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o-neillwith2ls · 3 years

Text

I've waited for this!

Original/Fanfiction: Fanfiction

Fandom: Stargate SG-1

Rating: PG/13

Warning/ Triggers: none

FYI: The dates coinside with the airing of the eposides, some are a couple of days off but its obvious which one htey are meant to be.

14 July 2000

Carter,

I don't want this to be some soppy letter. I'm not good at expressing what it is I feel inside. I didn't even know until it was almost too late, until I saw you on the other side of that forcefield.

But you already know. I saw it in your eyes, and I wonder how long you've known.

You're smart. You've probably known a long time.

I can't even finish writing it out of fear this will be found, and my selfish feelings will rip you from me.

I promised myself that I won't be the reason your life gets ruined.

So, I'll wait.

28 July 2000

I could have lost you, Sam.

No sooner had we admitted to even a little more than our respective roles, you were mourning the death of the man and symbiote the Tok'ra who once shared your body loved for over 100 years.

I have no way of…. No, I have no right to comfort you.

I could have lost you, Sam.

Why does it feel like I already did?

4 Aug 2000

Sam,

I have something I have to admit and I'm not sure you'll like it.

I mean you did. Like it that is, but I have to bear in mind that it was consequences-free and you knew it.

For a blissful twenty seconds we were consequence-free.

You were surprised, but you soon relaxed; you were in my arms, and we were just two people together.

I'm sorry if my admission embarrasses or makes life awkward for you.

Believe me, it was the last of my intentions. I would never want to make you feel that way.

But I was curious and truly a free agent, and when Daniel pointed out I could do whatever I wanted free of consequence, my first thought was of you.

I think I'm in deep, Carter.

1 September 2000

Thera,

I'm addressing this to you as the man that can. Before too much of the man who can't admit it occupies my mind.

During the last few weeks, I have never been as happy, as complete, then I am with you. You make me happy, not my lack of memories.

I would never be a complete or real person without you.

It meant the world to me that we found each other and shared ourselves with each other.

I am yours whatever my name is.

Jonah.

15 September 2000

I remember a certain Blond Captain once asking me if I died would I regret anything.

Oxygen deprived really gets you evaluating as well as frostbite.

Turns out my biggest regret now would be in not telling you how I feel.

I still can't, so I hope you know I want to show you through my actions.

You came for me, Sam.

I live, because of you.

26 Jan 2001

Withdrawal is hard.

But it took everything in me not to overpower you and just get it over with.

I think there would be some kind of relief to the act, but I don't care for the feeling of regret after. Knowing what I would have done to you.

I might crave you for the rest of my life.

But this is stronger.

I'll be stronger for you, Sam.

29 June 2001

I lost Teal’c.

I can almost see you rolling your eyes at me, trying to comfort me, and tell me it’s not down to me.

But it is.

And I'm scared.

I'm scared next time it might be just as easily you.

I am a liability to your life.

In more ways than one.

Find someone, Sam, who can love you, protect you, and keep you safe. Can do all the things I want to.

Because I can't be trusted to be with you.

10 July 2001

Okay, I didn't expect you to move on that quick.

Or has it been slow?

Have you been trying to get over whatever it is we had? Of course, you're not as emotionally invested in this as me.

You have options.

Everyone who meets you loves you.

And this alien guy, Orlin, sees you for all the beautiful and wonderful things you are, and he got share it with you.

I want to be happy that you're loved.

I wish – no I didn't wish it were me.

I feel so selfish. I didn't believe you at first and you had to let go of something you wanted. You were caught… between saving the world or your own butt, of course you chose the former.

You… you'd give this world your heart on a platter.

And you had to do it alone.

I'm sorry, Sam.

7 September 2001

I lost you. Again.

All my fears rolled into one.

And it wasn't out there in the big wide void of space.

They took you here! From outside your gym!

I remember when I heard that gunshot which killed Charlie.

And then the memory of that dread spread through my body that day… that same dread overtook me.

We found you in the nick of time.

I don't know what I would do if they took you away from me now.

Because I love you.

2 March 2002

I won't lie. Today was a good day.

It wasn't because I got to tease the cadets into believing I'm a terrifying Colonel, although that was pretty spectacular.

It was a good day, because you stood by my side, you were with me and, to them, we might as well have been equals in rank in their eyes. And, Sam, that was a great feeling.

I love making you smile and laugh. I love we have lots of in jokes which scared the pants off those kids. I love--all of it.

I wish I could tell you.

15 March 2002

I love it when you're all happy and smiling.

But, Samantha Carter, there is something which turns me on so much and that’s when you're rightly indignant and you march on and prove them wrong!

Not only do I love it, but it saved Teal’c's life today.

Never stop being you.

17 May 2002

You want me to talk. To acknowledge my pain somehow.

I wish I could. If only for you, Sam.

I don’t think I can't verbalise the way I feel for you, not even those three simple words ‘I love you’ covers it.

Daniel brought me back from a precipice. One, I was sure had no route of escape. Yet he talked me from the edge. Even when he lived on Abydos for a year, he was the reason I didn't jump.

He was so full of hope and faith, and those kids I lied for.

They deserved to live.

Just like my Charlie.

So, I protected them as best as I could.

I protected Daniel, as best as I could.

And I still failed him. Failed them.

For all I love you, everything I love, dies.

I can't lose you, Sam.

So, I'm letting you go first.

19 July 2002

"I know I said I was letting you go. But I can't. The Tok'ra which they gave me looked inside of me and saw what I would do to protect you, and I ended up being tortured without the Tok'ra the wimp, who ran at first sight of trouble. Clearly, he didn't learn enough.

I'd do it all again to save you.

23 August 2002

I hate that the ship was taken from under our noses.

I love that you willingly sacrifice yourself to save the planet. I love that you don't think of yourself, that you would carry out exactly what is needed of you. I love you for holding out with no weapons, no way out until I got to you.

For all I love all this about you.

Please don't do it again.

Don't sacrifice yourself for this world.

Nothing in this world is worth that much.

24 Jan 2003

Thank you for believing in me so much.

I never quite say it, but I'm glad you're my second. I don't think anyone would willingly put their lives in my hands like you do.

It speaks volumes of the kind of trust we have. You knew without evidence, even though you've seen what I'm capable of.

Just thanks.

7 February 2003

It's like it's an annual thing! They try to take you from me. Your head on my shoulders, my heart in my throat. I could do nothing to save you.

The thought of losing you now to some psychopathic lunatic of a snake--

Losing Daniel was hard. Almost losing Teal’c was painful.

Losing you would be unbearable.

14 March 2003

A lot has gone on lately.

Daniel has helped ascend Abydos.

It's a painful reminder of where we all started, how this all started. It’s hard knowing I won't see Skaara again. I won't see him grow or raise a family. I won't see any of those kids again, and yet, they aren't dead and gone.

They've ascended, and if they're anything like Daniel, they'll show them how it should be done. It'll be good to have good people up there.

And yet in all of that, I think Skaara was trying to set us up! It's a sad case of affairs when I can't hide how I feel for you from a kid inviting me to his wedding!

But you didn't seem disgusted, you just seemed distant from the idea of us being romantically linked, jumping to "friends". I suppose it's not so terrible being your friend, it has led me to the conclusion that you no longer care for me the way you once did.

That's okay.

I want you to live your life. You're amazing inside and out, any man would be lucky. It's a shame, that's all. I wanted it to be me.

16 Jan 2004

I know it's been a while since I've written anything.

I thought I had started to get over you. Turns out the minute you go missing, I go crazy!

And T told me when Colonel Maybourne and I were stranded off world, you despaired at the thought of never seeing me again.

And I hoped -- I hoped you still wanted me, like I wanted you, but when we found you--I don't think you did.

I have to give up now, but if you ever find these letters, know that I will always be there for you. I will always care for you, if you need me, I'll always be by your side.

30 January 2004

It's bittersweet when you finally took my advice and found someone away from all this.

I always hoped it would have been me, but as long as you're happy -- I'll be happy for you, because you deserve the best in life -- and that's definitely not me.

I hope this guy is that guy.

I hope he gives you all you deserve.

6 February 2004

It scares me when I lose you. I've said it so many times in these letters, but it doesn't make it any less true. So, when you went missing at the Alpha site, even dad didn't believe you could still be alive.

I'm surprised. I thought he knew you better, if anyone can keep going to the last millisecond it's you, Carter.

Can I tell you something? When we found you all bruised and broken, you asked me to sit with you. I sat beside you and gathered you for a hug. It was to reassure myself. that you were alive, and real. Selfishly, I knew it was one of the only places your boyfriend wouldn't find us. Because I wanted you to myself, just to be sure you were safe.

20 February 2004

I should be telling you to talk to your boyfriend about this.

Not the specifics, but the situation.

That your best friend is dead. and your boss almost died too. I should be saying to you he can help; he'll understand how rough it is on you.

But I couldn't deny you. Never could.

When you stood in front of me crying telling me you were glad I was okay.

It felt like so much was not said, and we didn't confirm or deny anything, and maybe this physical barrier of a having a boyfriend was enough to let me comfort you as a friend.

Just a little bit, just a hug a little, and why I lied to myself when I spent the night with you as a friend when I really wanted more but that’s not what I told myself.

That it’s nothing but professional concern.

You have a boyfriend after all.

18 March 2004

I have so much to tell you. So much I want to say.

When you ‘dropped by’, I knew.

And I stopped you. Because that line has been drawn and neither of us would cross it.

I worried you were saying it because my life would end soon and you felt as though you should admit it, after all there would be no consequences.

But I know that sort of love.

Admitting with no consequences only makes you regret having not said it sooner.

I want to die, knowing I haven't caused any sort of regrets for you.

If I go now, promise me you’ll love him with all of you.

That you will be happy.

And there are no regrets.

Comdo.

20 August 2004

Sam, I think this will be my last letter.

You asked me, as if … as if I could change your answer.

Don't you understand?

I don't want to change anything about you.

I want you to be happy. It's my only desire, my one wish for you to be.

The world could go down in flames, but as long as you were happy and safe then it would be okay.

It felt like you were looking for validation of your emotions, of your thoughts and feelings, like you had to be sure I didn't love you and I do but I can’t tell you!

But telling you to drop your relationship, to change your mind and pick me… is selfish and self-indulgent.

To believe I could be worth it for you and let you wait for something that might never happen!

I can't do that to you, Sam, because I love you.

I've already lost you! You’ve moved on without me. And there’s no way back.

But for you, I'd endure it all.

Because you're worth it.

08 March 2005

It feels like I cheated on you.

You're not mine to love, I know it.

I'm with a beautiful, free to love woman and I feel like I cheated on you.

I shouldn't even be thinking it, never mind writing it.

15 March 2005

You're lying asleep beside me, in my bed, completely naked.

It's three in the morning and I can't sleep.

I should want to sleep, but I don't want to.

And I don't want to miss a single second!

Eventually I'll succumb to a quiet slumber, and, in the morning, you'll wake, we'll repeat last night then we'll sleep.

Together.

You picked me.

And I got to tell you. I can finally say those three little words.

I love you!

So, for now, I'm savouring it.

Remembering each little detail and storing it in my heart.

Because I've waited for this, and it was worth the wait.

-------

"Hey Sam, I'm just popping out to the store because we're all out coke and beer--" He called out as he walked into the bedroom, and when he did stop suddenly to see her sitting in the middle of their bed surrounded by those pieces of paper he had recorded those letters on, and the shoe box that had been their home for years.

He looked at her and saw she was crying. For a moment, he was shocked. Too surprise to move. His voice and thoughts fought to be in sync.

Her voice was thick with suppressed emotions and she stammered in shock. "I'm sorry. I was looking for my tennis shoes when I found this under the bed. I only opened it to check if we hadn't missed throwing this out at our last move. But then I saw the letters--"

"Were all addressed to you." Jack said swallowing as he carefully sat on the bed trying not to crumple them. "So, I guess it's only fitting--"

"They're love letters!" She cried. "It's our love story. All of it, the messy, the tender, everything it's here."

Jack looked at her for a moment before he asked, "Is that okay?"

She nodded before she reached over the letters that were strewn over the bed, wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and hugged him.

"I've never had a love letter before." She told him.

"Never?" He asked surprised.

Sam shook her head. "This -- this is so romantic!" She sputtered. "I love you, Jack." She eventually whispered before she pulled away. "You waited."

He looked at her and wiped away her tears. "Yeah." He said softly.

"Am I still worth it? The wait?" She asked him.

Jack smiled and was amazed again at her humility. "I don't regret a single second."

#fictober21 #fictober2021 #stargate sg1 #stargate sg-1 #samantha carter sg1 #jack o'neill #jack o neill #samantha carter #sam x jack

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nymph1e · 3 years

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Okay fuck it, I gotta give in, I gotta watch through Supernatural. AFAIK, it's all on Netflix; at least I saw it on there in passing. Going into this, is there anything I should be aware of? Are there any episodes I should skip, any seasons? Should I start from season 4? I know the basic plot and concept, and I know it's very monster-of-the-week. But aside from me highkey shipping Destiel already, that's all.

Well my first piece of advice would be

but uh, let’s fucking ~GO~

If you’re actually jumping into this hellhole (why why why) don’t start at season 4. It’s tempting, but seasons 1-3 are some of the best shit in the whole show, also having context for Sam and Dean’s characters, and their relationship with the supernatural up to season 4 really highlights how fucking wild the introduction of angels is in the show. it’s basically a complete paradigm shift.

I would recommend you watch seasons 1-5 basically as is, though if you’re in a rush, season three is kinda skippable as long as you read a general synopsis. This is the original arc of the show and it shows. A friend of mine, @sammwinchestersdimples has said she’d have been fine if the show had ended there, and I can totally see her point. After season five things start to get... uhhhhh... not as good. THAT BEING SAID some really amazing seasons come later, and you’d get nowhere NEAR the Full Destiel Experience without them. What REALLY sucks is that all the seasons have good moments in them, so even if the seasons are generally bad, they’ll have episodes of GOLD. But fuck it, here’s a season-by-season breakdown.

Season 6 - This is the first... “eh” season. There’s a lot of character choices made in this one that I don’t like. The plot also doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with itself and it has no real main villain... or I guess it has a twist villain? This is also the season where they start chucking in the typical “no homos” you get when a show is queerbaiting, so they can point to the no homo bits and claim the queers are delusional.

Season 7 - The absolute WORST season, imo, is season 7, and it features Cas the least out of all the post season 4 seasons. You can tell the writers genuinely tried to write Cas off here. Not to mention the main plot is completely stupid. HOWEVER this is the season where we get golden things like Cas showing up to Dean’s prayer naked and covered in bees, and the episode where Charlie (best girl) is introduced and Dean subsequently has to flirt with a dude because she, a lesbian, cannot. (Wow so straight, Dean)

Episodes Not To Skip:

6x03 - A good Cas/plot episode (spot the famous destiel quote)

6x04 - A good all-round episode, also Jackles directed it so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

6x09 - This is one of the Batshit Episodes. Definitely watch.

6x10 - On the one hand, Cas episode. On the other, no homo, megstiel episode. Your choice.

6x11 - Good episode.

6x15 - THE ULTIMATE META EPISODE. Sam and Dean are teleported into Jared Padelecki and Jensen Ackles’ lives on the set of Supernatural and it is so batshit.

6x17 - Jolly good episode, and nice destiel content.

6x18 - Time travel episode, which is always fun.

6x19 - “Baby in a trenchcoat.” ‘Nough said.

6x20 - The Man Who Would Be King is the destiel episode. It is infamous in the fandom, and for good reason. It’s not just a good destiel episode, but one of the best episodes in the series. With banging lines like “Freedom is a length of rope. God wants you to hang yourself with it.” and “For a brief moment, I was me again.”

6x21 & 6x22 - The last two episodes are kind of must-watches after TMWWBK, trust me.

Episodes Not To Skip:

7x01 & 7x02 - follows on from s6 final. You don’t wanna skip.

7x05 - Good general episode

7x06 - Again, good general episode. Sets ups plot for the season.

7x08 - Ugh. So the A plot for this episodes invoves Becky, the insane, stalker, fandom-insert character, roofie Sam into marrying her (and it’s heavily implied they have sex - and it’s treated as a joke despite being LITERAL RAPE). BUT this is the episode where Garth is introduced and Garth is fucking amazing. So. IDEK.

7x10 & 7x11 - Plot important.

7x12 - Time travel episode! See if you can catch the bi!dean moment ;)

7x17 - Cas is back! Or is he???

7x18 - GARTH EPISODE

7x20 - CHARLIE!!!! WATCH THIS EPISODE!!!!

7x21 - Cas episode. It’s... interesting.

7x22 - The tagline for this episode is “Sam and Dean seek out an Alpha” 😭. It’s a Cas episode.

7x23 - If Cas weren’t in this episode I’d say skip it.

Season 8 - A fantastic season. If The Man Who Would Be King is the destiel episode, season 8 is the destiel season. When you watch this, DM me so I can RANT about all the amazing destiel this season. It’s also, again, a great season in general I remember watching it as it was airing it was soooo good. You have the arrival of the Bunker, you have Kevin and Charlie being awesome, some nice sprinkles of batshit episodes, BEST BOY BENNY rocks up in all his glory. Fucking epic season. Only downside it Sam’s character takes a bit of a dive. I’d recommend you watch through all of this season.

Episodes To AVOID:

7x13 - I literally pretend this stupid fucking episode doesn’t exist. Basically Dean impregnates a woman with Super Pregnancy and she has a daughter who becomes an adult within hours and then dies. The end. Everyone hated it. Man fuck this episode. Of course it was written by Buckleming.

Season 9 - Sadly, after how amazing season 8 was, and how spectactularly season 9 was set up, this season is a disappointment. It’s an ok season. It’s not bad, it’s not good, it’s just a bit all over the place.

I was going to give you the normal episode list to not skip, but looking through, most episodes this season should be watched for one reason or another. Either they’re Cas heavy, they do some interesting character building, or they feature one of the awesome side characters like Charlie or Jody.

This season is probably the height of the war in the writers’ room about destiel. Some writers want to no homo the whole thing and back way off, while other writers want to lean into it hard. So in the same season where SPOILER Cas loses his virginity to a random reaper woman and Dean kicks Cas out of the bunker to fend for himself, you also have Cas’ fatal flaw used as propaganda against him by Metatron being that he’s "in love” with humanity Dean. /SPOILER Whatever you do DON’T SKIP THE FINAL FEW EPISODES. TRUST ME.

Season 10 - Haha oh dear. This season is likely the biggest for wasted potential. You saw the end of season 9, right? You go “HOLY SHIT YES LET’S DO THIS” and then they do... season 10. They really became experts at setting up an awesome season only to fuck it up in delivery, right? Again, not a bad season, per se.

Episodes To AVOID:

9x05 - In which Dean wants to fuck a dog. I am not joking. I wish I were. Basically a spell-gone-wrong makes Dean doglike. it’s weird. it’s batshit. Not the good kind.

Season 11 - Season 11 is a pretty good season! They tried to give Dean a female love interest but Jackles said ✨No✨ and played Dean as brainwashed and uncomfortable the whole time and I love him for it. Of special note this season is the episode Baby (11x04), which is my favourite episode in the series! It’s funny, it’s heartwarming, it’s weirdly shot. I love it! We also get casifer this season which is awesome! Some episodes are skippable, but they’re generally good episodes.

Episodes NOT to Skip (ignore the 10 year special):

10x01 & 10x02 - Great episodes, Dean in this is *chefs kiss*.

10x04 - *sighs* Fan Fiction. A 200th episode that is simultaneously a love letter to fans and laughing in fans’ faces. I’ve never liked this episode for the second-hand embarressment of it all, but you should watch it and see if you like it.

10x06 - Pretty good episode.

10x07 - Jody AND Donna! Fantastic episode!

10x08 - Dadstiel rears his ugly head. I fucking love how Cas adopts two (2) kids over the course of the series and in both cases Dean eventually goes “ah fuck, I guess I gotta co-parent this thing”. Also we get some KILLER destiel this episode. hey go on a DATE and Cas tells Dean he’s a good person ^_^

10x09 - Good episode. Much destiel.

10x10 - Charlie episode!

10x11 - Teen!Dean! Need I say more?

OK so I just had a look, and you really just need to watch every episode from this point in the season on. Enjoy!

Season 12 - Another example of a TERRRIBLE season, is season 12. Season 12 is also one of the most destiel-heavy seasons in the show. You see the issue? Like, it’s got a stupid plot that makes no sense and has no fucking cohesion, but you also FINALLY have the writers going “fuck it” and all in on the destiel. After this point Dean never has another non-Cas love interest and vice versa, they stop giving us whiplash from baiting and no-homoing. IF the conspiracy theory is true, and the end of the show is shit because of executive meddling, this season is the one where the writers decided they were gonna push for destiel endgame.

I gotta tell you the truth, I skipped this season in my rewatch, so all of my memories are from years ago when it first came out. This seson was the last that I watched live (for a reason). Should you skip it? No. But I’m not well informed enough about this season that I can point out what episodes you should or should not watch.

Season 13 - Congratulations! You’ve reached the point where the show’s gotten consistently good again! (just in time for most of the audience to have already left lol). We start off with SPOILERS Dean mourning Cas like he’s lost the will to fucking live. I’m talking complete despondence, praying for Cas to come back, lashing out in anger at everything, one of the darkest points we’ve ever seen him at on the show, then pulling a 180 and being super happy the second Cas comes back. /SPOILERS They also introduce Jack, who is the SECOND child Cas decides to adopt and Dean ends up co-parenting (Sam too). In fact, Jack is explicity Sam, Cas, and Dean’s kid.

Season 14 - Another good one. My only issue is where they decided to take the plot at the end of the season. I’d recommend watching it all, regardless.

Season 15 - And so we’ve come to the end of the line. This season was... well it was actually pretty good. It started off with what we hellers lovingly refer to as the “divorce arc” where Cas and Dean have a big blow up, and Cas leaves, but that ends with Dean praying on his knees for forgiveness and a nice hug. Honestly this season you can cut the tension between the two of them like a knife, and you can tell Misha and Jensen were doing it deliberately.

I’d say watch up until 15x18, then you decide what to do with the last two episodes. If you want you can watch them to understand just why people put their conspiracy theory hats on, or you can send me another ask and I’ll rec you some post 15x18 finale fics! There’s one fic that’s a replacement for 15x20 written in script format that is particularly good.

Anyway that’s it. It’s kind of left me a little sad, to break down the show in this way. Especially coming up to season 15 nd remembering all the wasted potential. Honestly if you do decide to watch the show, good luck. I hope you enjoy it. I’m also glad you never had to be put through the bullshit false hope that came about after 15x18.

#supernatural #destiel #deancas #spn

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todaydreambelieversfic · 3 years

Text

Author Spotlight: Justgleekout Day 1

Author Spotlight: @justgleekout

How did you get into Glee and Glee fandom?

I remember seeing commercials for it on tv when season 1 was about to come out in the Netherlands. It really looked like something I would love as I already loved musicals like HSM and Hairspray and all that stuff. Though the first episode I actually remember watching was Mattress. (Will finding out his wife was fake pregnant was a very intense and memorable scene for a 12yo!) I absolutely LOVED the show and watched it religiously. When I found out the US was about a season ahead I started watching online. When I was caught up, I started setting my alarm an hour early the day after the episode aired in the US so I could watch it before school started. It was a ride. A friend introduced me to tumblr and I made my glee/klaine blog in February 2012 and I am still here.

In general, what drew you into writing (and/or creating)?

I am more of an artist rather than an author. I've been drawing and making fanart for as long as I can remember. Even before I really knew fanart was a thing I was already making it. because I love my favourite characters and I love drawing them <3 Writing fic took a little longer because english is not my first language and I'm dyslexic. I always loved stories and I always just wanted more!! I started reading fic in 2011 and it looked like something I would be into. I still have a little notebook from when I was 13/14 ish which has a very long story about Sebastian kissing Blaine at a warblers party and Kurt freaking out about it in the worst possible English imaginable..... that story will never see the light of day oml..

I hadn't actually published a story until this year. Glad to be here now though!! Never too late <333

What was it about Glee that made you decide to write fanfic for it?

Kurt and Blaine. God their love is just so beautiful and inspiring. I could fantasize about them for days. It was about time to get the daydreams on paper! (or laptop screen in my case)

Have you been a part of other fandoms before? Have you written fanfiction pre-glee?

