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Heat Without Warmth, Light Without Sight

This fic is for the @tma-valentines-exchange and was written for @barnabasbennett (pretty sure, at least!) AO3 link is in the source! Based on the prompt: rewrite episode 159 to feature Tim and Archivist!Sasha.

I’ve been waiting SO LONG to post this! I hope you like reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Chapter One: Embers

The archives are quiet. So quiet. Sasha can hear the tick of the clock on her desk and the hum of the radiator she had brought in so many months ago, back when her biggest concern was how cold her Archivist office was. Before the idea of heat reminded her of Tim in oh-so-many painful ways.

The Unknowing had been…bad. Daisy had been imprisoned in The Choke, Sasha left unconscious and Basira forever changed. She had seen it, she told Sasha later, the way Tim had stood amidst the rubble of plastic mannequins and brick and mortar, unscathed as smoke billowed into the sky, silhouetted in greys and blacks. It was terrifying, she said, in a completely different way than the Unknowing had been. Basira described Tim as unstoppable in that moment, a train bulleting towards destruction and revenge, a rage in his eyes that only intensified when he saw the unconscious form of Sasha James, bruised and lying in the rubble.

In Sasha’s six-month coma, she had missed a lot. Martin had explained things to her; a sad compassion in his eyes as he stirred sugar into tea. Tim had fallen to the Desolation, The Cult of The Lightless Flame calling him home after they had heard about his sudden resilience to heat and flame. It made sense. Tim had experienced so much loss and destruction in his life, losing Danny and Jon (and, temporarily, Sasha) due to the machinations of The Stranger. His connection to the Desolation had probably been growing when none of them, not even Tim, had noticed. Sasha tried reaching out to him; Tim was still employed by the Magnus Institute after all, but he was sullen at his desk, the air around him smelling faintly of burnt hair and the iced coffees he used to love now simmering slightly in his mug. Sasha didn’t think he could’ve been any more withdrawn than he had been in the ramp up to stopping the Stranger. But here he was, prickly and cold and altogether uninterested in Sasha’s attempts to reconnect with him.

Sasha unfolds the letter, singed at the corners. She must have just missed him. Again. Her heart pounds in her chest as she reads the words, written the slanted, neat print she knew so well.

Sasha,

If nothing else, I will miss you. But that loss is essential, Jude says, to feeding the spark that binds us all. They think Agnes Montague’s spark passed to me when I decided my loss of life was more important than the survival of The Stranger and their ritual. Something about total commitment to pain, self-destruction, etc. There is some satisfaction in knowing how unhappy they are about it, especially Jude. I think she really wanted to be special. You’d hate her. Maybe it’s cliché, but I don’t think I’m coming back from this. It all began, and it all must end. Who knows? Maybe I’ll finally be able to quit.

I    You are truly unforgettable, boss,

Tim.

Sasha had seen so many of the people she loved fall to the fears of this world in which they find themselves trapped. The loss of Jon had come first, when the thing that Was Certainly Not Jon had stolen him away under their noses. This discovery had come with the loss of the heart of their office: Martin. Realizing he had been in love with a lie had broken something in him, and while Sasha did her best to show him compassion, she couldn’t imagine going through it all in his place. The nature of Gertrude’s death had shocked her; Sasha had known her, had seen such a strong woman she had been. To see (or rather hear) her death reduced to a few cowardly gunshots felt…inadequate. Daisy had become softer after surviving the Buried, kinder to Sasha, but there the Hunt was still there, deep in her. Basira and Melanie were fine, but evasive, suspicious, too eager to wield a knife. And now?

Sasha had no friends, no one she could truly trust, no one left besides Tim. She hadn’t stopped trying to care for him, to make herself available, but she refused to keep her heart open for someone so clearly eager to move away from it all, even if that was motivated by a cult of fire and destruction and pain. But that love she had for Timothy Stoker was still there, the idiot who took her out for drinks and dressed up as her once for April Fool’s and had them all over for Guy Fawkes Day (should she had guessed it then, his eyes illuminated by the pyre, drinking in the light and heat of the flames?) and insisted he cook for everyone whenever he got the chance.

Eyes sweeping over the letter over and over, she read the words, trying to hear each of them in his voice, feeling something in her gut twist as she read her name is his handwriting, in his voice, over and over. Tim had said it so many ways: with mirth, frustration, exhaustion, and warmth. There was still so much left to say. There were so many more ways for him to say her name, and Sasha wanted to hear them all.

This letter? This would not be the last time he said her name. Sasha James, the Archivist, would make damn sure of that.

-

Sasha is hurrying through the Institute when she almost collides with Elias Bouchard. His hair is unkempt, shaggy from his time in prison, but he is dressed immaculately, black dress shirt rolled to his elbows and a tie that seemed to shimmer yellow-green when it catches the light.

“You-Elias, what the hell?” Sasha takes an involuntary step back, hand ghosting to the letter opener she had instinctively tucked into her waistband.

“Save the effort, Archivist. I’m only here to help, after all. My sources say Tim has left?”

“Sources?” Sasha spits the word, fingers resting against the mottled blue handle of the blade. “Please. There’s no need to hide what you are anymore, Elias.”

“Hmm, very well.” His fingers drum patiently on his jaw, one elbow elegantly balanced on the opposite wrist. He looks too calm, too relaxed for the anxiety and anger thrumming its way through Sasha’s chest. “So, you don’t want to know where he’s gone?” Fuck. Elias’s eyebrow arches expectantly, eyes staring past her as he focused on what she could now recognize as what she called the Knowledge.

“Elias Bouchard, t̶̡̟̲͓̩̜̣͕͇̟̱͉̹̽̋̑̑̅̊͒́̔̂͠ͅe̶̝͍̜̲̘̙̤̰̬̞͒͗l̴̛͕̜̟̟̰͑̿̎̎́͛͌̽̆͆̓̋̾l̴̟̤͚͉͔̼̄̈́̆̌̏̇͝ ̷͖̙̠͕̜̮̬̟̝̰̫͍̆ṁ̶̨̗̮͍̖͍͖̱̟̍̽͜͝e̴̗̩͒̈́͛̊̽́̿ ̷̧̨̡̦̻̙͎̬̪̞͕͙͖̓͂͂͂͂̊̔̊̕̚͜w̴͈̖̦̒̾̀̽͑̓̑̎̂̇͗̂͒ḩ̸̩̺͎̤̳̰̘̱̣̍ę̵̫͚̖́̇͜r̷̢̘͍̣͚̠͚̫̦̭͌ͅͅͅẻ̵͓͖̆̀̒ ̵͇͕̱̬̻̖͔̲͇͇͊̓͊́̽̍̋̓̈́̎̿̆̕͘͝h̷̨̡̧̨̻̝̲̱̬̻͙̻͋́͒̈͆͛͛̒͂̉̈́̎͜e̴̡̪͓̘̳͇͙̪̠̳͈͔̳͕͗̓̉̎ ̵̢̡̟͍̬͖͔͎̹͇̞͗̓́́i̶̲̬̰͙̖̘̮̠̘̜̙̗̍̈́̀̌̔͌̊͋́̍͌̑̚͝s̶̞̱̥͚̽̔̏͠͝.”

Her voice echoes with persuasion, the smooth words rolling off her tongue before she could consider it. Elias sighs, seeming almost tired with her. “He’s in the Desolation.” Elias sighs, seeming almost tired with her. “Honestly, Sasha, I would have told you without you needing to ask like that.”

She tunes him out, her own Knowing searching for Tim and landing her only with a burning inside her skull. She hisses her pain through her teeth and focuses back on Elias, who seems almost amused.

God, what a bastard. “Ȟ̶̆̿͠͝��̡̱͈̖̱̱̱̤̮̖̳̬͛̾́͗͝ͅͅo̷̡͎̙̓͗̋̂͊̏̏̅̚͘͝ẅ̶̢̨̧̝̖͚̦̱̟̹̼͕͌͌͌̋̒̆͑̈́̓͛͠ ̶̱̩̜̖̫̼̰̐d̴̢͈͍̗̱̀̉̽͋o̷̢̡̫͈̼̺̹̩̥͕͕͘̕ ̵̢̭̦͍̬͖̪̹͍̬̝͝I̶͕̥̱̤̽̿̃̃̂͐̔͒̒̇̆͗̚̕ ̴̛̞̜̘̥͓̙̗̫̰̙̼̝̀͗͋̊́̕ḡ̴͈͈̗̜̦̇͐̏̿̾̅́̆̎̂̊̕͠e̷̡̡̲̘̞̟̤̗͓̺̱̣̘͐̆̈́̔̎̃͋́ṯ̶̨̺̜̪̺̼̼̟̽̽̍̾̊́͊́̒̕͘ ̵̢͔̟͈̘͚̫̩̭͑̃͘ͅt̸̪̊͛̽̀͒h̴̘̫̖̤̜͕̻̺̯̼̦̟͔̋̍̋̈̌̃͐̈́̍̋e̶̢̛͚͉͕͓̪̖̘͖͇͇̫̲͉̐̀̈́̋̄̃̆̽̃̍͊̓ͅr̵̨͍͖̜͕͈̱̤̤̭͈̳̯̜͈̆͒̾̎̓̓̀̐̈̀̂̉̕͠e̴̦̱̺͓̝͕̥͔̮̓͐͛̚?̸̛̝̞̦͈̦̿͐͌̂̌̆͂̆̔̋͗͒̊”

“Honestly, Sasha, you’re wearing yourself out. Timothy and Jude just left. They were in the library; I’m sure you can follow them. Let your mind follow theirs. Find the right string, if the Mother will pardon my analogy, and pull it. I’m sure they left the door open for you.” He winks, as if enjoying a private joke, and turns on a polished leather shoe, striding towards the Archives with purpose.

Sasha redirects her course and hurries to the library. Is this a trap? Almost definitely. But honestly, she doesn’t care. Rosie, head of the institute while Elias had been “previously occupied," had been the last to leave the Institute, Sasha Knew as she ran, clocking out at 18:02. The librarians and assistants were gone. It was just her. Well, she and Elias, certainly. She was already a pawn in this fourteen-way game of chess; she may as well take down some bishops if this was going to be her end. She has never met Jude Perry, but Tim was right about one thing: she certainly already hated her.

-

In the library, Sasha halts in the doorway, taking in the scene in front of her. The heat is excruciating on her cheeks as she sees a blazed trail of singed books, paper, and manuscripts. The burning in her face and soul is caused not by any fire, but by the sheer anger that someone dared mar her memories of this library, where she had met so many of the people she loves. Loved. No, loves, she decided with certainty. Jon is gone, the true memory of him lost to everything but the errant polaroid, Martin is all but gone, a shell of the warm man they had known, and Tim is just out of reach. But despite all this, maybe in sheer spite of everything they’ve been through, Sasha still present-tense loves each of them.

It is that love, she thinks, that guides her now, more so than the omniscient Eye that paves her way to the Desolation, the scar on reality widening and opening for her before it swallows her whole, the library crumbling into ash around her.

One way or another, she was going to end this.

SPN 15X19 Observations

So, here we are. Second-to-last episode of this show and what has been said will be the Season Finale. (While next week’s is the Series Finale.) 

Without further ado...

I don’t even know what to think going into this second-to-last episode. I don’t expect a “happy” ending to this show. But I can’t help hoping for a fitting one. One that makes some kind of sense. That does the characters justice. We’ll see how it goes. (Also, I want some GOOD content for Sam. *LOL*)

(Also, my notes might be sparse because I want to concentrate on the show.)

- Everyone’s gone.

- Except these three.

- Does Sam and Jack know about Cas?

- THEY DON’T KNOW YET!!! *crying* (To be clear, not upset that Dean didn’t tell them sooner. Since obviously there had to be a phone conversation at some point, or at least texting so they’d know where to meet up. THAT kind of news isn’t something to tell over the phone if you can help it.) 

- The music is really playing this up well.

- Oh Jack….. 

- And he’s still killing plants.

Commercial Thoughts:

I’ve said this again and again but I still don’t like how Chuck is being written. He might as well be rubbing his hands and cackling evilly. 

That being said, this really is sadistic. One of the few things that’s kept Sam and Dean going through all of this has been the people they’ve been able to save. (Crowely caught on to that in S8 and used it to good effect. But he was like a sniper, precise with it. Chuck is like a fricking nuke.) 

And Sam losing hope always makes me sad. (Have noticed the looks Dean keeps giving him. Still checking on him and how he’s doing and worrying about him.)

- This camera work is weird. Dream-like?

- DOGGY!!!!!

- omg Dean’s happy about a dog!

- WOW. That’s a new low.

- So, no animals? (Guess they’re gonna have to go vegetarian eventually if this doesn’t get fixed.)

- Michadam!!! 

- WHAT?! (No Adam?! HOW DARE CHUCK!!!)

Commercial Thoughts:

Okay, Chuck taking Adam is a really REALLY low-blow! (But then, that might be what pushed Michael to decide to help them after all.) 

Not surprised that Michael can’t open the book. Wondering if Jack can? Or they could call some reapers and see who wants the job of the next Death. *LOL* Hold interviews. “What will you do for us if we give you this promotion?” (crack thoughts, don’t mind me.)

I’m not sure if Chuck has realized that they have nothing left to lose. And that’s generally when people are at their most dangerous. (I mean yes, they have each other, but in the wake of what’s been lost? Literally the whole world? They can’t let that go. They can’t just sit back and treat it as a vacation. It’s not how they are.)

- CAS?! 

- WTF?!?!?!?! (Did NOT want to see Lucifer again tbh. And apparently neither did Dean. *LOL*)

- Okay, so Lucifer promoted the next Death.

- Is he actually dead this time?

- One can only hope.

- YEY! LUCIFER IS DEAD AGAIN!!!

Commercial thoughts:

So…. what was the point of all that again? 

Okay, I get that in the end, the book is open and now they can hopefully read it. Seems kind of convoluted. (Also, do NOT get me started on the whole “God and the Darkness have no pull in the Empty”. Unless God just replicated Lucifer, like I theorize he did with Lilith.) 

Wondering if they just did all that to have Luci and Mark P. back one more time.

- Sam being his super-smart self! <3

- What is Sam not saying?

- Hey! Isn’t that the lake where Jack was born?

- FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! Fricking Michael.

- Bloody winchesters

- That’s what Sam wasn’t saying. I don’t think they trusted Michael.

- Sam figured something out.

- Wow. That is some poetic justice!

- I’m actually impressed with that.

- So now what?

Commercial Thoughts:

Wow. Okay, that was a weird twist of a way to get there. But I’ve honestly got to say that I like it. It works. (I’d always hoped Jack would still be the key to Chuck’s downfall.)

I still feel sorry for Amara though. Like, is she just nothingness? Is she an alternate personality deep inside Chuck now? 

And what about Jack? Can he put things back to how they’re supposed to be? Bring everyone back? Did he get Chuck’s knowledge as well as his power? At least of who all he took away? 

Guess we’ll have to see.

Also, usually I’m not a fan of the trope of the “Good guys” sparing the villain who’s killed tons of people because “they’re above killing”. But in this case? It really was fitting. And a worse punishment than killing Chuck would have been.

- OH GOD I LOVE THIS SONG!!!!

- Sammy’s cafe!

- (Okay I’m getting a little misty)

- His smile!!! 

- OKay, I might cry now.

- They raised God.

- Awwww….. (The names)

- Okay, so, I’m not okay! (But I’m okay with it, so… good thing?)

- So it ends with them doing whatever it is they want? 

- I wonder if the Apocalypse World people were brought back? And their other friends. (And Eileen? I’m sorry, I know not everyone ships it, but I do, and now Sam doesn’t have the great Plot of the Universe conspiring against him.)

After-Show Thoughts: (After I’ve had a few hours to ponder things)

Let me just say, the music in this episode? Like, just even the background music? It was amazing! It did such a good job of invoking the emotions that were being felt by the guys. And their choices of songs used were also good. :) 

Michael: So, in some ways his character shift in this episode seems odd after the last time we saw him. But then I thought more about it, and I think Adam’s death had a lot to do with it. In the previous episode in which we saw them, of the two of them Adam actually seemed to be more stable, and often had good, grounding advice for Michael. Now with him gone, all Michael had was himself. And at heart, he still wanted his father’s love, despite everything that had happened. And I still think he’s an interesting Parallel/Contrast to Dean, who also had the same father-worship for a long time, but over time he’s come to understand that John was wrong about a lot of things, and he needs to make his own way. I don’t think that’s something that Michael ever REALLY learned. Not deep down. 

Lucifer: I found his presence here to be annoying. I get that he moved the plot along. And I get how much at least half of Buckleming love him. I am glad that his part was brief and that he didn’t get a redemption arc. I do wish Sam had been able to kill him. (I know, he couldn’t have because only another archangel with an archangel blade yadda-yadda. STILL though…) Or that there had maybe been SOME meaningful interaction between him and Sam for old time’s sake, since that always gets nice and spicy. (Because Jared and Mark P. always keep in mind everything that’s happened between them and put that into their performances.) But time limits and all that. Also, why were there no wing-shadows on the floor when Lucifer died? There were wing shadows on the floor of the friggen church at the end of S13 and he died like 15 feet up in the air. *LOL* I mean, then whenever Sam looked at the floor in the Library he could remember that Lucifer is Dead for Good. 

And I just rewatched the scene again and when he died, he just went poof. Like, in the past, unless a finger-snap thing is involved that’s not what happens when angels die. If they get stabbed, there’s usually been a body left behind. Heck, at the end of S13 there was a full-on light-show. Now it almost looked like a regular angel death just with redder light instead of silvery-blue. Was that because it was just a thrown-together mock-up of Lucifer that Chuck made? (Like with Lilith? Because he’s NOT supposed to have any sway in the Empty! Dammit, how hard is it for the writers to remember the stuff that was already established?!)  

(Sorry. Continuity issues bug me. And they’ve bugged me from Season 1 on, so I know that’s not a new thing. But it does feel like they’ve gotten especially worse this season.) 

