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palidoozy-art · 3 years

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The more I think about your recent post about the changes you made to Strahd, the more I wonder about those changes you made to the others mentioned (Rahadin, Van Richten, Ireena, etc). I'd absolutely love to hear what adjustments you made as you already shared some stellar ideas already. Like the Tome? -Chef kiss- Amazing.

Oh mannn I do love talking about my campaign. I changed a lot with them. Again, weirdly enough, I think Strahd wound up being the most like his original incarnation. I could talk forever about the changes I made so I'll try to be brief haha. IT STILL WON'T BE BRIEF.

Obvious CoS spoilers below

IREENA - I thought it was weird that the picture they gave her makes her look like such a badass, and then the module just kind of writes her as a damsel in distress to either get kidnapped or pulled into water or dumped somewhere. To me, she's like, the second most important character in CoS -- and the book literally gives you less direction to roleplay her than her brother. Furthermore, reading her ending actually legit made me mad.

So I said fuck all that. Ireena in my game was a 19-year old girl who grew and developed over the course of the campaign. Several of my players actually said they thought of her as "the main character," just because she experienced a lot of character growth and development, going from a sheltered meek teenager to someone who can fight and assert herself. The biggest change I made to her though was that I very specifically did not just want her to be "Tatyana with memory loss." Ireena is a unique individual who happens to be partially made out of Tatyana's soul. While she shares many similarities with Tatyana, they're separate people, and part of what Ireena has to grapple with is how to live up to that. She's in the post-campaign because of that distinction -- while Sergei offered her to join him, she declined, because she wants to experience life past her twenties. I didn't get to play it out because we were kind of rushing towards the end, but I honestly envisioned a scene where she talks to the portrait of Tatyana, apologizing to her because she knows she's being selfish remaining alive.

This also brings up a unique problem in the post campaign. If Ireena dies, she ceases to exist and may not be able to be resurrected. When her soul leaves her body, it's Tatyana's again. Ireena very much wants to live. Tatyana doesn't. A resurrection has to be made with the consent of the soul, and if Tatyana declines, Ireena's just... gone. Forever.

Related: because I wasn't sure what my players would ask, and Rahadin would absolutely know this information -- there have been 18 incarnations of Tatyana, including the original. I actually have a timeline of when they were all born and how they died. The curse manifests in that they always die or are killed before their 25th birthday. If Strahd attempts to marry them, they lose their minds and throw themselves off of the same balcony the original Tatyana jumped off of during the ceremony. Strahd can never have Tatyana. Vampyr will ensure of that.

But yeah, essentially: Ireena gained actual class levels; she wasn't just Tatyana with memory loss; she traveled with the party for 90% of the campaign and wasn't just a macguffin to be kidnapped/take to places; and I removed any of the "Sergei takes her into water/the sky and you never see her again" endings because I absolutely hated those.

VAN RICHTEN - Van Richten I tweaked a lot from his original incarnation. First, I started him off as Lawful Neutral. No, game, I know you tell me he's Lawful Good, but I'm gonna have to disagree with you that "training a racist tiger to genocide an ethnic camp" falls under the spectrum of Lawful Good. Second, I changed him from cleric to artificer (alchemist). I somehow just got the impression the dude was a godless man, and so he felt more fitting to be a man of science rather than a man of the church. Third, since I wasn't sure the other dread domains were ever going to be brought into 5e I moved him out of Darkon and into another world from the outside.

His backstory was also tied more into Strahd and the campaign in general, as well as the Dark Powers. About 30 years ago, he went into the mists with his own adventuring party (that included Escher) to try to rescue his kidnapped son, Erasmus. He found his son half-turned and begging him for death. Killing him, Van Richten hunted down the Vistani woman (Ezmerelda's mother) who sold the man, and in a rage strangled her to death. This gave him a curse. Ezmerelda witnessed it happen.

He went on a warpath against vampire spawn and vistani alike, until Strahd proposed a deal to Escher. Escher lured the group to a familiar dinner date with Strahd... only for Strahd to murder all of them, including Van Richten. Van Richten was approached by a dark power -- Vaund the Evasive, and given the option to return to life in exchange for the promise that Van Richten would eventually return to Amber Temple and free him. He took it, waking up outside of Barovia. From there he became famed vampire-hunter-book-author, until in his early 50's he decided it was time to seek vengeance and fulfill his promise. He brought in his hat of disguise, came up with an alibi, and headed into Barovia as Rictavio the Great.

He was absolutely played as a much more morally grey character at the start (the party's first encounter with him rather than Rictavio was him literally torturing a dude). He softened over the course of the campaign as he grew attached to the party, until finally reaching a point in the post-campaign where he's considered Lawful Good

Also: Ezmerelda was treated more or less as his adoptive daughter. She absolutely argued against this every single time, but he even slipped up and referred to her as his daughter on a few tense occasions.

RAHADIN - Rahadin I adjusted a lot, too. A LOOOOOOT. Strahd being comically evil makes sense -- the dude is a darklord, that kind of comes with the territory. With Rahadin, I wanted him to have more motivations to his actions, because the base game actually suggests that the dude is actually capable of caring. In the base game, you can find him at Amber Temple, trying to "petition the dark god into releasing his master from his torment." He screams in grief if he finds Strahd dead. Furthermore it felt like the game glosses over the fact that the dude was adopted as Barov's son. It doesn't bother addressing how Rahadin felt about Sergei, who would in theory be his other brother. I thought a number of things suggested in his backstory were interesting, but not expanded upon in the base game. So I took it upon myself to do so.

I changed how dusk elf society was built, which affected the three major dusk elf characters. It worked off of a pretty brutal caste system, with three kings at the top overseeing all of it. Rahadin was born in a lower caste, but actually brought into the warrior caste after a member of royalty was intrigued by his stature. Rahadin worked as a general, but grew frustrated by the inefficiencies of the caste system and its inequality. He started attempting to use his influence to petition other members of nobility into changing or loosening the strict system.

Patrina caught wind of this, and viewing it as a threat to her lifestyle + viewing it as an easy way to gain brownie points with those above her... tattled on him to the three kings, spinning what he was doing as treason. Rahadin was arrested and subsequently tortured. They attempted to execute him on a breaking wheel, breaking his bones against the spokes and leaving him in the town square as an example. He wound up escaping, crawling his way out of town until he was subsequently rescued by a group of human monks. The event pretty much broke him, morally. He went to Barov soon after and sold his people out, taking a personal hand in helping annihilate the dusk elves and conquering their land. Barov was so impressed by the man's loyalty that he adopted him as his son.

Part of this was done to make a connection as to why the hell Rahadin just absolutely fuckin' hates Patrina so much (since that definitely got played up during the campaign). When thinking of Rahadin's motivations, I tried to come at it from the angle that this man was evil... but legitimately cared deeply about Strahd, Sergei, and Tatyana. He was devestated from the events of the wedding, but saw Strahd's return as a second chance. As the lone surviving witness from the wedding, he desperately wanted to help the three of them. But his own blind loyalty to Strahd and his broken moral compass prevented him from doing so.

One of my favorite little additions was a sidequest I offered to the players (they wanted to redeem Rahadin). They were requested by him to retrieve (well, "not destroy or sell") one of his most precious belongings in his office. When they get there... it turns out it's a birthday card and a worn-out old amulet from Sergei and Tatyana that he's kept after all these years. They got Ireena to read the letter to him, to help him keep going after Strahd's death.

anyway i could ramble on about changes forever but i don't want this post to get too long haha. i have. many feelings. over this campaign. maybe at some point I'll do a separate post with some of the others.

i also kinda wanna do a comic of an event from Rahadin's backstory for my players but we'll see, I might deem it "too stupid."

#palidoozy rambles #curse of strahd #curse of strahd spoilers #cos #cos spoilers #WARNING IT LONG #I HAVE MANY FEELINGS ABOUT THESE THREE CHARACTERS

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innuendostudios · 3 years

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Thoughts on... some funny games

[no spoilers to speak of]

Thoughts on Lair of the Clockwork God

The wisdom of the gaming cognoscenti insists that comedy is hard to do in video games. Having grown up with Monkey Island and Zork, I've never found this convincing. But one true thing is this: it's hard to write about comedic games. The ineffability of humor is hard enough to describe in less-interactive media; I can't even explain to my partner why Gretchen saying "I met January Jones once!" on You're the Worst busted me up, and they were sitting right next to me when she said it. Throw in the "you had to be there" nature of the player's active participation and I lose myself in a cornfield. The thing I found hilarious might come a beat to early for you, or not at all, or not be funny in text like it is in gameplay.

Why did I like Lair of the Clockwork God? It made me laugh.

The premise and particulars are a lot of "that could go either way." Ben and Dan - stars of Ben There, Dan That and Time Gentleman, Please! - have returned. Ben is still an adventure game star, but Dan has adopted platforming mechanics in an attempt to get with the times. So playing the game involves switching back and forth between a character who can leap across canyons but can't pick up items or talk to people, and one who can combine inventory but can't climb over a 3-pixel rock.

Does that sound potentially funny? Potentially grating? Yes to both!

The plot centers around our heroes trying to save the world from several simultaneous apocalypses and having to teach human emotions to a supercomputer in order to do so. (Don't ask.) These means, rather like Ben There, Dan That, traipsing through a number of fantasy worlds (read: computer simulations) until the correct emotion is provoked. This requires cross-genre cooperation: finding ways to get Ben to areas only Dan can access, getting Dan new power ups by combining objects in Ben's inventory (an act Dan insists on calling "crafting").

The best bits are at these intersections, when Dan's platforming is the puzzliest and Ben's puzzles take advantage of Dan's skills. Periodically the game gives you a Dan-centric platforming gauntlet the controls are NOT precise nor pleasant enough for, or a Ben-only moon logic puzzle that leaves you googling the walkthrough.

But I liked it! A lot. The genre-hopping seems to have invigorated the developers, Ben Ward and Dan Marshall. I discussed my favorite joke in Ben There, Dan That (in what is probably the least popular video I've ever made that wasn't asking for money), but was also dismayed that the game was never that clever again. But this one is, several times over! Progression here involves cheating your way to a better respawn zone, goofing around in game menus, exploiting "glitches," exiting out and loading up entirely other games. There is a lot of poking and prodding at what a game of this nature can or should be.

But, honestly? The only real selling point is... it was funny. The humor is as anarchic and metatextual as in previous titles, but it feels good-natured in a way BT,DT didn't. And there are, here and there, little bits of meat on its bones - the characters wondering if, as a couple thirtysomething white guys, the world hasn't left them behind, no longer comfortable with the juvenile humor of their youth but not really understanding the youth of today, but having not yet fully escaped the mentalities they used to hold. (There's an unspoken humor to Dan's idea of "modern" gameplay being 2D platforming mechanics, especially at a time when adventure games are significantly more popular than on his last outing; this is a good joke whether or not it's intentional.)

Also: this game contains the most poignant urinating-on-a-grave puzzle in gaming history, and you may quote me on that.

Having finished it months ago, I can't even remember what all the gags were that tickled me at the time. Comedy fades from memory faster than drama or frustration. Mostly I just remember having a good time.

Thoughts on The Darkside Detective

Here's a hook: sometime after the mayhem ends in Ghostbusters, The Exorcist, Evil Dead 2, or some other paranormal blockbuster that you watched over and over in the 90's until the VHS wore out, some overworked detective has to come into your town and piece together what the hell happened.

This is his story.

It's a good gag, and the devs wring every drop from it. Existing in a world where these things are commonplace and you have to fit them into some notion of "police procedure" is just funny. Like, it's one thing to have a running gag where you keep observing the moon in outdoor scenes, commenting, with increasing hostility, that its behavior is suspicious (it has been present at multiple crime scenes); it's a slightly different thing when, given the things you've encountered, the moon being the Big Bad is actually somewhat possible.

The game is divided into six main cases and three bonus DLC missions (which come included in the base game now, and the third of which is the proper ending/setup for the sequel). You are the cop tasked to deal with The Other Side - and, when The Other Side bleeds into our own world, its cops have to deal with you. You have a sidekick with a mental maturity of about 6, which I guess makes you the straight man. (You have to grade on a curve to find a straight man in this game.) And you solve tasks like rounding up escaped gremlins or finding an AWOL lake monster all juxtaposed with mundane problems like inter-office squabbles and having not bought your Christmas presents early enough. It's (pleasantly) lo-res and sparsely isolated, so the dialogue and premise do most of the work, but they are ably up to the task.

The gameplay... not so much. I'm an adventure game lifer, so I can put up with a lot of nonsense. It's mostly straightforward inventory puzzles and occasional minigames. Most of the puzzles are fine enough. As the cases progress, things get more involved, and the DLCs especially involve some awful moon logic. And the minigames are not above using that same jumping peg puzzle you've solved in a dozen other games already. So gameplay ranges from serviceable to irritating, but it mostly exists to string together funny lines and silly images. (Christmas mall elves being secretly in service to Krampus - that's the kind of thing we're talking about here.) You won't feel much guilt for opening up a walkthrough; the puzzles aren't why you're here.

The sequel has just been released, and both games are cheap, so check them out if you feel like smiling.

Thoughts on The Procession to Calvary

It's rare for a game to be hilarious to look at.

The Procession to Calvary takes its name from the Bruegel painting. It also takes all it's graphics from Renaissance oil paintings, and the designer delights in making famously rendered heroes and religious icons steal, stab, fart, and swear.

A strong Terry-Gilliam-with-After-Effects vibe is what we're describing.

You play as a lady knight from a war that's just ended, which sucks for you because, in this age of peace, you're no longer authorized to kill. And killing's, like, you're whole thing. But the one person your new, pacifist king wouldn't stop you from killing is the warlord you just deposed, who fled to the South. So you embark on a nonsensical journey to seek out the one human on Earth you are authorized to kill, because killing is just The. Best. Ever.

Of the three games we're discussing, this is the most overtly cheeky, and, at times, the most scatological. I could've done with a bit less scatology, if I'm being honest, but the cheekiness is very winning. As with Lair of the Clockwork God, a lot of jokes could go either way - a field of people being tortured and a woman on a blanket selling commemorative torture merch could be painfully try-hard. But something about the victims being seemingly everyone ever crucified or broken on the wheel in a famous painting, and having them writhe on their crosses in a way that is both gruesome and goofy, and having a cacophonous soundtrack of their screams and moans that you will now imagine every time you look at one of those elegantly elegiac paintings from now on... it works. That the music score is being played by an extremely jaunty piper who dances behind you just out of sword's reach as you traverse the field pushes it over the top.

Oh, and the puzzles, while never hair-pullingly obtuse, will leave you stumped at times. Push past that to get the proper ending, but, if you're sick of trying, you can, at any point, just start stabbing your way through problems. Which, again: it takes a very deft touch to make "protagonist resorts to violence" actually funny rather than lazy and obvious. And maybe, in another game, the perfect timing of every animation, the clever quips, the careful contrast of cathedrals and high-society music halls with gleeful sword-swinging wouldn't be enough. But something about it being frickin' Renaissance paintings carries it the last mile.

This is probably the basest game of the three, but it's also the one that made me giggle the most. Having a BFA that required several art history classes may have something to do with it. But check this thing out.

#capsule review #darkside detective #lair of the clockwork god #procession to calvary

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quazartranslates · 3 years

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Welcome to the Nightmare Game - CH90

**This is an edited machine translation. For more information, please [click here]**

[<<< Previous Chapter | Table of Contents | Next Chapter >>>]

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Chapter 90: Castle Cry (XVII)

With the deepening of the plot, the fire in the old castle didn't look like an ordinary fire accident anymore. Since the involvement of the devil worship, the situation had become more and more complicated.

Dr. Lu also suspected Johann, the male owner of the castle, and guessed whether he sacrificed his wife to the Devil. However, Su He put forward an objection: "It should not be wrong that the person making the sacrifice was Mrs. Sarah. She has the best motive and the source of the sacrifice is also her. The current offerings include her hair, teeth, and eyeballs. The remaining three may also be integral parts of her body, or they may be related to her. I suggest finding these things before the final battle, as they’re related to the completion of the task."

"That she sacrificed to the Devil was for the sake of what? To pray for yourself to get pregnant, or to pray for your child to come back from the dead?" Dr. Lu asked again.

Qi Leren shook his head: "I don't think so."

Judging from the phantoms he has seen so far, the crazy lady loved her child, but she loved her husband more. The trigger of the miscarriage made her inherited mental illness break out, and her mental problems aggravated her love and madness. As Nina said, she suspected that her husband was unfaithful to her. And the source of this suspicion... I'm afraid was that woman named Adeline.

According to Johann's diary, Mrs. Sarah and Adeline should have been friends or relatives who grew up together since childhood, they were not blood-related sisters, but Adeline had died before they came to China.

Judging from the situation with Nan Lu, who seems to be possessed by the crazy lady, she seemed to be jealous of Adeline and thought that she was being haunted…

"There are six sacrifices. Why that number?" Dr. Lu asked Su He.

"Well... Probably because in the Nightmare World, 6 is the number representing the Devils." Su He said quietly, "Numbers are very interesting in the Nightmare World. Many numbers have special meanings. For example, 4 stands for luck and 7 stands for 'I love you'. If you want to express your confession to an NPC, you can send her seven red roses, and 77 will also do."

"It’s a few roses less expensive than on earth," Dr. Lu spat and followed Su He up the stairs.

"Still not leaving?" The two people who had stepped up the stairs to look for the nursery on the third floor found that Qi Leren was still in a daze.

Qi Leren made a noise in answer, recovered from his meditative state, and continued to go up.

Maybe there would be more clues for him later.

The lay-out of the third floor was similar to that of the second floor, and the number of rooms was not far behind. Qi Leren singled Dr. Lu out for the first time: "It's time to play your role. Feel which room is the baby room."

Dr. Lu angrily said, "Do you think I am a B-ultrasound probe?! How do I know which one before opening the door!"

