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ask-fantasy-sanders-sides · 3 years

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So, wait, toes Remus know that Virgil is a dragon too?? if he does, did Virgil tell him or did he just figure it out?

It wasn’t too long after their escape from the prison complex that Remus got irritated.

He didn’t regret dragging the strange assassin along — after all, Remus probably wouldn't have been able to escape without him — but he was getting more and more frustrated with his lack of response to...well, anything.

Remus has attempted more than once to scare and/or gross the stranger out with diatribes of gore and violence, but that hasn't phased him at all. Really, Remus thinks he probably should have expected that response from a dark-elven warrior, but it was a little jarring to have his usual monologues accepted with little more than a cursory glare. It didn't help that he had to speak to the soldier in the goblin language, which neither of them knew well enough to share many complex ideas.

Then, there were his rages. Remus wasn't really himself in that state, and he knew he was quite the sight to those who had never heard of a barbarian. He's pretty sure that if he had some foggy awareness of the assassin being disgusted or even mildly intrigued by his berserk mode, he would have remembered them. As it stands, nothing.

Then, there was his trump card: The first time Remus let out his true form and went berserk on a few guards, the assassin barely even noticed the difference. Remus dismissed it at the time, assuming they had just been busy doing their thing and hadn’t seen him do it. But, as they were sneaking away from the castle spires the next day and he had to dispose of some noble-looking witnesses, Remus definitely saw the assassin look at his wings.

Still he made absolutely no reaction! He doesn’t seem to react to much of anything, unless he’s being mad at Remus for yelling too loud or missing a swing. Admittedly, being able to spark annoyance in the stuck-up soldier is a little fun, but even his moments of anger are few and far between.

This is the first and only time someone has seen Remus’s kick-ass undead angel wings and not had a damn thing to say about it, and Remus can honestly say he hates it.

So, now that they’re finally outside of the Colony walls (and Remus doesn’t have to worry about the assassin chewing him out for making a scene,) Remus smirks deviously at the unsuspecting drow.

“Hey! Watch this,” Remus shouts, then closes his eyes to focus.

He reaches deep inside himself to connect with that boiling mass of discordant energy — a frothing core of divine light that’s spoiling rotten and necrotic, burning away the mold, healing, and then spoiling again, over and over with each beat of his two hearts. As he’s practiced ever since he was a child, Remus grabs that energy and pulls it out, dismissing a weight in his stomach that he hardly notices until it's time to let go.

The instinctual protective glamor that hides his true form dissolves in the firelight of his true essence, as bone-like angel wings, void-like eyes, and a tidal wave of smoke pour out of Remus like air from a popped balloon. A sickly green glow outlines his irises, his scars, and emblazons the emblem of a sword over his chest. He can feel it as the energy unfurls, how the world spins and sears into focus, how his senses grow sharp and breathing is suddenly so much easier than it’s ever been before. This is what he truly is, how he really looks, and it is a figure that strikes fear and awe in every creature who has the misfortune of seeing it.

All except one. Apparently.

The assassin simply stares at Remus, stone-still as Remus’s whole fucked up magical girl cutscene plays out point-blank in front of him. The fear-inducing necrotic gas rolls past the assassin's feet and into his lungs, but nothing happens. A few seconds pass, and he still hasn’t moved, but he’s clearly not gone into shock or anything of the kind.

Eventually, the assassin gets the impression that Remus is expecting a response. So, he cocks his hip out to one side and folds his arms, mimicking the facial expression that he’s gathered humans make when they’re confused: a pointed eyebrow raise.

(Given his usual glowering expression, it comes across more like sass.)

The minute passes, and though Remus feels the smoke dissipate and his eyes and scars return to normal with a sinking feeling in his gut, the wings remain. Instead of dismissing them, Remus throws his arms out wide with a growl,

“Seriously? That’s it? You’re not scared!”

“Scared?” The assassin parrots lowly.

A wide smile stretches across his lightly-freckled face. In the space of a blink he’s behind Remus, gently peeling the barbarian’s tattered shirt away to get a better look at the base of his wings.

He lays one ice-cold hand against the divot between them, touching him clinically, like he’s trying to figure out how solid Remus's wings are. His hand smooths gently across the stump where flesh gives way to semi-transparent bone before Remus's brain catches up. He shrieks and jumps away from him,

“What the shit are you doing?!” Remus squeaks, eyes wide as saucers. He would be more embarrassed by how absolutely unthreatening he sounds right now if he didn’t still feel the shape of that hand on him like a brand.

(He decides that this is more because of the supernatural nature of his wings, and not because Remus hasn't been touched that carefully by another person since he was like eleven. He doesn’t have time to unpack that feeling whatsoever.)

“You told me to look.” The assassin teases, openly laughing at Remus’s expense.

Then, — and Remus could swear he’s doing it slowly just to make sure Remus sees him — the soldier takes a deep exhale, and his purple eye flashes a soft glow. Suddenly, his body evaporates until he is a cloud of shadowy smoke. This smoke quickly blends in with the surrounding darkness of the cavern, and before Remus can get a word in edgewise, the assassin has re-solidified and is poking his back again.

“StoOOP TOuching me!” Remus yelps and spins around to face him, face red as blood and hands up in a defensive position, “Since when could you do that?!”

The assassin rolls his eyes at this, his hands falling to his sides. Now he takes a moment to think, before reaching down to untie his dagger belt and pull his tunic loose.

“What are you doing?” Remus protests louder, covering his eyes with his hands.

The assassin doesn’t respond.

Though he’s reciting curses in his head and trying very hard to respect this stranger’s privacy, Remus’s curiosity quickly gets the better of him.

He peeks out between his fingers to find the soldier shirtless, his white hair parted and pulled over his shoulders. He looks up at Remus with a completely unimpressed stare.

