i. probably the most wild thing - and this is true - was that she tried to break up with me using Chat-GPT.
ii. we hadn't ever seen eye-to-eye about this issue. i am flatly and annoyingly anti-bot. my entire thing is creativity and the empathy of the human spirit. communication should be about connection, not distortion through the lens of AI. otherwise: what is the fucking point.
iii. i am steadfastly loyal in all my personal relationships - to a genuine fault. that fault will become clear to both of us shortly. sometimes when you love someone, you give them the benefit of the doubt; even when you doubt that you benefit.
iv. however. i used to academically cheat a lot. i had all the sad-kid excuses you could possibly want - unsafe home, untreated severe ADHD, bullied at school. i skipped most of my classes, to the point that the truancy officer knew me personally. sometimes i stand on top of my own high-horse policy of why would you use AI? and then i see the hoofbeats i left behind me. didn't i copy homework? didn't i just sparknotes the reading? didn't i write multiple essays just using wiki as my main resource?
v. she started using AI for her job. admittedly it is a tedious, annoying job. the first steps, slippery-slope style, were uses of AI that seemed minimal - checking two documents for minor changes. reading over drafts for conciseness. the kind of thing that pushes but does not bend what "using AI" constitutes as.
vi. for the record; i stopped cheating in college. i instead became the kind of person that other people copied off of. once i'd moved out of the unsafe housing (and was free of bullies), i dedicated myself to my work with a passion my teachers called "honestly a bit much." but isn't it tempting, as an adult? why the hell should i write another cover letter for another position that's being read by AI?
vii. AI became the centerpiece of how she finished all of her writing, the way i had warned her about. the argument was pretty explosive. at that point i'd learned to be scared of her anyway - of ever having a different opinion. i tried to talk about how my own work has probably been skimmed. how it is destroying artists. i asked - how can you do this to the environment? after all - for years, she'd been vegan.
viii. there's no ethical consumption under capitalism anyway. and the world is falling apart. and everyone else does it. i keep hearing - it's here to stay, get used to it. and hell, maybe i'm that guy. sometimes i think of the panic people had when we invented GPS or tablets. how all the adults said it's going to make people stupid. maybe i am paranoid about the decline of civilization because every technological advance always does that to a generation.
ix. her job switched AI programs and she admitted to me that she couldn't really do it anymore. the new AI wasn't trained, wasn't as comprehensive. and she couldn't return to something she'd been doing for five uninterrupted years; that it was like relearning a language that used to be her mother tongue.
x. i don't know exactly when she started using Chat as her therapist. when exactly she started feeding Chat information about me. when she started answering my text messages with the famous unspaced-dash. i have my suspicions. i would have never known for certain, except that one night she opened her laptop to play a movie - and there it was. her chat prompt about me, and our relationship, and how we needed to break up. she said you weren't supposed to see that. i sat there and thought i am going to get dumped by a robot.
xi. the irony of it. i am a poet. before you ask - her final message to me had a "particular" structure to it. i still have no idea who said it. but then again: is there ever really a gap between master and puppet?
Do you believe it's possible that the Duffers backed out of Byler due to their desire to market Stranger Things as a franchise to a younger audience? Stranger Things was originally marketed as a television program for adults. A lot of changes were made to the show around season 3, and it seemed like they were attempting to expand their viewership demographic to older teens (Highschoolers) as well.
However, prior to season 5, they started to release a lot of merchandise specifically marketed for very young children. Polly Pocket playsets, children's school bags, Lego sets, Golden books (for anyone unfamiliar, these are very short picture books geared towards children aged around 4-6, to teach them how to read.) Photographs of the characters were plastered all over junk food geared towards children as well, such as Pizza Rolls and Chips Ahoy cookies.
