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bubblyhoney · 3 years

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sarah i have thought of another fic request or like a cute idea i guess! i didn’t have anyone in mind when i thought of it so you can write it for whoever you want honestly :)

okay so the reader is a streamer but streams games like animal crossing, standew valley, etc. then (insert who you’re writing for) says they don’t like that game, but later ends up buying it and the reader is like “i thought you said you didn’t like this game” and they’re like “well i like you” and they confuses their feelings and they end up playing the game together and reader gives them a tour of their island or farm

i feel like this request isn’t good, but the scenario seemed cute and i wanted to share it. sorry if this is confusing or just too specific cuz i know it can be hard to write requests like that! but yeah i hope it gives you inspiration and you like the request <3

new horizons

warnings: language, a Marvel reference (hint: natasha said it about tony), stupid idiots who don’t realize they like each other, use of pet names, Uno rage, Hasan Piker's presence

words: 1473

tags: sapnap x gn!reader

A/N: i’ve been trying to catch up a little on my requests (i’ve only got a couple so i’m not super overwhelmed) but school and outside life has been taking up most of my time so this one took me a while to make! tbh— ive never played animal crossing so i did google some of the game mechanics and i apologize if anything is inaccurate about the game…. but i liked relaxing and writing this cute one so thank you for requesting hails :3

requests/inbox status: open

“This game is trash.”

Your head quirks, fingers stopped on the screen. You’re in the process of giving your character a cute new nickname; it’s kind of hard to decide between “awkward dude” and “elderly skater”.

“Excuse me?” Your chat comes alive with emotes and ‘KEKW’s, obviously entertained by you and your almost-more-than-friends-friend.

There’s a story for that later.

Sapnap’s rough laugh comes through your headset and he audibly swallows, the sound of a water bottle dropping onto his desk echoing.

“I’m just saying—it’s boring. It’s like Minecraft but you don’t like… do anything.” The grainy image of his bearded face shifts and you see him pull out his phone.

“It’s— you can’t even compare it to Minecraft! It’s a completely different game system—you actually interact with other people live in the game.” You huff out a dramatic sigh, slumping in your chair with a pout. “Just because you go into this lucid state where all you know is ‘touch block, hit George’ doesn’t mean this game isn’t fun.” (He scoffs at your awful impression of his voice. Your viewers love it.)

“Jeez,” he mumbles, fumbling with the cap of his water bottle. “Touched a nerve there, bud.”

You roll your eyes, getting back to the village in the game.

“Don't ‘bud’ me.”

The call falls comfortably quiet, the sounds of him tapping obsessively on his phone and you clicking away filling the silence. A gentle bedroom-pop YouTube playlist remains in the background, prompting you to hum along and glance at the chat to see a flood of “check twitter” and “Y/N TWITTER!!”.

“What happened on Twitter?” You mumble, confused, and pull the website up on another monitor. Sapnap just makes a curious noise, swinging back and forth in a circle. “Oh my God,” you say to yourself, fingertips brushing your parted lips.

“What?”

“Hasan Piker just followed me and retweeted one of my not even remotely political old tweets. Like from a year ago.”

“That’s— wow. Congrats?” Sapnap’s voice cracks, and his ears flush pink the tiniest bit when you glance at his face on Discord.

“I’m gonna go on record and say that he could get it.” You shake your head in disbelief.

Sapnap falls uncharacteristically non-hyper-verbal, so you look past the frenzied chat and to his screen— wait. He muted and turned his camera off.

“Um,” you start, furiously typing question marks in your private chat. “Where’d you go?” You mute and turn screen share off for your stream, concerned that he might’ve fallen off his chair and broken his neck and needs you to call the ambulance.

The characteristic ding of a twitter notification sounds through your bedroom, and you look at your phone quickly.

“That’s where I went.”

Sapnap Tweeted: “all Y/U stans can choke on my dick”.

“Jesus, Sapnap,” you say, and rapidly refresh to read the replies. This tweet was deleted. “That’s so— that barely makes sense, bro. Why— literally what?”

His snicker floods your ears and you relax in your chair. Crisis: averted. “Don’t fucking— what’s wrong with you?”

“I thought it would be funny,” he offers, shrugging, and fiddles with the straw in his water bottle, smile fading. “And also Hasan pisses me off.”

“Why, ‘cause he wants a piece of this? Jealous?” You think back to your viewers, knowing they’re probably spamming question marks and coming to ludacris conclusions about both of your absences. No offense to them. You remember your stan days very vividly.

“I mean, kinda.” He rubs once at his nose, glancing at the camera (and what feels like you) before taking a sip from his water bottle.

“Wow.” You watch one strand of his hair fall from beneath his hat and brush against his full eyebrows. “I’m uh—I’ll get back to my stream. You coming? Or is it time for a Sapnap-snack?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He snorts and leans his chin onto the balance of his arm.

“That means you like to take a little snack break mid-stream and come back approximately nine hours later and you didn’t even eat.”

“You know what— fuck you.” He flicks the camera as you laugh at the look on his face.

The teasing mood is easily kept as you switch games from Animal Crossing to Uno, all the while slamming Sapnap with +4’s and skipping the newly-arrived BadBoyHalo at any chance you can get. It unironically pisses him off and he has to take a Sapnap-snack break midway through (only a fifteen minute break this time, during which you and Bad take a “What Kind of Bread Are You?” quiz). The rest of the night is filled with devious cackles (you), loud and sudden bangs that sound suspiciously like someone hitting their desk in anger (Sap) and the stupid barking of Rat, AKA Lucy (Bad). She’s cute but a menace to the sound quality of Bad’s microphone. You sign off stream around 2 a.m. with various forms of thanks and kisses blown to the camera. It’s been a refreshing night, actually; you’ve been busy organizing a partnership stream all week and all your friends have been busy filming or editing or what-not. Quackity had time for a little Roblox every couple of days, though. He’s got your back.

The next time you see Sapnap is after a two hour stream of him try-harding in Valorant and you finishing responding to an email from your partnership in the VC.

“Okay, I’m back.” You hear him shift in his chair and click a couple more times on his keyboard. You perk up in your chair, closing the email browser you’d been looking at.

“Do you want to play anything else? I’m down for anything.”

“Absolutely not Uno. You can go to hell for giving me 6 cards that one time,” he jabs. You scoff, crossing your arms and leaning back in your chair.

“Okay, the +4 was on me but it’s Bad who gave you the last two. That’s not my fault, sweetie.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbles, trailing off as the clicking of his keyboard stops. “Hey, um—Guess what?”

Your heart beats loud in your ears at the tone of his voice. He sounds nervous; that’s never good.

“I’m scared to guess,” you try, playing with a little Minecraft dog figurine you have on your desk with fidgety fingers. “What?”

“I bought Animal Crossing.”

Silence. You stare at his discord icon blankly, trying to reroute the wires of your brain.

“Tell me you love it.”

“Well… I haven’t actually played it— but you said you liked it, so.”

“So,” you repeat him, ears warming but continuing on. “Is that what you tell all your friends when you buy something they like? That it's because of them?”

He seems to choose his next words carefully, pausing a beat to consider your questions.

“Well, I don’t have a crush on all of my friends.”

“You—what?” You stutter, caught off guard and stumbling. What did he just say? “Don’t tell me you mean you have a crush on me.”

“I’m almost positive I just did.” His discord icon stares right back at you, taunting.

“You know, you’re very casual for someone who just admitted they like-like me.” Your cheeks flush pink and you have to press a hand to your chest to keep your breathing sounding stable.

“Yeah, I’m kind of cool like that,” he offers, a huff of a laugh punctuating his statement. The conversation moves into a lull that you can’t help but know is because of you. He must expect you to say something about it, right?

“You are very cool, Sapnap.” You tilt back in your chair, sucking in a breath to prepare yourself for your next words. “And—Isortakindofhaveacrushonyoutoo.”

He must understand you, for you can hear the grin in his voice when he asks “Really?”

“Y-yeah.” You feel like a preteen again, all shaky and giddy in front of the boy you just asked to a middle school dance.

“Um, alright. What do we do now?”

“I don’t know,” you answer genuinely and swing in a happy little circle in your chair. “We could play Animal Crossing.”

“I’m down.”

You swear you’ve never heard more beautiful words.

He keeps his camera off for most of the time you two play, too focused on creating his island and asking you questions about how to fish to turn it on. He silently flips it on when you help him decorate his lawn, needing to show you in real-time the decorations he has bought and where you think he should put them. He looks cute. I mean, of course he does. He always does.

You tell him goodbye late in the night, eyes saying a little more than just “see you tomorrow”.

You like him. He likes you.

It’s even better when you two have matching gardens.

A/N: anybody and everybody (especially my precious hailey) let me know what you think!! :]

#sapnap #mcyt #sapnap x gn!reader #sapnap x reader #sapnap x you #sapnap fluff #sapnap drabble #sapnap oneshot #bubblyhoneyfics #honey answers #mcyt x reader #🥚except small

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kingstylesdaily · 3 years

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What the 2021 Grammy Awards Will Look Like

Artists including Billie Eilish, BTS, and Taylor Swift will perform in a circle of five stages with masked crew at the center — in a ceremony that first-time showrunner Ben Winston calls “part Grammys, part Abbey Road studio session”

Ben Winston is exhausted. The television producer, who moved from the U.K. to Los Angeles six years ago to start The Late Late Show With James Corden, is a week away from executive-producing his first Grammys telecast. “I literally had two hours of sleep last night,” he tells Rolling Stone via Zoom.

On Sunday, March 7th, the Recording Academy revealed a slate of performing artists for March 14th’s 63rd Annual Grammy Awards that includes Billie Eilish, BTS, Taylor Swift, Cardi B, and Harry Styles. But while those names are on the lineup, Winston knows nothing about live TV is ever set in stone — especially in the time of a pandemic —so he’s been spending his days double- and triple-checking plans, waking up at 4:30 a.m. dry-eyed and restless. He’s worked to make a show “with heart,” he says — one that “doesn’t feel isolated, quiet, or alone.” He also had to take extra steps to ensure the three-and-a-half hour show, which will not take place at the Grammys’ usual home of the Staples Center, is Covid-safe for performers and attendees. Despite all that, he appears remarkably enthusiastic and alert.

Here’s what viewers next Sunday can expect from music’s biggest night, according to Winston: a multi-stage, audience-free show that highlights the year’s creative triumphs, social justice movements, as well as Covid-19’s impact on the arts. Winston hints at several “unbelievably powerful” performances on the slate, adding that the Grammys “absolutely are acknowledging what’s happened” in the country in the last year.

Winston, who in 2018 co-produced Bruno Mars’ well-received live show at the Apollo for CBS, also wanted to highlight independent venues, which are the “lifeblood of this industry” and a launchpad for emerging musicians — so the Grammys will feature guest spots from owners and workers of iconic American venues, including L.A.’s Troubadour and Hotel Café, N.Y.’s Apollo, and Nashville’s Station Inn. “I drive past the Troubadour on my way home from work every night,” Winston says. “It’s a significant thing for me when I look at it all boarded up. I always think, ‘When those boards come down, this will be over.’ That will be the sign. That will be the day where it’s like, ‘We got through this.'” Winston realized from his conversations with venues that many of them put on their last shows on March 14th, 2020, meaning the Grammys will mark the one-year anniversary of the shutdown.

Employees will come on camera to “tell us a little bit about their venue” and present some of the awards. “So, you’ve got, like, a bartender at a beautiful, independent venue — and she’s giving out Album of the Year to these megastars,” he explains. His goal is to acknowledge the people who work tirelessly to keep these stomping grounds afloat and have recently lost their jobs. “Those venues are made up by the bartender and the security guard, the manager, the box office person, and the cleaner at the end of the night.” He hopes to remind people of the importance of supporting local venues again when it’s safe to do so.

Originally, the Grammys were scheduled for January 31st, but organizers announced a move to March right after the new year. Winston says he felt American morale was at a low point in January — between political insurrection, an impeachment trial, and Covid-19 running rampant in Los Angeles — and it “didn’t feel right” to put the show on in the middle of that. The Recording Academy and CBS, which exclusively airs the annual show, both supported his decision to postpone. “I can now do everything that I wanted to do in my best-case scenario for this year,” he says of Sunday’s show.

Sunday’s location is an undisclosed building in Los Angeles, but Winston teases that the new venue is “massive,” “magical,” and “the biggest building I’ve ever been in indoors.” “I don’t want it to look like I’m criticizing Staples, because it’s the most amazing venue,” he emphasizes, sharing that he’s open to bringing the Grammys back to the arena in the future if they ask him to. While he does believe that Staples is a safe place, he says he wanted to go above and beyond to make even the most-skeptical participants feel undoubtedly safe.

A team of Covid safety officers oversaw the production set-up, and artists will enter the stage from different directions to minimize contact. Each artist also has their own backstage area. The space “allowed us to build an entire world,” he says.

The show will involve five stages of the same size and shape, four of which are for performances and one of which is for presenters. Stages are organized in a circle, facing one another, and crew members will work from the middle of the set. “People will perform while the other three or four artists on their stages watch, applaud, and enjoy. As soon as that one finishes, the next one goes, the next one goes, and the next one goes. Every 45 minutes, you change out those stages, and you bring another four megastars into the room,” says Winston, who was partly inspired for the “part-Grammys, part-Abbey Road studio session” setup by British shows he watched as a child, including Jools Holland and TFI Friday.

It’s going to be a “bespoke night of music that I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to repeat,” Winston says. “It’s about taking a camera into a room, and making an amazing musical moment by filming it quite simply and elegantly.” Performances, which started being planned in April 2020, will be a mix of live and pre-recorded — a fully live show would involve too many crew members moving sets and risking close contact — but the whole thing is intended to feel completely live. (Winston challenges viewers to try and guess which sets are pre-recorded; he designed them to be difficult to tell.)

To help plan the sprawling, immersive show, Winston brought in a suite of collaborators including co-executive producer Jesse Collins, who produced The Weeknd’s Super Bowl halftime show; co-executive producer Raj Kapoor, who handled creative direction for various artists on the last seven Grammys and produced Vegas residencies for the likes of the Backstreet Boys and Mariah Carey; producer Fatima Robinson, whose expansive background in creative direction and choreography landed her the Black Eyed Peas’ 2011 halftime show and Kendrick Lamar’s 2016 Grammy performance; producer Misty Buckley, who handled production design for Kacey Musgraves’ 2020 Christmas show; talent executive Patrick Menton from Dick Clark Productions; Corden collaborator Josie Cliff; and Super Bowl halftime, Olympic ceremony, Oscars, and Emmys director Hamish Hamilton, who Winston describes as a “legend” he’s admired since he was 14 years old. (David Wild, who has written for the Grammys since 2001 and became a producer in 2016, is the only person returning to his role.) Winston also points out that artists were heavily involved in designing their own performances.

Rather than have cameras pan over empty seats and an awkwardly small stage, the production team decided to reinvent the visual format with the five-stage setup. The pandemic’s limitations, coupled with the advantages of new faces coming in with fresh perspectives, helped them refrain from thinking in terms of what the Grammys had done before, he said.

For the most part, Covid-19 didn’t force too many changes. It did give Winston a lot of anxiety.

“There’s been so much uncertainty with what you’re allowed to do,” he says. Changing international quarantine rules made him question whether certain performers could fly in, while health guidance keeps fluctuating: “Every time my computer or phone dings, my first instinct is, ‘Oh, God, what’s gone wrong?’ I don’t know if that’s ever been my mentality before.”

While all the performers are confirmed and currently Covid-free, “you never know, one of their girlfriends could have Covid and have to quarantine, it’s all just bonkers,” Winston says. “There’s one artist that may, in the end, not be able to make it here due to rules of the country they’re currently in. There’s one immigration issue that we’ve got left.”

The show does not have replacements on hand if anyone pulls out — it’ll just cut that performance out.

Above all, Winston wants the 2021 Grammys to focus attention off of dire times. “I want people to be able to watch the 2021 Grammys in 2040 and go, ‘Wow, what an amazing show that was,’ and not go, ‘Oh, that was the Covid year, that’s why they had to do that,'” he says. “I think that’s what we could achieve if we get it right on Sunday.”

via RollingStone.com

#kingstylesdaily #Harry Styles #hs: grammys 2021 #March 2021

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headcans-oneshots-and-stuff · 4 years

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Teach me how to dance...(Preferences)

Requested by a flowery-fantastic Anon: would you consider doing some hcs for batsis learning how to dance from each of her family members

A/N: I know it became preferences, but I hope that’s okay, it just fit better. Also, I didn’t use all of the batfamily members (e.g. Jason or Tim) because I don’t know which dances they’d teach Batsis or how they’d be involved. If you have ideas tell me and I’ll add it :)

Bruce

Bruce teaches you the waltz. It’s just one of these things he conciders a daughter-dad moment and he enjoys it greatly. He’ll be dressed to the nines, suit and all, and lead you to the ballroom of the Manor, maybe even pay some musicians to play life music. And then he’ll teach you how the waltz. You’ll probably be very young at that point because with the life the Waynes live you have to be able to dance classical dances from young on and so Bruce took it into his own hands to make sure that you’ll be able to survive even the hardest Gala by dancing

Alfred

Alfred will teach you another classical, even though more rare, dance. The Foxtrot. It’s more complicated and ‘fancy’ then the waltz (from what I’ve hear, don’t quote me on that) and as Alfred just feels like it’s something that can only help you in life. For him it’s not just about the dance itself, it’s about the dicipline behind learning a dance and the syncronisation between you and your dance partner. Alfred also, just like Bruce, considers that quality time with his grand-daughter and he’ll be very happy everytime you ask him to dance with you.