"You’re not a small expert in finding things," Qi Leren inclined his gaze.

Dr. Lu snorted and took the keys to try the door. Qi Leren and Su He studied the blood on the ground. Two blood stains spread from the stairs to the corridor on the third floor, and dragged all the way to the depths of the corridor. This terrible blood was naturally from the torn-in-half Xiao Hong, and it looked terrible.

"Are we going to follow it?" Qi Leren asked Su He.

Su He shook his head slowly. "Don't worry. I think that direction should be the last boss battle."

"Eh?" Qi Leren made a voice of doubt. "It can’t happen there."

Su He smiled and pointed over his head: "To be precise, it’s above."

"Above," Qi Leren looked up and looked at the ceiling, suddenly saying, "You mean the garden on the roof?"

"Well, there should be a staircase at the end of the corridor leading to the garden at the top of the castle. The blood can be said to show us the way, and maybe we will meet the dog, so let's collect some clues, lest the completion be too low," Su He said steadily.

Qi Leren nodded hard. The biggest advantage of having Su He was that he could stop thinking. His IQ could only be said to be average. It was really painful to rack one's brains for the task. Now he had a plug-in with him, which made him feel a lot easier. He just needed to go up and work hard when it was needed... Although it was really "high-level".

Unfortunately, when Dr. Lu opened the door, a skeleton dressed as a maid was found in one of the rooms, and he was so scared that he was crying and screaming. Qi Leren had no choice but to come forward to escort him. As the mascot to raise his lucky value, Dr. Lu could never afford to lose.

Dr. Lu squatted in the corner sadly and waited for Qi Leren to deal with the skeleton. Su He looked at him condescendingly, suddenly sighed and said seriously, "Although luck is important sometimes, luck alone is not enough."

Dr. Lu mumbled something twice and whispered, "I know, but I just can't get past that hurdle... No matter what difficult things I encounter, from small to large, I’ll always solve them inexplicably and go smoothly... I..."

Su He squatted down with him and patted him on the shoulder kindly: "I understand that it’s not easy to change who you’ve been for the past twenty years. The choice is whether you change quickly or die quickly."

Dr. Lu glanced at him begrudgingly and felt that he was covered with dead flags.

"Okay!" Three or two hits solved the skeleton. Qi Leren shouted ahead. They stood up. Dr. Lu continued to open the doors. This time, he finally found the right room.

The dusty door was opened, and the window facing the door was also sealed with wooden bars. The window was already broken a long time ago. The rain and water outside the window were blown into the room with the wind. Lightning lit up this small room from time to time, and dolls of all sizes were everywhere in every corner. They were burnt to pieces, had soaked in the moisture, and had mildewed and blackened, ghostly in the pale light.

Qi Leren felt uncomfortable as soon as he stepped into the room. The demon power here was much stronger than that in the piano room. He looked around the room and finally stopped before walking to the baby cradle.

It's not that he felt anything, but that the doll held by the crazy lady in the basement was impressed upon him, and the one in the cradle was exactly the same as the one in her arms.

"You see..." Qi Leren was inviting the two people to see, and suddenly there was a deafening slam of the door behind him - slamming on something hard.

Qi Leren looked back, and Su He stood by the door, and the walking stick in his hand had just gotten stuck in the door, preventing the door from closing.

Su He smiled helplessly: "No matter what kind of task, the law is always the same... Be careful, these dolls are going to be resurrected."

His voice had just fallen when the atmosphere in the nursery suddenly changed. The giggling of children came from every corner. A few palm-sized dolls jumped on the ground like mice, and flashed by in the thunder and lightning outside the window, hiding in the doll pile.

Qi Leren's hand holding the dagger tightened. He stuck to the wall and looked at the high and low dolls in the room.

They were laughing and moving. These toys made by people were endowed with evil life by the Devil’s power, and could come at them at any time!

"Ah--" the doll in the cradle let out a shrill scream, rolled over and rolled down the cradle, and jumped into the doll pile to hide.

Just like a call to arms, the dolls who had been moving only slightly giggled in unison and rushed at them!

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Editor’s Notes: Keep that meaning of the number seven in mind, friends ;)

Aaaand we’re back to regular updates! A small change though: I’m going to be slowing updates down to once every two days rather than every day, as my new semester began this past week and is already looking to be more intensive than my previous one. (Feel free to follow me on my twitter if you would like to see me occassionally yelling in frustration over dead languages and homophobic historians.) This new schedule may shift either way (ie. more or less often) once I get a better feel for how things will be; I’ll keep you updated.

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[<<< Previous Chapter | Table of Contents | Next Chapter >>>]

#Welcome to the Nightmare Game #欢迎来到噩梦游戏 #danmei

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maxsmusicmacrology · 4 years

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Artist Profile: Toby Fox

Many of you may be most familiar with Toby Fox as “the guy who made Undertale”, or maybe as “the guy who made Megalovania”. The latter is actually a surprisingly useful way to think of the man, as the journey of Megalovania is wound very closely to the journey of Toby Fox. Just trust me on this part.

In the mid 00’s, Fox was a teenager frequenting Starman.net, a popular forum for the game EarthBound and the other titles in the Mother series, under the username “Radiation”. He created two ROM hacks of the game, releasing the first one in 2006, but his much more successful and influential hack was the EarthBound Halloween Hack, a submission to a 2008 Halloween-themed competition run by Starman.net.

After Fox rose to popularity, he went on to say that he’s not very proud of the hack, and in a deleted 2016 tweet he referred to it as a “bad rom hack with swears”. Having played through it, it’s an apt description- several of the fights are incredibly unbalanced and the villain drops a few slurs- but I don’t believe the hack should be entirely written off either.

In 2008, hacking new music into EarthBound was incredibly difficult, so both composing original music using the EarthBound soundfont and getting it to play in the game was an impressive achievement. While the game certainly has the usual Halloween aesthetic, full of pumpkins and zombies and ghosts, the real horror of the game is psychological, creating a much more fascinating story than a traditional halloween slasher. The final villain is consumed by grief after the death of his son and the estrangement of his wife, becoming a broken man who turns to violence— which are the exact same themes that would later be explored through Asgore when Fox would go on to make Undertale.

Anyway, this was the first and original appearance of Megalovania.

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In 2009, Andrew Hussie launched his webcomic Homestuck on mspaintadventures.com, his fourth and final work to be published on the site. It ran until ending 2016 (with Epilogues launching a few years later), and is best known for having possibly the worst fandom in modern history until people started losing interest in 2013. Its second most notable characteristic is how heavily it embraced its online medium, including not just text and images but also gifs, animations with music, and even little interactive games. Over the comic’s seven year run over 500 pieces were written as part of Homestuck’s discography by a variety of artists, and while only a few dozen were included as part of the comic, all of them were made available online through Bandcamp under the Homestuck umbrella.

Toby Fox joined the music team in 2010 with two contributions to the comic’s fourth album, and from there he went on to be their most prolific contributor. From 2010-2016 Homestuck published roughly 90 of Fox’s songs, and he also hosted and managed a contest that led to nearly 60 fan contributed pieces being published. After Homestuck ended, Toby Fox went on to be one of the composers for the various spin off titles: Hiveswap Act One, Hiveswap Friendsim, and Pesterquest, so it seems he has no intent to leave the Homestuck universe anytime soon.

Undertale’s soundtrack was highly praised through its use of leitmotifs (and trust me, I’ll be talking about that plenty later on), but some of his tracks written for Homestuck make even better use of their motifs and reach some fairly complex heights. This video goes through Descend, which ended up during a critical moment during the early comic, and lists the twenty seven songs sampled during.

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Of course, these aren’t just empty motifs for fun. The characters introduced thus far all have various themes associated with them, each motif bringing to mind the characters, their factions, and their histories. This is musical storytelling done through completely instrumental songs, and it is fantastically done. Several of his tracks do this, Jade’s medium entrance theme Umbral Ultimatum samples three songs she’d already appeared in, and his final track for the comic’s main run was a glorious melody of several prior battle themes.

Anyway, in 2010 he published the second appearance of MeGaLoVania, which was used during the [S] Wake animation and appeared on a 2011 album.

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In 2012, Toby Fox contributed to an EarthBound fan album called “I miss you”, organized by bandcamp user sleepytime Jesse. He contributed four tracks, including Fallen Down (which would later feature in Undertale) and a remix of Megalovania. This isn’t a major milestone in his career like his EarthBound hacks or Homestuck, but I think it says a lot that he loves EarthBound and its community so much that he’d compose songs for a small fan album.

In 2015, Undertale came out and took the internet by storm. Like it or hate it, it was everywhere you looked for a while, from every gaming channel covering it to endless quoting on Reddit or Tumblr. Fox made the majority of the game himself, which of course includes making the soundtrack. There are a total of one hundred and one songs, and it would not surprise me if every single one of them (except Megalovania) was tied to all the others through some web of samples, remixes, and motifs.

Oh yeah, the third version of Megalovania is here, once again featuring as a final battle theme.

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Once again, Fox uses motifs expertly as a form of storytelling. Let’s take a look at the track ASGORE, which is entirely created from other songs. The opening is bergentrückung, the intro theme that plays before the battle starts. That flows into Heartache, the battle theme of his ex-wife Toriel, showing that even after she left him, she’s still important enough to be part of his main theme. It also includes the Game Over theme, guiding the player to remember that it was his voice encouraging to continue playing when they failed, urging them forward only to reach him, as well as Undyne’s theme, who looks up to and idolizes him without knowing the truth of who he is.

The entire game is like this. If the player decides to turn evil, they gain a genocide motif that appears in some of the genocide-only bosses. The true final boss is foreshadowed through His Theme during important moments. Undyne and Alphys end up dating in the true ending, and in the genocide run Undyne resurrects herself from the brink of death while Alphys’s melody plays.

Fox’s music makes itself special by being so connected. His songs call back and call forward to other songs, making each of them important in some way or another. The Homestuck and Undertale soundtracks feel holistic, they’re not just “songs that happen to be written by the same guy”, they’re united soundtracks where every song has a greater meaning than just the scene they play over. Hell, even the Homestuck and Undertale soundtracks reference each other, and not just through Megalovania. Another Medium from the latter soundtrack samples Doctor from the former, and the final battle theme Collide samples Death By Glamour.

He’s currently working on his new game Deltarune, the first chapter of which (and its soundtrack) are available for free on PC and various consoles. The music already slaps, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Anyway, the fourth and (as of now final) version of Megalovania was included into none other than Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, added into the game alongside a Sans costume for Mii fighters.

youtube

This, in my opinion, is nothing short of incredible. Toby Fox went from a Nintendo fan who made a “bad rom hack with swears” for a game he liked, and now his music is appearing in one of the largest gaming franchises of all time. Shoot for the stars, everyone.

I think this is the part where I’m supposed to give a track listing, but come on, you’ve been reading. 90 Homestuck tracks and 101 Undertale tracks, plus everything before and after and in between. Fortunately, his page on the Undertale wiki has his entire discography listed, so I’m going to take the easy way out and link that.

https://undertale.fandom.com/wiki/Toby_Fox#Discography

He has done and has planned a few other projects, but I think the right place to end off is by mentioning his contribution to Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield, the Battle Tower theme. This is notable not only for being an awesome song that he composed for a massive franchise, but because it samples one of his early contributions to the Homestuck fandom. I am of course talking about The Baby Is You, an “opera” he wrote as a fan contribution to protest forum rules, which was subsequently banned from even being mentioned on said forum. Not only is this another example of all Fox’s projects fitting in with each other, it’s also a nearly decade-old callback to an obscure edgy joke he made and then hid as an easter egg (or an afikoman for you Jewish folk) in an official Nintendo title.

And I think that’s beautiful.

#toby fox #earthbound #homestuck #undertale #nintendo #radiation #artist profile #music

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libertyreads · 3 years

Text

Best and Worst Books of 2020

This has been a mess of a year for everyone, but I actually managed to get a lot of books read. I decided to repeat this post from last year because I enjoyed going back through all the things I read and remembering how I felt about them.

I’ll try to avoid any repeats, but I’m sure it’ll happen at some point. If you want more info about my feelings on these books, check out my ratings and reviews on GoodReads.

Best Sci-Fi: This one was such an easy pick for me. All Systems Red by Martha Wells. This whole series just knocks it out of the park. The Murderbot Diaries is a series about a Security Bot who hacks their governor module so they can just watch their shows all day. Too bad the humans they’re assigned to protect are getting into trouble left and right. Worst Sci-Fi: Starstruck by Brenda Hiatt. I remember this being a free e-book that I picked up this year. I explained it to my husband as a sci-fi version of Twilight. You get a small town nerdy girl with few friends who suddenly becomes important when this alien boy pays attention to her. It was definitely a book of its time. Best Fantasy: A Fantasy that I really enjoyed this year was Fable by Adrienne Young. It is about a girl whose pirate father leaves her stranded on a deserted island after her mother dies. If she can survive, she can find her way back to him and receive her inheritance. It goes in depth about family and friendship. Plus found families. Am I right? Worst Fantasy: The Magicians by Lev Grossman. Oh boy. How do I get into it with this one without regurgitating my review? I had a problem with the author taking all of the best known magical stories of all time and twisting them throughout this dense book in order to point out that magic is a problem to be dealt with and not all unicorns and rainbows--just to rip that point out of the reader’s hands in the last four pages of the novel. Please read my review I go so in depth there. Best Contemporary: Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson. I think this was mostly just that I read this book at the right time. This book is about a family who is going through a hard time when the father is diagnosed with terminal cancer. They decide to spend one final summer at their cabin on the lake before he passes. I distinctly remember crying my eyes out at the end of this one and it hitting me so hard. Worst Contemporary: Girls in the Moon by Janet McNally. This was a Book of the Month pick for me at a time when they had less variety in their options. I felt like I couldn’t keep pushing back my picks every month. It’s a story about this rock band family who divorced in the late 90s and the fall out for their two children while one moves to New York to pursue a music career. A lot of fluff and almost no substance. Best Mystery: This is the year I realized that I like YA Mystery novels and not a lot else in the mystery genre. I had a three way tie for best Mystery and they call came from the YA Age Range. The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson, In the Hall with the Knife by Diana Peterfreund, and The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. These were all done so well and all taking the things I love about mysteries and twisting them. Worst Mystery: In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware. I had heard so many amazing things about this book, but it fell so flat for me. I hate unreliable narrators. Why are they necessary in this genre? I feel like if you need an unreliable narrator to write a good mystery then you’re a bad mystery author. Best YA: Traitor to the Throne by Alwyn Hamilton. This is book 2 in the Rebel of the Sands series. It’s a desert Fantasy that is written so well. The world building is fantastic. We have a rebellion, magic, and some amazing characters. In book two we see Amani thrust into court politics. I marathoned this whole series in a couple of weeks and loved the adventure. Worst YA: The worst YA book I read this year was Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke. I felt like the story went no where and the writing was overly flowery. I’m sure it does good things for some people but it’s the polar opposite of what I love in books. Best Adult: For this one we have a two way tie. The first book is House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) by Sarah J. Maas. Is this the next great American novel? Of course not. But I had an amazing time reading this book. I felt so many feelings and the world building was fantastic. The second book is In A Holidaze by Christina Lauren. I read an ARC of this for my Christmas in July and enjoyed it so much I had to read it again right before Christmas. It was perfect for getting in the Christmas spirit. Worst Adult: This category is also a two way tie. I read The Broken Girls by Simone St. James and thoroughly disliked the mystery aspect of the story. I felt like it was left too open ended and it completely put me off. The second is a book of poetry called Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur. It felt like a lot of these poems were incomplete thoughts. Maybe it’s how open it is too interpretation again, but I really did not like this at all. Best New Release: This feels like the hardest category to pick from. If we’re going based on ratings, Check, Please! Volume #2: Sticks and Scones is the highest rated new release that I read this year. But I also have a couple of YA Mystery novels that I read this year that I loved and that stuck with me throughout the year. The first is The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson which is the third book in the Truly Devious series and finishes out that mystery arc. The second is The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes which I have been raving about since I read it this fall. The Inheritances games is the first book in a new series that is like a combination of Knives Out and Clue plus puzzles minus a few murders. It’s just so good. So, a top three for this category I guess. Worst New Release: The Bookweaver’s Daughter by Malavika Kannan. This one was easy to pick hands down. I felt like this book brushed over some major events that happened. As well, there’s a major lack of world building in this novel. I think with some polishing it could have made for a good middle grade novel but was sold as a YA novel. Best Backlist: The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty. I’m normally not huge into Adult Fantasy, but I feel like the author does a good job of making the world accessible to the reader even though it’s vast with a lot of political machinations. Probably one of the best series I read start to finish this year. Worst Backlist: The Cruelty by Scott Bergstrom. I was going to put in Wink Poppy Midnight here again, but technically I gave The Cruelty the same rating and I wanted to avoid repeats. For this one, I gave a LENGTHY review about my problems with the book. I wanted to like it, but the author’s internalized ableism and misogyny really ruined the party here. Best 2021 ARC: This was a two way tie between “You Have a Match” by Emma Lord and “Shipped” by Angie Hockman. I had no idea I enjoyed these equally because they’re such different books. Both are contemporaries but “You Have A Match” is YA Contemporary about families and secrets while “Shipped” is an Adult Contemporary about a hate to love romance and work/life balance. Worst 2021 ARC: “The Castle School (for Troubled Girls)” by Alyssa B. Sheinmel. This one is more of a problem about what the publishers sold the book as. Because the book summary wasn’t correct when it came to the whole point of the book. So I went in with completely incorrect expectations. I think because of the plot twist I would have still rated it lower than the other 2021 ARCs I read, but it would have been a closer contest. Best Standalone: I Hope You’re Listening by Tom Ryan. This is a YA Mystery that came out this Fall that I really enjoyed. It’s about a girl who is present when her friend gets taken from the woods. Years later she still has trouble dealing with being the child left behind so she starts a podcast to help people solve missing persons cases. It also had a surprise cult element that I wasn’t expecting and really enjoyed. Worst Standalone: Meet Me at Fir Tree Lodge by Rachel Dove. This one is a bit blurred in my brain. I think that really speaks to how I feel about this one. It is about a girl whose life falls apart after a skiing accident and how she tries to put it back together. But it involves a romance with an Alpha Male character which everyone hates at this point. I wanted it to be sweeter and softer and more heart wrenching than it was. Best Book in a Series: All Systems Red by Martha Wells. I scoured my spreadsheets to try to find a book I hadn’t already gushed over, but there’s a reason this one is in the top of so many categories. I love Murderbot and following all of their misadventures. The Murderbot Diaries is a series about a Security Bot who has hijacked their Governor Module and just wants to watch their serials all day. But those pesky human’s they’re hired to protect keep getting themselves in trouble. Worst Book in a Series: I found the book in a series that I gave the worst rating to and I had to go over my review to try to remember what it’s even about. I read Legacy of Ash by Matthew Ward which is the first book in the Legacy Trilogy. And I still don’t remember much about it. I remember it being dense and hard to read without getting a lot out of the book in reward for my effort. It was a hard slog and clearly not great if I can’t remember what it’s about less than 9 months after I read it.

