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peachcitt · 3 years

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shadow and bone netflix series analysis

what up besties i said as a joke that i wanted to do an analysis post on the changes made in the s&b netflix series from the grishaverse books, and then i realized i wasn't joking and that i actually wanted to do that

it's finals season, i am an undergraduate english major, i have had about five hours of sleep within the past forty eight hours, and believe it or not i am doing this analysis as a fun reward for finishing a research paper. i am putting this out here for you so you can decide if these are the kinds of vibes you want right now.

structure of the analysis will be vaguely as follows:

changes made, in chronological order (or as best as chronology i can do under the circumstances and doing absolutely zero fact checking)

analysis of change when looking at the themes of the books which will include my personal feelings

personal theories (if any) derived from the change for the trajectory of the netflix series

so, like, long post warning. also spoiler warning for the netflix series as well as probably most, if not all, grishaverse books

now let's get this baby started

alina's appearance and shu heritage

so the series starts right off the bat acknowledging alina's shu appearance and the in-world racism and prejudice she's experienced because of it, which was not in the books. however i found alina's shu appearance to be completely in line with the book's themes. alina was already isolated at keramzin and the army because of her sickliness, and she's isolated at the little palace because of her power and her awkwardness. so purposefully making her shu was, i felt, a nice world-building decision as well as a new and interesting layer to her character. also, it's always nice to see diversity in media, so i have literally no qualms with this change

in terms of the rest of the series, the grishaverse is a very politically-motivated story. there's a lot of in-universe politics that happens in the shadow and bone trilogy and especially in the king of scars duology, and i think if the series chooses to extend into/include the king of scars duology story (which, i really hope it will), alina being shu (or at least part shu) will be very interesting to see considering king of scars and rule of wolves deal with negotiations and treaties with shu han. i think also having alina be shu and someone who has experienced countless amounts of in-world racism become a saint, seeing how she and the rest of ravka navigate her identity and identity politics will be really interesting. generally speaking, i just really hope the later parts of the series really delve into alina's identity, what it means to be a saint and also "look like the enemy," and the ravkan people's mixed feelings about her

alina's sickliness/childhood relationship with mal

in the books, alina is described as thin, always having trouble sleeping, hardly ever hungry, and sickly looking because, as we learn later, of her constantly unconsciously repressing her grisha abilities. this is part of the reason she's isolated at keramzin in the books; she's sickly and awkward and no one bothers with her except mal - because they're the same age and mal is strong enough to defend her from the older orphans at keramzin. however, the show doesn't really delve into the effects of what suppressing her abilities do to her except for a few offhand lines (alina angrily saying "im never that sick" when mal suggests she say she's stick to stop from going into the fold, mentions of her larger appetite when they're on the run in the woods). instead, the show kind of flips alina and mal's childhood personalities; mal is depicted as shy and easily picked on, and alina is the protector.

i'll just say it: this change fucks so hard. i love it. i think it says such wonderful things about their characters, and i like that alina begins the series as someone incapable of turning a blind eye to bullies and someone who cares very fiercely for the people she loves (not that that isn't the case in the books - i just think this change does a great job of looking directly at it in the way that shows have to). i think it's easy to root for her, and it's easy to see how she will become a saint to the people. in addition to that, i love what this is saying about alina and mal's characters and how they grow up; that separation from alina caused mal to have to face his own problems head on in traditionally masculine ways (because that was what ana kuya criticizes him in the show for; for always running from fights and being too soft, and i think it's really telling that our first view of mal as a kid, im pretty sure, is gingerly holding a bunny which portrays feminine caregiving and then we jump cut to mal fighting in a dirty boxing ring in the first army, something gritty and masculine). masculine ways that he had to be indoctrinated into and that may not actually be in his natural disposition.

meanwhile, separation from mal meant alina no longer had to be a dominant protector, and she does not connect with anyone in the first army as strongly as she connected with mal, so she doesn't really feel the need to be as aggressive as she was as a child. however, you can see that quiet protectiveness spark up at times - notably when people other than herself are picked on, such as at the food line when she claims not to know the others in the cartography unit so they don't get penalized along with her. i do wish, however, elements of her sickliness had been emphasized a little more in the show because of grisha theory, which i will talk about in another section.

first entry into the fold

okay i will be honest. this change is probably the one that scared me the most when seeing it in the trailers, and i am kind of still iffy on it now. in the books, alina's first journey into the fold and the inciting moment for the entire series is just luck and orders. everyone in the first army has to go through the fold at some point, and it just so happens to be alina and mal's time to go through. however, in the show alina is not initially assigned to go into the fold, but mal is, and alina goes out of her way to make sure that she gets on the skiff so that mal won't have to go alone/without her. there's this level of 'choice' (or at least the illusion of it) in the show in terms of alina and mal getting onto the skiff and going into the fold; at one point or the other they both try to tell the other not to get on the skiff and just choose something else.

the thing that irks me the most is alina's stubborn "i'll make it" line that she tells mal after she's on the skiff. it screams 'fantasy dystopian protagonist' (divergent is the first to come to mind for some reason) in a way that alina never comes across in the books. alina never chooses to make her life more difficult - she's always given two terrible options and has to take the option that fits with her morals or her perception of the power she needs to surivive and win the fight. but i know the only reason alina goes out of her way to get on the skiff is because she's separated from mal, which aligns nicely with the protective nature the show has inscribed on her.

the thing that redeems this change for me is that when alina tries to get just herself onto the skiff (by burning the maps to ensure that she has a purpose there), she ends up endangering the lives of her entire cartography unit. this keeps with the theme of a whole lot of alina's later decisions throughout the books affecting so many more people than just her, and i like that this is a lesson that she learns very early on. this change also seems to be a trade out for the final entering-the-fold scene, but i'll talk about that later.

alexei

here he is, the lynchpin himself. in the books, alexei is dry and rude in a funny way with alina, and they have this really great banter at the beginning of the novel, and then he's, like, the first to get carried off by volcra. very harrowing in the book, i loved it. in the show, alexei's character is a little (a lot) different - he's naive and blunt in a silly way, and he very obviously has a crush on alina. instead of being carried off by volcra in the show, though, he jumps off the skiff and runs blind into the fold - committing what we think at the time is an act of suicide - which was extremely harrowing to see in a completely different way, and i loved it. even if they changed alexei's personality i still love him (and his death) dearly

so as previously mentioned, alexei acts as the lynchpin between the six of crows plot and the shadow and bone plot; he manages to escape the fold alive, and makes it all the way to ketterdam to tell a select few people the legendary sun summoner is alive WHICH. okay ive just decided that's my next topic. anyway back to alexei.

his death in ketterdam is awful because of the personality change, which is why i don't mind missing bitchy alexei from the book; his hopeful little "if i tell you, you'll set me free?" that pulls at your heart and also tells you immediately that he is going to die as soon as he tells everyone what he say is done so well. i also like that through treatment of alexei, we get some characterization of the crows; inej immediately gives him water and glares at the mercher in quiet rage on his cruel treatment, kaz doesn't flinch when alexei is killed but inej and jesper do. i also thought it was interesting to have the mercher (dreeson was his name i believe) to be the one to get his hands 'dirty' and actually be the one to shoot alexei because in six of crows, there is always the sense that the merchers are cruel and conniving, but that they very carefully keep the death of the poor and the grisha off their own hands. im wondering if this hands-on killing is a dreeson-specific trait, or if this more hands-on cruelty will be explored more in other mercher characters we meet, like van eck.

sun summoner legend

this change is so?? i don't really know what to think of it. narratively, it makes sense in the show to have this legend be in place so that alina's importance is immediately recognized by people across the different countries.

however in the books, no one really expected alina. her presence wasn't foretold or divine (at first) or fate in any way. she became a saint because i think in part people weren't expecting her, and once they saw what she could do, they wanted to believe in her abilities so bad they made her divine. this change was also weird to me having just finished rule of wolves where zoya (i think) reflects on amazing things that have happened throughout the story and she notes that alina was not some sort of legend that people were expecting - none of what happened was. everything that happened from alina to nina's miracles in king of scars to zoya's expanded abilities by the end of rule of wolves to the "age of saints." all of those things were just chance people being in chance situations that all slid together in a strange, amazing coincidence. they got lucky.

and i think, at the center of the books, is this kind of purposeful disillusionment of the saints and religion, what with the main character of the original trilogy literally becoming a saint and yet never truly feeling saint-ly or being perfectly divine. the sun summoner legend the show brings up seems to depart from this. it'll be interesting to see what the show does with the legend and how alina feels about it as she fulfills it, and im honestly hoping that we'll find out later in the series that the legend was actually just some poor guy a few hundred years ago making something up to give people hope.

the crows timeline/characterization

in the books, the six of crowd ice court heist happens three years after the events of the final book of the shadow and bone trilogy. but obviously the timelines are smushed together for the show to create a new and different direction for their story and also, as we see at the end of the season, a new and different direction for alina's story as well

ive also seen bardugo say that because of the converging time lines, the grishaverse story will not take seven seasons (one season per book in the grishaverse) to get through. for this reason, im thinking that the parem story/ice court heist will begin if/when we get season 2. given that parem is a big part of kos/row, i see a crows and nikolai interaction happening in season 2 that sparks a beginning discussion on parem.

but back to the crows characterization! the crows are completely in character for me in almost every way, and i found the interactions between kaz, inej, and jesper to be very in character. however kaz's plan to capture alina doesn't work out almost at all which is something that he definitely wouldn't have let happen in the books. im chalking this up to the converging timelines - these crows are baby crows. they're young, a little less experienced, and they haven't gotten their groove on heists (and they don't have the rest of their crew) yet. but i anticipate seeing more crows-classic successful heists in season 2.

there are a couple of things i want to talk about each crow, so it's subtopic time

nina and matthias

perfect. their interactions were almost always word-for-word from the book. i can't remember if matthias had actually been the one to actually catch nina in the book, but if not, then it was a nice touch. it was interesting to see that both of them were so willing to be traitors of their country for each other in the show, because even when they're in a romantic relationship outside of fjerda and ravka in the book, they struggle with even the idea of betraying their country.

i like how they changed nina and matthias' "escape" from fjerda to ravka, and how nina explicitly betrayed grisha she knew to their faces. im interested to see how they'll integrate her back into the second army, or if they even will do that. also, i like that fedyor slowed matthias' heart to make him pass out before he sees the other grisha, so it was easy to understand how matthias could've thought it was nina deceiving him all along. their confrontation in the boat was (chef's kiss), and the horror on nina's face as she realized that this situation she put him in won't be as easily solvable as she thought was just wonderful.

jesper

perfect. i love him. and the coy little hints that he's a fabrikator were so good. also the line in the very beginning where he asks for a demo man, which foreshadows wylan was very nice. the only thing out of character is one time kaz asks him to be a distraction and show jesper claims that being a handsome distraction is not part of his talents. it literally is, why did they make him lie.

inej

literally so so good. i love that we meet her while she still has her oath not to take lives; we get to see her develop and learn that sometimes death is necessary, but that she still isn't yet comfortable with killing. on some level, she never will be, and i think that was a perfect place to start her character. however, i am confused about the show giving her a brother. where is he. is he going to be important?? why is he here???? i can't even make any solid predictions about him because inej having a brother came straight out of fucking left field. here's one flimsy prediction based on nothing at all: inej's brother is grisha and is an indentured servant. may also be involved in the parem plot, or works at the white rose where nina will befriend him and connect with the rest of the six because of him. who fucking knows

kaz

i already kind of went over their disaster plan that still somehow worked out for him, but i love literally everything else they did with kaz. the refusal to show his bare hands was literally art!! we got that tease in the first episode and the camera pans up as soon as the gloves come off. that was perfection - as well as the intimacy and trust portrayed between kaz and inej without them ever touching. i also loved the hints and nudges for his story with pekka - the way he always says his name with obvious distaste, and when we see him interact with pekka for the first time on screen. how he asks if they've ever made a deal before and pekka just goes "nah" and kaz just glares at him. perfect. and i also think the show really leaned in to the soft parts of kaz that inej sees in him, especially when he basically said she (and jesper) meant more to him than any saint?? oh my GOD. i kind of like this honest departure from kaz's book "greed is my god edgy edgy blah blah" especially when he's afraid he'll lose inej. i also think it'd be funny if we hear kaz say "greed is my god" and be edgy about it with us AND inej knowing that is superficial because of what he told her. that would be hilarious.

pekka, tante heleen, per haskell

these three aren't part of the six, but they are part of the original six of crows story and i still wanted to talk about my opinions on them, so they're going here.

i fucking loved pekka, how ruthless he was, and his irish accent. that was wonderful. because of how fucking hands-on and brutal he was, though, i wonder if they're going to keep the jakob hertzoon piece of kaz's origin story the same, because this pekka was so good at being violent that it was hard to picture him even pretending to be a benevolent benefactor to orphans. he is a dilf, though. i am not afraid to admit that.

my only problem with tante heleen is that her actress looked too nice. like she might bake me cookies and offer me a ride home from school. total milf as well but not in the scary sexy way that she was in the books. she had smile lines, she was so dainty, she seemed so genuine. i want to see her be a little more cruel.

per haskell, the actual gang leader of the crows, is not in the show at all. it seems as though the show made kaz the official boss of the crows while he is only second in command in the book. this makes me wonder how they'll handle or if they'll even include that fucking awesome scene in crooked kingdom of kaz earning the gang's trust over haskell. it would be weird to introduce per haskell in season 2 when he wasn't even mentioned in season 1, but it wouldn't be altogether terrible considering the crows spent very little time in ketterdam this season. however, this makes me wonder if, when kaz was away on his little saint pilgrimage (i am calling it that specifically because i know it would piss him off) someone else stepped in as "boss" of the crows. in the show, kaz also leverages the deed of the crow club in order to be able to take inej with him, and presumably the jewels alina gives him will solve that problem, but what would happen if any of the crows find out he made that deal? would he still have to earn the gang's trust back in a show of power and respect like in crooked kingdom? much to think about.

mal

back to the shadow and bone story, ive already briefly (not really briefly) gone over mal characterization alongside alina, but i want to mention how the show includes his perspective alongside alina's and how important that is. the shadow and bone trilogy is told entirely from alina's perspective, and alina is in some ways an unreliable narrator. she tends to think of her relationships and feelings as one sided unless her friend/love interest is looking her in the eye and telling her exactly how they feel about her. the one exception is genya, and that sort of bites her in the ass until it doesn't, but i digress. the point is, the only mal perspective we get in the books is alina's perception of mal, and the bonus content of the "lost" letter he'd written to her while looking for the stag in fjerda. granted, that letter says a lot about mal and how he feels about alina, so if you didn't take the time to read the letter when reading the book, chances are you weren't so hot on mal unless you have sexy critical reading skills like me (or just really love the childhood best friends to lovers trope).

getting all the gritty, messy details of how hard mal is trying to get back to alina in the show makes him so much more of a sympathetic character than he may have seemed at first glance for the majority of shadow and bone from alina's perspective. the show really stresses that the bond alina and mal have is mutual and powerful, and i think that's fucking perfect, actually.

this point was really driven home during the episode we see that mal has a matching scar on his palm that is related to alina, just like how alina has a mal-related scar on her palm. that scene in the brig was so good, especially when they ask each other what they're in for, and alina says "the usual," and after a pause, mal replies "the usual" as well. he could be lying because he knows she would feel bad if she was the reason he chose to stir trouble to go to the brig, but he could also be saying that he usually actively chooses to be sent to the brig for defending alina or because alina is usually already there and he wants to be with her. knowing that and then seeing alina have the scar on her palm erased was. fucking devastating (in a good-ish way), and im kind of hoping alina either chooses to have the tailoring removed so she can see the scar again or injures her hand in a mal-related injury so they can match again :(

i have more to say about mal, but i'll save it for the grisha theory/amplifier section

the darkling

overall, darkling portrayal was very spot on, but i didn't really like how he just. gave alina his name so early on. in the books im quite certain he doesn't give alina his first name until the third book? regardless, he doesn't give it to her until they've fought and been enemies for a while. theoretically, kirigan giving his real name to alina so early could be a manipulation tactic (like his moments of 'vulnerability' and 'weakness' with alina in the book), especially because we lose that 'heart to heart' by the campfire after the darkling rescues alina from the fjerdans where alina first starts to see the darkling as human.

i also thought it was interesting that alina kisses kirigan first - in the books they're actually having a serious discussion (i can't remember what about, but when she realizes the darkling is Not Good, she remembers the first time they kissed as a thing he possibly did to distract her from thinking her own thoughts), and the darkling interrupts her with a kiss sexy enough for her to forget what's going on. the show however chooses to do a girlboss she-can-move-on-if-she-wants-to moment which is pretty cool and let's be honest, if you like men and ben barnes is right in front of you giving you Sexy Eyes a whole lot, you are going to want to kiss him. that scene where they get interrupted during a steamy kiss, and they laugh and kirigan leaves the frame just to rush back for one last kiss? that nearly fucking converted me. that was really sweet actually. the show does a fantastic job of showing how captivating kirigan's interest can be.

last note about the kirigan for this section - isn't kirigan the name of the guy who owns the guilded bog for nikolai in kos/row? i can't be sure because i don't have my book with me and i refuse to look up information when i have gone this entire post without looking anything up, but if his name isn't kirigan it's pretty fucking close. i don't know what that means, but i don't think bardugo is the type to name characters similar names for no reason. we'll know for sure if/when the guilded bog is introduced.

zoya

most of zoya's portrayal is really in line with her character and her development throughout the shadow and bone trilogy as well as king of scars and rule of wolves. i think the show did a great job of showing how zoya was in the darkling/kirigan's favor for a while before alina arrived and how she resents alina at first for causing her to not be the darkling's favorite anymore. in addition to that, knowing we find out she is part suli in row makes her casting so much better, and i like that we get to see a little more of her personality in the show than we do in the book shadow and bone. of course we see more of her in siege and storm/ruin and rising, but it's nice to have her become a sympathetic character through the knowledge that she has family in novokribirsk and that she purposefully mans skiffs to see them before she fully sides with alina.

the one thing that made me. just confused was zoya calling alina a "half-breed" at the little palace?? it was so out of place (that particular part of the insult; im pretty sure the other thing she said was very much exactly what she said in the book. some insult about orphans i think), especially knowing that zoya herself is a "half-breed," so that didn't make sense to me.

however, i was glad to see alina immediately embrace zoya as an ally - because she knows from the start of zoya's alliance that she had family that kirigan killed. in the books, alina's parentage is not at all important, and their deaths are never specified to matter, but the show points out from the very beginning that alina's parents were swallowed by the fold. i think this makes alina's immediate compassion and forgiveness of zoya make sense, and it was also very sweet and a little funny to see alina pull zoya into a hug that she so obviously does not expect or want to express as something she wants. it was perfect.

east vs west ravka civil war

i don't have much to say about this except it makes kirigan's actions at the fold seem a little better. not great, not by any means, but knowing that the leader of a growing coup was right on the other side really cements in the idea that kirigan is doing this for what he thinks is the greater good of ravka. im pretty sure in the original trilogy, there was also some tension between east and west ravka, but none of it comes to a head until the events of kos/row. great set up for future ravkan tensions in future seasons.

david and genya & fedyor and ivan

before we get into the last meat and potatoes of this post, i want to talk about love because it's a little bit of a break. take this time to stop reading, stretch, relax your jaw, straighten your back, drink water, etc. you've been here a while. you deserve it

okay so first fedyor and ivan. in the books, fedyor and ivan are just bros (i don't even remember them ever really interacting?) but in the show it is heavily implied they are dating. this is so funny to me, and i love it so much. especially because ivan was in a het relationship with marie in the books (but because the show kills marie off before she dies in the books, obviously that is not happening), so they really just decided that ivan and fedyor were gay for seemingly no reason. except i think ivan died on the skiff during the final battle in the show which is kind of a bummer because he lives through to ruin and rising and has an... interesting arc. fedyor, i think, dies in the battle of the little palace in siege and storm, but i wonder what they'll do with this relationship in next seasons. maybe fedyor will take ivan's place as grieving boyfriend with ptsd, but im not sure. i honestly don't even know for certain if ivan dies in the show, so we'll see.

as for genya and david, i would just like to point out the little hints of mutual affection. in the books, it's kind of implied that genya had feelings for david first and he didn't realize his own feelings until after she's scarred by the darkling, but in the show we see david actually looking at genya during the winter fete! like looking, appreciating the view! i loved the show choosing to include that small amount of mutuality, and after finishing rule of wolves it definitely made me feel some type of way. david and genya. i love them, they're perfect.

grisha theory/amplifiers

we're nearing the final stretch in this post, however, i have a lot to say about grisha theory and amplifiers, and i also have a lot to say for the battle of the fold so this "final stretch" will probably be. a very long stretch.

so obviously because of the nature of books and narrative writing, there was a lot of space within the shadow and bone book to go over the grisha theory alina was learning at her time in the little palace in great detail, however in the show we hardly even get any grisha theory at all. the little we get is actually from the apparat. im not sure if we get anything from bhagra. i don't even think we get the phrase "like calls to like" which is the most basic piece of grisha theory throughout the entire grishaverse.

i am definitely. bitter about this. i obviously didn't want huge long meditations on grisha theory in the show, but pretty much the whole time alina was at the little palace, i felt like she had so much time free time to wander around the palace, hang out with nadia and marie, daydream about mal and kirigan. don't get me wrong - those are all valuable activities - but i feel like it missed the point of alina's time at the little palace. she felt isolated there; yes, she had nadia and marie, but she couldn't share with them everything she was going through because she didn't want anyone to truly know how difficult mastering her abilities were. and because she was so isolated, she throws herself into grisha theory, especially during the times in which she can't summon her abilities by herself. this is when she learns about why she's been so sickly her whole life (because she has not used her abilities, and grisha derive some form of life force and energy from using their abilities), all about amplifies, and other really cool world-building for grisha abilities and culture. instead, it was difficult to tell (at least for me) in the show if the palace and the little palace were even different places while in the books the little palace was such a whimsical, ancient, and magical place for alina compared to the gaudiness of the main palace.

the collar

anyway, complaints about architecture and alina's subpar theory education aside, the little bit of grisha theory we get is from the apparat when he talks about ilya morozova and the three amplifiers he was attempting to make during his lifetime. when the apparat is describing amplifiers, it almost seems like amplifers - not just morozova's inventions - are super rare in the world of the show. amplifiers are relatively rare in the books, obtained by only some of the most powerful grisha (zoya, ivan, alina), but they still exist. from what we've seen of zoya and ivan, they didn't seem to have amplifiers on their person, so it looks like alina is unique not only in getting an amplifier from one of morozova's beasts, but also in just getting an amplifier in general, which is a little weird.