The assassin reaches out to grab one of Remus’s hands, then turns to show Remus his back.

Remus stares for a moment, eyes tracing the thin, ragged lines of a latticework of scars. They stretch across and around the assassin’s back, some older and some deeper. Most seem to have been inflicted by animals or monsters rather than weapons.

Remus feels no sense of pity at the display — he’s got his own patchwork of scars and his own complicated relationship to them, but over all he sees them more as a mark of survival, as stories to tell. But, he is definitely curious, and his mile-a-minute brain is already spinning outrageous tales to match each and every mark.

Then the assassin guides his hand up towards the top of his back, just alongside his spine. The skin there feels leathery, and significantly warmer than the skin of the elf’s hand, though the heat seems to be emanating from someplace lower on his spine. It’s also slightly off-color, a bit lighter than the skin around it. Whatever this is, this scar is old.

Remus traces the outline of it up, then off to the side as it tapers to a thin line between his shoulder and the base of his neck. The assassin’s ears twitch at the gesture, and Remus’s hand flinches away.

He turns to look at Remus over his shoulder, his neutral grimace returned.

“We are the same. Shadow and wings. You are kitrye'maelthra, right?”

“I don’t know what that is.” Remus frowns, always frustrated when the assassin sneaks an elven word or two into their rare conversations,

“I’m not super good at reading energies, but you don’t feel like an angel… You have wings??”

“No.” He frowns, his gaze becoming soft and distant, “Not anymore.”

“Oh.” Remus sighs, now reeling at the possibilities.

What sort of dark elf grows wings, and how can they be removed? He winces at the phantom pain to his own wings as he parcels through every guess. Did a monster tear them off? The scar was so smooth, it seemed more like they had been burned away with acid. Did he fall into the pit of a living ooze, or maybe it was a punishment from some cruel cultist—

“Yours are broken.” The assassin pries, still staring at him while Remus zoned out.

“Broken? No they're not!”

“You have no skin.” The assassin remarks, like that should have been obvious, “And you look like a ghost.”

“Wait, skin? Like a bat?” Remus laughs, imagining it. He shakes his head, “I’m not supposed to have skin! —Well, I mean, I am, but also feathers. Y’know, like a bird?”

“Bird?” The assassin repeats, like he doesn’t understand the word. He probably doesn’t, goddamn Underdark.

“...Ehh, forget about it. I’ll show you one when we get up there.” Remus shakes his head.

The assassin pulls his tunic back up and re-ties it. While he waits, a sudden thought knocks Remus out of his gruesome imaginings.

He thinks he probably shouldn’t ask, but it takes him all of three seconds to snap and say it anyway,

“Hey,” Remus hums offhandedly, like he’s not extremely invested in knowing the answer, “If you could ‘go ghost’ or whatever this whole time, why didn’t you just poof yourself out of that cell?”

(“And why did you stay to help me?” Remus refuses to add, because he is not that attached to his little stray-criminal monsterboy, goddamnit. He refuses.)

The assassin doesn’t answer or turn back to him, simply staring off in the direction of their path.

Remus huffs and rolls his eyes,

“Fine, damn, keep your secrets. Bet you just can’t hold it that long~”

“Don’t xhandal me, lotha mal'dhalaruk. Usstan orn da'urzotreth dosst et'zarreth.”

“Again, I do not know what the fuck that is.”

#lets roll #long post #long answer #janus's visions #tw violence mention #tw scars #hehe toes #ive stopped making the visions all in italics. its fun flavor but it makes them hard to read lol

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winterhawk-olympic-bang · 3 years

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Writer’s Workshop: How To End Your Story

How To End Your Story

Guest Poster: Flawedamythyst

We’re in the final furlong before the deadline for the first draft now, so it feels like a good time to talk about endings, and how to bring your story together to create a satisfactory one.

Have a read and then head over to the Discord Server where we have a channel for you to take part in a discussion based on the post, with chances to share your own ideas too.

How To End Your Story

There are traditionally six types of endings for a story:

Resolved ending - one with no lingering questions or loose ends. (Most murder mysteries and romances fall into this category.)

Unresolved ending - the kind of ending that leaves the reader with more questions than answers. (Usually for books that are part of a series. A lot of the HP books have endings like this.)

Expanded ending - expands the world of the story beyond the events of the narrative itself, with a time jump forward or a change in PoV.

Unexpected ending - a twist ending that the reader doesn’t see coming, but that should seem inevitable in hindsight.

Ambiguous ending - one that’s open to interpretation. Unlike an unresolved one, it leaves things to be interpreted by the reader so they have to decide themselves how it goes.

Tied ending - that brings the story full circle, and ends exactly where it began. Often the case for ‘Hero’s Journey’ type stories, where the hero ends up back home at the end.

You can read more about them here: https://boords.com/storytelling/how-to-end-a-story or here: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/ways-to-end-your-story but also in multiple other articles online just by Googling ‘Six Ways To End A Story’.

But, of course, they don’t really tell you how to work out which one your story needs, or how to write one of them without falling into any of the traps that ends with an unsatisfying ending.

Motivation

Of course, often the hardest bit with an ending is actually getting there. Losing motivation is so easy, especially when you’re writing something super-long. I know lots of people get motivation by posting as they go and using comments/kudos as a spur, or even just by talking about it on Tumblr or other places and letting other people’s excitement buoy them up, but a Bang event like WHOB doesn’t allow for that.

I’m going to talk a bit about ways to motivate yourself when you’re having to keep things secret from all but a handful of people, but bear in mind that this is something that really is very individual. Everyone writes for different reasons, and so everyone’s path to staying motivated is different.