(That gif wouldn’t work so you’ll have to life with that, sry)

Dick

Okay, I know this is an old horse by now, but.... He’d teach you some disco moves. Honestly, he’s so over his siblings making fun of his disco outfit that he decided to embrace it, learn some funky disco moves, and emberass his siblings with it on Galas or other events. And it works. He get’s way less comments from them. More so from the press now. But when he finds out that Bruce and Alfred taught you some of their dance moves, the serious classics, he decided that you should have some fun to. So why not some disco fun. You’re siblings will be less than happy when the two of you start funking out on Partys, but that’s the deal now

Cass

For Cass Ballet is a way to escape and to lose herself, but when you tell her how graceful and amazing she looks while dancing, and she decides that she could teach you some moves, it becomes a way for her to bond with you without words. Now it’s the music and the flow of the dance that connects the two of you and it’s love on a different wavelenght. Just like your other relatives, it’s a part of her that becomes a part of you and connects you. She’ll teach you everything she knows and even though it will be exhausting, painful and hard, you’ll be just as good as she is some day. It brings you closer

Damian

Damian isn’t a dancer, that’s out of question, but Damian is a fighter. And Damian is someone who won’t let himself be bested by his siblings, so if they can teach you something and connect with you over it, then so could he. And sure, if he can’t dance, then he’ll just have to find a fighting style that comes close enough. And he does. He’ll become an expert in Capoeira before he even mentions the wish to teach you, but as soon as he does he’ll act like you had nothing to do with it. He’ll be more kind with you, won’t hurt you during training or mock you when you lose against him or fail a move, no he’ll be almost soft. Strict, still, but also caring. He’ll also be very reassured the better you become because he’s still teaching you how to fight and to know that you can defend yourself is very important for him

(I know this is ATLA, but it’s inspired by Capoeira and I think it works pretty well with the idea)

Steph

As established here Stephanie Brown is a TikTok Icon and it shows. This girl will get you to learn tiktok dances with her, no matter if you like it or not. No discussion and no arguing. To be honest, alongside Stpeh it’s super fun and again, it’s a way to spend time and have a connection. It may be a bit more ‘silly’ than the others (if we ignore Dick) but you won’t take it any less serious. Not if your sister doesn’t

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obsidianfr3sk · 3 years

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now

Summary: “Now— do you like it?” Simon asked (still making jazz hands).

Oh, no, he liked it. But Simon had made a tiny mistake. And it wasn’t like he wasn’t allowed to make mistakes. It was just that… if he had a coin for every time Simon had made that exact mistake, he would have two coins. Which wasn’t a lot of coins; but it was funny it happened twice.

And there it was. Again. The infamous latticework pie.

AO3

Hello, friends! Obsi here. I want to start this author note by saying this fic is a birthday gift for Rita (@the-wee-woo-rita), a fandom friend of mine that I hold dear to my heart since the day they started to constantly appear in my notes and hasn't stopped since <3 Forgive me if I spent the rest of my time covering the birthday kid with invisible virtual kisses:)

Aaaah, Rita:') Feliz cumpleaños, amigue✨ I hope you have an amazing day and that you're reading this while your family and friends are giving you tons of presents and kind words <3 I gotta confessed that I noticed you almost since you entered the fandom bc you were always on my notes, so every time I saw your icon, I was like "Oh, Wee Woo is here <3". oH AND WHEN YOU STARTED YOUR FIC DKJFHKJFKJDF I wanted to read it since you started posting it, and when I finally could, it left me 💖💖💖. Not only because it's a super fun story, (go read it if you haven't, people) but also because I can tell you're writing from the heart and you're as invested in Hugh and Simon's relationship as I am skjdhksd one time I even cried because I felt so proud of you for writing it lol

I guess that you already know what this fic is going to be about. When you told me this is your favorite scene of these pair of idiots and knew I had to write something for you about it sdkjfhjksdf it came out really fluffy and funny, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I did <3

Never stop writing. You got this✨ Enjoy your gift!!

When Hugh first started dating Simon, he didn’t know if he wanted to marry him. If someone had asked him, he wouldn’t have known how to answer, and everyone would have thought he was a dick, when in reality, he just hadn’t thought about that. He hadn’t sorted out his life yet.

Not like other people.

She had her life sorted out. At least most of it. Hugh certainly wouldn’t have been able to take care of a child when he was that age, but from the moment Adrian was born, his mom was there for him. She told him she was able to know if he was asking for food, if he needed another diaper, or if he just wanted to see her.

“But how do you know that if he cannot even talk?” he asked her.

“One just knows,” she answered. “If you ever become a dad, you’ll understand.”

And it sounded like a threat. Because at that age, Hugh also didn’t know if he wanted to have kids or not.

Simon, on the other hand, did. He was a mess in almost every single area of his life (like him), but he did know he wanted to have kids and to get married to someone. And it wasn’t like he was trying to scare Hugh the first months they started dating. Simon didn’t talk to him about his plans for the future until they had been together for more than a year. The only reason he knew about them was that he overheard a conversation Simon was having with… with Georgie, on one of the few occasions she was able to take a break from her baby.

At first, Hugh didn’t feel something particularly strong about what he heard. He actually kind of forgot about it for a couple of hours, until he went to sleep.

In his dream— or nightmare, which was a more accurate term, he was in the kitchen trying to bathe baby Kasumi in the sink, but she kept playing with the water and wetting his clothes, even when he tried to tell her to stop. Then, he heard Tamaya screeching his name and when he turned around to see what was happening, Evander (who was the only one whose age didn’t change, so he was a teenager bullying a four-year-old girl) was trying to pluck off the feathers of her wings, with all the intention of hurting her. Kasumi threw more water at him, so he grabbed her, all wet and everything, to try to follow Tamaya and Evander to the living room and stop them from fighting, but then, Georgie, who was at least 9 years old in the dream, pulled his hoodie, and told him:

“This is for you—” and pointed at a newborn baby she had just left on the floor.

Adrian.

Her newborn baby.

“No, that’s not mine, that’s yours,” he said. “That’s yours, Georgie, pick him up.”

She crossed her arms. “You pick him up.”

Then, Tamaya started screaming again, and Evander was freaking laughing, but he couldn’t leave Adrian on the floor, so he handed a crying Kasumi to Georgie, asking himself why the fuck Simon wasn’t around the house to help him with the kids.

When he bent over to pick the baby up, Simon decided it was a good time to appear, spank him and ask him: “Where are my cigarettes, goldilocks?”

And that was enough to wake him up.

It took him a couple of seconds to process what he was seeing. Georgie was sitting on the basement stairs, feeding Adrian and singing a song to him. Evander and Kasumi were sleeping under the same colorful blanket, while Tamaya was sitting on the side of the bed, gazing at her friend and moving her head side to side, as if she were singing too.

“Hey,” Georgie called him. “Are you ok, darling?”

He opened his mouth slightly and when he was about to tell her he had a nightmare, Simon turned around and grabbed him by the arm, still asleep.

It was cute enough for him to stop being mad at him for something he did in a dream. “Yes, I’m okay. Everything’s okay.”

Maybe it had something to do with age, but the thing was that Hugh didn’t dream that often anymore. One time he told Simon that, despite that, he still had nightmares in which he couldn’t move his body but he was aware of his surroundings, just as if he were awake. Simon frowned and said that didn’t sound like a nightmare, but more like sleep paralysis. Hugh thought it sounded a little bit psychedelic and told him he didn’t believe in those things, to which Simon reacted as if he just confessed he was an Earth-flatter.

He couldn't quite understand why Simon acted as if he were some sort of dream expert. Simon told him it was because he was a dream expert, or at least he was more of an expert than Hugh was, since he got a lot more sleep than he did, and it was true. Hugh couldn’t remember the last night he slept without spending two hours staring at the dark and empty room, while he heard Simon’s body rubbing the blankets from time to time.

“You know, I don’t think that’s normal,” Simon told him when they were driving back home from the Headquarters. “I think you should see a therapist.”

Simon said that a lot, too. It wasn’t bad advice per se, but for some reason, it drove him crazy every time he said it, even if he didn’t show it (or at least he liked to believe he didn’t). He remembered that occasion, specifically, because he had had a particularly bad day at work when they had that conversation about sleep paralysis. Kasumi and Evander decided that was a wonderful day to act as if they were the main characters of their new show “Dumb and Dumber”, trying to convince him to get couches for their offices with a slide presentation and everything, and Tamaya was acting like a particularly angry pregnant woman that hated everything that moved, especially if that thing was Hugh. He hadn’t gone completely feral with Kasumi and Evander (even if they kind of deserved it) and just told them to stop trying to kill the last brain cell they shared, but even so, they reacted as if Hugh had done something super offensive and if he were the one who was wasting everyone’s time. He had been even kinder with Tamaya because, yeah, she was being irrational, but at the same time, she was pregnant, and being a dick to a pregnant woman wouldn’t have been very heroic of him. Still, Tamaya didn’t even try to get her hormones under control and was actually devastated when he brought her the wrong kind of gyro from the store. She even cried and took the rest of the day for herself, which was something she had the right to do, obviously.

But anger is a bitch and one of those emotions that takes the best of you, so a little voice inside his head that took control of his consciousness every time he got mad at someone, was telling him that he should ask Simon if his therapist had told him that it wasn’t normal to wake up in the middle of the night to see if your kid was still breathing.

Because it didn’t sound normal to him.

He didn’t do it though. Maybe he was too tired.

Being angry took a lof a lot of energy.

He was still curious about whether Simon had ever told his therapist about that or if he had normalized it so much, that he didn’t think it was important to mention it. He had been doing that since the first night he met him when they were still a pair of kids. The first night they slept together, in Simon's basement, he woke him up in the middle of the night and sighed with relief.

“Good, you’re alive,” he mumbled. And then went back to sleep, as nothing happened.

Hugh thought it was quirky and funny. Now he believed it may be a real psychological problem.

His suspicion was confirmed that same night after having that conversation when he woke up at 3AM to go get a glass of water and realized that Simon had left the bed. He assumed he was at Adrian’s room, so he didn’t think too much about it and went downstairs, without bothering to turn the lights on. After all, he couldn’t die if he tripped with his own feet because his powers would protect him (and if he did, it would be the stupidest of deaths and he deserved it.)

He took a glass cup (because plastic cups were only for kids), filled it with water, and when he turned around to go back to his room, Simon flickered, and he could see him right in front of him, with his dagger in hand, as if he were about to stab him.

“SIMON, WHAT THE FUCK?!”

Simon flickered again and let go of his dagger at the same time he started crying and hugged him while mumbling he thought he was a robber that wanted to “kill everyone in the house and then himself.”

Hugh could only hug him back.

Simon didn’t try to stab him again, but he still had a weird sleep schedule. Hugh, on the other hand, was sleeping a lot better now that his psychiatrist had shown him this amazing invention called citalopram.

A week before their tenth anniversary, he was about to fall asleep when Simon entered the room, got under the covers, and hugged him from behind, pressing his body against his.

“Si, it’s 2AM.”

“How do you want to celebrate our anniversary?”

He asked that question with the same tone he used when he asked Max and Adrian what they wanted to do during their birthdays. Or when he asked Nova if she wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving with them, or when he tried to convince Kasumi and Tamaya to do something fun for Christmas that year.

And Hugh answered him the same thing the others did:

“I don’t know.”

He knew being ten years married to the same person was something that should be celebrated. And he also knew Simon didn’t mean any harm by asking those things, even if they may have seemed a little bit oblivious to the fact that life as they knew it had almost ended during the supernova. Actually, he believed he asked them that because he was completely aware of what had happened and, for instance, he was trying to fix all the things the burning stardust had destroyed, covering the ears of the people he loved, hugging them, and telling them that things couldn’t be that bad if they still could have a little piece of cake to celebrate even the smallest of events.

That gave him an idea.

“I think I just want to eat cake with you,” he mumbled.

“Cake?”

“I like cake. Except when it’s wet.”

Simon snorted. “Do you remember when Oscar invited Adrian to his birthday party and he gave him a pound of cake for him to share it with us?” he asked.

Hugh remembered that. “I do.”

“And do you remember you hated it?”

“It was more milk than cake.”

“Pastel de tres leches,” Simon said, with almost no American accent.

In other circumstances, he would’ve found that voice really attractive, but now the memory of that stupid cake was too much for him. “You know, I think there is where the fucking problem begins,” he told him. “What’s the need of adding three leches? One leche is more than enough.”

Simon tried to contain his laugh and failed. “Why do you pronounce leche like that?”

“It’s not natural, Simon,” Hugh insisted. “Cake is cake. And cake is supposed to be dry.”

“Well, I loved it.”

“You love everything. Even those who are unlovable.”

“Oh, sweetie. You’re not unlovable.”

“I know. I’m talking about the fucking cake.”

Simon stayed silent and Hugh laughed to let him know it was okay.

“So you want to keep it simple this year?” Simon asked him.

“I think that would be the most… appropriate thing to do.”

“All right then—” he pretended to use his finger to write on his back “—No tres leches cake… And keep it simple. Something else, your Majesty?”

“No, I think that’s all.”

“What about gifts?”

“I’m a simple man. I like blue, I like silver things that look like chrome, and I like myself. Go crazy.”

Simon gasped. “Or I could bake something for you,” he said. “I could make a little dinner for us… with your favorite cake.”

He couldn’t tell if Simon was being serious, but he hoped he did because— that actually sounded really nice. “What about the kids though?”

“Pssh, let’s just put them to bed early,” Simon answered. “Max’s bedtime is 9:30 anyways.”

“Are you—”

“Let me do something nice for you,” he interrupted him. “Please.”

Hugh sighed

“I’m being serious. I’m going to make your favorite cake,” Simon assured him, holding him closer to him.

And then it hit him. “Do you know—”

“Of course I know your favorite cake, love,” he giggled. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Hugh wanted to keep talking to him, but he started to notice his eyes were getting tired and that he wasn’t going to be able to keep them open a lot longer.

Simon kissed his shoulder. “Are you going to sleep now?”

“Yeah. But turn around,” he added. “I want to be the big spoon.”

The next morning, while Simon was looking for his mask before heading to work, Hugh realized he never told him what he wanted for their anniversary, so he took that moment to ask him. Simon just said that he would love anything Hugh got for him, which was honestly the worst answer ever because Hugh was the worst person when it came to guessing that sort of stuff, and needed to know specifically what they wanted so he wouldn’t end up giving them a shitty gift.

But then, he realized that it was a gift for their tenth anniversary. And when he gazed at Simon again, he noticed he was already looking at him through the small mirror they had hanging on their closet door, with a small smile on his face, letting him know that he had noticed the moment Hugh remembered what they did each year during their anniversary.

There was a tradition Simon heard about when they were planning their wedding, that it was all about giving a gift made of certain material according to the marital year. He didn’t tell him about it until a year later when they were talking about what they were going to do to celebrate that year, and for some reason, they ended up talking about when they met.

Unfortunately, Hugh could no longer remember when was the first time he saw Simon. It was like one day, he just walked into his life, laid down on a twin-size mattress, and just started to exist there without asking for permission because he didn’t know where he was yet. And Hugh was staring at the kid with brown skin, brown hair, and brown eyes, while hiding behind a big closet he kept there, thinking about how to tell him “Hello. What’s your name? I’d really like to know about you.”

Too bad he always stopped at “Hello”. Too bad it all happened inside his head.

When he was a kid, not a lot of people talked about prodigies in a positive light, so he grew up thinking that his powers were something he needed to keep a secret for everyone and that he had to blend in with the other kids in order to survive, and there was no adult in his life that told him otherwise. But during the Age of Anarchy, the whole Council began to know more prodigies from all over the world, who had different beliefs about what it meant to be a prodigy. During patrol, Simon told him about this old European lady he talked to, who was also a prodigy, and assured him she would be able to recognize every single one of them even without their superhero costumes. When Hugh said that sounded a little bit dangerous, Simon laughed it off and added that what she meant to say was that all prodigies were made of the same stardust and that it was always trying to find a way back to the space where it belonged, that was the reason why many prodigies were drawn to each other even if they just crossed paths by mere chance.

If it was true, then it explained why Hugh could tell Simon was a prodigy from the first moment he looked him in the eye. And it explained why he wanted to be his friend so much, even before knowing that piece of information.

Simon did remember when was the first time he saw Hugh. Or at least one of the first times.

“You were sitting on the ground and staring at a bug. like a beetle or something...” he said. They were walking through the neighborhood, holding hands, and Adrian was in front of them, trying to get the hang of his new skate shoes with wheels. He had asked his dads to give him his space because he had seen another kid at Headquarters using them too and he was sure he could teach himself how to use them. “ And you were really concentrated, completely quiet when an adult came and killed it.”

“Fuck,” he whispered. “Like— on purpose?”

“I don’t know, they were just walking,” Simon shrugged. “But you didn’t even say anything, just… stayed there. And a raccoon walked in front of you, and you decided to follow it to the trash can he lived in, and when you tried to touch it, he and his whole extended family threw themselves at you.”

Hugh probably looked worried or something, because Simon tilted his head and asked him: “You remember that, do you?”

And he didn’t. “It sounds like me,” he said, “I liked beetles when I was a kid. Not sure about the raccoon attack though because I’ve always hated raccoons and getting too close to trash cans.”

“And have you ever stopped to think about why you hate that so much?”

“Because trash cans are a focus of infection. Same as raccoons. I would never follow one of those rats with masks.”

“Hugh, when you were a kid, I saw you eating cereal out of a bucket, I don’t know why you’re acting like you’re better than the rest of us for not following raccoons— which you did.”

“I did not.”

“And you know what I thought?” Simon asked as if he hadn’t heard Hugh. “I thought—”

“You thought I was a poor kid who needed your help.”