EDIT: thanks to @laelipoo for pointing out that zoya is actually shown to have what looks like a tiger’s tooth embedded in the skin of her wrist in the first episode! so okay this shows that powerful grisha still have amplifiers in the world of the show, but this probably suggests that instead of being pieces of jewelry like in the books, they act more as body modifications, which is really interesting. if im not mistaken, ivan’s amplifier is a necklace in the book, so maybe his show-amplifier would’ve been embedded in the skin of his chest. regardless, i’d still like to see more discussion on how amplifiers in the show work - which, now that we know zoya most probably has an amplifier, we might get to see with her becoming more prevalent of a character in the projected arcs of the show (both shadow and bone trilogy as well as kos/row)

i can't remember if morozova was ever referred to as "the bonesmith" (i feel like he has been, but not in the way the apparat refers to him in the show), but i feel as though that was a kind of. foreshadowing for how we would see the stag amplifier work later in the show. in the book, the stag's antlers are a literal collar around alina's neck that remains there until she loses her abilities, so the metaphor of being "owned" by the darkling is definitely there. it never stops being there until she loses the ability that makes her his mirror and his tool. however, in the show we definitely. do not get that.

so i've seen some people say that they hate the design of the stag collar, and i cannot say i was a huge fan of looking at it myself. but that just really cemented in the fact that kirigan forcing the collar on her is a complete violation of her body and her agency. the fact that the bones erupt from her skin and that her skin looks irritated where the bones puncture through her skin just reinforces the idea that this fusion is not natural and is not supposed to be pretty because kirigan taking control of her in this way is really really terrible actually. in addition to the collar, the show also gives kirigan a circle of bone embedded in his hand - which, hand versus collar, who has the most agency in this situation, his hand is quite literally around her neck, etc - but i feel like they made this change so that non-readers could see and understand the mutuality of the amplifier in a physical manifestation because the show doesn't expand on that theory at all.

i really liked that the show kept the reason for alina gaining control of the amplifier being her connection with the stag before kirigan killed it because that at least is consistent with the theory in the books, especially with the expansion of that same theory in kos/row with zoya's connection with juris and how true use of an amplifier requires mutual connection, understanding, and suffering between the grisha and the animal.

i also thought that the way the show portrayed alina taking back control of her power with the stag's horns absorbing into her own bones was a really effective way to show that the power is hers now, and that it is a part of her. however, i wish the show had kept some evidence of the collar because of how it quickly became a piece of her iconography in the books as well as a symbol of her power. seeing as how alina stabbed the circle of bone out of kirigan's hand (very sexy girlboss moment), i wonder if kirigan will still be able to control her abilities. if he can, i hope that any time he uses her abilities, the horns emerge from her skin again as a visual signifier that alina is being violated and that her own power is being used against her. OR even at the times in which alina uses kirigan's power against him (like if the show depicts the conclusion to the battle of the little palace where alina uses the darkling's merzost) to have the horns come out of her skin to show that she is reinforcing her bond with him. both would be really cool.

alina and mal

okay so in ruin and rising we learn that not only are alina and mal bffs and in love whatever, but also that they've been drawn to each other because mal is actually the host to the last of morozova's amplifiers. and then alina looks back at the times in which she's felt the most powerful or when they encountered morozova's beasts, and she realizes that all of those times coincide with when she had important moments with mal. this reveal is huge in the series, and without the build up, i fear it might seem like it would've come out of nowhere if the show chooses to go in the same direction.

for example, alina and mal in the book only find the stag after they kiss for the first time. however, in the show they don't kiss. they don't even move mal's "i see you now" speech to right before they find the stag. it's simply a jump cut to alina and mal in the forest looking at the stag. they might be talking, but i don't think it was an 'important' moment for them.

however, they've been setting mal up as a better-than-average tracker since the very beginning with ana kuya asking him specifically to hunt for dinner. mal also admits that when he saw alina's power come from the tent when kirigan is testing her power that he heard a 'high-pitched tone' and somehow intuitively knew that it was her or something like that. he also tells alina that he'll always be able to find his way to her, no matter what, which is really romantic of course, but it is also part of their connection as one of morozova's three amplifiers and the girl who will possess at one point in time two of the three amplifiers.

i also think that the scene in ruin and rising when alina kills mal for his power is supposed to directly mirror the scene in the shadow and bone book where alina tells mal before they find the stag that she wants him to kill her before she can be caught by the darkling; part of the reason she feels strongly enough to ask this is because she understands grisha theory enough to know what the darkling's plans for the stag and her are. when she's protecting mal and the stag from the darkling, she begs mal to kill her. but he doesn't. and in ruin and rising, when they're out of options during the final battle, mal tells alina to kill him. and she does.

but without alina asking to be killed paired alongside the lack of intimate mal and alina moment before they find the stag, i wonder if the show will be heading in the same direction as the books in terms of mal's status as the last of morozova's creations, or if they'll decide to do something different.

battle of the fold

i think the most obvious difference in the battle of the fold is that kaz, inej, and jesper are like. just chillin on the skiff. additionally, zoya is on the skiff (her presence there was discussed in the zoya section), and mal is not a prisoner in the skiff like he was in the book - he snuck on. for the six's presence on the skiff, i don't mind it and i actually like how they participate in the battle (inej throwing a knife into kirigan's chest and nearly ending his shit right then and there was something we always wanted but did not know we wanted. same with zoya and inej bonding during a fight), but the change in mal's freedom status on the ship is a little more complicated.

in the books, the darkling lets alina and mal spend one last night together (with bars between them) before whatever happens on the fold. i can't remember if he tells alina that he plans to execute mal in the fold, but regardless it becomes apparent that is his plan when he throws mal overboard, on the edges of alina's sunlight, and begins reigning in the sunlight so that mal will be consumed by the fold. it's the fact that mal is in danger that alina manages to gain control of her power once more, and she saves mal. the group of dignitaries from the various nations are still on the ship when she makes her escape, and she uses the Cut - a form of summoner ability that she has never used before and has only ever been used by the darkling. she makes the terrible and difficult decision to let the dignitaries die in the fold alongside the darkling, because she believes it's a worthy sacrifice to make, and she and mal escape together.

i think this sequence of events would've tracked really well in the show with how alina had previously been depicted as mal's protector, but the show chooses not to have alina save mal and kill the dignitaries. instead, the show has kirigan kill the dignitaries and also has mal have a homoerotic fist fight with kirigan which is. not exactly not in line with themes the show has put on, especially with how mal and kirigan have interacted before in the show.

in the books, we don't see mal and the darkling interact without alina as a buffer, and so a fistfight between them in the battle of the fold in shadow and bone wouldn't have made narrative sense and would've just ended up feeling cheap. however we do see mal and kirigan interact without alina in the show - when mal is showing kirigan where the stag is and kirigan learns alina's favorite flower through mal, and when kirigan gives mal that petty little speech about how he'll get alina eventually while mal grows old and dies.

there's an interesting phenomenon in certain kinds of love triangles; most of the time you see love triangles in the classic sense of Person B and Person C both being in love with Person A, who has to make the choice between B and C. however, that's not a true love triangle - there also needs to be a connecting factor between B and C. and, in most cases, that connecting factor is the ritual of masculine homosocial rivalry. so when applying this kind of love triangle to alina, mal, and kirigan, we see that both mal and kirigan have feelings for alina, but they also have a connection to each other through their rivalry, which is as much about rituals of masculine conquering (whether the person they are wanting to conquer is alina or the other man is a very interesting question to which the answer is yes) as it is about being the person alina loves.

do i personally like the kirigan/mal fight in the fold? no, i would've much preferred to see alina rescue and protect mal. however, i do recognize that the fight makes narrative sense within the show, and it was really funny to see kirigan get his shit rocked by mal's bare fists a couple of times. i would say i hope he's been humbled by the experience but we all know that's not true.

also remember when i mentioned that kirigan is the one who kills the dignitaries here instead of alina leaving them to die? and remember, way back in the beginning when i said that alina inadvertently getting her cartography unit killed in the show may have been a swap for some deaths in the battle of the fold? alina being excused from the deaths of the dignitaries in the show but responsible for the deaths of her cartography friends at the beginning is what i was talking about. like i said way back (or maybe i didn't say it but im saying it now), it makes narrative sense. i get it.

however, i think the choice not to have alina perform the Cut on the skiff when she regains control of her power is an interesting one. because, in the book, that was an ultimate show-off of power (even if it was a terrible moment for alina). no one else but the darkling can perform a Cut, and as soon as alina forcibly takes control of her power from the darkling she uses his own signature move to leave him for death? that's a power move. that's irony. that's a physical manifestation of alina being able to adopt and take advantage of some of the darkling's power and use it against him, which is definitely a main theme in the book as it happens every single time alina gets close to defeating him and also when she actually defeats him.

so the Cut is really important, and i want to see in what other situation the show might have alina perform a Cut of her own against kirigan, or if they'll even include that aspect of reclaiming of power. i really want them to.

conclusion

so what have we learned? i think, first and foremost, we have learned that i have so many opinions and should learn how to be sweet and concise with my words. we have also learned there were a lot of changes between the grishaverse books and the series, and these were only the changes that i remembered off the top of my head having watched the series almost a week ago and having reread the books over the past few months.

in addition to those things, we have learned that, in my academic opinion, many of the changes made to fit the story into the screen were positive changes or, at the very least, changes i am interested in seeing develop. in the end, i am just a fan, and regardless of what season 2 may throw at us, i trust bardugo's decisions because she has never let me down narratively before, so i'll probably end up loving things the show ends up doing because i am, at my core, a simple sort of person.

i had a lot of fun writing this all up, and i hope this super long post was informative or entertaining in some way. thank you so much for reading<3<3<3<3

#shadow and bone #s&b #shadow and bone netflix #s&b netflix #long post #alina starkov #malyen oretsev #the darkling #general kirigan #shadow and bone analysis #shadow and bone meta #peach stuff #jesus christ. if you read all this you are so strong. stronger than the us marines. i am so sorry im like this #you'd think during finals season my theory and analysis brain would turn off but no. apparently not #i did this as a reward. for finishing a research paper. i wrote and compiled all of this as a REWARD #also if my details are off or wrong in any way it's because i didn't do any fact checking <3 #im only human after all #and you can always comment or message me saying i fucked up and i'll edit this post #i haven't slept in. maybe 30 hours #i have gotten 5 hours of sleep within the past 48+ hours. i am having a great time #today is my break day though my next final isn't due until friday evening so i'll just. do it tomorrow and friday #anyways yeah. im so sorry for this. this also may be the best thing ive ever done

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wefoundloveunderthelight · 3 years

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The Love Cruise - by GleefullyCaptainSwan

Read on AO3: Chapter 1

Or on FF

Tagging: @kmomof4 @lfh1226-linda @teamhook

Summary:

When Emma Swan’s boss & co-workers decided they are tired of waiting for her to start dating again, they reluctantly convince her to join them on The Love Cruise, a new experience where singles go to meet and flirt their cares away in the middle of the ocean. Dragging her brother, David along for the ride, she embarked on a two-week adventure that was about to change her life.

Killian Jones, former Navy Lieutenant and widower, swore off dating for the rest of his life. Which is why when his best friend Robin convinced him to take a job as the Captain of the newest ship in the fleet, a floating dating cesspool of horny men and women, it seemed a cruel twist of fate. Little did he know, one of the guests about to board his ship, would alter his own course in life forever.

Chapter 1: The Adventure of a Lifetime

“First he runs off and gets married and then he goes and gets himself a promotion. I guess you would say the world is his oyster.”

“Or he’s having his cake and eating it to.” The man at the back of the bar shouts.

“Aye, so today as we celebrate, I want everyone to raise your glass to our newest Lieutenant, and my little brother, Killian Jones. I’m so proud of you.”

“To Killian Jones.” The crowd roared.

5 years later

“That’s not how I remember it at all, I’m pretty sure you were the one who walked in on them.”

“I would have remembered that.”

“I doubt that, you were drunk as a skunk and before you left the room, you yelled to the poor girl, and I quote, I'm no weatherman but I know you're going to get 3 inches tonight.”

“God, I thought you said that.”

“That was all you man, I thought the Captain was gonna throw you in the brig.”

“I’m pretty sure Liam saved my ass that night.” Killian laughed, remembering how many times his brother kept him out of trouble in his years in the Navy.

“I think Liam saved your ass most nights.”

“Aye.” He nodded sadly and Robin held up his glass.

“To Liam, gone too soon.”

“To Liam.” He swallowed the warm liquid, gulping it down and putting his glass back on the table in front of him. “I can’t believe it’s been two years.” He added solemnly, memories of his brother’s urn as he was released out to sea, being presented with the flag, the sound of each pop of the as the rifles went off, staring out to sea to the sound of the bugle.

“Sometimes it feels like yesterday.” Robin responded and Killian closed his eyes, pinched his nose, before shaking off the memories and waiving the waitress over for another order. “So, what’s your next move?”

Killian sighed. “I don’t know yet, I’ve got a few interviews this week.”

Robin cut him off, “Cancel them.”

“I’m sorry, you want me to cancel all my interviews?”

“Yes, cancel them, I have a great opportunity for both of us.”

“Working together?”

“Yes, I told you that I got a job last week, right? Well, they need a Captain and I put in a good word for you.” Killian knew he had gotten some amazing opportunity the last time they spoke on the phone, but he didn’t provide many details on what exactly that opportunity was.

“What’s the catch?” Killian regarded him suspiciously.

“Why does there have to be a catch?” He smiled innocently.

“Because you would have told me about it sooner unless you’ve been trying to figure out the best way to bring it up. And you conveniently chose a night when we have been drinking heavily, so that tells me there is a catch, Rob. So, spit it out.”

“Ok, so there’s a catch, but hear me out first.” Killian groaned but put his hand to his lips with a locking motion and gestured for him to continue. “She’s the newest ship in the fleet, top of the line technology, she would be any Captain’s wet dream to sail.” Killian chuckled, sitting up on his stool. “3600 passengers, 1300 crew members, including the best purser any ship could ask for.” He grinned widely pointing to himself.

“Get to the part where you tell me this ship sails to the Underworld and has an excursion to visit Hades himself or some other ungodly reason to explain why you waited til I was piss drunk to ask me.”

“Ok, but I haven’t even told you about the size of the Captain’s quarters yet…” Robin frowned as he shifted impatiently in his seat. “Alright, it’s the maiden voyage of…” He covered his mouth, “The wurv ruse.”

“I’m sorry what?”

“Fine, it’s a Love Cruise.” He shouted louder than he meant to. “One of those singles cruises where people go to meet each other.”

He tossed a brochure down onto the table and Killian flipped through it, his groan vibrating as he read the tag line out loud. “The Love Cruise, where singles meet on the adventure of a lifetime. Don’t you deserve a little TLC.” He tossed the brochure onto the table. “Oh, bloody hell.” He cursed. “Ma’am…” He gestured for the waitress. “I’m not fucking drunk enough to listen to this man anymore, if you could please bring a few more of those shots as quick as possible and make them doubles.” He added before turning back to Robin. “Are you out of your mind? What would give you the foggiest reason to think I would be interested in this?”

“It’s not like you would be signing up to be part of the singles cruise, you would just Captain her.”

“Why are you doing this?” He asked suspiciously. “You and Marian have been divorced for years and it’s not like you’re desperate for women.” His friend glanced to the table and Killian knew there was more he wasn’t telling him. “Out with it.”

“You know that woman I met last year?”

Killian chuckled, “How long do I have to answer, mate. You’re going to have to be more specific than that?”

“You’re hilarious. No, remember that entertainer I met when we took that cruise to Mexico last year, Regina Mills.”

“The lass we met who threw her drink in your face and told you to get lost? How can I forget, she’s given me months of pleasure just thinking about that moment.”

“Anyway, they hired her as the Cruise Director for this sailing, and it’s my opportunity to actually get to know her. You know because she won’t have anywhere else to go to continue avoiding me.”

“So, your selling point is that if I Captain this ship, I might get to see this woman destroy you on a daily basis?”

“Would it convince you to say yes?”

“I don’t know.”

“Killian it’s been three years. If you want to be celibate for the rest of your life, that’s your business, but you’d be an idiot to pass up this opportunity.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his jacket and slid it across the table. On it was a six-figure dollar amount, Killian grabbed the paper and pulled it closer to his face.

“How many years is the contract for this amount?”

“That’s per year, Killian.”

“Bloody hell.”

“It’s a lot more than the Navy paid us, and no one is going to be trying to sink our ship.”

He pushed the paper back across the table to Robin. “I just don’t know if this is a good idea, I have responsibilities here.”

“Brother, Milah wouldn’t want you hiding out on that damn houseboat, rotting away in your own depression. She’d kick you in the ass and tell you that you were being a bloody prat for walking away from this kind of opportunity.”

“Don’t invoke my dead wife, Mate.” He said angrily. Robin raised his hands in defeat and Killian knew he meant no harm. He sighed and looked over at the paper again. It was more money than he had seen in his entire life, and it was a real ship. He’d been working as Skipper on a fishing skiff for the last year, and while he enjoyed the security of being out on the water, it sure didn’t pay much.

“You know there’s no rule that says the Captain has to date the passengers, in fact, I’m pretty sure they frown on that type of behavior?”

“I get that, but I don’t particularly want to watch all the debauchery either.”

“I told you the Captain’s quarters are huge, right?”

“And they know about my hand?” He looked down at his scarred hand, he had lost the full use of it on one of the worst nights of his life, the night he lost his brother.

“They don’t care, you are a skilled Captain, trust me, they are very interested in you, Killian. All you have to do is be at the interview tomorrow, and the job is yours.”

Killian groaned, “I’ll sleep on it.” Judging by the smile his friend was displaying on the other end of the table, he already knew that Killian was going to show up to that interview.

~*~

“Have you seen that guy before?” Ruby walked over to Emma’s spot by the front door.

Emma glanced to the end of the bar. She hadn’t noticed the man until Ruby pointed him out. He wasn’t familiar to her, he was very nice looking, but also very intoxicated. “Don’t recognize him, but Will needs to cut him off.”

“That’s what you’re focused on, instead of how hot he is or the fact he’s new in town?”

“He’s ok, I guess. But honestly, I’m going to go tell Will to stop serving him. I don’t want to have to throw him out later.”

“Boo, you’re so boring, Emma.”

Emma turned and flashed her friend the middle finger before approaching the bar. “Hey, brown suede jacket.” She pointed to the man at the end of the bar. “How many has he had?”

“Oi, I was thinking of cutting him off. He’s been nursing that beer for an hour, but the three shots he drank with them seem to have accelerated his inebriation.”

“Yeah, cut him off, he’s swaying in his seat, let me know if he gives you any trouble.”

Emma walked back toward the door, surveying the tables as she walked past. She’d been working at The Wooden Nickle since moving back to Boston from New York almost seven years ago. Working nights as a bouncer wasn’t the most prestigious job in the world, but it allowed her to spend her days with her 6-year-old son, Henry.

“Everything good down here?”

Emma turned to see her boss; August Booth walking down the stairs from the above office. “Yeah, got a live one at the bar, Will’s already cut him off. I had to break up the two over at the pool table a few times.” She gestured to the man and woman currently making out against the wall. “I’m gonna head back there in a minute, before they start losing clothes.”

“I can always count on you, Emma.” August gave her a light tap on the shoulder and then headed back upstairs. “Tell everyone I want to talk to them before we shut down tonight.”

“Everything alright, boss?” He nodded with a mischievous smile and then bounded up the stairs.

She loved working for August. When she moved back to Boston, she hadn’t maintained a relationship with anyone except her brother, David, and her high school friends, Ruby and Will. Moving to a small town meant her skills as a bail bond agent wasn’t exactly needed, but August found room for her as a bouncer at his tiny but very busy bar. He’d treated her like family ever since.

She passed through the room, pausing at the couple in the back, to break up their make out session and then stopped at the bar. “Aug wants to talk to all of us after we close up.”

“Oi, did he seem upset? Shit, I bet he knows I was nipping at the whiskey last week.”

“What are we talking about?” Ruby approached and sat down her tray on the bar top. “Are we drinking whiskey?”

Emma laughed. “Aug wants to talk to all of us tonight, so I would probably say no, right?”

“That was a question, not a demand, so I say one shot can’t hurt us. If we’re all about to be canned, I want to take the news with some liquid courage.”

“You’ll use any excuse to drink whiskey.” Ruby mocked as he lined up the shots and poured. They each tossed back the glass and slammed it down on the bar.

“Ok get back to work.” She demanded with a smirk and headed back to the door to prepare for the close of shift. It was her favorite part of work, watching as the patrons exited the bar, some joyfully laughing, others grumbling with complaints of the upcoming next day, but mostly it was the time when they were alone, simply cleaning the bar and laughing together that she cherished the most. This was her family, and she loved them dearly.

“All clear.” She hollered an hour later as she finished helping the tipsy customer to a cab and reminded the overly zealous couple to remember condoms.

Ruby turned up the volume on the music and they spent the next hour cleaning the bar, Ruby dancing with her broomstick, Will singing loudly into the beer tap, and Emma watching them all with a smile as she wiped down the tables. She could hardly believe how much her life had changed in the last seven years. Ruby referred to these last few years as the years AN.

After Neal.

She had been devastated when Neal took off, draining their savings account of the money she had earned, leaving her alone and pregnant in New York City. Two months later, she came home with her tail between her legs, everything she owned in her tiny yellow beetle, and was left to explain to her brother David, that things with her and Neal had gone exactly how he had predicted they would.

She had been mortified to venture out of the home she shared with David for fear of judgement from their small town. Instead, she was embraced by old friends who came out of the woodwork to donate baby clothes, feed her, and offer emotional support.

“When did I start paying you lot to have a good time?” August boomed from across the room before breaking out into a smile and pulling Emma into his arms to dance across the room. He spun her around as they reached Ruby, switching to dance with the brunette until the song ended.

“The place looks great as usual.” He remarked to the three of them as he hopped onto one of the bar stools. “Come on, lets all chat.” Will gulped and August laughed. “This isn’t about the whiskey, Will.”

“What whiskey?” Will mimed. “I haven’t the foggiest idea…”

“I’m closing the bar.” Emma’s heart dropped. August sat solemnly looking down at his hands. He looked up peering around the room as a smile grew on his mouth. “For two weeks,” he added, “and before you all freak out on me, I’m still paying you.”

Emma breathed out a sigh of relief. Losing two weeks of pay would have killed her. She lived paycheck to paycheck trying to raise her son, missing a single day was enough to give her anxiety.

“On one condition.” He added and everyone in the group exchanged cautious glances. “We’ve all been working really hard and I wouldn’t have any of this if you all didn’t come to work every single day, even with William drinking my whiskey.” Will ducked his head. “However as much as I love you guys, I’m really tired of being alone.”

Emma was surprised to hear how sad August’s voice sounded; she knew he had been alone at home after his father Marco had passed. Emma had never heard of August going on any dates, or ever being involved with anyone romantically. But Emma wasn’t one to talk about putting yourself out there, she hadn’t dated or wanted to date anyone since Neal ran out on her.

“And let’s be honest,” August continued, “you lot don’t get out much either.”

“Hey, I’m just waiting until Ana comes around.” Will argued and she snorted to herself. Ana was Will’s ex-girlfriend. She had packed up and left town a year ago, leaving only a note stating it was over and she was moving to England with a guy she met online. Everyone knew it was over, except for Will. He still had his Facebook relationship status as “It’s complicated.”

“She’s gone man, it’s time to move on.” August said seriously. “And Ruby, I mean no offense when I say this, but you’ve practically dated everyone in town, present company excluded.”

“Speak for yourself, we went on a date once.” Will announced.

“That was a field trip you idiot, and the rest of the school was with us.”

“Ok but my point is, no one in town has been worthy of your affection.” August interrupted and then turned to her, “And Emma.”

“Don’t even go there, I have a six-year-old kid, I don’t have time for another child in my life.”

“Well, here it is, I’m going on a cruise for two weeks. And I’m willing to pay you each your two-week salary, as long as you come with me.”

“Oi, do you think you pay us enough money to afford to go on some fancy cruise ship?”

“Nope, that’s why I’m paying for that too.” He stared at Emma. “But it has to be all or nothing. Either you all come, or you all get a two-week unpaid vacation.”

“That’s hardly fair.” Emma complained. “I can’t just walk away for two weeks, Henry needs me.”

“First off, I already know that he’s about to head to summer camp for four weeks, so your excuse doesn’t exactly work.” Emma crossed her arms against her chest, she hadn’t expected him to know about that. “Ok, one excuse down, who’s next?”

“You aren’t going to get one from me. If you want to pay me to go on a cruise, I’m down.” Ruby hopped up on the bar.

“What’s the catch, Mate? Two weeks pay, a cruise vacation, something’s not adding up here.” Emma had to agree with Will, he wasn’t telling them the entire truth.

“Fine, it’s a singles cruise.”

“No way, I’m out.” Emma grunted, as she furiously wiped down the table in front of her for the second time that evening.

“Oh, come on Emma, who cares? There is nothing that says you have to hook up with anyone there.” Ruby pleaded, “I really want to try out my new bikini I bought last week. It would look so much better on a cruise ship than it would on our stupid beach.”

“I can’t go on a single’s cruise, I’m not single.” Will argued.

“She dumped you.” The three of them all shouted in unison.

“Come on you guys, we can all be there together, and just have fun.” Ruby continued to plead her case.

“Did I mention the alcohol is all paid for up front?” August announced with a wink.

“Bloody hell, I’m in.”

Suddenly all eyes were on here. “Please Emma.” Ruby whined.

“Free Alcohol, lass. We can just sit at the damn bar and drink all day. I’ll be your date.” Will flirted from the back of the bar.

“Brining a date would defeat the singles part, don’t you think?”

“Emma, you’re out of excuses.” August shrugged.

“Fine. But I have one condition.” She said angrily, coming up with a fool proof plan to get out of going. “If I’m going to be forced to go on this trip, then I’m not going without David.”

August laughed and surprisingly shook his head. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

Dammit.

#TLC #The love cruise #stacy's fics #my fic #captainswan #captain swan #captain swan au #captain swan fics #captain swan modern au #emma x killian #killian jones #emma x hook #emma swan

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johannas-motivational-insults · 3 years

Text

Demons Plot Synopsis: Arc 4

Some chapters are more plot heavy and/or emotionally intricate than others and have much longer summaries, as I’ve tried to include the most relevant information to follow the plot and character/relationship growth.

Notable flashbacks are summarized in italics after the main chapter plot, including the character’s approximate age at the time. (The Horde doesn’t do birthdays, so they all change “age” at the same time regardless of actual birth date, but it’s not like Adora or Catra know their real birth dates anyway.)

Spoilers for Demons ahead!

Arc 4: chapters 21-26 (Catradora U-Haul, break up, and go back to being best friends in the span of 2 days like any good lesbian couple)

Chapter 21: Amends (a.k.a. The hurt/comfort smorgasbord)

Now eight days post-jail break, Adora is certain Catra is not coming back and believes she deserves it for abandoning Catra so many times before. But Catra shows up, explains she was injured and unable to come sooner. Adora badgers Catra into admitting that Hordak assaulted and demoted her and gave her an ultimatum to kill Adora. Adora can’t help fearing Catra has come to do just that, so Catra calms her with a kiss and tells her she left the Horde.

Catra apologizes for making Adora worry and Adora cracks a joke, asking her to repeat the rare apology. This triggers a flashback for Catra, who tries not to flip out but does anyway when Adora persists. Adora says it’s not fair that Catra can tease her but she can’t tease back, and Catra argues that what’s fair isn’t the same for everyone because of their different experiences. She goes on to mock Adora’s poor social awareness, which Adora says isn’t funny either. They deescalate with unspoken apologies.