(Also, I’m starting to get tired so I’m going to try to wrap this up here. *LOL*)

I did like how they brought Chuck down. When it comes down to it, they weren’t following a pre-set plan. (Well, what happened probably WAS written in that book, but they didn’t know what it was.) Instead they found their own way with what they had. They figured out what was going on with Jack, and Sam figured out some bullshit spell to make some cool light-effects in order to fool Michael and Chuck into thinking they were setting it up for him. The only aspect of it that fell a little flat for me was the extended exposition on how they’d done it. It’s a trope that crops up a lot. The whole “Haha see what I did there!” But, on the other hand, I also realize that unless they’d shown us each step of the process as it was happening, there was no real way around presenting it that way. And it WAS more dramatic to have the audience in the dark until that moment. Also, I can’t deny the effectiveness of the scene where Chuck keeps beating them down but they keep standing up again. I mean, isn’t that an allegory for their whole lives? And at the end he’s incredulous as to why or even HOW they can still stand. What makes them keep going? True, part of it was that they knew the plan, and they knew this was part of it. (Which I think is why Sam opened it up with punching Chuck. To turn the confrontation more physical and draw it out, or he might have decided after all to just finger-snap them.) But part if it is also them just being them. They’ve both been down this road before. Like their whole lives have been this road. And they’ve both been to hell. Both suffered unimaginable tortures. And they just keep going. When one stumbles the other gets up. Or they get each other up. And they laugh in God’s face. Just… THAT was well-done. And Chuck's ending with them NOT killing him? That was absolutely poetic. Because now he's busted down to "normal" and has to figure out actual life (or just end his, but he'd have to do it himself) and he didn't even get an "ending" of his creations killing him. Because even if he did make them, he clearly still doesn't understand them. And I liked them saying "no" to the revenge game. (After making sure that he couldn't come back again as a problem. Cause they ain't dumb either. Despite what everyone keeps saying about them.) 

I also loved the scene where Jack brings everyone back. I would have liked to have seen some shots of some of the individual ones that we’d come to know being back, like Donna, some of those AU people (Eileen!) but I also get this ep was shot during Covid so they probably couldn’t get as many people back. (I hope some of them at least get name-dropped in the next episode so we know for sure that they’re back and alive.) But anyway, I thought the scene was well done, that song was a GOOD choice for it! (But then, I am a bit biased. It’s among some of the music I grew up listening to because my parents had it.) It may not be classic rock, but classic folk is fitting for the new God. :) 

Overall, I thought there were some pacing issues with this episode, but in general I was happier with it than the previous one. I’ve just been re-watching it (because I never catch everything the first time through, especially when I’m trying to take notes) and I just noticed something. Near the end when Sam and Dean are in the Library and Dean says “To everyone that we lost along the way.” I first was a bit puzzled about that, because my mind went to the more immediate people that they’d lost recently, and whom I’m assuming Jack brought back too. But on re-watching I thought about it in a grander scale. How many people have they lost in their lives due to Chuck’s story? Because Chuck thought it would make things more dramatic? I think he was reflecting on their whole lives, not just the last 48 or so hours. And that makes sense too with what Sam said following, about them finally being able to write their own story. (And yes, I know that Cas was not one of those brought back. At least, he doesn’t seem to have been. And though I don’t ship him and Dean, I don’t doubt for a minute that Dean cares/cared about him very much. It’s okay to love your friends. But I didn’t get the feeling that he was JUST talking about one person. That held the weight of years of losses.) 

I thought the ending montage was brilliant! Honestly, if the show ended here, I would have been okay. Not saying I DON’T want another episode! I’ll take whatever I can get. And I definitely wouldn’t mind seeing where they take their story. So yeah, looking forward to the next (and final *cries*) episode.

Anyway, that’s about all I can really dredge up this late at night. *LOL* This will be the LAST time I do one of these knowing there’s more to come. It’s the last week we’ll all wait in suspense for what’s going to happen next. After next week's episode we'll be into new territory of "That's all there is and ever will be." This has been quite a journey, and I haven’t liked all of it, but overall I still love this weird little show, and even more so the characters that we've met through it. So, to quote Bobby, “Here’s to runnin’ into you guys on the other side.”

I haven’t been keeping up with Heartland season 14 updates the past few months, but I decided to catch up on some of it since the premiere date is coming up and the teaser trailer was released recently. And I noticed some interesting speculation about what might happen in the new season, and I have...a lot of thoughts about it, haha. I think I need to write it out in order to really sort out my thoughts and feelings on it, but I think it might get kinda long since it’s pretty major, so I’m going to put it under a cut. 

[NOTE: This post was written approximately a week or so ago, and I’ve been just sitting on it trying to decide if I wanna post or not. But having watched the full trailer for Season 14 now...I’m like 95% certain that this seems to be the route that the season is going. Still have about 5% doubt because trailers can be misleading and I could just be reading into it. We won’t really know for sure until we see the first episode, and I’m so torn between being somewhat excited just because I want to know for certain and nervous because I know I will still be sad if it’s true.

Either way, I wanted to get my thoughts down before the season premieres so here it is I guess lol]

So...it’s actually possible that Ty might die/be dead when this season begins? Which is utterly bizarre to think about because I never would have considered this to be an actual possible situation for the show. Even when there was that summary that leaked earlier this year, I still didn’t think it was a real possibility. I thought for certain that was fake, because this is Heartland. It’s one thing for a side character to disappear from the show or to be killed off, but a main character? A main character can be hurt, injured, and on the verge of death, but they won’t actually die. Especially not a character who is in one of the two major ships on the show.

Until now?

Of course, if this does happen, I don’t think it’s something anyone on the show wanted, not even the writers. In an ideal world where every actor wanted to be in every episode of the show, I imagine they’d be perfectly happy continuing to write that story.

But in cases where an actor no longer wants to be a main character on the show -- well, obviously I can’t say definitively that this is the case, because as far as I know he has never specifically said this in an interview, but from an outsider’s/fan’s perspective, it feels like that is a possibility. I don’t know the reasons behind it though, and I’m not going to go that far into speculation.

But let’s go with this scenario hypothetically. Because it does sometimes happen with television shows, where an actor for one reason or another no longer will be part of a show. 

What do you do with that character?

The character could be recast, I suppose, but I don’t think that would work in a show like Heartland. How would we explain in-universe why Ty suddenly looks different when everyone else is still the same? Even if you can find an actor that looks similar enough, we know what Ty looks like after 13 seasons, and I don’t think anyone would be fooled into thinking it’s the same guy. I guess it could be explained with the trope that he got into such a bad accident that they had to reconstruct his face, but that feels cheap and too much like a soap opera. 

So that’s a no.

The character could be written out in other ways. Ty could just be off screen somewhere...all the time. He’s at the clinic, he’s spending the day with Lyndy, he’s at a vet conference, he’s gone back to save wolves from poachers again, he’s gone back to Mongolia for the third/fourth/fifth/ten billionth time. 

That, honestly, would be frustrating. It’s maybe the least painful short term option, but long term, it’s not very enjoyable. It’s like when important side characters suddenly disappear from the show, occasionally mentioned but never seen on screen again, only 10 times worse.

Or he could be written off by...y’know, breaking up him and Amy. Which, frankly, is the absolute worst option in my opinion. It would immediately, retroactively, destroy the entire show, past, present, and future. Ty and Amy aren’t the only important part of the show, but they are a major part of it. The show has spent 13 seasons building up this relationship (with obvious ups and downs throughout, but I’m not focused on analyzing their whole relationship in this post), so to suddenly turn around and have them divorce would be an absolute trainwreck. 

What would even be the reason? Even with some of my disagreements in the writing of certain decisions the characters have made (*coughtheMongoliaplotcough*), I don’t think those are reasons enough for these two characters to break up over it. So something new would have to be invented, and it would likely be something completely ridiculous and out-of-character for them both and also likely ruin their character development from past seasons. 

Which leads us to yet another option: Ty dying. A year ago this was something I never would have considered for the actual show (or any of those other options, frankly). It could be interesting to explore in a fanfic, but on the show? No way.

But...things change. Reality sometimes gets in the way of a television show’s ideal storyline, which is one of the difficulties of the medium, especially a live action one. And just because one actor hypothetically doesn’t want to be on the show anymore doesn’t mean it should be derailed for all the other actors and crew who are on board.

So you get rid of the character. It isn’t hard to do. Probably the hardest part will be the very first episode when it’s revealed to the audience. How did it happen? Did it happen before the season begins, or does it happen in the first episode? Or if it happened before, do we get any flashbacks? 

Is it due to complications from the gunshot at the end of season 13? A freak car/motorcycle accident? An accident during a vet call? Depending on what it is and the context of it, it can be a strong final note on the kind of person Ty has become. If during a vet call/because of an animal, it happens while he’s doing what he loves, taking care of animals. If from the end of S13, it’s from him protecting his wife. If a car accident, maybe he was going to pick up Lyndy to spend time with her after leaving a vet call, because he’s a loving father. All of those are inline with Ty’s character and still support the growth that he’s had from the first episode to now. 

And then there’s all the story potential and character growth that it opens up for all the other characters. Because this is something that majorly impacts the entire family. And the description of season 14 that was put out does talk about a “life-changing challenge,” particularly for Amy for obvious reasons.

How does she deal with losing her husband? They’ve been together for so long, not just as romantic interests but as best friends. What does her life look like without him in it? How does this affect her work? Is her work with horses a comfort for her, or does it remind her too much of him? How does she guide Lyndy through this? 

And then the rest of the family. How does Jack deal with his loss? Considering Ty became like a son to him and “officially” joins the family when he marries Amy, how does it affect Jack to lose him? Especially if it was in something like a car accident, similar to Marion. How does it affect Jack and Lisa’s relationship? 

Not to mention Lily, and Lou, and Georgie, and Tim, and Caleb, and Scott, and Cass. Ty was a huge part of all their lives, so this will affect them in major ways too. 

Again, it’s not ideal. But I do feel like this option provides the best story opportunities without ruining the characters in the process the way certain other choices would. 

And, of course, this is all purely speculation. We won’t really know what’s going to happen until the season actually airs, and it’s entirely possible that the “life-changing challenge” will be something completely different, and Ty will be fine. And if so, that’s okay with me. 

But if Ty is gone...I think I could learn to be okay with it. Though it does still depend on how they handle it. Like if everyone’s sad about it for one or two episodes, but then everyone immediately moves on and everything’s fine, then I wouldn’t be happy with that. We don’t need a whole season of everyone crying all the time, but we also don’t need this to be something that’s swept under the rug. We, the audience, will need time to grieve along with the characters. Because this is a main character that we could be losing here, not just a minor side character like Mr. Hanley for example. So I hope we get to see all of the characters going through the stages of grief and processing their loss in their own ways throughout the season.

Anyway, it was nice to write through my thoughts on this. It’s kinda funny thinking about how not that long ago, I would’ve been completely 100% against this idea ever happening in the show, but now I’m like almost on-board with it. Maybe it’s the effect of 2020 or something lol

Midnight Striga: Fairy Tail/Owl House Crossover Episode 1 Part 3

Hey, once again, Crossover time, with your host, me! Everybody clap your hands!!!

Lightning crashed, and thunder rumbled outside the ominous spire of stone and lost hope that was the Conformatorium. As Luz took in the sight before her, she turned a flat stare towards the smirking Witch next to her. “What was that you said about this place being super fun?”

Ignoring Eda’s chuckle, Luz panned her vision across the area, giving herself a rough idea of the layout for the building, before her eye caught on a poster tacked to a nearby wall. Walking up to it, she yanked it down to see an artistic representation of Eda and King, complete with Bounty. She let out a low whistle at the figure. “Wow, these guys really got the hots for you.”

“Yeah, but they’ve never caught me.” Eda preened with pride, deftly stuffing the flyer into her hair. “King’s got some moves of his own when it comes to giving people the slip.”

“Yeah! Just try and catch me when I’m greased,” King cheered, eager to talk about his skills. “I’m a squirmy little fella!”

“Heh, I’ll take your word for it.” Luz grinned.

Eda smirked, gesturing for Luz and King to come in closer. “Alright, I’ll make a distraction to keep Wrath and his goons preoccupied. You two will make your way to the Vault from above.” She paused to conjure up a platform, the transport they would use to ascend. “I’ll do my best to keep Wrath and the Guards from getting to you, but for that to work, I’ll need you guys to keep your heads down in there. Can I count on you?” She turned a solemn face towards Luz at her question.

Luz made a small show of mulling it over, before grinning brightly. “Don’t worry about it. This isn’t my first time sneaking around somewhere I’m not supposed to be, after all.”

“Ugh, enough with the emotions, let’s just go already!” King complained, eager to get inside.

With a huff of amusement, Luz leapt onto the platform, scooping up King with an indignant squawk, before signalling Eda to send them up. As Luz rose through the air, she calmed the giddy excitement bubbling up inside, letting her face and emotions go blank. She needed to focus, to prepare herself for the fight her instincts were SCREAMING was coming their way.

As the platform reached its apex, just short of the window they needed to get to, Luz dully noted, she once more picked up King, this time with only a slight grumble of protest, and launched them both upwards. As they soared through the window, Luz caught herself in a three-point landing, fist planted in front of her chest, legs spread to catch her weight, a practically superhero-esque look… and then King slammed into the ground next to her with a grunt.

Chuckling sheepishly, Luz pulled the small demon up. As they walked towards their goal, Luz couldn’t help but marvel at the interior; this place may have been an evil den of corrupt tyranny, but she couldn’t deny the place was stylish, in a “step out of line and get wasted” sort of way. One thing that bothered her, though, was how empty it was. Luz had been around the block more than once, and she was fully aware of how much crime could get up to in any civilization, especially one that cared more about preserving things a certain way than helping the people, so the sheer barrenness of the cells was… unsettling to see.

Finally, she broke the silence. “Hey King, where are all the prisoners?”

“Weh? I don’t know. Why do you ask?” King replied. He wouldn’t openly admit it, but he was kind of weirded out by how empty this place was himself.

Luz’s curious look gained a more serious edge. “Because, no prison, whether the prisoners deserve to be in it or not, should be this level of empty unless it’s abandoned.” Luz’s scanning of the surroundings gained a hint of nervousness at that point. “I just can’t shake the feeling that something bad goes on here. You know, besides the whole “imprisoning for failure to submit to societal norms” thing.” Her frank bluntness would’ve been funny, if the situation hadn’t been so grim.

King glanced around, now feeling far more nervous about being here. “Now that you mention it, a lot of people get dragged here, but you don’t really hear much about them afterwards…”

“Hey kid, how did you get out of your cell?”

Turning their heads in surprise, both King and Luz were mildly surprised to find actual prisoners ahead of them. The one who had called out, a Witch-girl with dusky skin, two prominent canines that bordered on fangs, and an almost sleepy look to her, was beckoning them closer. It made sense, no one liked being in prison, and Luz’s gut wasn’t giving her any warnings about her. So, with that in mind, Luz sidled up to the bars.

Luz cleared her throat. “Not a prisoner actually, also, not technically a criminal.” She ignored King’s shout of ‘Not Yet Your Not!’ “Mind if I ask how you all ended up in a dump like this?” Okay, maybe it was cheesy, but Luz wasn’t gonna not ask how a group ended up in prison; what other time would she get the opportunity?

The prisoner chuckled, a bitter sound, the type you hear from someone who doesn’t really expect to be happy ever again and is just going through the motions. “Never thought someone would have the time or desire to ask me that. I got stuffed in here for writing stories about food falling in love with each other.” She held up a notebook with an image of two vegetables kissing on the open page. “And I know you didn’t ask, but the name’s Katya. You’re the first person to actually care about me in a long while.”

“Same with the rest of us.” Commented the prisoner next to the now-named Katya, a pale-blue fellow with multiple eyes. “I got put in here for eating my own eyes.” He then demonstrated, preempting Luz’s question, popping out one of his eyes, swallowing it whole, and then regrowing it perfectly. It was as fascinating as it was disturbing.

A muffled thumping came from the last occupied cell. Turning to it, Luz saw a small, white, ball-shaped creature that seemed to be a head with arms and legs sticking out of it. A cloth gag was tied tight over what Luz assumed was its mouth, the thumping coming from the creature slamming against things as it furiously clawed and yanked at the gag.

Turning a questioning stare to the others, Luz asked, “What’s going with that one?”

Katya snorted, a tired humor in her eyes. “Yeah, she’s big on conspiracy theories. She ended up annoying the guards so much they gagged her to keep her quiet. Which I thought was kinda lame, she had some fun stuff to say. Also, she really dislikes the government, which probably didn’t help her either.”

Luz was furious. No, scratch that, she was beyond furious. She was so angry, all she could show was calm. King could physically feel the rage seeping off of her. Speaking in a voice so coldly furious, Luz bit out. “So, what you’re telling me, is that you guys haven’t actually committed any crimes, and got thrown in here for being different?”

Katya let out a sad sigh. “Pretty much kid. Wrath really likes throwing anyone he considers “unsuitable” for society in here. And we happen to fit his definition of unsuitable.” She gave a soft grin towards the still irate human. “But hey, at least we got the chance to tell someone, right? Not many get that chance.”

Luz hyper-focused on that last part, instantly trying to process that statement alongside her concerns from earlier. “What do you mean by that?”

Katya gave an ominous stare. “A lot of people come into this place, but it isn’t much of a prison. It’s more a waystop before they get shipped off to the Emperor’s Castle; whatever goes on in there, we don’t know, but some people come out, utterly broken… and others don’t come back at all. Because so few people are actually here at any time, there aren’t many guards, but considering how tough Wrath himself is, it doesn’t make much of a difference.”

Luz's blood ran cold. The details may have been sparse, but what little she had been given painted a rather… ugly picture. There was no way she could leave these guys here. Glancing around, she spotted the lever that would release the cells (she honestly wondered how she missed it at first), and started tugging on it. At the slight motion of the heavy piece of metal, Luz was torn between frustration at how slow-going it was, and satisfaction at being able to move it at all. Just as she felt she was making progress, she paused, the sharp rumbling of heavy footfalls approaching in their direction.

“What are you fools yammering about?”

