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nachosncheeze · 2 years

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Nothing Else To Think About (Blindspot 3x12 fic/extra scenes)

Also on AO3.

I want love back in my life. So do I.

Jane owes her husband an apology, and they're gonna have to work on it. Beginning with the final Jeller scene of 3x12, this post-ep is the third and final part of my mid-season 3 Jeller stories following on from my 3x11 fics "The Company You Were Keeping" and "A Pretty Good Reason", but it can also be read as a stand-alone. It's an attempt to fill in some of the blanks that canon left behind, in a manner that hopefully makes the growing strength of their bond through the rest of the season feel a little more natural. Contains mild spoilers through most of the rest of season 3, but nothing that'll ruin any big twists.

A note on timelines can be found below the cut for the curious, before the story.

Thank you once again to the lovely @lurkingwhump for encouraging me to explore and write out my take on Jeller's midseason drama. Hopefully this addresses some of the gaps in canon in a way that feels honest, and I hope everyone enjoys it. Let me know what you think. :)

Content warning for mentions of infidelity.

~~~~~

A note on the timeline: This story can generally be taken as fitting within canon, with the caveat that the canon timeline of events for when Jane was on the run is muddy at best, with a lot implied or open to interpretation and very little shown with certainty. In order to make this story happen I had to get pretty specific about developing a workable headcanon/interpretation built from the breadcrumbs provided on-screen.

I expect the most unusual aspect of this version of events for many will be that for my purposes Jane and Clem's association lasted only 3 to 4 months after Paris, and ended shortly before her close call in Switzerland and subsequent trip to Berlin. The money on the bed was all Clem's in this interpretation; some of it earned before he learned her name in Paris, making his "6 months" comment part of a sales pitch to convince her to form a more permanent partnership. That also places their tryst right around the lonely milestone that is the one-year mark since Jane left home, though you won't catch her explicitly saying so or using it as an excuse. Hopefully everything else will come through well enough in the story, but if anyone wants to know the details or where I got any of it, I can make a separate post.

Everything I've used does all technically fit into the spaces that canon left behind, but I realize it will differ greatly from some headcanons, so if it doesn't work for you please feel free to treat this as "canon divergent" instead.

~~~~~

Jane stood outside the door to the apartment she shared with her husband. Or… had shared with him, until she had walked away from him and out of this same door, furious and sad to the point of numbness, leaving her wedding ring behind. She stared at the numbers on its surface, breathing deep, trying to stave off a rising wave of panic. She had left the hotel, packed her few things and checked out, planning not to return there. She knew it was the right call to deprive herself of an out, but now that she stood outside what had been her home, her mind was a silent cacophony of anxieties and discordant thoughts. Her head said ‘just open the damn door,’ her heart said ‘you need to see him,’ but her feet and her stomach said ‘run,’ so she simply stood, trying to quell the noise inside her.

It had been one hell of a day that had brought her here. She thought listening to Kurt jumping out of a plane not that long ago had been hard, but he’d had a chute. She knew he did, he had to. He’d known what he was doing. And she was still angry, Avery was still dead; it was a near miss but it was a miss, so there was no need at the time to make haste in processing what she was feeling. It had turned out Avery was alive though, and she was safe now under the watchful eyes of Jane’s FBI colleagues. So when Reade revealed the significance of the location the militia was taking Kurt and his undercover partner to, suddenly all she could think about was her husband trapped in a bunker, underground, outnumbered and overwhelmed. She’d nearly panicked then, too, fighting to push away a rush of mental images of that bunker becoming a tomb. Her heels and knees had bounced as she sat, twisting her hands in her lap, chewing her lip throughout the brief helicopter ride to be his rescue.

When they landed and grabbed their gear, she took the grenade launcher. If those assholes managed to take him down, there would be no arrests; she was going to make sure every single one of them went down with him.

And now, standing before nothing more than a wooden door, that resolve was nowhere to be found. She was absolutely terrified.

She took a last deep breath to steel herself and knocked, then fitted her key into the lock without waiting. She knew that if his mood was anything like hers had been lately, he wouldn’t answer, hoping that whoever was there would just go away.

She stepped over the threshold and bumped the door shut behind her. He was on his feet at the sight of her, a glass of scotch in his right hand and the other hidden in his pocket. “Hey,” was all he offered.

“I’m not letting Roman win,” she responded without preamble.

He looked to the side, shuffled his feet, then leaned his shoulder against the door frame from the lounge. He’d been wishing for this, to see her back in this place where she belonged. But then he’d learned about Clem, and now that the moment had arrived, he didn’t know what to say. Somehow it felt like neither of them belonged there. You have to try, he reminded himself unnecessarily. “What happened? Everything alright?”

It was her turn to look away, again grasping for the courage that always seemed automatic when looking down the barrel of a gun but was shredded to straws under his guarded expression. “No, uh… and it might not be for a while.” She walked further into the apartment, giving a helpless shrug. “Look, I know that you have a history of being let down by the people you love.” He shifted again, half turning from her as though he wanted to leave and escape the conversation. But he stayed. “Your father, your old partner… me. But knowing why you lied about Avery doesn’t make me feel any less betrayed. And that… hurt… may never go away.” He looked at the floor, nodding his resignation. She didn’t stop. “But all of this has just made me feel so… lonely. Afraid to trust the people I should believe in the most.”

He met her eyes then and straightened from the door frame, Allie’s words echoing in his ears. She was out there alone for a long time, but that doesn’t sound like the Jane I know. Trust had been at the heart of them from the beginning. She'd given it to him, unwaveringly, from almost the first moment they met, and he had returned it from the moment Chao's blade met his skin at the top of the Statue of Liberty. They'd bruised and broken and mended their trust more than once since, but… even at its lowest, he had always loved her. And she'd always loved him. It wasn't easy. It was absolutely worth it. That, at least, was something he knew. He started moving toward her.

“And that is exactly what Roman wants,” she was continuing, “I’m not gonna give it to him. Because I wanna trust Avery. I wanna work this out with you. I want love back in my life.”

He finally found his voice. “So do I.”

She blew out the breath she’d been holding and nodded, her chin quivering slightly, and they both stood staring, glassy-eyed, at one another.

It was Kurt who broke the silence, stepping a little closer and extracting his left hand from his pocket. Things weren’t right between them, and she was right, they wouldn’t be for a while. But she had come home, and maybe that was enough of a starting point for the minute. “Come on,” he said, tilting his head back toward the lounge. For a moment, she didn’t move.

It could be all too easy. She had no idea what he was thinking or what he wanted now, but he at least seemed willing to let her back into their home. She could feel the tension in him, and his pain matching her own, but also his relief at her presence and her intention to stay. Maybe he meant to leave their sleeping dogs to lie, just for tonight, and spend the rest of the evening simply easing back into the idea of sharing space. He was reaching for her hand, and she gave it to him, feeling his fingers gently closing around her own.

He turned and began leading her toward where he had been sitting, and she watched his back, his feet, their hands as she followed in numb silence. And suddenly all she could see was his wedding ring; the way it dully reflected the dim light feeling like a blinding glare.

She’d been hiding behind the icy wall she’d put up between them, scrawling messages to herself on its surfaces, assuring herself that his transgressions were the greater, his lies the more dire, her injury the more grievous. Even as she had stepped through the door to their home, having rehearsed precisely what she wanted to say, she braced for disaster by telling herself over and over that between the two of them, she had nothing more to apologize for. She had to believe it, because if he threw her out - and she had half-believed he would - she didn’t know how else she could survive it. But now that he hadn’t, she realized that what she was left with was less a wall or a shield and more a cold, hard brick of shame lodged somewhere behind her navel.

She stopped and pulled her hand from his, looking at the floor so that she didn’t have to see the hurt and confusion on his face as he turned to look back at her. Not talking about things was what had brought them here, and maybe this wasn't the best time, maybe neither felt ready for this conversation, but she didn’t want to repeat that mistake. She didn’t want any more misunderstandings, didn’t want him thinking for even one more moment that her foolish indiscretion had been a rejection or any other kind of comment on him. He was worth so much more than that; he deserved to know the truth. And she knew that they could never be ready for something like this. Whatever either of them intended, she owed it to him to do it now, if he would hear it, rather than risk that morning light and the crazy realities of their days might bury it all under other people's crises again.

“We… we should talk,” she stuttered. She saw his expression crumble, the relief seeming to abandon him, and suddenly she realized that in that moment, he was afraid of her. Afraid of what she might say, or maybe of how much more she might ask of him. “I mean… I should talk. I mean, I owe you… an explanation.”

His jaw flexed, and he glanced back and forth between her and nothing in particular a few times as he considered her offer. At last he nodded and turned his back on her, stepping back through the double doors into the lounge. She was frozen, wondering if the reminder of what she’d done had been too much for tonight after all, if he was going to keep right on walking, close a bedroom door behind himself and leave her there. Instead, he pushed aside the footstool with his knee and dropped back into his chair with an exhausted sigh, then gestured vaguely to the room in front of him.

“Okay,” he said, “then explain.”

She moved tentatively toward him and settled gingerly on a spot on the floor, in front of him, but not too close. “I’m not… even sure where to begin,” she confessed. She had known since that heated moment on the plane that this had to happen sometime, but she was so scared that he’d never give her the chance that she had doubled down on her anger, never allowing herself to consider what she would actually say. After several long moments of watching her mouth work soundlessly to no avail, he finally put her out of their misery, clearing his throat as he leaned forward. He rested his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging limply between them, one still loosely holding his glass of scotch.

“You knew I wanted to go with you, but you took off without me. I’m thankful that you put Bethany first. But you took off your ring.” He stopped short and swallowed down hard on the bile that suddenly seemed to be rising in his throat. She reached out gently as if to touch him, but withdrew her hand when he flinched. The action seemed to give him the push necessary to say what he needed to next. “I don’t want to know. I really, really don’t. But I think… I need to. We were happy, Jane. So… what happened?”

“I thought…” she hesitated. “No,” she corrected, then started again, stronger. “I left my ring for a reason. Part of it was about blending in, hiding the things I love. I left to keep you both safe, and if someone made me, if they saw that ring and saw that I was still…” still in love with you - she swallowed the words, “I had to keep you safe. I thought I’d be able to finish it, and come home.

“But… I knew there was a chance that it wouldn’t work. I didn’t want to hide that from you. I left it where I knew you’d find it, so you wouldn’t have to wonder what I’d done. And if I couldn’t make it back, for whatever reason… I didn’t want you stuck with me. My past just keeps coming back to haunt you, and that's not fair. I don't want that for you. I wanted you to know that… even if I wasn’t there, even if it wasn’t with me, more than anything… I wanted you to be happy.”

“I made a vow, Jane,” he said quietly. “And I meant it. There was no ‘happy’ for me without you.”

She glanced away, trying not to let her entire world crumble at the word 'was'; past tense. “I made that vow too,” she offered weakly, unthinkingly. And I broke it, she admonished herself silently. She heard him give a single, humorless little snort. He no longer had the energy to say it aloud, and she didn’t have the strength to, terrified that if she did, the sober reality of it would be the death of them. The silence hung heavy between them.

“I fucked up, Kurt,” she said finally, her trembling voice little more than a whisper. He glanced at her in surprise - she almost never swore, especially since Bethany had come into their lives - but he looked away just as quickly, knowing that if he continued looking his tears would spill over and never stop. Or worse, he might reach out to hold her and tell her it was okay.

It wasn’t okay.

“I fucked up,” she said again, louder but no less broken, “so badly. There’s no excusing it. I can’t undo it. I’d say I don’t know what I was thinking, but really, I just can’t believe how foolish I was.” She went quiet again.

He didn’t want to know what she had been thinking, leaving him behind and getting that close with another man; couldn’t imagine any line of thought that wouldn’t cut him to the bone. He halfway wished he could stop this and pretend the whole thing was just some terrible dream. But he understood what she was trying to do; trying to come to account so that whatever way things resolved, they could walk forward and away from this nightmare with something of their senses of selves intact. It was the same thing he’d done the night he’d finally told her the truth about Berlin. He knew there would never really be any going forward for them, not as individuals and definitely not together, if he didn’t ask. Allie was right. His imagination was running wild, and even if he didn’t want to hear it, it was information. Information he needed.

Finally, he gently cleared his throat. “So what were you thinking?” he asked, the subdued sound breaking her heart with the vulnerability it showed. For all his gruffness and all his walls, Kurt had always been strong, and had always worn his heart on his sleeve for her, even if he sometimes liked to pretend it wasn’t there. This quiet reservation, a man hidden back behind walls she couldn't scale… she didn’t know how to deal with it. She wished he would meet her eyes, but knew she didn’t deserve to ask that of him. She didn’t know where to start, or where to finish, or what to put in between. So she just let the words flow, throwing her crimes out on the carpet along with their fate. It wasn’t up to her anymore. Maybe it wasn’t up to either one of them.

“It wasn’t… a relationship. At least, not like you were implying, on the plane. We worked together. When I started doing K&R, I did it alone. We crossed paths a couple of times on jobs. On one job, we got to the hostage at the same time. There was no one I could trust out there, and I sure as hell didn’t trust him. But he didn’t fight me; he agreed to split the reward. Unfortunately he was still using Dwire for backup then, so you can imagine how that went. That ass knocked us both out and stole our pay.

“Clem…” she paused, almost choking on the name. “We backed each other up on a few jobs after that. After those first few, he admitted that he knew about the bounty, and he'd known for a while. He'd kept working with me in spite of it. It seemed like I could at least trust that he wouldn't sell me out for that, so I kept working with him. He became... a friend.” She paused, trying to gather herself again, trying to find her voice for the confession they both knew was next.