They are planning on releasing a cartoon that is clearly aimed at young kids. I don't know much about advertising for shows, but I do know a bit about it in relation to food and consumable products. To build "brand loyalty," companies that sell products for adults will often times use cartoon mascots to attract a young audience, who will then think of their brand. A classic example of this is the Camel cigarette mascot, Joe Camel. Parents may not allow kindergarten and first grade aged children to watch the original show Stranger Things (especially S1 and S2, which were legitimately scary at times,) but will allow them to watch the cartoon. This introduces the brand loyalty, where they go on to watch the spin offs for teens and adults as they get older.
Prior to the release of season 5, multiple actors and people involved with ST stated that the season would be darker and scarier than ever. That was absolutely not the case. Aside from the scenes that were horrifying on a moral level (such as Will being orally assaulted at the start of season 5, El being reduced down to an incubator by her father, the pregnant women being treated as a spectacle/body horror and then blown up without another word spoken about them, the racist treatment of Kali, etc) there was absolutely nothing scary about season 5 in a traditional horror movie sense. It was nothing but bland conversations detailing exactly what was going to happen next, and generic CGI action scenes.
All of this leaves me wondering what went wrong. Why did they pivot on Byler at the last minute? Was it because the powers that be decided that a toxic heterosexual relationship that had been broken down was still less controversial to show to children than a healthy homosexual couple? Why was there such a sudden push of merchandise towards very young kids? And why was the show stripped of all of it's actual horror elements in the last season?
as someone who’s spent enough time working behind sets to see how creative decisions get reshaped by industrial ones, i could be completely wrong here, and that’s always possible. but based on what i’ve learned about this craft, the whole stranger things situation makes a lot more sense when you stop treating it like a single show and start treating it like a franchise machine.
seasons 1 and 2 were prestige tv: adult targeted horror, spielbergian pacing, a visual language that wasn’t afraid to be genuinely unsettling. but by season 3, netflix had repositioned it as an ip ecosystem, and once that shift happens, the story stops being the primary driver. brand management takes over. when a series becomes a tentpole brand, the mandate changes. it’s no longer “tell the best story,” it’s “capture the widest possible demographic for the longest possible time.” i’ve watched this happen on sets, the moment marketing and consumer products departments start circling, the tone, the visuals, even the blocking can get softened or redirected to make the property more “universal.”
that’s when you get the brightened colour palette, the quippier humour, the softened horror, and the merch friendly iconography. it’s the same trajectory we’ve seen with star wars, ghostbusters, jurassic world, marvel. once the brand becomes more valuable than the narrative, the narrative bends to protect the brand.
and the merch strategy you’re describing? that’s not speculation, it’s textbook. the sudden explosion of polly pocket sets, golden books, lunchboxes, lego, and junk food tie ins is exactly how you build brand loyalty in children. i’ve seen producers adjust entire sequences because a toy partner wanted a clearer silhouette or a more “marketable” prop. parents might not let a five year old watch season 1 or season 2, but they’ll let them watch a cartoon. that cartoon becomes the gateway drug to the rest of the franchise. and once you’re doing that, the content itself has to be “safe” enough to sit next to those products on a shelf. horror narrows demographics; action and exposition widen them. that’s why season 5 feels like it was scrubbed clean of actual horror and replaced with cgi spectacle and flat, over explained conversations.
which brings us to byler. from a narrative standpoint, byler was seeded, foreshadowed, thematically coherent, visually reinforced, the pink sky in the field scene alone is a masterclass in romantic cinematography. but from a franchise standpoint, a queer romance between two boys becomes a “risk factor” the moment you pivot the brand toward children and global markets. and this is something you learn quickly working behind sets: corporations will always choose the path of least resistance when protecting a billion dollar ip. queer representation, no matter how healthy, narratively earned, or thematically central, is still treated as a variable that can “limit” international distribution, toy sales, and brand safety. so instead of committing to the arc they built, they defaulted to the heteronormative option, even though that option was narratively broken.
