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avaritia-apotheosis · 3 years

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Phantom Children Ch. 6

Hi guys! I'm back <3 (also, I'm currently looking for alpha/beta readers for Phantom Children, so if you're interested, feel free to shoot me a message!)

In Which: Danny Attempts to get Answers, Bruce Learns, and Dick Finally Learns What's Inside the Door that Doesn't Exist

AO3 | Prologue | 5 | [ 6 ] | 7

DANNY IS KNOCKED DOWN three, four, eight times on the ice. Each time made his back ache, his bones bruised and tired, and his mind burning with embarrassment and a drive to lash out. But each time he gets back up. Each time he lasts a little bit longer against Talia.

The ice still shifts, cracks and rumbles with every wrong move. Danny learned to roll with it. Move on light feet but attack with a firm stance, gauge which parts of the ice are stable and which should be avoided. Multi-tasking has never been Danny’s strong suit, but he’s good at learning and learning quickly.

Talia corrected his form as much as she beat him down. Exploited every one of his openings until he learned to defend them and praised him whenever he managed to pull one over her. The League’s martial arts was the holy amalgamation between almost every single fighting style there is, mashed and refined to perfection to become almost unpredictable to the untrained. A vast improvement to Danny’s previous ‘fuck around and see what works’ brawling and had the added benefit of meshing together with his spontaneity.

“You are doing well, Daniel,” Talia said as she sheathed her sword, hand resting just above her hip. “You have improved greatly in such a short time, as I have expected.”

It takes every ounce of Danny’s superhuman energy to not collapse to his knees, his every breath a ragged shudder as he tries to get his breathing under control. “Still can’t beat you, though.”

“Very few can boast that feat.”

“I’m not exactly sure if that’s supposed to make me feel any better or not. Do I get my prize at least?”

Tahlia tossed her braid over one shoulder with a laugh. “Come, then, let us rest in the caves. The sun is to set soon and we must make camp before we freeze to death.”

“Hypothermia is so last season. I’m way too cool for that.”

He didn’t know whether to be disappointed that Tahlia didn’t react to his pun. It was pretty clever, in his opinion.

('Puns are the lowest form of comedy,' said mind-Jazz.

Says the one who named the Box Ghost the ‘Crate Creep.’

'That’s alliteration, not a pun.')

It was kind of pathetic that even his mind-version of Jazz was smarter than him.

“What would you like to know first?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Sarcasm dripped from Danny’s voice. He sheathed his sword and let it hang loose at his side. “Maybe how old this mysterious brother of mine is?” Ancients, his life was weird enough already, it wasn’t supposed to sound like the B-plot to a bad soap opera.

“Damian is younger than you by a little over four years. He will turn eleven this year.”

“Huh. Never been an older brother before.”

“Perhaps you might have been, if circumstances had been different.”

Cryptic. Great. Danny stepped over a particularly large crack in the ice and scampered over to solid ground. “You gotta give me more than that. What’s he like?”

“Prideful,” she said. “But skilled enough to warrant it. He was raised like a prince—as how you should have been.”

“And he lives with…our dad?”

“Yes. In America.” The cave was deep enough to shield them from the worst of the eventual mountain winds. Tahlia had already started building a campfire with equipment from her knapsack, embers eating away and growing into a steady flame. He sat down, legs crossed, beside the fire, hands tucked beneath his armpits.

He bit his lip, a question forming in his mind. “Do…do we have the same dad?”

Tahlia looked up at him. “Of course. Only your father has had the privilege of being called my beloved, and only he is worthy enough to have sired my children.”

Once night fell, it fell quickly. Blanketing as far as Danny could see from the mouth of the cave in a thick darkness. Snow fell from the skies in thick tufts and covered their footsteps.

“Does he—do they know about me?”

“No, they do not.”

“And you probably aren’t going to tell them anything about me, if you could help it.”

“That is very perceptive of you, habeebi.”

“You won’t tell me anything more about them, will you?”

“In due time, I will.”

Danny blew part of his fringe away from his face. Figures.

Despite the ever-present niggling at the back of his mind, Bruce had yet to see what was in the flash drive. The weeks since his strange meeting with Vlad Masters suddenly exploded with criminal activity with the recent breakout in Arkham and the brewings of another gang war in the shadows of Gotham’s paved streets. It was all hands-on deck. And Bruce, whether as Batman or Wayne, had always prioritized Gotham and its citizens over anything else.

The flash drive remained on his person despite the crisis, tucked away in one of the sturdier compartments of his utility belt to prevent the data inside from becoming damaged. Sometimes he found his hands gravitating towards it, fingers brushing against the button that would release the mystery from its confines before he realized what he was doing and steeled himself. Hands fisted to his side and attention forcibly directed elsewhere.

Eventually, the rogues were placed back into Arkham, and Gotham let out a shuddered breath of relief as it remained standing for another day.

Most of the family were out on a light patrol, cleaning up the remains of the breakout and helping where they can. Jason and Dick bickering over the comms whilst Barbara laughed in her clocktower.

(“It’s not that bad.”

"‘It’s not that bad’—shut the fuck up.” Jason spat. Bruce could hear him revving his bike. “You’re a fucking idiot, you know that? Certified Grade A idiot. B’s gonna kill you.”

He could hear Dick roll his eyes. “Sure, pile it all on, Jaybird. Blame the victim.”

"It was your fault.”

“It’s not my fault I didn’t see it there!”

"You tripped and got a concussion. From a stick. A. Stick.”

“Can we please just leave that out of the report?” Dick groaned. Barbara laughed. “Oh god.”

“Richard motherfucking John Grayson. I swear if you vomit on me then—”

“I’m not gonna vomit on you! You just turned the corner a little too fast. It’s nice to see you care though.”

"Fuck no, I just don’t wanna smell like regurgitated cereal.”)

Damian was benched from a patrol. Their last conflict with Poison Ivy ended with Damian sticking a bad landing and twisting his ankle. He dealt with it with as much grace as can be expected. Meaning that he spent the last few days sulking as he caught up on his missed schoolwork and shooting daggers at everyone else who came back from patrol.

Bruce flicked the flash drive open and plugged it into the computer. The flash drive contained only a single folder dated six months ago.

He clicked it, and a news headline popped up.

LOCAL TEEN DIES AFTER DRIVING OFF CLIFF

Beneath it, a picture. Blue eyes. Black hair. A familiar face.

Blood pounded in Bruce’s ears. He could hear nothing except a sharp gasp from Damian behind him.

When Dick and Jason arrived at the batcave, it was to an eerie silence. Not that it was usually loud, only that Bruce spent most of his free time down in the cave and Dick had come to expect hearing some signs of him around. Typing on keys, the clicking of a mouse, the heavy thuds of a fist meeting a punching bag or a training dummy, etcetera, etcetera. Or maybe even Alfred cleaning up around the cave, feeding the bats, or restocking their med bay.

(Dick, it turned out, didn’t have a concussion. Probably. Not a severe one anyway. What mattered most was that he managed to convince Jason to have dinner at the Manor. Alfred was making a tarte tatin for dessert tonight and those were absolutely to die for. )

One of Tim’s cases took him to the other side of Gotham. The only person in the cave was Damian, who was staring agape at the batcomputer.

“Why the hell is the demon spawn looking at old pictures of Bruce? We get it. They look alike.

“Uh, Dami? What’s up?”

Damian snapped his mouth shut. “I believe it might be best if you asked father that, Grayson.” Despite his clipped tone, there seemed to be little anger in his voice. His proud shoulders were hunched over on the chair, eyes trained on his lap.

He looked so small.

Damian clucked his tongue. “He’s upstairs, if you need him. So is Pennyworth.”

Dick shot a glance at Jason who raised his hands in mock surrender. “You’re up golden boy. Whatever the fuck the old man’s problem is this time, I’m not dealing with it.”

Dick sighed. “Fine.”

There was a door in Wayne Manor that didn’t exist.

When Dick was a child and recently adopted by Bruce Wayne, one of the first things he did was explore the manor. It’s the prerogative of every child that somehow found themselves in a large mansion—even more so given the castle-like exteriors of Wayne Manor. All castles have secret passages, and if the Batcave lay in the subterranean depths below, then surely the manor proper must have its own secrets.

Dick would tumble and cartwheel along the hallways, opening any and every single door he came across. A lot of them were just empty bedrooms or unused parlors and sitting rooms; the furniture covered by white sheets to keep the dust away. Alfred was probably magic, but even he can’t keep the entirety of the manor dust free.

The majority of the unused rooms were unlocked.

Except for one.

It was a room in the west wing, on the second floor. A couple doors down from where Bruce’s and Dick’s were. Why it was locked, Dick never found out. But he was curious since it was the only room on that floor that remained shut.

When he asked Alfred about it, the old butler only said that it was an unused storage room they preferred to keep locked just in case. When he asked Bruce about it, he’d be quick to change the subject. Usually something Batman related. Which, well, always worked, because it was Batman related. And Dick, young and spry and itching to fly under Batman’s wings, would quickly forget about that curious little mystery in favor of punching bad guys in the face and flipping over rooftops.

At some point that locked door quietly disappeared, leaving a blank expanse of wallpaper and a decorative vase where it once stood. It was never brought up again. And Dick slowly forgot that it was ever there in the first place.

Until now.

The wooden table and vase were shoved off to the side. Wallpaper sliced away to reveal the lines of a doorway. The door, covered in its faint damask wallpaper, was kicked open, the wood around the bolt splintered and cracked. He could hear voices—Alfred’s and Bruce’s—speaking softly on the other side.

He pressed his back against the wall and kept his breathing quiet.

“Three times, Alfred.” Bruce’s voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper. “Three times she’s done this to me.”

“Master Bruce…”

“I don’t—I don’t understand why—” Bruce choked, swallowing a shuddered breath. “Damian, I can understand. Jason, I can too. But…This? I—” Bruce suddenly quieted. Dick knew the jig was up.

He unlatched himself from the wall and slowly slid through the once-hidden-door, a hand kept on the frame. “Um. Hi, Bruce? Alfred?” The words fell flat, stilted. Dick winced as he said them. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop but, uh…” He trailed off the second he registered what was in the room.

It was large, as so many rooms in the manor were. The room was covered in peeling green wallpaper with faded pictures of baby deer and owls and other woodland creatures prancing about. There was a dresser on one wall. A shelf filled with little picture books and stuffed animals on the other. A brown teddy bear had fallen on its face on one of the shelves.

In the middle—where Bruce was hunched over—was a crib. The wood streaked and aged with time, the beddings within pristine and untouched, if not dusty. Hanging overhead was a mobile with little animals dangling on a string.

“Worry not Master Dick. It is good that you are here since it will inevitably involve the rest of the family at some point.”

Dick nodded absentmindedly, trying to lock eyes with his guardian. “B? What’s—what’s going on?” Dick took one step deeper into the room. “The pictures in the cave. I thought they were you since they were too old to be Damian—” Bruce’s hands on the crib’s railing flinched.

Dick’s breath hitched.

“They’re…not your photos, are they.”

Bruce took a deep breath in, the lines of his shoulders tense. “No. They’re not.”

In their line of work, the answer could have been anything. Clones, magical doppelgangers, alternate universe counterparts, hell, even just someone’s genetic code being coincidentally similar to another person. But…this room, this nursery, pointed towards only one conclusion.

“Who is he, Bruce?”

Bruce angled his head towards Dick, unshed tears glimmering in his eyes. “He’s my son, Dick.

“He’s my son.”

#danny phantom #batman #danny phantom x batman crossover #dp fic #phantom children.txt

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pluviophile-bookworm · 3 years

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HSMTMTS 2x11: Let us pull up a chair as the dining room proudly presents... the reason for my next mental breakdown

I can't believe myself, honestly. Oversleeping on the one day of the week that I've got something exciting to wake up for? Oh well, I'm up now and I'd better go ahead and do this before my dashboard has showered me with spoilers. I mean, I have never really minded spoilers, but when it comes to this, somehow I do. Though I do wish something had forewarned me about last week's snap ending (get it, 'snap'... I'll see myself out). I'd better dive in already.

Yes, Mr Mazzara, that's what I've been saying for a while! Ok, maybe I haven't been very vocal about it, but it was in the foreground of my mind that they should have asked for Mr Mazzara's help re: transformation! I'm just glad he pointed it out. Not that he could have done much while he was busy playing therapist for his beloved Miss Jenn. Oh well.

Were those Ash and Ricky doing actual paired-up warmups? That is what they should have been doing for weeks now. That and having actual off-stage interactions, too. But I still subscribe to the theory that the gang had some good rehearsals off-screen — otherwise there's no way they could have been this good on stage as we saw in the previews. I said it last time and I'll say it again — not everything is for us to see.

Wow. The one time our leads are in unison, and it is about both being injured. The East High drama club must be cursed — they can't have one production run smoothly and without what can only be described as pure unbridled chaos.

They don't have any understudies? That explains some things... but also how? But also, I'm so happy Ashlyn is going on. No way she would have missed her first (first of many, right?) chance of being the lead because of some 'minor' injury.

Ricky and Nini still can't talk to each other properly. Oh well. Take your time. It's not like I care about this pairing anymore.

Did EJ just use the word 'dig'? Boy, the boy's got it baaaaaad. Also, what is it going to take for these two to realise they're in love? For all we know, they might have that big kiss we're all dreaming of and still be like 'nah, it's nothing, we're buddies'... give me a break! But I mean, at this point they might just be turning into Redlyn 2.0, where even a kiss doesn't define things. But hey, if they do follow in Redlyn's footsteps, that only means good things in their future, right?

What did that fake French git do to my boy Carlos? He's not supposed to look this inanimate until right before the climax of the play! Well, I mean, at least Seb serving as his interpreter means that Seb gets more lines for a bit. Too bad he can't go on for someone with more lines in the play.

Miss Jenn's 'words of inspiration' were less than inspired... yeah, this show's going down. Or it would, if it depended solely on her. Let's hope the kids do better. I mean, I know for a fact they will... at least for about 5 minutes of the thing. There is still room for things to go wrong and I'm scared.

Oh, my sweet boy... I wish I could jump in there and do something to help him feel less nervous. Thing is, if I were there, I'd probably be the most nervous of them all, even if I were playing Townsfolk #3 or something, and everyone's nervousness would rub off on me, and I would be making things worse instead of helping. So yeah, I'm kind of glad I'm not there.

Ahhhh who called it? @redlyncentral was it you? Ash got flowers for her Biggie! And there's a card whose contents we've yet to see. But that doesn't seem to be helping either. My sweet, sweet Reddy... I hope and pray he'll be alright.

Well this is awkward! Who told Mike to show up and shake everything up right now? Miss Jenn is literally on the brink of exploding, and now she's stuck in this completely unnecessary love triangle. She needs some space. And a quiet place to breathe, thanks Mr M for suggesting it.

'Did we forget to build a mote around the school or...' Yeah, you tell her, Rick! That girl whose name I never want to pronounce (because it makes me think of much nicer people and she's making me hate it) has no business being there. She's not... being given a redemption arc, is she now? Some people just don't deserve it. And if hating her is an unpopular opinion now, well, I never did care much about having popular opinions. I can live with that.

'Lily, scram!' Yes, thank you, Natalie! I've always wanted someone who would voice my thoughts in a way that the characters can hear them. Make this girl a main next season, won't you? (Just so we're crystal clear, I mean Natalie, not the other one.)

OMG Mr M is in the play! In a way... I love that!

I love, love, love the way they did the prologue. 'Repulsed [the prince makes an over-the-top gesture of repulsion] by her haggard appearance [the witch shows off her face to the audience]...' I love this. I would pay a lot for a chance to see their entire play, you know?

Oh dear, somebody give my boy Reddy some sort of... medical aid against all the throwing up! I've got a nice pill that helps me with my bad cases of motion sickness. Hey, so maybe I could have helped if I were there after all. Great, now I feel bad. But also, is all the throwing up an excuse on the writers' part to keep my boy off-screen for the majority of this episode? Because it's a really lame excuse.

Gina's 'Many questions' continues to be a mood. What exactly is Miss Jenn expecting from the kids? Last-minute adjustments? No way. This spells disaster.

Was Carlos on vocal rest or something? Because he shines like the star he is... despite all the very obvious nervousness backstage. I mean, I wouldn't have it any other way, but... oh well, I wouldn't say it's unrealistic. In my personal performing experience, the most nervous ones perform the best. (So... what is that saying for my boy Reddy? Good things only.)

I've already had the opportunity to geek out about Be Our Guest yesterday, but... I mean, just look at them! Carlos doesn't need actual candles to be on fire, Ashlyn is stealing the scene without any lines in it, Gina is absolutely gorgeous, and don't even get me started on EJ and Big Red looking at their girls in absolute awe! This is everything!

Aww, look at them! Gina and Ashlyn dancing together, I mean. They're sisters and it really shows. And I love them both so much.

Kourtney is an absolute show-stealer! I'm still upset about some casting choices (one of them is in this scene, doing his absolute best with the crumbs he has been given), but she is absolutely perfect. I think I'll rewind and watch this entire scene again before moving on with the rest of the episode.

I'd just like to point out that Frankie's voice in his lower register is everything!

'You absolutely dusted that stage'... Not EJ making a pun so punny even I could not have thought of it... boy is absolutely smitten!

Not me tearing up when Jordan Fisher appeared as Gina's brother... like, I knew it was happening — I knew it even before it was announced. And I still teared up because, well, it's emotional in-universe and out.

Awww, my boy Reddy is so in love with Ashlyn... I mean, who wouldn't be... but — not Ricky saying Lily might not be as mean as they thought. Especially not to Big Red of all people. To him, she was just as mean as they thought.

'Side hustle project in the south hallway'? Ooh, what is it, I want to know now!

Why do I feel like things are a bit too awkward between Kourtney and Howie? Not that I'm too invested in their relationship, but if it bothered me, imagine how it must feel for the stans.

No, Ash, you absolutely do not need to add any fancy riffs to the song! Especially not just because L... well, that girl did it. You're unique and lovely and a literal Disney princess inside and out. That girl? She's just a wolf in a sparkling golden dress.

Awww... Big Red literally lowers Ash's blood pressure! Those two are such an amazing couple! (Full disclosure, though, he kind of does the same for me too; the other night I had this horrible nightmare, and I woke up in cold sweat in the middle of the night, and then... ok, getting too personal there.) The point is, if even the fantasy of a Big Red hug makes me feel better, imagine what his actual presence would do for Ash at that moment. Where is my boy? Everyone seems to be looking for him.

Oh... guess they took my advice to give the poor boy something for his vomiting issue. Good for whoever thought of it.

And we're back to the Porter siblings... forgive me if I still can't wrap my head around calling Gina's brother Jamie. I don't know about you guys, but thanks to my lovely new friend Paz he will always be Theodore to me. I guess we can headcanon that as his middle name. Anyway, I love it that they made a joke about the hilarious height difference between him and Gina because, well, it's the only thing I can think about when I look at the two of them. It reminds me of me and my little cousin who has been taller than me since she was 10, and is still growing taller now at 13. But, I mean, it's not very hard to be taller than me, since I'm so, so short... ok, this is not about me. Moving on.

Was I the only one who actually laughed out loud at Ricky drinking from the bowl as the Beast? I mean, that part has always made me laugh in the original movie, but something about Ricky's take on it makes it even funnier.

Meanwhile, my girl Ash is absolutely killing it as Belle. Not me having the very same expression as Big Red while watching her... gosh, I love both of them so much! Also, no offence to the rest of the cast, but Julia really is the best vocalist out there. Out of all of them. I said what I said.

My apologies to Ricky, but his voice is just not it when it comes to playing the Beast. Still, with the other option being him putting on that fake deep voice from the audition, I'm glad he didn't.

Ahhhh Portwell nation you ok guys? Since we didn't get them singing Something There, this is very much the next best thing... and boy, is it good!

Those glances between Kourtney and Howie, on the other hand... what on Earth is happening there?

Ok, so you all know just how strongly I feel about Seb's casting as Chip, and yet... boy had one line and absolutely ate it up! Give him an actual singing role next time, Miss Jenn!

EJ being starstruck by Jamie not because he's a big music producer, but because he's Gina's brother... excuse me while I sob!

Excuse me, what!!!! 'A big brother figure'? Boy, this didn't turn out the way I thought it would... now I'm scared.

