#this is a real panel. that someone drew. that they published | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

knifeonmars · 3 years

Text

Capsule Reviews, February 2021

Here's some things I've been reading.

The Curse of Brimstone

DC's New Age of Heroes books, emerging from the beginning of Scott Snyder's creative-flameout-as-crossover-event Metal, mostly constituted riffs on Marvel heroes like the Fantastic Four (in The Terrifics) or the Hulk (in Damage). The Curse of Brimstone is a riff on Ghost Rider. It's... uneven. The first volume is generally pretty good, and when Phillip Tan is drawing it, as he does the first three and a half issues, it's gorgeous and unique, when he departs though, the quality takes a nose dive. None of the replacement artists, including the great Denis Cowan, can quite fill his shoes, and the story gets old fast. Guy makes a deal with the devil (or rather, a devil-like inhabitant of the "Dark Multiverse" as a not horribly handled tie-in to the conceits of Metal), realizes it's a raw deal, and rebels. The characters are flat, lots of time is spent with the main character's sister haranguing him to not use his powers (it is, in my humble opinion, something of a cardinal sin to have a character whose primary role is telling other characters to stop doing interesting things), too many potboiler "I know you're still in there!/I can feel this power consuming me!" exchanges, a couple of underwhelming guest spots (including a genuinely pointless appearance by the old, white, boring Doctor Fate) too many flashbacks, and not enough of the action. There's potential in the classic demonic hero rebelling plotline and its link to the liminal spaces of the DC universe, forgotten towns and economic depression, but the wheels come off this series pretty much as soon as Tan leaves. The really disappointing this is that the series is clearly built as an artistic showcase, so after Tan's shockingly early departure, the main appeal of the series is gone and there's nothing left but the playing out of an obviously threadbare story.

Star Wars - Boba Fett: Death, Lies, and Treachery

I don't care much about Star Wars these days, and I think that most of the old Expanded Universe was, as evidenced by Crimson Empire, pretty bad. Death, Lies, and Treachery, is that rare Star Wars EU comic which is actually good. John Wagner writes and he's in full-on 2000 AD mode, writing Boba Fett as a slightly more unpleasant Johnny Alpha (who is like a mercenary Judge Dredd, for those unfamiliar) right on down to the appearance of a funny alien sidekick for one of the characters. The main attraction is Cam Kennedy's art though, along with his inimitable colors: this might be the best looking Star Wars comic ever. The designs are all weird and chunky, with an almost kitbashed feeling that captures the lived in aesthetic of classic Star Wars, and the colors are one of a kind. Natural, neutral white light does not exist in this comic, everything is always bathed at all times in lurid greens or yellows, occasionally reds, and it looks incredible. In terms of "Expanded Universe" material for Star Wars, this hits the sweet spot of looking and feeling of a piece, but exploring the edges of the concept with a unique voice. It's great. I read this digitally, but I'd consider it a must-buy in print if I ever get the chance at a deal.

Zaroff

Zaroff is a French comic (novel? novella?). It's like 90 pages and it delivers exactly on its premise of "Die Hard starring the bad guy from The Most Dangerous Game." It's pretty good. Count Zaroff, he of the habitual hunting of humans, turns out to have killed a mafia don at some point, and after miraculously escaping his own seeming death at the end of the original story, finds himself hunted by the irate associates of this gangster, who have brought along Zaroff's sister and her kids to spice things up. Zaroff not only finds himself the hunt, but he also has to protect his estranged family as they struggle to survive. Nothing about this book or its twists and turns is likely to surprise you, but I don't think being surprised is always necessary for quality. Zaroff delivers on pulpy, early-20th century jungle action, is gorgeously rendered, and the fact that Zaroff himself is an unrepentant villain adds just enough of an unexpected element to the proceedings and character dynamics that it doesn't feel rote. There's a couple of points, ones typical of Eurocomics, which spark a slight sour note, such as some "period appropriate" racism and flashes of the male gaze, but for the most part these are relatively contained. It's good.

Batman: Gothic

Long before Grant Morrison did their Bat-epic, they wrote Batman: Gothic, an entirely different, but then again maybe not so different, kind of thing. It starts off with what must be called a riff on Fritz Lang's film, M, only where that story ends with a crew of gangsters deciding they cannot pass moral judgment on a deranged child-murderer, in Morrison's story they go ahead and kill him, only for the killer to return years later to rather horribly murder all of them as a warmup for a grandiose scheme involving unleashing a weaponized form of the bubonic plague on Gotham City as an offering to Satan. Along the way it turns out that said villain, one Mr. Whisper, is a former schoolmaster of Bruce Wayne's, who terrified the young Batman in the days before his parent's deaths. It's an earlier Morrison story and it shows. Certain elements presage their later Batman work; Mr. Whisper as a satanic enemy recalls the later Doctor Hurt, and the cathedral Mr. Whisper built to harvest souls recalls what writers like Morrison, Milligan, and Snyder would do concerning Gotham as a whole years later.The art, by Klaus Janson, is spectacular. If you're familiar at all with his work collaborating with Frank Miller you'll see him continuing in a similar vein and it's all quite good, even when he stretches beyond the street milieu which most readers might know him from. There's one particular sequence where Janson renders a needlessly complicated Rube Goldberg machine in motion that manages to work despite being static images. The writing by Morrison though, is not their finest. The M riff doesn't last as long as it could, and Mr. Whisper's turn in the latter half of the story from delicious creepy wraith to a cackling mass murderer who puts Batman in an easily escaped death trap feels like something of a letdown from the promise of the first half of the book. Gothic is good, but not, in my opinion, great. It's certainly worth checking out for Morrison fans however, and I imagine that someone well-versed in his latter Batman stuff might be able to find some real resonance between the two.

Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters

For a long, long time, Longbow Hunters was THE Green Arrow story. It is to Green Arrow as TDKR is to Batman, deliberately so. Mike Grell wrote and drew the reinvention of the character from his role as the Justice League's resident limousine liberal to a gritty urban vigilante operating in Seattle over the course of these three issues, which he'd follow up with a subsequent ongoing. Going back to it, it certainly merits its reputation, but its far from timeless. Grell's art is unimpeachable absolutely incredible, with great splashes and spreads, subtle colors, and really great figure work. The narrative is almost so 80's it hurts though, revolving around West Coast serial killers, cocaine, the CIA and the Iran-Contra scandal, and the Yakuza, and it's hard to look back at some of this stuff without smirking. The story begins with a teenager strung out on tainted coke sprinting through a window in a scene that's right out of Reefer Madness. In the cold light of a day 30+ years later, parts of it look more than a little silly. The 80's-ness of it all doesn't stop with that stuff though, even the superhero elements smack of it. Green Arrow realizes that he's lost a step and has be to be shown a way forward by an Asian woman skilled in the martial arts (recalling Vic Sage's reinvention in the pages of The Question), and Black Canary gets captured and torture off-panel for the sake of showing that this is real crime now, not the superhero silliness they've dealt with before. The treatment of Black Canary here is pretty markedly heinous, it's a classic fridging and Grell's claims that he didn't intentionally imply sexual assault in his depiction of her torture is probably true, but still feels more than a little weak considering how he chose to render it.The final analysis is that this book is good, but it exists strictly in the frame of the 1980's. If you're a fan of Green Arrow, there are worse books to pick up, or if you're interested in that era of DC Comics it's more than worth it, but as a matter of general interest I wouldn't recommend it very highly.

SHIELD by Steranko

Jim Steranko is sort of the prodigy of the early Marvel years, a young guy who came up through the system, blossomed into an incredible talent, and then left the company, and by and large the industry, behind. He would go on to dabble in publishing, work in other mediums, and generally kick around as the prodigal son of Marvel Comics. This collection, of both his Nick Fury shorts in the pages of Strange Tales and the four issues he drew of the original Nick Fury solo series, charts Steranko's growth as an artist. The book starts off with Steranko working from Jack Kirby's layouts with Stan Lee's dialogue and writing, and Steranko might be the one guy in history for whom working off of Kirby's blueprints is clearly holding him back. The first third or so of this collection really isn't much to write home about, as Steranko is obviously constrained by someone else's style, and at the end of the day those early stories still read as somewhat uninspired pulp compared to the highlights of early Marvel. There are flashes though, of techniques and ideas, which foreshadow what Steranko is capable of, and when he finally takes over as solo writer/artist it's like he's been unleashed. He immediately has Nick Fury tear off his shirt and start throwing guys around over psychedelic effects. He writes out most of Kirby and Lee's frankly uninspired boys' club supporting cast, he makes Fury visibly older, wearier, but also so much cooler. It's the birth of Nick Fury as a distinctly comic book super spy.By the time he finishes wrapping up the previous writers' plotline with Hydra and Baron von Strucker, Steranko is firing on all cylinders. By the time it gets to Steranko's Fury solo series, he's somehow surpassed himself, turning in effects, panel structures, and weird stories which make the earlier installment about a suit-wearing Man from UNCLE knockoff and its strict six-panel layouts look absolutely fossilized.I can't recommend this collection highly enough for any fan of the artform, even if the stories themselves might not be everyone's cup of tear. It's truly incredible to watch Steranko emerge as an artist over the course of this single collection. The book itself has a few problems, it's not the most elegantly designed in its supporting materials and index, but the content of it more than outweighs that. It's great stuff.

#capsule reviews #comics

3 notes · View notes

blackfemmecharacterdependency · 3 years

Text

12. On Your Side

Decided to publish what I had worked on before my hiatus, mainly for Tina and nem, as a Xmas thing. Ion celebrate that shit, happy holidays or whatever. I was hoping to have completed the story by now, but with my break for mental health, I guess it's either pushed back or gonna be abandoned. Will know in a couple of weeks or so what, if anything I intend to do with it. Its an Apex centered chapter. I'm still on hiatus. You can leave a review if you want to, but don't message me about Simon or this story. Thanks.

*The Grace St. Catherine Playlist, featuring songs used in chapter and songs that inspired the chapter*

“Even through the darkest phase

Be it thick or thin

Always someone marches brave

Here beneath my skin…” Grace let the music play in the background as she tried to do all of the things suggested to her by her “spiritual advisor,” Sunny, whenever she moved into the place. She was doing more drawing - mostly sketches of carnage and rage. She was journaling a lot, mostly in the form of a narrative told by a hypothetical fictional character, because admitting to the things that she was doing on paper was a huge no-no, so she simply projected her life through her journaling character, The Saint, whom would never be referred to by name in any of the entries. In this particular one, The Saint was contemplating calling The Shadow. What would the conversation even be like? He would tell her how bad she was for being mad at him. She would tell him that she only hurt bad people, but he hurt a friend… he hurt her. That was different. So different. But she MISSED him.

She had began to sketch him. She was more of a doodler/drew cartoons and comics on her phone and stuff… but she was shut up in this place for hours at a time and hadn’t really used a pencil and a sketch book seriously in a while. Then, it got away from her. After a few days, she had almost filled up a sketch book with drawings of Simon. She winced when she thought of his name. She had been avoiding speaking it and thinking it. “And constant craving has always been…” She stared at the phone, then changed the track. The last thing she needed was to think about craving, of all things…

Now, that the phone was in her hand, she glanced around, feeling that paranoia that she had since she left home. Nobody was watching her here, but she felt obligated to check, anyway, and upon verifying what she already knew - that nobody was fucking watching her - she went to visit his social media. Private? Since when? She checked another. Same thing. A third, same fucking thing! “UGH!!!” She threw her phone onto the couch and went to go chop wood. She didn’t really like to chop wood, but it did make her feel better to swing a tool and see destruction come out of it.

“Old wounds

Old fights

Another day goes by

I'm not playing by the rules

They can't take me for no fool…” Her phone continued singing as she went outside.

Jalicia Barrett was not the same type of watch as Grace was. She obviously wasn’t as upscale as Grace, so she wound up having much to do that was necessary, unlike Grace’s schedule of playing a typical woman. Now, to say that Jalicia was typical would be a stretch of the imagination, as Simon knew that none of Grace’s people were that and she had possibly an unreasonable amount of tiger items, but she was closer to an average person than Grace was.

She went to Seattle University, but hadn't selected a major. She was still doing general studies after taking a few years to get her GED (She began trying at 16 and only successfully received it less than a year ago), so.. a freshman in college, which wasn't bad. She was 19. She worked on campus and seemed to have other odd jobs, like being a delivery driver or personal cab, and stuff at that Infinity Foundation place.

She didn’t have rich parents. From what Simon was able to find, she was never reunited with them, whoever they were. If they had lived in Seattle when she was taken, there was nothing on file to indicate that she was reported missing. Of course… he didn’t know what her real name was. The name Jalicia Barrett only became a name for her in the year after Grace left the mental institution. He knew that was likely connected.

Maybe… she wound up in the system after Grace touched base with them? At any rate… whoever the girl who was brought into trafficking had been, she was now Jalicia Barrett, a girl who began existing when she was 13 or 14 and obviously probably didn’t know her DOB either, as it was on record as the day that her name was given, her documents were created all around the same time, so she had to either have been a baby whenever she was taken, or simply never knew her personal information like birth date and full name.

BUT, she did have prints on file, so she probably had birth records that could be matched to them somewhere. He didn’t know if he wanted to get into that… or if she hadn’t done so herself and simply decided that life was easier being the person that she knew herself to be now. He certainly couldn’t imagine separating from his loved ones and then not finding them for a decade or so and then just… trying to pretend that they were family after all or something. She had the family she wanted… Well… she lost one. He felt bad for her. It wasn’t the same, but whenever he lost Grace, he felt like his world collapsed. To even pretend to understand how this woman must feel losing her life partner after years of being together, he wouldn’t insult her like that. Instead, he looked into the details surrounding that. Whatever happened to that investigation?

He’d provided an alibi for them and the police never spoke with him again. He’d done his best playing ignorant and pretending that everything was casual. Whenever they asked him about Heath, he said that he didn’t know Heath. “I’ve only met him once and he didn’t show up to the gathering… Is he alright?” They didn’t answer, just wished him a good day.

Now, he was looking through their paperwork and he was sure that he might find something interesting, if not useful. Simon had no idea what he was looking for with these other people. Something that led him back to Grace’s trail, and he had to figure out how they worked to even presume that…

Here’s the thing… Simon wasn’t going to write himself off as wrong or going too far. For crying out loud, the things that these people did, and they felt justified in their reasonings, so he wasn’t going to allow himself to feel bad. Grace might need him, and Xander was keeping her away from him. He cursed himself over that gun, though. However, IF she would have just let him explain that he only had it to keep Xander from getting it! He didn’t know what to think when he holstered it, but it wasn’t for her! Why would he hurt her? He scanned through paperwork, trying to take his mind off of Grace’s lack of faith in him and then, he was sure that he found what he needed. If not; he’d found something interesting. “Huh.”

Grace called Sunny for more tips. She was doing everything that she told her to, and reading all these books and articles, ordering all sorts of holistic woo woo shit, and trying SO HARD just to not lose it out there… Sunny was always a mood lifter for her though. They would talk for however long, laugh, joke, sometimes get entirely too serious and cry… they hadn’t done this in a long time, but Grace had been calling her more frequently lately and, well… it was necessary for her to be available.

“It’s like… I don’t want to use this word lightly, and I especially can’t tell Xan, but I feel like I’m like… addicted… Does that sound stupid?”

“Xander doesn’t own the word addicted, Grace. He’s struggled with a few drugs over the years, but one of the reasons is because he’s sick. Some people can try things and never really become addicted to them because those things didn’t appeal to them in that way. This dude appealed to you in a way that your body wasn’t used to. He got into your mind, and most likely changed the chemical balance. Affected your hormones and shit, only to find that he wasn’t what you thought and now your chemicals gotta try to balance back out without his influence, so no, it doesn’t sound stupid. Perhaps melodramatic, but I don’t know. You could be addicted to the way that he made you feel. Going through dick withdrawals is a struggle that people don’t give enough credence, too.”

Grace snorted. “I’m… not… going through that. We weren’t like that. I don’t even know if he ever was into me that way? It was like… I don’t know… I never got the feeling that he desired me physically.”

“What feeling did you get?”

“For the most part, that he wanted me around. I don’t know why. He never seemed to be asking anything of me but to let him be near me. He was very good about not entering my personal space, and even when I got comfortable, he still never made any move on me or anything like that. He just seemed to like to be… present.”

“Okay, but what would he be doing when he was present?”

“Sometimes nothing, really. Just looking at me, or listening to me. Sometimes, we were doing our own thing - me reading a book. Him playing video games or writing, or… Idk, working on a cosplay outfit.”

“Girl, on what?”

“He’s a fantasy fanboy before he’s a fantasy writer, so he you know… makes cosplay costumes and stuff for conventions. Whenever he’s not scheduled to be on a panel at one… This is something that I’ve observed, not something that he’s said. He… doesn’t talk about himself a lot. Not at all, come to think about it.”

“Xander makes him out to be a literal serial killer.”

“Xander hates him. What about 808? What does she say? Xan seems to think that he “got to her” or played some kind of mind games or something?”

“Well… she didn’t say anything to me about him, except that he was very talkative and apparently worships you. She was pretty thrown off guard at how comfortable he seemed with being caught and held hostage. She said that he is either the most nonchalant person ever or the craziest fucking person that she’s ever drawn a weapon on, because he acted like they were buddies just chitchatting, and we all know that he knows what we do to people.” Grace didn’t reply. Sunny offered, “Well, whenever I think about the shit that I went through with Xander and how we always seem to find each other in the dark, it's usually in terms of No Angel.”

Grace said, “Beyonce’s No Angel?”

“”Is… Is there another one? Because, if there’s anything AND a Beyonce song, just go ahead and assume that I am only speaking of the Beyonce option.” Grace laughed. Sunny recited, “ I love you even more than who I thought you were before.” Grace held her breath, unsure of what to say to this. Sunny continued, “All I mean to say is that sometimes people aren’t who we initially thought. Sometimes they’re worse. Sometimes they are seriously fucked up. Sometimes, they’re absolute trash… But… you might still love their ass.”