The voice that spoke was sinister, rumbling, and had a grating edge to it that set every nerve in Luz’s body on fire. Just as the figure was about to enter visual range, Luz gave a leap, clinging to the shadow-cloaked walls above. The amazement the prisoners felt at watching her feat was quickly squashed as the source of the voice pulled into view. A hulking, muscular figure, what little of his body could be seen having a purple tone to it. His body was clad in a white tunic, a triangular badge displayed proudly across his chest; the plague doctor-like mask sent chills up Luz’s spine. There was no doubts, this was the infamous Warden Wrath.

The Warden loomed over his prisoners, an almost palpable ruthlessness bleeding off of him. Glancing down, he spotted what he assumed was the topic of their discussion. “Ah.” He pulled up what Luz could see was a copy of that same wanted poster of Eda she had seen before. “The Owl Lady.” He brutally crushed the paper in his grip. “She escaped me before, but soon, she will be within my grasp.”

Alarm bells began ringing in Luz’s head, and as she looked down and saw King, hidden in the dark corners of one of the cells, the blind panic in his eyes made it clear he felt that fear too. Suddenly a sharp gasp drew their attention. “Aiw!!! I can bweathe again!!” It was the last prisoner, having finally managed to work the gag off of her face. Refocusing on the present, the tiny inmate began a tirade at the sight of Wrath. “The voices of independence cannot be silenced!! We will suwvive, we will enduwe, we will cast off ouw oppwessows!! We will neveh be afwaid of you, you big old cweep!!!”

Speech impediment aside, Luz couldn’t help but feel impressed at the courage it took to speak your true feelings, even in such a bleak situation. That admiration turned to dread, however, when she saw the Warden move towards the lever to the cells. While he didn’t see her, she could feel the air hum around him as he easily lifted what she struggled to even budge.

As the doors to the cells opened, the smallest prisoner gasped in delight. “Hooway, I’m fwee!” Eager to take advantage of her apparent freedom, the conspiracy theorist took off like a bullet, only to be effortlessly snagged by Wrath. As Wrath ruthlessly pulped the prisoner in his hand, the resulting squeak more menacing than humorous as he laughed over it, he calmly stated something that would forever infuriate Luz, even years later: “Remember, there is no place for you in society if you can’t fit in.”

As Wrath wandered off, to where Luz didn’t care, still clutching and tormenting the small prisoner, Luz leapt down as silently as she could, King rushing to join her. As she opened her mouth, hoping to say something, Katya raised a hand to stop her. The light that had been in her and the other prisoner’s eyes? It was gone, that little spark of hope had been snuffed out. Still, Katya tried to pull off a smile. “Just go kid. Go and enjoy freedom for us.”

Luz and King traded sad looks, before walking off. King, he didn’t know what to do with this. He was used to feeling unstoppable, weakened form notwithstanding, so feeling… bad for someone was new to him; he didn’t like it. Luz, she was angry, furious, apoplectic, basically every word you could use to describe being angry she was feeling right now. Before everything happened, she was used to feeling like an outsider, like people didn’t want to be around her because she was different from everybody else, but even at her lowest, she was never made to feel as if being herself, that being weird, was unacceptable on par with the worst of crimes. Luz knew one thing; when this heist was over, she was going to bring this place crashing to the ground.

As Luz and King mulled over their conflicted emotions, Eda ran up, a mischievous grin stretched across her face. “Alright gang, the Warden’s distracted tormenting some tiny creature and- what’s with the long faces?” Her grin wiped itself away at the depressed aura surrounding the two.

Luz turned a nervous eye towards Eda. “Hey, Eda? How often do people get sent to this place?”

Eda blinked, a little confused at the question. “Fairly regularly, at least once a week I’d say. Why do you ask?”

Luz gulped, not liking what she was about to say. “Well, how often do people come back out? And, if people come here so often, why are there so few prisoners?”

Eda paused, considering the question. As the possible answer, or answers, dawned on her, she grew grim, face pale. “Okay, yeah, that’s something I hadn’t thought about before. We need to get that crown, and get out of here as soon as possible.”

Luz nodded, a look of concentration upon her face. “Yeah. We overheard the Warden earlier, and the way he was talking? I think this may be a trap to lure you here.”

Eda blinked at that, then facepalmed. “Ugh! I can’t believe I didn’t think of that! Well, we better make this quick then.”

King piped up at that. “Then we better get going! The sooner we get my crown, the sooner Wrath stops being our problem!” With that said, he stomped towards a pair of very impressive doors.

Previously On Supernatural Season 3, we had a really rock solid trio of episodes to kick us off right, so what does SPN do next? It’s gonna lay the groundwork for some spicy character development that may or may not pay off by the end of the season. Let's find out!

To be honest, I felt the next three episodes just sort of plateau? There’s enough nuggets in these three eps - “Sin City”, “Bedtime Stories”, and “Red Sky at Morning” - that it does feel like they’re setting up for something big but it’s taking too much time. If the season had been longer, I don’t know that I’d be complaining, because there’s SO much potential introduced with these character developments, but I know it’s gonna get cut off at the knees in the very near future. 2021 Me has been trained on what to expect from a short season, so half of my brain wants to give the show slack for Unexpected Circumstances, but the other half of my brain is shouting YOUR NOT DRIVING THE BUS FAST ENOUGH, YOU’LL NEVER MAKE IT TO THE END OF THE LINE IN TIME!!!

And that’s maybe unfair because there really are some great nuggets in here. We’ve got “Sin City”, which is Dean’s episode. I mean, they’re ALL Dean’s episode, but this one more so than the other two in this post. Dean gets trapped with a demon who turns out to be...kinda...nice? In kind of a Stockholm Syndromey way I guess? She let’s Dean in on the fate that awaits him when his year long contract is up and it is NOT great. This isn’t the first time we see that there’s more to the demons than SPN has shown us in the past (hello, Ruby), but it is the first time Dean chills out enough to actually have a conversation with one. Dean doesn’t really get it, like he’s still not interested in getting out of his deal, but the fear gets planted, it just needs some time to grow. Oh, also, the Colt Ex Machina is back in action, so that's important.

This dumb bitch thinks he can fool us with that devil-may-care side glance but he caaaan't

But then we get “Bedtime Stories”, the Sam episode, where Sam learns...to let go? That’s the point of this episode right? It’s about letting go of someone before that person becomes too toxic and dangerous? At least, that’s the lesson that Dean wants Sam to take away from this case. But Sam will NOT learn this lesson, so instead he tries to cancel Dean’s deal by killing the crossroads demon who wrote it. Spoiler Alert: it doesn't work.

And then we get “Red Sky At Morning”, which opens and closes with some heavy emotional baggage, but then is stuffed full of fun. Like, this episode ricochets wildly in terms of Feelings, but then that’s probably what we should expect from SPN. I mean, what show have I been watching for 3 seasons now?

Fun Facts guys: I’m a tired Millenial, and swapping DVD discs was too much work so I switched over to watching this season on Netflix and GUESS WHAT???? THESE EPISODES COME WITH A SUICIDE WARNING!?!?!

They're not wrong.

And like, if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about this season I don’t know WHAT will. Cuz Dean is absolutely suicidal and I am surprised (??) I guess (???) by how much the show acknowledges that. Or I guess, surprised by how much Netflix acknowledges that. It’s something that I did not...pick up on the first go around on season 3, possibly because I was 19 and I was an idiot and found this sort of emotional vulnerability to be endearing. Listen, I know there’s a lot to be said about the producers of the show making...umm…poor decisions in regards to character developments? But if the target demographic of this show was anything like me - and I suspect they were - then the viewers were also...probably...responding inappropriately to some of those character developments. And here’s the thing - I’m looking at this from 12 years in the future, with 12 years worth of real life drama that makes the heavy handed melodrama of television feel...well, heavy handed. Maybe irresponsible? Certainly a little uncomfortable. Big Me is having A Time confronting Little Me’s taste in TV Characters. It’s one thing to have a kink, Little Me, it’s another thing to romanticize suicidal depression.

And hey, I can’t deny that the character development for Dean makes sense. I actually appreciate that the show is thinking through the world and the relationship dynamics that they’ve built and the toll that these misadventures are having on their main characters. These episodes all get bookended by Impala Fights where Sam keeps pushing Dean to give a shit about his own life and Dean responds with an inability to care. That’s just where he is right now, and I get that. We’re early in the season still. But how will the rest of the season handle this? I honestly can’t remember but I also don’t want this to be a throw-away issue that they use to remind us that Dean’s supposed to die at the end of the season. I’m prob gonna come back to this throughout the season because I ~just~want~this~show~to be~repsonsiblllllleeeeeeeeeeee.

Lol, I know, that’s a lot to ask from the CW.

ON TO MORE FUN THINGS!!

Sam is gettin’ reeeeeallll bitchy in these episodes and #1, I love it, Bitchy Sam 5Ever, but also #2, was this supposed to be the sign that Sam was going darkside? Like, he’s snarky, he’s angry, he’s not pulling any punches and that could just be him reacting to his brother’s situation but it could also be….you know...him...becoming slightly...evil? For instance in “Sin City”, he kills the two demons who kidnapped Dean without even thinking. On the one hand, this is the Winchester MO, they kill demons, that’s their job, but on the other hand, Dean is actively telling Sam to stop. Same deal in “Bed Time Stories” - Sam kills the crossroads demon in cold blood (or maybe viscera). Again, we could blame this on instinct - the Winchesters were brought up to do exactly this - but 1) Dean keeps telling Sam not to and 2) that’s not Sam. This show spent 2 seasons telling us that Sam is the Good Brother, the White Hat, the Touchy-Feely One. This is not the Touchy Feely Sam who reasons with ghosts and falls in love with werewolves. Like, everyone else sees it too, right? Also, he is usually very nice to everyone but he is a REAL BITCH to Gertrude in “Red Sky at Morning.” Like, come on, Sam, she just wants to have a nice time. She is OLD. You really think she’s got what it takes to climb that tree?

Honestly, how tall are this lady's heels?

I know that there was a plan for Sam to start Turning in this season before the show’s episode order got slashed due to the Writer’s Strike. And man, I really would have liked to have seen this play out. Like, first season Sam is the Innocent, right? He’s our stand in for the viewer in those first few episodes and then he’s revealed to be kind of the only thing that went right in the lives of both John and Dean, so Baby Must Be Protected at All Costs. The fact that John ultimately lets Sam go off to college and doesn’t contact him for the next four years says to me that on some level, John felt the need to preserve that innocence, that kind of untouched quality Sam has. Dean is very similar - whenever Sam gets too into the job, Dean calls him out on it. So in the second season when we find out that Sam might be evil, it’s a real punch in the gut, for Dean most of all. But then the show admittedly got bored with that storyline and it didn’t really go anywhere. So whereas Dean has personality in SPADES that fluctuates and changes and develops/maybe just gets more intense as the show goes on, Sam remains that kind of blank slate that the viewer can put their face on. Except now we’re in season three, and if you’ve bought into this show, then you’ve bought into it, so the audience doesn’t need a Blank Slate Sam anymore. And if you start with Sam the Innocent and then introduce the idea of Dark!Sam and then just leave that concept hanging, then isn’t this sort of like Checkov’s Evil Sam? If you introduce Evil Sam in the first act you really ought to deliver on Evil Sam by act three, right? Wouldn’t that have been A+ and Wild? Wouldn’t that have made Sam’s arc and emotional struggles over the previous seasons have more weight?

Will this be resolved in later seasons? Maybe. I’m gonna be honest, this is the last season I watched all the way through and seasons 4 through...like, 8 were real touch and go for me. I know that Sam ultimately is revealed to be a vessel for??? The devil??? And Dean is ultimately revealed to be a vessel for??? Michael??? And then the two of them???? Fight to the death???? Point is, season 5 got weird guys and I’m not there yet.

Back to more fun things! You know what guys?? I think I ship Dean and Bela. I’m...almost ashamed to admit it? Like, I remember Little Me watching this season and just dumping on Bela, I HATED her, but this time? I am 1,000% On Board This Ship. Like, there is an alternate universe somewhere where these two got a spinoff show that ran for 6 seasons and I watched EVERY episode. And then, like, 5 years after it ended, they rebooted it with Dean and Bela’s grown up daughter as the lead and the whole OG cast makes cameos over the three seasons it stays on the air and it’s amazing. I’d own both shows on DVD.

What I like about Bela this time around (and again, I am WILDLY surprised about this development), is that she can dish it just as hard as the Winchesters can. Like, every line Dean throws at her she holds up a mirror to say, “Oh yes, I know the Kettle is black, but what color are you, Pot?” and I’m just continually thrilled. She is also just as damaged as Dean is but somehow channeling it into a healthier way? Like, she’s true Chaotic Neutral, which is not necessarily healthy, it’s just healthier than Dean. Or maybe it’s just that she’s better at managing it. In either case, they are HOT MESSES and I love it. I just love it. I know I complained about shoehorned romances but Ackles and Lauren Cohan just totally crush it in every scene and when Dean walks down the stairs all She’s All That in “Red Sky at Morning”, I yelled at the screen OMG just BONE already!!!!! And then like, 5 seconds later, Bela literally says “We should really have angry sex,” and it was probably the most vindicating moment I’ve had on this ride so far.

I just think they're neat!

WHY did we cancel her? WHY?? I don’t want to believe it was the Wincest again, so I’m gonna pretend that it wasn’t, but it was definitely fans. According to Kripke, Bela gets the axe at the end of this season because of the fan hatred of her. Now, I’ve already admitted that I personally held a grudge, but good Lord, what was wrong with us, as a Fandom? To be fair to me (and all of us), would we have felt differently if we had not been introduced to Jo a mere season earlier?? I'm gonna say yes. Although I had misgivings about Jo the first episode we meet her, by the end of season 2 I was certainly on her side. Working through season 3, I am remembering that, when we were introduced to Bela, I was immediately FURIOUS because WTF, WHERE’S JO? SPN just introduced to her. They just settled on a love interest for Dean and the writer’s just got me on board with that. Now they’ve completely done away with both that character AND that dynamic and you want me to get on board this NEW thing? And be excited about it??? So I'm gonna blame the love-interest-whiplash, combined with the fact that Little Me related my own personal self more to Jo than to Bela, that made me hate Bela in the first place. When you look at how quickly the show abandoned one character to introduce another character, it makes sense why fans got mad, but I’m also mad that we continued to hate Bela when she turned out to be such an A+ Frenemy. It makes me want to shout at the writers through the time void COMMIT TO A FEMALE CHARACTER YOU JAGWEEDS.

What’s wild watching this show now is just how Male it was, especially considering its audience was already skewed heavily female by this point in the series. If you made this show today, I don’t know that you could do that. Today, there’s a real push for balanced, diverse casts in programming, especially in sci-fi/fantasy and young adult. I think if SPN had started in 2021, they would have introduced the Harvell’s or Bela up in season 1, and that introduction would have been much more intentional. The benefit of having a shorter episode count as the standard is that there’s less of the “throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks” approach. Looking at it from 2021, reading snippets of interviews from Kripke, that’s definitely what they’re doing with the side characters in these seasons and you can feel that in Jo and Bela. A shorter season means that the storytelling has to be tighter, it can’t wander, so every decision has to be a load-bearing decision. On the other hand, one of the down sides of having a shorter episode count is the exact same thing - less room to throw stuff, less room to experiment. Heck, Bobby was technically a character they threw at the wall and he didn’t just stick, he became a tentpole character of the series. The only side character that actually made it into the series finale even!

So how much room should we be giving our television programs? I think it depends on the show, honestly. I think you have to decide up front if you want space to experiment, or if you have one, tight, compact story line that’s gonna drive viewers from episode 1 right through the finale without giving them the chance to catch their breath. You have to make the decision, but that doesn’t mean we have to stop making one style of show in favor of the other. Just because we’re in the Age of Streaming doesn’t mean there isn’t room enough for both.

Rei (PART TWO)

I literally finished my university paper a day early so I would have time to write this up and keep giving you guys the Good Content™. Thanks for the overwhelming amount of support on part one, everybody!

-When Rei first tells them her plan for taking down Endeavor, they don’t think there’s any way it’ll actually work.

-The LOV has always operated as a physical unit, out to kick ass and take names. They didn’t band together for subtle espionage and demolishing reputations through intellect.

-But Rei’s adamant that going into a brawl won’t accomplish anything. After all, even if they did manage to beat him in a fight, Endeavor be seen as a martyr to the public, still a symbol of hope, the number one hero that defended them to the end. That’s not what they’re going for. Beyond that, the only way to keep him from rising again, in that sense, is to kill him, and while Rei Todoroki wants some well-deserved justice, she doesn’t want his life on her hands.

-So, instead, she suggests ruining his image. They’ll air out all the sheets of the Todoroki household, let the world know once and for all the truth behind the man they’ve placed their faith in. Force him to step down, allow him to finally reach that number one spot that he’s ruined the lives of her family to achieve, and then strip it from him with the evidence of the horrendous acts he committed to get there.

-”He lit this fire,” Rei says coldly, and the chill in the room doesn’t come from her quirk, “Now he can burn in it.”

-Personally, Dabi still wants to torch Endeavor’s ass straight to hell, but even he has to acknowledge that Rei has a point. Their odds of success are a lot higher going into this from a tactical perspective. The rest of the league can at least somewhat come to that conclusion as well, but there’s one main problem barring the way.

-Kurogiri is the one to point it out, asking how they’re going to get evidence of events that happened so many years ago. At the best, they have two witness testimonies, and there’s not a single court around that would take the word of a hospitalized woman and a well-known villain over that of their number one hero.

-And it’s then that Rei’s face hardens into an expression that none of them have seen before, delicate hands balling into tight fists, jaw clenched.

- “I can get you that evidence,” She claims easily enough, as if it’s something that can be pulled from thin air, “But I’m going to need a laptop, or a computer-”

-The very nice thing about co-inhabiting with criminals that have loose morals is that they can get you things very quickly, and typically for free. Rei has a laptop sitting in front of her before the night is up, and is furiously typing as soon as they get her logged in.

-It’s common knowledge in the league that Rei has a habit of mumbling to herself when deep in thought; this has been particularly prominent while working on the Endeavor plan

-And this has actually been pretty unsettling for a lot of the members, because for someone so sweet, Rei has a novel of shit that Endeavor needs to atone for, and she hasn’t forgotten a single insulting incident in twenty-four years. 