Way to ruin things, Jamie! And I don't even mean the fact that his name is not Theodore. It doesn't matter what his name is anymore. He might just have put a spanner in the works of Portwell, and they were just doing so well! Ugh, I'm so frustrated. I wish I'd never boarded — what did I call it — 'the majestic S.S. Portwell'. What if it doesn't set sail now?

And there goes another disappointment... Carlos' 'the orchestra hasn't vamped this much since Bop to the Top' line had nothing to do with Seblos, and everything to do with what might still be the downfall of this show. I am not ready.

No. Miss Jenn did not just say that. She did not just tell Ricky — who, may I remind you, not that anyone's forgotten, just fell off of a high place last episode — to 'jump off of something high'. I realise she's under all the pressure, but that is not an excuse. Well, at least she heard herself.

Oh my gods... Nini — well, Nina, actually — did not just call him 'Richard', did she? That's it, that's the point of no return. And well, I kind of wanted them to reach it.

Told you, didn't I? I told you that-girl-who-must-not-be-named was evil! I always follow my intuition and it has not once deceived me. Redeem that, if you can! Guess what? You can't. We've just reached another point of no return.

Wait, a bloody cliffhanger? I cannot handle this. I physically cannot handle this. If you need me, I'll be sitting on my bed in shock, trying to process everything that happened. I'll need a while to get a grip on myself.

#hsmtmts #hsmtmts s2 #ricky bowen #nini salazar-roberts #gina porter #ej caswell #ashlyn moon caswell #big red redonovich #carlos rodriguez #seb matthew-smith #kourtney greene #hsmtmts miss jenn #hsmtmts mr mazzara #hsmtmts howie #jnk

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thecrimsonjaguar · 4 years

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A Short List of Adventure Time AUs

So I got a google doc of adventure time aus I’ve made over the past two or three years. Here are some of my favorites (and also the ones I came back to and edited)

If you’ve got ideas for an au or ideas to add onto the preexisting ones I’ve got here, please tell me! I’m always up for some au discussion.

1.) Jermaine AU: Jermaine comes to live at the treehouse after his house blows up. This, unlike canon, happens rather early in season 3. The rest of the series mainly stays the same, except this time there's three brothers instead of two. He's a kinda anxious dude with demon hunting expertise and a painting hobby. He sometimes wonders if he made Dad disappointed by letting all his work explode. Finn and Jake help him out, and he helps them. Despite this, Jermaine is the only one with a brain, and Finn and Jake share exactly one (1) braincell that they trade every so often. Jermaine is tired. (Jermaine is the only one who tries to clean regularly, and he's also the one to keep Neptr, Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant, and a few others company. He's a bit of real wisdom the early series Finn and Jake needed.

2.) Melted Ice AU: Mid season two, IK is hit with something that de-ages him. He turns six. Maybe this mystery de-aging thing blows up the top of the ice mountain, who knows. Maybe he wakes up in the snow, with no memory of how he got there or why. No memory of the last one thousand years. Finn and Jake don't know about his backstory since that happens in season three. Simon is carried by a snowman out of the ice kingdom where he breaks down in the plains. Finn, of course, finds him and is ecstatic to meet another human. Completely missing the fact that this small child is, in fact, the Ice King, Finn declares to help this boy no matter what. That promise soon becomes difficult when people hear about the second human in Ooo, and whatever effect that's keeping him young starts to wear off. (Marceline comes to visit and has a heart attack)

3.) Adventure Falls AU: AT x GF baybee!! Seventeen year old Stanley Pines hops on the Stan O' War and sets sail when he's kicked out. Unfortunately, that boat is nowhere near sea worthy, and all it takes for him to go overboard is one sudden (magical) storm. But, miraculously, Stan doesn't die. He washes up on Ooo, the island of misfits. Where there's daddy issues galore and punching things and getting gold is a legitimate career. He's found on the shore by none other than Finn, who asks if he's okay and if a dungeon adventure would soothe his worries. Stan accepts, because that sounds awesome, and they maybe date. For the next ten years, Stanley is a professional hero. He travels with Finn, he lives in a tower with tons of gold, he's respected, adored, and has made a family for himself. Ooo has a habit of forcing traumatic therapy onto to people, so Stan gets (read: is forced) to work his issues out. And then, somehow, he gets a postcard from his brother.

4.) Young Pups AU: Jake's kids grow up fast- but not that fast. He stays with lady for a few episodes being Dad and when the Pups are old enough, go visit Finn and Jermaine. Also Jermaine is there when the pups are born that always bothered me in canon like what the fuck. This whole AU results in Jake the Dad being a better father than in canon, because he actually has time to make mistakes and learn from them. He sometimes shapeshifts into one of those baby carriers but suited for five kids instead of one. Finn and Jermaine fight for best uncle privileges. Finn is considerably more awesome but Jermaine's got magic junk and juicy stories about Jake. So far the votes are: FINN: Jake Jr, T.V. JERMAINE: Kim Kil Whan, Charlie. Viola remains undecided.

4.) Evilgreen AU: Evergreen was evil. His idea to make the crown to stop the comet was actually a cover story to take control of all the elements and freeze everything. Of course the same thing happens here as it did in canon, Gunther gets the crown and wishes to *be* evergreen. This is bad. Very bad, so bad in fact, that things get FUnKy. A couple eons later, Simon gets the crown as per canon, and then things start to slide downhill. Since the crown is significantly worse, Simon tries to get rid of it. No amount of magic pull is going to get him to put on the eldritch hat. It teleports back. When things go to shit, the crown tells him he's got two options: He can either live, or he can live unwillingly. This all coalesces in super angst and mild horror as Simon has to fight off evil urges and somehow keep both he and Marceline safe. Things start looking up, though, when he summons Hunson Abadeer.

5.) Nightmare Therapy AU: Simon, now himself post canon, has some funky nightmares. Problem is: he's due for a visit from the cosmic owl due to some mystical bureaucratic bs. If that were to happen, Simon's dreams of Golb and Orgalorg and the world ending and everyone dying and maze would come true, without the veil of metaphoric junk dreams are known for (also due to bureaucratic bs). So, Simon gets a dream therapist. An OC, probably, that would fight off his nightmares when they came and talk to him about his issues.

6.) High School AU: Except they're all still magic and crap. Finn's a jock that's part of the LDnD club(Literally Dungeons and Dragons), Jake's got a job at a pancake place and hosts the Card Wars clubs on Wednesdays, Jermaine's in college and their parents were still detectives/demon hunters. PB is preppy/nerdy girl with weird fucking family and is absolutely a mad scientist. Marceline is still a demon/vamp (vampire biker gang, they all died, deaths pending) and her uncle is Simon. Simon is a history teacher whose ex wife might be an eldritch abomination (the students wonder, but there are no answers)((simon says cryptic things every so often that are the subject of much ridicule, but he's a nice guy)). Ooo High has all of the AT characters in some shape or form. Tree trunks is the lunchlady, Mr Pig is a janitor. Lemongrab is just there. LSP(Q?) is a teacher because that's hilarious. Hunson is dead along with Marceline's mom because fuck hunson. Magic Man is a hobo that snuck onto campus and can't be chased off (his brother is the superintendent, Glob). there's a lot more but that's for a different word doc.

7.) Back to the Future AU: So PB fucks around with time travel, right? For science. She gets sent back in time a thousand years, before the war. Now, she's a pink lady who can shoot jelly beans from her hands, of course needs to lay low. And of course she needs to get home, but she's in a Futurama situation where she only has one type of time machine; the one that can go into the past. Not to mention her own time machine got busted on her way there, so she's double screwed. But, she remembers something. There is an individual (two, actually) that knows about time travel in this time period. She knows him, and he's likely to help her if she plays her card right. She needs to find Simon and get back to her own time, preferably without dooming herself in the process. (perhaps she tries to steal the notes Simon has, and Simon's completely oblivious, except Betty can smell trouble from a mile away and immediately notices some pink woman trying to steal books and she goes ham. Perhaps she goes ham in such a way that Simon doesn't notice. Perhaps this goes on for seven acts.)

8.) Bread and Butter AU: Bella Noche during the episode Betty creates a huge black cube that engulfs all of Wizard City. This box acts as a cage and prevents Wizards from escaping the magic purge. Simon is unable to bring Betty back from the past, and he's fading fast. In a desperate attempt to stop things from escalating, Simon chugs a bottle of anti-magic like a fucking god. He gets through the cube that surrounds Bella Noche and knocks their lights out. He passes out, and when he comes to, the anti-magic he consumed as merged with him. This is because of a simple rule: Magic sticks to magic, anti-magic sticks to anti-magic. And since humans have always had just a little bit of anti -magic present within them, humans and anti-magic go together like bread and butter (badumtish) ((I have actually written a fanfic about this, you can find it here))

9.) Swapped AU: Through various shenanigans Ice King's and Magic Man's powers gets swapped. These shenanigans somehow land them in space as well. This happens before Magic Man's trial. The swapping of their powers results in Simon getting his memory back. It also gives Magic Man the Ice Crown, unfortunately for him though, it seems to hate him. Simon's glad to back, but quickly realizes one issue: He's still crazy. So the pair try to make it back to Ooo. MM needs his powers to swap himself with some other shmuck so he doesn't croak when his trial comes, but Simon's made it clear he isn't giving his powers up without a fight. The pair starts off rocky, neither trusting the other, but space trouble forces them to work together. Simon's a nice enough guy he wouldn't leave someone to die and MM really needs Simon alive so it works out. A weird friendship forms, and they learn get along. Just a couple of crazy space wizards. Then the crown is destroyed. MM is freed from the crown's control, and he's freed from magic. He gets his sanity back, just in time for his trial.

that’s all I’ve got for now!

#at #adventure time #adventure time au #adventure time aus #Finn the Human #finn #jake the dog #jake #marceline #princess bubblegum #pb #simon petrikov #betty grof #ice king #magic man #au #aus

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kitkatt0430 · 3 years

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So I saw a gifset from the episode Power Outage that reminded me that in season one - and presumably season two - Ralph Dibny is actually dead. He died because of the accelerator explosion in December 2013, but presumably due to Flashpoint he's alive by the time season four rolls around. (So he's actually alive in season three.)

In the show, the only two people who might have realized that Ralph being alive is a product of Flashpoint are Barry (because he lived in that pre-Flashpoint timeline) and Cisco (because Vibe powers). But neither of them mention it, so I guess we'll never know for sure that his survival isn't actually down to the Legends meddling with time (like the Scooby-Doo gang, but with a significantly cooler ride - sorry, not sorry, Mystery Machine).

Anyway, all of this has reminded me of a fanfic idea I've had in the back of my head for a while.

So it'd start with Barry's return from the Speed Force at the start of season four. Iris and Eddie are married and various other changes abound as i see fit. Barry comes back still massively out of touch with reality and writing in the speedster glyphs and Wally gets help from Jesse to defeat the Samuroid bot. Also Wally isn't Kid Flash anymore - he has taken on the mantle of the Flash in his own right.

Barry starts recovering slowly, but as he does his understanding of the glyphs he's writing with wanes... even though he keeps doodling them all over the place. He winds up quitting his job at the CCPD because he's just... not in a place where he can hold down a job right now. He's also not 100% sure anything is real and that he's not still stuck in the Speed Force and he's reluctant to seek out therapy because of his experiences with therapists as a child were not good and also he'd need to discuss being the Flash which... not happening.

Which is when the bus metas start showing up (out of show order). Wally gets the indignity of the marble-related pratfall and accidentally meta-cuffing himself. Barry starts to gain more confidence in himself and his reality when he's able to shut down the accelerator before it goes critical, moments before Wally successfully cuffs Hazard. (Presumably the accelerator actually exploding would have been very unlucky for Becky, so something would have to make it shut back down, right?)

Linda returns leading to relationship drama for Wally and Jesse. Wally finds Linda attractive but would never cheat (also Linda's really only aware of him as Iris' younger brother right now), which Jesse knows but she feels jealous anyway and she doesn't like what that says about herself. She also feels like she's stretching herself really thin trying to protect Earth-2, act as Jay's back-up on Earth-3 (because he's starting to slow down and is still looking for an apprentice, but hasn't told anyone on Earth-1 what's happening to him yet), and both date and help Wally on Earth-1. It's too much work and too much stress and too much running between different Earths. She eventually decides that, much as she cares about Wally, their relationship isn't really what she needs right now and they part ways. A hopefully more satisfying break up than what we got on the show with that cube thing. Also the thing with Kilg%re happens.

Barry realizes - using Cisco's translation program - that he keeps writing something about a bus in the speedster glyph doodles. (Cisco's translation program is incomplete.) OG Team Flash connects Becky and Ramsey back to Bus 405, which Barry... er... Flashed the day he returned from the Speed Force. (hehehehehe) They're able to identify Ralph and a few other people who were on the bus because their bus passes were logged on boarding. It's still not clear who was on the bus at the time Barry Flashed it (*snicker* i regret nothing). But Ralph had to be because, well, he boarded the bus the stop right before the Barry accidentally acted like an EMP on the bus' electronic systems.

And Barry's issues with parsing reality are triggered because he remembers two versions of Ralph thanks to time traveling and memory integration - let's just say that Barry has memories of both pre and post Flashpoint timelines and say the story would theoretically handwave it better than I'm prepared to do right now. So Barry remembers this version of Ralph, who faked evidence and was a dick to Barry (almost misspelled that as being a duck to Barry). But he also remembers another version of Ralph, who didn't fake evidence and was Barry's friend and died in a car accident trying to reach the hospital after finding out Barry'd been struck by lightning while Ralph was at home and off duty and should have been safe. (Hello Barry's guilt complex which no one actually missed.)

Barry's memories are a tangled mess (gee, thanks Speed Force), so Caitlin goes with Barry and Joe when they meet Ralph. And Ralph's knee jerk reaction to keep them at arms length - especially as he's concerned they're crooked, which isn't that ironic from his PoV - is to combine obnoxiousness with sarcasm and pepper in some misogynistic comments that piss off Caitlin enough that Frost pops out to play. Joe clearly freaks out and tries to pretend he isn't freaking out. Barry just... goes with it. Whatever, Frost is part of Caitlin and Caitlin is part of Frost and he doesn't have the time, inclination, or the survival instinct to go "enemy sighted, begin defensive measures". He's just kind of like "hey Frost, nice to see you again, I've been hoping to talk w/you, but can it wait until we're done with Ralph? Or is Caitlin not gonna give you enough time for that? 'Cause I guess we're basically done here anyway."

Meanwhile Ralph is quietly freaking out with a blank O_O expression. Because Killer Frost. KILLER FROST. His fight or flight instincts are weighted heavily to freeze in place and hope to spontaneously blend into the environment.

Which is when the mob guys show up and Barry just kind of starts laughing upon learning that this version of Ralph is basically living a crime noir plot because the other Ralph loved that genre so much. Something triggers Ralph's powers while Frost cheerfully freezes the bad guys shoes to the floor and Joe arrests them. Ralph insists he was never blackmailing anyone, and Barry and Frost wind up taking him to STAR Labs while Joe waits for Eddie to show up to help him take in the thugs.

Barry and Frost do end up talking - Cisco side-eying them hard even as he gets Ralph settled in to wait for Caitlin to come back. And Barry apologizes to Frost. For how the team treated her and how Savitar treated her and just... everything. He'd like to hope they'd have handled the situation better if they'd understood Frost was a separate personality entirely, but the truth is they fucked up and pushed Frost into the position of thinking turning to Savitar was her only choice. And he hopes that she'll give them a chance to do better by her this time. Frost says she'll think about it and pretends she's not tearing up as she lets Caitlin take back over.

that's kind of where my ideas dry up and I'm not really ready to tackle writing any of this as an actual fic yet, but... I kind of saw this as a series that would include my headcanon for Ralph being face blind and him eventually bonding with Barry over the similarities between Ralph's struggle with accepting his disability and Barry's struggle in acclimatizing to his own post Speed Force incarceration disability, but with the adding drama of Barry's friendship with the Ralph-who-died and his guilt there complicating things too.

Barry would eventually take up the mantle of the Flash again with Rip showing up shortly after to borrow Wally for the Legends, though I've got no idea how that would play out. And Julian's still in there somewhere since he's still the CCPD's CSI even though Barry's had to quit. I imagine Ralph and Julian would very much not get along. (Julian and Eddie, though... they would definitely get along.)

#the flash #unfinished story idea #alternate season four story idea #as for where harry is in all of this... um... yeah i have no idea #he's there though #the speedster glyphs would wind up being important for helping them defeat DeVoe somehow #like... barry's blocking a lot of his traumatic speed force experience out but it's still in his subconscious #so there'd be him starting to remember and dealing with all of that

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feather-dancer · 4 years

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Trollhunters Fanfic Recommendations - Part 2

My original fanfic recommend post seems to have exploded in notes which is a little bewildering if I’m honest. Since then I’ve stumbled over more I have enjoyed thanks to a couple other recc posts doing the rounds, a few I forgot to list and new ones that have appeared on AO3

Want to see the original recommendations post? You can find it here!

General Trollhunters

Love, we hold on together - Jilaire post Season 3 and very cute and fluffy.

Young Atlas - Season 1 finale with Jim and wandering into the unknown to do the right thing.

Hope (or something a little bit like it) - A take on what it was like for Dictatious when he was pulled into the Darklands when Gunmar was sealed away.

Partners - Season 1 finale with Toby’s thoughts of his bestie going off without him.

Family - Season 1 AARRRGGHH thoughts and everything he’d do for his current and newly adopted family.

Family History In The Context of the Parallel Development of a Relationship as Told Through a Trollmarket Dwelling - Just as it says on the tin.

Under the Sun — Part One: The White Rabbit - Oh what wonders could Otto have seen and done long before we met him in the modern day? Learning he hates the cold and snow, for one, and someone seriously needs to get him glasses pronto.

The Devil and the deep blue sea - A retrospective on Walter Strickler/Stricklander and missed chances.

Talking About Teenage Angst: For Dummies! - Steli fic with Coach being wonderful and things going rather pear shaped one night.

Sticky Notes - Another Steli fic, this one is very cute fluff with post-its.

~~~

Stricklake

We'll Meet Again - I think the actual summary sums it up better than I can: Perhaps there is no such thing as love at first sight, but what about second or third or fourth or…?

The Festival of Nauna - It’s time for a Troll festival post Season 3 and naturally Not!Enrique “helps” things along in regards to Strickler and Barbara’s still strained relationship. Also contains Strickler who likely has lasting fears of being summoned by gnomes and good old changeling banter.

Fallout - Jim for a time saw Strickler as a father figure he never had, it turns out however he might have been closer to the truth than either had realised. Secrets don’t stay so forever though, be they true parentage or the slight issue of somebody not being human.

Like for Like, Echo for Echo - IT TURNS OUT An Amorous Attack (The hilarious Draal reporting in to Jim) fic had a sequel and I had no idea! We heard from the troll what happened but it’s not quite the same as hearing from the actual culprits.

misc. trollhunters prompts - Sometimes fluff, sometimes angst, who knows what you’ll find! Also includes Rebecoming which is an AU that makes me yell in good ways. Then Organised Knowledge made me yell even more.

Stricklake: Stones Through A Lake - Stricklake prompts! Contains fluff, angst and all that good stuff.

almost (you) me - In Unbecoming, what if Strickler had glimpses of a life he could have had if things had just happened a little differently?

The Strawberry Shortcake Chronicles - A collection from the fluffy to uh higher rated? Following the long relationship of Walter Strickler and Barbara Lake through it’s ups, the downs, the dawning realisation of falling for someone and of scenarios that are just adorable to behold. And then Strickler fucks up.

Good Morning Arcadia Oaks! - Put it under this section as two of these ARE actually Stricklake which are incredibly fluffy and delightful and the other one is AARRRGGHH having a job and I love them very much. The newest one is god please let this idiot teach again I need it in my life.

~~~

Alternate Universes

Eventide - An absolutely DELIGHTFUL Gang!AU. Fear the renegade teenagers, they WILL break into your house and make you toast.

Eclipsing Daylight - Jim has spent 6 months in the Darklands instead of two weeks before his rescue and brings a whole lot of trauma, emotional baggage and nightmares home with him. This is the fic that made me feel less bad about Ghost!AU as he’s severely put through the wringer here. Heeding the content warnings is a must.

