny Fleck who is the reason behind Arthur’s, “Condition”. Who was released 20 years earlier. Now working among the regular people. Including trying to stay low and make sure no one knows who he is. Because after all those years of spending in jail, he is still the cold hearted man who had beaten Arthur. But now living as a hermit, not making any connections with anybody.

During this time, Batman questions him about Arthur and where he may be at. But also when Joker discovers who Napier is and that he still lives in Gotham City. He decides to pay the old man a visit and confront him.

Notes: This is a weird addition. Because in a way it doesn’t add a whole lot except that Batman part. Mainly the addition of Penny’s boyfriend being in this story is to give the people what they want. To have Arthur/Joker give him what he deserves. Including to close a chapter in Arthur’s life.

Mainly the scene is this weird dark comedic scene with Joker, Barbara(who’s being kept hostage by the Joker), and his followers go to Jack Napier’s apartment. With Joker revealing who he is(Despite the added Batman meeting I had thought about to give his role more meaning) to Jack Napier and what he did to him as a child. With Jack Napier admitting to not regretting abusing Arthur. Including saying Arthur deserved it.

Joker(Even if he was already planning on doing this, Jack Napier not regretting his actions made the choice even more easy) holding a customized sledge hammer, repeatedly beats Jack Napier with the hammer to the head. Basically beating the old man to death. With Joker admitting this is a vengeance to with Napier had beaten Arthur’s head.

It ends with Joker all tired from beating his abuser to death. Traumatizing Barbara(Which was the reason he brought her there to witness it. To show in his case, “Parents are fucking awful”) in the process. With Joker literally asking as some sort way to calm her nerves down by asking her and his followers if they want to order pizza. With Joker literally stealing Napier’s money off his corpse to pay for a possible pizza.

Including it was tough thinking of who to cast as this character. Including it’s a small role. Originally it was Clancy Brown. But I decided Mark Hamill as a easter egg because he had voiced the Joker in multiple Batman media. Such as Batman The Animated Series, and the Batman Arkham series. Especially his name being a callback to Jack Napier from Batman 1989, the Jokers real name from that film.

Douglas Hodge as Alfred Pennyworth.

Bruce Wayne’s butler, caretaker, and legal guardian after Bruce’s parents were murdered. He knows Bruce is Batman and tries to assist him the best he can. A best friend and father figure to Bruce during the most dire of times. But when Bruce discovers that his family had possible connections to Arthur’s decent into becoming the Joker. This puts a strain on their relationship as Alfred was possibly keeping this secret from Bruce.

Sally Field as Dr, Leslie Thompkins.

A doctor who has dedicated her life to help Gotham’s unfortunate, including a surrogate mother to Bruce Wayne after his parents were murdered. She knows Bruce is Batman yet despite the dangers. She supports him being the Batman.

Elza Gonzales as Selina Kyle.

A woman who Bruce has been dating for a while. The woman who would later or is possibly Catwoman now.

Emma Stone as Harleen Quinzel/Harley Quinn.

One of Jokers followers he’s gained along the way. A intern psychologist who was assigned to the Arthur one time. But soon fell in love with him and escaped with him. But compared to other interpretations, there isn’t really a abusive relationship between the two. Mainly just the idea Harley fell in love with Arthur/Joker but he doesn’t share the same feelings towards her. Which overtime her, “Love” for him slowly fades away, possibly helping the police track Joker now. Realizing she was never really in love with him.

Notes: To be honest it’s difficult to deal with Harley in this story. Because there is a reason why I said this feels like a third part of a trilogy. Because Harley sounds like she would be something like from a first sequel. Including this is what I have said there seems to be too many characters for this one story.

Especially with this angle because this Joker, while not abusive with her. Yet he doesn’t share the same feelings for her. With Joker or in this case Arthur still having feelings for Sophie after all these years. Especially it’s also the fact I’ve seen a person’s reply on a piece of Joker and Harley art(With the 2019 Joker and DCEU Harley with Batman) of this Joker probably wouldn’t abuse his Harley. But we don’t know about that.

I’m sorry if I seem to disregard this element. I’ll be honest I’m not big on the Joker and Harley ship. Mainly because of the whole abuse thing and just let Harley stay with Poison Ivy. Especially I guess this adds to the, “Softer” Joker thing I mentioned.

But yeah Harley is such a big character that just it’s interesting to imagine her in the world of Joker 2019. Yet I’m trying to be careful with what I do with these characters.

Also Emma Stone isn’t this permeant casting choice. It was just a casting choice I went with him because choosing a suitable actress for Harley is difficult. Including crap now I’m thinking of having a Poison Ivy cameo to just give Harley a girlfriend or whatever.

Especially I have wondered of putting Vicki Vale as a cameo. Maybe Emma Stone but I don’t know. As of now in this development Emma in Harley.

Leif Gantvoort as Bob the goon.

A follower of Joker who in 1981 helped Arthur Fleck escape from Arkham State Hospital. Ever since then Bob has been Jokers, “Number One Guy” basically his right hand man/2nd in command. He’s a man who believes in Jokers cause or if he even has one. These days he helps Joker with his acts of terrorism. Being one of his most devoted followers.

Notes: As you can tell it’s Bob from Batman 1989, basically in the same role in a way. Yet it probably won’t end the same way like it did in the 1989 film.

Other notes: I just wanna say I do have plans of showcasing Black Mask in this. But not as an important character. Mainly in a scene where he is talking to Joker, criticizing him for having no motive and everything he’s doing is doing nothing for anybody. Which results in Joker just straight up murdering Black Mask by shooting him in the face. All because Black Mask criticized Joker and what he was doing.

Mainly Black Mask’s men are shocked but don’t do anything. Because they just lost their leader and Jokers followers are there too in the meeting. In a way Joker kind of saved Gotham from Black Mask and his criminal army. But it also unleashed more chaos.

Especially Black Mask would mention Penguin as a reference of him being a, “Deformed freak” who is a weapons dealer and crime lord like Black Mask of sorts. Including Killer Croc was supposed to be in this as a minor character who Batman takes down. With Killer Croc being described as a cannibal with a skin condition making him look like some sort of reptile. But I feel this may be too much and Killer Croc deserves his own film maybe. I wanna put Scarecrow and Harvey Dent in some ways. But it’s already too much.

#joker 2019 #joker #Arthur Fleck #batman

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