I have been in a lot of other fandoms, but none of which I felt as strongly about as glee. When I was younger I was obsessed with the original dutch version of "House of Anubis". I'm still high-key invested in the Avatar: the Last Airbender fandom. also also Shadowhunters and Harry Potter hold big places in my heart. I have however never written about these fandoms because, when it comes to it, nothing brings me as much joy as glee/klaine!

Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to?

Oh so, so many!! But the two ideas that I've been playing with a lot recently (in my head I might add) are a Hogwarts AU and a mid-evil soulmate AU!

Is there a trope you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole?

There are some wild kinks I tend to stay far away from. But the two things I really cannot ever deal with are rape/noncon and abuse.

How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?

How many???? oof I have 28 saved in my notes app. Most are just one shots/ideas, but still. I really want to make a one-shot series of all the klaine kisses that should have been but never were.

But I'll give you a tease for the medieval soulmate AU I'm working on:

People are born with the name of their soulmate on their backs. But everyone who has the name of someone from the same gender has to get their mark magically removed/burned off when they are born. Kurt and Blaine are princes from different kingdoms, who never knew the true names of their soulmates because all there was to see on their backs was a small burn scar. When they meet however, they inevitably fall in love and seek a way to find out what their mark originally says.

***

Check out Justgleekout’s Fics

Grease Monkey - Blaine goes to visit Kurt at 'Hummel Tires And Lube' but he is not prepared for the sight that awaits him.

Welcome Home - After not having seen each other in months, Kurt goes to pick up Blaine from the airport.

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holyhellpod · 3 years

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Holy Hell: 3. Metanarrativity: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship? aka the analysis no one asked for.

In this ep, we delve into authorship, narrative, fandom and narrative meaning. And somehow, as always, bring it back to Cas and Misha Collins.

(Note: the reason I didn’t talk about Billie’s authorship and library is because I completely forgot it existed until I watched season 13 “Advanced Thanatology” again, while waiting for this episode to upload. I’ll find a way to work her into later episodes tho!)

I had to upload it as a new podcast to Spotify so if you could just re-subscribe that would be great! Or listen to it at these other links.

Please listen to the bit at the beginning about monetisation and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to message me here.

Apple | Spotify | Google

Transcript under the cut!

Warnings: discussions of incest, date rape, rpf, war, 9/11, the bush administration, abuse, mental health, addiction, homelessness. Most of these are just one off comments, they’re not full discussions.

Meta-Textuality: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship?

In the third episode of Season 6, “The Third Man,” Balthazar says to Cas, “you tore up the whole script and burned the pages.” That is the fundamental idea the writers of the first five seasons were trying to sell us: whatever grand plan the biblical God had cooking up is worth nothing in face of the love these men have—for each other and the world. Sam, Bobby, Cas and Dean will go to any lengths to protect one another and keep people safe. What’s real? What’s worth saving? People are real. Families are worth saving.

This show plugs free will as the most important thing a person, angel, demon or otherwise can have. The fact of the matter is that Dean was always going to fight against the status quo, Sam was always going to go his own way, and Bobby was always going to do his best for his boys. The only uncertainty in the entire narrative is Cas. He was never meant to rebel. He was never meant to fall from Heaven. He was supposed to fall in line, be a good soldier, and help bring on the apocalypse, but Cas was the first agent of free will in the show’s timeline. Sam followed Lucifer, Dean followed Michael, and John gave himself up for the sins of his children, at once both a God and Jesus figure. But Cas wasn’t modelled off anyone else. He is original. There are definitely some parallels to Ruby, but I would argue those are largely unintentional. Cas broke the mold.

That’s to say nothing of the impact he’s had on the fanbase, and the show itself, which would not have reached 15 seasons and be able to end the way they wanted it to without Cas and Misha Collins. His back must be breaking from carrying the entire show.

But what the holy hell are we doing here today? Not just talking about Cas. We’re talking about metanarrativity: as I define it, and for purposes of this episode, the story within a story, and the act of storytelling. We’re going to go through a select few episodes which I think exemplify the best of what this show has to offer in terms of framing the narrative. We’ll talk about characters like Chuck and Becky and the baby dykes in season 10. And most importantly we’ll talk about the audience’s role, our role, in the reciprocal relationship of storytelling. After all, a tv show is nothing without the viewer.

I was in fact introduced to the concept of metanarrativity by Supernatural, so the fact that I’m revisiting it six years after I finished my degree to talk about the show is one of life’s little jokes.

I’m brushing off my degree and bringing out the big guns (aka literary theorists) to examine this concept. This will be yet another piece of analysis that would’ve gone well in my English Lit degree, but I’ll try not to make it dry as dog shit.

First off, I’m going to argue that the relationship between the creators of Supernatural and the fans has always been a dialogue, albeit with a power imbalance. Throughout the series, even before explicitly metanarrative episodes like season 10 “Fan Fiction” and season 4 “the monster at the end of this book,” the creators have always engaged in conversations with the fans through the show. This includes but is not limited to fan conventions, where the creators have actual, live conversations with the fans. Misha Collins admitted at a con that he’d read fanfiction of Cas while he was filming season 4, but it’s pretty clear even from the first season that the creators, at the very least Eric Kripke, were engaging with fans. The show aired around the same time as Twitter and Tumblr were created, both of which opened up new passageways for fans to interact with each other, and for Twitter and Facebook especially, new passageways for fans to interact with creators and celebrities.

But being the creators, they have ultimate control over what is written, filmed and aired, while we can only speculate and make our own transformative interpretations. But at least since s4, they have engaged in meta narrative construction that at once speaks to fans as well as expands the universe in fun and creative ways. My favourite episodes are the ones where we see the Winchesters through the lens of other characters, such as the season 3 episode “Jus In Bello,” in which Sam and Dean are arrested by Victor Henriksen, and the season 7 episode “Slash Fiction” in which Dean and Sam’s dopplegangers rob banks and kill a bunch of people, loathe as I am to admit that season 7 had an effect on any part of me except my upchuck reflex. My second favourite episodes are the meta episodes, and for this episode of Holy Hell, we’ll be discussing a few: The French Mistake, he Monster at the end of this book, the real ghostbusters, Fan Fiction, Metafiction, and Don’t Call Me Shurley. I’ll also discuss Becky more broadly, because, like, of course I’ll be discussing Becky, she died for our sins.

Let’s take it back. The Monster At The End Of This Book — written by Julie Siege and Nancy Weiner and directed by Mike Rohl. Inarguably one of the better episodes in the first five seasons. Not only is Cas in it, looking so beautiful, but Sam gets something to do, thank god, and it introduces the character of Chuck, who becomes a source of comic relief over the next two seasons. The episode starts with Chuck Shurley, pen named Carver Edlund after my besties, having a vision while passed out drunk. He dreams of Sam and Dean larping as Feds and finding a series of books based on their lives that Chuck has written. They eventually track Chuck down, interrogate him, and realise that he’s a prophet of the lord, tasked with writing the Winchester Gospels. The B plot is Sam plotting to kill Lilith while Dean fails to get them out of the town to escape her. The C plot is Dean and Cas having a moment that strengthens their friendship and leads further into Cas’s eventual disobedience for Dean. Like the movie Disobedience. Exactly like the movie Disobedience. Cas definitely spits in Dean’s mouth, it’s kinda gross to be honest. Maybe I’m just not allo enough to appreciate art.

When Eric Kripke was showrunner of the first five seasons of Supernatural, he conceptualised the character of Chuck. Kripke as the author-god introduced the character of the author-prophet who would later become in Jeremy Carver’s showrun seasons the biblical God. Judith May Fathallah writes in “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural” that Kripke writes himself both into and out of the text, ending his era with Chuck winking at the camera, saying, “nothing really ends,” and disappearing. Kripke stayed on as producer, continuing to write episodes through Sera Gamble’s era, and was even inserted in text in the season 6 episode “The French Mistake”. So nothing really does end, not Kripke’s grip on the show he created, not even the show itself, which fans have jokingly referred to as continuing into its 16th season. Except we’re not joking. It will die when all of us are dead, when there is no one left to remember it. According to W R Fisher, humans are homo narrans, natural storytellers. The Supernatural fandom is telling a fidelitous narrative, one which matches our own beliefs, values and experiences instead of that of canon. Instead of, at Fathallah says, “the Greek tradition, that we should struggle to do the right thing simply because it is right, though we will suffer and be punished anyway,” the fans have created an ending for the characters that satisfies each and every one of our desires, because we each create our own endings. It’s better because we get to share them with each other, in the tradition of campfire stories, each telling our own version and building upon the others. If that’s not the epitome of mythmaking then I don’t know. It’s just great. Dean and Cas are married, Eileen and Sam are married, Jack is sometimes a baby who Claire and Kaia are forced to babysit, Jody and Donna are gonna get hitched soon. It’s season 17, time for many weddings, and Kevin Tran is alive. Kripke, you have no control over this anymore, you crusty hag.

Chuck is introduced as someone with power, but not influence over the story, only how the story is told through the medium of the novels. It’s basically a very badly written, non authorised biography, and Charlie reading literally every book and referencing things she should have no knowledge of is so damn creepy and funny. At first Chuck is surprised by his characters coming to life, despite having written it already, and when shown the intimidating array of weapons in Baby’s trunk he gets real scared. Which is the appropriate response for a skinny 5-foot-8 white guy in a bathrobe who writes terrible fantasy novels for a living.

As far as I can remember, this is the first explicitly metanarrative episode in the series, or at least the first one with in world consequences. It builds upon the lore of Christianity, angels, and God, while teasing what’s to come. Chuck and Sam have a conversation about how the rest of the season is going to play out, and Sam comes away with the impression that he’ll go down with the ship. They touch on Sam’s addiction to demon blood, which Chuck admits he didn’t write into the books, because in the world of supernatural, addiction should be demonised ha ha at every opportunity, except for Dean’s alcoholism which is cool and manly and should never be analysed as an unhealthy trauma coping mechanism.

Chuck is mostly impotent in the story of Sam and Dean, but his very presence presents an element of good luck that turns quickly into a force of antagonism in the series four finale, “Lucifer Rising”, when the archangel Raphael who defeats Lilith in this episode also kills Cas in the finale. It’s Cas’s quick thinking and Dean’s quick doing that resolve the episode and save them from Lilith, once again proving that free will is the greatest force in the universe. Cas is already tearing up pages and burning scripts. The fandom does the same, acting as gods of their own making in taking canon and transforming it into fan art. The fans aren’t impotent like Chuck, but neither do we have sway over the story in the way that Cas and Dean do. Sam isn’t interested in changing the story in the same way—he wants to kill Lilith and save the world, but in doing so continues the story in the way it was always supposed to go, the way the angels and the demons and even God wanted him to.

Neither of them are author-gods in the way that God is. We find out later that Chuck is in fact the real biblical god, and he engineers everything. The one thing he doesn’t engineer, however, is Castiel, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

The Real Ghostbusters

Season 5’s “The real ghostbusters,” written by Nancy Weiner and Erik Kripke, and directed by James L Conway, situates the Winchesters at a fan convention for the Supernatural books. While there, they are confronted by a slew of fans cosplaying as Sam, Dean, Bobby, the scarecrow, Azazel, and more. They happen to stumble upon a case, in the midst of the game where the fans pretend to be on a case, and with the help of two fans cosplaying as Sam and Dean, they put to rest a group of homicidal ghost children and save the day. Chuck as the special guest of the con has a hero moment that spurs Becky on to return his affections. And at the end, we learn that the Colt, which they’ve been hunting down to kill the devil, was given to a demon named Crowley. It’s a fun episode, but ultimately skippable. This episode isn’t so much metanarrative as it is metatextual—metatextual meaning more than one layer of text but not necessarily about the storytelling in those texts—but let’s take a look at it anyway.

The metanarrative element of a show about a series of books about the brothers the show is based on is dope and expands upon what we saw in “the monster at the end of this book”. But the episode tells a tale about about the show itself, and the fandom that surrounds it.

Where “The Monster At The End Of This Book” and the season 5 premiere “Sympathy For The Devil” poked at the coiled snake of fans and the concept of fandom, “the real ghostbusters” drags them into the harsh light of an enclosure and antagonises them in front of an audience. The metanarrative element revolves around not only the books themselves, but the stories concocted within the episode: namely Barnes and Demian the cosplayers and the story of the ghosts. The Winchester brothers’s history that we’ve seen throughout the first five seasons of the show is bared in a tongue in cheek way: while we cried with them when Sam and Dean fought with John, now the story is thrown out in such a way as to mock both the story and the fans’ relationship to it. Let me tell you, there is a lot to be made fun of on this show, but the fans’ relationship to the story of Sam, Dean and everyone they encounter along the way isn’t part of it. I don’t mean to be like, wow you can’t make fun of us ever because we’re special little snowflakes and we take everything so seriously, because you are welcome to make fun of us, but when the creators do it, I can’t help but notice a hint of malice. And I think that’s understandable in a way. Like The relationship between creator and fan is both layered and symbiotic. While Kripke and co no doubt owe the show’s popularity to the fans, especially as the fandom has grown and evolved over time, we’re not exactly free of sin. And don’t get me wrong, no fandom is. But the bad apples always seem to outweigh the good ones, and bad experiences can stick with us long past their due.

However, portraying us as losers with no lives who get too obsessed with this show — well, you know, actually, maybe they’re right. I am a loser with no life and I am too obsessed with this show. So maybe they have a point. But they’re so harsh about it. From wincestie Becky who they paint as a desperate shrew to these cosplayers who threaten Dean’s very perception of himself, we’re not painted in a very good light.

Dean says to Demian and Barnes, “It must be nice to get out of your mom’s basement.” He’s judging them for deriving pleasure from dressing up and pretending to be someone else for a night. He doesn’t seem to get the irony that he does that for a living. As the seasons wore on, the creators made sure to include episodes where Dean’s inner geek could run rampant, often in the form of dressing up like a cowboy, such as season six “Frontierland” and season 13 “Tombstone”. I had to take a break from writing this to laugh for five minutes because Dean is so funny. He’s a car gay but he only likes one car. He doesn’t follow sports. His echolalia causes him to blurt out lines from his favourite movies. He’s a posse magnet. And he loves cosplay. But he will continually degrade and insult anyone who expresses interest in role play, fandom, or interests in general. Maybe that’s why Sam is such a boring person, because Dean as his mother didn’t allow him to have any interests outside of hunting. And when Sam does express interests, Dean insults him too. What a dick. He’s my soulmate, but I am not going to stop listening to hair metal for him. That’s where I draw the line.

Where “the monster at the end of this book” is concerned with narrative and authorship, “the real ghostbusters” is concerned with fandom and fan reactions to the show. It’s not really the best example to talk about in an episode about metanarrativity, but I wanted to include it anyway. It veers from talk of narrative by focusing on the people in the periphery of the narrative—the fans and the author. In season 9 “Metafiction,” Metatron asks the question, who gives the story meaning? The text would have you believe it’s the characters. The angels think it’s God. The fandom think it’s us. The creators think it’s them. Perhaps we will never come to a consensus or even a satisfactory answer to this question. Perhaps that’s the point.

The ultimate takeaway from this episode is that ordinary people, the people Sam and Dean save, the people they save the world for, the people they die for again and again, are what give their story meaning. Chuck defeats a ghost and saves the people in the conference room from being murdered. Demian and Barnes, don’t ask me which is which, burn the bodies of the ghost children and lay their spirits to rest. The text says that ordinary, every day people can rise to the challenge of becoming extraordinary. It’s not a bad note to end on, by any means. And then we find out that Demian and Barnes are a couple, which of course Dean is surprised at, because he lacks object permanence.

This is no doubt influenced by how a good portion of the transformative fandom are queer, and also a nod to the wincesties and RPF writers like Becky who continue to bottom feed off the wrong message of this show. But then, the creators encourage that sort of thing, so who are the real clowns here? Everyone. Everyone involved with this show in any way is a clown, except for the crew, who were able to feed their families for more than a decade.

Okay side note… over the past year or so I’ve been in process of realising that even in fandom queers are in the minority. I know the statistic is that 10% of the world population is queer, but that doesn’t seem right to me? Maybe because 4/5 closest friends are queer and I hang around queers online, but I also think I lack object permanence when it comes to straight people. Like I just do not interact with straight people on a regular basis outside of my best friend and parents and school. So when I hear that someone in fandom is straight I’m like, what the fuck… can you keep that to yourself please? Like if I saw Misha Collins coming out as straight I would be like, I didn’t ask and you didn’t have to tell. Okay I’m mostly joking, but I do forget straight people exist. Mostly I don’t think about whether people are gay or trans or cis or straight unless they’ve explicitly said it and then yes it does colour my perception of them, because of course it would. If they’re part of the queer community, they’re my people. And if they’re straight and cis, then they could very well pose a threat to me and my wellbeing. But I never ask people because it’s not my business to ask. If they feel comfortable enough to tell me, that’s awesome. I think Dean feels the same way. Towards the later seasons at least, he has a good reaction when it’s revealed that someone is queer, even if it is mostly played off as a joke. It’s just that he doesn’t have a frame of reference in his own life to having a gay relationship, either his or someone he’s close to. He says to Cesar and Jesse in season 11 “The Critters” that they fight like brothers, because that’s the only way he knows how to conceptualise it. He doesn’t have a way to categorise his and Cas’s relationship, which is in many ways, long before season 15 “Despair,” harking back even to the parallels between Ruby and Cas in season 3 and 4, a romantic one, aside from that Cas is like a brother to him. Because he’s never had anyone in his life care for him the way Cas does that wasn’t Sam and Bobby, and he doesn’t recognise the romantic element of their relationship until literally Cas says it to him in the third last episode, he just—doesn’t know what his and Cas’s relationship is. He just really doesn’t know. And he grew up with a father who despised him for taking the mom and wife role in their family, the role that John placed him in, for being subservient to John’s wishes where Sam was more rebellious, so of course he wouldn’t understand either his own desires or those of anyone around him who isn’t explicitly shoving their tits in his face. He moulded his entire personality around what he thought John wanted of him, and John says to him explicitly in season 14 “Lebanon”, “I thought you’d have a family,” meaning, like him, wife and two rugrats. And then, dear god, Dean says, thinking of Sam, Cas, Jack, Claire, and Mary, “I have a family.” God that hurts so much. But since for most of his life he hasn’t been himself, he’s been the man he thought his father wanted him to be, he’s never been able to examine his own desires, wants and goals. So even though he’s really good at reading people, he is not good at reading other people’s desires unless they have nefarious intentions. Because he doesn’t recognise what he feels is attraction to men, he doesn’t recognise that in anyone else.

Okay that’s completely off topic, wow. Getting back to metanarrativity in “The Real Ghostbusters,” I’ll just cap it off by saying that the books in this episode are more a frame for the events than the events themselves. However, there are some good outtakes where Chuck answers some questions, and I’m not sure how much of that is scripted and how much is Rob Benedict just going for it, but it lends another element to the idea of Kripke as author-god. The idea of a fan convention is really cool, because at this point Supernatural conventions had been running for about 4 years, since 2006. It’s definitely a tribute to the fans, but also to their own self importance. So it’s a mixed bag, considering there were plenty of elements in there that show the good side of fandom and fans, but ultimately the Winchesters want nothing to do with it, consider it weird, and threaten Chuck when he says he’ll start releasing books again, which as far as they know is his only source of income. But it’s a fun episode and Dean is a grouchy bitch, so who the holy hell cares?

Season 10 episode “fanfiction” written by my close personal friend Robbie Thompson and directed by Phil Sgriccia is one of the funniest episodes this show has ever done. Not only is it full of metatextual and metanarrative jokes, the entire premise revolves around fanservice, but in like a fun and interesting way, not fanservice like killing the band Kansas so that Dean can listen to “Carry On My Wayward Son” in heaven twice. Twice. One version after another. Like I would watch this musical seven times in theatre, I would buy the soundtrack, I would listen to it on repeat and make all my friends listen to it when they attend my online Jitsi birthday party. This musical is my Hamilton. Top ten episodes of this show for sure. The only way it could be better is if Cas was there. And he deserved to be there. He deserved to watch little dyke Castiel make out with her girlfriend with her cute little wings, after which he and Dean share uncomfortable eye contact. Dean himself is forever coming to terms with the fact that gay people exist, but Cas should get every opportunity he can to hear that it’s super cool and great and awesome to be queer. But really he should be in every episode, all of them, all 300 plus episodes including the ones before angels were introduced. I’m going to commission the guy who edits Paddington into every movie to superimpose Cas standing on the highway into every episode at least once.

“Fan Fiction” starts with a tv script and the words “Supernatural pilot created by Eric Kripke”. This Immediately sets up the idea that it’s toying with narrative. Blah blah blah, some people go missing, they stumble into a scene from their worst nightmares: the school is putting on a musical production of a show inspired by the Supernatural books. It’s a comedy of errors. When people continue to go missing, Sam and Dean have to convince the girls that something supernatural is happening, while retaining their dignity and respect. They reveal that they are the real Sam and Dean, and Dean gives the director Marie a summary of their lives over the last five seasons, but they aren’t taken seriously. Because, like, of course they aren’t. Even when the girls realise that something supernatural is happening, they don’t actually believe that the musical they’ve made and the series of books they’re basing it on are real. Despite how Sam and Dean Winchester were literal fugitives for many years at many different times, and this was on the news, and they were wanted by the FBI, despite how they pretend to be FBI, and no one mentions it??? Did any of the staffwriters do the required reading or just do what I used to do for my 40 plus page readings of Baudrillard and just skim the first sentence of every paragraph? Neat hack for you: paragraphs are set up in a logical order of Topic, Example, Elaboration, Linking sentence. Do you have to read 60 pages of some crusty French dude waxing poetic about how his best friend Pierre wants to shag his wife and making that your problem? Read the first and last sentence of every paragraph. Boom, done. Just cut your work in half.

The musical highlights a lot of the important moments of the show so far. The brothers have, as Charlie Bradbury says, their “broment,” and as Marie says, their “boy melodrama scene,” while she insinuates that there is a sexual element to their relationship. This show never passed up an opportunity to mention incest. It’s like: mentioning incest 5000 km, not being disgusting 1 km, what a hard decision. Actually, they do have to walk on their knees for 100 miles through the desert repenting. But there are other moments—such as Mary burning on the ceiling, a classic, Castiel waiting for Dean at the side of the highway, and Azazel poisoning Sam. With the help of the high schoolers, Sam and Dean overcome Calliope, the muse and bad guy of the episode, and save the day. What began as their lives reinterpreted and told back to them turns into a story they have some agency over.

In this episode, as opposed to “The Monster At The End Of This Book,” The storytelling has transferred from an alcoholic in a bathrobe into the hands of an overbearing and overachieving teenage girl, and honestly why not. Transformative fiction is by and large run by women, and queer women, so Marie and her stage manager slash Jody Mills’s understudy Maeve are just following in the footsteps of legends. This kind of really succinctly summarises the difference between curative fandom and transformative fandom, the former of which is populated mostly by men, and the latter mostly by women. As defined by LordByronic in 2015, Curative fandom is more like enjoying the text, collecting the merchandise, organising the knowledge — basically Reddit in terms of fandom curation. Transformative fandom is transforming the source text in some way — making fanart, fanfic, mvs, or a musical — basically Tumblr in general, and Archive of our own specifically. Like what do non fandom people even do on Tumblr? It is a complete mystery to me. Whereas Chuck literally writes himself into the narrative he receives through visions, Marie and co have agency and control over the narrative by writing it themselves.

Chuck does appear in the episode towards the end, his first appearance after five seasons. The theory that he killed those lesbian theatre girls makes me wanna curl up and die, so I don’t subscribe to it. Chuck watched the musical and he liked it and he gave unwarranted notes and then he left, the end.

The Supernatural creative team is explicitly acknowledging the fandom’s efforts by making this episode. They’re writing us in again, with more obsessive fans, but with lethbians this time, which makes it infinitely better. And instead of showing us as potential date rapists, we’re just cool chicks who like to make art. And that’s fucken awesome.

I just have to note that the characters literally say the word Destiel after Dean sees the actors playing Dean and Cas making out. He storms off and tells Sam to shut the fuck up when Sam makes fun of him, because Dean’s sexuality is NOT threatened he just needs to assert his dominance as a straight hetero man who has NEVER looked at another man’s lips and licked his own. He just… forgets that gay people exist until someone reminds him. BUT THEN, after a rousing speech that is stolen from Rent or Wicked or something, he echoes Marie’s words back, saying “put as much sub into that text as you possibly can.” What does Dean know about subbing, I wonder. Okay I’m suddenly reminded that he did literally go to a kink bar and get hit on by a leather daddy. Oh Dean, the experiences you have as a broad-shouldered, pixie-faced man with cowboy legs. You were born for this role.