Lasting Repercussions - His fellow Trollhunters were a bit too late rescuing Jim in the Darklands and the Decimaar blade did... something to him before Gunmar was punched away. With visions and thoughts distinctly not his own Jim has an extra thing on his plate he didn’t ask for but perhaps it could also be turned into an advantage.

A Fantastic Upheaval - Barbara meets her unexpected basement lodger and nothing short of sheer shenanigans ensue.

Works in Progress - Three unlikely friends meet one by one in a hospital, none of them are okay but maybe, just maybe, they can help each other on the road to recovery.

My Only Sunshine - What if Jim was trolled as a five year old thanks to a (Presumed) magical bath bomb? By luck he turns back into a human but only while the sun is up which leads to both mother and son scrabbling to deal with this awful situation while also trying desperately to keep anybody uncovering their secret lest the worst happens to Jim. Expect to feel emotions, a lot of them, and just wanting things to start going their way. “Jim loses track of time” has never been so ominous.

In the Dead of Night - What if Bular survived? It turns out accidentally adopting a child called Trisha, terrible decision making involving pans on fire, a very confused Otto and the show that must still must go on.

Fire Agate - Toby makes the decision to be trolled like Jim so his new extended family won’t have to see him age and wither as a human. Comes with feels, so many many feels.

Whispers Within - Did you want a slice of life fic with a gay Uhl who gets a monster boyfriend? Well even if you didn’t you can have one anyway as it is DELIGHTFUL. The school actually has more staff, there’s a toilet garden, family drama and such damn good LGBT+ rep!

Text Ya Later, Trollhunter - A text/group chat fic that tangented due to what we knew at the time into utter delightful chaos. “I see you smiling through ur window u tiny fiend!” has yet to stop being hilarious and I recommend this fic if you just want sheer silliness that led me to binging the entire thing until about 2am.

The Time That Is Given To Us - Please heed the summary and warnings of this before you read. Steve gets up, goes to school, has practice, heads off home, dies. Wakes up and it was just a bad dream right? But the deaths keep happening and along with the phantoms of his previous injuries following him as closely as his killer, he remembers everything. His only hope seems to be some little things are happening differently, slowly but sure...

The self indulgent section

Listen it’s the second recc post, I think it’s now socially acceptable to plug my own two fics way way down here :p

Masks We Wear, Lies We Share - Strickler centric and set before the days Jim Lake Jr. was one of his students we follow the grand ups, downs and general craziness of being a changeling in a human world balancing two lives and the existence of your brethren on the same knife. Then one day you get a goblin making a nest in your hidden office as this is your life now. Contains Ocs that deserve good things, Nomura glad to be back in a warmer climate and soon to come, Otto relating a worrisome auction house incident

It can deal with uncomfortable themes, warnings can be found in the chapter summary when relevant.

Ghosts he left behind (Ghost!AU) - After “A House Divided”, we saw Jim manage to stumble home newly changed in the dead of night before collapsing moments after breaking the threshold. However, what if he never made it home after crawling out the waters that changed him?

First chapter follows Jim only, second chapter (To come) follows the rest of Team Trollhunters as they desperately try to figure out what happened to Jim and in turn find the boy who is succumbing to an increasingly distraught state alone. Second chapter also contains Stricklake because I can.

Please remember to check the tags.

#Trollhunters

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steve0discusses · 4 years

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Yugioh Ep 28: Valon Joins the Dead People Gang

So lately it’s been really freakin hot.

Like crazy freakin hot. I haven’t done anything productive because youknow--I live in a Covid hotspot and I’ve been quarantined for what feels like is 6 years, and then to continue the 10 plagues across America, now it’s just really freakin hot.

I was trying to go the hell to sleep when I heard this WIND outside my window at 2 AM. Just...WIND. It was like 5000 degrees outside, and then it started thundering, and then the lightning started hitting and I was like...wtf 2020, please calm down!

So I decided to check Twitter at 3 AM really fast just to make sure this wasn’t a freakin dream. Aaaaaaand Northern California had a Fire tornado warning.

3 words I never thought I’d see in conjunction. Fire tornado Warning.

and it hella dropped in Tahoe, y’all, it was freakin nuts. Meanwhile, Death Valley--the place where Yugi hella biffed it and died, if you don’t remember--hit 130 F (54.4 C, for the metric lovers in the back) so...it’s been a time for every part of California, and now we have some good ol fashioned rolling blackouts accompanied by 27 wildfires (yes, 27 fires) who have turned the sky into a yellow pea soup.

So because of the rolling blackouts (one of our power transformers exploded because of either the lightning or overuse, I dunno) at any point...my power might go out. Because of this, I didn’t feel like booting up Photoshop and so instead I’ll just...work on this.

...something about the Fire Tornado, the yellow shadow realm outside my window, and crazy lightning over San Fransisco reminded me that it’s been a HOT MINUTE since I’ve posted so lets get back to Yugioh. Somehow they knew that the doorway to hell was my back yard and you know what? They’re right. Completely believable and I wish someone would close the damn door.

Tristan read my mind that it’s been such a hot minute since I’ve checked in, that he mansplained a very quick summary of what the hell is currently happening to Tea Gardner.

A brave man, Tristan Taylor. A brave man to risk getting into a fight with Tea, who is the only Goliath on this show that exists without also being a paper card.

Which is when Pharaoh had some news.

I guess without Duke around, Pharaoh had to be the new Killjoy

(read more under the cut)

I exaggerate a little for the caps, but it’s kind of interesting that when Joey is usually on his own, it’s Yugi who’s certain that Joey is about to die and Pharaoh is the one that has to calm little Yugi down. But, when Yugi’s not there, I guess Pharaoh is just already in a Mood.

Mai is really weird this episode! I wish this season had gone into more detail about the extent of the Orichalcos’s mind control. Because Mai could very well be under it’s spell...or not...maybe it has no spell and they’re just falling for it like a placebo?

It’s not like the Orichalcos was ever put on anyone who was “good.” like if it were possessing someone nice like...

....

....(let me think about this, I’ll think of someone on this show who is a true lawful good.)

....

.................Dark Magician Girl, then I’d actually know if this Orichalcos actually IS different from how these characters actually are. But Mai was introduced in this series as a villain, and she’s always been around to bust balls, so it’s like...what part is Mai and what part is not?

Apparently a part that only shows up when Valon dies.

PS Valon turns a very quick 180 right before he died. I honestly thought I had skipped an episode or something because bro mentioned something about...Valon burning down a church or something...but I think that was a spicy headcanon where he mixed up this show with another anime.

I think. If I skipped an episode, y’all would tell me, right? I didn’t skip an episode?

I did skip the card games, however, so something about getting punched like 1000 times in the dick by Joey Wheeler taught Valon how to be human again, and the death that followed the 1000 dick punches inspired Mai to remember that Valon exists and that she Loves Him.

(just flat on his face)

I just...

I am going to give Yugioh this one. They have had so little in terms of relationships--I will give this to them. Good Job Yugioh, you did it. You had a relationship on your show. Sure, it was one where she...never seemed to like the guy at all, but hey--they actually did embrace...a corpse. Good on you, Yugioh.

Again, I have a really difficult time not cracking up about this very tragic moment a little bit because (and I have said this before about relationships on Yugioh), but I have never seen a TV show treat a straight relationship this way. I have never seen Straight Baiting before in my life and it is...WILD.

Also because Valon and Mai have both murdered I want to say hundreds of people at this point, it’s hard to feel too bad about them, although they are drawn as a very cute couple in how their outfits match. They got the finger less gloves, the belts hanging off their collar, the sleeveless outfit that is both too much clothes and too little clothes at the same time.

And like...I really like the idea behind Valon/Mai. I still think that was a good idea to build off of, I just wish that there was more of a sign from Mai that she had any idea that Valon existed prior to this. Because Valon had Orichalcos too, but he was fully able to love her--so what was happening on her end that prevented this? Was it just the amount that she hated Joey was so much more than her love for Valon? Was Valon actually more jealous of her hate of Wheeler and misinterpreted it as love?

Anyway it’s a billion degrees and I don’t have air conditioning so...I think we’ll have more time to think about this next episode. Maybe it’ll occur to me two weeks after this heat wave ends exactly what I am trying to grasp at when it comes to these two, but for now all I can say is...well it was nice.

Ah RIP Valon/tine (or at least I assume that’s the ship name). You lasted almost a whole season. You almost became a thing. I guess well find out if there’s redemption after he eventually gets resurrected.

And on this show we redeem resurrected people kind of a lot, so that seems reasonable. Sure it was a couple hundred people that he murdered but like...we redeemed Marik.

And then she goes back to wigging out like immediately. The flipping and the flopping of Mai Valentine in this episode is a lot.

And immediately after he says something along the lines of this, he follows with...doing this:

Joey! Valon just died so you wouldn’t have to duel Mai Valentine! He’s dead, Joey! Maybe try talking???

The thing about this show is that cards can both heal you and also destroy you, and the line between the two is just...rolling a dice and hoping you come out healed. Yugi played cards against Yami so that Yami could free himself from his guilt and move on--Valon was healed of Orichalcos control because Joey beat him at cards--Seto was “cured” of his more evil side because Yami mind wiped him in a card game--card magic is weird.

At the same time, Cards can take your soul in just So Many Ways--kind of one of the downsides. But, in a very round about way, maybe cards are kind of like therapy in this world. Maybe they don’t have therapy, and all these kids playing card games with eachother is metaphorical to how they all need eachother in order to push eachother to actually go through the steps of-

Ah, who am I kidding? They just really needed to have Mai lose at cards so they could write her off the show.

I do appreciate that the show never tells you that someone’s actions in the past mean they must rot for eternity. This show will never cancel anyone and say “burn that bridge, let’s go” but I feel like murder is...the line where you can just walk away?

But youknow if that were true of Joey wheeler he’d have no friends left.

During this time, The Yugioh crew was inexplicably lost while, for once in his entire life, Seto was going the correct direction.

Unfortunately, the lure to throw cards at thing was too much for him to go the right direction for very long. It is kind of funny to note that he is the smartest boy in Domino--so he knows you can drive through a hologram--but he just didn’t want to know if they were real or not, so he...didn’t.

Like I think that says a lot about Seto, and I’m sure the show-runners didn’t think about this at all, but he could have tested his theory right now. He could have just seen if these were real in order to know if he was crazy or not...but he’d rather be insane, than be involved with magic.

Anyways, Mai drops that Orichalcos.

Reminder that San Francisco is only 7-12 miles from one end to the other depending on what part of the peninsula you’re on.

But then again, they’re reading a map in Roman characters and these kids are school dropouts who only speak Japanese and maybe Spanish. Maybe they’re actually doing really, really well considering the language barrier?

Anyway that’s all for now I’m gonna go pass out and hopefully when I wake up it’ll be next week when it is no longer hot. If you just got here, this is a link to read these caps from the beginning!

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

#yugion #ygo #photo recap #episode recap #yami muto #tea gardner #joey wheeler #tristan taylor #Valon #Mai Valentine #So much punching #Seto Kaiba shows up for 5 seconds #Mokuba too I guess #S4 #Episode 28

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florrickandassociates · 4 years

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TGF Thoughts: 4x01-- The Gang Deals with Alternate Reality

I had a lot to say about this one, guys.

Welcome back! I see this season TGF has decided to be It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Is this some sort of joke about how last season it was always raining? Is every title going to be like this? And where are the numbers!? There is no counting of any kind in this episode title!

When you think about it, the central argument of this episode-- that 45’s election brought new life to resistance movements that would’ve otherwise laid dormant-- is also my central argument about why TGF is a good show instead of a passable one. Remember how in season one the point of the show was supposed to be a fake scandal about Maia?

So it’s fitting that we begin season four by going back to the show’s pilot: Inauguration Day. Only this time, Diane is happily watching Hillary Clinton’s inauguration. Did I say happily? I meant ecstatically.

As Diane pops champagne, the TV goes to static-- something’s off-- and the credits begin. Same credits as season 3 but with one key difference: things are coming together rather than exploding. I see what you did there. (The TVs still explode, though, and they still have the real 45 on them.)

Yeah I didn’t need to see the credits to know the Kings wrote this one.

I think the notes the Kings left in the script for this episode for Brooke Kennedy just said, “Make Diane look like a glamorous badass.” I’m like one minute in and she’s already popped champagne and worn trendy sunglasses.

Brooke’s directing in this episode is so stylish and it might be my favorite ep she’s ever done? The showiness (and sometimes campy performances) REALLY work for the tone of this episode.

Diane takes the elevator to work and looks quizzical. One may be tempted to ask how Diane knows to go to RBL if it’s the day after inauguration and she’s still at Lockhart Deckler whatever (one may then snark that RBL is in the LG space so she’d go there no matter what). The answer is: dream logic!

(But really, little disorienting moments like that-- and yes, I know this was probably only disorienting for me and one other person-- help the episode work long before we know this isn’t a true alternate universe.)

Marissa is waiting at reception to inform Diane that HRC’s press secretary is in her office. Diane then asks Marissa who the president is, and Marissa asks Diane if she’s microdosing again. Ha! Also, that’s another clear clue that something’s up-- Diane wouldn’t have already microdosed right after inauguration. And why would Diane have microdosed in this AltVerse? Again-- dream logic. And I love it. In episodes like this, when things don’t add up, it’s wonderfully disorienting instead of frustrating. (Plus, this line is a knowing wink at fans about the absurdity of the microdosing storyline.)

Marissa confirms that it’s 2020 in show time. Diane has a flash of a selection of horrific images that have come out of these last few years, then says, ”God, have you ever had a dream that is so real that it takes you a long time to wake up?” I wish.

Diane wants to know how Hillary won, and Marissa says she won in a landslide-- 3 million votes. “Same as in my dream,” Diane says. Marissa thinks she means the other candidate had 3 million more votes, and wonders how he won if he had fewer votes. On one hand, Marissa totally knows about the electoral college. On the other hand, would “3 million votes” and hating the electoral college be cliched and top of mind enough to work as the joke in this scene if those votes had actually mattered? Probably not. I doubt many people would be talking about abolishing the electoral college, or that Marissa or even Diane would be SO quick to understand how one could win the popular vote and not the election, if we hadn’t all lived through the past three years. Also dream logic. It’s a great way of explaining things that are out of character.

“Whatever, it’s a dream, it doesn’t have to make sense,” says Marissa, making my point for me.

Oh hello there Lucca, your jacket is very bright. Lucca asks to sit in on Diane’s meeting with the press secretary. Lucca was up for a partnership in 3x10 but in this episode she’s very obviously an underling (and honestly seems a bit lower ranking and hesitant than usual-- I’ll need another episode or two to understand if this is how the writers are writing Lucca, how Diane views Lucca, or just what was easiest for the plot).

The White House is now asking Diane to take on cases. Way to dream big, Diane!

And Diane will be arguing in front of the Supreme Court!

In the alternate universe, Liz’s wonderful bathroom belongs to Diane.

Diane gets to do so many things she wouldn’t usually do in this ep, like furiously shake her head to prove to herself she’s not dreaming!

Diane still has that Girl With Flower As Head painting and I do not believe she would have that painting if HRC were president because it’s too friggin weird. Also has it always had a US flag in the background?

In the alternate universe, Garland and Warren (as in Elizabeth) are both on the court. It’s a good laughline precisely because it’s so plausible. (Well, idk about the Warren part, but she’s a recognizable name.)

Diane looks so happy she could cry when she learns Warren is on the Supreme Court.

There is a shot of Lucca that is so very clearly from Diane’s POV and I like it. I read a review of this episode that said it didn’t have enough character development. To that I say, one, this isn’t TGW-- this show has always been more about tone and theme, and two, there’s PLENTY here that’s about Diane’s POV and how she views others and thinks of herself. Because it’s dream logic I can’t make nearly as much out of it as I can make out of an episode like A Few Words, but there are little touches here and there. Even this shot of Lucca, where Lucca’s in the center of the frame shot from a high angle, grounds me in Diane’s POV. You could even make an argument about hierarchy based on the angle.

“Who’s that?” Lucca whispers when Diane asks about Kavanaugh. Diane is elated at that response.

Somehow we leave Diane’s POV (whatever, it’s a dream so I won’t be as brutal to this choice as I was to a similar but more subtle one in Don’t Fail) and follow Lucca into Adrian’s office. She immediately tells Liz and Adrian she’s concerned about Diane. That sounds like Lucca alright.

Diane is DANCING in her office as she watches news coverage that isn’t a garbage fire.

I’m curious y’all-- are people in your area cheering at a certain time? Hearing cheers every night during this pandemic is one of the few things I like about this awful moment in time. (My recap writing was just interrupted by cheering, if you couldn’t guess the reason for this abrupt digression.)

News stories in alternate reality: Cancer has been cured, there is polar bear overpopulation, the rainforest has been saved, 45 is REDUCING the amount of content he’s putting out into the world, and $35,000 is missing from some government agency. Ha. All that and people are hung up on $35,000? Sounds about right, actually.

Diane hugs Liz and Adrian because she feels like a weight has been lifted off of her. I appreciate that Diane acts without restraint or concern for what other people think in this episode. This is central to why I think this episode is actually a pretty good character study: this is who Diane imagines herself to be, more or less. Real Diane, no matter how bizarre things are, probably would handle herself more professionally in a work meeting and probably wouldn’t let feelings like this show. Dream Diane has no reason to double check herself. This is just how she thinks she’d react if there were absolutely no constraints. Not that she’s actively thinking- she’s just doing.

Diane is very excited to be watching the news, and Adrian thinks she’s nuts-- there are scandals! Like the missing $35k and THE EMAILS. The GODDAMN EMAILS. Even a fictional joke about how they’d still be a scandal makes me mad. Twenty years from now it will still be too soon to remind me of the emails. (And to play Fight Song, that song is cancelled.)

A haircut is also a scandal because sexism.

I admire this show for calling attention to problems on both sides without ever screaming BOTH SIDES ARE EQUALLY BAD. This episode may call out some of the good things that have happened as a result of the 2016 election, but the whole premise of this joke rests on the fact that only one of the two potential administrations could run through a year’s worth of scandals in a day.

Might circle back to this later on-- btw I write these after watching the whole episode, so I do know what’s going to happen next-- but I don’t think the show is trying to make the case that it’s good 45 was elected. I think they’re trying to ask questions about how the world has changed and cause and effect so we can understand the moment we’re in. Above, I said I liked hearing my neighbors cheer every night. And I could write a lot of words on how that collective activity inspires me, makes me feel connected even when I’ve been stuck inside for a month, etc, how I’ve gotten better about keeping in touch with old friends, whatever, and NONE of that would mean that a global pandemic is a good thing. It just means that like any huge societal phenomenon, its implications are complex.

TGF and TGW have always, always, always been shows about understanding where we are in time. That’s what this episode does. And it makes sense to do a thought experiment like this now, at the start of season 4, in a season opener. We’ve had enough time living in this world that we can reflect on it.

Diane laughs, because what Diane dream sequence would be complete without a glorious laugh?

Adrian’s kinda suspicious of Hillary. Sure, cancer’s been cured, but it’s not public how or when!

God it’s weird to hear some of the most absurd happenings of the last three years as punchlines.

The line about the Obama’s overall deal at Netflix is fire.

Diane laughs AGAIN.

Oh right, Harriet Tubman was going to be on the $20 bill. (Is it obvious yet that I am the exact right target for this episode?)

Julius is VERY mad about Hillary’s $500 haircut. Heh. He’s also publicly supporting Trump which is interesting (and probably a dream logic thing; Diane knows he supported Trump therefore in her dream he isn’t ever hesitant to share that he voted for Trump.)

“Only Hillary could cure cancer and turn it into a scandal,” someone else adds. I’m loving all these jokes. He is mad cancer wasn’t cured earlier and that it’s been cured in an election year. This joke is funny because it’s exactly what would happen in this scenario.

I wonder if Julius would be more likely to speak up about his political affiliation if the stakes were lower. If 45 lost, then is supporting him as much of a thing to hide in a place like RBL? People would be mad but they probably would get over their moral opposition to his views a lot faster when it isn’t a real threat.

Diane’s brought in a huge client, which is news to her. And that client is none other than Harvey Weinstein, which… my God this is an interesting thought experiment.

“I’m amazed you got him away from Lisa Bloom,” Adrian says. YIKES!!!! (If y’all haven’t read Catch and Kill yet, pick up a copy ASAP.)

