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burneddownthegym · 3 years

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When do you think Buffy and Spike started developing feelings for each other? I think for Spike it started in season 2 which has been kind of confirmed by Dru, but what about Buffy? Their relationship seemed to change after Spike let Glory torture him to protect Dawn, but I like to believe Buffy had unregistered feelings for Spike way earlier. I don’t know what’s true though. She let him live many times when she shouldn’t and that could just be the writers wanting to keep Spike but it could also be read as Buffy not wanting to kill him for some reason. If I were Buffy I would have at least been attracted to him from the start but I’m not Buffy. What do you think?

oh god. i started writing this and it just got more and more unhinged until i was left with a novel. but here’s my headcanon under the cut.

i think for spike it started in season 2, yeah. kind of immediately. i mean in his second episode he already has like ten tv’s mounted on the ceiling to obsessively watch buffy fight? ok weirdo. obviously the writers weren’t planning on spuffy at the time but it all fits with the dru retcon in “fool for love”. i think any feelings he had were super repressed in him for a while though, and were probably closer to obsession than anything (where does one draw the line between obsession and love? much to think about!!). tbh, and maybe this is controversial, i kind of think it’s not until “intervention” that he really understands just how in love with her he is, or what it really means to be in love with her. he definitely thinks he’s in love, he has a raging, identity-crisis crush, but i don’t know, something just feels different after that episode. i feel like it’s when his feelings for buffy really become less about him and more about her. like, less about having her or wanting her to recognize him, and more about wanting to be what she actually needs. less about *loving* buffy and more about loving *buffy*, maybe. so even though his feelings before then are real, they feel real in a different way to me after “intervention”.

buffy is harder. personally, i don’t think she was ever consciously attracted to spike until maybe s5. (buffy being immediately attracted to him in fic is actually a huge pet peeve for me; it doesn’t feel in character at all and can even make me stop reading). i think there was latent attraction, but spike was just so far outside the bounds of who she thought she would be attracted to that it doesn’t register that way (reason #34095 spuffy is a lesbian ship, obv. also it’s why her being attracted to him immediately can turn me off in fic, bc it makes the relationship feel less gay, and that’s kind of important to me). i think she finds him tacky and annoying and lame and just not a sexual object. he’s a soulless vampire and you don’t sexualize those. and so anything sexual she felt toward him she dismissed the way you might dismiss a weird sex dream about someone you’d never want in real life (jane espenson apparently had notes on her desk pre-s5 saying buffy had sex dreams about him, which i totally buy, especially after “something blue”). i think one of the reasons she freaks out so bad in “crush” is that suddenly spike isn’t in the non-sexualizable category anymore. like, what, vampires and slayers are sexualizing each other now? like in real life not just innuendo? you broke the rules, what am i supposed to do now? it’s why she’s so weirded out when he tries to kiss her in “fool for love” and goes on about how people can’t love without a soul in “crush”. spike isn’t fitting his sexual category and she doesn’t know how to deal with it so she tries to stuff him back in. long story short, i think it’s only after “crush” that she actually consciously thinks about his attractiveness, because before then he just wasn’t someone on the table for her to think about that way.

(oh i should also add—i think spike’s “crush” moment with buffy is “who are you?” when faith comes onto him. because it was sort of a similar thing for him. even though he was attracted to buffy before that episode, it was something he repressed or treated as kind of a game. innuendo and eroticism as a battle tactic but not something you’d actually follow through on in real life. but he thinks buffy breaks the rules in “who are you?” and suddenly makes herself real-life sexualizable. so i think his attraction becomes more conscious after that, even if he’s still trying to act like it’s something that disgusts him, like buffy post-“crush”.)

(also, this is why it’s so easy to read violence and murder as sublimated desire in a gay way with spuffy. it’s not really about murder and violence. it’s about them expressing romantic/erotic desire within the bounds of what their roles allow, because they can’t conceive of each other in other roles.)

but i do think buffy did still have some sort of draw to spike before s5. i feel like instinctually she saw him as more of a person than other vampires pretty early. definitely not consciously, and definitely wasn’t love. but she talks to him like he’s a really annoying guy more than she talks to him like some sort of mindless enemy. she doesn’t bother telling other soulless vampires that she violently dislikes them, or mock them about their breakups. i think the only other soulless vampires she sort of treats that way are harmony and holden in cwdp, which makes sense since both of those are vampires she knew before they were vamped. she didn’t kill harmony either, and wasn’t excited about having to kill holden. but spike is the only “stranger” vampire she sees that way, and i think that’s interesting! i think a lot of her conflict over him is due to this too, tbh. he instinctually feels like both a person and not-a-person to her, and that’s hard for her to process.

i have zero canon to back this up, but i think the first time buffy kind of sort of falls in love with spike is in “the gift”, when he says he’d protect dawn until the end of the world. i mainly think this because i don’t think it can be understated how important dawn is to buffy, or how telling it is that she kisses spike in “intervention”. other people have said this, but she just doesn’t kiss people every time they do something nice for her. i don’t think she would have done that unless she felt some sort of latent *something* for him, and unless he’d done something that really deeply affected her. him being willing to sacrifice himself for dawn’s sake, or protect her above all, affects buffy first: because of how self-sacrificing she is. she’s always the one who has to die or put herself on the line for other people. and second: she’s the only one who cares about dawn the way she does. no one else goes into a coma or threatens giles or vows to protect her until the end of the world…except spike.

so the fact that spike would understand the self-sacrificial and protecting-dawn parts of her, or help her with them in the same unthinkingly committed way, when no one else is, i think hits her where she lives. he understands and is not just supporting, but *embodying* this hugely important thing to her at the time when it counts the most. so she falls a bit in love with him. maybe just a second, or a minute, and then she ignores it and saves the world. but that’s the first time it happens.

then as far as s6 goes, i pretty much take buffy at her word when she says she has feelings for him, but that they’re not love. i think she has really intense and confusing emotions around him and for him, but they just don’t cohere into something that could be called something clear-cut like love. and that’s sort of the tragedy of that season? it has all the potential and intensity and chemistry for love, but she doesn’t like or trust herself and she doesn’t trust him, and he isn’t in a place where he can understand the guilt and self-hate she’s going through, or be moral without her guidance, and so in a lot of ways her lack of trust really is justified. so it just can’t quite reach the realness of love, where you want and want to care for the other person’s whole self. but (adding this edit based on a comment by marinxttes!), i totally agree that a lot of her breakup with spike is about her feeling enough for him that it doesn’t feel right to use him anymore. i think that’s the decisive moment when she stops being confused about whether he is or isn’t a person (and whether *she* is or isn’t), and decides he is one. maybe not one she thinks she can love yet, but one she genuinely cares about doing right by, and that’s a huge shift.

i believe her in s7 too when dawn asks if she loves him and she says she feels for him. i don’t know when exactly that whole mess starts cohering into something that really is love for buffy, but i feel like it’s happening the whole season. like air condensing into water. all the pieces have been there, amorphously, for a long time, and finally they’re allowed to take form. so when she says “i love you” in “chosen”, it’s at once something new, and also something that’s been there all along.

#ship: spuffy #do i have evidence to back up 90% of this? no #am i going to post it anyway? absolutely

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anerdinallherglory · 4 years

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Approaching Sun (29)

Author’s Note: Happy Halloween! Sorry this is so late everyone. I am currently writing my thesis for graduate college (the very reason why this chapter is not longer) and it has been sucking up ALL of my time in combination with Covid-19 face-to-face teaching and virtual teaching. In short, my life has been a walking list of “to-do’s” which causes me to neglect my writing. This chapter is dedicated to zeidika (hope you are reading this) who reviewed my story back in July. I occasionally think about your message and it keeps me going through stressful times. I hope your upcoming graduation is a memorable moment and that your son is doing well. You inspire me too! Congrats on the outstanding GPA! I am hoping to follow you soon with graduation!

Please let me know what you guys think. More action-packed chapters coming your way soon (hopefully).

P.S. While you are waiting on more chapters of A.S., go check out my new mystery/horror fiction story, “Beneath the Harlow Grove” by @anerdinallherglory on Wattpad.

Pairing: SasuSaku

Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28

Chapter 29: A Generation of Weaklings

Sasuke blasted through a few too many red-dirt mountains in Kaguya’s core dimension. With every blast, he felt more like himself. Something chemical happened in his brain when he tunneled raw chakra through his veins; it helped him adopt the right mindset. Sasuke found that the quickest way to erase his thoughts was to surrender them to his shinobi persona who had to be focused. That chakra felt like a jolt to his nervous system, reminding him of himself and his shinobi goal.

Of course, now that he was less distracted, he found himself too depleted of chakra to do anything more than take a breather. Now that he was in the core dimension, Sasuke would have to adjust his plans. Previously, the Uchiha had been trying to cross into the desert dimension without going through the middle dimension. Now that he had jumped ship and escaped here by instinct, he was going to have to do this whole thing in reverse. Logically, his next step would have to be crossing into the desert dimension and then overpassing this core dimension directly to Kunagakure. All this would require a lot of chakra.

Just to speed up the process, Sasuke momentarily considered swallowing one of the chakra pills that he had swiped before his cold exit hours before into this dimension. It might be a good idea for experimentation purposes, but Sasuke knew enough about shortcuts to comprehend that chakra pills would do more harm than good, which is why they were typically reserved. It was best, the Uchiha decided strategically, to take the pill when he was at his chakra max, so he could ultimately top it off and have just the right amount to make the jump.

And besides, Sasuke just didn’t have enough time or chakra to experiment recklessly. He would get one shot to try it before he had to wait a significant amount of time for his chakra to replenish enough to try it again if he failed. Not to mention in what ways he would have to recover from whatever side effects he would suffer through from abusing the chakra pills.

Sasuke pinched his nose in concentration and tried his best to expel Sakura from his mind while he waited. And it worked just enough, for the most part…consciously—until he fell asleep that night and dreamt of her, his suppressed thoughts confronting him in his subconscious. He had developed a habit of dreaming about Sakura lately, so this wasn’t something new to him. His dreams of her usually involved her imminent death; an enemy threatening her life in a way that Sasuke was too late to prevent. This was the case. Usually. But something about that kiss earlier had unnerved Sasuke, transforming his instinctual focus on her from one of concern to one of…how would he describe it? Desire? Hope? Longing? None of those words seemed acceptable to the Uchiha; he hated to have to admit to any of those feelings even when dreaming.

In this dream, he was back in that damn medicine preparation room, glaring into Sakura’s green eyes after that unexpected kiss. But this time, instead of sensibly leaving, the Uchiha gave in to her desperate pleadings, taking her chin between his fingertips and bringing her mouth back to his. In this dream, Sasuke kissed her. Was kissing her frenziedly, hand suddenly twisting in the pink fuzz at the nape of her hot, flushed neck. Was, until a hand clamped firmly on his shoulder, jerking him abruptly back away from her. When he turned, Sasuke was face-to-face with himself. His conscious self vs. the subconscious.

When Sasuke woke, he laughed derisively as he realized he would always be the one to get in his own way in both reality and fiction.

“Good,” he said aloud to the airless dimension, suddenly frustrated for fantasizing about the opposite scenario of the one he had chosen. He hoped Kaguya, or others like her, somehow were able to hear him through this connection of dimensions. They would see just how determined he was to rid the world of them; how dedicated he was to protect those he loved. So much so, that he would sacrifice and surrender every aspect of his life to this goal.

Sasuke stood then, forming the hand sign to split the dimension in the space before him until raging sand materialized before his eyes. He decided he would just not sleep; not unless he was so tired that he wouldn’t even have enough left in him to dream.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sakura was a quick learner. The medical ninja gave herself that credit at least as she imitated the slow intake and exhale of breath that professed sleep. This certainly wasn’t her first kidnapping. Half a year ago, Kido had done just exactly that and as soon as his posse realized she was awake, the show had begun. Sakura’s poison-trained system had finally started to break down whatever sleep-induced toxin Mako had spiked her drink with. With no conception of how long she had been unconscious, Sakura had become cognizant and immediately began to mimic an undisturbed state. This time, she was set on listening. This time, she would assess and strategically plan.

She had been waiting to hear the answer as to “why” she found herself in this particular situation as she was dragged, then hoisted over someone’s shoulder. For a blurry second, Sakura was taken back to her drunken episode several weeks ago when Sasuke carried her home after the medic had decided to deplete Tsunade’s alcohol stash. The only similarity between this state of stupor and that one was the pounding headache that made Sakura want to vomit. That was when memory caught up with her and she began to “act.”

She was exchanged from one shoulder to the next and Sakura realized suddenly that she had been carried by Mako up until this point--that bastard--and was being surrendered to someone else. She didn’t know the voice.

“Great job,” a guttural accent commended Mako for his successful abduction. Sakura planned on commending him herself once she regained the upper hand.

“Just shut up and walk,” came Mako’s voice, in a tone that sent shivers down Sakura’s spine. She had never heard him speak like that. How could she have been played by him this whole time?

Sakura began to second-guess her decision to pretend the longer that they walked. In cases of abduction, it was well known that a person’s chances of survival drastically dropped if the kidnapper succeeded in moving them to a second location. But Sakura thought of Isao, her patients, her coworkers, and even Sasuke and resolved herself. It was better for them if she could allow these maniacs to believe that they had got her. What they didn’t know, was that their mistake would be getting Sakura just far enough away from civilians where she could cause some real damage. She had handled Kido; she could take care of these two as well. Neither of them could have anticipated her other skillset; Mako didn’t know her well enough.

When they had dropped her not so gracefully onto her back an hour later, Sakura bit the inside of her cheek to keep from making a pained groan or facial expression to give away her performance. Other voices chimed in then, and Sakura realized her adversaries had just doubled.

“About damn time,” someone drawled as she was dropped. “You couldn’t have taken care of this sooner?”

There was some shuffling as her capturers arranged themselves in what sounded like a cramped space.

Mako announced: “She’s surprisingly resistant. Not to mention Uchiha’s been around just until recently.”

That particular statement wounded Sakura a little more than the fall she just sustained. Of course, this was all about Sasuke. She should have known. Kido had kidnapped her for this same reason: to lure in Sasuke, kill her in front of him so his eyes would change. Sakura was starting to get pretty annoyed with people trying to use her to get to Sasuke—as if she would ever let that happen. When would they learn that things weren’t so black and white? Mako’s previous statement the morning of her capture began to make more sense to her now: “Well, it’s obvious that he likes you. To be honest, I thought you were already a couple.” And Sakura cursed her mouth for confiding in him because now she identified his interest as a predatory investigation.

“Or maybe you just weren’t trying hard enough because you liked her,” came a response from a voice Sakura seemed to recognize for some reason. It was different from the rest—distinctively female. Sakura mentally raised an eyebrow at that fact.

“Believe me, that’s not the case” came Mako’s defense. “Ashuwa just didn’t do the trick on a medical specialist as we had hoped.”

And then Sakura was cursing. Cursing a stream of silent words that wouldn’t do her any good to express verbally now that she was getting information. The bastard had even convinced her that Sasuke should take it. She thanked the universe for Sasuke’s non-allergic reaction to it.

“What ended up working?” came the female voice again, expressing honest curiosity.

“Tea and kindness,” Mako stated unemotionally, eager to move past the topic. “Now let’s get on with this.”

“Of course,” said the female again, tossing what sounded like clanging metal onto the floor at his feet. “You have been given a position among us as promised for your service. Welcome.”

Sakura couldn’t resist. She snuck a peek through the corner of her eyelashes at them then and did not like what she saw. She was in a small gathering room with a domed ceiling, one of the many adobe homes on the outskirts of the Sand Village. She had also miscounted by 1. There were four of them, an extra silent companion seated & leaning against the wall farthest from her, seemingly uninterested. In the same second, Sakura also noted that Mako had bent down to retrieve something she recognized, a headband with a foreign symbol etched onto it—the same symbol she had seen on the headbands of their assailants back at the Tanigakure lodge. She made the connection: these were the same ninja who had followed Sakura and ambushed her and Sasuke in the night. The ninja she had recounted to Gaara, who was supposedly on their trail. How did they manage to get past him?

Just as Sakura thought this, an unexpected thud came from the ceiling accompanied by the crumbling sound of sand. Quiet consumed them as no one moved. Sakura observed quietly as all ninja revealed their weapons in silence as if they were snakes quietly coiling back to strike.

The man in the corner nodded toward the door, and the ninja closest to Sakura’s head disbanded from the group and disappeared within a second. Once outside, the same ninja began swearing loudly at some surprise. Everyone in the room relaxed as a child’s vocal squirming reached their years. The shuffling continued as this child was being brought inside.

“Damn kid must have followed us!” the returning ninja said in annoyance. “Got some bite to him.”

If Sakura hadn’t been laying down already, she would have collapsed in shock and fear at the memorable voice of the child they had just apprehended and threw down next to her. “Get away from me!” Isao shouted, the boy swinging a kunai out in front of him. They laughed wickedly at the boy’s ferocity.

Okay, show’s over.