the merch push before season 5 wasn’t about the ending; it was about the future. season 5 wasn’t being treated as a finale. it was being treated as a launchpad for the kids cartoon, the stage play, the spin offs, and the long term merchandising pipeline. you don’t end a brand; you diversify it. and to diversify it, you need the widest possible entry point.
so what went wrong? from both an academic and on set perspective, it’s simple: the duffers stopped being the sole authors of their story. once stranger things became a global brand, every creative decision had to pass through marketing, consumer products, distribution, brand management, and franchise planning. byler wasn’t dropped because it didn’t work, it was dropped because it worked too well, because it would have re‑centred the narrative around a queer romance at the exact moment the brand was being repositioned for children. and the horror wasn’t removed because they forgot how to do it, it was removed because horror doesn’t sell polly pockets.
again, i could be completely wrong, none of us were in the room, but based on what i’ve studied and what i’ve seen behind the camera, this is the version of events that actually tracks.
The amount of glossing over linguistics in Project Hail Mary does make me a little crazyyyyyy because even on Earth it takes months/years for people to build up fluency in another language. And even if we are just focusing on the translation dictionary, so just very simple word to word correspondences, it's still crazyyyyy that they are able to get 250+ words in a matter of days including abstract words. Especially since they have completely incompatible nonverbal body language! Auggggh
Anyways my headcanons I am Coping with:
Ryland is actually kind of a savant for language learning but he's an amnesiac so he doesn't know and even before that was genuinely "What, like it's hard?" about it. Like he secretly has an incredible ear for language, but he thinks humans evolved to learn language and everyone could do what he can if they tried but they just don't care. He can pick up the basics of languages and accents in a matter of days/weeks for fun, and was an absolute menace in grad school and during the "living on a big international scientific collaboration boat" phase of the project because absolutely no language was safe to gossip in, if you had tea he WOULD figure out what language you were kiki'ing in and start listening intently and teaching himself it from context clues and spring it on you when you least expected it
They are actually not that good at language learning and made a large number of incorrect assumptions at the start, and have learned a number of things completely wrong. BUT Rocky's memory means he remembers what all the wrong words are and he's like "Whatever, it's easier to use west for left then to correct the leaky alien" of whatever.
Building on previous idea, especially once Grace becomes confident in his ability to recognize Eridian words and is less reliant on his translation program- they are engaging in true freak2freak communication and are using extremely impressionistic vague meaningless language with each other but are such mathpilled science geeks that they can intuit what the other means because they are so good at engineering. Like they are sort of using each other as Ouija boards, they know what SHOULD come next as they're problem solving so they 'hear' the other say it regardless of what's actually being said
Like it makes a group of Eridian linguists absolutely apoplectic to listen to a recording of Grace and Rocky problem solving together and it's just them speaking in nonsense words and sentence fragments punctuated with math. Like 30 minutes of "And what if we...question?" "Oooh you could!" "And then-" "Exactlyyyyyy" "Amaze amaze" "Grace and Rocky save stars 🥰" "Yes yes yes 🥰" and the Eridian linguists are like HOW. Did you possibly save two worlds. While communicating like THAT. QUESTION!?
The running theory among Eridian linguists is that humans' ability to perceive electromagnetic radiation gives them mild psychic abilities and that's how Grace was able to intuit the meaning of multiple abstract words. He denies it but they absolutely don't believe him. His insistence that somethings just have 'a vibe' in particular seems suspiciously psychic to them.
Please more ortiz!rocky smut!! I love these but maybe excluding Ryland?
ask and you shall receive!
___
The telltale signs that Rocky has been courting you starts showing up when you notice that there’s a new article made of shimmering jewels on your pillow every night before you sleep. At first it’s a necklace. Next comes a pair of earrings. Then a waist chain and two anklets.
You’re under the impression that he’s giving you samples of his planet’s handiwork and technology at first. After all, you’ve both agreed to introduce each other to your respective cultures and practices; part of that is presenting human- and Eridian-made objects in multiple fields and usages. You’ve shown him how a radio and a television work, and you’ve watched a documentary about crystals that can be mined from deep within Earth. Maybe he got the idea from that show.