No one’s heard of Weinstein’s sexual assault issues. I believe it. I mean, I think some women in power might have known before 2017-- I still vividly recall how many journalists reacted to the release of the story not with “Oh my God, how has this been going on for so long?” but with “Holy shit, someone managed to publish a story about this?!”-- but I’ll believe that the general consensus in elite liberal circles was to set the rumors aside and not share them widely.

I can’t watch this episode without thinking about VIP Treatment (2x05 of TGW). That episode, which raises the question of what happens when someone accuses a liberal legend of sexual assault, feels so ahead of its time. It aired in 2010. And I just, right this moment, learned that it was ripped from the headlines about accusations a masseuse made against Al Gore. Guys. I didn’t know there were allegations in 2010 about Al Gore. Is that because I was 16 in 2010 and just never heard of (or forgot about) the story? Is it because he had less power? Is it because of something specific about the reporting or the allegations? Or is it because we as a culture swept it under the rug since it was (allow me to be the millionth person to make this awful joke) an inconvenient truth?

I don’t know the answers to the above. What I do know is that this episode is making me ask those questions.

In Marissa’s world (“you mean reality?”), 45 bragged about grabbing women by the pussy and then lost the election. And the story ended there. There was no women’s march, no #MeToo.

Sarah Steele gets to react to a lot of things in this episode and it is very delightful to see her say things like, “what are pussy hats?”

Diane looks so angry and stunned when she realizes that Weinstein is still “a thing” in the world.

He won the Presidential Medal of Freedom because of course he did.

His wikipedia page says his only controversies are about his managerial style. Yikes.

Marissa’s reaction to the phrase “masturbating into plants” is one of the best things about this episode. I love that she gets so hung up on it.

Charlie Rose is the first name other than Weinstein that comes to mind for Diane when Marissa asks what other men were serial harassers. I’ve got to think that Rose gets the most attention here in no small part because he was part of the CBS family-- he was even on TGW.

I’ve seen Annaleigh Ashford in so many things recently.

Diane handles the meeting with Team Weinstein VERY poorly (she also does not care to handle it well), while Adrian covers with the “all options are open to us” gibberish that Diane absolutely would be able to convincingly deploy in a meeting she couldn’t follow. I point this out because it shows that 1) Diane isn’t behaving the way she would in reality and 2) Diane does not give a fuck.

If this were reality, would Diane push so hard in this meeting? I don’t know. This situation is so far removed from reality it’s hard to tell. But my sense is that Diane would like to think of herself as someone who would never waver in her commitment to Doing The Right Thing, but she’d probably be a lot more diplomatic-- even in real 2020-- in initial meetings. It’s a bit dated at this point, but in VIP Treatment Diane was hesitant to believe the victim because the man accused of assault was a high profile liberal. To her credit, she does eventually choose the victim over her own politics. But I could totally see Diane-- with no knowledge of the real timeline-- behaving like her friend/HRC’s press secretary Zoe does in this episode.

All that to say: personally, I don’t think #MeToo would’ve caught on to the extent it did if women weren’t already angry. I believe there could have been a hashtag and some stories (maybe even the Weinstein story). But I also believe women felt an urgent need to speak out and organize. And I believe that more women were inclined to believe victims and get angry. And I believe that it was only because of the world in general that #MeToo spread outside of a few online circles. To put it another way, you know how there are sometimes cases of the week on this show where you might know the reference in detail, but if you ask a co-worker or friend about it they’ll know either nothing or only the very basics? I think all of #MeToo could’ve ended up like one of those cases if it hadn’t played out with 2017 in the background.

Dreams aren’t subtle: Weinstein’s publicity tour includes appearances with Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer. (This joke also serves as a reminder that sexual harassment is a systemic problem.)

Diane is SO confrontational in this meeting. Also, the woman they’re meeting with is SO FRIGGIN COMPLICIT.

Weinstein’s team frames sexual assault allegations-- which are still floating around even in alt2020-- as a Republican conspiracy. I have no doubt they would have used this approach if given the chance.

I’m on page six and fifteen minutes in, damn.

Adrian, or Diane’s version of Adrian, does not believe women and seems to hate Hillary Clinton a little bit too. An accurate portrayal of Adrian? Lines that betray Diane’s suspicion of where Adrian stands on women’s issues? Or just that Adrian is there to be the person pushing back and it could’ve been anyone? (I think it’s somewhere between the first two, personally. If this could’ve been anyone, why not Liz?)

In this alternate universe NBC’s refusal to broadcast Ronan Farrow’s investigation is proof of Weinstein’s innocence, because in the alt universe we still apparently have faith in the corporate culture at NBC. (Perhaps the most surprising thing to me about Catch and Kill is that a LOT of it is dedicated to exposing the shit that went down within NBC. It’s fascinating and also makes it crystal clear how assault is a systemic problem and not just a few bad apples you should avoid being alone with.)

Adrian’s reaction when Diane mentions Reddick (Adrian knows nothing of the accusations in this universe) changes the tone of this scene in an instant and it’s breathtaking. This is the one moment in the episode where she knows she has to shut up.

The one thing about this ep I am not sure I buy is that the firm is struggling because of the rise in corporate taxes. But I know so little about this issue I don’t care if it’s right or wrong.

After Diane leaves Adrian’s office, Liz asks, “What about my dad?” meaning she somehow heard the conversation through the wall. (The door was definitely closed so either their office design is worse than I thought or it’s just dream logic.) Diane doesn’t share the rumor with Liz.

Lucca is for some reason on this case, and they are for some reason in court on the same day they learned about the case. And the best part is that I don’t have to worry about whether or not this is plausible BECAUSE IT’S ALL A DREAM

Another thing I’ll say about this ep-- it’s pace remarkably well. The opening previews what’s to come, there’s just enough happy liberal utopia with funny jokes at the start, the Weinstein twist comes at the right moment, and the shift to the more dark, character focused scenes that wrap up the episode come exactly when the writers have gotten as much mileage as they can out of this premise. I knew this episode would be fantastic the moment I saw it was only 41 minutes long.

The judge keeps saying the opposing counsel’s full name, Ann Howard. Is this supposed to be a familiar name to me? I am not getting the reference.

The judge’s ruling is basically that no one would take the risk involved in assaulting someone at work these days so the case must be bogus. And then we see, immediately (because, dream) that the judge is totally corrupt and just wants to get his daughter an internship with Weinstein.

“Justice is an equation. Justice equals the law times the zeitgeist. The law on its own doesn’t stand up. You need the mood of the times on your side,” Diane eloquently explains. That’s basically what this episode is saying. To put it more simply: Context matters and nothing happens in a vacuum. (TGF and TGW were always about the context-- you simply couldn’t do a show about a woman standing by her cheating politician husband and being REVERED for it in 2020. That’s not about the law, but the same principle applies.)

Lucca says they won, so the zeitgeist worked for them-- and how could it be against women when the president is a woman? Remember how the Kings used to say that TGF was going to be about Diane retiring because she thought the glass ceiling had been shattered? I always thought that sounded wrong, but this episode is helping me understand what they were thinking a little bit.

Lucca calls out Diane, a bit abruptly, on how only the woman partners probably would get to say “no more” if there were to be a women’s movement because the associates can’t risk it. Lucca’s right and she’s wrong-- her words underestimate how mainstream and trendy it’s become to publicly talk about sexual harassment, but she’s 100% right that there are still underlying power dynamics.

Diane’s Lucca is V V V V V V V concerned with power dynamics and VERY much wants to be higher ranking. On the one hand, actual Lucca wants to rank higher too. On the other, is there a piece of Diane that sees Lucca as power hungry?

Lucca’s asked to take documents to Weinstein, and she’s flattered. Diane, like every viewer, sees this as a car crash in slow motion. She knows exactly what will happen when Lucca gets to his hotel with the documents. But Lucca, who’s in the dark, only knows it’s a good opportunity to impress a huge client.

Diane tells Weinstein’s… whatever she is? That she is “Harvey’s pimp” and she is not wrong. Also since I don’t actually know this woman’s job title I’ll just refer to her that way moving forward.

(See what I mean about Diane just saying things that are totally unprofessional bc this is a dream Diane who does what she wants and not actual Diane making tough decisions?)

Lucca is REALLY bitter about how Diane is always taking opportunities away from her. They’re definitely trying to do something with Lucca in this episode but as I said earlier, I think I need to see what they have planned for the rest of the season before I can fully understand what they’re going for.

Diane tells Lucca exactly what is going to happen when she goes to drop off the papers. Lucca won’t hear it, so Diane asks Marissa to keep an eye on her.

Another possibility for what they’re trying to do with Lucca (and Adrian): Maybe it’s supposed to be about how different Types would react-- the powerful man who benefits from not questioning things and has some latent sexism issues; the ambitious young woman who gets caught in a bad situation because she’s trying to move her career forward. The more I think about it, the more I think this is what they’re going for-- and the question I should be asking is what does it mean about Adrian and Lucca (in terms of how the writers see them, in terms of how Diane sees them) that they can take on these roles so easily?

(It may say nothing about Diane because… idk, do YOU do thoughtful character analysis in your sleep? Because I don’t!)

Marissa is still stuck on the plants and I love it.

Lucca catches Marissa right away, but all that accomplishes is that both of them clearly see that Diane is right. These scenes feel a little unnecessary (they’re also not in Diane’s POV, though surely dreams can have tangents) and I think they’re only here to illustrate how the system works. I can’t imagine this scene is teaching many people new information.

Also there’s… just not another scene with Lucca in this episode? And I don’t know if I feel like that’s a bad thing or like it’s part of dream logic? I think it’s probably just bad plotting that the unnecessary sequence ends abruptly and doesn’t return.

“With the presidency, women can do whatever they want,” says one of Diane’s liberal friends at a women’s event. I’m… not 100% sure anyone would say this. If this were true why would they even be having a gala for a women’s charity? But point taken. People love this type of statement.

So Diane’s extremely low cut dress like has a mesh thing covering her exposed chest??I can’t figure it out.

Weinstein is also a hero to everyone at the feminist charity. When Diane hears this, she gives an interview to a reporter about having a long way to go, which I 100% believe would be the message no matter reality we’re in what because literally no one is going to say please donate to my cause we have no battles left to fight BUT I DIGRESS. Diane tries to ignite #MeToo (and even name checks Tarana Burke, so that’s awesome) and is quickly cut off.

Then, after giving the interview, she has Jay (hello!) set her up on Twitter. Dream Diane is revealing just how little she understands how social media works. She also wants to link to a “Me Too Site” which is… not how any of this works, Diane.

Diane sees herself on the news-- she’s mostly cut from the piece and her words are taken out of context.

Adrian and Liz stare Diane down for calling Weinstein’s pimp a pimp and Diane defends herself. Liz doesn’t believe this either. Diane is asked to sign a VERY RIDICULOUS (like it sounds like 45 more than anything else) apology letter and laughs.

Liz reminds her that they’re close to bankruptcy and that they’ve defended killers before (oh, and, most relevant-- the assholes to avoid case, I can’t believe I went to 205 to think about how Diane would react in a more nuanced present day situation when I had that example!), why would Diane draw the line here? “Everyone deserves a defense. Just not everyone deserves MY defense,” Diane says. You know it’s a dream when a character on this show actually says that. Do you know how many times (if you’re still reading this you probably do know) I have written something to the effect of “SAYING EVERYONE DESERVES REPRESENTATION IS NOT THE SAME AS REPRESENTING THEM YOURSELF, LIZ/DIANE/ADRIAN/WILL/ALICIA/CARY/LUCCA/WHOEVER”? It’s been a lot.

(Here is something I wrote in a case in which Diane, at the height of #MeToo, defended some assholes for money: “‘I wouldn’t say hate. We’re obligated,’ Diane says. Ohhh yes this is a new pet peeve. Y’all are not obligated. You were not assigned this case. You chose to take it for the money.”)

Idk what my point is here, maybe that this feels like a dream because the characters are never this principled in reality.

Zoe, the press secretary, wants Diane to shut down #MeToo. Lucca’s there too, but she says nothing (despite the experience she may have just had, because dream). Zoe doesn’t want women to get angry about abuse because “that’s not the message that helps us in 2020.” Ooof. But I buy it. I am not sure if it’s ACCURATE that anger wouldn’t help but I can completely see campaign staffers being afraid it would hurt, especially given that Bill Clinton has… more than a few issues.

This scene veers into Diane’s POV. The camera gets closer and closer to her as she feels boxed in, and Liz, Adrian, and the pimp stare accusingly at her. Suddenly she realizes she doesn’t know where Kurt is because she’s spent the last few days at work. I think the most dream-like thing about this is the way Kurt just suddenly pops into the dream and shifts the tone of the whole thing.

She runs off. Liz and Adrian ask Diane to step back from the firm for Weinstein and she’s like, okay, I’m going home, “I don’t know how I changed my clothes, I went to that event last night and I have different clothes on now and I don’t know where Kurt is.” I LOVE watching this whole episode twist into something this weird.

When Diane gets home, there’s a man fixing her door. He’s watching Trump TV, which is currently airing Felix Staples singing “This Wall is Your Wall” and honestly this is the best use of Felix Staples in the show so far.

The man fixing Diane’s door also remembers reality. He doesn’t know why he’s fixing Diane’s door. It’s disorienting.

Diane gets a beer with the man fixing her door and wonders about if she even likes this world where HRC is president (or if the problem is just that she doesn’t believe it). (I think she’d like it just fine if she experienced it linearly, tbh.)

Sexy gun lady from a previous episode is back, and Kurt’s guns are missing because he didn’t want them to be confiscated (I do not believe this would ever be a policy but this is a full on illogical dream right now) and now Diane is talking to the TV.

“I’m in the car, right?” Diane says while standing in her bedroom and pretending to grab a steering wheel. Heh.

Diane drives to a cabin in the woods (the way this is shot is SO atmospheric) and finds Kurt, in shadow, in the woods. So THIS is what Robert King was going for in Mind’s Eye in the clumsily directed scene with fake Will in shadow. Gotta say, the whole “person you love and can’t quite picture” thing works a ton better when it is obvious it’s an intentional style choice.

This scene is so weird because suddenly politics doesn’t matter and Diane only cares about Kurt and also Kurt might be dead? I am not sure I understand what this is saying. And I’m pretty sure I spent the entirety of this scene the first time through alternating between thinking “ooh pretty”, “this is what 614 wanted to be,” and “please don’t kill Kurt!!”

Kurt pulls Diane to reality and gets her to recap where we left off. She wakes up on the floor of her bedroom. She and Kurt have both, thankfully, survived Book Club’s SWATting.

HA the first thing Diane says when she wakes up is “What happened?” which… that HAS to be intentional right????

To check that Diane is of sound mind, one of the agents asks her how many fingers he’s holding up and who’s president. She laughs.

This episode is UNDER 40 minutes if you exclude the credits and promo.

Guess we’re not doing recap songs.

Had a lot to say about this one. I’ve liked TGW’s mind-y episodes more, but that’s not really a fair comparison since the point of this wasn’t character study… it was tone setting.

What this episode does NOT give me is a sense of what season 4 will be about, other than the usual absurdity.

#the good fight #tgfthoughts

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xmarveled · 5 years

Text

Stressed

Pairing: Peter Parker x Reader

Summary: Exam season is coming up and to that you’re stressed would be an understatement. Luckily, everyone’s favorite friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is there to save the day!

Request: Requested by the lovely @waiting-for-motivation. Heyyy honeyy🌞 I don't know if you write for Peter Parker but could you maybe write an imagine where the reder is really stressed about her exams and breaks down because she think she can't do it and Peter cheers her up? Because I'm soooo afraid of my coming exams and I need fluffy Pete❤ Hope this makes you feel a little less stressed! And dw honey, you’re gonna ace that test!!

Warnings: FLUFF, FLUFF, FLUFFFFF

A/N: Writing this got me all excited for Far From Home again!! If you want to request an Avenger x Reader, feel free to drop an ask, leave a comment below or send me a message! ^^

It’s been 3 hours since you started studying, and you were nowhere close to done. For the last 20 minutes, you’ve been staring at one page in your textbook, looking at the words over and over again until they became jumbled together in your useless brain.

Right now, you were staring at one particular formula that refused to commit itself to your memory. You were getting frustrated, especially since math was NOT your strong suit and you had an exam early tomorrow morning. “God damnit.” You muttered under your breath. “I am sick and tired of trying to find your “x” math. Just accept that she’s gone and move on!!” At that moment, your phone rang and you reached over to pick it up.

“Hello?” You mumble into the phone. “Y/N, where are you?” Came MJ’s voice. In the background, you could hear Ned talking excitedly about something, but you couldn’t make out what it was.

“Oh shit.” You say, suddenly remembering that you were supposed to meet up with the gang at the coffee shop down the street. “Sorry MJ, can’t today. Math is kicking my non-existent ass right now.”

“Oh...” Said MJ and you could almost picture her scrunched up eyebrows. “You sure you can’t make it? You could come later if you want.” You really did want to go down and see her, Ned and of course, Peter, but alas, math beckoned.

“I’d love to, but if I want any chance of passing this exam, I’ve gotta study. I’ll see you at school tomorrow!” You say, before hanging up.

MJ signed as she finished her call, walking back into the room Peter and Ned were in. She could hear them from the hallway and as usual, they were arguing about you.

“C’mon man!” Said Ned, clearly exasperated. “When are you gonna ask her out?”

Although she couldn’t see him, MJ could picture Peter’s face turning pink. “I told you! She doesn’t like me like that.” He said.

“Parker, have you seen the way she looks at you?” Ned demanded. “Ask her out and do it soon, or else some other guy will snatch her up.”

“What!? Who!?” Asked Peter, clearly panicked. “Alright, alright! I’ll ask her when she gets here.”

Before Ned had the chance to respond, MJ stroded into the room. Peter turned and looked at her with hopeful eyes, asking “Is she coming?” MJ shook her head. “She can’t. She has to study for her exam tomorrow.” The cheerful atmosphere in the room was instantly deflated by the news and Peter looked away, trying to conceal his disappointment.

“Oh...” He said, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “Did she say what exam she’s studying for?”

“Math I think.” Answered MJ.

“Math?” Said Peter, sitting straight up. “Did she say if she needed help or anything?” He asked, eyes starting to shine again.

“Nope.” Said MJ, propping herself down next to Ned.

Peter started to inch towards the door. “I’m-I’m just gonna go give her a call. See if she needs help. I’ll be right back!” He said before darting out the door, leaving MJ and Ned to exchange knowing smirks.

Half a hour later, you had still barely moved forward though your revision sheets. Finally, accepting that it was going to be a long night, you stood up to make a cup of coffee when your phone rang again. Your heart started racing when you saw that it was Peter and you picked up immediately.

“Hey Y/N!” You heard Peter say with his usual cheerful voice, making a smile appear on your own face despite your exhaustion.

“Hey Pete, what’s up?”

Peter felt his own heart skip a beat when you called him “Pete”, making his cheeks warm up again.

“I uh-, I heard that you were struggling with math.”

You signed, mentally cursing MJ for selling you out.

“Yeah. Math is really not going that great right now. It’s why I couldn’t come with you guys tonight.”

“I um-” stuttered Peter. “Do you um-maybe need some help?”

“Thanks for offering Pete, but it’s fine, if I go down, I prefer to go down alone.” You say, wondering if you were imagining how flustered Peter sounded.

“Oh well um-. It’s kinda too late for that.” He says.

You frown, confused. “What do you mean?” You ask.

“Well... I’m kind of outside your window right now.”

You spin around and see him exactly where he says he is, outside your window on your balcony, one hand holding his phone up to his ear while giving you an awkward wave with the other. You drop your phone and dash to unlock the door.

“Peter! What are you doing here?” You exlaimed.

“I’m your personal math tutor!” He says, laughing at your shock at seeing him.

“Aren’t you supposed to be with MJ and Ned?” You asked.

“You’re more important.” He says, not realizing that he said it out loud before it was too late. Blushing furiously, Peter quickly asked “so what do you need help with?”

“Everything.” You groaned, heading back towards your chair. You felt him come up behind you and pointed at the question that was currently driving you insane. He leaned forward, taking a look at the sheet.

“Alright, so imagine this. Thor has 362 pop tarts. He splits them evenly between himself and his 3 friends and eats 3/4 of the remaining pop tarts. What does Thor have now?”