“It had been a few months since we started calling each other for backup, and after one really tough rescue I stayed to celebrate instead of just taking my cut and leaving. I thought it would be like our team does after we close a tough case. It would just be… nice, to be around another person for a while. But then he made a pass, and I thought…” she closed her eyes and took a big breath, “I thought about all that time. About how long I’d been gone, and how I’d wanted you to be happy, how I left my ring so that you could be in case... in case I didn’t come back. And for a minute, I fooled myself into thinking you were. It had been so long, you must be. You must have moved on.”

She saw him very subtly shaking his head.

“I know,” she said sadly, answering his unvoiced protest. Kurt Weller was loyal to a fault; he would have been right to scoff at her, to scream it in her face. But he didn’t. “I know,” she repeated, “…and I knew it right away then, too. I’ve made a lot of mistakes since we met. So many. But that…” she trailed off, shaking her head as the tears that had been gathering in her eyes thickened, blurring him from her sight. She couldn’t say it was the worst of her mistakes. Her mistakes had gotten Mayfair killed; they’d nearly robbed her brother of his whole life and condemned him to the CIA. Instead, she’d let him go and gotten her team, her husband, even the daughter she hadn't known she had, all ensnared in this mess of revenge or whatever the hell else Roman was playing at. They were all terrible mistakes. But Clem was by far her most foolish. She’d given up her faith in the person she should have believed in the most. That wasn’t Roman’s doing. She’d done it all on her own.

“There’s no excusing it,” she stated again. “I was lonely, but it just made me feel even lonelier. It was a mistake, and I felt so foolish. I think some part of me knew that you were still out there, somewhere, waiting for me. Keeping your vows. And I failed.”

She could have stopped there and let her ownership of that failure stand on its own, but she knew there would always be unanswered questions and doubts if he didn’t have the full story. She needed him to believe, to understand, that it had started and ended in a single, stupid night. She pressed on.

"I didn’t wait; I left that night. I never spoke to him again, not until I called him about Avery. That was before you told me about Berlin. Finding people is his job, and he’s good at it… he can do things the FBI can’t, things you and I couldn’t do without risking our jobs and our future. I just wanted to know she was safe.” She realized she was starting to spiral into trying to justify herself again, so she closed her eyes again to breathe through it. “I never expected that he would come to New York.”

“But once he was here, you thought you’d get back in touch,” he said flatly. Given the short notice on which Clem had arrived at the airstrip for their rescue mission to Berlin, he had already suspected the man had come stateside before Patterson found Avery, and he had a hunch that meeting up on the plane wasn’t their only recent encounter.

“Well…” she said awkwardly, knowing that she had to be completely honest, “no. Before Patterson found Avery, he got in touch. It was the day we rescued those Camp Iko refugees. I told him that Avery had died, and he wanted to come see me that morning, at the NYO. I hung up on him. But… I was so confused. I went to see him after work; I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I just… wanted someone to talk to, someone who wouldn’t feel caught in the middle between you and me. Nothing happened, but it wasn’t right. He doesn’t want to be friends. I’m not sure he ever really did.”

No fucking kidding, Weller found himself thinking, but he stopped himself from voicing it out loud. He tried to put it in context again - the Jane I know, as Allie had said. Jane, who was brave, and fierce, and boundlessly empathetic towards those in pain, but had very little clue about romance and almost no experience to build on. She had dated precisely one normal guy, for a long and rewarding few weeks, before choosing her husband. Zapata and Patterson had taken her out sometimes for drinks back in the early days, but he didn't know if she'd ever gotten a date out of it. Had she ever even really spoken to any guys before Oliver? Apart from him… and Oscar.

He needed to refocus on the subject at hand, make sure there was nothing else he was missing. “You said you left him that night, in Europe. What happened?”

She sighed, rubbing a hand over her face in frustration. “I fucked that up, too,” she admitted. “I guess by working with one crew, turning up with the same partner on multiple jobs, I made myself predictable, too easy to find. Until that day, I mitigated the risk by not sticking around a moment more than was absolutely necessary. When I realized how badly I'd messed up, I left him in a hurry, but I was distracted. The bounty hunters must have been watching, waiting for me to be alone. When I bolted, I played right into their hands. I didn’t get very far before they caught up with me, and I barely made it out. That was how I ended up in Berlin, like I told you; I lost my go-bag.” She chewed on her lip for a minute, looking somehow frustrated and lost at the same time.

“I knew I had to leave Europe, so I picked up my stash, bought new papers from Max, and ran. I didn't really know where I was going, but I had more than enough to get by, so staying off the radar and getting as much distance as I could was more important than anything else. I headed east, alone, as quickly and quietly as I could. Then there was an accident. When I woke up, over a week later, I was far away from where I had been... and somehow, the money was still there. It made no sense at the time, but I guess that was when Roman tattooed me, and he must have been the one to leave me with the monks. They were kind, it seemed safe, and things there were simple, so once I recovered I just… stayed."

He thought about pointing out that she could have come home, but it didn't seem like a useful time to rehash that argument. It wouldn't change anything, anyway. What was done was done and all they could control was what they each chose next.

“I needed to be alone. Somewhere I could leave my mistakes behind, but still keep you and Bethany safe,” she explained, as if she could read his thoughts. “And even if I could somehow keep the bounty hunters off my tail, I felt like… I’d lost the right to come home. I don't know if it was guilt or grief or just… fear, that drove me up the mountain. But once I was there, I stayed because it was so far off-grid that no one would find me, and if I couldn't be with you… at least I could live a life that wouldn't have hurt you more.

"And then when I saw you there, still wearing your ring… I was so overwhelmed. I didn't deserve that; you don't deserve what I did. And I shouldn't have kept it from you."

He nodded solemnly, staring into his drink as he processed everything she’d just told him. “Would you ever have told me?” he asked.

She glanced to the side, drawing a deep breath. “Honestly? I don’t know,” she answered. “I regret it; of course I do. I'd like to say there's not a day that goes by that I haven't been eaten alive by my guilt, but the truth is… after a while, I sort of started to forget about it.” She shuffled closer to him on the floor, trying to catch his eyes, silently begging him to see her sincerity. “You, Kurt… here, in front of me, beside me… there's nothing else to think about. You're… everything." He sniffled at that, and she saw him quickly swipe a single tear from his cheek with his thumb, but he still wouldn’t look at her. She feared he never would again.

“Life has given me so many reasons to doubt myself,” she said, and that was the crux of it all, wasn’t it? She doubted that she was worth it; had always doubted that she was enough for him, enough to deserve or keep him. For a brief, crazy moment, she’d let her self-doubt expand and fill her until she’d doubted him. But right now this wasn’t about her – or at least, not about her pain and insecurities. He’d been trying to apologize, trying to reach for her while she’d been keeping a secret of her own, only to throw it in his face the moment he was within arm’s reach. This was her turn for coming clean. “But ever since we finally got together, you never gave me a reason to doubt you.”

“And now we’ve both given each other reasons,” he said.

She nodded sadly. “I was wrong,” she said simply.

“So was I.”

“And Kurt… I’m–” her breath caught in her throat as he finally lifted his head to meet her eyes – “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” he whispered, “me too.”

They sat staring at each other for a long, long moment, remorse and pain so thick in the air that time seemed to stop.

“So what happens now?” she asked.

He leaned back in his chair, looking lost in his grim thoughts. "We’ve both made terrible mistakes," he started slowly. "This is going to take time. We have to learn how to stop… protecting each other, with little lies and half-truths. I think the betrayal of keeping those secrets has hurt us even more than the secrets themselves ever would have."

She nodded agreement at that.

"But… I want to work on it, with you," he finally said. "As much as it all hurts right now… you're it for me, too."

She pursed her lips to the side in what could have been a ghost of a smile, if she hadn’t been working so hard to blink back tears. She wanted to reach for him, but didn’t quite know how. She wasn’t sure he would welcome her touch just then. Truth be told, despite what he’d said, she feared that the image of another man’s hands on her would drive his touch away forever.

But despite the chasm between them, it still seemed as if he could almost read her mind. Or maybe they just wanted the same things. Her eyes were drawn to his lap as his hand slid forward to rest on his knee, as if he, too, wanted to reach for her but couldn’t quite find the courage. She tentatively lifted her own hand, silently asking for permission as she slowly bridged the gap. It was a stuttering dance between them, an old engine shuddering to life - his fingers alone lifted from the denim of his jeans, her hand moved a little closer through the empty air, and they both watched as her fingers finally found the spaces between his. They laced together, his palm at last leaving his knee to press into hers. It wasn’t quite like the opening of a floodgate, but her motion was smoother and less hesitant when a moment later the rest of her followed, just a little closer, to rest her head lightly on his knee. The back of his thumb found her cheek and she exhaled, feeling him exhale with her. A moment later he set down his glass and placed his newly freed hand on the side of her head, stroking her hair.

Then she went very still. That gentle touch was the final straw. He felt her tears on his thumb, one, then another, and she heard his sharply indrawn breath as he tugged lightly on her hair, coaxing her to look at him so she could see his tears start to fall, too. Not leaving her alone; showing her that he was right there with her, even in their pain.

She raised up on her knees between his feet, tugging his hand towards her heart. As soon as she was sure it would stay there she moved her own hand to his, and the two sandwiched those hands between them as they finally embraced. His body shook with a single, heavy sob, and he turned his face into her neck. She held him there, murmuring again and again how much she loved him as they both let the pain flow from their bodies to soak each other’s shirts.

After a while their sobs subsided to shaky, hitched breaths, and gradually to quieter sniffles. Kurt turned his palm from her chest, curling his fingers around the back of her hand to keep it over his heart while his other hand eased her back a bit so he could look at her. “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked with a fragile, watery half-smile.

She regarded him intensely and brushed her fingertips down his cheek, wiping away a lingering tear. “Yeah,” she nodded after a few heartbeats, sniffling with a fragile half-grin of her own.

“You’re gonna have to reach the glass, though,” he motioned to the other side of the small room. “Someone’s got me pinned.”

She rewarded his attempt at teasing with a look before she extracted herself and reached out on her hands and knees to pull a second glass off the low shelf and pass it to him. He poured and handed it back to her, then picked up his own glass and raised it a little. “To truth?” he suggested, then added, “Whole truths.”

“No matter how painful,” she agreed.

“And never, ever giving up,” he finished, and she smiled a little more genuinely as she clinked her glass with his and took a sip. After a moment, she turned, settling again on the floor and leaning back against the chair between his knees. He set the record player going, soft music filling the air, and he brushed his hand just once through her hair. She leaned into the touch, then reached up to take his hand over her shoulder, and they sat quietly sipping their drinks, sharing the air with each other and their own battered thoughts.

After a while, he found something more to say. Her fingertips were idly stroking the back of his hand, lingering from time to time to toy with his wedding band. “It’s where you left it,” he murmured, knowing without a doubt that she was thinking about her own ring. He was, too. “I… couldn’t touch it.”

“What do I have to do? To earn it back.” She knew that there was more to do, and after the hurt she'd caused him, she wanted to give him the choice. She held still while she waited for his answer.

“It’s your ring Jane, you can do what you want with it.” She frowned. They’d made a little progress, but he still sounded so fragile. She turned her body halfway toward him, looking up at him with an earnest expression.

“But it’s more than a ring. It was a promise, and I broke that trust. It’s not in your pocket this time. You haven’t been waiting to give it back.” There was no judgment or accusation in her voice, only truth.

“I wasn’t sure I could.”

“And now?”

“Now… it belongs with you. At least, I want it to. I kept wearing mine because… I still want to belong to you.” He hesitated, knowing that despite the progress they’d just made, they were both incredibly raw. He’d hurt her, badly, but she’d hurt him, too. The sight of her hand without the silver jeweled band he’d put there made his chest feel hollow any time he stopped to think about it. He didn’t like the contrast of her pale skin and dark ink without its crowning sparkle. His wishes and feelings weren’t the only things that mattered, though. This one had to come from her. “It doesn’t have to be tonight. We’ll keep working on it. But… I need you to be sure you want it, too. I just… can’t watch you leave it behind a third time. I can’t. So what do you want?”

She nodded thoughtfully, sadly; her expression was not unlike the one she had worn in Nepal, the last time she found him still wearing his ring while her finger was bare. “I'm not sure I deserve to even say it, but it’s never felt right, being without it,” she said. “I was angry, so angry I felt numb… but underneath all of that it just hurt, and taking it off just made it worse. So much worse.” She caught his eye, hoped he could see the truth - the whole truth; her sadness and regret for having left it behind again. “I don’t think I could do it again. It felt all wrong. I don’t ever want to feel that again; I don’t want you to feel that. I don't want that kind of pain in our lives ever again.”

“We’re still gonna have pain in our lives, sometimes. No one gets through life without that.”

She turned to face him more fully. She had come home looking hard yet frightened, and throughout her confession looked so sad and ashamed, but now he could see that Jane, his Jane, was beginning to return. Her face was pink and puffy from crying and he was sure his own face matched, but her expression was determined and her voice was growing stronger. “But I can’t be the cause. I can’t be the reason you look like that again. I couldn’t bear it.”