Adora inquires about Catra’s plans post-Horde and Catra invites her to go with her to Dryl. Adora surprises Catra by agreeing enthusiastically, then invites her to follow her into the Castle while she packs her things. Catra’s wary of the place but she’s a sucker for Adora and easily convinced. Once inside, Adora asks if she’d like to stay for a bit and take a nap together. Catra understands that Adora has been touch starved since leaving Bright Moon to save her, so she gladly gives her the cuddles she needs. Adora feels hopeful that she can continue to make up for past mistakes.

[4 y/o] Catra shows off to Adora by climbing a high pipe but gets stuck, causing them both to panic. Adora insists they need Shadow Weaver’s help and runs to get her, despite Catra’s fearful protests. Shadow Weaver says she knew this was bound to happen and tells Catra she can find her own way down, threatening to punish them if they get help from anyone else. Adora can’t handle her guilt over leaving Catra there, so she sneaks back in the night and coaxes Catra down. Catra breaks down in tears when they return to the barracks, and Adora consoles her with cuddles and pets.

[9 y/o] Post-punishment, Shadow Weaver tells Catra to repeat an apology louder. Catra obeys but with obvious anger, and Shadow Weaver decides she needs to make her more sorry.

Chapter 22: Violations (a.k.a. The PSA on trauma and touch aversion)

Catra wakes from a nightmare paralyzed and with Adora’s hands all over her, attempting to provide comfort. Her skin is crawling and she tells Adora to stop but Adora insists on cuddling her. Catra pushes Adora away and yells at her, roasting her hero complex and need to feel useful, and says if Adora really wanted to make her feel better she wouldn’t have left. Adora snaps right back that Catra can’t say she doesn’t care about her after the jail break, but Catra chalks this up to the heroism and says Adora can’t fix everything by smothering her and needs to ask before touching her like that.

Adora is confused based on their earlier intimacy and Catra admits she gets touch-averse sometimes when she’s upset. Catra drives the point home too harshly, triggering a meltdown for Adora, and she quickly regrets her approach. Catra attempts to comfort Adora but continues to show resentment and Adora says maybe Catra should just go on to Dryl without her if she’s such a bad friend.

Adora accidentally summons Light Hope, who berates her for allowing an enemy in the Castle and threatens to sic the spiders on Catra. Catra jumps to Adora’s defense and says she’s not an enemy anymore, and Light Hope demands to scan her brain again to be sure. Catra initially refuses, but when Light Hope continues to lecture Adora for poor judgment she allows it just to prove her wrong. Light Hope is unimpressed to find out all that Adora’s been hiding from her but says Catra can leave without a fight.

Catra urges Adora to come with her despite their fight but Light Hope insists she stay and continue to focus on training. Adora implores that she’s not a machine and she’s miserable there by herself, and promises to return and train with Light Hope each week after the Alliance meeting. Catra is disturbed by the implications of Adora’s poor mental health and how unaware of it she seems.

[9 y/o, cont. from ch. 21] Catra begs for mercy and apologizes repeatedly, but Shadow Weaver says she had her chance to apologize and continues to torture her with magic. Eventually Shadow Weaver stops and demands the apology again, and Catra has no fight left to respond with attitude. Shadow Weaver rubs in her authority with unwanted touch, humiliating Catra further by petting her and calling her a good kitty.

Chapter 23: Rubble (a.k.a. Is it a break up if you’re not officially together?)

After her resentful and cruel outbursts in the Castle, Catra feels she needs to take a step back from Adora until she’s in a better headspace, but is nervous to tell Adora and hurt her feelings. Swift Wind flies them to Dryl and takes a moment to threaten Catra not to hurt Adora again before he leaves. Entrapta greets them and accidentally reveals that Catra told her and Scorpia and Hordak about Adora’s betrayal of Bright Moon, which irritates Adora. Entrapta directs them to their new quarters, two adjacent rooms of which they can use one or both.

Catra says she wants her own room, surprising Adora and prompting some accidental confessions of affection and desire that leave them both blushing. Catra explains that despite those feelings, she doesn’t feel ready to go back to how things were or take things further because she still resents Adora and doesn’t want to take things out on her. Adora can’t help interpreting this as a punishment and Catra assures her it’s not, and that her resentment of Adora is Shadow Weaver’s fault, not Adora’s.

Catra explains she’s afraid of messing things up by moving too fast and that being in a physical relationship will mask their issues and leave them unresolved. Adora asks if that’s why Catra stopped their almost first time in Bright Moon, and Catra admits it’s because she felt vulnerable and like she was losing control of the situation. Adora asks if Catra thinks she’ll ever get over being mad at her, and Catra assures her with a chaste kiss, saying she doubts it will be their last.

Chapter 24: Socialization (a.k.a. Autistic solidarity)

The next day, Entrapta and Adora take the skiff to Bright Moon for the weekly Alliance meeting. Adora is dejected and feeling like a fourth wheel after Catra left her alone the previous evening to hang out with her friends and didn’t invite her. Entrapta remarks that Adora seems upset, based on what she’s observed regarding her body language. Adora is creeped out that Entrapta analyzes her behavior, but Entrapta points out that everyone does it, she just has to put more conscious effort into it. Adora admits that she can relate, prompting Entrapta to remark that she’s noticed Adora has similar difficulties as her.

Adora asks if Entrapta has any notes on Catra, and Entrapta produces a list of feline body language and delivers a scathing psychological report about Catra’s insecurities. They commiserate about how most people never say what they actually mean. Adora expresses frustration over Catra holding her at a distance and having no way to fix the problem, but Entrapta points out that learning to understand Catra and respect her boundaries is still helping the situation.

The Alliance is thrilled to see Entrapta alive but disappointed to learn she was indeed working willingly for the Horde. Entrapta explains that she stayed because the Horde had superior technology to work with and because she thought the princesses had abandoned her. When Glimmer blames Catra for the misunderstanding, Entrapta points out that it was a reasonable assumption for Catra to make given her and Scorpia’s gripes with the princesses, and reveals they all left the Horde together. The Alliance is not pleased to hear Entrapta is aligned with two of their greatest adversaries, throwing her shade about how she nearly caused Bright Moon’s destruction. Adora jumps to her defense and says Entrapta is here to make it right and they should lay off her.

Entrapta clarifies that she’s there to rejoin the Alliance, offering Horde intelligence in exchange for their protection. Adora reveals she’s staying in Dryl too in hopes that will sweeten the pot, but it only sows more discord. Perfuma questions how Entrapta can be sure Catra and Scorpia aren’t secretly still working for the Horde, and Entrapta points out they have done more to earn her trust than the Alliance. That silences all objections, and Entrapta is brought back into the fold.

[16 y/o] Shadow Weaver lectures Adora for her tardiness and skewed priorities after she loses track of time playing games with the other cadets. Adora was grateful to feel included for once but Shadow Weaver asserts that socialization is a waste of Adora’s time and the other cadets are beneath her, that she needs to focus on becoming a Force Captain.

Chapter 25: Almost Maybe Possibly (a.k.a Adora hits peak awkward)

After an exhausting meeting, Adora and Entrapta return to Dryl. Entrapta reports her success rejoining the Alliance and shares the highlights of the Horde intelligence with the others, including how Hordak is a clone and he found a baby near a spontaneous portal almost twenty years ago. She also confirms the Alliance has promised to protect them from attacks and says she’s building an early warning system for Horde attacks. Scorpia calls Catra ‘Wildcat’ in a playful moment, shocking Adora as Catra usually responds to such remarks with hostility.

Leaving Scorptrapta to their PDA, Catra asks Adora to play a game with her and Adora snarks if that’s because her friends are busy. Catra recognizes Adora is bitter about something and asks her to explain, not wanting to add to their pile of baggage. Adora admits she feels left out and insecure about Scorpia’s closeness with Catra, and also feels awkward around Catra because of the uncertain nature of their relationship. Catra says she wouldn’t have invited Adora if she didn’t want her around and that she’s overreacting, but eventually admits she needed space from Adora because she felt bad for hurting her feelings.

Adora tells Catra that being left alone after that tough conversation made her anxiety over it way worse, and Catra admits she didn’t think of that. She suggests Adora try to bond with the others, and when Adora points out she can’t confide too deeply in either of them Catra suggests she spend time with her Bright Moon friends. This surprises Adora but Catra says she hates seeing her feel so alone and doesn’t want her life to be miserable. Adora assures Catra that she’s not miserable, that she’s happy they’re on decent terms and get to see each other every day.

Chapter 26: Protection (a.k.a Who died and left you in charge?)

Adora remembers late that night that she was supposed to train with Light Hope after the meeting. She freaks out and devolves into a panic spiral, dead set on finding a way to get to the Crystal Castle in the dark, and Catra orders Entrapta not to help her do so. Adora is offended that Catra thinks she’s in charge of her, and Catra asserts that someone has to look out for Adora because she doesn’t take care of herself. Catra crafts a convincing lie for Adora to tell Light Hope and offers to sleep in her room to help calm her down.

Catra curls up at Adora’s feet but Adora’s distress quickly triggers her protective instincts and she moves up to cuddle with Adora. She tells Adora she wasn’t trying to boss her around, just protect her. Adora says that’s not her job and Catra snaps, laying out all the little ways she has always protected Adora. She needles Adora’s ego and hero complex and Adora protests that she doesn’t like the responsibility of being She-Ra, but Catra doesn’t believe her. Adora is upset by this and admits she fears losing Catra, but Catra says she just wants Adora to acknowledge that she’s not a weakling.

Adora is surprised by this and Catra explains that Adora’s overprotectiveness made her feel powerless and worthless. Adora assures Catra that she’s not worthless and that she makes her feel safer, and Catra breaks down in tears. Adora admits she acted the way she did because she didn’t want to feel weak either and Shadow Weaver drilled into her head that she couldn’t need anyone else. She admits she liked feeling stronger than Catra because it made her feel needed, but Catra says that whether she needed her or not she wanted her. Adora says she wanted her too.

#demons plot synopsis #spop #catradora #fanfic #demons #child abuse #writing #catra and shadow weaver #adora and shadow weaver #anti shadow weaver #some people shouldn't need an anti tag but here we are

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MCU Loki Ep 5 “Journey to mystery” intensive analysis

So we reached episode 5. Which yeah it’s better than episode 4 but…

It’s not like it fixes episode 4 problems. It just skips them.

Also… it’s an abrupt change of mood. The other 4 episodes were fundamentally serious. They had comedic moments but they were just moments. They had the appropriate amount of drama considering the plot.

This episode… seems to come out from “Looney tunes” for the most part. You can consider it partly a compliment, as I love “Looney tunes”… but the problem is that the “Looney tunes” is out of place considering what should have been a dramatic situation, ends up causing the story to lose a lot of time on things that could have been skipped and required the characters to be OOC for the jokes to work.

So really… I can’t say it’s not fun, it is… but it seems out of place with the rest of the series as if they had handed it to completely different people.

Premise, I usually don’t talk about them but the title of this episode is “Journey to mystery” which is an homage to the comic that hosted “Thor” but also the whole saga of Kid Loki.

Anyway.

Loki has woken up on the Void and, as soon as he had woken up he had met 4 Lokis, Classic Loki, Kid Loki, Boastful Loki and… Alligator Loki. I find the irony of Loki meeting an Alligator Loki when he’s out trying to kill 3 space lizards delicious but only if this isn’t trying to foreordain the big enemy is going to be another Loki Variant.

Because, if that’s the case I’m not gonna find it funny. But I’ll save the rant for when and if we’ll cross that bridge.

So we start with an interesting scene.

We’re at the TVA but we see it upside down. It’s a hint of how our view of the TVA should have turned upside down. They aren’t heroes protecting the Sacred Timeline, they are brainwashed Variants murdering other Variants. The camera keeps on rotating as we move in what was supposed the room of the Time-Keepers and then it finally stop and shows us things not upside down as we’re back into the Void in which Loki ended.

There’s plenty of fog and a devastated New York City and a purple cloud with purple thunders inside and who’s pretty close to our Loki who stands up and ask where he is and who’re the others.

He’s told in very simply terms:

Classic Loki: This is The Void. That's Alioth. And we're his lunch. Come on!

As the group escape, Loki in tow, the purple cloud whose name we just learnt is Alioth, turns on having a face with red shining eyes and red mouth that looks many things but friendly is not one of them.

Now… who named that place? Who named the cloud? Did it stop and introduced itself? Okay, it’s probably not relevant who need it but if the sentence had been ‘We call this place The Void and that hungry cloud Alioth’ I think it would have worked better. But whatever, I’m nitpicking, I know. On a sidenote Alioth is a Marvel comic character but in them he has a little more personality. Here it reminds me more of “the Nithing” of the “Neverending story” movie, with a bit of Gmork added just to spice up things.

We get the title then we switch back to the TVA.

Sylvie demands to have Renslayer’s TemPad and Renslayer, who’s not as fast as Sylvie was when she was a kid because she’s not blessed with the superhuman speed of the heroine, hands it to her without trying to use it first.

Sylvie now asks who’s behind the TVA and Renslayer denies to know it. Now, if Mobius were here he would probably close her in a time loop in which she would be beaten until she’ll beg to please stop but Sylvie is not Mobius so she’s just sarcastic as she pushes her back on the ground with one feet.

Sylvie: Poor Judge Renslayer. Your whole reality's been destroyed. Tell me, how does it feel to be on the other side of it?

Okay, so it seems… she has hurt Renslayer a lot although her arm isn’t broken and she’ll use it just fine later on? And… no, okay, I’m lost.

Because now they aren’t anymore where the Time-Keepers were supposed to be but in the place where the trials are held. Only Sylvie got the TemPad only now so, how did they moved?

She stopped threatening Renslayer to retrieve some other guard’s TemPad then transferred them there then returned to Renslayer and demanded her Tempad? Or they walked outside and reached that place so that everyone could notice Sylvie threatening Renslayer? Besides why in the world moving there? Just so that Sylvie can say:

Sylvie: This is it, isn't it? This is where you dragged me after you stole my life. A fitting place, then, to take yours.

Dramatic and fitting but is this quote worth destroying the logic behind the scene? HELP?!?

Why moving them there? It clearly wasn’t Sylvie’s idea as she realized only there they were in the place where they had held her trial… and anyway I would have said it’s more the place from which she escaped. The place she was dragged to was the TVA, that place was just her last stop of her permanence in the TVA.

There’s something that doesn’t work well here.

A moment before Renslayer was on the ground, groaning in pain because Sylvie has just pressed her foot against her shoulder… and now she’s instead standing in front of Sylvie and slightly distant from her.

Why letting her get up? Why since Sylvie was looking around and not at her Renslayer, instead than just get up hadn’t tried to make her trip? When this has happened as the change is just too abrupt?

Whatever, not great but not big.

Renslayer deploys what Mobius defined cockroach's survival mechanism by telling Sylvie Loki isn’t dead yet.

Sylvie says she would think she’s lying but Renslayer, who has evidently stolen Loki’s silvertongue, manages to persuade her they want the same thing... or at least to listen to her explaining how is he still alive and how saving him might get them closer to who’s behind the TVA.

Renslayer: It's complicated. I'm telling you this willingly.

And here I facepalm because she’s either assuming Sylvie is an idiot or the viewers are idiots because no, she’s not telling this willingly. Sylvie has just told her she was going to kill her and she’s trying to stall her from doing so and calls this ‘willingly’? Either she doesn’t know the meaning of the word or she’s taking everyone for an idiot.

Honestly I believe she’s taking everyone for an idiot but, in the hands of a different writer, this might explain why Mobius feels he’s Loki’s friend and not the guy who tortured him to get what he wanted, because they might think than being threatened of being killed is a normal interaction in a conversation.

Some people say ‘hum…’ some people say ‘I’ll kill you’, where’s the difference, it’s not threatening at all, just an ordinary intercalation.

Anyway Renslayer tells her how she deeply wishes to know who lied to her, because again, with the people at the TVA, it’s all about them, never about the people they reset. And can we just point out how she reset Loki AFTER knowing the TVA lied to her?

So when the Time-Keepers turned out to be fake it’s not like she went ‘oh my God, I want to know who lied to me now!’, she actually went ‘I’ll reset Loki and Sylvie and when this fails and Sylvie tries to kill me I’ll go, ops, I just remembered, I didn’t mean to reset you both, I only wanted to know who lied to me! I’m totally sincere here!’

Anyway Renslayer explains when they actually prune a branched reality they can’t destroy all that matter so they toss it in a comfortable trash disposer where it can’t continue growing, a void at the end of time ‘Where every instance of existence collides at the same point and simply stops.’

Sylvie asks ‘why?’

Why they toss them there? Why it can’t continue growing? Why every instance of existence collides at the same point and simply stops? No idea anyway it’s not like Renslayer has an answer either.

Renslayer: I don't know. The dogma states that the end of time is still being written, that the Time-Keepers are transforming it into utopia.

Oh, you’ve dogma. So you’re admitting you’re just a crazy cult.

Sylvie coulters that’s ‘super believable’ and yeah, it is. I’m sure the Time-Keepers are trying to create a cool utopia. For themselves.

I just doubt the rest of the universe will find their chosen ending an utopia as well. Anyway Renslayer assures her nothing comes back from where SHE, let me stress on the ‘she’, has sent Loki despite knowing the Time-Keepers were fake and lying to her. But Sylvie doesn’t have to worry because Renslayer can help. How if nothing can come back from her?

Magic?

What is Renslayer anyway, another Loki Variant who makes up dumb things but Sylvie swallows them because the plot says so? I say to just put her in a time loop, Sylvie.

Since the TVA likes them so much why not to let them experience them in the first place?

But no, she has to give Renslayer the tempad so, if Renslayer has a ounce of brain she can summon a Timedoor, escape from there, come back from another timedoor and arrest you.

But we don’t see her doing that because we jump back to the Void.

The Void is a terrible recycling dump. It would be nice if this were supposed to have the mean of starting a responsible discussion about trash disposing but no, we just have Loki who would like to take a breather so he can ask questions.

Sweety, really, I know the plot told you otherwise but I assure you that you can ask questions and walk and escape from Alioth so he doesn’t eat you all at the same time.

I was hoping the plot was going on you not being a walker because people in Asgard used horses to move around and skiffs but now I fear they only wanted to paint you as lazy.

I mean, we’ve a old man and a kid that can walk, why can’t you?

Anyway I’ll admit I found funny the following bit.

Classic Loki: Gotta keep moving so we don't die.

Loki: Okay, but what's your plan?

Classic Loki: Don't die.

Loki: Okay, but beyond that?

Classic Loki: Don't die.

Loki: That's not a plan. It's a general demand of living.

Of course there’s actually a pan behind all that as they’ll plan to walk till their hideout and hide there so that Alioth can’t find them. Now it’s probably a good moment like any other to wonder ‘how in the world they had found Loki?’

They’re far from their hideout, what then, they were out for a walk and he was dropped in front of them? Is this kind of plot contrivance or the story is going to have things happen for a reason that’s not ‘oh, look, what a coincidence’? Because a plot should have only so many coincidences, it can’t all conveniently happen at random!

Whatever, why am I talking anyway? Of course it happened because it’s convenient to the plot. And why did they pick him up and are taking him to a shelter? Just because they’re coincidentally nice Lokis like that? -_- Yeah, that’s why.

Loki protests if they’re Loki they should always have a plan. Yeah, they should. Too bad in this whole series it was proved over and over hardly Loki ever had a plan so… whatever.

Now I love the weird birds the place populate but they sadly serve no purpose beyond being weird birds moving around there and, apparently, being the only animals who survive the place… or the only Variant of animals the TVA pruned.

Loki start screaming, demanding explanations and summarizing his situation. Again, it’s fun, especially the part in which he says ‘now I'm surrounded by Variants of myself, plus an alligator, which sadly I didn't find all that strange’ but it feels like I’m into one episode of “Looney tunes” (in which the weird birds would fit perfectly by the way) or ‘who framed Roger Rabbit?’ because the fun is based on a total lack of logic.

That’s not the moment to stop and yell so as to have answers you can have by keeping on walking. They just told you not too long ago Alioth is interested in eating you all, either you believe it and keep walking or think they’re tricking you and walk away.

And this applies to the other Loki too. They can explain and walk instead they had dragged him along for who knows how long in silence for unknown reasons. But I’ll dig better into this in a while.

Anyway the purple cloud also known as Alioth seems to react to the ruckus Loki is making so Kid Loki points his sword at him walking close to him.

And here I’ve another problem.

Kid Loki was distant from Loki when they stopped… but when he pulls out his swords is what? A meter from him? So Loki has to hurry to back walk which causes him to fall because falling Loki is hilarious. Or because Kid Loki has to seem badass, pointing his sword to a lying on the ground Loki.

Kid Loki: Stop wailing or you will signal Alioth.

Even Kid Loki calls it just ‘wailing’. *sighs*

He does so by whispering though so Loki whispers as well when he asks him if he means the monster in the sky. I’m not sure why the kid shook his head since Loki is right, but whatever, he makes the sword disappear and helps Loki up.

Now… remaining where they are, the Lokis, starting from Kid Loki, begins to explains things to Loki, without bothering to whisper or to walk.

Kid Loki: This is the place where the TVA dumps its rubbish, everything they prune. And Alioth, he ensures none of it ever returns.

Boastful Loki: It's a living tempest that consumes matter and energy. They send entire branched realities here that are devoured instant...

Thanks for the info dump, I would have appreciated it just the same if you gave it to Loki while walking because yeah, it was funny to see Loki blowing up but it had no point and for me logic takes precedence over fun. I’m weird like that.

Now… Classic Loki is apparently the only one who can talk with Alligator Loki. I love how he explains him things because again, it’s funny…

Alligator Loki: ( /Growls/ )

Classic Loki: Oh, there's no such thing as an alligator tank. Besides, it's a better metaphor. He's overly sensitive like the rest of us.

…but again, also pointlessly absurd. The Void is not Toontown, the situation is supposed to be dramatic.

I fear they had decided since the Lokis are supposed to be chaotic creatures… they’re meant to create chaos for the sake of it.

The only things that VERY funny and that makes sense is this bit.

Loki: Hang on, that thing's a Loki too?

Classic Loki: Oh, yes.

Loki: Okay, fine. Willing to accept that.

I mean, it’s a totally fair question and it makes sense in a situation in which he has seen Variants of himself of all the kinds he can accept there’s one who’s an alligator too.

Really though, I’d like to have an explanation on how the Variants works. What makes someone the Variant of someone else? Because we’ve already established Sylvie had genetic code different from Loki but whatever… but an alligator… that’s in a completely different league.

Anyway the fact that Classic Loki define themselves as OVERLY sensitive basically seems to be put there to invalidate they’re sensitive because implies they’re excessively sensitive.

In “Thor” Loki had valid issues to be sensitive about and the side material was united in saying Odin favoured Thor. It wasn’t just Loki being overly sensitive.

This series claimed it would discuss Loki’s issues but the way they do it is by invalidating them.

I genuinely wonder if the Loki series employed someone who knew about psychological issues as a consultant. They gloss over narcissism, sensitiveness, adoption, racism issues, a suicide attempt and fear of abandonment in a worrying way.

Loki asks why there’s so many of them. It’s actually just four and they might not know. I mean, Loki doesn’t know so why should they have that info?

Never mind, they’ve the answer.

Classic Loki: Because Lokis survive. That's just what we do.

Oh, okay it’s not an answer to ‘why so many variants of Loki came into existence’ but ‘why you managed to survive’.

Not that the answer tell us much though since they don’t mean if Alioth will eat them, they will survive.

Loki asks them how do they escape. It turns out he doesn’t mean from Alioth but from the Void.

The answer he gets… fits with the question only for the very first part, the rest is an absolutely random info dump to define the Lokis incompetent.

Classic Loki: We don't. All of us were arrested by the TVA and pruned, just like you. And just like you, we all stood around making bad plans that went nowhere.

I mean, okay they were pruned. I could figure out this bit. It’s the ’and just like you, we all stood around making bad plans that went nowhere’ I’ve problems with. When it happened? Prior they were pruned? How did they know they were bad plans if they never could come into fruition because the TVA pruned them? Or after they were pruned? As in right now? Because escaping in a safe place is not a bad plan… it’s just a temporal fix though. And anyway Loki hadn’t planned anything yet… but of course he’s about to and it will be dumb.

I would like to say it’s not his fault, because he doesn’t know the place he’s in, so he would like first to use a TemPad… when of course there’s none there, and then considers causing a Nexus Event… which really is dumb because, let’s forget they’re in the Void, to cause a Nexus event you’ve to do something the Sacred Timeline disagree with, and Loki doesn’t know what the Sacred Timeline agrees with.

This means he wouldn’t know where to start in causing a Nexus event.

But whatever, instead than telling him they don’t know how to cause a Nexus Event they just tell him the TVA doesn’t care what happen there, which I hope they figured out by themselves and not because the TVA conveniently gave them an info dump at random.

As Loki insists there should be something they can do Classic Loki answer him there is.

Classic Loki: There is. Survive. That's all there is. All there ever was.

Sound like a sensible suggestion. Kid Loki tells them all they’re done talking and should go and Loki is free to do what he wants. Then they start to walk away. Note that they had all forgotten they should have whispered and the whole discussion was done with them talking normally and they’ll continue to talk normally now.