-What this means is that sometimes, when she’s working deep on the planning, divulging information about the number one hero, she’ll give them a list of his weaknesses, things that will set him off, ways that they can target him that nobody else is aware of (potentially even Endeavor himself)

-But then after that, she’ll start listing incidents. Her eyes will gloss over, and the words will just start tumbling out of her mouth as she crosses situations out of that novel, offenses that are being reciprocated through her sabotaging the man

-Her last round of info had made up for six incidents, and while the league had gradually been getting used to these episodes, the last one had packed a punch.

- “The time you forced Touya to train so hard, he broke three fingers and you still made him keep going for an hour after.”

- Any time she mentions incidents with Touya, the tension in the room goes up four notches. Dabi can’t believe some of the details she remembers, can barely remember them himself sometimes, but his ring finger on his right hand has been crooked ever since that day, and it serves as a stark reminder of the past they’ve endured.

-While she works at the laptop, though, the things she mutters are not incidents, but random sequences of letters and numbers, her hands moving in sync with the mumbled symbols.

-And it takes them a while to pick up on it, but these memorized segments are the extremely distorted weblinks to clearly self-made web pages, at least six or seven in total.

- She doesn’t stumble once. Not on a single number, not in any of it, and every single one of those links are complete gibberish, entirely disconnected from one another.

-The web pages are filled with images, all of them old, all of them pre-dating Rei’s hospital admittance

-And it’s with this that Dabi has to leave, storming out of the warehouse, and Rei gets this carefully blank look on her face, because they’re both reliving nightmares, and they’ve barely started scrolling the pages.

-There are scanned copies of journal entries written in different coloured crayons and a wobbly hand, more entries on some of the other web pages done much steadier and in pencil, but with the same printing. There are photos of bruises, scars, burns, four different children, one woman’s gaunt face. Personal accounts, typed and handwritten, short and blurry-quality video clips of Endeavor’s “training”. It’s a montage of horror, carefully collected and dispersed across the web through links that meant nothing, that would never come up as a result from a search engine, spread across multiple pages so that even if one page were found and deleted, there were many more to replace it.

-But none of them have been found, none of them have been taken down because Endeavor, man that he was, had assumed that because his wife never raised her fists, she wasn’t fighting back.

-It’s in that moment that it clicks with everyone else, too: Rei Todoroki didn’t come up with this plan to take down Endeavor in the few months they’ve known her- she’s been planning this for years.

-The way that Rei takes all of this in, and then almost too-calmly asks Kurogiri if he can please make her a cup of tea is terrifying, even to a room full of criminals.

-They all fall asleep restlessly that night, reminded of their own pasts and the demons that have led them to where they are- and as for Rei? Well, she gets to cross another twenty-seven incidents off her list, and when she falls asleep as well, the weight on her chest feels much lighter.

-When Hawks shows up the next day, it’s still early in the morning- early enough for most of the league to still be in bed, and a few hours before his time to patrol. He comes bearing a tin of sweets for Rei, her bitter, dark-haired son (she’s so happy he’s found a friend), and a USB stick.

- “I hear we’re raising hell,” He says cheerily by way of greeting.

-They go through the evidence quietly the hero scrolling through the pages with an increasingly scary look on his face.

-He doesn’t tell Rei what he and Dabi have already hashed out between the night before and six o’clock in the morning- that A) Hawks is definitely a spy, and damn did it ever piss him off to have Dabi out him so easily, because he was sure he had him fooled, B) Dabi won’t out him to the rest of the league so long as Hawks agrees to help Rei, and C) None of this can go through the Commission. Absolutely none of it.

-They’re both very aware that if the Commission gets their hands on this kind of info, it will be swept under the rug faster than either man can blink, and the people instigating the problem will probably disappear. Hawks has heard them use the sentence “It’s for the greater good” far too many times to cover up too many things, and a sickened part of him doesn’t want to consider if maybe they’ve used those exact same words to cover up situations like this before.

-And damn it all, he agrees even though he knows it’ll probably come around and bite him in the ass- because at this rate, if the Commission catches wind of him being affiliated with this plot in any way after it all breaks loose, he’ll be on the rack. But he tries not to consider what he has to lose, and instead focuses on the fact that he can help these people, and maybe others as well. Who knows how many “heroes” have ruined lives just like Endeavor and walked free.

-And really, in the heart of it all, he wants to help the Todoroki family. Sure, he doesn’t know Natsuo and Fuyumi and Shouto very well, but Rei has slowly warmed over a portion of his heart that he didn’t realize was lacking a mother figure, and Dabi means more to him than he’d like to admit. Growing up, he was never given the liberty of being attached to people, tangible people who were his equals and not his icons. Now, having grown so fond of these two in particular, he’s beginning to understand why some people are willing to lay everything on the line for family.

-So he goes through the evidence and does his best to ignore how Rei strokes her hands through Dabi’s hair as the two of them watch as well, not entirely sure who the action is meant to comfort more. All the while, he’s trying to match up the man in these entries, the man in these clips and photos, to the man he’s risked his life for, fought beside, trusted wholeheartedly.

-Betrayal has a bitter taste, and it lingers in his mouth.

- He’s just finishing up downloading all the files onto the USB drive, when Rei finally speaks.

- “If this works, you’ll be the new Number One.”

-His hands stumble on the keys, and a sinking sense of melancholy sets in. Quite honestly, Hawks has never aimed for the Number One position in the way that others do. He’s never gone after it like he needed to have the top position or nothing- in fact, he would be happy to settle lower in the top ten then where he is now.

-But there’s really no avoiding it, and while he’s not sure what kind of complications it will have in his career, in his mission, in his growing relationships with both Rei and Dabi, he determines that’s a problem for another day.

-“I’ll be better than him.” Hawks says, the words coming out as more of a promise than the assurance he intended. Rei’s answering smile is caught somewhere between satisfied, bittersweet, and proud.

- “Good.”

-He takes the USB stick, gives Rei a quick hug and demands that she eat at least three of the chocolates herself before passing them around to everyone else (because he absolutely knows that she will) and leaves a shared parting look with Dabi that means everything and nothing all at once.

-Rei notices of course, but it’s really not her place to pry and she’s honestly not even sure that Touya himself has any idea what his current situation is with the winged hero, so she chooses to let the matter drop. The fact that the chocolates Hawks brought her happen to be her son’s favourite doesn’t entirely go over her head either, but she chooses to let that slide as well

- In the end, true to their collective nature, the LOV still agrees to also attempt a physical attack on the Number One hero, if only to bolster their media image. After all, they’ve been lying low long enough that the hero world needs a reminder that they’re still alive and kicking.

-And honestly, maybe just a little, they also want to give the world an image of Endeavor being taken down in more ways than one.

-Dabi volunteers immediately, that much kind of being a given, but everyone’s surprised when Rei offers to go as well. So far, everyone aside from the league and Hawks is still under the impression that Rei’s hospitalized- her image still isn’t tarnished, and if she wanted to, she could walk away from the league that minute and never suffer consequences for it. The instant her face is shown in correlation with them? There’s no going back from that.

-But she’s adamant, and it’s with some reluctance that they give in. In some ways, it’s only fair- this is personal for her after all, so it makes sense that she’d want to be involved. They settle on letting the mother and son handle the fire hero, and make plans to have everyone else ready to back them up if needs be.

-Besides, they’re out to absolutely destroy his image, and what better way to do that than have Endeavor’s own family do so? Bonus points for dramatic flair, nobody will be forgetting this for a while.

-Before long, it’s the night before the whole operation, and everyone’s restless as hell. Twice and Toga watch five consecutive episodes of some awful cake-decorating show that neither of them can stand before calling it a night, Spinner’s gone for most of the evening, and in a rare show of caring, Shigaraki puts down a steaming cup of soothing tea in front of Rei, the kind that she always steeps for him when he starts getting antsy and in his head. It’s a kind gesture from the young man, and she makes sure to smile warmly when she thanks him for it, pleased when he chooses to stay and sit at the table with her. They don’t make conversation, but just knowing that the other is around is comforting in itself.

-Rei ends up staying up later than he does, and it’s with a somewhat awkward and unpracticed motion that the man reaches out to pat her hand before heading to his own room, the action jerky like a rusty machine, but still appreciated. Rei smiles into her cup when she notices that the leader of their rag-tag little group has been gradually getting more tactile with those around him, wearing those gloves she made for him at almost all times. He still has a long way to go before he’ll be able to handle true contact, but she can see the effort he’s making, and every little bit of progress marks a new milestone.

-Dabi also spends the night away from the league, but Rei isn’t too worried about her eldest child. She knows exactly where he’ll end up, knows that he’s in good hands. After all, there’s probably nowhere safer for him to be than with the one other person in this world who cares for him just as much as she does.

-And on that note, Hawks spends most of the night discreetly flying all across Japan, dropping off printed files of incriminating evidence under an anonymous cover and using several fake emails to reach out to news agencies, freelance journalists, newspapers, magazine editors- anybody he can think of who would take this on as a scoop and spread the proof like wildfire. By the next morning, he knows that he’ll be seeing this stuff all over the media- he just hopes it’s been enough.

-When he returns home to find the door already unlocked, he doesn’t even bother turning on the lights. Instead, he locks the door behind him and makes his way over to the couch, not surprised at all to discover a familiar lanky figure passed out unawares.

-Normally he’d just leave him, maybe toss a blanket over the other man in passing, and continue on his way. But… After tonight, everything was going to change, and who knew what was going to happen to all of them, yes, but especially him and Dabi and this… Well, whatever it was that they were building.

-So he wakes the other man up instead, smiling as blue eyes catch on his own, and they talk. They talk about everything Hawks can think of to talk about, every little question he’s ever wanted to know about this mysterious person who’s taken up such a huge portion of his life recently. And for once, Dabi doesn’t meet him with resistance for his curiosity, seeming to have come to the same conclusion. 

-Eventually they end up in Hawks’ bed, still just talking, laying side by side. There’s a strange sense of rebellion in the intimacy of it all, and the part of Hawks that has always loved pushing boundaries, fighting his leash, is basking in this. The Commission had wanted him to get close to Dabi, but he doubts they’d intended for him to get close enough to press a brave kiss to the other man’s forehead as they both start drifting off, to be close enough to hear his breath stutter before he hesitantly drapes an arm over the hero’s waist. If they could see him now, they’d expect him to be luring Dabi into some kind of trap, stabbing him in the back after earning his trust.

-But for now, the greatest “fuck you” he can send their way is by choosing to be gentle over violent, by choosing this person over his mission, by going after what he wants for once, damn it-

- “You won’t be there tomorrow, will you?”

-No, no he won’t be. As a hero, if he were present, he’d be expected to step in, and that’s the last thing he wants to do here, especially if it means facing off against not only Dabi, but Rei as well. The thought of even acting threatening to the woman is enough to turn his stomach.

-And honestly, if anyone had ever told Hawks that at twenty three and well into his professional career, he would find himself cradling a villain in his bed and whispering promising words of encouragement about the upcoming takedown of his childhood idol, he would never have believed them.

-Eventually they fall asleep this way, and Dabi has never really known, in all his life, what safety feels like but he’s pretty sure this is it.

-Skipping ahead to the next morning, Endeavor is already out on patrol when the news bombs start dropping. And of course, the reaction from the public is… Explosive, to say the least.

-There’s a lot of shock and a lot of horror, and absolute outrage. The only thing to really do in a situation like this, as far as news is concerned, is to go for a follow-up, so there are people all over the city trying to track down their Number One to get some answers.

-Meanwhile, Endeavor has no clue this is happening. At this point, the worst part of his day is not yet the fact that his hero career will be over in the span of a week, but that he ran into a familiar crispy edgelord and just… Doesn’t have time for this shit again.

-He expects Dabi to start monologuing to some degree, so when the villain starts off with, “Do you remember me?” it’s not really any kind of surprise.

-But it’s when Dabi responds to his irritated retort with a more firm, “No- do you remember me?” that Endeavor halts in his tracks a little bit. He’s not entirely sure what this creepy asshole is going for, but it’s setting him on edge, like there’s something in this situation that he has missed observing.

-And, for starters, he’s missed seeing the film crew behind him, although he will notice them eventually. 

-But then this criminal starts talking about his children. Shouto, Natsuo, Fuyumi. He talks about how Shouto was kept separate from them, how he isolated the other two like they were never good enough, how he pushed his youngest so hard, the boy cried himself to sleep every night. Dabi starts listing events, scenarios, as if he gave a shit about them, as if he was there-

-And that’s when it clicks.

-When it does, he just outright cuts the other man off, a scowl working its way onto his face, disgust curdling in his gut. Part of him can’t believe it, that his long lost son has returned to him in the form of a ghoul, and the other part doesn’t accept it at all.

- “You’re not Touya.”

-At first, Dabi stares at him incredulously and starts to laugh, because how the hell could he not be, given the list of offences he just spouted off, but Endeavor corrects him, voice chillingly cold. “You might’ve been, but you’re not anymore. I gave you that name, and I can just as easily take it away. I set you up for greatness, and you chose this?!”

-The rage is bubbling over now, and the look on Dabi’s face has gone from one of irritated humour to a sheer blank slate. “You’re not my son. No family of mine would be so weak as to fall into villainy.”

-And, well, that line basically digs his grave for him, because from out of the shadows steps Rei Todoroki, and in the ways her eyes are blazing, one could’ve sworn she’d stolen Endeavour’s Hellfire right out of his hands.

-Instantaneously, half of Japan is losing their collective shit. In the span of six whole hours, Endeavor’s been exposed, Touya Todoroki is back from the dead (and is, as it turns out, one of the most prominent LOV members), and Endeavor’s wife has not only escaped the hospital she was admitted in, but has apparently sided with the villains as well? And this is all being filmed on live television?

-Every building with a functional TV is tuned in. Hawks is in line for coffee when he catches sight of the news channel and decides he’s going to slow down for once in his life, and not take it to go. Natsuo is watching the whole thing go down while munching on a bowl of cereal in his apartment, and as shocking as the whole situation is, it’s immensely satisfying as well.

-Shouto Todoroki watches from the dorm common room, and nobody knows what to say.

-And let’s just talk about Aizawa for a moment, shall we?

-Aizawa is a stoic man of few words, and even fewer needs in life. He’s simple, pragmatic, a slightly pessimistic rationalist through experience, and pretty laid back as far as most things go.

-But you don’t ever fuck around with his students.

-If anyone is going to react poorly about this, it is Shouta Aizawa, hands down. Unlike Hawks, Aizawa has never looked up to Endeavor as a hero. He’s never even liked the guy. And therefore, he has nothing to lose when his manageable contempt for the hero escalates to seering, undiluted hatred. Aizawa does not have a fuck to give; Endeavor just made it onto his shit-list.

-And the worst part of it is that he didn’t really suspect anything. He probably would’ve assumed that Endeavor was hard on his son, but he would never have guessed even remotely close to everything that’s been uncovered. And this is Shouto, Shouto who is always so polite and aloof, and so eerily unshakable for a boy his age.

-Hell, his classmates just got him to partake in his first Disney marathon four days ago, and he couldn’t stop grinning all the way through Frozen. The boy’s made so much progress in being here, has been finally opening up and making friends- but now he’s staring blankly at the TV screen while the news feeds roll, and Aizawa is literally quaking he is so pissed off. 

-So while the rest of his students gather somewhat uncomfortably in the common room, watching the television with wide eyes, all of them clearly trying to decide between going to comfort the youngest Todoroki and leaving him be, Aizawa walks in with an extra blanket and two mugs of tea and just… Chills with him? The rest of the class is shook.

-And Aizawa doesn’t say anything either. He just gestures towards the TV and asks if Todoroki would like it left on, and when the boy gives him a silent nod back, he’s content to leave it at that. 

-Gradually, the rest of class 1-A begins to gather as well, quietly collecting around their shaken classmate. The couch is not near big enough for all of them, but they make it work.

-Midoriya’s curled into Todoroki’s other side, Iida and Uraraka sitting by his feet on the floor. Surprisingly enough, Bakugou chooses to stand, but directly behind where Todoroki’s seated on the sofa, hovering at his back and looking silently livid, which is even worse than when he’s loud. There’s students gathered around on the floor, standing like the blond, sitting on the arm of the couch like Kaminari is perched. 

-And it’s bad enough going through the Endeavor twist, but when Dabi reveals himself as Touya, Todoroki just blanches. There’s a million things running across his face all at once, and half of them are crushed. 

-Even Aizawa doesn’t really know how to react to that, and the room falls into a hushed silence until Bakugou finally speaks up.

- “I can’t believe your fucking brother kidnapped me, Icy Hot.”

-And then suddenly, noise. Kirishima is squawking and smacking Bakugou’ arm and telling him not to be insensitive, and Midoriya is overanalyzing, and Aoyama’s saying something about the woods and the Summer Camp attack, but nobody can really hear him-

-And over it all, Todoroki is laughing. It’s not an entirely wholehearted laugh, but it’s a laugh nonetheless. 

-When Rei steps up, though, that laughter fades quickly. Suddenly, Shouto Todoroki is four years old again, watching his mother face his raging inferno of a father, and all the previous boisterous life in the room gets sucked out at the sight.

-Throughout all of this, Aizawa’s been trying to keep his distance somewhat. Shouto’s never been a very affectionate student or individual in general, and neither is the erasing-quirk hero. But seeing how tiny and frail his student appears, shrinking in on himself as the drama keeps unfolding- well, Shouta doesn’t hesitate to put a comforting arm over the boy’s shoulders, noting with approval that Midoriya has snagged one of Todoroki’s hands as well, and is trying to keep him grounded.

-He gets a few notifications that he’s being paged to head out onto the scene, but he ignores them. Aizawa’s priorities are and always have been his students. If some other hero cares enough about hauling Endeavor’s ass out of trouble, they can rush in and help him, but Aizawa’s never been shy about making his opinions clear. He’s right where he needs to be, and he’s not moving.

-Rei is not afraid.