Protective instincts kicked in swiftly as Sakura successfully reached forward and stole the kunai away from the child in less than a blinking second. There were unanimous intakes of breath throughout the room as Sakura managed to get Isao behind her and compress the blade threateningly against the esophagus of the man who had touched the both of them—it all happened within a microsecond. Sakura’s sudden revival activated the group’s defense and they were upon her, but she let out a snarl, drawing blood against the man’s throat.

They immediately stopped their advance when the man she had ensnared began to laugh, throat nicking against the knife as he did so. “Do it already,” he breathed through his laugh. “My death will be a part of this effort. It will only help us in our cause.”

Sakura was certainly tempted by that. The way he had roughly handled Isao seconds before with his colossal insensitive hands was like a fresh and bloody burn on her skin, painful and needing the immediate relief of this man’s execution. But something in his words froze her hand. A cause?

“Glad you are finally awake,” came Mako’s distinct tone, a vicious friendliness warming the words again.

“Shut up you liar,” Sakura spat viciously.

“If you let him go, we’ll tell you why we are going to kill you,” came the female’s voice, and Sakura flashed her angry green eyes over in the woman’s direction. Her face and hair were covered, and Sakura acknowledged the same black shemagh that had concealed her attackers in Tanigakure.

Fat chance, she thought. Sakura immediately assessed her chakra levels and was aggravated by how slow chakra was reacting to her body’s summoning of it. Mako was a fellow medic, and Sakura deduced that whatever he had given her had strategically messed with her system and chakra connection. Sakura mutely criticized herself for trusting Mako. How many times would she be tricked in her lifetime? Probably many more, but she would learn from them all. Oh well, she thought. She had had worse odds before. Her only additional complication was Isao because now she was responsible for herself and the 11-year-old boy who had pursued after her. Had he somehow witnessed Mako’s abduction of her?

It was at this moment that the woman at the front of the room began to take off her mask, and Sakura almost dropped the knife altogether. As the black wrap was loosened and it slumped around the woman’s neck, Sakura immediately recognized the face of Hisa, the female medic ninja who had been her assistant throughout Sakura’s entire stay in Kunagakure. Even Isao behind her, gasped when he saw the woman who had helped take care of him.

Sakura’s moment of surprise was all it took for the ninja she stood behind to reach his hand lightning-quick between his own throat and the kunai. He grabbed on to Sakura’s wielded wrist with his left hand and flung her forward over his shoulder. She mentally cursed as she went flying toward the forefront of the room, landing painfully into the opposite wall. She practically went through it, and the side of the adobe house collapsed around her. As she fell, Sakura realized that the brute force used against her revealed their intention to truly kill her. They weren’t planning on preserving her, let alone sparing her life.

Sakura had been launched farther than she initially realized because when she managed to rise from the dust and sand, she winced at the other consequences of her distraction that was now beyond reach. One by one, the villains stepped through the new door that Sakura had made, carrying Isao with them. In the next second, Isao was tossed to the sand, screaming threats and clutching at the thug man’s foot that suddenly pinned down his chest. When the beast applied pressure to the child’s sternum, Isao began to moan in pain.

The sight enraged her, and she broke her silence. “You’re wrong if you think this plan of yours will work!” she screamed at them. “I am nothing to Sasuke. Nothing to anyone, do you hear me?!”

All but the quiet man snickered in response to her declarations, but she continued, seething through her teeth.

“He will not come to save me! You will not get what you want by using me! Let the child go!”

“This isn’t about Sasuke,” replied the wraith-like man who came last through the shattered side of the building’s exterior wall. For the first time since her awakening, the still man walked to the head of the party and addressed her. “Neither is it about the Hokage, or even the Jinchurki. This is about you.”

The night suddenly seemed starless, dark, and void of all sound save the squealing wind. As the stranger spoke this truth, three of the other members flanked his sides before fanning out beside him like Tamari’s fan, creating a close-knit semi-circle. The phantom-like man stood casually in the middle, his face cloaked in the combined darkness of night and the face wrapping he wore. As Sakura looked closer, even this man’s eyes, the only thing that could be seen between the black fabric, seemed like depthless holes of nothing. This man reminded Sakura of a walking desert mirage, some sort of shadow demon hiding in human clothing.

Sakura gritted her teeth as her body instinctively begged her to flee. Isao’s need for her overpowered that. She would die before abandoning him.

“Me?” Sakura asked instead, revealing her honest surprise. “What do you want with me?” It was a trick, the kunoichi told herself. What could they possibly have to gain from killing her when much more powerful figures literally walked side by side with Sakura? There was nothing to gain besides Sasuke’s, Naruto’s, or Kakashi’s ultimate death, defeat, or capture.

“Your efforts to fix the ‘mentally ill’ goes against the philosophy of our newly founded group,” came Hisa’s poison-dripped answer. Sakura noted that they all took a step toward her in synchrony, tightening in on her a little closer. This practiced pack was testing her and Sakura took a step back to match their own. She was smart enough not to let them surround her like the meal they believed her to be. Sakura felt suddenly empathetic for those mother animals who felt torn between their captured young and their own safety. Let them believe that she was this helpless observer who reeked with fear.

“And what philosophy is that?” She asked, imitating the breaks of a trembling in her throat. She practically seeped the question with distress. It must have had the effect Sakura wanted, for her enemies smiled in response and took another step toward her.

With an insanity that Sakura had not heard in his statements before, Mako declared emphatically, “Progression!”

Sakura couldn’t wait to punch his teeth so far down his throat that Mako’s vocal cords and epiglottis would permanently suffer damage.

Sakura stammered again, portraying the weakness they wished to see. “Pro--progression?” Another step back. Just a little more.

“Whether or not it is your intention, you will create a shinobi generation of weaklings,” stated the leader again. He essentially breathed more darkness, because the night around her suddenly grew thicker. Was she imagining it, or could this be some sort of jutsu?

“How do you figure that?” she questioned, adding a nervous laugh to her annoyed tinged inquiry. Sakura’s exasperation with their reasoning was starting to make her focus waver.

As she asked, Sakura concentrated on her chakra. She was calling it, calling it, calling it, but it did not spring forth. She would have compared the sensation to drawing blood from a syringe, except her chakra was like liquified cement and the syringe was the size of a pen. If she chose to use it, the Strength of a Hundred Seals just might flood her chakra paths and burst through whatever plug the medicine had caused, or it could potentially well up like water in a dam and she wouldn’t have any access to it. Medically, that might be a concern. And it had only been a few weeks since she had last used her reserves to assist Sasuke crossing dimensions, so would the risk be worth the additional amount behind her forehead?

In an eerie declaration, the masked leader stepped toward her again and said, “If you go around curing the next generation of their anger and pain, brainwashing them with this vision of peace, there will be no more progression.”

“What the hell does that mean?” she asked, all pretense gone now. The confidence in her tone made them stop their encroachment. For a second, Sakura didn’t look so weak to them. They glanced at the leader, the shadow-man, and then again at Mako because Mako knew her best out of the group; he had also drugged her.

“The medicine should still be working. We must hurry though. It won’t last all night.” Listening to this, Sakura inhaled and exhaled, willing the small drip of chakra to pool more heavily in her palm. She would only have one shot before she could collect enough chakra for another one. Sakura took another step back. And another, drawing them away from Isao and his captor. Just a little more. Keep them talking.

“There is peace in the world now,” Sakura baited. “There’s no need for children to suffer through trauma alone anymore.”

The leader did not hesitate a second before responding with the practiced mission justification of their group: “Without anger, hatred, and pain, there is no incentive for war between villages. And without war, there is no need for young shinobi. You will create a generation of weaklings who cannot defend our borders. The world of Shinobi as we know it will disappear.”

Sick freaks, Sakura thought. She was their target because she worked with children? They were afraid that children would be weaker without pain? “The world would be a better place,” she commented, “if there weren’t people like you in it.” Sakura didn’t care to listen to this nonsense anymore. She hated to kill them, but they weren’t giving her much of a choice.

At exactly this moment, Isao had somehow reached into his pocket for another kunai, stabbing it into the foot that held him down. Apparently, the ninja had been distracted by the rest of the pack’s slow pursuit of Sakura and the conversation. Isao left his mark, slicing it clean across the top. The ninja screamed which turned the heads of all those before her. Isao bolted up before anyone had the chance to stop him.

On his feet now, he charged the group and Sakura watched in panic as the ninja he had left behind now followed, brandishing a sword of his own.

“Kill that brat!” came Hisa’s order.

And then Sakura was in the air, her fury propelling her forward and then down on top of them.

Mako let out a cry of alarm, the first to notice her above them. The kunoichi had just enough for one hit, and Sakura prayed the sand wouldn’t buffer too much of it. She fisted the meager amount of chakra between both of her palms, fingers interlocked to make a combined fist. She brought them down as hard as she could at their feet, making it through several feet of sand before she connected it with the ground. Sakura was not able to see the damage done, because not only did sand fill the air, but all light blinked out and a shroud of complete blackness consumed her.

#approachingsun #approaching sun #sasusaku #sasusakufanfiction #ssfanfiction #naruto fanfiction #prosasusaku #Sakura Haruno #sakura hiden #Sasuke Uchiha #sasukeshinden #sasuke and sakura #sakura uchiha

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raeloganthesonic06fangirl · 3 years

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I know you didn't ask, but I think the reason Bushroot is so popular is because he's one of very few villains that can be honestly described as "Sweet when not actively homicidal" which is a fun character type.

Full disclosure, but I always thought Bushroot's design was pretty cool when I was a kid, like, the guy has a creatively unique style that has a very recognizable profile and silhouette, as well as his VA, the late Tino Insana, had a very recognizable and iconic vocal quality (seriously, if you've ever seen any cartoon with that guy lending his voice, you're going to remember that series somehow, if not only because you remember that voice. I really think this is why Barnyard never left our conscious thoughts)

Bushroot himself is such an interesting member to the Fearsome, in which he has the tendency to flip between sides or just be on the fence whenever he's involved. He can be a ruthless villain, a tragic victim, or just be there because it's fun to include him (one of my favorite episodes is "A Star is Scorned", where Bushroot gets the spotlight as the star of the show, and he goes full insufferable diva just to mess with Darkwing, and I love it. Bushroot in animal print clothes, ascot, oversized sunglasses, in a limo is one of the greatest things I've seen)

I get the feeling that perhaps another reason why we gravitate towards sympathizing with him before we really step back and remember that he's not an UwU Cinnamon Bun is that his origin story makes it a point that he was bullied by his peers, who also kept sabotaging his experiments and taking credit for his work, which I can imagine would tug at our hearts on account of how absolutely real that sort of situation is

Like, geeze, as a person who was bullied a lot in school for my wierd quirks and tendency to hyperfixate on things people thinks is, and I quote, "stupid garbage", and literally having my stuff pulled out of my hands and thrown into trees that I've had to retrieve despite not being coordinated enough for that task, I can tell you that situations like these being done to characters really manipulate me into being more sympathic for them than I probably should be

So right out of the gate, we are presented with Bushroot pre-mutation and seeing how much his life just sucks.

Then there's that whole kind of icky thing where he's just a bit of a creep when it comes to trying to find true love or whatever, and I swear I cannot feel sympathy on that mark for a guy who is willing to kidnap a girl and force her to undergo experimental exposure to change her molecular structure to make her a plant monster like him against her will, and when that didn't work, he just tried to grow a wife from scratch and ended up with a potato and decided that was good enough anyway even though he's technically said potato's father and she's barely a few minutes old, so yeah...

Bushroot kind of gives off stalker vibes in this regard, and it's really weird that he's such a soft spoken, docile guy when he's not provoked. Like, a ticking time bomb, and he's willing to latch onto anything that shows him an ounce of positive interaction, even if it's just Darkwing saying: "We're going to have to team up right now"

((Maybe the real friends he needed were the people he tried to mulch with a lawnmower along the way...))

But, yeah, I think what makes Bushroot such a popular character is that he's honestly really well designed, his character history is clear and understandable, he's endearing at times, he's got some cool powers, he's pro-environmental, the franchise makes it clear that there's a reason why he's a villain, and he's constantly shown that, if given the opportunity, he has no qualms about helping the heroes because he's just happy to have some social activity

Also, he's practically immortal

He can been shredded down to a mere cutting of plant, and regenerate from that.

That opens up so many possibilities of situations and potential for him. He can grow plants on command, he can bring a forest to life, the guy has a pet venus-flytrap that acts like a dog and that's really cool, I just love Spike

And also, in the rare times Liquidator is actually used in the series, he has a good chemistry with him

I think what really helped with Bushroot being one of the most popular in the series is partly due to his early episodes happening early on in the series, him having some solid solo episode outings, the overall energy he gives off, how easy it is to market him as a feature, his instantly recognizable design immediately pinpointing him as a product of the DWD cartoon that sets him aside from other Duck themed characters in the overall Duck-verse, and I also have a feeling that Posion Ivy might also be marginally responsible for some of this solidifying, on account of "Batman: The Animated Series" being released around the same time and the 90s was very much Pro-Take-Care-Of-The-Planet-Before-Nature-Kills-You with its programming selection and overall themes in kids media

Also

youtube

He's so socially stunted, it's almost adorable. 😅

((Still not going to forget that he kidnapped his coworker with the intent to make her fall in love with him, tho. Bushroot be as crazy as Jervis Tetch, yikes))

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nightcoremoon · 3 years

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so for the first time I saw batman: the killing joke.

...

it was okay I guess. but massively overrated. I expected some fucking masterpiece of cinema but instead it was just two unrelated short films that were more style and flash than substance.

so first off, barbara's storyline was mediocre. franz wasn't a compelling villain; just a creep, and a trust fund brat. oh wow he's a mafia kid who stole his family's fortune by hacking. if it was the falcone family I'd have cared more but it wasn't so it's just some faceless deathfodder rando. who gives a shit. the whole situation was just a vehicle to shove batman's dick into babs. which kinda fucks over bruce's character here and judging by the timeline kinda makes him a bit of a groomer, yikes. bruce and gordon have known each other since bruce was a young boy and we know that bruce is way older than babs so yeah bruce totally knew her from birth until present day, he literally utilized an active power dynamic to police her crimefighting activities, and he should have fucking known better and stopped her when she kissed him because it would (and did) compromise their professional dynamic, but hey, batdick. and at least barbara recognized that she was behaving emotionally rather than logically when it came to bruce and paris and took the high road out. that would be a serviceable standalone episode to write her on a bus in a serialization but THIS IS A MOVIE. so for a waste of an already short runtime it's like having an appetizer before your meal but instead of something like a crab cake before stuffed flounder, you get greasy onion petals that are more fried batter than onion before getting a well done cheeseburger that's just a glorified hockey puck on a sponge with a kraft single on top. the animation and vocal delivery were excellent of course, not gonna disparage that aspect, so it was well made, but the writing was just not very good. a polished turd. quantic dream must have developed it then because it feels like I watched a david cage production.

so in a 78 minute movie, five of which were the credits, we had a half hour Disney/Pixar short except those bring joy and this brought boring. also there were a lot of shots of her ass tits and underwear that were obnoxiously male-gazey and there was a token gay for the sole purpose of dangling a carrot on a stick for the queers. look kids, warner brothers and dc comics cares about the lgbts! give us money! a waste of time before the real reason why anyone came to see the movie that literally only exists to pad out the runtime to make it a feature length (even though paying a full ticket would've been a total ripoff because, again, IT WAS ONLY 78. even 9 was 81 minutes long and that had an amazing storyline so I forgave it, but 78 minutes? ugh.

also, GOTHAM RAGE??? CRINGE. SO CRINGE.

alright now for the joker segment.