Loki decides to follow them and… ask Classic Loki why he wears the horns since he let a child command him. Now… “Marvel studios Visual Dictionary” says the horns on Loki’s helmet are a symbol of sorcery, not of leadership which makes goddamn sense since Loki had them in “Thor” too and he clearly wasn’t the leader. Now this series is trying to say me the horns make someone the boss?

The group stops again for… no reason.

Classic Loki tells Loki to respect Kid Loki as this is his kingdom. With all due respect this seems a way to please young viewers. Sure, it’ll turn out Kid Loki’s Nexus event was ‘to kill Thor’ but that’s all we’ll see the kid accomplish… and sadly it isn’t really explored upon. Was Thor killed on purpose or by coincidence? Did it pained him or not?

Loki seems affected by the idea that kid killed Thor but that’s all we’ll get from such a big declaration. It’s a wasted chance. They could have given us that instead than all that walking and the funny but pointless moments.

I was hoping Kid Loki ‘killed’ Thor by turning into the frog we saw being in a buried jar, in short Thor wasn’t dead yet but the TVA pruned everything and so a still alive Thor ended there and Kid Loki believed he had killed him but no, it seems Frog Thor in a Variant arrested by the TVA.

Eric Martin @MrEricMartin · Jul 8

Comic fans will notice the Frog of Thunder in that jar. We actually shot a scene for the Time Theater in Ep 1 of Loki getting pummeled by Frog Thor, but had to cut it to keep things moving. It’s too bad, because Tom was funny as hell. #LokiMidnightTheater

Apparently the “Loki” series longed for a frog to beat Loki too as if the show didn’t beat him often enough. As of now we don’t have an episode in which Loki didn’t got a beating.

Ep 1? B-15 beats him.

Ep 2? The people possessed by Sylvie beat him.

Ep 3? The guards on the train beat him.

Ep 4? Sif beats him.

Ep 5? Kid Loki sent him on the ground and then we’ll have all the Lokis beating each other.

I’m not saying Loki can’t get beaten in a series with fights, just that if it becomes a ‘funny’ trend proposed in each episode it talks of poor creativity.

The group resumed walking.

Okay the scenery is nice but why in the world they went so far?

More walking after the group reaches a trap door that Classic Loki probably sealed with magic as he’s the one who unseal it.

The group gets in.

The camera moves, showing us details about the layers of ground, among them we can see Mjolnir is buried there with a glass vase inside which there’s a frog Thor who’s still jumping around, screaming (Chris Heimsworth voiced it) as it tried to escape and can’t.

I would have liked it, if the backstory beyond the frog was that Kid Loki turned Thor into a frog and then buried him and that’s why he thinks he killed him when Thor survived but ended up pruned by the TVA just the same.

Once they’re inside the shelter Classic Loki questions Loki.

Classic Loki: So, why did you want to return to the TVA so badly, anyway?

Boastful Loki: You leave your glorious purpose there?

Loki: Something like that.

Can they please, please, please, stop tossing around ‘glorious purpose’? Loki used it only once in a movie and now, all of sudden, it has turn into an intercalation that gets said in all the episodes more than once.

Loki: I am Loki of Asgard. And I am burdened with glorious purpose. [Ep 1]

Loki: Glorious purpose. [Ep 1]

Mobius: It's exactly the same thing. Because if you think too hard about where any of us came from, who we truly are, it sounds kinda ridiculous. Existence is chaos. Nothing makes any sense, so we try to make some sense of it. And I'm just lucky that the chaos I emerged into gave me all this... My own glorious purpose. [Ep 2]

Loki: Oh, the mission? The mission? What, your glorious purpose? Give me a break. You can't beat them. [Ep 3]

Boastful Loki: You leave your glorious purpose there? [Ep 5]

Boastful Loki: Glorious purpose! [Ep 5]

Classic Loki: Damn it! Animals, animals! We lie and we cheat, we cut the throat of every person who trusts us, and for what? Power. Glorious power. Glorious purpose! We cannot change. We're broken, every version of us. Forever. [Ep 5]

Classic Loki: Glorious purpose! [Ep 5]

They managed not to mention it only in Ep 4 but to make up for it Ep 5 mentioned it 4 times. Loki used that sentence only once in “The Avengers” no need to have him or someone else close to him to keep repeating it.

There’s something else I dislike about the whole setting, which is that all the Lokis we see have fundamentally given up on the idea of escaping. Or defeating Alioth. The most they want to do is to rule over each other.

Loki in both “Thor” and “The Avengers” was highly intelligent and quick-witted. In this series he’s none of that. At this point it’s clear he’s not the Loki we know in a world we don’t know. Episode 1 and 2 showed him to have some intelligence (like how he stole the time twister or how he figured out Sylvie was hiding in an apocalypse) but everything has gone downhill from then.

It’s sad.

I might say it’s nice now Loki’s ‘glorious purpose’ is clearly helping Sylvie but this doesn’t solve how poorly their love story was built. It just asks me to pretend to forget about how poorly it was built and embrace it.

We switches to the TVA and Renslayer deploys the help of Miss Minute to access to a series of restricted files about the beginning on time and founding of the TVA for… no purpose than stall time really. I mean… if in those files there’s something compromising for the Time-Keepers they clearly wouldn’t let it available to people who could not be on their side. If Renslayer were to be allowed to see it, it’s clear it would mean she’s on their side and not trustworthy.

Plus the whole thing has no relevance whatsoever in the story, it seems an excuse to have Miss Minute there. We learn nothing about the beginning of the time and the foundation of the TVA because Sylvie starts asking about the end of time, the Void in short, where Loki is.

Miss Minute at this point stops searching and shows them a timeline, the sacred timeline I guess, which ends in the Void.

But it’s not solely because Sylvie cares about Loki, no, she asks because she’s SMART, so of course she goes:

Sylvie: What if The Void isn't the end? What if there's something beyond it? Hiding in the shadow of apocalypses obscured me from the TVA because I couldn't create a diverging branch there, right? So if all of this is still being written, whatever happens is just a new timeline. It would be impossible to start a nexus event there. You could be completely undetectable.

Renslayer agrees it has to be the solution, the Time-Keepers has to be there but insists they can’t get past the Void with the Tempad and getting through it (no idea how) would be suicide.

At this point Sylvie comments she doesn’t need Renslayer anymore so Miss Minute mentions a ‘Void spacecraft’. Renslayer catches the ball and say they’ve a prototype of a spaceship designed to withstand the temporal void which could take them to the end of time.

Miss Minute volunteers to search the files which is clearly another way to stall time because what will they do with the files? Start producing it in that room using the blueprints as reference?

They need the prototype, not the files and it’s unbelievable Renslayer wouldn’t know where it is and needs the files.

The girls go on saying:

Sylvie: Find Loki.

Renslayer: Find the man behind the curtain.

Sylvie: And kill him.

Renslayer: Together.

The Time-Keepers were three, an unholy trinity. Why now it’s only one man?

Anyway Renslayer would shake hands on this but Sylvie is SMART so she doesn’t let her go and insists for having the file. Miss Minute and Renslayer try to buy time saying it’s buried pretty deep… which really, it’s an idiocy as pc don’t ‘bury things’. They hide them behind passwords and encryptions but she’s just making a search, not using passwords and decryption programs. Renslayer claims she might not have clearance, which again is dumb.

So Sylvie, who’s SMART suggests the prototype doesn’t exist.

In fact the guards barge into the room and really, I don’t know why they took so long. It’s the TVA, there’s plenty of hunters, what where they waiting for?

As we will likely need Renslayer for more plot related things, Sylvie doesn’t prune her but merely pushes her away, temporally losing her status as SMART girl but hey, she recovers immediately as she steals Renslayer’s Tempad as she pushes her away so she’s back on being SMART.

Sylvie hides behind a balcony. She has the TemPad, she can escape in a damn apocalypse and resume killing Minutemen but she remains there to chat because she knows she’s the heroine and plot protected.

Renslayer tries to get her to surrender with a pretty speech about how tiresome it should be to escape from a fascist government which wants to kill you. Much, much better to surrender to them and not try to survive, right?

Okay, those aren’t her words but you get the gist of it.

Sylvie goes:

Sylvie: I'll admit you had me fooled there for a minute. Or did you get a little real? Did Judge Renslayer really feel betrayed by her beloved TVA?

Now… if Renslayer remains IC (and she might not as Mobius was way too OOC in ep 4 and we’re talking of a character this series created), no, she didn’t feel betrayed. She lives for the TVA.

Mbatha-Raw: “She’s really worked hard to get where she is, so she’s not going to be reckless with the power that has been hard-earned for her. She, in some ways, is deeply indoctrinated with the ways of the TVA. She’s completely conditioned by their thinking and the idea of the Sacred Timeline, and the concept of free will is quite alien to her. She’s a believer. She believes in law and order, and it’s done quite well for her so far in terms of getting her to where she is. She’s not going to abandon her philosophy lightly.” [‘Loki’: Owen Wilson Says Renslayer’s Betrayal of Mobius in Episode 4 Was ‘Pretty Shocking’]

Renslayer didn’t have additional information compared to the ones she had when she decided to remain loyal to the TVA and prune Loki and doesn’t has a concept of free will, hence no, she shouldn’t feel betrayed.

She was a servant and she should remain a servant. But since the series is no big on keeping character IC… who knows?

Renslayer: Why don't you come back out and we can talk about it?

Sylvie: Sure. Just tell everyone else to piss off and we can settle this between us.

Renslayer: Works for me.

Renslayer slips on the dumb slope in this part of the discussion in which nobody just does everything as the hunters remains where they are and the scene seems there to fill time because the hunters will start moving AFTER THIS.

Renslayer continues talking merely for plot purposes.

Renslayer: Tell you what. You come out with your hands up and I'll put you in a time loop. Something not so bad. You can live out your days in a good memory. Do you have any good memories?

Sylvie doesn’t trust her, it’s clear she doesn’t swallow her promises but she has to prompt Sylvie to think to her Only Good Memory which I bet is the one in which she touched Loki one moment before they believed they were about to die and ended up causing the Nexus event.

Because Sylvie is a tragic girl and in the what, centuries she take in growing up considering the Asgardian slow rate of growth and assuming she has Loki’s same age, she never had a single good thing, she didn’t even witness a beautiful sunset or ate a food she liked. Touching Loki was the only good thing she had.

Tissues anyone?

I mean, it’s clear Sylvie is a tragic character and there’s nothing bad in tragic characters but they just overdid things with her. If this keeps up they’ll tell us she had a worse time escaping the TVA than Bucky Barnes when she was brainwashed and forced to work for Hydra.

Now… instead than pruning herself secretly so that the whole TVA might think she escaped, she does so very blatantly. Mind you, the scene is pretty but serves little purpose beyond showing Sylvie’s brave act.

For our SMART girl it was more functional to prune herself secretly so that the TVA would be all busy searching for her.

Whatever, Renslayer declares her dead, forgetting she has a Tempad, HER Tempad, and could return from the Void. But as I said Renslayer is slipping in the dumb slope.

We move to the Lokis group drinking… Roxxiwine, a supposedly exceptional Pinot Noir. This includes Alligator Loki who is poured wine straight in his mouth by Classic Loki.

All this where Boastful Loki is… well, boasting about how he vanquished Captain America and Iron Man and claimed his prize, all six Infinity Stones and I’m “Hey, what about Thanos?”

Because it wasn’t Captain America or Iron Man who were collecting the stones but Thanos. If you’ve to boast, boast about beating the right guy.

But anyway it’s probably all a lie, at least according to Alligator Loki. Boastful Loki counters:

Boastful Loki: At least my nexus event wasn't eating the wrong neighbour's cat.

…and I goes again: “CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN ME WHAT’S UP WITH THE VARIANTS? BECAUSE I GENUINELY HOPE OUR LOKI NEVER TURNED HIMSELF INTO AN ALLIGATOR TO EAT THE RIGHT NEIGHBOUR’S CAT!”

Logic? Hey, logic, where are you?

Alligator Loki decides to turn Boastful Loki into his next dinner. Not a bad move for an Alligator but completely OOC for a Loki as they usually don’t jump at someone’s throat… unless Alligator Loki is actually female?

Besides why Boastful Loki doesn’t get even a little scratch from him biting his hand while President Loki will completely lose his hand?

Classic Loki and our Loki run to stop him and he ends up back in his small swimming pool.

Again, this is fun, this is episode is probably the funnier of the whole series but overall absurd and pointless, more fitting of a “Looney tunes” episode than of the series.

Besides what’s the point for Boastful Loki to feed us a fake story on which he could boast about while they’re in such a situation? It makes him a compulsive liar. As if the show hadn’t depicted Loki poorly enough.

Kid Loki, who remained sitting on the throne drinking juice because no matter if he’s a Loki, minors don’t drink wine in this show, demands to know Classic Loki’s backstory.

I, instead, demand to know what’s going on.

The general impression was that Classic Loki, Boastful Loki, Kid Loki and Alligator Loki were living together by a while but they decide to tell everyone their stories ONLY NOW for the benefit of Loki and, more important, of the viewers?

Whatever.

Classic Loki, despite supposedly being a Narcissist like all the Loki goes and say:

Classic Loki: Me? Nobody wants to hear about that.

Loki points out he’s actually interested in knowing since he was aware he was supposed to be killed by Thanos.

So, to explain the survival of Classic Loki, the “Loki” series goes and tosses a COMPLETELY VALID AND RIGHTFUL JAB AT “AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR” whose creators said they planned Loki’s death as their first scene and actually made an illogic mess of those 10 minutes which contain more nonsense than the rest of the MCU movies put together…

Classic Loki: Thanos? In my timeline, everything proceeded correctly, my entire life, until Thanos attacked our ship.

Loki: So, you didn't try to stab him?

Classic Loki: ( Chuckles ) Certainly not. Take no offense, my friends, but blades are worthless in the face of a Loki sorcery. They stunt our magical potential.

Boastful Loki: But they look awesome.

Classic Loki: Oh, yes. Especially when they clatter to the ground just before your neck is snapped.

…to end up in colossal disappointment (never mentioning the one Loki who praises blades as awesome is the one who doesn’t use a blade but a hammer. Copying Thor much?).

I appreciate the praising to Loki’s magic but Loki can’t cast solid projections of himself (and this series so far hadn’t bothered to explain why Loki got an upgrade in his magic power which he has hardly used in the other movies). Not even this Loki in fact can make solid projections, as we’ll see the Asgard he’ll project later on is just an incorporeal illusion. It would be different if he’d used a real person but the idea is even more horrible. Anyway, for the sake of tricking Thanos, Loki suddenly can do something he couldn’t do before, which of course will end up being interpreted as being what he also did in “Thor: The Dark World” too when he faked his death. And then what?

Classic Loki: Then hid as inanimate debris. After I faked my death, I simply drifted in space. Away from Thor, away from everything. Thought about the universe and my place in it, and it occurred to me that everywhere I went, only pain followed. So I removed myself from the equation, landed on a remote planet and stayed there in isolation, in solitude for a long, long time.

Then he basically dumped Thor and the other Asgardians who survived and remained on a remote planet in isolation. I mean, it would have worked just the same if he had said ‘I drifted in space, ended on a remote planet and couldn’t leave because there were no spaceships or anything else’ but no, he has to decide to dump everything.

Why?

Because everywhere he went, only pain followed. Yeah, from when he set foot on Asgard, Asgard lived 1000 years of pain. And when he came to Midgard it wasn’t because he decided to attack it that the Midgardians suffered but because he set foot on it.

Had he come there as a tourist, the Chitauri would have invaded JUST THE SAME but solely because he was there. If he’d gone in another place Thanos would have never tried retrieving the Tesseract from Earth.

And the 4 years in which he again ruled Asgard… yeah, all the Asgardians were miserable, weren’t they? It’s actually funny Hela managed to arrive on Asgard when Loki isn’t there, isn’t it? And Loki is the one who brought a spaceship big enough for the Asgardians to escape, and Loki stopped Hela by resurrecting Surtur but no, everywhere he goes he brings pain so the Asgardians would have been happier dying in Asgard.

It wasn’t Thanos’ fault at all if he killed so many Asgardians, he did so only because Loki was there otherwise Thanos doesn’t kill people, no, not him.

Logic, where are you?

And so how the TVA captured him.

And of course, it turns out he somehow knows Thor survived the mad Titan but decides he misses him and wants to see him only when he’s grey and old and so, when he attempts to leave, this sets the TVA on him. They could have said finally someone dropped on his planet and offered him to leave, but no, he always could, he just decided not to.

Mind you it’s sweet he said:

Classic Loki: I got lonely. To tell you the truth, I missed my brother, and I wondered if he missed me, if anybody else did.

But the premise is bad and the conclusion is horrible.

Classic Loki: Because we, my friends, have but one part to play, the God of Outcasts. Nothing more. The God of Outcasts.

Basically Classic Loki’s point is that they’ve to stay isolated, away from people, cut out from the world, there in the Void.

This is how Loki came to call himself ‘God of the Outcasts’ in the comics

“I am Loki. God of outcasts. They see themselves in me, and I in them. All of us, alone together. It’s why my stories always end with someone trying to put me in a box. And begin with my spectacular escape.” [Loki (2019) #5]

It’s the opposite to surrendering in being kept boxed into a corner. And it’s the opposite of seeing the Lokis as an entity apart from the rest of the living things.

This series has so many Lokis… who’re just the same yet neither of them is said to be the same as any other human. They don’t belong except than among them and even then they can enter into conflict. They can’t fall in love except than with themselves and even then they need a special Loki female to fall in love.

It’s Sylvie that points out the TVA workers are Variants like they are, but, even in this case, there won’t be camaraderie between the Lokis and the TVA workers.

Anyway after hearing all of this our Loki decides that no, he’s not going to play the part of the God of the outcast but he’s leaving, going back to the TVA. Since they’re as good at escaping (something this series has established) as at surviving he thinks he can escape and survive and if he’ll die instead, like Boastful Loki says, well, that was his destiny to begin with.

It would be a nice speech if it came from him. Too bad it came from his love for Sylvie because she got the Mary Sue power to turn him into a new man with her love. And so, since the other Lokis didn’t benefit from having the chance to love Sylvie, they can’t be like him, but that’s their only difference. Because love is saving the world.

Kid Loki: You're different. Why?

Loki: No, I'm not, you see? I'm the same, really. I'm the same as all of you. Have any of you met a woman Variant of us?

Classic Loki: Sounds terrifying.

Loki: Oh, she is. But that's kind of what's great about her. She's different. She's not trying to take over the TVA, she's trying to take it down. And she needs me.

Don’t take me wrong, I’m sure love plays a huge part in saving the world but in this way it feels just as cheesy and childish as it could be. Besides Loki’s plan is against dumb because all his brain went to Sylvie.

Loki: Now, you said Alioth is what keeps us here. You said it's a living thing. You said it's a shark. Well, if it lives, it dies. So I'm gonna kill the shark. I'm gonna kill Alioth, and I could use all the help I can get.

Okay, to be honest this is not a plan, this is a goal. Killing Alioth is a goal but a plan requires studying a way to how to do it and he hadn’t, isn’t doing and won’t do it. So no plan.

Anyway the Lokis laugh either because they have surrendered and believe Alioth can’t be killed or because the idea someone were to ask help to them is absurd because they’re backstabbing, evil guys. I don’t know which one is more depressing.

But whatever, the discussion isn’t even done well.

I mean, this series wrote down Loki is fluid but when Loki suggests they might have met a woman Loki the other finds it ‘sounds terrifying’ which I don’t know if it’s more stupid or misogynist. And Loki agrees but then launches in a rant on how, because Sylvie is a woman, she’s different and so perfect. Because being a woman is a character trait that makes you better.

Loki: Oh, she is. But that's kind of what's great about her. She's different. She's not trying to take over the TVA, she's trying to take it down.

This is not validation! This is dumb. A woman is a damn human being who can be awesome or horrible because her sex and/or her gender do not decide which sort of person she is!

If the idea is that Loki is bad because he’s a man that’s just dumb and if the idea is that Sylvie is great because she’s a female this is not only dumb, it invalidates all Sylvie has done to be the way she is… which is not great because she’s actually moved by wish of revenge, not by some sort of humanitarian purpose.

At this point Killmongrel was more noble than her as he at least cared about those he viewed as his brothers.

Sylvie just wanted to erase the TVA… and now she wants to save Loki because she fell for him.

Should I also mention how Loki the silver tongue, can’t even persuade a kid to eat a candy in this show?

Loki leaves commenting they’re ‘monsters’ which is kind of a big word for guys who don’t want to follow you because you are going against a REAL GIANT MONSTER that could kill them and don’t have a plan.

What about Thanos then? What about the TVA who pruned countless lives? How do you call them?

When Loki is about to leave however he meets a Loki who, for once, looks EXACTLY like him, President Loki, who had gotten there with tons of other male Loki who couldn’t look more different.

Again, the exchange is funny…

President Loki: Ah. Hello, which one of us are you?

Loki: This is a nightmare.

…but the joke is more a “Looney tunes” nonsense, albeit, for once, a little better planned.

But I’ll return on this in a minute because the story switches to Sylvie, the heroine who wakes up in a vehicle. Evidently she was dropped there because the roof above her is broken so she likely fell into the vehicle more than magically woke there.

And, please, prepare yourself, we’re about to start a list of new plot contrivances.

COINCIDENTALLY, although that vehicle was clearly abandoned there by only God know how long, Alioth decides to eat it just now, but COINCIDENTALLY, Sylvie has just came out of it in time so as not to be eaten. Alioth begins to give her chase, so she tries to enchant one of his… tendrils? Pseudopods? So she COINCIDENTALLY see in his memories not his last dinner but where the Time-Keepers are.

COINCIDENTALLY, despite Alioth being very fast, she manages to distance herself from him and hold that distance until COINCIDENTALLY a car which is COINCIDENTALLY working as it’s not damaged and has fuel (Sylvie’s vehicle was unlikely to move considering it seemed to have been forgotten there by a lifetime) appear which is COINCIDENTALLY driven by Mobius who has COINCIDENTALLY not only seen Alioth but not turned away from him immediately and fast as he could and had COINCIDENTALLY noticed she was there too despite the fact she was pretty distant.

COINCIDENTALLY, despite Alioth’s speed, Sylvie manages to outrun him in time for her to reach Mobius’ car. Should I mention Mobius COINCIDENTALLY knows how to drive that kind of car though as a TVA analyst he shouldn’t need it? No, maybe I’m being too nitpicking.

So Alioth, who first was COINCIDENTALLY slow enough Sylvie could outrun him otherwise she would end up being eaten, now COINCIDENTALLY speeds up and tails Mobius’ car up close otherwise the chase would be boring.

Meanwhile, as they drive, Mobius and Sylvie scold each other, each of them sure he’s more competent than the other. We see them pass by the pyramids and the Sphinx and then the scene changes.

We’re back in the Lokis’ hideout but now President Loki and his men has taken control of it.

Classic Loki scolds Loki for leading ‘the wolves’ there. President Loki claims they prefer to be called snakes.

Kid Loki has a nice moment in which he says:

Kid Loki: I've eaten both. They die just the same.

I wish they had developed him more. Is he meant to be a murderous dangerous psycho or he’s also acting so as not to look weak? Sadly though, like all the Loki Variants except Classic Loki, he’s just tossed there to make number and confusion.

Anyway, as I was saying, President Loki being there is not a coincidence nor our Loki’s fault. It turns out Boastful Loki betrayed Kid Loki.

Why? Because he’s a backstabbing idiot with poor planning issues which is how we’re supposed to see all the Lokis. Not intelligent beings and with quick-wits who use their brains to beat enemies stronger than they are but backstabbing idiots with poor planning issues.

Anyway Boastful Loki gave to President Loki the location of Kid Loki’s hideout so, in exchange for shelter and supplies, President Loki would give his his army and he would take the throne.

Not even a kid would believe someone would honour such a dumb agreement and in fact President Loki doesn’t plan to honour it because he plans to take everything for himself

President Loki: Ah, yes. Not so good a bargain. How about this one? My army, my throne?

So of course his army of backstabbing idiot Lokis with poor planning issues decide to start arguing among each other on who has to get the throne.

I’ll be honest, if this was a “Looney tunes” cartoon I would find it hilarious. As they’re trying to tell me all those are Lokis who are ‘more successful than our Loki’ I just facepalm.

He's the Loki that was supposed to stay on the timeline. All those Lokis who had all those successes were Lokis who got pruned by the TVA. As Mobius says, ‘It's your job to lose so others can become the best versions of themselves.’ That's the part Loki is meant to play on the Sacred Timeline. The question is: can you change? [Why Other Lokis Are Much More Successful Than Hiddleston's]

Our Loki successfully interrupted the coronation, successfully killed Laufey and would have successfully destroyed Jotunheim hadn’t he been interrupted. He successfully stole the Tesseract from a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, successfully hypnotizing Selvig and Hawkeye and he successfully distracted the Avengers while Hawkeyes did what he had to do. Successfully let himself be arrested so as to arrive where Hulk was and successfully set him loose while also successfully escaping from his prison then successfully managed to open the passage that lead the Chitauri on New York.