“No, I thought you were the weirdest fucking kid I had ever met. And I walked away.”

Then he winked at him, letting him know he was joking. But Hugh felt really offended on behalf of his younger self anyways. “And why do you remember that but I don’t?”

“I was invisible. And I wanted to see what you were up to.”

Then, Adrian fell to the ground and screamed “DADDY!”. Neither of them was really sure of who he was talking to, so they just helped him get on his feet again and told him he should be more careful, ending their conversation there.

That year, he gave Simon a card he bought at the supermarket that he decorated with raccoon stickers he found on Adrian’s backpack, and he even used all his artistic abilities to draw a speech bubble that said “I love you”. Simon also gave him a card, but instead, it was decorated with hearts and flowers and looked a lot more like what a card for an occasion like that was supposed to look like. They gave each other cards because the first-anniversary gift, according to tradition, was something made of paper. He could tell what Simon gave him every single year, but some of the honorable mentions were the leather jacket he never used because Kasumi told him that buying things made of leather was unethical and “not green”, a wooden figurine of the two of them he found at a local flea market, and a pottery coffee mug he did himself when he and Tamaya took pottery classes, which Evander broke one day he went to the house.

So, yes, Simon always gave him nice things. And he kept every single one of them. The card was between the album photos and newspaper cutouts. The leather jacket remained in the closet not to be seen ever again. The wood figurine was in the living room (and will stay there even after he was dead because if Adrian ever dared to take it somewhere else, like he had tried to do before, he was going to haunt him until he put it back where it belonged), and eventually, Evander glued together the pottery coffee mug and gave it back to him, probably trying to make clear he was really sorry about breaking it, without really saying it out loud.

It was a nice tradition. Especially because it was almost impossible to fuck up and Hugh could come up with nice gifts for Simon too.

And now it wasn’t going to be the exception.

That year’s traditional theme was aluminum. At first, he was a little bit confused because the only aluminum he knew about was the aluminum foil they had in the kitchen until he spoke with Tamaya over the phone, and she told him there were a lot more things that were made of aluminum other than foil. She had stayed at her house ever since what had happened in the Arena. Simon told him and Kasumi it would be nice if they took turns to call her one time a day to check on her, and that day, it was Hugh’s turn.

She wasn’t mad at him, which meant she was having a less shitty day than other times it had been his turn to call her. She even gave him the phone number of a place where he could buy something for Simon, that was not so far away from Headquarters. Before hanging up, she reminded him to make sure Kasumi was eating during lunch breaks and made him promise he was going to double-check, just because that's what she would do if she were there. After doing what Tamaya asked him to do (Kasumi started to eat her salad as soon as he walked into the room, and he stayed there until she finished the whole plate), he called the store and knew exactly what he wanted to ask for.

It had been a little difficult to pick it up from the store because Simon was always with him, but the anniversary was on Sunday, so he said that someone had called him to go to Headquarters and headed out before anyone could ask for more explanations. He arrived at the store a few minutes before they closed and the owner told him he wasn’t sure if he was going to arrive on time. Then, he proceeded to show him the final product, and Hugh thought it looked exactly as what he had in mind. The daughter of the owner put the gift inside a box and decorated it with purple wrapping paper and a silver bow, and it was ready to go.

When he arrived at the house, Simon was already preparing dinner and the kids were eating ramen in the living room while watching a movie. He put the gift on the coffee table and told them it was time to get ready for bed.

Simon and Hugh had always been good at assigning each of them chores to do around the house. When Max was living in his quarantine area, Hugh stayed with him after Simon and Adrian went home. He bathed him, helped him brush his teeth, and then put him to bed. Meanwhile, Simon cooked something for Adrian, helped him with his homework, played with him for a while, and when Hugh went home, he helped him with his night routine the same way he had helped Max, while Simon prepared tomorrow’s lunches.

Adrian was a pretty calm kid during bath time (at least most of the time). He would dare to say he liked it, probably a little too much because he didn’t bathe himself until he was almost ten years old. Max, on the other hand, was a completely different story. It was a lot easier to control him when he was a baby, but the older he got, the more difficult it became to get him inside the tub. He tried to distract him with other things, made a lot of excuses, and even hid under the bed so his dad couldn’t see him. Simon thought it wasn’t a normal reaction and that they needed to make sure Max was alright, but Hugh didn’t believe Max’s behavior was weird because when he was a kid he threw even bigger tantrums each time he was told it was bath time. He screamed while he had shampoo on his hair, bawled while he was putting on his pajamas, and sobbed for at least ten minutes after he was tucked into bed. At the ripe age of four years old, he went as far as running down the street completely naked because he was already in the tub, waiting for his aunt to find a clean towel between all the mess they had around the house when he decided that wasn’t going to work out and just walked outside the house, without wearing any clothes. A minute later, he heard his aunt screaming “HUGH, YOU LITTLE BITCH—” and knew he was in danger, so he began to run as fast as he could until he tripped and he was taken back to the bathroom (while he screamed and kicked, like the demon child he was.)

“Well, I guess it makes sense why you acted like that,” Simon answered, “but I want to make sure everything is fine with Max. For my own comfort.”

Simon talked with Max the next day, and apparently, he came to the conclusion he was just someone who thought that bathing was a waste of time, like Hugh did when he was his age. His kid just showed it in a less… explosive manner. Because yeah, Max had never thrown a tantrum because of that. Not at least until the other night, when Simon told him to go take a shower after he spent the whole day outside with Nova and got his clothes all dirty. For some reason, Max got super pissed at the idea of his own father giving him a reasonable order, and after going to the bathroom and taking off his clothes, he started to yell that he was already clean and that he didn’t need to take a shower. Hugh and Adrian were in the living room talking about some mundane topic when they saw a naked and almost maniac Max running around the house, and a screaming and desperate Simon with a white towel in his hands, trying to catch him before he headed out of the house and the neighbors saw him.

Simon almost had a panic attack after that, when Adrian finally was the one to catch Max and convince him to go take a shower, because in his own words, “you smell like a dead dog, my friend” (Adrian knew what he was dealing with because he had done the same thing when he was a kid). And Hugh didn’t want Simon to go through the same experience again, especially that night.

“I was a well-behaved kid,” Simon told him, while they cuddled under the covers. “I almost never cried. And I most certainly never complained about bath time.”

“Everyone has a childhood story that involves running around completely naked because you didn’t want to get on the tub.”

“I don’t… think so.” Hugh scoffed in response. “Actually, I was so well-behaved, one time my mom closed the car door and smashed my fingers, but I didn’t even complain about it—”

“You should have complained about it,” Hugh said.

Simon didn’t hear him. “I think maybe Max is just going through a phase.”

“Or maybe our son is a normal kid and you are the Antichrist for not crying when your mother smashed your fingers.”

And he whispered: “Well— maybe, I guess.”

Luckily, Max was feeling nice and he followed the night routine without causing any more problems, and just asked Adrian to read him a bedtime story. Forty minutes later, Adrian went back downstairs and told them he was going to sleep too (but Hugh knew he was going to stay up late talking with his team.)

Simon took a few minutes after that to finish the dinner because the dessert was still in the oven. Hugh waited for him, sitting on the couch, eating the leftovers of Adrian’s ramen and watching whatever thing was on TV, when suddenly had the feeling someone was staring at him. He turned around and even though he didn’t saw anyone, he still said:

“Simon, I know you’re there.”

And he got no answer.

Then, when he decided to let it go and continue watching TV, Simon was sitting on the coffee table, with the gift box on his lap.

“Can you stop doing that?” Hugh asked him.

“No, it’s part of my charm—” Simon shook the box a little, like a kid would do on Christmas morning “—Is this my gift?”

“No. I bought it for my other husband. But you can open it, I guess.”

Simon shrugged and opened it. He gasped and covered his mouth with his hand, but he still could tell he was smiling. “Love—”

“You like them?”

Hugh had bought a couple of aluminum wine cups, decorated with a blue and purple stripe on the top. He extended his hand to turn on the lamp next to him and then patted the space next to him. “You wanna see something really cool?” he asked him.

Simon sat down next to him, holding one of the cups. Then Hugh grabbed him gently by the wrists and put the cup under the light, allowing both of them to see the hidden message written on the aluminum.

He couldn’t exactly read it because he wasn’t wearing his glasses, but Simon could.

“I’ll forever choose you,” he read. “It’s what—”

“It’s what I said during my vows,” Hugh answered, “and I still mean it.”

Simon leaned against him and Hugh took it as a chance to kiss him on the corner of his lips. “I’m going to kill your other husband,” Simon whispered.

“I don’t think you got it— but actually you’re the other husband.”

“I’m allowing you to make those jokes because I’m too happy to pretend I’m mad at you for saying them, okay? Just wanted to make that clear, so you don’t go around trying to push your luck.” He continued looking at the cup and putting it under the light to read its message again and again. “Can we use these cups? You know— are they made for drinking or are they just decorative?”

“I guess we can,” Hugh answered. “I don’t see why not. Cups are made for drinking.”

“Then it’s a good thing I brought us wine—” he got up with difficulty and grabbed the other cup from inside the box “—Are you hungry?”

He really wasn’t. Adrian’s leftovers were enough for him. But he still had a little space for more, so he nodded and took Simon’s hand before he got on his tiptoes and put his hands over his eyes. “Follow my lead.”

Even after arriving at the kitchen, Simon asked him to keep his eyes closed. He obeyed, and a couple of seconds later, he finally gave him the sign to open them, appearing behind the kitchen bar and waving his empty hands with a silly smile on his face.

Hugh covered his whole face with his hand to hide the fact that he was laughing.

“Now— do you like it?” Simon asked (still making jazz hands).

Oh, no, he liked it.

But even if he did, he could hear his own voice saying inside his head to make sure to sugarcoat whatever he had to say about one small detail that, unfortunately, was the first thing he noticed because he was that mean.

It was an amazing dinner. The main dish was chicken alfredo, and there was a small basket with bread from the supermarket they went every week to buy groceries (the same one Hugh didn’t go to anymore because last time he had almost hate-crimed a cashier because… reasons, maybe). He had lighted up some candles they kept around the house in case the power went out during the night and there was a white tablecloth covering part of the kitchen bar. Simon also took the time to look through the garage for the chinaware they only used for very special occasions and that Hugh insisted on hiding it in the garage since he didn’t trust his kids and believed they would break it at the first chance they got. And he didn't lie when he said he had bought a bottle of wine. Actually, he knew it was an expensive wine because it was the same brand as the one they drank during their wedding. It must have been an absolute hell trying to find it, considering that ten years had gone by since then.

But Simon had made a tiny mistake.

And it wasn’t like he wasn’t allowed to make mistakes. It was just that… if he had a coin for every time Simon had made that exact mistake, he would have two coins.

Which wasn’t a lot of coins; but it was funny it happened twice.

During the Gala, there had been a silent auction to replace some of the stolen drugs. Hugh was going crazy, trying to make sure everything was going according to plan, but Simon insisted that, as members of the Council, they needed to support the fundraising.

At first, Hugh didn’t notice what Simon had done. He had a lot of things going through his mind, like what if someone put a bomb on the ceiling and blew the whole building, if Adrian had drawn a callalily for every single centerpiece, or if Max had asked him to buy him more markers and construction paper since last week or last month. He also was trying to ignore how uncomfortable the suit he was wearing felt, which felt kind of tight when he raised his arms a little bit. Plus, the lights were too bright, the music was too freaking loud for a formal Gala, and for some reason, he was sure he could hear every single conversation that was going on there, at the same time he didn’t understand a single word coming out of those people’s mouths.

But suddenly…

Suddenly Simon grabbed him by the arm and said:

“I got this for you.”

“Huh?”

“I got this for you—” and he pointed at something on the table.

For the split of a second, he thought that Simon was referring to the chocolate cake that was right in the middle of everything, that was decorated with small pearls of white chocolate and a cherry on top. Which would have been a really kind and romantic gesture because chocolate cake would always have a special place in his heart.

But then, he noticed that actually, he was talking about the latticework pie that was right next to it, inside a little transparent box with a golden ribbon around it.

It looked nice; but the chocolate cake looked a lot better from his point of view.

“Simon—”

“Yes, I know technically I haven’t gotten it yet,” Simon said while jotting down his bidding number on a sheet of paper, “but I’m gonna win this and we’re gonna eat pie, like the winners we are.”

“Simon—”

“Do you wanna be a winner or not?”

“Simon—”

Simon finally looked at him, still holding the pen he had used to write down the bidding number.

Hugh had reacted a little bit too late.

So he just sighed, rested his chin on Simon’s head for a couple of seconds, and then asked him if also thought the lights were too bright (“No, but you can talk to someone and see if there’s something they can do about it. Just don’t go all Captain Chromium on them.” “That’s not a phrase other people use.” “Kasumi does.”)

Now, the Gala wasn’t a memory he liked to replay inside his head constantly because while they were there, their kids were risking their lives fighting against people they shouldn’t even be worried about. He felt guilty when he remembered that he was dancing with Simon in a small corner of the room, where they were sure no one could see them (not because they were embarrassed or scared but because Simon didn’t like to be surrounded by a lot of people, and honestly, Hugh wasn’t in the mood for dealing with that either). He was starting to think “Hey, maybe I’m having fun” and Simon was this close to kissing him, but one second after that, they were notified about what had happened to Max and had to rush to the hospital.

It had been one of the worst nights of his life. The last time he thought about it, was while reading Max a book they had just bought for him (“Tough Guys (Have Feelings Too)”). Max mentioned something about Adrian taking him to eat pie that afternoon and “going all Captain Chromium” on him for something he didn’t understand but sounded like normal sibling stuff, and suddenly Hugh vividly remembered the latticework pie Simon had put a bid on.

They never got to eat it.

Which was good because he knew that if he had gotten to eat some, knowing there had been a chocolate cake right next to it that they could have gotten instead of that freaking pie, his night would have been even worse.

Not like your kid almost dying was bad enough though.

“Keep reading the book, Hugh,” Max told him, pretending to be disappointed after he told him that story about the Gala. “Let’s keep the trauma talk for Therapy Thursday.”

(That was how Simon called Thursdays now. It was the day the four of them went to family therapy. Everyone thought it was a stupid way to call it, even Hugh, but he always told his kids it was an incredible way to motivate them, that Simon was trying his best, and that next time he heard them make fun about “Therapy Thursdays”, calling it “$200 Nap Thursdays”, he was going to tell the fucking shrink and they were going to go to family therapy two times a week.)

And there it was.

Again.

The infamous latticework pie.

But when he saw it, he didn’t feel anything else but the impulse to laugh out loud.

“I like it a lot,” he answered.

“You’re putting on the sugar jacket!” Simon exclaimed.

“No, I’m not!” Hugh told him, still laughing.

“No, I can see it!” Simon insisted. “You’re doing it, you always laugh when you do it!”

“What are you talking about?” He cleared his throat. “I’m way too good at sugarcoating, no one notices when—”

“I’m going to keep calling it sugar jacket,” Simon interrupted him, crossing his arms and staring at him with narrowing eyes. “Don’t use that tone with me.”

“And I’m going to keep making fun of you for it. Imagine me putting on a sugar jacket, Simon. It would have to be a huge jacket. The house would be infested with ants.”

But Simon wasn’t interested in the logistics of keeping a sugar jacket inside the house. “It’s like what you did last week. Oh, yeah, Simon, that’s so good—” He scoffed “—I know you hated that souffle because I hated it too.”

“But I liked that souffle! It was pretty good, I don’t know why you hated it.”

“The more you insist on that, the less I’m going to believe you.”

Hugh sat down on one of the kitchen bar stools and hid his face with his hands until he stopped laughing. When he finally did, he saw Simon smiling, even if he was trying to hide it.

“Si—” Simon raised his eyebrows as if he were saying “Hey” with them “—Can I get some wine?”

He thought about it for a second.

“Just because I love you—” and he began to pour it into one of their wine cups. Then, he walked towards Hugh, and with one hand, he took his wine cup, and with the other, he pulled Simon closer to him.

“And I love this,” he whispered. “I loved what you did for me, it’s just what I asked for.”

Simon’s smile got even wider. “I know I said we were gonna have cake but— I know you like pie a little bit more.”

Hugh took a sip of wine.

“Because… you do, don’t you?”

So he left the wine cup on the kitchen bar, grabbed Simon by the waist— and he told him the truth.

“I do now.”

Before Simon could ask him what he meant with that extra “now”, he leaned over and kissed him.

Now it was not the time to talk about that.

#renegades #archenemies #supernova #renegades trilogy #hugh everhart #simon westwood #the warden and the captain are sitting in a tree #sorry but i had to complain about tres leches cake #i reflect all my hate for that thing in my problematic son lol #plus the chicken alfredo is a reference to royal jewels #and there's also a hcttr reference kjsdfhksdfj #and the story of the naked kid running down the street... yeah parcially based on real events <3 #one time i saw one of my neighboor's kid playing outside without any clothes on #it was so weird i had to ask my mom if she saw it too #and she told me a lot of kids do that so JSHDKJSJK #well now im going to stop talking-#tags are supposed to be used for useful things #dUDE I HAD TO LOOK FOR THE ENGLISH VERSION OF ARCHENEMIES BC A LOT OF SMALL DETAILS GOT LOST IN THE SPANISH VERSION #and i wanted to be as acurrate as posible x'd #ok im going to go now x'd #obsi's writs

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evakuality · 3 years

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Hanna, episode 7

1. It’s really interesting what they’re doing with Amira this whole season. It’s setting up to a whole lot of the stuff that happens in the later seasons really well. She suffers so many microaggressions all the time, and even here - she makes a joke about costumes parties and they all just swallow it. It’s a really vivid recognition all the way through of exactly how much Amira deals with on a daily basis. Considering we all know where this is leading, it’s difficult to watch, but also it’s good that they do this.