*ahem*

what the fuck? that sucked! *throws tomato*

mark hamill and the joker's lines and the art and the cinematography and the choreography was all good and the plot was cohesive. I get it.

but holy shit was the writing weak as fuck.

okay so some rando breaks the J-ster out of Arkham (already unlikely but ugh whatever), he didn't turn a trick or recruit or anything, he just went to purchase a carnival. or, steal one. but wait, he DID recruit, but he went to get all of the stereotypical Circus Freak™ stereotypes. little people, fat lady, bearded lady, wolf man, strongman, diaper man (wait, what?), and the two headed woman. I guess if you don't really think about why all of them were super readily available in the outskirts between arkham and gotham [i just realized they both end with -am] then it makes enough sense. and then literally right after that HE RECRUITS SOME GUYS TO HELP HIM KIDNAP GORDON. and then strips and photographs barbara. um. ew. you can tell the writer and director were men. Alan Moore is constantly molesting women in his comics and this one trick pony should be put down already. but whatever. the plot is weak and it only gets saved by the flashback sequences.

oh.

oh no.

they're not that great.

he's a failed unfunny comedian who just wants some money to move his wife to a better house so he turns to thievery with the mob. OR YOU COULD JUST STOP GOING TO THE BAR AND BLOWING IT ALL ON BOOZE. I mean the cops knew where to find him after all so clearly he's a repeat customer (or moore is a bad plot writer who relies on convenience and shut the fuck up and don't critically analyze it). alright so he gets wrapped up in the mob to perform a heist on a playing card factory. GET IT, BECAUSE HE'S THE JOKER??? and he uses the moniker of the red hood to retain his anonymity. I expected the mobsters to be working for francisco but no the paris storyline was only cooked up screenplay for passing the runtime so why would they do something clever and interesting and make the film cohesive? that'd be really stupid to make the movie feel more like one movie and not two short films. at least when grindhouse & planet terror did it they advertised themselves as an anthology film. whatever. he falls in the vat of acid which melts the red hood to his face and I gotta say that's actually a pretty good idea to get his face white and his hair green and his lips red. I like that part. oh wait I forgot about the most important part! his wife gets shoved in the refrigerator. OH WOW THAT'S JUST SO COMPELLING AND ORIGINAL, TOTALLY NOT SOMETHING THAT ALREADY HAPPENED TO GREEN LANTERN. TWICE. although she wasn't literally shoved into a literal refrigerator like alex was. rip in frozen pieces you absolute legend of a trope namer. alright, so... so the joker is sad because his wife died. you know, the wife we saw for two minutes and knew the moment we saw her drenched in sepia she was gonna die. and she died offscreen. kyle's gf died and he was fine. gordon's wife died and he was fine. batman's parents both died and he was fine. oh boo hoo someone I love died! fuck off. I am so goddamn sick of people trying to justify their evil with "I was sad once". it's a stupid trope and it's not compelling. the only valid version is doctor doofenshmirtz' evil(er) version in the PF movie because it's hilarious that it's because of a toy train because that's the emotional depth that fridgewomen is treated with in all of these storylines. but at least batman said so. oh yeah, I almost totally forgot, batman's in this movie.

batman punches people and nonlethally takes them out. by suffocating them and letting them get stabbed and throwing them into pits of spikes and HEY WAIT A GODDAMN SECOND! okay let's just ignore that bit and hope that the little people squeezed between the gaps in the spikes and the strongman could breathe in the face mask and the two headed women had KO gas and the fat lady was fat enough that the knives only stabbed her cellulite. it wouldn't be the biggest reach one would have to make in watching this fucking disaster of a plot mess.

now I did like that it was actually batman, and by that I mean he gave a shit about the insane because he recognizes that mental illness is not a cause of dangerous or criminal behavior, just a potential exacerbating factor if it wasn't treated. yeah he brutalized mobsters and crime lords but they were mostly in self defense while gathering intel. he politely asked sal maroni and the sex workers for information and they gave it to him without violence- he manhandled maroni but only after he reached into his pocket for a cigar which could've been a gun. also batman says sex work should be decriminalized if only by not ratting them out to the cops. he was a genuinely good person in the second half of the movie. too bad it was ruined by the shitty first half that made him a borderline groomer.

joker's song was... bad. mark hamill performed his ass off but the song wasn't that good. it just tried to be willy wonka if he was a voyeuristic monster. oh yeah have the only girl character be paralyzed stripped and photographed only to give her father ManPain™. again... the fuck? joker and batman were both gross but, again. male writers. if it was a one-off I could drop a thermian argument because, alright one and done makes sense, especially 1988 standards. but it saturated and soured the entire goddamn movie because of abhorrent pacing decisions. so you're goddamn right I'm gonna bring it up twice! joker was a creep, his plan was dumb, nolan and burton and lord/miller and even ayer had better motivations. YES I AM SAYING THAT JARED LETO'S JOKER HAD BETTER WRITING THAN MARK HAMILL'S JOKER. not nearly to the level of ledger nicholson or galifanakis but hamill didn't have a lot to work with here and I maintain that his performance was amazing; honestly I like his the best out of all of them but just... not here. but I think I can cut some slack to firelord ozai and luke skywalker even if he just phoned it in here which he didn't. writing was just weak. and that's all there is to it. don't anon me and threaten to remove my bones ok?

alright so batman and joker fought and joker got the upper hand and was gonna kill him but it was a prop gun. haha. they had a heart to heart and batman tells joker that he wants to help him get better, even after joker killed robin and molested barbara and traumatized gordon and did countless other travesties, he still said he would help. but joker said no, and told a joke that was good enough to make batman laugh. and then the credits rolled.

...

what a completely pointless and empty ending. oh it's deep and meaningful and poignant? ok sure, I guess, movie, but you didn't earn that. shyamalan did the same thing a dozen times. that doesn't make him any less of a shit writer.

I can understand the concept of batman laughing at joker's joke, humanizing him.

I get it. I see what they tried to do. I respect it.

but this movie was massively overhyped and overrated and I expected it to be so much better than it was. but overall to me it was just another batman cartoon to throw on top of the pile. maybe it was influential to graphic novels. maybe it shaped batman into what he is today. it published right as tim burton's movie and I can respect its place in the pantheon of comic history. but sometimes things that are classic...

aren't that great.

citizen kane, casablanca, the maltese falcon, the treasure of the sierra madre, gone with the wind, singing in the rain, all of them are classic and legendary pieces of art. but they're just not that good, interesting, appealing, watchable, or FUN. they were good at the time- I mean come on we all know them today- but on going back you'd have to really appreciate the finer details to still love the movies today. and this belongs there, in the vault, to be appreciated from afar. influential if dated.

but god am I still disappointed nonetheless.

TL;DR

it was just okay. had some good ideas, had some really bad ideas, had some ugly stuff. overall mediocre. first half 5/10, second half 7/10, overall 6/10.

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fortunamuta · 4 years

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Pt.3 Devilman Crybaby Post (anime spoilers)

Alright so this is the last post and honestly i forgot to talk about the last episodes 7-10. Can u feel my depression while writing this, bro the sadness is never ending. I have become one with the mf void, and within it there is no self, no thoughts, no emotions just darkness.

Also TW alot of this stuff is extremely gory and dark (lots of horrible deaths that I may talk about, so tread lightly)

Lets just say things took a turn for the......first of all WTAF Homeskillet NOOOOOOOOOOO (if u haven’t read part 1 of this post homeskillet is Taro Makimura) HE ATE HIS FREAKING MOM, AND WHEN I TELL U I GAGGED AND FELT MY EYES TEARING UP. THAT WAS THE MOST TWISTED THING I EVER SAW AND THE DAD FOUND THEM. Basically the mom had taken Taro away from the family when she learned that he was a demon, also i thought he was a devilman but he didn’t win against the demon so he was taken over. But in the scene when he’s slowly eating his mother, and his dad is screaming why pointing a gun at his son, who he now realizes is his son. Taro’s demon begins to tear up making me believe that Taro was conscious but not in control of his actions. And thats when the tears begin to fall, and the dad was screaming and crying at how unfair the world was and how disgusting the sight in front of him was he couldn’t bring himself to shoot. So then the army guys who kill demons came and the dad begged them not to kill his son, but without hesitation they fired on dad and Taro, subsequently killing both. Akira tried to save them but was ultimately too late and ended up atleast grabbing the bodies and burying them.

The next scene in the episode shows Akira crying while on his knees infront of three graves (with crosses) on what looks like a hill. And I wondered if this was alluding to the three crosses who stood on Golgatha’s hill. This definetly marked a turning point for Akira and how he felt about Ryo. Anyway demons from everywhere popped up and tried to kill Akira at the instructions of Psycho Jenny, but then Miko saves him.

OH SCHNAPP I FORGOT TO TELL YALL Miko is a devilman and sis ate MY KING OF SPOKEN WORD and I think she ate her grandmother too. Anyway she really uses her new abilities to her advantage and wants to be better than Miki M. She later confesses that her jealousy and hate was just her inability to come to terms that she loved Miki and looked up to her, she didn’t like being outdone when she was used to being the best. Anyway she saves Akira from the demons trying to kill him. At this same moment Ryo is having a come to jesus moment (more like come to satan moment) he realizes that he is SATAN. I FUCKING KNEW IT. Anyway he goes on air, and stirs chaos by OUTING AKIRA. If i could throw hands and get my grandma to pray the mess outta that fool I would, damn he really didn’t have to do him like that so the whole worlds now knows that humans can become demons, so people begin to openly attack everybody. Anyway that public call out puts a target on Akira.

Akira and Miki have a moment where shes like even as a devilman he’s still the crybaby she’s always known and love. oh btw Miki now knows her parents are dead and so is her little brother. Let me tell u her screams of anguish THAT SHIT HURTED. Anyway The Spoken Word Squad is now friends with Miki because the main dude gotta crush on her, and THEY ARE SO MF LOYAL THE REAL MVP’S of THE SHOW. (except shorty he really played us) Anyway Akira goes to get answers and confront Ryo and u can see the betrayal on his face he truly still believed Ryo was trying to make the world a better place. Anyway a mob descends on the Makimura household and the Spoken Word Squad says to leave it to them. At this point I am bawling my eyes out, and i’m slowly being pulled apart by the void. Miko takes Miki on her back to try and escape from the mob but those hoes mad angry and for what reason, anyway before this Miki made a twitter post talking about how much she loved Akira i think in the familial since tho, and how even though he is a devilman he is still who he used to be and that the humans are capable of loving them even though they are different. He’s not the enemy they should be focusing on.

So as u may have guesses SPOKEN WORD SQUAD DIED, eversingle one of them, but not without being the baddest bitches every before going out. Seriously Homeslice with the dread had that crowbar and my boi was swinging and taking hoes out, but homie ended up getting over powered and visciously stabbed to death. The same happen to the dude who was crushing on Miki M basically there were just too many people(those people were the real monsters, giving into raw fear to tear into children like that)

Anyway Miko and Miki are making there escape and they end up on their old running path, and its really sad. A jeep comes out of nowhere and everybody a motherfucking automated weapons. And they continue shooting at Miko and Miki until they bring them down, Miko urges Miki to run and continue running until she’s safe and to leave her behind. Miki runs and then the show the screen with them as kids running and passing the baton. Miko passes Miki the baton signaling her death, then Miki continues to run with the baton she’s trying to catch up to Akira who in front of her but she can’t seem to and then someone in real life shoots her in the legs, but she keeps moving and finally she’s able to pass the baton to Akira. At this moment (not me tearing up as I write this) she is tackled by some guy who stabs her and she screams out, calling out for Akira. But he never makes it.

Akira goes to this place where humans have crucified other humans and there are throwing stuff at them. Akira comes and shields them, and cries out that if they should kill someone kill him. In the midst of his crying, a voice over of miki’s letter is played. And like in the bible a little child shall lead them, which a little boy goes up to Akira to hug his leg and other kids follow the mob stops throwing stuff and now some adults are coming up to Akira to apologize hugging him and crying and they help the people they had crucified. In the midst of this the demons convince Track Homie to betray Akira even though Akira was helping him. So he impales Akira with his horn thing, in the process trampling many of the humans who had been standing near, causing a panic. Demons come out of nowhere and Akira gets away.

Now Akira has made it back to Miki’s house after a big fight with Ryo promising to defeat the other. He gets there to find the house up in flames and a mob surrounding it all whooping and cheering. He focuses on the mob and almost throws up finding that Miki, Miko and the Spoken Word Squad had all been decapitated and amputated and their limbs where pushed down on spikes which were being lifted and waved around for all to see by the mob. In a fit of rage and sadness at the fact that humans had done this he releases a fiery blaze crisping the humans in the mob. He swiftly leaves and the final strand attaching him to Ryo breaks. In Ryo’s tranformation to satan they now are naked, full breast and genetalia on display with big white wings. Ryo tells Akira that he doesn’t want to fight him, he did all of this so they could be together. But Akira said he has enough spite and anger for both of then and charges, they have a midair battle and the demons back up Ryo, in the end other Devilman come to help Akira lending him limbs so that he may continue fighting sacrificing themselves.

The fight is long and sad, you can tell immediately that Akira is no match for Ryo. The scene changes to when they were younger as children, playing in the snow and going to hotsprings, exploring and just enjoying each others company. It shows just how pure and adorable Akira was and how Ryo always showed sign of not having any regards for life and believing that the weak deserved to die. Then it changes scenes to the baton passing scene showing the baton being passed from miko to miki then to akira and finally akira trying to pass the baton to Ryo but the baton keeps dropping between then, it happens several time until it drops one last time and the new scene is of the sky. Ryo’s voice is speaking to Akira as he stares at the sky, we see the side profile of Akira and his eyes are open but he’s not responding.

Ryo continues to speak about them as children, then the screen pans to the sky showing broken planets and the earth around them is destroyed all that remains are broken pieces and the heel they are on. No other signs of life. Ryo asks Akira a question, and believes him to just still be mad at him but then he touches his face and says he’s been so quiet. Finally he cries and he exclaims how he doesn’t understand these feeling and asks Akira what these feelings are.

Akira finally hands Ryo the baton.

The scene pans to show us Akira missing half of his body and dead. Ryo cries out to Akira pleading with him to say something, then he pleads that Akira not leave him alone. He continues to sob into Akira and plead to not be left alone as the screen moves further away from them, showing the actual destruction caused by their fight which basically destroyed the solar system.

So yeah, i am one with the void, devoid of emotions, thoughts, and feelings. I belong to the darkness, how tf am i supposed to feel after that. I-i just wanted Akira to be happy, but apparently that was too much to ask. Goddamn THE WHOLE MF SOLAR SYSTEM. I cried so hard my brother was actually worried about me, I had puffy red eyes and couldn’t stop my mf hiccups. and warning i do no cute cry, that shit was really ugly.

So yeah, I thought it was really good, definitely not for everybody though. Imma need to watch some Ouran Highschool Host Club. Also prayed with my grandma the other day for extra protection. But umm somebody please tell me what the relationship between Akira and Ryo because the end scene got me confused. I think it Ryo realizing his feeling for Akira because he didn’t want him to die and realized Akira had always been there for him. So this was def a wild ride, Miki was honeslty a pretty solid person except when she was modeling for that creepy dude. And then sis went to his house and asked for a shower, I was like sis are u DumbDDumbDDDDumb, luckily Akira was there because Ryo out here killing grandmas and was ready to kill Miki back then too.

Also FLY HIGH SPOKEN WORD SQUAD and MY KING OF SPOKEN WORD.

and Taro really was bestboi led astray.

My pain level is astronomical might as well be numb. 10/10 probably won’t watch again unless I need a good cry and psychological trauma. But it was really good all in all.

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pinkysfaultorbrainsfault · 4 years

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pinky and the brain - s1e3a: tokyo grows

episode summary: inexplicably existing in post-war japan, brain hijacks a shrink ray he just found laying around in order to make it a growth ray. he intends to dress pinky up as terrifying local monster gollyzilla, and pretend to defeat him, so the japanese people... elect him... president. of. japan.

all i’m gonna say is shinzo abe’s replacement has a hell of a lot coming to him if that’s a job requirement.

the rundown:

IT IS TOKYO IN 1956.

you can tell because it says “tokyo 1956″ in big letters at the bottom of the screen.

as we take a detour into acmeshito labs, senior-ly produced by tom ruegger,

we see a fellow sacrificing his shoes to the shoe gods. (sorry about that weird line at the bottom. vlc player has just decided it’s doing that now, i guess. nothing i can do about it.)

inside, some other lads, who have all been produced by peter hastings (my, the man gets around) are shrinking tvs for fun and giggles.

“at last! professor mifune! you have perfected the process of shrinking electronic devices, so we can sell them to americans for a lot of money!”

hm.

“yes, shimura, and now i say to you! miniturisation will be very,

BIG.”

and then they both shuffle over to stand in front of each other and laugh in a weird stilted way.

HA. HAHAHA. HAHAHA. i’m not sure if this is making fun of japanese people, or a common trend in japanese media (or voice acting?) at the time, but, um, i’m uncomfortable.

thankfully, the newly miniturised radio advertises that Legendary Prehistoric Monster Gollyzilla has been spotted, and apparently

the emperor wants mifune’s scientific opinion on gollyzilla

GOLLYZILLA

so maybe it’s best for mifune and shimura to get the fuck out of dodge.

so the two of them make a hasty retreat - after toeing their shoes back on, of course.

but who are these two!

brain looks pensive. i don’t know what’s in that waterbottle, but he’s having a tiny mousie crisis. pinky is narfing at him with little to no concern for his mental state.

still, crisis or not, brain has a world to take over. he mentions to pinky that the scentific equipment before them will be “invaluable for his plan to”

“TAKE OVER THE WORLD.” we really do get one per episode, huh.

“you mean you’re going to shrink down all the electronic so only mice can operate them?”

which is a reasonable idea, i think. brain counters it with “don’t be absurd, pinky, there’s no future in minaturisation,” and clarifies that is is big things that strike fear into the hearts of humans.

like that ridiculous legend of gollyzilla. <gay little hands on hip pose>

as pinky ponders whether Kay Ballard is In The Union (sorry, pinky, she’s dead) brain explains that his intent is to alter the shrink ray into a growth ray, to “become a four hundred foot tall mouse and save the world from gollyzilla.”

“but you just. said there was no such thing as gollyzilla, brain.”

“there is now, pinky.”

did we really need another closeup for that line, guys? really? is it not enough to have the mouse say his lines without shoving the camera into his face? must the man deepthroat the camera every time he has things to say?

anyway brain’s plan is to dress pinky up as gollyzilla and “save tokyo” from him. you can tell because the camera angle makes it look like his head is on gollyzilla’s body.

this random man takes a toke from his old timey pipe. “yes, i see.” he says. this is not explained.

as brain reverses the shrink ray into a growth ray, pinky makes his debut.