-That’s the first thing she realizes when she makes a move to stand by Touya, and sees Enji’s eyes widen in disbelief. She has stood in this exact position so many times, has stood before this man on too many occasions to be afraid of the wrath in his eyes. She is not afraid, she has evened the playing field, and she will not let him break her again.

-The worst part of the whole thing isn’t even seeing him again, meeting like this with the remains of a shattered family falling down around them. The worst part is that he sees her, narrows his eyes, and tells her to get out of the way. The first words out of his mouth are an order, same as they’ve always been. And right now? She has no intention of complying. Never again.

-When she doesn’t move, he repeats himself, angrier this time. He’s pouring flames, a spectacle that would have instilled her with enough terror ten years ago to do whatever he said, and not speak a word. But as she sees Endeavor winding up to attack, eyes fixed on Touya, the young man, her boy, reaching out to pull her behind him-

-Endeavor lunges. Rei shoves. Dabi ends up on the ground well out of harm’s way, and for a moment, the world stops on its axis.

-Enji Todoroki did not bribe over an entire family to win a woman with a run-of-the-mill ice quirk. Were that the case, he never would have wasted his time. Rei was a meek woman with a powerful ability that she barely used, and never in extremes; a little bit of frost to cool a juicebox, a cool hand to soothe a scrape.

-So when an absolutely terrifying, guttural roar of a sentence reaches him, seconds before thousands of pounds worth of ice go shooting up in a very obviously threatening display of power, he’s inclined to stop dead. 

- “Don’t you dare touch my son.”

- Rei’s teeth are clenched, eyes hard, hands still braced to fight. The exertion of putting up so much ice hasn’t even seemed to affect her, a simple flick of the finger compared to the full-handed slap she could deliver.

-For once, Endeavor hesitates.

- “You won’t lay a damned hand on him,” She hisses, and a collection of icicles shoot forward at her words, though they stop a good four meters away from where he stands, “I’ll never let you do that again. Because you were right about one thing, Enji- he’s not your son. He’s mine. Natsuo, Shouto, Fuyumi, Touya; they are all my children. You haven’t done a single thing in this life to deserve them.”

-Endeavor sputters at this, but only for a second before Rei’s ice is growing again, eyes cold and dangerous.

-He manages some kind of threat about having her rehospitalized, still unsure how it happened that she was out in the first place. Rei’s smile is not a pleasant one.

- “I don’t recommend you try that.” She says quietly, and in seconds, there’s ice everywhere, Rei unleashing her powers for the first time in well over twenty-five years. It shoots up in an enormous plume, cutting itself short before reaching the reporting camera crew, but forcing Endeavor to leap out of the way and scramble to safety.

-Rei and Dabi slip away in the confusion, regrouping with the league who were hoping to see some more general ass-kicking, but greatly appreciated the display nonetheless.

-And across the rest of Japan, people notice. Hawks chokes on his coffee when the ice flares up, stunned to disbelief that sweet little Rei, who had been so careful preening out his bad feathers that time he got stuck in a storm, was effortlessly capable of this. Natsuo drops his bowl, Shouto sits agape. None of them have ever seen Rei use her powers to her full capability, and the effect is stunning. 

- “That explains… A great deal.” Aizawa mumbles eventually, voice barely audible over one Katsuki Bakugou shouting “Fuck yeah!” at the top of his lungs from behind the sofa, very nearly scaring Midoriya off the couch. The news roll continues, but there’s nothing more to see aside from Endeavor shouting at a group of heroes that have arrived suspiciously late.

- “I… Yeah, I guess so.” Todoroki manages. It’s overwhelming, all of it, and while he has a billion questions in his mind, there’s one that sticks out more than the others: what on earth does all of this mean for them now?

What this means is that I guess we’re doing a part three now too, because I don’t know how to cut things short. Sorry guys. Thanks for the support, if you’ve read this far, and hopefully I’ll have some new content up for you all soon!

Family Matters (Bruce Wayne)

I got the inspiration for this piece from one of the episodes from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. I also related it to personal experiences as well sooo.... Yeah, it’s gonna be a sad one, but not enough to cry over lol. Anyways, I hope you enjoy it!

Word Count: 2754

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“My god, they’re really going at it up there, aren’t they?” Jason acknowledged your anguish screams coming from the top of the grand staircase; although you were on a whole different level of the manor, the pitch of your screams was still sharp on the ears for the boys and Alfred on the first floor in the kitchen. His facial features scrunched up with his shoulders every time he heard your violent scream and the sound of something breaking, whether it be glass or a heavy object hitting the ground or wall. “They started acting like that shortly after they got home,” Dick informed everyone in the room; his blue eyes observed the concerned faces of his brothers and Alfred, “they’ve been doing that for the last hour and a half, with no break.” “What set them off anyways?” Tim questioned with a hint of pure curiosity. His blue eyes narrowed while he looked over everyone in the room to see if anyone had a clue. “I heard that they were fired from their job?” Dick answered with uncertainty, making him question his own knowledge. “They got a secret partner anyone know about? Maybe a messy breakup?” Jason suggested as he stood by the entrance of the kitchen connecting to the back staircase leading up to the bedrooms; he listened to you rage on some more with the accompanies of shattering glass. “No, they haven’t met anyone in months,” Damian mentioned while he got down from the bar stool at the counter while he took his drink from Alfred. “Maybe they just got tired of being lonely?” The boys were at a loss at trying to figure out what had set you off on an emotional rampage in your bedroom. They were concerned for your safety with the number of numerous things they heard being thrown around, but none of them were brave enough to see what exactly was hiding behind that door of yours. They all chose to sit in silence, letting themselves be consumed by their numerous thoughts. Damian stood next to Dick by the table and when he heard Alfred briefly cough, a thought had snapped into his head. “Alfred, you seem to know every single thing about us and what we’re always doing, do you know the cause of all of that?” Damian pointed upwards at the ceiling as your screams got louder and something heavy hit the floor. Alfred gave the boys subtle glances before returning to preparing a tray filled with refreshments, food, and a first aid kit sitting next to it. A drawn-out sigh was the only answer the boys got; with that type of answer, they all figured that he knew the source of your distraught and was holding out on them, letting them wander in the dark with their wildest predictions. “Oh come on Alfred. It’s not like we’ll go running our mouths to everyone we know,” Jason scoffed as he was getting irritated with your behavior and the lack of progress to correct it, “Can you at least tell us if it is a serious matter to us as a family or them? We’re genuinely worried for their safety.” “It’s a serious family matter for them, I’m afraid, but it is none of your concern,” Alfred shot Jason a look that told him to just forget about the source of your pain, “You shouldn't worry too much, I’m afraid that we must let them work through this on their own for the time being, master Bruce will take care of it shortly.”

“Wait, Bruce knows about it too?” Dick asked, prompting Alfred to stop what he was doing to answer their questions in a discreet manner, “How come he didn’t tell us if it concerns our family?” “I must’ve not been clear earlier, I said that it is a family matter on their behalf, no ours,” Alfred placed his hands on top of the cool marble counter and gave all the boys a warning look, “I suggest that you all find some other activities to do around or outside the house for today. I have a feeling that when they are all done with their...excited behavior, they will be ashamed of themselves and wouldn’t want to face you all for a while.” Alfred left it with that and finished packing the tray with numerous items before setting it aside and walking into the laundry room for other matters. The boys were left dumbfounded as their wise butler left them with more questions rather than answers. They continued to listen to your screams that were starting to subside while they talked quietly amongst themselves. “So it’s a family matter. It’s got to be her blood relatives, right?” Tim questioned as he let his detective skills do all the work, “But I thought that she was orphaned with her parents' death?” “They were, but maybe it’s distant relatives, like cousins or aunts and uncles?” Dick stated, adding more questions to the mix. “Shh, you guys heard that?” Jason hushed the boys by holding up his hands in their direction while his head was poked out into the hall to the back staircase. The boys all listened in on what Jason was referring to and it all made their senses sharpen. “It’s...quiet. Maybe a little too quiet,” Jason walked out into the hallway to listen closer and he heard the slight muffle of two voices, one belonging to their adopted siblings and the other to their father, “Bruce is up there. They’re talking.” While the boys all listened at the base of the staircase the best they could without alarming the two of you in the room, you were standing in the center of your room looking like a complete mess. From your shins down to your bare feet, they were littered with cuts from the shattered photo frames of your real family and other glass objects that used to sit on your bookshelf. Your clothes were ripped and overstretched and your (H/C) hair was filled with knots in your loose bun; the flyaways constantly waved in and out of your vision, but you chose to not the littlest things take your attention away from your own goals. Bruce stood by the door, just inspecting the mess before him. The moment he stepped into the room he knew that that air would be tense, but he underestimated it as it felt like with the numerous family photos laying on the ground and your distressed demeanor that it was choking him as he was being forced to deal with a concept he is still fighting to understand himself. Your chest was heaving as you dug your fingers into your hair before pulling them out aggressively and moving to grab the snowglobe you received as a gift recently from your parents and gave it a good look over before smashing it on the wall a couple feet from Bruce. You rage lost steam the moment your eyes made contact with Bruce’s; reality and guilt took over you as you realized that you had lost yourself in his home and destroying all of his own property. “I guess I don’t have to ask you how your meeting went with your parents, now do I?” Bruce addressed the problem directly, trying to get you to cool down so he could at least get you to relax so the both of you could talk about it more discreetly. You scoffed as you threw your hands up in the air and gave him a look mixed with anger and confusion, “Oh yeah, it went just terrific. It was the best two hours of my life, honestly,” The words came out with a sarcastic tint and each word dripped with venom as you looked down at the ground to see a picture that was the source of your pain, “My life is definitely taking a big turn in a whole other direction I originally planned it to go in when I met them.” Bruce could still sense the anger in your voice and watched your lip quiver when you brought up your family. A shaky sigh came from him while he cautiously tried to take a step in your direction, but there was just glass everywhere. He knew that you were suffering and it pained him to see you that way, but he was getting used to being a parent and how could he be a parent to you when you already looked up to somebody else? “I know you’re mad and you have every right to be,” Brue started, raising his hands to fold across his chest, “but anger won’t get you anywhere good.” “Damn right, I have every right to be mad—I’m furious, pissed off!” You raised your voice, feeling the veins in your neck flex as you let all of your anger come out at once. “How could I be such a damn fool to believe their words? To believe that they actually wanted me back in their lives? They gave me up, for fuck’s sake!” Bruce felt your pain as he watched your body fight with your mind about becoming worked up once again. Your eyes wandered around the room at an alarming rate while your fists clenched and you fidgeted with your feet. Throughout your battle with yourself, he kept a neutral face and you didn’t know if that was factoring into your pain. “(Y/N)...You’re not a fool…” “No, I must be because who else would respond to the people who gave them up for adoption to meet up and spend time with them over a series of months and believe that they really enjoyed their company and thought of them as their child? Who else would get attached after all those months and have them turn around and tell them that they were a mistake and a chapter in their lives that they would rather forget?” Your fists came to hit your chest to refer to you as you began to pace back and forth in the room; the glass under your feet didn’t even bother you cause in your mind, you tried to imagine a worse pain than what you were currently going through. You wanted to through something, anything, but there was nothing left for you to grab, just like your family. “I’m a damn fool to think that because they were still together after they had me and they now have a family, five children, five… six, if they would think to count me… do they still even count me as one?” You wondered, letting your lip quiver as you let yourself start to feel bad for yourself. “It doesn’t even matter anymore really, they’re the type of people to do that, I could sense it, but I couldn’t prevent it; all they do is build you up and tear you down in the end.” Bruce couldn’t believe the words coming out of your mouth. He knew you like the back of his hand but the person he was seeing now wasn’t the same person that he adopted all those years back. He watched you come a long way from being a shy little orphan to a very successful member of his clan and now to see your past bring you to your knees was a blow to his heart for you. “(Y/N), I’m sorry that it turned out this way if there’s anything I could—” “No, it’s fine Bruce really, because up until I met them, I was doing just fine, I don’t even know why I agreed to see them in the first place. I learned how to brush my teeth without them, how to drive, how to play the violin, other people along with you were kind enough to teach me all of that and now look where it’s got me, I’m gonna graduate high school with honors and numerous scholarships; I got a bright future ahead of me and I give no credit to them. I’m gonna find me a man that will love me and we’ll have a big family and you’ll be damn sure that I won’t ever put those children down once!” The determination in your eyes was definitely there as Bruce finally saw you slowly come back to your true self. He ignored the glass under his shoes as he made his way over to you to see you more closely. He could tell that something was bothering you as well, but he didn’t as it came after your rant. Your teary (E/C) eyes came to look at Bruce’s and at that moment you felt ridiculous for your earlier actions and what you had done to his home. You could finally see that it was with Bruce’s help that you got to where you were today and that those people you devoted all your time over the previous months were wasted when you could’ve been spending it with the true family that has been with you ever since you were twelve. Your true family will always be connected to you, but your bond with Bruce and his boys were stronger, but the pain you were experiencing now was evident and it was still a big issue. “How come they don’t want me?” Bruce gave you a crushed look before pulling you into his arms and holding you against your chest as he felt your angry grunts turn into silent sobs. Your arms came to wrap around his waist and you pulled him tight to your body as you were finally feeling that familial love that you’ve been lacking all those years. He let you sway the both of you as were relaxing in his embrace; your sniffles were the only sound in the destroyed room and after your screaming session, your voice was becoming hoarse. The moment that you were sharing with Bruce was one you would forget. “I’m sorry about the mess, I really didn’t mean to.” Your voice was muffled against his chest while he just shushed you and patted down your wild hair. “Don’t worry about it, I’m glad you did it here and not out in public,” Bruce stated while he surveyed the room once more. Pictures were strewn about and the bed was shifted and there was water on the flooring and glass shards on the walls and floor, “Also, I know that you can hold a lot of anger and we could put that to use in your training; you might have to go easy on the boys though.” Your laugh was music to his ears while he let go of you and helped you sit on the bed. He knew that you would need some medical attention with all those cuts on your feet, so he went to call up Alfred through the intercom. You fiddled with your fingers while he did that and while you both waited on Alfred, Bruce pushed the glass shards away with his shoes for his butler. Shuffling by the door stopped Bruce in his tracks as it got louder and it sounded like someone was mumbling. Bruce shot you a questioning look while you shrugged your shoulders at what it could be. Bruce swiftly made his way to the door and threw it open to see Tim standing there with a tray of food and medicine, wearing an innocent smile while his eyes said danger. “Tim, what are you doing right here? Were you listening?” Bruce asked him sternly, cracking the door to hide the mess that he knew you were definitely ashamed of. “The others, they put me up to it, I swear.” He insisted as he handed the tray off to Bruce while slowly backing away to make a break for it back to the kitchen. He was yelling at his brothers for ditching him at the scene while Bruce just shook his head with a small smile, already knowing it wasn’t just Tim at the door and the real reason why they were there in the first place. “My god, they were listening, weren’t they?” “With good intentions. In this family, one person’s burden is everyone else's. They just wanted to make sure you were alright.” With a small, sheepish smile you just nodded curtly before finally accepting that this is what normal families do, well knowing that Bruce and the boys were more than just ordinary people, this is what families close to normal do and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

☆ MGA5 EPISODE TWO ; JULY 4 #5008 HA SUNGWOON ; interview

much like the last episode, the ceos retire to discuss the results of the performances while the contestants are ushered one by one into private rooms to be interviewed on the day’s events. sungwoon wonders if this will become a staple from now on. if so… he’s not entirely sure how to feel—the interviews broadcasted last week were interesting, to say the least. he supposes it adds some excitement to the broadcast along with giving viewers a glimpse into the personalities of the contestants. it also feels like russian roulette, like the producers are waiting for someone to inevitably say something damaging during their interviews and metaphorically shoot themselves in the foot.

but maybe the moment of reflection is a good thing too. sungwoon appreciates getting the chance to reorient, to breathe and consider the day’s events and performances in one go. he never truly struggles to answer, so his complaints are probably less valid than most. rather than being truly worried, he’s eager to get this over with and get to the results. 

when his name is called, sungwoon rises and gives his friends a double thumbs up before following the staff to the interview room. a quick touch up of his hair and makeup later, he’s seated in a familiar chair in front of the interviewer in a set-up not much different from last week. he greets the interviewer with a smile and makes some idle small talk about the weather and how their day is going so far until the cameraman indicates it’s time to begin.

showtime.

so, welcome back, sungwoon. you’ve managed to survive the first cut, but what did you think of the results last week otherwise?

ah. he expected this one. cutting fifty people from the competition at one time is a lot. of course they’d be asked about it. “i didn’t expect there to be quite as many eliminations from the beginning, so it was a little nerve-wracking, to be honest.” sungwoon is grateful his friends survived alongside him, but admitting as much might sound like rubbing salt in the wounds of people who were separated from their friends.

he decides to keep it neutral. “all my predictions for who would make it to the next round came true, though! well, except one.” poor chan. sungwoon really thought he was good, but his opinion doesn’t count for much when it comes to rap. “i guess that disqualifies me as a psychic? unless i make sure to include a disclaimer that there’s a 16% error margin on all predictions?” he laughs, embarrassed as he realizes his mental math might be a little off. “actually, don’t fact check me on that number.” math isn’t his strong suit, but he refuses to be make a fool of himself over numbers on national tv.

shaking his head slightly, he taps his fingers against his knee in thought. “it was disappointing to see so many talented people go home,” sungwoon adds slowly. “but it’s a competition and, well, i have to believe the ceos made the decisions they did for a reason.” they clearly know what they’re doing, and it’s not for him to question them yet. 

how did you feel when you realized you were through to the next round?