Yes, he wasn’t successful in that battle and it was a big deal but I’ll say he accomplished plenty of things.

Which sort of success the other Lokis had? I honestly missed it.

Alligator Loki has enough and moves closer.

Now again, the following scene is very fun for a ‘looney tunes’…

President Loki: Why the hell is there an alligator in here?

Classic Loki, Kid Loki, Boastful Loki: He's a Loki!

…with Alligator Loki managing this time to eat President Loki’s whole arm when before he couldn’t even scratch Boastful Loki’s hand but… it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Chaos ensues as all the Lokis start fighting among them and I wonder if we’ll see Yosemite Sam and Marvin the Martian join the fight along with Taz.

It’s clear that the whole thing is meant to be solely humorous, when President Loki loses his hand and then starts screaming like a banshee, apart from an initial spray of blood he doesn’t lose blood at all.

You aren’t meant to take seriously the loss of his hand, you might even expect they’ll glue it back to him later on.

It’s not terrible humour, it’s something one can definitely enjoy… but it’s so out of place in a story that supposedly has serious themes and instead decides to just spend half of the episode in a comedy that’s more fitting of ‘Who framed Roger Rabbit?’ with Loki leaving the place by escaping in such a manner I can’t even begin to describe… as if he’s tiptoeing around the other Lokis in hope they won’t notice him… and they don’t.

He fundamentally does nothing useful, the one acting is mostly Classic Loki who uses his magic, Kid Loki who handles Alligator Loki and Alligator Loki who beat or maybe I should say bite some Lokis… but the weirdest thing is that Loki, Kid Loki, Alligator Loki and Classic Loki wander through the place for a bit then Classic Loki opens a magic portal that lead to the outside and they leave the place… with our Loki a bit wary to go through it which makes me wonder, is it a power only Classic Loki has?

Did Classic Loki spent all those years after Thanos improving his magic? Or was he a better wizard from the start?

Anyway Classic Loki, Kid Loki, Alligator Loki and Loki leave together because somehow they’re a squad who doesn’t want to betray each other despite being Lokis… but Classic Loki and Kid Loki rants against Lokis in general.

Kid Loki: And whenever one of us dares try to fix themselves, they're sent here to die.

Now I appreciate Kid Loki saying so but if he was sent there to die it was not because he was trying to fix himself but because he killed Thor, right? Or this was a lie?

At this point I don’t know anymore.

Loki claims he wants to get out of there and stop the TVA so things can change. And no, I don’t agree.

They could change also remaining there.

Enough with this determinism and the idea the TVA control everything.

Those Lokis didn’t want to change that’s why they didn’t. It had nothing to do with the TVA and everything with themselves.

What’s more, Loki probably doesn’t know it but he wasn’t always a complete jerk in the sacred timeline. He saved his brother from the Kurse. He came back to save the Asgardians against Hela.

It’s not the TVA who decided he has to be a backstabbing idiot with poor planning issues, in Doylist terms it’s this series which basically erased whatever didn’t agree with this definition from his story, in Watsonian, it was his own mess.

The TVA doesn’t care what they do there, they could fix themselves if they want to.

But whatever, the “Looney tunes” moment is finished.

So we have…

Loki: That's why I need to get out of here. Nothing can change until the TVA is stopped.

Classic Loki: And you trust her?

And okay, I take Classic Loki means Sylvie, but this basically means that they’re thinking only Sylvie can stop the TVA because she’s magical like that and Loki, at the very best, can just help her.

So much for a change. And in fact…

Loki: She's the only one I do trust. And right now, I believe she's our only chance of stopping the TVA.

Kid Loki: That's good enough for me.

Classic Loki: Okay, okay. We'll help you. But approaching Alioth is a death sentence. We'll get you to it, but that's as far as we go.

So yeah, Sylvie is the Lokis’ only hope, their saviour, they aren’t meant to change themselves just to entrust themselves to her. Welcome to the new cult, the Sylvie cult.

And now come the worst part.

Of course CASUALLY Sylvie and Mobius managed to offscreen escape Alioth even though the last we left them Sylvie was complaining he was driving toward it.

Mobius whines:

Mobius: All that time, I really believed we were the good guys.

Even now, he’s not really shown feeling horrible for all the people he has reset and sent there to be eaten by Alioth. He’s more worried he discovered he wasn’t one of the heroes. Is he meant to be a Loki? Or something worse? Please, let me know.

Sylvie, because she’s the only one who gets to call things by their names, point out at the idiocy of his beliefs.

Sylvie: Annihilating entire realities, orphaning little girls, classic hero stuff.

Classic hero stuffs indeed but if you believe that the TVA is real because the TVA is real you can believe in everything. Instead than just apologizing for orphaning her and annihilating her reality Mobius goes and tries to explain her how he actually wasn’t in the wrong and she too… she too was very bad…

Mobius: Well, I guess when you think the ends justify the means, there's not much you won't do. By the way, you did some annihilating too.

Sylvie doesn’t take any of his idiocies but he again tries to compare his situation to her.

Sylvie: I did what I had to do.

Mobius: Yeah, so did I.

No, you didn’t Mobius. You chose to turn your eyes away from the truth, you chose to believe because being a hero gave you a purpose.

Mobius: Odin, God of the Heavens. Asgard, mystical realm, beyond the stars. Frost Giants. Listen to yourself...

Loki: It's not the same. It's completely different. No. It's not the same.

You first compared your little cult’s beliefs to what Loki lived through his life then told him the situation didn’t make sense but you didn’t care because it gave you a glorious purpose and that the TVA was real solely because you WILLINGLY believed in it. And now you’re telling Sylvie, the poor girl the TVA kidnapped, orphaned and tried to kill with your willing help that you choosing to willingly reset Variants and her fighting to survive are the same thing.

Sylvie: You hunted me like a dog.

Mobius: I'm sorry about that.

Of course, since it’s Sylvie that points it out, at this point he apologizes TO HER. What are you sorry for, Mobius? Just hunting her? What about the rest? And what about the other Variants, Mobius? The ones who didn’t manage to escape? What about your supposed friend, Loki that you had beaten and belittled so you could get information out of him to protect your precious TVA and at whom you reused to believe even when he was telling you the truth?

But honestly, I shouldn’t take it out of Mobius. He’s like Jessica Rabbit. ‘He’s not bad. He’s just drawn that way’. Because this series doesn’t really want to talk about what the TVA did to the other Variants and whatever happens to Loki doesn’t matter because ‘he deserves it’ so why should Mobius or anyone at the TVA feel sorry?

Anyway, after Mobius apologizes to her Sylvie has a moment of vulnerability in which she confesses she pruned herself to find Loki but now she believed the storm ate him already. Because obviously Loki is dumb and incompetent so better not get her hopes up. Okays, she didn’t say so and I get her discomfort but… but nothing, Sylvie goes back to her mission and who cares about Loki while Mobius, who previously harshly criticized Loki’s ‘demented crush for his female self’ now is all supportive.

Mobius: You really believe that?

Sylvie: It doesn't matter. The only thing that matters now is getting out of here and finding out who's behind all of this.

Sylvie of course has a plan because she’s SMART. Sylvie decides they’ll go back to the angry cloud which she previous told Mobius to escape from because she thinks the cloud can be the answer. And since Sylvie is SMART, even though she hadn’t given him a plan and she’s really not persuasive Mobius complies because everyone in Sylvie’s squad does what Sylvie says as she rolled a 12 in persuasion so, whatever.

Back to Loki and his group, Classid Loki asks Loki if he has a plan. He does.

Loki: Get inside, find its heart or brain or whatever, and then, you know, do it in.

Please, don’t tell me this is the guy who manipulated Laufey into trusting him and coming to Asgard or that could keep up a discussion with Fury. This is not a plan this is ‘Loki smash!’ only it works better when Hulk does it. A kid could do better in fact Kid Loki notices it’s dumb and Loki gets defensive.

Loki: Just because it's not complicated doesn't mean it's bad.

Kid Loki: It also doesn't mean it's good.

Okay the “Looney tunes” fun is still on and it continues being on.

Alligator Loki: ( Growls )

Loki: See? He's on board.

Classic Loki: He's praying. He thinks we're going to die.

Because this is fun but so very OOC and out of place I just want to take this episode and put it in another series. I would enjoy it more if it were in another series.

By the way, why Classic Loki understand Alligator Loki and no one else does.

A ship populated with people appear, likely because the TVA reset the reality. Where’s the sea and the rest of that reality? Who knows and who cares? Alioth of course notices the ship and now Loki says something intelligent:

Loki: Alioth is like any animal. He'll go after the big meal first. And while he's busy with that, we can sneak around the back and...

The people on the ship tries to fight and is swallowed in less than a minute. It should be a tragic moment in which all the people on the ship died. It left me empty. Hum… this part just feel flat. Probably because they want to continue with the “Looney tunes” theme by having Loki realize his idea of sneak behind Alioth being dumb because it’s impossible as Alioth is just too fast and dangerous.

Loki: ( Panting ) Okay. Maybe we, uh... think a bit more about this, huh?

Now… COINCIDENTALLY a car arrives and at Loki who worries if it’s bad this is told because “Looney tunes” mood.

Kid Loki: Well, usually means cannibalistic marauders or cannibalistic pirates.

Loki: Delightful. Now they're slowing down.

But no, it’s not cannibalistic marauders or cannibalistic pirates, COINCIDENTALLY it’s just Sylvie and Mobius. COINCIDENTALLY the car stops away from them but COINCIDENTALLY Loki recognizes Sylvie just the same so he can run to her while Classic Loki who evidently hadn’t hear him recognizing Sylvie can continue with the “Looney tunes” moments.

Classic Loki: I don't understand. Is he a coward or was he being brave?

Kid Loki: I'm not too sure.

They decide to follow him anyway. Are they coward, brave or fool?

Loki ends running to Sylvie and she greets him with a ‘ You're alive’ which honestly doesn’t even feel as if she were surprised or happy. Loki is a lot more emotional about seeing her and Mobius. Okay, Mobius seems happy to see him too even though he says nothing.

“Looney tunes” mood continues as she tells him

Sylvie: We thought you could do with some backup.

And he puts his hands on his hips and frowns at her but then she notices Classic Loki and Kid Loki and she neither wonders why they’re dressed so oddly nor recognize them as Loki but considers attacking them until Loki, still in “Looney tunes” mood, introduces them.

Loki: Oh, no, wait, wait, wait, these are my friends. Well, they're, um... How best to put this? Us as a child, us in the future, and us as an alligator. It's best not to question it.

Mobius: You throw a rock out here, you hit a Loki.

Again, hilarious, just not fitting the situation.

Sylvie decides them being there means they’re not there by chance but after the giant cloud monster. Loki confirms they’re there to kill Alioth which she finds a dumb plan because of course all Loki’s plans are dumb and he should just follow Sylvie’s as she has years of experience with Alioth and… no, nevermind she doesn’t but she has read the script and she knows she is the only Loki with a power that’s useful against it. Because Mary Sue. Or heroine. Whatever.

Loki: Well, we haven't decided how we're going to kill it, but...

Sylvie: Come again? Kill it?

Loki: Yes, we're gonna kill Alioth.

Sylvie: Oh, my God. That was your plan.

Loki: Yeah.

Sylvie: And you went along with it?

Kid Loki: I had my doubts.

Classic Loki: Probably unsafe.

So Sylvie gets to expose her plan. She thinks, without any proof whatsoever, that the person they’re after is beyond The Void at the end of time and Alioth is their guard dog protecting the only way in.

Sure, she had a vision when she tried to enchant Alioth but I saw nowhere on that building a sign seeing ‘residence of the time-keeper’. It might very well be the last thing Alioth ate or Alioth and the Time-Keeper might be unrelated. The Time-Keeper might hide in a timeline parallel to the sacred one. Or at the beginning of time. Or he could be Casey in disguise. Or the cat the guy who had Loki sign all he said had. Or he can be Alligator Loki for all we know. But of course, since this is Sylvie’s theory, this is a theory, not a plan, everyone accepts it.

And this is Sylvie’s plan which is her alternate solution to ‘I’ll hit it with my sword’

Sylvie: I'm gonna enchant it.

Which is also insane because really, the last time it worked so well. Loki points it out but of course Sylvie claims his plan was dumber and anyway she’s gonna enchant it, we’re not in a democracy and she’s the Mary Sue, I mean the heroine end of the discussion. And since she’s the Mary Sue, I mean the heroine, everyone agrees with her because she’s a female Loki and female Lokis are special like that. Especially when there’s only one female Loki in all the times.

Sylvie: I'm gonna enchant it.

Loki: ( Laughing ) That's insane, right?

Sylvie: As insane as what? Paper-cutting a cloud to death?

Loki: Listen, I've been down here longer than you...

Sylvie: I'm going to enchant it.

Mobius: She's pretty confident.

Besides, I mean, if Sylvie finds Loki so dumb… why is she falling for him? Why I’m asking? Because she’s the Mary Sue who falls for the character the fandom adoures and manages to do what no one ever could do, make him fall for her and make him a better person.

It’s amazing how Mobius agrees because she’s pretty confident it took Loki, his friend, a lot to persuade him that the Variant could hide in the apocalypse. Ah, the power of a Mary Sue. I’m waiting for her to start singing.

Whatever, back to Renslayer we go.

She enters in a GIANT sized room, chases away the two hunters guarding it, goes to a wall and uses the Tempad to open a door. Behind it we can see Hunter B-15, that Sylvie evidently forgot in the room of the Time-Keeper when she moved in the trial room because who care about her.

Hunter B-15 would like to know why she’s there. I’d like to know why she wasn’t pruned too.

Renslayer accuses her of freeing the Variant and being disloyal to the TVA. Variant, singular, if I didn’t hear wrong. She actually freed the VariantS plural. Unless two Lokis count as one because always Loki. While Renslayer is trying intimidation techniques asking her if she thinks she could escape punishment B-15 wants to know to who she was disloyal as she too saw Time-Keepers weren't real.

Renslayer asks her why should this change anything and, for once, I agree with her. If the Time-Keepers put there puppets as a safety measure this doesn’t change anything and it’s not even the point.

The problem wasn’t if the Time-Keepers were in that room for Sylvie to kill them, it was that the Time-Keepers lied to the TVA employers, telling them they had created them when they were kidnapped Variants who were being used to kill other poor Variants who never did anything wrong. No, scratch the last part, B-15 never cared about the Variants she killed, she only had problems with the fact she was happy before.

Anyway B-15 wants the others to know the truth but didn’t think to hack a transmitter when she could and warn everyone, no, she was just assisting Sylvie to kill the Time-keepers. Out of revenge for lying to her I assume.

Renslayer says the TVA only needs stability, in short who cares if they were lied to, they’ll keep on serving it, so B-15 has to cooperate with her and tell her what drives Sylvie and B-15… has a link to her. Which means Renslayer is sure Sylvie will come back.

And I facepalm.

A link? They talked few minutes and Sylvie could have lied or not exposed herself but anyway… wasn’t what drove her obvious enough one could pick it up without even having to ask.

B-15, who was so good to play bully with poor Variants, obeys and answer Sylvie is OBVIOUSLY driven by revenge… how could Renslayer miss it, did she also have to tell her “My name is Sylvie Laufeydottir. You killed my timeline. Prepare to die"?

Anyway B-15 decides since the Time-Keepers turned out to be fake Sylvie will search for who’ll being this. And okay, Sylvie has fully turned into the heroine of this story. Loki is a recurring character, a very present character but when all is said and done he’s just supporting cast.

Sylvie is the heroine and even this chat supports it.

Hunter B-15: This isn't about protecting the TVA at all, is it? You just want to find whoever is behind all of this, too. You'll never find them. Not before she does.

Renslayer: And why is that?

Hunter B-15: You only want it. She needs it.

B-15 who belittled so much the other Variants clearly looks up on Sylvie, she has blind faith in her and Renslayer’s situation amuses her a lot and if B-15 hadn’t been the one finding amusement in belittling Variants I might share in her fun but like this it feels as if they’re reminding me she’s one who enjoys belittling and humiliating others.

And Renslayer isn’t worried Loki could do something to cause troubles either. It’s all Sylvie. Sylvie will win because that’s what heroines do.

Now it’ll be interesting if it turned out Sylvie is actually truly evil while Loki has ultimately decided to become truly good but I bet the last episode will instead reveal the one who’s truly evil is a male Loki Variant, one that Sylvie will have to either kill, punish or redeem.

Whatever, for now the story only seems interested in pinning Renslayer as evil.

Renslayer leaves B-15 and tell Miss Minute to find her the files on the founding of the TVA. Everything from the beginning of time. You know, the one she wanted to find at the beginning. So… did she really want them, it wasn’t just to stall time?

She excuses her request by claiming:

Renslayer: Whoever created this place is in danger. I need to find them.

Miss Minute agrees to comply.

Now… if Miss Minute doesn’t turn out to have a bigger role in the last episode, I don’t know she’s a spy, she’s the big bad, she’s Tony Stark in disguise, anything, I think they could have cut her. She’s basically the Clippy of the TVA and there’s a reason if Clippy, despite being cute was discontinued as intelligent user interface.

Her existence makes me think they’re trying to market Loki as a child friendly, which explains the low level of drama, Kid Loki being the ruler of the place and not being really mistreated when all the Lokis wanted his place as well as surviving and being the one strong enough to kill Thor, the “Looney tunes” humour. And if this is a kid show it explains also why potentially serious themes aren’t really tackled differently from “WandaVision” and “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”.

Back into the Void, or better back into the “Looney tunes” cartoon Classic Loki and Kid Loki are talking with Mobius about Alligator Loki which makes for another funny yet absurd and OOC scene.

Mobius: I mean, the TVA arrested a lot of Lokis, but, no, I don't remember an alligator. I mean, who's to say he's even a Loki Variant?

Classic Loki: He is green, isn't he?

Mobius: I don't know, he could be lying. The long con. Of course, that just makes him more likely to be a Loki. It's always the game within the game with you guys, which I respect.

No, actually he doesn’t. He didn’t respect when Loki lied to him, he insulted him. But somehow episode 5 decided since Mobius saved Sylvie he’s 100% back among the good guys.

Anyway I wish there a story behind Alligator Loki and we were told it and that he wasn’t just reduced to play the part of Kid Loki’s pet and a role similar to the crocodile in “Peter Pan”, with President Loki becoming the future Captain Hook.

Kid Loki asks Mobius what he’ll do assuming he’ll get back to the TVA, which he of course can do as Sylvie has a Tempad and can open a Timedoor.

Mobius: I don't know. I'd like to let people know the truth.

Oh, the truth, yeah it’s the people at the TVA who need the truth, not the poor Variants in that Void who need to be saved, the Variants the TVA wants to be pruned who need to be saved. Let’s save the poor TVA workers from ignorance so they can decide if to willingly follow the TVA like Renslayer is doing or not.

Yeah, I get by knowing the truth some of them might be willing to stop what they’re doing but what if they don’t, like Renslayer?

You wanted to be a hero, Mobius, what’s the problem now, saving people instead than murdering them is too hard?

So they goes to discuss the theme of change:

Classic Loki: So just like that, you're turning on the very thing you devoted your life to.

Mobius: Well, it's never too late to change.

This story makes a big deal of the theme of changing but the reasons why one should change aren’t so great. Mobius wants to change because he was lied at, Loki because he fell in love. Meaning if Mobius had really been created by the Time-Keepers he would have happily continued to kill Variants because it wasn’t his problem and if Loki hadn’t fallen in love with the only special unique female Loki he would have never changed.

That’s not a great way to deal with the theme of change.

Back to Loki and Sylvie, who’re sitting in the grass alone together, Sylvie has turned into a Mobius fangirl who exists to make us forget whatever wrong Mobius might have done giving him her seal of approval.

Sylvie: Mobius isn't so bad.

Loki: Or so good. I think that's why we get along.

Sylvie: He cares about you.

So wait, you barely know him and he has felt more hurt he wasn’t a hero as he hoped than for all the Variant he killed, had tried to compare his murders and his situation to yours but, when pressured he said he was sorry he hunted you like a dog. Also implied he wasn’t sure Loki died. Whatever else which might have happened went offscreen. Forgive me if I’m not won over by the little I saw in this episode, especially after episode 4. I really needed more than that.

But who cares, Loki doesn’t care Mobius isn’t so good, he gets along with him even when the latter threatens to kill him and have Sif repeatedly kick him in the groin. Stockholm syndrome or masochism?

Now, COINCIDENTALLY, it’s cold so Loki conjure up a cover for himself and volunteer to do the same for Sylvie. Those, of course, weren’t in his pocket so why the Tempad in ep 3 ended there?

Sylvie would like a new outfit, because her own is uncomfortable. Why she didn’t get her a comfortable outfit instead than that is beyond me. It’s not like she’s forced to wear a TVA uniform, those are clothes she picked up. Where I don’t know but whatever.

By the way, it’s a lifetime Loki has the signs of a wound on his arm which he got when they were fighting in the Time-Keepers’room… but the blood must be solely decorative because no one, not even Loki, cares.

They’re kind of cute when they talk about their Nexus event and go into full denial mode. If only I could forget their romance was SO VERY FORCED and tied to narcissism I might enjoy it… though I still think it would have been better if they had made them friends. But Sylvie wouldn’t be a good Mary Sue if it didn’t get to have the male protagonist.

The dialogue focuses on Sylvie’s drama.

Sylvie: I don't know how to do this.

Loki: I don't even know what we're doing.

Sylvie: I don't have friends. I don't have... anyone.

Now, I don’t want to belittle Sylvie’s drama, they clearly had built for her an overly tragic life because what’s a Mary Sue without a tragic past, but maybe of us got into this show for Loki’s drama, hoping it to be discussed if not solved and we got nothing, nothing at all. Loki won’t talk with her of what pushed him to commit suicide. It would be a good point of discussion, telling her there had been a time in his life in which he also felt he had no one, or that prior to Mobius who has somehow been elevated to the level of friend, he had no one because no, Sif and the Warriors Three clearly were Thor’s friends, not his own, but no, it doesn’t matter.

Loki and Sylvie are supposedly in love and all she knows about him is about his mom and how she taught him to do magic. And all he knows about her is she barely remember Asgard and was forced to live on the run.

It’s not bad just for Loki, it’s bad as a portrayal of a love story between two people because they don’t know each other and don’t try to do so, they don’t share anything of their lives, they don’t even have things in common beyond being Loki… which Sylvie rejected for reasons we don’t know as she’s now Sylvie.

Anyway Loki tries to cheer her up by… telling her there were more important things to do?

Loki: Well... there are more important things, right?

Sylvie: Right? Yeah. Like bringing down the TVA.

Loki: I mean… Saving the universe, even.

Sylvie: Well, there's no need to be dramatic, but, yeah, kind of.

Sylvie couldn’t care less about saving the universe, it was all about revenge and no, bringing down the TVA isn’t more important than having people who love and support you around you. This is dumb hero moral.

Loki uses his magic to put the cover he’s wearing around his shoulders around Sylvie as well… which likely means he has also stretched the cover. She moves closer to him and they had that sort of stupid happy face I love in love stories so it would be really, really good if they had built better their own instead than tossing it to us at random.

I mean, this is very cute, and I don’t know if it’s Loki who’s laughing or Tom Hiddleston who find it funny.

Sylvie: It's not very snuggly.

Loki: ( Chuckling ) Okay.

Sylvie: Is it a tablecloth?

Loki: No, it's a blanket.

Sylvie: Thank you.

Loki: My pleasure.

And I like how Sylvie says thank you in a serious tone as if all this was important for her. But the romance remains still out of nowhere even if this is the episode which handles it better.

Then they ruin everything with this.

Sylvie: How do I know that, in the final moments, you won't betray me?

Loki: Listen, Sylvie, I... ( Sighs deeply ) I betrayed everyone who ever loved me. I betrayed my father, my brother... my home. I know what I did. And I know why I did it. And that's not who I am anymore. Okay? I won't let you down.

Same way Loki knows you won’t betray him. Either you trust someone or don’t there’s no guaranty but this whole chat is not in order to reassure Sylvie but to tell the readers Loki has been changed by love without really discussing the issues that pushed Loki to betray people. The fact he was lied to, the fact his father favoured Thor and made him feel inferior, the whole racist system Asgard had for the Jotuns, the fact Thor used to look down on him and was so arrogant and bloodthirsty Odin kicked him out of Asgard… we don’t talk about all those issues. I’m not even going to mention what might have happened with Thanos because Joss Whedon isn’t working anymore with Marvel and I start to think whatever plan he had for Loki and Thanos got scrapped away long ago… and anyway Loki doesn’t speak about what happened on Midgard… unless we’re meant to believe what happened to Midgard was him betraying his father, his brother, his home and we aren’t talking about what happened in “Thor”…

Whatever, anyway we aren’t talking about it. Loki is a new man, love solved all his issues.

We should just enrol criminals in professional matchmaking programs to find love for them too and they too would come out as different people.

The next bit is, of course, to tell us Loki has given up on his wish to rule, again because love made him happy.

Sylvie: You sure? 'Cause if we make it, and the TVA is gone, there might be a timeline for you to rule.

Loki: Ah. And then I'd finally be happy.

Sylvie instead admits she has no idea what she’ll do after she’ll get her revenge.