He still looked reserved, and took a swig of his drink in lieu of speaking. She abandoned her drink on the floor and reached up to stroke her hand down his stubbled jaw, then stood and made her way to the breakfast bar. She returned a minute later and knelt in front of him, holding up her ring between her thumb and index finger. “It’s not going to get better overnight. I know it’s not. But I know that I want to belong to you. No more secrets, and no more lies. No more running. We’re better together. I want to be in this, together with you.” He stared at the ring then looked into her eyes, long and hard, searching for any trace of uncertainty. She gazed back at him with absolute conviction. At last he put down his glass again, leaning forward, and took the ring from her.

“Then we do it together,” he said.

She nodded her relief, the certainty in her expression never wavering. “I’m yours, Kurt,” she told him, more softly but no less firmly. He glanced at her in acknowledgement before he slipped the ring back on her finger and joined their left hands together, their twin rings finally reunited and exactly where they belonged. He stared at them as if in a trance, his posture relieved, but a shadow of apprehension remained on his face.

“Kurt,” she said softly, trying to draw his attention. She paused and waited for him to meet her eyes again, and when he did, she smiled gently. “We’re gonna be okay.” A heartbeat later, he squeezed her hand, and smiled softly back.

That night they slept on their own sides of their bed, facing away from one another. When he woke in the middle of the night, her feet were together, her toes lightly pressed against the backs of his calves. When she woke in the morning, he had rolled over and stretched his arm toward her, his fingers ever so faintly brushing her ribs, just below her shoulder blade, each time she inhaled. A handful of days passed with an awkward sort of friendship, stilted hugs or chaste kisses, and the occasional joining of hands. And nights passed just like that first one, with each tentatively reaching out for the other in their sleep.

The way Jane looked at him, up and down, unabashedly checking him out after she recovered the Nergal device from Sho Ahktar became something of a turning point for matters at home. He looked great in that suit, and she knew exactly what working undercover together did to him - what seeing each other pretending to be someone else and yet still so unmistakably them did to them both - and she was done playing slow and safe. She was pretty sure he was, too. She hit pause on those thoughts as they changed and debriefed and she went to meet up with Avery, but in spite of the nerves she felt about an unstructured visit with her estranged daughter, the wink her husband gave her when she left the office had her grinning most of the way to the coffee shop.

She was tired when she got home, emotionally drained and ready to shelf anything else for another day. When she saw him stand from the sofa though, looking adorably apprehensive, so ready to be lovingly supportive no matter how her visit had gone, her fatigue went out the window. Seeing Nas had brought up some things; Jane liked the woman well enough as a workplace colleague, and appreciated all she’d done for the team, but Nas had always been just a little bit too patronizing toward Jane and was still just a little too comfortable in her husband’s presence for someone who had in times past threatened to return her to a dark, dark hole. Never mind that the woman had been sharing Kurt's bed while holding those things over her, or the easy way she’d walked back into what was long since Jane’s home.

It started with a slow, lingering kiss that was as much a question as a greeting, and which quickly evolved into an answer. Their reunion was a little rough at first - possessive - and soon they were breathing words like 'yours' and 'mine' into each other's skin. They didn’t quite make it to the bed, but that suited them just fine. Their last reunion had taken place on the floor too, and while this time there was an aggressive edge to the way they reclaimed each other, it ended similarly, with gentle smiles, interlaced fingers, and murmured affirmations of love.

Things weren't better overnight, even after they climbed under the covers to finally sleep curled around each other for the first time in weeks - and woke each other in the dark hours of morning to confirm those things they'd already worked out on the floor. The now-crumbling walls they’d erected around their hearts still made reading each other outside the office more challenging than they were accustomed to, interrupted by hiccups of insecurity and niggling fears. It helped, though, that now they were calling them fears, not anger or blame; and so too did the fact that they spoke about them regularly rather than suffering them in silence.

Some of the lingering hurt was smoothed by the discovery that with the bulk of their anger released, they still functioned as an unstoppable team at work. They read each other as well as ever in the field, and in the office they still looked to each other first, asking questions and giving answers, or sharing thoughts and opinions, all through silent exchanges that they would only occasionally voice to the team. Those daily reminders that they were still better together than they were apart became a salve against any doubts they might feel about whether they could get through it.

Jane was surprised but pleased to find that Kurt was relaxing a little more into his tactile nature throughout the day, deliberately instigating casual little displays of affection that he had been more restrained about before. It was subtle, not at all like the desperate way they had always grasped each other after a close call, and nothing so overt as to make their colleagues regularly uncomfortable. His hand was simply finding her own, or the small of her back more often, and sometimes he would step up behind her to embrace her for no reason other than she was sitting by herself at a workstation and he felt like it. She knew how much those little check-ins meant to him, and with each little touch, she felt surer. Weller was similarly surprised when Jane caught him in the hallway outside the lab one morning to ask what he thought about inviting Avery to live with them. The prospect itself delighted him, but the fact she had come to him about something so important as soon as she decided she wanted it, even though they were busy and at work, filled him with a warm sort of certainty.

They were both practicing not waiting, because they were keenly aware - especially after the date Rich had sent them on was cut short by assassins - that 'the right time' wasn't something they could necessarily count on in their line of work. They also practiced opening themselves, volunteering more of their inner worlds than either was used to, and no longer taking for granted that their comfortable place on each others' wavelength would be enough on its own to keep all misunderstandings at bay.

It was taxing at times. The days at work flew by while their evenings were slow and deliberate, but gradually, with each spontaneously voiced thought, each unsolicited touch, each difficult conversation that turned out simpler than expected, they built something; something unlike what they had before. They had always believed their bond to be unshakeable, but now it was being reforged in the certainty that came with a proven commitment to work at it no matter how hard or painful; to accept that they would sometimes mess up or let each other down, but safe in the knowledge that they would never stop reaching for each other and they would never, ever give up. Because they were in love, they were everything, and they decided again, every single day, that that mattered. More than anything.

#fun fact! this is *by far* the longest story I've published to date #clocking in at 7210 words #when most have been in the ballpark of 1.5-3k words #blindspot #blindspot 3x12 #blindspot fanfic #blindspot fanfiction #blindspot rewatch 2022 #blindspot s3 spoilers #jeller 💔#but also ending with a lil plain ole hopeful #jeller #nachos blindspot oc #nachos blindspot fics

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data-is-my-favorite-android · 1 year

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You know, having finally watched Dollhouse, I can’t help but notice some similarities between BtVS’s Spike and Dollhouse’s Alpha:

They’re both pretty unrepentant murderers (Spike because he’s a vampire, Alpha because he’s like 50 people and all of them have been fucked up by what they’ve been through)

They’re both hopeless romantics albeit in a totally twisted way and would do anything--and I mean ANYTHING--for the one they love including truly heinous acts

They both love super-strong women and literally worship the ground they walk on

though they also both oscillate wildly between proclaiming their love (usually in wildly inappropriate ways) and wanting the object of their obsession dead (but not really, because god fucking damn it they love them and they’re both suckers for love it’s like literally their reason for existing)

Since everyone’s superhuman here, they have no problem throwing down with their prospective honey if that’s how it’s gonna be

They both know instantly that something is genuinely special about The Girl

They both develop an obsession with the main character (Buffy/Echo) as soon as they clap eyes on them. Is it creepy? Kinda. But they get better, so... *shrug?* look, this is fiction, it’s not real, we can have this here okay

They both begin as Big Bads but canonically end up as Good Guys (even though we sadly didn’t really get to see the evolution from A to B in Alpha’s case)

They’re both really insightful and actually have some pretty valid points, however difficult or uncomfortable those points may be. But they’ve also got some pretty skewed logic mucking up the works, too

They both get an idea in their head and won’t stop until they’ve achieved their goal

They both show the ability to evolve. Like, they both realize at some point that they’re missing something critically important for them to be with the object of their affection and try various ways to fill that gap. Unfortunately, they both get it wrong a few times before getting it right (again, Alpha was on this road, but the show got cancelled before we got to see the whole transformation. We really only got to see the beginning and end :( which sucks, but we know it happens somewhere in the vaguery between S2 and the Epitaphs timeline)

There are so many opportunities for the main characters of both shows to just kill the Big Bad Evil son of a bitch and end things then and there, but they just... don’t? and then Spike/Alpha just get up and walk away lol

Some of the developing themes around their characters revolve around similar questions of identity and nature vs. nurture: how much does your original self remain when you become a demon/Doll? Which is stronger, your original self or what you were made to be? Are you shackled to your “nature” or can you change to become someone better? Someone you want to be? How can you do that when you’ve done so much wrong (and you’re low-key kinda not sorry about a lot of it)?

They both can switch between being comedy gold and genuinely menacing on a dime

And **MORE SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS AHEAD**

honestly? I think they both ultimately end up in love with the reality of The Girl than the idealized version of her. At first Spike is attracted to Buffy as The Slayer. As he evolves and they grow closer, he tries to convince Buffy to become a creature of darkness like him because he thinks that’s the only way they can be together. But he does love the human parts of her, and in the end accepts the complexity of who she is and loves all of her without reservation or expectation. Angel, on the other hand, loved the idea of Buffy more than the reality of her and never really moved past that. He insisted he knew who she was and what was best for her. By the same token, Alpha believes Echo will love him the moment he frees her by recreating his Composite Event. He tries to convince her that they are the same kind of new being, that they are gods/ubermensch, but she rejects his worldview and him. That doesn’t stop Alpha from trying to understand why she did that and attempt to bridge the gap between himself and her. He initially rejects Caroline and "loves" Echo (the Doll and all her many personalities). He’s frustrated by her rejection, but seeks to understand it. After he imprints himself with Paul Ballard’s personality, I think he would have gone on to a) actually understand love beyond obsession, and b) love Caroline AND Echo. Additionally, like Spike when he got his soul, I think he would also have better understood his own deficits and felt more remorse for his past sins. He would have vacillated between doubling down and seeking atonement, at turns hindering and aiding the main characters before eventually committing to a heel-face turn. He was on the same road to reformation and redemption as Spike was and likely would have loved Echo completely without asking for anything in return (as seems to be implied by their interactions in Epitaphs II). Paul, on the other hand, is attracted to Echo but in love with the idea of Caroline (without having ever actually met her until much later, and that didn't really work out too hot for him because, like he did with Echo, she holds him at arms length emotionally). Despite realizing that Echo is becoming a person in her own right with her own desires and feelings, he shuts Echo down every time she tries to get closer to him, presumably because he feels like any relationship beyond a professional or platonic one would be a violation of Caroline’s being. Basically, he sees Echo as only and forever a vessel, an empty shell to someday be filled back up by Caroline--and when that day comes he is hoping that she will love him back when he “rescues” her (and, unlike Alpha, seems more stubborn about sticking to his guns and waiting for the “real” girl to come back instead of realizing shit’s a lot more complicated than that now).

Idk, I'm just saying from what I see there's a lot of common ground here. Don't get me wrong, there are some significant differences between Spike and Alpha, too (as well as Buffy and Echo's respective situations), but I found some of the parallels intriguing. A lot of this is conjecture for Dollhouse/Alpha because the show got canceled before they could really explore Alpha's character arc. And look, I know this is personal taste, but just like with Spike vs. Angel, Alpha was way more intriguing than Paul imo.

(also, like, there are THREE gifs of Alpha that I can find. THREE. How? Is? This? POSSIBLE??? How am I supposed to work in these conditions?!?)

Anybody else see any other parallels between Spike and Alpha? Or maybe between Buffy and Echo/Caroline? and are any of my fellow spuffy shippers also on this ship? if anyone out there loves spike but hasn't seen dollhouse, I'd recommend it, also please talk to me, I need people to talk to about my new hyperfixation/problematic blorbo...

#spike btvs #alpha dollhouse #dollhouse show #dollhouse 2009 #spuffy #long post #meta analysis #it feels like whedon kept trying to write a certain kind of bad guy #to make the “good guy”/intended love interest look better #but inadvertently creating a way more interesting character #that has internal drives that actually push them to grow into better people #and that end up understanding the main character on a fundamental level

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bladetoblade · 2 years

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sometimes i forget that my au lore is not canon so lemme tell you about my ✨obi-wan+quinlan master-padawan “family” unit✨ headcanons

in my mind, (which idk exactly how much canon influenced this), obi-wan gets anakin (9) when quinlan already has aayla as a padawan (14/15ish?)

the timeline is dicey bc quinlan is literally on tatooine during phantom menace? but for aayla to be the age she is and her to be his padawan she has to already be his padawan

anyway when anakin becomes a padawan, his closest jedi bestie is aayla secura (which is just absolutely impeccable taste)

yes it’s because they are iconic duo but also because i think baby anakin would primarily get along best with kids/people who are a bit older or a bit younger than him. in my mind (and probably not in canon), it’s a 5-6 yr gap and they have a cute cool sister-dorky lil brother dynamic

this works out perfectly for everyone bc master obi-wan is obviously friends/annoyances with master vos!

it’s also great bc quinlan’s personal experience with the outer rim and being a unique black sheep sort of his age group makes him very qualified to give obi-wan advice/help guide anakin who pretty immediately also finds himself in that niche

based on all of this i firmly believe in quinlan and obi-wan doing some co-mastering