2. But oh yikes, this whole bunch of rumours swirling about Sam ‘making out’ with someone at the party is really well done. It’s pretty obvious that no-one genuinely knows - the only people who know what happened are Hanna and Sam (and ‘making out’ isn’t exactly how I’d describe it) so the rumours are all based on a love of gossip. Who knows how they started, but it’s obvious just how guilty Hanna feels. How awkward for her to be hearing this! Then her very very obvious ‘I have a boyfriend so it wasn't me!!’ move (very similar to Matteo’s in s3 in the discussion about homosexuality with Amira, which is illuminating - they both want to try to ‘prove’ something with these moves). Also, Kiki and her thing about Alex - it’s terrible how invested she is when it’s obvious that he’s being an asshole. The excuses she makes for him unfortunately ring true - this is exactly how people try to convince themselves of this sort of stuff. In reality it’s a shame the girls aren’t more forceful - they clearly want to say Kiki is being an idiot, but after Amira got shut down last time, it seems none of them is keen to be more explicit.

3. Ohhh poor Hanna. This thing has been eating at her and she had to tell someone about it. But choosing Matteo was NOT a good idea. I mean, we all know this is going badly (Snakesak is such an iconic take on the season that even if you forgot everything else, you’d remember that), but even without that, Matteo feels a bit more... I don’t know. Shifty? Somehow? There’s something really calculating in the way he examines her. Like, even without knowing what’s coming, there’s clearly something goin on in his head. With Isak it came out of the blue; he was set up much more supportive/innocent because they wanted the shock value when the reveal happened. But with Matteo there’s something different. I guess at least partly because most people watching would already know what’s coming so hiding it is less imperative. Hanna sees him as a friend and the only one she can tell, but it’s such a weird choice anyway (as it was in the original). He’s Jonas’s best friend. Like he says, why tell him? Even if he wasn’t a little snake, this is putting him in a really difficult place. Effectively this makes him choose between his best friend (who he’s kind of in love with even if she doesn’t know that) and his friend. Him choosing to let Jonas know wouldn’t be all that strange and it’s a big risk to take before she knows he sits in the ‘don’t tell’ camp. I am also baffled that they did this with other people in earshot. It could totally get out, even if this girl agrees she should keep quiet.

4. I really like this adaptation of the ‘claim’ Alex makes into ‘he told me I have a cute stomach’ instead of the hoodie thing in the original (though that works very well too). This way it’s much less overt and also it really plays into Kiki’s fears about her looks. We’ve seen small hints of her eating issues already, so this just adds to the weight of that. Specifically targeting a body part that girls can be sensitive about is clever - at first it can seem sweet, like he’s being so nice about something vulnerable, but then you can see he’s being very deliberate with that impression and it really hammers home the insecurities Kiki is already harbouring.

5. It’s a fascinating dynamic between all the girls in the argument about how Kiki should deal with Alex. I’m with Sam and Amira - stay above it and move on (tbh, Kiki should never have gone there in the first place, but she did so this is her current best option). But the fact that Mia is so strongly in favour of telling him he’s a dick is swaying Kiki. Of course, Mia is a strong person and from her it probably would feel empowered. But Kiki is, and always has been, far more innocent and vulnerable and sensitive. It doesn’t feel like (even without knowing where this goes) that this will go well for Kiki, and the fact that Mia doesn’t get that says a lot about her. I like this; it’s nice to see her not being quite right here - it sets her up for some growth as we move on. And super yikes when he tells Kiki to take a breath and she does. This, the importance she places on him, is exactly why this was a terrible idea, and why Mia’s encouragement was wrong. It’s easy for her - she’s not invested, and her failure to recognise the difference between her and Kiki is really important. And Alex is SUCH an asshole that this scene is so hard to watch. Kiki’s acting is superb in all these scenes and it’s so damn hard to watch her take in ‘you’re not worth it’ but as with the original, Mia’s ‘take down’ doesn’t land for me, probably because while Alex’s acting is far superior to William’s, there’s still a fundamental lack of caring about what she’s said. It doesn’t feel like saving face, but more a genuine lack of care. And this is why I really dislike this ‘William’ character; he doesn’t seem to care. I have said before that I’ve never watched Mia’s season because I cannot stand William in the original. So if I do watch I’ll be interested to see if they can make me like him better. So far, they’re not succeeding.

6. And just like that, we’re back to the soft, dreamy colours and shots of the start of the season. But there’s a harsher light coming in to some of the shots. particularly with Jonas and so it’s not comfortable. This is something on a precipice. The kissing is back and they’re reconnecting on that level, and it’s working again. The darkness is gone, but things are hovering still - that Sam stuff on her phone with Jonas in the background, slightly blurred but very overlit, adds to the sense of unease. You can feel something coming, even if it’s not obvious what that is.

7. Man this fight is so funny. I know I shouldn’t say that, and it’s a very serious moment for Hanna, but the slo-mo and the faces they make! And Amira’s moves! Kiki, full-on legs wrapped around this girl as they both collapse to the ground! Priceless. I do like the way the sound gradually fades out as Hanna’s realisation of what’s happening sets in. That’s really well done.

8. What a change from the earlier moment when Hanna woke with Jonas and they had their sweet little moment. Now we’re fairly tight in on her face as she keeps trying to get hold of him. It sucks a lot, and you can sense the anxiety and worry she’s feeling. Also, I do understand why she feels the way she does about all this, and why she leans on Matteo. Unlike earlier, here it makes sense for her to rely on Jonas’s best friend. He’s the one who has the best line in to Jonas when he’s staying so distant from Hanna. But wow his advice is truly shitty. On the surface it seems sensible, both times. Nah don’t tell him; it’ll only hurt him. Nah leave him be; he needs time and space. But in both instances it’s the complete opposite of how she should be acting. And in both cases, Matteo knows Jonas, he knows what he’s like and how he’ll act. This is so calculated. And he’s still in a space where he has little to lose. He feels like he can still ride the ‘hey I had their best interests at heart’ line and get out of it. I always felt like Isak was more opportunistic in his lying; saying and doing things in the moment. Whereas this really does feel like Matteo has thought it through more - that’s some difference in the way the two characters are presented and acted. But I like that it’s different, and his little hint of a smaile when she collapses on him - Isak seemed a lot more genuinely wrapped up in Eva and his face seemed more overwhelmed. But Matteo really seems to know what he’s doing. Also - sound mixing in this scene: top notch. I love that you can hear every swallow, every breath, every step, movement etc. It really heightens the tension right up til she gets Jonas’s ‘don’t call me’ text.

9. I said it before and I’ll say it again, Leonie’s savage pleasure in Hanna’s troubles is a real reflection on her - and not a good one. I really do get that she’s hurt, but this is vicious and she’s being awful! And Kiki - ugh, just be quiet child. Calling other girls sluts is pretty shitty.

10. I really like that Eva’s mother morphs into Hanna’s father. There’s a difference in this dynamic that builds on that difference. Eva and her mother seem closer, even while her mother isn’t around much. Hanna’s father just feels more absent emotionally, so these moments where he tries to be a dad fail because of that. It’s obvious that he cares for her and that he’s trying, but equally obvious that he just doesn’t know what she needs or how to approach her. Not that Eva’s mother was much better, but it was still a different sort of distance.

anyway, this is suuuuper long because so much happened in this episode. It’s packed with a lot of stuff and while some stuff is starting to resolve, there’s so much that’s hanging over their heads still. I like this one a lot, but I think it could have done with a little bit of breathing room. Maybe that one episode where it felt like things were waiting to happen could have picked up some of this heavy lifting. But either way, this one has a lot going for it and really does set us up for what’s coming in the next few.

#druck #og druck #hanna episode 7 #this one also got reallly long

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red-hood-redemption · 3 years

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SO I know I’m like, super late to the party, but I finally got my hands on Robin 2021 and there is literally no one for me to talk to about it so now I’m just screaming my thoughts into the void ✌

First off, before i even bought the first two issues, I read through a lot of other people’s opinions on it to kinda get an idea of where it was going characterization-wise for Damian, and because of all the mixed reactions, I figured I should just read it myself and find out. Now I am the FURTHEST thing from a comic book authority, so like, this is truly just an opinion piece but if it convinces anyone to give the run a chance, then yay!!! Honestly, I’m really glad I gave it a shot because I’m genuinely hooked! I’m actually excited about this series (and it scares me lol)!!!

I'm gonna separate my thoughts into two sections: characters, and story, mainly for my own ease, but also if anyone cares more about one thing or the other it's easier to distinguish. But, the line is a little blurry so if I end up getting a little too much into the characterization in the story section, just bear with me lmao. OH and I'm going to try and keep this as un-spoilery as possible but we'll just have to see. SOOOOOOOO

Characters

I think it goes without saying that Melnikov's art is absolutely gorgeous, and really does show how much Damian has grown up. It makes me want to sob its so beautiful, everyone is so pretty, even the guy that looks like a washed up, high as fuck Tony Stark lmao. But moving on to the actual characters,

Rose Wilson

I honestly don't know too much about Rose, I haven't read enough about her to say anything about her characterization and how it compares to her other appearances, or whether or not she is OOC, but so far, I'm enjoying her taking up the "big sis" role, like, immediately lmao.

I don't know how much I trust her yet, but I definitely get the vibe that even if she does betray Dami in any way, she's probably gonna stick her neck out for Dami again and he's probably gonna do the same.

I'm really intrigued about her motivations for being here. Obviously, Respawn has something to do with it, but I want to know what's up with that. I've seen a lot of theories and I'm so excited. Also side note, that Black Swan chick is hot, and I can't wait to see more of her in action!!!

I feel like Ravager knows a WHOLE lot more than Dami does about the interesting things going on on the island, mainly because she's been doing a lot more sitting and waiting than he has as of yet, but I'm hoping to see more of the two of them doing detective-y sleuthing together. We love a mysteryyyy

Flatline

Okay but real talk, why does she look like a character straight out of Monster High

Honestly tho, I dig it. It's cute! She's cute! She isn't annoying (yet) but I don't know if I care too much about her other than she would make a cute friend for Dami.

I think the problem with DC is that they know people LOVE Harley Quinn and they try so hard to make characters just like her but it always falls short, so honestly I am a little wary of her character development in this run, but I'm willing to give her a shot since her little coffin purse on the cover of the second issue is so damn cute. I'm a slut for character design, okay?

Oh speaking of Flatline and Dami, I don't ship it and I don't want them to force a romantic relationship into Damian's "coming of age"/"soul-searching" moment okay? Because that's what this run is about, at least to me! More on that in the story section!

They're literally 13/14 years old. That's 8th-9th grade, babes lets think about that for a minute

Also let's stop the whole "lets introduce a female character just to make her a love interest!" bullshit okay?

Basically, Flatline is interesting, or at least has the potential to be, but I don't want to get my hopes up because DC is notorious for disservicing their female characters 😕

I think the mixed reaction to her is valid, I don't think she's had much time to make a solid impression yet, so I guess you'd have to read it for yourself. Personally, I don't understand why people immediately hate her, especially because she's like, 14, and what kid that age isn't annoying? like at least a little bit lmao! But, yeah. I don't trust her either but literally everyone on this island is sketchy at least and a murderer at best, so hey 🤷‍♀️

Damian

His new outfit lmaoooo at first I was like "WHaT is this child wearing? You'd think Dick would have rubbed off on him and taught him what good taste looks like" but then I saw the later outfit, with the gold patterning and those sleeeevessssss ugh and I take it all back. A Fashion Icon TM. Truly stunning. A sight to behold. So proud, look at him go 😪

I think there's a lot of different opinions on Damian's characterization in this run, and I can definitely see where its coming from, but I disagree with the notion that Damian has been done dirty and reverted to a blood-thirsty, feral child. And I have a LOT of opinions on the whole "feral" thing regarding Damian period (but that's for another time).

I don't think of Dami's rampage as a regression for his character. He's letting of emotions right then and I think its very similar to him venting. Its just not verbal, its physical and he knows he's not going to have to grapple with the consequences of his actions on the first kill. He knows he's technically not doing anything wrong.

He is clearly upset at Bruce and his failure to protect Alfred, and while Dami and Bruce are really often described as being very similar personality-wise, they are still distinctly different individuals who came to their current moral codes in vastly different ways. Bruce came to his "no killing" rule on his own; he made that decision for himself. It wasn't taught to him, it was a moment-of-truth kind of situation. Damian, on the other hand is in a vastly different situation.

Dami is, I think, at the beginning of the climb to his own moment-of-truth. He is in his rebellious phase like Dick, where he's gone off to spread his wings. It's not his conscious intention (at least that's not the vibe I got from reading the first two issues), but its directly underlying his "mission".

Damian is growing out of the expectations of his parents and into his own person. We all know he's been thrown from one moral code to another, both drastically different from each other. I don't think its a regression for him to lose his way a little, because realistically, he's going to have to in order to find it, specifically a moral compass that he forged on his own. He's just what? 14? Like hell a kid his age wants to listen to any form of authority. He's as stubborn as it comes. Damian needs to come to his decision regarding the path he takes in life on his own. It can't be made for him. He's seen and lived both sides of the coin, and I don't think he should be forced just yet to choose a side or pave a middle ground, but I do think that he should get the opportunity to see and experience all the gray areas on his own.

I think I'll transition from characterization to story here, because let's face it, this story is about Damian dealing with his confused emotions right now, in the wake of losing Alfred, a man that kind of acted like a grounding presence, a voice of reason, or a moral compass for him (and honestly Bruce and the rest of the bat crew if we're honest).

Story

So there's a lottttt going on in the story that is really enticing and exciting, and I'm really interested to see how it all plays out.

All the rules to the tournament are so, sketchy? Like they don't sound like they are meant to be sketchy, its basic safety and guidelines or whatever but with all the glowy green shit and the stakes of the tournament? Yeah, you can bet your ass its the "no fighting at night" and other shit is gonna be broken, and that's likely when the fun begins *insert evil laughter*😈

I was slightly put off by the whole "let me teach you to have fun" thing with Rose, because it's not like Dick, Steph, Jon, and like the Titans haven't done that with him too, but eh, not something I'm too concerned about. It's definitely just a segway to get us introduced to more characters that might become Damian's friends which will be interesting considering what Mother Soul said about fraternizing.

And that's another thing! I want Damian to make some friends! I know he already has some, but here's the thing: I think he's already been struggling with belonging, and he's definitely been feeling the disconnect between his life and other kids', whether they're supers/vigilantes or not. I think it'd be nice to see Dami have the experience of meeting people who he at first thinks are just like him!! and then realizing that maybe he doesn't really fit in here either, and that it's okay to feel like you don't belong, as isolating as it may feel at times. It just means you have a set of values. I want him to realize that its not always a bad thing, and you learn more about yourself and your own heart this way.

And from there,,, lets talk about the thing that stuck out to me the most in these two issues! GUILT!! It's mentioned SOO many times already, and I think its going to be a really fun, heartbreaking, and interesting aspect to explore about Damian. Is it guilt about his actions? Leaving behind family? Not being able to save Alfred? Not being a perfect example of Robin? He may call himself Robin but he doesn't sport the OG look or symbol like before. I love that his guilt takes on the form of Alfred though, or at least his conscious. I think it'd be really interesting to see this conscious disappear when Dami strays too far from his center, and when he finds it again, it reappears.

I really think that seeing Damian's actions in this run as a failure of character development is an unfair assessment, though. You can't do everything right in order to grow! You have to screw up, lose your way, experiment with life to find your fit, right?

Something tells me he doesn’t care for the tournament itself, but the end result, and the people behind it and more about WHY it was hidden from him. I mean he finds out the tournament TRULY begins once everyone has died once and tHEN he kill everyone? Felt to me less like a “killing spree” as everyone put it to a calculated decision to get the tournament going. He literally cuts Mother Soul off in the middle of her speaking to start fighting at the beginning

Anyway, just my thoughts lol. I do have some issues with the past two issues, and I might make a separate post about that, but honestly not enough for me to dislike Robin 2021 so far. I mean, besides the very obvious white-washing in the second issue, because DC can absolutely do better. And they should. It’s like they thought we wouldn’t notice???? But besides that, story and characterization-wise I’m looking forward to more. Here’s to hoping it stays that way, just with a better colorist!

#dc comics #robin 2021 #damian wayne #robin

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renaerys · 4 years

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PPG One-Shot: Six Degrees Chiller (Brick/Blossom)

A new cute one-shot in honor of @carriedreamerx birthday! In the same high school AU as part 1, part 2, and part 3, but can totally stand-alone. Also posted on my AO3. Tune in for some laughs and some Reds cuteness!

Summary: Brick goes deodorant shopping. It doesn't end well. (Or does it??)

xxx

Brick squinted at the nine-foot shelf packed with a full color wheel of deodorants and antiperspirants. The sheer surfeit of brands and scents was as daunting to behold as it was absolutely batshit insane—how many ways did people need to not smell like a dirty gym sock?

He picked a random stick and scowled at the label as if it had offended him and all his future progeny. Who the fuck would want to smell like mango lassi?

The squeak of a shopping cart rolling down the aisle sent Brick into a febrile panic for a hot second, and he shoved the saccharine deodorant stick back onto the shelf. A geriatric woman with a hunched back, a bright head scarf, and eyes so folded over with wrinkles it was a miracle she could see anything at all wheeled her cart slowly past Brick, who froze where he stood. She smiled politely at him, and he nodded out of sheer self-preservation instinct. The moment she passed him, he yanked the bill of his red cap lower over his eyes.