That’s your main theory when the first few necklaces make their appearance on your bed, and you hold onto that and its viability… until it starts to fall short in the next couple of days. Rocky insists that you wear what he’s given you. Not for dormitory decoration, he tells you, and you get a hint that he’s a tad hurt that you aren’t adorning yourself with his own creations. So you relent. He’s visibly happier when he hears the jewels chiming underneath your collar while you work in the lab with him. He makes it a point to stay close to you so he’s always within earshot of the sounds, because apparently they clink at a specific frequency that’s particularly pleasing to Eridian ears.
Speaking of which, you also notice that Rocky sings something short to you in a certain tune whenever he greets you or whenever he happens to be in the same space as you. It’s an Eridian translation of your name, you suppose; you don’t think much of it until you stumble upon a recording of it on the laptops — you run the program from time to time, as Rocky’s still building his English vocabulary by learning more complex words — and you find that it doesn’t have a counterpart in the aforementioned language. A quick extrapolation gives you the answer that he’s calling you by the Eridian equivalent of “beloved” or “darling”. Oh-kay…
That’s when it clicks. The gifts, the trilling, and the proximity. How he always finds a way to you after he and Grace are done with their work for the day. The weight of his stare when he thinks that you aren’t looking and you’re busy explaining Earth science to him, thinking that that’s what he’s interested in. He is interested in Earth science, to be fair — it's more advanced than that of Erid’s, and it greatly fascinates him — but really, he’s more fascinated by you.
He’s a pretty straightforward guy. You realize this early into the friendship, so it’s not an uncommon recurrence for him to be unapologetically blunt even when the usual human practice is to hold one’s tongue. He may be inhabiting a human body, but he’s still an Eridian to his core. And he is not holding his tongue about his intentions for you.
Rocky wants you as his new mate. He’s long accepted that Adrian might have a new one of their own once he gets back — they’ll work out the logistics of that; Eridians aren’t so touchy about polygamy like humans are, so it’ll be of little consequence when he makes his return to Erid with you.
His bigger problem is whether or not he can make you understand his intentions, because he catches wind pretty soon that you aren’t picking up what he’s putting down. You wear the necklaces and you respond positively to his terms of endearment, but you aren’t quite into the role yet. You’ve haven’t assigned a pet name for him, nor have you given him gifts for the purpose of confirming your love; it’s only for science, he believes. So Rocky plans to go on an even more aggressive approach. If he wants to truly win you over, he’ll have to corner you and clarify his very simple objective.
So that’s what he does.
You’re in the laboratory checking the taumoeba containers, as part of the routine chore that all of you had agreed to participate in. You can’t have another breakout, not when your fuel was just enough to get all of you to Erid, so you diligently test the tanks for any leaks, and log that there have been none within the hour that was assigned to you. Better safe than sorry.
As an additional measure, you do a second and third sweep on each of the receptacles, despite your drowsiness. The sensors are good; the astrophage slides are all pitch black, and there’s none of that awful methane smell of rotting interstellar microbes being consumed by its natural predator. You sigh in relief. You put away the tablet back into the slot by the door, and you jump when Rocky suddenly appears before you. A hand flies to your mouth to stifle the would-be scream.
“God, Rocky, I…” you let out a breath. “Don’t startle me like that!”
“Sorry, [name],” he says. He doesn’t look all too remorseful, though — his eyes are glued to the necklace that’s peaking out from the collar of your shirt as he gathers the rest of his words. They flit up at yours after a while. “You’re done with your work?”
You’re still a bit shaken up by the surprise appearance, but you manage a nod. “Yeah. The tanks look good. Nothing’s amiss.”
“Oh, okay,” Rocky mimics your gesture. “Good, good,” he pauses, “—can we talk? Alone?”