“Damn, Sis… Is this how you feel about Xan? Because those are some hard descriptions.”

“No. Xander is definitely a hot mess, but I was absolutely describing your… thing… over there. Jimony?”

“Simon,” Grace said, trying not to laugh.

“Right. I knew it had “mon” in it.”

Jalicia didn’t know what it was about that station that made her put it on all of the time, but her streaming service generally stayed on an old r&b from the 60s and 70s station, and sometimes 80s and 90s, whenever she was at work. She had a journal with a tiger on the front that she was writing down poetry in, but she could never think of titles for any of her work, and she didn’t feel like she was that artistically creative, so she’d title everything, “(Song Title) Plays in the Background,” whether or not the song had any bearing on the poem. Today’s? Let’s Groove Plays in the Background.

Work was a little bit overwhelming, these days, but only because of the things that had nothing to do with it. The fact that she wouldn’t just receive flowers sometimes and have her coworkers wonder why her boyfriend was this thoughtful, but they never saw him. Or the days where she would pout about being broke and having to pack a stupid sandwich and he would insist on having something sent to her at lunchtime, if he didn’t just make her a different, more fulfilling lunch instead. The way that she would get a text whenever he went on his own lunch break, and it would just be some hilarious video or a new thing that they just HAD to buy. Work was overwhelming, because what she had leaned on every shift was the fact that he’d interrupt it with something nice and that she would leave there and get to see him every day.

Now, she was listening to Earth Wind & Fire, in a gray pantsuit and fooling around on her computer while she waited for something to do. She heard the tone of the doorway and she got up to see if somebody needed help. It was a college bookstore and she was often far overdressed, but all she had aside from her typical attire were the pantsuits she wore when she had to do something other than be casual - like functions and interviews or whatever, so that was what she wore to work.

The O. He looked at her like they were friends or something. A polite smile and warmth in his eyes. She stared him down and reached for her phone. “Hi. Can I just have a moment?” He asked. She texted: The O is here and hit “send” to 747. “It won’t take long, I just wanted to give you something.” The O reached into his bag and Jalicia had already identified four common objects in her immediate surroundings that she would definitely use as a weapon against him if he tried something slick. He handed her an envelope, one of the big yellow ones and she frowned.

“I’m not taking whatever that is. For all I know it’s got anthrax in it.”

He laughed and opened it himself, pulled out the paperwork and handed it to her. “I figured out a better method of tracking people down than Heath had the resources for. I know that Xander is trying his hardest, God help him, but he’s not much on a computer and some of these things are hard to find.” She took the pages and glanced through them. Simon helped her find a certain page, “I’ve guessed that you maybe didn’t know much about this part of the situation that you all walked into. The… X, I suppose you’d call him, was very paranoid that he might be on your list and he hired protection.” He pointed out a few key lines that he had highlighted. “Professional protection, and yet when the time came to protect him, Heath wasn’t shot in the arm, or hell, if they didn’t want him to escape, the leg is an option as well.”

“They killed Heath on purpose,” She said, the wind knocked out of her as she did. She tried to take a seat, but just fell back onto a table and leaned against it, knocking down several books.

“They wanted to send a message and since you all slacked up since then, I’m sure that they think that they did.” She started crying angrily and wiped her face. “Flip to the next page.” Her hands were shaking and she wasn’t sure of what she might see, but she flipped to the next page anyway. “That’s your shooter. Since he was on the job, he confessed to being the one who fired and because Heath was breaking an entering and had no family to intercede for an investigation… the cops seem to be fine with what happened to him, despite the fact that our laws state that a person may not use more force than is necessary given the situation.” She shut her eyes and squeezed out tears, her fists tightly holding onto the phot0 of the man. “Next page are his personal details. Do with it whatever you think is best. I just thought that you would want to know.”

She shivered and cried, “This doesn’t mean that I owe you anything. I didn’t ask you for this and I don’t feel indebted to you for it.”

“Jalicia… I’m on your side. Whatever side Grace is on, that’s where I am. I did this because I want to help.”

“Well… This is the most help you’re getting from me - Xander’s on his way.”

“Then, I’ll be on my way.” He had that polite smile again and she was almost terrified how easily it came to him. He left quite a few minutes before Xander arrived.

She instantly fell apart as soon as she saw him, handing him the papers and explaining to him what he was looking at. She left work and was going to call Grace, but Xander snatched her phone while he was driving. “No, what if he. like, cloned your phone or something?”

“What? This ain’t Person of Interest, Boy. What the fuck are you talking about, Bro? He’s rich but it’s not like he’s Lex Luthor.”

“We can’t chance it. He’d do anything to find out where she is.”

“Give me yours, then.”

“Just hold off. I need to check this dude out. For all we know, Simon is just blowing smoke up our asses to get us to lead him to Grace.”

“The fact that you think it’s more likely that he falsified a bunch of police documents than that he simply sneaked them away is making me wonder about you .”

“I let him get too close to her before, and I’m not doing that again.”

Jalicia snatched her phone back from him and they wrestled for it but, he eventually heard Grace on speaker.

“What is happening on that end?” She asked, laughing a little bit nervously.

“We need to talk about Simon,” Jalicia said.

“I disagree with that sentiment!” Xander said in the background.

There was a pause. Grace was panicking a little bit. Did they know that she was trying to check his pages? That she was trying to see if she could make a temporary account just to try to get to them? How would they know that, Girl?

Jalicia added, “It’s about Heath.” Xander turned red in the face and he shook his head and tried to breathe. “Oh, fuck you, Xan. You left him there to die. The least you could do is chill out while I speak to Grace about this.”

“Whoa… That’s not extremely fair. The Apex protocol is that if somebody is hit, we leave and regroup. We go in with the expectation that if we’re hit, we would slow everyone down and jeopardize everything. So, Xander and I both left him,” Grace said the last statement laced with sadness and guilt.

“He pulled you out and sped away,” Jalicia said.

Xander scoffed and then burst into tears, “I’m glad that you’re telling us how you really feel.” His voice was surprisingly calm, but the ladies knew that hurt him more than anything ever had in this world.

“Tell me what you need to say,” Grace said.

“Simon found Heath’s killer.”

“Simon found a person he alleges is Heath’s killer.”

“He had all of the paperwork to corroborate it. More than Heath has ever collected on any X.”

“He had paperwork on a man who works in security who may have shot Heath dead, but as far as we know is not a bad person. He probably was just on a security job. Somebody broke into the house he was guarding and he shot!”

“WHY DID HE SHOOT HIM IN THE HEAD???” Jalicia squealed. “I’ve been over this myself, before Simon EVER said anything about it, but WHY didn’t they shoot him to survive and answer questions about what is one of the most infamous string of serial murders to ever hit the city? Why would he risk his job to kill someone that way in security, if there wasn’t a reason that Heath needed to be dead?”

“You… you think that the security dude is old Apex?”

“I think that at best, the security dude wanted to kill a person that he didn’t HAVE to kill and he used Heath as a perfect excuse, making him a shitty person, in my opinion, and at worst, he didn’t want us saying anything to anybody, because he knew why we were there!”

“But, we did release what we had on the X. The information is out there now. Nothing was done about it,” Grace added.

“Precisely! Just as nothing was done about this trigger happy buttfuck, even though our laws state that you’re not supposed to kill motherfuckers if you don’t have to!” Jalicia said. She looked at Xander, poked him in the arm and reminded him, “You were the first one to claim you’ll avenge him”

“And you told me to go fuck myself.”

“Emotions were definitely running high, but if you’re looking for the chance to make good on your word, you’ll have to suck it up and just live with the fact that Simon gave us this, like I have to live with the fact that Heath is never fucking coming home!” She got louder than she intended. Xander wiped his tears with the back of his hand, but more just poured out. He nodded, but he was still extremely upset.

“Send me what Simon sent you. I’ll let you know what I decide from there.”

“Thank you, Grace.”

Grace sighed, paused, then said, “Heath would have wanted us to get out, but even if you had driven away and left us all, we wouldn’t have faulted you… That’s the protocol. Heath knew that…”

“Does that make it easier for you?”

“No. But, we shouldn’t make it harder on each other, either…” Jalicia sighed, rolled her eyes and let more tears fall. “I’m sorry, Jalicia. Heath was the first person in the warehouse that I ever cared about. I would trade myself for him, if I could.”

“He’d never let you,” she hung up and reached out for Xander. He accepted her hand. “I was mean to you…”

“You were honest. It just fucking hurts. Heath was the backbone of this family, and everyday he isn’t here, I lose more and more respect and control. He kept me grounded.”

“Doesn’t Sunny do that too?”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Maybe you don’t let it be. Maybe the reason Heath was your rock was because you thought that you only needed one. That’s what I did, too. I didn’t even realize how much of my life revolved around him until I was just spinning in space, with nothing to pull me back. Why do you think I moved in with your ass?”

“To split rent.”

She gave a resigned shrug, but shook her head, “I thought that it would make things better, if even just to put me in a spot where I could just not think about it and not be alone. I figured I wouldn’t get over it, but that at least I would logically be able to grant myself some peace because you’re there too, and that there would be some type of comfort. Not emotionally. That’s gonna take more time than I even believe that I have left in this world. But… at least I wanted that solid ground to stand on, to be able to say, Heath would want his two favorite people to lean on each other and find some strength in his absence.” Xander sniffled. She finished, “But it didn’t matter, and I don’t even know what to do, because I thought that being around you would guarantee some balance, even if it didn’t truly help… I still have all of my grief, and I’m..” she whimpered, “So tired. And empty. And distant. My closest living friend is sitting right next to me, and I have been so alone…”

Xander pulled the van over, unlatched his seatbelt and hugged her. She wasn’t done. She was so focused on her train of thought that she hadn’t even actually noticed that Xander was hugging her. “Heath was always in my life. Before any other human that I can remember. Like, logically, I know that Grace took care of Todd and Heath took care of me… but… I don’t even remember anybody else until maybe I was 5 or 6. I know he wasn’t the only person around, but in my mind, he was. I have NO frame of reference that doesn’t involve him. He was…” She finally realized both that Xander was already holding her and that she was crying again.

She remembered something. She was 4 or 5, her brain was never good at that part. She wasn’t in school or anything. All of her special days were simply moments and occurrences. This particular occurrence. A boy with light hair, getting hurt really bad by the stewards. Heath covered her eyes and started talking about flowers. He found a new book about them. He’d help her try to read later. The noise of the boy being beaten up was in the background, but at the time, she was too young to pay any attention to it and listen to Heath. So, she listened to Heath and the beating was background noise filtered out. Afterwards, he took her to the side of the building and let her pick flowers for their new friend. The new boy was mean. He was mean to Heath and Grace had to help Heath. Then, he was nice. She looked at Xander’s face and saw that same boy, just as hurt and just as angry as the first day she recalled a memory of him.

“He wasn’t always in mine… but he was the first person who was ever just nice to me for no reason other than to be nice,” Xander said. “There’s nothing that I want more than to punish a person who would take him away from us, but to have Simon, SIMON, give us that…” He was red in the face and shaking his head. “He’s using it to get to Grace, and I just didn’t want to give him that kind of power.”

“Then why didn’t you just say, ‘Hey, lets not tell her where we got the information?’ If you had just sent it to her with X confirmed, instead of fighting me in traffic…”

“You didn’t give me a chance!”

“I just… This ONE thing, then maybe I can move on.” He nodded and buckled back in. “I’ll get to work on the logistics. In case Grace gives us the go ahead, I want to be ready to move as soon as possible.”

Simon pulled his hair up into a high ponytail. He was going to try to get it into a bun, but it had been getting longer and thicker, and while he’d normally just pull the top part into a pony and let the rest hang, but it was windy and he was going to be pretty active, so high ponytail, it was. He had been checking out the X that he gave Jalicia, to see if they were going to make a move on him. He wasn’t positive of the typical turnaround time on an X, so he simply went to watch every night. He wasn’t going to do the car. Dude was in security. He’d probably make him.

Instead, he parked around the block and went to a big tree across the street from the X’s home to post up. He had binoculars and an awkwardly applied hunting tree seat. It wasn’t made for him to be up this high, but he situated it only to have a seat that wasn’t tree bark. He spent the time that he wasn’t watching the house on social media, checking out Sunetra’s pages… which… apparently she went by “Sunny…” which… Simon noted to himself that he had seen a little sun tattoo on Xander, and whenever he came across Sunny’s very tasteful artistic nudes, he saw that she had a little tattoo, as well, on her chest, of an “X.”

Her photos were really nice and she seemed to… possibly be a stripper? He checked a few of her posts and captions. She hashtagged #burlesque in some of them, so maybe not a stripper, but something risque. She was in the fine arts program in college, for dance and had many posts from the Infinity Foundation of her doing dance workshops, yoga, and stuff. She had a lot of witchy posts, too. Simon rolled his eyes, but kept scrolling. Several of her posts were really funny. He noticed a yoga and meditation program that she would be doing at a community center and saved the post.

He watched the X for about a week and a half when he saw the van pull up. In the dark, he couldn’t tell who people were, but two had gotten out and through the binoculars, he could tell that Xander was one and the other was Jalicia. He checked the van. That was an unfamiliar one behind the wheel, but he presumed that it was Sunny or 808, and that he simply couldn’t see them... There was a loud noise and screaming in the house. He turned to see that Jalicia had a knife to a woman’s throat while Xander was escorting the X out, with his hands up. He got him to the van, injected something into his neck and tossed him in. Jalicia unhanded the woman, but appeared to take a bag along with her and the woman ran next door.

Jalicia had taken all the phones with her. The woman had to run next door to call the police. Simon realized that she was probably doing that, and he got out of the tree to get back to his car. If he hurried, he might be able to catch the van!

He went the direction that they had, and when he came to what he thought might be them, he put on a mask of his own, but it was a medical mask, just because that was… possibly not as weird as if he wore like a clown mask or something. They had NOT handled that in the way that he expected. Something told him that they either were rushing or desperate. He wondered why.

But, whenever they pulled the van into an old train station, he parked behind the building and got out of his car. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up.

He could hear their voices, and he followed the sound of them, but didn’t come from the shadows of the building. They were dragging the bag into a field that Simon knew that he had passed several times in his life, but never paid much attention to. Nobody really did. Was this where they buried them? He wondered. He only saw Jalicia and Xander, pulling the body bag with one hand and carrying shovels in their free hands. Where was the driver? He went around the other side of the building and the van was pulling off. Where were THEY going? He couldn’t start his car. Jalicia and Xander weren’t far enough away to not hear him. He groaned and went to look back towards the field. He couldn’t see anything beyond the tall grass, but he used his phone to try to record where they were… maybe he could find it in the daytime. Besides, they were now far enough away that he could start his car without alerting him. He felt like he had enough.

Simon drove home, wary of a van behind him for a portion of the way. He took some loops and turnarounds that he wouldn’t usually take before he was comfortable that they weren’t following him and it wasn’t the van… but after he got home, he noticed at the bottom of the hill a van, and it looked like the van that they used. It looked like the van that he was nervous might be following him. But. There was no way that the van had found him after those turns. Was it one of them, just letting him know that they knew he had followed them?

He rushed inside and looked out of the curtains. They were there for a moment. They turned the van off and he took a deep gulp and reached for one of his guns. They got out of the van and stood, staring up at the house. DEFINITELY APEX. This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.

They stared, wearing a gold mask, a tam hat, and the all black outfit that he had gotten used to, but then not seen for a while. “Grace!” He said. He put his gun down and rushed out of his door. “Grace?” He called, but she rushed back into the van, tossed something out, and peeled off. “Grace…” He ran down the hill and out to the road. She was gone… He looked down to see what she had thrown down on her way off. It was a Stop sign with a red squiggly line underneath the word “Stop.” He picked it up, roared and began to smash it against the pavement, before flinging it into the middle of the road and going back into his house. He called Jalicia and she looked at her phone, not recognizing the number, so she answered it. “Hello?”

“Was that Grace?” a voice asked.

“What?”

“The person who just followed me home and told me to stop. Was that Grace?”

“No,” was all that she said. He hung up. She put her phone away.

“Who’s that?” Xander wondered.

“Non issue,” she said. It wasn’t a complete lie, and there was no way that she was about to ruin their night with… whatever that had been about. She and Xander were still digging when their third came walking up, her gold mask on her face and a shovel in hand. “Girl, where did you rush off to?”

“I knew he was gonna still be alive,” she said and pulled up the mask onto her head. Sunny. “Had to make a stop,” she said with a shrug. She and Jalicia stared at each other a moment, and Xander kept digging, oblivious to the exchange of them questioning each other with their eyes. It was short lived, because Grace was connecting for the video call. “Hey, Girl, Hey!” Sunny cheered.

“Bitch, I’m so mad that I’m not there right now.”

“Be mad at Jimona,” Sunny said.

“Simon!” Grace said, laughing. Then, more solemnly, said, “Draw a squiggle right across his face, for me.”

“Sure will,” Sunny said, pulling her knife out. “What are you listening to, Woman?”

Grace checked the info on her streaming, “Hurts by Emeli Sande.”

“That’s dope. Send me the link to that.”

Simon was at the apartment now, crying and sitting in front of the cameras. He wondered if she would return with them, but looking at the feeds he had placed to check the outside of their homes, he noted that the three entered Xander and Jalicia’s home at 3:47 am… and that… wasn’t Grace. It was the woman that he had initially identified as, “One who looks like Grace.” It was Sunny… He flared his nostrils and set an alert to remind him about the yoga and meditation at the community center.

His phone began to ring while it was in his hands. It was a private number. For a moment, he let his heart accelerate. “Hello?” He answered.

Silence. He sighed and almost hung up, but… he felt something. His tears stopped, he sat up erect and waited. She was silent, still. He was afraid to break it, but more afraid of her losing whatever nerve she had at the moment and hanging up. So, he dared to speak. He kept his voice soft and low. Gentle, like he knew she would remember him being. “Hey…” He said. He heard her sniffle and it tore at his heart. “Hey,” he managed to say even softer. “Are you okay?” She sniffled again. “Tell me what I can do to make you okay?”