For me, I think it comes down to focusing on why am I writing this story to start with? Any time I feel myself flagging, I think back to that reason and re-capture the original feeling I had about it. Often there’s a couple of different reasons.

For example, when I was writing Look What The Cat Dragged In, my motivations when I wrote the first line were:

I want all of fandom to share with me the image of the Winter Soldier waking Clint up to threaten him while gently cradling a kitten in his hands, and

I was writing it as a present for @kangofu-cb.

So, if I flagged at all, I was able to either reread that moment with Bucky holding the kitten and think ‘wow, I really do thing people will enjoy this mental image’, or I was able to think ‘I want my friend to have a nice thing’, and that helped me drive on and push through.

A lot of my personal motivations come down to ‘I want to share this scene/witty one-liner/visual of Clint pole dancing while dressed as Captain America with people’, so often just rereading what I’ve already done is really motivating for me, plus it also gives me the chance to see just how much I’ve already done, and what I would be dooming to be unfinished if I just walked away without pushing through.

You might well have different motivations though, which are equally valid. Maybe you started a fic for this event because you wanted to get a shiny badge, or to do something that your friends were doing, or you wanted to prove to yourself that you could write something longer than usual or outside of your usual wheelhouse. It may feel harder now than it did when you had that first idea, but that doesn’t change why you wanted to do it, and it’s actually easier now than it was when you started, because you’ve already done some of it.

And, if none of those motivations work for you, there’s always spite. ‘Oh, my brain gremlins think I can’t finish this? Fuck those guys, I’m going to prove those assholes so very, very wrong’ is completely how I powered through to finish my first ever novel-length fic, a million years and several fandoms ago.

Resolution vs Ending

So, let’s move on to the ending itself.

There are two parts to writing an ending: there’s the plot resolution and how that all gets tied up, and there’s the actual ending of the fic - the last scene, and the last place the reader sees the characters.

Sometimes the resolution happens only at the very end of a story and so those are the same thing, but I tend to think that makes things feel a bit abrupt. Especially for fics, which tend to be more character-driven than mainstream media and so need a wind down on how the characters react to the end of the plot for the reader. (This isn’t always true, of course, some plots do tie up neatly in the final scene. Every story is different and you’re the person best placed to judge what’s needed in your fic.)

So when you’re thinking about the ending, think about both parts. ‘How does this plot resolve itself?’ and ‘where do I want to leave these characters in the readers’ mind’s eye?’

Plotting a Story Resolution

You may well have already got a resolution worked out as part of your planning, but what if that ending doesn’t seem to fit any more, or you realise just as you get to it that you forgot to think about an ending at all and have no idea where to go?

First of all, don’t panic! If the rest of the story is there, you’ll be able to pull together the strands to create the best ending. Trust the bones of your story.

When I’m facing a blank page and no real idea of how I’m getting from the Depths of Despair moment to the happy ending, the first thing I do is reread the whole story in case that sparks a fantastic, fully-formed idea to appear on how to tie it all up. Mostly that doesn’t work, which is always disappointing, but it’s still a good place to start, because you have the whole run of the fic fresh in your head to plan from.

The next thing I do is make a list of all the things that I know definitely need to happen for the plot to be done. These don’t need to be in any particular order at this point and they don’t need to link up, you just need a list of what needs to go into the framework, however minor. ‘Clint wears Bucky’s hoodie and Bucky is smitten’ is a totally valid plot point to include, or even ‘include mention of recurring joke about muffins’. If you know something needs to be resolved but you don’t know how yet, just putting ‘resolve plot point with badgers’ is fine. Hopefully once you’ve started thinking through all the different bits, you’ll work out what’s going to happen to the badgers, and it’ll make sure you know it needs to be included somewhere.

If you have a beta/cheer reader who can help, it’s also super helpful to ask them what they would expect from the ending based on what they’ve read so far, or what elements from earlier in the story they think will be coming back/will turn out to be foreshadowing. Sometimes you’ll find you’ve written the clues to your ending into the earlier bits without really noticing, and you can throw them down on the list to be included as well.

Once you have everything you know needs to be included, you can shift them around into a rough order you think they need to go in, and start filling in the gaps. For example, if ‘Clint gets injured’ is there, you can add in ‘Bucky tends to his wounds’ as the obvious next step and maybe that would be a good time to throw in a muffin joke, and then Clint might need to borrow a hoodie if his shirt has blood on it, so you can tick those bits off as well.

It gets easier to see where the gaps are once you have it written out, even if it’s only things that you already knew would need to happen. Having it down in black and white helps your brain to move pieces around like a jigsaw puzzle, and start extrapolating on what comes in the gaps between.

Make The Ending Fit The Story

Think about what kind of story it’s been so far, and make sure that the ending you come up with fits in with it.

You’ll know the general feeling that you wanted for the fic when you started writing, so that will give you a solid idea on how the ending needs to go. (Often for me this feeling is ‘schmoopy and loved up’, because I’m a softie. A lot of what I’m doing when I’m writing a fic is just clearing out of the way any obstacles that are going to get in the way of my characters being schmoopy and loved up. When there’s nothing left in the way, that’s when I know it’s the end of the story.)

You also need to keep the tone and pacing of your fic the same, and make sure that your ending matches up so it all feels like it fits together. This includes keeping the pace the same as it had been, no matter how tempting it is to rush through so you can get the thing finished already, or slow right down so you can add in a few thousand more words.

Along with sticking to the tone you’ve set for the fic, try not to genre-shift - if you’ve written an action-packed zombie apocalypse fic, resolving the plot with domestic schmoop isn’t a great idea. The reader is invested in the style of story that you’ve written so far, so pulling the rug out on them will only give them whiplash, a vague sense of dissatisfaction or a persistent nagging feeling that zombies are about to attack.