(which given the community oriented nature of the jedi i doubt that’s scandalous, though i’m sure they put their own insane spin on it)

it’s probably usually anakin tagging along with aayla and her master so that obi-wan can finally take a karking nap

or obi-wan and quinlan being paired together with their padawans (since i doubt obi-wan would really try to be a consistent authority figure to aayla? i think he would treat her more as a peer)

the comedic potential of this unofficial arrangement is endless honestly

aayla and anakin getting annoyed at how over-protective both of their masters are and running off together to figure shit out themselves hmph. (they succeed but there is a Significant amount of property damage :/)

aayla and obi-wan having brunch to sigh about the insanity of quinlan and anakin and their desire to do shit purely out of spite (although obi-wan only has 1 leg to stand on there)

anakin and quinlan trying to figure out maximize their respective talents for driving obi-wan insane, which leads to a 2 week long padawan swap. obi-wan almost doesn’t want to switch back but it’s not quinlan’s fault that his is the best padawan

as for obi-wan and quinlan, i honestly don’t know if i find it funnier if they were fwb while this stuff happens or not?? so quinlan and obi-wan are schrodinger’s friends with benefits for the comedy

anakin and aayla both constantly do the jedi version of “well Mike’s dad and mom let him use their wii whenever he wants >:(“ to obi-wan and quinlan.

i’m sure quinlan and obi-wan both hold back laughter every time it happens and they mentally store each incident to be brought up on their padawan’s knighting days or anytime they have a disagreement among themselves

(obi-wan: aayla told me you forgot the difference between left and right last week -_-

quinlan: well anakin told me that you’re lame and i’m the only fun jedi master in the order :P)

anyway i’m sure quinlan and obi-wan had a blast and took way too many pictures to put in their lil co-master photo album. they pull them out when they get sad about how grown up their padawans have become :,)

#quinlan vos #i’m sorry to the team™️ but he definitely outranks them on my list of jedi #anakin skywalker #obi-wan kenobi #aayla secura #quinlan and obi-wan’s adventures in co-mastering #anakin and aayla besties for the resties #my fic #if this is incoherent i’m sorry #i did not check for typos at all 💀

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wispvial · 2 years

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we all know the sawyer brothers were made from snips and snails and puppy dog tails but here’s some sawyer family headcanons just for fun

-the old woman’s corpse in the 1974 movie is the mother, not the grandmother, who is seen in the 2nd movie. of course, that could be the maternal grandmother vs paternal grandmother, but i think there were no lasting fathers in their life. perhaps each brother had a different father. i like the idea of one of them bringing in the occult elements to their lives. but they came and went, and the influence cannot be attributed to anyone.

-the grandfather is of the mother’s side, she’s always lived with him. the sawyers have always had reclusive, mistrustful tendencies, and having children out of wedlock with transient men isolated her from the town of other slaughterhouse workers and their families.

-nubbins and bubba have little memory of the mother, though as gunnar has said in an interview, bubba has recollections of her applying makeup, which he models in his pretty lady persona. they know nothing about her as a person; they vaguely understand her by the feminine role she played. some kind of Figure, her corpse a totem, a respected Object who they have no curiosity about. but i imagine her life was austere, unappreciated, and obscure.

-was the grandfather aware of her passing at all? probably not, since i feel she died when the younger boys were small, and nubbins talks about grandpa in the past tense as though he’s never interacted with him. whose idea was the corpse preservation? do not think too hard about any timeline, it has to be nebulous as in fact the sawyers were borne from a cow’s final moo echoing in the air and a stray solar flare.

-there aren’t a bunch of secret family members living somewhere else. if there are, they'd have no knowledge of them or means of communication. their world is just so small, everything they have is just a replacement for something else, a sad bunch of isolated men playing house.

-drayton is over 20 years older than nubbins and bubba. i cannot see it as a case of premature aging due to a stressful life, there is a significant age gap. he hates to be mistaken for their father but is also unable to connect with them as a brother, using distancing language (“look what your brother did to the door” is kind of awkward when he is also a brother). despite playacting as a traditional, authoritarian father figure, he seems to have no interest in continuing the family line, hes very aware it terminates with him, and i mean, he’s also pretty apt to just blowing himself up when things are too much as seen in tcm2, if the way he is in that movie matters at all. “Family” has always been important to them but not always in the way you’d expect, and a lot of the newer movies suffer by trying to make them like, Christian farmers

-bubba is probably like 20 in the 1st movie, nubbins is ~25 according to the script. i think he is older because i want him to be

-idk how i wrote this post referencing the 2nd movie at times while forgetting chop top existed. thats very rude especially in this day and age when tumblr is banning hashtag bald. drayton is clearly visible in the eyes of society, but i kind of wonder just how aware people are of the other brothers? they had a job in the slaughterhouse but could have been paid under the table. i believe nubbins and bubba were never actually named, and only have nicknames. so how easy would it have been for him just to dodge the draft? idk who he (bobby chop top...chobby top..) is and what hes about, he is there for vibes, more of a blood splattered neon sign than a sun-tanned animal hide though, which makes it hard for me

#txt #tcm #long post ? what if thats a banned tag now...#texas chainsaw massacre

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blancamz · 3 years

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“It’s Over Isn’t It” Reanimation progress

Honestly one of my favourite parts about animating is posting the WIPs online. Here’s the step-by-step of how I went about doing my reanimation for the end section of “It’s Over Isn’t It” from the Steven Universe episode Mr. Greg.

1) Idea and Prep

I was flicking through Steven Universe: Art & Origins. I think at the time I must’ve been between jobs or bored or something, because it came into my head to do a bit of animation based on the pilot style SU. I’ve always been quite fond of the pilot style, especially Pearl’s David Bowie / LaRoux look. The little tux design by Hellen Jo was quite snazzy as well, so I decided to have a go at doing a segment of “It’s Over Isn’t It”, using these designs.

I traced the turnaround from the book in Clip Studio Paint and approximated Jo’s design to it. At first I had the colour turnaround, but did the low-colour turnaround with the heads to give me a better idea of where the lines are and proportions of the body. I also get a clip of “It’s Over Isn’t It” and trim it down to the section I want to do.

This is a long one so strap in.

2) Sketch Pass

I’ll be using gifs that show the first 100-130 frames of the animation, because the full segment is 22 seconds long.

Very very loose animation of what I’m going to be doing with this segment, done in Adobe Animate. I have a video of the real segment in the corner of the stage and audio in the timeline, and closely reference them for layout and acting.

I’ve decided I want to go really nuts with the animation. Lots of angles on her face, smooth movement, secondary animation / follow-through on her various clothing elements. Technically her earring’s supposed to be on the other side but I want to animate that flailing around dangit, so I change it so it faces the camera.

3) Rough Pass

I tidy up the rough I did somewhat. It’s still very rough, but Pearl is better proportioned and the motion is more complete. I get a better idea of how she moves by focusing on drawing keys (the most important drawings) and breakdowns (drawings that help you figure out the motion a little bit, without full animation). I have Pearl, her suit, ruffles and earring on separate layers so I can turn things on and off or lower their opacity as needed.

4) Tiedowns

At some point between the rough and tie-down phase I realized that I’d been animating at 30fps instead of 25fps like I’d meant to, so I had to end up shifting all the roughs I’d been doing. Bad news: having to wrestle with getting the timings I’d so carefully planned out in the rough to still look good. Good news: I have to animate and clean up 5 fewer frames per second, so that’s 110 fewer drawings to worry about. Yussssss. For reference, the above clip has now gone from 132 frames to 107.

During the tiedown phase, I go over the roughs and more carefully try to match the proportions in the turnaround. I keep a flattened version of the first frame of animation to use as reference thoughout to prevent morphing. Sometimes when you’re animating, things will get bigger or small as you re-draw them, so it’s good to have a base drawing to refer back to and make the sizes stay consistent.

At this point I’m way more aware of reasons behind the big design change for Pearl between the pilot and the show. She’s so dang skinny and tall with that extra poof of hair up top that she’s really annoying to frame up. If you want to keep all of her in the frame, there’s going to be tons of empty space.

I also find that my turnaround isn’t enough reference for Pearl’s awkwardly-shaped head. I snap me a bunch of screenshots of pearl’s head from different angles and collate them into a big sheet.

5) Inbetweening

Inbetweening, aka filling out all the gaps in the timeline between the keys and breakdowns. If you’ve done your keys and BD’s well, inbetweening can be a pretty straight-forward.

But I’ve got like a million bits of secondary animation to content with, which means this still takes a significant amount of time. The hair and ruffles have to move a little later than the rest of the body, and some parts of the ruffles have to move at a different rate from the rest. I’m trying to animate like there’s wind since Pearl’s on top of a tall building. I keep animating until it feels good enough.

This is what my timeline and stage look like in Animate by this point. The animation is mostly on 2s, with some 1s, 3s and 4s thrown in when needed.

6) Cleanup and Colour

I did the cleanup in Toon Boom Harmony. As a program, I like it was more than Animate, even though it isn’t without it’s flaws. But it’s also really dang expensive. Fortunately, by this point I’d been working on the upcoming Deadendia series for Netflix. What with the pandemic, we were working from home and the studio gave me a license for Toon Boom. So I exported my frames from Animate, put ‘em in TB and started cleaning up.

I’ve found that cleanup is something that’s often offloaded to new or less experienced artists at studios because blah it’s just tracing the rough animation. But you’ve got good cleanup and bad cleanup, and a good cleanup artist will compensate for flaws in volume and have a good, clear and natural line.

I’m not terribly fond of doing cleanup myself. I feel I tend to end up rushing, which leads to sloppy work. I tried really hard to keep up a standard here.

7) Comping

a.k.a. Compositing, the final layering of the various elements before exporting a film. Another stage I don’t quite care for because of its nuances. Also drawing backgrounds.

I admit that I’m not very good at drawing backgrounds or environments. I tried to do the one for the second shot of this animation, since it was acutally really important. In shots 1 and 3, you don’t really see the ground or even the railing that Pearl is leaning on, but 2 is a wide shot. My first attempts at it were unfortunate. Fortunately my husband @joe-sparrow is both good at backgrounds and good at imitating the style and colour palette of the show. He volunteered to do the BGs and I accepted. See mine vs. his:

So yeah, get me some nice backgrounds, put the animation on top, then fiddle with a couple of elements in the comp to give things a little bit more depth. During this stage, errors that had happened during the animation progress that I hoped would just go away became annoyingly obvious, so there was a fair bit of going back to fix them.

So that’s how I done made this animation. I started April 2018 and posted in on January 1st 2021, so that’s over 1.5 years it took me to do these 22 seconds of animation. However, I wasn’t working on it continuously through that time. Sometimes I’d be working on it every day, other times I’d not touch it for weeks or months at a time. It really depended on how busy or whatever I was at the time. I think if I’d been working on it non-stop, it still would’ve taken me at least like 2-3 months to finish it.

If you made it to the end of this post, I hope you found all this information interesting.

Happy drawing.

It’s over, isn’t it.

#animation #wip #art #Flash #toon boom #fanart #steven universe #pearl

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mindynichole · 3 years

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How important really are the spinoffs to the overall story?

Anonymous asked:

I heard Scott gimple was trying to create some sort of Walking Dead legacy or something. Sort of like Marvel or something. Is this true?

Anonymous asked:

You loose me when you start rambling on about the other shows. I don't watch them so why would I care?

Wow! That's a lot of Asks!

You guys should have seen all the ones I lost while trying to paste them together. I think I've counted seven or eight total in the last month. If your specific question on this subject is one that I lost, I am so sorry. Please know that I've read them all.

So, let’s take a minute and catch up with what’s going on and might be coming next with TWD Universe as a whole so people can get the answers to some of their questions.

Because now that The Walking Dead Midseason Part A Finale and The World Beyond Premier has finally aired on network and with FEAR being already on AMC+, I feel like it’s an important time anyway to stop my usual ramblings for one hot minute, breathe, and explain to those who are confused what many fans believe is going on and coming next within the overall universe at the moment- or at least discuss what most are pretty damn sure of.

Just know that rather or not you even watch the spinoffs at the moment, ultimately they are all connected nevertheless with the original show. As TWD comes nearer to its end, the more important the rest of the universe becomes.

Because of this, the other current and future shows - as well as the movies - have to be factored into the many theories I and others are about to write in the coming months.

Therefore a basic understanding of what is most likely happening and what lies ahead for the franchise helps others to understand why people feel the way they do about certain storylines.

I have never meant to confuse anybody and sometimes it is easy for a TWD nerd like me to forget that not everybody frequently scours the internet for related information with quite the enthusiasm that I do. However, I've made a short list for those who don't already know!

Timelines of the Current Individual Shows and Their Significance:

Per Scott Gimple at SDCC@Home 2021 - TWD original show timeline is the most current. TWB is slightly behind the original, and FEAR is a prequel about 6 years in the past.

Interestingly, FEAR being 6 years in the past currently sets last season’s finale with Morgan flying away in the CRM helicopter very close to around the time Rick was also “rescued” by his own CRM helicopter.

Gimple specifically saying - over and over again actually - that TWB is slightly behind also means it’s entirely possible we could see actual or referenced characters/groups/events from the short spinoff in the final season of the original show.

Best Understanding About How The Zombie Universe Will Proceed From Here:

The World Beyond will immediately end after this current run of 10 episodes already airing.

The original show will air Part B of their final season in Spring 2022, most likely around February. The Walking Dead will end completely after it’s Part C finale sometime in Fall 2022.

Fear The Walking Dead will continue to run for an undisclosed amount of time and will probably continue to give us more information about the CRM.

“The Daryl/Carol Spinoff” will probably premiere sometime in 2023. Since it has already been confirmed that the pair will travel out west, the show will most likely revolve around these two characters - perhaps along with other survivors from the OG and other shows- searching for the Civic Republic’s secret city, which has been strongly suggested to be in the “southwestern United States” somewhere. The motivation for their travels will undoubtedly have something to do with Rick - and perhaps other important characters who have found themselves tangled up with the CRM as well. The show will most likely fill the gap between the original’s finale and “The Rick Movies,” with the timeline probably being the most current like with the original show.