“Why did you do that, Simon? Why did you?”

“I wanted to be close to you. I wanted to know you. I wanted you… I didn’t know what to do. I was desperate. I am desperate. Please, tell me where you are…”

“You let Xander catch you.” There was the longest pause since the conversation started. Eventually, she spoke again. “I feel like the kids walked in on me doing something dirty…”

“I feel like it’s none of ‘the kids’ damn business what we do.”

“They can’t see stuff like that. They can’t see me being followed and watched, obsessively. They can’t just move on from that. You have no idea the kind of people who… Why did you have a gun?”

“Because, I had just been attacked by somebody that I know is a murderer and I was on edge…” They were quiet again. “I can keep them out of sight from now on. I can keep them away from you, at all times…”

“If I come back into town, my crew is gonna get… difficult. It won’t be safe for you.”

“I can’t prove myself to them? To you? Did you see what I found for them? For Heath? For Jalicia?... For you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Jalicia told me right away…”

“You sound like you’re smiling,” he observed, daring to smile, himself.

“I can’t help it… but… we can’t… do this, Simon.”

“Don’t…”

“We’re both in really weird places and us coming together isn’t good… for either of us, I think…”

“Please…”

“We shouldn’t be together, see each other, anything. You should… get on with your life.”

“No!”

“Bye, Simon.”

“NO!!” She hung up. He bit into his lip so hard that he drew blood, trying to keep his composure. He couldn’t even go to the gun range right now! But.. He could… go back to that field. He knew where it was. He knew where the bodies were now… he… was running out of patience, but he reminded himself that it wasn’t her fault. The longer they kept her away from him, the more confused she would be. She just needed to understand that he was on her side. If she couldn’t… she would have to learn that there were consequences for going against him.

13. A Shot in the Dark Pt 1

#AU Infinity Train #Infinity Train #Nesha Fanfiction #Infinity Train Fanfiction #fics #People Watching

4 notes · View notes

togafukagiftexchange · 4 years

Text

for @perfectwill

by @pinlc-candy

Hi, hi! I’m your pitch-hitter! Hope you enjoy! There’s a little bit of angst, but only in a ‘Fukawa’s childhood’ kind of way. Not between these two! I went with childhood friends, part-first date and partners in crime.

***

In fairytales, most little girls were princesses given happily ever afters, who lived in castles with conical roofs and befriended cute fluffy animals. That probably didn’t include stink bugs like the one that followed Touko home one day. Anyway, if they weren’t princesses, they became princesses, and they stayed princesses after the credits rolled.

One such princess was Cinderella. She lived with her stepmother and stepsisters, who abused her, starved her, enslaved her, until one day, Cinderella met Prince Charming and she was liberated from her cruel family and went on to live with her true love. From that day on, Cinderella lived happily with him in a beautiful castle.

Certainly not in a squalid house, like Touko’s. Certainly not with the family she was born into, like Touko.

“Is your neck made of rubber?” hissed Touko’s mother, with one hand gripping her daughter’s shoulder and the other jerking the hairbrush through Touko’s hair. Much like every other time, Touko winced and squeezed her kneecaps tightly as her head tipped in the opposite direction to the brushing.

Her mother glanced at the clock on their living room wall, only to then remember that it ran out of battery power a while ago, so she checked her wristwatch and grimaced, yellow teeth framed by nude, chapped lips.

“They asked us to be there in twenty minutes,” said Touko’s mother, and she gave Touko’s hair another tug. The brush didn’t get very far, and her expression contorted even more. “It takes ten to get to that restaurant from here, so they’ll be arriving in about ten to collect you.”

She took her hand off Touko’s shoulder and shoved Touko’s lower back. Any harder might have sent Touko tumbling to the floor and onto the food wrappers lying there. Instead, Touko just bent forward with a squeak.

“Get up! Get dressed!” demanded her mother, so Touko slid off the stool, feeling its uneven legs make the seat wobble underneath her as her weight shifted.

Keeping her head down, Touko scuttled up the stairs to her bedroom and closed the door behind herself. Her room contained a bed, a wardrobe and a desk. She opened her wardrobe, an old thing that came with the house, and stared at the contents. The back of the wardrobe was splintered from a past impact, and she could count the number of different outfits on one hand. Other girls in her elementary class boasted about new fashions, like how their parents bought them the latest in the Enoshima line, yet Touko had no choice but to pull out her school uniform, with it being the most suitable for the occasion.

As she braided her hair and dressed herself, putting the uniform over her vest and undies, a voice in her head re-emerged, wondering if this was a prank. After all, not many people as young as her, a mere ten years old, could say that they had been invited to lunch by the grandson of the president of Polanski Business Limited, if any could say that at all. She didn’t know anything about him, but her parents had been excited when they read the letter that had been addressed to Touko, marked ‘PRIVATE’, and they had relayed the information to her when she returned home from school that day.

The reason given for the request to see her, according to her parents, was that the grandson was interested in meeting her after reading the book she had published two months ago. To be honest, Touko didn’t feel too keen about the whole thing, imagining the grandson to be at least a decade older than her. Probably some slimeball interested in the female protagonist of her novel, who thought Touko would be similar. He would be someone that she had nothing in common with at all. Just a rich man born into wealth who didn’t know how the real world worked.

However, she couldn’t decline the invitation. Touko hadn’t even accepted it. Her parents did, and without having to ask them, she knew her parents wouldn’t let her opt out of this opportunity. Not if it meant more money for them.

She walked over to her desk and pulled on the drawer. It opened with a grunt. The sight of her stink bug inside of it brought a small smile to her tired face, and she hovered her finger near the insect’s head for a few seconds.

“I’ll see you later, alright?” she whispered. Kameko brushed her antennae against Touko’s finger.

As much as she would prefer to hide herself away, she knew her family would be waiting for her, so she shut the drawer, leaving it ajar, and stepped back. Touko looked down and adjusted her skirt, and only then did she notice a bit of dirt on her pleated skirt. Her stomach tightened. She didn’t know if it was dirt-dirt or a splatter of juice, and she was dabbing it with saliva and picking at the mark when the door flew open.

“There you are!” Touko’s other mother barked in the doorway, not caring that she had nearly startled Touko’s soul out of her body. “The limo will be here any minute. Come on, brat!”

Touko let go of her skirt and shuffled over to the door, barely able to hear her footsteps over the ringing between her ears. Her mother watched her approach without saying anything, and as soon as Touko was close enough, she seized Touko’s wrist and dragged her through the house, with Touko barely managing to keep up, staggering the whole way.

It was this mother that Touko accompanied out of the house and into the garden, where trash collected instead of flowers, sprinkled amongst the dirt patches and overgrown grass. They passed through the tall picket fencing that kept the garden secluded, and then headed down the street.

At this point, Touko’s mother released Touko’s arm, though Touko could still feel the imprints of her mother’s fingers burning against her skin through her sleeve. In contrast, the cool morning air clung to her face.

Neither spoke to the other as they walked. Distant traffic rumbled, and for the most part, she kept her eyes on the pavement. When she did look up, she stiffened, catching sight of her father, who stood at the end of the road with his hands in his suit pockets.

Her footsteps slowed, but not soon enough. The pair stationed themselves by him, with her standing between them.

He turned to them and showed more teeth as his eyes probed Touko. She hugged herself. Prayed her mind exaggerated the actual size of the wet patch on her skirt.

Finally, he looked away, but her guard stayed up.

“Don’t screw this up for us, Touko-chan,” he said in his gravelly voice.

Touko nodded. His eyes flitted back to her and flashed warningly.

“Speak when you’re spoken to,” he snarled.

She twitched like someone thwacked a ruler against the back of her hand.

“Y-Yes, Father!” she promised. He stared for a few more seconds before taking his eyes off her, but her skin continued to tingle as they waited in silence.

A minute later, a black speck appeared in the distance, and Touko’s father straightened his back and fiddled with his tie. Her mother tweaked the u-neckline of her dress, while Touko clasped her hands together, feeling her heart beat faster. As the speck drew closer, it began to shape, revealing itself to be a limo.

The windows, tinted black, disallowed anyone on the outside from seeing into the vehicle. Touko felt rather small when it pulled up in front of them. She had never seen a limo before, and though she knew they were big, she didn’t realise they were this long. Shortly after it came to a stop, the driver’s window yawned open, and they saw the chauffeur, an old man wearing a suit and a cap.

Touko didn’t notice the man make eye contact with any of them or even look at them, but he glanced at what seemed to be a photograph held in his gloved hand and gave a slight nod.

“We’ll have her back in a few hours,” he said.

Then he got out, walked alongside the limo and opened another door. He stood there, and not until Touko felt one of her mothers push her on the back did she realise that she was meant to get in. She hurried over, hesitated at the door, then ducked in.

Once Touko sat down on one of the plush leather seats, the chauffeur shut the door with a thud. Touko peeked out of the window, and though she could still see the faces of her parents, tinted black, none of them should have been able to see her.

Yet she felt their gazes on her.

Touko swallowed her heart back down. Her body thrummed. The limo started moving, and the faces of her parents began to recede. Even after the limo turned the corner and entered another street, she still felt their gazes on her, tied around her limbs with string.

Another man in a suit sat along from her on the row of seats. He didn’t talk to her, and she didn’t talk to him. His sunglasses were a double-edged sword. On one hand, she rather he didn’t stare at her, but though she couldn’t see his eyes fixed on her, she couldn’t tell for sure if he was secretly studying her or not.

She wiggled uncomfortably, but soon stopped, cringing as her seat squeaked with her movements. Staying as still as possible now, she peered upward. Above her loomed a dark ceiling dotted with small lights that reminded her of stars, and opposite her was a mini-bar with drinks she wasn’t old enough to consume legally.

Regardless of whether she could have any or not, she didn’t try. Didn’t want to. It tasted disgusting, anyway.

Roughly ten minutes later, they parked outside of a restaurant that Touko didn’t recognise outside of her parents chattering about it being mentioned in her letter that she never got to read. The chauffeur opened her door, and she hopped out. He turned away and walked toward the building. She followed.

Despite the fanciness of the place, no other vehicles were stationed in the carpark, and while she hadn’t been to a restaurant before, she knew this one was fancy. Speckled square panels intermingled with straight-edged windows on the building’s face, all very modern, and a scarlet brick floor surrounded the entrance. They passed under a canopy, silver font on a golden background, and the door opened automatically to permit them inside, like it deemed them worthy.

Inside was just as empty with only one table occupied, and even then, only by one person. Two, if one included the elderly man stood next to the seated boy.

Cream walls and crimson tiled flooring caged Touko in. Polished wooden furniture filled the open room, their accents the colour of standard rose petals. Everything that bled into her vision gave the restaurant warm hues, and it bathed Touko’s small body in it too. Touko trailed after the chauffeur, who seemed to be leading her toward the table with the boy, and she tried to figure out who they were before they reached there. Her first thought was that the elderly man was the boy’s grandfather and the president’s son, and the boy was the president’s great-grandson.

When they arrived at the table, Touko noticed no plates or cutlery had been set. The only things on the tablecloth, which resembled a blood splatter, were a paper folder and a book with a blank cover, all positioned where the boy sat.

She felt a bit queasy. Red. This place had a lot of red. Sometimes she visited decorator shops and browsed the paint aisles, taking card samples home with her so she could continue to examine the different shades in her bedroom. Not because she wanted to paint her room or anything, but to give names to the exact colours she imagined while scratching ink into her notebook.

“You can wait outside now,” said the boy, and the chauffeur left. Once he departed from the room, going back the way he came, the boy steepled his fingers and focused on Touko. His eyes pricked her and she wrapped her arms around herself, feeling a chill.

The boy looked about her age, but with a stern expression too hard for most children to be able to have. But she knew it possible because adults occasionally asked her if she was okay upon seeing those features clouding her face. Yet, his weren’t a fog like hers, but a lightning strike as clear as day. Blond hair framed his face, reaching his shoulders, and his bright blue eyes studied her from behind white glasses. While her frames were circular, his were rectangular, and he nudged up his glasses before lowering his hand back down.

“Touko Fukawa,” he said. No matter how seriously he spoke, he couldn’t hide that his voice hadn’t broken yet. He picked up the paper folder that had been resting by his elbow and opened it, then took out the contents and set the folder down again.

She eyed the stack of papers fastened together with a foldback clip. Their angle didn’t allow her to read what they said. The boy pinched the clip, released a single sheet of paper, and then let go of it so it snapped back into place.

“Let’s get straight to business, shall we?” he asked. He put down the majority of the papers and nodded at the chair opposite him.

Her legs didn’t budge. Only her arm moved, and even then, it didn’t feel like she was moving it herself.

“B-Business?” she said, hovering a crooked finger by her lips.

The boy inclined his head forward a little. “Yes. Is there some issue with that?”

He didn’t relent. Touko squirmed against his glare and shrunk back.

“I thought... Aren’t I meeting the grandson of the president of Polanski Business Limited?” she asked in a small voice.

“What? Yes.” Annoyance flickered on his face like the flame of a candle shimmering. It may as well have been a full-blown fire with how she jolted. He hadn’t even raised his voice. “I’m his grandson, Byakuya Polanski... but that will be Byakuya Togami in a few years, when I take over the Togami Conglomerate.”

She blinked. “Eh?”

Byakuya pursed his lips. Just like that, he went from hot to cold.

“You’ve wasted enough time,” he told her icily. “Sit down and then we’ll get to work.”

The table was flanked by four chairs, one of which he had already claimed. Touko shot a quick look at the old man, who stood motionless, staring into space like he was somewhere else entirely. He must have been Byakuya’s butler. She averted her gaze and lugged her chair back enough for her to sit on it, shuddering as it gave an awful screech.

After she sat down, Byakuya started talking again.

“Your debut novel isn’t the sort of thing I’d usually read,” he said, “but I read about it in the news. It’s the talk of the nation. It’s impossible for me to avoid hearing about it.”

Her toes curled in her shoes. The puzzle pieces in her head began to fit together. Everything so far pointed toward Byakuya being a reluctant fan of her book, who as the grandson of an incredibly wealthy man, could afford to hire out a whole restaurant and request her presence. But also, she noted, they were of similar ages, and they were at a table in a restaurant together. Privately. And surely Byakuya would want to marry someone one day. Perhaps someone famous. Or someone who would become famous.

So all this... could it have been...?

“After a week, I decided to read your book,” he said, looking her in the eyes and leaning in a bit, “and...”

... and here, the lights could have dimmed, maturing the colours in the room to sombre shades. The butler could have whipped out a candle and placed it between them, lighting it in the bat of an eye. A violin would start singing, and Byakuya would scoop Touko’s hands up in his, and he would say suavely,

... I want to know if you will be betrothed to me?

“Y-Yes!” she gasped, clutching her heart.

Opposite her, with his hands firmly on his side of the table, Byakuya quirked his brow and said, “What?”

Touko returned to reality with a crash and cringed. “I-I...”

“You didn’t even hear what I had to say yet,” he said as his lips curled into a sneer.

She willed the floor to swallow her up, chair and all, but it didn’t, and because she still continued to exist, he elaborated.

“After reading your book, I realised you have great potential,” he told her, and he didn’t laugh or even smirk. “Your prose captured many people’s attention. It made them want to date a person like the one your main character dated by the end. I hate romance novels, but even yours drew out an emotion from me... an unpleasant one, but one nonetheless.”

His face gave a quiver before grimly setting. In the beats during their conversation, when neither talked, her whirling thoughts made the silence loud. She swallowed, finding that her mouth and throat had become dry, but she didn’t want to ask for water. Well, she did want some, if only to give her something to do while she sat there, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask or even find the words. They evaporated off her tongue.

“You’re a genius, like me,” he said in a low, even tone, and he tucked a hand under his chin. He looked at her as much as she looked at him. “Even if you’re sitting there with a stupid face like that.”

Touko flinched and jerked a hand to her cheek.

“W-Who are you calling a stupid face...?” she asked, anger spiking in her chest. Hitching in her voice like nails down a chalkboard.

Byakuya was unperturbed.

“I have a proposal,” he said casually.

That made her waver. The ball of anger in her swooped down and rolled off somewhere, leaving a flutter in its place.

“P-Proposal?” she mumbled.

When he reached into his jacket pocket, her stomach flipped, and she imagined him whisking out a small box that clicked open to reveal a ring. Never mind that neither were old enough. That didn’t matter in the world of imagination. Her imagination.

As it was, moments later, he held out a small notebook and passed it to her. She took it and opened it. The first page was blank, and leafing through the rest, so were those.

“I want you to work for me,” he said while her eyes were downcast. “I have great plans in store for the world, and I want you to assist me.”

Want. Byakuya wanted her. The word ensnared her, and Touko barely breathed as she curled her fingers over her heart.

“I read your manuscripts,” he started, only to stop when she jumped in her seat. Her eyes darted upward and locked onto him.

“W-What?” she asked.

Touko didn’t give him any manuscripts. He offered Touko the stack of papers that he had got out the folder earlier, and she brought them closer to her face.

Reading the first line, her breath lodged in her throat with a choked yelp.

This was hers. Definitely hers. She recognised the handwriting, remembered writing it, and she held the papers, trembling. Trembling because she had kept this in a shoebox under her bed. And as she flipped through the other pages, she found more of her work. Work that she hadn’t let her parents take. Or read.

Horror clung to the back of her throat with its claws digging in, and the bitter, acidic ooze it secreted trickled all the way down to the pit of her stomach.

“What’s the matter with you now, for goodness sake?” asked Byakuya, somewhere in the fog consuming her thoughts.

“How... How did you get these?” she said, staring at her manuscripts.