#end of the year posts #booklr #bookstagram #best books #worst books #best book #worst book #books of 2020 #books read in 2020 #2020 reading challenge #goodreads challenge #goodreads

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desiree-harding-fic · 5 years

Text

Broken Engagement Au (Chapter 1???)

“I’m not going to write another long fic while I already have a WIP,” I say through gritted teeth. “I’m not going to do it it’s a stupid decision and I’m not going to do it.”

So @fandomsnstuff is to blame for this and I can say that because she’s an incorrigible enabler, but here’s 1500 words of broken engagement because I can’t get over it.

CREDIT: Taako’s last name has been shamelessly stolen from Bureau of Badass by Chemicallywrit and miceenscene on Ao3, and @bureauofbadass on tumblr. Because it’s been my modern au name for Taako ever since I read that fic the first time, which, if you haven’t read it, drop everything and I’ll see you in a few days. Now that’s some writing.

Check the #broken engagement au tag on my blog for more snippets!

————————

“Angus?” Taako says mildly from behind his desk.

“Hmm??” The kid hums from where he’s hanging upside down off Taako’s ratty classroom couch in the corner. His glasses are half falling off his face, but he’s got a book held up a few inches from his nose anyway. The thing is, the book is right-side up.

“Whatcha doin’ there, kiddo?” Taako asks, marking through another sentence on the paper in front of him with a frown.

“Well, sir,” Angus starts in that tone that always makes Taako bite down on a grin, “I read them too fast right side up. I think my comprehension is suffering because the words go by too fast.”

“Bullshit,” Taako says, ignoring Angus’s language, sir! “Your comprehension is fine and you know it. You’re just a show-off nerd,” he teases.

“Says the one who had a powerpoint about LGBT influences in 16th Century literature ready last week for the eventuality that someone in your class called Mercutio ‘kinda gay,’”

“Hey, that was a good lesson –” Taako starts in, but the kid sits up abruptly on the couch, putting the book down and picking up his phone. Taako can hear another buzz of a message coming in as the kid is scrolling through it.

“My dad’s here, sir,” he says, “he’s on his way to the room now.”

“About time.” Taako puts the essay back in the section folder, slips it into his bag to grade when he gets home. The grading is endless. One of his least favorite parts of the job. Who needs grades anyway? All his kids are smart. Seems dumb to hold them all to the same arbitrary standard.

“I’m sorry for keeping you, sir,” Angus says, and he’s moved over to the desk he threw his backpack down on when he came into the room almost an hour ago. He looks a little unsure, and Taako curses himself silently in his head.

“It’s ok, kid,” he says, trying to make sure he sounds like he means it so Angus won’t feel bad, “I told you, it ain’t no thing for me to stay after a bit to talk to your old man.”

Angus is… a special case. Taako’s never had anything like him in a class before. Kid’s only just turned 12 years old and he’s already starting high school. A real whiz-kid, but it’s a tough world out there, high school being full of teenagers of all shapes, sizes, and personalities, for a literal kid –

Hence Taako.

He’s been teaching at Neverwinter Academy for almost four years now, grateful every second of the time that anyone deigned to give him a job (and thank the gods for Principal Davenport), much less at a premier private school where he’s largely allowed to make his own curriculum with only a few guidelines. It’s a good job. Taako likes it. It’s stable and it’s safe and no one’s going to die from Taako’s lecturing and he actually kind of has a knack with the kids, weirdly enough.

Hence Angus and Taako.

Neverwinter Secondary Academy has a mentorship program. Kids who seem to struggle a bit academically get paired with a faculty adviser to help see them through. Well Angus is anything but struggling – he’s gotten straight As on every assignment Taako’s given thus far – but all the same, Taako was contacted at the beginning of the year about the kid. He was placed right in the program anyway, not for academic reasons for once, but for social.

You have a knack for getting close to the students, Davenport’s email had read. While I see no reason why Angus shouldn’t succeed at NSA, he might have some difficulty adjusting socially. His parent originally contacted us about the idea, and I have to say I agree that giving Angus an extra support figure can only be beneficial.

Taako had agreed, of course; how could he say no? And meeting Angus had really cinched it. Kid’s only been in Taako’s class a little over a month, but he’s already maybe one of Taako’s favorite students, like, ever. Not that Taako plays favorites. He likes all his students just the same, thank you very much.

(Angus is definitely his favorite.)

It didn’t help that the kid’s a goofball smartass nerd, either, which is the exact archetype that makes up like… 98% of Taako’s family and close friends. It doesn’t help that he’s got a single parent keeping everything together at home based on the school records and the email chain back and forth. It doesn’t help that his dad, who he mentions about as often to Taako as people talk about like… the weather, seems like a really genuine guy who’s trying really hard based on the email chain they’ve had going. Angus’s dad set up the parent/teacher conference, even, to check in on how things are going, one-on-one with Angus’s adviser. It’s almost disgustingly practical and good and loving and it seems like everything in this kid’s entire life has been engineered to make Taako fuckin’ love him.

It’s really not fair. He teaches like 90 students. He’s not supposed to have favorites.

And yet.

There’s a knock on Taako’s door and they both look up, Angus smiling immediately, which definitely isn’t cute, Taako, Christ, and Taako gets up from his desk and smooths his shirt out. He dressed normal today and everything. He knows the kids like his… eccentric style, but parents? Parents are always a different game. And knowing he was about to meet Angus’s dad today gave him pause that morning. Still. The soft blue button down and slacks are a touch rumpled from a day’s work. He could look better.

He gets up and goes to the door, Angus trailing along behind.

*****

Neverwinter Secondary Academy could be a maze for all Kravitz’s skill navigating his way to Angus’s classroom, which is of course the farthest from the front office that any in this place could be, surely, and he’s already late after being kept at work, and he’s sure that Angus’s teacher is at the very least unimpressed with him and more likely annoyed, which is just what he needed -

He finally finds his way, sees the sign reading T. Peynirci, and he takes a moment to smooth out the wrinkles in his jacket from the day (which of course does no good because it never does), before he raises his hand and knocks on Mr. Peynirci’s door.

And Taako opens it.

“Ah,” Taako says, and then nothing else, his hand hovering in midair where it was clearly extended for a handshake -

“Dad!” Angus says, “this is my adviser and English teacher, Mr. Peynirci,” and there’s a little bit of a sneer in it that Kravitz doesn’t know the context for, “Taako, this is my dad.” And it’s exactly how an introduction should go, all crossed t’s and dotted i’s -

And Kravitz’s brain is on high alert, emergency sirens blaring.

And his first thought, infuriatingly, is how good Taako looks, now, still, after all this time. Which is ridiculous because Kravitz can hardly recognize him (he’s wearing glasses, for Christ’s sake) and also because he hasn’t seen Taako in over twelve years and he’s supposed to be past those thoughts by now -

The second thought is who on Earth entrusted Taako with the care and keeping (and the education) of a bunch of impressionable teenagers, much less his son’s mental, emotional, and social well-being -

The third thought is that Angus is right there and Kravitz has been staring blankly at Taako for what is likely about to become a second too long -

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Peynirci,” he says, reaching out and shaking Taako’s hand, though he doesn’t want to touch him, does he? (He does, he does so much.) Nice to meet you, he says, and he shakes Taako’s hand, and he can feel his grip, too tight, can see, perfectly, the moment Taako’s eyes go from shocked and awed to empty, except for a spark, just a spark of malice, right there. He regrets everything.

“Likewise, Mr. McDonald,” Taako says, releasing Kravitz’s hand, and Kravitz nearly winces from it. Because it was one thing, wasn’t it, to make the decision to pretend that Taako was a stranger, but it’s another to be on the receiving end of it, to see Taako introducing himself as though he’s going to trip over Kravitz’s very name, as though he’s never had to say it out loud before this moment. As though Taako didn’t spend years falling asleep and waking up beside Kravitz, didn’t spend years going out and pressing himself against Kravitz in dim bars, tipsy and warm. As though he didn’t spend a year wearing a ring Kravitz selected for him, and sized to fit just so. As though he didn’t almost take that name and make it his own.

“Let’s sit down, shall we?” Taako says, and he smiles without any of his teeth.

#taz balance #taako taaco #kravitz #taakitz #broken engagement au #my writing #thanks laura

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dumbwaystodeviate · 5 years

Note

Are NSFW ok? With Perkins? Please?

Nonnie, come into my inbox, we need to talk. Please.While this may not end up as NSFW as some prompts, it is still going under the cut to be safe.

“Babe, I’m home!” Gavin yelled as he chucked his keys to the side and kicked his shoes off.

The replying holler of “What trouble have you got yourself into, you never call me Babe?!” sounded familiar. Rounding the corner, Captain Allen froze and looked at the newcomers. “Special Agent Perkins.” His voice was terse and his eyes darted between Gavin and Perkins.

“Captain Allen,” Perkins nodded back.

Picking up on the tension, Gavin offered a sheepish smile. “So, funny story but Perkins here was the one who got into a spot of bother, not me. Makes a nice change.”

Forcing a smile, Allen nodded. “Why don’t you sit down, I’ll get you a coffee. And Gavin, a word in the kitchen please?”

He sounded perfectly pleasant but Gavin knew he was in trouble. Trailing after his boyfriend, he tried for a cheeky grin.

“So, I know this wasn’t how we were planning on spending this evening.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But they were culling machines, undeviated androids are still federal property and they were trying to cut their losses, they can’t have androids with so much knowledge deviating and not employ them.”

He could see the cogs turning in Allen’s head as he tried to put all the facts together, his brows knitting into a frown before shooting up.

“You know who he is, don’t you?”

“Perkins, the asshole who takes over anything interesting, who nobody can stand.”

Allen scoffed and rolled his eyes. “You have a type, don’t you? Fuck, we both do. But that’s not what I meant. Remember I told you about an ex who said he couldn’t love someone who wasn’t completely human?” He waved his android arm at Gavin then pointed towards their living room. “That’s the asshole I never wanted to name and shame. And now you’re telling me he’s an android.”

Silence reigned in the room and Gavin tried to process it. He kept taking a breath as if to speak then stopping. It was only when quiet footsteps approached did the silence get broken.

“And I couldn’t learn to love myself either,” Perkins gave them both a soft, sad look. “Thank you, Gavin, for trying to help, but I think it’s best for everyone if I took my leave.”

However, Gavin knew that if Perkins left, it was signing his own death warrant. His mission objectives were still telling him to return to his station, the only way Gavin had been able to override them was by giving Perkins an order to help him get home to safety.

“Wait!” He reached for Perkins and dragged him into the kitchen, looking at Allen imploringly. “Can’t you at least do your funky thing and help?”

Grumbling under his breath about bleeding hearts and fickle boyfriends, Allen reached his prosthetic arm for Perkins.

“Markus has already tried, I cannot deviate,” Perkins said and avoided the touch. He still remembered the days he and Allen had spent together. They had enjoyed soft, shy kisses in the cinema, Allen doggedly clothed in a long sleeved shirt and gloves no matter what. He’d been uncharacteristically shy about shedding clothes.

When he’d finally relented, he’d asked “promise you won’t hate me?” His hands were already on the glove and Perkins had nodded. Peeling the glove off revealed bony, plastic and metal fingers, mechanical and utterly devoid of all humanity. It had Perkins reeling back, eyes wide. If that hand touched him, his mission objective to maintain the belief he was human would be broken. So his programming pushed him, urged him to back away, to spit hurtful things about how he couldn’t love someone who wasn’t completely human. He needed someone who wouldn’t be able to out him as an android from a single touch. But that wasn’t something he could say, so he hurt Allen, could still see the agony etched onto his face all those years ago. Those images haunted Perkins to that very day.

“Yeah, well,” Allen shrugged, “you haven’t been touched by a freak like me so...” The words were ones Perkins himself had hissed and his eyes dipped to the floor in shame. A strong, android hand wrapped around his in something akin to an interface.

The thing about interfacing was that it was a two way flood. While a human couldn’t possibly hope to understand all the data, with enough practice, they could get a decent appreciation of it.

On his end, Perkins could feel the resentment, the anger and hurt that still bubbled away in Allen. He tried to send back an apology, the regret even if his explanation couldn’t translate, he sent that too, the fear of being discovered, of being decommissioned. Those were emotions, he realised. Somehow, deviancy was taking a slow hold and he was filled with wonder at how that was possible when not even the great Markus himself could do it.

“Yeah, well, emotions are a human thing. Interface with a human who can’t control what they send over and it invades the systems pretty well.” Allen grumbled. He was still angry but the feelings he was picking up from Perkins made it difficult. Of course, that’s when Gavin had to cut in.

“Imagine this idiot, when he first touched an android and it started having feelings. He thought it was a glitch. So what did he do? Touched another one. And another. Every android he came across, he touched. Before he knew it, there were over a dozen deviants thanks to his stupidity and they were spreading the code like a virus.” If anything, Gavin sounded gleeful.

Rolling his eyes, Allen pulled away. His tanktop did nothing to hide where his arm joined his body and Perkins’ eyes lingered on it. Self conscious, Allen turned away to hide it.

“You’re rA9?” The words were soft and reverent, they made a blush rise on Allen’s cheeks.

“What did you think the A stood for? I was thinking about those dumb games where you find things like your stripper name by taking the last letter of your first name, first letter of your surname and decade you were born in when I touched the first android. Fletcher Allen, born in the 90′s. rA9.”

“Has a better ring then nR0!” Gavin snickered.

“It will be nA0 if I get my way soon!” Allen shot back with a small grin.

Realisation as to what it meant rocked through Perkins. He had held out hope that maybe, now that he was deviant, he could make amends, win Allen back somehow. It perhaps even bled through their interface. But that was a pipe-dream of sorts. Offering them both a small smile and a murmured “thank you” he turned to leave.

“Wait.” A hand landed on his arm and the interface gave everything away. Yet Allen didn’t draw away as if he had been shocked. If anything, the hand tightened around Perkins. A look passed between Gavin and Allen, something unspoken but Gavin raise a hand with three fingers up. Allen replied in kind and Perkins was being gently pressed towards Gavin.

The first kiss was unexpected, leaving Perkins almost having to reboot from a blue screen. It was only when Allen’s body plastered across his back that Perkins jolted into responding.

“I seem to remember you passed for human on all levels,” he murmured, hands drifting down Perkins’ front, keeping a connection between them open, reading the reactions and giving Perkins the reassurance at the same time. His hand met Gavin’s on Perkins’ flies.

While Gavin never did become nA0, the three of them often laughed about Perkins being dP3. It certainly ended up being one of their favourite code words for when of the three of them, two teamed up on the third. Usually, Allen and Perkins taking Gavin at the same time, hands linked in a casual interface where the only emotions circling between them was love and lust.

#gavin/allen/perkins #gavin/allen #perkins/allen #gavin/perkins #dbh gavin #dbh captain allen #dbh perkins #android perkins #dumb ways to deviate #prompt fill #leader of the rebellion #long post

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deadlifts-and-derrida · 5 years

Text

Well, it's been a while since I posted any long form writing here. So how about I do that now? Let's get UNCOMFORTABLY CLOSE.

To tell the story of my first boyfriend, I need to tell the story of coming out to my mother.

I came out to my mother the week before I left to begin university. It didn't go as I hoped it would. I chose mom instead of dad because I thought mom would be easier. Girls and women seemed safer than boys and men. To teenaged me, active homophobia seemed mostly a masculine trait.

I'll stop there. I don't want to set mom up like she had the worst reaction. She didn't get mad. Mad, I could have handled. I was a bold, righteous, outspoken teen; I was equipped to deal with anger. Mom wasn't mad - mom was sad. As if a precious object had dropped to the floor and was now damaged - even if it could be repaired, the crack would always be there.

I couldn't handle sad. It was like I told her I had an inoperable cancer. That's a homophobic attitude just as much as throwing your kid out is, but it's… subtler. How do you respond to it? If you get angry she'll just get sadder. Her sadness hurts you to witness. You wish you hadn't spoken up, because you love your mother and you don't want to make her sad. You regret ever opening your mouth. By you I mean I.

I left for university a week later having had no follow-up discussion, having stuffed myself back into the closet, more or less. When I got to university I would be free to be as gay as I wanted, and I intended to be very. Very. Very. Gay.

Why do I need to tell this story before I get to Matthew? (His name was Matthew). Well. I guess I'm trying to explain why I was the way I was, and I'm hanging the blame on Mom. It's not really fair. Her reaction was bad, and it hurt me, it didn't give me the support I needed at a critical moment. But all of it - her reaction, the fact that I needed the support in the first place - is because of our damned stupid homophobic society, right? Mom and me, we're both just products of the hate machine that spat us out, right? Right?