TADAAAAAAA POIT.

“what do you think, brain? pretty scaaaaaaary, eh?”

“yes, pinky. terrifying. stand by.”

boop.

there probably won’t be a lot left of the lab when brain is done, unfortunately.

but hey! check this out!

“narf.”

“where are you, brain? i can’t see you.”

“i’m down--”

bonk.

well, he’s clearly dead, so i guess that’s this review over.

jokes, of course. lucky for us, brain is still alive, and he has brought a little megaphone with him! awwww.

“now, go on your rampage, gollyzilla!” he’s very hype for that, it appears. pinky tries his best not to disappoint.

NARF POIT I AM PINKZILLA KING OF THE MONSTERS

AARGHGGHGHH RAAARGHGHG ARGH.

it’s this random man again. “yesss, i see.” i don’t know who he is, or why he’s here, and i am scared.

but never mind him. we cut to this adorable straight couple chilling on this bridge.

“i love you, fumiko.”

“and i love you, hershel.”

awwww.

unfortunately, famously heterophobic legendary monster gollyzilla is here. “hello!” he says, cheerily. “i’m on a rampage. narf.”

fumiko and hershel get the fuck out of dodge.

still, pinky’s having fun, and that’s what matters.

though bits of his costume are coming off.

“oooh, i can’t see through this thing!”

“oh.”

“oh no! the giant monster is moulting!”

rip that guy, i guess. upon attempting to recover his lost glove, pinky accidentally spikes his tail on a nearby building in the process.

“egad. i’m all a tangle!”

he gives it a yank, for good measure,

and ends up catapulting himself into the abyss.

the random man is back. “yesss, i see,” he says. what does he want? what is he doing here? please don’t smoke in front of me, sir. i have real bad asthma.

meanwhile, brain is making himself “the largest mouse on earth, and hero of the planet.”

donk.

this frame is terrifying so obviously i’m making everyone look at it.

“people of tokyo! do not fear! i, brainodo, have come to save you!”

i’m not sure they’re convinced. the army have shown up, by this point.

“it’s another giant monster! even more ugly than gollyzilla!”

rude.

brain suggests that, perhaps, he is actually an artificially enlarged labmouse here to save them from gollyzilla, and maybe they could thank him by making them emperor.

the military do not agree.

so, yknow, maybe it’s best that he goes to look for pinky.

“how can i save the city from gollyzilla with no gollyzilla!” yells brain, as he steps on a school bus and either, 1, kills like 40 children, or 2, ruins the setpiece for melanie martinez’s 2019 music video “wheels on the bus.”

(no one’s watching us don’t give a fuck wheels on the bus ou ou)

anyway it’s a good thing that pinky has decided to spontaniously burst out of this lake. man’s really commiting to the role, huh.

again, he’s having fun.

brain is less impressed.

after admonishing pinky for running off,

brain reminds him to “make the battle look realistic”. their plan, of course, depends on it.

TAKE THAT, YOU HORRIBLE BEAST

ouch.

pinky sure is putting a weird amount of effort into this battle. and pyrotechnics??? yeah.

bonk.

yeet.

as brain unflomphs himself, and prepares to strike back, pinky comes over to see what’s going on.

“scuse me, brain.”

“go away, pinky. can’t you see i’m fighting with pinky?”

“oh, but. wait.”

“how can you be fighting with me over there, if i’m over here?”

“it’s a very simple principle, pinky! it’s because!”

“that’s the real gollyzilla.”

and by the looks of things, he’s not very happy.

conclusion:

pinky’s first instinct, upon seeing The Real Gollyzilla (please stand up, please stand up) brandishing a building at them, is to pick brain up and flee in terror.

it’s very cute. he just scoops him up and nopes him away. not today, gollyzilla. not today.

gollyzilla, unfortunately, seems pretty bloody determined to make it today.

unfortunately, in his quest to deliver brain to safety, pinky walks right into a pylon.

bonk. they fall over. ):

and unfortunately, they fell directly onto what was once acmeshito labs, which activates the growth ray in the process.

it’s this guy again.

who are you??? what the fuck do you want?? why are you just smoking your pipe and looking at me like that and saying yesss, i seeeee. what do you see??? did the newslady send you??? what do you want from me??????

he gets shot by the growth ray. good. die.

the mice, as you can imagine, are not having a great time of things right now.

gollyzilla is fully prepared to bonk them on the head.

but oh! what is this?

random man? is that you? are you our hero, random man? is this your redemption arc?

do you see now, random man? what do you see?

well, he just yeeted a building, so jot that down.

he seems to be preparing himself to yeet gollyzilla, too.

same.

the mice duck out of the way as the fearsome creature is launched like an olympic sport. good thing tokyo 2020 got cancelled, i guess.

air lizard. nyoom. unfortunately they land on the remains of acmeshitu labs,

and nudges the growth ray in the process.

it goes a bit haywire.

the mice look on, perturbed, as it starts firing at random objects.

like this building.

and that fire hydrant.

and that building.

and this, uh.

city?

um????

oh dear.

at least acmeshito labs is going back in for repairs.

“it’s a shame we’re not giant any more, brain.”

“we are, pinky. unfortunately, so is everything else. our relative smallness remains.”

alright. that’s the end of that one, i guess. that’s going down as a solid outside influence.

brain: 5 ½ pinky: 6 ½ outside influence: 11

brilliant, brain!

but oh, wait, no. is earth like, 400 times its’ previous size, now? surely that can’t be good for the universe????

what are your thoughts, bbc science focus?

well. that’s not good.

#patb #pinky and the brain #before each night is done they'll prove their mousey worth #by the dawning of the sun they'll cause the biggest extinction event earth has ever seen #they're dinky.

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thewalkingdead-imagines · 4 years

Text

TWD - Negan Imagine ~ “Stalker”

Imagine about the the 10th episode of season 10.

Summary: While Negan gradually finds out about Beta’s plan for Alexandria and has to cope with the helplessness and fear that the Reader could be in life threatening danger, Alexandria’s residents and the Reader have to deal with the bloodbath Beta causes inside the community.

Alexandria truly couldn’t catch a break. And neither did you. Just moments after you had stepped after your house you’d been called to the gates, first suspecting that another wave of walkers was about to hit Alexandria but instead, it was only one person, one person who was enough to rush another flood of restlessness over the community. Right in these moments, she was standing in front of the gates, the whisperer who had been talking to Aaron, Mary, who was surrounded by guards who pointed their spears at her, ready to act if she only tried anything. But she was all still, maybe a bit nervous as you watched her fumbling on her torn clothes before she moved up to pull the mask off her face and tossed it to the ground. “I'm the one that knows Aaron”, she said, gulping thickly as her eyes switched briefly to the spikes that were pointed at her. “We know who you are”, Gabriel quickly said as you kept on looking at her, watching while she shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “The people you sent out, they're in trouble, trapped in a cave where Alpha has placed her horde. Now, they could still be in there or they might've gotten out... I don't know.” From one moment to another, you could feel yourself an ice-cold shudder washing down your back, flooding your body with tension as you thought of Daryl and the others that could still be trapped in a dark cave, surrounded by uncountable walkers that only waited to get their hold on one of them. “You said the horde was in a field”, Gabriel’s voice cut of your train of thought, preventing for a moment that the toxic and concerned thoughts could bore themselves deeper into you while the woman sighed thickly. “It was.” “Now it's in a cave”, Gabriel nearly snarled, staring down at her as she shifted slightly, nodding as she grew even more uncomfortable. “She moved it.” “The whole thing. Right before they got there”, Gabriel said, spite and nearly some sarcasm sounding through his voice, matching the change in personality you had seen over the last time in him while Mary sighed defeated, looking as if she knew that no one in here would believe her right away. You didn’t neither, even though she seemed sincere...but Dante had seemed sincere the whole time as well. There was a part of you that wanted to believe that she was actually ratting Alpha out, that she was saying the truth here but you were still too struck by Siddiq’s death and Dante’s betrayal to allow it completely. This could be a sick plan of Alpha after all, who knew, that woman was capable of anything. And you couldn’t miss some signs of some suspicious behavior again, no matter how small it was. You really couldn’t. “I'm just telling you what happened. I'm not sure you are. I'm trying to help”, she said, sighing once more as she stared at Gabriel, almost desperate while Rosita stepped a little closer, eying the women. “Why?” Her voice hushed and silence fell over the place for a moment, while she visibly struggled, her eyes swaying to the ground for a moment as if she needed to collect herself again before she glanced up. “The baby that they left at Hilltop, he's my nephew. And I would do anything to see him again”, she said, and if you hadn’t that bitter aftertaste of Dante’s actions striking through you, you would feel drawn to believe her. Sure, you would expect Alpha to give her instructions to direct her reason at soft spots, at spots that would elicit empathy and trick someone more into trusting another one than some random reasons, but for some reason she seemed genuine and you didn’t know how to handle that. “Where's the baby's mother?”, Gabriel said, his voice as cold as before while the women grew even more restless and uncomfortable than she already was. “Dead”, she finally said, her lips quivering slightly as she thickly gulped, her fingers fumbling on the torn clothes that covered her body. Gabriel stayed silent for a moment, only turning to Rosita who nodded softly before he glanced back at the woman. “If I give you a map, can you show us where the cave is?” “Yes”, she said, nodding and with a small gesture of Gabriel, the guards lowered their spears from her body and allowed her to step closer. She was a little reluctant, her eyes starting at you before her glance swayed over the others until she finally stopped at Gabriel and Rosita as she stood before them, waiting for what to come next. And so did you, watching the scene, your head still pumped up with thoughts of if Daryl and the others were fine that mixed up with the thought that if Negan was actually in the whisperer camp, she might know him. But before you could grasp a clear thought, you suddenly saw Rosita lunging towards the woman, her fist meeting her face’s side and knocking her right to the concrete ground. “You're a liar”, Rosita growled, her eyes glaring down at the woman who was wincing, only barely conscious as Rosita gestured towards the guards,”The cell!”

Couple hours had passed since he was back at the camp again and while he had hoped that spending some time alone a little bit off from the skin freaks would help him forget what had happened on the clearing, it honestly hadn’t done anything but give his thoughts space to torture the shit out of him. He’d told himself constantly that (Y/N) would understand that he hadn’t been able to find a way around it, that scaling her “reward” down to a kiss had been all he had been able to do without risking that she suspected something of his real intentions or worse, would directly end his ass because she couldn’t take rejection from a follower. She would understand, he hoped, she knew how goddamn much he loved her and she would know that he would never do shit like that if there had been another way, if there hadn’t been the threat of being exposed or killed. Still, he was scared shitless to lose her and that feeling only started to nestle itself deeper into him the more time he spend alone. So he was wandering around the camp now, trying to distract himself, trying to tell him that it had at least made her trust him more and got him a step closer to destroying her and the rest of those skin freaks. He couldn’t really do much around the camp except for walking around, collecting some firewood or digging some holes that would be used to cook the meat. Some others were responsible for making new skin suits and he was kinda glad about that, though that didn’t keep him from realizing more and more how goddamn boring the life of a whisperer was most of the time, apart from the whole disgusting and culty vibe they were giving off. He couldn’t really talk to anyone, all they did was either giving him no reaction at all, grunting back or, if he was very lucky replying with a sparse sentence. Hell, even during the day hours of his time in the prison he’d been able to talk more than now and that meant something. And fuck, that bothered him. He liked talking, much more than most people probably and he missed the hell out of having real conversations, he missed getting a reaction to whatever goofy shit was slipping out of his lips, he missed being among people who were actually acting like humans and not some weird stage between walker and living person. And neither Alpha nor Beta were at the camp right now to entertain him with their weird-ass relationship. Groaning slightly he bend a little down to grab a couple of branches that seemed fitting as firewood, just the right size and dry enough to do the job while he let his eyes sway around the camp, that was becoming less and less filled than usual. It wasn’t a rare thing that the number of skin freaks varied around here, often, some wandered off to check on borders or tried to get more walkers for their herd or some new skin suits, but today was different, even more because some of them seemed more restless than usual and he had to find out what was exactly going on around here, why there were much less skin freaks walking around, why the hell the rest was so troubled and why Alpha and Beta both weren’t back yet. He had to find out what the hell was going on here, one way or another.

You felt like you could cut the tension air with a knife when you found yourself in the conference room, not more than two hours after they had brought Mary into Negan’s old cell. She wasn’t there anymore though, she was standing before the large table, two guards behind her that had their spears ready in case she tried anything, while she was glancing over the map trying to explain where the cave was. “So, 14 miles inland here?”, Gabriel mumbled, bowing his upper half over the table, moving his finger over the map before glimpsing up at her. “Yes”, she nodded while he gripped the edges of the thick wood, standing a little straighter “Any other way in or out?”, you could hear Scott ask from his spot beside Gabriel, before Mary shifted a little from foot to foot. “There are others in the area. I'm not sure where. And they'll be guarded”, she said, gulping thickly while you were still unsure what to exactly think of her. Gabriel and Rosita had found out that her sister and the baby’s mother wasn’t only dead, she’d killed her for Alpha and hearing that her leader had lied about killing Lydia, a sacrifice similarly big, had crushed her in the end. She really did seem genuine and you wanted to believe that her information was true, but you had your problems crossing Dante out of your head, regardless out how much you hated it. “Did Earl send those new weapon sets?”, Gabriel finally said, glancing over at Laura who nodded quickly. “Yeah. Enough for all of us.” “Good. We're gonna need them”, Gabriel mumbled while Rosita shifted uncomfortably beside you, staring out of the window and even more tense than before as she let out a thick sigh. “What about the border?”, she said, for the first time glancing over at Mary,“It's gonna be guarded all the way down to-” “It's clear. It's too long for Alpha to defend. Most of the patrols will be near the cave”, the shorter woman quickly said, fumbling on her torn clothes and even though that didn’t really seem to calm Rosita, what she said made sense. The border was long as hell and if the whole thing about the cave was really true, they were definitely setting priority onto that. “Take her back to her cell”, Gabriel finally said, leaving the guards to lead Mary out of the room and just as they had closed the heavy door behind themselves Gabriel pushed himself away from the table and walked around the table. “So, two rescue parties. Rosita and I will take the first”, he said, stemming his hands against his hips before he glanced into the round. “We don't know if any of this is real”, Rosita scoffed, moving from her spot by the window finally towards the table, a thick frown pressing into her face while Scott let out a defeated sigh. “Don't we? You said you were sure she wasn't lying”, he said, glancing towards Gabriel while he leaned back over the table, as if that position would make him more powerful. “I am, and she isn't”, he said, putting an urge into his voice before he let out a thick chuckle and that odd look you had seen a couple times these last days began to spread over his face again “You all are hesitating because you're afraid of them, right? You shouldn't be. That's why I brought her in here. So you could see”, he said, almost as if he as some prophet who was trying to show his followers the right way, his eyes nearly looking as if he was possessed by his ideas. “See what?”, Laura asked, similarly irritated as you were while that only seemed to facilitate Gabriel in his intensity. “That they're cowards. We broke her. Completely. And if we can break her, we can break others. If you come across one of them, keep them alive, start pulling teeth and taking fingers. Get information, because we now know the more pain and fear you pour over them, the sooner they drop the act, which is what it is!” Now what the fuck was that? He stared at you all, eyes wide, and his hand gripping into the table’s edges as if he intended to break it while you just looked back at him, with furrowed brows and not sure what to answer to this bullshit. “Do you have anything to say?”, Gabriel’s eyes suddenly fell on you, his eyes still as wide and his body as tense. “What?”, you said, startled for a moment. “I can see the way you’re looking. The way you’re all looking at me”, he said, clenching his jaw while you could see Laura and Scott looking at you from the side, as if you expected you to tell Gabriel what kind of shit had just slipped out of his lips. “I just..I don’t think it’s the fear that made her break and I don’t think teeth pulling or cutting fingers off is the way to get into their head either”, you said, sighing softly as he looked confusedly at you, as if what you had just said was a thousandth time crazier that what he had told you. “Then how?”, he asked and well, now you had to find a way to put your thoughts into words, in any way Gabriel might understand. “She revealed everything after she found out what this place actually is, right? That it’s not as bad as Alpha tried to picture it. And she cracked once for all when she realized Alpha lied about not only that but about Lydia and a bunch of other stuff too”,you said and even though the look in Gabriel’s eyes didn’t make you feel like he was just trying to process what you were trying to say, you went on ,”Realizing that Alpha is a liar and betrayed them too is what made them crack.” “I think so too”, Laura said, and you couldn’t thank her more since it honestly felt like Gabriel was gonna jump on you and maul you if no one would support your point as well,”We have to make sure we find the most effective way...we can’t let our hate or rage get in the way.”