Well, dear, you never tried world domination, do you? But no, Loki tells her he doesn’t know what he’ll do either so they could figure out together. Because love saves the day.

And it does but I wish it was less cheesy.

The romance moment end.

We see the weird birds with no purpose beyond being weird birds and then Alioth moving closer. Everyone watches it fearfully.

Since Sylvie, being a Mary Sue, has been elected as leader she’s the one who answers Mobius when he asks which should be their next move.

Sylvie: The TVA needs to be brought down. We don't know who created it or where they are, but that thing out there does. When it hit me earlier, I linked to it. It was brief, but I caught a glimpse of something, and I think if I can get close enough to it, I can enchant it, and it's gonna take me to whoever's behind all of this.

Or, alternatively, he can swallow up you whole but whatever, time for the romantic moment.

Loki: I'm staying.

Sylvie: Loki, I don't know if this is gonna work.

Loki: You go, I go.

Oh, finally she admits she doesn’t know if this will work. Because actually her plan is as solid as Loki’s but who cares, this is only to underline that love is in the air because Loki is staying with her even if her plan might be a complete and utter failure.

I don’t really like her ‘mommy is telling you this might be a dumb idea’ tone if I’ve to be honest, Mobius who suddenly turns to him as he said so, seemed more worried and I’m very clearly not a Lokius shipper as I don’t even believe Mobius and Loki to be genuine friends.

Anyway Loki gives the Tempad Sylvie gave him to Mobius. Because they had to wait for Alioth to be there before deciding to leave.

Mobius, as the true friend he is, decides he’ll leave the place and who cares if they might need herlp, so that in case Loki and Sylvie don’t die but can’t get to the TimeKeeper either they’re left without any mean of transportation away from that place.

Mobius then goes:

Mobius: I'll give your regards to Renslayer.

Sylvie: Oh, please do.

I take this means his strong and deep and special friendship with Renslayer has ended. Anyway he volunteers to bring with himself the other Lokis but they refuse saying that’s their home… which is not wrong as that place has what remains of their homes since the TVA sent them there. Still Mobius could have tried harder but it’s not like he has to care about Loki Variants he and the TVA sent there after destroying their homes.

It’s Loki who worries about them and about how Alioth could harm them.

Classic Loki: We've survived this long. We know what we're doing.

Kid Loki gives Loki his sword, Laevateinn so Loki with his magic creates a sheat he put on his back.

Classic Loki wishes him good luck and I’d like to point out that for all their babbling about the Lokis being terrible, Classic Loki, Kid Loki and Alligator Loki and been very nice and helpful with Loki and among them. Friends. They didn’t just lie, cheat and cut each other throat for power, even if they had just met him. They didn’t even use him.

And I like their relation more than I like the one with Sylvie.

They walk away and Mobius open for himself a Time Door.

Now… it shows that Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson are friends because when they interact they genuinely seems so but the basis on which the plot built this friendship are nonexistent.

Mobius observes Loki got away in the end which is… a bit early to say so, since he also needs to get away from Alioth. At Loki who asks him what he will do at the TVA he answers:

Mobius: Burn it to the ground. Thanks for the spark. Well, see you later, Loki.

All this because the TVA lied to him, not because it pushed him to reset poor people he didn’t even try to save from the Void.

Still the sentence is good considering the story started with Loki wanting to burn the place.

Loki: I'm gonna burn this place to the ground.

Mobius: I'll show you where my desk is, you can start there.

Mobius offers him his hand to shake but Loki has to hug him and thanks him even though he didn’t hug Classic Loki and Kid Loki.

Now, it’s true, without Mobius the TVA would have killed him, and Mobius gave him a second chance when the TVA decided to consider the first mission Loki took part in as a failure, but the point is Mobius did it because he needed Loki’s help. Loki helped him find where the Variant hid and tried to stop her. He failed, ended up on Lamentis and when he was retrieved, Mobius didn’t believe him and had him beaten up telling him he didn’t need him anymore. He came to free him only because he discovered Loki didn’t lie to him and so he wanted help face the TVA.

Now compare with Classic Loki, Kid Loki and Alligator Loki. They found Loki and brought him to their hideout because it was dangerous to be outside with Alioth around. They gave him something to drink and possibly to eat. When they were attacked by President Loki, after understanding it wasn’t his fault, carried him with them in their escape. Helped him find Alioth. Gave him a sword. And Classic Loki will die in a while to help Loki and Sylvie against Alioth. In short they only helped him and never wronged him. But they aren’t special friends like Mobius, not even taking into consideration it’s supposedly Loki’s narcissism who caused him to fall for Sylvie.

As Mobius hugs Loki he whispers ‘you’re my favourite’ looking at Sylvie.

Considering how he used to bother Renslayer about wanting to be her favourite and that he knows Loki is in need of reassurance I don’t really enjoy much the joke.

Mobius leaves, the door immediately closes behind him and doesn’t remain open for hours like in Ep 2 and Sylvie and Loki are alone to face Alioth. They walk closer and Sylvie decides then to explain him her plan because doing so earlier, when they had all the time in the world, would have been unromantic. Much better to do it five minutes before facing him.

Sylvie: When a branch appears, Alioth will focus on it. That's when I'll enchant it.

Classic Loki and Kid Loki meanwhile are kilometres away because when they walk away slowly they walk just that fast.

Classic Loki turns behind but then keep on walking so that they get farther.

As they’re close side by side… Loki moves to the other side of Sylvie… no idea why… and points out they might not have the time to wait for a branch so Sylvie says they’ll need a distraction. And how did she meant to create one if Loki hadn’t remained with her? I still think it’s a poor plan that can work only because the Mary Sue’s plan always works.

Okay, so she didn’t think Loki would be the distraction because, after she says so he rests his hand on her shoulder and she shakes her head no and he instead nods yes and then runs away and tries to persuade Alioth in coming after him, showing him the flaming sword Kid Loki gave him.

I’ll be honest the silent dialogue between Sylvie and Loki is a nice moment. If they had put more things like these in Episode 3 this idea of a romance between them would have worked much better.

On another side Loki with a flaming sword seemed a much cooler scene in the trailer than here, where the flaming sword is merely used as some sort of light to attract Alioth.

Sylvie then tries to enchant one of Alioth’s tendril/pseudopod but he notices, ignore Loki and goes after her. Loki runs toward Sylvie telling Alioth he should come his way but Alioth doesn’t care and is about to eat Sylvie who doesn’t move at all because ‘why escaping?’ and then Alioth abruptly gets distracted as Classic Loki uses his illusion magic to recreate Asgard because a real friend comes back in your time of need and even risk life for you even though you hadn’t hugged him.

The music is rather cool.

We’ve then this informative bit:

Sylvie: How is he doing that?

Loki: I think we're stronger than we realize.

Which really feels useless. He’s an older Loki he might have developed powers you two don’t have yet. People change with time, stop considering all the Lokis equal.

Anyway Alioth is fully distracted by the fake Asgard and Classic Loki tells them to go. Sylvie takes Loki’s hand because she has decided she’ll enchant Alioth together with Loki. Loki points out he doesn’t know how to enchant people but who cares, they’re the same so of course he knows.

Logic, where are you?

On another note originally Loki wasn’t meant to do it.

Eric Martin@MrEricMartin·Jul 8

Loki and Sylvie enchanting Alioth together was something we found pretty late into the process. It was #KevinWright that brought up that they should hold hands and find the strength within each other and it was such and of course moment. #LokiMidnightTheater

Of course Loki just watching as Sylvie were to enchant Alioth would have been disappointing but again, a plot also needs LOGIC. Sylvie could have spent two minutes teaching him to use enchantment instead than just telling him ‘You do. Because we're the same!’ The idea that because you’re both Variants of the same person you also share common knowledge is ludicrous but whatever, the show established Sylvie could learn doing it without being taught so… who am I to judge? On the other side the remarking of the fact they’re the same kind of ruin the romance by again feeding into the narrative it’s the result of narcissism.

Whatever, since Sylvie trusts him to learn how to enchant a giant sized monster right then Loki of course is persuaded he can do it.

It’s kind of… odd how the illusion of Asgard disappear before Alioth could touch it… is Classic Loki teasing Alioth? But well, I love how he distracted him by showing him Asgard, as if it were a Testament to Classic Loki’s love for it.

Meanwhile COINCIDENTALLY Alioth let two tendrils/pseudopods get near Loki and Sylvie so each of them can use one to try and enchant him because if they only had one it would have been a problem and if they had three it would have been too many.

Loki can’t quite work the enchantment magic yet so they hold hand tighter. Yeah, it’s romantic but… okay, I’ll try very hard to forget the logic here because this finally causes Loki’s hand to light up with magic.

Meanwhile sustaining such a big illusion was too much for Classic Loki. The illusion fades pressured by Alioth. He uses his magic again but nothing happens but this seems the plan… so it can be is it just that Alioth is attracted by Magic?

Laughing and yelling ‘Glorious purpose!’ Classic Loki, instead than trying to escape by opening a portal has he had done when they were inside their hideout, let himself be eaten by Alioth.

So to sum it up this Loki decided he wouldn’t sacrifice for his brother, as he escaped Thanos and let Thor to fend for himself, but then decided he would sacrifice for a Variant of himself. As I like to consider him a different person from Loki this can be a very nice message of friendship… but I fear the series’ idea is it’s all narcissism and the point they’re trying to do is that Loki sacrificed for himself… even though the series yammered for hours about how the Lokis didn’t see the other Variants as themselves… unless when they fall in love with one.

Bottom of the line, Classic Loki can’t have nice things, he can only die heroically and in this is supposed to be his redemption and he can only embrace such fate.

On another note… why was he capable to open a portal when they was inside their hideout but when they had to do all that walk through the place or when they moved to search for Alioth or when they left Loki and Sylvie he didn’t think to open one? Don’t give him powers that he isn’t going to use when it would be useful to use them!

Back to the story, at this point Alioth notices Loki and Sylvie so they close their eyes and have… a burst of magic? Is that what had happened? Anyway Alioth starts shining green and loses his face, no, not in the sense he damages his reputation, he just loses his face which evidently was just some sort of scary decoration as he’s basically a cloud.

Everything becomes green and Sylvie opens her eyes, smiles and tell Loki, who hasn’t realized anything, that he can open his eyes… which really is dumb.

Anyway they hadn’t enchanted Alioth, they had just… dissipated him because the cloud now opens up but you don’t see what’s behind it but, literally, a building in likely another dimension because of course Sylvie’s theory was right and beating Alioth meant to open the way to the residence of their enemy.

Or are we supposed to assume they’re mentally controlling Alioth? But in this case it’s just Sylvie who’s doing it because Loki was apparently unaware so…

At this point the two start to walk toward their supposed enemy’s residence and it would be very fun if the guy there had no relation with the TVA who actually was guilty of tossing litter in his own territory but only one episode is missing and, of course, they need to fight the big bad.

Have I already said if they use again Loki as the big bad I’m going to scream?!?

I genuinely hope that this will not be the case and we’ll get Kang, the conqueror.

Anyway so, this episode.

This episode was the funniest of the series, I’ve no qualms admitting it. It’s just I didn’t see much point in having an episode which is mostly filled with “Looney tunes” humour at this point in the series in place of facing all the serious themes the other 4 had supposedly raised. Also I would have appreciated the “Looney tunes” humour more if Loki had played the part of Bugs Bunny instead than the one of Daffy Duck, mixed with Yosemite Sam and other characters who’re there just to make confusion.

I’ll be fine if it were to be an extra episode, a bonus, but no, we’re wasting almost a full episode to… have fun?

At this point, instead than making a serious series with serious themes you would have made a fully playful one. Let’s not have a fascist organization which kills Variants or sent them in a lager called Void to be eaten alive by cannibalistic pirates or by Alioth, and which also kidnap and brainwashes its workers so that they’re willing members of a dumb cult and act all racist and abusive toward other Variants.

Let’s not talk about identity, sexual or personal, of the nature of people, if they can be good or evil. Let’s just have fun. Or let’s not and keep on talking of all that until we’ve solved the issue.

You can’t show me Mobius who first forces Loki to work for the TVA then has Loki beaten over and over for no decent reason belittling his relationship with Sylvie and then they’re back on being best friends and he’s super supportive of his relationship with Sylvie and we don’t talk of what happened in Ep 4.

You can’t show me the TVA being abusive and racist toward the Variants and now that they’ve discovered they’re Variants they don’t regret what was done to them but just that they were lied to and this isn’t denounced as hypocrisy but as the right thing to do.

What’s more you can’t take a character who’s famous for his intelligence and quick wit and who’s a capable fighter and stronger than humans and have him dumbed down and weakened down in a serious contest.

You can’t wave away what were meant to be serious issues which lead said character to attempt suicide as him being overly sensitive.

Do you want to make a parody? Fine, but label it as such.

On a positive side they made the romance between Sylvie and Loki a tad better… but it’s just too late.

You should have first constructed them falling in love, and then developed it. Their falling in love was built over nothing. Even if now you’re raising a pretty house, it has no foundations.

Also there are just too many plot contrivances and too little characterization.

Why Kid Loki wasn’t fleshed out a little bit? He killed Thor. How? Does it pains him? He’s the king of the place? How? Which are his powers? He’s generally nice with the other Lokis in a world that insists the Lokis are backstabbing idiots who want to backstab themselves. Isn’t it worth exploring? If only to see why they turned out different from how they started?

No, he’s just there to point out how he was willing to murder his brother from a young age because retconning “Thor” is Marvel’s biggest wish from a lifetime.

Also this episode keeps the trend of recurring plot contrivances and poor Sylvie as a Mary Sue which, honestly is damaging to women portray. A solid characterization would have to be persuasive or capable on solid basis, her tragedy genuinely explored not just tossed there with everyone humouring her because she’s a Mary Sue.

I mean, even Thor, in “Thor” to have his best friends follow him on Jotunheim tempted them with things they liked/wanted.

Sylvie just says ‘jump’ and everyone asks ‘how high?’ and this is bad because Sylvie has a goddamn lot of potential but all her previous struggle isn’t explored and currently she gets all she wants served on a silver platter so, even now, we don’t see her struggle.

Overall the plot of this episode can be summarized in Sylvie reaches Loki and Mobius into the Void, provides Mobius the means to go back to the TVA while she and Loki find the way to who’s behind the TVA.

Nothing really relevant happens otherwise. For 40 minutes episodes it’s really too little.

So yeah, it was a funny parody episode but… that’s all. Compared to episode 4 at least they kept the characterization the series established so they didn’t screw it up in this episode but… really, this has so much more potential that got wasted and it’s sad…

#mcu loki #loki #loki laufeyson #loki odinson #classic loki #kid loki #boastful loki #ravonna renslayer #mobius m mobius #alioth #president loki #alligator loki #miss minute #9 worlds study #9 worlds study mcu loki

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tsarisfanfiction · 3 years

Note

Spin the wheel, Hearts? ♥️♥️♥️

Escape (Tales From The Heart)

Fandom: One Piece Rating: Teen Genre: Adventure Characters: Ikkaku, Law, Heart Pirates

Okay, I spun and I got adrenaline in a holding cell. (Considering half the locations I’ve seen, I’m glad I got one that actually fits into One Piece’s universe!)

Now, what are our Hearts doing in a holding cell, hmm?

Spin the wheel of whump and give me a character!

Well, this was annoying. She glowered at the bars, and the Marine leering at her through them. Surely the Marines had better things to be doing with their time than chasing down engineers with false credentials and putting them in filthy cells before treating them like eye candy?

Something like hunting down actual pirates, maybe? Or just kissing the arses of whoever had the most money in this town. Ikkaku hadn’t got far enough into finding out who, exactly had the deepest pockets in this place. Her fake documents had been sniffed out at the last port, so she’d had to leave a little faster than she’d planned, and somewhere along the way something had slipped out somewhere, because they’d been waiting for her with open arms and clinking handcuffs the moment she’d slipped off the boat.

Now, she was crammed in a cell with several other women, most of whom were either drunk and shouting slurs at their captors, or sitting like her and watching silently, waiting for a chance to escape. It wasn’t worth trying to work with any of them; she’d made that mistake the first time she’d been shown the inside of a marine holding cell.

Rookies who offered themselves up as unknowing bait got used as bait. She had the scars to prove it. Now, she was a veteran, wondering which idiotic woman in the cell would try and form an alliance. Who she could use as bait to get out this time.

So far, no-one was showing signs, but there’d be one. There was always one, and it would probably be one of the drunk birds, once they stopped singing and realised their stay wasn’t an alcohol-induced hallucination but real. Once sobriety crashed down on them and they became a sobbing mess.

Ikkaku was patient. She could wait.

A commotion drew her attention, leering Marines suddenly making faces that looked less hungry and more wary, and she let herself focus on it, careful not to betray her interest to the casual onlooker. There were some other women doing the same, carefully still looking around, seemingly ignoring the ever-louder ruckus going on somewhere inside the Marine base.

From the men’s holding cells, if she didn’t miss her guess. She might never have been in this town before, but Marine bases were all the same. Once you’d seen one, you’d seen them all. Past the women’s block, across the courtyard, and then it was the men’s. A cesspit of testosterone, always filled to bursting with idiots who thought they could openly defy the Marines and get away with it. Pathetic, really.

A blue sheen appeared out of nowhere, then the Marines were screaming in terror, and her curiosity spiked higher. Whatever was going on, it sounded interesting.

Different.

The bars broke. No, they didn’t break, they sheered off, as neatly as a knife through butter. They fell, and at once every single woman saw an opportunity.

Pandemonium ruled, and Ikkaku joined it, not so patient that she’d pass by an obvious chance to escape, with so many others spilling out to distract the Marines - Marines who seemed to be in pieces on the ground, beheaded but still screaming.

She’d seen worse. Probably. Maybe.

At least, it was interesting.

But there was nothing for her in this town, her fake papers exposed before she even arrived, and the heady rush of a prison break took over as she leapt over the other women, leaving them in her dust as she dodged what few Marines there were still intact and hurtled for the harbour.

She needed another ship, another passage out of there. It didn’t matter who they were or where they were going, as long as it was away and didn’t care enough for the law to report her. Stowing away was an option, too. She’d done that before, laid low under the deck of some small fishing skiff until they were far enough from shore that there was nothing they could do about it.

There were no fishing ships in the harbour. Marine, with their white and blue flags flapping self-importantly in the wind, but nothing civilian.

Pirates, blasé enough to glide right in alongside Marines, littered the harbour. There weren’t many, but there were enough. The problem came in choosing one to try. Pirate ships weren’t like civilian ships. They were dangerous, ruthless and merciless, and often had ridiculous ideas about women and appropriate payments for the voyage.

She had nothing to offer, refused to stoop so low as to sell herself.

The blue sheen came again, a group of young men a similar age to her materialising out of nowhere on the deck of the most amazing ship she’d ever seen.

Metal - and with a kairoseki hull if she wasn’t very much mistaken - there was something different about that ship. The engineer in her, the real engineer, not the one hiding behind false credentials, wanted that ship.

Everyone knew there was nothing more dangerous than someone with nothing left to lose. Beriless, reduced to nothing but the clothes on her back and on an island determined to lock her up for the crime of being too poor to get officially registered as an engineer, Ikkaku had nothing to lose.

She barged onto the deck of the ship, homing in on the man the blue sheen had retreated into. The other men - and bear? - were looking at him, to him, and he was obviously the captain, so he was the one she stormed towards, head held high as she met his gaze in a challenge.

He was taller than her, with piercing golden eyes that widened slightly when she approached. Any of the men could have torn her apart then and there, but they didn’t. Eyes watched her from all angles, but her eyes stayed fixed on him.

“You broke me out,” she told him firmly. It was an educated guess, and even if it were true he hadn’t done it on purpose. It was a risk but all she had left were her guts and her instinct. Risks had to be taken.

He didn’t dispute the claim. She pushed further.

“If I stay here, I’ll end up right back in there. You got me out, so I’m coming with you.”

The men started muttering, and one even laughed. The captain didn’t join in. Those golden eyes raked her up and down, but it wasn’t a leer, wasn’t how she was used to men looking at her.

It was more like the way the other women in those cells looked at each other. Calculating. Determining who was useful and who was no more than Marine bait.

“What makes you think I’ll let you?”

“You haven’t thrown me off yet,” she retorted, throwing everything into that gamble. She didn’t know this man, this crew, didn’t recognise the jolly roger plastered on the side of the ship. Didn’t know their reputation.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t.”

A chance. A glimmer of a ticket off of the island, with its Marines and their grabby hands and blasted holding cells. Ikkaku met his eyes firmly, and made her final gamble.

The ship was magnificent. She’d never seen anything like it, but she was an engineer. She knew technology, knew when she was standing on something incredible, something most engineers could only dream of. This ship, whatever it might be, was an engineering marvel, and her credentials might be fake, but she was a damn good engineer.

“You don’t have an engineer that can keep this ship running much longer,” she said, half-bluffing, half putting the pieces together from what little of the puzzle she’d seen. “She’s old, isn’t she?” Too old for these young pirates, unless they’d been pirates since childhood.

She didn’t care about their story.

“Old enough to start falling apart. Old enough to need an engineer to keep her running, and you won’t find many engineers that can handle a ship like this outside of the Grand Line.”

Golden eyes didn’t give anything away, but she stood strong anyway.

“I can be that engineer,” she said. “Get me off this island and I can repair your ship.”

The muttering had silenced while she spoke, but she only had eyes for the captain, and he only had eyes for her. The rest of the crew didn’t matter.

Then he looked away, eyes flicking left, then right, and over her head. She didn’t turn to see who he was looking at, which members of the crew he was silently communicating with. The decision didn’t take long.

“Very well,” he said. “You have until we reach the next island. If you’re telling the truth, you’ll join my crew.” His hand flexed, and the blue sheen was back, enveloping the two of them.

Her chest exploded, something erupting out of her and into his hand, driving her to her knees.

The heart in his hand pulsed.

“If you’re lying, you’ll die.”

#one piece #one piece fanfiction #tsari writes fanfiction #heart pirates #ikkaku #trafalgar law #drabbles #Anonymous #Tales from the Heart

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grandcompany · 2 years

Note

[ 🐺 ] does your muse like solitude? do they prefer it to being around others? how easily does your muse get lonely? (For both Capricious & Lorh)

The gathering was long gone when Wolf woke. Gone before the sun had fully risen. She'd heard them creep out, of course. They'd stepped as softly as they could around the curtain pulled tight around her bunk, but after last night's confrontation they'd all been too sheepish to bother waking the caretaker as they slunk out.

She felt bad as she lay there in her bunk, dozing and trying to snatch back the sleep their fight had stolen from the previous evening. They had meant well enough, but they simply weren't her sort of company. The jeering. The rough way they spoke to one another. The affection wrapped in taunts and teasing. It grated on her nerves until at last she'd snapped and told them off.

Perhaps it was the contrast to the quiet company of her prior guests. The old foragers easy company and old stories soothing her with their presence in ways even her solitude couldn't. She felt just as at home with them as if she'd known them her whole life, and she'd been sad to see the couple go, off to wind their way back north.

Running the lodge was such a strange thing. Such a difficult balance at times, but as she finally pushed herself to get out of bed and start her day Wolf was sure she wouldn't want it any other way.

Lorh rolled over, her hand sliding across the vacant sheets like a skiff cutting over calm water. The empty bed beside her wasn't a surprise. She'd heard the other woman slip out the door at first light, heard the murmured excuses and the empty promises to catch up some time over coffee. It was just as well she'd gone this way, having sated her curiosity like so many others.

Well. That was what she told herself, anyway.

The sun was halfway up the sky, and the water outside was a sparkling, brilliant blue, but Lorh couldn't bring herself to climb out of the warm bunk. It was her day off. She could do as she pleased. If what she pleased was sitting around her house feeling sorry for herself, and angry at the fickle interest of some woman she'd spent half an evening flirting with then that was her prerogative.

She rolled over and reached up to touch the soft silk cloth of the kimono hanging across her window. It wasn't really the woman. Lorh had felt the lack of spark there just as much. They'd had some fun, and that was likely all they'd have together. It was just so damnably unsatisfying all of a sudden.

Sleeping with a new woman each evening while in port, and then returning to the warm embrace of her crew was one thing. Coming back to the cramped, lonely houseboat was another. She missed the camaraderie. The friendships. The feeling of belonging somewhere. Even her time aboard the Maelstrom ship had felt better than living alone. The other conscripts hadn't been friendly, but they'd all been living a sort of shared experience together and that made a difference.

A sudden tightness in her throat caught her breath, and a sob suddenly overtook her as she rolled against the pillow. The deafening silence of living alone. Of being alone. It was too much.

It was just too much.

Thank you for the ask @sirenofdusk! Wolf is definitely more of an ambivert and enjoys good company over solitude, but solitude over poor company.

Lorh is extremely extroverted and would prefer being around people to being by herself even if she doesn't particularly like the people she's around that much.

#wolf asks #lorh asks #wolf answers #lorh answers #answered asks #wolf writing #lorh writing #lorh posts

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actualfarless · 3 years

Text

The Engineer And The Witch: Part II

Read Part I Here.

Story below or available on Wattpad or Reddit.