Unless you’ve written a domestic schmoop zombie AU of course, in which case I would read the hell out of it. ‘Curtain!fic but sometimes the undead interrupt’ sounds like a lot of fun.

And finally, make sure you maintain your characterisation. If the ending you want involves your character doing something wildly out-of-character, then that’s not the right ending. (I like to call this an Endgame!Steve ending. No, I’m not over that.) Even if your audience is invested in your story enough to overlook the incongruence, they will be having to overlook it rather than feeling fully invested in the journey you’ve created.

Chekov’s Gun

The most satisfying endings are the ones that tie up most, if not all, of the loose ends, and provide an emotional pay-off equivalent to the build-up. If you’ve been talking about something big that might or might not happen, and then it doesn’t, it’s narratively frustrating. In the same way, if you drop something big in that doesn’t really fit with what went before, it’s going to make the story feel unbalanced.

Obviously that doesn’t mean you can’t have a surprise or twist ending but even if the reader is surprised by something happening, they still want to feel like they’re reading the same story. They need to look back with hindsight of knowing the twist and see how it fits in, and not how it stands out.

A good rule to follow is the Chekov’s Gun rule: If there’s a gun on the table in the first act, someone needs to shoot it in the second act. If you’ve been teasing something, make sure the pay-off is there.

And, of course, if someone’s going to be firing a gun at the end, go back and make sure it gets mentioned earlier in the story. It doesn’t need to be a heavy-handed anvil, but if you can drop in casual hints about guns earlier in the story, the whole thing feels more cohesive and thought out. No one needs to know that you only put those hints in after you’d finished the whole thing.

Loose Ends

Something I always like to do when I’m plotting exactly how the ending is going to go, is to go back through the whole fic and make a list of anything that feels like it could be a loose end if it didn’t get resolved. (If I’m having a problem working out my ending, often this happens at the same time as writing down all my ending plot points, as I described above.)

Some of those are obvious, like ‘Bucky and Clint need to kiss’, but some are less so. Did Clint think about how much he just wants to be done with all the drama so he can snuggle with his dog? Maybe throw in some Lucky cuddles somewhere in the finale so he gets the emotional pay-off. Has Bucky mentioned really want to punch a bad guy in particular in the face? Give him a chance to smack that asshole around a bit. Has there been a minor relationship drama along the way, like someone leaving their socks lying around? Have them either make a point of putting them away, or the other person just rolling their eyes and accepting it as a part of being with them.

It’s also important to think about where your secondary characters are going to end up, and if it feels like they’ve had an arc that needs resolving. Has there been another pairing with a bit of screen time or some background drama? Give them a chance to make out/make up. Has the bad guy done something that affected one of the other Avengers? Let them have a slice of revenge along the way.

For example, in my plan for Be All You Can Be, one of the original characters I introduced as other soldiers doing Basic Training, Havelka, didn’t turn up again after he’d been kicked back a level to another training unit. When I reread that, it became clear that he needed to prove himself somehow or his arc would be a depressing downward slope partially instigated by Clint and Bucky, so I brought him back at the end to do some First Aid and gave him a line or two to point to how his future was going to go, so the reader knew he was going to be okay.

You don’t have to completely resolve everything of course, and sometimes it is nice to leave a couple of things up to the reader’s imagination, but it’s nice for the reader if there’s a sense of things being tied up in a little bow.

Ending

So, you’ve resolved your plot, how are you going to handle the actual final ending?

Depending on how your story has gone, you might not need much after the resolution, or you may need several epilogue-y type scenes just to make sure everything is wrapped up.

Take a moment to think about what feeling you want the reader to take away from the fic. If it’s a romance, do you want to end with a warm fuzz of ‘aw cute’? If it’s been an angsty dig down into Clint or Bucky’s mental health issues, do you want a sense of optimism or catharsis? If there’s been a lot of action and drama, do you want a bit of peace and quiet for your characters to signal it’s all over with?

The best way to end any story is with a sense of hope, even if you’ve not gone for a completely happy ending, or have left yourself open for a sequel with some unresolved plot points. You want the reader to feel at least in some way uplifted. After all, regardless of whatever else has gone before, that’s the emotion they’ll have when they get faced with the Kudos button and the Comment box, so you need them in a good mood, right?

When you know what kind of feeling you want your ending to have, that will give you a major clue as to what the characters should be doing in the final scene.

One thing that can work well is bringing back something from the first scene or two and twisting it to be part of the ending. For example, at the beginning of Be All You Can Be Clint uses the song Make A Man Out Of You from Mulan as a way to torture Bucky, and then at the end, they watch the movie together while snuggling.

You do have to be careful not to be too heavy handed with that, and it doesn’t work in every fic, but I do like the feeling of ‘things coming full circle’ that you can get from doing it.

Afterglow vs. Too Much Ending

I always think that good stories come with a certain amount of ‘afterglow’: Just a scene or two to round things out and give a pointer towards the future.

For example, in general, I don’t like stories that end with a first kiss, which is one of several reasons I usually find Hollywood romcoms unsatisfying. It feels like too much of a beginning, and leaves too many questions open about how things are actually going to go for the couple in question. As part of a complete ending, it feels more satisfying to have an ‘epilogue’-y type scene afterwards that will give you a sense of how things went from there, even if it’s just a couple of paragraphs about them planning their first date.

I’m sure we can all think of other times we’ve read or watched something and had a moment of ‘oh, was that it?’ after the last sentence/when the credits rolled. Abrupt endings without a bit of afterglow can leave the reader blinking a little and wondering where their damn cuddles are.