Metatron is my favourite villain. As one tumblr user pointed out, he is an evil English literature major, which is just a normal English literature major. The season nine episode “Meta Fiction” written by my main man robbie thompson and directed by thomas j wright, happens within a curious season. Castiel, once again, becomes the leader of a portion of the heavenly host to take down Metatron, and Dean is affected by the Mark Of Cain. Sam was recently possessed by Gadreel, who killed Kevin in Sam’s body and then decided to run off with Metatron. Metatron himself is recruiting angels to join him, in the hopes that he can become the new God. It’s the first introduction of Hannah, who encourages Cas to recruit angels himself to take on Metatron. Also, we get to see Gabriel again, who is always a delight.

This episode is a lot of fun. Metatron poses questions like, who tells a story and who is the most important person in the telling? Is it the writer? The audience? He starts off staring over his typewriter to address the camera, like a pompous dickhead. No longer content with consuming stories, he’s started to write his own. And they are hubristic ones about becoming God, a better god than Chuck ever was, but to do it he needs to kill a bunch of people and blame it on Cas. So really, he’s actually exactly like Chuck who blamed everything on Lucifer.

But I think the most apt analogy we can use for this in terms of who is the creator is to think of Metatron as a fanfiction writer. He consumes the media—the Winchester Gospels—and starts to write his own version of events—leading an army to become God and kill Cas. Nevermind that no one has been able to kill Cas in a way that matters or a way that sticks. Which is canon, and what Metatron is trying to do is—well not fanon because it actually does impact the Winchesters’ storyline. It would be like if one of the writers of Supernatural began writing Supernatural fanfiction before they got a job on the show. Which as my generation and the generations coming after me get more comfortable with fanfiction and fandom, is going to be the case for a lot of shows. I think it’s already the case for Riverdale. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the woman who wrote the bi Dean essay go to work on Riverdale? Or something? I dunno, I have the post saved in my tumblr likes but that is quagmire of epic proportions that I will easily get lost in if I try to find it.

Okay let me flex my literary degree. As Englund and Leach say in “Ethnography and the metanarratives of modernity,” “The influential “literary turn,” in which the problems of ethnography were seen as largely textual and their solutions as lying in experimental writing seems to have lost its impetus.” This can be taken to mean, in the context of Supernatural, that while Metatron’s writings seek to forge a new path in history, forgoing fate for a new kind of divine intervention, the problem with Metatron is that he’s too caught up in the textual, too caught up in the writing, to be effectual. And this as we see throughout seasons 9, 10 and 11, has no lasting effect. Cas gets his grace back, Dean survives, and Metatron becomes a powerless human. In this case, the impetus is his grace, which he loses when Cas cuts it out of him, a mirror to Metatron cutting out Cas’s grace.

However, I realise that the concept of ethnography in Supernatural is a flawed one, ethnography being the observation of another culture: a lot of the angels observe humanity and seem to fit in. However, Cas has to slowly acclimatise to the Winchesters as they tame him, but he never quite fit in—missing cues, not understanding jokes or Dean’s personal space, the scene where he says, “We have a guinea pig? Where?” Show him the guinea pig Sam!!! He wants to see it!!! At most he passes as a human with autism. Cas doesn’t really observe humanity—he observes nature, as seen in season 7 “reading is fundamental” and “survival of the fittest”. Even the human acts he talks about in season 6 “the man who would be king” are from hundreds or thousands of years ago. He certainly doesn’t observe popular culture, which puts him at odds with Dean, who is made up of 90 per cent pop culture references and 10 per cent flannel. Metatron doesn’t seek to blend in with humanity so much as control it, which actually is the most apt example of ethnography for white people in the last—you know, forever. But of course the writers didn’t seek to make this analogy. It is purely by chance, and maybe I’m the only person insane enough to realise it. But probably not. There are a lot of cookies much smarter than me in the Supernatural fandom and they’ve like me have grown up and gone to university and gotten real jobs in the real world and real haircuts. I’m probably the only person to apply Englund and Leach to it though.

And yes, as I read this paper I did need to have one tab open on Google, with the word “define” in the search bar.

Metatron has a few lines in this that I really like. He says:

“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.”

“You’re going to have to follow my script.”

“I’m an entity of my word.”

It’s really obvious, but they’re pushing the idea that Metatron has become an agent of authorship instead of just a consumer of media. He even throws a Supernatural book into his fire — a symbolic act of burning the script and flipping the writer off, much like Cas did to God and the angels in season 5. He’s not a Kripke figure so much as maybe a Gamble, Carver or Dabb figure, in that he usurps Chuck and becomes the author-god. This would be extremely postmodern of him if he didn’t just do exactly what Chuck was doing, except worse somehow. In fact, it’s postmodern of Cas to reject heaven’s narrative and fall for Dean. As one tumblr user points out, Cas really said “What’s fate compared to Dean Winchester?”

Okay this transcript is almost 8000 words already, and I still have two more episodes to review, and more things to say, so I’ll leave you with this. Metatron says to Cas, “Out of all of God’s wind up toys, you’re the only one with any spunk.” Why Cas has captured his attention comes down more than anything to a process of elimination. Most angels fucking suck. They follow the rules of whoever puts themselves in charge, and they either love Cas or hate him, or just plainly wanna fuck him, and there have been few angels who stood out. Balthazar was awesome, even though I hated him the first time I watched season 6. He UNSUNK the Titanic. Legend status. And Gabriel was of course the OG who loves to fuck shit up. But they’re gone at this stage in the narrative, and Cas survives. Cas always survives. He does have spunk. And everyone wants to fuck him.

Season 11 episode 20 “Don’t Call Me Shurley,” the last episode written by the Christ like figure of Robbie Thompson — are we sensing a theme here? — and directed by my divine enemy Robert Singer, starts with Metatron dumpster diving for food. I’m not even going to bother commenting on this because like… it’s supernatural and it treats complex issues like homelessness and poverty with zero nuance. Like the Winchesters live in poverty but it’s fun and cool because they always scrape by but Metatron lives in poverty and it’s funny. Cas was homeless and it was hard but he needed to do it to atone for his sins, and Metatron is homeless and it’s funny because he brought it on himself by being a murderous dick. Fucking hell. Robbie, come on. The plot focuses on God, also known as Chuck Shurley, making himself known to Metatron and asking for Metatron’s opinion on his memoir. Meanwhile, the Winchesters battle another bout of infectious serial killer fog sent by Amara. At the end of the episode, Chuck heals everyone affected by the fog and reveals himself to Sam and Dean.

Chuck says that he didn’t foresee Metatron trying to become god, but the idea of Season 15 is that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all their lives. When Metatron tries, he fails miserably, is locked up in prison, tortured by Dean, then rendered useless as a human and thrown into the world without a safety net. His authorship is reduced to nothing, and he is reduced to dumpster diving for food. He does actually attempt to live his life as someone who records tragedies as they happen and sells the footage to news stations, which is honestly hilarious and amazing and completely unsurprising because Metatron is, at the heart of it, an English Literature major. In true bastard style, he insults Chuck’s work and complains about the bar, but slips into his old role of editor when Chuck asks him to.

The theory I’m consulting for this uses the term metanarrative in a different way than I am. They consider it an overarching narrative, a grand narrative like religion. Chuck’s biography is in a sense most loyal to Middleton and Walsh’s view of metanarrative: “the universal story of the world from arche to telos, a grand narrative encompassing world history from beginning to end.” Except instead of world history, it’s God’s history, and since God is construed in Supernatural as just some guy with some powers who is as fallible as the next some guy with some powers, his story has biases and agendas. Okay so in the analysis I’m getting Middleton and Walsh’s quotes from, James K A Smith’s “A little story about metanarratives,” Smith dunks on them pretty bad, but for Supernatural purposes their words ring true. Think of them as the BuckLeming of Lyotard’s postmodern metanarrative analysis: a stopped clock right twice a day. Is anyone except me understanding the sequence of words I’m saying right now. Do I just have the most specific case of brain worms ever found in human history. I’m currently wearing my oversized Keith Haring shirt and dipping pretzels into peanut butter because it’s 3.18 in the morning and the homosexuals got to me. The total claims a comprehensive metanarrative of world history make do indeed, as Middleton and Walsh claim, lead to violence, stay with me here, because Chuck’s legacy is violence, and so is Metatron’s, and in trying to reject the metanarrative, Sam and Dean enact violence. Mostly Dean, because in season 15 he sacrifices his own son twice to defeat Chuck. But that means literally fighting violence with violence. Violence is, after all, all they know. Violence is the lens through which they interact with the world. If the writers wanted to do literally anything else, they could have continued Dean’s natural character progression into someone who eschews the violence that stems from intergeneration trauma — yes I will continue to use the phrase intergenerational trauma whenever I refer to Dean — and becomes a loving father and husband. Sam could eschew violence and start a monster rehabilitation centre with Eileen.

This episode of Holy Hell is me frantically grabbing at straws to make sense of a narrative that actively hates me and wants to kick me to death. But the violence Sam and Dean enact is not at a metanarrative level, because they are not author-gods of their own narrative. In season 15 “Atomic Monsters,” Becky points out that the ending of the Supernatural book series is bad because the brothers die, and then, in a shocking twist of fate, Dean does die, and the narrative is bad. The writers set themselves a goal post to kick through and instead just slammed their heat into the bars. They set up the dartboard and were like, let’s aim the darts at ourselves. Wouldn’t that be fun. Season 15’s writing is so grossly incompetent that I believe every single conspiracy theory that’s come out of the finale since November, because it’s so much more compelling than whatever the fuck happened on the road so far. Carry on? Why yes, I think I will carry on, carry on like a pork chop, screaming at the bars of my enclosure until I crack my voice open like an egg and spill out all my rage and frustration. The world will never know peace again. It’s now 3.29 and I’ve written over 9000 words of this transcript. And I’m not done.

Middleton and Walsh claim that metanarratives are merely social constructions masquerading as universal truths. Which is, exactly, Supernatural. The creators have constructed this elaborate web of narrative that they want to sell us as the be all and end all. They won’t let the actors discuss how they really feel about the finale. They won’t let Misha Collins talk about Destiel. They want us to believe it was good, actually, that Dean, a recovering alcoholic with a 30 year old infant son and a husband who loves him, deserved to die by getting NAILED, while Sam, who spent the last four seasons, the entirety of Andrew Dabb’s run as showrunner, excelling at creating a hunter network and romancing both the queen of hell and his deaf hunter girlfriend, should have lived a normie life with a normie faceless wife. Am I done? Not even close. I started this episode and I’m going to finish it.

When we find out that Chuck is God in the episode of season 11, it turns everything we knew about Chuck on its head. We find out in Season 15 that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all along, that everything that happened to them is his doing. The one thing he couldn’t control was Cas’s choice to rebel. If we take him at his word, Cas is the only true force of free will in the entire universe, and more specifically, the love that Cas had for Dean which caused him to rebel and fall from heaven. — This theory has holes of course. Why would Lucifer torture Lilith into becoming the first demon if he didn’t have free will? Did Chuck make him do that? And why? So that Chuck could be the hero and Lucifer the bad guy, like Lucifer claimed all along? That’s to say nothing of Adam and Eve, both characters the show introduced in different ways, one as an antagonist and the other as the narrative foil to Dean and Cas’s romance. Thinking about it makes my head hurt, so I’m just not gunna.

So Chuck was doing the writing all along. And as Becky claims in “Atomic Monsters,” it’s bad writing. The writers explicitly said, the ending Chuck wrote is bad because there’s no Cas and everyone dies, and then they wrote an ending where there is no Cas and everyone dies. So talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. Talk about giant craters in the earth you could see from 800 kilometres away but you still fell into. Meanwhile fan writers have the opportunity to write a million different endings, all of which satisfy at least one person. The fandom is a hydra, prolific and unstoppable, and we’ll keep rewriting the ending a million more times.

And all this is not even talking about the fact that Chuck is a man, Metatron is a man, Sam and Dean and Cas are men, and the writers and directors of the show are, by an overwhelming majority, men. Most of them are white, straight, cis men. Feminist scholarship has done a lot to unpack the damage done by paternalistic approaches to theory, sociology, ethnography, all the -ys, but I propose we go a step further with these men. Kill them. Metanarratively, of course. Amara, the Darkness, God’s sister, had a chance to write her own story without Chuck, after killing everything in the universe, and I think she had the right idea. Knock it all down to build it from the ground up. Billie also had the opportunity to write a narrative, but her folly was, of course, putting any kind of faith in the Winchesters who are also grossly incompetent and often fail up. She is, as all author-gods on this show are, undone by Castiel. The only one with any spunk, the only one who exists outside of his own narrative confines, the only one the author-gods don’t have any control over. The one who died for love, and in dying, gave life.

The French Mistake

Let’s change the channel. Let’s calm ourselves and cleanse our libras. Let’s commune with nature and chug some sage bongs.

“The French Mistake” is a song from the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles. In the iconic second last scene of the film, as the cowboys fight amongst themselves, the camera pans back to reveal a studio lot and a door through which a chorus of gay dancersingers perform “the French Mistake”. The lyrics go, “Throw out your hands, stick out your tush, hands on your hips, give ‘em a push. You’ll be surprised you’re doing the French Mistake.”

I’m not sure what went through the heads of the Supernatural creators when they came up with the season 6 episode, “The French Mistake,” written by the love of my life Ben Edlund and directed by some guy Charles Beeson. Just reading the Wikipedia summary is so batshit incomprehensible. In short: Balthazar sends Sam and Dean to an alternate universe where they are the actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, who play Sam and Dean on the tv show Supernatural. I don’t think this had ever been done in television history before. The first seven seasons of this show are certifiable. Like this was ten years ago. Think about the things that have happened in the last 10 slutty, slutty years. We have lived through atrocities and upheaval and the entire world stopping to mourn, but also we had twitter throughout that entire time, which makes it infinitely worse.

In this universe, Sam and Dean wear makeup, Cas is played by attractive crying man Misha Collins, and Genevieve Padalecki nee Cortese makes an appearance. Magic doesn’t exist, Serge has good ideas, and the two leads have to act in order to get through the day. Sorry man I do not know how to pronounce your name.

Sidenote: I don’t know if me being attracted aesthetically to Misha Collins is because he’s attractive, because this show has gaslighted me into thinking he’s attractive, or because Castiel’s iconic entrance in 2008 hit my developing mind like a torpedo full of spaghetti and blew my fucking brains all over the place. It’s one of life’s little mysteries and God’s little gifts.

Let’s talk about therapy. More specifically, “Agency and purpose in narrative therapy: questioning the postmodern rejection of metanarrative” by Cameron Lee. In this paper, Lee outlines four key ideas as proposed by Freedman and Combs:

Realities are socially constructed

Realities are constituted through language

Realities are organised and maintained through narrative

And there are no essential truths.

Let’s break this down in the case of this episode. Realities are socially constructed: the reality of Sam and Dean arose from the Bush era. Do I even need to elaborate? From what I understand with my limited Australian perception, and being a child at the time, 9/11 really was a prominent shifting point in the last twenty years. As Americans describe it, sometimes jokingly, it was the last time they were really truly innocent. That means to me that until they saw the repercussions of their government’s actions in funding turf wars throughout the middle east for a good chunk of the 20th Century, they allowed themselves to be hindered by their own ignorance. The threat of terrorism ran rampant throughout the States, spurred on by right wing nationalists and gun-toting NRA supporters, so it’s really no surprise that the show Supernatural started with the premise of killing everything in sight and driving around with only your closest kin and a trunk full of guns. Kripke constructed that reality from the social-political climate of the time, and it has wrought untold horrors on the minds of lesbians who lived through the noughties, in that we are now attracted to Misha Collins.

Number two: Realities are constituted through language. Before a show can become a show, it needs to be a script. It’s written down, typed up, and given to actors who say the lines out loud. In this respect, they are using the language of speech and words to convey meaning. But tv shows are not all about words, and they’re barely about scripts. From what I understand of being raised by television, they are about action, visuals, imagery, and behaviours. All of the work that goes into them—the scripts, the lighting, the audio, the sound mixing, the cameras, the extras, the ADs, the gaffing, the props, the stunts, everything—is about conveying a story through the medium of images. In that way, images are the language. The reality of the show Supernatural, inside the show Supernatural, is constituted through words: the script, the journalists talking to Sam, the makeup artist taking off Dean’s makeup, the conversations between the creators, the tweets Misha sends. But also through imagery: the fish tank in Jensen’s trailer, the model poses on the front cover of the magazine, the opulence of Jared’s house, Misha’s iconic sweater. Words and images are the language that constitutes both of these realities. Okay for real, I feel like I’ve only seen this episode max three times, including when I watched it for research for this episode, but I remember so much about it.

Number three: realities are organised and maintained through narrative. In this universe of the French Mistake, their lives are structured around two narratives: the internal narrative of the show within the show, in which they are two actors on a tv set; and the episode narrative in which they need to keep the key safe and return to their own universe. This is made difficult by the revelation that magic doesn’t work in this universe, however, they find a way. Before they can get back, though, an avenging angel by the name of Virgil guns down author-god Eric Kripke and tries to kill the Winchesters. However, they are saved by Balthazar and the freeze frame and brought back into their own world, the world of Supernatural the show, not Supernatural the show within the show within the nesting doll. And then that reality is done with, never to be revisited or even mentioned, but with an impact that has lasted longer than the second Bush administration.

And number four: there are no essential truths. This one is a bit tricky because I can’t find what Lee means by essential truths, so I’m just going to interpret that. To me, essential truths means what lies beneath the narratives we tell ourselves. Supernatural was a show that ran for 15 years. Supernatural had actors. Supernatural was showrun by four different writers. In the show within a show, there is nothing, because that ceases to exist for longer than the forty two minute episode “The French Mistake”. And since Supernatural no longer exists except in our computers, it is nothing too. It is only the narratives we tell ourselves to sleep better at night, to wake up in the morning with a smile, to get through the day, to connect with other people, to understand ourselves better. It’s not even the narrative that the showrunners told, because they have no agency over it as soon as it shows up on our screens. The essential truth of the show is lost in the translation from creating to consuming. Who gives the story meaning? The people watching it and the people creating it. We all do.

Lee says that humans are predisposed to construct narratives in order to make sense of the world. We see this in cultures from all over the world: from cave paintings to vases, from The Dreaming to Beowulf, humans have always constructed stories. The way you think about yourself is a story that you’ve constructed. The way you interact with your loved ones and the furries you rightfully cyberbully on Twitter is influenced by the narratives you tell yourself about them. And these narratives are intricate, expansive, personalised, and can colour our perceptions completely, so that we turn into a different person when we interact with one person as opposed to another.

Whatever happened in season 6, most of which I want to forget, doesn’t interest me in the way I’m telling myself the writers intended. For me, the entirety of season 6 was based around the premise of Cas being in love with Dean, and the complete impotence of this love. He turns up when Dean calls, he agonises as he watches Dean rake leaves and live his apple pie life with Lisa, and Dean is the person he feels most horribly about betraying. He says, verbatim, to Sam, “Dean and I do share a more profound bond.” And Balthazar says, “You’re confusing me with the other angel, the one in the dirty trenchcoat who’s in love with you.” He says this in season 6, and we couldn’t do a fucken thing about it.

The song “The French Mistake” shines a light on the hidden scene of gay men performing a gay narrative, in the midst of a scene about the manliest profession you can have: professional horse wrangler, poncho wearer, and rodeo meister, the cowboy. If this isn’t a perfect encapsulation of the lovestory between Dean and Cas, which Ben Edlund has been championing from day fucking one of Misha Collins walking onto that set with his sex hair and chapped lips, then I don’t know what the fuck we’re even doing here. What in the hell else could it possibly mean. The layers to this. The intricacy. The agendas. The subtextual AND blatant queerness. The micro aggressions Crowley aimed at Car in “The Man Who Would Be King,” another Bedlund special. Bed Edlund is a fucking genius. Bed Edlund is cool girl. Ben Edlund is the missing link. Bed Edlund IS wikileaks. Ben Edlund is a cool breeze on a humid summer day. Ben Edlund is the stop loading button on a browser tab. Ben Edlund is the perfect cross between Spotify and Apple Music, in which you can search for good playlists, but without having to be on Spotify. He can take my keys and fuck my wife. You best believe I’m doing an entire episode of Holy Hell on Bedlund’s top five. He is the reason I want to get into staffwriting on a tv show. I saw season 4 episode “On the head of a pin” when my brain was still torpedoed spaghetti mush from the premiere, and it nestled its way deep into my exposed bones, so that when I finally recovered from that, I was a changed person. My god, this transcript is 11,000 words, and I haven’t even finished the Becky section. Which is a good transition.

Oh, Becky. She is an incarnation of how the writers, or at least Kripke, view the fans. Watching season 5 “Sympathy for the Devil” live in 2009 was a whole fucking trip that I as a baby gay was not prepared for. Figuring out my sexuality was a journey that started with the Supernatural fandom and is in some aspects still raging against the dying of the light today. Add to that, this conception of the audience was this, like, personification of the librarian cellist from Juno, but also completely without boundaries, common sense, or shame. It made me wonder about my position in the narrative as a consumer consuming. Is that how Kripke saw me, specifically? Was I like Becky? Did my forays into DeanCasNatural on El Jay dot com make me a fucking loser whose only claim to fame is writing some nasty fanfiction that I’ve since deleted all traces of? Don’t get me wrong, me and my unhinged Casgirl friends loved Becky. I can’t remember if I ever wrote any fanfiction with her in it because I was mostly writing smut, which is extremely Becky coded of me, but I read some and my friends and I would always chat about her when she came up. She was great entertainment value before season 7. But in the eyes of the powers that be, Becky, like the fans themselves, are expendable. First they turned her into a desperate bride wannabe who drugs Sam so that he’ll be with her, then Chuck waves his hand and she disappears. We’re seeing now with regards to Destiel, Cas, and Misha Collins this erasure of them from the narrative. Becky says in season 15 “Atomic Monsters” that the ending Chuck writes is bad because, for one, there’s no Cas, and that’s exactly what’s happening to the text post-finale. It literally makes me insane akin to the throes of mania to think about the layers of this. They literally said, “No Cas = bad” and now Misha isn’t even allowed to talk in his Cassona voice—at least at the time I wrote that—to the detriment of the fans who care about him. It’s the same shit over and over. They introduce something we like, they realise they have no control over how much we like it, and then they pretend they never introduced it in the first place. Season 7, my god. The only reason Gamble brought back Cas was because the ratings were tanking the show. I didn’t even bother watching most of it live, and would just hear from my friends whether Cas was in the episodes or not. And then Sera, dear Sera, had the gall to say it was a Homer’s Odyssey narrative. I’m rusty on Homer aka I’ve never read it but apparently Odysseus goes away, ends up with a wife on an island somewhere, and then comes back to Terabithia like it never happened. How convenient. But since Sera Gamble loves to bury her gays, we can all guess why Cas was written out of the show: Cas being gay is a threat to the toxic heteronormativity spouted by both the show and the characters themselves. In season 15, after Becky gets her life together, has kids, gets married, and starts a business, she is outgrowing the narrative and Chuck kills her. The fans got Destiel Wedding trending on Twitter, and now the creators are acting like he doesn’t exist. New liver, same eagles.

I have to add an adendum: as of this morning, Sunday 11th, don’t ask me what time that is in Americaland, Misha Collins did an online con/Q&A thing and answered a bunch of questions about Cas and Dean, which goes to show that he cannot be silenced. So the narrative wants to be told. It’s continuing well into it’s 16th or 17th season. It’s going to keep happening and they have no recourse to stop it. So fuck you, Supernatural.

I did write the start of a speech about representation but, who the holy hell cares. I also read some disappointing Masters theses that I hope didn’t take them longer to research and write than this episode of a podcast I’m making for funsies took me, considering it’s the same number of pages. Then again I have the last four months and another 8 years of fandom fuelling my obsession, and when I don’t sleep I write, hence the 4,000 words I knocked out in the last 12 hours.