“i was relieved, mostly,” sungwoon admits readily. a sigh escapes his lips as he thinks back to the moment his name was called—he’d felt weak and weightless at the same time, even more so when the others made it through safely. sungwoon would like to say he never had any doubts, but that isn’t entirely true. there’s always room for doubt. “i would’ve been mortified to get eliminated so early in the competition.” honestly, he’d be equally mortified to get eliminated now, but it feels unnecessary to add that into his answer. “it also felt right, you know?” he continues with a sheepish smile. “i felt acknowledged by the judges, and that went a long way towards boosting my confidence for today’s performance!”

many people have expressed concern about the number of previous mga contestants participating in this season. as one of the people highlighted as a former contestant during the episode, how does the backlash make you feel?

well, this is one he didn’t expect. of course sungwoon is aware of the backlash—the previous episode literally broadcast one of the contestants’ thoughts on the subject, and the netizens seem united in the opinion that this year has too many old faces. and as one of the old faces, his opinion on the subject should be pretty clear: it sucks, and he doesn’t agree that just because they’ve been on the show before, they have no place on it now. he’s not sure why the interviewers would ask this, unless they’re hoping he gives them something juicy to air? sungwoon is determined to avoid that trap, to think carefully over his response before he gives it.

honesty is the best way to play this, in his opinion. “it’s not the greatest, i’ll admit.” wringing his hands together, he shoots the interviewer a distracted, what can you do, kind of smile before raking his fingers through his hair. “i think it’s disingenuous to act like being on the show one year means we can never come back or to claim we’ve used up our one and only chance. it’s not like we stopped dreaming just because it didn’t work out the first time.” for many, including sungwoon, participating in the mgas increased his desire to stand up on stage.

“i also believe people might be under the impression that we’ve had tons of opportunities for success following the show last year?” being on tv might’ve brought a little bit of localized fame for a brief period of time last year, but all that is gone now, leaving old contestants as forgotten relics of a different time. “but i can tell you that’s not really true—personally, at least. no companies were looking to sign me, and i didn’t have any other prospects.” a bitter pill to swallow, but there it is! he chuckles and rubs the back of his neck. “compared to a lot of other competitions, the mgas are accessible, so yeah, i gave them a shot again, but because this might be the only way i ever make it. i’m sure others feel the same way.”

god, he said a lot more than he intended to. sungwoon takes a deep breath and shakes his head, forcing a smile he hopes looks natural. “if the new contestants are worried about facing the old ones, well, a little healthy competition never hurt anyone, right?”

i see. moving on, how do you think you did this week?

“like i said, i’m never satisfied.” he feels like this will be a familiar refrain if this question continues to come up again, but it continues to be true. he needs the persistent buzz under his skin, the nagging voice that tells him he can do better. it drives sungwoon to improve, and that’s worth the temporary discomfort. still, his feelings towards today’s stage is largely positive overall. “i know my performance wasn’t as exciting as some of the others. that’s always the risk when you do a ballad, right?” sungwoon was well aware of it from the beginning. “and for once i didn’t play an instrument. that was nerve-wracking, let me tell you.”

he straightens up in his seat. “but i wanted the focus to be on my voice today.” no bells and whistles, just sungwoon showing the judges what he’s capable of. “so i chose to sing a korean song, one that ended up becoming pretty personal for me. i think… i did all i could up on the stage, and i hope it resonated with everyone who listened. that’s all i can really ask for.”

who do you think is the best under each skill?

oh, now that’s an interesting question. sungwoon wouldn’t have been able to answer it last week due to the sheer number of people performing, but after watching the episode and sitting through today’s stages, sungwoon is in a better position to judge the rest of the contestants. the interviewer catches the grin spreading across his face and asks him if he’s thinking of naming himself, to which sungwoon responds “oh, no. no,” with a laugh. he wouldn’t dream of it. “i’ll try not to name only empty enigma members either, but you can’t blame me if a few slip in.”

for singers… sungwoon feels like quite a few of them are strong. this is the only category he feels qualified to talk about at length, in any case. “i think heejin is a strong singer, maybe the strongest in the competition. i enjoy her vocal color, and i think her voice is powerful. she has a strong stage presence too, so i definitely think she’s someone to watch for.” he wants to mention a few other singers as well, but he’s determined to keep his picks to one each this time. or… maybe two. two picks, maximum. “hyojin too! he sang one of my favorite day6 songs, and his range is insane. i can’t wait to hear more from him.”

dancers are harder to comment on; sungwoon doesn’t know enough (or feels confident enough) to choose the best in this category. “uh, i think i’m only qualified to talk about who i liked the best, so take all this with a grain of salt.” he probably shouldn’t say park woojin, but the first name that comes out of his mouth is—”park woojin, for sure. though to be clear, i would pick him even if we weren’t friends. his performance was powerful and captivating—i think he’s easily the best dancer here.” he wants to mention kenta as well, but he doesn’t want to come off as too biased either. “i also think yugyeom is a good dancer. i don’t know how i feel about him in general, but i won’t deny talent when i see it.”

rappers are possibly harder to talk about than dancers, so sungwoon takes his time running through the list of performances before answering. “i think the number of female rappers in the competition this year are pretty cool, so i’d have to pick one of them. sakura, maybe? i was surprised by her performance, but in a good way.” his second choice is so obvious, sungwoon wonders if he even has to state it out loud. “and mason, obviously. he’s a good rapper, maybe one of the best, but that’s a given.”

were there any performances you liked?

sungwoon hates questions like these, mostly because he never has enough time to mention everyone he wants to. just saying ‘all of them’ would save a lot of time, but he’s pretty sure that isn’t allowed. also, it’s not truthful either. there are performances he definitely didn’t enjoy. the question is about ones he did, however, and sungwoon runs through the ones he remembers well enough in his mind before blurting out the first one that stayed with him. “daniel’s!” wait, that really isn’t going to help him sound less biased. his face warms and he scratches his cheek while rushing to gather his thoughts. “okay, honestly. i know he’s not the best of the rappers, but he wrote his own rap and the lyrical content was straight fire. his performance had me hyped up. how can i not mention it?”

aside from daniel, there are a few others he wants to mention. “eunji’s dance was… i know i mentioned her last week as a talented singer, but she’s a phenomenal dancer as well. her performance was really powerful and compelling. park jinyoung—i liked his voice, and i thought his song choice was very appropriate for his tone. personally, he’s one to watch for me as well.” pausing, sungwoon leans back in his chair and rubs his chin in thought. “yeji? i thought she did a great job too—really, a lot of the girls have been killing it this year. i wish i could mention them all because they deserve it.”

were there any you didn’t like?

“guys, seriously,” he laughs, letting his arms fall to his sides. “have people answered this?” how many have taken the bait and actually said something negative about their fellow contestants? the interviewer won’t answer that for him, so sungwoon is left wondering when he should bite or not. maybe he should, but gently? “there were a couple of performances i was let down by,” he admits. “kyungsoo, for one. i really enjoy his voice, but i wasn’t sold on his song choice, so i think that colored my opinion of his performance.” toxic isn’t a choice he’d make personally, and while he respects it, sungwoon isn’t sure it’s appropriate for this stage of the competition. “i also enjoyed suwoong’s performance last week, but not as much this week… i don’t know, i think he could’ve taken it a bit more seriously?” sungwoon shrugs. “they’re both good performers; just not my cup of tea.”

is there anyone you are certain will move onto the next phase of the mgas?

“is it time for sungwoon the psychic’s predictions again?” he taps his forehead, thought he’s… not exactly sure why. “uh, well, i think everyone i mentioned as the best of their categories will go through. special shout out to mason, because he’s going all the way to the finale! mark my words.” he doesn’t know if he has any solid picks outside of those. “yuri? she has a powerful voice and the necessary star power.” hm, maybe that’s all? no, wait, he remembers one of the dancers leaving an impression and struggles to pronounce her name properly. “jieqiong? she’s pretty and talented; i would expect her to go through.” sungwoon figures he’d better stop there—or he’ll end up naming half the contestants in the competition. “let’s see how many of these work out! remember, 16% error rate!”

is there anyone you are certain will be eliminated today?

“my third eye broke; i can’t answer that,” sungwoon says, completely straight faced. several moments pass before his expression cracks into a distant smile. “no, seriously—i’m not sure what criteria the judges are basing their assessments on, so i can’t answer. you’d think it would be straightforward, but someone who’s average in a skill can get far based on their sheer charisma and stage presence, right? so i think it could be anyone’s game.” he won’t speculate further; it’s not his place. and he’s worried that if he does start to consider who might be eliminated, a few familiar names could potentially pop into mind.

that’s all for now. thank you!

“thank you! you’ve worked hard.” sungwoon rises and bows to the interviewer and the staff before returning to his seat. he steals a bottle of water from one of the empty enigma members and polishes it off with a cheeky smile. “i need this, guys. i talked a lot,” he complains when they ask. when do you not? someone answers, and sungwoon glares at them playfully before promising to buy another bottle during their break. it’s much easier to stick to smiles and lighthearted conversation before eliminations, and sungwoon does his best to keep the atmosphere cheery.

it’s all he can do for them right now.

I guess it’s time for me to put on my clown wig and make a complete fool of myself by dumping out all my last-minute thoughts about what I want and expect from the Sarazanmai finale, now that we’re just a few hours away from it.

Mostly this is just gonna be me trying to rationalize a way this could end happily for everyone involved even though I know full well the finale’s gonna murder me. [And tbh this is mostly gonna be me talking about Reo and Mabu lol]

lmao I have so many scattered and messy thoughts about all this, where do I even begin.

Most of all I’m still clinging onto the hope that Reo and Mabu will some way or another get revived in the finale. I’m bracing myself for the worst, though. I just feel like their deaths don’t even fit into the typical pattern of Ikuhara characters ‘dying’ as a way to transcend reality. Reo’s death in particular was so down to earth and casual that I don’t really think it’s satisfying or even bittersweet in the way that a lot of other Ikuhara endings are.

I also just think it seems really noteworthy that instead of getting sucked into the hell of never ending, beginning, or connecting, the ring representing Mabu’s place in the big circle of society bounced back and manifested in the real world to land in Reo’s pocket. And then Reo himself turned into the same sorta ring after he died even though he didn’t even become a kappa zombie or anything, and he just died a regular death. I get the feeling that Keppi might have somehow stepped in to stop them from completely being destroyed, considering what he said after Mabu’s death about how he was going to make sure to connect their desires to the future.

It just comes across like they’re in some sort of stasis where there’s still a chance to bring them back somehow. At the very least, I don’t really see what the entire point of them turning into rings would be other than that.

I’ve also been thinking for a while now that it might be Sara and Keppi who get the trademark ‘self-sacrifice/transcending reality’ Ikuhara ending, rather than any of the main trio or Reo and Mabu. I could even see it being a thing where they don’t even die, but they basically give up their place in the human realm and go back to the kappa kingdom permanently, which wouldn’t even be that sad of an ending for them in my opinion. There’s a lot of different ways it could play out, but I’ve got two ideas.

For one thing, I think Sara might be able to create her own dish of hope like Keppi can. He said he was the only one who can do that [I think he did, at least], but he’s also clearly been lying about being the ‘sole survivor of the kappa kingdom’ so I don’t really trust that, and the fact that the main dish of hope that we’ve spent most of the series working toward has already been used makes me think that another one might be introduced in the finale so that another wish can be made. It also seems really fishy to me that the scene with her and Haruka in ep10 revealed that Sara’s head ornament thing is apparently a type of plate. It makes me wonder if maybe there’s gonna be a reveal where we find out that she’s been hiding a dish of hope in plain sight, literally right on top of her head.

I could also maybe see a situation where Sara and Keppi transplant their own shirikodama into Reo and Mabu to bring them back, like what Kazuki wanted to do with Haruka in ep6. I’ve been wondering ever since that episode if that whole idea was going to come up again, at least. I think this could lead to the sorta situation I mentioned before where they have to give up their place in the human world, since as we also learned in ep6, giving up your shirikodama ejects you from the circle. But they might still be able to just go back to the kappa kingdom even after that so it might not be a big deal for them.

And along those same lines, maybe instead of Sara and Keppi both giving up their shirikodama, maybe Keppi will transplant the two halves of his broken shirikodama into Reo and Mabu. I guess it’s not really that different than the other option, but still. I think it’d at least be a nice bit of symbolism if they end up with two halves of the same shirikodama.

I’ve also been toying with the idea that maybe as part of the whole thing with how they deleted all the tweets from the ReoMabu twitter account, maybe if the finale involves them getting revived, the twitter account will basically be ‘rebooted’ and start posting all new tweets about their post-anime lives together. That’d be a really nice way to turn things around from how depressing the end of ep10 was. And it might be a good way to help balance out the fact that they probably wouldn’t get that much screen time in the finale even if they get revived, so giving them an epilogue story of sorts in twitter form could help make it feel more fleshed out.

In general I’m just gonna be disappointed if they stay dead in the finale, lol. I’m not going to make any harsh judgments or final opinions until the last episode airs, but I just think it’d be lame if their ending is just ‘they died, the end’. It’s obvious what sorta social commentary Ikuhara’s trying to make with them, but I feel like there’d be nothing subversive or interesting about commenting on how gay characters are ‘punished’ for being open about their feelings by just, y’know, effectively doing exactly that. Especially since it feels like Enta’s probably not gonna end up being able to properly tell Kazuki about his feelings either.

But the bottom line is that we just have to wait and see how it pans out. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions. And even if I end up disappointed by it, it wouldn’t make me hate Ikuhara as a content creator or as a person or anything. It’d just make me wish that more people would go about this kind of social commentary by giving gay characters happy endings where they get to be open about themselves.

Anyway, aside from the whole question of if this two will stay dead or not, I think the thing I most want out of the finale is some sort of a concrete explanation of how the ReoMabu manga fits into the whole timeline. We know for a fact that it’s canon to the anime timeline and isn’t some sort of an alternate universe story, but the more I think about it, the harder it is to figure out where it fits in.

It boils down to whether it happened before or after the anime, I guess, but both options don’t make complete sense. It seems more logical to assume that it happened before the anime, but it’s worth noting that the twitter account seems to end right before Reo and Mabu head off to the war, but they never acknowledge Sara at all in the whole twitter account, and I think there was even a tweet they made about Children’s Day ‘not being relevant to them’. Which seems like a hint that they haven’t even met Sara by that point.

But it happening after the anime comes with some more obvious inconsistencies. Though honestly I prefer this option, and I think a lot of questions about it could be solved if we assume it takes place post-anime with Reo and Mabu being revived but with some of their memories erased, and if we assume that the otters are completely defeated by this point.

I think the only thing that seems to concretely ‘date’ the manga is the absence of the Skytree, but I still think that it’s very likely the Skytree might just get destroyed in the finale as part of the big final clash between Keppi and Otter, so I think that’s not necessarily a contradiction. There’s also the fact that in the manga, the name and design of the police station is plate-themed instead of otter-themed, which on paper seems to indicate that it’s taking place before the otters took over, but it might instead indicate that it takes place after they’ve been defeated.

The whole thing with them not recognizing Sara at all in the final chapter of the manga also sticks out to me a lot now that we know Reo and Mabu used to be quite close with Keppi. It just seems like no matter where in the timeline the manga takes place, if they know about Keppi, they should probably be aware of who Sara is. But who knows. I just think it might be a hint that they get their memories of everything related to the kappas and otters erased after the anime.

I also think the whole premise of Sara being abandoned in the human world and conveniently adopted by Reo and Mabu seems more and more baffling the more we learn about them all as characters, and I think it might make more sense if it happens after the anime. Maybe Sara uses up so much of her power that her human form reverts back into being a baby. Who even knows! It’s weird in it’s own way to assume that the princess of the kappa kingdom just got abandoned in the human realm before any of this even happened.

The bit with her reuniting with her manager and Keppi also comes across as being pretty final to me. I get the feeling that she’s leaving the human world forever and isn’t going to be able to come back. Which makes me think that even if most of the manga takes place pre-anime, maybe the final chapter or two alone happens much later. Somehow. 

Then there’s the possibility of time looping being involved and there’s just too many ways it could all play out, lol. I just really want there to be a clearly understandable timeline of events once this is all done, otherwise it’s gonna nag at me forever.

If we find out that the manga happened pre-anime, I think they should have basically adapted it into an episode of the anime somewhere in the second half, to flesh Reo and Mabu out more. But we’ll see.

Also, before I forget, the Sarazanmai twitter account reposting the old PVs is making me wonder if we ever heard Reo’s line from his PV about assumptions being dangerous in the show itself. All of the other lines everyone said in that series of PVs ended up being used in the show itself, but I don’t remember that line of Reo’s ever coming up. I’m definitely just grasping at straws but it makes me hope that maybe it means it’ll be part of the finale. It at least gives me the mental image of him and Mabu appearing at the last minute to help fight against Dark Keppi and the Otters or whatever, and them being like ‘BITCH U THOUGHT!!! >:^)’

I don’t really have as many concrete predictions for what’ll happen with the main trio, even though they’re gonna be the focus of the finale. Mostly I just hope this doesn’t end with Kazuki making a wish to turn back time. I feel like that wouldn’t really fit the whole narrative and message of this show. And honestly there’s only so much that could even be ‘fixed’ by turning back time. Like, sure Kazuki might be able to improve his personal relationships and maybe prevent Haruka’s accident, but would turning back time do anything about Toi’s family history and Chikai’s criminal ties? Would it do anything about the destruction of the kappa kingdom, or Mabu’s death and rebirth with a mechanical heart? Would it do anything about Enta’s presumably one-sided crush? It just feels like there’s only so much that could even be achieved with that sort of an ending, unless they completely undo everything. But going by how ep6 played out, I don’t think Ikuhara’s planning on that sort of ending. I just want this to end with the main trio having to move on with their lives and live with the consequences of how everything turned out.

But if we exclude the possibility of time looping and whatnot, I don’t really have any strong ideas about how things might turn out with them. But I guess all they really need to do is just save Toi from venturing outside the circle, and after that they can just deal with the rest of their lives together.

The big wildcard seems to be the fact that we’re finally gonna figure out the true meaning of the very first scene in ep1, which is still one big question mark. It does come across like it’s hinting at some kind of a time loop, but who knows. One way or another I feel like I might end up rewatching ep1 right after the finale. It’ll be interesting to see if it carries any additional meaning after all that.