Only an hour later, Alexandria was starting to go into lockdown, preparing search teams, sharpening their weapons and dividing tasks and while this would have already been more than enough for anybody inside the community, there were calls coming from an outpost warning about new waves of walkers that were starting to make their way towards Alexandria like it already had happened weeks ago. “How many can you see in the herd?”, Laura asked as she stood beside you in front of the smaller gates at Alexandria’s backside, holding the walkie close to her lips before the crackling voice of from the other side echoed through the air. “100 at least. It's hard to tell, but it looks like there are Whisperers in it. It's on its way. What should we-” The voice broke off as you looked confused at Laura who stared huffing at the walkie, shaking her head softly. “Echo post, say again”, she repeated as you made your way over to Gabriel and Rosita, but nothing but static crackled through the walkie. “We lost you. Echo post, respond”, she repeated again while you gave her another confused look, asking yourself what the hell was going on at that outpost before you heard Gabriel’s voice again, thankfully less eerie than it had been in the conference room. “That watch tower's two miles away. We can't let this next wave bunch up at the gate the way the last one did.” “Why would they send a herd now?”, Scott scoffed, readjusting the armor he had just slung around his torso. “We have a defector giving us information. They're trying to stop us before we act on it”, Gabriel shook his head “We're gonna have to split up if we want to cover both gates” Laura said while you glanced at her walkie and still nothing but static slipped out of it, only hearing Scott’s voice distantly between the bunch of people that were rushing around you. “That means less people out there.” “We don't have a choice”, you heard Gabriel quickly mumble back while you let out a small sigh and glanced up. ”Well defending the gates will take more people than finding the group, right? or do you wanna stop part of the herd outside too?”, you asked, looking at Gabriel as he let out a sigh. ”Yes, that would be the best, that’s why we should split up”, he added again while Scott let out a grumpy huff and moved from your side back to the few Alexandrians that were busy with collecting the right weapons for the people who would head out. “Show of hands how many people here have been on gate duty?”, Laura called out as she walked from your little group towards the others, trying to get some overview in this mass as a couple rose their hands. You didn't, though you walked a little away from Rosita and Gabriel, hoping to see that none of the other shift workers would head outside and leave you completely alone with it. Normally, it would’ve been okay but after this whole forenoon you could pass on that. “Hold on. New Plan”, you heard Gabriel say before you could go any further, bringing your glance right back to him ,”Rosita and Laura, stay back on gate security with a skeleton crew. (Y/N), you too, so you’re available if you’re needed in the infirmary or anybody gets hurt in the night.” You nodded slowly, kind of agreeing with him for the first time today. You hadn’t expected much else, there were already two less people in the infirmary, especially during the time most people could get hurt they wouldn’t send you out as well. You could still hear Gabriel making some more orders to other people, and while it still weirded you out to see him in any kind of leading position, you got stuck in your thoughts again. This would be a goddamn long night again, and while you were already exhausted from the little sleep you had gotten during the last nights, at least this wouldn’t allow any nightmares to torture you, at least you wouldn’t have to see Negan die over and over again until you would wake up covered in cold sweat.

The sun was slowly vanishing from the sky, filling up the forest with warm light when Negan found himself back on his usual spot by some tree, nibbling on the rest of meat that was left on the bone he’d been able to snatch from today’s dinner. Tossing the clean bone to the side he let out a small groan and leaned himself against the tree behind him, glancing around the camp that was becoming even emptier than earlier today. Alpha and Beta still weren’t back and that only gave him the feeling that something bigger was going on, and he was kinda pissed at himself that he hadn’t been able to get some real information out of any of these silent ass fuckers except for catching some small comments about having to wander off to different spots in the territory. He’d hoped that would help him in any way but he couldn’t make up some connection between them, not at all. He knew some of the area around here, especially from runs during his Savior days but by far not enough to make sense out of these spots that were sprawled out over the area. He wished he could just ask out of the blue but he couldn’t do that, that was for sure, it would just make him look suspicious and that was something he really didn’t need, so he had to find the right moment, and that shit was especially hard when the fuckers who were sitting with him by the roasted pig were as taciturn as the fucking rest of this damn group. He was just about to try to figure a way out to get the skin freaks to talk, right as he found the right opening as two of the four whisperers who’d sat around the pig nodded to one another, got up and slowly made their way into the woods. ”They’re going too? Fuck, leaving us poor fuckers alone, huh? Gettin’ empty in here”, Negan chuckled, glancing at the other two men who’d been silently nibbling on their meat until now but were looking up now, the older clearing his throat after he gulped down his bite. “They’re heading to the cave...Alpha wants more guards there after the enemies got out, wasn’t sure if they all did”, he mumbled, surprising him for a moment with that long ass sentence that sure was more than he’d expected before he got what the man had just said. Whoever was in that small group they’d talked about yesterday, they were out which was definitely some good news, except not everyone had made it out and he could only reassure himself that his girl was most likely in Alexandria and the chances were close to zero that she was among that group. “Alright, now that’s a good reason for gettin’ their asses outta here”, he chuckled, running his hand over the beard stubble that was already a little thicker than usual while he put a brighter grin on his face. But now that he had them by the balls, he couldn’t let go there and damn, chances were low that he was gonna get a whisperer to sit next to him who spoke in actual long sentences as this one here. ”By the way, anyone’s seen the big fella? Feel like he’s gone forever”, Negan said, reaching for his last piece of meat and cleared his throat slightly,”if he’s by the cave, pretty damn sure no fucker gets in or outta there without being knocked on their ass.” The whisperer only shook his head slightly, nibbling off the last tiny bit of meat on the bone before he glanced back at him, keeping him more on edge than he liked. “He’s on his way into the enemy’s camp...He’s on his way to the place that held you captured.”

A thick yawn left your lips as you moved through the streets of Alexandria that were filled with darkness by now, while you grabbed the Machete in your hand a little tighter and glimpsed around yourself. Rosita and Laura were right next to you, a few other Alexandrians were walking right behind you, caring some spears and hatchets while Rosita talked to Gabriel on the walkie, trying to find out when you had to prepare for a wave of walkers, though that was your smallest problem at the moment. They had reached the outpost by now only to find the people stationed there slaughtered and left to reanimate, giving you a sad explanation to why they hadn’t responded to the walkie calls anymore and it didn’t take a genius to figure out who was responsible for that bloodbath. “They were forced to call. Must've held the knife to her throat to make him call us and lie”, Gabriel’s crackling voice sounded through the walkie while a cool shudder ran down your back and made you unconsciously grab the machete tighter. “Why?”, you could only hear Scott’s voice echoing quieter through the walkie, just before Gabriel’s voice sounded a little louder to you, “Most of us are out here. There's hardly anybody back home.” And right in that moment, right as you felt the tension growing even more in you and gave you the feeling that this whole night would take another horrible turn, you heard an eerie scream sounding through the night. “Walkers!”, you heard a male voice scream, mixing within moments with the groans of the dead, forcing your glance at a house in a side street, the doors wide open as freshly reanimated corpses of Alexandrian’s poured out of it, their bodies covered in blood, some of their heads nearly hanging onto their shoulders as more blood flew out of their slit throats. “They're here”, you heard Rosita call out as you gripped the machete tighter, watching as the guards who had walked behind you right now were already storming to the walkers to end them before they could cause greater harm. “Are you gonna check the infirmary?”, Rosita asked, her voice already filled with tension as you nodded quickly, feeling as if you were stuck in another one of your nightmares before you could see her nodding to Laura. “Come with me. We’ll check Morgan Street”, she panted, already starting to run while you could feel yourself starting to switch into the survival mode. The whisperers were here, and fuck, now it was time to fight. Heavy pants left your lips as you ran down the street, keeping your machete ready as you tried to make sure to catch every little thing that was going on around you, tried to make sure that you wouldn’t miss any whisperer that could hide in the shadow of the houses. It was an oppressive feeling that was pressing down on you there, giving you the feeling that in any moment, any time some of those freaks could attack out of the blue even though you hadn’t seen just one when you finally reached the infirmary. Gulping thickly you made your way up the porch, your heart pounding up into your throat as you rose the machete a little higher, preparing in case one of them was hiding in here. Your eyes were constantly searching for blood, your ears directed to detect any groans while you hoped dearly that no one had been in here and had hurt them, or worse, was still making their way through the house. But instead, and before you could even open the door it ripped open, revealing the three patients who stood in their pajamas in the door, their eyes tried from the sleep but filled up with worry and confusion. “What’s going on here?”, Barbara asked, her voice filled up with fear as you walked closer, quickly lowering your weapon while still trying to keep yourself calm to not get them all worked up as well. “Whisperers are in here”, you said, gulping thickly as you glanced around for a moment, trying to reassure yourself that none of them was near before you glanced back at the three, ”We’re trying to find where exactly they are. I need you to get inside and move up into one of the rooms upstairs and lock yourself in. We’re gonna be fine” “Okay”, Oscar just nodded while Barbara already tried to vanish behind him, clearly scared and you had really hoped that you could’ve told them in a more sparing way but you couldn’t lose any time, not while those freaks were in here. “I’ll lock the outer doors now”, you said, trying to force a small smile up your lips even though you knew how desperate it made you look as you watched them moving inside, “We’re gonna be fine.” Fumbling on the keys from your pocket you quickly moved them inside, seeing the last of them as they moved up the stairs and vanished upstairs before the keys clicked in the lock and gave you the go for the next steps. Your heart was still pumping violently against your chest when you finally locked the two terrace doors as well, making sure that no one would get in there or would at least have a hard time doing so. And right in the very moment you finally made your way back down on the street a gun shut sounded through the air, pumping you right back full with a new wave of adrenaline as it urged you to ran towards its source. It was coming from somewhere around the brownstones, you were sure, and the fear of what might have happened there right now kept you running down the street, past the corpses of the Alexandrian’s that plastered parts of the blacktop and the pools of blood that slowly grew around them. Your breath grew heavier with every moment, straining your throat as you pushed yourself to keep going until you finally got into the street of the brownstones and raised your machete, hoping that you weren’t too late. Panting heavily you glanced around, feeling the fear skyrocketing in you as you made your way down the street, instinctively glancing down the stairway that lead to Negan’s old cell, right before what you could glimpse at through the window filled you up with nausea in the matter of seconds. There was a body down there, lying on the concrete ground and all you could see was part of its lifeless figure, not more, not less, but it was way more than enough to let the panic in you rise even more. “Shit”, it left your lips as you slowly stepped down the stairs, keeping your weapon ready in case whoever was responsible for this was still down there. But there was no one, nothing as you finally entered the all too familiar room and could finally see the full figure of the person who was laying by the bars. “Oh no, oh fuck”, you panted as you stepped towards Laura’s lifeless body that got slowly surrounded with a pool of blood and was daubing the metal bars next to her. “Fuck...fuck!”, it left your lips again, as if it would act as a valve for the panic that was rushing through you right in the very moment you saw her body starting to twitch and heard a groan falling from her lips, alarming you to do something. Carefully, you stepped closer, laying the machete to the side for a moment and moving your hand to the holder on your pants to get your knife out, before you leaned down to her, trying to figure out how fast she would reanimate before her bleary eyes suddenly stared at you and her arms raised up as she snarled, forcing you to act fast. “I’m sorry”, you mumbled, gulping thickly before you reached your knife up and let it rush down onto her head, closing your eyes the moment you could feel the blade burying itself into her skull and could feel her body going limp beneath you. “Fuck”, you cursed, trying to hold it together as you moved your hand into her blonde hair to keep her steady as you moved the knife out of her skull and slowly let her down, before the shock ebbed for a moment away and made you realize that Mary was gone from this cell and that she and any other whisperer was still walking around outside. Fuck had she fled? Had she done this? Or had it been some other whisperer trying to get her back to Alpha done this shit? You didn’t know and it drove you crazy and you rushed up the stairs again, almost on your way onto the street again before you caught what had you had missed to notice when you’d seen Laura’s body in the cell. The door of Michonne’s home was opened, not wide but just enough to slip through and after what you had found in the cell, this couldn’t mean anything good. “Shit”, you cursed to yourself, gulping thickly as you could feel your palms growing sweatier while you gripped the machete tighter and slowly moved up the stairs, right as you heard a loud thud coming from the inside, mixing with choked up screams that let the fear in you spike once more. This wasn’t just preparation anymore, there was definitely whisperer inside, hurting Judith, RJ or maybe one of the others and you had to get in there, you had to get in there now. You could feel yourself tensing harder as you got into the house, trying to be as quiet and fast at the same time without stumbling about anything in your way, knowing that you could neither lose time nor that you could allow whoever was in there to know of your presence before you could afford it. “No!”, you could suddenly hear Rosita’s voice scream upstairs, sending another shock through you before you heard another thud, enough for your body to take over your mind and make you rush upstairs just as you heard Mary’s voice calling out. “Beta, stop!”, she screamed just as you got up the stairs and saw her standing in the doorframe at the end of the hall, her small stature only barely covering the scene inside. Rosita was on the ground, blood dripping down her arms as the whisperer who had to be Beta stood above her, his arms raised, ready to rush down the knifes he had in his hands down into her body. “Alpha wants me alive. Step towards me”, Mary said, moving the knife in her hands to her throat while you tried to process what was happening in front of your eyes right now. You stood there, glued to the ground as you saw the giant with the skin mask move towards the short woman, nodding at her and leaving Rosita behind just as you saw Judith and RJ peaking out of the door beside you, uninjured but just as shocked as you. And just then, just when that giant beast got to Mary you allowed yourself to move towards them, standing in front of them to make sure you could do at least something for them while you lowered your weapon as they started to walk down the hallway. “Toss it away”, you suddenly heard the giant growl as he saw the machete that was still in your hand, stopping his path as you stared at him for a second, feeling another icy shudder rolling down your back before you let the weapon fall to the ground and pushed your foot onto it to slide it as far as possible away, trying to convince him that it was enough. You wanted to kill him, you really did, for all he had done here in this night and for everything he was involved in before but you knew that you didn’t stand a chance. You couldn’t risk everybody’s live in here by trying to play the hero, keep the machete and attack him, you just couldn’t. You had to do the smart thing and let them leave, no matter how hard that was. You had to let Mary walk him out of here, the woman who had gladly said the truth about everything and who was now risking her damn life to keep Beta from continuing his slaughter. And so you were forced to watch them walking down the stairs after beta had started to walk again, feeling like shit that you couldn’t do anything but stand there and wait for them to leave, feeling like shit that you couldn’t fight even though you knew that this was the only smart thing to do. And then finally, the door fell into its lock. With that one sound a could snapped in you and allowed you to move again, first reassuring yourself that Judith and RJ were both fine before you found yourself rushing down the hallway. “Oh fuck”, it slipped out of your lips as you caught Rosita leaning against a wall by now, holding her arm with her hand that was already covered in her blood, wincing as she moved to see you. You’d almost expected for Judith to call out your language as she’d often done it with Negan but instead, she stayed silent now as you kneeled down next to Rosita and glanced at her as she kept on pressing her hands onto the wound. You gulped thickly, glancing from the kids to Rosita, still too overwhelmed with everything that had just happened before you nodded to her, trying to somehow grasp some clear thoughts as you watched her wincing once more. “We’ll get you to the infirmary now, alright?”, you said, watching as she nodded and tried to move herself a little up. “Okay, let’s go.”