Some final words. Lyotard defines postmodernism, the age we live in, as an incredulity towards metanarratives. Modernism was obsessed with order and meaning, but postmodernism seeks to disrupt that. Modernists lived within the frame of the narrative of their society, but postmodernists seek to destroy the frame and live within our own self-written contexts. Okay I love postmodernist theory so this has been a real treat for me. Yoghurt, Sam? Postmodernist theory? Could I BE more gay?

Middleton and Walsh in their analysis of postmodernism claim that biblical faith is grounded in metanarrative, and explore how this intersects with an era that rejects metanarrative. This is one of the fundamental ideas Supernatural is getting at throughout definitely the last season, but other seasons as well. The narratives of Good vs Evil, Michael vs Lucifer, Dean vs Sam, were encoded into the overarching story of the show from season 1, and since then Sam and Dean have sought to break free of them. Sam broke free of John’s narrative, which was the hunting life, and revenge, and this moralistic machismo that they wrapped themselves up in. If they’re killing the evil, then they’re not the evil. That’s the story they told, and the impetus of the show that Sam was sucked back into. But this thread unravelled in later seasons when Dean became friends with Benny and the idea that all supernatural creatures are inherently evil unravelled as well. While they never completely broke free of John’s hold over them, welcoming Jack into their lives meant confronting a bias that had been ingrained in them since Dean was 4 years old and Sam 6 months. In the face of the question, “are all monsters monstrous?” the narrative loosens its control. Even by questioning it, it throws into doubt the overarching narrative of John’s plan, which is usurped at the end of season 2 when they kill Azazel by Dean’s demon deal and a new narrative unfolds. John as author-god is usurped by the actual God in season 4, who has his own narrative that controls the lives of Sam, Dean and Cas.

Okay like for real, I do actually think the metanarrativity in Supernatural is something that should be studied by someone other than me, unless you wanna pay me for it and then shit yeah. It is extremely cool to introduce a biographical narrative about the fictional narrative it’s in. It’s cool that the characters are constantly calling this narrative into focus by fighting against it, struggling to break free from their textual confines to live a life outside of the external forces that control them. And the thing is? The really real, honest thing? They have. Sam, Dean and Cas have broken free of the narrative that Kripke, Carver, Gamble and Dabb wrote for them. The very fact that the textual confession of love that Cas has for Dean ushered in a resurgence of fans, fandom and activity that has kept the show trending for five months after it ended, is just phenomenal. People have pointed out that fans stopped caring about Game of Thrones as soon as it ended. Despite the hold they had over tv watchers everywhere, their cultural currency has been spent. The opposite is true for Supernatural. Despite how the finale of the show angered and confused people, it gains more momentum every day. More fanworks, more videos, more fics, more art, more ire, more merch is being generated by the fans still. The Supernatural subreddit, which was averaging a few posts a week by season 15, has been incensed by the finale. And yours truly happily traipsed back into the fandom snake pit after 8 years with a smile on my face and a skip in my step ready to pump that dopamine straight into my veins babeeeeeeyyyyy. It’s been WILD. I recently reconnected with one of my mutuals from 2010 and it’s like nothing’s changed. We’re both still unhinged and we both still simp for Supernatural. Even before season 15, I was obsessed with the podcast Ride Or Die, which I started listening to in late 2019, and Supernatural was always in the back of my mind. You just don’t get over your first fandom. Actually, Danny Phantom was my first fandom, and I remember being 12 talking on Danny Phantom forums to people much too old to be the target audience of the show. So I guess that hasn’t left me either. And the fondest memories I have of Supernatural is how the characters have usurped their creators to become mythic, long past the point they were supposed to die a quiet death. The myth weaving that the Supernatural fandom is doing right now is the legacy that will endure.

References

I got all of these for free from Google Scholar!

Judith May Fathallah, “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural.”

James K A Smith, “A Little Story About Metanarratives: Lyotard, Religion and Postmodernism Revisited.” 2001.

Cameron Lee, “Agency and Purpose in Narrative Therapy: Questioning the Postmodern Rejection of Metanarrative.” 2004.

Harri Englund and James Leach, “Ethnography and the Meta Narratives of Modernity.” 2000.

https://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/mel-brooks-explains-french-mistake-blazing-saddles-blu-ray/

#transcripts #supernatural #supernatural podcast #<60mins #this is first and foremost a podcast about cas and misha collins

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smutember · 4 years

Photo

The prompts for Smutember 2020 have arrived!

There they are! Ready to make 2020 a bit smuttier. As you probably have noticed, at least some prompts above are related to the Miraculous fandom, from which Smutember (AFAIK) originated, but as I’ve mentioned before - this event is most certainly a cross-fandom one, so don’t be discouraged. Anything can be smuttified, rule34 applies. Oh, and speaking of rules:

Rules

All posts have to be tagged with either smutember or smutember2020 hashtag (preferably both). Be aware that ns fw tag is shadowed, and posts with it are not visible in the tags. I personally suggest the revived old lemon tag. it wouldn’t hurt to @ this blog, so that your post won’t be missed, especially if your blog is new and still not shown in the tag.

No minor/underage content.

All submissions have to be at least somewhat smutty/naughty. We don’t require hard Explcit rating, a Mature one is fine too.

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Prompts are merely suggestions - at the end of the day, you are the one who chooses how to interpret the prompt. You can also completely ignore the prompts and have your own 30-day challenge, we’re not gonna call the internet police on you.

And in case they weren’t clear, here is a list of prompts with explanations and some propositions:

1. Dirty Talk - Let’s start with some naughty words~. Possible prompts: dirty talk, sexting, writic erotic fics for each other, etc. 2. Foreplay - Self-explanatory: anything related to the heat before the main event. Kissing, petting, grinding against each other, body worship, etc. 3. Striptease - The fun is not just in the destination, but also the journey… of removing clothes. Lap dances, pole dancing, striptease, erotic lingerie, etc. 4. Oral - French love for the win! Blowjobs, cunnilingus, deepthroat, 69, swallowing, rimming - anything related to making love with your mouth and tongue. 5. First Time - It’s supposed to be magical, it’s usually awkward, so let’s make it magical again. First intercourse, first time trying something new, first time in a specific place, etc. There are lots of possible “firsts” 6. Swap! - Switching places is fun. But how about switching roles, or bodies? Possible kinks include: bodyswap, dom/sub swap, or maybe crossdressing/clothes swap. 7. Sweet Treats - Fresh from the bakery, but reheated in microwave counts too. General food play, sex in kitchen/restaurant, etc. 8. Long Distance - Sometimes you can’t be in the same room, but it doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. Prompt includes: sexting, spicy letters, sex through phone/webcams, but also telepathic/portal sex, etc. 9. Fantasy - We all have them, and it turns out our characters have them as well. Prompt includes: dreams, daydreams, acting out a fantasy, but also possible incorporation of AUs. 10. Masturbation - Sometimes you gotta take matters into your own hands… literally. Prompt Includes: masturbation, single or mutual. 11. Costumes - Naked bodies are fun and all, but the real pleasure is imagining what hides underneath fancy clothing. Prompt includes: sex in costumes/fancy clothing, crossdressing and anything related to that. 12. The Morning After - You wake up and the memories of the previous night start flooding in… Morning after intercourse/performing specific kinks for the first time, etc. 13. Messy - There’s a reason you should be keeping a box of tissues on a night stand. Cumshots, facials, bukakke, creampies, but also body paint or messy food play. Anything related to the messier aspect of sex. 14. Moonlight - The most romantic of times, especially when the Moon is enormous on the sky. Sex at night, in the moonlight, late night cuddles. 15. Naked Photo Shoot - Opportunity is right there: a naked model, and an artist, starving for… well, some art in this case. Prompts may include: nude photography, drawing acts, nudism, being filmed, making erotic videos, etc. 16. Caught in the Act - GASPEST OF GASPS. They have found us! But what were you doing? Kissing, groping, having sex…? Or have they caught you moments before/after the main event…? 17. Roleplay - We like to imagine our characters doing new stuff, but turns out they have minds and ideas of their own. Prompt includes: roleplaying, acting any scenarios and anything related to that. 18. Teeth and Claw Marks - We have those to make sure out partners won’t forget the nights… Biting, scratching, leaving hickeys, marking partner, blood play (remember to tag), etc. 19. Yo-yo and The Baton - Toys galore! And they are not for kids. All the usage of sex toys, or mundane objects that suddenly become deeply erotic with some creativity. 20. Adrenaline Rush - So, your hearts are pumping and you are out of breath… Perfect moment for sex, right? Includes: sex after workout/exercise/fight/adventure, glad-to-be-alive sex, but also sex in dangerous place, on a risky day, etc. 21. The Water is Just Fine - So let’s jump right in! Sex in a bath tub/hot springs/shower, beach date, skinny dipping, underwater sex or maybe even some shenanigans involving those who live in the depths of the sea… 22. Who Watches the Watchmen? - Peeping Toms, that’s who. Voyeurism, exhibitionism, sex in public/indecent places, anything related to sex in places where one can be seen, either accidentally or deliberately, nudism, etc. 23. Clothes Stay On - Either because we don’t have time to disrobe, or maybe it’s sexier that way. 24. You can touch, but you can’t look - Anything related to sensory deprivation - blindfolds, sex in the dark, etc,. 25. Three isn’t a crowd - It’s only a beginning. Orgy galore! Have an OTP? Turn it into OT3 for a night. Already have an OT3? OT4 then! And generally, for any OTn, have an OTm, for m>n… Threesomes, moresomes, orgy, multiple partners, double/triple/multiple penetration. The more the merrier. 26. Heat - Love is in the air…! Quite literally sometimes. Prompt includes: Animalistic tendencies, sex pollen, ABO, heat/mating seasons. 27. Try Everything - You gotta stay open minded and do something more than missionary of cowgirl… new positions, new kinks, or just anything new that would spice up the night life. 28. 1+1=3 - Just like we enjoy making OCs, so does out OTPs… Except for real. Pregnancy, pregnant sex, impregnation, accidental or deliberate, breeding, mating, as kink or for real - anything related to securing the future goes here. 29. Ecstasy - Ever wanted to write a scene where earth shakes upon having an orgasm? This prompt is for you. Prompt includes: passionate/exhaustive sex, sex marathon, explosive/multiple orgasms, etc. 30. Free day - Didn’t enjoy the prompts? Or have you enjoyed them too much and have more ideas? Use this as a wildcard to express your creativity. Anything goes here, as long as you tag it. Thanks to @noblesnook, @thatguywiththefaceog, billythesquid and several anons for sending prompts propositions!

Also, here’s a list of prompts people submitted:

blindfolds, skinny dipping, bodyswap, double penetration, rimjob, facials, titjob striptease/lapdance, hot tub, crossdressing, food Breeding or M/M/F voyeur, exhibitionism, pregnant Beach, Moonlight morning or evening cuddles partner swap, live show Body worship, Lazy Morning sex, exhibitionism body paint “I walked in on you by accident but you didn’t notice, how do I act normal from now on? ” Workout/Exercise favorite position being filmed bet glory hole nudism

#smutember #smutember2020

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laurawritesandgames · 4 years

Text

Title: The Children We Never Had

Fandom: Beetlejuice (Musical)

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Beetlejuice/Barbara/Adam

Prompt: Hurt/Comfort

Content Warning: References to miscarriages and abortion

Summary: As Delia and Charles prepare to start their family together, Barbara reflects on her chance to have her own children. What once seemed so simple can become much more complicated when you’re a ghost....

Delia and Charles had just completed the first round of IVF treatments. Delia was fanatic about getting all toxins out of the house, so one Saturday the Maitlands, Beetlejuice and Lydia were helping Delia get rid of any plastic containers in the kitchen, to be replaced with glass containers.

“Why is there so much Tupperware?” Delia exclaimed.

“One of Mom’s friends sold Tupperware, and we had a few parties,” Lydia said. “Mom was sick for years. If she’d been able to keep up with the science, I doubt she would’ve kept them. She was nuts about the environment.” Lydia frowned thoughtfully. “Say, Delia, what exactly are your thoughts on vaccines?”

Barbara and Adam shared a look. They knew from the Maitland-Deetz’s biweekly parenting meetings that Delia had anti-vaxxer tendencies. She was, at least, open to a respectful discussion about vaccines. Give Charles a few conversations and she’d probably give in to science and reason—the newlyweds were crazy for each other.

Not that Lydia had any of that context.

“I’m just not convinced vaccines are necessary. I have some very interesting websites I can show you later, Lydia. There’s a lot of doubt about the so-called ‘science’ that Big Pharma doesn’t want you to see.”

Lydia’s lip curled in the disgust.

“Are you an idiot?!” Beetlejuice said. “I lived in a world without vaccines. It was shit!”

“I just don’t know if I’m willing to take that risk,” Delia said, with her polite, argument-deflecting smile. Adam’s parents had been masters at avoiding conflict, so Barbara knew what would happen next. She’d say something light or silly and try to get everyone focused on the kitchen again.

“I should draw a door and bring you to the Netherworld, Delia. Give you a tour of Diaper Town so you can see all the dead babies that’re there from before childhood vaccines were a thing.”

“Diaper Town?” Lydia asked.

“Eh, that’s not the real name—just what we called it. Where the dead babies go. Ugh! I had a shift in Diaper Town for a few decades. It was the worst.”

“I imagine they look like they did when they died,” Lydia said, thoughtfully.

“And they never age! That’s the only reason people hang around babies—because they eventually become not-babies.”

“What about miscarriages? Mom had a few before me. Is there going to be a clump of Deetz cells in the Netherworld?”

Barbara reached out for Adam’s hand and found it within seconds. (He’d been across the room a second ago. He must have teleported.) She clenched it. Hard.

Beetlejuice didn’t notice.

As a ghost, you were always cold. Barbara couldn’t get colder. She also couldn’t swallow to try to wet a dry mouth. Her hands wouldn’t grow cold and prickly with shock. Her emotions were completely disconnected from bodily sensations. She could feel Adam behind her and leaned back into him slightly. Not that he made her feel warmer. Nothing ever would.

If she’d been alive, she might’ve looked like Delia: her face pale as she forced a too-wide smile onto her face. “Let’s all talk about something else, shall we? I don’t want any bad vibes.” Her hand rested on her stomach. During one of their parenting meetings, she’d mentioned she only had a few eggs left. “Not—not right now.”

Lydia glared at her. “Seriously? Hearing about a dead woman’s fertility issues isn’t going to hurt your fetus.”

“The Deetus,” Beetlejuice added. “Deetz fetus. Get it?”

Lydia ignored him. “Bad vibes aren’t a thing!”

“We’ll agree to disagree on that one.” Delia hurried out of the kitchen. “Would anyone mind a smudging ceremony? Just to clear the air and usher in tranquility?”

Lydia followed with a shriek of rage. “’Smudging ceremony’? Are you from an Indigenous tribe, Delia? Because if you’re not, that’s major cultural appropriation!”

“Ooo, cultural appropriation! I know that one!” Beetlejuice said, delighted. When he’d first come back from the Netherworld, the Maitlands had held a few sensitivity seminars for him so he could stop getting into arguments with Lydia. Beetlejuice’s views were a weird mix of surprisingly progressive and incredibly archaic. “It’s a culture, not a costume!” He floated over to Barbara and Adam. “Did I do that right? Do I get a kiss?”

It took a lot of effort to focus on Beetlejuice right now. “Sorry,” Barbara said. “We’re not going to reward you for being a decent person. But thank you for trying.”

Beetlejuice huffed in disappointment.

Adam cleared his throat. Barbara glanced at him. Adam tilted his head slightly at Beetlejuice, raising his eyebrows questioningly. He was asking her for permission to tell Beetlejuice. After a moment’s thought, Barbara nodded. Beetlejuice liked to keep things light, but he was their boyfriend, after all. He should learn a bit more about Barbara and Adam.

“What happens to children who died before they were born?” Adam asked quietly.

Beetlejuice shrugged. “I dunno. I was born dead in one of the original versions of the musical, but it ain’t canon. There aren’t any fetuses floating around the Netherworld. Maybe they go someplace else?” He shrugged, spreading his hands. “I got nothing.”

Out of habit (not because she actually needed to breathe), Barbara sighed in relief. Thank God, was her first thought, despite having a pretty good idea that God didn’t exist. She let of of Adam’s hand, giving him a small smile.

“Why do you wanna know?” Beetlejuice asked.

Barbara shared another look with Adam before saying, “When I was 22, I got pregnant.” She cleared her throat. She hadn’t talked about this in years.

Beetlejuice didn’t like silences. Immediately, he said, “Quit pulling my leg. If you were pregnant, then where’s your—”

It took a few moments, but his eyes finally widened and his jaw dropped. “Oh. Ohhhh. I didn’t think…” His hands began flapping, then running up and down his sleeves and fiddling with his cuffs. “So we’re bringing in some of the movie backstory. Okay. Okay. Sure.”

“The what?” Adam asked.

“Nevermind. So you guys had a miscarriage.”

“An abortion, actually,” Barbara said.

Beetlejuice stopped bobbing faintly, freezing in mid-air. His voice rose in pitch as he said, “I saw the tags on this fic and I assumed you’d be hurt/comforting me! I’m the one with all the issues! Who the hell told you that you guys could have issues?!”

“What now?” Barbara said, forcing her tone to stay even.

“And also, our lives weren’t perfect,” Adam said. “I just want to remind you that both of my parents are dead. So…yeah. When we were alive, we had struggles and challenges like everybody else.”

Beetlejuice began coughing. He stuck his fingers in his mouth, eventually pulling out a foot and tossing it on the ground. (Barbara had learned not to ask whose foot.) “Um. Can I try again?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Feel free.”

Beetlejuice opened and closed his mouth a few times, but didn’t say anything.

Adam said, “Just so you know, Bug, this isn’t something to share.” Beetlejuice was a compulsive oversharer; they’d learned to explicitly tell him what was appropriate and what wasn’t.

“It’s not because we’re ashamed,” Barbara said quickly. “It’s just our story to tell, that’s all.”

“Right! I can do that.” He focused on something in the middle distance. “Although maybe some people could really examine their need to inject complicated real-world issues into a stupid five-page fic for Beetlelands Week. Not every fandom and every fic can bear that weight! And some characters definitely aren’t designed to deal with shit like this! They’re awesome Deadpool-style badasses and not…not…whatever this needs!”

Barbara loved Beetlejuce, but he was getting on her last nerve. I didn’t think he’d completely disassociate like this. It’s only a goddamn abortion. He didn’t even have to deal with anything! “Well, I’m sorry my and Adam’s history is such an inconvenience for you. I’m going to go find something to do. If you want to talk when you’re not spiraling and doing whatever this is, come find me.”

Barbara teleported to their bedroom, the Deetzes’ former guest room, upstairs, and Adam teleported with her.

Tears wavered in his eyes. Startled, she held him, stroking his back.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

“No, don’t be.”

He sniffled a few times, wiping his tears away. Their ghostly bodies still remembered how to produce tears, and if Beetlejuice was any indication, that memory would stick with them for centuries. He whispered, “We would’ve had a child. If it weren’t for me—”

Adam had always felt needless guilt about mentioning the abortion first. She’d thought he’d gotten over it. “You didn’t force me. We had student loans, the recession had just hit the year before, we couldn’t find work, and most importantly? We weren’t ready. We were barely ready 10 years later, when we had a house and good jobs.”

He smiled sadly, wiping the tears from his eyes. “Sorry. I don’t know where this is coming from.” He stroked her cheek. “I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”

She blinked. “I’m…fine? I’ve been fine for 10 years.” She hadn’t been fine immediately before and after the abortion. There’d been lots of crying, praying, and long conversations, but that had been a long time ago. Gently, she asked, “I thought you were, too. Was I wrong?”

When did we really talk about it except immediately after? Barbara couldn’t recall.

Adam gave her that same distracted smile he used to give her after his parents’ funeral. He was a brave little soldier, marching forward. “You weren’t wrong. I’m fine.”

You didn’t push when you saw that smile. “I think I’m going to read something. Want to join me?”

“I wouldn’t mind working on the model a bit more. Call me if you need anything.”

“I will.” She kissed his cheek, and he went up to the attic to work on his model of Winter River.

She was choosing between Michelle Obama’s biography a polyamory how-to guide when a spider skittered underneath the door. The spider climbed up the wall then began spinning a web in the corner of the room at unnatural speed. Letters appeared in the web.

SORRY

I WAS A BAD BOYFRIEND

It’s a Charlotte’s Web homage, Barbara realized. She’d loved that book as a child. He remembered. “Apology accepted, Beetlejuice.”

He knocked on the door. Opening it revealed him reading from index cards. Delia, who was using her life coach skills to help Beetlejuice adjust to being part of the family, had encouraged him to write down important things.

“I should have reacted a lot better than I did,” Beetlejuice read. “You and Adam trusted me with with a part of your lives, and I should have liz—lizden? Shit, I’m bad at spelling.” He looked up from the cards, rocking back and forth on his feet. “Anyway, thanks for trusting me, baby. Sorry I was being a dick about it. You and Adam having an—an abortion had nothing to do with me or my feelings.”

Beetlejuice could talk about the filthiest sex acts and talk about rotting corpses without flinching, but now he was stumbling. Interesting. “Well, ‘we had an abortion’ might’ve been a lot to throw at you. We could’ve prepared you better.” She nodded him inside, and he floated in. She closed the door behind her. “I imagine abortions weren’t really talked about in your day.”

“Well, we thought ladies’ wombs wandered around their bodies, so…no.”

“Do you have any questions?”

“Um…are you okay?” He fidgeted. “You’re all…y’know, motherly and shit. Are you sad about having an abortion?”

“No. I mean, I don’t love that I needed it. Adam and I were a lot more careful making love after that, believe me. But Adam and my family had my back, and luckily I live in a state where I can access an abortion easily. I also found some forums, and chatting with people who’d also had abortions helped me feel less alone. Honestly, until Lydia brought up miscarriages today, I hadn’t thought about my abortion in years.” Feeling awkward, she chuckled. “Um, really glad I won’t have to deal with a clump of cells following me around in the Netherworld, though.”

She felt a twinge of guilt for not feeling guiltier. Her Good Christian Girl upbringing still reared its head now and then. But I did what was best for my family at the time. That’s all anyone can do. If I’d known Adam and I were going to die 10 years later, we might’ve done things differently, but how could we have known that?

“So, that’s my story. I was supported and very lucky. I’m not sad or guilty or anything.” She frowned. “Adam might be, though. He was strangely upset.” Did I do something wrong? Has he been suffering for years without me noticing? “He’s upstairs working on the model again.”

“I’ll cheer him up!” Beetlejuice said. He clapped his hands together. “It’s hurt/comfort. Time to be goddamn comforted, Adam.”

“I’d give him a few hours.” Adam was a brooder. There was a certain point where he just wouldn’t engage.

Beetlejuice chuckled, patting her smarmily on the head. “Your boring, married-couple rules don’t apply to me, Babs. I’mma shake things up and heal his wounded heart. You can come up and watch, if you want. Watch me win.”

Barbara made herself laugh as she tried to ignore her jealousy. Beetlejuice was just being his usual low-grade dickish self, but what if he was right? Maybe Adam will respond better to Beetlejuice than to me. I didn’t expect Adam to be this sad, after all. What else have I missed? “If you succeed, feel free to come back and give me a play-by-play of your victory.”

Beetlejuice poofed away, and Barbara picked up the how-to guide to polyamory. It couldn’t help to get a refresher.

If Beetlejuice made Adam feel better, then that was a win for everyone. She could ask him how he’d done it and learn from him. The entire point of dating Beetlejuice was to break out of their old patterns and add a little excitement to their afterlives.

Barbara was lying down on their bed, reading the first chapter when Beetlejuice teleported back in.

“You mighta been right,” he grumbled.

“It’s almost like I’ve been dating him since I was 16.”

“Of course you were high school sweethearts. You two are so cliché, I blocked that out.” Beetlejuice floated closer, whining, “Sexy raised his voice to me, Barbara!”

Barbara set the book down. “Oh, I’m sorry, Bug.” That was the Adam equivalent of full-blown shouting. (Adam had shouted at Beetlejuice before, of course, but that was when Beetlejuice had been a villain.)

“Me! The favourite!”

Barbara raised her eyebrows. “Maybe you should read this chapter with me about egalitarian polyamorous relationships—and how terms like ‘favourite’ are toxic.”

Beetlejuice floated away from her. “Mmm, nope, too many things to do.”