“Your parents sent them to me,” he explained, confirming her suspicions. She tore her gaze off the paper, breathing shallowly. While she was teetering on falling apart, he didn’t so much as rattle. “You are incredibly talented, and trust me, if you weren’t, I wouldn’t bother. I assumed I would get more romance handed to me, but to my pleasant surprise, it wasn’t all that. One piece stood out to me... the one that referenced a shadow observing a young girl being abused. It seemed biographical. Was it?”

Touko knew which one he meant. And it was. She nodded.

If her parents had read it, she didn’t know if they would have included it. Maybe they hadn’t bothered reading it. They never read the novel she published. Or perhaps they had read it, but they didn’t think there was anything incriminating in it. In their heads, they were justified.

She wondered if they really were justified, if she was as rotten a girl as they and the rest of the world had told her she was for so long.

“I want you to work for me, Touko Fukawa,” murmured Byakuya. Light glinted off his glasses. “I have plans for the world, and you would be a great asset.”

It wasn’t with disgust he stared at her with, like her mothers. It wasn’t lust he stared at her with, like her father. It was something else, a light in his eyes, embedded in an otherwise blank mask. Touko didn’t answer right away, trying to locate a crack in what he said, one that would reveal his true motives.

No one ever wanted her because of her talent. People wanted her for a punching bag, as a pastime, as a target or more recently, for her newfound fame or for her money, which all went to her parents. No one wanted her because of her talent. Not really. Not until now.

“You... want to publish my books?” she asked, croaking slightly. She shook her head. “I already have a publisher...”

Byakuya waved a hand. “No, no. I told you, I have plans for this world. Don’t you think it’s corrupt, Fukawa?”

She pressed her thighs together and hunched her shoulders, unable to disagree. He tilted his head to one side.

“There are things that I’ve seen, that I’ve been through, that most people wouldn’t be able to even imagine,” he said, a child. Touko stared back at him. Thought she understood the reflections in his eyes. “Terrible... depraved acts. Violence. Betrayals.”

“Try me,” she blurted, a child too.

That made him hesitate. His mask slipped, and he showed genuine surprise. Not at what she said, but at how she addressed him. Next to him, for the first time so far, his butler stirred, and he seemed to inflate, growing in size, fists clenching by his sides.

Her stomach knotted.

“S-Sorry!” she said, smacking her hands together in prayer. “Please... Please don’t hit me...”

Seconds passed, filling her head with the wail of a siren. Byakuya blinked, then regained his composure.

“I don’t intend to,” he said calmly. He adjusted his glasses. “But you see the world for what it is, don’t you? It’s truly rotten. There are people high up who misuse their power, who don’t deserve it. Society has been poisoned, and I want to rebuild it. But to do that, we need to cut the strings of the puppeteers, and flush out all the impurities that are rife in civilisation.”

This didn’t sound like something that would come out of a child, but it did. His butler had returned to being stoic. She gripped her skirt. Slits of her knuckles blanched.

Byakuya offered his hand to her.

“I want you to be my publicist,” he said. “I want you to write for me.”

Touko bit her lip, sinking back in her seat. She eyed his hand like a snake was wound around his arm under his sleeve.

“M-My stories...” Touko mumbled. Her paper refuge. Their walls threatened to collapse in on her.

“You can still write your novels,” he said. “In fact, I demand you do. But I will also want you to come with me. Over the coming years and perhaps even beyond, we will be working closely together toward that ideal world. One without people like the villains in your stories.”

She sat up. Was about to take his hand.

“... but be warned. Once you accept this deal, you cannot go back on your word. Your life will be as good as over if you do,” he said. “But as long as you stay by my side, I will stay by yours.”

Her body tensed. She faltered, but their eyes met and with a surge of determination, she took his hand and shook it. Byakuya tried and failed to fight down a smile, a fleeting crescent that soon hid behind a cloud in the night sky, but even after his features hardened, she pressed the image against her heart. He had looked so beautiful.

Still did.

“Excellent. Pennyworth, fetch us the menus,” Byakuya said, and the butler marched away.

While the butler was busy, Byakuya reached into his pocket, pulled out a pen, and gave it to her.

“Take notes,” he said. She positioned the pen against the first page in the notebook, and he added, “We can eat afterwards. Don’t worry, I will pay for both of us. Now, there’s an academy that enrolls the country’s most gifted high school students every year. This would be the ideal place for the movement I have in mind. I was thinking, to appeal to more people, we could have a mascot of sorts.”

As he spoke, Touko wrote down what he said, and whenever he paused, she sketched bits onto a doodle in the margin.

It resembled a bear.

#togafuka #touko fukawa #byakuya togami #danganronpa #togafukagiftexchange #zenonaa #2019

38 notes · View notes

monstersandmaw · 5 years

Text

Male vampire (Ruben) x trans male character - Part Two (sfw)

Edit which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

I honestly thought I’d posted this one already on here, so I’m so sorry, and thank you Anon for reminding me!

This has very kindly been sensitivity read for me by two lovely people independently, and I’m hugely grateful to both of them for educating me and suggesting alterations and improvements on how to handle various aspects of this love story. I would never have posted this without your help, and I hope I’ve done that help justice! As with all my stories, however, if there’s anything that anyone feels needs addressing, please get in touch with me privately.

The story is still told from Ruben’s point of view. Please remember that he is a 480 or so year old vampire, with surprisingly little experience of dating, but he’s trying! We pick up where we left off last time, with Ash having just been confronted with the alarming sight of a suit of armour clanking into the room with no helmet, asking Ruben where his head is… understandably, he freaked out at that and left. Ruben is immensely frustrated that his one and only chance to talk to Ash about his being an undead vampire has now possibly been blown…

CW: mentions of blood drinking and vomiting, past child abuse and murder of family (all Ruben), and discussion about Ash being trans and what that will mean for their relationship going forward.

Part One

—

I hung a long time in the completely black vaults beneath the castle, suspended as nothing more than a ball of shifting black mist, deliberately ignoring the seething, roiling anger inside me. I knew I’d had one chance to tell Ash about what I was, to explain things calmly and rationally, to let him decide if I was a creature he could even begin to entertain the idea of being with, but it had all been shattered and I had no one to blame but myself. I should have warned Aubrey that he was coming, but I’d been so caught up in the excitement of seeing him again - like some giddy teenager - that it’d simply not even occurred to me, fool that I was.

Eventually I heard a heartbeat, felt a presence, and I allowed my awareness to expand beyond my own collection of vaporised molecules.

It was not Ash.

Aubrey’s partner fumbled falteringly into the vault and called my name. “Ruben… I know you’re in here. Aubrey just told me what happened… It… That sucks…”

I materialised in the middle of the room and staggered, gasping as I became corporeal once again and the old, familiar pain seemed suddenly as fresh as the day I had been shot full of silver buckshot. “That’s one way of putting it,” I growled, groping for a nearby column to steady myself as I staggered, vision blurring.

“I… I’ll talk to him if you like… tell him about Aubrey…”

“Don’t tell him about me,” I rasped through clenched teeth. “I want that to come from me, personally.” If I ever got the chance, I added bitterly to myself.

I was met with a nod, though there was hardly a pinprick of light in the chamber; certainly not enough for human eyes to make out anything. “Ruben… are you going to be ok?”

I nodded in return. “Yes. I was a fool. Please, if you speak to him, reassure him that he is welcome to return here should he wish, and that he is in…” I had been about to say that he was in no danger, but that would have been a lie.

As a vampire, even one with an inability to digest blood properly, my bloodlust still presented a very real danger to him. Besides, my strength, my speed… all it took would be one miscalculation, one moment of carelessness.

“What am I saying…?” I hissed, turning away. “You should just tell him never to come back here.”

“I won’t do that, Ruben. You’re a good soul. You and Aubrey both. You deserve to be happy, and I think Ash makes you happy.”

“I barely know the man!” I snarled, still dizzy and weak.

“You were getting to know him…”

When it became apparent that our discussion had become circular, Aubrey’s partner left me and I returned to my peaceful, incorporeal state for the rest of the night. As I felt the sun’s tug on the world, even from down in the dark, I decided to head back up to my chambers where the secret door would open for me and my simple black coffin awaited me.

When next I awoke with a great, hoarse, gasping intake of breath, I heard sounds outside the secret door and frowned. Sitting up and pushing the lid up off my coffin on its silent hinges, I caught the sounds of armour pacing up and down in my bedchamber.

With a tiny smile, I stepped awkwardly out of my coffin and discovered that someone had thoughtfully brought my cane up for me and laid it beside the coffin. I needed it to help me stand, let alone walk. All the drama with Ash and the ensuing misery had drained me. I groaned as I realised I would have to feed again, and my stomach turned over at the mere thought of it.

As I opened the secret door in the wooden panelling, I managed to smile and said, “Aubrey.”

“Ru, I’m so sorry,” he blurted, turning around - now with his helmet reinstated - and taking a few faltering steps towards me. His fingers clenched and unclenched with a soft clinking.

I inhaled deeply, the familiar, ferrous tang of his armour filling my senses almost like blood. “It’s alright,” I said, and I was surprised to find I meant it. I was resigned to the facts now. “Though I think it’s Ash who could do with your apology more than me…”

When I enquired as to the whereabouts of his partner, I discovered that Ash had agreed to meet and discuss what he had seen, and that the two of them were at the pub at that very moment. At that news, I frowned and shot a glance out of the window, only to discover that it was long after sundown.

“You slept late tonight,” Aubrey murmured.

I patted his shoulder and said, “You mean you let me sleep late…”

Something buzzed and I looked over at my bed - unused as always - and at the source of the noise. Aubrey’s phone lay on the covers as if he’d tossed it down in frustration, and he darted over to pick it up and read the message. He pulled his touch-sensitive gloves back on, snatching them up from the bed, and opening up the message in a flash.

“Good news!” he chirped.

I walked a little closer and came to a halt, resting my weight on my cane and my shoulder against the post of my carved, wooden, four-poster bed. “Oh?”

“Ash wants to meet you again and talk, but he wants you to come to him at the bar.”

Relief washed through me and I felt myself stagger, knees buckling.

Aubrey was at my elbow in a heartbeat.

“Easy,” he laughed. “I didn’t know you felt that strongly about him yet. I mean, I knew you liked him, but…”

“I don’t want him to be afraid of me,” I said truthfully steadying myself on his arm. “Whether or not anything ever happens between us, I… I don’t want him…” my voice became a ragged whisper and I lowered my head. My loose black hair fell into my face. “I don’t want him to fear me, Aubrey.”

Aubrey hugged me then in a way he’d not done in over a century. His metal plates were warm and I could almost kid myself that he was my big brother - human again - as I laid my cheek on his breastplate. “I want you to be happy, Ru,” he said in a quiet rumble that I felt more than heard. “I think he makes you happy too.”

“You’re the second person to tell me that in twenty-four hours,” I said, sniffing and pulling back from his embrace. I took my brother’s shoulder in my grasp and kissed the cheek of his closed helmet. “Thank you.”

With that, I headed downstairs, fed, endured the usual aftereffects, and then settled myself into a chair to recover and message him for the first time since the previous day.

‘Ash, I understand that you’d like me to meet you at the Coach and Four, is that correct? I will gladly come to you, but only if you wish it. And -’ my thumbs hovered, trembling, over the screen before I forced myself to go on. ‘-And I will tell you anything you wish to know.’

I didn’t get any response for almost ten minutes, during which time I paced the room slowly, willing my stomach to settle, limping back and forth in front of the large bay window overlooking the sea.

Aubrey had left me to stew over it all in peace, and I was grateful to him for the privacy which he had extended to me.

When it eventually came, Ash’s answer restored only a modicum of calm to me.

‘I’ve been hearing about Aubrey but not about you. If you’ll tell me what I want to know and promise to leave me alone if I ask then yes, I’d like to meet up. A.’

I drew in a long, steadying breath through my nose and let it out slowly. At least he was going to let me explain. I could ask for no more than that. ‘You have my word.’

I drove down immediately and parked around the corner from the pub. My heart was in my mouth as I put palms to the door and pushed, and yet the moment I saw him sitting there in the corner, alone now, I felt strangely hopeful. He even smiled at me as I approached.

“Hi,” he said, standing up as I neared his table.

I bowed my head, closing my eyes briefly, and then, taking a deep, steadying inhale which brought with it all the vile smells of the bar - I think I might have turned a little green - I managed to croak, “Thank you.”

Ash nodded at me and sat.

“May I?” I asked, eyeing the empty chair across from him.

Again, he nodded, and I could hear the racehorse pace of his heartbeat.

“You look terrible,” he ventured, and I snorted, lips curling up on one side.

“It’s true, I’ve felt better,” I admitted, but offered nothing more just yet. After I had settled myself in the seat and leaned my cane against the table, I looked up at him. “I understand you’ve heard all about Aubrey?”

Ash himself looked a little pale and a tad clammy, but I can’t say I blamed him. But those gorgeous eyes of his still burned with curiosity, and I tried to take that as a comfort. He was at least as intrigued as he was afraid.

Licking his lips, Ash nodded. “Yeah. That was… quite the story…”

“I’m sure all of it was true,” I murmured. “Do you have any questions about any of that which I might be able to answer, before we move on to… well… me?”

I watched his throat bob apprehensively. “He’s really your brother?”

“Step brother, but yes,” I said, resting my forearms on the table. “My mother remarried Aubrey’s father.”

“And your mother wasn’t human?” he asked very quietly. From that, I guessed that Aubrey’s partner had skirted the issue, but had been unable to get by without at least touching on the truth in some vague way.

I nodded and then steeled myself to tell him everything. “Please interrupt if you have questions,” I began, “But otherwise I will simply tell you what happened, from the beginning.”

After Ash’s nod of understanding, I swallowed and then said, “My mother began her life as a human, but when I was four, my parents were travelling by coach late at night and were attacked by a very powerful and ancient vampire.” I watched Ash’s steady blue eyes widen as he looked at me anew, but he said nothing, so I continued. “This vampire drained my father dry, but when she begged him to make her like him instead of killing her, he turned my mother. I was not present, and so I escaped either death or turning at that point.”

“You’re a vampire then?” Ash breathed, and then he rolled his eyes as if he should have known all along. “Figures…”

With the smallest of nods, I let my dark gaze slide away from him and down to the ringed surface of the pub table. I traced one circle with a fingertip for a moment before carrying on. “I knew something was different about her, but I think I was too young to realise what she had become. I was sent away to boarding school when I was eight, and then I went to Cambridge when I was old enough, so I didn’t spend much time at the family home. I knew she’d been courting someone, and that our own finances were not in a particularly good way. She… She was unhinged… deranged… cruel in the extreme, and she had a way for spending money that I have yet to encounter again.”

I balled one white fist on the table and watched my knuckles strain. “When… When I was a child and I came back for the holidays from school, she would lock me in the cellars or in a broom cupboard while she held the most extravagant parties. Sometimes she’d forget about me for days, and would eventually send a servant to find me. Often she couldn’t even remember which cupboard she’d thrown me into before locking the door… I tell you this not to garner sympathy,” I added, flicking my eyes up to meet Ash’s again, “But so that you understand that I had always simply thought that she was a monster, and one who needed more cash to fund her opulent lifestyle. I didn’t realise she was undead until much later.

“The man that she had begun courting was Aubrey’s father, and with him she had been nothing but sweetness and grace. Even Aubrey liked her, though he’s a gentle and trusting soul anyway. Aubrey’s family owned some of the largest and wealthiest estates outside of the English Crown at the time, and -”

“At the time?” he interjected. “When was this?”

I made a side to side movement of my head and said, “Around the early 1500’s.”

“Fuck,” he hissed. “So… uh… you’ve been a vampire for that long?”

I nodded. “Yes.” I let that information sink in, and then ploughed on. “As she forged a relationship with Aubrey’s father, so I began to find a friend and a brother in Aubrey. He was older than me, but not by all that much, and he took me under his wing. I’d been shy and bookish, afraid of others, but he introduced me to his friends and socialised me a lot more. I was still odd, and I needed my space, but I started to laugh again and come back to life a bit more. I think when my mother realised just how close we had become, she started to panic.”

“Why?”

My smile was not kind as I said, “She had planned to kill Aubrey’s father and Aubrey, and claim their inheritance. She had already used her talent for control on him to make him write a will that left everything solely to her. To be honest, I’m not sure why she didn’t try to kill me earlier. I was human, and nothing but a burden to her, but perhaps she had hoped at one point to marry me off to some rich lord’s daughter. Anyway,” I said, waving my fingers as though brushing at a cobweb, “The long and the short of it is, once they had been married for a year, and all the legal documentation had been secured, she attacked Aubrey’s father. She caught him by surprise and killed him. Aubrey came running in at the sound of the attack, but she hadn’t expected that I would be with him, that she would be outnumbered two to one. I was supposed to have been out for the evening, but had cancelled at the last minute. When she tried to kill Aubrey, I intervened, and she flew into a rage.”

Ash’s normally healthy complexion looked pale as cold porridge as he listened, but he didn’t interrupt me.

“As he bled out on the floor, Aubrey’s essence somehow became entangled forever with a suit of parade armour which had been standing in the corridor on display. It had been knocked over in the fight. I begged him not to die, and perhaps it’s my fault. I don’t know. She’d bitten me,” I said, my fingers finding their way to my neck where she’d savaged me, “But before I also bled out, I managed to grapple the dagger from her as we fought, and I stabbed her in the heart. I passed out, and when I came round, I was a vampire. I assume that her blood had mingled with mine as she died on top of me, and that was what turned me.”

“God, that’s horrific…” Ash whispered. “How come Aubrey became tied to the armour though?”

I shrugged. “Lots of hauntings are the result of violent ends, and he always had a strong spirit and desire for life. But maybe it was because of what I said as he died in my arms… The armour was knocked over in the scuffle, and he… exsanguinated beside it, soaking it.”

I sensed that these questions had been brewing since his earlier discussion, and now with all the information, he felt able to ask them. “So he’s a ghost, in a suit of armour?”

I had to smile. “So to speak. His essence, his soul if you like, is tied to that suit of armour. He can remove himself from it, but if he stays away from it for too long, he begins to fade, and eventually he would die.”