You blink. He doesn’t wait for you to answer, and instead takes you by the wrist as he leads you to one of the main viewports. You often spend your breaks here, so you have an idea as to why he picks this area of the ship to have some kind of tête-à-tête. About what, you don’t really know. Well, more like you can’t wrack your brain for a reason, because it’s way past your bedtime and you can really use some shut-eye.
Rocky doesn’t waste his time stating his business, much to your benefit.
“I need your answer, [name],” he takes a step towards you. For the first time, he finds it hard to look at you directly and resorts to playing with your hand that he can’t let go. “If you don’t want to be my mate, ‘s okay.” he says. A bit of his old verbal habits slips through his speech. “But if I can be selfish, I want you to say ‘yes’. So,” his eyes — which carry a hint of sadness in them — momentarily flicker up on your own, “I need your answer now.”
You take a deep breath. “I… What about Adrian? Isn’t it—”
“I told you before, Eridian culture is not like Earth culture at all. Multiple mates are fine,” Rocky replies, seemingly more desperate this time. He wants so, so badly to convince you, and you can tell this by his body language alone. He squeezes your hand, and takes the other to complete the pair.
“If… If that’s the case, then…” you trail off. Rocky visibly leans into you, highly anticipative of your verdict. It’s hard to escape his scrutiny when you’re so close to each other like this. You point your gaze at some insignificant spot of the floor. “I… I accept it. I can be your m—...!”
You don’t even finish your sentence. Rocky hoists you up, wrapping you in his arms and kissing you all over your face. “I’m so, so, so happy,” he says. He tightens his grasp around you. “Thank you, [name],” he plants his lips upon your temple, and he smiles. “You are mine now, and I’m yours,” he grins. “We’ll seal this now, yes?”
You tilt your head. “‘Seal’?” You echo, confused with his proposition.
Rocky chuckles. “[Name]’s so silly. You don’t know your own customs on Earth?”
Sex. Rocky meant sex.
That’s why he’s got you pressed up on the cold, hard glass of the viewport while you’re bare from the waist down. Rocky, too, is partially clothed. You’re both damp with sweat and covered in each other’s releases; consciousness oriented nowhere near coherence. Your hands are working overtime to keep yourself steady as he slams his hips into you, and to accommodate his own fingers that are laced through yours, because he insists on being as close as possible; to be connected to you in every way that he can. His lips are attached to your neck, reaching over to the best of his ability so he can keep on kissing you.
You’ve lost track of time now. You’ve no idea what hour it is, or how many rounds it’s been because Rocky has been in charge of every configuration, every contortion into which your body is being positioned. Amid your fleeting thoughts, you conjure a prayer of thanks that the stars — all witnesses of this sordid, amorous affair — don’t have eyes and are thus unable to be voyeurs of your copulation with your new lover. You should be ashamed, but alas, you aren’t. At this point, you don’t even care that your mixed fluids are dripping in a steady stream down your thigh. There’s so much of it; it’s better that way, Rocky said earlier. It’s good that there’s so much so that you won't forget that you belong to him now.
Every forward push nudges you further into the glass, and it makes the jewelry he’s fashioned for you jingle from the force. This pleases Rocky a lot; you know because he moans even louder each time he produces that sound from fucking you in this pace. Eventually he manages to peel your shirt off you so he can behold you in all your naked glory, adorned only by his gifts, all of which are catching and reflecting off every beautiful ray of starlight that’s entering the large, circular pane.
Oh, he can’t wait to see you in full Eridian garb on your wedding night. His cock twitches at his own reverie.
Rocky pauses to pull out. You whine from the loss, but aren’t given much time to grieve as he’s maneuvering you upward again. He carries you, and you cross your legs behind him. You hiss as he enters you again. He’s reaching much deeper places inside of you, and you don’t know if you can last through this round without gushing with something else. So you warn him. Rocky only gives you a lopsided grin.
“I d-don’t care, [name],” he pants. “I want everything you’ll give me...”