“Get a grip,” he grumbled. He was an eighteen-year-old guy buying deodorant, not stool softener. He was totally casual and had absolutely no reason to be so fucking paranoid. Nobody who might recognize him was coming to Cooper’s Market at 8 a.m. on a Sunday.

Brick wiped his clammy palms on his jeans and searched the shelves for what he’d come for so he could hurry up and leave. There it was, fifth shelf in a sea of sleek black and edgy, neon letters: Axe Ice Chill.

“Okay, do you consider yourself more of a music lover, sports star, gaming guru, or style icon?” Boomer had asked as he sat cross-legged on the sofa with his laptop open to the Axe “Find Your Magic” test a few months ago.

“Sports star,” Butch had said on his left, and poked the screen that wasn’t a touch-screen.

“That’s you, moron,” Brick had said, totally above this stupid test. “Pick style icon.”

Boomer grinned. “Oh yeah, your hoodies are so stylin’.” He clicked the next question. “Signature scent? Huh, maybe warm and aromatic?”

“Sounds like one of those Yankee holiday candles,” Butch had said.

Unfortunately, he had a point.

“Well, you're not exactly woody and earthy, and you’re definitely not fruity and sweet—”

“Just go to the next one.” Brick clicked on “fresh and cool” and waited for the screen to load. “Smellin’ good!” the loading page flashed at him. Jesus fucking Christ.

When the quiz presented a true or false statement, Butch moved like he had a bug up his ass and slammed the touchpad before Brick or Boomer could do anything about it.

Boomer tried not to laugh. “Dude, come on.”

“Please, he’s a punk-ass dweeb who’d never make the first move in a fight, let alone on a girl—” Butch had taunted.

Brick punched him in the throat with his Super speed and smiled at the sound of his asshat brother gagging. “Choke and die, motherfucker.”

Butch wheezed as he laughed through the pain, and Brick and Boomer breezed through the more generic age and appearance questions: under 18, long hair (“Mane Man!” the quiz gushed, and Brick almost melted Boomer’s laptop right there), and natural look. After an artificially anticipatory loading screen, a picture of a dude with a clown nose crowd surfing in a sepia Instagram filter appeared on the screen with the generic “Be your best self!” encouragement in blocky letters superimposed upon it, and finally the expert, personalized recommendation for Brick’s body spray needs.

“Because you’re hotter when you’re chill.” Brick had cringed when he read that idiotic tagline the first time, and he cringed reading it again now in the deserted personal hygiene aisle where he prayed no one would find him buying this cry-for-help vanity spritz.

However.

He sprayed a bit of mist in the air and reveled in that cool, icy scent that wasn’t a scent so much as a feeling. Six degrees chiller in a bottle. The first time he’d tried it (under great duress), he’d griped and bitched and slammed his bedroom door to get away from his howling brothers. Settled on his bed with a frown, he had to admit it did cool him off. It was almost pleasant. The smell wasn’t overwhelming like that tiger piss Butch bathed in on the daily. But it wasn’t out of this world compared to the generic shit he’d been using before.

It wasn’t until Blossom sneezed on their way out of AP Lit that her ice breath—and understanding—hit him with the force of a cold snap to the balls.

“Sorry, did I get you?” she’d said, abashed as she covered her mouth with one hand and fished out a bottle of Purell from her messenger bag with the other. Her ice splatter fast melted on his shoulder as his too-warm body absorbed the cold with a bizarre, but extremely pleasant, shiver down his spine.

Son of a bitch, but he had a kink.

Which, of course, spiraled way the hell out of control when he found himself here months later with a recycled shopping bag he’d brought so he could carry the three bottles of Axe Ice Chill he planned to purchase home, because Brick planned ahead and liked to keep his bathroom well-stocked.

Which also, of course, was why at that very moment, fate decided to punch him in the dick.

“Bubbles, you have, like, fourteen bottles of shampoo at home! You don’t need another one,” Buttercup groused at 8 in the goddamned morning on a Sunday.

“Those are all different products, not just shampoo. Honestly, Buttercup.” Bubbles zipped into the aisle with Buttercup on her tail just at the moment Brick had his second panic attack in the span of five minutes and completely lost his shit.

He launched the bottle of Axe Ice Chill so hard into the ceiling that it lodged in there tighter than a prairie-dogging turd.

“Brick?” Blossom’s hand on his shoulder nearly sent him yeeting after his abused body spray, if the sheer mortification didn’t rob him of further motor function and exactly one hundred percent of his brain cells.

Like her sisters, she wore a jacket over her pajama pants. They must have just popped over for some last-minute breakfast staples and a side of peer humiliation. But even in those criminally hideous Ugg boots and five boxes of pancake mix in her shopping basket at 8 on a fucking Sunday morning, her smile glowed.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” he returned lamely, because that was all she was getting from him until his neurological functions rebooted.

“Hi, Brick,” Buttercup said, suspicious like usual and searching for some excuse to bust his balls for a laugh. “What’re you doing here?”

The Super sisters had cornered him in front of the Teen Spirit, which came in an absolutely frightful eighteen scents because there was nothing pubescent teenagers needed more than eighteen reassurances that their social survival depended on smelling like a potpourri candy bar.

“Shopping, obviously,” Bubbles said. “Ooh, Brick, you have straight hair. What do you think?” She held up two bottles of brightly colored free-range, organic hair shit.

“I think I was just leaving,” he managed.

“Empty-handed?” Buttercup peered at him like he might transform into a literal dick with ears if she only managed not to blink for long enough. He could smell the threat of a joke on her.

“They didn’t have the brand I wanted.”

“Oh, that sucks,” Bubbles said, genuinely stricken.

“Girls, let’s get going. I really want those pancakes,” Blossom said.

“We better grab more syrup. Buttercup finished it all,” Bubbles said, already moving away. She dropped both hair products in Blossom’s basket, not bothering to choose between them.

“Oh please, everybody knows you and the Professor are the syrup fiends in this house.” Buttercup floated after her and waved to Brick. “Hey, tell that shithead to answer my texts. He owes me $20.”

“Uh-huh,” Brick said, fully intending not to mention anything about this conversation to Butch at all.

“Sorry about your favorite brand being sold out,” Blossom said.

It’s fine, he would have said had she not caught his cheek in her hand and pressed a frosty kiss to the corner of his lips before he could do anything about it. Frozen fernlings crept over his cheek and chin, down his neck, and slowly absorbed through his now flushed skin, and he shivered. Without even thinking about it, he reached for her, but she was already walking away to catch up with her sisters.

When she got to the end of the aisle, she shot him a cheeky grin over her shoulder and had the nerve to wink at him. “Stay cool, Brick.”

Red in the face and high on her, Brick just stood there like an idiot gawking at his kind of unofficial girlfriend and the singular dominating object of his fantasies, be they sexual or otherwise. What was dignity when she smiled at him like that? What was a paltry imitation in a bottle when she kissed him like that?

The paltry imitation fell from its hole in the ceiling and exploded on the tiled floor at Brick’s feet with a winter ferocity that, in that moment at least, rivaled Blossom’s in the heat of battle.

When Brick got home later that morning and Boomer asked him why he smelled like a snowman’s asshole, Brick burned the clothes on his back and spent the next half hour in the shower thinking about how he was going to convince Blossom to make the first move and finally make them official.

xxx

Y’all better appreciate the research that went into this fic. That Axe quiz is real and I took it pretending to be Brick, and it literally does spit out a photo of a dude wearing a clown nose in a club. If that’s not a sign from the Daddy that I’ve chosen the righteous path, then idk what is. Sacrifices to my Chrome search history were made for this fic in the name of celebrating Carrie, ergo, worth it.

#Blossick #PPG Reds #Blossom #Brick #Powerpuff Girls #PPG Fanfic #Powerpuff Girls Fanfiction #february fic prompts #ppg shook

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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New X-Men Xtrospective Part 3: Imperial (NXM #121-126)

To me all you happy people! And welcome back to my X-Citing look at Morrison’s Masterwork on Marvel’s Merry Mutants! Part One is HERE, Part Two is HERE if you feel like it.

If not... to catch you up on last time....

All Caught up? Good. Join me under the cut as our heroes head into this old woman’s hedd to see what’s wrong and fight off an alien army while horribly ill.

Silent, Psychic Rescue in Process:

So we pick up not long after we left off: Thanks to Beast waking up from his bat induced coma, the X-Men now know Charles is trapped in Cassandra’s body and she pulled a Freaky Friday on him, with marginally less bullets.

And thus we get this issue. This one was part of Nuff Said, an incredibly clever theme month by Marvel and one I wish they’d try and do again at some point in some form.

The gimmick was simple but amazing: Every issue would be mostly silent, with at most some dialouge at the start and finish to bookend it. So far i’ve only read two issues of this, this one and the X-Statix one, but it is a genuinely great idea. I do think forcing it on the entire line was a bit much, but as I said I do wish they’d do this again just make it optional: have some books opt in or do some annuals with the theme. It’s just a fun break from the usual and with this issue resulted in one of the best single issues of x-men period.

Naturally given the name, which is cleverly displayed on a sign the x-men have because of course they do, it’s exaclty that: Emma and Jean after readying themselves (Jean kisses Scott goodbye and Emma downs a bottle of jack because why not do an alchol before doing delecate mental surgery), head in.

Inside they find horrific old lady head doors, stone ol dlady heads around a tower that shoot lasers, and said doors also bite and puke weird goop because it’s Grant Morrison. This is his chance to just go full balls out weird.. and given last time involved skin flake golemns.. and this isn’t even the weirdest he’s done. As mentioned last time he once had a supervillian run for president using a super LSD Bike that made everyone high.

And just to prove he can reach that level of weirndess we find charles alone, naked and with an overenlarged brain.. before he transitions Jean to a field of sperm.

Yeah... but this DOES have a point.. as it turns out it’s a meaphorical transition into his gestation as a baby.. and how he had a twin. Yeah turns out Cassandra was not lying he did try to kill her.. but as you can probably tell by the fact she’s a genocidal sociopath, she lied by omission to screw with Hank: In the womb she tried strangling Charles to death with his own umbilical cord..only for him to use baby’s first psonic blast to send her reeling and his mom tumbling down the stairs and well.. you can probably guess the rest. Yeah.. Cassandra’s entire origin story is concentrated

And I love it. The sheer audacity is nice and everything but what makes it really work for me is the simple concept: An evil version of charles, one almost born at the same time whose every bit as evil as he is good.. granted there’s a TON of Morally Grey in Charles Xavier ESPECIALLY post decimation and even more so now with Krakoa. But he’s sitll at his heart a well meaning person, while Cassandra at her heart is a racist genocidal nightmare. She is pure evil, with enough personality to not make her boring.. and more importanlty all the power charles has but NONE of his restraint. Part of what makes Charles noble is he only uses his powers when necessary. Cassandra.. has no such restraint and will happily mentally snap necks all day.

So with this our heroine’s leave and we end on the iconic line “Professor Xavier killed his twin sister in the womb. We Really ought to talk.

This issue is an utter classic. It finally explains Cassandra a bit while still leaving a ton of questions, Frank Quitely is at his best here, and he and morrison are incrediby good at non verbal storyteling. The result is surreal, unsettling and awesome. Check it out. Seriously seek this one out it’s worth the trip. It’s so famous it was homaged with a spirtual sequel in the recent Giant Size X-Men one shots. It’s excellent stuff

Imperial:

So with our first issue we open with things going terrible on that flag ship Cassandra took off on with Lilandra, empress of the Shiar and Xavier’s space wife. She’s revealed herself, is ravaging the ship and mind rapes a the helmsman into crashing it, so with no other options Lilandra sends Smasher, not the one from the avengers run earlier version, to earth to send a warning to the X-Men.

At the School things are actually going well for a second. In an intresting move the school is changing things up with no officla timetable.. which I think means there’s no rigid class schedule and you can just do them as you please or as necessary for your power. The plan’s the same, they just want to learn from each other in building mutant society and the future. It’s ideas like this that are the bedrock of the current run and were sadly never fully realized here.. but I don’t blame this run for that. Morrison had 2-3 years and it was cut short early, leading to a rather disapointing ending we’ll get to. They never had a chance to really dig in because they were kicked out by morons and then their whole grand design was undone until Hickman un-undid it in 2019. And even then some of this like the idea of mutant culture and what not hasn’t been picked up on yet. I do mean YET, as given the sheer NUMBER of x books touching on all sorts of subjects, it’s only a matter of if not when.

As for who’s behind this it’s a combination of Jean and Charles: Jean is using charles notes and is going at full tilt. Scott is concerned though.. both about her since she went Phoenix and Logan told him about it and because these plans may alarm the humans. ON the former Jean just brushes him off which is not right.. given what happened with the phoenix force copy of jean, which granted had her personality, memories and powers and Jean later got a set of her memories so it might as well of been and only MAYBE the genocide is something Jean wouldn’t of done under the same circumstances, he’s understandably concerned. He lost her to it last time and it did weird shit to poor Rachel, who hif you don’t know is their daughter from an alternate timeline... because the Summer’s family tree is a WAKING NIGHTMARE. Thankfully I don’t have to untangle it because there’s a handy chart right here to do it for me that was recently released in X-Men Legends, a new series featuring legendary x creators telling stories in the cracks... and given we’re getitng storys by the simosons and peter motherfucking david, yeah good stuff.

And why yes there are more than one clone in this tree and several alternate timelines. , not to mention several clones and a sexy cat lady, it’s complicated is understnading it and i’m not sure what properly states it honestly. Also if your wondering about Adam there he’s the genetic son of Cyclops mom and the ma Shiar empreror who killed her for not sleeping with him through. Again it’s complicate REALLY feels like understatement.

Point is he DOES have a right to be worried about the thing that lead to her being cocooned for a while and left their daughter in the future at the time of this... just in case you needed a reminder after that wonderful clusterfuck of a chart up above athe x-men are really fucking weird.

So Jean brushing that off is not okay. She does however call him out on the second one and rightfully so: This isn’t some dominate the humans manifesto: this is simply changing the course of the future and how they teach their students to create a better one instead of adhering to human norms to try and appease “the republicans’, as jean puts it.. which has only gotten MORE RELEVANT, 20 years on: Attempts to appease the norms of society and things “just because that’s how it’s been” have never been a good thing. It’s why the very writer of this comic took several decades to properly identify themselves as non binary because people were too stuck int heir ways to try and see if there really were just two genders. Fighting against the grain, finding new ways to express things that have always been there... it’s what humanity needs to do and certainly what comes after us would need to do. i’ts how we get better as a race. If something’s not working we change it, quickly or slowly. And given Scott’s huge amount of emotoinal repression lately.. I can see why she’d see the former complaint as just him being a dick as opposed to the genuine concern it is.

Short Version: Jean Grey is fucking awesome and while he’d be the last to write her for decades, no one did it better than Grant and no one has since. Hopefully Gerry Duggan can clear that bar.

After this fight we get a fuller verson of what happened both at the end of issue 120 and in the big reveal last issue: Turns out Hank awoke because Charles piloted his body like a truck and needed it revealed fast. Hank’s regained control of his body and facilities by now, but in a twist of irony he helpfully points out, had Cassandra not gone a needlessly cruel and sociopathic tangent and had Beak beat Beast into a coma, Charles wouldn’t of had a body.

As for Charles in cass’ body he’s now in a tub of goo created by it.

It acts as a shield as well as melding him with Cerebra so he can talk to jean telepathically as his thoughts are very weak.

Thanks to this and her psychic Jaunt, Jean now knows just what the hell cassandra is: She really is Charles twin sister. As for how the hell she surivied outside of the womb and how Charles never knew, she created herself a clone body using his cells and didn’t fully manifest till now. And while she has plenty of intellegence, at an emotional level she’s fully convinced, much like an infant that only she and charles are real and thus destroying him means gaining domance over her world. So in short she’s both utterly insane and now has an interstellar empire at her fingertips.

And the news SOMEHOW get sworse: She booby trapped her body and charles only has days before he’s vegatable, having put every psychological disease possible in there, and she’s probably responsible for their colds and the u-men. So in short their pretty scrwed but at the very least Charles plans to try to flip things, use the fact their now public (a clear tactic to weaken them) to share his manefesto, his last will and testiment if you would.

Scott meanwhile figures since their sick a healer might be a good idea and goes solo to fetch Xorn... who just sorta disappeared after the annual and didn’t return till his arc.

We get an utterly touching scene after this: With Logan staying on his hobbit like toes in case of another attack, Jean goes to talk to hank. Hank is still throughly traumatized from the attack, fearing Cassandra is right and he’ll just keep devlovling until he ends up in a metamoprhisis type situation. I mean it’s not ALL bad hank,.. I mean going through that guarantees a musical about you.

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But Jean reassures him: It’s okay to be afraid of her, they all are.. but as she puts it...

It’s a really powerful inspiring scene... and really afirms how well Morrison writes Jean from the previous arc onward. She’s confident, powerful.. but also caring and compassionate. Here hank’s at his lowest, disparing that this might get worse.. and she reaffirms that htis evolution is an upgrade.. he may not be the same.. but that’s okay. He’s better. It really speaks to the core message of the X-Men as a whole and why they’ve stuck around all this time: It’s not just okay your diffrent.. it’s WONDERFUL. Your wonderful for being you. Whatever meataphor you read into it, it’s at it’s core a message that no matter who hunts you or trys to shame you for what you are, they are wrong and you are wonderful. And you are not alone... your people are out there.. and they will go through hell to protect you. It’s moments like this that remind me despite the bad parts, the accidnetal transphobic metaphor last time, a subplot with Hank coming up, the affair storyline and Planet X, just.. Planet X.. this run is special to me for a reason. It has heart, character and truly gets how the x-men should work, what makes them great... while making something NEW AND FRESH from it’s bones. Pushing envelopes, chanigng things for good and shaking things the hell up after far too much stagnation. It’s just pure good comicy goodness and i’m proud to finally be talking about it after having always wanted to.