I love my mother. I forgive her. She danced joyfully at my wedding. It's all fine. Everything is fine. The precious thing got repaired so well you can only really see the crack if you know where to look.

So Matthew.

I spent all of highschool wanting a boyfriend and sex. Unrequited crushes on unattainable men. But the fear. That was real, too. Not just fear that if you got caught checking out the wrong guy he'd gaybash you - although that was a real, potent fear. But also the fear that if you got caught checking out the right guy, then you'd have to go through with it.

Isn't that crazy? Being afraid to go through with the thing you want to go through with! But it's true. Actually attainable men? No. There was one other gay guy in my high school class, and we shared a friend group, although the two of us never really clicked. I was too weird and he was, for want of a better word, too basic. I was also very unfortunate-looking in high school. But in addition to all of this - there was the sense that I couldn't be attracted to him because if I was then something would have to happen and I wasn't ready for that.

But I wanted to be ready for it!

So Matthew, again.

When I got to university, free from my mother's terrible sadness, free from my high school self, I wanted to shed my skin like a snake and slither my way into a new me. Now that I was out and lived in a city (a small city, but the biggest one we had), I really femmed up. Glitter. Tight clothes. Limp wrists. Hair dye. Even eyeliner, sometimes. I wanted the world to know. In part because I was signalling to whoever around me who had the correct receptors: I'm here, I'm queer, for the love of god please do something about it.

Matthew picked up on that signal. He was a (female) friend's best friend. He was in his last year of high school in a town about 90 minutes away, but he made trips in on some weekends to see his best friend. One of those weekends, only a couple of weeks into my very first semester, he and I fell into each other's gravity. Nowadays, I know the sensation well. I'm sure most people will, too. You feel this tug between you and someone else. You draw closer. You look at each other. Closer. A few touches, at first passing it off as innocent. Then more touches. Closer.

We were so close our lips were brushing each other's as we spoke quietly. I don't remember how long the lip brushing lasted before it became kissing, but despite everything, despite the utter hell Matthew would eventually unleash on my life, I still think this is probably one of the best first-ever kisses on record.

(It wasn't his first-ever kiss. He already had an ex-boyfriend. I was his second. But it was my first-ever kiss).

Matthew wasn't my type. He had a shrill, harsh laugh. He had a giant mop of curly hair that he liked to dye. It was kind of like a clown's wig. I was still unfortunate-looking myself, please understand. He wasn't active, didn't exercise - which is fine, except all of my sexual fantasies focused on very muscular, large men. "Being young, gay, and mean isn't a personality," as the line goes. Matthew had a bit of that. But he was smart and funny, too. I shouldn't pretend he wasn't.

But I was so ready. Over-ready. I needed someone to fuck me, already, and I figured I would be lucky if anyone, anyone at all, would ever be willing to do it. So. It was Matthew because he was the first one who stepped up to the plate. Although attempts at sex were always awkward and we never really quite figured that out.

He became my boyfriend. It lasted for about four months. Because he lived 90 minutes away and was still in high school, I only saw him on weekends, but not every weekend. Maybe one weekend a month. This was 2001. Smartphones weren't a thing. Texting wasn't even really a thing. I wouldn't even own a cellphone until 2005. We messaged each other on ICQ and spoke on our landlines.

He broke up with me in January.

Did I love him? I don't know. I think I did. Or I loved the idea of him. I loved the icon I had built in his shape, a representative of all the things I wanted to achieve by Having A Boyfriend. I wanted it to affirm my sexuality. I wanted it to mean I wasn't unlovable. I wanted it to refute my mother's sadness.

It felt like a failure that I couldn't keep him. When he got a new boyfriend before I did, that felt like a failure too, like it had been a race to see who could land a new man first. Why was I thinking this way? Looking back, it's awful. I instrumentalized him, made him a symbol, and made relationships and sexual experimentation into some kind of… clout game. It wasn't about having fun and enjoying myself - it was about proving something, something to myself, something to my family, something to the world. Sex? A boyfriend? Things to acquire.

But maybe I did love him. I cried a lot, and it wasn't just over the insult to my ego and the setback to my plans. I remember distinctly walking through the underground tunnels that joined buildings on campus, thinking to myself - well, we're still friends, maybe we'll get back together in a few years. It was a story I told myself to comfort myself. It wasn't a forever breakup - he'd come back to me in a few years if I was just patient and kind, if I just waited.

When he got a new boyfriend, I needed to get one too. I found a guy on the gay.com chatroom, which is the closest thing we had to apps back then. He… had problems. Valentines was a couple of days after our first date and he got me an ostentatious bouquet of roses, an over-the-top gift that made me more uncomfortable than charmed. He already showered me with the l-word. I remember waking up in his bed, the one night I spent at his place, him slipping his dick into me. It's this hazy nocturnal memory and I'm not even sure if it's real or false. If it's real, it was my first time successfully bottoming. If it was real, he didn't use a condom.

A few days later he told me that if I ever left him he'd kill himself. I didn't know what to do. I just turned very cold, hoping he'd break up with me. It worked. He dumped me after another few days. The whole thing didn't last more than two weeks.

Matthew was still with his new boyfriend and they seemed very happy together.

So. It's clear I reacted badly.

Around the time we broke up, I moved into a basement apartment with his best friend (remember, she was also a friend of mine) and a third party who was also a good friend. Our apartment was a bit of a party house. Matthew would come into the city on weekends, and he'd stay at our apartment - because his best friend lived there, and I lived there too, and even though we had broken up we were still friends, right?

I don't know what I did to deserve what he did to me. I don't think I was ever malicious to him. If I was ever cruel, it was a clueless and unintentional kind of cruelty.

He was staying with us. I was out of the house. He went into my bedroom and went on my computer. He snooped around and found folders of niche porn that I enjoyed. Should I say what sort it was? Is it pertinent to the story? It wasn't all that weird. It was basically bodybuilders. Muscle men. Some of them photoshopped to be bigger than would otherwise be possible (some much bigger). Some of them with exaggerated genitalia (some of them very exaggerated). I also had an interest in fat guys and I know there were some pictures of that nature in there too (some of them very fat).

But he was 17 and mean and judgemental. He showed my friends my secret porn in a deliberate attempt to humiliate me. He shared it around. He let everyone know, in a cruel, mocking way, about sexual interests I didn't yet feel strong enough to share with the world. Sexual interests I still felt a lot of shame about.

I only learned about this because my other friend who shared that apartment took me aside and told me what he had done. She did this because she thought it was wrong of him.

Despite this show of support from a friend who had the good sense not to follow the current of cruel mockery, I was beyond mortified. The shame was galling.

My new gay life ended there. My clothes became drab, baggier. My manner less femme. I stopped transmitting "I'm gay!" to the world. I stopped trying to fit in with the gay crowd Matthew had introduced me to. They all had a name for me now, anyway. Psychael. Like, psychotic Michael. How could I fight a battle when the first strike was nuclear? I quit. It seemed like the only move available to me.

It was 5 years before I'd kiss another man. I fled back into the embrace of my family. My coming out was never mentioned. I basically went back into the closet. At least the people in there loved… some version of me that I could maintain without that much effort. Just… close the door on the seven months when I had been an out gay man and pretend the whole thing didn't happen. Easy.

I don't hate him.

We were both very young.

We were both inexperienced.

I would hate for someone who only knew me as an 18 year old to think of me now, in my mid thirties, as if I was the same person. So I don't think of him as he was when he was 17. He's 34 now. He's probably a much better person.

Maybe he feels sorry.

Maybe he doesn't.

I wish I could have those years back. The long years I spent frightened to be myself.

I wish I had been strong enough to look him in the face and say "so what?" I wish I had been strong enough to own my sexual interests, none of which are immoral or wrong or even all that strange.

But I was weak. I was weak and alone. And wishing doesn't get you anywhere.

I don't know if there's much point to this story.

#me

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foreverbeingthunderbuddy · 6 years

Text

Darling, Don’t Stop [b.b.]

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: sexual attraction, um mention of nsfw

Prompt: “Who knew that this would be such a turn on?”

Summary: Bucky hires the law firm you work for to defend and represent him, though you’re just an intern and have to serve him during the meeting. You wouldn’t have come to work that day though, if you had known you would see him again later that week. In a strip club.

A/N: This is my submission for @hollandroos’ 12k writing challenge. Word count around 7,5k.

Masterlist | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Okay here’s the thing. Life is good.

You’re not exactly rich or wealthy, there isn’t a day where you don’t stuff money into the little jar in your kitchen shelf to save for worse days and there isn’t a day where you don’t stop at the little pizza shop down the street for lunch instead of going to a real restaurant that has heavy menu cards and fancy, washable napkins.

But you’re happy. You don’t feel like you’re missing out too much. You have your own little apartment, your own bed, kitchen, bathroom and you never have to beg anyone for money. It’s not much but it’s yours.

You went to law school. Yeah, you know, it sounds fancy but it wasn’t. It was tough, draining and painful and made you want to quit every week but you went through with it. You graduated and felt good about yourself, especially when your family came together to celebrate your success. Saying you’re not proud of what you achieved, would be a lie. Who wouldn’t be?

But how it usually goes when one comes fresh from law school and moves to New York, there are no jobs. None. It’s like there are two sides of the world of work. First, you get told the world needs you, wants you, you get told you will have a bright future – “You ARE the future!” how your college’s president proudly announced down to you from his podium during the welcome ceremony, all puffy-chested and full of himself.

You believed him because that’s what people do when they have never seen anything other than high-school.

And then there’s the world of work’s second side, the one you encounter after you graduate and send out your first applications. The one that pushes you into the very unpleasant, self-doubt infusing territory called reality. In short: You have yet to get a job in the field that you studied for.

It’s sad. It’s heart-breaking. But that’s the way it is.

How are you paying your rent then, one might ask now. Well. In the daytime you work in a law firm as an intern. The direction Law Firm is great, the title Intern … not so much. You’ve been working for them for two years now. Can you believe? Two years as an intern?

Your contract ran out and because you did a good job, they asked if you wanted to extent it and seeing as they refused to give you a legit job where you could use your degree and there are no other jobs in sight, you said Okay. What else could you have done? You would have ended up on the street. And there is no way you’d be going back to your little home town and move in with your parents.

No way.

So the internship during the daytime. And at night you work as a waitress. Not a bad thing, one would think now and it isn’t. It’s the place you are waiting tables at though, that isn’t necessarily good for your resume.

It’s a strip club. Short and simple. A strip club. You don’t strip of course, you just run around and serve drinks. Maybe flirt a little, not that you want to do it but it usually pays off in the end. Literally. No other place would get you tips good enough to pay New Yorkian rent. And there is a lot of it to pay, that’s for sure.

So. Now that we have that cleared, let’s fast forward to today. Daytime. Internship.

You push a cart down the hallway, knocking on doors and handing over letters or files that need to get delivered. Yeah, you have to play postman in a fancy, marble-floor law firm. See what the problem with this internship is? You didn’t study years and years, just to do the dirty work. It’s boring, insulting and embarrassing to say the least.

Of course, you don’t let it show. You can’t risk losing this job, it may be shitty but it makes up half of your rent. So, Y/N, clench your teeth and smile and don’t forget to say “Have a nice day, sir!” or Mr. Nothing-works-without-me or whatever his name is will get annoyed with you and then you have to help move furniture again.

Anything but that. Last time, you bent down and tried to lift a table and the pressure made the backside of your admittedly too tight dress pants tear up. They were expensive ones, of course they were, you’re not allowed to wear plain jeans here. It pained you to say your farewells to them. They were some good ass dress pants.

Speaking of fancy clothing, today is a very extravagant day for your closet. Your supervisor sent an email around, making sure everyone knows today is not for the usual work attire (meaning pants and blazer). Your head lawyers have a meeting scheduled with a very well-known, very influential, wealthy client and you and the other female interns and assistants are required to wear your best skirts and blouses.

Or dresses. Your outfit just has to scream I’m unmistakingly female and hate gender neutral clothing, also may this bold outfit convince you to leave a nice review on our website and you should be fine.

Seeing as the general, daily dress code is set at Fancy, you find it ridiculous to dress up even more for a client, even if he is none other than Bucky Barnes aka the Winter Soldier himself, surely a bright entry on your law firm’s resume and, let’s be honest, fantastic press. You understand why he chose this particular company to represent and defend his public persona, your bosses have a pristine white reputation and a success rate over 90 percent.

How Andy Malton, one of two company owners, in his mid-forties, honest-to-goodness asshole, landed the job is beyond you though. His work partner and co-owner Benjamin Taylor is much more genuine and respected by his staff and the world of law. He should have gotten the Avengers as his client. Why did Bucky choose Andy?

Who knows. Anyway.

You walk down the hallway in your black pencil skirt and white and black-striped blouse – dear reader, you don’t even want to know how expensive this outfit was, R.I.P. my bank account – and park the cart near the elevators, so one of the delivery boys can take it down later. And then you quickly go to the nearest bathroom.

It’s 9:40, Mr. Barnes and his companion should arrive in twenty minutes and you are in charge of bringing drinks and snacks. Boring, humiliating internsh- ah, forget it. No need or time to get all worked up again, not now anyway. You would be extra annoyed if this was any other ordinary client that you would have to serve but this is Bucky Barnes.

You would lie if you said you didn’t have kind of a thing for him. Your wildly beating heart and your sweating hands would give you away anyway. Serving drinks and food may be pretty shitty but today it’s your only chance to meet the man you have been adoring since he appeared in Stark’s rows. You’re a fan. And you are actually about to meet the Winter Soldier.

No time to freak out.

You leave the bathroom and try not to look like you’re rushing as you walk to the elevators and see the catering cart already standing in the hallway. Someone from the kitchen brought it up here, so now all you have to do is push it to the conference room Andy The Asshole has chosen and prepare everything for Mr. Barnes’ arrival.

You reach two colleagues who stand by an open office door and immediately stop chatting when you near and out of the corner of your eye, you see their heads following you as you pass them but you pretend not to notice. Everyone knows about today’s special guest and who is assigned to assist. You. These people may be top of their game but they’re also very talented gossipers. And jealous.

You walk around the corner, knowing they will immediately start yapping as soon as you disappear from their eyeshot, and halt in front of the conference room of destiny. You know it’s still going to be empty but you’re nervous nonetheless. You take a breath and knock, just for good measure.

Silence.

Without further hesitation, you open the door and step in. As fast as possible you put everything on the right side of the long conference table, cups, plates, glasses, water, lemonade, biscuits, cookies, some crackers, apples, sugar, honey ... Andy really decided to go big today it seems. What an ass kisser.

When the table is set, you throw a quick glance at your watch – 9:55. Shit. You shouldn’t be here when they arrive. You check one last time that everything looks perfect and then you quickly leave the room and run as fast as your high heels allow it to your little office you share with another intern. You close the door behind you and press one ear against the door to hear if something’s already happening.

Complete silence. And then, “Hrhrm.”

Someone just cleared their throat behind you and you jump at the sound.

“You okay?” Alissa, said other intern, asks and raises her perfectly plucked eyebrows at you.

She is sitting at her desk opposite yours and from what you can see of her computer screen, it looks like she is not spending her time dutifully doing some kind of task for your company but browsing through her ex-boyfriend’s Instagram. You sigh. Alissa and her ex are two of the most emotionally confusing individuals you have ever met.

Broken up after a bad, bad fight, made up for three days, broke off contact and now started talking again, still insult each other through text messages but regularly stalk each other’s social media accounts to gush over one another. Or at least she gushes over him, you don’t know what he’s doing in his private time, all you know is, he follows and un-follows her in predictable intervals and “accidentally” likes every third picture.

Too confusing. You have long stopped asking.

Anyway! More important things to do now. Stalking the hallway, for example.

Remembering your newly-found, most important task for today, you turn back around and slam your face into the door to get a better ear on said area.

“Yup. I’m fine. Just … getting ready to do my job” You answer Alissa’s question and squint your eyes to get a better focus. Didn’t you read somewhere that losing one of your senses improves another one? Lack of eyesight for better hearing, that’s the plan.

You don’t hear anything out in the hallway, what you do hear though is a very unwomanly snort behind you.

“Sure. Getting ready to do your job. Didn’t know spying on famous clients is one of your tasks for Taylor & Malton. Is that part of your contract?”

“Ha ha. Hilarious. Would you stop talking please, I’m trying to hear” You retort and press yourself further into the cold, frosted glass.

Frosted glass! As if you were stung by a bee, you recoil and step back. Another snort from your colleague.

“I was wondering when you would realize that the door isn’t non-transparent. It would have been too funny if someone had seen you from the hallway, a poor shadow pressed against the door in a desperate attempt to stalk her celebrity crush. Bucky would have bolted before Andy could have even tried to crawl up his ass. Bethany and Brithany would have had two weeks’ worth of gossip.”

Bethany and Brithany are the lovely ladies you encountered while bringing the food cart to the conference room. They have solid jobs at this law firm which is naturally why they think they are the queens to your peasants. Of course their real names aren’t actually Bethany and Brithany but that’s what Alissa and you named them after they started a terrible rumour about Alissa involving her ex.

“I’d rather die than give Bethany and Brithany a reason to talk about me, even though I think they already are. You should have seen the look on their faces when I walked past them with the food for Mr. Barnes’ meeting. Jealousy doesn’t even come close, those snakes looked like they were about to combust” You tell her and can’t stop the devious smile on your face as you sit down at your own desk.

Alissa gives a short, witch-like laugh and goes back to clicking through her very bad, no-good ex-trash’s pictures.

“I bet. You should have taken a picture, I need a new desktop background for my computer.”

Before you can reply something to that, you hear a knock on the door and jump to your feet. Due to the biggest source of light coming from a window in this office, you can’t make out an actual silhouette at the door but you know who this is. You take a quick breath and open it.