She’d expected that. It wasn’t clear when Beetlejuice had died, but it was definitely before therapy and couple’s counselling had become more mainstream. He didn’t have the same ability to talk about and reflect on his and other’s feelings that Barbara and Adam had. Usually, he just reacted to his own. Barbara wouldn’t have gotten into a relationship with Beetlejuice if she’d been unwilling to teach him.

“Lemme know when he’s ready to talk, okay?” the demon continued.

“Well, I don’t have a psychic link to him, but I’ll try…if you read this chapter with me.”

Beetlejuice crossed his arms over his chest, harrumphing. After a few moments, he shrugged, floated over to the bed, and curled up beside her.

If her eyes could water, they might have at the smell of rotting flesh. But Barbara quickly got used to the smell. “Let me guess—your clones poked around and didn’t find anything else interesting happening right now?”

“Ha! Busted! Delia, Lydia and Charles are still arguing about vaccines. Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap. Making out with you is way more fun.”

“We’re learning how to have a more equitable, communicative relationship. Not making out.”

“We’ll see, baby.”

They approached Adam later that afternoon.

He looked up from a figurine he was painting, expression guilty. “I’ll come down when it’s time for dinner, okay?” he said quietly. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Is there anything we can do for you now?” Barbara asked.

He looked between Barbara and Beetlejuice. His eyes were so haunted…. Barbara took a few steps forward.

“Adam?” she said softly.

“You said we weren’t ready,” he murmured roughly. “What if we would’ve been? We never even gave ourselves the chance….”

He showed her what he’d been working on: a little child figurine with her blonde hair. “There would’ve been part of you and me living now. Someone with your hair and my eyes, or your smile….”

Okay. We haven’t talked about the abortion in years, and now he’s making a model of what would have become our child. So, this is new. But I can handle this. I know him. I’ve got this.

Nevertheless, a tiny part of her really wanted to tag out and let Beetlejuice handle this one. Not that he would’ve done well—he was frozen except for his eyes, frantically flicking between her and Adam.

While Barbara thought of the most empathetic, respectful way to respond, Beetlejuice blurted out, “Someone’s got a case of the Shouldas.”

“Hmm?” Adam grunted, looking uninterested.

“You know, shoulda done this when I was alive. Shoulda done that. Every newlydead goes through it. Of course, usually they’re stuck in an endless void and not chilling in the living world with their sexy boyfriend.” Beetlejuice nodded to Barbara. “And your sexy wife.”

So he had learned something from that chapter they’d read together. Barbara gave him a small smile. “How do newlydeads usually get through it?” she asked.

“‘Get through’ is real optimistic, Babs. They just get crushed by overwhelming despair and hopelessness. It’s the Netherworld. Everything sucks there.”

Adam grunted again.

Beetlejuice rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, I can’t really talk about ‘healing’ and shit….” He gestured frantically for Barbara to do something.

One thing about spending so much time with Beetlejuice was that you got used to out-of-the box thinking. It was time for a little experiment. Barbara didn’t give herself time to think, and dove right in.

“Congratulations, Maitlands.” She made air horn noises. The words ‘The Life We Never Had’ appeared in bright text above the model town. “Welcome to your life where you had your child!”

Adam and Beetlejuice both stared at her in stunned silence.

“This got so dark, so fast, but I kinda love it,” Beetlejuice commented.

“Well,” she said, “first of all, forget this house. We’d probably be living with your parents. They don’t even live in town.” She took a few moments to create a mental map, then gestured at the model. It grew larger, to the surrounding counties. Adam’s family farm was on the outskirts of this new map.

“And forget the CPA degree. No way we can afford that now. But your uncle Eddy has that plumbing business. He’d probably give you a job.” She manifested Eddy’s truck, making it drive through town. “I’d probably knit and sell things on Etsy…. Wait, it’s 2010. Does Etsy even exist?” Barbara couldn’t remember. “Or I’d sell them at the local farmer’s market. We probably still love our projects, even if we don’t have as much time for them now.”

Barbara could’ve gone darker. In this future, she would’ve been stuck in Adam’s parents’ home with no career prospects and a baby she wasn’t sure she wanted. If anything was a recipe for postpartum depression, that would’ve been. But she kept it light.

“Oh, jeez,” she realized, “I forgot all about names! What do you think of Aspen?” Barbara had always wanted a nature-themed name.

“It has the word ‘Ass’ in it,” Beetlejuice complained. “Do you want bullies to give your kid swirlies?”

“You’re not here, mister. You don’t get a say.”

“Hey, that’s right! We never meet if you don’t move into the house.” Beetlejuice frowned. “Truly, this is the darkest timeline.”

“What about River?” Adam said. “For our child.”

“River. That’s beautiful. Okay, so little River goes to school here.” She gestured to the school in town. “What do you think? Good grades?”

“Of course.”

“And then you guys commit crimes!” Beetlejuice interrupted.

Barbara raised her eyebrows.

“What? Boring people commit crimes all the time and become awesome. Weeds? Breaking Bad?”

“I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t.”

“Argh, fine, I was just getting bored of all this slice-of-life shit. Let’s spice things up!”

“Ooo, maybe we solve crimes? Like a cozy mystery set in rural Connecticut.”

“Committing them is way more fun, but I’ll take anything at this point. Your ideal lives are so boring! River’s gonna do meth just to feel alive!”

“They might fall in with a bad crowd in high school,” Barbara said.

“Thank you! A little conflict, please. It’s the essence of drama!”

“But we’d be there for them,” Adam said. “Hmm. Mom and Dad would still die, I suppose. I’d probably disappoint my Maitland ancestors and sell the farm.”

Barbara watched him intently. He wasn’t smiling, but he seemed a bit more engaged than he had been.

“We could move into one of the homes here,” she suggested, nodding to one of the small houses on the outside of town.

“That’s gonna really suck for you when the zombies attack,” Beetlejuice said.

Barbara kept making up their fake life, with Adam chiming in every now and then, both of them trying to ignore Beetlejuice’s input. They tried to give River a nice life, with a full-ride scholarship to NYU (which was, coincidentally, Lydia’s dream school), lots of friends, and a home that may not be full of money but was full of love.

Eventually, Adam smiled and shook his head. “Thanks for playing dolls with me, guys.”

Barbara hugged him from behind. “If you need time to mourn, take all the time you need. Beetlejuice and I are here for you.”

Adam wiped some tears from his eyes. “I think I do. Sorry, sweetie. Sometimes all the things we never got to do…they just hit me, hard. Even things I’d made peace with long ago. I spent so much of my life worrying….”

Barbara moved to stand beside him, kissing his cheek. If she could’ve made him feel warm, she would have.

Beetlejuice was spaced out, staring into the middle distance. Thinking of his own Shouldas, maybe? Nah. He never looks back unless he’s trapped in a traumatic memory about his mother. Probably wondering when we can make out again.

She nodded him over, and he blinked, coming back to the present. Hesitantly, he floated over and rested his chin on Adam’s head.

They were both still and silent, two things Beetlejuice hated, so it wasn’t surprising when a horde of centipedes skittered across the model, or a tiny King Kong grabbed a figurine and climbed up to the top of the town bell tower, roaring.

Lydia interrupted them when she she poked her head into the attic and told them dinner was ready. “And the leftovers will be stored in glass containers—if you leave us any leftovers, Beej. Delia cleared the cupboard of all plastics. Don’t worry about the baby, either. If Delia continues to believe tea tree oil can cure pneumonia or whatever, Dad and I will get the kid vaccinated when she’s not around.”

Barbara smiled at her chosen daughter. Beetlejuice was right; they weren’t stuck in the lonely void of the Netherworld. There was life and family just downstairs. “I’m glad. But I’m sure we’ll be able to convince her otherwise. We have nine months.”

“You’re more optimistic than I am, Barbara.”

Adam put the River figurine with the smattering of other children outside the grade school. “Let’s go,” he said quietly.

The three of them followed Lydia to the dinner table.

#beetlelandsweek2020 #beetlelands #goldenbeetle #beetlejuice the musical #beetlejuice #adam maitland #barbara maitland #beetlejuice x adam x barbara

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fandompitfalls · 3 years

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Fandom, Misogyny, and the Struggle for "Clarice"

Originally posted 2/24/21

There’s a quote that, summarized, says, in order for a woman to be seen as an equal to men, she has to work twice as hard. And never more what that brought to light outside real life than Valentine’s Day weekend when CBS aired the premiere of Clarice.

In 1991, Silence of the Lambs, a runaway hit thriller staring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins came onto public consumption and introduced the world to the phrase “quid pro quo” and the name Hannibal Lecter became a well-known name.

In 2013, a series by the name of Hannibal staring Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy premiered on television and was immediately embraced by the fandom community. Dating long before Silence of the Lambs, the show features a BSU consultant by the name of Will Graham who is called into service because of his unique ability to profile serial killers. He develops a professional and later, a personal relationship with Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

In the beginning the question of Will’s mental state was brought up, the reason Lecter was introduced into the series, he was hired on assess Will Graham after cases to make sure his fragile mental state was not deteriorating. It allowed Hannibal to get close to Will and manipulate him in an attempt to turn Will into a killer like himself. The show ended after three seasons and during those seasons, the show’s creator, Brian Fuller, made cinematography magic with his sets and scenes, a lot of them gruesome yet exquisite.

Hannibal became fandom’s gory darling, the relationship between Will and Hannibal being the main fodder. This was furthered by the support of Bryan Fuller’s comment in Collider stating that he saw Hannibal as being in love with Will Graham. https://collider.com/bryan-fuller-hannibal-silence-of-the-lambs-interview/

Just this past week, a new twist on the Silence of the Lambs timeline premiered with Clarice. Clarice takes place a year after Silence of the Lambs and the Buffalo Bill murders. She is pulled from the BAU and sent to a task force run by Ruth Martin, the mother of Buffalo Bill’s only surviving member, Catherine. Created by Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet, Clarice is not affiliated with Hannibal, the Series, in any way, rather, it is a telling of Clarice Starling’s story after the events of Silence of the Lambs.

Here’s where it differs. And remember, this is only the first episode. By the time I post this, there will be two episodes out.

In the opening scene, Clarice Starling is sitting in a therapist’s office. The therapist, a man with no name as of yet, is trying to get her to tell him about her feelings regarding the one-year anniversary of the Buffalo Bill murders. He even has a copy of a magazine that features her on the cover with the title “Bride of Frankenstein.” The more he pushes the more she holds back, telling him the rots answers that most FBI therapists want to here. Finally, she mentions the magazine was bought by him as a trigger to see if she would break and he tells her that he thinks she’s not stable enough to go back in the field because she refuses to use to the “survivor” in relation to her encounter with Buffalo Bill. She is not a survivor, she was never kidnapped, she was an FBI agent doing a job. He also cites her relationship with Hannibal Lecter, insinuating that it was more personal in nature than he thought necessary.

Before he can put her at a desk, she is called back into the field by Ruth Martin and put under the team led by Paul Krendler, a man who Clarice “upped” in the movie when she was a trainee. He doesn’t want her there, insists on a profile after seeing the first two bodies and when she can’t give an accurate one because she doesn’t have all the evidence, he tells her she had to tell the press it’s a serial killer.

It’s already shown that Clarice has a bit of trauma with press conferences and this is something that keeps coming back. The press want Clarice and Paul Krendler just wants her to be the face of his team and tells her that she will say what he tells her to say. Clarice is not taken seriously by Krindler, by anyone else in the office, (there’s a scene where men from the other unit that share an office, coat her desk drawer with lotion and leave that lotion and a basket in the drawer and then laugh about it). Clarice is blocked at every turn by men, even her therapist calls Krindler and tells him to bench her because he’s worried about her mental state.

The first time we meet Will Graham, his mental state is mentioned as tenuous, yet the FBI have no problem throwing him right out into the field. Clarice was a trainee who managed to catch a serial killer, and somehow she’s considered too “fragile” to be put on any cases other than desk jobs. In fact, throughout the entire first episode, the only person on her new team to take an interest and believe what she says is Thomas Esquivel, an ex-special forces soldier turned agent who believes in what she says.

From the first moment of this show the misogyny was right out on view, there is no hiding that all of the men in this show do not like Clarice because she’s young, she’s a woman and they are intimidated by her talent. Her only support comes from Agent Esquivel and her friend and former trainee Ardelia Mapp.

I mention the misogyny because it’s not all on the show. It’s from the fans as well. The first time I was reminded the show was on was when I noticed Hannibal was trending on Twitter. The day and time frame Clarice aired its premiere, Twitter was lamenting that they wanted a season four of Hannibal. While researching for this blog, I used IMDB to get names and plot points. And came across this comment about the premiere:

“Can we bring back Hannibal, please?

12 February 2021 | by [redacted]

And by that I am of course referring to the excellent series featuring Mads Mikkelsen's amazing portrayal of Dr. Hannibal Lecter. That series had great style, fantastic atmosphere, and stellar directing, editing, and acting. They planned to tell the ultimate Hannibal Lecter story but only were able to make three seasons out of a seven season plan. So, here we have a Clarice Starling series that had been in the works for years but didn't get the train running till now. So the premiere - Meh. Rebecca Breeds makes a very good Clarice but nothing else is up to her level. The cinematography isn't bad but the atmosphere is lacking, the characters are none too memorable, and the storyline isn't attention grabbing enough. I give it about a season at least.”

I don’t know the time when this posted, but I’m not surprised by the comment at all. Comment and review bombing seems to be the way that fans express their “disappointment” about their old shows not getting anything…or rather, their favorite male characters not getting more screen time.

On the same page, the below link was posted. This was one day after the first episode of Clarice premiered:

Clarice: Season Two? Has the CBS TV Series Been Cancelled or Renewed Yet? 13 February 2021 | TVSeriesFinale

A freshman series about a female criminal profiler who is pushed down, ignored, harassed because of her sex. It’s almost a case of life imitating art.

I was going to leave this post as it was and post it today but last week the second episode aired which showed Clarice pushing past childhood trauma to face down a cult leader and a corrupt government system thereby earning Krendler’s respect and her position on the team. And while Thomas Esquivel told her that a team is only good if each of its members understand that they can trust and support one another, thereby hopefully foreshadowing that this team will eventually accept Clarice as one of their own and in turn she will do the same, it took her risking her life by going back inside the compound, disregarding orders and singlehandedly getting the information needed to put both the cult leader and head of the County Sheriff down for the count for Krendler to finally see her worth and decide to keep her on the team.

I liked Clarice. It was hard to watch at times, not only because of the trauma she is dealing with as well as the survivor, Catherine, calling her and harassing her, but because of the anger I felt watching Clarice get stepped on time and time again by the men in this show, only to get up and do her job. Her final speech she makes at the end of episode one about her grandmother is inspiring and gives the viewer a bit of a “in your face” to the men behind her, especially Krendler…even though we all know he’s going to make her life a living hell when they get back to the office because she didn’t follow his rules. That said, this show is very much a procedural, much like CSI or Criminal Minds. The series follows the format of the movie. This is not Hannibal. It’s not trying to be Hannibal, It is trying to be Clarice. And, as the quote goes, it’s going to have to work twice as hard to even get one half of the respect it deserves.

#FPBlog #Clarice #misogyny #fandom #televison #blog post #toxic fandom

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yessoupy · 4 years

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the @imetyouonljpodcast episode this week gave me lots of thoughts and feelings about star wars. more like, reminded me of all my thoughts and feelings around my first fandom. thus, I decided to write my own journey into and throughout star wars fandom, and what it means to me. buckle up, this story spans decades.

my very first memory of anything star wars-related is a yoda puppet that my grandmother had. it had to be from the original run of the movies, because I was maybe 4 in my first memory of it, and i was born in '86. my sisters and I loved it, and one of our cousins was deathly scared of it so we'd chase him around the house with it.

my second memory of star wars was going to the movie store with my dad and sisters and seeing our favorite yoda on the cover of a VHS. "yoda yoda yoda! daddy, it's yoda!!! can we get it?" we were holding up the display cover for return of the jedi. dad said no, we couldn't get that one yet because we had to watch them in order. so we rented a new hope and all I remember was falling asleep while artoo and threepio were trundling across the tatooine desert sands. at five I guess I was too young.

in early 1997 the special editions of the original trilogy were aired in theaters and I was in 4th grade. dad took us to see one of them (I think empire, at some point we'd finally finished a new hope). at school that grading period I sat next to a boy named mark and he noticed I was drawing little x-wing silhouettes on my paper. "you like star wars too?" he asked. when I said yes, he declared that because of my name, he was going to call me skywalker. that's the name on the back of my high school letter jacket.

in fall of 1998 I started the 6th grade and I came home from school one day to a hardbound book my mom had checked out for me from the library. heir to the empire by timothy zahn. mom pointed out where it said on the cover it was a trilogy, and I could get the other books when I finished this one. she hadn't found the young jedi knights series for me. she'd checked out a GROWN-UP star wars book.

in spring of 1999 the phantom menace came out and my parents' friend took me to see it on opening day because neither of them were free and I HAD to go that day. later on that year she took me to a star wars exhibit at the museum of fine arts. that was also the first time I saw a monet and a renoir. the exhibit had costumes (real costumes!!!) from the original trilogy and the newest prequel. I bought a book about the myth of star wars in the museum gift shop.

I read every expanded universe book our local library had, which was a lot. I had a lot to catch up on, too, since heir to the empire had been published in 1992. you never saw me at school without a star wars book. I read while walking in the hallways, even. in 6th grade I read during lunch, since I was in varsity orchestra with 7th and 8th graders and was terribly shy. they'd tell me I should socialize at lunch, not read my books, but... I wanted to read. I had a lot to learn. I have a lot to know.

I was in 7th grade when I read vector prime, the first in the new series. my first class of the day was science, and the boy I had a crush on was in that class. we had DEAR time at the beginning of that class - drop everything and read. not a hardship for me. that day, I read the part of the book where chewbacca was killed. I looked up, astonished. heartbroken. I locked eyes with the boy I liked. he nodded at the book and I showed him the cover. he nodded sympathetically. "they killed chewie," I whispered. he said "I know."

I wrote original characters in star wars fan fiction when I was about 13. I had an internet friend named rachel who lived in brisbane. then there was dave and 'roswell' who gave me ideas for my story. I loved being able to talk about the wide world of star wars with other people. we used aol instant messenger and email. my username in those days had 'skywalker' in it. I am pretty sure we met in an aol chatroom. I didn't find much of use on the official star wars site and I have probably visited it fewer than 10 times since 1999.

I read those books all through middle and high school. they were my christmas presents and my birthday presents. I moved into our family beach house after college. it sounds really nice but I didn't have running water because it was the summer after Ike hit. I would go to the used book store on 23rd street and buy a stack of star wars books and read them while I waiting for calls to interview for a teaching position. weekends I'd go into town to stay at a friend's house and help her with wedding stuff. I'd shower there, too. that's where my new stash of star wars books started, with me catching up on the legacy of the force series I hadn't read in college and then finishing up through the fate of the jedi as those came out. I felt that I had grown up with these characters. I remembered when kyp was just an orphan han rescued, when jacen and jaina were five years old, when corran horn had no wife, no kids, and was just finding out who his family was. I had capital o opinions about what color lightsaber i would have and why (silver; bc corran), I knew the geography of the galaxy and where everyone was from and my favorite planet was dathomir because women ruled it. I knew all of these characters' histories and motivations and the difficult decisions they'd made and had to live with. I loved them.

i never ventured into the online fandom space for star wars, even after I'd found other online fandom spaces, because I didn't feel like there was anything anyone could add to it for me. I was satisfied with all I'd gotten. sure, favorite characters had been killed (after chewie, the one who stung most was Mara, luke's wife), but people die. and in such a long-running series spanning so many years and trillions of miles of space... you come to expect it.

people would ask me ALL THE TIME when the sequels were coming out and I said never. then, disney bought star wars. initially I was excited (tears of joy happy) to have sequels confirmed. my mind raced, imagining a trilogy centered on the events surrounding jacen's descent to the dark side. the original actors would be the right age for that. who could play jacen?

then, the announcement came that the canon was now 'legends' and they wouldn't be taking any of it into account when writing the sequels BUT that didn't mean we wouldn't see old canon favorites. they announced adam driver as the villain and I thought "jacen." I held onto the idea that this knowledge I had, these years of knowing these stories, would still be worth something. that I'd be able to add new information to my mental bookshelves and maps. that my universe would expand further.

the force awakens was a bitter disappointment. I was upset from the crawl, leia's title making it clear to me that she wasn't chief of state, she wasn't the mother to three children, han wasn't her husband, and all of her history I'd grown to love really was gone. what I saw was the older version of a woman I'd met when she was 18 and hadn't seen her since her early twenties. I didn't know her.

I didn't know the galaxy, either. starting with the new jedi order series, a map of the galaxy was included in the front of each book with the planets named so you knew where everything was happening. the new galaxy was bare. it was small and knowable. while the hosnian prime system was destroyed in the movie, I'd never known it, and all the planets I DID know were similarly blasted out of memory. where was dathomir and its fierce warrior witches? if their planets were gone so were their people.

as the movie trudged on, a retelling of a new hope, I kept thinking, "at least let his name be jacen." I hung my hopes on this sith character being han and leia's son and sharing that name of the boy I'd known and the man who'd grown up to turn to the dark side. at that first shout of 'BEN!' I was angry. Ben?? that was the name of LUKE'S son! that was MARA'S child! Ben??? with three letters jacen solo and ben skywalker were also dead to the galaxy.

I know, I know. I should get over it. I AM thankful for poe dameron. the x-wing books were always my favorite. poe was familiar to me the way other new characters weren't. he was part of the new republic navy. I knew what that was. he flew an x-wing. I knew what that was.l and what company manufactured them. he was from yavin IV, I knew where that was and what it looked like. finn was a stormtrooper, yes, but the empire had not stolen children to be raised as stormtroopers. they were recruited like any other position. his story wasn't real to me, it wasn't something I could easily accept. and the idea that the new republic just LET the first order rise? leia's new republic would NEVER. but leia wasn't chief of state in this universe. leia hadn't had that power.

I read a lot of articles about the force awakens and the reactions to it, and never saw myself in any of them. the star wars fanboys whom I'd never known were painted as being angry because their fan knowledge was useless and "boo-hoo poor widdle fanboys" they would be mocked, rightfully. but that's why I was angry, ultimately. everyone I knew and loved was dead. worse, they'd never existed. "what do you think will happen?" some unsuspecting coworker would ask. I'd shrug, but inside I was yelling "who the fuck knows! my favorite characters don't exist anymore. nothing I know as this person you know as SKYWALKER means anything anymore."

it only got worse from there. One day I spent four hours figuring out how far the casino planet was from the drifting ships in the last jedi and doing math to figure out how long it would REALLY take to get there, using old canon star wars physics. I couldn't suspend my disbelief during that movie. everything was wrong. (the other space physics quibble I had was from TFA when poe is using comms while in hyperspace, and dropping out on a command and not... when nav told him to?? you'd fly right through a star!! were they HOVERING in hyperspace? none of it made sense.) I knew too much and too little to enjoy it.

TROS was a narrative mess already retconning new canon and I decided that I would only keep what I liked about the new canon (poe and his family) and pretend the old canon is all there is. one day I'll write the story of poe being part of the storied rogue squadron being sent by leia's new republic to put down the fascist upstarts at the edge of the unknown regions. one day.

one more quick story -- i met my college friend’s three kids for the first time when the oldest was 6. i’d sent a toy lightsaber as a gift when he was born, because i believe every child should get their first lightsaber from a skywalker, and his father had shown him the movies when he turned 4. when i walked into the house i said hello and he said, “i have some questions about star wars.”

we sat on the couch with the tfa visual dictionary, a book he’d gotten out of the library. every question he had was an excellent question, and i couldn’t answer any of them. “why does his lightsaber look like that? and why does he have the extra blades?”

“well, kiddo, let’s see what it says here about how lightsabers are made. i used to know all about it, but they changed everything on me.”

---

what i love about star wars since disney bought it:

poe dameron, cassian andor (and all of rogue one, i got over the fact that the movie wouldn’t be about rogue squadron it was PERFECT), solo (a fucking DELIGHT), the mandalorian, and i’m sure the cassian andor live action will be amazing and i’ll love it.

#star wars #fandom thoughts #i've just spent SO MUCH of my life being a star wars fan #and being perfectly happy to describe myself as such #edit i tried a read more but it didn't work so sorrryyyyyyyy

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darkmindsotome · 4 years

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Wrapped For Dinner

Fandom: Love 365 Irresistible Mistakes

Pairing: Shunichiro Tachibana x MC

Word count: 3,796

Warning: NSFW Smut

Written by: darkmindsotome

Tagging @voltage-vixen as requested. Prompt #13: Sex under the sun dress

Darkmindsotome Masterlist

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Wrapped For Dinner

My latest big project at Addison & Rhodes had me working as lead creative. It was long hours and a lot of hard work but in the end, we were able to pull off a pretty fantastic ad campaign that was currently trending and going viral.