Fuck it. Fuck this goddamn day. Hours had passed since that whisperer had broken the news and there hadn’t been a quiet moment in his head ever since. Beta was probably right fucking now at Alexandria and he couldn’t do a thing. All this time he’d hoped she’d be there and not among that group, had told himself that this was the only probable thing and now this hope had fucked him over. He’d almost been up and about to end this whole fucking plan here and make his way back to Alexandria, too worked up by his emotions and fears that this big ass idiot would end up hurting his wife when he’d start whatever fuckin’ slaughter he’d planned there. He’d pulled himself together though, forced himself to sit his ass down and stay calm, no matter how fucking hard that was at the moment. He only had a chance to really change something if he stayed here, he couldn’t let that be ruined by some suspicions that might not even be true. Maybe she wasn’t in Alexandria at the moment for whatever damn reason, and if she was...she would knew what to do when that freak got in. She would know when it was smart to fight and when the time had come to hide or attack from the ambush, she would know what to do. She wasn’t asleep right now, right? No, during all those years in the prison both of them had gotten used to stay up longer to use the time they had together in the night, she probably was still up and would notice when that fucker would walk through Alexandria or come even close to their house. She wouldn’t get hurt, she would be fine. A tight breath left his lips as he shifted against the tree, moving uncomfortably over the cold ground as he closed his eyes tightly shut, trying to silence the fucking thoughts that kept on spinning around in his head. All he wanted now was to be with her, make sure she was fine and make sure that no one would just harm a damn hair on her head but he couldn’t and he had to find a way to cope with that, somehow. Morning fell over Alexandria, filling the community with light again after the horrible night that was still stuck in everybody’s bones, keeping the memories of the dead bodies and the blood that was still partly covering the streets alive. The night and the early morning hours had brought revelations with themselves that at least were more good than they were bad. Gabriel’s group outside had brought Mary back inside with them after Beta had been forced to leave her behind as they’d shot at them, unfortunately without killing him but at least urging him to vanish back in the woods. Aaron was back, bringing the news that everybody except for Connie and Magna had made it out of the cave in time before it collapsed and left their fate unknown. And while you felt sick knowing that not everybody might have made it, you were more than relieved that Daryl was out even though he still wasn’t back, still searching for other openings of the cave to see if he could get them back or at least find Lydia. The complete dark side of these revelations was a late gift from Dante, one that he had worked on during his time in Alexandria, before everyone’s eyes. he’d used Cheryl’s grave to build a tunnel that lead out of the community, allowing Beta to walk right into Alexandria without having to conquer the walls just the tiniest bit. You’d already thought you’d seen the last of him but hell, that asshole really was trying to stay in your minds for longer. “Are you coming with us to Hilltop?”, you heard Judith ask from her spot at the kitchen table, watching as you got her and RJ’s food for the way ready. A whole bunch of people would head there today, along with Rosita who you could stitch up in the night but who’d definitely needed some of the medication you simply didn’t have available anymore at Alexandria. They’d leave in a bit, and you really weren’t sure yet what people had planned for you. “I’m not so sure to be honest. They need me here at the infirmary but if I could come with you, I could get new health care supplies and stock up a bit up, maybe recruit someone to come help here. So we’ll see”, you said with a small smile, packing the first done sandwich into a box while she slowly nodded, watching you before she puckered her brows slightly and shifted over her spot. “Where’s Negan?”, she asked out of the blue, startling you for a moment as you gulped thickly and glanced down at the bread in front of you. They hadn’t told her yet, of course not. You couldn’t fool her, she knew that he hadn’t been in the cell but hell, you also couldn’t tell her what you suspected him of doing outside and you also didn’t want to just crudely say that he had simply escaped his cell, leaving him to look like someone who had left this place behind for good. “He isn’t here at the moment”, you said, feeling your throat growing tighter the moment you had spoken it out. “He’ll come back, right?”, she asked, glancing at you as fumbled on Carl’s old hat that laid right next to her on the table. “Yeah, yeah he will”, you said with another smile that was more bittersweet than anything, filled up with the uncertainty of when this time would come and the worries about him, mixed up with the hopeful thought that it if you were just a little lucky you’d be able to have him back with you sooner than later. And you couldn’t put in words how much you hoped that the luck would be on your side with that.

(If you would like to be tagged, just let me know! The gif isn’t mine/ it was originally posted by dancing-at-the-funeralparty)

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comradesummers · 4 years

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Some Buffy big bads: Glory, The Mayor, Angelus, The Trio, The First Evil

Hi, thanks for asking. Sorry I took so long to respond, insert my regular excuse about college kicking my ass (which it is).

5. The First Evil.

Season 7 is not great in a lot of ways, but one of the main problems is how underwhelming the main antagonist is. Despite being really hyped up at first (pun very much intended) and initially making a big splash, the First is kind of a non-entity. Now, admittedly, with a villain like this, this was always going to be a problem. I mean, the guy turns into different people, so it’s gonna be hard to give it a consistent personality. But with that said, I still think the writers could have at least tried to give it some of its own traits that would’ve remained consistent among all the actors portraying it. Because lacking that, there’s very little to grasp onto with this villain.

But worse than that is the fact that the First consistently fails to live up to the promise of this type of character. Because the only thing that you can really do with an incorporeal villain whose only real power is shape-shifting is psychological manipulation. And the writers seemed to understand that at first. That’s why our first prolonged introduction to the First in Conversations With Dead People is all about fucked up mind games. And it really works. Like what the First does with Willow and Dawn in that episode is really scary and harrowing. But following that, the First just doesn’t do that anymore. I mean, I guess it does mess with Spike and the potentials, but for some reason not with the main fucking character. It was such a waste of a decent concept, and a big part of why the season feels so monotonous to me.

4. The Mayor

The Mayor is a great villain and Harry Groener gives an excellent performance. His relationship with Faith is somehow both very sweet and deeply fucked up, and an incredible inversion of the Buffy/Giles relationship. And the whole shtick of him being this polite, squeaky clean, “family values” (read: Republican) politician who also happens to be a soulless demon (former human? I was never too clear on what exactly he was) is a lot of fun. He truly is a joy to watch and the only reason he’s not higher on the list is that I like the other characters just a tiny bit better.

3. Angelus

Yeah, so this show has a lot of great villains and choosing between them is really fucking hard.

The Angelus storyline is so good for so many reasons, but mainly because it’s a villain that affects Buffy so directly and so personally. Like the entire situation: the slow buildup of Bangel, the turn itself occurring within the worst possible circumstances (which are problematic™ but they do work really well on an emotional level), and then that gut punch of a resolution, are all so fucking effective and well-constructed. And the relationship between Spike, Angelus, and Drusilla is set up beautifully in the first half of the season, so the resulting payoff is so much fun to watch.

It’s such a tight, well-written story, that I’m honestly kind of shocked at myself that I only put Angelus at number 3. I guess if I had to articulate why he’s not higher on the list, I would say that I like the storyline more than I like the character? Like not sure they’re entirely separable, but at the end of the day, Angelus is just kind of a mustache twirling villain, but the storyline is so good, and the relationships he has with other characters are so juicy and interesting, that it really doesn’t matter that he could maybe be a bit more compelling on an individual level.

2. The Trio

Yeah, I know I’m committing fandom heresy here, but hear me out.

So anyone who’s followed my blog for a while might have noticed that I’m kind of obsessed with the Trio. And like, it’s not because I find them particularly likable or appealing (I don’t and I’m not supposed to). But the fact that these characters are so distinctly reprehensible is exactly why they work so well. In a show full to the brim with demons and vampires and hell-gods, there’s something uniquely terrifying about a villain that you know. Like you see the Trio, and you’re like, I know these guys, I know exactly the kind of gross toxicity that they’re about, and I know exactly the kind of evil shit they’re capable of. And I know that this kind of villain is more common nowadays, but I think that the sheer accuracy of how the Trio is written is especially impressive in the pre-incel days.

And in addition to all that, the way they serve the season thematically is just brilliant. Like starting them off as three non-threatening idiots is greats because it highlights just how not okay Buffy is. Like last season she’s fighting a god and this season she’s fighting some nerds she knew in high school? And they’re also brilliant in the way they serve as parallels for both Willow and Spike. Like the Trio and Willow were all seemingly non-threatening nerds in high school who are now obsessed with gaining power in order to compensate for their insecurities. So the intersection of their respective descents into darkness is really well done. And the Trio also serve as a parallel for Spike, sort of in the same way. In that they’re all characters that are initially presented or perceived as non-threatening, before the audience is forced to come to terms with the full extent of what they’re capable of.

I get that they’re not exactly the fun kind of villain, which is why most people don’t share my obsession with them. But I really love what the writers did with them and I’m not going to feel bad about it.

1. Glory

Glory is kind of like the template for a perfect villain for this show. She checks all the boxes: She’s entertaining and funny, but also thoroughly scary and threatening when she needs to be. She’s just the right amount of mysterious, and the writers spread the information about her perfectly throughout the season. Also, she’s written to be thoroughly evil but at the same time her motivations are still sort of sympathetic somehow? But most of all, by having her need to kill the one person Buffy can’t stand to lose in order to get what she wants, the stakes are a lot higher than the standard apocalyptic stuff, and it’s really effective. She’s truly an incredible villain and I love her so much.

#the first evil #mayor richard wilkins iii #angelus #the trio #glory #btvs #buffy the vampire slayer

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yetanotherbuffyblog · 3 years

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Avoid Jocks with Jackets

We’ve done a love spell episode before, but we’re doing another one.

Okay then.

Spike moves into Xander’s place to keep him away from the school basement. The reasoning being that the Hellmouth down there is not helping his sanity at all. Xander’s not happy about it though, as you probably could have guessed.

After having a quick conversation with Dawn about her love life, Dawn somehow falls desperately in love with a guy on the school football team, RJ. It gets pretty embarrassing, because she insists that it’s true love and decides to try out for the cheerleading team using Buffy’s old cheerleading outfit. She wrecks the outfit, and the audition. Buffy is more upset about what’s going on with her sister than the outfit, but Dawn will not hear it.

What makes this scary is when Dawn overhears that someone is replacing RJ on the spot of quarterback, and to make sure RJ keeps his spot she ends up PUSHING THAT GUY DOWN THE STAIRS WHAT THE FUDGE

At this point, when Dawn’s denying anything to do with it in the principal’s office, is when Buffy realizes something is strange with Dawn’s new obsession. RJ asks Dawn out, and when Buffy, Xander, and Willow are hanging out at the Bronze they see RJ dancing very suggestively with a girl, only to later realize it’s Dawn. After Buffy sends Dawn home, Dawn is cornered in the street by RJ’s girlfriend? Ex-girlfriend? Whatever, she’s mad, and attacks Dawn, and Buffy has to break it up.

Buffy, as school counselor, tries to talk to RJ about how he’s treating girls around him, but then starts… falling for him, I guess? And she tries to lead Dawn away from him saying that he needs space or something, only to pull him out of class one day and seduce him in an empty classroom (which is witnessed by Dawn and interrupted by Xander).

When back at home, even though Buffy and Dawn argue about RJ, the others decide that something is definitely wrong and there must be some kind of love spell (Buffy seems to think that the spell only affects RJ, what she has is REAL). Xander remembers that RJ’s older brother was in school the same time they were, a couple years older, and decides to go talk to him with Spike, while Anya and Willow watch the Summers sisters.

Also RJ visits while Xander and Spike are out, and though Willow and Anya turn him away at the door, they also fall in love with him (decide Willow being lesbian) and all four decide they need to prove who loves him more.

Xander and Spike find out that RJ’s older brother, now kind of an uncool slob, has lended RJ his jacket. Through some deduction, they decide that his jock jacket is what has the magic spell on it, and decide to get rid of it. First they have to stop the female Scoobies though--Buffy’s planning to bazooka the principal, Dawn’s planning to kill herself, and Willow was planning to use magic to turn RJ into a woman.

Buffy does snap out of it when she sees Dawn on the train tracks, and that makes me feel a little better about this.

They quickly take the jacket and burn it, and everything is fine.

Except it’s implied Anya robbed several banks, though she turns off the radio news before the rest put it all together.

Notes!

-Is Spike actually better by being pulled away from the Hellmouth? I don’t know. Seems better to me so far, but we’ll see how it fares long-term.

-So there is apparently some argument about whether or not when Xander catches them Buffy is about to have sex with RJ or in the middle of having sex with him, and it’s just obscured because this is a television show and they could only get away with so much. The latter seems more likely given the tone of this show and all, but I choose not to believe it because while the issue of teachers/school staff molesting teenagers is all too common, that’s gross yo and I don’t want to think about Buffy doing that, magically-induced or not.

-Then again, why make it sound like RJ’s the victim? He’s essentially going around with a magic jacket that date-rapes girls and women into falling in love with him and acting in a way that’s contrary to their normal personalities. THAT’s pretty sick too. Like, maybe he doesn’t realize the effect the jacket has, as his brother doesn’t seem to think it’s magic, but I feel like that’s giving him too much credit.

-Basically someone’s raping someone and that’s gross.

-And said brother was at school the same time as the Scoobies and this never came up? Granted, he was a couple of years older, I think. Also, it seems as if the jacket has gotten stronger? Because apparently it’s passed down and that’s how their father met their mother. Which… hoo boy, this entire family’s scum, isn’t it? Reminds me of Anders in _Almighty Johnsons._

-I really, REALLY like that what snaps Buffy out of everything and makes her realize she’s been whammied is that she sees Dawn willing to kill herself for this guy. And she very strongly tells her that no guy is worth killing yourself over. Good job, BtVS!

Also don’t shove someone down stairs for a guy. That’s also an implied moral, but really don’t hurt people for love. That’s bad.

-Given that Willow’s plan for getting RJ is to magically make him into a girl, I think… we can say that’s a lesbian, not bisexual.

-Hey is the bazooka Buffy has in this episode the same one from the episode she shoots that demon with that can’t be killed with normal weapons or whatever?

-When I say ‘uncool slob’ about RJ’s brother I want to clarify that it’s not because he doesn’t have a fancy job or is out of shape. It’s because he’s those things, when he puts value on really shallow things like girls and athletic prowess, which don’t matter. Essentially, he thinks being cool in high school is status and that’s… not good.

-According to TV Tropes though, the actor playing RJ is actually… older than Sarah Michelle Gellar?

What?

#BtVS #Buffy Summers #Dawn Summers #Willow Rosenberg #Xander Harris #Spike #Anya #7x06

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heroes-fading · 5 years

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Why Veronica Mars Won’t Have a Season 5

My introduction to Veronica Mars came in the midst of my father’s death. I watched episodes in hospital waiting rooms before it happened, and holed up in my room afterwards. I found a lot of comfort in the strength that the characters provided. The scene of Logan at his mother’s funeral - maniac and trying to find the humor in it - is exactly what I felt at my father’s. I, like Logan, made jokes and tried shrugging it off. I was certain that this was some sort of cosmic joke, and I was on the receiving end. Veronica’s personality shaped most of who I was in high school - my dad passed away two weeks before I started. Her snark, intelligence, and resilience inspired me so much then. I found a wonderful community with fans of the show, and to this day as a semi-adult I love and adore so many people I met through the show.

When the movie was announced, I was ecstatic. I remember rushing to a bathroom stall at my high school so I could eloquently keyboard-smash about it with my friends, donating to the Kickstarter, wearing my t-shirt, going to the theater with my friend to watch it and livestreaming it the night of its release with my online friends. In a sea of horrible feelings and helplessness, Veronica Mars helped me feel empowered and supported.

That’s partly why all of this stings so badly and feels so much like a betrayal.

Logan Echolls fits into a lot of tropes I’ve grown to hate as a self-identified feminist who has zero time for bad boys. Men who “atone for their sins” to get with a leading heroine are ones I often find boring - so often they’re executed poorly and their past mistakes would be absolutely unforgivable in a real context. Chuck Bass, Damon Salvatore, Spike, et. all are characters I’m tired of seeing in fiction. Logan Echolls organized a bum fight, took out Veronica’s headlights, burned down a community pool, made a series of racist comments to Weevil, and generally had moments of being the absolute worst. But for some weird reason, I have a massive soft spot for Logan and he’s become one of my favorite fictional characters.

Maybe it’s because we’ve seen him go through much, change so much over the course of the show. Maybe it’s because the show actually held him accountable (as well as Veronica) so the redemption didn’t feel cheap or unearned. Or maybe it’s because I’m just a weak heterosexual hypnotized by Jason Dohring’s abs and my feminism only goes so far as who I think is hot. I hope it’s not the last one, but I’m sure some would argue it is! The point is -- healthy, going-to-therapy Logan feels earned after the deaths of his parents, his abusive dad killing his girlfriend, numerous beatings, and too many near death experiences to count. Logan went from being an obligatory psychotic jackass to a fairly well-adjusted boyfriend in a way that made narrative sense.

His offscreen death right after getting married to the love of his life? Not so much.

The thing that stings about Veronica Mars’ final episode is not just Logan’s death - it’s what it means for the show going forward, especially its titular character. What made Veronica lovable was not her toughness as Logan’s final voicemail details. As season 3 Logan reminds us, Veronica isn’t invincible and she isn’t always right. What made her such a compelling character was what was underneath that toughness, and the people around her that highlighted that warmth buried underneath layers of trauma. In other words, what made her a marshmallow. Burnt on the outside, but gooey on the inside, as Wallace describes her in the pilot.

When we meet Veronica in the pilot, she’s been through a litany of traumas: her best friend’s death, a breakup, sexual assault and drugging, social ostracization, her mother’s addiction and swift exit from her life, a swift drop in socioeconomic status, and routine humiliation at the hands of her peers. But in spite of all of that, she’s still the girl that cuts Wallace down from the flag because it’s the right thing to do. She’s still the girl that worries about her father, has sympathy for Logan after his mother’s death despite all of his cruelty, defends and comforts Meg Manning after she endures the same bullying Veronica did, cares (often, initially unwillingly) about the people whose cases she takes, and bakes cookies for her friend after his basketball game just because. Even as recently as the books, Veronica bakes a cake for her terrible, abandoning mother on her birthday in spite of her replacing her and Keith with another family. She looks after her half-brother Hunter, even if he’s a painful reminder of her mother’s foibles. Veronica isn’t nearly as tough as she pretends to be, and that’s a good thing. That’s what makes her interesting and stops her from being like every other cynical hardboiled detective trope.

The people around Veronica - who support her, evolve with her, and serve as contrasts to her - are what help make her story so compelling. People who can tell her when she’s wrong (Logan, Keith, Weevil, et. all), who remind her of her soft side (Keith, Wallace, Mac, Logan), who can stop her from turning into a noir stereotype and cement her as Veronica Mars. People aren’t tuning in just to see Veronica snark at random side characters. Her personal journey in moving past her trauma and her relationships with other characters are what really makes the character who she is.