And on the topic of ep1, even aside from that very first scene, I’ve always kept thinking back to how part of ep1 involved some narrative misdirection where we found out that in the scene at the car garage, ‘Sara’ was just Kazuki cross-dressing. It just seems interesting to me that that level of outright misdirection and lying to the viewer hasn’t really come up again, outside of Enta’s delusions. So I’ve just been wondering if it might ever come up again somehow. Though I also can’t help but hope that his cross-dressing will come up again one way or another since it kinda got unceremoniously dropped after ep6, so maybe I’m just grabbing at straws, lol. I do feel like it’d be a bit of a shame if there’s no actual deeper link between Kazuki and Sara, one way or another.

Though on that note, I do think it’s still pretty likely that if the ending involves her leaving the human realm, we might get an epilogue scene that shows that Kazuki’s basically taken her place as the local idol/TV presenter. Which I think would be a cute way to tie everything together.

In terms of happy epilogue type stuff with the main trio, I think it’d also make sense if we see them all playing soccer together.

I don’t really have much investment in shipping any of them, but part of me’s still holding out hope for a polyamory ending. But the more it goes on the more it does feel like Ikuhara doesn’t plan to really go anywhere super substantial with any of them in terms of their romantic relationships. Which is fine. I think it’d probably just be kinda sad if this ends with two of them getting together and one of them being ‘left out’. I’d rather it be an all or nothing type of thing.

Even the ep11 synopsis hints at the idea of them wishing for something at the end of all this, but I don’t know if that means they’ll literally make a wish with a dish of hope in the finale, after Kazuki just used his to save Enta. It might just be more about them finally bonding properly as a trio and resolving to keep living together.

But I do still think that Sara’s gonna make a wish on her own secret dish of hope, though. And if that happens I think the only things she’d really want to wish for would be related to saving Reo and Mabu, or turning back time completely.

All in all, as much as I want to go into this finale with restrained hopes and measured expectations, I still feel like this is the most stressed I’ve felt about an anime finale ever since Yuri on Ice, lmao. It’s gonna be really sad to see this all end. Even if we still have Migi’s manga adaptation and the second LN volume to look forward to afterwards.

I'm sending you 42. and 80. (because this gotta be funnnn) for the trope mash-up, but only as long as you don't forget that you also kinda promised to write the pregnant-neighbor-comes-begging-for-food thing. Because I won't forget about it. :)

The lovely @laschatzi is talking about this post. I cheated a little bit but I hope you’d like how because now we have

Hungry pregnant neighbour + The Big Damn Kiss + Green-Eyed Epiphany 

Family Recipe;  ~ 5, 500 words; FF.NET || AO3

previous: wilderness/survival + I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On &Detective AU  + Awful First Meeting

Killian is somewhatashamed to admit that he has become something of a take-out guy.

It’s just… it’s one ofthose things he never got back into after losing his hand. Like volleyball. Orplaying the guitar. Or arm wrestling Will. Or the black nail polish. Or goingto the beach. Or hitting on that cute girl at the bakery around the corner. Orgirls,period. Or basically anyone he didn’t already know before the accident.

But anyway. Cooking.He never got back into cooking. He was never all that good at it to begin withbut it gave him a funny sort of pride and he enjoyed it.

He enjoyed having togo to three different stores to manage to collect all the herbs and spices fora proper curry. And lying all his products out – basically filling everyavailable space and then having to push stuff around to have somewhere toactually cook. And chopping histomatoes really fine – concasse, was it? – and his onions not quite because hedid not enjoy crying over their massacred corpses. And – never to be revealedto another living soul – making a mini forest around his chopping board withthe broccoli and the cauliflower. And the whole kitchen smelling for two daysafter. And basically making a mess of every horizontal surface – and thevertical ones that one time when he was learning how to spin pizza dough.

Yeah, he enjoyed that.And then he didn’t. Couldn’t. Didn’t.

And now here he is,sipping his beer and scrolling down his take-out app as if he doesn’t knowhe’ll get the Chinese because he had pizza twice during the week and they’vetotally ruined the Mexican place and Liam says he is a masochist but he is nota ‘take-out sushi’ level of masochist.

He looks outside.Checks his watch. At least two more hours of solid daylight. He wasn’t evenhungry yet. He could get some tortilla chips to snack on while trying to see ifhis oven still works.

Really… what couldhappen?

///

Mrs Lucas has spoilther.

It is the only reasonEmma is even contemplating this. That and the fact that it smells really good.

And look here, Emma isnot one of those girls that needs to always get what she wants. She iscertainly not used to getting whatshe wants. It’s just… her baby doesn’t seem to have followed in her footsteps.

It might havesomething to do with said baby not even having feet to walk with yet. Or… shethinks – tries to remember what she’s been readying semi-obsessively and thenthrowing under the bed as if the books are judging her for her singleness andbrokenness and the general dinginess of her apartment – maybe it has feetalready?

They’re definitelyforming but definitely not usable hence no following in any footsteps anytimesoon. There. She’s leaving it at that. Maybe she’ll dig out that last book fromunder her bed tonight. After she has some dinner.

Which brings her rightback to the problem at hand.

She is pretty surethat 5C is one of those bachelors that live on beer, pizza and whatever elseyou can get delivered to your door; has a football or poker night with the guysevery month – see the football she is sure about ‘cause those walls are fuckingthin and those boys are fucking loud but she likes to imagine the pokeras well ever since she saw the guy in this super slick vest that she is sureonly people who can actually step into a casino and somehow manage to not look sleazy own; occasionally blaststoo loud music but not often enough to warrant a complaint; puts Netflix on loud enough and regularly enough that her brokeass is hoping she can keep up with the new season of Stranger Things simply bymoving her couch next to the wall his TV sits against; never brings girls backto his place.

Honestly, Emma is notjudging (or stalking – the walls are thin).She’d probably be giving 5C a run for his money on the easy single living, ifshe wasn’t pregnant and broke and grumpy half the time and hungry the otherhalf – which also makes her grumpy, and generally disillusioned with humanityand the world and the idea that one might actually be able to enjoy life andnot struggle through it at every step and did she mention broke? She is brokeand constantly hungry and constantly trying to fool her baby into thinking thathe likes overcooked pasta and whatever fruits are on sale this week.

He doesn’t. He likeswhatever 5C is cooking.

///

This was a disastrousidea. The kind of disastrous idea he hasn’t had since he was 4 years old andthought that if he puts snails on Liam’s bed they’d stay there and not like…make their way all over the room that Killianshared with Liam.

This is worse thansnails. This is a dozen utensils in the sink already – because of course hetosses a spoon in the sink the second after he has used it once, of course, why put it to the side and use it again when hehas to stir his unholy concoction, and half a dozen plates – one of those inpieces in a trash bag by the door because your one hand being a slippery one isnot the situation in which you want to be handling porcelain.

He has a sizeable cuton his big toe where he stepped on one of the pieces and his t-shirt issticking to his back from the effort of grinding bloody vegetable – Jesus, heused to run miles without breaking a sweat and now blasted carrots are gettingthe best of him, and all he has to show for all his work is what he hopes is apassable mince.

Now for the mash. Hestill has three limbs and 14 uninjured digits to go…

///

Look, Emma doesn’thave much but she has her pride, ok? And this kid growing inside her has madeher relinquish her hold on that enough to knock on Mrs Lucas’s door and ask herwhat it was she put in her cookies because apparently Emma – or someone else, was addicted to it nowand it was not cinnamon. And that hadtransitioned into Emma becoming almost a firm fixture at Granny’s on weekendsand then into Emma busting tables for a month until Granny gave her a nononsense look and told her she won’t be doing this in a few more months, andafter a week of asking and listening and string pulling and cookie bribing, shegot her a job at August’s bookstore even though he still grumbles that he doesn’tlike anyone else ordering his books.

And, yes, this allworked out pretty well but Mrs Lucas was the one that came to her door on her first week in thebuilding with a plate of those cookies that by this point Emma can barely lookat.

(It’s what she does.She falls in love with peanut butter and then eats so many PBJ sandwiches thatnow she almost gets sick at the mere sight of a jar on the counter. And shehears the The Kooks coming from 5C’s wall and goes on to listen to them onrepeat for two weeks. Mind you, not even everything but just Junk of the Heartbecause she is mental like that. And she starts Modern Family, when she stillhad a freaking Netflix account, and binges the whole damn thing in a couple ofweekends and a few late week nights.)

So, yeah, Emma mighthave some addictive tendencies – the legal kind, and some impulse controlissues.

But Emma would neveractually go to someone’s door – someone she has never exchanged a single wordwith despite sometimes hearing their voice float through her wall – and, yeah,he has a pretty voice but what’s that gonna do for her? shitty people can havegreat voices, she is sure – to ask them forthe love of all that is good and holy, what they are cooking because it smellsso fucking good and she has to know and she has to have something that at leastcomes close to it.

She’d never.

///

It’s in the oven. It’sover. Well, all he has to do now is make sure he doesn’t burn the damn thing toa crisp. But if he managed to put it together in the first place, for the firsttime tonight, Killian thinks he can maybe pull this off.

///

It got worse. Worse asin better. Fuck, it got so much better. And now her stomach is grumbling andshe has made for the door three times in the last five minutes and for thefirst time tonight Emma is coming to the horrible realization that she probablywon’t be able to survive this day with her dignity intact.

///

He is just about todig into his plate – fancy plate set and fancy napkins that he didn’t even knowhe owned and the second episode of American Gods queued up and-

There’s a knock on hisdoor.

Killian freezes withhis fork in the air, eyebrows bunching together. Who on earth? He knows hehasn’t invited any of the guys over and Liam knows better than to just drop infor an unexpected ‘we are going out and getting you someone to go home with’visit by this point.

He waits. Nothing.Maybe he imagined it?

///

“There, happy?”

Emma glances down ather slightly rounded stomach and tries on her best ‘mom look’. She thinksshe’ll definitely need to work on that one before the baby comes out because heis already too stubborn for her owngood.

She glances at thedoor with 5C on it one more time, raises her hand and then drops it again.

No. She knocked. Thisis a sign. For once the universe is sparing her the embarrassment and-

“Yes?”

No, of course, not.Why would the universe ever spare her anything?

///

She must be the onethat knocked. 5B. His sweatpants neighbour.

Killian tries not tofeel bad about the nickname. They’ve never been properly introduced and… well,he has mostly seen her back disappearing inside her apartment or her back goingdown the stairs with laundry or her back rushing below his window on a jog. Sohe’s never seen her in anything but sweatpants. He’s not judging. It’s just…the only thing he had to go on.

She is in sweatpantsnow as well but as he looks at her to ask what she needs, he is taken aback byher green eyes. He is taken aback by the sudden realization that his neighbouris this young and very pretty woman and her eyes are the kind of eyes you can’thelp but notice.

It’s… interesting. Hehas heard the soundtrack of her daily life through the wall they share for afew months now but somehow he never imagined the face and body that must gowith those sounds.

As he thinks his gazeslides down almost involuntary and he doesn’t know what catches his attentionmore: the fact that she is a few months pregnant or the fact that she came overbarefoot.

The latter is trulyendearing, the former a tad disheartening for some reason.

Not that he hasanything against kids. Or pregnant women. It’s just… it’s not every day yourealize your neighbour is a pretty girl about your age and currently standingat your doorstep. But he shouldn’t have just assumed and anyway he doesn’treally… that is… is she ever gonna say something?

///

“Lass?”

Emma shakes her head alittle and wants to slap herself back into reality. You know that space andtime continuum where she is not attaching thisman to every sound she has ever heard come through their wall.

(She is convinced heplays air guitar when blasting Bon Jovi hits and that his eyes blaze reallybright when he is swearing at something about “bloody this” and “bloody that”.)

“Umm, hi. Sorry. I…”

He raises an eyebrow.She doesn’t really appreciate the mix of amusement and expectation. Then again,she is standing on his doorstep. He probably has some right to expect anexplanation. Why on earth didn’t she rehearse what she’ll say if he opened thedoor?

“Did you needsomething?”

Fuck.

“I just… ummm, am I botheringyou?”

“Not at all, lass. But,to be frank, I’ll probably be more capable of answering truthfully, if you toldme what you are here for.”

The hell? Was hetalking like that on purpose?

“I-“

Come on, Emma, like aband aid, nowhere to go now unless you wanna be the weirdo asking for a cup offlour.

“What you arecooking?’

///

“Oh.”

Oh. Bloody hell.

Killian can feel hischeeks heating up and focuses half his attention on keeping his hand at hisside and not scratching his damn ear.

“I apologize. I didn’tconsider the smell might bother some-“

“No. No, no, no. Ilike it! So… I was wondering what it was.”

She likes it? Thattimid feeling of pride he felt when he took his dinner out of the over and it wasn’t burn to a crisp grows threetimes.

“It’s just ashepherd’s pie. Slightly altered recipe. My mum’s. Supposedly, probably muckedit up along the way and it’s twice altered now but yeah… Shepherd’s pie.”

“Oh.”

///

Great. She was hopingfor something along the lines of a lasagna. Then maaaybe she could’ve boughtsome frozen crappy version from the supermarket and tried to cheat her bodyinto thinking it was the real thing.

But no, of course,not. It had to be shepherd’s pie. Family recipe edition. Just her damn luck.

“Well, thanks. Andsorry! I was just… curious. Sorry to bother you.”

///

She turns to go andthis might have been the most bizarre conversation he’s had this month.Including that guy on the underground with the orange hair.

Did she just want toknow what the smell invading her home was? She did say she liked it. Maybe-

She is already half toher door so Killian just thinks to hell with it.

“Would you like some?”

He sees her stop deadin her tracks and cringes, hoping he isn’t now the biggest weirdo of her month.And not in a good way.

The blonde turnsaround and he knows the second he sees her face that she would indeed likesome. But Killian likes to think of himself as at least moderately intelligentso he keeps his smile to himself and instead prepares for the distrust in hereyes that is obviously warring with her appetite.

“Do you usually offerfood to unknown women who come knocking on your door?”

“I can’t say, you arethe first.”

He doesn’t actuallysee her cheeks change colour but then again he thinks it might be because shehas been blushing this entire time.

“I didn’t mean tobother-“

“It’s no bother, love.Truly. Now that I feel knowledgeable enough about your intensions to say so.”

She rolls her prettygreen eyes in a way that has his pulse speeding up a bit.

“Plus I just made adish more people share with a family of four. For myself. I think I can sparewhatever you can eat.”

It’s a gamble thatpays off when he sees her eyes blaze up and let’s himself grin at herteasingly.

“I’m sorry, was that achallenge to how much I can eat?”

He steps aside andwaves her in.

She only hesitates fora second.

///

OK, first of all, hisapartment is waaay better than hers like, both bigger and with more naturallight coming in but also simply more tidy and colour-coordinated. Also, ifpossible, it smells even better inside and Emma’s eyes immediately zero in onthe dish on the kitchen counter.

She hears 5C chucklebehind her and tries not to feel even more embarrassed. Her capacity for itmust be running out by this point. Thankfully, he doesn’t make a comment butjust moves around his kitchen island and takes out a plastic food container.IKEA guy. Cute.

It probably takes hera bit longer than it should – what with her still mostly trying to pretend sheis not hustling her nice and pretty neighbour for food – but eventually Emmanotices the peculiar way he moves around his kitchen and operates only with hisright hand. A quick inspection proves that it is because he simply has no leftone to assist him.

“No shit!”

The guy startles ather words and turns around and probably follows her gaze because in the nextmoment the limb is tucked slightly behind him and he is giving her a tensesmile.

“Shit, I’m afraid.”

She honest to Godcovers her mouth. Better late than never. Or not.

“Shit. I mean, sorry!Sorry. I wasn’t- I was just- you cook?!”

5C frowns at her as ifher person skills are something that would only befit a visiting alien. He’sgot her there.

“Sorry. Again. But,like, I can’t cook for shit even with two hands.”

To be fair, the crapproducts she can afford probably have something to do with it but Emma is gonnabe a single mom pretty soon and she is pretty sure that “to be fair”s won’t cutit when she has to cook for her kid.

But makes-food-that-smells-illegally-good-single-handedlyneighbour seems to relax a little.

Foot – partially outof mouth.

///

Killian tries to unbunchthe muscles in his neck and not keep his right side weirdly angled towards her.It’s fine. Really, it’s fine. She was bound to notice eventually.

“To be honest, this ismy first try in quite some time.”

“Seriously?”

“Indeed. So if you getfood poisoning or something, I’m not to be held accountable.”

The thought gives himpause and he turns to her with his eyebrows all drawn together and almostreluctant to hand her the container in his hand.

“Actually, are youallergic to anything? I mean… I don’t think there’s anything too weird in itand everything I used was fresh but-“

He can’t help butglance down at her stomach. Gods, she ispregnant, right? This will be just the kind of thing-

But the blonde’s handcomes up to her stomach and she smiles at him almost shyly and Killian breathesout a quiet sigh of relief.

“I’m sure it will befine. I mean, the things I’ve been feeding myself… I’m pretty sure someonemight get a bit of a shock from the home-cooked food but definitely not the badkind.”

He tries not tooveranalyze the “feeding myself” part and instead nods and finally hands thecontainer with half of his shepherd’s pie inside.

“Whoa. You really arechallenging me.”

He laughs and dips hishead to the side to admire the way her eyes widen a little.

“It should keep for acouple of days if you put it in the fridge. And you can always just feed it toSmee.”

“Smee?”

“Oh.”

His cold ring grazeshis earlobe and dammit, he forgot to watch out for the damn tick.

“I named the cat thatalways hangs around behind the building.”

“Oooh, ok. And hellno.”

She hugs the food toher chest almost protectively and Killian laughs again and bloody hell, is hecoming across too giggly or something? What else can he say? He-

“Well, I shouldprobably let you finally eat your dinner. Whatever you have left,” she beatshim to it and juts her thumb at the door and he can’t really do anything butnod.

///

She is alreadystepping outside, teeth embedded in her lip and what do you say to the cute neighbour that fed you dinner but not inthe date sense?

“Oh. I’m Emma, by theway. Emma Swan.”

His eyes light up andEmma finally gets to put a mark in the ‘didn’t fuck it up’ column.

“Pleasure to meet you,Swan. Killian Jones. Always at your service, though I must warn you, myculinary repertoire is quite limited.”

Killian Jones with thefancy words and delicious food. Fuck.

///

She uses her employeediscount on something other than baby books for the first time.