To say I was relieved at the response was putting it modestly. Toma had already teased me about the stupid grin on my face creeping him out at work and Natsume had commented on it as well when he dropped off the updated sales figures. I managed to laugh them both off, nothing was going to put a dampener on my good mood. Well, almost nothing…

The phone rang at my desk the caller ID clearly displaying it was from the creative director’s office. I picked up the receiver as I pressed the button to answer. I had palpitations in my chest knowing my boyfriend was calling me during work hours. I wonder if I’ll ever get used to this?

“Creative department, MC speaking.”

“Always so professional.” I could hear Shinichiro’s deep voice as he chuckled. It managed to send tingles rippling through me. “Good work on that last project I just saw the updates. The projections look set to knock the client’s preferred targets out of the park.”

“Thank you, Sir. It means a lot hearing you say that.” My mood and happiness seemed to increase ten-fold being praised by him.

“… Listen about later, I’m going to have to take a rain check. One of the larger clients for the company had a scheduling issue and I was asked by the higher-ups to cover for someone who is still off-site.” Shunichiro’s words were like a bucket of ice water bringing me firmly back to Earth.

“Oh, that’s fine.” I didn’t know what else to say in response, it felt like the wind had been knocked out of me and I rolled my chair a little closer to my desk hoping the computer monitor would hide me from the rest of the department.

“I knew you’d say that. I’ll make arrangements for something soon and make it up to you.” He sounded genuinely sorry but what worried me more than the cancelled date was how tired he sounded.

“You don’t have to worry, work is work. I’ve bailed on you a few times recently too.” I tried to mask my disappointment with a little enthusiasm. I really didn’t want to add to his problems by making him worry about me.

“Well alright if that’s how you really feel. You seriously did a great job this time I’m going to have to work harder to stay ahead.” It was reassuring to hear him accept my response and hear the motivation return to him. I could feel the smile returning to my face just listening to him.

“I’m still nowhere near –”

“I’m going to have to go another call is coming in.” Shunichiro cut me off after an electronic beeping on the line.

“Alright.” I nodded. He was busy and while I had really wanted to see him it couldn’t be helped.

“Mc? I can’t wait to see you.”

The line went dead as I held the receiver to my ear for a few seconds letting his parting words linger.

“Oh, Shun… you really don’t play fair.”

With no new projects that required my immediate attention, I was actually able to leave the office on time for the first time in ages. It was the weekend and the original plan had been to go to Shunichiro’s last night and spend the weekend together.

I looked over at the weekend bag I dragged back from a locker at the train station last night. Takuro had given me a quizzical look when I came back with it, but he was now curled up on top of the bag fast asleep.

Reaching for my phone I shot a quick message to Shunichiro wishing him good luck at work then hopped into the shower. With my hair dry but a towel still wrapped around me, I rifled through my wardrobe looking for clothes. I picked up the summer dress Yuiko had helped me find on our last shopping trip together.

The delicate gradient of pastel shades made the dress look like a dawn sky and the petals spread out around the baseline hem looked like I had kicked up waves of Sakura flowers. It made me feel happy and a change in mood was certainly what I wanted right now.

I hadn’t been very sure about it, after all, it was a wrap-around dress that caused a deep plunge to my neckline. My reaction had made Yuiko laugh as she kept encouraging me to try it on insisting that if it was to go on a date that it was perfect. In the end, I bought it, I wanted to see his reaction but that was not happening today.

Tying the fabric around my waist I checked myself in the mirror and slipped on a pair of kitten heels. Today may not be the day I get to see him but it was still a day off. Plus, I had been working so hard at the office recently I had no groceries in the apartment to make breakfast. Grabbing my purse, I exited my place in search of sustenance.

My parents had always warned me about food shopping on an empty stomach. I really didn’t want to end up carrying a ton of things back with me just because I was thinking with my belly and not my brain. After cutting through the park I came out onto the main road and spotted a familiar sign for McDonald's and went in.

Quickly grabbing a McMuffin and a coffee to go I was just on my way out again when I walked smack into someone. A familiar scent of a particular brand of cigarette, cologne and citrus shampoo filled my senses.

“Whoops! Careful, are you alright?” My eyes followed the arms supporting me. Navy blue suit with grey pinstriped vest and a custom shirt. Finally reaching his face and those deep brown eyes. My mind went blank as I stood there, face to face with Shunichiro. “Wait… MC?”

Clearly, I was not the only one surprised to see my partner. Shunichiro’s eyes looked me over from head to toe as if to check it was really me. I was suddenly very aware of his arms around me and felt a little self-conscious with how he was looking at me. I haven’t done anything different with my usual makeup, maybe its the dress. Does he not like it?

“Morning, late night?” I took half a step back putting a little space between us and the awkward situation.

“Yeah, fast food always tastes better after a late night. If you’re free right now we could eat together.” He shrugged, composed as always. This kind of situation really doesn’t rattle him, I guess that’s something that comes from age and experience.

“Really?”

“Well, it’s up to you. What do you want?” He was clearly holding back laughter I probably sounded or looked childish right now. His playful tone was not lost on me if anything it triggered more of my childish side.

“You have to ask?” I gave him a small glare that made him smile wider.

“Ok, I’ll be right back.”

I found a booth and sat down feeling completely unsure as to what I was now supposed to do. I wasn’t supposed to see him today at all and the fact I now was had thrown me. The look on his face when he recognised me also bugged me a little. While I was lost in thought a second bag was placed next to mine and the cushioned seating at my side pressed lower as Shunichiro sat down.

“I was going to phone you later.” He began talking as he cracked open his bag and began pulling out two McMuffins and a pastry.

“You were?” I looked at his face in profile, he was always handsome but something about this slightly tired look had me thinking back to our time spent together in bed. I reached out for my own bag of food to distract myself from my own lude imagination.

“Mhm,” He filled his mouth with a bite of his breakfast and then sucked hard of the straw for his iced fruit juice. I could have laughed at myself for how I suddenly felt very jealous of a straw, watching his moist lips wrap around it. “After pulling an all-nighter, preparing copies and things for the meeting. The client phoned saying they would have to reschedule again.”

He sighed and leaned back against the booth seating. He was frustrated and tired, you didn’t have to be his girlfriend to see something so plain.

“After you put in all that work!? That’s just too much…” I raised my voice a little allowing the annoyance I felt to at least show even if he wouldn’t.

“It’s a big account and the board members all want to keep it, but when I left the office earlier they were all apologising to me for the extra work.” He gave a wry smile and sucked a bit more on his drink. This was one of the many things I actually loved about this man. His dedication to his craft made him glow in a way that always had me dazzled, it motivated me to keep pushing forward.

“Must be nice to be in demand like that.” I smiled feeling some of my anger subside. He was so talented and respected by everyone in the company. Remembering that a warmth spread through my chest as a wave of affection hit me for the man at my side.

“You are as well you know? I am always getting requests for you to handle accounts personally.” There is a look on his face that even in profile seems to reflect everything I was just feeling about him back at me.

“You’re joking!” I nearly choked on my coffee as my embarrassment caught in my throat. Great work there MC remember to breathe air, not coffee.

“I’m really not.” Shunichiro chuckled at my little outburst making me feel even more childish sitting next to such a well put together man. He had already devoured his pastry and moved on to the rest of his food without me even noticing. “It actually makes me feel very...” He turned his head to look at me the expression painted on his face was not one I saw when working. It was softer but there was an intensity swimming in his eyes that automatically had my core tightening under that gaze. He smiled and then gave my food a nudge closer to me. “Your food is getting cold.”

“Oh!” The spell holding me seemed to break at his prompting. I really wanted to know what he didn’t finish saying, but the timing was now all wrong.

I don’t know if he knew what I was thinking or how he was affecting me. Knowing him he probably had already laid the groundwork for the perfect game plan. He always found a way to get me dancing in the palm of his hand.

“So what do you want to do now?” His question had me confused. It also came right after I had stuffed a big mouthful of McMuffin into my mouth.

“I thought you’d just pulled an all-nighter. Shouldn’t you be heading home to rest?” My words were muffled as I tried to swallow my food and talk at the same time. I probably looked like a hamster, my lack of manners and decorum didn’t faze him at all he simply listened to my garbled gibberish with a soft smile on his face. Ok, that look should be illegal.

“I was but seeing you made me feel much more energised. I’m not so old that one late night is going to stop me from seeing the woman I love. It’s up to you though, I know what I’d prefer.” He was so calm and easy-going. It reminded me that this mature sexy guy was like the smooth jazz music at our favourite bar.

He always did this. No matter what he always said something that was intrinsically tempting in a way you couldn’t possibly refuse then asks what you want to do. It still catches me off guard at times but I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Then will you come shopping with me?” I hadn’t planned on seeing him today so the fact I was right now made me unbelievably happy. It didn’t, however, change the reason behind my leaving my apartment.

“Shopping?” My rather boring request had him look at me in slight wonder. I don’t know if he thought I had offered up something mundane because I was concerned for his exhaustion or what.

“Sorry is that weird?” I cast my eyes down looking at the last bite of my breakfast in my hands shyly.

“No, not at all. What are we shopping for?”

“I…” I fidgeted in my seat. At work, I was organised and usually even at home I was as well. However, being as busy as I had recently meant I had let so many things slide in my personal life that I was getting embarrassed thinking about it all. “I haven’t been home much so I didn’t have any groceries.”

“Well, we can’t have that. If we’re buying food can I make some requests?” Shunichiro didn’t laugh at me or look like he was harshly judging me. I finally look up at him, his face looking a little boyish. I loved that look of innocence on him too.

“Of course!”

After finishing our food, we headed over to one of the larger stores because it had a slightly bigger variety of items.

“So, what do you want to request?” I ask as I pick up a shopping basket from the stack.

“Well lately I’ve been really craving your cooking I would say anything you make is fine but…” Shunichiro trails off looking at the displays. It made me smile thinking this is the first time in a while either of us had been food shopping.

“You want me to make chicken nuggets don’t you?” I end up giggling which earns me a raised eyebrow from him.

“You know me so well.”

“Naturally I am your girlfriend after all.” The words came naturally but with an instant hit of embarrassment. To hide my fluster, I looked away from him as I marched towards the shelves. “I’ll just go find the seasonings you go get the chicken.”

“Anything else?” He was hot on my heels making me little thankful for being able to stay ahead of him.

“Whatever you see you might want to eat.” I stopped in front of the seasoning looking over the array of choices and as I raised my hand to pick one up, I found myself covered from behind. “Shun?”

“In that case do I really have to go over there? I can’t think of anything but how great you would taste right now.” Shunichiro’s low voice and hot breath brushed against my ear as he pressed himself against my back. His hand was on top of my outstretched one, nimble fingers tracing my own while he used his thumb to rub the sensitive skin on the inside of my wrist.

“Shun… we’re in the middle of a store.” I closed my eyes wanting so badly for time to stop or for our location to just magically change. He placed his other hand on my hip sliding towards the wrapped fabric of my waist. His fingers delved into the gap they found and traced over the naked flesh beneath.

“Mmm, pity.” He hummed before removing himself and gracefully swiped the basket from my hand as if nothing had happened at all. “I’ll go get the chicken then.”

“You’re a damn tease, Shunichiro.” I muttered as I finished finding the seasonings and made a move for some frozen items next. With any luck, the freezers might help me cool down.

It was almost a mad dash to get home. I wanted to say it was because of the risk of food spoiling but to be honest that was the last thing on either of our minds.

Our little flirtations had persisted around the entire store, and when I say our flirtations, I mean Shunichiro’s. By the time we were at the checkout, I was trembling so much from his persistent teases that I couldn’t locate my card in my purse easily.

Not wishing to waste valuable time, Shunichiro produced his card and paid for the whole lot. He even picked up all the bags and began walking before I could protest. As we left, I caught one person saying “…such a gentleman.” Oh if only you knew.

Once inside he walked right into my small kitchen and opened the door to the fridge, not caring one bit about unpacking. I watched in shock as the entire bags, including their contents, were unceremoniously wedged inside.

“You know that isn’t good for the food right?”

“And you know right now I couldn’t care less.” His voice was lower than I expected. It was ruff and gravelly instantly reigniting all the tingling hot spots he had kindled during our impromptu shopping date.

He closed the gap between us in the blink of an eye. The strength with which he took me in his arms knocked the air from my lungs and my ability to think right out of my body. He dipped low plying my lips open with his tongue and pushing it deep into my mouth as if he were trying to steal my ability to speak as well.

Experienced hands roamed over the top of my dress pulling on the fabric in all the right places to provide some friction of fabric on flesh, raising the temperature between us.

“Mhm!.... Ah… Shun.” I was panting as he pulled back finally allowing me a few seconds to gain some air.

“I’ve never been so bothered by work. It’s so frustrating our schedules just never match up at the minute.” Even as he spoke he was removing his own clothes. Tossing his jacket and vest behind himself in a flurry of action that had me rubbing my legs together seeing him so desperate.

“I know I felt the same.” I brought my hand up to the buttons on his shirt, slowly tracing them before popping them one by one between my fingers like I was snapping them. My eyes never left his as he unbuckled his leather belt and trousers. “Every time I felt a break in the workload You vanished under a pile of assignments.”

“Seeing you every day at work. So close…” He shuddered at my touch the fire in his eyes lit scorching hot paths through my body.

He gave an almost silent groan as he lunged at me. My back hit the kitchen table as he pinned me down on either side with his strong arms. Hovering over me I could feel the pulsating heat from his body and the weight of his raw animal magnetism that always had me coming back for more.

My legs were forced wide as he brought his leg and hip between them. Alternating rhythms resounded in my body as my heart hammered hard enough to burst and his fingers danced up my inner thigh under my dress before slipping past the fabric barrier covering me.

“Mmm, A-ah—” The pressure filling me was exquisite. I watched his arm and shoulder pump in action with his fingers buried deep inside me as he worked away at my sanity.

“I was so glad to see you today I thought the torture was over but then you had to go and do this to me.”

“Do what? I didn’t do anything?” I was seriously confused. I was focusing on him but I felt like there was something I was missing. He didn’t answer me with words instead he brought his face to my chest burying it between my breasts and pulled on the fabric of my dress with his teeth.

“Are you being coy on purpose? Where did you learn to charm a man like that?” He pulled his fingers free with a smirk watching as I writhed missing his touch while he licked them clean. The next feeling my increasingly befuddled mind registered was the complete fulfilment as we became one.

“Oh, God!” My back arched against the unforgiving table and he placed one hand on my chest pushing me back down while he moved his hips against me.

“Ngh… dammit, you are just so perfect.”

“Shu…ni…chiro…” The pop and grind that was a familiar dance to us had me seeing stars.

“I know baby, I know.” He picked up the pace our bodies becoming slick with sweat as we relentlessly hammered home our mutual desires for each other.

“You awake?”

I slowly opened my eyes finding that I was not exactly where I thought I was. Shunichiro had been sitting on my sofa having a drink. Noticing how I was now conscious he returned to my side in my small little bed.

“Mmm, yeah. Did you carry me to bed?” Clutching the covers over my chest I wriggled closer to him. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders placing my head on his chest in the process.

“Well I did consider leaving you on the kitchen table but I thought you might get cold.” He laughed as he teased me. I was too happily exhausted to care and gave him a pathetically weak slap on his arm. My eyes started to adjust more to being fully awake, finding my alarm clock next to the bed.

“Jeez is that the time I should start making the food.” I freed myself from his hold and had placed one foot outside of the covers only to be pulled back in. “Ah!”

“You could or we could enjoy ourselves a little more. There’s no rush, after all, we have the rest of the weekend together.” He was whispering in my ear and trailing fingers over my now naked form. The tip of his tongue drew a line down my neck to my nape where he suckled on it. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re a sneaky scoundrel.” I smiled knowing this was him. He was sneaky, tricky, devilish, conniving and god help me if I didn’t find every aspect of the man appealing.

“Correction.” He chuckled and I found myself flipped under him. “I’m your sneaky scoundrel, and you’re mine.”

---

#summer of smut #summer of smut writing challenge

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littlehollyleaf · 4 years

Text

(I had a really long, detailed version of this....... but Tumblr ate it D’: so this is... heavily abridged, sorry!)

Tagged by the ever lovely @castiel-saved-me-from-myself <3

pick 10 ships without reading the questions

Interesting... ok!

1. Dean/Cas (obviously)

2. Aziraphale/Crowley

3. Nygmobblepot

4. Foxma

5. Babitha

6. Amy/Rory

7. Nomi/Amanita

8. Eve/Flynn

9. Catradora

10. Cosima/Delphine

1. Do you remember the episode/scene/chapter that you first started shipping 6?

I think I started shipping Amy/Rory during the Venice fish monster ep - cos that was when I felt Amy really did love him back and they had a future together. Before I suspected that her running away with the Doctor was a sign she and Rory weren’t right for each other.

2. Have you ever read a FanFiction about 2?

Only read a handful of Ineffable fic. Overall I’m perfectly happy with the canon alone.

3. Has a picture of 4 ever been your screen saver/profile picture/tumblr?

Yes I’ve had Foxma themed phone backgrounds and a tumblr header :)

4. If 7 were to suddenly break-up today, what would your reaction be?

Disbelief and disapproval. Nomi and Amanita were one of the great constants of Sense8 for me. I think a break up would be out of character for them tbh. Plus it would be denying the black and trans characters a rare example of a happy ending, which would suck.

5. Why is 1 so important?

I wrote such a detailed thing about how DeanCas is not only important to me personally but also how I feel it’s been important for TV/media in general... ugh, tumblr!

In a nutshell - this ship helped me better myself in various ways. It introduced me to fandom, which boosted my confidence and independence via increased socialisation; it encouraged me to write more, which improved my writing skills; meta discussions educated me on lots of issues, inc. but not limited to abuse, sexuality, gender identit, autism and racism.

I also genuinely believe that the loud and open fandom support of the ship has been a significant help in the ongoing battle for more and better queer rep in media.

6. Is 9 a funny ship or a serious ship?

Serious! Catra and Adora’s relationship is a core part of the whole show, relating to lots of the wider themes of abuse, toxic behaviour, growth and forgiveness. Plus the significance of a same sex romance involving the lead character in a CHILDREN’S CARTOON really cannot be overstated.

(but it is also cute and funny sometimes :p)

7. Out of all of the ships listed, which ship has the most chemistry?

I’ve spoken before about having issues with the concept of ‘chemistry.’ If I ship characters it’s usually because I find the combination of their characterisation and story arcs interesting/compelling. I often don’t notice (or I guess care about?) chemistry.

So I think I’m not qualified to answer this one.

8. Out of all of your ships listed, which ship has the strongest bond?

Agreeing with @castiel-saved-me-from-myself here - you can’t really beat the Ineffables millenia long romance :)

9. How many times have you read/watched 8’s fandom?

I’ve rewatched The Librarians 2 or 3 times now. It’s DAFT. But it’s fun. And Eve and Flynn make me feel warm and fuzzy.

10. Which ship has lasted the longest?

Again, as @castiel-saved-me-from-myself said - it’s gotta be the Ineffables, both within AND outside of the story, since Good Omens was originally published over 30 years ago and the Zira/Crowley shippers have been going strong all that time. Otherwise it’s DeanCas.

(though idk if Catradora was a ship back when the original She Ra cartoon was airing, or when the original cartoon was made, so it’s possible that is also a contender!)

11. How many times, if ever, has 2 broken up?

Lol at @castiel-saved-me-from-myself for getting Nygmob for this one, as their relationship is, like, 90% break up :P

For the Ineffables though it’s basically just the once - when Zira chooses Heaven over Crowley. Not made such a Big Deal in the book IIRC, but in the show it’s the infamous Bandstand Break Up scene.

All other separations are only minor, temporary squabbles imo. Which is what makes the Bandstand scene so PAINFULLY, BEAUTIFULLY, ANGSTY AND EMOTIONAL and why I love it so!

12. If the world was suddenly thrust into a zombie apocalypse, which ship would make it out alive, 2 or 8?

I figure angels and demons probably can’t be killed by zombies, so the Ineffables are the most likely.

But Eve and Flynn did actually face off against zombie-ghost things in an alt universe during a whole Loom of Fate plot and survived, so I think they’d probably also make it.

13. Did 5 ever have to hide their relationship for any reason?

No, Babs and Tabs were always open about being together, even when Tabs was also in a relationship with Butch.

I might argue they hid the depth of their feelings for each other though, even from themselves, and instead made out what they had together was just a casual ‘friends with benefits’ type thing.

Though Tabs did hide things a little when she sent assassins after Jim cos she blamed him for putting Babs in a coma. She clearly knew her brother would disappprove, which is why she didn’t tell him what she was doing. I guess that kinda counts as hiding her relationship with Babs? She was trying to conceal how much Babs mattered to her?

14. Is 4 still together?

Lol, Foxma were never together (ALAS!). But the show did end with their lingering fondness for each other intact I think.

15. Is 3 canon?

Is Nygmobblepot canon? Rather a touchy question for the fandom tbh.

If we are talking EXPLICIT canon - then no.

They never got a kiss or a MUTUAL love declaration (and they had a controversial ‘we’re brothers’ exchange in the penultimate episode) - ergo there is not enough, imo, to say they ended the show officially romantically involved.

However, Ozzie DID EXPLICITLY DECLARE HIS ROMANTIC LOVE for Ed, and that was never rescinded. There is also LOTS OF SUBTEXT floating around Ed to imply he reciprocates. Plus they did end the show together as clear Partners in Crime.

So is Nygmob subtextual canon?

I would say yes.

But explicit, CANON canon?

A frustrating no that fandom remains, understandably, critical about.

16. If all 10 ships were put into a couple’s Hunger Games, which couple would win?

I think a toss up between Nygmob and Babitha - because everyone else has too many morals that would hold them back from killing :p

(and since Ed and Oz have both bested Babs and Tabs in the past I lean towards them... but it would depend on when in Gotham canon the games were happening!)

17. Has anybody ever tried to sabotage 10’s ship?

Breaking up Cosima and Delphine was a LITERAL PLOT POINT of Orphan Black at one point, so very much yes! I forget the details (the show got very twisty, with lots of different organisations working on different agendas in the shadows), but I’m pretty sure Delphine was shot because she was protecting Cosima. I remember it BROKE MY HEART and I thought it was a casebook example of Bury Your Gays. But, spoiler: it wasn’t ;)

18. Which ship would you defend to the death and beyond?

Going with DeanCas, because I think that, historically, it’s the one that’s been in most need of defending.

19. Do you spend hours a day going through 1’s tumblr page?

Not anymore I’m afraid. Though 3 or so years ago I used to spend most of my free time on DeanCas and spn meta. Ah, nostalgia.

20. If an evil witch descended from the sky and told you that you had to pick one of the ten ships to break up forever or else she´d break them all forever, which ship would you sink?

Foxma. Because while I adore the idea of a messy, confused ~something between them, in my heart I know that Foxy deserves better :P

I was too tired to bother with tagging the first time I completed this - DEF not gonna bother now!

Play if you want - it’s fun :D

#a true but boring story #about me

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saiilorstars · 4 years

Text

The Girl in the Forest

Chapter 13: My Dear Friends

// Story Masterlist //

Fandom: The Originals

Pairings: Klaus Mikaelson x Original Female Character

Pronunciation of OC’s name: Ma-leh-nee

No real warnings for now!

Requested tag: @queenmj10

~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~

Chapter Summary: Maleny struggles to keep her decision to leave the compound which, as days pass by, just make it harder not to clash with Klaus.

A/N: A reminder that Maleny is back in her original body so her new face claim is the actress Angelique Boyer!

While things may have not been as perfect as everyone wished for, there had been a visible change in moods - all save Hayley of course. In the lounge room upstairs were Elijah and Cami, having a rousing game of chess. They had the small table between them, and while Cami was looking as if she were ready to flip the table over in frustration, she was managing to win.

"Another one," remarked Elijah as Cami took out another of his chess piece.

"Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure you're letting me win," Cami announced with a mocking smile.

"Why would you believe that?" Elijah asked, matching her smile with an innocent one.