That’s the last thing that registers in your head before you’re drenching Rocky in your release, boneless and spent in his arms, unable to string any lucid word or thought. Rocky follows soon after, filling you up one final time before he decides that he’s completely staked his claim over you. It’s the most perfect exchange in his eyes: you, glimmering with precious stones, and him, glistening from your prurient liquor.
you know what? enough with the "Percy is just another dude" trend. He does not look like another dude. Hazel, a powerful big three kid saw him once and thought he was a god.
Percy was offered immortality 3 times before his 18th birthday. The Olympians, who chronically cannot agree on anything unanimously decided to grate Percy godhood. not immortality. godhood. Poseidon, who has literally tens of thousands of children decided that Percy was his favorite. As soon as Percy discovered he was a demigod he started kicking godly ass and never stopped, even in fucking Tartarus.
I need people to start realizing this. immediately. enough with the "he's just a plain dude." no. No. NO. from the get go they see that Percy completely out of their league. camp jupitar saw this and promoted him to praetor in the space of a WEEK. they merely glimpsed the potential and they tried to hang on to him.
Percy's profs at NRU recognize his intelligence (4 languages under his belt before 18 without consistent learning disability accommodations), and offer him a specialized program and he becomes one of the youngest demigods/leggionnares to earn a masters/PhD. In a shockingly short amount of time. they test his IQ and he's a veritable genius.
He joins the basketball varsity team and redos all their strategy plays and his teammates realize that yeah. this is the guy that camp up with the strategy to take down typhon. this is the guy that led the defense against Kronos. they can believe it. after one rousing speech by Percy he has them all ready to fist fight Jupiter himself. they fucking smash every single other college team off the board; it's like nothing anyone's ever seen before. every single one of them get multiple professional offers to join national/international teams.
his classmates occasionally see him hanging around new rome with people they don't recognize. except praetor Reyna does and she fucking gasps and kneels and it turns out his friends he like to hang out with casually? fucking Olympian gods. Hermes. Mercury. Apollo(n). Poseidon. Neptune. Artemis. Diana. they visit on his schedule. they do shit for him. because he's the one that saved their asses. and they fucking know it.
just. enough with the "he's just a normal guy, Percy Jackson." no. No. NO. the man is single handedly responsible for the fact that Olympus still stands and western civilization still exists. He is light years out of everyone's leagues.
Kaito Momota Getting Accepted Into Astronaut Training
Name pun aside, the fact that Momota attended a commercial high school—meaning a vocational school focused on economics and commerce—honestly makes his successful passing of the astronaut selection process even more mind-blowing to me.
I wanted to look into just how difficult it actually is to pass the astronaut selection and be accepted as a trainee, and in doing so I learned that applying to become an astronaut is arguably one of the most difficult selection programs in the world.
Under normal circumstances, you’re expected to have a certain level of prior experience—around three years of professional work experience—and a completed degree in a STEM field. And even then, the competition is insane. In the most recent recruitment round of JAXA, out of more than 4,000 applicants, only two candidates were accepted. If you apply for recruitment, you go through multiple stages of selection, ranging from written exams in languages and STEM subjects to psychological and cognitive evaluations, as well as physical examinations.
Now imagine someone like Momota suddenly barging into the examination hall—and despite his lack of professional experience, his missing university degree, and even the fact that he falsified documents, he still manages to get accepted.
I don’t want to glaze him, but the way I see it, you’d have to be genuinely extremely talented for these kinds of actions to be rewarded rather than getting you blacklisted. I imagine JAXA would only take on such a legal risk if they truly believed that rejecting Momota would be a serious mistake. And I doubt he would’ve been accepted solely because of his charming personality (not to mention that a good chunk of people see him as pretty eccentric).
If we assume that Momota was telling the truth about his achievements—such as being fluent in multiple languages and acing the astronaut exam—then, based on everything we know about him, I’d assume he must have acquired that knowledge mainly on his own. And honestly, when you consider that he attended a commercial high school—a type of school that doesn’t align with his career goal at all and barely even teaches STEM subjects—that just makes it even more impressive.