Tales of the Walking Dead will also begin to air probably sometime in 2023 ***as @witchmars pointed out to me, it's actually been confirmed that this spinoff will actually start next year in 2022*** and will feature stand alone episodes about individual characters and groups - both currently living and long dead. What’s really intriguing about this new show is how Gimple has suggested that besides basic backstories, the show might also be used now and again to check in on the where-a-bouts of other TWD characters who might still be alive in the universe but are not really part of the upcoming spinoff. Additionally, it has been suggested that this show might also be used to introduce new characters, groups, and communities.

Scott Gimple also said during SDCC@H that there might be even more spin offs around this time following other characters and communities but nothing additional has been announced yet.

Eventually, all roads from the original Walking Dead and the many various spin offs will lead to “The Rick Movies” - which despite the rumors are still confirmed to be a cinematic trilogy associated with Universal to be released in theaters.

After the final “Rick Movie,” it has been also strongly suggested that TWD Universe will continue on in some way with the next generation living in the aftermath of the movies. Think Judith, RJ, Little Hershel, Baby Coco, Gracie, and even others like Baby Morgan from FEAR all grown up. If this is true, we might experience somewhat of a baby boom within the universe so important characters might live on through their children.

#bethyl #bethyl forever #beth lives #beth greene #team delusional #team defiance #uss bethyl #teamreckoning #beth is alive #td

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curioussubjects · 4 years

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come be a season 12 truther with me; or what if dean and cas got together offscreen

Originally, I wrote this post to celebrate “Galaxy Brain” airing as Berens & Glynn gave us “The Future.” It’s been a while since that episode aired, and some things have changed about this meta. As such, there are multiple versions of this post floating around, so make sure to go back to the source for the most up to date version. For all intents and purposes, this post functions as a meta manifesto not unlike shipping manifestos from days of LJ past. In keeping with that tradition, this post is a close reading of Dabb Era Destiel in which I argue that by using narrative gaps, queer coding, and romance tropes, Dean and Cas are shown to be in an established relationship. Although beyond the scope of this post, it’s worth pointing out that keeping Destiel mostly off screen was a way for the creatives to bypass network censorship while still remaining true to the characters.

This post is divided into three sections. Section I focuses on giving an overview of why earlier seasons of Supernatural aren’t as compelling as season 12 as a turning point for Dean and Cas’s relationship. That said, special consideration is given to 09.06 “Heaven Can’t Wait” as a potential rest stop in our journey due to it’s significantly placed narrative gap as well as themes in the episode. However, this post isn’t going to examine season 9 trutherism in depth, though it does coexist with and allow for it. Section II analyses season 12 and proposes a timeline and justification for the shifting Destiel dynamic. Finally, Section III will offer an analysis of how Dean and Cas’s relationship has changed dramatically from previous seasons in a way that is most like the shift from a “will they or won’t they” pairing to an established one.

Before I move to Section I, I’d like to note something this post takes for granted: Dean and Cas are the main romantic subplot of Supernatural, and, in fact, their relationship is elevated to main plot for both characters in season 15. This post won’t argue about the canonicity of Dean and Cas’s feelings for each other, therefore, and so won’t spend time looking at many Destiel defining moments. I’d also like to make clear that this post also takes for granted that Destiel is being intentionally developed by the writers starting with Carver’s Era, and more so in Dabb’s.

I. Why Seasons 4 through 11 May Not be It

The tl;dr. here is that while there are many moments throughout these seasons that Dean and Cas could potentially get together, none of those moments are ideal for a bunch of reasons that can be summed up as really bad timing. I also think the narrative is actively pushing them towards a moment that works. We get plenty of stepping stones, especially once we hit seasons 8 through 11 (and 11 most of all).

Seasons 4 & 5:

I know there’s been a lot of get together fics over the years set in this time period, but I just don’t see it. Do I see them being intrigued and drawn to each other? Yes. Do I think either Cas or Dean would act on it? Nope. I’m not arguing anything re: Dean’s feelings, but with everything going at the time I find it hard to believe he’d pursue anything with his angel friend. Most importantly here, though, is that during this time Cas was still very alien and other. There was too much angel in him, and while he obviously came to care about Dean (and Sam) very much, I just can’t see him navigating the realm of human relationships. That said, seeing human!Cas in “The End” is the first we see of potential developments for how Cas could behave without his angelness interfering. Being human changes Cas a lot, beyond even his experience existing among humans, though that of course matters too. This development will be important later /wink.

Seasons 6 & 7:

Before anything else let me just recognize that if we could see some sexual tension in seasons 4 & 5, these two seasons come with our first taste of romantic tension. The pining! Also note the difference between season 4 Cas and season 6 Cas in terms of behaviour. He is much less the angel we saw in that barn in “Lazarus Rising.” In season 6, we have a Cas making misguided decisions guided entirely by his emotions – namely, not wanting to involve Dean with the war in heaven – which is peak human, honestly. Put a pin on how sad Dean is in both seasons with Cas’s absence. Finally, put a pin on this being our first moment of Cas doing things on his own to spare Dean and it not ending well (soulless!Sam, Cas “dying” after Leviathan) because this is *the* hurdle in their relationship (along with Dean’s lashing out and self-worth issues). With all this said, the marked distance between Dean and Cas in these seasons negates the possibility of them entering into any kind of relationship. Much like seasons 4 and 5, there’s too much going on.

Season 8:

Ah, yes, the summer of purgatory. If you thought we had pining before…! I think we’re all very clear on season 8 being a turning point for the show, not only because new showrunner, but we also get the bunker. TFW now has an HQ, which pretty soon becomes home. Yes, Baby will always be home, but the bunker becomes the *unmovable* safe haven that Baby couldn’t be. The bunker is a place to coalesce, and for all the amazing things Baby is, she is not that. The acquisition of the bunker marks a shift in the psychology of the show: with the stable home space we can start to imagine domesticity, a place to come home to, the stuff of ordinary living. Most of all, the bunker is emblematic of security, of safety –keep this in mind, as we go forward.

This season also continues to see Cas go down the path of independently solving his problems instead of asking for help from Sam and Dean (his family in a way heaven never was) – note that the better together issue is at play in different ways with Sam and Dean also, but I digress. I also want to point out disastrous instance #2 of Cas’s insistence on figuring it out on his own: he loses his grace, and the angels fall. As for Dean, season 8’s focus for him has much to do with Sam, and them coming face to face with their issues with codependency, which hit catastrophic levels with the gates of hell and Gadreel plots.

So despite all the deliciously angsty get together purgatory fics and spec, there’s too much distance between Dean and Cas on Cas’s part due to his guilt over betraying the Winchesters in s6 plus slaughtering angels plus unleashing Leviathan. We do see Dean being more emotionally open with Cas and continue to voicing his wish that Cas would just stay with him and Sam, and let them help. It’s clear as day how much Dean cares. The timing is still bad, though.

Before moving on to next season, let’s take a moment to appreciate that this is the season Dean admits being kinda done with one night stands because “always with the adios.” Remember the bunker as a sign of stability? Yeah. I wouldn’t say Dean is craving a relationship, exactly, but I think we can see that he does want something more (ahem also I’m nodding to Cas refusing to stay put just cause).

Seasons 9 & 10:

The most important thing to happen between this two seasons is Cas’s stint as a human for an extended period of time. There’s been plenty of spec and meta written over the years about the effects of being human on Cas’s grace (a proto-soul now maybe?). What we can say for sure, regardless, is that Cas is much more humanized once he becomes an angel again. The understanding he gets from being human doesn’t go away once he regains his angel powers. You’ll notice that while we still see some of season 4’s characterization, Cas is not the same as he was – he is alien to angels now and is more intelligible to humans. Additionally, in an interesting reversal from previous seasons, we now get to see the depth of Cas’s feelings for Dean (thanks, Metatron) as well as seeing him be more open emotionally, while Dean does most of the pushing away (first because of Gadreel, then because of the Mark of Cain). In short, the timing is still bad as Dean and Cas are largely kept apart both physically and emotionally.

9.06 Heaven Can’t Wait

This episode is my white whale, friends. While I’ve come to fully subscribe to the idea that something did happen between Dean and Cas during the fanfic gap, I don’t actually think it’s feasible that it marked the start of a relationship -- be it sexual or romantic. My reasoning here is quite simple: the timing is bad. Were it not for external events (Cas regaining his Grace and Dean taking on the MoC), the course would have likely differed. Furthermore, Dean’s guilt over making Cas leave the bunker as well as Cas’s own hurt and self-loathing pose a significant and as yet insurmountable obstacle, which is easily seen with how Dean and Cas’s character trajectories go separate ways.

YMMV on what exactly happened between them in that Motel, but something definitely did. Perhaps one day I’ll have a proper s9 trutherism post to link to here for more details (likely won’t be written by me, though).

10.16 Paint It Black

From the point Dean gets the MoC until the end of season 10, anything between him and Cas is quite impossible due to distancing, to say the least. Again, yes, the fic is really good, but alas. One of the reasons I’m bringing up this episode in particular is because of the confession scene. One, it’s a rare bit of explicit emotional honesty from Dean, and two, it tells me that while he and Cas may be well aware of the Thing™ between them, it’s still uncharted waters. It’s scary, and murky, and they’re unsure how to navigated it or if they should even try. Makes sense, too, there’s been A LOT going on since s6. Anyway, he’s the full confession:

You know, the life I live, the work I do…I pretty much just figured that that was all there was to me, you know? Tear around and jam the key in the ignition and haul ass until I ran out of gas. I guess I just thought sooner or later, I’d go out the same way that I live – pedal to the metal, and that would be it. […] Now, um… recent events, uh… make me think I might be closer to that than I really thought. And…I don’t know. I mean, you know, there’s – there’s things, there’s…people, feelings that I-I-I want to experience differently than I have before, or maybe even for the first time. […] Yeah, I’m just starting to think that… maybe there’s more to it all than I thought.

Can I just say, first, that this confession keeps me up at night because we never actually see anything done with it explicitly? I mean, obviously, I think we do in fact see the effects of this confession in the show, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this behemoth, but still, like. Damn. Ok, so, remember when I brought up that thing in season 7 about Dean being kinda done with hook-ups? Here’s where that led us. We’re seeing a Dean here who wants more than what he has convinced himself he gets to have. He wants more than dying bloody. And when he talks about wanting to experience people and feelings differently, well, that says a lot not just on the queer coding front or the romantic front. I mean, jfc, Dean is accepting the idea that he can have more in life than just hunt until he drops, and he’s specifically talking about experiences at the interpersonal level.

Do you ever see a character having an epiphany and find yourself wanting to cry because this is it right here. Dean is just blatantly admitting he wants more and maybe he can make himself be open to that (!!!), which all culminates in season 11, so…

Season 11:

The pining is still here, but it’s worse now since it’s the whole plot? It’s been *checks calendar* 5 years of this. How are any of us still kicking I don’t know. Your slow burns could never. Cool worth noting points: Cas says yes to Lucifer (bad decision #2.5, lots of mitigating effects_I don’t actually hold it against him that much but Dean is another story & not entirely rational at this point); for the first time since the early days, Dean and Cas are on equal grounds: they’ve both fucked up a lot and have hurt each other. The issues this season are outside their dynamic. Amara and Lucifer here serve as externalizing forces for Dean and Cas’s problems: Cas checks out with Lucifer because he thinks it’s the only way he can help, Dean is caught up in the turmoil of Amara, the emblem of absence and avoidance of struggle. We do get something like an affirmation from the two of them to each other via Dean calling Cas his brother (and I want y’all to consider the historical queering of that statement, and Cas’s “I could go with you.” It feels like we’re headed to them being on the same page. By the end of the season, though, it feels like we’re getting a clean slate: Mary is back, nobody died, no end-of-the-world in sight, no interpersonal crisis. We’re also getting a new showrunner, so. No wonder. We’re gearing up for something, but I’m getting ahead of myself. What this season does that is super important is that it sets up the stage for the possibility of an actual relationship between Dean and Cas, something that has, up until this point, been pretty much impossible.

11.04 Baby

Y’all know what I’m about to quote here, right? That conversation between Dean and Sam about having something with someone who understands the life. Here we still have Dean reverting to the idea that it’s impossible, which is a direct contrast to the openness in 10.16. It’s understandable, though, considering there’s been little reason to think anything like that would be possible (see all the mess and poor timing from seasons past). The quote in question, though, marks a continuing development regarding the issues Dean is struggling with this season:

DEAN: Piper? That’s awesome. Heather. One-night wonders, man. Shoot, we’re lucky we still get that at all. SAM: Really? You don’t … Ever want something more? DEAN: I’m sorry, have you met us? We’re batting a whopping zero in domestic life, man. Goose eggs. SAM: You don’t ever think about something? Not marriage or whatever. But … Something? You know, with a hunter? Somebody who understands the life?

We wouldn’t be talking about this stuff all these years after Sam and Dean had a serious relationship if it wasn’t important, right? Also who else do we meet this season? That’s right! Eileen! And doesn’t that hit different with season 15 hindsight? And who does Dean have that understands the life? Whose stories have been intricately connected to his? Right now, this is all conjecture. A pipe dream Sam is revisiting, and Dean is skeptical about. Except, well. Look at what we get in “Into the Mystic” and “The Chitters.”