So as we end the issue Scott grabs Xorn, whose been at a budist temple all this time, and Smasher arrives to warn earth... but his warning missed his intended target.

Well at least he got to Hellcow’s coven.. maybe she can call in Man Eating Cow and the Chick Fill A Super Cows.. thought hey might not help. Their parent company IS pretty homophobic.. I doubt their high on mutants either.

Testament Emma and Jean talk over things how i’ts going etc, with Emma unsuprisingly annoyed with most of the students and Jean optimsitc.

But Emma soon has bigger issues to deal with: TEEN ANGST!

Yeah 4/5 of the Cuckoos are upset Esme has a boyfriend. Their concerns in part are because without her their apparently powerless.. which given one will die and another will leave and they’ll be left with three is just factually not true, and either Morrison changed his mind later, or more likely their simply exagerating like teens do. Emma points out it’s pointless to fight this...

So... their in a domestically abusive relationship rife with sexual tension? Are you sure your not htinking of Sam and Diane, Ross and Rachel, Garfiled and Odie perhaps?

Meanwhile Angel’s sulking in a tree talking about how all the kids are stupid and she dosen’t fit in. That sort of thing. Wolverine naturally has a tactful and understandable response to this:

It’s here Angel goes from understandable, a bit hard edged and obnoxious becuase of a very rough life.. and just becomes annoying. I do get what Grant was trying to do: he was trying to play with Wolverine’s habit of taking sassy teens under his wing by giving him a more hardscrabble one with a harder life pre-xaviers.. not that Jubilee’s was easy, but I get what he was going for.. he just dosen’t succeed. Instead of a realistic version of a teen sidekick she just comes off as an obnoxious brat whose rude to everyone including her one friend Logan and her later boyfriend. It dosen’t help that ONCE AGAIN, Morrison flew directly into unfortunate implications without meaning to, by having the only major POC character (Bishop guest stars later and there are two significant characters during the Riot at Xaviers arc but both aren’t relevant before or after), be an abused teen with gross fly based powers and a teen pregnancy subplot. Seriously this isn’t even the LAST time Morrison shoves their foot in their mouth like this in this run. While I do like this run a lot, it’s still 20 years old and it’s still going to have a bunch of bits that have aged like harvarti left on a sidewalk, and handing out unfortnuate implications like their candy is tied for the biggest with their handling of Magneto when he finally shows up in person. It’s THAT bad a take on the character that it’s up there with accidental racisim and transphobia.

So moving on from.. that we get Jean comforting the professor before meeting the press, giving a throughly lovely speech about how Charles got his powers 30 years ago and despite seeing the worst in humanity, used his telepathy to allow him to see past it and see deep down just how scared and alone we all felt. So she takes them into a psychic conference room and we get a very interesting exchange.

It’s an interesting parallel to how real world disinfranchised groups, how it takes time.. but soon being a POC or LBGTQ+ goes from unrightfully perscuted to celebrated. How a group starts with hates whipsers on the fringe of things but grows to be accepted, like it always SHOULD have been. Take representation of Trans people in the media. It started with Trans people being almost entirely punchlines and sources of fucking horendous “DID DEY USED TO BE A MAN.” storylines and hurtful jabs at people who had transitioned, treating them as a sideshow instead of you know as fucking human beings. But now coming out as what you always were ont he inside is celebrated. Sure the right are dicks about it but they always will be: but most media gladly celebrates when someone comes out as trans. Same with being gay, or bi or pan or polamorus or nonbinary. Hell I admire grant for showing i’ts not even 100% perfect once you are popular: you still have to grapple both with people wanting to copot your culture and those who still don’t understand you trying to speak for you.

She also gets the standard question calling the X-Men an army, shoots it down with the normal global peacekeeping operation stuff.. then we get this bitch.

Who quickly realizes she’s outclassed by Emma Frost, professional that bitch. And while Jean is understandbly going to have to erase that.. I can’t blame her for snapping her.

Just to tear this shit down.: The privacy thing is not something she’s doing. All she’s doing is spcyhic teleconfrencing, you harpy. They fight greek gods and monsters to protect your sorry ass and the last one.. just makes me absolutely livid and feels so much like a real world comment i’m suprised there isn’t a fox news logo next to her bigoted head.

Trouble follows them everywhere they go.. because their mutants. They can’t help it. A LOT of shit like the demons, aliens, and gods and what not, I do not know if they actually did fight the greek gods but i’m not going to say for sure they did not, the norse gods defintely, not sure on greek. But the point is allt his stuff HAPPENS TO THEM half the time, or is a consequence of trying to PROTECT PEOPLE. I’m so nettled by this because this is how the marvel unvierse acts all the fucking time towards ALL super powered peoples. Mutants esepcailly but they blame the heroes and what not for being chased and harassed by guys in costumes or alien invasions or all the stuff they FIGHT. Sure sometimes they caused it but it’s either because of a monsterous person with a grudge or just because their powerful and some douche took an intrest. I’m just.. so fucking tired of asshole civlians in comics. It’s realisitc I know but it’s just hard to stomach after so many have turned their back on so many for such DUMB reasons.

Jean recovers well pointing out the genocide and how 16 million people, 16 million possible einsteinss or mozarts are just GONE, and that their trying to focus on the future. She also brings up autistic savants who can talk to atoms and while I don’t like the use of the savant thing, as it brings to mind stuff like rainman I very badly want to see this autistic kid who can talk to atoms as someone on the spectrum myself. Also I just want the crew of HIckma’ns books in general to pour over this because there are a lot of intresting powers and personalities only MENTIONED we never saw proper that could be great characters. Just saying.

Jean cocludes her speech to the world, including Logan whose wisely getting hammered at anearbye bar.. while Hank finds out what’s going on with their sickness.. nanonscopic sentnels in the blood.

But while the press confrence ends well with Jean having won over the press.. things go sideways as not only is it clear Esme’s boyfriend is in fact something sinister.. but Jean falls over due to the nano snetinels, and senses Scott being taken in tibet, taken down by a group of the Shiar’s imperial guard.. picutre the legion of superheroes but blindly loyal to the goverment and far more likely to get killed. And the rest are preparing to attacking including Gladiator who if you don’t know him, has all the powers of superman as long as he retains his confidence.

And it turns out Esme’s boyfriend is an advanced Scout, the shapeshifting amoeba blob thing Stuff, a new addition by morrison and good on him. And the Imperial Guard are here but with one goal

Superdestroyer

On the Ship we find out both wha’ts going on with Scott and Xorn, they’ve been taken and why the shiar are attempting mutant genocide: Cassandra is puppeting ALL of them, has convinced them the mutants are infected and since Lilandra is a puppet, Scott’s words fall on deaf ears.

Meanwhile Wolverine ambushes one of the squads, kiling one named Dinosaurer via claw to the brain, while Emma has had a dome thing put over her head and isn’t transforming into diamond to counter it because...

But the Cuckoos fight back, taking out oracle before easily handling stuff since his brain is fairly simple.. and given he’s racist against solid people and unlike the others reveling in the genocide just a tad.. yeah what he deserves. So now with a living weapon the Cuckoos make peace with Angel as they need all the help they can get.

Jean ushers the press into the panic room, not happy about it but not having anothe roption for their saftey. Hank tells her to self distruct crebra if cassandra get sclose and goes off to join the fight and let off some steam over the situation. Hank easily routes two of them, and one , Manta tries to just fly right ot jtean wince their TK proof. How does that go?

Jean gets to saftey after that, not that she needs it and hank is quickly taken down by a batch of Superguardians.. only for Wolverine to arrive in the Sknitt of time and chop them up.. oh and as one of the puts it...

Bad. Ass. I also like the addition of the flight patch, a nod to the Legion, who the Imperial Guard were based on as those kids used flight rings.

But while Logan and Hank easily tag team these assholes...

The SHiar call in the big guns.. Gladiator.. and I wasn’t kidding abotu the superman thing. While Logan TRIES to talk him out of it, the murders only confirm Cassandra’s bullshit and Gladiator breaks into the panic room throwing hank and wolverin’e before them having utterly decimated them off panel. I mean Wolvie is a badass.. but even he has limits. I also like recontecullizing the guard as a whole here.. showing just how TERRIFYING they SHOULD be as enimies to the x-men. Yes our heroes did win.. but barely and only till Gladiator showed up. In most cases thier clearly holding back out of affection but here hteir just at errifying unstoppable force, and also apparently used to doing genocides like this. It takes what was a cheesy shout out to David Cockrums other big artistic work, and makes it horrifying and it is AWESOME. I admit to not having liked this arc as much for the longest time but this reread, the sheer teror and hopleessness as an interstellar superman easily cuts through our mighty mutants like tissue... it’s awesome.

Thankfully one of the Guard found smasher.. and thus the truth comes out so our heroes are given a stay of execution with Gladiator clearly horrified at what he almost did and our heroes now so sick they can barely move and Hank can’t think them out of this.

Thankfully he dosen’t has to as back in space, Cyclops tires of it and points out something Xorn, not being as experinced nor having delt with the guard ahd thought of: G-Type, the glowly guy about to execute them, is made of solar energy.. and xorn can manipulate that thanks to his star brain. He does, they take out the rest.. and prepare to go save the day.

Losers: PIcking up shortly before where we left off we see Cassandra murder Lilandra’s advisor who figured out what she was just as our heroes escape.. and as Cassandra is having Lilnadra order all of the shiar ships to immolate themselves.

WIth Lilandra not being any use, Cass tries to psychically force her to commit sucidie but jumping off a space ledge but Xorn saves her. Cass tries another turn at mentally breaking an x-man, pointing out all scott’s recent flaws, his increased repression his faling marriage and while it gets him to stop it dosen’t quite work as well as it did on hank, likely because at his heart Hank is simply a more emotive person. Though his REAL reason for stalling is he can’t kill charles.. which he muses just as the ship blows up real good.

Meanwhile back at Campus the kids initaiate their plan, having Angel break in and take a dna sample. She also finds beak naked in a tank and decides eh why not and brings him with her. This ends up paying off as Beak suggests the obvious to get emma free.. just force the space guy they have over in the corner to do it. They do and it works

Back in the mansion our heroes prepare for Casssandra... but Jean and Logan object to saving her body, pointing out that getting hank to repair it is exactly what she wants, and that Jean feels she can save charles without uit, with Hank being understandably doubtful given their current condition.. but Jean’s real plan is to put charles in her head and it’s already too far in actoin to stop now: she’s been saving his memories as they flaked off and if she dosen’t do this now there will be no charles left.

Hank evacuates the civlians to teh danger room, and has an encounter with trish who tries to apologize and get him back.. only for him to rightfully regjecter her..a and then goes a step further by capping it off with:

Yeah on it’s own it’s not TERRIBLE. Still very dated to claim your gay just to spite someone, but for the time it was acceptable and compared to some of Morrison’s other gaffes in the run it’s minor at best. But it leads into a rather annoying subplot we’ll naturally get to that’s a much bigger issue, so i’ll save talking about it in full for when it comes up again.

Jean manages to shove Chuck into her head, but is naturally leaking a bit and barely holding it or him together and may of overestimated herself just a tad.. while on the lawn Cassandra easily takes out the guards. That said the scene of Jean taking Chuck into her head is REALLY damn awesome. Jean is the arc MVP by a mile and Hank is pretty dang good competition.

All Hell: We open the final issue of the arc with Scott and Xorn escaping the spaceship using some teleport tubes taking Arakai and Lilandra with them.

We open with Cassadra utterly humilating gladiator while the kid team prepares to fight her despite you know, the 8 billion to 1 odds against them.

Jean, despite hte discknes and trying to keep an old man in her brain marches out , prepared to fight, for the kids sake. For the world’s sake. But Logan’s easily taken out and with Jean barely holding it together.. the kids prepare to fight.. likely being slaughtered even if they mean well.. onlyf or help to finally arrive with Scott and Xorn glowy porting in. We get a really sweet , short moment with scott and jean...

Scott not knowing the situation tries to have Xorn heal charles first but since Cassandra’s body is dead and unoccupied that’s a no go.. he’s still usefult hough, curing Jean of her nanosentital sickness and moving on to Scott and Hank while there’s still time.

We find out more about cassandra: She’s a murrmadi, a bodyless parasite.. eseetinally the dark first test a person faces... she just stuck around because she was one for a telepath.. the world’s STRONGEST telepath. But really other than that part the rest just feels like stuff we alreayd heard LAST TIME, mildly repaackaged and seems enitrley like filler to pad the issue out.

So while Jean takes cerebra, both to keep it away from Cassandra’s plans of mutant genocide and for whatever she has planned, Scott, Hank and Xorn prepare to hold the line.. and as Jean mentions.. emma’s still out in the wild.

So we get our climactic showdown.. logan, hank and xorn veruss cassandra, with Cassandra trying to do eveyrthing she can, tear them down mentally, throw out the students with our heroes fighting back best they can. It’s good stuff.

Eventaully Cassandra gets to Jean.. but she’s already inacted her plan, putting a piece of Xavier’s mind in EVERY mutant, and giving Cassandra one ohell ofa reason you suck speech.

It’s an incapsulation of what i said earlier and what the runs about: alone we are weak but together.. we just might make it. More on that as we go. But thanks to Cass naturally going fo rcerberba.. she accidently restores charles and is left bodyless.

Emma finishes the fight with her own brilliant gambit, presending cassandra her body.. but it’s actually stuff , reprogrammed into a sentient brain for her to inhabit and leaving her trapped, with Charles hoping t teach the now mentally reset Cassandra. So Cassandra is beat, the virus is stopped, and our heroes have one.. but naturally for this run.. there’s one last suprise in store.

Charles can walk again.. and going forward will be a far more active member of the team. The team is complete, Cassandra is beaten, and the future.. is bright.

Final Thoughts:

This arc is a mixed bag.. it has really good scenes with the first and last issues being the standouts, with the former being an utter classic with an intresting gimick and the latter being a rousing climax with tons of awesome moments, with some good mometns scattered throughout.

But that’s the arc’s issue.. it has good moments and ideas.. but they don’t quite work togehter. The idea of teh Shiar Imperial Guard nearly doing a genocide is good, but the Shiar are such flat characters.. it’s really hard to care. They just don’t have enough connection to the x-men to really have the betryal sting but aren’t callous enough for genocide protocols to maeks sense. It’s a good idea, I still support it being terrifying.. but not enough is done with it and it feels liek Grant is more concerned with throwing weirdos at the x-men than actually saying something.

The biggest issue however is the art. While inconsitant art is an issue as they’d rotate artists.. but in previous arcs it was usually pretty evenly split but here it’s sloppy: Quitely does the first issue, van Sciver the second.. and the worst of the three Igor Kordey does most of the art. I gave him the beinfit of the doubt last time.. but this time not so much. His art is muddy and tries to be stylized but comes off confusing,ugly and not great. He’s probably a lovely guy but given he’s up against two legendary artists, his lack of style comapred to both shows badly. And given the arc is alreayd a bit overly complicated, it makes things WORSE by giving us muddled art in a very complex storyline. The flip flopping art makes a fairly intricate story very hard to follow. It’s easily why this arc didn’t grab me in the past and even seeing some better moments, it’s not the series best. It’s not the worst either, Planet X easily takes that ground despite having far better art. It’s an incredibly muddled incredibly long feeling arc and really needed to be compressed by one or two issues but instead is just hard to get through. It’s owrth it for the rest of the runa nd the good moments within but all in all easily one of the weakest points in the series.

Next Month on New X-Men:The X-Men soak in the new world order, and we meet fantomex, dust and the last surivivors of genosha.

Next on this blog:Green Eggs and Ham is back!

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2o2o-kit · 4 years

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An American’s Thoughts on Horrible Histories Songs

Born 2 Rule: Iconic, really set the stage for Horrible Histories, not my favorite George III song though that prize goes to Hamilton, (also I was always taught George III was mad in an angry way)

Wives of Henry VIII: This song walked so Six can run, still iconic

Making a Mummy: Kind of forgettable, but if we are going by the pattern as seen in the first two, I predict the next big history musical will be about making mummies

The Tudors: I don’t know why but I love this song’s intro, but I find the dance moves cringe worthy

Georgian Lady: It’s great when you can read along to it, but Martha is still iconic

I’m a Knight: I love the whole Monty Python inspiration, this always makes me smile, just pure wholesome knight energy, one of my favorite season 1 songs

Caveman Love: It gets better the more you listen to it

It’s Not True: Probably my least favorite Horrible Histories song, still better than most songs on the radio

The Plague: The plague was made for musical theatre, besides this check out Spamalot and Something Rotten

British Things: Drags on a bit, but haha Britain, you are not perfect, (but America is far from perfect)

We are Greek: It’s king boring, but lyrics are still pretty clever

Burke and Hare: I’m not a fan of this TBH, maybe it’s because I’m not a huge fan of true crime and stuff like that, it’s not that catchy either

Literally: Nothing like an 80s rock parody, it’s also one of the funniest songs

Charles II: This was the first HH song I listened to and I’m glad, because it’s a banger, and this is probably the closest you will get to a kid friendly Eminem

Spartan Musical: This is so camp and just you have to watch to understand

WWII Girls: Katy Wix needs to be in more songs, I love the costumes in this

George IV: I’m obsessed with this one, Jim’s vocals in this are perfection, definitely one of my favorite of the whole series, I wish I could belt like that

Blackbeard: The acting in this is perfection, I still laugh while watching it

Victorian inventions: I’m not a big fan of this type of music, but it’s still funny

Hieroglyphics: Idk why Mat did a Texas accent, and I’m not sure but it’s not bad, but it’s not as great as the other songs

Cowboys: The accents are good but I could go without all the farts

Boudicca: This is an inspiration

Funky Monks: I’m not a big fan of this one, it’s funny but I wish they had more singing in this, but Terry is great as always

Pachacuti: At first I was bit nervous to watch it because of the brown face, and yes it’s in there and I also thought it would be too cheesy but that’s the point and makes it so much fun, also what’s a northern accent

Dick Turpin: For most people it’s the guyliner that makes this a thirst trap, for me it’s all the tricorn hats 😍. When I first watched this video I recently developed my tricorn fetish and this song was just... The music to this is great too, I listen to this daily. And imagine me learning that this thirst trap’s name is Dick

Monarchs: Iconic, super helpful, now I can name all the English monarchs, thanks

William Wallace: Better than Braveheart, seems like a lot of fun to film

Work! Terrible Work: Hey look theatre reference, this so is definitely not a mood booster, but those sideburns (and I’m not really into sideburns)

Ra ra Cleopatra: Martha is killing it, and I love all the Lady Gaga references

Richard III: Thanks for talking about the horrors of Tudor Propaganda and the lyrics in this are amazing

Evil Emperors: If you claim your bad, don’t make such a catchy song that can easily be confused as another thirst trap, love the parody and Caligula and Nero and some of my favorite HH characters

Suffragettes: This song proved how hard these ladies worked, also I want to sing this song with others, who’s in?