On top of that, I also don’t think Momota would be particularly popular among his fellow trainees. I mean, imagine studying and working your ass off for years to achieve your dream of becoming an astronaut—and once you finally make it, you suddenly see some random teenager with barely any experience achieving the same thing. Momota is probably also under a lot of pressure to perform, constantly feeling the need to prove that his acceptance as a trainee was justified.
(Noting that, I actually have a lot more thoughts on Momota’s possible school life prior to becoming the Ultimate Astronaut, as I was wondering why he attended a commercial school to begin with, but that might be fuel for another post—)
Thank you, @honeybeebunny111 . I suppose I should talk about myself and all that. I'm not one to spread things across multiple posts, so with your permission I'll combine two into one: WIP Wednesday and this thing.
And as always:
"ATTENTION!!! English is not my native language! Thanks for understanding."
"Когда поздно ночью читал похотливую аргонианскую деву и в комнату неожиданно зашла мамка"
I love reading stories about OCs and their relationships with canon characters from games, alternate histories, and the like. BUT! I don't read fanfics. Because if I start, I'll get too absorbed and starve to death. And I still want to live and draw. so sorry about that.
Right now I have about a dozen webcomics saved for later that I want to read, but I can't find the time. I solemnly promise (to myself) that by the end of the year I'll sit down and read everything I've saved. By then there'll be a nice backlog of updates.
What I'm doing: Trying to fit character figures into in-game screenshots. An experiment. Once again I realize I've only learned 10% of Ibis Paint. Layers! All the time I wasted using just two or three. My eyes still dart all over, the number of layers annoys me, but it's so convenient.
Here's the WIP — Vilkas's lineart without his "makeup".
Plans: Keep practicing, practicing, practicing.. Finally switch to PC and download a proper program ._.
What about the reactions that yelena, Bucky and John have when they learn Johnny is the human torch. Also does Professor Spencer start working with Kate in her lab once she moves back to New York.
More Evermore lore 🤍🥹
Honestly I’d love a dramatic TV reveal. Our beloved cops see it from the station. Bucky sees it on his mechanic shop.
News announce the engagement of a Fantastic Four Member. They have word that the most coveted bachelor of New York–who actually hasn’t been a bachelor all this time–Johnny Storm, is tying the knot with this girl no one knows. Tragic, the news say, millions of hearts broken over this.
John and Lena, of course huff when they hear the TV anchor going off about it, without even looking up from their work. Because what the hell kind of news is that? Who cares?
That is, until officer Ava Starr points out, “Hey–uh, doesn’t that look like that guy we saw with Professor Spencer?”
Heads snap up.
And yes, John’s jaw hits the floor when he realizes that Johnny Lowell guy he met a year ago in your office, that looked suspiciously resembling to your son, and whom you’d moved out of the city with just a month ago, was actually Johnny fucking Storm.
And you were going to marry him.
“Holy. Fucking. Shit.”
“Language!”
And for Bucky it happens right after he rolls out of a car all greasy, stretching his neck to finally eat the plums he packed for lunch, when he looks up at the little TV talking gossip. He almost walks past, but stops in his tracks when he recognizes the blonde guy on the screen. The same guy he saw multiple times walking in and out of your house, sometimes even holding Leo.
He crosses his arms, and whistles after a chuckle. “Huh. Now that I think about it they do look a lot alike…”
Now for Kate, actually no, because they didn’t move back to New York. They settled in New Jersey, close enough to the city so that Johnny could still attend his superhero duties and be close to his family. However, Professor Spencer–now Professor Storm–does retake on her education and even participates on programs from different cities, even in New York, but she never goes to work back in the Baxter Building. I do believe her and Kate are meant to cross paths again, maybe in a science competition where she is part of the judges panel Kate’s presenting a project to 🤍