“Right. So… what happened after the attack…?”

“Well, I had been wounded and weakened, but I was able to maintain the illusion that I was still human and keep everything hidden from the servants and staff. My mother’s sire had somehow caught wind of what she had planned to do, and he came to the house a day after it happened, and offered to teach me all he knew. He said that he never should have turned her, but he let himself be moved by her. She’d always been a convincing liar and actress, so naturally, her ‘talent’ had been for persuasion and control when she had become a vampire.”

“‘Talent’?” he asked, and I explained.

“Many vampires exhibit a certain knack or talent for things. Some can control people, others can shape shift into wolves or bats.”

“What can you do?”

“I can turn into shadow or mist,” I said very quietly. I was now entering territory that could really unnerve him - i.e. myself.

The expression that I saw on his face was not the one I had been expecting. His lips quirked up on one side and his eyes glittered. “That’s… I mean… let’s say I believe you for a second… which I kind of do, that’s… actually pretty cool…”

I had to smile myself at that. “It has had its uses, I don’t mind admitting.”

“Is there some way you can prove to me that any of this is true?”

“Here? Now?” I asked, horrified. “Ash, I have to be careful. The hunters’ guild is still very much active, and despite my long life, I have no desire to end it just yet…”

“You think there are vampire hunters here? In this sleepy little seaside town?”

I shook my head. “Probably not, and I’d like to keep it that way. If word gets out of strange happenings - a man turning to mist in a pub - then it will draw their attention and they will start sniffing around.”

“Ok, ok,” he said. “I wasn’t gonna ask you to turn into a fucking bat or anything. Just… you don’t have fangs, and other than you being pale and really old fashioned, there’s nothing to suggest you’ve been around since the fucking fifteen hundreds, that’s all…”

“Oh,” I said, instinctively running the tip of my tongue beneath one canine. “I can at least show you my true form, provided that no one is looking.”

“True form? You mean, this isn’t what you actually look like?”

“I do look like this, but the physical changes we undergo during feeding is considered our ‘true form’.” I hastened to add that we don’t have to be about to feed to reveal that form, and he relaxed a little.

Something thrummed in him with a wild, nervous energy, and he said, “Ok. Show me that then.”

I took a deep breath and glanced about. No one was looking at us in our quiet corner, and I had my back to the room.

Closing my eyes, I called on the raw power inside me, delving deep into a place I hated, and it was like dipping my fingers into icy water. A thrill ran through me and I felt my facial features shift, sharpen, my cheekbones becoming more prominent as my cheeks grew gaunter, my eyes sinking a little deeper and flaring a flaming crimson red. The most noticeable change, at least for me, was the lengthening of my canines. My gums throbbed and burned as my fangs were propelled slowly downwards, ready to sink into the skin of a human. My stomach, as ever, protested the very idea of it, and I was sure I must have turned a little green again.

When I dared open my eyes, Ash was staring at me with a mixture of horror and fascination on his face. “You really are a vampire,” he finally whispered.

I blinked slowly at him. I could see his carotid pulsing. “Yes.”

He remained silent for a while, just staring at me, and I let him, despite the way it made my skin crawl to be under such intense scrutiny. Ash surprised me once again when, instead of recoiling or running out of there screaming ‘Nosferatu’, he reached for my bare hand where it now lay curled in a loose fist on the tabletop. “You’re cold,” he observed, and I quirked an eyebrow which, to my pleasant astonishment, made him laugh. “Should have guessed you would be. Are you always cold?”

“Undead, so… yes.”

“Right.”

“I mean, technically I’m not that cold. I’m just colder than you. My body tends to match the ambient temperature…”

“Like a reptile…” he mused and I snorted. After another few moments, he let go of me and said, “If… If you wanna, you know… switch back… that’s fine by me.”

I did, and he watched, fascinated, as my features softened again and I became almost feminine in comparison to the gaunt-faced beast I had been before. “Thank you.” I almost felt his next question in the air before he even articulated it and had to smile.

“I’m guessing you drink blood then?”

With one slow nod, I confirmed it. “All vampires do,” I said. “Though I have trouble digesting it, so I do not drink nearly as frequently as I probably should. And before you ask, most of us have connections with people in the blood donation service. There are even humans who willingly donate to vampires and are handsomely rewarded both for doing so and for keeping quiet about it. I do not live-feed.”

“Live-feed?”

“Directly from the source.”

“Oh. Right. So how much of what’s in the movies is fake?”

“Probably most of it, though I don’t tend to watch many vampire movies. Aubrey has forced me to endure a few. We do not ‘glitter’, we cannot move in daylight without burning - usually we have about fifteen minutes before we ignite - and we do sleep in coffins. Garlic is poisonous to us, though not usually lethal unless given in stupendously high doses, holy water burns like acid, stakes through the heart will kill us, as will decapitation. Did I miss anything?”

Ash swallowed. “Silver?”

How could I of all people have forgotten that one? “Again, burns like acid and does lasting damage if left in contact with our bodies for too long.”

After staring at me unblinkingly for a good ten seconds or so, he shook his head slowly. “It’s a lot to process…”

“I understand. Shall I leave you for now?” I asked with the utmost reticence.

He licked his lips and sucked the tip of his tongue pensively for a second or two. “Maybe?” but as I took my cane in my hand and made to stand, he added, “Wait,” and I found that his lovely blue eyes were fixed on the steel-handled cane in my fingers. “Do vampires heal up faster than humans?”

I nodded.

“Then… how…?”

“That’s a longer story, but I was telling the truth when I said to you before that I was attacked, and that it was a long time ago. I will tell you about it another time, if I may.”

“Was it hunters?” he pressed, and I nodded.

Once I had straightened up and was looking down at him, I smiled. “Thank you, Ash, for giving me a chance to explain myself and the events of last night. You… You handled that with remarkable grace.”

He let out a snort of laughter at that and shook his head again, running unsteady hands through his sandy blond hair, ruffling it just perfectly. The urge to kiss him took me completely by surprise but I remained perfectly still as he said, “From the way you talk, I should have seen this coming, right?”

I only curved the corner of my lips into a wry smile and shrugged. “Goodnight, Ash.” I had just turned around to leave when I paused and looked back over my shoulder at him. “And I don’t think I need to tell you how important it is that you remain quiet about what you have been told.”

“You got it, Ruben,” he said shakily. “Whatever happens next, I won’t tell anyone.”

“Thank you.”

And with that, I left.

Aubrey pounced on me like a heavily-armoured battle retriever the moment I got back, and I told him as best I could what had occurred. “It’s up to him now,” I said, trying to stave off the utter, crushing misery that was filling up my lungs like spray foam. While the encounter had largely gone well, there was always the very real chance that he could decide that our little family was just far too strange and dangerous for him.

The next seven days that passed without word from Ash were amongst the longest I have ever endured.

But finally, I awoke one evening and emerged from the secret chamber which houses my coffin to find the sound of voices drifting up from below. The castle doesn’t mute noises quite as well as one might think for such an old and thick-walled building. It is, after all, honeycombed with hidden passages and staircases.

Descending from one such staircase, I paused at the bottom, on the far side of the entrance hall to the castle, and listened with barely contained joy, to the voices of Aubrey’s partner and Ash. The latter, it seemed, had tentatively agreed to come up to the castle, and had made his friend very excited. A moment later, Aubrey came clanking out and I heard him give a yip of pleased surprise.

In order not to appear in their midst from a secret panel like a woodworm from the very fabric of the castle, I shifted to my shadow form and flashed through the building, coming to a halt in the passageway which led from the hall and down, eventually, towards the kitchens. Taking a moment to steady my breathing and my equilibrium after such a rapid journey, I laid my hand on the smooth plasterwork of the corridor, and inhaled and exhaled slowly. Only then did I make my way up the corridor, my cane tip clunking on the hard, polished floors and announcing my presence, along with my tell-tale rocking gait.

When I entered the entrance hall, all three of them turned to face me, and I watched Ash’s lips curve into a soft smile. “Hi,” he said, in much the same breathy tone of voice as he’d spoken to me back at the pub the week earlier. “I… I hope it’s ok that I called uninvited…?”

“Of course, Ash. You are always welcome here.” At a flat look - don’t ask me how I know it was a flat look, I just do - from Aubrey, I added rather awkwardly, “I’m delighted that you’re here.”

A tense pause hung in the air between all of us, so I drew on my many years of forming connections in a more professional situation, and suggested that I give Ash the tour he never got on his first visit.

He grinned. He could see I was nervous and I silently blessed him yet again for his patience and grace in dealing with me. “Sure,” he said.

It took us over an hour to explore the castle, and by the end of the countless sets of stairs and corridors, vaults and parapets, my hip and knee were aflame, but I tried my best to conceal it from Ash. Eventually however, my pace got slower and slower, and my limp more pronounced, and I could no longer hide it.

“Ruben…?” he asked as we paused at almost the very heart of the building in a flagstone courtyard garden that smelled of jasmine in the early summer. Now, in the cool of autumn, it smelled of the frosts to come and of the chill of the stone itself.

“Yes?” I said, cursing the hitch in my voice.

He turned to face me and said, “You don’t have to keep soldiering on to impress me. If you’re in pain… say so…”

I took a deep breath, recalling my promise always to speak the truth to him. “Alright. I am in pain and would appreciate a pause. Would that be alright?”

“Of course,” he said, and plonked himself down into one of the cast iron chairs nearby, where I liked to take tea in the spring.

“How have you been?” I asked once I’d eased myself into the chair opposite him. “I mean, I haven’t had the chance to ask you, amid all the excitement of diamonds in the vault and peregrine falcons in the tower…”

He grinned. “I’ve been thinking of you a lot,” he said.

“And?”

“I… I’d like to see what happens next. If you’re up for it still.”

The relief that washed through me took me by surprise and I found myself laughing softly. My head bowed forwards as my chest caved a little, and my long hair slid over my shoulders to shroud my face a little.

“Ruben?”

Smiling, I looked up at him. “I… Thank you, Ash. I honestly didn’t know what to expect.”

“Ok, I have another question for you, and it’s not about being a vampire, though I do have questions about that too…”

“Alright. Ask away.”

“Is it possible for you to say how many people you’ve been with in your life? Not, like, one night stands, but… well, like a romantic -”

“One.”

That shut him up almost faster than finding out I was a vampire had.

He stared at me, aghast. “You’re… You've been alive since fifteen-fucking-hundred and you’ve only been with one other person?”

I shrugged. “I don’t normally feel the need to become romantically involved, and sex for its own sake is definitely doesn’t appeal to me. The last person I was with was a vampire, so you are the first human I’ve been with. Or… at least am beginning the process of being with…”

Ash looked me up and down and then, as though he could no longer contain the question, blurted, “But why? You’re gorgeous!”

A small laugh escaped me and I shook my head. “My physical appearance not withstanding, I simply haven’t sought it out.”

“Ok then… So why me?”

My gaze bored into his and he met and held it. “I’m not sure how it started,” I said honestly. I adjusted my position in the hard iron chair and grunted before taking a steadying breath and continuing. “That night at the bar when we first met, I had had no intention of going out, let alone of finding a date. In fact I’d given Aubrey a flea in his helmet for even making me suspect such a notion. But then there you were, and… Ash… you have such life to you.”

“I mean, I do have a heartbeat…” he grinned. “That’s one up on you, right?”

“No,” I scoffed, “It’s not that. I could perhaps have had hundreds of human partners if I’d so wished it over my lifetime, but… I’ve never smiled so much as those first two weeks after we exchanged numbers. Your wit, your sense of humour, your eloquence, your intelligence, your empathy… it’s all drawn me in, Ash, like no other human ever has.”

“Would you kiss me if I asked you to?” he said, leaning his elbows on the table, and I felt my mouth go dry and my canines throb in my gums. As intuitive as ever, he had detected that perhaps the physical side of things might be a bit slower coming to me than other aspects of a relationship, but with him, I knew I wanted it all.

“Yes,” I rasped.

“You think you’re any good after only having had one partner?”

“I did have a lot of practice with him,” I grinned, also leaning forwards and stifling the heat in my hip as I moved. “I may be out of practice though. Perhaps at some point you can remind me how it’s done?”

He rolled his eyes dramatically, feigned gagging and said, “If I didn’t know you were super out of touch, I’d never forgive you for a line like that.”

I couldn’t help smiling. He was so close I could smell him with crystalline clarity. He was nervous, but then again so was I, but he smelled of soap and his own unique scent. He’d showered after work and his hair, which had been a little damp when he’d arrived, was now dry. I wanted to run my fingers through it and find out what kind of noises he might make. Yet again, that surprised me, but I welcomed it.

Taking me off guard yet again, Ash rose from his seat and walked slowly round to me. “You said this castle has a garden?” he said, and when I nodded, he said, “You up for taking me there?”

The rose garden wasn’t much to look at at this time of year, little more than a ragged brambly thicket interspersed with some late blooming flowers, but still, it would be a pleasant and mostly flat walk, tired as I was. I extended my hand to him and he steadied me as I levered myself to my feet.

“Ruben, what… what could do that to a vampire? I mean, permanently…” he tailed off and I filled in for him.

“Permanently disfigure him? Silver. Silver buckshot to be exact. And silver nitrate. Come on, let’s go.” And I turned away from him. I was not ready to share that with him. I was not ready to relive that again, and I knew he would understand. I had expected him perhaps to be apprehensive about sharing his body with me, though I’m not sure why, but in fact I think it was me who was more self-conscious.

As we moved slowly through the castle and out into the gardens on the east side, he slid his hand into mine. Something about him taking the lead with me was deeply attractive and I squeezed his fingers slightly.

We came to rest at the wall of the upper terrace which overlooked the rose garden, and suddenly I wasn’t sure I could make all the stairs down into the lower level. It was late, and he stifled a yawn before leaning against the low wall on his forearms. “I still can’t believe you live here, ancient vampire or not,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

“It’s even nicer in the summer,” I murmured, looking at nape of his neck instead of following his gaze out into the gardens. The wind ruffled the dark blond hair there and I fought the sudden urge to lift my finger to it and brush it against the exposed skin.

As if sensing my thoughts, he swivelled his head to look at me. “So I’ve also been wanting to ask something else…”

“More questions?” I teased, and he grinned.

“Yeah. You said I could ask you anything.”

“That I did,” I said, easing my weight down onto the low wall so that he stood a little taller than me. “Something tells me I might live to regret that…”

“I hope not,” he replied. Taking a deep breath that accompanied a small spike in his heart rate, he asked, “So… You said you’d only been with one other person, and that he was a guy.” I nodded. “I’m guessing he wasn’t a guy like me…”

“You mean… being… trans?” I asked carefully, remembering the term he had used, which hadn’t been invented when my friend Maria had been alive.

“Yeah.”

“No, no he wasn’t.”

“So… What happens if… if we take this further and you don’t… you aren’t… uh…” he scratched the back of his neck, heat rising to flush his cheeks, visible even to me in the low light. I supposed it was almost pitch black for him at that time of night with little or no moonlight.

“Look, Ash,” I faltered. “I… While I have not been with someone in your exact situation… My attraction to you has not changed since…” my heart, if it could still beat, would have been going like the clappers. As it was, I was suddenly incredibly nervous. I did not want to mess this up, and I barely knew what I was doing. Not dating for over a century was really coming back to bite me in the behind.

Taking a deep breath, I stilled my racing brain and said, “My attraction to you has not changed since you graciously informed me of your situation. I would like to develop our relationship and, in time, I would like to become intimate with you. If you would permit it, that is. If… If you think you would enjoy it.”

I watched his face for a horrifyingly long time before he rewarded me with a wry smile, still leaning his forearms on the wall, and said, “What if you don’t like it? I don’t mean to push the issue, but you’ve told me already that you’ve only been with one cis guy in the past. My original hardware doesn’t match my software…”

“I… I don’t know what any of that last part meant exactly,” I said. “Is that… a computer analogy?”

“Oh my god,” he snorted, bowing his head and chuckling. “Sometimes I actually manage to forget.”

My heart dropped like a lead weight through my chest. “I do sound like a terrible prude, don’t I?”

“I mean,” he laughed, elbowing me in the ribs, “That was probably the most awkward way anyone has ever proposed sex to me, but you know what? It’s adorable.”

I shrugged. “I’ll take ‘adorable’ over ‘prudish’…”

“I didn’t exactly mean it like that,” he snorted, looking away again at the garden.

Knowing I wouldn’t be able to hide the flash of gratefulness that undoubtedly passed over my face, I didn’t try. “Thank you. Sex has never been something I have seen as a priority in a relationship, as you might have gathered given the dearth of partners in my past, so this is always awkward for me to discuss…”

He took me by surprise by nodding sagely. “I’m happy you’re still considering it…” he said with a complex emotion that I suspected I would never fully understand visible in his eyes. “Ok, look, when it comes to it, I’m happy enough to guide you through a few things if you like.”

“Things like… I shouldn’t touch your chest?” I asked, feeling horrendously awkward.

I found I wanted to get to know his body already, and explore him - see what made him arch his back and raise his hips; see what he liked and what he sounded like; and what he might like to do to me as well - and that was unusual at this stage in a relationship for me. In the past, the physical side of things had taken a spot on the back burner until I knew my partner very well. With Ash, there was still the desire to know him intellectually, but it was tinged with another longing to know him physically. It felt like my body was waking up after lying cold and dormant for centuries. While I definitely did want to pursue that, I equally didn’t want to mess things up through my own fumbling ignorance.

Ash chuckled and shook his head fondly, watching me over-think things yet again before correcting me gently. “Maybe I wouldn’t have liked it before,” he said. “I still have a bit of numbness near my armpits but you definitely can touch my chest. I… I’d actually like it if you did.”

I nodded. “I understand, and thank you.” I turned and looked along the gravel walkway and, deciding that I had made this conversation awkward enough for the time being, said, “Would you like to walk with me a little way?”

“God yes,” he said and, to my surprise, he slid his warm fingers into mine, waiting for me to take my time standing.