Her journey, from the pilot episode to the movie, is realizing that she can’t just shove down and run away from her trauma. Over the course of her show, we see her form bonds with people in spite of her attempts not to - Wallace, Mac, Logan, and a variety of others. They help her, support her, and challenge her in ways that only serve to make her story more interesting. In the movie, we see Veronica realize she can’t keep running and she doesn’t want a cushy life as a New York lawyer with a boyfriend who doesn’t understand why she cares so much about what happens in her hometown. Neptune, as corrupt and corroded as it is, is her hometown.

That’s why it’s such a spectacular slap in the face for the end of season 4 to offer the exact opposite. Veronica loses her husband (after finally evolving from the Veronica in the pilot who swore she was never getting married because she was so cynical about relationships) immediately after marriage. She leaves behind Keith, Wallace, and everyone else to chase unknown cases with unknown people in unknown places. As Rob has said, he saw this as the only way for Veronica to continue to be interesting - roaming the world solo as if she’s Sherlock Holmes.

This is not character progression. This is not driving the plot forward. This is regressing to a character to a point even before the pilot episode - a hardened Veronica who pretends she doesn’t care, who uses her trauma as an armour, and keeps people away from her. It undermines the central message of the movie - that Neptune is her home and in spite of her problems, she’s willing to fight for it. By killing Logan, Rob wanted to kill Veronica’s ties to Neptune. This isn’t an evolution - it’s a devolution.

Rob Thomas has offered this option before - a Veronica exit vehicle sans everyone else, including only Kristen Bell snarking at a camera - in the form of the last-ditch FBI pilot. It was not well received by fans nor networks, and unsurprisingly not picked up or seen anywhere other than a reposting on YouTube. I think if he sincerely expects any other result from a similar future attempt, he’s lying to himself.

If Rob Thomas wanted the male character-centric P.I. noir he initially planned on writing rather than Veronica Mars, he should have written that rather than allowed it to take over the Veronica Mars universe. Writing a woman with the same elements of toxic masculinity as male characters (a complete disregard for their own feelings, ripping themselves away from personal connections, framing “toughness” as superior and emotional development as a waste of time) is not feminism - it’s just lazy. “Strong female characters” don’t have to be made strong by undergoing trauma after trauma and shutting down until they’re a shadow of their former selves. Their male counterparts aren’t expected to have to deal with rape, death, ostracization, and every other possible form of trauma - women sure as hell shouldn’t.

Furthermore, the way that Rob Thomas has framed his fanbase is shameful. Veronica Mars fans aren’t just deranged fangirls too obsessed with Jason Dohring’s abs to care about the health of the story. This isn’t “not what we wanted, but what we needed” - we’re not an audience too stupid to know what’s good for us. We’re an intelligent audience when we’re giving the showrunners money, but when we’re disagreeing with the writing choices we’re just too invested in romance to “get it”. Predictably, these fans (who make up most of Veronica Mars’ fanbase that the showrunners claim to adore so much) are women. For decades, women have been stereotyped as media-consumers that only care about romance and thus can’t care about depth as if the two are mutually exclusive. This stereotype is incredibly sexist, especially given what this fanbase in particular has done for this franchise, and the continued insistence that these fans just don’t know what’s good for them or the show is incredibly condescending and transparent.

This fanbase poured $6 million dollars into a Kickstarter for a money, maintained energy for a revival and actively lobbied streaming services and networks for a continuation, and kept the fandom twelve years after the finale episode of its original incarnation aired. As much as some may resent how fan energy encouraged writers to see Logan evolve, or Logan and Veronica to sort out their issues, or anything else - these were choices the writers made and stood by for years. A sudden U-Turn in storytelling to go from “the fans were right, this dynamic is wonderful and we’re going to base our advertising around it!” to “well, it was never supposed to be about that” is a kick to the teeth to a fanbase that (literally!) gave so much.

It’s not as if this is the first time the fanbase has been disappointed by a writing decision. Speaking for myself, I was heavily disappointed by the way sexual assault was handled on the original incarnation of the show. Veronica’s rape was handled by at first not framing it as a sexual assault at all in “A Trip to the Dentist” - Duncan Kane (her ex-boyfriend/potential half-brother at some point in time) having sex with her while she was unconcious was framed as just “feelings and nature taking over” because he was under the influence. In season 3, the writers decided that framing women protesting sexual assault on campus as deranged feminists who sexually assault men by inserting them with Easter eggs was a good choice. That Easter egg part was played for laughs by the show, writers, and leading cast member.

Even the inclusion of Dick Casablancas for laughs - whose GHB was intended for his girlfriend and ended up in Veronica’s cup - doesn’t feel right. Ryan Hansen’s charm explains a lot of it, but the show seems to place a lot more blame on Madison for Veronica’s rape despite the fact she narrowly escaped the same fate at Dick’s hands. I was disappointed then, and I’m still disappointed with it now - far away from any romantic concerns of the show.

And my biggest problem with the ending of season 4 isn’t just that Logan is dead. I’m incredibly crushed and disappointed to see all of that character development be met with an offscreen car-bomb, but it doesn’t bode well for Veronica’s characterization and ultimate arc either. I fell in love with Veronica’s character first, and I don’t even recognize her anymore.

If the movie was a thank you to the marshmallows (both the fans and Veronica’s inner softness), the ending of the show was a middle finger to both. If the lesson from the series and the film is that you fight for things because they’re worth it and not because they come easily (whether they be relationships or towns), then the lesson from the revival is that the best thing to do is leave and take your bags. So much of the narrative was set up around Veronica accepting who she was and where she’s from - and the revival’s Veronica has finally been traumatized so much she’s packing her bags and giving up. That’s not toughness. That’s not strength. That’s certainly not saving the show or the character.

That’s selling a grim story because you think it’s edgy. That’s trying to be subversive and failing, too focused on shock value to care about the characters. There’s a reason shows like Game of Thrones, Dexter, and How I Met Your Mother got such backlash -- they just don’t make narrative sense and the endings are far from satisfying. Making the fans happy isn’t a mark of bad storytelling, especially when the survival of your franchise has been so contingent on it. Sometimes, they actually do know what they’re talking about! And if you want a season five, maybe don’t alienate your fans to a point they don’t recognize the show anymore. Rob mentioned, “...I will have made a really bad bet if, en masse, the fans turn on the show. That would certainly be a tough lesson to learn.” -- I think he accomplished that!

I wish the Veronica Mars that got me through the toughest parts of my life was still around. But I’d rather say goodbye to her forever than be faced with a cheap imitation.

#veronica mars #veronica mars spoilers #vm spoilers #logan echolls #logan x veronica #veronica mars season 4 #tv: veronica mars

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fxkthatdairy · 4 years

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Panic Room Chapter Nine: Safe and Sound~ Grayson Dolan

Overview: In the year 2020, to solve the problem of overpopulation. Selected few are thrown into the PANIC ROOM simulation. If the person finds their soulmate in the simulator and manages to survive, they are able to rejoin the rest of the population. If they fail they will become a victim of the PANIC ROOM. What happens when (Y/N) gets thrown in the PANIC ROOM? Will she survive? Or will she fall victim to the simulation?

Warnings: Murder, death, depression, angst, suicide warning

(Y/N)’s POV

The wall slowly closed the gap between Grayson and I and I was trapped in this empty room. My heart began to pound inside my chest and my anxiety spiked extremely. The room was solid white with indents in the walls. I sunk to the floor and placed my head between my knees. How the hell did this happen? I’m never going to see Grayson again. I’m going to die fucking alone. My thoughts ran through my head.

“(Y/F/N) (Y/M/N) (Y/L/N),” A voice echoed through the room.

“Who’s there?,” I questioned.

“Welcome to the second part of the Panic Room simulation that tests the individual strengthens against troubling times. You will be put through some of your biggest fears and saddest memories to see if you can overcome them. If you pass this test, you will be released into a waiting room to see if your partner can make it through as well, if they do you shall be released back to the public but if you shall fail, you will be murdered or you shall become part of the simulation. Outside this room, your darkest fears and follies will push you to your limits. Good luck and God bless America,” the voice echoed off and a door opened to the side of the room.

I stood up and grabbed my bag. It was time to man up and be strong for myself, Grayson, and my mom. I took a deep breath and walked through the doors. The hallway was long and dark. The air was very humid and honestly, it was hard to breathe. I kept walking, even though I had no clue where I was going. My shoes began to feel like they were getting soaked so I looked down. I slowly realized that the floor was filled with water and that water was currently rising. I began picking up my pace as I looked for an outlet out of the hallway. I’ve had a fear of being drowned by water since I was a child due to the fact that I was never properly taught how to swim. My heart pounded against my chest as the water was now up to my knees and I haven’t found any way out of this hallway. It was harder to speed through the hallway as the water rose up higher and higher. My anxiety started getting worse as the water now was up to my chest and it was getting harder to fight through the water. This is how I’m going to die, all alone, in a dark hallway being drowned. As the water rose, I began trying to swim with it up. The water now almost completely filled the hallway and I took one last deep breath before completely submerging underwater. Right before I was going to accept my fate, I noticed a hatch on the ceiling. I swam up towards it and began pulling with all of my strength. The lack of oxygen was starting to affect me as I began slipping in and out of consciousness. I pulled one final time and the hatch door swung open and I was able to breathe again. There was a ladder that led up into what I could only assume was an old manhole that belonged to a sewage system. I climbed the later to the top and pushed the metal cover off and pulled myself out of the hole

When I stood up, I was standing in the middle of the street. Not just any street, the street that my childhood and current home resided. My once soaked clothes were now dry and not tattered anymore. I smelt clean and my hair was nicely done. I walked down the street and noticed the blue Volkswagen bug that used to belong to Mrs.Schmidt before she moved to Florida. It would have been impossible for that buggy to be in that driveway because Mrs.Schmidt moved when I was 15. I then began noticing other small things. The swing set that belonged to the children across the street stood in the front yard was missing and so was their mother’s minivan. Instead, a bright red convertible was parked in the driveway. Before the children were born, their parents were extremely sporty people and loved their sports cars but after the kids were born when I was 14, they switched out their sports cars for something more suitable and safe for their children.

“What year is it?” I thought to myself as I found a lone newspaper on the ground.

The newspaper read: November 26th, 2014, which would’ve made me 13 years old. The date was also very familiar to me but it couldn’t have been. This newspaper had to be old, so I just dropped it back where I found it and continued to walk to my house. As I approached my house, I saw a girl, no taller than 5’0, leaving my house. She closed the door quietly and threw the hood of her hoodie over her head and began to quickly walk away, steering clear of all of the street lights.

“Hey, why were you at my house and who are you?” I called out loudly to the girl and she didn’t even acknowledge my presence, so I picked up my speed and continued walking after her.

“For real, who are you? I promise I won’t call the cops!” I said as my fast walk slowly began to turn into a jog as the girl began taking more complex turns and staying in the dark.

The girl still continued to ignore me as if I weren’t real or something.

“Okay, this isn’t funny anymore, please answer me,” I said as I was now running to catch up to this girl.

The girl stopped in her tracks looked back very quickly as if she was checking to make sure that nobody was following her before she continued on her way. In the quick few seconds that she turned around, I was able to recognize who she truly was. The girl that I had been chasing and who walked out of my house was me.

I caught up with myself and found that I had snuck out to the park. The memories flooded back to me as I watched the younger version of myself search around the park.

“Caroline! Where are you? I came to play,” The younger version of myself called out and I desperately tried to stop the younger me from seeing the scene that haunts me every single day. The reason why I never allowed people to get close to me or for me to get close to others. I rounded the corner of the tree and stopped as I saw the younger version of myself frozen with the look of fear etched on her face. The scene in front of us was something that still haunts me to this day.

(THROWBACK)

After my father’s death, I refused to leave the house because I wanted to watch after my mother at all times. She went through a huge depressive phase where I would come home from school and find pills scattered across the kitchen island, or I would find a bloody knife followed by bloody footprints. My mother tried to kill herself multiple times but she was never successful. Often she wouldn’t cut deep enough or she would immediately puke up the pills that she swallowed. I tried removing all sharp objects and pills from our house but she always managed to find them. Every time I came home, I would comfort my mother and tell her how much I loved her and that we were going to get through this. One night, after I had gotten my mother to sleep after she had attempted to cut her wrists and bleed out, I needed to get out of the house and get fresh air. I pulled a black hoodie over my clothes and quietly exited the house. I walked to the nearby park and sat down on the swingset. Tears fell down my face as I slowly pushed myself back and forth on the swing. I missed the way things used to be before my dad passed away. I missed when my mother was happy and she would play with me instead of crying herself to sleep every night. I missed when I was able to play like normal kids my age.

“Why are you crying?” A girl around my age sat down beside me on the swingset.

“I’m just sad and lonely,” I said as I stared at my feet as they dragged through the wood chips.

The girl got off of her swing and wrapped her arms around me and rubbed my shoulder in comfort.

“What was that for?” I said as the strange girl pulled away.

“My mother said hugs always make people feel better. I’m Caroline, let’s be friends.” She said as she grabbed my hand and pulled me off the swings.

“I’m (Y/N),” I said with a slight smile on my face. We walked around the park for about an hour just talking and playing until I decided that it was time to head back home. I quietly entered my house and walked upstairs to my bedroom. For once, since my father’s death, I felt happy. I planned to see Caroline the next day and fell asleep feeling like I was normal again. We met up every night around 7:00 and we would hang out for a few hours and then both go home. I told her everything about my mom and my dad and she never judged me. She always supported me and made me feel like I was human. She became my best friend.

A year and a half later, I was getting ready to go hang out with Caroline and my mother went through one of her episodes, so I was running a little on meeting up with Caroline. I finally got my mother settled down and I quietly snuck out of the house and began walking fastly away from the streetlights to get to the park before it was time for Caroline to get home. I approached the park and I didn’t see Caroline at the swings where we always met.

“Caroline! Where are you? I came to play,” I yelled as I walked around the park.

I assumed she would go to our secret spot behind the tree and to the creek so I decided to go there. As I approached the area, I began hearing slight noises so I was positive she was there. When I rounded the corner tree, I froze in my place and my heart dropped to my stomach and my lungs forgot how to breathe. A dark man kneeled over her body, as he pulled a knife from her chest. Her head had rolled over to the side and I saw my best friend’s lifeless eyes and her tattered face and I placed a hand over my mouth and I ran. I ran faster than I ever thought I could run and I ran straight into my house and locked my door and went upstairs to my room. I slid down my door and brought my knees up to my chest and sobbed so hard my whole body shook. I grabbed my trash can and puked my guts up and cried some more. I cried myself to sleep for a whole month. I had lost the one person who I loved more than anyone.

(End of Throwback)

I saw her lifeless body lay there as that man kneeled over her. I saw the younger version of myself run away. I stood there frozen and filled with sadness and anger. The man stood up and dropped the bloody knife in his bag and began to walk away. I ran over to Caroline’s lifeless body and sank to my knees beside her. I pulled her head into my lap and I ran my fingers through her matted hair as tears streamed down my face. Her favorite One Direction shirt was soaked in blood and her once beautiful skin was tainted with bruises and cuts. I held her body in my arms and cried. If I was never late on this day, I could’ve prevented this, I could’ve saved her life. This should be me in her place, she had so much to live for.

“I’m sorry,” I let out with a sob, “I’m so so so sorry Caroline, I failed you.”

I grabbed some of the flowers from the meadow beside the creek and placed them over her body. She always seemed to adore those small flowers. I kissed her forehead and gently sat her head down on the ground. I stood up and grabbed my knife from my backpack. Filled with rage, I walked in the direction of the bastard who did this. I saw him perched up against a rusty dented up car, taking a long drag from his cigarette.

“Hey Bastard,” I said as I approached him and he looked up and my fist collided with the side of his face and he fell to the ground. I got on top of him and continued to punch his face to the point where his blood stained my knuckles and his face was so bloody you could barely tell who he was.

“Who are you?” He asked, his voice trembled.

“Your worst enemy,” I growled as I spotted Caroline’s blood stained on his shirt.

“Please, I don’t even know you, lady, I haven’t done anything to you,” He pleaded as I reached behind me and pulled out my knife from my back pocket.

“Oh but you have, you son of a bitch, and I hope you rot in hell,” I said and plunged the knife deep into his chest. I saw the fear in his eyes as he began stuttering for air. I plunged the knife back in his chest and I repeated this action. I closed my eyes and continued to stab his lifeless body. I saw him murdering Caroline over and over again in my head and I felt his blood splatter against me. I pulled the knife out of his chest and sat it down beside me. I opened my eyes and my whole heart dropped and it felt like the world was spinning. The man who killed my best friend was no longer there and in his place was the love of my life.

“Gr-Gr-Gray,” I let out a small sob and pushed his matted hair from his forehead. His lifeless brown eyes stared into my own and I started to attempt to do CPR. His blood was all over my body and the knife laid beside his body.

“NO, PLEASE, YOU CAN NOT LEAVE ME, GRAYSON I NEED YOU,” I sobbed as I continued to do compressions. Nothing happened, and I gave up. I laid my head on his lifeless chest and sobbed. His once calming heartbeat was absent. My whole body shook as the sobs raked through my body.