Ain’t Stain Alive: Okay just like Pachacuti, I’m sure this song can’t work today, but it’s great, so catchy and the screams, also the behind the scenes of this is iconic

Age of Stone: I like how it explains the time periods but I’m not really a big fan of how it was presented

English Civil War: The choreography is on point, Lawry needed to be in more songs and I love the song they parodied, it’s Cool from West Side Story

Celtic Boast Battle: I don’t know, I find it a bit too much but the ending is perfection

RAF Pilots: Now I’m not big on war history, epically WWII, but song is perfection, I love the coloring used for this, the music is just awesome, and this along with The Captain from Ghosts and Molly McIntire are proving the WWII is gay

Nature Selection: I’ve been using this phrase a lot during the pandemic,

The Thinkers: Alright, no strong opinions

It’s a New World: A jam, love the shade of how the pilgrims treated the natives, and it’s a great parody altogether, also I need a New New Castle now

Mary Seacole: So catchy I love it, and the dancing is great. I wish they didn’t cut out that one lyric about Florence because that’s important

Victoria and Albert: It’s kind of slow, but I can see why others like it, maybe it’s just because I’m alone

Blue Blooded Blues: I don’t really like Blues music, even though I’ve lived in cities known for their blues, but James Cape™️, GAAAYYYY!!!

The Luddites: Definitely one of my favorites, I love the cinematography, the costumes are my type, and nothing like historical heavy metal, ironic right, and Jim has the vocal range

The Borgia Family: I love everything about this, the music, the accents, costumes, this is better than the Showtime series, wish Ben got a solo in this song though, (also is it just me or do the Borgias remind you of the Trumps expect the Borgias are more like able)

Mary I: It’s okay, Sarah in this is great and it’s a great parody but I always thought of Mary having a deeper voice (I know weird)

William Shakespeare and the Quills: I love Shakespeare, but I’m not a big fan of this type of music, also I low key wish Shakespeare was sexy in this one

Georgian Navy: Please forgive my star spangled ass, but I’m not a fan of the British military during the Georgian era, and yes I know Nelson didn’t really fight in the American Revolution, but I’m not a big fan of war history

Flame: Will get stuck in your head, but who cares it’s an awesome parody, Jesse Owens in amazing, we love Jim’s Nero, and Mat you said you were all nude (I feel cheated)

Death’s Favorite Things: Hilarious, and a mood for me

Rosa Parks: Now Rosa’s story is something we get drilled in our heads in America, which is good, this song is so catchy and I love the costumes, but the ending did say ‘segregation was ended in America,’ but technically...

Vikings and Garfunkel: Aww so peaceful,

Charles Dickens: I love the music on this and the cinematograph, but there is something about it that I’m not a big fan of it, but I’m not sure what

Crassus Minted: A freaking underrated banger, just like the real Crassus

Joan of Arc: I’m sorry but this song is a bit cringe worthy but still way better than the new seasons

Alexander the Great: I mean is there any other song that can truly depict Alex

Owain Glynwr: Wish they had more Welsh history on the show but Tom Jones parody I never knew I needed

Transportation: The dancing in this is amaze, and I’m obsessed with Ben’s accent in this, how is his Midwestern accent better than mine, and I have a Midwestern accent, (stop making me like Henry Ford!) and I love whenever they do musical parodies

Henry VII: This song makes me want to be Henry VII, he made the monarchy great again

Matilda Stephen and Henry: There are more ABBA references in this than a production of Mamma Mia, and it’s brilliant,

Australia: I’m surprised they got away with saying Hellhole in this, but still very catchy, low key wish Thomas sang this in Ghosts

Cousins: It’s silly and I like it

Love Rats: Lyrics make me want to remain single, video is having me crush on actors that are old enough to be my parents

Final: Supersweet, but I can only watch it once because it makes me emotional

#horrible histories #my opinion #history

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rachelalghul · 4 years

Note

Prompt: Damirae sexy time, using your profile icon 😘😉😜

Ooooohhh mmmm here it goes; also, sorry for the late post !

[Edited: I forgot to put the warning 💀]

Warning ⚠️: Super explicit content

- Damirae request fic #2 -

They were watching a movie in the living room. Lights off, theater speaker was on, drapes off, the only source of light was from the 60-inch smart TV in front of them. Some dumb movie that Gar chose was playing and both Damian and Raven just went along watching it, not without Damian taking time every now and then to criticize the movie, just to piss Gar off. Raven rolled her eyes with a playful smile watching the bickering Gar put up to defend his movie choices. The movie was bad, but she still enjoyed the sound tracks they used in the movie, it increased the serotonin in her that under the blanket she shared with Damian, her hand moved to rest on his open wide lap. So close to his center.

Damian turned to his left with a curious glance, but Raven didn’t show any expression on her face as her eyes were straight on the movie. He let it go and tilted his head back to the TV and continued watching the movie. He was yawning when the hand on his lap moved a bit up, her pinky finger touched him. He felt himself jerked to the sensation; he could feel everything when his sweatpants material was so thin. His eyes scanned the dark room, everyone was intently focusing on the movie; Gar and Wally were in front of them on the bean bags, munching on the popcorn placed between them.

He glanced at her, voice in a whisper, “Raven,” his tone warning.

Raven ignored his warning and boldly moved her hand to his core, quickly grabbing him in her hand. Her lips twitched into a smirk when she heard the sharp gasp next to her. Slowly, she let go of him and lifted her hand higher, her fingers gracefully grazed the skin below his belly button. She let her fingernails played around on his skin while her eyes were on the movie until she felt the trails of trimmed hair, leading to the place she was craving for. Her four fingers slipped under the waistband of his sweatpants and she touched the base of his semi-erect dick. She didn’t wait any longer to wrap her hand around the base, listening to the sharp intake of his breath.

She turned her face to look at him and was met with a dark glare, he was breathing hard and glaring at her. The soft lights from the TV shone his face and she could see the lust pooling deep inside his green eyes. Raven smirked; her hand slowly began to pump him up down to get him to fully erect. Her thumb swiftly grazed the tip, feeling the wet pre-cum. She took her hand out and brought it to her face. She made sure to lock eyes with him when she leaned forward, her tongue peeking out of her lips to lick her coated thumb.

Damian’s eyes widened slightly and he was fully erect now. The sight before him; Raven tasting him on her thumb while staring at him daringly. Oh fuck.

He took a deep breath, trying to make himself composed before leaning forward and pulled Raven to him by the waist, his lips at her ear, “I want you in my room, on your knees, in front of my bed. Now.”

Raven grinned, her fingers clicked and they were transported to his room without anyone noticing. She watched Damian sitting down on the bed, his legs wide opened. He put a pillow on the space between his legs.

He looked at her, “On your knees.”

She hummed, walking toward him and knelt down before him submissively. Her dark eyes looked up into his green eyes, she tilted her head, “What do you want?”

“I want you to continue what you started, with your mouth.”

Raven pulled his sweatpants down and Damian willingly lifted his hips up, watching his erected dick sprung out in front of her. His eyes followed the movement of her fingers swiping her hair to the back of her ear.

“Wait,” he leaned forward to his night stand and took the hairband that Raven left when she slept over in his room.

Raven watched him with her big doe eyes, waiting for him. He pulled her hair into a ponytail and tied it. It was loose and messy, something that normal Damian wouldn’t sit still without trying to make it neat, but nothing mattered when her wet hot tongue touched his base, licking it from the bottom up to his tip; slowly sucking him in, following her own pace.

Damian leaned his head back, his hands holding him up from both sides, cursing at how good it felt to be inside her mouth. Cursing at how he just wanted to fuck her mouth so bad she would be drowning with tears rolling down her cheeks. He took a deep breath, calming himself down to stay in control.

She started pumping down his dick, filling her mouth as much as she could, her hand covered the part she couldn’t get it in, just yet. Her tongue swirled around, making sure to feel the veins popping up. Her free hand cupped his balls up, listening to the hiss sound she stared up into his distorted face filled with immense pleasure. She swirled her tongue around, tasting him better while pulling her head up and when her lips were wrapped around his tip, she waited a few seconds to grab his attention before sinking down fast.

Damian’s hand was quick to grab her head from behind, a short breath of curse fell from his mouth, “Fuck, Raven,”

His hand slowly pushed her head into him, following the pace he wanted. He started slow and smooth, making sure Raven was comfortable and not being forced, then, he felt her mouth going faster and he grinned satisfyingly. He had just gotten his green light. He pushed his hips up and pulled her head in simultaneously, rolling his eyes to the back when he felt his tip at the back of her throat. He was starting to see stars; their pace was faster and it was getting sloppier but he didn’t care. He didn’t give one two shits when he was getting his soul sucked so good.

“I’m almost there, don’t you dare stop, Raven,” his voice was harsh and husky, filled with lust as he groaned out loud.

Raven briefly looked up at her boyfriend, taking in how beautiful he looked with his head tilted up, eyes closed, mouth opened, breaths short. She used both of her hands to cup and massage his balls, stimulating him even more. She worked her mouth faster, her head bobbing up and down as she felt the grip on her hair was getting tighter and his moans were getting louder. She knew that it was only a matter of seconds before Damian let go of everything.

The moment she felt something hot shooting inside her mouth, their eyes locked in an intense stare as she took all of him in, dripping from the sides of her mouth where she couldn’t cover, eyes filled with tears trying to swallow every drip of his cum. When she couldn’t take it anymore, she pulled herself out and the last bit of his cum shot out at her sweaty face. Raven was breathing hard, coughing into the back of her hand and swiping her face clean with her free hand, her dark hair sticking to her forehead. There was still essence of him dripping from her mouth to her jaw, falling down to her skin and entered the valley of her heavy breasts.

And Damian thought she looked the sexiest then; he leaned forward and pulled her in for a desperate hot kiss which didn’t take long for Raven to reciprocate. He could taste himself on her lips and it was fucking nasty, but he didn’t care. He pulled her into his laps, never letting her lips go as he continued his frenzy kiss, taking all of her in, his hand deep inside her messy hair. The hair tie was long gone. Only when Raven tapped him on his shoulders did he pull out slowly from kissing her, his nose touching hers as they rest their face on each other’s forehead while raggedly breathing.

Raven tried to talk through her breathless state, “Let…me…breathe…for a…moment.”

Damian smirked, leaving trails of kisses around her jaw before locking her eyes with his, “I love you so fucking much,”

She grinned, wrapping her arms loosely around his neck, she tilted his head slightly to the side in a playful manner, “For giving you the best blow job?”

He rolled his eyes at that, not wanting to boost her ego. Then, a teasing smile appeared on his face, “Now let me eat you out until you’re a fucking mess you’d be begging me to stop but oh, Raven. I won’t stop, you gave me an erection in a room full of our friends, about to embarrass me.”

“Nobody noticed,” she shrugged.

He snorted, “Please, they noticed the second we’re not there because they want us to be there to watch that horrible movie,”

“Mmm,” Raven played with hair, feeling the softness of his brown waves.

Damian suddenly stood up with Raven in his arms, her legs wrapping around his waist. He turned around and her back was now facing the bed. He threw her onto the bed and crawled up to her, smirking fully, “Now it’s time for your punishment, Raven,”

-end-

God i hope this is good enough,,, i dont really know what to write using raven’s pic so i just went with this 😭

#raven #damian wayne #damirae #damirae fanfiction #demonbirds #fanfiction #rachel roth #titans #dc cinematic universe

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itsmyregularcat · 4 years

Text

Influenced by @white-cat-of-doom, and his Cats dream cast (please check it out), I have made my own.

This is going to be a tough one to figure out, but here is my Cats dream team, as of today.

I wish to see more productions to be better informed in my choices, so I need to get on some bootlegs I guess! (Some choices are actually going to be based off of assumptions of how the actors portray them).

I already know a bunch of my choices are going to be from the Broadway Revival (because I really like that production), and almost all are going to be from newer productions because I am way more familiar with them.

In alphabetical order:

Admetus / Macavity: Thomas Inge (Asia Tour 2017/2020 and UK International Tour 2018/9)

I quite like the Macavity redesign for Vienna 2019 and Asia 2020, so he gets the nod just for this. Otherwise, he is an established Admetus and seems to have fun with it.

Alonzo / Rumpus Cat: Fletcher Dobinson (Asia Tour 2020)

I have never seen him perform as Alonzo, but he has this energy about him I cannot really describe. From short videos I have seen, he seems to have a 'snarky' side, and just has a hell of a time flirting about with everyone during curtain calls. He has the moves.

Bill Bailey / Tumblebrutus: Kolton Krouse (Broadway Revival 2016 / Cats 2019)

They can fly with the best of them. Their flip in with the ball during the end of the Old Gumbie Cat is a cool addition. No strong feelings for this character though.

Bombalurina: Rosemarie Ford (Cats 1998)

If anyone exemplifies what it means to be Bombalurina, I think Rosemarie wins. The duality of caring attitude and scornful nature, combined with her moves and her voice all make her a top pick. Also, slightly older Bombas I feel are better?

Honourable mentions: Christine Cornish Smith (Broadway Revival 2016) for sure, Suzie Melloy (Asia 2017/2020), and Tanya Valenzuela (Mexico 2018).

Carbucketty / Pouncival: Joel Morris (South Africa 2008 / UK Tour 2013 / Palladium 2014 / International Tour 2016)

He does a relatively good job being juvenile, but not annoying in his role. Him screwing around during Tugger's song, Moments Of Happiness, and Skimbleshanks is actually endearing to a point. No strong feelings for this character though.

Cassandra: Mariah Reives (US Tour 6)

Another pick I have never seen during performances, but she looks like a good Cassandra. She is really pretty and appropriately tall, so ¯\_( ツ)_/¯. Bonus points for her lighting up during Misto's song.

Honourable mentions: Jessica Buckby (2013 UK Tour), Danielle Cato (International Tour 2019), and Emily Pynenberg (2016 Broadway Revival)

Coricopat: Corey John Snide (2016 Broadway Revival)

He pairs up very well with my top Tantomile pick, and cannot realistically be separated. This legend was also a dance captain, involved with Cats 2019, and did a split track cover of Coricopat and Jennyanydots during his run.

Demeter: Zizi Strallen (London Revival / Palladium 2014)

Real talk, I love her as Tantomile in Cats 2019, and her singing voice is beautiful and distinct. Her as Demeter is a good bet, and she gives off a happy vibe during less serious points of the show. That happiness she puts in 2019 Tanto is what she did with 2014 Demeter.

Honourable mention: Lisette Pagler (Gothenburg 2006 / Stockholm 2009). The OG grey Demeter. She is absolutely beautiful, and her non-rep portrayal design is neat. She is also an actual singer in Sweden, so her voice is top notch. I really like her as Demeter. Also, Ella Nonini (International Tour / Asia 2020).

Electra: Leah Sue Morland (Cats 1998) or Lili Froehlich (2016 Broadway Revival)

I cannot reasonably pick one over the other, I have disproportionately strong feelings for both. Lili made me fall in love with Electra as a character (and I mean, look who my icon is!), and Leah cemented it before and after me seeing the Broadway Revival. They both make a modest ensemble cat seem so much more important. One of my favourite Cats across any production.

Etcetera: Jo Bingham (Cats 1998)

Boundless energy and happiness rolled into one bouncy cat. No one had a better time during Cats 1998, and for a cat that does not appear in many production afterwards, Jo just said f*ck it and did whatever seemingly came to mind to forge a legacy. Biting Coricopat’s ass remains a landmark moment in cinema. One of my favourite cats in the film without a doubt.

George: Frank Thompson (Cats 1998)

He is sort of always there, enjoying himself. If I would cut a cast member, George would be it. Sorry George.

Gus / Bustopher Jones / Growltiger: Rory Campbell (UK Tour / Zurich / London)

Dignified Busto. A good Gus that does not play off too much about being old and decrepit. If done properly, Growltiger (for the sake of Griddlebone) should make a return to more productions. Remove the total racism and the open misogyny inherent to many portrayals of Growltiger, and make it strictly about the lovers.

Grizabella: Jennifer Hudson (for real) (Cats 2019)

I know this one will ruffle feathers, but her sad sap performance is quite unrivaled in Cats. She brought the gloom and the dejection of being casted out to life. Her singing Memory is powerful as all hell, and filled with emotion. She wins the screaming match.