By the time we reached the end of the walkway, I was no longer walking, but very obviously hobbling.

Wordlessly, we stopped, and as we did, Ash turned to face me.

He looked up at me and my mind went blank at the expression on his face. “This is the time I give you that kiss, isn’t it?” I managed to murmur.

“If you’d like…” he grinned.

I leaned my cane against the stone wall that still ran alongside us, and then cupped his face in my cold hands. He didn’t flinch at all, but rather leaned into the touch.

“Last chance,” I whispered. Some morbid part of me still expected him to pull back, to turn tail and run just like he had on that first night, but he didn't. Tonight he was prepared. Tonight was happening because he had decided to make it happen.

He shook his head. “I trust you. And besides, I have someone else’s word that you’re a good guy…”

I made a mental note to thank Aubrey and his partner for setting this in motion, and then pushed all thoughts to one side as I lowered my head and kissed Ash. It began gently, hesitantly, but when he grabbed my waist I moaned suddenly, unexpectedly, the sound rolling out of me at the nature of his touch. He slid his hands up to hook them around my neck, effectively tugging himself closer to me, I deepened the kiss, nipping gently at his lips until they were flushed and swollen. His pulse raced beneath my fingertips and I found a heat kindling in my eyes.

Knowing that they would be glowing red, I made to pull back, eye rammed shut, but he clung to me.

“Show me,” he growled. “Show me what you are.”

And because it was him asking me, I did.

He kissed me again, harder, and I returned it.

I swivelled around and lifted him easily onto the wall so that we were of a closer height, and he drew me down by the collar of my pristine white shirt. I could have resisted him, maybe, but in that moment he was utterly in control of me. Again, it was as if he were a vampire with the talent of control, and I the enchanted thrall.

We kissed each other breathless, and then I noticed that his hands were almost the same temperature as mine, and I drew back, panting, gums throbbing from resisting my bloodlust which had just begun to spike as his growing arousal made itself known to my nose. It was foreign and alluring to me in a way that I’d not encountered before. I found myself getting hard, and out of breath.

“Ash,” I rasped. “You’re cold…”

“Yeah,” he admitted, looking delightfully ruffled.

“Let’s go inside.”

“Ruben?”

“Yes?”

“I didn’t bring anything with me, but… can I stay over?”

I smiled. “Of course. I’ll prepare a guest room.”

“I could stay with you?” he said, and I had to laugh.

“My coffin would not accommodate two comfortably,” I began, but I suddenly realised that there was somewhere else he could sleep. “But my bedroom has a bed which is never used. You could sleep there.”

“Oh. Of course…”

There were going to be one or two such difficulties to negotiate in a human-vampire relationship, but I was certain we could at least talk about it now. We seemed to have got the hardest parts, respectively, out of the way, and now it was just the old fashioned formula of two people slowly falling in love and working out what that meant…

He held my hand as we moved through the castle, and when we met Aubrey on the staircase, Ash swore and laughed. “I don’t think I’d ever get used to the sight of a suit of armour just fucking walking around…”

Aubrey laughed. “Try looking in a mirror and seeing that!” he said. “Still scares the shit out of me every morning - well, ectoplasm, but whatever. Are you staying over?”

Ash nodded and Aubrey clapped his gauntlets together with glee, bouncing on the spot with a great clattering ruckus. “Yes!” he squealed and actually shot forward and embraced Ash.

When he was released, Ash looked at me and said, “Ok, here’s the real mystery. How come a suit of armour that’s made of steel is warmer than you are?”

“If you’d rather curl up with him tonight…” I suggested, and he punched me on the bicep before grabbing my hand.

We shared a laugh and I continued to make my way upstairs, breathing through the very real pain in my leg.

In my room, I fished out a clean t-shirt of mine for him and said, “I have a new toothbrush in the cupboard in the bathroom over there.” With a trembling hand I extended my arm to the door on the other side of the room and then crossed to the secret door in the wood panelling of the room. “I… I sleep in here.”

He seemed to sense that I was not ready to share that with him just yet, and so he nodded. “Kiss me goodnight?” he smiled. “I know you’re a big sappy romantic really…”

I opened my arms and he crossed to me. His hoodie was still chilled from the night air outside, and I wrapped my arms around him and placed a kiss atop his head while he still hugged my lean body. “Thank you for lending me your trust.”

Ash tilted his head up and I kissed his smiling lips before he stepped back.

“Night.”

I nodded. “Goodnight,” I murmured, and watched him cross to the bathroom.

At the door he paused and looked back at me before blowing me a tiny kiss, little more than a brief pout.

Once he had slipped inside, I opened the door to my own chambers and stepped into the pitch black. The room was intimately familiar to me, and I needed no light, so I let the panel close behind me and crossed to the coffin which lay open on the far side, pushed against the wall as though it were little more than a storage box.

It was early for me to be retiring, with dawn still hours and hours away, but I was tired and drained, and I felt its siren call, so while the heartbeat of the young human I was slowly falling for grew steadier next door, I let the sound of it lull me into my undead, dreamless slumber, with the image of him looking up at me in the gardens seared into my memory.

---

Hope you enjoyed it!! Don’t forget to reblog if you did because it really helps out authors/content creators on this website!!

For all early releases, character art and bios, upcoming story info, and much, much more, join me over on Patreon!

You’ll have access to stories before anyone else, and you’ll get instant access Patreon-only content as well, including polls and an exclusive monthly story for those on the Pixies and Goblins tier or higher!

---

#exophilia #vampire #trans character #trans male character #vampire x reader #vampire x trans character #monster x reader #sfw

215 notes · View notes

etherealblasphemy · 4 years

Text

Quarantine Ask Game

‘kay so i was tagged by @darklings-heart

“1. how has your day been? 2. what is the last thing that made you smile? 3. what's keeping you entertained these days? 4. if you are in some kind of quarantine/self isolation: is there anything you'd like to achieve in this time? 5. post a selfie! (if you're comfortable with that) 6. last but not least: send this to some mutuals to keep the game going”

1. i was on a discord call with my friends for like two hours and we played cards against humanity and sent each other vine shitposts based on our dnd campaigns and it was super fun, so pretty good i’d say

2. drew this really stupid comic based on a vine. we have a dwarven cleric who is very religious, and my character always pokes fun at the gods being canonically dead, so we drew a shitty comic based on the “welcome to bible study we’re all children of jesus” vine with the cleric saying that and then the final panel is him saying “kumbayaaa, my lord” as in background my character just slams her head into what is certainly not a line of coke. dumbest shit each but it made me laugh so hard

3. dnd mostly, don’t know if you could tell lol

4. um, i’d like to actually do my school work rip. for real though, i’d like to finally try to contact publishers and figure out how to get this manuscript of mine published

5. lol i’m not posting my face on here so have a drawing of my dnd character slamming her face into a table instead lol check out my shitty comic in drew in literally a minute

6. i have like three mutals rip

@xmicrxn @seabellart @kogy4ru i feel like im forgetting someone and i am very sorry about it

#tag game #dnd #god that last panel kills me every time #the fucking SLAM into the table

3 notes · View notes

jyushimatsurepliez · 5 years

Text

HEY JYUSHI, CATCH THIS AND HAND IT OVER TO MUN, WILL YA??

@drowsy-duck:

(Real quick, I hope the panels are in the right order!!!) (and sorry for writing a friking novel; I hope this isn’t too much to read!!)These are crappy drawings, but I mean them with all my heart. Stay strong, mun; things will get better soon, ok? Seeing someone like you being so hard on yourself hurts.. (IT’S THAT DUMB PUBLISHING COMPANY THAT’S TRASH, NOT YOU!!!!) I know this isn’t easy, but hang tight and keep doing your best. There are people out there who care about you, and we all want you to be successful in your career and artistic endeavors! Now get plenty of rest so you can score that home run, ok???

{As you may have noticed I’m the emperor of long-ass messages, so this ABSOLUTELY wasn’t too long to read. Actually it got me emotional in so many ways. You drew so much just to cheer stupid whiny me up, even though really it just comes down to me feeling bad for being ordinary and mediocre, which is a pretty insulting thing to feel bad about… But also… Usually when I feel bad, not everyone takes it so well, you know? I lost quite a few followers over that in the history of my blogs. So getting something like this… It’s huge. It’s definitely not crappy in any way. It’s impressive, it’s huge and I love it so much.

Honestly they’re not trash… They’re a mess is all… And my artwork seriously isn’t that good at all, especially for my age.

But… Honestly, knowing that my dumb art (and Jyushi, of course, he the man èwé) could cheer you up when you were in a bad situation is what meant the most. No trouble is petty, yours certainly weren’t, and by getting to chat with you a bit it means even more than I could be of help to someone with such good taste and a kind heart!

So yeah… MAY I JUST HUG YOU, and THANK YOU SO MUCH for this!!! I’ll be okay, seriously, my life isn’t that bad at all, art hates me, but I can’t quit anyway.}

#WHY CAN'T I WRITE SHORT STUFF SEE #ooc #drowsy duck #*sends love*#*ALL THE LOVE*#submission #long post #(we're both hopeless)#meet your humble author

37 notes · View notes

estelofimladris · 5 years

Text

My Longest Day Ever in Fandom

This has been one of the hardest 48 hours for me as a fan. Really they’ve been pretty bad in the scope of me being a person, but in my fandom experience, this shit takes the cake.

** WARNING: THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR The Magicians as well as some minor spoilers for Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Avengers: Infinity War, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Flash, and Supergirl. **

** ALSO: This shit gets super personal. Don’t read if it makes you uncomfortable. **

I get that I’m specifically interested in stories of struggle and triumph. I thrive with stories about how the things worth having aren’t easily obtained. And sometimes people fail and sometimes people lie. There are horrible obstacles and things to conquer.

A bit of my fandom-inflicted past:

Will Turner was my favorite Pirates character. We had tickets not only to the three-movie marathon on opening day, but then the midnight screening. I nearly didn’t go to the second screening.

Sirius Black is why I got into Harry Potter. I got into it at the weird middle place when the books were still coming out and the movies were being made. I had been forced to read the first book when it was first published and it had left a very bad taste for me so the fact that anything could draw me into the fandom was insane. I watched Prisoner of Azkaban entirely by chance while hanging with my cousins and had read all the books by the time Goblet of Fire was released. I lived in and loved a fandom where my favorite character was dead before I even got a chance to know him.

Grant Ward was one of my two my favorite Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. characters. I rushed a Ward cosplay for WonderCon, which happened to be scheduled about a week after the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and less than a week after the AoS episode “Turn, Turn, Turn” aired, revealing that Ward was a brainwashed and abused Hydra sleeper agent the whole time. I then nearly scrapped the entirely completed cosplay. Instead I wore it to WonderCon and had people whispering “Hail Hydra” to me all weekend.

I spent at least three years living with a TV curse. Every show that I watched before its renewal for a second season was cancelled. To this day, I struggle to watch new shows because I fear that I will fall in love with a show only for it to be cancelled.

In the past year, I have lost 5 of my favorite characters to sudden deaths/departures:

Bucky Barnes (Avengers: Infinity War)

Harry Wells (The Flash)

Leo Fitz (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

Winn Schott (Supergirl)

And this is about the most recent one, Quentin Coldwater (The Magicians)

I also know that there are more to come:

Avengers: Endgame comes out next week.

Arrow is ending at the end of this year.

There are more stories of woe and uncomfortable spaces in which we want to see our favorites succeed and they fail or lose or die. But this, this is more than just someone failing or losing or dying.

I survived all that other shit. I was a little off for a few days following or weeks or months or even years. But we always come back to Fandom. Maybe not the same fandom, but the big idea of Fandom. Being a fan isn’t something you can really just stop.

I got into The Magicians because of serendipity. Two of my closest friends got into the show at some point last year and had mentioned that I’d liked it, but it was one in a malaise of fandoms that I’d been told that about and I only have so many hours in the day and space in my heart. One of the people I was rooming with at SDCC this last year had freshly gotten into the show and was going to the panel. Another of my friends was going to the panel as well who had freshly gotten into the show. When I asked about it afterwards, the lovely human said they’d met a lovely other new fan. My friends had met entirely by chance at the panel and I got to hear all about how lovely the fandom was and that it was a really great panel with a lot of promise for the new season.

I got home from SDCC and, one day while curious, watched the pilot of The Magicians.

I finished the show in less than three weeks. I watched it again. I’ve probably watched this show more than any other media since August.

A bit of background about me and why this show struck a very deep chord with me:

I met my entire close group of friends, my found family, because of Lord of the Rings. I learned Sindarin (elvish) in high school. Every screen name I have is related to my love and foundation of loving Lord of the Rings. I have a tattoo in elvish.

I grew up around a lot of mental illness. I myself have been diagnosed and treated for adolescent/adult ADD, but members of my family as well as every best friend I’ve ever had, has been depressed and most were suicidal. I had to confront my best friend over suicide attempts at 13. My brother was treated for extremely aggressive childhood depression when I was a kid.

I’m also queer. Still working to unstick myself from some definitions I’ve given myself, but I’m definitely genderqueer and androphilic and exploring my romantic identity in part because of this show.

I’ve delt with death my whole life. My first grandparent (maternal grandfather) died when I was 5 or 6. My last grandparent (paternal grandmother) died when I was 22. I had a dear friend die in a motorcycle accident in 2015. I’ve been there for people who have lost loved ones suddenly and held people’s hands through the deaths of parents, loved ones, and children.

I also am about to complete my third and final year of an insanely rigorous graduate costume design program.

This show felt like it was made for me to love it. It made it so easy.

The fandom was a loving community that welcomed me immediately and I have thrived there. I would come home from a crazy day at school, put on an episode of the show, and get lost in the lovely fandom that I’d found myself in. I mean that both ways. Yes, I tripped and fell and found myself among excellent people. But more importantly, I found myself in ways I didn’t expect through The Magicians.

Through a series of very unfortunate events, I stopped reading Fan Fiction about 7 or 8 years ago. I would occasionally write something, but nothing that I cared about what anyone thought about it. It was only writing that had to be written not writing for an audience in any way.

The Magicians got me reading Fan Fiction again. I drew fan art. I participated in discussions on the meta. I joined in when I don’t really have the free time, but it felt so good.

In Quentin in particular, I found a part of myself that was seldom voiced. This melancholy nerd who was Doing His Very Best™ all the time tapped into the kid who loved something so much it transformed their life. It spoke to the parts of me that I don’t talk about that feel like a fraud and a floundering fool. The Magicians told me that I’m not some pathetic thing. That I’m part of my world and that I belong. That it’s ok to re-think about sexuality and romance as an adult. It spoke to my struggles with school and creating something from absolutely fucking nothing.

Something that I’ve not told many people: I’ve struggled with feeling worthy of love. I’ve had some really big relationships that ended poorly and ever since coming out as genderqueer and living my truth, I’ve been single. Watching Quentin be so worthy of love and struggle with that himself, he really shifted my views on relationships.

So, Wednesday was, needless to say, rough.

The fun twist though, I have a mandatory class on Thursday mornings. I had a lot of anxiety about this finale already because I had a notion that something horrible was going to happen because its a Magicians finale. I really struggled to work on homework for the past week. (I texted a friend on Wednesday “How am I supposed to work under these conditions!?” partway through the day.)

This anxiety resulted in not all of my homework being done by the time I had set aside to cook a delicious dinner and settle in to watch the episode with friends. So at the end, after I had cried, drank, nearly threw up from being upset, and was all-in-all a complete wreck, I then proceeded to work on homework until I couldn’t, then I put myself to bed with an alarm set to wake up early and finish, but woke up with a nearly-vomiting anxiety attack (which I don’t get ever) an hour before my alarm.

I finished my homework on my 1.5 hours of sleep, went to class, tried to be eloquent and not burst into tears. I sorta succeeded at both, thankfully. My work was... sub-par, but present, which was the only real requirement. Despite some close calls, I didn’t cry until I was in my car driving home.

I got home, cried a lot, tried to eat and sleep (and failed at both) and ended up having a second wake with another friend and drinking, which finally made me fall asleep.

Throughout the day, I seriously considered deleting every Magicians post from my queue and even my Tumblr as a whole. I thought about dropping out of fandom entirely, including conventions, cosplay - all of it. I thought about selling or donating all of the considerable amount of Magicians merch and related items (cosplay, decor, fan-made merch) that I’ve accumulated in the past few months. I thought about shaving off the hair that I grew out specifically for Quentin that helped me re-shape my queer identity over the past few months.

I woke up in the middle of the night again with more panic attacks. It took sitting with my best friend to make me really fall asleep and stay asleep.

Today, I’m looking back at this whole experience up to this point and I’m so exhausted. I’m tired of crying over something that just brought me so much deep joy. I miss my fandom. We’re all in mourning and its chilling.

I decided somewhere in my insanity yesterday that I need to reclaim The Magicians that I loved. I posted about how it will take time, but they can’t kill the love that transformed my life.

I’m still not sure how to get out of this horrible raw place, but I know time will help. And actually eating a real meal.

I’m sharing all of this because I’m not the only one in this place. If you’re struggling, you are not alone.

I see you. I feel you.

Thank you for being a part of this fandom that has so heavily enriched my life. You are loved. We will find ourselves again.

#personal #but also about the magicians #fandom #the magicians #quentin coldwater #i'm a fucking disaster right now

11 notes · View notes

bountyofbeads · 5 years

Text

Trump’s pick to lead U.S. intelligence claims he arrested 300 illegal immigrants in a single day. He didn’t.

https://wapo.st/2ZrB4ou

Ratcliffe withdraws from consideration for intelligence chief

By John Wagner and Shane Harris | Published August 02 at 3:07 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted August 2, 2019 7:16 PM ET |

President Trump announced Friday that Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Tex.), his embattled pick to lead the nation’s intelligence community, was withdrawing from consideration and would remain in Congress.

The lawmaker was facing intense questions about padding his résumé and a lack of experience, which led to a lukewarm reception on Capitol Hill.

Trump said he would announce a new pick for director of national intelligence shortly.