“Diabetes.” You mutter. Peter laughed, his breath fanning out on your neck, making goosebumps appear. Both of your laughs died down and you’re left staring at each other, noses almost touching. Up close, you could see the freckles dusted across his cheeks and his slender eyelashes that most girls only dream of having. Both of you looked away, cheeks flaming as your hearts pounded.

“This Thor guy must be really big.” Muttered Peter, drawing another laugh from you and he swears, it’s the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard.

2 hours later, you and Peter were sprawled across your bed, both of you exhausted. With his help, you had (unbelievably) finished studying. Looking over at Peter, you whispered “thanks for helping me tonight.”

“No-no problem Y/N.” Peter whispered back, tripping over his words a little.

You gave him a drowsy smile back, closing your eyes as you felt exhaustion take over you. Meanwhile, Peter could only stare at your beautiful, sleepy face as he felt something warm spread through his chest. This close, he could see the little dimple in your cheeks that deepened whenever you smiled, which was often. He could see the birthmark on your forehead that you were so self conscious about, but to him, it didn’t matter. To him, you were perfect. The last of his self-control shattered when you sleepily nuzzled into his chest and he whispered “I like you Y/N, I really, really like you.”

Your steady breathing halted for a second before you looked up at him with glazed eyes. “I really, really like you too Pete.”

His eyes lit up like stars shining in the light sky and slowly, as if giving you time to pull away, he leaned down. You tilted your lips up and after months of shy glances and secret longing, your lips finally touched.

Fireworks exploded between both of your closed eyelids and both of your hearts felt so full that they might burst. Peter pulled you into his chest and you snuggled into him. It felt like coming home after a long day.

“Goodnight, Y/N.” He whispered, pressing a kiss to your forehead.

“Goodnight Peter.” You whispered and thought that maybe, math tests aren’t so bad after all.

Ahhh!! I think I might have overdone the fluff a little. Hope you guys liked and good luck to those who have exams soon!!💜

Taglist: @xxstarwalker @bxcksdoll @phanoffandoms67 @waiting-for-motivation @bluediamondsevie @antisocial-koala @spider-writer @randomavengersquotes @odinson-barnes @bonemarroww

If you want to be added to the taglist, message me or leave a comment below!! :)

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storytime-hoe · 5 years

Text

Tough Love Ch.5

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x O/C

Summary: Story picks up during season three as the group goes into Woodbury to rescue Glenn and Maggie from the Governor. However, they pick up another prisoner of Woodbury, Emma (O/C). She is a thief who fears friendships after her hard losses. She stays on the move, studying communities from afar and then robbing them blind. She has stayed alive this way for a while until the Governor catches her in the act. Now she finds herself with the group from the prison in a mission to kill the Governor for what he has done to her. She plans on stealing supplies from the prison group after the Governor is killed, but she might be growing a little too close to the groups members, especially one man in particular: Daryl Dixon.

Warnings: Slow burn, language, usual twd violence, mentions of abuse/rape, panic attack stuff also

Authors Note: Hey I don’t feel too great about this chapter either so sorry if it’s shit. Thanks for reading anyways and if anyone has any suggestions for what they would like to see along the story please hmu and I might be able to work some stuff in here and there.

Previously: Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4

I was taking in the fresh air with Carl still by my side when I started getting a bad feeling.

I felt the presence of Carol and Beth coming up behind us. I was stuck watching Hershel talk with the crazed Rick. I prayed that he could get Rick's head on straight enough to come help plan how to deal with the Governor.

That's when I really felt the change in the wind. My stomach turned in circles, a feeling I couldn't shake. I took a step closer to the fence and put my hand on it as I squinted to see into the trees.

I tried to get the warning out, but it was too late. I saw the Governor in the trees and his gun went off before my voice had a chance to reach the others. I grabbed the shirt of Carl to pull him back with me. His hands went to where I gripped his shirt and he started to try and free himself, not realizing what was going on yet. I held tight and yanked his small frame around the corner of the wall just as gunfire exploded out from everywhere around us.

"Shit," Carl muttered just as Beth rushed inside of the prison for weapons hopefully.

Carl took out his gun and fired in the direction of the Governor's men. I sat back helplessly watching Michonne and Carol spray the trees with their own gunfire. I searched for Hershel who was still out in the open, separated from everyone by the fences. He would die, I thought for sure. He had a gun to defend himself if he could, but without two legs to run away on, he was a goner. There goes our only doctor.

Rick was still outside the fence where the Governor's men were, and I had no doubt in my mind they would take him out easily too. And there would go the leader of our gang. To say we were fucked would have been an understatement.

"Emma!" Maggie shouted from across the way with Beth behind her. They had two rifles each and one of them was slid across the ground to me.

In normal circumstances I could have taken that gun and fired away like everyone else. But the Governor's presence had my head a scrambled mess. My heart pounded in my chest so fast I thought it might explode. My hands were shaking uncontrollably and I felt like I was back in Woodbury, trapped within the rotting walls. My throat felt swollen when I tried to swallow, making it harder and harder to breath.

It was like my entire body was shutting down and I didn't understand. Seeing the Governor, even if he was separated from me by a yard and two fences, I still pictured him inches from me and pulling me into his truck to take me back to Woodbury. Just the possibility that it might happen had me rendered useless.

"What are you doing?" Carl shouted at me, taking a second to glance at my trembling figure pressed up against the cement wall. "Help us! Get the gun!"

I could hear what he was saying, but it was not reregistering. The only thing I was thinking of was how there was no way we were winning this battle and I would be back with the Governor by the next hour. I couldn't believe how foolish I was to even think that we could have beaten him in the first place.

Just when I didn't think it could get any worse, a van came speeding straight towards the prison and busted down the first gate. It stopped in the middle of the yard where Hershel had been alone. The doors opened up and Walkers were soon stumbling out into the yard one after the next. If Hershel wasn't already dead out there, he would be soon.

My vision crossed at the sight of the multiple Walkers moaning for the want of living flesh. What the fuck was wrong with me? A day ago I stared down the Governor and had no problem with storming up to kill him, but now it was like just the thought of him had me too weak to function.

My whirring mind was about to overload when I blinked away some of the panic and saw that the Governor got back into his truck and was speeding away from the scene, letting the Walkers finish us off.

I managed to swallow down the thick lump in my throat and force myself away from the wall. I scooped up the rifle and surveyed the courtyard, noticing how the noise of our gunfire had drawn in more Walkers to the outer fence.

The group was running out into the courtyard, Michonne at the lead. It took me a beat to see that they were going out to save Hershel, who was miraculously unharmed.

I didn't think twice as I start following everyone out towards the Walkers invading our courtyard. We all fired at the Walkers or used a knife to put them down if they were in reach. I felt the adrenaline, the feeling of life and power, filling my veins. But I still wasn't my usual self, checking the road every second to see if the Governor was coming back. That constant fear ate away at my mind, making me not as sharp as I would have liked to be in a death match with unfeeling creatures.

When a car did fly down the road towards us, my body seized up again. It took more time than I would have like for me to reassure myself that it was only Glenn returning from his poorly timed supply run. But, thank God he came back when he did because he was able to reach Hershel much faster than we were. Glenn pulled up next to him and had Hershel back to safety in no time.

The others were making their way back to the prison as well. But I stood still, mesmerized by the clanking of teeth as I made one Walker head splatter after the next. I was clearing out a path back to the prison as well when I heard the grunts of someone struggling.

I turned back towards the outer fence and I took off running before I really saw him. Rick was overwhelmed by five Walkers with more being attracted to him by the second. They held him against the fence and he was doing his best to push them back. My legs were carrying me as fast as they could to save him, but I wouldn't make it. I wanted to shoot at them, but I didn't trust myself to not accidentally hit Rick.

My hope was dwindling away with every pounding step. A Walker was centimeters from his face and there was nothing I could do. I felt a scream rising in my throat, my frustration getting the best of me. I almost just shut my eyes to look away from what was bound to be a gruesome death until an arrow shot from the trees and put down the Walker that was on him. Rick was just as confused as I was until we both spotted the Dixon brothers at the same time.

All the doubts I had about Rick or Hershel or the entire group's capabilities were washed away at the sight of Daryl Dixon. I knew that we would be okay. I knew the Governor wasn't getting me back, at least not today. Even though I didn't see eye to eye with Daryl, just his presence kept me grounded; he kept me sane. The glue that held everything together was back, and he was here to clean up the God damn mess that was made while he was gone.

I rushed to the fence, feeling entirely myself one again, and used my knife to kill the Walkers that weren't being taken care of by Rick, Daryl, or Merle. I felt my built up rage be released into every stab I took through the fence. My body worked wildly with no more fear holding me back.

Once the Walkers surrounding them were dead, Daryl stood back, his eyes flicking up to Rick. There was going to be more arguing about Merle inside, I knew that much, but there was a silent agreement and pact that was made between Rick and Daryl. I looked between the two of them before Daryl finally met my eyes. He stared, frustratingly unreadable. I didn't dare let myself look at Merle before I spun around and started swinging my blade at the Walkers coming at me from my side of the fence.

The boys quickly ran around to meet me on the inside, helping one another out so no one would become overwhelmed. Rick had a look of revenge in his eyes that made me grin. It was about damn time everyone got fired up about the Governor, we needed to take killing him seriously. We had our backs to each other, moving as one to take out any Walkers. I felt calm with Rick and Daryl flanking me, they gave me a sense of protection that I don't think I had since the world went to shit. It was strange how connected to them I felt, almost like a family looking out for one another.

Back inside I shook away the idea that these people gave a fuck about me other than because I could help them with the Governor problem. I needed to chill with that damn family thinking. I couldn't let myself get attached, I couldn't.

I sat by myself while Hershel cleaned everyone up. He stitched and cleaned fresh wounds or re-opened ones. Almost nobody talked, not even about the fact that Merle was there now. We were too exhausted I think to try and start up that screaming battle again. Tomorrow we could all be mad that Merle was here or that the Governor attacked. Tomorrow we could plan more destruction, but for now we needed healing both physically and mentally.

One by one people disappeared into their own rooms. I was locked away separate from their cells with Merle and Michonne. Rick said he couldn't trust us yet and we needed to stay separate from everyone else when they slept. I understood the reasoning, but I wasn't happy about sleeping in the same room as Merle.

Michonne had taken to a corner and while I would much rather speak to her that to Merle, she didn't look like she wanted to be bothered. So, I huffed out a breath and looked to Merle who was leaned up against a wall, inspecting the metal that covered where his right hand used to be.

"You came back," I said, my voice sounding much louder than I wanted it to sound in the silent prison. I wasn't being rude to him or trying to start something. If I had learned anything about Merle from the time I've spent with him, it was that he was just as hot headed as I was and that he often said things that he didn't mean in the heat of the moment. That's why I didn't hold our argument prior to his departure against him and I would be using this conversation to hopefully make amends.

I think Merle and I were a little too similar sometimes. We both had shit lives and basically raised our younger siblings on our own. We both were too stubborn for our own good. And we both sure as hell didn't know when to keep our mouths shut.I think that is why we always got too personal from time to time like when he brought up my deceased sibling before. We knew where to hit the other where it would hurt; our weaknesses were our little brothers.

"Why did you come back?" I kept my voice light, showing him that I just genuinely wanted to know the answer and that I wasn't going to nag at him about anything.

He spared a second to look up at me. "We knew you dickheads would need us. Even if you can't admit that."

I stared down at my hands, not believing that was the reason, but also not denying it. "Well, I guess you're right." I stood up and slid a cigarette out from the package that lay beside of him, glad he let me take one. "If you and Daryl hadn't come back, Rick might be dead."

Merle silently held out a lighter to light my cigarette for me. It was probably the most kind thing he'd done for me besides sit and talk with me during the lonely nights of captive life. It was also as much of an apology that I would ever get from Merle and I took it as a sign that we were on good terms again.

"So I guess we do need you guys," I squeaked out before taking a long drawl on the cigarette and making my way to the door leading outside. I left Merle speechless I guess because he didn't say anything as I left to finish my smoke.

I didn't want to smoke inside since there was a baby indoors. I stood out and looked up at the bright moon. The growls of the Walkers that were still in the courtyard kept the moment form being peaceful and enjoyable. I huffed on my cigarette and slowly strode around the area, not thinking anyone else would be out this late.

Boy was I wrong. I turned the corner to where the barrels of clean water were, the place where I had cleaned myself upon my arrival. Now standing there was Daryl. His back was facing me and he hadn't noticed I stumbled upon him yet. I wanted to turn away and leave him be, give him the privacy that he came out here to have. I really did. But I was glued in place.

His shirt lay on the ground next to him and my eyes watched every muscle in his back and arms moving. The moonlight bounced off of him in such a way that just illuminated his muscles even more. It took me a minute to notice the scars that were on his back and shoulders, obviously from a beating. I recognize them to match the ones Merle had given me during my first week at Woodbury. Merle was crueler back before he took the time to chat and get to know me, so that was another thing on the list that I had forgiven him for.

At first I wondered if Merle had given the scars to Daryl too, but any thoughts about Merle and scars were long gone when Daryl raised an arm up to stretch it out, the muscles flexing as he did so. My knees weakened at the sight of his bare skin. I swallowed hard and tried to look away again, but it was no use.

I really knew it was too late when he turned around on his heel, spotting me looking on like a creep. The fire in his eyes told me I was in for it.

"The hell ya think yer doing'?"

I shook my head and tried to keep my eyes on his face and not his bare chest as he stalked towards me. "Sorry, I was just–"

"Yeah? Just what? Snoopin' around in my business?"

I furrowed my brow and crossed my arms. My mind switched into defensive mode and my anger began to spark. "I was just taking a walk, asshole. I don't give a fuck about what you do."

He wasn't buying it. "Ya sure did stand there long enough."

There was no explaining that without sounding like a total idiot, which I was not about to have at the moment. So, I asked the only question that would steer the conversation away from the fact that I was stupidly admiring him. "Did Merle do that to you?"

His eyes shot up to mine as he shoved his arms through a sleeveless button up shirt to cover up his scars. He might have been a sheet of hot anger, but I saw the embarrassment and insecurity that he was trying to cover up. He did a damn good job at covering it up too; I thought he might hit me he looked so mad. "You don't know nothin' 'bout us! Stop actin' like you do just cause Merle told ya a few stories! He didn't scar me up. He would never h–"

His rant was cut off at the sight of me turning around and pulling up the back of my shirt. I could feel his eyes running along every scar that crisscrossed down my back. I let him stand in silence and take it all in for a long time before I dropped the tank top back down over my skin and turned to face him. I knew he wouldn't listen to me try and explain that Merle would, in fact, do something like that, so I had to show him instead. It did the trick of shutting up his tempered ass.

His eyes dropped to the ground and I could tell he was still fuming, but for a different reason now. "Merle do that?" He asked dangerously quiet. In his heart he knew the answer before he even asked the question. It was just hard believing his brother was still fucking up other peoples lives on a daily basis.

I shrugged it off, taking another drawl on the cigarette to distract myself from the reality of it. I didn't mind that I might look less attractive with all of the scars I had, I just felt ashamed that I wasn't strong enough to prevent something like this from happening.

"It was before he knew me. He was doing his job." I tried my best to take some of the blame off of Merle. I didn't want Daryl to be mad about it. This entire conversation only came about because I was gawking at him, not because I wanted to know or even cared about his scars nor mine.

Daryl shook his head. "Doesn't make it right."

"Doesn't matter," I said quickly. "Nothing that can be done about it."

Daryl knew I was one tough bitch. There was no denying it after what I'd gone through, but he still looked like he was pitying me. I was starting to despise the way he did that. I was not some God damn damsel in distress. To get the attention completely off of me this time, I decided to dig deeper about where his scars came from, which I had to keep reminding myself that I didn't care about. Well... maybe I was a little curious. But still, I told him about mine, it was only fair he return the action.

"If it wasn't Merle, then who?"

Daryl was confused at first, his thoughts on Merle beating the shit out of you because some asshat wanted him to. When he realized you were talking about his own experiences he shook his head. "Piece of shit dad," he confirmed casually and gnawed at the skin around his thumb. "He did it to Merle first. Then me. Merle took a lot for me though. Guess he didn't tell ya that story huh?"

Merle talked a little about how his dad drank a lot, but he never mentioned him being abusive. Suddenly I understood why Merle would be the way he is. Without thinking I muttered, "Like father like son."

Daryl glared at me, his eyes a deep pool of hurt and anger and I realized that what I had said would include him too and not just Merle. "That what ya think of me? Ya think I'll beat ya? Or any of them in there?" He motioned to inside the prison where everyone was sleeping. His voice grew louder as he went on, his boiling anger returning in an instant.

"No! I didn't mean that. I know you wouldn't–"

"Nah," he cut me off curtly. "For the last time, ya don't know me. So stop pretending ya do."

He shouldered by me harder than was necessary, leaving me alone with my smoke still in hand. I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose once he was gone.

Why did the Dixon boys have to be so fucking sensitive?

***

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@daryldixonandfrogs

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ser-pea-nt · 5 years

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☆ﾟ*・ﾟ┊Jordan Connor, He/Him + age (21), cis-male┊❝ isn’t « Sweet pea » totally tubular looking? they seriously remind me of a character from « riverdale ». i started seeing them at « Palace Arcade » a few « days » ago, humming to the tune of « Nocturnal Me + Echo and the Bunnymen » when they think no one’s looking. also, they’re like totally known as the « hothead » of town, so i’d keep my eye on them. seriously. ❞

tw: victim of war death, alcohol and drug abuse

GENERAL

Name: Sweet pea

Age: 17

Place of birth: Riverdale, USA

Spoken languages: English, very little Chinese (spoken by his grandmother who lives in China and used to be close with Sweet pea)

Sexual orientation: heterosexual

Occupation: Part time as a mechanic at a Southside garage, Serpent ‘run boy’

APPEARANCE

Eye color: Dark brown

Hair color: Black

Height: 6′4″

Scars: minor scars from fights or working on his motorcycle or truck, fell off a roof once as a dare and had a scar along his back from the fall

Tattoos: Serpent tattoo on left side of neck, pointed thumb rings on both hands, wolf head tattoo on calf (about the size of his serpent tattoo)

FAVOURITE

Color: sky blue or burnt orange

Entertainment: Reading, going to the bar, playing pools and darts (hes very competitive), going to the drive-in, hanging around the Serpents

Pastime: reading, listening to music, drawing

Drink: water, rum and coke, black coffee

INFORMATION-

Tw: drug and alcohol abuse, toxic parental relationships

➤ So, here is the tall glass of Serpent water! Sweet pea is the fighter of the younger Serpents and pretty much does anything he can to revolve his life around them proving he is completely loyal to them and his closest friends. ➤ We don’t know anything about the Serpents in season one besides maybe someone bringing up they are thugs who do crime on the other side of the tracks. But obviously that is not the case the more they are introduced. But I am going to work on what little we have with Sweet pea and add in a few things of my own that I think make him more interesting.

➤Sweet pea was born a Southsider and shows that is his legacy, he hates the Northside (more so in the beginning before Jughead joined in season 2) because they resent the Serpents and consider all of them thugs and miscreants, sure, it’s a bit of a contradiction and he doesn’t give some of the more understanding Northsiders a chance but they haven’t shown him any reason too… not yet at least.

-From what we are given, he lives in a small trailer alone and has no parents around. I would guess from abuse or just mistreatment. His father was heavy on the bottle but when he was a kid he went off to war with FP Jones so get better chances on money, the only thing is he died at war leaving Sweet pea and his mother alone and due to this his mother slipped into drug abuse leaving Sweet pea 100% dependent on himself; at least until FP took him under his wing and introduced him to the Serpents a few years back and this is where he found his true family and he became devoted to them and willing to do any job or task they need of the boy while he also gets himself in dumb situations with his friends.

➤Sweet pea has been shown being both a total brute; fighting ghoulies and Northsiders whenever he can, standing up for the Southsiders when they were being pulled under the bus, or just destroying property when he gets angry; he solves justice physically and irrationally which is not always smart but he feels he’s only good for his strength. Sweets has a lot of problems seeing good in himself even though there is more love in him than anyone will ever know he just shows it differently. Instead of being emotional and letting his feelings out the boy is extremely protective and quick to react to violence if the people he loves are threatened.