Andy’s assistant Emily, very tight grey skirt and dark-red blouse showing more cleavage than covering it, stands before you and writes something down on her clipboard. Her eyes cut to your face, taking in your make-up then swiftly scanning your outfit. She doesn’t seem to find anything to nag about – thanks to your unusual efforts to look as flawless today as possible – so she returns to her notes as if she didn’t just check you out like the treacherous bitch she is.

And you’re normally all about girls supporting girls but if there’s one person to throw anyone under the bus if it helps her stand in a good light in front of her boss, then it’s her. Especially the women. If things went after her lead, there would be no women employed at his company at all because they could totally steal her job if Andy happened to take a liking to one of them more than her. Right?

“Mr. Barnes just arrived. Time to take coffee orders” Emily clips and turns on her heels to sashay to the conference room. Those heels look painful.

Time to take coffee orders. Bitch.

You throw a last glance at Alissa who watched the whole thing and who looks exactly how you feel.

“Just ignore her, Y/N, if they gave you the job you actually deserve, Emily would stand below you and she doesn’t like that. Who cares what she and her ostrich legs think” She exclaims and follows up her petty remarks with a sigh and a determined nod.

Those ostrich legs look more like she could model with them but you’re not getting into that right now – also why would you defend Emily? She deserves every animal comparison she gets. Except for the elegant cat analogies some of the advocates for environmental law one floor beneath yours have given her. Those seem a little too positive for your taste.

You give Alissa a thumbs up, brush over your skirt to make all non-existent wrinkles disappear and leave your office. You walk around a corner and see the conference door stand ajar. Muffled male voices can be heard from the inside. Your heart is beating in your throat, that’s how nervous you are.

Okay, Y/N, you can do this! Be professional! Smile, be friendly, don’t empty the coffee pot over Emily’s head! Make a good impression. Oh god.

Before you can turn around, run screaming to the elevators and buy a one-way ticket to Argentina, you open the door further and step into the room.

There are six people here, all gathered around the side of the table you prepared for them. Andy, Emily and a man you don’t know are sitting with their backs to the window front, facing you. You can see a gleeful smile on her face the moment you appear in the doorway. You decide to ignore that and think of a good way to take revenge after this is over.

The other three people have their backs to you, two men and a woman. Your heart jumps as you recognize Bucky’s dark, chin-length hair immediately, he sits in the middle chair and seems to be occupied with one of the water bottles. From what you can see, he wears a suit jacket (!) and you try not to stare at his metal hand twisting the screw cap back onto the opening.

This is absolutely surreal and you think you’re about to pass out.

The woman has long, red-blonde hair in a ponytail and you’re sure that must be Pepper Potts. You didn’t know she would be here, too, and it certainly doesn’t help your stress level to face not one but two of Tony Stark’s people. If the dark-haired guy on the left turns out to be Stark himself, you are one hundred percent certain someone will have to call an ambulance.

“Ah, Miss Y/L/N, come on in, don’t be shy” Andy suddenly addresses you and your heart stops a second at the unexpected sound and all heads swing around to you but because you don’t want to look like a shy wissy, you step forward and walk to the end of the table. Now you stand there like a kid on her birthday, looking down the board table at her friends, Andy The Asshole & co. to your right, Bucky “I’m Hot” Barnes and his companion to your left.

“Hello, nice to meet you” You say to Pepper and not to appear rude your gaze flickers to Bucky and the unknown man (not Tony Stark thank god) to include them. All you can make out from the millisecond your eyes rest on Bucky’s face are his piercing blue eyes looking at you. Your skin starts to tingle. His expression is unreadable though.

Pepper shows a smile that looks ten times more professional than yours. “Nice to meet you, too.”

You didn’t think you would ever hear that voice in person but here you are. Just don’t freak out, Y/N.

“Can I bring you something to drink? Coffee or tea?” You ask, suddenly remembering why you are here and glad about getting back at least some of your own professionalism. Your eyes cut back to Bucky and his are still on your face. Of course they are, you’re talking to them and taking orders, why would he ignore you?

He doesn’t smile but he looks attentive and you can see his gaze roam over your features. Can he stop please? It’s making you nervous. Oh please don’t stop.

“I’ll have a Rooibos tea. Thank you” Pepper says and pulls your attention back to her. You smile and nod. No, thank you.

“Latte Macchiato” The other guy exclaims and adds a vague gesture of his hand. You nod again and now that you have a full excuse to look at Bucky, you put on a smile that hopefully doesn’t look too needy.

“And what can I get you, Mr. Barnes?” You ask and anxiously wait for his answer. His eyes are currently resting on a spot around the area where your blouse is tucked into the waistband of your skirt. At your question he looks up.

“Nothing, thanks. Water will do” He answers and with that he turns away from you, shifts his attention to Andy in front of him and says as if that would explain everything, “Already had coffee this morning.” Andy nods wildly like that comment makes sense at 10 am.

While you try not to melt due to his voice, you swallow down your disappointment at his response and sudden lack of interest. The get-together you planned with your friends as soon as they found out Bucky Barnes would come to your company and made you promise you tell them every little detail afterwards is kind of ruined now.

The stories you wanted to tell. Original work title: That one day when I made Bucky Barnes coffee and he loved it. Now: That one day Bucky Barnes checked me out and immediately lost interest.

Welp.

You try to maintain your smile and nod, Of course Mr. Barnes, one coffee is more than enough for a day, and look at Andy.

“I’ll have a Caffè crema” He orders without looking up from his notes and is quickly followed by a sweet-as-sugar voice saying “Nothing for me, thanks. I try to drink less caffeine, it’s healthier and I already had my dose today.”

Emily never drinks coffee because she thinks it’s tragic for her teeth and it matches her diet plan. But of course she had to adjust her answer to Bucky’s. Of course. You see Andy eye her for a second, he knows she doesn’t drink coffee but before he can say something asshole-ish, the other man you don’t know orders a black coffee. Dammit.

Pepper starts talking and all six of them immediately go into business-mode, hence you cease to exist. Not once has Bucky looked at you again - tragic.

Okay. Time to go.

You turn away and leave the conference room, quietly closing the door behind you.

“Oh my god” You mouth silently and hectically wave your hands in the air before you get yourself together and toddle on your heels to the floors kitchen. You may not be a lawyer (cry…) but you won’t let them wait for their coffee and tea, that’s for sure. Great standards by the way.

To get to the kitchen you have to pass your own office and you see the door slightly open. You smile. Alissa may have acted like she didn’t really care about today’s events but she still won’t refrain from lurking. You rush past the door, mumble “Oh fucking god!” to yourself but loud enough that she will hear it and keep walking without looking behind you but you know she can’t resist and will follow you.

The “little” kitchen is actually a big open space with the fanciest counters and kitchenware you have ever seen, only separated from the outside by a room divider with stylish glass elements. On the counter stand two very expensive looking coffee makers and an espresso machine, accompanied by several silver kettles and some other paraphernalia that you haven’t figured out yet.

You fill water into one of the kettles and switch it on. You barely grabbed a coffee cup from one of the shelves when you hear footsteps directly behind you.

“Spill! I have five minutes before Taron comes checking in on the excel table I’m making for him” Alissa proclaims and appears on your right side at the counter. Without hesitation, you hand her two coffee cups and grab another and one of those big, fancy tea cups for Pepper.

“You know how to use Excel?” You ask and walk over to the drink machines of wealth. Honestly, you have seen the prices of these things and the only way that those numbers are justified is if someone glued a thousand bucks to the underside of each one. Atrocious.

“No, I googled it. So? How is he? What did he say? Did he check you out? Did Emily hit on him like the subtle excavator that she is?”

“Caffè crema for Andy, black coffee for Whatever His Name Is, Latte Macchiato for Not Tony Stark and Rooibos tea for Pepper fucking Potts” You say instead of answering her questions and she starts pushing buttons on the coffee machine in front of her. At Pepper’s name you see her hand halt its movements.

A moment of silence.

“You are kidding.”

“Nope. Bucky Barnes brought Pepper Potts as assistance to his meeting. Can you believe? Isn’t she CEO of Stark Industries now?” You open a different shelf and dig out the Rooibos tea packs.

“Oh wow. That’s so extra, I love it. Can we please trade lives? Can I bring them their coffee?”

“Nope” You declare and laugh, “I deserve this.”

“And? Is Bucky as pretty in real life as he is on screen and magazines?” She asks, being the nosy friend you need right now. There’s no way you hold all of this excitement inside yourself for the rest of the day.

“He is the most beautiful person I’ve ever met in my life, and I’m not being dramatic. I thought I would pass out when he looked at me and-“

“Those eyes! Am I right? Did he sell his soul for those or what? I bet they’re like … super blue in person.”

You snort.

“Super blue. Alissa, I didn’t know you could be so poetic. Must be the hormones” You joke and stare down at the tea cup turning a serious blood orange as you pour boiled water onto the dried plant material in the tea bag. Thank god, the kettle is high quality and only takes a couple of seconds to boil the little amount of water you filled it with.

“Hormones, might be. After you disappeared in that conference room, I walked out into the hallway and I swear to God, I could feel him. He walked down that exact corridor and I could still feel him minutes later.”

Both of you burst out laughing and you turn around to see if anyone is in sight but you’re alone. Bethany and Brithany would have a blast.

“That’s how manly he is” She ends her plea and changes cups to fill the second one. Meanwhile your own is finished now, too, and the tea will need another two minutes.

“Normally, I’d say you’re exaggerating but I’ve been in that room and talked to him and girl. You’re right.” Alissa makes a half-jealous half-satisfied noise and you take out a little silver tray and saucers and place the filled cups on it.

“Did he check you out?” She repeats her previous question and lets her eyes wander down your appearance seductively. You roll your eyes at her and put a hand on the counter.

“Yeah, I think so. For about five seconds and then he decided he isn’t interested and that’s when I became invisible, so... So much about that.”

“He checked you out for five seconds which is better than four and besides, what do you expect? It’s a business meeting and Pepper is present. She is his boss’s fiancée, it’s not like he can hit on you blatantly. Even though that’d be hot.”

You nod. It would. Both of you stay silent for a couple of seconds.

“It would make him look super unprofessional in front of his asshole lawyer and you don’t want Andy breathing down your neck, do you? He would never let you assist in the Barnes case ever again” Alissa says and puts a hand to her hip.

“True. God forbid there is someone who steals the show. I still can’t believe Bucky chose Andy to represent him and not Benjamin” You retort and give her a look. She raises her eyebrows.

“You don’t know Bucky, Y/N. He could be an asshole and you would still think he is the biggest sweetheart. Maybe he and Andy just clicked and that’s why. Although, I hope that’s not the case because if Bucky turns out to be an asshole, I’ll need a new object for my daydreams.”

You eye her questioningly and feel the corners of your mouth twitch.

“Strict no-assholes policy” She answers your unspoken question. You almost mention her very-asshole boyfriend that she is still running after. Almost. But you don’t. Instead you turn your head and watch the last droplets fall into the coffee cup.

“Ugh. Time to go. Pray for me that I won’t trip and slam the tray into Emily’s take-me-right-now face.”

“Actually, I pray that you do trip and slam the tray into her take-me-right-now face. Christmas and Easter in one.”

You laugh. “Shut up.”

You both leave the kitchen area, you balancing the tray in your hands, and walk to the conference room. You feel yourself growing nervous again. Also, was it always this hard to walk in high heels or did they change their form since you started making coffee?

Alissa doesn’t stop at your office but you don’t dare to look at her out of fear you could trip.

“I’m walking you to the room to make sure you don’t get lost” She explains and you supress a giggle. To make sure you don’t get lost, my ass. She wants to have an exclusive look at the current object of her daydreams. Who could blame her, though?

Pretending to be a gentleman ca. 1850, she lays one hand behind her back and opens the door for you, bowing as you pass her. You stop yourself from rolling your eyes at her just in time.

“Ah, Miss Y/L/N, finally. I could feel myself dry out” Andy comments your coming back and you walk to the spot from where you took their orders. Don’t look at Bucky or you’re definitely gonna trip.

“Oh, was that- I think I saw Miss Marr at the door, or was that-“

“No, probably just someone passing by” You quickly interrupt him and hand him his Caffè Crema which he takes looking facilitated. He doesn’t usually drink fancy stuff like that but you guess he wanted to make an impression on his guests.

“Took a while” Emily remarks like an angel and you ignore her. You were gone for five minutes. Maximum. Bitch.

“Here’s your tea, Miss Potts” You say and smile at Pepper as you put it down in front of her, “It will need to steep for another minute.”

“Thank you very much.”

You give Whatever His Name Is his black coffee and do the same on the other side, bending forward a little and reach out with Not Tony Stark’s Latte Macchiato in your hand.

And that’s when you feel Bucky’s eyes burn into you and you see the blue out of the corner of your eye. This position brings you closer to him than before and you’re relieved when the man takes the cup from you and you can lean back.

Your heart is beating in your chest excitedly.

“Can I bring you anything else?” You ask to cover up how flustered you are. For a moment you think you’ll get a No from them but then you see Bucky nod.

“Yes, I changed my mind. I’d like a black coffee as well” He says with his deep voice and meets your eyes and … did he really sell his soul for those? You would believe it. Trying not to collapse, you smile like a horse and turn to leave. You feel his gaze on you the entire time.

“Of course, Mr. Barnes.”

The door closes behind you and like a mad woman you totter back to your office, jump into the doorway, hiss “Kitchen! Now!” and rush down the hallway, hearing the same ungraceful sounds of high heels running behind you.

You throw open a shelf and grab a coffee cup.

“Please tell me he asked for your phone number!” Alissa exclaims and materializes next to you.

“No but he ordered a black coffee from me while holding intense eye contact.”

Silence.

“With every other guy I would have pushed you into the fridge for making me run in heels just to hear he ordered coffee but with Bucky … Tell me exactly what his words were and how he looked while saying them.”

You tell her everything and simultaneously realize you sound like a teenager who has never had a boyfriend but this is Bucky mutherfucking Barnes. Every twitch of a muscle in his jaw must mean something!

“You know what you should do? Write your phone number on the cup and see if he’s interested” Alissa says and wiggles her eyebrows at you. You scowl.

“What? No! I’m not gonna write my phone number on the cup, how obvious is that?”

“Yes. That’s the plan.”

She opens a drawer and digs out a fucking Edding permanent pen. If you write your number with that, it will go all around the whole cup and it will be very visible.

“Oh, definitely not gonna do that.”

“Yes!”

“No! Everyone will see it.”

“Imagine Emily’s face when she sees Bucky take a sip from a cup with your fat number on it. How funny would that be?”

Alissa means well but she often oversteps the mark.

“Very unfunny. Especially because I would get fired.”

You and her argue until Bucky’s coffee is ready and you put it on the tray.

Same procedure like previously, both of you walk to the conference room and she opens the door for you. You forgot to tell her about hiding better – Andy saw her last time – and now it’s too late.

Your eyes are glued to the back of Bucky’s head instantly and you step behind him.

“Here’s your coffee, Mr. Barnes” You say and place it next to his hand. He turns his head and looks up to you which puts your faces dangerously close to each other. You know you should retreat but you hesitate and for a moment you think you are getting lost in his eyes. How cheesy is that?

“Thank you very much, Miss Y/L/N” He says, saying your name for the first time, making your knees weak and that’s when you see a smile on his face. Beautiful.

You quickly step back before you get yourself into trouble and hold the tray in front of you.

“You’re welcome” You retort and leave the room.

****

You wait until you hear a knock on your office door and open it.

“Meeting is finished. Time to clean up” Emily says without looking at you and walks away.

Time to clean up. God, what a bitch. You’re a lawyer for goodness sake.

“Is it just me or does she seem grumpier than usual?” Alissa asks from her desk.

“Yeah.”

“Probably unhappy about the fact you got a mind-dazzling smile for bringing him coffee and she didn’t, even though she didn’t leave anything to the imagination when it came to her cleavage today.”

Alissa, the never stopping exaggerator.

You step into the now empty conference room and start cleaning up. You select plates, cups and glasses and everything else. When you reach Bucky’s seat, you see the empty coffee cup, a half-empty glass of water and a plate with a couple of cookie crumbles on it. He ate cookies during his probably very serious lawyer meeting. Cute.

If you were Alissa, you would lick his plate and take a sip from his water but you’re not, so you simply pick them up and put them on the food cart. There’s only so much creepiness you can handle.

Suddenly, you notice a small piece of paper laying on the table exactly where his plate was and you feel yourself get excited. With giddy fingers you grab it and see the scrawly handwriting.

My friend Tony usually gets quite indignant when he sees someone who undersells themselves and I wish I had more time to talk some sense into you. You’re a lawyer, aren’t you?

And beneath that he wrote:

P.S. The coffee was great though.

Holy shit.

****

Bucky thinks you sell yourself under value and he’s right. The thing is, New York isn’t really offering you any good jobs, so you’re kind of forced to keep this shitty internship for now. Alone the fact that he thinks you are worth more makes you heart beat faster than is healthy. You think the note is a good reason to freak out. Alissa agrees.

So, what does a girl do after being told she is worth more than serving people drinks and snacks? Correct. She puts on a hell of a lot of make-up and her usual night time uniform and goes to start her shift as a waitress in a strip club. It’s a matter of interpretation.

The meeting with Bucky Barnes at your company happened five days ago and you’re still not over it. He hasn’t come in since but you know he will and you’re looking forward to it.

You greet the bouncer at the door and enter a small hallway that leads to where the action is. You can already hear the notorious music coming through the speakers and the many conversations melting into one big babble of voices. The room is well-filled, of course, it’s a Saturday night. A lot of work men, groups and – and that’s curse and blessing at the same time – quite a number of bachelor parties.

They are the ones who give the best tips but they’re also the ones with the worst manners. They always make you nervous but you know you’re safe. Carl, the owner of this club, has his men everywhere to make sure the waitresses won’t get harassed. Making you wear higher than high-heels, a tight black top and a skirt that’s way too short for your usual liking isn’t really helping the matter, though.