That said, you also don’t want to go too far in the opposite direction. If the plot is over, there’s no need to keep going with multiple scenes of fluff or porn that doesn’t really add anything. We don’t need to see their whole lives mapped out, and it can get fairly dull once the tension of the plot is over. Ask yourself if the three chapters of them having sex on every flat surface in their apartment is actually necessary, or if some of them can be cut and used as one-shot sequel/missing scene fics.

In general if it’s not adding to either the narrative or emotional arcs, try to cap it at a scene or two. Just enough to feel like you’ve had a bit of post-climactic afterglow, but not so much that it’s starting to drag.

In Conclusion…

Ending a fic is, in so many ways, the most satisfying part of writing. You got right the way through your plot to the end! You did all the writing! Your characters made it through to their happy/sad/ambiguous endings! You deserve all the gold stars!

You just want your reader to feel the same way, by making sure the ending fits with what came before, ties up all the ends that need tying up, and leaves them with a deep glow of whatever feeling you want the overall story to convey.

And then you just need to do the editing, but that’s a workshop for another day...

#winterhawk olympic bang #WHOB #winterhawk #writer workshops #writer workshop: endings #guest post #flawedamythyst

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alison-anonymous · 3 years

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I Want to Write a Mikayuu Series

Okay.

So um.

If you're reading this, HELLO. All of you long time ONS fans probably don't know me, but I'm Alison and I'm a hardcore Mikayuu, Mitsunoa, Gureshin, etc shipper. I've been in the ONS fandom for almost a year and dear god. The amount of people telling me that Mikayuu is queerbait is just making me really sad 😅 I'm a writer, and I'm the type of person who honestly feels like the author of a series should have the ability to choose how a story ends without influence of their readers. I mean, if it's their story, then it should be their ending, right? However, I also do have some qualms when it comes to how this "love triangle" between Yu, Mika, and Shinoa is being portrayed. This is entirely my personal opinion, but I feel like Shinoa seems to be forcing herself to love Yu. I honestly don't think she cares for him in a romantic way, but more of a very deep-rooted admiration or even envy that she's trying to convince herself to be romantic love. And Yu has said multiple times that he values Mika's life above his own, that he doesn't know what he would do without him if he were to die again (I mean the fact that he suffered seeing his best friend and potential lover die a first time was definitely scarring enough, PLEASE STOP TORTURING OUR POOR BABIES). And it's basically confirmed by now that when Mika said I love you in the manga, it was in the romantic sense. Even though I wish, I hope, I dream, and I pray that Mikayuu will become canon, I honestly can't say for certain what I think will happen. I think it could sway any way, with Mikayuu becoming canon, Yu and Shinoa becoming canon, or it being one of those ambiguous endings where it's heavily implied but nothing actually happens. And in order to make myself feel better when stuff like this happens, I tend to rewrite the entire story with the ending that I would have liked to see ;)

You're probably wondering where the hell this stranger is going with this. Well, I want to write a book. A series, actually.

One that's inspired by Seraph of the End.

Now, if you're interested in hearing me out, then feel free to keep reading. But if not, continue on with your scrolling, no hard feelings. But if you do, and I really hope that you do, give me a chance to explain.

I want to write a series inspired by Seraph of the End called Bloodsucker (working title, obviously). And this series is going to be a reimagination of ONS with an ending that I would have loved to see in the anime and manga. I plan to have three main characters (please keep in mind that I'm going to have name changes): Yuichiro, Mikaela, and a brand new character, Epic.

Now, I would begin this series a bit before the anime and I'm assuming the manga begins. I'd start with introducing our main three characters as they meet in the orphanage (yes, Epic would be a part of this orphanage as well) and how Epic and Yu try to make moves to run away only to be stopped by Mika and Akane.

I plan to include a scene between Epic and Akane where Epic tries to run out in the middle of the night only to be stopped by Akane, and this is what caused Epic to develop a crush on her (Epic is a girl btw). Then I would begin the whole shit with the vampires and how they set the world on fire and shit, but instead of the apocolypse, I'd make it so that most of the adults died in the fire while the kids were taken alive (because young blood is better and whatnot). This includes our little Hyakuya family. The directors would have tried to trade the kids lives for their own, and due to their selfishness, the vamps killed them and took the kids anyway.

This would begin my first story arc: the prewar.

Epic, Akane, Mika, and Yu would all be living under the vampires at this point along with the rest of the kids in their orphanage. I plan to include lots of moments of bonding that heavily imply Epic loves Akane even though she doesn't know it yet and Mika loves Yu, but Yu is fucking oblivious. The four begin to plot their escape, but while Mika and Akane (yes Akane too) are making deals with the vampires to help out with their family, Epic is constantly finding herself getting dragged along to visit Queen Krul. The pink haired vamp has a soft spot for her for some reason and often tells her that Epic and her family are "special" or sum shit. And she's super confused and semi grossed out. But none of the vamps ever dare to hurt her so she thinks it's fine. Then one day they all plot their escape and it's much more planned out and lengthy and less rushed than it is in the anime. Things almost seem to work out until the vampires stop them

And Mika and Akane DIE.

I know. I'm horrid.

Epic is standing here in shock as she watches the love of her life die before her and Mika BEGS for Yu to take Epic and run while they can. So while in the series only Yu survives, he obeys Mika and both him and Epic survive this. They're found by Guren (a new character I haven't come up with yet lol) and Yu is super protective over Epic, not wanting anyone to take the only piece of his family he has left (he's a fucking mess without Mika let's just be honest) and Guren ends up taking them under his wing.

Now we hit the second arc. Still with me?

The War.

Hold onto your hats everyone because this is where shit is about to get complicated. So I do plan to have a bit of a time skip into the current spot where Yu and Epic are attending school with Guren as their father figure and they've become very close. So close that Yu refuses to work with anyone else but her. They end up getting onto Shinoa Squad (obviously going to be completely different in my version) and they get put onto the battlefield. But here's the catch. Well, two catches.