- Sweet pea has always had it hard when making friends. Of course, the younger Serpents hang out with him but his intimidating personality and hard to scratch surface doesn’t let many people in. H O W E V E R, there are two Serpents that literally means more than the world to him. Toni Topaz: Sweets met her first, in kindergarten and the two have barely been seen apart. This girl has been through every dark corner sweet pea has ever been in and when he says he can’t live without her he means it. They consider each other their soul mates. She is his calm, when he’s about to explode all it takes is one word from Toni and he instantly steps back. She really is the love of sweet pea’s life. Then there is Fangs Fogarty: he is the second person in sweet pea’s life that sweet pea let in and will never let go of. Sweets knows Fangs can always protect himself but that doesn’t stop pea from doing it too. Fangs is the softest one in the trio and pea treats him like a brother often doing wild and reckless things as long as toni isn’t there to knock some sense into them or patch up their wounds when they hurt themselves. If there ever was a poor fool to mess with fangs or Toni they saw hell in sweets’ eyes and would pay for it.

-We’ve recently seen the softer side of Sweet pea though, when he has shown he wants to be in a real relationship, his love for Fangs and Toni, and the fact he wants to see the Serpents strong. I have the idea that due to experiencing abuse and thinking he was alone he stands up for anyone who is in a bad position and will give the clothes on his back to anyone who needs his help.

➤It’s not canon but from the way he is shown to always be in the front line of the younger Serpents I always imagined he wants to be able to climb the Serpent ladder and be a big leader of the gang at some point which is going to really be his main focus in life until more plots come, while he will always remain loyal to the people who have never done him wrong. There is nothing that can make him stray from the serpents.

➤For extra money to pay the bills for his parent’s trailer Sweet pea runs product for the Serpents. He is young so he is usually seen at parties and any thing that is directed toward teenagers who need a fix. This is the only reason he goes to these events because he really doesn’t do the whole big group scene. Over the summer he has picked up some hours at the local garage as a mechanic. He knows a lot about cars and is always finding scrap pieces to keep his old truck running. He has a motorcycle as well but his truck serves him better unless he is trying to show off.

➤He despises the Northside; not only because more than half the town only believe the lies they have been told but because every Northsider is better off than anyone from the Southside and even the people who claim they don’t mind the Southside not one of them has ever tried to help out to make the place Sweets calls home a better place.

AFTER THE SWITCH:

➤After finding himself in Hawkins he’s only confused. He has only been around for a few days so he is really just trying to wrap his head around this whole thing. Yah boy has never really left the Riverdale/Greendale area so imagine how he feels in a place that doesn’t even exist in his world or time even.

➤ So, his background with his parents is the same but now he’s just been abandoned by his mother but instead of being stuck on the Southside in Sunny side trailer park he is in the Hawkins parallel version of the southside which is the outskirts in the trailer park by the Junkyard. He is still in the Serpents and not much has changed with him disliking most of the people who live in Hawkins and are more privileged than him.

➤ He was lucky and had a good amount of cash to get him through the week at the Hawkins junkyard trailer park but hes running low on funds and might need a place to crash and a job. So far he’s really interested in the Arcade, he loved the nostalgic (lol not so nostalgic) games and figures it will pay enough to scrape by. He is more than used to doing it at Sunny Side trailer park.

➤ Find Pea scarfing down a burger at Benny’s but something in him feel like something is missing. He sometimes thinks that he needs a milkshake to take it down with... but nothing ever suits his tastes. Is this the parallel pull he feels making him crave the all famous Pop’s burgers and shakes? probably. This is where pea goes when he feels homesick. Benny’s never fully helps but for some reason it’s the only place he feels a bit closer to what his body has been screaming for Riverdale food.

[[ I’m open for all plots and connections so please, if you want to do something fun with my baby DM me (here or discord) and we can figure something out! Or just chat! I promise I don’t bite lol ]]

#1986:intro #about

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spaceorphan18 · 5 years

Text

Finding Kurt Hummel: The Rise and Fall of Sue Sylvester

Masterpost

6x10: The Rise and Fall of Sue Sylvester

And here we are at the infamous Sue episode panned by fans everywhere. Is it really that bad? Well I did have it as my least favorite episode of the series, (though after careful inspection, that title truly goes to the hot mess that is I Kissed a Girl). However, believe it or not, I don’t think this is the /worst/ Glee ever put out. I do, though, think the context is what makes it so frustrating.

Child Star and Other Missed Opportunities

Here’s the thing - when you write out season 6 on paper, I think the structure of what the writers were going for makes a lot more sense. The main story that they were telling was getting the Glee club back in order, to be, in a way, an echo of what season 1 was. And for the most part, I do think that structure works. You have Rachel in the ‘Will’ spot as teacher, trying to get her life together while trying to inspire these young kids to be awesome, and like the end of the Front 13 - the ending there is Sectionals.

All the other plot lines are secondary, including Rachel’s triumphant return to New York, which is the b-story of the entire season. Kurt (and Blaine)’s reunion arc might be, eh, a distant 3rd? Maybe 4th after Will’s. But that’s what makes these final three episodes (before the final two that make up, essentially, the series finale) so jarring. We’ve been used to strong focus on Kurt and Blaine as secondary characters, and the kids have been the main focus since season 3. Shifting everything back so that Will and Sue are the main characters, with Rachel as a secondary lead feels... off.

The thing is -- I see what they were trying to do here. After wrapping up the Klaine (and Brittana) arc - the last arcs that the ‘kid’ characters get (besides Rachel) we essentially have three extra episodes left. One will be the competition episode. One was the episode about the New Newbies which I don’t think was a bad thing - even if I think introducing a new character five episodes before the end was a dumb move. But like the original kids, I think these new kids rightfully deserved an episode of their own. And thus leaves one episode where they needed to do, well, something.

And hence - we get Sue.

Yeah - It would have been nice if they had spent an episode exploring Kurt and Blaine’s now married life, or what the hell are Mercedes, Artie, Tina, Brittany, Santana, Mike, etc, etc, etc, etc, doing with their lives. But - in the minds of the glee writers... they already did that in various capacities over the previous episodes.

But even more than that - for reasons I’ll never fully understand, unless it’s about how much they love Jane Lynch, they decided to focus an episode on Sue. And while the episode isn’t the utter worst thing Glee ever did (honestly, go back and watch IKAG again...), trying to make emotional sense of a character you’ve reduced to a cartoon character, who breaks the fourth wall just... doesn’t work. And on top of that, they don’t resolve anything, nor is it that interesting to watch. Sue remains, well, Sue and nothing remotely happens.

So yeah, this ‘filler’ episode was a way to stall time before the obligatory ending Sectionals episode - and they filled it up with a lot of what no one wanted, especially the precious few who were still watching. And thus, we have the most frustrating and least satisfying episode of the entire series. Thankfully, Kurt is barely in it.

Burn the House Down

So, we open with the New New New Directions in typical Glee fashion, doing the hot single of the moment - idk even know the name of the song, though - Rather Be? Idk. Anyway, Kurt and Blaine come sombering in, cause, plot dictates they be there for exposition.

And we find out that Dalton has burned to the ground.

So.

Here’s the thing - there could have been an interesting story here for Blaine -- matching Rachel’s story about having to grow up and move on. I mean, it’s kind of subtly and subtextually there. It is (another) reason Blaine is forced to move on and grow up.

But. Do you know why they burned Dalton to the ground (other than doing it probably out of spite)? Not for some kind of deeper level of symbolism. Nope. They did it so New Directions can meet their quota of having 12 members. That stupid, fucking rule. I realize that it’s now become a joke (as mentioned earlier in the Hurt Locker episodes). But c’mon Glee. It’s like you’re not even trying now.

But also, like after most big Klaine events - do Kurt and Blaine get a moment to reflect on their newly marriage life? Nope. Other than talking about a piano exploding in the next episode, Kurt and Blaine won’t share dialogue again until the series finale. On top of that -- instead of getting to be happy newlyweds, they have Blaine upset because his surrogate home has burned down. Thanks writers. Thanks.

However - there are two things I do like about this little moment. A) the fact that Kurt is being a very comforting husband. B) the fact that they are wearing their proposal colors. Nice touch costume dept. You get the gold star.

In the next scene - we get the indoctrination of the Warblers into the New Directions. And Kurt just nods his head along in all the appropriate places. Not a whole lot to talk about -- other than now that we’ve got Will back in charge, Rachel and Kurt have faded into the background. Is Kurt even teaching anything any more? No, not really - despite all the ‘conversations’ Kurt, Rachel, Will, and Blaine have off screen.

Anyway - you know another reason Dalton was burned to ground? To service the Sue plot. Yup. God. Luckily, though, I don’t really have to go into it.

The Way Too Long Geraldo Segment

So, long story short, Sue’s hurt locker was found out and then she’s exposed on Geraldo, which does go on way, way to long. Look, there are some funny moments and callbacks, like the finding of Sue’s Penthouse magazine and the quick return of Joe. But it just becomes stale as it continues after the commercial break. Also, though, Sue’s not going to actually face ramifications. I mean, she should really be in jail just on the hurt locker alone. But this is Glee, where Will, Sue, and Rachel never have to really deal with the actions they make.

So - Kurt’s bit is about the elevator. Which is... fine. It kind of feels hollow since they’re going to thank her in the finale, and she just sent them on a week long honeymoon. But yeah - don’t kidnap people, guys. Bad. The best part of this is the look on Blaine’s face.

Unity

This scene was almost impossible to get a good still. Oh well. Anyway, a good twenty minutes of the episode later...

So, I should mention in the previous scene, the gang is all trying to help Rachel through her issues and trying to get her back to New York (or whatever). It’s a little weird that Kurt is not here since he’s spent so much of his screen time playing emotional prop to Rachel Berry. but I guess I’m not complaining even if I think it’s weird? But we do get Sam calling NYADA a scam school, and info that Blaine was kicked out by Carmen herself - to which I say, why does anyone care about this school?? Whatever. It is a funny little scene though.

Anyway, back to this scene -- where the Warblers and the New Directions are arguing over costumes. And the only real thing I get out of it (Kurt-wise) is that Kurt really hated wearing that uniform when he went there, lol. (He did, though, it’s in season 2.)

And I know there was some grumbling of this scene - why is Kurt taking New Directions’s side? Why is he not supporting Blaine and the Warblers - to which I say... the writers didn’t give a shit about that. Seriously. This scene is a) about comedy and b) presenting this argument that will be compromised in about ten minutes anyway. It’s not at all any kind of reflection on Kurt or Blaine or their relationship. And actually, I’m of half mind that the writers completely forgot that Kurt even went to Dalton himself.

In the large scheme of Kurt related things - this scene barely registers, tbh. **shrugs**

Hey, but costumes wins again - Kurt and Blaine are wearing each other’s colors!

Final Countdown

So, Sue and Will duke it out through music - like it’s always done, and we get confirmation -- all those fantasy performances? Were just that -- fantasies. I kinda do like when the kids come in and are like - wtf??!? Kurt tells Rachel that he hopes that the’ll never become that. Oh y’all won’t, promise ;) Anyway - I love that the show comments that Will and Sue have lost it - like we haven’t known that since the end of season 1.

So, uh, the next day? Will apologizes for being an idiot. Okay, fine. And then Rachel says that now -- if the glee club doesn’t win, all fine arts will be cut. Because that makes a load of sense, c’mon writers, c’mon....

Anyway - the one redeeming thing for this otherwise ridiculous little scene, is that Kurt’s a ball of optimism -- he inwardly reflects on all the crap that’s happened in his life and he turns it around saying that they’ll never give up on anything (to which Blaine looks at him adoringly). And, I mean, it’s a subtle thing -- but I kinda love this. Because here’s a kid who has been through hell and back and a lot of shitty things (even recently) and you know what? He’s fine. He’s in a good place, he’s happy, he’s loved, he’s got a great support system, and a good attitude about life. And, he’s got a great motto to go along with it -- It’s Got Bette Midler. (lol)

But I mean, let’s take a second and think about the fact that Kurt started his journey being that kid who gets thrown in dumpsters for being weird and gay and now, you know what? He’s fine. He’s really, really, really fine. :)

Rise

So - here at the end, we see Blaine solving the absolute crisis of the episode and somehow he’s managed to make, like, twenty unity blazers overnight, combining the Dalton tradition with the McKinley colors. And did it without Kurt knowing what he was up to because Kurt was totally surprised. But it’s in a good way, Kurt’s incredibly proud that Blaine managed to solve this epic dilemma. (I joke, but really, it’s sweet that Kurt’s, again, proud of his new husband).

Meanwhile, we get the song Rise, written by Darren Criss -- and I’m kind of impressed with this song -- it manages to reference birds, Dalton burning down, the kids rising to the top, and the fall of Sue Sylvester all in one go. Color me impressed, too. (Btw, this is such a Darren-esque song, I can hear this in his voice even if I’ve never heard him actually sing it.)

I’ll leave you with the some lyrics, which I’m sure you can work out their meaning on your own ;)

Have you ever felt like you woke up (On the wrong side of your heart) Has it ever felt like it's broken (Like the world tore it apart) Have you felt so weak, You could hardly stand Like if you ever fell You could never tell If you'd ever get back up again I know it's hard to do, But I think you can make it, Cause I know we can take it Baby we will... Rise We are young we are the dreamers we will fly When the world will not believe us, We will rise above the ashes Before this whole life passes us by You and I, we will rise

#finding kh #kurt hummel

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takerfoxx · 5 years

Text

As it so happens, my unplanned little rant about the Lego Movie sequel kinda ends up being a great jumping-off point, as here is another little rant that I’ve actually been working on and off ever since that discussion about grimdark deconstructions and how to and not to do them, mainly to just get it off my chest all in one go.

See, I (obviously) like darker stories, but like everyone else I got my storytelling pet peeves. And the biggest one is something I’ve talked about here and there, something that I call Redshirt Philosophy. Basically, this refers to the narrative treating the protagonists as the only ones whose lives matter, and any nameless passerby and/or walk-on is free game. By this, I don’t mean that it’s bad to only kill bystanders and side-characters while sparing the mains, I’m saying that it’s bad to treat those deaths like they don’t matter and that they happen with no consequences.

But there’s a sub-category of that that pisses me off even more: the concept of the Unintentional Karma Houdini. Basically, a Karma Houdini is someone who does something really bad and gets away with it. They go upon their merry way suffering no repercussions.

Now, in of itself, this isn’t a bad plot device, and it can be done well if it’s intentional to make a point. However, when a character who is supposed to be the hero does something bad and it’s not treated as something bad, or if it’s just brushed off with no consequences, or if the bad guys switches sides but is never held accountable in any way for their heinous acts…then yeah, that really gets to me.

So without further ado, here’s my list of good guys who did bad things badly and it still pisses me off!

Warning: the following contains spoilers for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, Warcraft 3, Elfen Lied, Future Diary, Game of Thrones, and Angel. Yes, I will be saying some bad things about most of those. So...take that for what it’s worth.

1. Protagonists who did bad things and were either treated as being in the right or at least insufficiently called out, but I am still a fan of the series and even still like the character. It’s just that these incidents kind of stick in my craw.

A. Buffy’s “Everyone but Me Sucks” speech, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I’m starting off with the least offensive incident, as well as the most understandable, even if I still think it was bad writing. Okay, some quick background: in season 7, the Big Bad known as the First Evil starts sending its henchmen to wipe out the entire Slayer line by killing off all the girls who had the potential to become the next Vampire Slayer when the current one died (which, due to a weird loophole, actually wasn’t Buffy, but she still had her powers and shit). Anyway, all the surviving potentials get together and go to Buffy for help, who takes them into her house to shelter them and train them to defend themselves, even though they didn’t have any supernatural power.

Now, the thing about the First Evil was that it couldn’t become corporeal and interact directly with our world, which is why it had to work through agents. However, it could take on the form of anyone that had died to speak to people, just not actually touch them. Which meant that it could still appear in Buffy’s house to fuck with the gang, which it did.

The worst incident is when they noticed that a girl named Chloe was late in coming to breakfast, so they went to her room to wake her up. But upon entering, they find Chloe’s body hanging from the ceiling, with another Chloe standing next to her. It turned out that the First Evil had been speaking to her all night, slowly twisting her around and finally convinced her to kill herself.

Naturally, everyone is shocked and horrified. Buffy buries the body by herself in the back and then calls everyone together for a meeting. From there, she has this to say about their recently departed friend.

“Anyone want to say a few words about Chloe? Let me. Chloe was an idiot. Chloe was stupid. She was weak. And anyone in a rush to be the next dead body I bury, it's easy. Just...think of Chloe, and do what she did.”

She then proceeds to ream everyone for hiding behind her and letting her do all the work, giving them the “Get your shit together or die” speech. Of course everyone is offended and angry, but over the course of the next few episodes they start doing just that: pulling themselves together and becoming more proactive in the fight. All well and good; after all, sometimes leaders have to be harsh and tell people exactly what they need to hear to save their lives. It ain’t always going to be pretty, and you do sometimes need to be mean, especially when it’s a matter of life or death. I’m sure commanders out in the field have often had to make similar speeches to their surviving men, especially after one of them cracked and took the easy way out.

There’s…just a couple problems with the execution here.

See, this is the last we ever hear about Chloe. She freaks out, kills herself, and gets verbally bashed by the person she went to for help. And that’s that. She straight up loses, and that’s that. And call me a softie, but I have a real problem with introducing a terrified girl, have her get mentally tortured by the literal embodiment of Evil itself to the point where she takes her own life, and having the final word on her in the whole show be…that. And from the main character no less! It goes back to the whole disposable victim thing, which is funny, considering that the whole reason the show even existed was because Joss Whedon would always feel sorry for the cheerleader who would get killed off at the start of schlocky monster movies and wanted to see them fight back and kick the monster’s ass. Understandable, but it’s weird that that same trope would get used over and over again in his own show, all to make the monster of the week look scary. And again! There’s nothing wrong with that in itself, but it’s kind of noticeable when you have a kid’s head explode in one episode and have Buffy just make a joke about it, have a girl get her heart torn out in another and have her supposed best friend mention their bond all of once right after and then forget all about her, and then there’s the whole thing with Jesse in the first episode and…well, you get the idea. Joss, man, what are you doing?

But this wasn’t just a monster tearing out some teenager’s throat out. This was a suicide, followed by a verbal condemnation of the victim. Which, in a real life setting, wouldn’t be as much of a problem, but the fact of the matter is that no matter how much reality you want to inject into your fantasy show about vampires, ghosts, and robotic internet demons (look it up), your show does not exist in a vacuum. It wasn’t just the characters hearing that speech, it was thousands of people all over the world. And if you’re going to tackle a subject such as suicide, then you have to be really, really careful about how you handle it. Did it never occur to the writers that there might be people in their audience struggling with suicidal thoughts themselves, who were constantly told that their problems were all their fault, that they were being a burden, or maybe some of them had actually attempted it, failed, and were all called weak, useless, stupid, what have you?

Interestingly enough, I recently stumbled across an old Buffy message board, which had a thread debating this very topic. And it was pretty fascinating reading the various viewpoints, with many agreeing with me that the writers kinda dropped the ball here, especially since there were many points in the series where Buffy also gave up, succumbed to fear and despair, and even attempted to end her life. Plus, she wasn’t nearly so vicious when the First Evil nearly convinced Angel to kill himself in an earlier season. Others were of the opinion that while harsh, it was something that needed to be said, and that Chloe’s actions were cowardly and selfish considering what it would do to her friends. Plus, given the immense amount of pressure Buffy was under with all the trauma she had already suffered, snapping like that was perfectly understandable. And I can’t lie, I do see where both sides were coming from.

I guess my main problem with this episode wasn’t that the speech itself happened, but that it ended up being the final word on Chloe, which was pretty messed up.

So what would I have done differently? Well, if we must keep the speech, then fine. Have Buffy slag her off to motivate everyone to get their shit together. However, don’t let that be the final thing that’s said about the terrified girl who was manipulated and intimidated into committing suicide.

Earlier in the episode, it’s mentioned that Chloe had been a big fan of Winnie the Pooh, something that the First Evil used to taunt her friends. So, after the speech, after the fight and whatever it was that everyone did to get their heads into the game, just stick in another scene, one that’s just a few seconds long, where, when nobody’s watching, Buffy goes into the backyard and just leaves a Winnie the Pooh doll on Chloe’s grave, indicating that she did feel bad for her but had to say what she did. That’s it, that little bit of empathy is all I ask.