In tweets, Trump said that Ratcliffe was being treated “very unfairly” by the media.

“Rather than going through months of slander and libel, I explained to John how miserable it would be for him and his family to deal with these people,” Trump wrote. “John has therefore decided to stay in Congress where he has done such an outstanding job representing the people of Texas, and our Country.”

In a statement issued shortly after Trump’s tweets, Ratcliffe said that he remained convinced that if confirmed by the Senate he would he would have served “with the objectivity, fairness and integrity that our intelligence agencies need and deserve.”

“However, I do not wish for a national security and intelligence debate surrounding my confirmation, however untrue, to become a purely political and partisan issue,” he said. “The country we all love deserves that it be treated as an American issue. Accordingly, I have asked the President to nominate someone other than me for this position.”

Trump made the announcement of Ratcliffe’s withdrawal shortly before appearing at a White House event to announce a new deal to sell more beef to the European Union. He ignored questions shouted by reporters about Ratcliffe’s withdrawal as he left the event.

One White House official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said that Ratcliffe got cold feet because of the lack of support among Republican senators.

But inside the White House, at least some believed that while Ratcliffe would likely have faced an contentious nomination fight, Senate Republicans were ultimately unlikely to vote against a Trump nominee. Ratcliffe might have survived, and may have withdrawn too early, in the view of some.

Ratcliffe’s background has come under scrutiny since Trump announced Sunday that he planned to nominate the lawmaker to be the next director of national intelligence, replacing Daniel Coats, a longtime senator and diplomat who was often at odds with the president.

Though Ratcliffe had dialed back claims that he had won convictions in a high-profile terrorism case as a federal prosecutor, his planned nomination drew opposition from Senate Democrats and tepid support from key Republicans.

Some current and former intelligence officials have said Ratcliffe is the least-qualified person ever nominated to oversee the country’s intelligence agencies — previous directors have been former diplomats, senior intelligence officials and military leaders — and questioned whether he would use the position to serve Trump’s political interests.

The post was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to coordinate the 16 other agencies of the nation’s intelligence community.

Ratcliffe has been a staunch defender of the president and has alleged anti-Trump bias at the FBI. Trump tweeted out his plan to nominate Ratcliffe several days after the lawmaker attacked former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III during a hearing.

Congressional and intelligence officials have described Ratcliffe as a relatively disengaged member of the House Intelligence Committee and as little-known across the ranks of spy agencies he has been tapped to lead.

Though Rep. John Ratcliffe’s membership on the House committee is perhaps his most important credential for the top intelligence job, officials said he has yet to take part in one of its overseas trips to learn more about spy agencies’ work. The other new lawmakers on the panel have done so or are scheduled to travel in the coming months.

It is also unclear whether Ratcliffe has spent much time at the headquarters of the CIA, the National Security Agency or other parts of the sprawling U.S. intelligence community that he has been nominated to direct.

On Thursday, The Washington Post also reported that a Ratcliffe claim of a massive roundup immigrant workers at poultry plants in 2008 as a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Texas was undercut by the court record and recollections of others who participated in the operation. Ratcliffe has often cited the arrests as a highlight of his career.

In a statement, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said he respected Ratcliffe’s decision to withdraw from consideration.

“As the White House determines its next nominee, I’m heartened by the fact that [the Office of the Director of National Intelligence] has an experienced and capable leadership team to see it through this transition,” Burr said. “However, there is no substitute for having a Senate confirmed director in place to lead our Intelligence Community.”

Ashley Parker, Robert O’Harrow, Shawn Boburg and Greg Miller contributed to this report.

Trump’s pick to lead U.S. intelligence claims he arrested 300 illegal immigrants in a single day. He didn’t.

By Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Shawn Boburg | Published August 01 at 9:10 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted August 2, 2019 |

President Trump’s choice to lead the nation’s intelligence community often cites a massive roundup of immigrant workers at poultry plants in 2008 as a highlight of his career. Rep. John Ratcliffe claims that as a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Texas, he was the leader of the immigration crackdown, describing it as one of the largest cases of its kind.

“As a U.S. Attorney, I arrested over 300 illegal immigrants on a single day,” Ratcliffe (R-Tex.) says on his congressional website.

But a closer look at the case shows that Ratcliffe’s claims conflict with the court record and the recollections of others who participated in the operation — at a time when he is under fire for embellishing his record.

Ratcliffe played a supporting role in the 2008 sweep, which involved U.S. attorneys’ offices in five states and was led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, according to a Justice Department news release. The effort targeted workers at poultry processor Pilgrim’s Pride who were suspected of using stolen Social Security numbers.

Only 45 workers were charged by prosecutors in Ratcliffe’s office, court documents show. Six of those cases were dismissed, two of them because the suspects turned out to be American citizens. One of those citizens, a 19-year-old woman, was awakened in her home and hauled away by immigration agents, the woman said in an interview.

Two people involved in the planning or execution of the enforcement effort said they could not recall Ratcliffe playing a central role.

A.J. Irwin, a former immigration investigator who was involved in the early planning stages before retiring, said in an interview that the operation was a costly failure. Later, as a private immigration consultant, he advised the poultry processor after the sweep and gathered details about the woman who was arrested.

“At the end of the day, it did not deliver,” Irwin said. “It was the biggest waste of money and hype.”

A spokeswoman for Ratcliffe, Rachel Stephens, did not respond to questions about the operation but said in a statement that it grew out of a prior investigation and arrests in the Eastern District of Texas at the company’s national headquarters.

Ratcliffe’s background has come under scrutiny since Trump announced Sunday that he plans to nominate the lawmaker to be the next director of national intelligence, replacing Daniel Coats, a former longtime senator and diplomat who was often at odds with the president.

Ratcliffe has dialed back his earlier claims that he had won convictions in a high-profile terrorism case as a federal prosecutor. His planned nomination has drawn opposition from Senate Democrats and tepid support from key Republicans.

Ratcliffe graduated from Notre Dame in 1986 and Southern Methodist University Law School in Dallas in 1989. A native of Illinois, Ratcliffe and his family moved to the small city of Heath, an affluent suburb just east of Dallas, where he began a law practice.

In 2004, he was hired as an assistant federal prosecutor in the sprawling Eastern District of Texas and was named chief of anti-terrorism in the office, despite an admitted lack of experience.

“My background isn’t in law enforcement and I don’t have any real specialized training,” he said in an interview with the Dallas Morning News in early 2005.

The same year he became a prosecutor, Ratcliffe was elected mayor of Heath, an unpaid post he would hold for eight years while working for the Justice Department. In his run later for the House, Ratcliffe cited his leadership of Heath — a wealthy lakeside community of 8,000 that has a yacht club and a private golf course — as an example of his government service and fiscal acumen.

He was named acting U.S. attorney in May 2007 to fill a vacancy for one year. He was never nominated by the president or confirmed by the Senate. The brief stint later became a cornerstone in Ratcliffe’s bid for Congress.

“During his tenure, John personally managed dozens of international and domestic terrorism investigations involving some of the nation’s most sensitive security matters,” his campaign website said during his first run for Congress in 2013.

In 2016, seeking reelection, he claimed a central role in a major federal terrorism case. “There are individuals that currently sit in prison because I prosecuted them for funneling money to terrorist groups,” he is quoted as saying in campaign literature.

Stephens, Ratcliffe’s spokeswoman, did not respond to questions about which cases Ratcliffe was referring to. But the same news release refers to a high-profile case from that time. “In 2008, Ratcliffe served by special appointment as the prosecutor in U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, one of the nation’s largest terrorism financing cases,” it says.

Stephens acknowledged this week that Ratcliffe’s assignment was not to prosecute the case but rather “to investigate issues related to” why an initial prosecution of Holy Land Foundation resulted in a mistrial.

She said Justice Department policy prevents Ratcliffe from commenting on his work related to the case because it did not result in criminal charges. Without citing specific cases, she said that Justice records would confirm that Ratcliffe “opened, managed and supervised numerous domestic and international terrorism-related cases.”

Ratcliffe has made the immigration roundup of poultry workers, code named Operation Plymouth Rock, a defining example of his conservative bona fides.

Irwin said he raised questions about its goals and methods during planning sessions in 2007. Irwin said he questioned why they were devoting so many resources to a case he thought would net only low-level offenders.

An ICE spokesman did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Irwin retired from ICE before the sweep. He later worked as a consultant at a firm that helped Pilgrim’s Pride comply with immigration laws, including in the weeks after the arrests.

He dismissed Ratcliffe’s claim of having arrested 300 immigrants in the country illegally, in part because ICE agents and U.S. attorneys’ offices in five states were involved. Also, he said, federal prosecutors do not arrest suspects.

Leticia Zamarripa, a spokeswoman in ICE’s El Paso office who also participated in the operation, questioned Ratcliffe’s characterization of his role in the arrests. “No, that doesn’t sound factual. That sounds incorrect,” she told The Washington Post.

Zamarripa said she does not recall Ratcliffe being involved. “The name doesn’t ring a bell,” she said.

A news release by ICE and the Justice Department on the day of the arrests calls the operation “an ICE-led investigation with support” from the five U.S. attorneys’ offices. The release said that the defendants could receive up to five years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

“The Department of Justice anticipates that a substantial number of those detained will be federally prosecuted,” the news release said.

But the operation was marked by some missteps, and the cases did not result in long sentences or big fines. One of the suspects was Xochitl Delgado, the 19-year-old female citizen who was detained.

Born in California, she had worked at Pilgrim’s Pride for almost a year before her arrest. In an interview in Spanish, Delgado told The Post that eight agents, some of them armed, awakened her and took her into custody just hours after she finished a night shift at the plant.

She said she was surprised and scared: “I was asking myself, Why are they here? Who are these people?”

Delgado was released from custody the following day after agents learned she was a U.S. citizen. The case was dropped after a prosecutor representing Ratcliffe’s office asked a judge to dismiss it “in the interests of justice,” court records show.

Another U.S. citizen, also 19, was arrested at the Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plant, records and interviews show. A third was a legal resident worker.

Irwin’s consulting partner, Hipolito Acosta, a 30-year veteran agent and manager at the agency formerly known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, was at the plant advising the company during the sweep. In an interview, he said he told a top ICE official who was there that the 19-year-old man was a legal citizen. He said the official responded, “He can tell it to the judge.”

Those charges were also dismissed, records show.

The three were among six cases dismissed at prosecutors’ request. Indictments against the other suspects were dismissed nearly two months later as part of plea agreements that resulted in guilty pleas to a single charge of false use of a Social Security number and a $100 fine. The defendants in the Eastern District were released to immigration officials for deportation proceedings, and at least one person arrested in the case was deported, according to documents and interviews.

More than a dozen defense attorneys representing other defendants did not respond to inquiries about the outcome of those proceedings.

Ratcliffe’s campaign literature later claimed that “as a result of John’s efforts” Pilgrim’s Pride paid a $4.5 million “criminal penalty.” The agreement to pay the money was not struck until December 2009, a year after Ratcliffe left the prosecutor’s office. The company did not admit wrongdoing and the government brought no civil or criminal charges against it.

Ratcliffe highlighted the crackdown when he announced his first run for Congress, citing it as “part of a proven conservative record” and describing it as “one of the nation’s largest work site enforcement actions.”

“Operation Plymouth Rock led to the successful prosecution of hundreds of illegal aliens,” the campaign brochure said.

2 notes · View notes

fred-frederator-studios · 5 years

Photo

Arlen Schumer: The Frederator Interview

Arlen Schumer is the designer and illustrator of our Frederator Fredbot, the robot that’s inspired so many variations.

You read that right.

We all hear so much from fans about our “red robot” that I thought the time was right for Arlen to design something for us again, 20 some-odd years after his first.

So here it is! The 2019 Frederator New Year’s poster. (You can see some of the poster’s development work here.)

Arlen’s not only a fantastic artist/designer, but he’s a prolific pop culture historian with some great books and essays to his name, and a thriving lecture series on some of the famous (and even more unsung heroes) of comic book art.

How did Arlen Schumer come to Frederator? And how did Arlen come to art, specifically, comic book art? As you can read below, he and I have known each other and worked together for several years, even pre-Frederator.

All this and more, in the first Frederator interview of 2019.

Hi Arlen. When did you start drawing?

I grew up in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, a great place in the early-mid ‘60s, with equal parts bucolic American suburbia and small-town Rockwellian, pop culture ambiance—everything from an uber-Jewish deli like Petak’s to Plaza Toy & Stationery, which had a classic 20th Century soda fountain: it was there, after school, that I read all the comic books of my youth while drinking chocolate egg creams (with a pretzel log, natch). And because Fair Lawn, like all of New Jersey, was in the shadow of New York City, I grew up on all that pop culture through television, not just the 3 networks but the 3 local stations that showed everything from the old Universal monster movies to The Little Rascals to The Three Stooges to the George Reeves Superman TV series.

One of those local TV shows, a children’s show called Diver Dan, which was filmed in black & white to look like it took place underwater—the actor, in a deep-sea diver’s suit (with a helmet that never revealed his face, so he was like a superhero), walked slowly like he was underwater, surrounded by pop fish hanging by wires—triggered my interest in drawing, as I watched my brother draw him first, and copied him. I’ve been drawing ever since!

What was the first comic you fell in love with?

Giant Superman Annual #7 (Summer ’63): Not only is its cover the hands-down greatest of all the great multiple-panel Superman Annual covers that Superman Artist of the Baby Boom Generation (and my first favorite artist) Curt Swan drew in the ‘60s—not only does it feature perhaps the greatest single Superman figure ever rendered by Swan (in pencil; head of DC coloring Jack Adler did the hand-painted grey wash tones over it) or any Superman artist, before or since—but it is the first comic book cover I can recall ever seeing, when I was five years old, in summer camp that year. What an image to come into the wonderful world of comics by!

What was your first professional job as an artist?

My summer job between freshman and sophomore years at art school (Rhode Island School of Design), creating black & white line illustrations for a t-shirt silkscreening company in Fair Lawn.

I know that you count Neal Adams as a primary mentor? Were there any others?

Neal Adams was one of two Gods of Comic Book Art in the late-‘60s: the other was Jim Steranko, who was described as the Jimi Hendrix of comics, because Steranko’s career was as meteoric in its rise, and as short-lived. Though Steranko didn’t die in ’70 like Hendrix, that’s when he left Marvel Comics after less than 4 years of explosive and experimental works—and, like Hendrix, his impact on both the art form and its audience was in converse proportion to the relatively small amount of work he turned out. In particular, Steranko’s design sense and typographic talents were a tremendous influence on my choosing to major in Graphic Design at RISD.

It was sometime in my junior year there that I must’ve written Steranko a fanboy letter, gushing about those very things—and much to my shock and surprise, he wrote me back, inviting me to come see him in his home/studio in Reading, PA! So I took a bus from Providence, RI to Reading, and spent the day with Steranko—except I barely remember a thing about it! Why? Because I think I was having a Dr. Strange-like ectoplasmic out-of-body experience the whole time I was with him—I, a fan, spending quality time with one of the Twin Gods of Comics!!!

He wanted me to leave RISD and begin working with him as his apprentice! I couldn’t believe what he was offering me; I remember the bus ride back to Providence in a daze, feeling the utter cliché come to life of my future like the road in front of me: I could either stay on the main highway of getting my college degree, or take that exit ramp and join the circus! What do you think I did?

I stayed in school and got my diploma a year later. Had it been freshman year, maybe I would have left; but not when I was a year away from matriculating—not to mention honoring my mom’s sacrifice of putting me through school financially. But I’ve remained in touch with Steranko ever since, and feel both fortunate and unique, that I am the only fanboy who grew up to not only work for one of the Twin Gods of Comics (I ended up working for Neal Adams 3 years after I graduated from RISD), but almost worked for the other, too!

And then, Fred, there was—YOU! You were one of the first great professionals I met/interviewed with after I graduated from RISD and moved to New York City, when you were still at Warner-Amex having just created the MTV always-changing logo [actually it was Manhattan Design; I was the company creative director]. You impressed me as someone who was “real,” who didn’t hide behind a phony “professional” mask. We stayed in touch after that, and you gave me my first real breakout illustration job when I went solo as a freelancer a few years later, designing and illustrating an animated 30-second spot for a radio station, working with Colossal Pictures in LA (who later became Pixar)—and a NY metro-area billboard to go along with it!

Since then, we’ve done a bunch of great things together, up to and including this Frederator poster! And I’ve watched you wade through your own career waters as a multi-dimensional leading man, wearing so many different hats over the years—the decades—which has inspired me to cultivate my own Renaissance Man attributes. I’ve always described you to others as a mensch, the ultimate New York pro who’s got a great big beautiful heart an d soul to match his creative mind. If I could ever be described that way one day, I would consider that to be the highest compliment I could ever receive!

How about the mentors that you never met?

My father died when I was only four months old; my mother raised my older brother (by a year and a half) and I herself. Neither of my grandfathers was alive, and, though I had a handful of uncles, I would only see them a few times a year at family gatherings. So I had to find surrogate father figures elsewhere—and I found them in the American Pop Culture I grew up with in the’60s, in roughly this chronological order: Sean Connery’s James Bond, my first idealized masculine role model (the first movie I ever recall seeing, when I was around four-five years old, was Dr. No, the first Connery Bond, at a drive-in theater); Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling, a pop prophet of moral righteousness in the vast television wasteland, looking cool as all get-out in those incredibly tight TZ introductions—all of my artworks based on the series can be seen as my ways of honoring Serling’s legacy as a son would honor his father’s; and the superheroes in comic books, first and foremost Superman and Batman (the Yin-Yang of the genre), pseudo-paternally teaching me right from wrong, good from evil, and standing up and fighting for one’s beliefs. These are the things I suppose sons learn from the fathers, as well as their religious and academic authority figures. But “Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Comic Books”!

You've published a few pop culture histories, and given countless lectures on various great, neglected figures. What got you started as an historian?