Cami raised an eyebrow, "Because I've never played before," she smirked and placed his chess piece beside them, "and I just so happened to mention this right before we began playing."

"Coincidences," Elijah gave a shrug and pretended to focus on his move.

Cami shook her head, unable to contain a laugh, "You are full of crap!"

"Camille, I would have thought you'd have better language," Elijah looked up from the table with a less than serious face, "There are far more beautiful things to say don't you think?"

Cami rolled her eyes and motioned him to get on with his chess move. While he did so, Klaus strode into the room with an air of aggravation as he went straight for the drinks across.

"Isn't it a bit early to drink?" Cami gave a call, "It's not even noon yet."

"Well, that goes to show you how bad it's already going," Klaus waved his glass before taking a long gulp down.

"Did you retrieve the stake, brother?" Elijah finally looked up from the table after making a move. Cami gaped at how quickly she was now losing - he most certainly was playing for real now.

"I attempted to," Klaus muttered, "Hayley and I found some witches whom we tried persuading to locate the white oak stake for us."

Both chess players alarmed, shouted simultaneously, "You took Hayley on a witch hunt!?"

Klaus wasn't very surprised by the stunned question and so turned to the table to pour himself another drink, "She heard and I couldn't very well say no, could I?"

"I'm sorry isn't that what you always do?" Cami shook her head, "You realize Hayley is like inches from falling apart, right?" she began looking through her remaining chess pieces for another move.

"Perhaps the problem is your high standards? Hayley is a vampire now. Being it only exaggerates what you truly are, and wolves are wild things. Your judgment only hurts her more."

Elijah angrily looked up at his brother, "We are not judging her, we are concerned for her. Someone needs to talk to her before she does something she truly will regret."

"What about Maleny?" Cami suddenly asked, having just thought of the idea, "Think about it, Hayley lost a daughter and Maleny was a daughter who lost a mother," both brothers glanced at each other with consideration, "Not to mention they're both basically orphans. I'm sure they can connect on some level."

"I will talk to her, see if she's okay with it," Klaus volunteered after a moment. He set his glass down and turned to the two again, "Of course that would be after I find somewhere for her to live at."

"What do you mean?" Elijah asked, both he and Cami sharing confused expressions.

"You haven't heard?" Klaus bitterly huffed, "She says she must live somewhere else until we find her previous corpse and burn it. That is the only way her curse can officially be broken. And since no one knows where it is she has to 'play it safe'." He was still highly upset Maleny had persisted in that direction even after sleeping well and thinking more on it. He had been so sure she would change her mind...but he was wrong. And now he had to actually look for a place she could stay, other than the compound.

Cami leaned back on her spot, "Well, it does sound logical. I'm sure we can find a place for her nearby," but after a minute of studying Klaus she began smirking, "Oh, but that's not what you expected is it? Cos you did expect something, right?" Klaus shot her a glare warning her to stop but Cami just laughed at the attempt, "Oh c'mon, Klaus, you spend months brooding over her and you expect us not to form ideas about it?"

"If it bothers you, perhaps have a talk with her," suggested Elijah.

"You two are no bloody help at all," was all Klaus said before leaving with a glass in hand.

Cami raised her eyebrows though she wasn't surprised with the response, "Does he ever stop acting like he doesn't care?"

"It's difficult for him. Think about it, every time there is a woman - who we assumed has been Maleny - she disappears. It's not easy to openly care about someone after a while."

Cami had to agree with Elijah on that, "Alright fine. But that doesn't mean we can't help."

And judging by the smirk on her face, Elijah figured there was already a plan forging in her mind, "Anything in mind?"

"Perhaps," Cami knocked down another of his chess pieces, "but we can discuss that after I beat you."

Elijah looked at his knocked down piece with genuine surprise, "Well," he picked it up and placed it down by his other lost ones, "you're turning out to be a challenge."

Cami giggled and motioned him to make his next move. He had no idea.

~ 0 ~

In Maleny's room, that had finally been opened up last night, stood the blonde in front of a finished painting. She'd seen it last night but had been too tired to study its details. Now wide awake and changed, she took her time. It only took minutes to conclude she loved it. She recognized the painting as the one Klaus had been working on months ago, after Elijah's faction party had gone rogue. At the time there had been only scenery - the forest - but now there was a prominent figure...herself. There she sat on her knees, with her long, blonde hair cascading over her chest. One of her favorite blue dresses was the choice of clothing with her prized golden chain necklace around her neck. She was genuinely surprised that Klaus had remembered her so...perfectly. Anyone else may have forgotten her likes and dislikes in a couple years, but not him despite it being a thousand years.

Now Maleny would've continued to admire her new painting - as Klaus had told her last night it was hers to do as she pleased - but she heard the trotting of boots coming closer to her room. She looked back at the open door in time to see Hayley walking by. Though Hayley didn't acknowledge her Maleny quietly walked to the doorway and peered out. Hayley was leaving a trail of blood after her, and she herself was drenched in mud, blood, and tree twigs. Once Hayley entered a room, Maleny walked out and looked below into the courtyard, startled at seeing so many corpses, assumed to be witches. After a couple of minutes of thinking, Maleny decided to go find Hayley.

This couldn't keep going on.

Eventually, she found Hayley in a bathroom, taking a bubble bath. However the tub was oozing with running blood, even the water tainted.

"Are you kidding me?" Maleny stepped into the room, eyeing all that was wrong, "This is what your mornings consist of now?"

Hayley couldn't help roll her eyes, "Mal, you've been gone so to answer your question, yes this is kinda what I do now. I was having a crappy day, so Klaus took me out to the Cauldron. Wouldn't you know, we ran into some witches!"

"Hayley, I'm a witch, this makes me feel uncomfortable."

Hayley tilted her head back to see the blonde, seeing the genuine nervous shift in Maleny's expression, "Yeah, but you're not evil nor part of the group that nearly killed my baby. You're good."

"Gee, that makes me feel all better," Maleny crossed her arms and stared at the brunette who returned to 'relaxing'. After a minute she shook her head, "Absolutely not, nope. This can't and won't keep going," she headed for a table with towels and snatched one off, "Take it and get dressed," she ordered, "We're going to talk."

"Excuse me?" Hayley raised an eyebrow.

"No, I will not excuse you. You heard me, get dressed and meet me in my room. Ten minutes," Maleny warned with her two hands before walking out, giving Hayley no chance to put in a word of refusal.

~ 0 ~

Maleny sat on a couch just beside her window, her hands clutching a cushion as she stared out the window. She had taken the custom back in the French house during the early days when she couldn't walk for very long. She would watch everything work, whether it was the trees swaying to the wind or Isabelle's family in their daily chores. She often wished she was able to go downstairs but her body needed a lot of physical therapy before she could even think about stepping outside.

The sounds of shoes coming closer made her break her thoughts. Hayley strode into the room wearing a not so pleased face - not that Maleny cared. Hayley plopped down on the couch beside Maleny, "Well? What is it?"

"That's your greeting?" Maleny raised an eyebrow.

"Maleny, I'm not the same anymore-"

"Clearly," Maleny cut her off with a wide smile, "You're a new hybrid, you're a new mother, and you've taken up the sport of hunting? That's definitely not the Hayley I knew. But I'm pretty sure she wouldn't like the way you're behaving now."

"There is no other way to behave," snapped Hayley, "I lost my daughter to people I didn't even know. You tell me how I'm supposed to keep going with a bright smile on my face?"

"I can't, because I'm not a mother," Maleny conceded her fault, "but I am a daughter who also lost her parents. My mother died, and my father never loved me. I was like an orphan after my mother died."

"So was I," Hayley reminded, unsure of where the conversation was heading to, "except in my case both my parents died in some war."

"Hayley, I'm not going to tell you that everything is 'going to be okay' or 'things will get better' because that would only be an insult to you," Maleny leaned forwards and took her friend's hand, "but what I can tell you is that you're not alone in this. We know what it was like losing our parents and we would never want that for our children. But you know what your daughter has that neither of us did?"

"What?"

"Her mother and father are both alive and willing to do anything it takes to get her back," Maleny smiled, "She will live with hope."

Hayley lightly smiled and looked down, "Have you had some sort of therapist training or something?"

"Not exactly," Maleny chuckled, "I had a lot of time in my hands when I was in France and couldn't move about. I took to reading - any genre. And, in one of those books, it mentioned something about getting in touch with your origins as a means to help you rehabilitate."

"I'm not a drug addict, Mal," Hayley shook her head, slightly amused.

"No, but the book still stands. Have you gone back to the bayou since you gave birth? To see your people?"

"No, and after ambushing them I'm pretty sure they're in no mood to see me."

"Don't you see Hayley? Those wolves are key to getting back your daughter. Why make an enemy when you can make best friends," Maleny smirked, a pointed finger at Hayley, "There's no need for them to be your enemies."

"Now you're sounding a lot like Klaus," Hayley blinked, surprised to hear such similarities.

Maleny sheepishly pushed some of her hair back, "Well, my mind's been a lot more clearer now so...there's bound to be some similarities."

"The thing that would really drive it home is if you were to say-"

"You need to be their alpha," Maleny finished for her, meaning every word spoken.

"Maleny!"

"You waged a just war on those who would harm your child! Not only will they respect you, they will answer to you! They have to."

But Hayley still refused to believe it, shaking her head, "Why would they do that now?"

"Because you're their queen - or so I've heard from Klaus."

"Stop hanging around with that guy," Hayley mockingly ordered, "I don't want to have to deal with two arrogant vampires."

"Hey," Maleny laughed, "First of all, I'm not arrogant. Second of all, I'm a witch," she gestured to herself, "I may not have all my power but I am still one, alright? And you know what, this witch is going to accompany you to the bayou so you can see your family."

"You're going to what?" Hayley's eyebrows shot up, the idea already giving her a bad ache in her stomach.

"You heard me," Maleny leaned back on her spot, giving a light shrug, "I've got to play it safe around this city and it would look less suspicious if they see me with you instead of Klaus or even Elijah. They would probably think of me some wolf friend of yours."

"Mal, I don't know…"

"I'll go with you for a while then I'll come back home so you can do all your little wolf things on your own. I want to stop by and see Davina anyways. She doesn't know I'm back yet. I don't know how she's doing."

"Word on the street is she told her coven to 'shove it' and she's now back at school," Hayley decided to share as a preview of what she would later hear.

"Really?" Maleny chuckled, "That's Davina. I'm happy for her. So, bayou?"

"...bayou," Hayley eventually agreed and watched Maleny laugh again, easily noticing there was something else that Maleny was so giddy about, "You seem in an awfully cheerful mood for someone who, I hear, is still cursed."

Maleny sobered up but still ended up smiling, "Well," she tucked some hair behind her ear and turned her head to the right, pretending to study her room, "there's just a lot more gained now for me."

"Like?"

"Nothing," Maleny shrugged. At that moment, Klaus appeared at her doorway, lightly knocking on her door to alert of his presence. Maleny looked at him with a cheery smile, "Morning," she greeted.

"Actually it's noon, but good morning," Klaus corrected as he came further into the room, "I came to tell you that Cami and Elijah will be looking into that apartment of yours."

"You're moving out?" Hayley immediately frowned at Maleny, "But you just got here."

"Like I said, I need to play it safe," Maleny repeated with a sigh, "How would it look that the Mikaelsons' just accepted a brand new woman in the city into their home? If someone has my corpse and the knowledge about me, it won't be long until they figured it out. I can't be here."

Hayley could see the necessity for Maleny to live somewhere else and so decided to leave the subject at that. Besides, she could already tell the idea wasn't sitting well with Klaus anyways and saw no need to keep talking about it.

"Cami and Elijah will come up with something for you," Klaus reiterated to Maleny, "Meanwhile I will go to the witches at the graveyard to meet this 'Cassie' - the last of the Harvest girls - who is now, I hear, leading both the witches and the wolves."

"What?" Hayley hissed, nearly jumping out of her spot on the couch, "Why!?"

"Because of Oliver of course," Klaus shrugged as if it were obvious, "You should see into that, little wolf. It won't bode well for us if the wolves and witches unite against us."

"She absolutely will," Maleny flashed Hayley a knowing smile, "She's going to the bayou today."

"Excellent," Klaus was severely satisfied to hear it, "and in the meantime you will stay here," he told the blonde.

"Alright," Maleny accepted though both she and Hayley knew that wasn't happening.

"I mean it Maleny," it seemed like Klaus was also doubting her easy acceptance, "You said it yourself, you need to play it safe around."

"I got it," Maleny raised both hands in her defense.

Klaus stared at Maleny longer before adding, "Cami and Elijah won't be long, so you won't have time to make an escape," and with that he left the room.

Maleny made a face as she stood up, chucking her cushion back on the couch, "So, bayou?" she looked at Hayley as if nothing had happened.

Hayley looked between Maleny and the open doorway, "Didn't you hear?"

"Oh I heard," Maleny went over to her night stand and picked up her cellphone. She entered the messaging tab and began writing to Cami.

"And you're still going to leave? Cami and Elijah are going to be back early."

"Done," Maleny cheered and stuffed her phone into her jean's pocket. She turned to Hayley and walked over, "Cami's gonna cover for me."

Hayley stared at the blonde with slight amusement, one she hadn't had in many months, "I'm glad you're back," she said after a moment.

"Me too," Maleny clapped her hands, "Let's go!"

~ 0 ~

The bright green bayou was difficult to walk through when one visits, as was the case for Maleny. Knowing she had to leave earlier, she and Hayley left the car they back where it would no longer be able to go through. Maleny was trudging along slightly behind Hayley who was having no trouble getting through. In fact, she didn't even notice Maleny struggling to keep up. Maleny had the good idea to have Hayley keep talking about the occurrences that happened after she'd 'died' at the cemetery and while Hayley was over explaining some things while briefly touching others, Maleny was putting in pieces of the big picture fairly easy.

"So you've like...distanced yourself from everyone," Maleny concluded after Hayley finished one story.

"I had to, Mal," Hayley crossed her arms, looking down as they walked, "I cried all day, I fed all night. I was no good to anyone. That's probably why I lost things."

"What kind of things?" Maleny curiously asked, though by the tone of Hayley's voice she was already forming ideas.

"My pack, for starters," Hayley huffed, "I lost connection with them when I turned. I used to be close with people and now...things have changed. Take Elijah, for starters. When I got to this city he was overbearing with all these concerns and now...I'm lucky if we have one conversation a day. He likes to spend time with Cami now…"

Maleny awkwardly cleared her throat once she sensed the smidge of jealousy covering Hayley's last words, "Cami's a new vampire, he's probably just mentoring her or something. Believe me, he does that with many people - even Marcel," she recalled lastly.

"You haven't seen them, Mal. While you've been in France, I've stayed here, remember?" she glanced back at Maleny, "I know what I see."

Maleny sadly looked at her friend, assuming Hayley had felt like she was (and had) lost everything, "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," Hayley continued walking, now facing straight ahead, even though Maleny was still behind she kept the calm facade on her face, "It's not Cami's fault either, nor Elijah's - it's mine. I turned into a monster and who could love that?"

"You're not a monster," Maleny scolded, wishing she could speed walk to comfort her, "You're just sad, and with great motives to be. Besides, if this didn't happen then it's probably cos someone else is waiting for you somewhere."

Hayley received that comment with a scoff, "Okay."

"I mean it Hayley," warned Maleny.

Hayley would've continued to refuse the statement if it hadn't been for the fact they'd finally found the remnants of her pack. Minutes later, Maleny finally caught up and looked out to a small clearing where several Crescents were gathering up their belongings.

"So, Jackson is MIA and Oliver seems to think he's the Alpha," Hayley gestured the obvious, "They're not going to listen to me."

"Hey," Maleny turned to the brunette, tugging on Hayley's black jacket to reveal her birthmark, "that birthmark on your shoulder did not disappear when you became a hybrid so as far as anyone's concerned you're still one of them - just with a few upgrades."

"Upgrades?" Hayley gave her a long look.

Maleny shrugged, "Or perks, whatever you want to call them. Just go," she pointed to the clearing, "Go on, talk to them."

With a deep sigh, Hayley emerged from their spot by the trees and walked for the clearing. Maleny followed behind and immediately noticed the tension that had settled in the air. The group had formed a circle around them as if they were waiting to attack.

"The hell you want?" Oliver demanded from Hayley, taking no notice of the blonde.

However, that didn't stop Maleny from making a snarkish response, "Hey, shut the hell up before you end up down in a lake," and to prove she could very well practice enough magic she snapped her fingers causing a branch from a tree behind the group to plummet to the ground.

Hayley shot her a look, both surprised of the magic and irritated for the imprudence, "Hey, I thought we were coming to talk, remember?"

"Yeah, but I'm not gonna have disrespect for either of us," Maleny crossed her arms.

"You with Cassie?" Oliver decided to ask her, suddenly realizing he had never seen her near the covens. For all he knew she could be under Cassie's order.

"Don't know who she is, don't really think I want to know," Maleny shrugged, uninterested.

"We didn't come here to fight, Oliver," Hayley clarified, "Our pack has been divided by people who want us to be their slaves. What we need right now is a leader. Someone who will reunite us and make us strong again. Someone who will fight for our pack. If you let me, I can be that person."

Oliver scoffed at the idea, "You think we can trust you? You're not one of us! Hell, you're not even a wolf, you're a blood-sucking vampire parasite!"

"And yet you're working for Cassie," Maleny spoke up again, leaving him quiet for a minute. Her eyes looked at the other wolves intently listening to them, "I mean, do you guys really trust a man who I hear, caters to a teenage witch?"

"That witch can help us all," Oliver snapped, growing more irritated with the stranger, "She can give us moonlight rings-"

"Which would then make you all her slaves for the rest of your lives," Hayley replied then.

"Yeah, they would rather follow a witch than you," Oliver stepped towards the two women, "Me? Hell, I'd rather die than follow you."

"That's it," Maleny shut her eyes and waited to feel the channeling of powers between her and Isabelle's coven. With a thrust of her hand she blew Oliver to the ground, "Follow witches and you'll so end up on your back, dead," she told the group, "That's what you want? To be dead?"

"Mal," Hayley hissed, not at all pleased with the stunt she'd pulled.

"It's time to learn politics, Hayley," Maleny stepped forwards, wearing an uncommon sinister smile on her face, "You gain support by killing your detractors!"

"What ever, look, they may not like me very much, but these people, including Oliver, are my family," Hayley softly explained, feeling slightly awkward with the burning stares everyone had on her.

Maleny smirked as she looked around, "See that?" she jerked a thumb at Hayley, "That's the kind of leader you want and need - not some fool," she then pointed at Oliver, "that only talks loud to be heard. Choose to follow this 'Cassie' witch and you'll eventually be killed, whether by her or her enemies - who knows."

She retreated back to Hayley's side, "I have to go see Davina. You can take it from here, I think. See you back at the compound."

"Thanks," Hayley whispered before the blonde left, grateful she had been forced to come and do this. Yes, she was definitely glad to have Maleny back.

~ 0 ~

It didn't take long for Maleny to locate Davina in the Quarter. It seemed like the girl had taken refuge in the church attic again. Maleny gave a light knock on the open door, already peering inside to see the teenager reading over a grimoire, "Knock, knock."

At the unfamiliar voice, Davina looked up in alarm and ready to battle, "Who ever you are," she stood up from the couch with a hand raised towards Maleny, "you need to leave."

However, her invisible companion, Mikael, was stunned to see the blonde at the doorway, "By all the Gods…" he sucked in a breath. Davina quickly looked at the man for further explanation.

Maleny laughed, clueless of the third member in the room, "Davina, it's me, Maleny. I know I look a little different," she grabbed a handful of her loose hair, "but it's good ole Mal, I promise."

Davina's head snapped back to the blonde, her eyes wide, "Maleny!?"

"I'm finally back."

"Oh my God!" Davina scurried across the room to encase Maleny in a tight hug, "I can't believe you're back!"

"Of course I was coming back," Maleny pulled back, "Did you give up hope on me or something?"

"Never," Davina declared instantly.

"So," Maleny looked around the wooden room, unable to stop thinking of the gruesome activities that took place long ago, "word on the street is you told your coven to shove it?"

Davina chuckled and moved back, "That may or may not have happened."

"You're a badass," Maleny moved around the room, missing the stiffness in Davina as she watched the blonde walk pass Mikael.

If Maleny was back then it surely meant she was also back with the Mikaelsons. She didn't doubt for a second Maleny was already living there. The most horrendous thing would be if Maleny was now actually with Klaus. That would definitely put a damper on their friendship. Her plans still consisted in letting Mikael kill Klaus after she de-linked Klaus' sireline. Could Maleny forgive her for that if she was still in love with Klaus?

"Any particular reason why you're reading a de-linking spell?" Maleny had found Esther's grimoire on the couch and become interested in the current page.

"Um…" Davina quickly racked her mind for an excuse.

"If you tell her your plans she will never forgive you," Mikael warned in all seriousness, "She was the fool who loved that bastard."

Davina stared at him for a long time, truly taking in his words. Maleny followed her gaze to the empty spot in which Mikael stood, "Davina?" she called again, making the teenager flinch and look back.

"Uh, I was just...studying," Davina settled for a weak answer, "Telling your coven to shove it kind of means you have to learn on your own."

Maleny accepted the answer with ease, "I'm sorry for that. But you know, even though I don't have all my power back doesn't mean I can't teach you what I've learned."

"You've learned?" Davina walked to the couch, stopping just behind it.

"Mhm. My original body was in a French coven's care and when I woke up Isabelle, the leader, gave me some lessons. I even have a channeling spell between her coven and myself to help me with magic."

"That's incredible," Davina was happy to hear her friend had garnered at least a little magic of what had been taken.

"Plus, I still have my mother's grimoire. You can take it any time you want."

The kindness Maleny showed towards her made Davina feel worse of her secret plans. Since Maleny arrived to the Quarter she'd done nothing but help Davina and now Davina would repay her by killing her (hopefully past) love?

That was cruel on every standard.

"Davina, you'll have to forgive me, but this time I do come with a favor to ask," admitted a sheepish Maleny.

Davina however found no offense and quickly motioned she wanted to hear, "What is it?"

"It's about my previous body's corpse. I need to have it burned so that any link between it and the curse can officially die. This way the curse would be broken and I would be, well, free. Klaus says he doesn't know what happened to it because apparently someone took it."

Davina's gaze dropped to the floor, alerting Maleny she was already in the know of the situation. "I tried to find it," Davina began quietly, the guilt visible in her stance, "but it was cloaked. There's a powerful spell covering its location."

"So someone is intentionally hiding it," Maleny turned away, running her hands through her hair in frustration, "And they're probably waiting for me to come back so that they can..." she swallowed hard, "...capture me again..."

Davina watched her friend with sympathy. Although Maleny played out to be the tough, sarcastic woman Davina knew very well Maleny was just scared beyond belief of her cursers, and now the person who held her previous corpse. The fact she could, at any time, be once again thrown back into the cycle of jumping bodies and forgetting everything had to be something traumatizing for one person to live under for centuries.

While Davina was lost in thought, Maleny heard a cellphone vibrating, and figuring it wasn't hers she turned back. She saw Davina's phone and picked it up, reading the contact name as 'Kaleb'. With a smirk, she passed it to Davina then promptly asked, "Who's that?"

Davina blushed as she took the cellphone from Maleny, "Just...someone I met," she answered quietly and read the text sent to her.

'Can I make it up to you over dinner?'

Maleny watched a bright smile spread across the teen's face after reading the message. She chuckled when Davina remembered she wasn't alone and quickly looked back with an embarrassed look.

"So, you want to tell me more about this guy?" Maleny raised an eyebrow, resisting the urge to laugh.

"Yes, definitely yes," Davina pointed, making a face, "just maybe another time?"

"Ooh, I know that, that's a nice way of telling me to leave," Maleny backed away, now fully laughing, "Rebekah used that one on me back then so she could have some fun."

"Not like that," Davina looked mortified and blushed again.

"I expect full coverage on this tomorrow," Maleny warned, turning to leave as Davina grabbed her own things to follow.

"Definitely," Davina shut the door of the attic then hurried on out, leaving a chuckling Maleny to leave afterwards.

~ 0 ~

As the day grew darker Maleny found it was time to return home before someone grew confused. She'd spent some hours on her own getting to know the Quarter again, while also discreetly looking out for any potential enemies that could be holding her previous corpse. She also had gone to a shop for certain ingredients that would help keep a strong, constant connection of power between her and Isabelle's coven. As she was coming out of the shop, she accidentally bumped into someone.