He finds the bookwaiting for him outside his door. The post-it note says “This is why peoplelike home-cooked food. Who knew.” And the book is Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things and it takes him a momentto connect the dots and remember that he was watching Amarican Gods the othernight and, yeah, maybe it makes him feel kinda good that Emma Swan noticed andremembered that.

///

He tries some Mexicannext and it’s 100% because his favourite place has gone to crap and not at allbecause he once saw their delivery guy in front of 5B.

She opens the door andhis face is half-obscured by an IKEA container and he says it’s just a not sosubtle reminder that she hasn’t returned the other one yet and she pretends tobelieve him.

///

She reasons that youcan’t return food containers empty so she tries to bake muffins because muffinsare supposed to be easy.

He hears the firealarm and five second later he is banging on her door and having a veryflustered Emma Swan dragging him inside and pointing at her oven or what can beseen of it behind the cloud of smoke and explaining how it’s all his fault.

///

He’s been looking fora not food-related reason to knock on her door for a week and coming up emptyand he is damn rusty when it comes to talking to pretty girls but then againshe is pregnant and the fact that he didn’t see a naked man in the middle ofher kitchen the one time he was there for 10 minutes doesn’t mean anything somaybe that’s for the best.

She knocks on his doora day after Stranger Things comes out with three bags of popcorn, explainingthat only one of them is for him, obviously.

///

She lives to binge andyet here she is trying to stretch an 8-episode season over more than a week.

He honestly debatescalling Netflix and begging them to somehow somehowrelease more episodes of their damn show.

///

He has been thisscared exactly once in his entire life and that situation included headlightscoming straight at him.

She has a freakingstomach ache, probably from too much popcorn, and she is almost as embarrassedwhen she comes out of the doctor’s office as she was that first night sheknocked on his door but Killian doesn’t really seem to care how she is ok as long as she is.

///

She is scrollingthrough her Instagram at work and she is so bored and distracted that shealmost misses it but then she goes back and blinks and then goes to the accountto check this is not some sort of ridiculous surveillance thing or she doesn’teven know what – but sure enough, there – on @cutestparentstobe, is a pictureof her very pregnant self, eating ice-cream on the beach with one KillianJones.

He doesn’t know how heworms his way into a doctor’s appointment, he just knows that when the nursecalls him “daddy” Emma kinda sputters but doesn’t say anything to contradicther and he sure as hell keeps his trap shut and just smiles and nods when theygive him an ultrasound picture all for himself.

///

They’ve been doingwhatever they are doing for 4 freaking months and within the first couple ofweeks they were already using like only 30% of his couch for the both of themand in a month they started venturing outside the bubble of their apartmentsand Emma never thought she’d be thehand-holding type but yeah, they kinda hold hands all the time and they hug,like, every day and they text all the freaking time while they are at work andshe meets Liam when she is 7 months pregnant and convinced that he is gonnahate her on sight for saddling his little brother with herself and he doesn’treally but he also doesn’t seem to love her on sight and Killian is verypointedly unamused by the lukewarm reception but honestly, Emma is just glad tobe given a chance here, and he goes shopping for baby stuff she can barelyafford with her and then he goes shopping for baby stuff by himself and shegets kinda angry and they kinda break up or whatever at least twice, basicallyeach time Emma decides that this is ridiculous and he can’t just date a girlthat is having another guy’s baby and that’s twice the size she should be andthat he’s only known for a few months and one night Killian lines up fourfreaking shepherd’s pies outside her door and if she even keeps her door closedto that then she must be dead inthere and one night he lets it slip about these therapy sessions that he issupposed to go to but doesn’t and she basically makes an appointment for himand drags him out of the door and maybe threatens him with not coming to herdoctor’s appointments anymore, if he doesn’t go to his.

And through all that and then some, they never actuallykiss.

Sure he kisses hercheek when he wishes her goodnight and she kisses his head when he falls asleepon her during Lord of the Rings and he kisses her hand placatingly every timehe tries to dissuade her from helping him with dinner and she kisses hisforearm in the park that one time he freaks out on her because she is on hisleft side and goes to hold his arm and he kisses her stomach the first time shegrabs his hand and lets him feel the baby kicking but-

They’ve never properly kiss and it’s this lastfrontier and maybe he is waiting for her to cross it but she just can’t seem to.

And then she is givingbirth and he is there when she is givingbirth and they haven’t even kissed.

And then there’s Henryand they both kiss him plenty but-

///

they don’t kiss whenKillian refuses to hold her baby and she is hurt and offended and so confusedand kinda angry and then he says he can’t, he can’t hold him with one hand andshe is just sad and, yeah, maybe still kinda angry but also eerily calm as shebents Killian’s elbow and gives him the kind of look that makes him shut hismouth audibly and places her son in his arms

they don’t kiss whenKillian barges in on her breastfeeding and twirls around on the spot, slappinga hand over his face and sputtering apologies while all she can do is laugh andlaugh and tell him to stop acting like her tits are a big deal and make her acup of that crappy decaf coffee and he does and he also makes sure to look herdirectly in the eyes and then wink very poorly when he says that her tits are a big deal

they don’t kiss when Henrystarts teething and Emma is up at all hours of the night and she looks likefucking hell and Killian tells her so in no uncertain terms and basically,somehow, taking advantage of her sleep-deprived brain, manages to rope her intoa teeth-sharing plan which basically includes her passing half of her insomniaonto him and Emma can’t forgive him and at the same time can’t love him enoughand yeah, she loves him now and they’ve known each other for a year and they haven’t fucking kissed and what ever

///

they don’t kiss whenshe asks him if he thinks maybe, possibly Liam would like to meet Henry and allKillian can do is nod and swallow and start planning the kind of lecture he’llgive his brother, if he dares to voice any of his doubts about the soundness of the situation, but Liamseems to think that if his brother is spending half his day around a certainbaby – no matter whose it is – it probably isn’t a terrible idea for him tomeet said baby and Liam Jones may be a military man and he may have nevergotten over the fact that he didn’t manage to protect his little brother fromall the evils of the world and he may have been determined to give Emma Swan ahard time for even the slightest hint of her using Killian but he is also puttyin the hands of Henry Swan within 10 minutes

they don’t kiss thefirst time she uses the key to his apartment and sneaks into his bedroom in themiddle of the night – baby in her arms and her hair into the messiest bun thathas ever been twisted and her damn sweatpants and her eyes all puffy and herwhispered worries all about not being able to do it and being all alone and notbeing good enough and he just folds himself around both of them and tries tostart the process of getting each ridiculous notion out of her head

they don’t kiss when shetells Henry to spot throwing his food all over daddy and Killian just standsthere – carrot puree all over his t-shirt, and watches as she continueswhipping the eggs in front of her as if she didn’t just- and he loves them bothtoo damn much to point it out and risk having her take it back and bloody hell,he loves her now and they’ve been together for all intents and purposes forover a year now and they haven’t bloodykissed and good lord

///

She comes back fromthe store and heads directly to Killian’s apartment and tries to calculate ifshe and Henry are spending more time at her place or at his at this point. Butas soon as she opens the door and the smell hits her, her calculations are leftoutside in the cold and it’s all she can do not to moan out loud. Turns out itwasn’t just the little guy growing inside her that made her love Killian’spies.

She hears the lowmurmur of Killian’s voice and decides to tiptoe into the kitchen as quietly aspossible. She wants to look at them without giving her presence away just yet,when it’s just them.

And sure enough Henryis tucked into Killian’s left arm, his little fist twisted into the hair at theback of her boyfriend’s neck (god, he is not her freaking boyfriend, along withHenry in his arms he is her entire fucking universe).

She knows what theyare making already but she narrows her eyes as she realizes that she has neveractually seen Killian make his shepherd’spie.

“This is the only wayI can make your mom eat these, Henry.”

He twirls a broccoliin front of her son’s little nose and Emma rolls her eyes. Partially because it’strue and partially because the broccoli version is not her most favourite.

“When you are oldenough I’m gonna teach you how to make it on your own but for now I’ll justshow you how to make yourself a little forest.”

She honestly doesn’tknow if it’s the implication of years tocome in his promise, the fact that he says it so confidently, so easily,without any doubt, without any caveat of “if we are still together”, withoutany alternative in his mind. Or if it’s the fucking forest of broccoli that heis arranging around his chopping board like the most precious human being thathe is.

Emma honestly doesn’tknow. But she does drop the bag she is carrying on the floor and she crossesthe space between them in the time it takes Killian to turn around and open himmouth to greet her. And then she finally finallyfeels his lips under her own.

He tastes even betterthan his damn pie.

Holmes’ Last Case

Yep, this one will remain on the bottom of my list. 

Not like it’s bad bad, but it had a lot of potential and many things to provide, and it decided not to. Sometimes I think they went for that on purpose to cut some slack, got fed up of expectations. No matter the adaptation, everyone does Reichenbach, it’s in the Make Your Own Unique Holmes Adaptation 101 kit, along with the Baskervilles and Irene Adler as a romantic interest. Everyone does it, the audience is always judging, so fuck the audience and everything about it, today they’re not trying.

Of course there are spoilers, there’s one episode left, the series is almost over. Almost over and they decided to go with this as a second episode from the end *shakes head*.

I’m being very open about my opinion on this one, as you can see. Let’s explore the tragedy, or something.

Again, not like this episode is a complete disaster or anything, if it was a some sort of standalone feature without the rest of the series attached, by Russian miserable standards, it would be a decent film, but nothing more. Not great, not good, not bad, but passable. The fact that it is attached to a series after all makes it look even more disappointing, especially when this episode is almost the last one. We’ve seen some best episodes, we’ve seen what this show is really capable of, and here we go, they put this as a catalyst to the end, a barely alive plot that served as an excuse for the Reichenbach to happen more than anything. I was really worried when this episode aired, if they managed to suddenly drop the quality to “passable”, at the most crucial moment, then I couldn’t have imagined what they’d do in the last episode. 

So, two reasons, I think: Irene Adler and the plot in general. Maybe also the fact that everybody knows what’s going to happen and so they decided not to bother with fake drama, especially when the relationship between Holmes and Watson here could be considered friendship only technically. 

I’m just really not fond of Irene Adler in this series, I said I can understand her and everything, but that’s as far as it goes. I know she’s like important to Holmes and his development, but at the same time I really believe that getting rid of her plotline completely would’ve served the show a good job. She’s alright when she’s minding her own business, but when her and Holmes meet, that’s where it goes downhill fast. Uncomfortable attempts at romance that seemed to appear out of nowhere, the vulgarity, Holmes that is ready for anything for her for some reason. The worst part is when the show finally elaborates on the last part, it only demonstrates that there was no reason at all. In my opinion, romance is something that this series never managed to get right, and yet it keeps shoving it in my face and it doesn’t become any better. 

Then there’s the actual plot that starts barely interesting and then goes into some weird direction, and a quite lazy one at that. Now we’re suddenly witnessing Germany pull an early Nazi. Before we process that, the emphasis shifts and now everything is about some magical needles that are bigger bullshit than that frog’s poison from the fourth episode. And before the show elaborates on that, it’s suddenly Reichenbach. The entire shitshow before that was just a set up to get Holmes to Reichenbach, those needles were in the narrative only because Holmes was supposed to give them to the Kaiser. What happened of those in the end? Idk he just held them under a candle and they all fucking broke lol, that very undiscovered metal that is so undiscovered no more needles could be made apparently. What a fucking shame. 

Well, here’s Moriarty holding fairy wings, very magical.

That’s Holmes having a secret seizure watching Lestrade playing with his button.

That’s the start to the entire embarrassing flashback of rushed fuckery and zero development.

Of course since Holmes is in love, he’s completely different and very easily fooled, that’s what Holmes himself lamented about every time Adler popped up, but that doesn’t make it any less awful to watch. She just grabs him under a non-existent excuse and they’re suddenly best friends forever admiring Paris twenty minutes after their initial meeting.

That’s the worst part, the entire bullshit we’re witnessing with this storyline all happened because of some fucking one night stand, these people literally knew each other for a day. Then met three years later and apparently were still in love with memories as fresh as if everything happened yesterday. The only woman that managed to fool him, you know how? Like literally every other unimaginative thief prostitute that got her target drunk and then robbed while they were unconscious. Really fascinating, right, exactly the type of crime that makes Sherlock Holmes bust a nut. 

Well, of course, it’s not the Holmes we are talking about, this guy is just a very pathetic, below average loser whose only strength is his intellect, he’s not a super inhuman machine as Watson makes him to be, and considering that, of course he’s more than easy to fall into such an unoriginal trap. He is in love after all, love blinds and the alcohol helps. Holmes hating on Adler for the rest of the series was simply his frustration with himself, it was very easy to guess and yet he still fell for everything like a complete idiot, that is very clear and was said by the characters themselves. And that would’ve made total sense, it makes now, right? Wrong, not when all of this holds on the fact that they’ve known each other for a day. I could’ve understood everything there, but not when it escalates so high, trying to support itself on the basis of a one night stand. 

If love changes you to such an extent, then fuck that.

Thank you Watson for being appalled with this hoe story that Holmes just randomly decided to share.

Watson, huh, Watson’s next. I maybe shouldn’t go on another rant here, considering that Watson’s loyalty does have a tendency to roll an idiot ball across canon and other adaptations at the most unexpected places, but everything has a limit. It was fucking dumb that after some 20+ years of knowing Holmes in the Soviet series, Watson, in the last twenty minutes of the last episode, suddenly believes he’s a criminal. It becomes dumb every time this fucky plot dares to take place in any story that happens when the number of years they’ve known each other for rolls over five. And it’s especially dumb now. 

Watson sure takes no shit from Holmes here and he never fails to constantly question everything he does, but one thing that has always remained static is the fact that in the end, Watson always follows. I’ve discussed that one already, Holmes is Holmes, there’s no point in demanding normal things from him, Holmes is in his own realm and his schemes were always on the right side of justice. Watson understands that and that’s why he’s always willing to close his eyes on all the questionable shit, insults and other things he wouldn’t have let go normally. And here we fucking go again, Watson suddenly believes that Holmes is a criminal. Made double fucking stupid by the fact that the third episode exists, and it repeats EXACTLY THE SAME situation that was actually even worse, but Watson helped nonetheless and everything turned out great as always. Now fucking Mrs. Hudson has more faith in Holmes more than his “friend” ever fucking did. 

I hate Holmes but I feel it’s right when he’s free - that’s true and that was always the vibe. But why the FUCK did this claim happen after Watson AGAIN bought the criminal bullshit from fucking LESTRADE, and wouldn’t have given it a second thought if Mrs. Hudson didn’t flip him off? What the actual fuck, at this point I have the right to expect a proper reaction STRAIGHT AWAY, not when another character calls him a fucking idiot. 

I honestly do not understand this fucking episode, you can play this fucky card once, but certainly not twice, and certainly not when an identical card has flashed ALREADY in an early episode, where it was still understandable. I take everything Watson did and said by the point when he was talking to Lestrade, but for the love of fuck do not even dare to ask me to acknowledge this entire shitshow beforehand. 

His “proposal” scene was mildly ugly than anything, I still stand by my claim that this series should not do romance.

Mrs. Hudson is of course a very smart and understanding woman and sure has more fucking common sense than Watson, but I really don’t know what they were going for here. Was that supposed to be romantic, Watson breaking down in humiliation? What was that supposed to be? 

Honestly that should be me here, I said this episode wasn’t anything disastrous, but the more I talk about it the more I fucking hate it. I do not find Adler romantic, I think the proposal scene was ugly, I think the plot was pathetic, I think the characterisation loop of Watson’s loyalty was beyond shite. But do I hate it? No, I still don’t. Surprisingly, I still don’t. These things come and go, and gladly they weren’t there for long. 

On the quick subject of reoccurring characters, the German ambassador made an appearance in episode three, as well as that rat guy in jail. I think unlike the ambassador, the rat guy was also in the fourth episode. Glad to know they’re using their characters.

*sigh*

Also glad to know that this episode put Mrs. Hudson to jail, therefore making all three inhabitants of Baker Street criminals at one point or another. 

Welcome to jail boi

Also glad to announce that this is the episode that finally gifts Holmes his personal body count. This is the episode where that body count also stops. Behold Holmes’ only victim: a rat in a cage.

That officially makes this Holmes the most dangerous out of the bunch, since if you haven’t noticed, Soviet Holmes’ count remained zero. Shirley Holmes’ count remained zero, the cartoon Holmes’s count is zero, the Blue Carbuncle one’s is zero. Well, there’s the ‘71 Hound of the Baskervilles, but I always disown that one. 

Don’t start me on the needle bullshit 

The only good thing about that was Holmes’ aesthetics, some of the dialogue and a bit of practical experimentation. 

Holmes wouldn’t have been so fucked if he’d invested into something else rather than sleeping pills. 

Judging by how fast they fell and for how long they slept, many kidneys sure failed that night. Maybe that kill count wasn’t just one after all. 

So, Reichenbach. You know what, for that little scene of Holmes just standing there bracing himself while this worryingly melancholic music is playing and snow is falling, I am still ready to forgive everything this episode threw at me. 

It happens in winter, sure, original, I honestly couldn’t care anymore. I don’t even remember how the original story went, but basing on the Soviet series, that managed to make much more sense than this “reality”. Moriarty there had lost everything, was on the run, very angry and wanting blood - of course they’d fight. Here though? Even Moriarty was baffled. Fucking Moriarty himself was baffled as to why the fuck Holmes would suddenly want to fight. But the fight happened anyway, it was alright, Moriarty fucking slipped on the ice and fell on his ass, that was gold.

Their fashion choices still trigger me.

In the end I guess it was kind of melancholic, but nothing more. Holmes makes no drama about the possibility of his survival, even Moriarty is clearly shown to have an escape plan, which I overlooked completely because Moriarty always dies. But that’s for another episode. 

Not the best thing out there, clearly not the best thing out there. I’m pretty sure nobody had any passion for this mandatory event in the first place, and that’s why it’s so rushed, meek, and barely even ties in with the grand plot. 

I would be really happy for people who liked this episode, especially people who liked Irene Adler, because they have at least enjoyed everything on screen. For me this episode is just a chore.