I don’t know how any artist in any genre or medium, if they truly love their work, cannot also be equally-interested in the history of that art form. When Keith Richards plays any of his classic Rolling Stones licks, he knows which black bluesman he nicked it from; filmmakers like Spielberg and Scorsese know the history of film like they know their own films. And the history of comics is as rich in artistic triumphs (and personal tragedies) as the histories of the other major 20th Century art/entertainments: film, television, popular music and rock and roll.

When I was a senior at RISD, for my degree project, I toyed with designing an exhibit of comic book art, and when I went looking for a theme, the only subject that seemed both worthwhile of my passion for the material and deep enough for the demands of the assignment was one based on the comics I grew up with in the 1960s, and the artists who drew them, the twin founts from which I drew the inspiration to become an artist. Though I never did that exhibit (I ended up doing a giant autobiographical photo-comic instead), I kept the ideas and images that I gathered, in the hopes that one day I’d use them in some other form. Many of those 1979 layouts are the same ones I’ve used in my book published in 2003, The Silver Age of Comic Book Art; its introduction, in which I place the images and ideas encountered throughout the book in a socio-political, historical framework, is composed of essentially the identical concepts from my aborted exhibit idea.

The idea to do a book instead on this period of comic book history goes back even further, to 1970, when Jim Steranko, on the heels of his amazing barnstorming stint at Marvel Comics, wrote, designed and published the first of his twin-volume History of Comics, which remain the best books of their kind, and were—and continue to be—a source of inspiration. Except they were about The Golden Age of Comics (circa 1938-1950), the period Steranko grew up with and was affected by, not The Silver Age of Comics (circa 1956-1972) that I, and the entire Baby Boom Generation, was turned on to.

Steranko himself might have been inspired by the first great book about comic book history, Jules Feiffer’s 1965 The Great Comic Book Heroes, even though it’s more of a handful of wonderfully written, witty essays on specific Golden Age superheroes Feiffer followed avidly as a boy, accompanied by reprints of the origins or earliest adventures of those heroes. Feiffer may not have realized what it was like to be an 8-year old comic book fan in 1966 and hear that there was actually a book in the Fair Lawn public library about comics!

How did you come to design the Fredbot?

When you asked me to come up with my take on the classic Japanese-influenced sci-fi trope of the giant-monster-attacks-the-tiny-people back in 1997 for your first Frederator brand image—but make it a robot, and make it look like you [I don’t remember this last part], to boot—I immediately thought of the animated robot Gigantor, one of the first Japanese anime to reach American shores in the wake of the Batman TV series in 1966. Once I started drawing my version of Big G, it was a no-brainer to add the distinctive Seibert horned-rim eyeglasses, topped by the equally-distinctive Seibert eyebrows, and voila! Fredbot!

OK, I know you love Bruce Springsteen. How come?

I believe there are Four Pillars of Rock & Roll, in roughly chronological order: Elvis, Dylan, the Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix, representing the greatest voice, lyrics, band, and guitar; hence, The Four Pillars.

Like Elvis, Bruce is a singular, dynamic presence with a commanding vocal power; his lyrics and songs have stood the test of time and made him the only one of the many “new Dylans” to actually live up to the label, living a true, real rock & roll life while writing it down, The Great American Novel but on records, great American songs chronicling not only his life and career, but that of the postwar generation that has come of age with him, timeless anthems like “Born To Run,” “Thunder Road” and “Born in the USA,” just to mention three of his greatest hits; with The E Street Band, Bruce captured the sheer joy, enthusiasm and positive energy of the early Beatles; and, like Hendrix and any of the other guitar gods—Clapton, Page, Van Halen, The Edge—Bruce has played searing, soulful, melodic leads with the best of them.

But Bruce isn’t one of those rock & roll pillars—he’s the rock & roll roof built over them, the complete rock & roller, putting it all together as no one has before. Bruce Springsteen is, quite simply, the promise of rock & roll...delivered.

His uncompromising and unparalleled creativity, body of work, attitude, and performance and work ethic have been an inspiration to me since I first heard the song “Born to Run” over a tinny AM car radio when I was 17 years old in the summer of ’75. Especially when I lecture, I employ what I call the “Springsteen Performing Style,” which is to give your 110% all to your audience, whether it’s 10 people or 10,000 people.

Bruce is also a bonafide moral leader for our age, doing what a true leader should be doing: living his life by example, and using it to inspire and exhort others to do the same.

He is the true President of the United States.

Thanks for the interview Arlen. And of course, thanks for the Fredbot! Happy New Year!

#Arlen Schumer #Fredbot #frederator #poster #2019 #The Frederator Interview #posters #illustration #interview #artist #graphic design

43 notes · View notes

raifuujin · 5 years

Text

MK Treasured Edition Commentary

From here, here, and here.

Volume 1

Hello, it's me, Aoyama.

In the course of the republication of Magic Kaito I take the liberty to show my memories of this time straightforwardly. (grin)

The Revived Phantom Thief The memorable first chapter! Actually I became a Mangaka because I wanted to write about a high school phantom (grin) and so I drew it under great tension! Well and back then I was short of money which is the reason why his hatband around his tophat isn't shaded with screen tone…

The Police Are Everywhere The original title „Keikan ga ippai” referred to a movie... „Taiyou ga ippai”, a movie with Alain Delon („Purple Noon”). Detective Doron is an allusion, too, because „Delon” is written as „Doron” in Japan. (grin) By the way! The words „When you bend them, they...” Kaito announces the light-emitting diode were literally written on the package of one of those things I purchased on a public festival as a kid. (grin) Appearantly they're actually known as „glow stick”.

The Clockwork Heart A science-fiction-thriller! A rarity for Kaito (grin). I recall that I perceived it as really exhausting to draw all the parts of the robot and that I had no computer, so that I had to write Kaito's farewell letter by hand (Haha!). By the way! In the panel the robot says „I'm Kuroba Kaito... Haha!!” Kaito's pupils look kinda strange (?). There I mimicked Akemi Matsunae of which I was a big fan back then. (grin)

Kaitou Kid's Busy Day Off Back then, the 3D movie „Captain EO” starring Michael Jackson was being played in cinemas and has been satirized in this chapter, although I never thought 3D movies could have been revived because of „Avatar”... (grin) By the way! When I read the closing scene today I think that the phrase „But, ice cream... still tastes great!” is my most embarrassing quote ever (grin).

The Pirate Ship Unsurfaced A sea adventure with Kaito? This is a rarity, too! (grin) I can't remember at all why I wanted to draw this story, but maybe I wanted a confrontation between a thief from the mainland and a thief of the seas...? (Ha!) Well, and so Kaito brought his costume of Kaitou Kid even to this place...?! (grin)

The Scarlet Temptress There she is! Mistress Akako! To be honest, she, as practitioner of black magic, is the reason who drove me into the corner the most during Kaitos appearances in Conan. Well, you just have to accept these works as parallel universes. (grin) By the way, Kaito Kuroba is written on the handkerchief, this probably was a prank done by his mom (Chikage)... (grin)

Aoyama Kid ♥

Volume 2

Stay Away From Him Although it's more of a romantic tale than a thief story I really like this one ♥ Especially the panel with „Well, excuse me for being an idiot...“ is a real gem, because of how often I had to redraw it! (laughs) Additionally, Superman and Top Gun appear... which is according to my taste! It's also revealed in this story that Aoko is flat-chested. (laughs)

Japan's Most Irresponsible Prime Minister A story I used one of my then-favourite actors Hitoshi Ueki, who has passed away in the meantime, as model! I also dared to use the Japanese prime minister - this was probably really audacious... And then characters appear who look like the past leaders of the USSR and the USA, Gorbachev and Reagan... (sweating). By the way, did anyone notice the „Akako balloon“ in the night sky? (laughs)

I Am the Master! This story was purely written because I felt like it! Anyway, I really wanted to draw how Kaitou Kid makes a balls to the wall ride down the facade of a building... (laughs). I would be nice if they one day made an Anime out of it ♫ Oh well, even if Cleopatra's Vanity case should really exist, two thousand years later one probably couldn't use it anymore... (laughs)

Would You Grow Up If I remember correctly, the hang-glider associated with Kaitou Kid lifted the first time in this story. Well, one could also say that Kaitou Kid could have fled from the get-go with it, instead of stretching a rope to the Tokyo Tower first (laughs). I'd really like to bring the motorized roller skates again.

The Boy Who Bet on the Ball It has also been really daring to take real professional baseball player as a model... (laughs). I think the story was created after I talked with my editor in charge about how thrilling it would be if Kaitou Kid appeared on a pole in Tokyo Dome. Well, the Yomiuri Giants are working together with Conan in several ways anyway, so I hope they can turn a blind eye to this... (fierce laughter)

Ghost Game If I remember correctly, I was frantically busy because I had to draw „Tantei George no Minimini Daisa-kusen“ („Detective George's Mini-Mini Big Strategy“) three weeks in a row for the Sunday magazine, so I finished this chapter in a very short time... (laughs). Directly afterwards my series „Yaiba“ started, because of which „Magic Kaito“ had to pause for a while. Hard to believe that the series is continued until today...! (laughs)

Hustler vs. Magician Originally this was the true second chapter of „Magic Kaito“! But... it was rejected! Since my debut in „Sunday“ there was never a story before or after it that was rejected. It's real luck that it made it into this volume! (laughs)

Omake „Magic Kaito“ was the first Manga I was allowed to publish as a Mangaka, which could be the reason I drew this story with zest and high motivation... Oh well, this probably was my youthful enthusiasm... (laughs)

Aoyama Kid ♥

Volume 3

Star Wars The first „Magic Kaito“ story I drew in the Heisei era (since 1989 -editor's note). There are several stories in which someone tries to gain profit from using a false Kid, but this is the shining first one! At the crime scene Kid announced a lot of Kid fans have assembled and shout "Kid! Kid!". Pretty clever idea, huh? Because this has developed to a classical element until today.

The Great Detective Appears!! Entrance of Saguru Hakuba! No, not only that, the chief inspector also shows his face...! Perhaps the junior was just worried because the top policeman never appears at the crime scene? (grin) By the way, Kid is so bad at ice skating because I'm so lousy in it myself.

Kaitou Under Scrutiny The skirt of Aoko's school uniform is so long and Kid's television is so big! From this you can tell the time! (Haha!) Apropos, the newspaper appearing on the last page is called „Oshima Daily Paper“ in the original version. Most of the newspapers shown in „Magic Kaito“ were named after my then editors. I beg your pardon. (grin)

Akako's Delivery Service Kaitou Kids measurements, 1.74 m (~ 5'9") and 58 kg (~ 128 lbs), naturally are my measurements from back then! The same goes for his blood type! (grin) Back then I thought it's really cool that it's possible to figure out skin colour and age of a person just by a single hair, but today, with DNA analysis you can figure out the whole identity of the person the hair belongs to. The progress of science is frightening... (Haha!)

(Extra Chapter) Yaiba vs. Kaito! I was told to draw a short, self-contained story and this dream sequence is the result. Back when I was a kid I already loved collaborations like „Mazinger Z vs. Devilman“, so I wanted to draw something like this. This is also the reason Kaitou Kid appears in Conan... (grin)

Blue Birthday The first time the gem Kaitou is after is the name origin for the title! Because this was the first „Magic Kaito“ after a very long time I debuted Kaitou Kid's arch-enemy and I can remember how much this motivated me... but it's also a story about a nightly firework in the midst of the city which must have made a lot of trouble in the surroundings... (grin)

Green Dream Oh well, this story is nothing special, but to be honest, it's this story which grew dear to my heart. (grin) What should I say about it? The rhythm is felicitous. This story was the first time I drew Kid's „signature“ we've grown so accustomed to. You can also tell from the name of one of the persons appearing that I really loved „Furuhata Ninzaburō“ back then - a japanese police detective drama.

Aoyama Kid ♥

Volume 4

Hello, it's me, Aoyama.

Since Magic Kaito is being republished I allow myself to show my memories about the past without further delay. (grin)

Crystal Mother This is the Kaito-train story I always wanted to draw! Including some allusions to "Lupin III" or "Sherlock Holmes" it became a story during which I could live it up... (grin) Snake, who got severely hurt in the tunnel returns in the following chapter completely unharmed. That's what I call "tough“! (Ha, ha!)

Red Tear Back when this story was published the first time, the thre first pages were in color! In fact, this created a mystery: „The gem on page 1 is blue, but the one on the cover page is red... Why oh why?“ Great that we can revive this mystery in all its glory! (grin) By the way, the closing scene in which all the photos containing the fondest memories are projected against the wall is an homage to the closing scene of the movie „Cinema Paradiso“. ♪ I used this highlight again in „Detective Conan – The Last Wizard of the Century“. (grin)

Black Star The first confrontation with the one and only Shinichi Kudo! In this story, Kaito says: „The inspector couldn't catch him even if he used a satellite system!“ But really, it's kind of surprising that he hasn't caught him before, isn't it?! (grin) Shinichi is firing a pistol? Akako wants to use magic to get rid of Shinichi? Little Kaito is flirting with Aoko? What a crazy story! (grin) Well, the scene in which Akako uses her magic powers was cut from TV syndication, but it was restored for the DVD, so everyone who wants to watch it, can do so now. ♥ Oh yeah, the title „Black Star“! I believe there are some readers who ask themselves why this gemstone served as the namesake of the story even though it's just mentioned in passing at the end. That's because Kaitou Kid himself is the "Black Star" after all ★ – hence the title! ♪

Golden Eye The first duel of the phantoms! (... maybe.) Catherine Zeta-Jones was the model for the character Ruby Jones. ♥ Well, they don't look very much alike... (Ha, ha!) In this story it's made clear that Kaito was born in June and Aoko in September! Exactly... Kaitou Kid may be a thief, but he is also a magician, so it really delighted me to slip in the name of the grandiose real-life magician Harry Houdini. (grin) There are a lot of tricky moments that show how much Detective Conan "poisoned" this story... (Ha, ha!)

Dark Knights The mask Nightmare is wearing is based on one I bought during a vacation in Spain, because I really liked it. It now hangs at the wall of my living room. (Ha, ha!) Again, in this story is a lot to analyze and moreover, it ends in a thought-provoking, grim mood, which isn't very typical for „Magic Kaito“. On the other hand, this isn't bad either, isn't it? Superintendent Chaki, an old acquaintance from Detective Conan, had his origin in this story. Further on, Hakuba's nanny „Baaya“ has her very first appearance in here! Actually, it's said that there is another nanny for him who has a more docile personality, but that's a different story altogether... (He, he...)

Phantom Lady (Preannouncement) This story revolves around how the original Kaitou Kid obtained a wonderfully beautiful jewel for the first time. ♥ It will be the first in Volume 5... I wonder when it will be released? (grin)

Volume 5

Hi, it's Aoyama ! Since a new volume of ''Magic Kaito'' came out, I have to delve into my memories from the past. PHANTOM LADY I wrote this story about Kaito's parents four years ago. I had stopped writing Magic Kaito for Conan and I thought : ''Wow, so much time has passed ?'' (laughs) If I recall correctly, his mother mutters ''Kaito, it's time for you to know'', and the story's finally here ! It's this story that finally revealed that Kaito's mother's name is ''Chikage''. It was my first time digitalizing a manuscript, I was glad I managed to portray the security sensor similar to phantom thieves stories so cooly, but I had to drew one night scenery after another, and that took time and so I almost didn't make it in a deadline. By the way, this story leads to Conan's Ryouma case, in volume 70. Read it if you're interested ! MIDNIGHT CROW When it was decided to animate the series, I had a meeting with the animation staff. We asked ourselves ''How are we going to finish the story ?''. So I suggested : ''Why not do one about a black Kaitou Kid that would be published in the Sunday ?''. And that's how I wrote Midnight Crow. I will never forget the staff's face when I told them ''Actually, Touichi is alive'' (laughs) Ikeda-san, Touichi's voice actor, had difficulty saying the line ''When you come in contact with an audience, it's a scene of duel...'' quickly ! <3 The ''sucker trick'' line comes from Kaito Kid's anime screenwriter Kunihiko Okada, who I thank very much. In the Phantom Lady chapter, Kaito's work as Kid was given by Chikage, but in Midnight Crow, he's supposed to quit because a lot happened in Las Vegas... but it's another story (laughs) SUN HALO This chapter was written to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Magic Kaito, so it had to be a love comedy <3 When I drew the chapter, Kaito's bike is a Suzuki GSX 250 R. I had forgotten that it was supposed to be broken, so I had Jii-chan say that a ''doctor friend'' helped him... I leave that to your imagination (laughs) Speaking of characters, Lucifer appears again ! As I thought, Akako uses red magic ! (Fortunately Akako doesn't exist in Conan's world (laughs)). The entrance hall in the chapter is based on Tottori's entrance hall, so please go there if you visit Tottori ! By the way, in Sun Halo, Aoko rides the bike with Kaito ! NONCHALANT LUPIN It's a short story I sent to a shounen magazine, and I got an award for it. As you can see, it was a prototype for ''Magic Kaito'' (laughs) The forms are different but there's no card gun. I drew this because the editor I had at that time told me : ''Show me a story you want to write''. It's my second work ! Now that I look back, I'm embarassed because it looks bad. (laughs) Anyway, the hero's name is Lupin, and the name of the story ''Nonchalant Lupin'', but I don't know where he's nonchalant... (laughs)

#reference #These are the ones that bug me the most about the translations honestly #Because these are the comments where people like to point and say 'DC and MK aren't the same world'#When the terms used only really indicate that their stories are separate; not their worldds #They're more separated into 'DC world' and 'MK world' in extremely loose terms that don't actually mean 'separate universes'#More just things like 'Akako is only going to be in MK because she can't appear in DC'#Which. Really gives more argument for their universes being the same; if there can't be a 'DC version' of Akako without breaking DC #Means if Akako were to appear in DC; she's implied to have magic; which could only be if she's the same Akako as MK #...Anyway; last post about this; unless more MK stuff comes up or I missed some #Which is possible; there's a lot of random information everywhere

21 notes · View notes