Yu and Epic do have demon weapons. I do plan to try to incorporate that into this. BUT the backstory is different. I plan to make it so that the vampires obviously see the humans as fies. Insignificant things that are more playthings than threats. And they didn't want to have to deal with killing all of them, so they sent demons in their place to handle it. But the humans were able to form deals or "contracts" with the demons and therefore turned the vampires' own secret weapon against them.

Now, catch no. 2

So, Epic, Mika, and Yu aren't seraphs in this. But they are something else. I'm going to try to explain this as simply as I can, but each of them (besides Mika since he doesn't have a demon) have 3 souls inside their body:

Soul 1 is their current soul, the one that identifies as Mika or Epic or Yu.

Soul 2 is their demon soul, like what Asuramaru is to Yu.

And soul 3 is their archangel soul (I might change that name later on).

So I'm just going to come right out and say it. In this series, Epic is the villain.

Yes.

You read that right.

Epic is the villain. But she doesn't know that she is. These Soul 3s were reincarnated into the current bodies of Mika, Epic, and Ari (and I know that's not exactly how it works but screw logic this is just a fucking concept) from their lives centuries ago.

These souls existed way before vampires existed and Epic (or Essie) was very close friends with Yu (or Aytigin). Aytigin was in love with Haru (Mika) but for one reason or another, they couldn't be together. Essie wanted to do something, willing to do anything to make the two of them happy. So she made a deal that brought the vampires into creation so that Haru and Aytigin could be happy. She was willing to sacrifice everything that they stood for so that the two of them could be in love together.

She had good intentions, but of course Haru and Aytigin were furious because now the vampires were turning against the humans and they all basically died. Until they were reborn respectively, but unknowingly.

Now picking back up in the present, Yu and Epic are fighting in one of the main battles and the two are very confused when the vampires make a very deliberate attempt not to hurt Epic. They're unsure as to why, but Guren tells them not to worry about it.

Suspicious bastard.

Anyway, it's revealed finally that MIKA IS ALIVE

BUT HE'S ALSO DEAD

Yes he is a vampire. And Yu falls in love all over again upon seeing him, and after a bunch of struggling, Epic gets kidnapped. At first she gets strangled by Lacus and then she gets kidnapped by Ferid who doesn't kill her surprisingly.

Oh and uh... Ferid is nice in this. He's still a fucking creep, but he's a lot nicer than he is in the series. I plan to make Queen Krul or whoever I turn her into be the villain.

Anyway, they take Epic back to the vampire palace or whatever and Queen Krul and Epic are reunited! And Krul is the one who reveals to Epic exactly who she, Mika, and Yu are and this is what sparks Epic's fall to insanity.

I mean, she's the killer. She's the one who brought them into this world. She's responsible for every death the vampires cause.

I would go crazy too.

So, she manages to escape (partially thanks to Mika) and the two join Yu and the others again and it's revealed a second time exactly what is going on. And while no one actually blames Epic on the Shinoa Squad, that doesn't stop people like Kureto and even herself from blaming.

And this causes her demon to go haywire.

She begins losing her marbles, almost killing her teammates and trying to kill herself, all while the three begin to experience dreams or visions of their Soul 3s.

While all this shit is going on, there's heavy romance between Mika and Yu because these two lovers just got reunited and FUCK did they have glow ups but yes -

Oh. And there is another spark for Epic, even though she doesn't think she's worthy of love.

Okay. I'm just gonna say it.

Lacus falls in love with Epic. Yes. You read that correctly too.

I plan to make the two of them get trapped together at some point and they have to work together to escape. It's during this time that Epic realizes he's not all that bad and has some form of self control and he realizes that she's the most interesting thing he's ever met in this disgusting and boring life and damn do her eyes look pretty-

But yes. She forms a permanent alliance with him that he jokes about as marriage and they meet on other occassions too, but lol yes.

Anyway, blah blah blah, more fall to insanity, the Soul 3s take over their bodies on multiple occasions and there's a lot of bonding and fighting and Epic and Mika somehow manage to get some of the vampires on the human side.

And in the end, Epic and Yu basically sacifice themselves to save the human race and kill Queen Krul. It's a very rough ending I haven't quite perfected yet, but Yu has a moment like he did with the King of Salt. But though he inflicted a lot of damage, it's not enough. So while the team is worried about him, Epic takes this opportunity to fix her and Essie's mistakes.

She allows both Essie and her demon to take control of her body and dies on the battlefield. Queen Krul is eliminated. Most of the vampires are gone. The humans won.

Horray.

Epic is dead.

Kinda. Yu and Mika take her back home and this is the preview to the last arc where everyone's in the hospital and Epic's in a coma. Mika and Yu barely ever leave her side and it's only when Lacus of all people comes to visit that she fucking wakes up.

Okay. Are you still with me? Now come with me to the final arc.

The Post-War.

No my friend. It doesn't end there. Because Mika and Lacus are still vamps and life still sucks and I drank too much coffee this morning.

No it's not over yet.

So flash forward a couple years and Kureto and Crew are working as the heads of this city. Stuff is being rebuilt, people are settling down in homes, Lacus and some of the other "good" vampires find jobs, and Mika, Yu, and Epic get a house together (in case I didn't mention before, Epic is pansexual. She loved Akane dearly and I plan to include scenes where she sees her in her mind and dreams like Mikayuu so she's never truly gone, but she falls for Lacus too when he's not being a sadistic asshole). Things are going strangely when

BAM. Epic and Yu come up with a cure for vampirism.