Tera breached the surface, gasping for air. Her vision blurred and filled with stars that seared into her brain. Needles pricked her arms and legs. Her lungs burned. Her muscles ached. With every wave, the sea dragged her back into the inky depths.

Strong arms wrapped around Tera and pulled her from the water. She fell sputtering into the rowboat, straining to keep her eyes focused enough to see her rescuer. The only light came from the burning ships and distant cannon fire, painting the battle in silhouettes with every round. Even in the darkness, she recognized the raised scar on their scalp. Mayer rowed in silence, unflinching even as cannonballs splashed in the water around them.

“Thank you,” Tera said. Her voice was soft, barely a whisper, and if Mayer heard her at all, they didn’t respond. She huddled in the bow of the skiff, too weak to help Mayer row. Too weak to worry about the ongoing conflict. Unable to fight it any longer, she let the darkness take her.

Her body still ached when she woke, but the fire no longer burned in her leg and the stars no longer clouded her vision. Gentle morning light filled the room. A breeze wafted through the curtains. Four beds on wooden posts sat along one wall, a table and two chairs against the other. The other three beds were empty. By a stack of folded clothes on the table sat a bottle. Gharos’ gift.

No guns boomed in the distance. No shouts or cries.

The battle was over.

Tera shifted, raising herself on her elbows. Absence was something she was slow to notice, but once she did, she couldn’t think of anything else. Clarity broke through morning drowsiness, sharp and sudden. She felt no pain in her leg. She felt nothing at all. Tera yanked the covers off, knowing what she would see, yet unprepared to face reality. Her left leg ended in bandages above where her knee should be. She clawed at the emptiness, trying to bring her limb back from the void that swallowed it, but no matter how she tried, her leg remained gone.

Mayer stepped through the door before her mind could grasp what happened, quietly closing it behind them.

“Good, you’re awake,” they said, unconcerned by her frantic state. “I hoped to see you before I go.”

Tera stared at them, eyes wide, mouth agape. She struggled to form words, to form any sound at all, only managing to understate her distress. “My leg.”

Mayer’s eyes flicked down to Tera’s leg — to where Tera’s leg should have been — and nodded. Nothing more than acknowledgement. They dragged a chair over and sat by Tera.

“I’m sorry,” they said after a brief silence. Their stare was as cold and hollow as ever, but their tone soft. Sympathetic. “You were hurt in the explosion. Even with surgery and the best healing salve, you couldn’t have walked on it, and they have neither here. This was the best option.”

The statement fueled fury in Tera but exhaustion overpowered the emotion before she could even speak. She knew Mayer had no part in the decision. Even assuming they were right, she struggled to process the information. As she shifted in bed, turning to face them, she felt her movements were off, pushing with a leg that was no longer there. Her right leg hung over the edge, swaying slightly. Heavy and alone. The nothingness where her other leg should have been felt as solid as bone and flesh ever did. Absence given form.

For their part, Mayer said nothing, not demanding her attention until she could accept the amputation. They cast their eyes down to their hands folded in their lap, not daring to meet her gaze, not rude enough to gawk at her injury.

Tera couldn’t turn away. The light shifted and the breeze finally died and her eyes did not move, even when she tried, as though she could will her leg back to her body if only she stared long enough.

She couldn’t.

“You saved me,” Tera said finally.

“If you could call it that—”

“You did.” She pulled their gaze upward. “Thank you.”

Mayer nodded, a subtle movement, acknowledgement but not acceptance. Their eyes were wet. They turned away again, like staring at Tera any longer would break them. “I had to save someone. Now we’re stuck here.”

“You’re not, are you? You look fine.”

“I’m not, no.”

“So we won then? I was worried you were about to tell me we’re in a rebel hospital.”

“The kingdom won this time. The war continues. This wouldn’t be the first time Port Talen changed sides. I doubt it will be the last.”

“Right,” Tera agreed. If she believed her father’s letters, the colonists would attack the port as soon as they rallied. She hoped there was nothing left of the colonial navy. At least then, the Eon Heart’s sacrifice wouldn’t be for nothing. With solid supply lines, they were months away from winning the war. A year at most.

“You could find another ship. A better one,” Tera quickly added. “I’m sure there’s a few that could use your help.”

“You couldn’t work an engine with a mekanica leg.”

“Not an arc engine. I’d like to stay on land, though. I’d like to work with mekanica if I can. That’s what I’d do back home if… if there wasn’t a war.”

“That’s your plan? Stay here? Serve the kingdom?”

“Yes. What else?”

Mayer shook their head but said nothing. Answer enough.

Silence hung in the air for too long before, unable to hold her tongue, Tera asked, “Mayer, what happened? I knew things on the Eon Heart were bad, but I thought everyone died in the explosion. I thought I died.”

“You must be lucky.”

“Mayer—”

“Gharos. He had a plan. He always did.” Mayer sighed.

“Why?”

“Legends. Duty. I don’t know. He sacrificed himself for the kingdom. That’s what any good soldier would do, right? If the kingdom wins this war, history will know his name long after the ether claims the rest of us. Already he’s a hero. Tell anyone here where you served and they’ll thank you. As if Eon Heart was anything but a prison. They won’t remember us. They won’t remember every gunner who was sacrificed. They won’t remember Gharos.

“He knew the captain would drive himself mad someday. That’s why we had a plan.” Mayer dug their hands into their thighs. Their tone grew increasingly bitter with every word they spoke but, at that, their voice cracked. Their lip quivered as they sucked in a breath, straining to hold back a sob, one that slipped out anyway. “He was supposed to start the engines and run. I waited for him — I did! I waited as long as I could.”

“I’m sorry,” Tera said. She reached for them, offering a gentle touch, comfort, anything to ease Mayer’s pain, but they pulled away. Tears stained their cheeks.

“I loved him.” Mayer’s voice was so soft Tera thought she imagined the words. “The kingdom has taken everything from me. I wanted to leave so many times. Before they forced me into service. Before this vile war started. But I stayed! I stayed for Gharos and his stupid loyalist ideals and now… and now he’s dead. History will forget him.”

Mayer rose to their feet. They dragged the chair back to the table on the far wall, pausing only to pick up the bottle. They turned to Tera with a look somewhere between anger and sorrow, waving it with a question on their lips they couldn’t find the strength to ask. Instead, they slipped it into their breast pocket. Tera didn’t protest.

“I’ve seen enough death for one lifetime,” Mayer said at the door. “I no longer see a reason to serve a kingdom that doesn’t want me. I came to ask if you would come with me. You won’t, will you?”

“I can’t.”

“Hm. No wonder he liked you.”

Without another word, Mayer left.

Tera was alone.

She was not unused to her situation. She spent enough of her childhood in her room, nursing bruises from fights won and lost. The hospital was no different. Once each day, a nurse would rub healing salve on her wounds, though the product was poor and watered down, so it did little more than sat the itch of her sheets.

As the days turned into a week — then two, then more — Tera grew accustomed to the lightness of her phantom limb. The swelling died. Flares of pain became infrequent. Tera spent more and more of her time awake and bored in the confines of her room. She wrote letters to her mother and her father and Engineer Shen and any one else she could think of, passing them to the nurse with a request for more paper, more ink, but if they ever left Port Talen, she never received a response. Isolation quickly drove her mad. After enough complaints, the kind nurse found her a crutch so she could explore the rest of the hospital. She recognized a few of the wounded, but no one she had spoken to. Few survived the Eon Heart.

The hospital sat in the heart of Port Talen, on the corner of two avenues, and it occupied half the block. From the recent battle — or one long before — one wing lay collapsed in a pile of wood and brick. The other wing stood three stories tall, messy and littered with tools well out of Tera’s specialty. Weeks after the kingdom claimed the city, the hospital was nearly empty. Only those with serious wounds, those that couldn’t travel remained. Only those with serious wounds and the dead.

Makeshift tents covered the hospital courtyard. A field of white, grey, and blue stretched from the hospital doors to the fence on the far side. Even after the temporary morgue had long been cleared, every breeze carried the stench of death through windows and cracks in the hospital walls, a reminder of what awaited most who still lingered. Tera had volunteered to assist with digging graves, but the caretaker refused her help. Acceptable in the end, so long as she did not have to see the bodies. Or smell them any longer.

Most of the dead were buried in shallow unmarked graves. If there had been anything of Gharos left, so was he.

With the city under kingdom control once more, the bulk of the army pulled out, moving south and deeper into the colonies. A garrison remained for peacekeeping, but the colonists led the reconstruction efforts. Port Talen transformed slowly, piece by piece, day by day. Tera offered her aid to whoever would listen. All turned her away. The civilians watched their tongues, careful to find a reasonable excuse, following the example of the cemetery caretaker, but the way they eyed her uniform told her enough. No words or kindness could rid their hatred. The kingdom freed the city of rebel control but not the minds of its people.

The kingdom told her to wait for orders.

The end of summer brought an end to the otherwise ceaseless muggy heat that plagued the colonies. Cool autumn air set on the city and still Tera was no closer to leaving the hospital. The garrison claimed a restored building as an office for reassignment and recruitment. Her trips to the office became a ritual. Checking out of the hospital, trekking through the city on one leg and a crutch until the smell of the sea overwhelmed all else. All to ask for work. All to be turned away. The kingdom didn’t need her — not now — but if only she were patient, they would find new orders soon.

The ritual remained the same. The orders never came. Not until chance brought Tera an inquisitor.

She was pale with large eyes, a furrowed brow, and grey streaks through her light hair. By her stood a girl a few years younger than Tera and a surly lizardfolk. Each woman had a sword on her hip and a badge on her chest, though Tera didn’t need either. She had met enough inquisitors at her father’s work to spot them on looks alone. They all had the same dark look in their eyes, as if seeing something not meant for humanity. Something Tera was glad she couldn’t see.

As a child, her father stressed the importance of treating inquisitors with respect. Tera pushed her shoulders back and straightened her posture. Unable to decide if she should salute, Tera committed halfway. Her crutch fell to the floor a clatter and she nearly fell with it. The office went still. All eyes shifted to the door and the girl leaning on it.

“Bounty Hunter, would you?” the inquisitor asked.

Tera’s face burned with embarrassment as the lizardfolk approached. He scowled and toyed with the knives on his belt but he was gentle with Tera, bending slightly to offer his arm. With his help, Tera limped to a nearby desk and settled into a chair.

“Sit, nessa. We’ll only be a moment.”

“Actually, we’re done here,” the inquisitor corrected. She leaned the crutch against the desk. “I am Inquisitor Jo. This is Meera, my apprentice.”

Tera waited patiently for her to introduce the bounty hunter, but no one said anything.

“Tera Bec, Third Engineer of the Eon Heart.”

“Eon Heart? I’m sorry, I heard the news. I vow we will catch the witch who destroyed your ship. Do not worry.”

“Witch?”

“I heard the ship exploded, did it not? Nearly took the whole crew with her. Witchcraft is the easiest explanation.”

“Engine failure.”

“If it was the engines, then where were you? Did you not say you were an engineer? I assume you did maintenance when you docked.”

“We tried. I wanted to help Gharos.” Tera struggled to explain, nearly tripping over herself to correct the story. The disapproving looks of the inquisitors and bounty hunter only worsened her nerves. “It wasn’t his fault; the captain—”

“Mon Valis was a brilliant man. A fine captain, I understand. He could have been an admiral one day. Certainly deserving of whatever honors they will bestow. Few have sacrificed so much for the kingdom.”

The inquisitor met Tera’s eyes before she could interrupt. She left words unspoken, but Tera understood well enough. Silence would serve her well. Inquisitor Jo moved her gaze downward, resting on Tera’s injury.

“I find it hard to believe the ship was lost to engine failure and that is the worst of your injuries. Are you sure the witch did not poison your mind?”

“I… I’m not sure.”

“What is your specialty?”

“Mekanica.”

“I am sure we can find something for you in the city. Maybe even fix that leg. Meera?”

“Yes, Inquisitor?” The girl had not moved from her position at the inquisitor’s side, yet she stood so still, Tera had forgotten she was there.

“See if they know of an empty workshop we could use for Engineer Bec here. Then head to the ship.”

“Will Seros—”

“The bounty hunter and I will meet you there.”

“Yes, Inquisitor,” Meera said. She lingered for a moment, casting a meaningful look to Seros, one Tera knew all too well. The inquisitor and the bounty hunter pretended not to notice.

The workshop sat just off the docks, painfully far from the hospital, though the lizardfolk’s assistance made the journey easier. Like Gharos — like the others she had met — Seros stood a full head taller than she, lean and muscular beneath his scales. She leaned on him as they walked, in part from need, in part from comfort. His scales were green, not red. His eyes were yellow, not amber. But if she closed her eyes, she could imagine he was Gharos, alive once more.

If the layer of dust was any indication, the workshop had been abandoned for some time, but Tera had seen worse. Far, far worse. Half built chassis hung from hoists. Parts and scrap and workbenches filled with tools lined the walls. Metal stairs doubled back on themselves as they led to the office above.

The workshop was smaller than Engineer Shen’s, but that didn’t matter. She had spent months in cramped quarters on a tiny ship then months idle in a hospital. The workshop could have been a wrench and Tera would be happy.

For a moment, Tera was a young girl back in Bar Tannis. No war. No injury. No inquisitor nor striking bounty hunter. Just a girl and her tools.

Delivered safely to the workshop, the inquisitor dismissed Seros to go join her apprentice on the ship. Inquisitor Jo lingered, gloved hand placed firmly on her sword. Her eyes never lifted off Tera as they toured the workshop.

“Will this suffice?”

“This is… thank you,” Tera said after a moment. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”

“If I’m being honest, Engineer Bec, I am not entirely altruistic.”

“Please, call me Tera.”

“Then call me Bann.” The older woman flashed a smile, the first Tera had seen. “You have been in the port for a while.”

“I have.”

“What have you been doing?”

“Waiting until they find a ship for me. They told me they would reassign me. That was months ago.”

“I see. You need direction. Convenient then, the inquisition could use your help. I am well aware there is growing dissent. This ordeal with the colonies should have been over long ago and my order is spread too thin. We fight the war here, the threats at home only grow. We cannot simply abandon our post, not when the colonies need us, but the cost is greater than you know. All the while, the inquisition shrinks. We’ve had to resort to the aid of bounty hunters.”

“He seems nice,” Tera said before her mind caught her mouth.

“I do not care for ‘nice.’ I need loyalty. That is what I see in you.”

Bann pulled the glove off her hand. Fingers lined with brass and silver curled and unfurled as she held out her hand for Tera to see. Forgetting for a moment who Bann was, Tera took the mekanica hand in hers, turning it over to marvel at the delicate construction. She had seen a wide range of prosthetics with Engineer Shen, but none so finely crafted. The fingers were almost flesh in movement and detail. Polished wood filled the space between her knuckles. A white porcelain plate covered the back of her hand. All was detailed with the same loving care a watchmaker gave their most expensive pieces.

The inquisitor traced the lines on Tera’s palm. Her fingers moved with great precision, greater than Tera had ever seen in mekanica. All but the ring finger. It twitched and spasmed but otherwise remained straight.

“I lost it in a duel with a witch,” Bann said finally, breaking Tera from her spell. “I was young and eager to prove myself. I did win. I had an opening and cut into her, but my sword stuck. She carried through. In a moment of stupidity, I brought my hand up to catch her blade. I am lucky I only lost my hand.

“I know the struggles you face, Tera. In a time of peace, you would have walked out of that hospital in a month. You wouldn’t need a crutch. The rebels have taken much from us. I fear the kingdom’s dignity is the greatest loss. Talent is left to rot while old fools sacrifice others for a statue. Oh, yes—” she met Tera’s questioning eyes — “I know what kind of man Mon Valis was. I heard stories of his reckless behavior long before the war. Were I the one making decisions, he would have been removed from his post long ago.”

“Oh. I’m relieved.”

“Relieved?”

“You said he was brilliant. Earlier.”

“Even someone of my rank should not condemn the dead. Not publicly. I understand your grievances. I agree. But we must be united in beliefs. That is how we beat this threat. I don’t deny it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, but until this war is won, we have no choice. Civility is our way. Now, can you fix this?”

Tera nodded. Searching the workbenches, she pulled together a quick repair kit, including a clean cloth for the inquisitor to rest her hand. Mekanica could — and often would — be detached for service, but Bann made no effort to do so and Tera dared not ask. Her nerves bubbled in her stomach as she carefully unscrewed the protective layers and pried them off the inquisitor’s hand. The movement beneath was as fine as the casing.

Piece by piece, Tera took the hand apart, placing screws and pegs and various bits into small piles until no obstruction remained. Discussions of powering mekanica had been a debate Tera never really cared for. Simple prosthetics rarely had an internal power source, relying on pure mechanics to move, or not moving at all, but anything with complex movement required an arc core. Etherium for those with enough bar. Yet the inquisitor’s hand only gears, wires, and pulleys within its frame. No insulation. No core. Nothing.

“My prosthetist was a talented man. He could work wonders,” Bann explained, answering Tera’s unasked question.

Tera turned the inquisitor’s hand over, tracing the mechanics of the third finger. Despite the care taken with the rest of the hand, the wires were cheap and frayed, likely patched on the field. At one joint, the wire had snapped completely.

“It is well made,” Tera said.

“I must know, did anyone else survive the Eon Heart?”

Tera hoped the sinking feeling in her gut didn’t show on her face. She kept her eyes focused on the job before her. Under ordinary circumstances, mekanica repair was a delicate process and Tera was out of practice. Bann’s steady gaze didn’t help either. Tera strung new wires through the joints, though she took several tries to hook them in place.

“No,” she finally answered. “No one I knew well. I saw a few of the gunners at the hospital, but most of them are gone now. Reassigned or… they’re gone.”

“Hm. Disappointing.”

Tera let the silence linger in the air. “Are you looking for someone?”

“Yes. There was another engineer on your ship. A colonist. I believe they went by the name Mayer Dunn.”

Tera’s grip slipped on her screwdriver and it fell to the floor with a clang. Tera dropped after it, failing to catch the tool in the air, and dropping several screws as she tried. Bann did not move from her seat. She kept her hand on the cloth by the lamp and organized piles of parts. Her eyes never moved off Tera. Her face never changed.

Tera pulled herself back into her seat.

“You knew them, then?”

“I did. Why are you looking for Mayer?”

“You said the Eon Heart exploded due to engine failure, did you not? I know Mon Valis was a poor commander, we agree on that, but I cannot rule out sabotage. I think the captain’s leadership skills only make it more likely.”

“Mayer wouldn’t do that.”

“The Eon Heart was as much a symbol of the kingdom as it was a vessel. The surviving twin. A person of questionable character pushed to drastic action could see that as an opportunity.”

“Mayer wouldn’t do that,” Tera repeated. “They stayed with Gharos when the captain… when the ship exploded. I ran away but they didn’t. They didn’t make it.”

“If you’re so sure.”

Tera tightened the last screw and fit the porcelain plate back on the inquisitor’s hand. Bann flexed her fingers, testing each independent of the others. Satisfied, she pulled on her glove.

“Good work. I suspect I will return to Port Talen before long. I hope I can rely on you.”

“Of course.”

“The workshop is yours. I’ll arrange for a stipend and your official transfer.” Bann clasped the girl’s shoulders. “Welcome to the inquisition, Tera.”

“Thank you, Bann.”

The older woman paused by the workshop’s sliding door. “If there is anything I can do for you, do let me know. I am no Mon.”

Tera started to refuse, but a stray thought she couldn’t shake bubbled to the surface. “I haven’t heard from my father in a while. He is a rifleman out on the frontier. If you hear anything, would you let me know?”

“If he is on the frontier, you know it is unlikely he is still alive.”

“I do.”

The inquisitor accepted with only a slight nod before stepping out into the city.

Unable to contain her idle hands any longer, Tera set to work. Bann’s mekanica hand had been fascinating — inspirational — but the fix was otherwise boring. She took time to organize the scrap left in her workshop. Time to clean the dust from her tables. Time to draft plans. Morning light broke through the workshop windows before she even realized the sun had set.

She had designed mekanica before. A few times for Engineer Shen, but mostly as an exercise for her studies, and rarely prosthesis. Practical considerations gave way to art when materials were limitless.

The leg was functional, little more. Her design had no polished wood between the joints. No porcelain covers. She stripped one of the hanging chassis for parts, though the metal was ill-suited for prosthetics. Standard mekanica used a heavy alloy, not as sturdy as a ship’s hull, but too much for a limb. She carved grooves through it to lighten the design, like the fuller of a blade. There was only so much she could remove before she risked the structural integrity of the leg, but she took the opportunity to add a decorative flourish.

For the first time in months, Tera walked on her own two legs.

Word spread slowly through Port Talen, but she kept busy. She built prosthetics for the other survivors. She fixed the plumbing of the hospital. She found jobs left untouched by reconstruction efforts, jobs that did not pay, but vital to the health of the kingdom.

The first frost covered the ground before a ship engineer appeared at her door, looking for a new valve for a steam engine. From him, she met what passed for the Port Authority in the colonies. They commissioned three utility mekanica for loading and heavy lifting at the docks.

Tera nearly cried from happiness.

Assembling the mekanica took her through the end of winter. Engineer Shen taught her the basics of designing mekanica and the college refined her skills, but she learned little in the way of managing a workshop. Loading mekanica required sturdy frames made from strong metal. She had the tools to shape sheets as she needed, but only enough scrap for a single prototype. With shipments from the kingdom delayed and most of the colonial mines under rebel control, Tera struggled to source materials. The inquisition’s monthly bar couldn’t cover bids on new metal, but she found a junker in the shipyard willing to sell her salvage for a low price.

Piece by piece, she assembled the frames, spending more than a month on each, then two more weeks to fix their internals when one failed. Without sufficient insulation, she had to temper their arc cores. They failed to meet her designs. Not as elegant. Not as fast. But they worked.

By spring, she had orders for half a dozen more from neighboring farms and warehouses.

Tera hardly noticed the months pass. She expected the war to end quickly after the kingdom claimed Port Talen. Now it showed no signs of stopping. Supply lines by land and sea were disrupted by pirates and the remnants of the rebel navy. Soldiers shared stories of battles north and south and west. Yet the port remained quiet. The rebels never rallied. A few ships passed by the city near the end of her second summer, but they fled once they saw they were outgunned. Only the rising price of metal and her leg reminded her of the ongoing war.

Bann visited infrequently, always with a story. Alone every time. Her sincerity disarmed Tera, speaking earnestly her thoughts on the war and inquisition. She greeted Tera as an old friend which, by the war’s fifth year, perhaps they were. The inquisitor hardly changed: a few more streaks of grey in her hair, new scars, and patchwork fixes to her hand. Bann shared her adventures with Seros and Meera. Tera showed Bann her projects and designs, sure her details of the machine’s guts would bore the inquisitor, though Bann never said as much. The two would talk late into the night until Bann had to leave or Tera fell asleep at the table. Inevitably, the conversation always turned to the war and, inevitably, the same questions were always asked.

No news of Tera’s father from Bann.

No rumors of witchcraft from Tera.

Once Bann returned with only two fingers of her hand, the thumb twisted and bent back. The porcelain plate had shattered and Tera spent an hour picking pieces from the gears within.

“I’m not as fast as I used to be,” Bann admitted when pressed. She refused to elaborate.

Tera fell into a routine, though not a dull one, not to her. There were days she could forget the circumstances that brought her to the port. Days she spent so enraptured with her work, she didn’t realize night fell until the sun rose again. New orders rolled in with the seasons and maintenance kept her busy between. She repurposed her prototype — Cyan-2, named for the stripe on its chest — to assist with upkeep and moved a bed to the office upstairs. Exactly what she dreamed as a young girl in Bar Tannis.

The war forgot Tera.

She found a quiet life.

The war entered its sixth year when they arrived at her door. Tera awoke to the sound of them knocking. She shrugged the blanket Cyan-2 had draped over her shoulders and trudged to the door, sliding it open with a yawn. She expected Bann. They clearly were not. The two figures wore cloaks with the hoods pulled up to hide their faces. One watched the darkened street. The other stepped through the door as Tera opened it. She saw the gun and her heart rose to her throat.

Then she met their eyes.

“We need your help,” Mayer said. They pulled the other figure in and hurriedly shut the door behind them, “I’m sorry. There is no one else.”

“Tera?”

She froze at her name. Pushing past Mayer, the man pulled back his hood. The voice she hadn’t heard in years. The face brought tears to her eyes.

“Dad?”

#oof #this was technically ready like two weeks ago #but it was in such bad shape #now it's in like #okayish shape #it's good enough to post #this story has changed so much from the original plan #that the title probably isn't the best anymore #the titular witch is not as relevant as expected #also which character is the witch has changed #reduce reuse recycle but it's fiction

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winelover1989 · 3 years

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Shadow & Bone Fixit Crackfic

Malania Orionstar, the famous tracker with an almost supernatural leg up her tracker unit, that is, when she's not tumbling in the hay with all the sexy boys and gals in the military. Why did she join the military? She grew up in an orphanage she wanted to avoid like the plague. She figured anything is better than that. Even the military. Maybe she'll make enough money to buy a farm of her own to live out her cottagecore dreams for the rest of her days. Sadly, she had grossly overestimated the wages. Wouldn't be the military if anyone got decent wages for selling their body to a bloody king who spent his days shoving delicacies down his throat, drinking, partying, molesting little girls, and throwing the country head first into debt. What a fool she had been.