11.11 Into The Mystic

I’m bringing up this episode as a cross reference to “Paint It Black” as well as to complement the talk from “Baby,” and to show, again, that, for all the closeness between Dean and Cas, there’s still a marked distance they haven’t yet bridged. There’s still truths they haven’t told each other. Thanks Mildred for the delicious exposition:

Darlin’…If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years on the road, it’s when somebody’s pining for somebody else. […] Oh, don’t try and hide it now. Follow your heart. Remember?

11.19 The Chitters

And here we see some validation to Sam’s imagining of a possible future with someone else. We actually see hunters who not only are married, but they both make it out alive. Jesse and Cesar get their happy ending. They make the dream come true. And the reality of it important not just for Dean to see, but Sam too.

Dean: [with realization] Oh, so … [points back and forth to Jesse and Cesar] Cesar: Yeah. Dean: Okay, that’s… Cesar puts his beer bottle on the table and looks at Dean, while Jesse is being silent. Dean: What’s it like, settling down with a hunter? Cesar: Smelly, dirty. [turns to Jesse] Twice the worrying about getting ganked.

I’d like to point out, too, that the fear of getting ganked is thematic when it comes to the tension between Dean and Cas. More on this when we hit s13.

Alright, now, having said that, let’s take a look at season 12. Bear in mind, this is the official start of Dabb’s era, even if he kinda began taking over in season 11, and the change in vibes is obvious. In fact, 12 jumped out at me as a turning point, in hindsight, after getting smacked by the domesticity of seasons 13 and 14.

II. Why Season 12

[Out of date section. Update coming soon when spoons. After significant debate, I’ve altered the definitive start of Dean and Cas’s friend-with-benefits-with-mutual-pining relationship to between 12.02 and 12.03. I briefly explained why here, and yes it’s a shitpost--still true tho.]

Finally, the promise land, y’all. Getting right to it: what s11 was for Dean in terms of setting up the relationship stage, s12 was for Cas. In its initial beats, any way. That is, until the Kelly debacle, this was the longest Cas has been around the bunker and with the exception of seasons 13 and 14, it’s one of the first times we get to see how Cas might actually fit into the bunker-as-home. Things seem remarkably chill. Of course, we’ll notice that there’s still a lot of baggage hanging around because despite Dean and Cas being in a more stable place, they haven’t actually dealt with their interpersonal problems. I didn’t single out directly this episode, but do keep in mind Cas’s declaration in 12.09 First Blood as far as how much the Winchesters matter to Cas & how we also see Dean and Cas be particularly singled out with them seating together in the backseat of the Impala. What we also see this season is Cas trying to prove he is worthy of this family, his family. He’s not fighting for heaven or to right some grievous wrong (a la s8). No, this season he’s fighting to spare the Winchester, to bring them a win. To bring Dean a win. The major disconnect is that Dean (and Sam & Mary) already sees Cas that way, he doesn’t think Cas has anything to prove. And just maybe, Cas starts believing that too – or, at least, believing it enough.

12.10 Lily Sunders Has Some Regrets

This episode, oh my god, the goodness. In the wake of 12.09 we have Dean and Cas in a tiff because Cas mistake #3 (killing Billie and “cosmic consequences”), this is a pattern. Twice the worry of getting ganked, etc etc. But where this episode really shines is through the contrast between Ishim’s obsession with Lily and Cas & Dean’s mutual affection for each other. Ishim sees no difference here and, to him, Cas’s feelings for Dean are a human weakness. Returning to my point about human!Cas, this episode underscores that Cas’s increasing humanity is what puts him in the place where he can want what Dean wants instead of either being too alien to get it (see s4 & 5) or unable to experience it properly (Ishim).

12.12 Stuck in the Middle (With You)

Cas’s trajectory culminates here with the whole I love you (@ Dean), I love all of you (@ Winchesters). Let’s note too that Cas is dying here, in a way that is much more human than going up in light. This declaration of different types of love is entirely human. It’s also a definitive step wrt to Cas and Dean’s relationship because of what happens in 12.19. This. is. it. Oh, and, of course, let’s not forget to point to Dean’s face when Cas says that “I love you,” and how terrified he is that Cas is dying. Might make one rethink some things, hm?

12.19 The Future

This episode is simply hella suspicious, and all the kudos to Berens and Glynn for writing it. It’ll haunt me forever. Consider watching it again and just questioning everything. So. Weird things:

1. Dean’s reaction to Cas no getting in touch as opposed to Sam’s. Dean is pissed, which is Dean-speak for worried out of his mind. Sam is very worried, too, and puzzled, but he’s mostly expressing his relief that Cas is back. But Cas has gone awol before, but this time Dean is much more worked up about it; Sam takes note of this, too. Now, let’s imagine that maybe the events of 12.12 led to something happening between Dean and Cas. Then Cas decided to leave to find a lead on Kelly, but eventually Cas decides to work with Heaven and goes radio silent. For days. Having taken a chance, and something having happened between them, how would Dean react to Cas just going poof and not contacting him – despite Dean having called Cas multiple times.

2. Cas knows about the Colt. Ok, nothing off there. But when he goes to Dean’s room to talk, right after Dean leaves we see Cas looking around briefly. Like he know Dean would keep it in there. Maybe Cas had looked other places already. Who knows. What we do know is that eventually he does find the Colt not only in Dean’s room, but under Dean’s pillow. Sam didn’t even know the Colt wasn’t in the safe. So how did Cas know?

3.“He came into my room and he played me.” So, this quote right there, makes it seem like some seduction for personal gain, right? But can you see Cas actually doing that if they hadn’t gone there previously? For Dean not to suspect anything and go with it? There’s plenty of plausible deniability here, but the gaps in time in the narrative make me question what is there in those spaces. The scene where Cas tried to give Dean the mixtape back doesn’t read like “playing,” so it’s about a different interaction. Hm. Hmmm.

4. Dean and Cas’s brief conversation in Dean’s room is clearly Dean just wanting Cas to stay, so they can work (and be) together – because they’re better that way. Which, yeah, truth, but also ow.

5.And most importantly: When did Dean give Cas that mixtape??? How did that happen?

Sequence of events: Cas tells Dean he loves him – Dean is clearly shook by it – Dean gives Cas a mixtape (romantic gesture, often a declaration of feelings; in true Dean speak too lolsobs) – Cas goes awol - Dean acts like he got ghosted by his new bf -?????- Cas somehow knows the Colt is under Dean’s pillow – "He went into my room and he played me."

What am I supposed to do with that, hm? Like. Y’all realize they probably had some emotionally constipated getting together moment, right? Something that Dean clearly initially thought meant things were gonna change, now. Something that Cas couldn’t allow to happen until he could give Dean a win. Y’all are seeing this, yeah? I’m not saying they slept together and were full of feelings, except that’s kind of what I’m saying. But YMMV, there are other possibilities beyond sex. The full of feelings isn’t up for debate, though, even if the whole thing is informed by ridiculous amounts of miscommunication.

III. Seasons 13 through 15 As Established Relationship

Regardless of what happened in season 12, exactly, I can’t shake the feeling that something did happen, and something did change. My reasoning here is actually really simple: in comparison to previous seasons, Dean and Cas’s dynamic shifts significantly come season 13. I know some folks have been disappointed with some of season 13 and then season 14 for having dialed back on the destiel side of things. And, hey, maybe there’s truth to that in terms of backstage stuff, but I also want to point out that...well, the dialing back isn’t quite dialing back is it? Let’s look at 13 a little more closely:

Season 13:

So I said the deancas dynamic changed, right? I also think that change caught us unaware because the pivotal turning point that would cue us in never happened on screen as well as being subsumed by Cas’s death and Jack’s birth. But if I ask you about deancas in season 13 what would come to mind? Grief arc? Brokebacknatural? How domestic Dean and Cas are? There’s just something easy about their relationship after Cas returns from the Empty. The tension we’d grown so familiar with over the years is gone. Actually, it feels like we skipped the getting together bit of their relationship and went straight to established relationship and parenting. Some of the most peak married deancas moments we see circulating? Season 13, (and 12.10). It’s a lot, and it’s different, and it’s amazing.

13.01-13.05

Dean’s grief mini-arc. He was acting like a widower. Here’s me vaguely gesturing towards the mapping of Jonh, Mary, Dean, and Sam onto Dean, Cas, Sam, and Jack. And the reunion? I can’t help but be giddy at the song choice: “it’s never too late to start all over again.” To. Start. All. Over. Again. I’m just saying.

13.06 Tombstone & 13.16 Scoobynatural

I’m not going at length about these episodes, I just want to point out that they reveal that Dean and Cas have a whole thing going on off screen: they watch movies together, Cas knows about Dean being an angry sleeper, Cas seems to have been aware of the Dean-cave before Sam was. It’s little things like this that are examples of the narrative gaps surrounding Dean and Cas that have cropped up over the years. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wonder what else could be hiding there. And when did the movie nights alluded in “Tombstone” happen? Maybe in season 12 when Cas in hanging around the bunker? The same period when Dean and Cas seem to be coalescing into something safer and more stable? Something that we never see come to a head because plot happens and Cas dies? Something that is immediately taken back up once Cas is alive again?

Season 14:

Overall, this season is more of what we got during 13, but it had two high notes I wanted to single out before ending this already too long post.

14.15 Peace of Mind

Look me in the eye and tell me Dean and Cas talking in the kitchen about Jack doesn’t read like husbands talking about their child. Look me in the eye and tell me Cas just texting Dean to gossip about Sam isn’t couple-y as hell.

14.18-14.20

Ah, yes, the divorce arc. Awful. Terrible. The culmination of Dean’s problem in all this: he lashes out, he pushes Cas away, his anger is alienating. Cue all of us suffering. But while Dean is clearly in the wrong in how the deals with his feelings, let’s not pretend some of his anger doesn’t come from a long established, and unaddressed, rift between him and Cas, which had its last traumatic turn when Cas died in s12. Dean isn’t being rational here: he saw Cas doing something on his own, and he saw that his mother is dead. What else could happen? Why won’t Cas just trust they can work as a team? What if Cas died again? And why should Cas put up with Dean’s behavior without knowing the cause? How can any relationship work this way? But notice how caught in the middle Sam was during all this. Notice how Jack is running off and acting out. The whole family is falling apart. Divorce arc, indeed.

Season 15:

But what about what we’re building up in 15? That seems like it could be a getting together plot, too, right? Well, yeah. It could very well be. But I’d argue the tension we’re seeing isn’t a will-they-or-won’t-they because they already have. We’re are watching a getting back together plot! The tension is, instead, will-they-or -won’t-they use their words to talk about the baggage that has kept them from truly being confident about their relationship. That’s the crucial step in their togetherness that they’re still missing, which is also the bedrock of the divorce arc that spanned twelve fucking episodes -- y’all, that’s half a season.

And technically? We’re not even done with yet because Cas never let Dean finish his prayer/confession in purgatory. What’s more, Cas hasn’t grappled with his role in the breakdown of their relationship, either: that he keeps going off on his own and getting hurt (and getting other people hurt), and Dean has to deal with the fallout. The deep emotional understanding, the truly being on the same page is what we’re on the edge of our seats for. We’re waiting to see what else Dean had to say, and what will happen when Cas’s deal with the Empty comes to light.

Finally, could we still have this plot without Dean and Cas having gotten together off screen? Sure, but I think the stakes are higher if they already did have something between them. If they actually have an established romantic relationship going on. Something real and tangible and as of yet much too fragile.

"...you asked what about all this is real. We are."

#destiel #deancas #supernatural #spn #spn meta #this thing is gargantuan yikes #anyway enjoy? let's chat #my writing #this thing is half meta half my adhd unleashed

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aerial-jace · 3 years

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Figuring out cat ages: The Followers of the Sun Trail

So, y’all remember that fic concept I threw out? Yeah, I decided I want to actually write it. But first, I need to figure out some cat ages because if we’re touching on the kithoods of Clear Sky and Gray Wing I need to have some sense of who are their peers and who are their seniors. I’m deciding to throw it out to the internet just in case anyone has thoughts of their own or can smack me with some textual evidence of why I’m wrong. Also, it’s just fun to map out cat ages and relationships, I’m having way more fun than I’ve ever had with this kind of prepwork for some reason.

For reference, let me throw some useful pages from the Warriors wiki: here’s the allegiances for The Sun Trail, and here’s a timeline of events of the whole series. I’m cross-referencing these with my own copies of the DotC books in case anything sounds fishy but by and large I trust the wiki.

For this particular post, I want to trace mostly the ages of the Followers of the Sun Trail, that is to say: Shaded Moss, Rainswept Flower, Tall Shadow, Moon Shadow, Cloud Spots, Dappled Pelt, Turtle Tail, Shattered Ice, Quick Water, Bright Stream, Hawk Swoop, Jackdaw’s Cry, Falling Feather, Clear Sky, Gray Wing, and Jagged Peak. Other than our protagonists we have very little evidence of any of their ages, but I like to think the group skews young adult which for the sake of these being cats I’m defining as around 1 to 2.5 years old. There are certainly older adults as well as younger members of the group, but the vast majority of ages will be in this range.

Future posts will touch on the ages of the rest of The Tribe of Rushing Water at this point in time as well as any parental relationships for cats who would’ve been kits within the timeframe of the story. I’m just going to say it up front, I’m going to just ignore fathers when figuring out families (aside from the one canonical father given I guess) because it’s less of a headache and I like the idea of queens just not being required to disclose parentage.

First off, our protagonists and their siblings!