How, you may ask? I don't fucking know, I haven't read about it in the manga yet but before we come up with an idea for it, imma say they came up with it through a spell. They share their findings with Guren and soon all vampires are being cured, most notably Mika, Lacus, and even Rene.

BUT and there's always a but, Kureto passes a new law claiming all vampires to be property. That any vampire or previous vampire or even vampire supporter/owner that tries to disobey these new laws is to be killed immediately. Now Epic and Yu are in jeopardy because their ex-vampires are in danger (Epic and Lacus have been hanging out a lot more and he's proven himself to be a decent guy. Contrary to popular belief, I headcanon him as not really knowing what to do when he actually cares about someone since he's been a heartless vamp for so long. So when he turns to Mika and begrudgingly asks him for LOVE ADVICE of all fucking things, Mika is ready to die). So basically, Mika and Lacus end up getting locked up along with the other ex-vamps (including Ferid which was a pain in the ass) and did I forget to mention that there's a proposal?

Oh yeah, Yu proposes to Mika and the blond still has yet to give him an actual answer because poor baby is still having a hard time accepting that Yu can love a "monster" like him.

But anyways, now Epic and Yu are furious and SHINOA SQUAD IS BACK IN BUSINESS. With the help of Guren and Shinya and everyone, they form a sort of rebellion and blah blah blah they manage to get Mika and Lacus and everyone out and blah blah blah they all get separated and Lacus begins to get INSANELY protective of Epic and ends up confessing his feelings to her before he nearly dies and blah blah blah did I forget to mention that I'm making Mitsunnoa and Kimizuki x Yoichi canon and blah blah blah.

Epic kisses Lacus as an instinct. Lacus kisses her again. Mika accepts Yu's proposal then almost dies AGAIN. I kill off some characters for emotional tugs and after a ton of more fighting and revenge and psychological breakings later, Kureto is killed. And Guren (or someone else haven't decided yet) is the new head of their city.

Epic, Mika, and Yu finally let Akane and the kids go. There's a lot of Shinoa Squad bonding but this is a summary so I haven't included much besides the main three. Epic and Lacus becomes canon. Mika and Yu get married. Guren and Shinya get married. Shinoa gets pregnant.

And everyone gets the FUCKING HAPPY ENDING THAT THEY ALL FUCKING DESERVE BECAUSE FUCK

I do plan to be slightly ruthless like the creator and include a lot of heartbreaking scenes, but it's going to be much different than ONS but I still want it to hold on to some core relationships.

I just want them to be happy. And I just want to make other people happy because fuck I JUST WANT TO BE HAPPY

So. Yeah.

That's Bloodsucker...

So my question to you is... if I wrote this shit.

If I sat down and typed about 30 books roughly inspired by Seraph of the End and Mikayuu and Mitsunnoa and shit...

Would anyone read it?

♡ a.a.

#mikayuu #yuumika #mika x yuu #yuu x mika #owari no seraph #owari no straights #owari no serafu #seraph of the end #seraph of the gay #Mitsunnoa #i wanna write a book #reimagination #fml #send halp #lacus #new character #akane #what am i doing with my life

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remmushound · 3 years

Note

Could you write a crossover oneshot, about the 2018 crew (April included) showing off their crazy OP skillz? (Mikey yeeting boats around, Donnie's tech, Leo's portals, etc.)

@assanmaharielsreblogs @itscryptifssil

Rise April = April

2012 April = O’Neil

“Hey guys!”

Leo hated being so exposed, just standing in the open for all to see. Leonardo had reassured him that it was chill here, that they’d never been spotted and weird stuff happened so often that no one would question it if they were. Still, standing there on the docks, open as he was, Leo couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder every few minutes to check for any signs of life disturbing the darkness.

“Watch this!”

Michelangelo resembled the Mikey that Leo knew in so many ways, and it seemed they even shared the same mad skills that all Mikey’s seemed to have in common. The turtle had been loud in his cry, drawing the attention of all below as he leapt from the rooftops and swung out hiskusari-fundo. Like the most beautiful fire work show, the blade and chain ignited in a feiry blaze that caught all of the other box turtles below by surprise, though Michelangelo’s brothers hardly acknowledged the act past a short applause or curious, watching eye.

“Holy—“ Leo sputtered.

“It’s so beautiful!” Mikey’s eyes Reflected the flames like something out of a movie, observing their beauty and hardly breathing.

“HOLY CHALUPAS!” Ejected Donnie, “How did he...?”

“Thats... concerning.” Raph said softly, trying to hide his astonishment behind a chilled facade.

The kusari-fundo shot out over the water, the chain stretching far longer than Leo could remember it actually being. Like an ever growing snake, flying and flying over the orange-reflectinh bay until the blade and a good deal of the chain latched impossibly around the hull of a boat down in the water. Before Michelangelo could come crashing down onto the hard docks, the chain tightened and pulled him into the water at incredible speeds, like a water skier without skis.

“COWABUNGA!”

When he was just about to hit the bough of the ship, the chain gave a sudden, upward jerk and pulled him onto the safety of the deck just in the nick of time. The fire went out, and for a heart wrenching moment none of the turtles could even see the youngest among them, until the teen’s silhouette appeared over the railing and waved to them.

“Uh... how did he—“ Leo began before his taller counterpart cut him off.

“Relax; I’ll go get him.”

Before Leo could even begin to ask how Leonardo would achieve such a feat, Leonardo had drawn his katana and traced a large, arching shape in the air. It was like the blade was slicing through the very fabric of reality, leaving a baby blue glow wherever the tip of the metal touched. When the sword reunited with where it had started, the entire middle erupted into that same mystic glow.

“Woaaaah.” Was all the box turtles could say— even Donnie finding himself speechless at the pure display of power.