Jellylorum / Griddlebone: Freya Rowley (Cats 2019)

At this point you are probably thinking, ‘my lord, what the hell is this person on about?’. Freya does not sing in the movie, and is just a background cat, but my god is she the best cat there! During her time with actual stage productions, she was a principle Tantomile, and covered Demeter, Jelly, Jenny, and Cassandra as swing. I know she can sing (even though I have never heard it), and I want to hear / see her as the most novel Griddlebone around. Big orange energy - get with it.

Honourable mention: Sarah Jean Ford (2016 Broadway Revival)

Jemima: Veerle Casteleyn (Cats 1998 / London / Dutch Tour)

The most vanilla choice, but she was the face of Jemima / Sillabub and the Cats ‘franchise’ when the 98 film first came out, and rocketed her character to great importance and notoriety. They used her for promo shots after the movie came out realizing how popular her character had become. Veerle is the innocence of youth personified. By the way, I am taking her without the overdub.

Honourable mention: Arianna Rosario (2016 Broadway Revival / US Tour 6) and Dawn Williams (UK Tour 2013)

Jennyanydots: Eloise Kropp (2016 Broadway Revival)

A younger Jenny still as wild as any other. Her greater involvement during the show is also cool to see. The changes they made to the Broadway Revival may irk some, but the Gumbie Cat scene with the choreography change is my favourite I have seen so far. Eloise does a really good job, and has a chaotic energy that draws me to her.

Mistoffelees: Laurie Davidson (Cats 2019)

On my pursuit of pissing off the purists, here is another controversial choice. He provides a character development that I think would work out well on stage. Imagine it for a second, with Tugger or Munk hyping him up. No Mistoria though.

Honourable mention: Joseph Poulton (UK Tour 2013 / Palladium 2014)

Munkustrap: Jack Rebaldi (London / Madrid / Paris / Dusseldorf / German Tours)

The man is a serious Munk, who is versatile with his portrayals. He gets so into playing the character, and seems to be having a great time doing it. Plus, how the hell can someone do Munk in English, Spanish, French, and German in the course of three years? Madness.

Honourable mentions: Robbie Fairchild (Cats 2019) and friend-shaped Michael Gruber (Broadway / Cats 1998)

Mungojerrie: Drew Varley (Australia 1993 / London / Cats 1998)

One half of the chaotic duo present in Cats 1998, with an oustanding level of dumbassery and foolishness that encompasses Jerrie. He encapsulates that attitude very well, and pairs perfectly with my top Rumpleteazer.

Honourable mention: Dante Hernandez (Mexico 2013 / 2018)

Old Deuteronomy: Nicholas Pound (London / UK Tours / Palladium 2014 / International Tour)

A bit of a different choice, considering most people would likely pick Ken Page (and for good reason). Mr. Pound has a great voice, and welcoming vibe. Behind the scenes, he is a chaotic Old D. Plus, his name is Dick Pound.

Rum Tum Tugger: John Partridge (UK Tour / London / Cats 1998 / Berlin / Dusseldorf)

Velvety smooth voice, swagger coming out the hip thrust, and a playfulness suitable for the rockstar cat. No contest with this choice. He also does not play of RTT as being childish or over the top (*cough 2016 Broadway Revival / US Tour 6*), which is appreciated. Sorry Tyler Hanes, your vlogs were delightful, but your Tugger was a bit too much.

Rumpleteazer: Jo Gibb (London / Cats 1998)

Jo Gibb is the reason I became super obsessed with Cats, and probably why my favourite character is Rumple. Having initially seen the 2019 movie before the 1998 film, seeing her smiling face and adorable portrayal made me sort of fall in love with her. She is a perfectly mischievous Rumple, and I feel is the benchmark for most others. Her engagements with other characters is awesome, and she is just the ideal actor. Also, Cockney accent Rumple is best Rumple I do not make the rules.

Honourable mentions: Every other Teazer. All of them. There is no bad one. They all have my heart.

Skimbleshanks: Steven McCrae (Cats 2019)

Big daddy Skimble, with the red pants and the moustache. Tap dancing and ballet powerhouse. WOO WOO. Enough said.

Tantomile: Emily Tate (2016 Broadway Revival)

Given all Tantos do not really have an opportunity to set themselves apart because they are more of an ensemble Cat, I liked Emily from the beginning I saw her, and I think she is really cute. Her, paired with CJS, make a pretty ideal Cori and Tanto. Maybe I am swayed by the amount of lifts and spins they do together during the show? They have a beautiful synchronization and grace with their movements.

Weaponize your Tantomiles, helicopter her above your Coricopats and take over. Kill Macavity. Become the Everlasting Cat.

Honourable mention: Kaye Brown (London / UK Tour / Cats 1998), Melody Rose (US Tour 6), Helen Gulston (RCCL Cruise). Realistically, all Tantos are good. I like Tantomile.

Victoria: Georgina Pazcogiun (2016 Broadway Revival)

A prominent soloist with the New York ballet, renowned for her distinctive style, and you can appreciate that if you watched a 2016 bootleg show. She has also pushed out against ballet norms by being "The Rogue Ballerina" as a means of embracing the qualities that make her unique as a dancer, such as her 'bigger' (in terms of ballet) body type. Her unique style as Victoria makes her my choice. Plus, she be sneaky.

Honourable mentions: Hannah Kenna Thomas (UK Tour 2013 / Palladium 2014 / International Tour / Vienna Revival), Tyler Lotzof (Asia Tour 2020), Alicia Beck (UK Tour 2013), Phyllida Crowley Smith (London / Cats 1998). Realistically, all Vics are good.

Any way, there is my shitshow of a production.

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aforrestofstuff · 4 years

Note

What do you think the OPM characters' guilty pleasures would be? I feel like Tatsu loves soap operas and Atomic Samurai secretly loves a really popular boy band, like SMAP

Thanks for your request, anon! Sorry this took me so long to get to, you were buried in my inbox lol. But I hope this was worth the wait because oh boy this required all 3 of my brain cells.

Tornado of Terror: As you said, soap operas. She also loves candy apples in canon. But...she also is a HUGE fan of those really cheesy Cosmopolitan magazines that have all of the personality quizzes and the “which hot male celeb would date you” scenarios. She doesn’t fall for it one bit. In fact, she hate reads those fuckers in the same way that people pay to go see bad movies. It’s fun.

Silverfang: Yoga and following along to some cheesy-ass 80s workout videos. I’ve said he likes yoga in a previous headcanon, but he also likes to exercise along to some obnoxious 80s pop while some dude in a leotard instructs him on what to do from a TV screen. He wears sweatbands and legwarmers, too. The whole shebang. He only does it when he’s alone, though. Sometimes he’ll try to teach yoga to his disciples as a way to help them decompress after a long training session, but his workout tapes are his best-kept secret.

Atomic Samurai: I don’t know what a SMAP is, but he’s definitely got some questionable music choices going on considering he’s... well, the way that he is. I’d say he likes to listen to old country, like Marty Robbins and Glen Campbell. It’s really funny because you’ve got this intimidating man from Japan (or a fictional universe basically set in Japan) with a badass katana and shit but inside that empty head of his, there’s just a faint “out in the west Texas town of El Paso....”

Child Emperor: Picking at scabs. He’s often on his knees fixing shit in his lab, and he probably gets burned all the damn time from playing around with lasers so he’s undoubtedly always has a wound healing somewhere. Whenever he’s working on something, he’ll just absentmindedly pick at his scabs. It’s a bad habit and he knows it, but nothing beats the feeling of peeling off an entire patch of that shit. So satisfying.

Metal Knight: Buying books. He doesn’t even read them. He just buys bigass novels with smart-sounding names to fill up his library because he thinks it’ll make his dick grow another three inches or some shit. One of the few things he likes in this world (besides homicide) is the smell of a new book. If he’s feeling particularly pissy, he’ll go into his library and just ssssssnnnnnnnnnniififfffffffffff. He spends an outrageous amount of money on it. If he has anyone over (which is unlikely, but hypothetically speaking) and they mention his library by asking something like “have you read all of these?” It’ll be one of the few times in his life that he’ll feel shame.

King: Reading and writing fanfiction based on his favorite video game/anime series. Nobody knows he does this except his small following online, of course. And even more so, nobody online knows he’s an ultra-popular S-Class hero who’s friends with the most powerful man on earth. He’s actually a pretty decent writer, he just doesn’t take himself too seriously so the plotline to his stories tend to get a little haywire and overly self-indulgent. Let him have his fun. He just wants to be a Sailor Scout.

Zombieman: Singing. He actually used to be a good singer (he sounded like a discount Steve Perry back in the day), but constant smoking really fucked up his voice. He might as well have lungs the size of grapes because he can’t carry a note for more than 2 seconds without wheezing like an accordion with asthma. He’s never sang in front of anyone before because he thinks it’s silly thing that isn’t worth showing off. Play anything from The Eagles though, and he’ll have a hard time resisting.

Drive Knight: He likes to open up panels in his arms and legs to play with the wires (basically a robot’s version of nerve endings, I’m assuming) just so he can feel something. It’s kind of sad because he doesn’t experience pain or the cold or being tickled... (I know what y’all are thinking and you’d better STOP). So he sometimes takes it upon himself to dick around with his insides and dip his toe into what it feels like to be human, even if it’s just for a little bit. He’s super secretive about it (he’s just secretive about everything, really) because he doesn’t want anyone to know that he desires something outside of being a weapon of mass destruction justice.

Pig God: His whole schtick is basically indulging in a guilty pleasure — pigging out on delicious food with no regard whatsoever for one’s overall health. Other than that, however, he does like to collect body pillows. There, I said it. All he fucking does is eat and he’s too much of a big boi to be going out 24/7, so he’s gotta be on the internet/watching anime/playing video games/reading manga during all of that downtime between his stints of doing hero work. His bed is fucking ginormous to handle all of that big boy-ness and on it, he has his body pillow nest. He rests on a throne made for kings. A true icon.

Superalloy Darkshine: Also working out along to some cheesy 80s exercise videos. His hero outfit was inspired from what those ravishing instructors would wear on the television. Well, it was supposed to be a full leotard but it ripped every time he flexed just a tiny bit so the speedo is the only thing that’s left. He’s gotta hella rhythm and keeps up with the music using little to no effort. Although, he can’t go too hard because he’s also a big boi and he’ll literally shake the entire building if he gets too turnt up. Dance muscle boy, dance.

Watchdog Man: Eating too many dog treats lol. Sometimes while he’s stationed on his little podium thing, visitors will leave him little offerings like dog treats and other miscellaneous food items/toys. He never takes them or eats them in front of people, but he often brings everything home with him after a long day just to gobble that shit up. He’s gained a little weight since he started doing it but you can’t even notice it because his suit is hella bulky. Some of it is due in part to stress-eating because being a dog and dude at the same time is hectic, but it’s honest work.

Flashy Flash: Racing shit. Whenever he’s on his travels during, say, assassination missions or hero work, he gets hella bored really quickly. So, to help with this, he’ll often race birds or planes flying in the sky on his way to his destination to see who’s quicker (it’s always him). Sometimes he’ll even play catch with himself by throwing a pine cone or something and running to the place he guesses it’ll land before it even touches the ground. He just does a ton of weird speedster shit whenever he’s bored and he’ll deny it if anyone asks.

Genos: Purposefully putting a little bit too much oil on his joints after each upgrade so he’ll be as slick as a salamander. It’s a really funny feeling to be able to move your limbs with little to no resistance without having to worry about popping or breaking anything. It just makes him feel so agile despite being like, a hunk of actual metal. If he wasn’t so uptight, he would loosen the screws in his fingers to he can bend them almost all the way back (he’s actually thought about it a few times), but both Dr. Kuseno and his 3 remaining braincells attested to that. He just likes to tinker around with his body and see what weird shit he can do. It’s a bad habit because it’s led to a few things being broken on multiple occasions.

Metal Bat: Zenko’s shitty pop music. Whenever he drops her off at school or piano practice, he’ll immediately go home and blast that shit on full volume (because he’s practically deaf from always jumping out of falling buildings and continuously blasting music in his earbuds) while doing chores and the like. He’s one of those people that HAVE to have something going on in the background as they’re getting shit done. He’d rather be caught dead than listening to the OPM equivalent of Taylor Swift because he knows Zenko would never let him live it down.

Tanktop Master: Wearing suits around the house when he’s not even going anywhere. He’s got to wear his tanktop 24/7 whenever he’s in public to keep up The Image (which he has no problem with, he genuinely loves the tanktop ideology) but he also needs to feel fancy every once and a while. So, if he happens to have the time while in between appearances, he’ll prance around in a suit tailored just for him. Because he’s so fucking huge that he had to pay someone a large sum to custom make an outfit that actually fits. He is 7-motherfucking-feet tall. 7.

Puri-Puri Prisoner: Making Valentine’s Day cards all times of the year. Listen, it gets boring as hell in prison. Sometimes the guards will let all of the inmates have a little glitter and glue to keep themselves busy because no harm can come of a little arts and crafts, right? He likes to make cards on the daily just to let all of his lovers know how much he appreciates them. If they express even the slightest amount of disdain for his creations, he’ll spent the next week crying in the darkest corner of his cell block. He also likes origami. Origami is huge in prison because it’s hella time-consuming and guaranteed to calm a busy mind. His favorite things to make are little unicorns.

Amai Mask: Bath bombs. There have been several mishaps in which he’s used a poorly-made bath bomb and came out of the tub looking like Shrek but he’s grown and lot since then, okay? After a long day or a particularly stressful concert, he’ll sink into some hot water and drop a ball of lavender-scented goodness in there. It’s become a bit of an addiction because he’s got multiple cabinets dedicated solely to his collection, but at least he always smells divine.

Iaian: Shakespearean dramas. Kama got him hooked on theater shit and he’s since ripped through all of the most well-known plays. He thinks in iambic pentameter. It wasn’t always noticeable since he’s a quiet, well-reserved guy but his fellow disciples and Kami have recently noticed that he’s developed a bit of a dramatic flair. Even worse, he’s started calling himself a knight whenever he puts on his armor. Everyone prays it’s just a phase but seeing as how stubborn Iaian is, that seeks highly unlikely. Kami is dying inside because he can’t handle another drama nerd.

Okamaitachi: Soap operas, like Tatsumaki. Kama is the most dramatic out of all of the disciples so it’s only natural that she’d like the most dramatic genre of any show out there. She doesn’t exactly watch them religiously though. She’s the type of viewer to drop off the face of the earth for three seasons and come back without knowing what the fuck is going on (because the disciples have limited access to cable due to Kami’s dumbassery and ignorance to anything technology-related), but still cry during the finale anyway because oh no these people are so hot and one of them is deaaaaaad and the other one is that person’s long-lost sister....

Bushidrill: Taking alcohol from Atomic Samurai’s stash every so often. Bushidrill knows what the good shit is and he could buy it himself if he wanted to, but why would he when there’s a perfectly good alcoholic to steal from living right down the hall? He only takes in small doses because, believe it or not—he’s smart, but Kami isn’t gonna notice regardless of whether or not Bushi takes 1 or 5 bottles at a time because the old shit couldn’t spot a purple raccoon if it was 3 feet in front of him. There have been times where Bushi has opened bottles of Kami’s alcohol right in front of him just to play God and he always, without missing a beat, says “Oh, we have the same taste. How neat.”

Fubuki: I’ve said this before in a previous headcanon, but she has a mild obsession with Victorian aesthetic. She’s got a small collection of semi-authentic ballgowns that cost upwards of a-fuckton-of-money each, but anything’s worth it to be able to play dress-up with Lily. Fubuki’s favorite thing is making Lily feel beautiful because everyone has been an insecure teenager at one point and she knows how it feels to not be comfortable in one’s own skin. This isn’t exactly a guilty pleasure because she’s not guilty about it, but it’s almost gotten to a point where an intervention is needed. She’s got so many damn dresses and sooooo much fine china....

Saitama: Retail therapy, lol. Saitama is only good at budgeting because he has no choice given how fucking poor he is, but give this boy even a little bit of leeway and he’ll buy the ugliest clothes (to which he thinks look poppin’) and the best meats without even batting an eye. His entire manga collection is the product of him having little to no self control the moment he realizes he’s got a bit of money to spend on himself. This is also the only time he’ll experiment with cooking because now he can actually afford to fuck up, literally.

Mumen Rider: Sweets! I’ve said this in a previous hc but he has a major sweet tooth. You can substitute salt for sugar in any given recipe and he’ll see it as a major improvement because he just goes absolutely buckwild for anything sweet. His pancreas is suffering, but he believes nothing feels better than curling up under the covers on a rainy day with a heaping helping of milk chocolate. The only thing that makes him feel better after getting beat to shit is a kiss on the cheek and box of his favorite cookies (and some bananas, lol).

Sonic: Like Flash, he also likes racing things. But, in addition to that, his guilty pleasure is doing his own hair in elaborate hairstyles (when it was longer). He’s pretty much homeless so he’s got a lot of time to himself in between murders. This is when you can find him sitting in the woods somewhere braiding flowers into his hair and tying it off with a moss ribbon. He’d never admit he does this because he’s a big macho man and he’d probably cry.

Garou: Spicy chips. I’ve said this before in a previous hc, but he absolutely inhales his food without even tasting it half the time so it’s not even like he gets to enjoy the flavor that much. He just likes the burn because he’s a shithead. He also doesn’t fear death or a torn-up asshole, so he’ll eat an entire family-sized bag of the OPM-universe equivalent to Takis without even batting an eye. He’s been beat to shit so many times that the agony that comes with downing so much spice is lost on him. He doesn’t even need water. It’s insane. Someone stop this madman at once.

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