Gray Wing and Clear Sky are noted to have been kits just last sunny season which the wiki interprets as them having been born in Greenleaf. I don’t particularly like this because that means that at maximum the two are about 8 moons old which... I don’t know it seems kinda young for them. I think a more sensible solution is to have them be around 12 moons/1 year old (we’re rounding down the 12.34 lunations a year for simplicity’s sake). I think it’s pretty reasonable for the journey down the mountains to have taken approximately one moon, with Newleaf just starting by the time they arrive. If Gray Wing and Clear Sky were born within the last moon of Leafbare, that would mean they are under 6 moons old (what the series takes as a benchmark of the transition out of kithood, though that may be a later cultural thing for the clans) for 2 out of the 3 moons of Greenleaf (again, working with simpler whole numbers) and I think that fits.

Now Jagged Peak and Fluttering bird are noted to have been born in the cold season which the wiki interprets as Leafbare and, yeah, no argument there. However, noting the fact that I take the journey to take the last moon of Leafbare, that would make the two a whole 2 MOONS OLD! Holy shit, Jagged Peak is a fucking infant by the start of the journey, just barely having been fully weaned! It’s honestly crazy how Quiet Rain just kind of accepted the fact he was gone and just sent out her son as the only means of protection. I would’ve been going feral in her place trying to get back my child!

Ahem, so that small freakout aside, I wanna talk about Shaded Moss, the leader of the group, next. However, he has a daughter, Rainswept Flower, and I can use her age as a benchmark for determining her father’s age. I like to think, for no particular reason, that she is 1.5 years old and just for the sake of making the numbers look nice I think I’m assigning Shaded Moss an age of 3 years old. That sounds about right.

Talking about the adults of the group, Cloud Spots! I want him to be somewhat older than Shaded Moss, perhaps by a year or two, so that sets our age range at about 4 to 5 years old. Considering the timeline says that the events of Dawn of the Clans take place over about 4 years (though for some reason the Shadowstar’s Life novella is still not included in the timeline and that seems to take place after the last events listed in the DotC era), I think it’s believable that he lived that long and is headed for retirement just as soon as he finishes mentoring his apprentice, Shivering Rose, who appeared in Thunderstar’s Echo.

So, for family relationships we have 2 sibling pairs which I believe while not explicitly stated are meant to be read as being littermates: Tall Shadow & Moon Shadow, and Jackdaw’s Cry & Falling Feather. Considering Tall Shadow is Shaded Moss’s second in command I like to think she’s closer to him in age so perhaps we can go with that upper limit of what I’m counting as young adult and have her and her brother at 2.5 years old. Now, for Jackdaw’s Cry & Falling Feather the best evidence we have is that the allegiances describe them as “young”. This is like... really vague and the fact there is a need to mention it implies to me they’re the youngest in the group, baring Jagged Peak. I think the most interesting choice would be to have them be a season younger than Clear Sky and Gray Wing, putting them at 9 moons old.

Now let’s talk about the love interests, Bright Stream and Turtle Tail! I want them to be older than our protagonists but still young enough that they would’ve spent a significant amount of time together as kits. I want to have them somewhere within the 13-15 moons old range just for the sake of having them be older than Clear Sky and Gray Wing but not by much, not really settled on a particular age. I also like the possibility of Turtle Tail being Dappled Pelt’s littermate so I’ll have her at 13-15 moons old too. We'll see if they remain sisters once I start having to figure out mothers for all the kits that will be running around when the story begins with Gray Wing and Clear Sky’s birth.

And last of the Followers of the Sun Trail I actually have any strong opinions on age about, Hawk Swoop, Jackdaw’s Cry’s mate. I think the best would be to have her be around the same age as Clear Sky and Gray Wing for the same reason I settled on Bright Stream and Turtle Tail’s age, plus the fact she’s not described as young. So she’s going to be at 12 moons old. I don’t think this is a particularly problematic age gap since there’s a whole 2 seasons in between them setting out for the journey and having Acorn Fur and Lightning Tail, time by which they are both within my somewhat arbitrarily designated category of young adult cats. So, yeah.

And to get them out of the way, Shattered Ice and Quick Water. I’ll just throw out the number 21 moons/1.75 years old. I think this range of ages within the spectrum was a bit empty so I’m just plopping them there.

#warrior cats #wc #dotc #dawn of the clans #the sun trail #fanfiction #warriors fanfiction #headcanons #warrior cats headcanons #spent way more time than I thought I would #in my hubris I thought I could get out all ages for the tribe out of the way

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bartramcat · 3 years

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CSIV: Of Confessions and Consummations

I'll just throw it out there right off the bat: in no way do I think Sara was telling Nora that she and Grissom began their love affair the night she told him her backstory. While ND was undoubtedly responsible for them finally getting together, I just don't believe it happened then. Nor do I think that is what Sara was saying. I actually think that what she said left "the moment" as vague as it has always been.

Sara telling Grissom her backstory is not new information. Nor is the fact that "Gil understood, and, after that, he was just there” for her. Exactly what she means by “after that” and “he was just there” can be interpreted in many different ways. “After” could be any where between 5 minutes after she told him to a week later--or even longer. His “being there” to me does not imply only a romantic/sexual context, although I think that becomes part of their dynamic fairly quickly post ND, just not during ND.

I am well aware that it has been debated until long after the cows have come home exactly when they got together, with some people thinking it had to be ND and others thinking it didn’t happen until Time of Your Death. That’s a pretty large time gap. I suppose some folks want empirical evidence, while others try to peek through the keyhole and read between the lines.

Actually, to be blunt, this iteration of CSI is, thus far, full of temporal anomalies. On the one hand, we have the ND reference, and, on the other, all of this stuff circa Rashomama that makes no sense. As I said previously, Grissom's Performance Review of Sara doesn't sound like Season 6; at the latest, it could be from early season 5 IMO. Then, also in the conversation between Sara and Nora, Nora states that around that time is when Gil and Sara “became serious.”

Now what is that supposed to mean? When they started having sleepovers? When they moved in together? She actually implies it is the period in which they were so caught up in the Romance that they weren’t paying attention. And how would anyone outside of a small circle of friends (maybe) come up with that as a date that they “got serious”? Even Sara’s “two years” to Ecklie doesn’t fit within that time frame. As little entree as we, the audience, were given into the nuts and bolts of their affair, we actually had more information than the folks at the Lab ever did.

(The odds of Gil and/or Sara sitting down with anyone and giving a timeline of their affair....just didn’t happen. Even as to their first marriage, Sara is so closed-mouthed about their relationship, I doubt she filled in their history to anyone. And Gil certainly never discussed it with anyone after Sara left in Season 8. Hell, the only person to whom he opens up about Sara at all is Heather, and she certainly never talked to anyone at the Lab.)

It has occurred to me that perhaps Rashomama is a favorite episode of this new crop of writers. Heck it's easily among my favorites as well. Still, trying to make everything revolve around that one episode, from the evidence fabrication to a significant point in the GSR love story simply ignores too much of the history of everything we already know.

Hey, showrunners! Reruns are forever.

#csi vegas #csi #gil grissom #sara sidle #nora cross #nesting dolls #rashomama

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victory-red · 3 years

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why tōya being the oldest todoroki sibling makes no (or very little) sense.

Warning: Manga spoilers. Long post ahead - big paragraphs, lots of reading, and at least one (1) rabbit trail.

So I know this is old news, but I’ve been meaning to make a post about it for a little while now. I know a lot of people already headcanoned that Tōya was the oldest Todoroki sibling even before it was officially confirmed, but it just never really made sense to me, particularly in regard to Enji’s timeline. And then, after Chapter 291 came out, it made even less sense.

(A couple of quick disclaimers, before I continue: I’m not trying to pass anything off as fact. My conclusions are simply opinions based on observations I’ve made. I’ll also note that there are definitely gaps in what information we do officially have, so there is still a chance that what seems to me like a fairly significant plothole will eventually be explained.)

I’ll start with Enji - more specifically, his current confirmed age in relation to Fuyumi’s, who is the oldest Todoroki sibling whose age we do officially know. As of the current manga arc, Enji is 46 years old, and Fuyumi is 23. Since Enji’s birthday is in early August and Fuyumi’s in early December, that means that Enji was a little over 23 years old when he and Rei had Fuyumi.

From what we know of Enji’s history and personality, that seems like a reasonable age for him to have started having kids. He said in Ch. 165 that he became Number Two at age 20, at which point he immediately realized that he wasn’t ever going to be able to surpass All Might on his own. He said that it was because of this realization that he passed the torch (no pun intended) to Shōto. But, Shōto wouldn’t be born until a decade later. So, it makes sense to me that this would be the point that Enji decided it would be best to instead try having a child that could surpass All Might. In other words, it makes sense that this would be the catalyst that led to Shōto’s birth.

The most recent information we got regarding Enji and Rei’s relationship in Ch. 291 seems to be just a bit conflicting with how Shōto had described things back in Ch. 31 - unlike Shōto’s account, Ch. 291 sort of implied that Enji did care for Rei to some capacity, at least early in their marriage. (How he’s been portrayed in flashbacks recently is actually very conflicting with flashbacks from earlier chapters, and even with his entire personality in earlier chapters. But I won’t get into that - we’ll just make the assumption that Shōto’s story was biased, because it probably was.)

Since he essentially bought Rei’s family off, it only makes sense that he would have to grow to care for her over a period of time - you know, maybe like a year or two. I’m not sure how long the entire Quirk Marriage process took, but factoring in the 9 or so months Rei had to carry Fuyumi before she was born, it makes sense that after Enji’s realization upon attaining the Number Two title, the entire process of creating the plan of having hyper-powerful children, finding a suitable partner, buying her family off, marrying her, and having their first child would take anywhere between two to three years. That would mean that he was 20 when the process started, 22 when Rei got pregnant, and 23 when Fuyumi was born. Boom.

(Frankly, even that timeframe seems a bit compressed to me, but since Enji’s and Fuyumi’s ages are both canonically set in stone, I have no choice but to work with it.)

Tōya canonically being older than Fuyumi begins to screw a lot with the timeline - especially taking into consideration what the implied age gap between them is. I unfortunately can’t find where (or if) this is explicitly stated in the manga, but the wiki says that most Quirks develop around the age of 4. Now, it’s entirely possible that Tōya was born with his Quirk, but given Rei’s constitution, I highly suspect that there would have been severe complications with both her pregnancy and Tōya’s birth. It also makes sense that if he had developed his Quirk at an exceptionally young age, there would have been some note made of it. But since neither of those things are mentioned to have happened, we’ll just assume he was between 3 and 4½ years old when his Quirk manifested.

I don’t know how long afterward it took for Enji and Rei to decide to have another baby, but I can’t imagine that the decision took any longer than several months. I’ll be conservative and say that they decided no longer than a few months after Tōya’s Quirk developed, because remember - Enji literally, canonically cannot be any older than 23 when Fuyumi was born. Jumping 9 months forward from that time, Tōya would most likely have been between 4 and 5 years old when Fuyumi was born.

Now I will note that in the top panel, Tōya looks to me to be between 4 and 6 years old, which was presented as being before Fuyumi’s birth. But in the lower one, where he’s crawling over to look at baby Fuyumi (or at least I think that’s what’s happening? It’s a bit dark to tell for certain), he looks a lot younger - in fact, he doesn’t even look to have the white streak in his hair yet. But given how it’s explained that Enji and Rei even came to the decision to have Fuyumi at all, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense contextually. But, I’ll let it be and just assume that the manga didn’t present those panels chronologically. It could also be the zoomed-out view that makes Tōya seem smaller. Either way, I’m overanalyzing, and that’s sort of off-topic, anyway.

Okay, I think that’s all the setup I need to finally get to the meat of my argument, which I will start with this: If Tōya is anywhere between 4 and 5 years older than Fuyumi, that means that Enji was anywhere between 18 and 19 years old when Tōya was born.

In any other situation, that might make sense, but here’s the thing: it’s already been established, or at least very heavily implied, that Enji didn’t even consider the possibility of having children to surpass All Might until he attained his Number Two status, which as I’ve already mentioned happened when he was 20. Even if Tōya was only 3 years older than Fuyumi, which doesn’t make much sense because he would then have had to develop his Quirk at age 2 or younger, that still would mean that he was conceived before Enji even became Number Two.

If that doesn’t make sense to you, think of it this way: If Enji was between 18 and 20 years old when Tōya was born, that would mean that Tōya would have been conceived when Enji was 17 at the youngest - still a student, unless he graduated early. Regardless, that also implies he would have had to create his elaborate plan to beat All Might, as well as find and marry Rei, before he even graduated secondary school. Given what information we have from canon, that just does not make any semblance of sense.

As compelling that argument alone may or may not be, there are others to support it as well. Let’s consider what that implies for the age gaps between Tōya and the other Todoroki siblings. If he’s 3-5 years older than Fuyumi, that means he’s roughly 7-9 years older than Natsuo and 10-12 years older than Shōto. That would mean, if Shōto were between 5 and 6 years old in the following panels, Tōya would be anywhere between 15 and 18 years old. Fuyumi would be between 10 and 13, and Natsuo would be between 8 and 11.

While I understand that Tōya inherited Rei’s slight constitution, puberty usually begins for boys around 12 or 13 years old (although to my understanding it often starts later in Asian boys), so Tōya would likely have already begun to go through his growth spurt by this age. Even assuming that Natsuo had started going through his own growth spurt, Tōya still has 7-9 years on him - so the chances that Natsuo had this much height and mass on him are pretty slim. I might be able to buy Tōya being 15 years old in those panels, but I find even that a bit of a stretch.

And finally, let’s talk about how old Tōya was when he “died.”