B. Hermione Granger’s scarring of Marietta Edgecombe in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Ho boy, this is a complicated one.

All right. So, Order of the Phoenix is my favorite of the Harry Potter books, mainly owing to Dolores Umbridge being a brilliantly written character in just how incredibly scummy she is, and the whole plot of her versus the school was just gold. And…kind of topical, now that I think about it.

But anyway, though it’s my favorite of the books, it also has my least favorite scene. Quick background: Umbridge has taken over the school and pretty much nixed Defense Against the Dark Arts, which is now needed more than ever. To counter this, Harry and co. take it upon themselves to start teaching it to the students. They form a group called Dumbledore’s Army and make their hideout in a magical room hidden from Umbridge and her minions to practice. However, someone sells them out, the room is raided, everyone is caught, and Harry is rushed to Umbridge’s office to be interrogated.

There, it’s revealed that the traitor was one Marietta Edgecombe, best friend of Harry’s girlfriend Cho Chang. This is discovered because Hermione had hexed the contract she had everyone sign to cause pus-filled blisters write out the word SNEAK across her face, something that apparently none of the brilliant and experienced wizards they got teaching at Hogwarts can remove. In fact, her final scene in the series shows her wearing a veil over her face to hide it.

Of course the heroes get out of their predicament in the end, but it pretty much destroys Harry and Cho’s relationship, as Harry is understandably a little peeved about that whole betraying him and his friends to a sadistic fascist thing and felt that Hermione’s hex had been brilliant, while Cho sticks up for her, saying that she’s actually a good person who had been the only one of her friends to stick with her after the murder of her previous boyfriend Cedric Diggory, and she had just made a (big) mistake, given that she hadn’t even wanted to join the DA in the first place and didn’t trust Harry to begin with, given that her mother worked for the Ministry of Magic, which wasn’t exactly keen on Harry at that point. Plus, she was kinda put out that Hemione had hexed them all without telling them, so basically they fight and break up.

Anyway, this in itself wouldn’t be much of an issue. A bit character that we barely know sells the good guys out, gets humiliated in return, and the good guys prevail in the end. What makes this something of a sticking point for me is due to one of the first of the many controversial social media canon details that JK Rowling would become infamous for dropping: that the blisters would indeed leave permanent scarring, and that she feels that this is wholly justified, given that she, and I quote, “Loathes a traitor.”

Okay.

There is…a lot to unpack here, and it has become even more divisive in the fandom than the Chloe thing I mentioned above. One camp holds that while betraying the DA was a rotten thing to do, the hex still crosses the line, given that scarring a sixteen year old for life for one mistake is really messed up, that she hadn’t even wanted to join the DA in the first place but had been pressured into it, that given that she had a parent in the Ministry of Magic she was probably subject to a lot of anti-Harry propaganda and genuinely thought he was a bad person, and that she had probably been singled out by Umbridge and interrogated, likely with her mother’s job being threatened. The flipside argues that she had to know that she still sold everyone out to a sadistic fascist, that Hermione was a minor herself and isn’t subject to the same rules that an adult would be, that Umbridge’s perchance for torture was well established at that point, that she had to know that her friend Cho would be punished with everyone else, and that teenager or no, there is no excuse for supporting someone like Umbridge. I mean, Hitler Youth and all that.

To tell the truth, like the Chloe thing above, I can see where both sides are coming from. On the one hand, I can see how someone like Marietta could be led to believe that Harry was trouble and feel that she was endangering her family by associating with him. Plus, we have no idea what the circumstances surrounding her betrayal were, though given Rowling’s words on the topic I guess Umbridge didn’t have to probe hard. On the other, she did sell out everyone to get pretty much tortured, so that deserved some kind of retribution, so good points all around.

But that’s not really where I personally have a problem. My problem is that Rowling’s addendum on the whole affair goes against the rules of the world she created, and even the themes of the book itself. Also, if Rowling wanted us to agree with her, then she fucked up the execution.

First, let’s take the bit where it the blisters left permanent scars. This is a world where they can make bones grow back, inflate bodies like a balloon without doing permanent harm, and where even mutilations are temporary (if painful) inconveniences. The only thing that can cause permanent damage is Dark Magic, hence Harry’s scar.

So…how exactly does Hermione’s hex permanently scar Marietta then?

Jumping off that, this isn’t the only instance of permanent scarring in that book. One of the many horrible things Umbridge did to students was force them to write lines with a magic pen that literally carved out those lines into their skin, resulting in Harry picking up a new scar that read I MUST NOT TELL LIES. The fact that this scar can’t be removed with magic is one of the many clues that Umbridge is more than just a pompous asshole and had dealings with something darker.

Look, I’m not saying that the two situations are a one-to-one parallel, but it just feels kind of uncomfortable for the book to treat magically scarring kids as something horrible and unforgiveable (which it is!), only to laud one of the heroes for doing it right after, regardless of circumstances. It…just doesn’t sit right.

Plus, you know, there is the point that when you get down to it, the hex is kind of a problem in of itself. Like Cho pointed out, putting it on everyone without telling them is a little messed up, and it makes it completely useless as a deterrent. Why not use a tongue-tying spell or something? Then again, logic was never really the series’ appeal.

And finally, how the hell are we supposed to feel righteous indignation about a character that gets zero lines, just sort of hovers in the background, and has a character we already know to be sympathetic defend her? With Umbridge we had ample on-page reason to hate her, but we never get to see her finally get her just rewards in the end. The Malfoys are all sorts of horrible throughout the books, but other than some humiliation they apparently come through it unscathed. So really, this whole thing just feels weird.

How to fix? Simple. JUST DON’T PUT IN THE PART ABOUT PERMANENT SCARRING!!! All the rest about the hex can be written off as Hermione just not thinking things through. And without the scars, it sort of works. Marietta still gets paid back for her betrayal but isn’t disfigured for life, and the whole things becomes a lot less uncomfortable.

Hell, why not take advantage of the situation? Give Marietta some character growth, bring her back to redeem herself like they did with Percy, and he was way worse. Hell, Snape was downright monstrous, and he was made out to be this tragic redemption story.

Sigh. I know the movies get a lot of flak for the stuff they’ve changed, but switching things so that Cho was magically compelled to give up the secret and sidestepping the issue entirely was a good idea.

2. Heroic (or at least, portrayed as sympathetic) characters who cross the line so thoroughly that I now loath them and am infuriated whenever I think about them, but I am still a big fan of the rest of the series they appear in.

A. Tyrande Whisperwind’s slaughter of the Watchers to free Illidan Stormrage, from Warcraft 3: The Reign of Chaos.

Yeah…fuck this character.

All right, this happens pretty deep into the plot, so here’s the cliffnotes: demons are invading the world, and the remnants of civilization need to put aside their differences to stop them. In particular, the priestess Tyrande and her husband Malfurion, the Arch-Druid, set out to awaken their people’s sleeping druids for reinforcements. But while delving into the cave where said druids are napping, they come across a strange locked door. It turns out that the door leads to the prison of Illidan Stormrage, Malfurion’s traitor brother, who was imprisoned for turning on the Night Elves due to his lust for magical power. Tyrande has the brilliant idea that they should free Illidan to help fight the demons, BECAUSE THAT TOTALLY SOUNDS LIKE A SWELL IDEA! Malfurion says no, Tyrande tell him that she’s gonna do it anyway, and fucks off to do just that.

Beyond the door, she’s confronted by the Watchers, a group of Night Elves and their forest allies who had been entrusted with defending Illidan’s prison, who respectfully inform her that they will not waver in their duty and she does not have the authority to say otherwise.

So…she slaughters them.

All of them.

She wanted to free a dangerous traitor, the guards said no, and she kills them for it.

Yeah. That is a thing that happens.

But hey! Illidan is free now, and he agrees to fight the demons for her. And wouldn’t you know it, on day one he manages to destroy a powerful demonic artifact that was corrupting the forest and kill Tichondrius, one of the demons’ primary leaders, so that worked out!

…a pity that his lust for power took over and he absorbed all of the artifact’s power, turning him into a monstrous demonic beast and leading to Tyrande and Malfurion to become so horrified that they imprison him once again.

…nah, just kidding. They banish him, basically freeing him to do as he pleases. And as it turns out, what he pleases ends up being summon up a bunch of monsters from the depths and use them to strike at Night Elf villages, massacring its inhabitants.

Good job, Tyrande. You really know how to pick ‘em.

But you know what’s worse? You know what takes this whole ordeal from a massive fuck-up to completely killing any possible redemption for the character for me? As it turned out, Maiev Shadowsong, the leader of the Watchers, was out on patrol at the time and narrowing missed being murdered off with the others. And when she got back and found her friends dead and her prisoner freed, she gathered up what remained of the Watchers and immediately set off after Illidan.

Well, she finds him, but he and his new allies prove to be too much, so she calls for help. And Malfurion and Tyrande answer, with Tyrande even admitting that the whole thing was her fault and thus it was her responsibility to fix! Okay, okay, it’s a step in the right direction. Doesn’t really make up for what she did, but at least she’s…

Oh wait. Maiev calls her out on pretty much everything, and Tyrande’s response is, and I QUOTE, “I did what I thought was right. You are in no position to judge me.”

…

Oh, FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bitch, YOU MURDERED HER FRIENDS! YOU FREED ILLIDAN, WHO HAS SINCE MASSACRED YOUR OWN PEOPLE! SHE HAS EVERY RIGHT TO JUDGE YOU!

Hell, waaaaaaaaay back earlier in the series, the human prince Arthas kills all the inhabitants of a city call Stratholme, all whom had recently become infected with the Undead plague, and it’s treated as his moral even horizon, the point where there’s no turning back from his descent into evil. Except…while terrible, he at least had a very good reason for doing what he did. Those people were literally moments away from turning into zombies, and there was no way to save them. Whereas Tyrande causes the deaths of even more innocent lives, whether directly or indirectly, but it’s treated as, at worse, as a whoopsie-daisy on her part. Meanwhile, Maiev is made out to be this revenge-obsessed extremist.

So…yeah. Fuck Tyrande. And hey, I still kind of like him, but fuck Malfurion too for letting it slide.

B. Just about everything about Lucy from Elfen Lied.

All right, cards on the table: of all my favorite anime/manga, Elfen Lied is easily the most flawed. The violence is beyond gratuitous, the nudity is sometimes downright silly in how nonsensical it is, the plot is completely inconsequential, and the sudden mood changes aren't exactly gracefully done.

Still, I’ve always had a soft spot for schlock that embraces its own schlockiness, and it has enough of my personal favorite tropes to make me love it. Hell, it was my freaking avatar for the longest time!

That being said, I do have one major issue with it, and that is the central character: Lucy.

Yes, the chick whose eye used to be my avatar.

I hate Lucy.

Why? Because she’s a psychotic serial killer who’s graphically murdered hundreds of innocent people out of pure sadistic nihilism. One of her first acts upon coming into her powers is to kill a random family just so she could hide out in their house, and that’s when she was a child. There’s a scene that establishes that she’s mastered the art of giving passersby brain aneurysms just so she can murder more effectively without drawing attention to herself. She tears Kouta’s family apart, including his little sister, because she was jealous. She has a breakdown and massacres an entire festival full of people. One of her first acts upon regaining her memories and wandering off is to use that brain aneurysm thing to kill a passing girl…just for walking by!

And that’s just the stuff we see her doing on-screen!

Now granted, the series doesn’t make it out that she’s still somehow a good person, though they do portray her as sympathetic for…reasons, and even treats her like the hero in some parts. However, there is a scene in the anime where, upon learning all this, still forgives her and even kisses her! And yes, that includes learning that she’s the one who murdered his little sister! At least in the manga he tells her off and tries to make her promise not to kill anyone else! And she also gets a terrible death in the process, so there’s that.

But I guess most of my issues come from how others fans still try to stick up for her. I had a friend who once said that she was justified for everything because kid-Kouta lied about the gender of his cousin. Uh, yeah, nooooo. She’s a monster, end of.

Oh, what’s that? She has a tragic backstory of abuse and neglect? Well, whoop-dee-fuckin’-doo. Guess who else has the same? Just about every Batman villain, and most of them are portrayed as dangerous monsters! Except…for the ones who are cute girls. Huh, imagine that.

Wait, she had an alternate personality intrinsic to the Diclonius driving her to kill? Well, I’d just might buy that, except for one problem: Nana exists. Nana, another Diclonius who is shown having the same alternate personality issue but also fighting it off and goes through the whole series without ever killing anyone else, despite enduring even more horrible torture and abuse than Lucy! And that’s why Nana is a ball of love and delight and fully deserved her happy ending and fuck Lucy.

Although…just to be clear, I’m not talking about Nyu: the childish other alternate personality that Lucy reverts to as a result of her amnesia. Nyu’s great. Nyu’s adorable and innocent, and since the series treats her like her own character, I will too.

But yeah, Lucy’s an irredeemable monster and screw anyone who says otherwise. Man, that on top of how much of a mess this series was, why did I like it so much?

=looks down at my Nana-themed mousepad=

Oh yeah.

Thank God for Nana.

And finally…

3. Protagonists who did so many terrible things and were never held accountable for their actions that I stopped liking them entirely, actively rooted for their failure, and eventually stopped liking the series as a whole.

For this entry, there really is only one example: every single one of the main characters of Future Diary.

Oh, Future Diary…

See, I used to be a big fan of this manga. Back when I first started IM, it was my favorite, and I eagerly awaited every month for the new installment. I mean, it was pretty much Battle Royale meets Code Geass, of course I would be a fan!

However, as the series went on and my favorite characters were all killed off, leaving the four mains, I started to realize something:

I did not like these people.

They were all pretty terrible people, in fact. All of them had either done something really, really awful or were complicit in the others’ actions, and they never really got held accountable for what they did, with their actions just treated as, “Oh, BIG SHOCKING PLOT TWIST!!!!” So by the time the series reached its end and they all got a happy ending, I felt no happiness for them. In fact, I was kinda pissed.

Later, when the anime first started airing, I watched the first couple episodes, and seeing their actions actually animated before me made it worse. I hated them, and I hated the fact that nothing they did ever had any real consequences for them.

Now, looking back on it years later, I can really see what a mess this series was. Nearly every aspect about the plot, setting, and character growth is pretty illogical and inconsistent to the point of being outright stupid. But that’s just the icing on the cake for me, and not my main reason for hating this series. My beef comes down to these people, and the things they did.

Yuki Amano

A lot of these people bash this guy for being weak and passive, a bit like Shinji Ikari. Personally, as someone who actually liked Shinji, that part didn’t bother me.

Him deliberately betraying an entire orphanage and gunning down all the orphans sure as hell did though.

As did him almost immediately forgiving his father and wanting to live with said asshole EVEN AFTER HIS DAD MURDERED HIS MOM! And this is just swept aside because yay, his dad is back!

Yuno Gasai

Ho boy, where do I start with the Queen of Yanderes? Well, let’s get this out of the way: I actually don’t have an issue with her creepy stalking. It’s her schtick, and if executed well it can actually work.

It…wasn’t executed well. It just was a long list of making her do crazy shit for big shocks, and outside of her Yuki obsession, she had pretty much no other characteristics.

Also, in the second episode, she deliberately sets off a bunch of bombs that massacres scores of innocent teenagers over a misunderstanding.

And after that happens, it is never brought up again.

So yeah.

Minene Uryu

Let’s start with the fact that she is a literal terrorist who has killed scores of innocent families.

And that she blew up part of Yuki’s school to get his attention, also probably killing several children.

And no, she isn’t held accountable for this. At all. Why? Because she’s cool, I guess.

Masumi Nishijima

Doesn’t kill anyone like the others…but hey, what about him completely ignoring the fact that he falls head-over-heels in love with Minene and even proposes to her, despite knowing that she’s massacred hundreds of innocent people and it’s actually his job to bring her in? Talk about being completely useless as a police officer.

And the worst of it? All the above get one kind of happy ending or another.

Yeah, no. Fuck each and every one of them.

Even though this is by far the worst offender, I’m not going to spend as much time on it, as it’s easier to rant about something that does a lot of things right only to fail spectacularly in one regard. Future Diary instead does so many things wrong that it’s kind of beyond saving and not really worth getting heated up about. Which is a shame, because the concept could have worked in the hands of a better writer, but instead, we got a dumb, illogical mess full of characters that are impossible to root for.

But okay, I’ve ranted on and on about these instances that piss me off, but are there any examples of series doing this right? As if in, actually holding characters accountable and making them suffer consequences for their actions when they usually wouldn’t?

Well, obviously, but there are a few instances that really stand out in my mind, because they’re instances that would normally get glossed over without mention, but the writers actually had the wherewithal to ensure that this wouldn’t happen. And they really make me happy.

A. Sandor Clegane stands trial for the murder of the Micah the butcher’s boy, in Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones.

It’s kind of funny that Ice and Fire would be on this list, seeing how it’s full of innocent people getting slaughtered, tortured, and raped, even by the “good guys’” hands at times. You’d honestly think that I wouldn’t even touch it as a result.

And yet, it is the rare example of someone going all in on the ultra-darkness but actually doing it right. Because no matter who it is doing the bad thing, who they do it to, and how well laid their plans are, they always seem to suffer consequences for their actions.

In this particular example, there is a scene where Sandor Clegane casually murders a little boy named Micah in the first book because evil Prince Joffrey did a thing. And of course, none of the bad guys suffer any repercussions. At the time, I chalked it up to another example of just how unfair this medieval fantasy world is meant to be.

Flash forward another book or two. The king is dead, chaos reigns, and the Stark family has been scattered to the winds. Little Arya Stark, who had been a friend of Micah, falls in with a group of good guy outlaws. And to her surprise, they have taken the now renegade Sandor Clegane hostage.

Naturally, since the Hound had been one of Joffrey’s top henchmen, this is a big catch for them, but since they insist on doing things honorably and giving him a fair trial, they run into the problem of being unable to pin any specific crime on him, since most of the stuff they come up with was actually carried out by other people or they can’t prove that Sandor was involved. But then Arya brings up Micah, which Sandor actually did, and of course the outlaws seize upon.

Now, when I read this, I actually put the book down for a moment to pump my fist. Because holy crap, they’re actually acknowledging that whole thing! It wasn’t just another example of an innocent person getting offed for shock value without the perpetrator being held accountable! It was getting brought up, and not only that, it was being used as a plot point! It was beautiful!

Of course, Sandor does actually win the resulting trial by combat and is set free, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that Song of Ice and Fire, as grimdark as it is, is fully committed to holding all of its characters responsible for their actions, and sometimes small cruelties will come back in huge ways, and I think that’s awesome.

Another example from the same series is Theon Greyjoy. Now, here is a guy whose insecurities lead him to betray the family he was raised by, steal their home, execute their associates, and even murder a couple of little boys and cover their bodies with tar just to make his men think that he had successfully killed the Stark boys rather than admit that they got away. Now normally, this would put him right at the top of my shit list, and it did for a while. But surprise surprise, the story actually manages to make him look sympathetic again, by…

1. Showing full well how his insecurities have caused him to make these mistakes

2. Have him get called out by pretty much everyone over how horrible his actions are

3. Show full well that he understands this, and feels rotten about it deep down inside

4. Have him essentially put through hell as a result, to the point where he’s physically mutilated and mentally scarred by Ramsay Bolton’s…administrations

5. Have him go through even more hell to try to redeem himself and put his life on the line to protect someone innocent

6. Make him acknowledge that he doesn’t deserve forgiveness, but he’s going to try to do whatever he can to atone for his sins once he gets his identity back

Through all that, when he finally is forgiven by Jon Snow and welcomed back into the Stark family, it does feel earned, and not through excusing what he did, but by acknowledging it and dealing with it directly.

B. Spike shows genuine remorse for his past, in Buffy/Angel

Kind of weird to include Buffy/Angel in this section after already calling it out before, but I’m pretty sure these two episodes had different writers.

Anyway, Spike is undoubtedly one of the most, if not the most popular characters in the Buffyverse, and it should come as no surprise that he’s my personal favorite. Quick background for anyone who hasn’t seen the series: he is a British punk-rock vampire renowned for loving violence and besting two Slayers in one-on-one combat. He started off as a main villain, but became so popular that the writers nixed his planned death and spent several seasons slowly bringing him over to the good guys’ side, first out of necessity, but giving him a redemption arc (which was controversial for…reasons) that ultimately ended with him fighting to get his soul back and become an actual hero. So, hoorays all around.