"Sorry!" the blonde quickly went.

A dark-skinned man was the receiver of the push and appeared stunned by her presence, "You…" was all that came out of his lips.

Maleny lifted an eyebrow, "I'm sorry? What was that?"

The man, named Vincent, (or so everyone thought) quickly recollected himself and shook his head, "No, no, it's my bad. I wasn't looking where I was going…" he paused to stare at her one more time before forcing himself to go, "Excuse me."

Confused, Maleny watched after the man, wondering what was wrong with him. A vibration of her phone reminded her it was time to go. She dashed for the car and made way to the compound.

~ 0 ~

Upon entering the compound Maleny walked in the midst of people she didn't know. It wasn't until she came into the courtyard and saw Hayley giving instructions to the group.

"Take any of the rooms on the first floor," she was motioning the group to head into the downstairs corridors.

"Hayley, what's going on here?" Maleny went up to the woman.

At the same time she asked the question, Klaus and Elijah emerged from the downstairs living room, "Are we running a kennel now?" Klaus called.

"I'll handle them," Hayley told the group before dragging Maleny up to the brothers.

"And where the hell have you been?" Klaus demanded once he caught sight of Maleny.

But before Maleny opened her mouth, Hayley answered, "She was with me at the bayou helping me reconnect with my pack."

Klaus looked at Maleny, studying her face for any thing that would give reason to doubt, "You agreed to stay in here."

"I was with Hayley, someone very capable of keeping me safe," Maleny swung an arm around Hayley's shoulders, "That's not bad is it?"

"No," Elijah answered before Klaus could say something, "I think it's good you two went out," he could already tell a difference it made in Hayley and he would not have anything ruining it.

"Well, these are the ones that are not with the witches," Hayley explained as more of the pack entered.

"I don't see Oliver amongst them," Klaus observed the incoming Crescents, "Am I to assume you finished him off?"

"We made a deal," Hayley said, "He'll pledge his loyalty to Cassie, report back, and tell me everything that he learns."

Maleny blinked with surprise, "Wow, you managed to do that in the span of a day?"

Hayley smugly smiled, "Yeah."

"You're good!"

"Hey," Cami entered the compound holding a rolled up paper in hand, "I got the apartment," she declared with a smile.

"I thought you two were looking into that together," Maleny looked in between Cami and Elijah.

"We were," agreed Cami, throwing Elijah a mock glare, "then I was ditched for Davina."

"Davina? What does Davina have to do with this?" Maleny frowned, seeing the change in Elijah and even Klaus.

Elijah motioned for them to follow and while Hayley took care of the remaining Crescents.

"What's going on?" Maleny asked again once they were in the living room. The air had suddenly turned dense, like something was incredibly wrong.

"It appears our troubles with the witches are far from being over," Elijah began, "more than we thought anyways."

"How so?" Cami questioned, glancing at Maleny.

"They have the white oak stake don't they?" Maleny assumed by their behavior. Hayley had told her of the predicament the two Originals found themselves in with the loss of the stake.

"Yes and no," Klaus pointed at her, appearing irritated for some reason, "Your little witch friend, Davina, has it...along with my deceased father."

"Come again?"

"Davina somehow brought our father back from the dead and has him under her control," Elijah explained thoroughly, "and with him and the stake she has the perfect weapon to finish us once and for all."

Maleny shook her head, "That can't be. I just spoke to Davina earlier today-"

Klaus immediately stopped her after she'd basically given up her lie, "So you weren't with Hayley all day."

Maleny stiffened but quickly came up with, "I left just for a bit. I only saw Davina for like five minutes. She didn't mention anything of the stake-"

"I doubt she would have even if you asked," that response had come from neither Mikaelson brother.

Stunned, Maleny turned to face Cami, "Cami! How can you say that?"

"Well, it's just what I've seen," Cami gave a shrug and went to take a seat at the couch, "Davina's changed while you've been gone. She doesn't address me the same anymore because I keep seeing those two," she nodded towards Klaus and Elijah, "I'm not doubting her love for you because she's proven it's real, but despite all that Davina has never and probably will never desist on her attempts of killing the Mikaelsons'."

Maleny ran her hands through her hair, still reluctant to believe that one of her friends was going to kill the people that were practically her family, "I have to go talk to her," but before she even turned to leave Klaus gave her a call.

"You will not go anywhere!"

Maleny glanced back, startled of his snark, "What?"

"You're not leaving this place unless one of us," Klaus gestured to his brother and Cami, "is with you."

"I don't need a babysitter," Maleny turned back with her arms crossed, "I told you that long ago and I stand by that statement."

"Maleny, in this case, I think he's right," Elijah spoke up, getting an agreeing nod from Cami.

"Yeah, if their deranged father -" Cami began but then winced at her rudeness and apologized, "Sorry -," she told the brothers before continuing with Maleny, "is back then he'll definitely use whatever he can to his advantage."

"It's not just our father we have to deal with," Klaus announced, wanting Maleny to see just how grave the situation was, "Our mother has taken the last Harvest's girl's body, Cassie, and I doubt she's here for a simple visit."

"So both your parents are back," Maleny scowled at the idea, "Well I'd love to have a chat with Esther. Let me at her."

"This isn't funny, Maleny," Klaus snapped, "Now do you see why you need to be here?"

"No, honestly, no," Maleny shook her head, "Because as bad as things are I can't remain here. I need to have my own place and you're not going to stop me," she moved to Cami and snatched the apartment's contract from her hand before leaving the room.

"MALENY!" but Maleny ignored the shout of the hybrid as she speed walked towards her room.

Down below in the courtyard, Hayley was watching the blonde hurriedly going towards her room. She then saw Klaus coming out of the upstairs living room wearing that common angry face that usually led to some violence in the end.

"Klaus?" she called and stopped the man midway towards Maleny's room, the latter now shut and loudly.

"Not now, Hayley," Klaus warned with a finger and made to move when Hayley called again.

"Yes now," Hayley mimicked his tone. After sending the last of her pack to the needed rooms, she directed herself entirely to Klaus, "I heard everything from down here and believe me when I say shouting will not get you anywhere."

"Are you really going to give me lessons on how to speak with Maleny?" Klaus scoffed at the idea, "You are forgetting I've known her since we were children."

"Then you should have learned by now that your shouting does no good to her - nor anyone," Hayley crossed her arms, "Isn't that how you lost her the first time around?" at the question she received glaring daggers from upstairs, "You shouted and told her you'd never turn her. So then she ran away and that was the horrible ending of your relationship."

"None of this is your business, why not go and attend to those of your pack you so easily let into this house?"

"I will and currently am," Hayley remained calm, "but I'm also going to take care of my friends. Look," she took a step towards the rails, "I'm on your side, I think it's a lot safer for Maleny to stay here if Esther's back, not to mention Mikael."

"Then you talk to her," Klaus angrily motioned for her to get moving, "Because she doesn't want to listen to me!"

"Maybe because you're not understanding the problem here," Hayley gave him a narrowed look, "You don't get it, do you? She's scared, Klaus, and she doesn't know how to deal with it. She wants to leave because she's scared. Show her she's protected here, and try not to shout. Good luck," she gave a pretend salute before leaving to tend to her pack.

Klaus rolled his eyes and turned for Maleny's room, taking a moment for himself to push down any shouts that could possibly come out. He needed to be in control of himself if Maleny was to agree to stay.

~ 0 ~

Inside her room, Maleny was busily pacing back and forth thinking of how exactly she would be leaving the compound without causing unnecessary commotion. She was also thinking of where her corpse was in and who had it, not to mention what the person was doing at the moment. Had they already figured out she was back? Were they going to act on their plan now? Or would it be like the Dawsons, straight to the point?

The knock on her door made her stop momentarily and out of politeness she called, "Who?"

"Klaus," came the answer.

Maleny looked around for a minute before deciding to go and open the door, "If you're here to keep ordering me what I can and can't do you might as well get going. I would have guessed that by this time you have learned that I'm a grown woman."

Klaus took a deep breath, making it clear he was doing an effort to stay at ease, "I just...want to talk…"

Maleny opened the door wider and motioned him to come in, "What about, exactly? I think we've said everything by now."

"Mal," Klaus turned to face her, "I need you to stay here," he pointed to the room, "where I can make sure that you are, in fact, safe."

"But it doesn't matter where I go, I'll be unsafe until I can find the corpse. But living somewhere else makes me just a little safer."

"Not with Mikael and Esther walking the Earth," Klaus shook his head, "No one is safe and you being out there is specifically the thing we need to avoid. Do you have any idea what my mother would do if she found out you were here in the Quarter?"

"No, I don't know, but I'm going to find out whether or not I live here. Esther has things to pay for and in that are my powers she stole. I'm seeing her no matter what."

"Then if you're going to do that, at least be with us until things are safer," Klaus nearly pleaded but maintained an aura of calmness, "Hayley lives here, Cami lives here now, Elijah is here and so am I. We can take care of you, we can protect you."

Maleny stared at him for a long while before breaking down with a long sigh and hands in her hair, "I don't...I don't know what to do..."

As much as it pained her, and perhaps Klaus if he knew, she was utterly confused on what to do with her life. On the one hand, she wanted to stay in another place (in the Quarter) and start a new life with her newfound (albeit little) freedom. She hadn't had much time to get to know the modern world after waking up in France, and now that she was back in the Quarter perhaps she could start to. There were so many things she wanted to do...but she was completely afraid. The other part of her wanted to stay in the compound, with everyone she knew, where it felt safe and secure. Her mind was going crazy trying to come up with the decision.

Klaus walked up to her and removed her hands from her hair, "Mal, it's not difficult-"

"Yes it is," Maleny meekly insisted, embarrassed he was seeing her unable to make such an apparent decision, "I don't know what to do. I was already nervous coming back but now that your parents are here I can literally feel my heart," she gulped, "I...I..."

"You're scared," Klaus thought back to Hayley's words, his gaze on her turning soft with sorrow. Maleny sniffed as the tears welled in her eyes and without a word took her hands out of his to hug him. With a light sigh, Klaus wrapped his arms around her, "How about a compromise?" he asked quietly, one hand stroking her soft hair.

"What kind?" she whispered, keeping her head resting over his shoulder.

"You can stay here until Mikael and Esther are gone," he proposed, and he was shamefully hoping that took a long while so that he would have enough time to convince her to stay permanently with him.

"I guess...that sounds okay," she said slowly, still thinking, "but you can't tell me to stay here all the time."

"Well, you can't go escaping all the time," he countered with a hint of amusement.

"I want to stay out of trouble," she admitted sheepishly, knowing that was just about the opposite of her entire person, "But it gets a little complicated sometimes. Still," she raised her head and looked at him, now wearing a small smile across her lips, "I think we can make a compromise. But you know I want to focus entirely on this curse," she shook her head, missing the brief flash of pain in Klaus' eyes, "I wouldn't want to break my promise to you and have to forcibly leave because someone stole me."

He scowled, "I've always lived with danger at my side..."

"And for that very detail I would like to change it so that I don't cause you unnecessary pain," she insisted, deeply sighing, "It's difficult, I understand, but this is merely my attempt to help. So please, just abide by this rule."

"I don't have much of a choice," he grumbled. But when she took his hands again and he saw her smiling at him, he couldn't keep up his disappointment. She would at least be staying with him where it was safer, where he could make sure it was safe for her.

But he was still going to make his attempts and persuade her to permanently stay with him. After all, soon Hope would be returning and he wanted nothing more than to introduce one to another. One day, he would have both of his girls together, and with him.

~ 0 ~

The same man Maleny had bumped into earlier hastily walked into the witches' lycee where Cassie - or Esther - was busy handling herbs.

"Mother," he called in urgency, making Esther glance back, "She's here, she's back in the Quarter. Maleny's returned."

"Has she?" Esther raised her eyebrows, clearly content with the news.

"I bumped into her by the witches' voodoo shop. It was her," her eldest son, Finn, assured.

A smirk started spreading across Esther's lips, "Then it's most definitely the appropriate time to make contact with your brothers in their home. There is much to do now."

#klaus mikaelson #the originals #ocappreciation #ocapp #klaus mikaelson imagines #tvd imagines #the originals imagines #klaus mikaelson fics #the originals fics #the originals fanfics #elijah mikaelson #Camille O'Connell #hayley marshall

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ed-edward-blackbeard · 4 years

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Fanfic Author Meme. Keep Reading after question 2 for 3-50.

1. What was your first fic and could you stand to reread it today?

Jesus Lord, no. I’d die of secondhand embarrassment before I got halfway through it. It was never published online, thank Christ. It was called … ugh, I don’t remember what I called it, but it was a line from Edmund Spenser. (Don’t judge.) It was an OC female character and Autolycus, from Hercules and Xena, played by Bruce Campbell. It was… a SHAMBLES. Self-insert, wish-fulfillment of the worst kind. But, my friend Alicia read it at the time and she told me how great she thought it was, and I should keep at it. So, thank you, Edmund-Spenser-titled-fic.

2. What’s your most recent fic and how far do you think you’ve come?

It’s called “i commit sins every day but i never give my soul away”, and it’s on my AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/22951009. And I actually don’t have a unit of measurement for how much I’ve improved. But it’s also been… God, I’m 43 today, so it’s been 27 years I’ve been writing. Almost thirty years. Shit, I’m old.

3. In your opinion, what’s your best fic?

Oh, man. Tricky question. If by best you mean technically written, most enjoyable? I’d say maybe wasting the dawn. Definitely By Inches We Fall. But to be totally honest with you? I think my best fic, the one that got me, personally by the throat, shook me, and hasn’t let me go? Shoah. It’s one of my earlier fics, from the Sentinel fandom, but man. Writing this was rough. I did my research on concentration camps, and I couldn’t sleep right for weeks. Lisa and Patt were holding my hands over AIM practically every night when I was sobbing that I couldn’t finish it, that I couldn’t do it, that it was too much. (I’d have been about fucking seventeen, maybe nineteen, when I was writing it.) I bit off way more than I was prepared for, but I didn’t quit. And I’m proud, quite frankly, that I even finished the damn thing, but even this far removed from it, I still feel that gut-punch when I go back re-read it, which is why I don’t. And haven’t for a couple of years.

4. In your opinion and without looking at any numbers, what’s your most popular fic?

It’d probably be Consortio.

5. Is there any fic that makes you super happy to reread and remember you wrote that?

I actually feel that way about 99% of my stuff. Even some of the older stuff, I re-read it and I get really happy because not only do I see myself changing and maturing, I realize I was harder on myself than I should have been. I didn’t suck like I thought, and I get the warm fuzzies.

6. Is there any fic that makes you super embarrassed to reread and remember you wrote that?

Er, not really? I mean, there’s some cringey shit I wrote when I was like, twelve, but not even I know where those notebooks got off to.

7. What’s the fic you most want to continue (unfinished or no)?

By Inches We Fall. It’s my only Game of Thrones fic, and I feel like I really want to continue the story of Jamie and Brienne and their kids, and of Jaime being Hand to King Jon and Queen Sansa.

8. What’s the oldest (longest since last update) fic you most want to continue (unfinished or no)?

How Firm A Foundation. It’s a Deadwood fic, and I (many years ago, when Deadwood was actually on the air) actually sketched out how every chapter would go. There’s a few things I’d change today, if I started it again, just because I can plot better than I could ten years ago, but I think the thread of the story is gone forever.

9. Have you ever written for a fandom without watching/reading/playing the source material?

Yami No Matsuei. A friend of mine was actually heavily into YnM, and I wrote several stories for her. Later I’ve watched some of it, and I realize I did okay on my characterizations, but there’s always things I could have done better.

10. Have you ever written for a fandom without reading other fanfic for it?

Pretty much every fandom I have ever been in. I don’t read a lot of fanfic, because I’m afraid (almost paranoid, in fact) that I’ll internalize something I’ve read and later spout it out in my fic, and I don’t ever want to copy anyone, deliberately or otherwise.

11. Have you ever written a fic for a concept you know someone else has done before? How did it impact your writing process or feelings after posting?

I have, and I didn’t publish it for the reason above; I didn’t feel like my take on it was original enough to bother.

12. Have you ever written a fic and decided never to publish it? Why?

Lots of reasons, actually. Sometimes I write with the intention of not publishing, it’s something just for me. I’ve also written a few fics that I ended up absolutely hating, and they’ve never seen the light of day. I’ve also done some that I felt wasn’t original enough, or they were written about the trope du jour, and I had nothing else to offer that ten other people hadn’t already done.

13. What’s the biggest change between your style when you started in fandom and today?

Sentence style and structure. I used to do the whole, “He said.” “In reply, she said.” “The sky was blue when he rode in.” And then a few of my better friends (and betas) took me in hand and showed me how to mix it up, chop my comma addiction in half (seriously, I once had a single sentence run on for twelve lines.) and I feel like I get a better grip on characterization.

14. What’s the biggest change in your taste between when you started in fandom and today?

Sex. I used to write it in everything. And then the more I wrote, and the older I got, the less I wanted to write it (or read it, or talk about it.) So I’m a lot more comfortable writing non-sex stories than I used to be.

15. Have you ever purposefully written one fandom/fic idea over another because you knew it’d be more popular?

Of course. I think everyone has, at one point or another.

16. Have you ever stopped writing a fic/for a fandom because it wasn’t receiving enough attention?

Anything I’ve ever abandoned was lack of my own attention, not anything else. I’m kinda used to not getting a lot of attention.

17. In your opinion, what’s your most overrated fic?

What He Wants. It’s pretentious wankfic, for a pairing I don’t actually like all that much (Lucius/Harry), and I just feel like everyone loves it way more than it deserves.

18. What’s your most underrated fic?

I’m gonna pick on Shoah again, because I feel like it just doesn’t get enough love. I’m biased, because of how emotionally attached I am to the fic, but I feel like it’s ignored.

19. If you had to pick one fic/scene/chapter of your work to describe your entire portfolio to a stranger, which would you pick?

Wasting The Dawn. It’s a Magicians fic, and it showcases every character from the show, and I think I did a passable job of hitting every voice. So I’d be proud to show that one around.

20. Have/Would you ever rewrite a fic? If yes, would you take the original down?

Would I rewrite it? Sure. Would I take down the original? Um, that’s a little more difficult. On the one hand, I’m not really ashamed, as such, of anything that I did. But having two copies of things would get really complicated and onerous. I might actually start a second pseud, like maybe kelex-originals or something like that, and move the originals over to that, and leave the rewrites on my main, with a link to the original in the notes. Yeah, that’s probably what I’d do.

21. If someone starts kudosing and commenting your fics in a spree and has a few works of their own, would you go look through theirs?

HELL YES. Mostly because I’m always looking for shinies to read in fandoms I don’t write for. I also kind of like to read their stuff and get a feel for who they are and why they like what I’ve got. But mostly, I just love it and it makes me giggle watching someone go through my fics and like EEEE THERE YOU ARE AGAIN.

22. Has there ever been anyone who’s made you freak out because they read your work and followed/favorited/reviewed?

Fucking scads of people, actually.

23. What’s the nicest review you’ve ever gotten?

Oh man, I’ve got a fuckton of good ones. But the one that I always get a kick out of is on one of my Gotham fics, and the comment was along the lines of, the tag mentioned bed-sharing and they thought that was all it was going to be, but it was so much more and they got caught up in it and it was wonderful. And that’s my favorite (if not the nicest) because I love the fact that I was able to give someone something they enjoyed, even more because it was unexpected!

24. What’s the meanest review you’ve ever gotten? Do you think the reviewer intended it?

It was a review back in the days of OneList, and I was told that my pencils should be broken and my keyboard taken away because I was a terrible writer. And yes, I know they meant it.

25. What constructive criticism, however well-meaning, always makes you feel bad when you see it in a review?

It’s less a concrit and more a crit. But it’s always, “why did you do X? It was out of character!” and that makes me grit my teeth. Mostly because I feel like I’ve always explained, thoroughly, why I’ve done something (whether in dialog, in the writing itself, or heavily implied in monologues), and that question always makes me want to throttle someone because either they didn’t get it, or I didn’t.

26. What aspect of your writing do you most enjoy to see praised?

Humor. I’m a sarcastic bitch, and when it’s appropriate (and sometimes when it isn’t), I have funny characters or have characters deadpan things. And it delights the fuck out of me when someone highlights that as one of their favorite parts.

27. If you could only ever write crossovers or single-fandom fics ever again, which would you pick?

Single fandom fics. I’m not a fan of crossovers, though I’ve written them from time to time, and probably will again if I think it’s appropriate. I just prefer not to cross the streams, as it were.

28. if you could only ever write for a single crossover or a single fandom again, which would you pick?

Good Omens. Hands down. So. Many. AUs. So many ideas. So many delightful characters.

29. Does the division of your writing across fandoms line up with your reading? What’s the biggest discrepancy?

It does not. I read far, far less than I actually write.

30. Do you continue to write for a fandom after you’ve moved on or do you focus solely on the new one?

I usually focus on the new one, however, I’ve occasionally re-visited a fandom after I’ve left it, because inspiration hits me, or I’ve gotten back into it.

31. Who’s the one character you’ve just never managed to get perfectly right?

Margo Hanson, from the Magicians.

32. Who’s the one character who shines without you even trying?

There’s a few. Eliot Waugh, Lex Luthor, Jack O’Neill, the Doctor (9 & 10 mostly)

33. Is there any particular character whose scenes always wind up being longer/more frequent than you expected? Does the quality hold up?

Not really? Characters and scenes are as long as they need to be. I do think the quality holds up, though, because honestly, by the time they’re done, I’m done.

34. Was there any fic that you wrote that really surprised you in the fandom reaction? Was it just by the numbers or did they take it an entirely different way?

Not really, or if there was, I don’t remember it.

35. Have you ever written a ship into a fic without meaning to?

Yup. It snuck in there, especially in the background early on, and by the end I was like, what the fuck, I don’t even ship you, YOU DON’T EVEN GO HERE.

36. Have you ever sincerely written a ship you do not support into a fic?

Nope. If I don’t like a ship, I don’t write it.

37. Have you ever purposefully bashed a character/ship in a fic?

No. Not as a writer. But like, I have written a character saying “I don’t think X belongs with Y, they belong with me!” because that’s pretty much how the actual relationship went down. (Spike, Buffy, Riley most specifically.)

38. Have you ever purposefully written something you know your readers would find uncomfortable/would not enjoy? If yes, why?

Very, very, very many years ago. I wrote it just to see if I could. I could, I did, and I haven’t written it again.

39. Do you consider yourself to have a readership?

No.

40. Do you feel like you put out enough content?

I feel like I put out what I need to. Is it enough? idk.

41. If you cross-post your fics on multiple sites, do you have a favorite? Are there certain fics you would only post on certain site?

AO3 is, hands down, my favorite. For awhile, I was posting to WWOMB (Wonderful World of Make-Believe) but I’ve stopped there, sadly.

42. How many views has your most popular fic gotten?

Consortio is my most popular fic, and it’s gotten 21,658 hits. Although the fic is multi-chapter, so I don’t know how to break that down into individual hits. In fact, four of my five most popular are multi-chapters. The only single-chapter fic is What He Wants, clocking in at 6,743.

43. Your least popular?

The Rose and the Yew Tree, with 0 hits.

44. Do you follow/favorite/kudos/comment/review more stories than you have received?

Unfortunately, no.

45. If you had to call yourself an author of a single genre (besides fanfic) what label would you give yourself?

Pornography.

46. Do you consider yourself a diverse author?

Diverse as in fandoms? Yes. Diverse as in style? Not so much.

47. If someone you know in real life who isn’t involved in fandoms asked to read your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you recommend they read first?

I’ve done that before, and I’ve tailored it to the person and what I know they like. For example, my old boss got me hooked on La Femme Nikita (the Peta Wilson one), and so when she wanted to read my writing, I gave her my LFN fics to read.

48. Does anyone you know from outside of fandom know you write fanfic? Are they involved in the same fandom too?

Yes, and some of them.

49. Has anyone in your life ever read your fanfic just because you wrote it?

Yes.

50. Has writing fanfic had a significant impact on your life? Would you say it’s entirely positive?

It has had a very significant impact, and no, it hasn’t been at all positive. Some of my best moments, as well as my worst, are because of fanfic and fandom, but fanfic in particular. Fic’s brought me close to people, fic’s pushed me away from people, and it’s made people change the way they look at me.

#everything you ever wanted to know about me #but were afraid to ask #fanfic writers meme #askbox meme

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