Assuming that the second panel is the most recent (halfway decent) photo the Todorokis have of Tōya before his “death,” I’m inclined to agree with the people who have pointed out that his clothes resembled a junior high school uniform, similar to what Midoriya and Bakugō were seen wearing in the story’s earliest chapters and episodes. Junior high school in Japan is attended by students between the ages of 12 and 15, roughly - so it’s safe to assume that Tōya was no older than 15 years old when he “died.” However, I will note that given how Horikoshi draws most of the 15-year-old male characters in the story, he does look younger than that to me. I am keeping in mind that Tōya was mentioned to have had a slight build - even as Dabi, he still does - so there is the possibility that my conclusions there aren’t accurate.

If Tōya was 12 when he “died,” Shōto would probably not have any memories of him at all - at the time of his “death,” he would have been anywhere between 2 years old and a newborn. It’s implied in the manga and the anime that Tōya disappeared sometime after Rei burned Shōto’s face, which undoubtedly happened after Enji had begun to train him - so, likely well after he had turned 5. In the somewhat unlikely event that his face was burned while he was still 5 years old, Tōya would have been between 15 and 18 years old, as mentioned above. If it had happened when Shōto was 7, he would have been between 17 and 20, and so on. Going with the junior high school uniform theory, which honestly seems rather plausible, he essentially cannot have “died” after age 15 - so, more than likely, he would have been gone before Shōto even began his training. Obviously, this is disproven by the soccer panel in Ch. 39.

Honestly, I don’t know how else to say it - no matter how I angle it, it just does not make sense to me, canonically, that Tōya is the eldest Todoroki sibling. There’s a lot of information stacked up against it, and though I’ve mulled over it for a bit now, I can’t actually think of a scenario in which it actually is a logical conclusion.

TL;DR: Tōya being the oldest Todoroki doesn’t make sense in light of information we have regarding Enji’s timeline as well as previous images we’ve seen in the manga and anime.

#bnha #mha #touya todoroki #dabi #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #todoroki family #meta #v.txt

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majjiktricks · 3 years

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jazz blease,,,, for the character ask,,, mistew majima

i have my suspicions about who this is but also im not 100% sure so i will keep my accusations to myself either way i <3 u anon

How I feel about this character majima my beloved... <3 the first yakuza character i went nuts over. i love him dearly. he lives in my brain

All the people I ship romantically with this character me on my multishipping bullshit: kiryu, saejima, kiryu AND saejima (ultimate ot3 honestly), makoto (had things gone differently)... ive put a little thought into nishiki/majima, especially during the 10 year gap. some shared catharsis... that would be a terribly unhealthy relationship since i think it would be built off mutual loss of kiryu, but still an interesting one to consider. i also have a soft spot for majima/kashiwagi. it came out of nowhere but i actually really like them, even if it kinda is a crackship. something about passionate men fighting on a rooftop, majima being one of the few people to get under kashiwagi's skin and make him lose his cool...

My non-romantic OTP for this character whatever majima and nishitani would have had, had y0 been different. their relationship would be a weird one. i cant see it as a romantic one at all but definitely more than friends. also to reference my own previous answer to this, i think him and akiyama would be wild as friends. i wanna see them interact more bc theyre funny together.

My unpopular opinion about this character i think my thoughts on him are really well put together in an analysis thats been floating around tumblr recently. i know a lot of people have only played 0, k1, and maybe k2, and it seems people focus on his potrayal in k1 especially. they dont get to see the depth that majima has throughout the whole series, and boil him down to "batshit crazy knife guy" when in reality hes probably the opposite of that. hes quite calculating and deliberate, and the post explains it very well. i hope that as the games are now fully available on pc (with the exception of some spin-offs/jpn-only games), more people will play them and see the whole of majima's character instead of shoehorning him into this little niche just because its easier.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon. more!!! screentime!!! i so wish we got to see him more in the later games. as i said he does have some significant beats in 3-6 that really tell the player more about his character, but they could have done so much more with him. ESPECIALLY in 5. hes barely in 5 AT ALL 😭😭😭 i know its for plot reasons but BITCH i just want the cast in general to interact more. im fueled by that kind of thing. wanna see more of majima's relationship with saejima, and with daigo (especially post-y6 shenangans). i want him to interact with haruka and have SOME KIND of relationship to her other than "that guy that beats up my dad sometimes." so much is interpreted or created by the fandom that you start to forget a lot of what DOESNT happen in the games. also. kind of a nitpicky thing but also a pretty big deal when you think about the plot of 5. what the FUCK is the timeline in the 80s. as great a game as y0 is, the dates for it completely fucked up what y5 sets up as majima's backstory. i would like to see that retconned and ironed out in a way that makes sense. changing a few years here and there (as well as changing park's age) would be able to fix it, but that has yet to be addressed... i could go on a whole rant about this (angeles has been the victim of said rant before, but i wont. just to keep this a readable length lmao)

send me a character !

#yakuza #majima goro #jazz noises #inbox #Anonymous

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a-student-out-of-time · 3 years

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Connections Review Part 1

Happy 2021 everyone! Well…the year’s off to a terrible start due to how bad last year was but I hope that most of 2021 will be good and not be 2020 Part 2: Electric Boogaloo. But enough of that, another arc ended, another review due. Now I am quite conscious of length here and I’ll try to make these reviews a bit easier to read, it will still be split into 3 parts as there I can cover the main themes which are; Time Travel, Harems and Maverick ‘Motherfucker Hellspawn’ Storm. My initial plan was to have a quick lightening recap of everything that doesn’t fit into these categories and then review the Time Travelling and Harems but Storm became so big he needed his own part. Oh, and it should go without saying, but I will not cover the Mistletoe Asks. They are not relevant to the arc and are basically shipping fluff. No in-depth analysis required there. And with that said and done, let’s get right into it.

Its Recap time

So, as I mentioned before we get into the 3 big themes of this arc, I’ll cover really quick, and I promise it will be really quick here, anything that doesn’t fit into those categories. So firstly, we see that Kazuichi went around the Void Warehouse and helped fix their lights. Now that all of Class 77-B are aware of Void’s existence, they can help out with any problems they might have in their living quarters, which leads to a funny scene of Kazuichi getting attacked by a crow. This could be random but given what has happened with another seemly random event (more on that later) and the fact that Monocrow exists, this could be sinister foreshadowing for things yet to come. We also see Kazuichi getting ideas to build a robot with Chihiro as that’s his way of romance. Given Chihiro’s crossdressing tendencies, I wonder when the truth comes out and how confused our shark boy would be. But yeah, Kazuichi out all of the new Class 77-B members seems to have the most focus in this arc, not that I’m complaining as he was the most ‘pointless’ survivor from DR2 so him getting actual character development and focus I’m more then welcome for! There’s also Yoruko rekindling her relationship with her mentor Minako. This went better than expected then again it happened years ago, both Yoruko and Minako had time to reflect on it and both wanted to make up, but thought the other wouldn’t accept it. We also see some parallels here with Hiroko from UDG as Kizuna is revealed to be the result of a teenage pregnancy. As I mentioned in an ask, not to bog you down with personal details but teenage pregnancy is a serious problem where I live and too many people I know fucked as teens, didn’t use protection, and boom! Babies! Good thing I have a passion for Danganronpa so I DON’T get wrapped up in that kind of stuff eh? So, I completely understand Minako’s rational here, and Kizuna’s more troublesome behaviour as one of my RL friends was also the result of a teen pregnancy, and this led to her having…issues. And yeah, Kizuna shamelessly flirts with the Anons and talks about Josuke, no not THAT Josuke, simping hard for her. Naturally we have bigger problems to content with but once the weather calms down, we need to sort out Kizuna, especially now that Yoruko and Minako have made up. And that’s the two things that happened which weren’t relevant to the main themes. Now they are out of the way, time to move onto Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Stuff. Hey, Emma made a Doctor Who joke already, so it’s okay!

Back to the Visions

Despite Time Travel being one of the main themes of this blog, not a lot of research has gone into it at the moment, so in this wind down time, it’s the perfect time for Umeko to do some experiments into time travel. Last Arc dropped the reveal that Mikako has being getting dreams of the future, and as Koroko and Umeko pull up at the Kisurugi household, we see that Mikako just had a dream of the Tragedy, which understandably horrified her. Because of this Umeko and Koroko were forced to tell Mikako, Yamato and his father the truth about the future. They omitted Kasugano and him changing the timelines as its not needed but well…when one dreams of an apocalyptic future you know is coming, there’s no sense in lying about it. Umeko then explains about the time travel and basically that since the brain surgery, Mikako’s brain has become a tachyon receiver that can pick up tachyon from different timelines, not just the one you are on. But it goes beyond being able to see the future via her dreams as if Mikako focuses, and someone touches Mikako during this time, they are hit with a vision of the future that involves them. The first vision was with Koroko and she caught a glimpse into a future much more distant then the 2017 that Hajime, Yoruko, Sora and the other 2 time travellers came from, as it seems to be from the Year 2020-2022 so pretty close to our time then. Here Koroko and Kanata, who not only went through a growth spurt like Hiyoko (Poor Hibiki, she is forever going to be the short one) and has married Nagito, are giving vaccinations to a young girl named Sayuri Hinata. Sayuri herself is very familiar to some people as during the last Arc when Akane was trying to comfort Nikei, one Anon asked about a timeline where she and Ayame had a child. This was a reference to Nextgenronpa which is a Nextgen AU on Instagram created by Mikwithnoando, if you happen to have an Instagram account, I highly recommend reading it, it’s really good! The character in question is called Sayuri Otonokoji the Ultimate Sculptor and in Nextgenronpa she’s the child of Hibiki and Iroha. Koroko looking through her medical records noticed her mother’s name is Hibiki Hinata so Hibiki obviously changed her last name, makes sense as she wants to probably be as far away from Otonokoji as possible now but no mention of the father and yes Sayuri looks a lot like Iroha. This has a few possibilities.

The first theory is that Sayuri is Hibiki and Hajime’s child, but both are very busy. Hibiki would have very likely restarted her musical career around this time and we don’t know what Hajime would be doing but he would be very busy as well, and thus not a lot of time to raise Sayuri. Now Iroha would have a very sedimentary lifestyle and given she is looking after Jataro at the moment, this would probably make Iroha one of the more experienced caretakers/mothers of the cast, so maybe Sayuri was often babysat by Iroha, and if Sayuri was spending a lot of time with Iroha at a young age, she would start to view Iroha as a second mother and start copying her behaviour and mannerisms. But that doesn’t evade the fact that Sayuri PHYSICALLY looks like Iroha as well. The second theory is something happens to Hibiki or Hajime and they are unable to reproduce but want kids. With Kyoji, making kids would not be an issue, but a surrogate mother would be required and maybe Iroha volunteered to be a surrogate. However, the big issue there is that Iroha is much younger than the Goodbye Despair cast, and as Mikan later points out legally, you need to be 21 to be eligible. Sayuri looking to be 8-10 years old means Hibiki and Hajime must have banged around now-2014 and Iroha won’t turn 21 until 2017 and Sayuri looks way older than 3-5 years old. But there is one more theory and the one I believe in. Just because Mikako can see the future, doesn’t mean it’s the timeline we are currently on, and you guys remember that awful, awful period during Oncoming Storm when Iroha was crushing on Hajime and wanted to join the Cuddle Puddle despite there being a significant age gap between him and Iroha? In our timeline, Yoruko was able to slap some sense into Hajime, he was able to see he was developing a Saviour’s complex and was able to grow and develop, and it also system shocked Iroha as well as she learnt that she needed to grow up as well. But what if that didn’t happen? I think that timeline is from one when the sense slapping didn’t happen and Iroha did wind up being part of the Cuddle Puddle, and Sayuri was the result of science from Kyoji and Iroha and Hibiki wanting kids. In addition to this we also see Kotoko in her teen years and she looks brilliant all grown up and the way she talked about ‘our mothers’ and Sayuri referring to Kotoko as a big sister, makes one believe that Mikan is successful in adopting Kotoko. Overall, while Sayuri is going to be a headache to decode, that future was nice and sweet, even if it gave Mikako mild seizures.

After Mikako recovered, Yamato wanted to see the future as well, and thus we get the second vision which is from the OG Timeline in 2014, as it shows some Class 79 tomfoolery with Haruhiko ‘testing’ Yamato’s jetpack and crashing into a tree, and Teruya being concerned for his bro. I know its 2014 because Class 79 was formed then and they didn’t bond for long before Utsuro showed up with an army of Monokumas and was like ‘Knock knock, it’s the upupupu train’ and we get the Proto Killing Game. At least Yamato gets to see his future friends for the first time. And Mikako doesn’t get that much of a headache this time so it seems that the further in time she looks, the bigger the side effects. The first vision was a decade into the future so the side effects were quite big but the second one was only a couple of years so the effects were reduced. It remains uncertain if Mikako has to trust the person in question for the vision link to be done because as much of a force of good this seer ability is, it can also be used for evil. Overall, lots of discoveries on Mikako’s abilities and some hope that not every future out there is filled with despair and there exists a timeline where the Quantum Crew do win. Now it’s a case of seeing if that’s the timeline they are on or not.

That summarizes part 1 with the recapping of minor details and the time travelling science! It’s a longer part then I wanted but with the recap at the beginning it cannot be helped. When we come back, I’ll talk about the Harems and the events surrounding them and hopefully that would be the new length I wish to aim for because this is more of my old length. Stay tuned people! - Review Anon

#danganronpa #a student out of time #submission

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