“What have I done?” I muttered under my breath. I reached for his once warm hands and brought it up to my lips. I kissed his hands and placed a kiss on his cold lifeless lips. My tears fell on his face. I took a deep breath and picked up the knife that laid beside him. The same knife that I thought I killed Caroline’s murder with but instead it was my lover, my soulmate, the one person who completed me and made me feel like I belonged. I looked at it and only one solution ran through my head.

“I’ll be with you soon baby,” I said through the tears and raised the knife up towards me but before I could plunge it through my heart someone tackled me.

Grayson’s POV

As I was waiting for (Y/N) to walk through those doors, I paced up and down the room. I sat down and placed my head between my knees and began to pray in hopes that it would work. I heard the doors open and my head immediately shot up expecting to see her walk through the doors. I expected to wrap her in my arms and kiss her all over her face and lips and tell her how much I truly love her. I expected us to walk out hand in hand and go see our families and tell them that we were safe and introduce them to us. But when that door opened, she didn’t walkthrough. I got up and walked to the door and looked down the dark hallway. I heard a faint sob that sounded like (Y/N)’s and I took off running through the hall towards the sound. I got closer and closer and finally, I turned into a room and there she was kneeling on the ground sobbing and holding a knife.

“I’ll be with you soon baby,” She said and lifted the knife up as she was going to plunge it in her heart. My heart dropped and I reacted quickly. I tackled her and grabbed the knife from her hands and I threw it across the room. I held her in my arms as I felt her whole body shake from her sobs. She looked up and her eyes filled with hope and her face changed.

“Grayson?” She questioned.

(Y/N)’s POV

I was tackled before I could plunge the knife in my heart and the knife was yanked from my hands and thrown across the room. A pair of arms brought me close to their chest and just held on to me as sobs raked through my body. When I looked up, my heart began to beat again. Grayson was right there and alive and he was holding me and he was real.

“Grayson?” I questioned.

“Yeah baby girl, it’s me, I’m right here,” He said and placed his lips on mine. I kissed back and wrapped my arms around his neck. Tears continued to fall down my eyes. I pulled away and looked over to where Grayson’s once dead body laid and it was gone.

“You are here, thank god. I thought you were dead, I thought I killed you,” I said through my tears as I kissed him again.

“I’m right here baby, and I’m going nowhere. You are stuck with me for the rest of your life because I love you (Y/F/N) (Y/M/N) (Y/L/N) so much and I will love you till the day I die. Now let’s get out of here so that we can see our families again.” Grayson said as he grabbed my hand and pulled me up. We held hands as we walked back through the hallway and to the exit.

———————————————————————

Chapter nine is done! I hope you guys enjoy this series as much as I enjoy writing it. Feel free to let me know your thoughts on how the series is going so far. As always let me know if you have any requests, concepts, or blurbs. Chapter ten will probably be up in the next few days. Part tenof The Principals Office should be up within the next couple of days as well. Sorry for my inactivity lately, I promise I’ll be better about posting. Love you guys 🥺😊💛

Tags: @dolanshellyes @graysavant @graydolan12 @flowery-dolan @dolan-bliss @justordinaryjen @dickdowndolan @dolans4lyfe @lanelessdolan @pineappledols @reblogserpent @frickin-bats @cautiouscalum @grays-laugh @youtuberimagines12 @minecraftgamerr @wrcn9fvlcver @buildermangray @highoffdolan @beautorigin

#grayson dolan fix #grayson x reader #grayson dolan angst #grayson dolan fic #grayson dolan au #grayson dolan imagines #grayson dolan imagine #grayson dolan sad #grayson dolan series #ethan dolan #ethan dolan au #dolan twins #dolan twins series #dolan twins angst #dolan twins au #dolan twins imagines #panic!grayson

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moistvonlipwig · 5 years

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Angel’s Redemption Arc

I think it’s interesting that in the Buffyverse fandom, which often concerns itself with debating and discussing redemption arcs, I don’t see much airtime devoted to the one that’s foundational to Angel as a show, namely Angel’s own redemption arc. Part of this is probably because Angel’s redemption arc is non-traditional in the sense that it has arguably begun even before Episode 1 of Buffy; part of it is probably because fandom has a tendency to dismiss Angel as “boring” and unworthy of time and energy that they could instead devote to talking about Willow or Spike or Faith. But I actually think Angel’s redemption arc is one of the best and most interesting in the pair of shows; IMO in terms of how well it’s executed it’s right up there at the top with Darla’s.

Now, when we talk about redemption arcs, it’s first important to establish what it is that the character is actually seeking redemption for. In the case of someone like Angel, it’s tempting to guess that the answer is “pretty much everything he’s ever done”. But ultimately Angel is a character in a narrative, and not everything he does, good or bad, is given equal narrative importance. Redemption arcs often focus on redeeming a character for what the narrative frames as their primary sin. So what does the narrative consider to be Angel’s primary sin? Again, it’s tempting to answer “everything”. But is the narrative of Angel really all that hung up on, for example, the time Angel nailed a puppy to the ceiling? Certainly as viewers we may squirm to hear that, especially if we’re dog-lovers, but it’s brought up maybe twice in the entirety of both shows. And while Angel has killed a ton of people, most of his victims died off-screen, years before Buffy began, and remain unnamed and unseen by the audience. Angel no doubt feels bad about killing them, but is the narrative of his show really all that concerned with them?

I would argue that the narrative of Angel does not consider Angel’s primary sin to be any of his actual murders at all. If you think about it, Angel’s problem can’t be that he kills people because that’s every vampire’s problem. That’s like saying a human character’s problem is that they don’t always drive exactly at the speed limit. It’s not technically wrong, it’s just not specific. What’s specific about Angel is that he doesn’t just kill people. He takes the time to psychologically destroy them. And often those people go on to do terrible things themselves, either because Angel sires them (see Drusilla) or because Angel’s actions beget a cycle of abuse that they perpetuate (see Holtz). Angel’s problem, therefore, is not that he’s a monster. It’s that he makes monsters of other people.

Examples of this can be seen throughout both shows. As mentioned above, there’s Drusilla, possibly the ur-example of this behavior pattern from Angel: she was a good person and he tortured her, traumatized her, killed her, and turned her into a vampire, both figuratively and literally turning her into a monster. There’s Spike; Angel didn’t actually turn him personally, but Spike refers to Angel as his Yoda and blames Angel for being the one to truly make a monster of him, which given what we see of their interactions in ye olden days is probably more or less true. There’s Sam Lawson, the vampire from “Why We Fight”, left physically and metaphorically adrift after Angel turned him, who turns to killing because it’s the only thing he can think of to do. There’s also Penn, the vampire from “Somnambulist” who, while not the most important to the overall narrative of the show, does say some things that I think are important to understanding Angel’s character arc; more on that later. And on a less vampiric note, there’s Holtz: Angel killed his family and, importantly, forced Holtz to kill his own vampirized child (again, more on this later). In turn, Holtz becomes so intent on revenge that he kidnaps, manipulates, and abuses Angel’s child right up until (and including) the moment Holtz dies. Holtz, like Drusilla, is symbolic of this behavior pattern of Angel’s; there’s a reason that both of them play such significant roles in Angel.

So, we’ve figured out what Angel’s primary sin is, according to the narrative presented by Buffy and Angel: he turns people into monsters. The next question that naturally presents itself is: how can he redeem himself from that? It seems fairly logical to say that one of the best ways someone can redeem themselves is to undo what they have done. Unfortunately, on a literal level, this is impossible for Angel: he cannot unmake the monsters he has created. But perhaps on a figurative level, this is possible. Angel may not be able to make it so that he never turned people into monsters. But he can try to turn monstrous people back into good ones. Angel thus commits himself to trying not just to redeem himself but to redeem other people. Along the way, he has successes (Faith being his most significant one) and failures (Lindsey, among others). But he always tries. He even offers Jasmine a second chance to become a better person, which says a lot about Angel and his commitment to his mission to make better people out of monsters, given how deeply and profoundly Jasmine ruined his life and the lives of his loved ones.

That’s all well and good. But this discussion is still missing a piece, and that’s Connor. How, you may be thinking, does Connor possibly fit into all of this? To understand that, we have to return to Penn and what he had to say about Angel in “Somnambulist”. Penn doesn’t just accuse Angel of making him a monster like Spike does, although that is probably the meaning behind his words. What Penn actually says is that he has spent his unlife trying to get back at his father, but he realizes now that all that was in vain, because Angel is his real father. The implication is that, when Angel engages in monster-making, he is also engaging in person-making, in an act of creation, in fatherhood. Angel doesn’t just make monsters, he fathers them. That, therefore, is Angel’s real problem: he’s a bad father.

Why did he become a bad father, I hear you ask? Well, like most bad fathers, he had a bad father of his own. In “The Prodigal”, we flash back to Liam’s interactions with his own father. His father is controlling and disparaging, and makes him feel worthless. Ultimately, the newly-sired Angel kills his father. But Darla warns him that this is not truly a victory, because it only lasted moments, while his father’s defeat of him will last his whole life. This clearly sticks with Angel, and he basically spends the rest of his time as a soulless vampire trying to recreate what his father did to him by doing it to others: defeating them not for a moment, but for the rest of their lives.

And, indeed, he succeeds in this mission. Not only does he make more monsters, but he even makes more bad parents. Holtz, a shining example of Angel’s work, is an abysmal father. Angel prompts his first arguably monstrous act as a father, namely the killing of his own daughter, which depending how you view vampires in the Buffyverse was either a terrible thing or a mercy, but regardless was not an action a parent should ever have to take. Later, Holtz kidnaps an infant Connor, emotionally and physically abuses him in a hell dimension for eighteen years, and in a final act of parental monstrosity, deliberately manipulates him through his own suicide.

Drusilla (who, I should note, frequently refers to Angel as “Daddy”) also becomes a bad “mummy” to Darla in “The Trial”, when she turns her as Angel looks on, completing the cycle that Angel and Darla started when they turned her. Significantly, Drusilla does this just as Darla, with Angel’s help, has come to a realization about her past actions and has decided she wants to try to atone for them despite knowing she can’t. In other words, Drusilla is directly interfering with one of Angel’s most important attempts at redeeming someone else’s soul. One of Angel’s own monster ‘children’ is the one to snatch away his ability to help create or ‘father’ a good person, and instead claim the mantle of parenthood for themselves. Angel’s actions thus are ultimately self-defeating, usually in a poignantly ironic way. But he does accomplish his goal of inflicting on others a worse version of what his father inflicted on him.

Ironically, however, every time he does this, he only succumbs further and further to his father’s defeat. His father is the one who made him a monster, just like Angel ends up doing to his victims, and thus with every monstrous action he takes, he only solidifies his father’s victory. Angel’s quest to control and corrupt his victims, aka his metaphorical children, stems from a desire to defeat his father by outdoing him at his own game. But in the end it only replicates and affirms his father’s defeat of him. To truly defeat his father, he needs to stop playing his game altogether and break free of the cycle.

Enter Connor. At first glance it may appear a somewhat random choice to give Angel a human son partway through his show. But if you look at Angel’s arc through the lens of him being a bad father, Connor’s narrative reason for existing is illuminated. As Darla puts it right before she stakes herself, Connor is the only good thing that she and Angel ever created together. In other words, he is Angel’s opportunity to truly (and literally) be a good father.

But Angel has had years of practice at being a bad one, and he doesn’t get it right on his first try. For one thing, Holtz obstructs his efforts to raise his son well by kidnapping him and taking him to Quor’toth. Again, we see one of Angel’s metaphorical ‘children’ denying Angel the opportunity to properly father a good person, only this time it’s more literal as it’s his actual child that gets taken from him. As always, Angel’s actions are cyclical and self-defeating.

But Connor does come back eventually. When he does, Angel tries his best but ultimately pushes him farther away, by lying to him (qv “Benediction”), denying him forgiveness (qv “Deep Down”), isolating him by kicking him out of the hotel (qv “Deep Down”, “Habeas Corpses”) and letting his jealousy influence his treatment of him (qv a good chunk of Season 4). (For the record: I am not trying to cast judgment on Angel for these choices, some of which were perfectly justifiable and some of which were less so. I am merely saying that they were not the ideal choices for Connor’s well-being.) These choices, combined with the abuse Connor suffered at Holtz’s hands (which wasn’t Angel’s fault, but which did ultimately spring from Angel’s actions) and Team Angel’s general dislike and distrust of Connor, make Connor susceptible to Jasmine’s manipulations, which ultimately lead to his emotional and psychological breakdown at the end of Season 4.

If there’s a common thread we can pick out between all of Angel’s choices regarding Connor after Connor returns from Quor’toth, I think it’s that Angel, for all that he loves Connor, also ultimately wants Connor to be what Angel wants him to be. This is more common among parents than most would ever admit. And it isn’t always a bad thing! Most parents, including Angel, want the best for their children. But they don’t always know what that actually is. And Angel’s desire for Connor to be happy and well-adjusted and, above all, a good person frequently expresses itself as Angel attempting to control Connor. Not for the same reasons he tried to control his prior ‘children’, but with unfortunately similar results. Angel lies to Connor because he wants Connor to think of him a certain way; he wants to control Connor’s perception of him. He kicks Connor out of the hotel because he wants Connor to learn a lesson; he wants to control Connor’s behavior. He disparages and tries to impede Connor’s relationship with a Jasmine-possessed Cordelia; he wants to control Connor’s relationships and feelings. (Again: not saying these actions were all unjustified, just that they were taken with Angel’s feelings in mind, not Connor’s.) In the end, although Angel is not trying to replicate his father’s treatment of him in his parenting of Connor, he ends up doing so regardless. His desire to do the opposite of what he normally does, to make a good person out of Connor, drives him to try to control Connor when Connor seems to go against that objective, which only further primes Connor to be more easily molded into a monster.

Thus the defining moment of Angel’s redemption arc is when Angel finally lets go of his need to define and control his child, who is now a sort of symbol for all his children, literal and metaphorical. I am speaking, of course, of the moment when Angel makes the deal with Wolfram & Hart to alter reality and wipe Connor’s memories. Ethics of memory-wiping aside, this is perhaps the greatest thing Angel could ever do for Connor, and it is the moment when Angel finally achieves victory over his own father, not by winning at his game, but by acknowledging he has lost and refusing to play any longer. In Angel, realizing you are wrong and have done wrong to others is often portrayed as one of the most crucial parts of the journey to redemption, and is usually a turning point for the characters who reach it. (See: Faith in “Five by Five”, Darla in “The Trial” and “Lullaby”, Spike in “Damage”, etc.) I believe Angel’s moment of realization is here in “Home”. This is when he understands that he has failed as a father, and that he cannot succeed just by continuing to try to control Connor’s behavior. To truly be a good father to Connor, Angel has to cede control entirely and give him over to a family who will do right by him. He has to stop playing any variant of his father’s game, and accept that the price of Connor being happy is that Angel cannot influence him for life -- for good or for evil -- the way his own father influenced him.

So that’s exactly what Angel does. He ‘kills’ Connor, and it is a terrible irony that the false prophecy Wesley feared so much, that the father would kill the son, comes true not as Angel’s lowest point or greatest failure, but as a moment of spiritual victory and redemption for Angel. In fact, it is a moment of freedom, for both him and Connor: freedom from the cycle of fathers and sons, like Liam’s father and Angel and Holtz and Connor, inflicting harm on each other ad infinitum. The power of the prophecy “the father will kill the son” lies not just in the emotional specificity of Angel and Connor’s own situation, but in its applicability to the general field of fathers and sons everywhere. In the world of Angel, every father, in some way or another, kills his son. Sometimes literally, often metaphorically; sometimes purposefully, often unintentionally. But always, the father kills the son. That’s part of why Wesley is so willing to believe the prophecy; he knows all too well that fathers are perfectly capable of killing their sons. Ironically, it is only by taking the prophecy to its most literal and logical conclusion and killing Connor (as we know him) outright that Angel is able to defy it, and end the cycle of fathers killing sons for good.

Now, all of this is not to say that Angel “wins” or achieves some kind of redemption badge that means he’s suddenly forgiven and cool now. Angel can’t win; that’s the point. He can’t win against Wolfram & Hart and wipe out evil forever; he tries that and fails, and when Jasmine tries and succeeds, he sees that such a victory is in a way its own kind of evil, and rebels against her. He can’t win against the weight of his crimes and become a human with a clean slate; in fact he gives up two different opportunities to do so on two separate occasions, because he too knows it’s just a fantasy and not real redemption. And he definitely can’t win against his father in the great game of child-rearing; he doesn’t get to raise his son at all, and children aren’t game pieces anyway. No, as much as he may try, Angel can never win. But if he accepts that, if he lets go of his need to win, he can do someone a great kindness. He can help someone like Faith be better; he can forgive someone like Judy who has done him wrong; he can set someone like Connor free from a seemingly endless cycle of abuse that he himself once perpetuated. Angel can be kind. And that, perhaps, is more precious than winning could ever be.

#angel the series #ats #buffy the vampire slayer #btvs #ats meta #anyway that's why angel is iconic and we have decided to stan forever #well love is love and not fade away #i kind of want to slay the dragon

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