However, there still is the lingering problem of him having spent over a hundred years torturing and killing his way across the world. The last season of Buffy tried to address that by revealing that one of the heroes’ new allies was the son of one of Spike’s victim and wasn’t too keen on working with the monster that killed his mothers, but their execution of said idea was…deeply flawed, to say the least.

Things got better when Spike made the jump over to Buffy’s sister series Angel. In it, a rogue Slayer named Dana, who has been rendered mentally unstable after an evil man murdered her family and tortured her as a child, is deluded into believing that Spike was the man that ruined her life. As such, she kidnaps him, tortures him, and even cuts off his hands (don’t worry, he’s a vampire, they can deal). Then the cavalry arrives to save the day. Dana is captured and handed off to people that can actually help her, Spike is rescued, and goes to the hospital to have his hands sewn back on. Like I said: vampire. They can do that.

Anyway, Angel then uncharacteristically goes to visit Spike, and as a bit of a surprise Spike doesn’t seem to hold any anger toward Dana at all, and instead says something to the tune of, “What? I’m supposed to be angry because hers wasn’t one of the hundreds of families I killed? I spent so much time being a monster, I never stopped to look back at the victims.”

This is great, as it 1, acknowledges the wrong he’s done, 2, shows that no matter what he does to redeem himself, it’s always going to hang over him, and 3, puts no blame on Dana whatsoever. And with that, I felt like I was free to like and root for Spike without having an asterisk hovering over everything.

And honestly, that’s all I ask for. Acknowledgement. Accountability. Acceptance of consequences. Because otherwise, it just leaves a rotten taste in my mouth, and the more I see it happen in fiction, the more it bugs me.

So, that’s my rant about storytelling for today. My next posts will probably be something more positive.

#buffy the vampire slayer #buffy summers #chloe #harry potter #hermione granger #marietta edgecombe #Warcraft 3 #tyrande whisperwind #elfen lied #lucy #future diary #angel #spike #game of thrones #sandor clegane #arya #rant

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doramaticbites · 7 years

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10 Representative Jdramas of the 2010s (so far)

This post is inspired by, or rather, is a reply to this excellent question posted by an anon to @jdramaconfessions. I meant to reblog the post with a reply but then this post got MASSIVE so I decided to just make a new one.

Of course, the best answer to that question of what are the representative dramas of this current decade can only be written in about 2025, when there is enough time to look back and take stock of what dramas actually stood the test of time. As it is, there are still 3.5 years left to the decade – and if 2013 and 2016 was any indication, one fairly good year could give us a couple of hits. That being said, I’m going to try.

I think the best place to start, when trying to curate a list of representative dramas is first to ask – how exactly does one define representative and what are these dramas supposed to be representative of?

The word ‘representative’ is tricky to me because it implies something different than ‘favourite’. When asked for a list of ‘favourite’ dramas, it’s definitely personal, and there’s no need to try to choose something objectively. But the word ‘representative’ implies that there has to be some sense of objectivity to one’s choice, even though I agree with the admin of jdramaconfessions that at the end of the day, personal preference still comes into play.

I define representative in three ways.

Firstly, by memorability. We are still living this decade out, so it’s hard to say which dramas will stand the test of time in the next decade or so. Still, I’m sure that there are a number of dramas from the early 2010s that cling on to our minds and are still referred to often.

Secondly, by popularity. I don’t mean to say that every popular show that has come out in the past decade is automatically memorable or representative drama. In fact, quite the contrary. Every season will inevitably have its own popular drama. But there are a number of dramas that have exploded in popularity and I feel that it is then valid to give them a spot on the list. After all, to an extent, popularity indicates a show’s ability to resonate with a wide audience. I will also try to choose dramas that are popular both domestically and internationally. Making popularity a criteria is also why I sadly exclude excellent dramas like the Oguri-led BORDER and gothic drama Karamazov no Kyodai – both were insanely memorable and unique to me, but perhaps not commercially popular enough to make them ‘representative’.

Thirdly, by innovation. This is also a way to address the question of ‘What exactly are these choices supposed to be representative of’? Jdrama is a big umbrella of many sub-genres. A representative drama of one sub-genre (say romance) may not always be representative of the entire group. Though to be sure, there are times when they overlap. So what I mean by ‘innovation’ is any given drama’s ability to give fresh life to their genres, and bring something new to the table. It’s a drama’s ability to be either be excellent within the constraints of its genre, or conversely, its ability to push the boundaries of the genre.

With that being said, I’ve got chosen a couple of dramas I think fit the bill – In no particular order after the cut!

1) Hanzawa Naoki

I’m putting this one first because @midnightrain910 brought it up. Yes. Personally I didn’t think Hanzawa Naoki was THAT great, but boy was it adored by repressed salarymen all over Japan. I literally had 2 of my (Japanese) managers come up to me to ask me if I’d watched it – on separate occasions! I mean shame on any 2013 Japan enthusiast who didn’t know the “bai-gaeshi” catchphrase. It also cemented Masato Sakai’s reputation as a credible and commercially viable actor.

2) JIN 2

I thought JIN 2 was inferior to the first season, but I included it anyway because I wanted to somehow squeeze JIN into this list. JIN is the historical, time-travel, medical drama OF DREAMS. It was so well-acted and so unexpectedly good. Just last year my Turkish colleague was raving about it to me. In that sense, I think it is an internationally accessible jidaigeki with a lot of heart.

3) Strawberry Night

Ok so, if you were to compare Strawberry Night with the MANY other Japanese crime/detective dramas, you wouldn’t find it definitive or groundbreaking. But still, it was GOOD. Sure I may be biased, but look, it lasted 2 SPs, 1 full season and 1 movie. If that’s not a testament of its popularity I don’t know what is. It managed to weave a bit of romance into it too. Also I think this is the series that threw Nishijima Hidetoshi into the limelight. He’s been around for ages, but I don’t think he had done anything since Asunaro Hakusho that was really popular until Strawberry Night.

4) Juhan Shuttai!

Juhan Shuttai! never set out to be critically acclaimed or sold itself like it was a precious gem filled with top actors. Nah, it set out to be a feel-good show but boy was it that and MORE. It just goes to show that great characterisation and a solid plot will bring a show far. That’s not to say that the actors weren’t good. A few of them were excellent, some of them were serviceable. I just wanted to point out that unlike some shows (cough Triangle, cough Rich Man Poor Woman, cough MOZU), they didn’t overpromise and underdeliver. Also, oftentimes well-written dramas happen to be so serious. I would really love to see more in the vein of Juhan Shuttai! (And Legal High, if I might add).

5) Quartet (2017) - Not to be confused with the other jdrama of the same name

Putting this in despite not having watched it because all the reviewers that I trust to give an honest opinion found that it lived up to its hype. THANK GOOD HEAVENS. After giving the couple of examples above of how a good cast doth not a good drama make, I’m glad that Quartet can now live on as the drama which BROUGHT IT. Also I wasn’t about to make this list without Mitsushima Hikari (If Quartet hadn’t made it I would have put in Woman). She’s one of most excellent actresses to have surfaced this decade. It’s so odd because I remember her from Folder5 days – and who would’ve known she’d be here today.

6) Marks no Yama

To me this must have been the drama that put WOWOW on the map. It was that drama that made everyone sit up and realise that WOWOW wasn’t just a second-rate channel airing foreign shows. It had a good strategy going – a very strong understanding of its niche, and the willingness to ignore popular models and idols and go for gritty, well-written fare instead. Because I’m ultimately quite a frivolous drama fan, I must have to say most of WOWOW posters (and shows) don’t really attract me, but the couple that I have watched have wow-ed me (pardon the pun).

7) Itazura na Kiss ~ Love in Tokyo

Ok it was a toss up between Good Morning Call and this one, neither of which I watched by the way. Well I did attempt one episode of GMC but I just….couldn’t. The truth is, now that I teach Japanese high-schoolers, it’s very hard for me to watch dramas with them in it. Though in a sense I’ve outgrown the genre, it’s more of a ‘this hits too close to home’ thing. That being said, high school dramas are a staple of drama world and it’d be weird not to include at least one. So I just went with which one I heard about the most.

Admittedly, the early to mid 2000s were a heyday for high school dramas to me. I’m hard-pressed to find a Stand Up! or Nobuta wo Produce among the current lot of dramas. They just don’t make them like they did anymore. That’s not to say it has been bad. I thoroughly enjoyed Narimiya Hiroki and Niigaki Risa trying their darndest to act like teens in Yankee Kun to Megane Chan. I was impressed that Piece managed to build itself into a dark mystery cum social commentary despite having pretty weak actors. I heard Sprout was cute. THAT SAID, none of them could be considered representative in my book.

As such, Itazura na Kiss stands out for being one rare remake that actually became as popular as its predecessor – and which was one teen drama to capture the hearts of international tumblrites.

8) Saikou no Rikon

Not only was this the show that introduced me to the genius that is Ono Machiko, it was the drama that turned the romance drama genre on its head. Its dialogue was witty, it was unapologetically real. And I think it made more writers sit up and realise that it’s the 2010s and they should really be challenging romcom stereotypes, not mindlessly rehashing them again and again.

9) We Got Married as a Job

@repinipi brought this up and yes, HOLY SMOKES this was THE romcom of 2016. It took Japan by storm. Till now theme song Koi is still on the top 10 of karaoke charts. My kids went wild when we teachers danced it at grad party. People still talk about the drama and Hoshino Gen is capitalising on it. Solidly written, it managed to be realistic, though the circumstances were obviously way to fictional to happen in real life. In 2020, I think this drama will still be looked upon fondly.

10) HiGH & LOW

I thought about this. I thought about this long and hard because, should H&L even be considered on the same plane as other dramas? At its core, it’s more of a promotional vehicle. But it just threw the delinquent/gang genre and shook it up into it’s own visually brilliant spectacle. It will probably never find its place among mainstream audiences in Japan. But it has grown its own dedicated fan base. If anything I’d compare it to Tokusatsu and Takarazuka fandoms. They are niche, but there are there, they are proud, and they are ready to throw some bills. LDH took J&A’s ambition and promotional ideas, then stepped it up a couple of notches. If anything, the business savvy of this company puts the entire series on this list.

Final Thoughts

I am just one person who simply hasn’t had much time to watch as much jdrama as I’d like. So its inevitable that I would have missed some out. Also, to make the arbitrary number of 10, I was unable to put some other picks on (trust me I would put either SPEC, Yae no Sakura, or Sanada Maru in in a heartbeat). Well, it wouldn’t be representative if too many made the list eh? Lastly, please remember, objective as I try to be, feel free to agree or disagree. Let me know your picks! :)

#jdrama #jdramas #hanzawa naoki #saikou no rikon #juhan shuttai #quartet #we got married as a job #Nigeru wa Haji da ga Yaku ni Tatsu #high&low #jin #marks no yama #strawberry night #itazura na kiss love in tokyo

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northpolenotes · 5 years

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Great Gifts for Boys Ages 5-8

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Are you looking for a great birthday or holiday gift for boys around the age of five to eight years old? Do you have a nephew or little boy turning 5-8 years old soon? Are you having trouble figuring out what to get for him?

Whether it’s for her birthday, special event, or holiday, there are certain gifts that are always a winner amongst this age group of boys.

As a babysitter for two boys in this age group and my nephew Jayden, who’s now 6 years old, I can say with most certainty that these toys are all winners with this age group.

As a woman, it’s a little hard to tune into the little boy mentality. However, if you just step back and watch how boys play, it’s easier to get a feel for what they might like. Boys like physical and interactive things.

In general, boys love things with moving parts, where you can see physical reactions and get results.

By five years old they’ve grown out of their preschool toys, and now they’re ready for big boy toys. They still want to play, but not with anything that they deem to be “baby” toys. It doesn’t mean that they don’t want to play with toy cars and balls, but they don’t want toys that light up and make noises like the ones for toddlers.

Legos are great, but what else is out there??

So what do you buy for your boy who’s now turned into a big boy overnight? Here’s the list of toys that I’ve gotten for boys ages 5-8 years old that are played with regularly.

Here’s a list of Jayden’s Favorite Toys!

Pokemon Cards

Have you heard of Pokemon? These are trading cards that are used to “battle” your opponent. It’s almost like playing the traditional card game of War combined with fantasy sports.

Some kids want the cards just to collect them and others want to learn to play the game. I learned the best way to play the game with them is to allow them to teach you.

Though it’s not necessary for you to play Pokemon with the kids, it’s a good bonding opportunity for you both. It shows them that you have an interest in their life. Taking time out to learn something new with them is a great way to show your love and affection.

If you want to brush up on your Pokemon skills, here’s a helpful resource.

You get 100 cards in this set plus 7 foil cards. You have to have at least 60 to play the game competitively. This is the best option because booster sets cost about $5 each. For the price, it’s worth starting here!

Note that there may be duplicates in this set.

Check them out on Amazon:

Pokemon Cards

Nerf Gun

Nerf guns are either a love or hate it item. I happen to love them, and so do the boys.

You’re not teaching them to hurt other people, you’re allowing them to explore their imagination and learn boundaries. There are certain rules that you can put in place with these guns. Such as, no pointing guns at anyone’s face, when someone says stop, stop, and apologize if you hurt someone. Kids are going to get hurt. It’s part of growing up.

I like this gun because of its size. It’s easily manageable and not too heavy which makes running around with it during a nerf war doable for kids.

Don’t let the size deceive you. This gun packs power! The darts can shoot up to 90 feet!

Comes with 6 Official Nerf Elite darts that are designed for distance, tested and approved for performance and quality, and constructed of foam with flexible, hollow tips

Rotating barrel flips open for easy dart loading and is hand-powered

No batteries needed!

Both of nephews, Jayden and Julian love their nerf guns. I suggest buying more than one. Even if they don’t have a sibling to play with, you can join in on the fun by being their opponent.

I also recommend to load up on darts! Unfortunately, nerf darts are easy to lose or become damaged over time. 200 is a good point to start with and it’s not going to break the bank.

Check them out on Amazon:

Nerf Gun

Refill darts

Beyblade

No, Beyblades aren’t actual blades!

Beyblades are spinning tops that “break” upon impact.

Beyblade battles take place with two to four players. Each opponent puts their Beyblade on a launcher the ripcord. You then aim them over the Beystadium, and start the Beyblade battle with, “3, 2, 1, Let it Rip!”

The beyblades then spin in the stadium and once they collide, once, twice, or even three times one beyblade will “explode” and break into pieces (they go back together).

I found that it takes a little practice to get the launching right. It’s a little tricky and I got mine stuck a few times and I even broke a nail. However, it’s a lot of fun and no two battles are ever exactly alike.

It’s a good idea to buy the complete kit with the Beyblades and the stadium (the plastic container). The beys spin rather fast and could cause some minor damage (dents or scratches) to walls if you play with it outside of the beystadium.

Check it out on Amazon:

Beyblade

Grossery Gang

The Grossery Gang is a parody from the Shopkins line.

The grosseries are collectible figures that are groceries and foods that have gone bad. There are more than 150 Grosseries to collect including Putrid Pizza, Dodgey Donut, Shoccoli, Rotten Egg and more!

You can buy just the figures, which vary by season. The season just means the figures that they have come up with for that period of time. Each new season has different characters with new funny expressions and names.

However, I recommend stepping it up a notch, and getting them two toys in one, which is the Grossery Gang figures and Truck. The kids can launch their grosseries with the built-in spring-loaded catapult.

There’s also fold down doors which can store the collectibles and action figures to go along for a ride or just kept their when they’re not in play.

The truck doesn’t come with many collectible figures, but there are enough to get the party started so to speak.

Though grosseries are pretty soft, I wouldn’t recommend playing with the catapult a room that has anything breakable. It could hit something and make it fall from a shelf.

Check it out on Amazon:

Grossery Gang Truck

Grossery Gang Figures

Hot Wheels Crash Track

My nephew LOVES this toy. It has four intersecting crash zones and a car feeder ramp. So you have multiple cars driving on the tracks at the same time. The total excitement with this toy is you’ll never know if the race will lead to the cars passing each other with near misses or end in a total 4 car pile up.

4 D batteries required

This toy is a lot of fun to play with, even my niece was interested and she’s more of a doll girl. However there are some things to note before buying.

Customers have complained about the noise level of this toy. When the motor is running, it makes noise, but it’s keeping the kids entertained, so that’s the tradeoff.

Second, you must read the directions while assembling the tracks. It matters and if you don’t put it together correctly, you’ll think the toy is broken when indeed it’s not!

Third, once the toy is put together, it is a little bulky. And if you decided to take it apart and put to back together at a later date (never my thing), make sure you’re careful with the pieces. Replacement parts are not sold sepearately.

Check it out on Amazon:

Hot Wheels Crash Track

Crayola Light-up Tracing Pad

Art is a favorite pass time in my family. My nephew Jayden loves to draw, color, and craft. It’s not always easy for children to simply see a picture and replicate it, though some can.

We often turn to Arthub on YouTube to draw pictures, but sometimes kids need some independent and screen free time.

This Crayola light up tracing pad is great for kids to be independent and creative and the time.

I have a light board myself, and I use it often especially to perfect any line drawings that I make. It’s so convenient, love it!

This tracing pad kit includes:

Coloring Board

Graphite Pencil (artist’s pencil)

12 Short Colored Pencils

10 Tracing Sheets

10 Blank Sheets

Requires 3 AA batteries (not included)

You don’t have to use the templates included in the box. Kids can trace anything because the light board just provides enough light to the paper so that the outlines can be seen and traced. You can make your own pictures and have kids trace them, or they can improve their artwork and handwriting skills by going over it with a fresh piece of paper.

Some people thought the light wasn’t bright enough, but ours works great.

Check it out on Amazon:

Make sure to watch the video!

Crayola Light-up Tracing Pad

Boxer

I had never heard of Boxer before this Christmas, but he was on my nephew’s list and it wound up being his favorite toy this year so I’m glad we got it.

Boxer is an A.I. (artificial intelligence) robot. Right out of the box he’s ready to play with via remote control. But he’s not just any robot, he has different functions. He has 4 different modes: app mode, remote mode, play mode, and card scan mode.

He’s small and cute. While he’s rolling around he’ll say things like “bee bop” and other noises which grabs the kids attention. But he’s not just a remote control toy.

You can switch him to card mode where he scans comes with a ball to play 10 different games such as Bot Bowling, Paddle Bot, and soccer. He can sense your hands and feet and will respond to them.

You can also download an app for more games, but we haven’t explored that yet.

I found that he didn’t move that fast on the carpet. He was much better at on the hardwood floors.

Some people complain about his size (he’s pretty small), but he can do a lot for his size and it’s a toy that doesn’t just take up space without anyone ever touching it. I think Boxer is great, and Jayden agrees!

Check it out on Amazon:

Boxer

Of course there are also FREE gifts that can go along with these toys.

Try writing her a letter. It’s a gift that they can hold on to forever. Loving words are never outgrown!

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Need Help Getting Started? Enter your email address below and get 3 Letter To Your Niece or Nephew Templates

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Email Address *

(function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]='EMAIL';ftypes[0]='email';fnames[1]='FNAME';ftypes[1]='text';fnames[2]='LNAME';ftypes[2]='text';fnames[3]='ADDRESS';ftypes[3]='address';fnames[4]='PHONE';ftypes[4]='phone';}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true);

Does your nephew love to color? Jayden always asks me to draw him different things so he can color them in! It’s a great addition for Crayola board! Enter your email address for a FREE hand-drawn, coloring ebook – A-Z Animals!

Get Your Free A-Z Animal Coloring Book!

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Email Address *

First Name

(function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]='EMAIL';ftypes[0]='email';fnames[1]='FNAME';ftypes[1]='text';fnames[3]='ADDRESS';ftypes[3]='address';fnames[4]='PHONE';ftypes[4]='phone';}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true);

I hope that you’ve found the perfect gift for your 5-8 year-old boys in your life. Jayden loves each and every one of these toys and continues to get great use of out them. I often peek in on him to find that he combines these toys so that they all play together. His imagination never ceases to amaze me.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like:

How to Shop For Your Nieces and Nephews

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