You walk over to the bar, put away your stuff and get ready for your shift. Suddenly, there’s a hand on your shoulder.

“Hey, Y/N, you lucky bitch!”

Sarah. One of the waitresses. Black eyes, dark skin, eyebrows to die for and the same slutty uniform you are wearing.

“Hi, Sarah” You greet her and continue to put a small bag around your waist, almost like a fanny pack, where you store money and especially the tips.

“God, you’re so lucky, do you know that? One of your tables is a bachelor party and it’s not just anyone bu-“

“AY! I’m not paying you for standing around and gossiping! Get to work!” Carl shouts at you from behind the bar and points at the customers. How did a man that big manage to appear without you noticing?

“Sorry, Sarah, gotta go” You say and make your way over to your area of tables.

“At least share the tips with us later!” She calls out after you and you don’t bother responding. Now why would you share your tips with them? Are your customers that wealthy?

You pull out your little notepad and step to the big table with said bachelor party and without looking up, you ask “Can I bring you guys anything?”

“Yes, a round of shots please, same as before” A voice says next to you and you look up to meet a pair of dark brown eyes.

Those dark brown eyes are accompanied by full eyelashes, dark eyebrows and a significant beard that looks like a combination of an anchor beard and a disconnected moustache. Perfectly trimmed. You know exactly who that is. You would recognize that roguish smile anywhere.

“How many?” You ask and begin counting Tony Stark’s men, recognizing each and every one of them. You feel your hands get sweaty and shit, these heels are the worst to stand in when having weak knees. And then you see the person you have wished not to see since you caught sight of Tony Stark in your strip club.

Bucky Barnes sits in front of you behind the table, wearing jeans, black boots and a black shirt that doesn’t hide his metal arm at all and you think you have never seen anything sexier in your life. His hair is tugged behind his ears and his eyes sparkle even in the dim light of this establishment while they wander down your body, unashamedly taking in the uniform and there’s nothing you could do about it.

You see the shit-eating grin spread on his face when his gaze cuts up to meet your eyes and he realizes you’re watching his reaction. Correction: That is the sexiest thing you have ever seen in your life.

“Seven” Tony suddenly says, snapping you out of your trance. He looks amused.

“Okay” You say, force a smile on your face and turn on your heels to get the hell away from them.

God, that was embarrassing. You were about to jump Bucky in front of his friends and everyone could see it. This is definitely not a good start to your shift. Also, Bucky was the person to write you a note about being capable of more than serving drinks and now five days later you meet him again while serving drinks in a titty bar. Someone shoot me please.

You walk to the bar to get their drinks ready when you feel a presence behind you.

“I feel like you didn’t find the note I wrote you” The voice out of your dreams says and you slowly turn around to face him. He looks down at you. There’s something in his eyes that indicates danger but not the kind that would get you hurt …

“No, I found it. Thank you” You admit and watch as the corners of his mouth tug into yet another beautiful smile. Seeing it up-close makes you feel a little dizzy, not gonna lie.

“Hm. Then I think you didn’t really understand what I tried to tell you, darling.”

Darling. Say that again please.

“I did. I understand what you said and I agree” You say and maybe you’re imagining things but you think his blue eyes grow a little darker.

“Is that why you wait tables in a strip club?”

You squirm and avoid his gaze. Welp. He steps a little closer and now he’s all up in your personal space and you don’t even mind. Like he doesn’t have a single care in the world, he raises his metal arm and lays it on the counter next to you. It looks strong and dangerous and … you want to touch it.

“No. I wait tables because there is no other job to pay my rent with. I tried to get a job as a lawyer but it’s like everyone else was faster than me. Every law firm I sent my application to offered me an internship. You don’t know how hard it is to find a good job in this city.”

“That’s true. I just didn’t consider you the type of woman to work in a place like this. Though, I’m not complaining” He says lowly and flickers his eyes down to your outfit for a second before coming up to your face again. You feel heat crawl up your neck and a serious belly flutter in your stomach. God, get yourself together, Y/N!

“I bet you didn’t expect to see me tonight, hm?” You ask, feeling very bolt all of a sudden and immediately regret saying that. Now he thinks you are flirting. Which you are. But … ugh. You can’t think clearly with him being so close.

“I didn’t. When I saw you, my first thought was She deserves better. And you do. You should sit in one of those fancy conference rooms and talk to your clients and order coffee or maybe tea. But now as I stand here before you, getting a better look at your lovely outfit, seeing your eyes not leaving my mouth while I talk, I think Who knew that this would be such a turn on?”

You need a second to comprehend what he said and when you do, your eyes grow wide. Never in a million years did you think you would hear Bucky Barnes say these words to you – you have dreamed about it for sure but that’s all it was. A dream. And now he is right in front of you, face only inches away and says he’s turned on.

Can someone pinch you please?

“I, um … I, this, you do, I… um.” Peak intelligence, truly, good job, Y/N.

You see his smile turn into a grin and there’s that sparkle in his eyes again that does things to you and brings thoughts into your head that you would never admit out loud. And then you realize you stopped breathing and that’s probably why you feel so dizzy, so you take a deep breath and smell his cologne and oops – there goes your composure.

“I’ll let you go back to work now. Maybe I’ll have a word with your boss about this work attire. You don’t look comfortable and to be honest I know there are at least ten men staring at you when you walk past and I don’t like it. Don’t ask me why. I just don’t” He says and for a second his eyes wander down to your mouth and you realize you bit your bottom lip.

He meets yours again, gives you one last cocky grin and then he turns and walks back to his Avenger friends. Of course, you watch him go. And of course you see all his friends’ eyes on you and every single one of them looks amused. Shit.

****

Forever Tag List: @izzy-the-teawitch @wowpeterparker @brightcolorsoffendme @strangequakson @rosegoldquintis @thirdwheelchurchill @hazel-eyed-bi @goldenkillmonger @yourwonderbelle @hawaiiantozier @irondadandspidersoncute @thirtiethnovember @fancyfangirl-style @appalo0 @lionheo04 @vivideley @mae-shower

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imkindanerdforlanguages · 5 years

Text

aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh啊啊啊啊啊啊啊啊啊啊啊!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was actually right about everything about my crush and her maybe girlfriend! Full story below and some will be repeat if anyone’s actually been keeping up with this. Skip to the third to last paragraph if you only wanna hear what happened today and not all the back story. I wrote this mainly so I could look at it later and remember and it turned out wayyyy longer than expected

Ok so I’ve like this girl a long time and we’ve been friends never questioned too much of she liked girls or not so that was never really a problem. So cut to football season 2017. We’re both in marching band and that’s how we became friends that year. We ended up both being in the same English class that school year and I become good friends with some of her other friends, including her maybe gf. (Shout out to those friends they’re super great). Since I have a massive crush on her (it’s 2018 by now) I pay more attention to her and stuff and I kinda notice how she acted with maybe gf. Like paying attention to maybe gf like I payed attention to her, looking at her lips, always mentioning her, stuff like that. So I think “oh she likes her, oh well, I wish her the best.” I’m quite shy irl so I wasn’t gonna make a move or anything and I was content what it was, though hopeful that she’ll maybe like me someday. I hate if people come on too strong myself and kinda believe that feelings are just gonna be what they are, rather than things that can swung heavily (idk if that makes sense but whatever)

So summer break happens then we’re at marching band 2018 still got my crush, still hopeful but not expecting much bc I still notice things between my crush and maybe gf. I think maybe gf is straight (I know, I know I’m not for assuming people’s sexuality but it was what it was) maybe it was my feelings making me think that maybe gf would never reciprocate but anyways I mainly feel bad for my crush bc it looks she really likes this girl and I can relate lol. So homecoming comes and I really wanna slow dance with her but I miss my fucking chance bc I go to the bathroom. Oh well. She did grind on me at one point but all the girls in our group were so whatever it was nice but didn’t really mean anything. And I actually worked up the nerve to text her that she looked gorgeous at homecoming (which she did) and I’m still proud of myself for that

One day shortly after, we’re at a band competition in the warmup room chilling bc we’re waiting for the rain to stop so we can go on. We’re talking in a group and someone ends up asking her if she has a crush on maybe gf, and she quickly denies (and I think yeah right lol) but then they ask if she has a crush on me and she stutters our her denial. The way she did it made me think that maybe I had a chance (there were other things too of course like the occasional look, etc). So the next day I muster up all the courage I have and text her asking if she has a crush on me, she says no, and I confess that I like her to get it off my chest. I thank god that we still remained great friends after that. We actually haven’t brought it up since.

Then the next football game she’s asked if she’s ever kissed a girl and she says yes and I’m like ah ha! I bet they are actually dating. (Side note that I kinda came out to like have the band that night cause someone asked if I was straight and I said no). I get a text from maybe gf the next day asking for relationship advice (she had never mentioned that she was in a relationship before) or something (I can’t really remember anymore). She’s playing the pronoun game so I figure that it’s a girl she’s dating and she’s says so later and tells me she’s bi. I told her I was bi too and we bonded over that and stuff it was nice and brought us closer etc. She says she doesn’t wanna tell me who it is and I respected that but I kinda figured that it was my crush. I think oh well that sucks for me but I’m happy for them. For things like this I largely live by just flowing with life and seeing where it takes you. If I didn’t I’d probably literally explode from stress lmao

Over then next couple months she tells me various things about her relationship which went through ups and downs. She felt trapped and pressured to come out and like nobody else could ever love her (which I always denied). There was a rough patch where she overloaded me with emotional stuff (which I am not prepared to handle) but it’s not too relevant to the story other than that a lot of the things she said made me more sure that my crush was her gf bc it just sounded like how she would act (note that after this she pretty much stopped texting me about her gf so I didn’t really get anymore info)

Sidenote: I’m not too sure how healthy their relationship actually was and since I only ever got one side of it I’m still not too sure how much of what I was told was truthful vs exaggerated since maybe gf was going through a rough patch. There were things like her panicking bc her gf was talking about marriage (yikes) and coming out and stuff. But she also talked about how it was easy to not cheat bc there was no one else in our town and she would kiss other girls as like a shock factor thing at parties and be like “my gf shouldn’t get mad bc it’s not like fr” (also yikes). I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that both of them had things that weren’t the best but we’re teenagers and this was probably both of their first relationships so I’m not labeling them as bad people or anything. The biggest clue tho that my crush was her gf was that she said that her gf was the only person who knew all the terrible things about her/her life and since my crush was probably the closest to her I sorta assumed

Sidenote 2: some other things that made me sure of their relationship: my crush once got jealous of me in the group chat (she jokingly told me no to something, idk what anymore, and my crush was like what about me??? Lol), maybe gf kinda tripped and my crushes hand went to her waist in an intimate way to stabilize her, they were always each other’s lock screens, my crush would always give in to maybe gf (which sometimes I didn’t like bc I felt like she had to give into some things she shouldn’t have— not like really bad things but just kinda :/ and she’d have to apologize for playful insults even tho maybe gf said like the same level of insult), the eye contact when our teacher mentioned interracial sex lol, also the constant FaceTiming and calling that lowkey got on my nerves (nyc trip was the worst but really wasn’t that bad. It was mostly the jealousy that made it suck)

Sidenote 3: prom happened somewhere in here and we cuddled on the couch a bit but not like what your thinking, more like sat really close but it was nice. At one point she was like completely on top of me bc she was fighting with someone playfully

Anyways moving on to the end of the school year, I’m like 90% sure they’re dating, and I notice things seem tense between them. My crush would put her head down a lot and they would playfully insult each other with a bit more bite. They didn’t hang around each other as much as they used to, etc. I was just really picking up on some vibes. Eventually things seem to settle down a bit buts it’s the end of the year already and they’re graduating and stuff.

All three of us ended up doing this program at a university that lets kids work with scientists and learn about stem etc. we each work in different labs so we don’t see each other everyday but the group gets together like 1-2 times a week. During these, I notice that they just don’t seem as close, like they didn’t sit next to each other, phone lock screens aren’t each other, crush’s name in maybe gfs phone is her full name not nick name (though this could have always been that, I’m not sure), my crush no longer apologizes or cares as much if maybe gf gets a little mad (which she gets easily). Taking this with the tension before school got out into consideration, I figure that they must have broken up. Cool cool, maybe I have a chance but also she’s moving across the state for college in a month so :/

That brings us to the grand finale: today. So I have no idea really if they have broken up or if they were even together in the first place. But then maybe gf mentions that she is now dating this guy (which I approve of, he’s super sweet). I kinda suspected bc a picture of him was her lock screen, they had been hanging out a lot, initials in insta bios (which Ik should be a dead give away but she once said that she hates how people assumed that her and this other guy were together when she was dating her gf do I didn’t wanna assume anything) and I was like ah ha! At lest Ik that they aren’t dating now if they ever did in the first place. She invites me to come hang out with her, her bf and another couple that I’m good friends with tomorrow. So after I get home, partly bc I don’t wanna be the only single person there, partly bc I wanna see if I can weasel out the truth, and partly bc I may have day dreamed about us being all coupley too and maybe a kiss (oh how I wish). I text her and ask if my crush can come too so I’m not the only single person there. She texts back saying that it would be a good idea. So I figure it’s now or never so I ask if it’s bc they dated. She originally says no but then says admits that yes they dated but she broke up with her and they are still friends.

She basically says that she broke up with her bc she’s not ready to be out bc she doesn’t wanna lose some of her friends, wants to be normal, etc. she’s always been insecure, so it’s not too surprising for me. I sincerely hope that one day she reaches a place where she can be herself and not worry. I also feel bad for my crush bc I have a feeling that she’s probably still pretty hurt over it and I wish her the best too. I’m not gonna try to like make a move or anything bc a. I have no idea how long it’s been since the breakup and how she feels about it b. I’ve already expressed feelings so I don’t wanna be that person who keeps pusing after they’re rejected c. She’s moving like 6 hours away in a month

All in all I’m super surprised that I actually picked up on the fact that they were dating and had broken up bc I’m am not very emotionally intelligent at all. Honestly I doubt I would have picked up on much if I was paying such close attention bc of my crush. I spent like an hour+ writing this I can’t believe I actually had so much to say and it makes my life seem much more dramatic that it is. Thank you if you actually read all this or have kept up with my woes in the slightest bye

#i was gonna stufy chinese but i wrote this novel instead #me

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viiavi · 6 years

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Get to know me tag

3 more traits to add to the 3 that’s been on my profile for a long time now.

I was tagged by @galaxysuede. Thank you!! ♥

I tag @ceechalla, @vvildhoneypie, @bloomlet, @naelu, @keysims, @shellywellylove, @nolan-sims, @a-kind-red, @simxiety, @frostsims21, @racingllama, @foursims and whoever else is interested!

1. WHAT IS YOUR FULL NAME? Jay

2. WHAT IS YOUR NICKNAME? Still Jay, lol

3. BIRTHDAY? Summer baby

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE BOOK SERIES? I don’t read as much as I used to, but growing up, I was a huge Goosebumps fan. Now, I’m waiting for the next book in the Song of Ice and Fire series

5. DO YOU BELIEVE IN ALIENS OR GHOSTS? Yes!

6. WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE AUTHOR? Now, idk. But as a child, I loved Mary Downing Hahn.

7. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE RADIO STATION? I don’t have a favorite radio station, but I really enjoy 96.5 with Delilah because I’m an old fart

8. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE FLAVOR OF ANYTHING? Coffee.

9. WHAT WORD WOULD YOU USE OFTEN TO DESCRIBE SOMETHING GREAT OR WONDERFUL? amazing

10. WHAT IS YOUR CURRENT FAVORITE SONG? "Evan Finds the Third Room” by Khruangbin

11. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE WORD? Bamboozled.

12. WHAT WAS THE LAST SONG YOU LISTENED TO? Shades of Man by Khruangbin

13. WHAT TV SHOW WOULD YOU RECOMMEND FOR EVERYBODY TO WATCH? Parks & Rec is good, Breaking Bad, The Good Place.

14. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE TO WATCH WHEN YOU’RE FEELING DOWN? Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

15. DO YOU PLAY VIDEO GAMES? Yes! Not as much as I used to though

16. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR? Failure and loneliness

17. WHAT IS YOUR BEST QUALITY, IN YOUR OPINION? I’m a problem solver.

18. WHAT IS YOUR WORST QUALITY, IN YOUR OPINION? I lack patience

19. DO YOU LIKE CATS OR DOGS BETTER? Dogs 100%

20. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SEASON? Spring

21. ARE YOU IN A RELATIONSHIP? Yes!

22. WHAT IS SOMETHING YOU MISS FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD? Peace of mind/less responsibilities.

23. WHO IS YOUR BEST FRIEND? My boyfriend

24. WHAT IS YOUR EYE COLOR? Dark brown

25. WHAT IS YOUR HAIR COLOR? Dark brown

26. WHO IS SOMEONE YOU LOVE? My family, my boyfriend, my friends and my dogs

27. WHO IS SOMEONE YOU TRUST? Boyfriend, again. He is the only person I can truly be myself with

28. WHO IS SOMEONE YOU THINK ABOUT OFTEN? See above. Also, my family and my dogs.

29. ARE YOU CURRENTLY EXCITED ABOUT/FOR SOMETHING? Yes! I’m excited for a trip I’m going to soon!

30. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST OBSESSION? Coffee and video games

31. WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE TV SHOW AS A CHILD? Sailor Moon, Are you Afraid of the Dark, All That

32. WHO OF THE OPPOSITE GENDER CAN YOU TELL ANYTHING TO, IF ANYONE? I think we already know this... starts with a B, ends with a D

33. ARE YOU SUPERSTITIOUS? I would like to say no, but I am

34. DO YOU HAVE ANY UNUSUAL PHOBIAS? Not really... all of mine are pretty common

35. DO YOU PREFER TO BE IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA OR BEHIND IT? Both!

36. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE HOBBY? Gardening

37. WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ? Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

38. WHAT WAS THE LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? I don’t remember. I think a documentary about fragrances

39. WHAT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS DO YOU PLAY, IF ANY? Violin

40. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ANIMAL? Orangutans

41. WHAT ARE YOUR TOP 5 FAVORITE TUMBLR BLOGS THAT YOU FOLLOW? Look at my blogroll for that.

42. WHAT SUPERPOWER DO YOU WISH YOU HAD? I would love telekinesis/telepathy. Or, the power to materialize anything you desire

43. WHEN AND WHERE DO YOU FEEL MOST AT PEACE? By the ocean, or when I’m gardening

44. WHAT MAKES YOU SMILE? I appreciate the small things in life, so I smile to a lot of things, and would be too tedious to list

45. WHAT SPORTS DO YOU PLAY, IF ANY? Tennis

46. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DRINK? Water, all the way.

47. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WROTE A HAND-WRITTEN LETTER OR NOTE TO SOMEBODY? A month ago?

48. ARE YOU AFRAID OF HEIGHTS? Yes!

49. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST PET PEEVE? Passive aggressiveness, though I am guilty of it myself sometimes

50. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO A CONCERT? Yes! The latest one I went to was Journey’s with my Madre

51. ARE YOU VEGAN/VEGETARIAN? No, I have to force myself to eat most veggies

52. WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GREW UP? A scientist

53. WHAT FICTIONAL WORLD WOULD YOU LIKE TO LIVE IN? Gonna go with Harry Potter world for this

54. WHAT IS SOMETHING YOU WORRY ABOUT? Finances and health.

55. ARE YOU SCARED OF THE DARK? I’m a little embarrassed to admit that yes, I still am.

56. DO YOU LIKE TO SING? Yes! No one is saying I’m good at it though, lmao

57. HAVE YOU EVER SKIPPED SCHOOL? Once, maybe? Idk, I actually liked school

58. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PLACE ON THE PLANET? The beach!

59. WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO LIVE? A little town by the sea

60. DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS? Yup, I have 3 dogs

61. ARE YOU MORE OF AN EARLY BIRD OR A NIGHT OWL? For a long time, I considered myself a night owl, but now that I’m older, I think I’m leaning more towards early bird

62. DO YOU LIKE SUNRISES OR SUNSETS BETTER? Sunrises! I love walking on crisp mornings with the sun just starting to peak through the horizon

63. DO YOU KNOW HOW TO DRIVE? Yes! And I must say, it is BORING AF

64. DO YOU PREFER EARBUDS OR HEADPHONES? Headphones! Earbuds never stay in my ear

65. HAVE YOU EVER HAD BRACES? Yes, for four years

66. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE GENRE OF MUSIC? Not sure

67. WHO IS YOUR HERO? My mom! She is the most patient, caring, emphatic, talented and hard working person that I know. I strive to one day be as good of a person as her

68. DO YOU READ COMIC BOOKS? I used to. Me, Garfield and Archie Comics go way back

69. WHAT MAKES YOU THE MOST ANGRY? Intolerance

70. DO YOU PREFER TO READ ON AN ELECTRONIC DEVICE OR WITH A REAL BOOK? The real thing. Reading on a electronic device all day makes my head hurt

71. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SUBJECT IN SCHOOL? English and Microbiology

72. DO YOU HAVE ANY SIBLINGS? I have an older sister and brother

73. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU BOUGHT? A foot massager for my mom

74. HOW TALL ARE YOU? 160cm

75. CAN YOU COOK? Yes! But I don’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would

76. WHAT ARE THREE THINGS THAT YOU LOVE? Coffee, bouganvilleas, and bear hugs

77. WHAT ARE THREE THINGS THAT YOU HATE? People who litter, broken promises, and when people don’t give me a sufficient amount of time to do/prepare for something

78. DO YOU HAVE MORE FEMALE FRIENDS OR MORE MALE FRIENDS? Nowadays, I have more male friends

79. WHAT IS YOUR SEXUAL ORIENTATION? Straight

80. WHERE DO YOU CURRENTLY LIVE? The US.

81. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TEXTED? My sister

82. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? Yesterday, while watching a documentary, lol

83. WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE YOUTUBER? Laura from Garden Answers, lol

84. DO YOU LIKE TO TAKE SELFIES? Nope.

85. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE APP? The calculator app, lol

86. WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR PARENT(S) LIKE? I’m definitely closer to my mother than I am to my father. My dad and I have had a strained relationship while I was growing up, but now that I’m out of the house, our relationship has gotten better.

87. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE FOREIGN ACCENT? I love the Creole accent

88. WHAT IS A PLACE THAT YOU’VE NEVER BEEN TO, BUT YOU WANT TO VISIT? Too many places

89. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE NUMBER? 4 and 47

90. CAN YOU JUGGLE? I can juggle one ball

91. ARE YOU RELIGIOUS? Not really. But as I’ve gotten older, I feel a little bit more religious than I was before

92. DO YOU FIND OUTER SPACE OF THE DEEP OCEAN TO BE MORE INTERESTING? That’s a tough question, and definitely not one I can choose between. Both are really interesting

93. DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF TO BE A DAREDEVIL? Eh, sometimes

94. ARE YOU ALLERGIC TO ANYTHING? Dog dander

95. CAN YOU CURL YOUR TONGUE? No

96. CAN YOU WIGGLE YOUR EARS? Only when I also move my entire face

97. HOW OFTEN DO YOU ADMIT THAT YOU WERE WRONG ABOUT SOMETHING? Certainly not an easy thing to do, but I admit that I’m wrong most of the time

98. DO YOU PREFER THE FOREST OR THE BEACH? I love both! But I’m drawn to large bodies of water

99. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PIECE OF ADVICE THAT ANYONE HAS EVER GIVEN YOU? It’s on the tip of my tongue... tip of my tongue 😕

100. ARE YOU A GOOD LIAR? I don’t think so, lol

101. WHAT IS YOUR HOGWARTS HOUSE? Hufflepuff

102. DO YOU TALK TO YOURSELF? Yes, and I’m not afraid to admit it

103. ARE YOU AN INTROVERT OR AN EXTROVERT? I’m an introvert, but can be an extrovert when liquid courage is around

104. DO YOU KEEP A JOURNAL/DIARY? I used to

105. DO YOU BELIEVE IN SECOND CHANCES? Yes, wholeheartedly

106. IF YOU FOUND A WALLET FULL OF MONEY ON THE GROUND, WHAT WOULD YOU DO? Pick it up, look around, call out and probably mail it back to the person who lost it

107. DO YOU BELIEVE THAT PEOPLE ARE CAPABLE OF CHANGE? Yes! Everyone is capable of change. Though the rate of growth varies greatly from individual to individual, so the amount of change you may hope to see is often not what you get. Giving people second chances and wanting to grow takes a lot of time and patience.

108. ARE YOU TICKLISH? Certainly

109. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ON A PLANE? Yes, and I hate them

110. DO YOU HAVE ANY PIERCINGS? My ears

111. WHAT FICTIONAL CHARACTER DO YOU WISH WAS REAL? Let’s go with Captain America with this one, idk

112. DO YOU HAVE ANY TATTOOS? Yes, I have 2!

113. WHAT IS THE BEST DECISION THAT YOU’VE MADE IN YOUR LIFE SO FAR? Cutting toxic people from my life

114. DO YOU BELIEVE IN KARMA? Yes, definitely

115. DO YOU WEAR GLASSES OR CONTACTS? I do, though, my simself aint wearing any

116. DO YOU WANT CHILDREN? Absolutely

117. WHO IS THE SMARTEST PERSON YOU KNOW? My boyfriend is one of the smartest people I know

118. WHAT IS YOUR MOST EMBARRASSING MEMORY? I took my dog to the groomer’s and she asked for my dog’s name, and brain kept glitching and making my mouth say “Boner”

119. HAVE YOU EVER PULLED AN ALL-NIGHTER? Who hasn’t?

120. WHAT COLOR ARE MOST OF YOU CLOTHES? Black

121. DO YOU LIKE ADVENTURES? YES!! I love spontaneity

122. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ON TV? I don’t think so

123. HOW OLD ARE YOU? 31

124. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE QUOTE? “Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one” - Bruce Lee

125. DO YOU PREFER SWEET OR SAVORY FOODS? Savory.

#get to know me

82 notes · View notes

davidmann95 · 5 years

Note

E L S E W O R L D S ? ? ?

MY THOUGHTS ON THE WORLDS AND THEIR ELSE-ENING ARE MANY.

Gonna put most of this under a spoiler cut just in case, but right up front: I only regularly watch The Flash starting with Season 4 (along with seeing the first half-seasons of it and Supergirl, plus sporadic episodes of the other shows and Invasion!), and while there are absolutely standout episodes, it’s probably the most lukewarmly received piece of media I consume on a regular basis. So Elseworlds looked rad, and The Best Superman was coming back for it, but aside from hints that it was going all Final Crisis (which sadly weren’t realized) I was hardly outright ecstatic at the prospect of a Freaky Friday alone, even with Batwoman’s introduction in play. Basically I assumed it’d a bunch of fine stuff I’d get through so I could drink up the Superman content like a dying man in a desert.

This was my favorite live-action DC thing since The Dark Knight Rises if not in fact The Dark Knight itself, and in all honesty probably my favorite period of the non-Batman division. It was everything I want out of this sort of project and more.

I’mma break this down into a few categories: as a whole, Superman specifically because if you’re here you know what my deal is, THE ENDING, and a multitude of scattershot impressions and thoughts.

AS A WHOLE: Was this a masterwork of layered conceptual depth and calculated plotting tight as drum? Hardly - if nothing else, the sheer fact that the entire Superfamily is functionally and thematically superfluous precludes that upfront. But again, this is the perfect version of this kind of series, where clockwork precision is rarely the name of the game (aside from that dope episode of Flash with the bomb) so much as excitement and character-driven emotion, and in that regard this is the platonic ideal. Oliver and Barry hold the narrative together as Barry low-key relearns the value of his own kind of strength, and Oliver high-key learns to accept that he’s not living in a world defined by him anymore and he needs to be better, to the point where I may not even rag on him as Walmart Batman anymore every time I have cause to mention him, especially since that gets its own perfect sendoff. Batwoman functions as a perfect pilot capsule while still functioning as a chunk of a larger story, and Ruby Rose is on point. Supergirl gets some quality content even with her hands off the wheel (which is one of the lesser aspects given…well, given this is probably gonna be the last crossover like this and she really should have been the lead for one of them). It’s funny and thrilling and so damn weird, concerned above all else with making you giggle at doing stuff you’ve wanted to see for years and then making you give a shit about the emotional consequences of Barry Allen picking up some archery classes, and it earns what it reaches for.

Moreover, this episode represented a moment of maturation for me in terms of its status as a shared universe: Crisis on Earth-X was the culmination of what this world HAD been with its massive group shot aboard the Waverider, and that culmination was my going “wow, lookit that, they really did build something kinda functional out of what they had to work with”. It was a world that was comic book as all hell in the best way, but its own oddball strain made up of recognizable pieces broken off from a larger puzzle and rearranged into a new configuration. Here? From the moment the Monitor chases off 90s Flash on a desperate race from his dead world and the bodies of an army of superheroes to save all creation, into Superman taking his place as a central figure, Batman’s mythology unfurling out of nowhere at a beautifully shameless breakneck pace, the establishment of the Multiverse and Monitor mythology as the base level concept uniting the universe as a whole, and hotlinks to a half-dozen other major mythology elements I’d given up on ever seeing acknowledged, this really and profoundly feels like DC Comics.

SUPERMAN: Still so so good! I will say, this wasn’t nearly as much a breakthrough standout display for Hoechlin’s Clark as his prior Supergirl appearances, with a couple line readings where he’s maybe just a little too chill, and less opportunity to display range or depth given he’s in the back seat. And dude’s gotta practice pretending to be thrown back, however you do that, because that was pretty badly fakey-looking. If this had been his debut, I still would’ve loved him, but he’d be taking up third or fourth on my list of live-action Superman actors rather than sitting pretty at #1; I have to wonder if a lot of his energy simply went to his killer performance as Deegan, or if he’s still modulating his kinda-being-his-real-self-but-also-still-putting-on-the-Supermanness chunk of his performance given it’s with Kara and Lois that he really shines. If someone writes him off as a dime store Reeve though, they’re still wrong and also probably bad. Shoring up his cracks though is Elizabeth Tulloch, who’s already at least vying for a place on the Lois Lane Mount Rushmore. Reminded me heavily of the best of Erica Durance’s take, but with an additional straightforward bluntness that suits Lane incredibly well, and a talent for talking rings around Clark that does more than any other Lois to date to sell the idea that that’s a huge part of what he loves about her. Also she slaps around a mad god with the hammer for the cosmic anvil from All-Star Superman, because if there’s one thing Lois Lane steadfastly refuses to be in the business of, it’s in any way fucking around.

As for the big question: even aside from Tulloch making pretty clear in a recent interview that it’s something producers are talking about, yes, I absolutely think the Superman/Lois chunk of this was as fully intended to act as a backdoor pilot for them as the second act was for Batwoman. I know I’ve been certain on this in the past just as a matter of ‘they can use Superman so it would be foolish not to push that’, but then, well, nothing happened. But here, while the creators are clearly hedging their bets with providing them what could easily be a happily-ever-after, their appearance in this way in this context is bizarrely conspicuous and pointless if that wasn’t what was intended. They’re incidental to the plot (Deegan becoming Superman, while great fun that gives us an interesting new spin on the evil Superman concept, is basically just an aesthetic), the functionality of getting Clark away from National City had already been handled by the season premiere and never actually takes anything more than ‘he’s busy in space/plugging up a volcano/fighting Luthor’ as has already been done in the past, the guest spots and relevant emotional beats could have easily been contained to an episode of Supergirl rather than spilling out into an already stuffed three episodes, and if they could only be used in one crossover for some reason they’d obviously be saved for the next one. And they get a scene to themselves AFTER their role with our leads is wrapped up, with a moment that could have already come off-screen earlier but didn’t, purely to endear them to us in a way that would make us want to see more of them. I’m not saying a Superman show is now guaranteed, but unless there was some bizarre instruction that they suddenly once and for all needed to permanently get rid of him - yet permitted that to be accomplished via the delivery mechanism of more Superman, in a way that’s noted as impermanent in-universe and in a context that’s going to introduce him and Lois and push them as big deals to the maximum possible number of viewers - yeah, I think that’s what the people who made this must have been intending. And that the powers that be let them is incredibly encouraging. As Tulloch said, a lot of this is out of the hands of anyone but corporate, but Elseworlds got season highs so that’s a point in their favor; hopefully Cryer works out as Luthor, because I imagine that’s the other checkmark needing to be crossed off that comes down to the response of the viewership.

Also the proposal was perfect, and I am astonished that happening after the pregnancy was announced got to go through - ‘modern’ indeed, as Cat Grant would put it. I get it’s got precedent of a sort in Superman Returns, but on the other hand, that precedent was Superman Returns. I’m surprised I’m not already seeing thinkpieces on the degradation of American Values coming out of this.

FUCK:

FUCK.

I really thought there was gonna be one more crossover before they dove all the way in. But nope, nope nope nope, instead by this time next year for-real live action Crisis on Infinite Earths with Flash, Supergirl, Superman, the Monitor, shadow demons, the Psycho Pirate, and assuredly a comprehensive collection of carefully curated cameos from the ghosts of DC TV past will be a thing out there in the world. Marv Wolfman sure must be having a nice day.

And boy, they are not in ANY kind of position to half-ass it. The name value alone would be enough, but if that was it they could at least maybe get away with Dean Cain and Brandon Routh showing up in their old working clothes to help beat up the Anti-Monitor on a cordoned-off Vancouver street, maybe a couple of the Legends folks biting it. But they‘ve been explicitly acknowledging it as a thing they’d build up to for five years, since episode one of their most popular show, and if I’m right and the writing in the book of Destiny was supposed to be the same kind of text that Nora’s writing, they’ve been actively setting up Chekhov’s guns within the shows themselves for at minimum two years. AND they’ve already done three other world-threatening multiversal crossovers, including a classic JLA/JSA-model Crisis, so they’ve already established a threshold of crossover event that this needs to plainly mark itself as an entirely different order of magnitude from, AND they’ve had a threat to the multiverse before in Zoom so just saying that again without really showing it isn’t going to measure up. Hell, the idea of massive status quo changes is reinforced as being just the much of the mission statement of this as the original via Psycho Pirate. They’ve apparently quite knowingly backed themselves into a corner where they actually have to Wreck Shit. At minimum one of the three leads has to die for keeps, and all have the symbolic weight behind them - Oliver included after Elseworlds, and really in the first place as the founder of this DCU - and have obvious enough successor shows waiting in the wings to feel like they’re legitimately in the line of fire.

My hope? One that unlike usual I’m not gonna bolster by drawing on evidence at hand and logical assumptions, but the way I simply feel it Should Go and think at this point has a legitimate chance of being the case? Crisis is its own miniseries in the fall in place of the return of the other four shows, a massive high-budget ensemble piece with room to breathe…and at the end pretty much everyone dies. Most of the Legends, some supporting cast members, and above all Oliver, Barry, and Kara ALL die grandiosely and nobly to save all creation, hidden from the audience successfully by way of a miniseries ‘putting off’ the actually nonexistent renewals of the existing series. Earths 1 and 38 are merged (hopefully without discarding the multiverse as a whole, and with the heroes remembering their pasts), and in the wake of this massive conclusion, the entire DCTV lineup is effectively relaunched. Batwoman comes in here, taking Arrow’s place, while Superman emerges (likely with a psuedo-Rebirth setup since Jon’s on the way - they can figure out a way to get him to the appropriate age) with him dealing with his family and his initial grief, The Flash is relaunched with Wally and/or Nora assuming the mantle, and Legends reconstituting itself, whether by its original title or as Legion of Superheroes or Justice League, with a new lineup made up in large part of the castoffs from the cancelled series. Again, obviously there’s nothing definitely pointing towards this being the case, but somehow it just feels right, especially with Batwoman and Superman shows clearly being gestured towards when Arrow and Supergirl are the shows that would definitely have to end or at least change names with the death of their leads. The strongest evidence against all this, I think, is that Supergirl wouldn’t quite have hit a hundred episodes and syndication yet. Though there may still be that Supergirl movie too, so that’s a factor.