That’s why she used her tracking talents to track truffles, other expensive herbs and spices, stuff grish fabrikaors paid big money for, and specific tracking commissions by clients with heavy purses. She even started a legit gig of selling maps updated with all the routes and unmarked wonders she stumbled upon her tracking expeditions. At this rate, she would have her farm if everything kept going as it was.

But the thing about fate is that she is a total bitch. And Malania simply couldn’t have good things now could she? One moment she was stealing some quality food from a grisha named Zoya, the next moment she found herself tumbling upon fine silks with the squaller with one hell of a mouth on her, and then she just had to brag about what a badass tracker she was, something that seemed perfectly harmless in the heat of the moment, but a disaster of epic proportions come morning.

The bloody witch had sold her out! That too to the General of the second army, whom the squaller seemed to be rather chummy with, and so Malania found herself shipped off to an exploratory skiff sent out to map the interior of the entire wretched fold, determine the safest routes, locations of volcra nests, and find some crumbling old ruin in there. That was her primary mission. To risk life and limb to retrieve some old papers from the ruin’s basement and some corpse rotting in there.

“Fuck you Zoya,” she cursed as soon as they all got their orders.

“Fuck me yourself, you coward,” the witch shot back before she swaggered off to her beloved sails. So this was how she was going to die? Chasing monsters and corpses and dusty old journals in the dark instead of the hot girl summer she had planned.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

--Macbeth, William Shakespeare

Days turned to weeks turned to months in this yawning chasm of an endless night where hopes and dreams went to die. Somehow they managed to evade death long enough for Malania to track down the dusty old journals in the dank old basement of a dilapidated ruin right in the middle of the lovecraftian world of horrors. Saints! She figured the black heretic must have some serious issues but how does one even begin to manifest THIS into existence. And how? Well, who cares? Shit like that was way above her paygrade anyway. They were almost done boxing up everything in the basement, but for the life of her, she could not find the corpse that she was informed belonged to the black heretic’s wife. Hmm. Interesting.

“Yoo hoo, Mrs. Heretic, come out come out wherever you are?” Malania called out into the endless darkness as she prowled the hallways of the ruin with nothing but a dim blue fabricator light that her eyes had adjusted to after months in the dark. Hmm. Wierd. According to the silly map--that seemed to be drawn by a five year old--she got along with her orders, the corpse was supposed to be found on a cot right about here. Though, what she found looked more like whisps of shadows fulring and unfurling in the vague shape of a skeleton. What the hell?

With trembling hands she reached out to touch it. That’s when the shadow skeleton disappeared into nothingness, leaving behind an orb, where the dead woman’s heart once recided.

That’s when the volcra came.

All of the them.

The night took a sudden turn from triumph of discovery to utter chaos and destruction and the crew made a run for it with the “crucial artifacts” that were supposed to be worth a lot more the lives of the people left behind in the bloody ruin to end up as corpses in their search for one. That’s when the unimageable happened. The orb lit up like a blinding light. It shone like she had the sun itself in the palm of her hands, obliterating all volcra in sight, and putting an end to the long night at last.

“The whorecrux?!?”

“What?” Malania asked the grisha standing shellshocked in front of her.

“Wh-where did the find the whorrcrux?”

“The whore what?”

“That sun summoner in your hands is one of the pieces of the prophesized light bringer that will banish the fold.”

Note: Neither edited nor proofread. Hell, I didn’t even spell check it so just put up with the mess but I had a lot of fun writing this joke fic. Might update for a quick run through the entire trilogy if anyone cares about it. @yototothelalafell @ambitious-witch for you two <3

#shadow and bone #grishaverse #fixit #mal and alina are so codepent that I just blended them #For the lols

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pikapeppa · 4 years

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Samson/Roman Hawke: Feelings

Some Samson & Roman Hawke fluff for @schoute! Well, as fluffy as these grouchy bastards ever get, in any case. Featuring Isabela and Anders being nosy bitches very good friends. 😂

~4500 words; read on AO3 instead.

*****************

Isabela pointed at a small ship in the Fereldan section of the docks. “... and you see that little skiff there? She’s a lovely little thing if you’re looking for something speedy. Perfect for smuggling. But that’s not what I want.” She sighed and leaned against a nearby salt-stained barrel. “What I want is—”

Anders interrupted her. “– a full-bodied ship that can take a good pounding, with lots of room for booty. We know.”

Isabela smirked at him. “So you do listen, then. And here I thought that brain of yours was totally tied up with medicine or that mage-rights stuff.”

Anders huffed. “You say that as though you disagree with my so-called ‘mage rights stuff’. I know you agree with me, even if you won’t talk about it.”

Isabela tsked and folded her arms. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that you should take a stand!” Anders exclaimed. “Staying quiet about mage rights is as good as condoning their poor treatment by the Templars! Right, Hawke?” He nudged Roman with his elbow.

Roman jolted and looked at him. “What?”

Isabela snickered. “See, even Hawke is bored of hearing you talk about this all the time.”

“She’s not bored,” Anders retorted. “She just wasn’t paying attention.”

“That’s what being bored means, you blond fool,” Isabela drawled. She pushed away from the barrel she was leaning on and sidled up to Roman. “What are you looking at, sweet thing?”

“No one – I mean, nothing,” Roman said brusquely.

Isabela’s eyebrow rose in a sly gesture. “No one? So you were looking at someone, then.” She peered with interest in the direction that Roman had been facing. “Is it a big burly sailor? I’m willing to go halves with you if you want.”

Roman grunted and elbowed Isabela. “There’s no fucking sailor. I wasn’t looking at–”

Anders cut in. “You were looking at Samson, weren’t you?”

Roman scowled at him, and Isabela wrinkled her nose. “Oh. Really?”

Roman forced herself not to look at Samson, who was standing by the pier about a hundred paces away and asking passersby for coin. “Mind your own fucking business,” she scolded.

Anders’ expression became serious. “Listen, Hawke. As your friend, I — look, I’m not judging you–”

“I am,” Isabela said. “Samson hasn’t got a single muscle to his name. How can he even fuck you properly when he’s so thin?”

“He’s not that thin,” Roman retorted without thinking.

Isabela’s face lit up. “So he’s a good lay, then?”

Damn it, Roman thought furiously. Why had she opened her bloody mouth? Why?

“Maker’s fucking mercy, will you butt out?” she snapped. It had been a week since Isabela, Varric and Anders had witnessed Roman’s embarrassingly public argument with Samson at the Hanged Man — an argument that had, regrettably, ended with Roman and Samson fucking furiously in a nearby alley.

Not that any of her companions had witnessed their tawdry but torrid alleyway fuck. But that didn’t stop Roman’s companions from jumping to conclusions that were, unfortunately, true.

Roman had hoped that her refusal to talk about it would make her companions leave her alone. The strategy had mostly worked with Varric, who had said nothing more about it than ‘let me know if you want to talk’, which was only mildly irritating.

Anders and Isabela, on the other hand, were a pair of gossipy assholes. Not that there was anything to gossip about, since Roman hadn’t spoken to Samson at all since the alleyway incident.

“As I was saying,” Anders said with a chiding look at Isabela, “I’m not judging you. But as your friend, I should, um, warn you that intimate physical contact with Samson might not be the… safest idea.”

Roman gave him a suspicious look. “What the fuck are you on about?”

Isabela wrinkled her nose. “Anders, are you sure you’re speaking as a friend and not as ‘the doctor of the free clinic who’s trying to act like he hasn’t seen Samson’s cock’?”

Roman stared at him. “Wait, have you?”

“No,” Anders blurted. “No, I—” He clamped his lips together, then seemed to collect himself and straightened up. “I’m not at liberty to discuss my patients. But–”

Isabela interrupted him. “So Samson has been your patient, then. What for? A skin rash? Something that Hawke could catch? Was it crabs? Maker, I hope it wasn’t crabs.” She turned to Roman with a grimace. “You haven’t had any itching, have you?”

“Shut up!” Roman hissed. “Just shut up, will you? Both of you.” She pointed at Isabela. “You keep the fuck out of it. I’m not giving you any dirty details.”

Isabela pouted. “You’re no fun.”

Roman ignored her and pointed at Anders. “And you. Stop trying to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do. If I want to know if Samson has a… a fucking rash or something, I’ll just ask him myself.”

“Will you really?” Anders said. “I thought you hadn’t spoken to him since the, uh, argument.”

Roman recoiled slightly. How did Anders know that? “What’s it to you?” she demanded.

He gave her an exasperated look. “Like it or not, Hawke, I do actually consider us to be friends,” he drawled. “And guess what? Surprise! I care about my friends and their wellbeing! Who would’ve guessed?”

Isabela tsked. “You didn’t seem to care about me too much the other day when I ran out of coin at the Blooming Rose.”

He smirked at her. “It’s not that I didn’t care. It’s that I cared more about watching you talk your way out of being thrown out by Madame Lusine.”

Isabela rolled her eyes and turned to Hawke. “Anyway,” she said. “When you said Samson isn’t that skinny, what exactly—”

Roman had suddenly had enough. “Shut up,” she snarled. “Shut the fuck up, okay? Leave me alone.” She turned on her heel and stormed away.

After about five furious steps, she realized that she didn't know where she was going. She couldn’t very well storm over to Samson while Anders and Isabela were watching like greedy vultures. But she also didn’t want to leave the docks, since Samson was here.

But why the fuck did it matter if he was here, if she wasn’t planning on talking to him?

At that moment, Samson glanced over and caught her eye.

Her belly twisted. When his usual weary expression started shifting into surprise, her guts twisted even more.

She abruptly changed the direction she was walking and stalked away from him to the opposite end of the pier, silently cursing herself and him the entire way.

Fifteen minutes later, when Roman was feeling a bit less rattled – and, incidentally, had confirmed that Anders and Isabela had left the docks – she made her way back along the pier in Samson’s direction. He was in the same area, but now he was sitting idly on a dilapidated crate against the shaded wall of a cheap dockside inn. Or at least it looked like he was idle. But Roman knew his habits well enough. She knew his idle-looking loitering just meant he was listening carefully to what passersby were saying, in case anyone said anything of interest that he could trade for coin or other favours.

She stalked over to him and sat abruptly beside him on a second dilapidated crate, and he jumped. “Maker’s–” he cursed, then recoiled slightly as he recognized her. “Bird? What are you–”

She thrust a steaming and greasy newspaper-wrapped packet at him. “Here.”

His eyebrows rose. “What’s — is that fish and chips?”

“Obviously,” she said snarkily.

He frowned. “What are you giving this to me for?”

Roman gave him an exasperated look. “To do a fucking tap dance on it. What do you think? To eat it, obviously.”

Samson cautiously took the fish and chips, and Roman folded her arms. “I ate half of it. I couldn’t finish the rest.”

He opened the packet slowly, then raised an eyebrow at her. “You sure you ate half of this? Looks untouched to me.”

Roman scowled at him. “Look, d’you want it or not?”

“‘Course I do,” Samson said. “I’m not too proud to turn down my first hot meal in a week.” He gave her a twisted half-smile, then started eating.

Roman just sat there beside him as he ate. He didn’t speak and neither did she, and by the time he was finishing his meal, Roman’s shoulders felt slightly less tense than they had all day.

He sighed in satisfaction and crumpled up the newspaper, then glanced at her. “So. What’s happening with you?”

“What do you mean?” she said.

He shrugged. “Well, your knickers are in a twist. Who crossed you?”

She scowled. “My knickers aren’t fucking twisted. I’m fine.”

He sighed. “All right, all right. Just asking.”

The silence stretched between them again, but it was rather dour this time, and Roman began to feel a cold wriggle of guilt — a feeling that only worsened when Samson broke the awkward silence between them. “I didn’t mean anything by it, Bird,” he said quietly. “I was just wondering how you were. It’s been a minute since you came ‘round.”

Her heart squeezed in an uncomfortable way. “I’m fine,” she said again. Then she shot him a resentful look. “Why do you care, anyway?”

He arched one brow. “I did mention it’s been a while since my last hot meal, right?”

A flicker of anger came to life in her belly. “So what, I’m your fucking meal ticket? That’s why you were wondering where I was?”

“That’s not the only reason,” he replied.

She glared at him in silence. His brows were drawn in a frown, but his eyes were steady on her face — unnervingly steady, in fact.

A sudden flash of memory crossed her mind: the intensity of his stormcloud-grey eyes when he was pushing up her skirt and sliding his callused fingers up the inside of her thigh.

A flush of heat burned hotly through her limbs and throat and straight to her mouth. “Fuck you,” she burst out.

His eyes narrowed. “No, Bird. Fuck you.”

She glared at him for a moment more. Then, for some reason, a snort of laughter escaped her.

Samson stared at her. Then a slow smile crept across his narrow face. He chuckled and rubbed his stubbled chin. “Maker’s bloody balls. You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

She huffed, then settled back against the brick wall. “You sound like my uncle. And my brother.”

“Well, that’s not disturbing,” he drawled.

She shot him a dirty look, then relaxed a little more at the sarcastic curl of his smile. She shifted slightly on her crate, brushing her shoulder to his in the process. “Ah, I take it back. You stink more than both of them,” she said. Never mind that she liked the unique melding of his woodsy masculine musk with the twang of lyrium that always hung around him.

Samson clicked his tongue. “If you’re looking to cut my balls off, you’re too late. The Templars already have ‘em in storage somewhere.”

She shot him a sharp look. She hated how he always talked about the Templars like they’d defeated him.

He glanced at her, then wilted slightly. “Ah, come on, Bird, it was a joke. Lighten up a little, will you?”

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before speaking again. “Let me know where your balls are stored, and I’ll get them back for you next time I go to the Gallows.”

He chuckled again — that rough-sounding heh-heh-heh that made something shiver deep in her belly. “Nice,” he said. “That was almost funny.”

“Fuck you,” she said again, but with no ire this time. “I’m hilarious.”

“By qunari standards, maybe,” he remarked. “Sense of humour like that, they should send you in to negotiate with that big qunari chief.”

Roman huffed a little laugh at the idea. If anyone ever asked her to talk to the qunari, she’d laugh right in their face before telling them to take a long walk off a short pier.

They fell quiet once more, but it was an oddly peaceful silence this time, and Roman slowly realized that this was the first time all week that she hadn’t been feeling at the edge of her temper.

Then, even more slowly, she realized that she was leaning into Samson’s shoulder, and that he wasn’t moving away.

She could feel the heat of his arm through his threadbare shirt. A strange jittery feeling began to rattle in her belly, and she licked her dry lips and stared vacantly at the Waking Sea while the warmth of Samson’s skin bled through both of their sleeves to spread across her arm.

She was so focused on the strange pleasantness of his arm against hers that she actually jumped when he spoke again. “Can I ask you something without you biting my head off?” he said.

She instinctively shifted away from him. “That depends. Are you going to ask me something fucking stupid?”

He gave her a weary look. “Come on, Bird. You’re breaking my balls here.”

I thought the Templars had those, she thought snidely, but the seriousness of his expression stopped her from making the snarky remark. She sighed. “All right, fine. Ask your fucking question.”

“Don’t you ever…” He trailed off, then rubbed his forehead. “Maker’s balls.”

She frowned, her curiosity and nerves piqued now by his hesitation. “What?”

He sighed, then lowered his hand and gave her a frank look. “I’m askin’ this out of curiosity, all right? Not because I was a Templar.”

She scoffed and folded her arms to hide her growing discomfiture. “This is going to be good.”

He sighed again and ran his hand over his hair. Then, to her surprise, he shifted closer to her and leaned in close. “You never worry about getting possessed by demons?” he asked in a very quiet voice.

Her heart jammed itself in her throat, and she swallowed hard. “Excuse me?” she croaked.

He gave her a chiding look. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

“Why are you asking me this?” she said in a hard tone.

“Because you’re a blood mage who’s angry all the time,” he said, very quietly. “If you was anybody else, I’d have put a royal on you being demon fodder already.”

“What the fuck do you mean by that?” she demanded.

“I just mean…” He faltered, then smoothed a hand over his hair once more, and Roman was vindictively satisfied to note that his expression was slowly twisting with discomfort. “I just meant you’re… you’re too smart to not have thought about it, all right?” Then he made a little face. “Well, I mean… not smart enough to not use blood magic, but smart enough to know how dangerous it is.”

She glared at him. There were compliments buried in what he’d said, but his judgment about her blood magic was overpowering enough to cover any praise he might have been trying to give.

She dropped her voice to a furious whisper. “Will you fuck off for even one second about me using blood magic? I never use anyone’s blood but my own. I never do spells that are bigger than I can handle. I’m not a fucking idiot, and if you’d stop jumping down my throat every time I–”

He cut her off with a loud groan. “Look, forget I said anything, all right? Bloody impossible trying to have a conversation with you.” He glared at her with his steely bloodshot eyes. “That’s all I was trying to do, Bird. It was just a question. It wasn’t a bloody accusation. I’m not trying to trick you and drag you off to the Gallows. It was just a question.”

Just a question, he said. It sounded innocent enough, but Roman knew better; her father had long taught her and Bethany that questions about magic should never be taken at face value. It was careless and stupid of Roman to let Samson witness her use of blood magic in the first place. Ever since she’d returned from the deep roads, it had been getting harder to hide the fact that she was a mage. If it became widely known that she practiced blood magic, the blowback on her family would be bad, especially now that Carver was a fucking Templar.

But Samson had never told anyone that she was a blood mage. He’d kept this information to himself, even though he could have sold it in a heartbeat to any number of people who wanted to take Roman down a peg. And sure, maybe he picked on her once in a while about it, but his picking usually took the form of macabre jokes or sarcasm, and Roman would take dark humour over her family’s self-righteous censure any day.

She shot Samson a dirty look, then dropped her gaze to her hands and picked at the red scarf around her wrist — one of a stock of scarves she used to mop herself up after channeling the power of her own blood. As the moments of silence ticked by, her anger gradually ebbed away, and she was able to consider the question he’d asked.

Of course she thought about being possessed by demons. It was something she thought about every time she slashed her arm to pull on a thread of the heady power that was held in her veins. But she couldn’t admit this to her family; they’d just scold or nag her even more than they already did. Admitting it to Samson, on the other hand…

Maybe he really was just curious. Maybe he honestly did just want to have a conversation. But did she dare give him an honest answer?

Finally she sighed and folded her arms. “Sometimes I wonder if I am a rage demon,” she said. “I’m so…” She broke off and looked away.

He shifted slightly on his crate. From the corner of her eye, she could see him looking at her. But he didn’t speak, and something about his silent attention prompted her to finish her sentence.

“I’m so fucking pissed all the time,” she said tightly.

Samson grunted. “If you were a rage demon, that would explain a lot.”

She looked at him, thrown off by his unexpected response. “Like what?”

“Like how you’re such a wildcat in the sack,” he said. “Or against the wall, I should say.”

She gaped at him, surprised that he’d mentioned their impromptu fuck so bluntly. There was a wicked slant to his eyebrows and the corners of his lips now, and for some incomprehensible reason, it made her smile.

She scoffed and punched him in the arm. “That’s desire demons, you fucking idiot.”

He nodded. “Right, right.”

She relaxed back against the wall. “I thought you’re supposed to know that shit with your Templar training and all. Doesn’t your training include some kind of handy guidebook to demons?”

He huffed out one of those rough-sounding chuckles. “If it did, I don’t remember. Too busy passing love letters for randy mages.”

Roman smirked at him. When he gave her a little half-smile, something in her chest jolted in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

She looked away from him and off toward the Waking Sea once more. The water was slapping gently against the ships in the harbour, and when Samson eventually spoke once more, his gravelly voice was a pleasant contrast with the water’s soft hush and flow.

“Have you always been like this?” he asked.

“Like what?” she said.

He gestured vaguely at her. “You know. Pissy all the time.”

She wrinkled her nose at him, but despite his tactless words, his expression was quite sincere. She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “A long time.” And honestly, if she was forced to think about it, she couldn’t quite put a finger on when she’d started feeling this… this persistent, low-level simmering of anger that always seemed like it was just a few words away from boiling over.

When had she started feeling so angry all the time? Was it when her mother had blamed her for Bethany being torn apart by that fucking ogre? Was it when Father had died, and her mother became even more dependent and demanding? Was it further back, when the boy she’d first had sex with suddenly decided he didn’t want anything to do with her anymore? Or was it even further back than that, when she was a child and she’d first started noticing that other people’s parents didn’t talk to each other in those quiet furious voices that sounded like kettles hissing?

She swallowed the growing lump in her throat, then pinned him with a hard look. “When did you start being all pessimistic and thinking your life isn’t worth shit?” she said snidely.

He recoiled slightly, then coughed out a bitter-sounding laugh. “When I joined the Templars and got put on a leash, of course.”

She turned to face him more fully. “You’re not a fucking Templar anymore.”

“As you’re always reminding me,” he drawled.

“I always mean it as a good thing, you dumbass,” she retorted. “They were better when they had you. They were better when they actually had someone who gave a fuck about people. But they’d have ruined you.” She settled back against the wall once more. “You’re better off without them.”

He gave her a deeply skeptical look. “You really think that?”

“Yes,” she said fiercely. “There’s no worse place in the world than a Chantry Circle. I’d rather be an apostate hiding for my entire life than be trapped in a fucking tower with Chantry sisters telling me I’m a sinful piece of shit for being born a mage.”

His face was deadly serious now. “I wasn’t born that way, Bird.”

“But they made you this way,” she insisted. “It’s their fault you’re on the streets. It’s not some failing of yours. You’re better than them. They — they tried to ruin you, but they didn’t, all right?”

He held up his hands in surrender. “All right, all right. Calm down before you turn into a rage demon.”

She scoffed and punched his arm. “Fuck you.”

“Is that you asking?” he said.

Her belly hopped with nerves, and she shot him a sharp look. This was the second time he was referencing their clinch in the alleyway.

“Come on,” he said. “Don’t act like you haven’t thought about it.”

His expression was sly and knowing, and his raspy voice was softened with a hint of coaxing. She glared at him for a second, then shrugged irritably. “Look, I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I’m just wondering if it might happen again,” he said.

“I don’t know, okay?” she said curtly. “I don’t — I don’t know.” Fucking him had been such a stupid thing to do. Not because they’d been half-drunk or because it was in an alley, or because of whatever vague gross reasons Anders had been hinting at. It was stupid for her to fuck Samson because… ugh, because she liked him.

Roman hated the fact that she liked Samson. She hated the fact that she gave a shit what happened to him. In her opinion, there was nothing stupider you could do than get into a sexual relationship with someone you actually gave a shit about.

Samson shrugged. “Well, I had a good time. That’s all I’m sayin’.”

She glowered at him, and he let out an incredulous laugh. “Andraste’s tits. It’s a compliment, Bird. What’s wrong, didn’t you enjoy it?”

His tone was mocking, and it pissed her off. But what pissed her off even more was that he was right. ‘Enjoying it’ didn’t even begin to cover how good he’d made her body feel. It was a full week after their impetuous tryst in a dank and darkened alley, and she still couldn’t stop replaying the memories of his voice panting harshly in her ear, or the blissful roughness of his hands grabbing her hips and the rough rhythm of his cock pounding into her.

But that wasn’t the fucking point.

She stood up abruptly. “I’ll see you,” she said tersely, and she started to walk away.

He grabbed her arm to stop her, and she glared at him. “Let me go,” she said coldly.

He released her and leaned forward on his elbows. “I don’t think your little ‘bad habit’ has ruined you, either,” he said quietly. The corners of his lips turned up slightly. “For what it’s worth from a run-down ex-Templar, anyway.”

She stared at him, tongue-tied with her heart pounding in her ears. The way he was looking at her now, with that tiny hint of a smile and that weary look of wariness in his unnervingly clear grey eyes…

Fuck, there was a lump in her throat again. She swallowed hard and defensively folded her arms. “So what, you’d still fuck me if I turned into an abomination?” she said sarcastically.

A crooked smile lit his gaunt face. “Sure would be a good way to go.”

She stared at him for a second longer. His stupid sick jokes actually made her want to laugh.

And for some stupid, sick, fucked-up reason, that just made her all the more eager to leave his company, even though his company was what she’d really wanted all week.

“Whatever,” she grunted, then walked away.

I should just stop talking to him, she thought. The calm she felt sometimes from being near him was never worth the uneasy irritability that ensued after she left him behind. But she’d spent this whole week feeling increasingly irritable when she was purposely avoiding him…

She scowled as she made her way to the Hanged Man. This is the problem with liking someone, she thought. These treacherous feelings wormed their way into your brain and made your mood go all over the place, and they made you look like an idiot in front of your friends. And worst of all, they made you so fucking vulnerable.

This only meant one thing: Roman couldn’t fuck Samson again. No matter how much she wanted to, no matter how much her nights were interrupted by thoughts of his tongue between her legs and what he might look like naked, she couldn’t fuck him again.

I won’t, she told herself fiercely. I won’t do it again, and that’s the end of it. With her resolve grimly set in place, she left the docks – and Samson – behind.

#samson #raleigh samson #samson/hawke #samson x hawke #romanson #pikapeppa writes

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