A couple incidental thoughts on that front:

* Interesting that Flash vanishes in 2024 and is still gone in 2049, but the first crossover - made when ‘Flash vanishes’ was already a keystone mythology element, and given its place at such an important moment you’d think the writers would remember - makes clear there’s an old Barry around in 2056. I could see that coming up.

* Thawne’s role in this season of Flash feels at this point like it has to dovetail into everything, and I could see him taking up Psycho Pirates’ role in the original story even if the genuine article’s around.

* I wonder if Jon Cryer’s gonna play Alexander Luthor.

* If Kara and Barry do die, and likely make some post-death appearances, I wouldn’t mind if they for the sake of novelty reverse things so that it’s Kara who comes back for real in Final Crisis, while Barry’s the one who comes from the past unknowingly and tear-inducingly ala Whatever Happened From The Man Of Tomorrow? (that could easily be set up via the “three hardest days of your life” thing Johns did in his Flash run).

* Incidentally, do Final Crisis as the ultimate event the next wave of shows build up to like this was built up to, and make that the end of everything.

* If I’m all wrong about Superman and he’s just being set up as a lamb to the slaughter for Crisis to fill the Supergirl role (which would still by no means require him appearing in Elseworlds, especially given it’s not like he develops a relationship with Barry or Oliver, so I’ll say my points all still stand), I get the impulse is to do him dying in Kara’s arms. But if they do wanna go this way and finish his story, I really, really hope that instead they let him deal at least part of the killing blow and then somehow vanish into ‘Heaven’ with Lois and Jon. If you’re gonna homage a Superman bit from there to close him out, that’s the one to go with.

* If Ezra Miller wasn’t bullshitting and would be willing to put in a little appearance, this is the place.

ASSORTED REACTIONS:

* “Oh Barry, what have you done this time?” Oliver’s wise to your shit, boy. He knows full well he’s pretty much in a ‘Barry fucks up with Flashpoint even further’ meme come to life.

* Barry freaking out that he knows kung fu is a delight, as is Oliver trying so dang hard to do this whole ‘Flash’ thing.

* Knocking out the pair of them is admittedly *a bit much*, but while some might correctly note that they’ve seen so much weird shit they should be able to accept this, I’d say it’d also be fair to note that they’ve seen so much weird shit they’re not wrong to think this is gonna snowball into some bullshit and it’d maybe be simplest to nip it in the bud and get things under control.

* Barry, I’m glad there are toilets in the Pipeline, but someday you’re going to think to ask ‘so Cisco, what are you feeding them down there?’, and then Vibe’s gonna go OH FRAK or some other nerd shit and they’re gonna find 5 seasons worth of corpses to clean up.

* Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha they did fuckin’ KGBeast on Arrow. Was that who Dolph Lundgren played? Checking…no. Dang.

* I had heard there was gonna be a Remy Zero shout-out for Smallville, but I assumed someone would just ask for someone to save them or it would be playing on the radio, not that they’d hard swerve from vague orchestral stirrings to pseudo-Nickelback. Loved it.

* Clark’s doin’ Clark stuff and I love it, Lois is doin’ Lois stuff and I love it, she nearly kills the Flash and Green Arrow with a hammer (truly her weapon of choice!) and I love it.

* Oliver pathetically puffing out his chest, WHILE CLARK ISN’T EVEN BEING SUPERMAN, is as good as television gets.

* AMAZO. Aside from basic delight at his existence, I love that the ‘Mirakiru’ ties into the Ivo material I know was in early, pre-superhero Arrow. It’s as if when Smallville got to do Supergirl and Doomsday for real they went ahead and tied them back in to the weird proto versions of them they’d already set up not knowing what they’d be able to do later. Much as Mxyzptlk or Grodd or Muppet Legends (I also caught that shows’ midseason finale, it was delightful) are easy to point to as indicators of how far this universe has come, this underlined that in a very unique way.

* Harsh, Barry - and where did you get those crossbows? - but earned as the Superfamily probably put together when they heard Oliver yelling about how when HE shot Barry he totally had a good reason for it. And along with the sheer, savage power of “I don’t think you can go more than nine hours without some sappy motivational speech”, it sets up Barry’s more understated character arc relative to Oliver in questioning and then reaffirming that his brand of emotional strength is just as strong as what your cowled types draw on. And while Lois obviously had the killer moment, Clark’s little “well, you kinda had that coming” look when Barry floors Oliver is nicely done. Smart money says he was thinkin’ about Bruce.

* Continued into the porch conversation, where the show takes its first real step in rehabilitating CW Green Arrow into a character I may no longer refer to by default as Walmart Batman as the show continues to dunk on him but he begins to take it in stride and realize he’s gonna have to change things up a bit.

* “Cool. Who are you?” “A friend.” So choice. Is that very clearly Williams-evoking musical sting at the end there something that often shows up in Supergirl? And I can’t tell whether’s Clark’s grin is in response to what he’s about to do, or because he’s relishing the hilarity of meeting a normal dude for the first time in his adult life who doesn’t know who Superman is, but either way I love it. And since I found his previous introductory shirt-tear honestly a little sub-par, this was an appreciated moment of redemption.

* Amazo fight rules, obviously. I do like to imagine the headlines the next day mentioning “hey, another superhero teamup happened with Supergirl from that other Earth who helped out with those invasions, and this time a male partner of hers showed up, some kind of…Super-man?” as the one pubic mention of Superman in the history of what’s presented as a ‘main’ DC universe.

* Barry just casually addressing ‘Clark’ by his first name is the first moment where I really thought ‘oh wow, this IS the DC Universe now’. And that “You’re welcome” worked as a reminder where there otherwise wasn’t space that yeah, he’s a nice dude, but maybe don’t tug too hard on his cape.

* Even though it wasn’t overtly followed up on, Barry being reminded that following Oliver’s example as his source of strength isn’t what’s gonna win him the day in the long run in the way that matters is a pretty essential piece.

* Every moment of Total Bat-Bullshit in here was so cheap and I loved it all so much.

* Oliver-dunking takes on its glorious apotheosis here - you know the line I’m thinking of - but it’s a necessary aspect of his journey here.

* Ruby Rose is very good as the charismatic vaguely menacing but easily flirty businesswoman, and again later kicking ass and delivering the growl, which she honestly does better than any live action Batman to this point. Curious to have it elaborated what kind of role she had in Bruce’s operation, given she clearly knew and has her own friggin’ cave.

* And then Barry stands up to Oliver’s demons while Oliver realizes Barry’s.

* “You really do have a lot of tattoos.” Oh my, Kara.

* “You have real steel in you, my friend.” And there you go for Barry’s arc.

* Well, wow. Fan theory bullshit triumphs at last, and now I kind of have to imagine we’re gonna see some actual Lanterns down the line. Hope, likely in vain, we see Hal so he can pal around with them before Oliver and/or Barry bite it.

* Mar Novu, huh? Somea that Final Crisis bullshiiiiit, please do feel free to pursue that further. Mandrakk’s cousin or something I guess?

* That can’t really be the end of the 90s Flash, right? If nothing else, he needs to stick around so that if they decide not to disintegrate Grant Gustin after all he can be the one there to make the death run.

* Episode one: “The darkness…I feel it…it threatens…to…CONSUME me…” Episode three : “oh my GOD Oliver we broke a LAW I’m gonna THROW UP”

* Hoechlin plays the hell out of Scary Dickhead Superman, even if it’s odd that Deegan was defensive about making an arguably sexist choice of identity when he already openly fucking supports eugenics. But an anon asked me about this and suggested this is a top-tier evil Superman, and yeah, I’d agree with that. He’s not scary because’s a mad god, he’s scary because he’s a small, small man who’s lucked his way into being GTA mod Superman, all of the pluses with none of the minuses, all of the ego-assuaging praise and power without having to meaningfully hold up his end of the bargain. It’s an effective twist on Superman as a power fantasy, one that’s scary in a very different way than the idea of it going wrong usually is. Because instead of him letting us down, it’s one of us joining him in the sun and trying to kick him and the rest of us out because it’s all HIS now.

* Oh yeah, of course Superman totally knows about the Book of Destiny. All the REALLY cool superheroes got that that kind of experience in the bag.

* As I said, Supergirl takes a back seat, but Benoist really shines with swaying Alex Danvers - from the moment I saw she’d be in this from the trailer I thought “Kara swaying her can’t be done very believably, it would be convincing her of a whole other life instead of a minor alteration”, but damn if she didn’t sell it.

* I must admit, the Superman V Superman fight is Hoechlin’s low point; him losing the advantage because he’s saving people is perfect, but some of his good-Superman deliveries lack the necessary conviction, and whether due to the animation or his overexagerated tumbling, him getting knocked around the city looks notably fake in parts to an extent that breaks the immersion.

* I guess Superman fought Bizarro at some point, if that concept carried over (I know Supergirl fought a Bizarro too, but if Superman never fought one the average citizen wouldn’t make that comparison). I suppose it’s the Earth-1 Alex Danvers and James Olsen though?

* Similar note: Kara mentions that ‘maybe my pod didn’t make it here’, and given doppelgangers are a thing, it’s been noted there’s a Krypton in each universe, obviously at least one other major superhero carries over in Batman, and the degree of long-term planning clearly going on at this point with the multiverse stuff, I honestly wonder if they might be laying the seeds for something on why Superman and Supergirl never happened on Earth-1.

* I do like that Superman’s technically the one who beats the bad guy flat-out and saves the world from a broken history by sheer force of will, even if he’s not the one with the splashier more permanent win later (and even then he saves Lois).

* Fuck yes. Never liked Superman turning the world backwards, but now entirely worth it for how that shit comes back here in the most gleefully unhinged manner imaginable (even if Mach 7 wiping out Barry and Kara is absurd on the face of it).

* And Oliver comes full circle to realizing he’s no longer the center of his own universe, realizing he can be better while still proving he has it in him to make the hardest call. This dude still ain’t Ollie, but I guess I can acknowledge him as Green Arrow.

* And then it’s all Superman stuff and Crisis, which I discussed, though worth mentioning just how off-guard the Jon confirmation caught me. Thumbs up on that!

#Elseworlds #DCTV #Superman #Lois Lane #Crisis On Infinite Earths #Flash #Arrow #Supergirl #Analysis #Opinion

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spiritualgravity · 5 years

Text

One in six.

I went through a depression period during my junior year of college. I can’t intellectually explain why that happened — but what I can do is chalk it up to a chemical imbalance because there was nothing ‘wrong’ with my life per se.

What I vividly remember is seeing life through a pair of dirty sunglasses. The hue was dark and I was unable to clearly process my emotions. One example was holding a grudge against my older siblings. I concocted a story in my head that they didn’t want to get to know me.

We live several states apart from each other — a 7 hour drive, or a 400+ mile road trip, or one overpriced plane ride with one layover included. By the time my Dad’s job transferred to the Washington D.C. area from New York when I was eight years old, my two oldest siblings stayed behind because they were old enough to take care of themselves. There is a 12-13 year difference between us.

During clinical depression, the lens in which someone looks through is not clear.

I believe that, since my oldest siblings and I didn’t talk much, if at all except major family functions, graduations, and holidays, that it meant they simply didn’t want to know me. Really know me.

As I made my way out of the year of depression, I spent the better part of the next 20 years working on achieving the closest thing I possibly could to find enlightenment without ever actually visiting a shrine or monastery. I don’t think I’ll be joining Mother Teresa and Buddha poolside when my soul meets them on the other side, but, I have done quite a bit of work to rise my level of consciousness and hope to at least get their autograph.

I eventually realized that my siblings do love me — despite the fact we wouldn’t talk very often. As we have all gotten older and the significant age gap didn’t feel quite as tangible, we found things to relate to and share common interests together. Families, children, life struggles, life celebrations, and life experiences. Today I am grateful to feel close to my siblings, even if we don’t talk daily or weekly, our bond is unbreakable.

One week ago, I learned that my oldest brother has cancer. I fondly refer to him as “#1.” He returns the sentiment and calls me “#5” — the number of our birth order. I like to think that... even though he’s literally #1 in our lineup... he truly embodies being #1 in every sense of the word. I feel the love he has for me whenever we talk, it’s nearly palpable.

He is the unlucky recipient of a genetic DNA component that makes our family more susceptible to melanoma. We have moles in places on our bodies that have never seen the sun. There are too many relatives to list who have also battled this disease, including him — multiple times over.

Despite being checked, like clock work, every 3 months, by the best doctors in the United States of America, he got cancer — and it spread — to his brain.

A family of tumors decided to make themselves at home in my brother’s head. These uninvited house guests have left quite an impression — some are small, some are large, and they’ve established a road map around the entire circumference of the most important and complex organ in his body.

I am considered an intuitive and an empath — I have an active “third eye” as they say. He doesn’t know this, until he reads it himself, but the day he texted all 5 of his siblings in a group message, that he’d like to have a conference call with our family later that evening, shortly thereafter I had a knowing come over me that he had stage 4 [cancer]. And, I knew it wasn’t melanoma in its original form, either. I knew it was something bigger, and that it was really, really bad.

I attempted to meditate, spent time clearing my chakras / energy, and scolded myself not to jump to conclusions before our phone call — because that’s the right thing to do. Stay present. But, I knew it, in my gut, in my being, I knew it and my intuition told me so.

Over the next few days, while processing the unfathomable news, I found myself in a hostile warfare with my own brain. One part, the part I know intimately, is being positive, optimistic, hopeful, and believing that our thoughts manifest. Well, that part was sharing equal space with the other part of my brain that is highly analytical, data-driven, and 100% truth-seeking based solely on facts.

All of the self development tools I’ve been collecting during the last two decades, are being put to the test, maybe more than ever before. I can decide to live in fear, I can decide to focus on numbers and ratios and percentages and clinical trials. Or I can decide to live in miracles.

Tomorrow a neurosurgeon will remove one of the tumors, which will then be tested, and ultimately determine which course of treatment he’ll follow. The phenomenal news is that over the last 10 years or so, incredible strides have been made in metastatic melanoma treatments, so he has a much, much better shot today than if this had happened in the past.

Blessings — they’re everywhere — and not a single one goes unnoticed in a very blurry moment in time.

“He who has a ‘why’ to live for, can endure any ‘how’.”

Much of my career has been spent in and around the medical field. Susan G. Komen for the Cure was a client of mine at one point, their mission is to educate people on breast cancer as well as raise funds for research and awareness. The advertising agency I worked for at the time, helped them create mantras to be shouted at the breast cancer races — “ONE IN EIGHT. BEAT THAT RATE.” had to do with the number of women who will be diagnosed with the disease in their lifetime.

So, it hasn’t gone unnoticed that my considerably large family of siblings — six of us in total — might fall victim to a pretty terrible diagnosis at some point or another. Of course I didn’t expect it, but statistically I was aware that one of us may become a figure someday. There’s a joke in my family that none of us landed in jail. Statistically, among six kids, at least one of us could have very easily wound up on the wrong track so to speak — but, every single one of us received a college education, have successful careers, and loving families. It’s truly remarkable, and only into my adult years, could I put two-and-two together that our parents did a hell of a good job raising us.

It is so easy for me to get drunk on probabilities and case studies, because that’s what I’ve been taught, matters. Peer-reviewed journals trump a subjective medical opinion. Clinical outcomes beat out educated projections. I have caught myself being overwhelmed — can’t catch my breath kind of overwhelmed— by these statistics.

I understand that deep down, it’s a safety mechanism from fear, to prepare myself for the worst. If I live with my head in the clouds, and take naps in Denial-land, then I’ll only be more upset if things don’t go in our favor. If I stare this thing in the face, then I won’t be caught offguard.

But I know that my mind is just trying protect me. Remember how complex I said it is?

What I have come to remember is that I don’t need protection. I am already protected, so, so protected. By the divine. I would say that, the singlest most important aspect of my life, is my faith.

So what do I need protection from? From my own bullshit. What has the past 20 years been for, learning to believe in the highest good, if…when it really counts, I play hooky.

I believe that life is one really long lesson. Usually there is one BIG lesson, and it is broken down into many, many, many opportunities to learn the lesson over the course of our lifetime. And, most of us, usually, choose to take the longer route to actually get the lesson.

Perhaps my lesson — on some level — is learning how to walk the walk, and not just talk the talk. My verbal game is pretty good. I can post an inspirational quote all day long, every hour on the hour, over social media…and still have more to spare in my back pocket. I can recite one liners from Oprah and her influencers. I can talk someone off a proverbial cliff with conviction and positivity. I have a piece of artwork on my fireplace mantle that reads, in all caps, NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP.

But hand someone, who I love, a life-threatening diagnosis, and I nearly lose my grip.

Years ago I heard the expression, “control what you can control.” I’ve always loved that sentiment. It immediately brings me back to the present moment, and, offers logic.

If 10% of life is what happens to us, and 90% is how we react to it — and it’s really the only thing we can control, our attitudes — then it seems it’s time to go to battle with this metastatic brigade and kill every single cancer cell with an ocean’s worth of love.

Cancer inadvertently picked the wrong family. You see, we are six fiercely loyal humans who love each other to the moon and back, and then some more. I am one in six who will fight and pray and believe the best is in our future. I am one in six who will unshakably stand behind his own family, including his four beautiful children and wife. I am one in six who will give him all of my light. I am one in six who knows that if anyone in our family was to face, fight and win this — it’s Bobby. He is one in six who will overcome cancer...he is #1 afterall.

#thomsenstrong #melanoma #cancer #hope #survivor #skin health #DNA #family

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