Leonardo tucked his katana back in its sheath as he stretched and stepped into the portal, backward so he could click his tongue and give finger guns as he disappeared through the rippling blue. Across the bay came that same ghostly blue glow aboard the ship, and they could see Leonardo step out and wrap his arm around Michelangelo before waving back to the turtles on land.

“Did you build that?” Donnie gasped out, addressing Donatello.

Donatello scoffed. “That? That’s nothing. Raph, show em.” He waved and gave the show off to Raphael, who seemed confused for a second before catching on with a belching bellow.

“Alright, guys!” Raphael slammed his fists together and gave an excited jig, swaying his body back and forth as a determined grin found itself on his face. Eyes narrowed, teeth pulled into a smirk, body moving with untapped potential. “I call this boss mode!”

“Boss mode?” Raph said slowly, trying to hide his growing anticipation and fear. “Looks like a dance to me.”

“Just gotta get warmed up!” He sucked in and huffed out deep breaths, grabbing his Tonfa as he shook out his wrists and started to dig his feet deeper into the ground with each increasingly-violent stomp. His tail lashed. Red sparks started to twist their way around his weapons and wrists, slowly spreading up until the electric aura surrounded him completely. The sparks turned into a fire once the all of him was in their power. His eyes flushed white. The red aura around him grew— and grew, and grew until he was almost as tall as the buildings surrounding him. Despite the awe-inspiring scene, the smaller Raphael within the heart of the beast seemed to be straining under the expended power. The bigger he was, the harder Boss Raph was to control. His teeth were clenched, muscles and veins bulging as life flooded back into tear-filled eyes.

“CONTROLLING JU POWER JITSU... LIKE A BOSS!”

Once the final three words escaped his mouth, he seemed in full control of the situation. When his leg moved, Boss moved in sync. Raphael forced his larger form to wade into the water, his red glow disappearing under the surface as he walked effortlessly over to his brothers on the ship. He held out a hand to them, and both seemed more than happy to hop onboard. Raphael spun around, the movement of his superior self slow and lumbering like most large creatures.

He held the two safely to his chest and carried them to shore, carefully letting them down beside Donatello. Raphael made sure his brothers were on sound footing before finally letting his form pixelate away into nothing and lower him to the ground in a gentle grasp. Leonardo and Donatello were there to support their older brother as he collapsed into them, his legs feeling little more than flexible foam under his great weight. Just from the maybe-minute long quest, Raphael was soaked in sweat and his plastron heaved with begging, thankful gasps of cool air.

“Sorry.” Raphael gasped to the other team, laughing and forcing his heavy arm up to wave. “Kinda tiring, yknow.”

“INCREDIBLE!” Donnie gasped, hurrying over to investigate Raphael though all traces of mystic power was gone from his body. “How often can you do that?!”

“Uh. Never done it more than once in a day.” Raphael rubbed the back of his neck, “it’s pretty draining.”

“I bet!” Donnie squealed, “maybe it’s like that because your metabolism speeds up dramatically— or, or your body adjusts for how long it SHOULD have taken you to do that normally, or—“

“It’s his chakra.” Donatello answered simply.

“Chakra?” Donnie deflated as he asked.

“Seven power points through the body, centers of magic? Ring a bell?”

Leo hummed. “Master Splinter taught me a technique called Reiki thats supposed to heal chakras...”

“So like, what’s your super magic power thing?” Mikey was practically pressing his nose to Donatello’s as he spoke

Donatello’s nose scrunched up at the invasion of personal space, but he quickly brushed it off when Leo grabbed his brother and pulled him away.

“I, little man, have the greatest ‘magic’ of all! SCIENCE!”

“Here we go,” Raph rolled his eyes.

“BEHOLD!” Donatello pulled his bō staff free of its holster and held it to the sky in a pose not unlike the Statue of Liberty. “MY TITANIUM REINFORCED TECH BO!”

Raph gave a slow clap. “Wow. Wonderful. So cool.”

Leo shoved Raph pointedly. “Thats... wonderful, Donnie.”

“Oh. OH HO HO!” Donatello laughed, motioning to his precious staff, “you think this is everything? Au contraire, my fellow shelled companions! This is the top of the line, most up to date technology in my arsenal. Complete with a glider...”

Two wings shot out from either end of the staff, much to the surprise of the turtles gathered.

“Chainsaw! Laser gun! Tranquilizer! Buzz saw! Dual sided rocket propellers! And of course a selfie stick!”

As Donatello listed off his tech-bo’s enhancement, the once simple-looking staff shifted between each feature, ending with a selfie stick that extended far beyond the reach of a normal one and took a snap after the few seconds it took Donatello to pose with two fingers extended and his tongue sticking out.

Leo blinked to try and bring himself out of the blindness induced by the sudden flash. Donnie recovered from it quickly, though his eyes were just as bright the light of the camera had been. He ran over to Donatello practically fit to burst as the softshell gave a smug smirk.

“THAT WAS SO COOL! HOW’D YOU EVER GET THE MONEY TO MAKE ALL OF THAT?!”

Donatello booped his older counterparts snout. “By no legal means.”

April decided to insert herself into the conversation before it could get much farther. “Wanna see what my power can do?”

Eight sets of eyes turned on her.

“You have a power too?” Mikey beaned.

April laughed and gave the mutant a pet on the head. “Sure do! Watch this!”

She lifted her baseball bat from her back, tapping it a few times on the ground as a green glow Overcame the wood. Donatello reached into his shell armor and produced a baseball, tossing it high into the air and out of sight.

“APRILLLLLLLL~”

She dug her feet into the earth as her eyes ignited in the same lime as her bat. She swung the bat a few times, super sight locking onto the small ball as it came hurdling downward.

“O’NEIL!”

With impossibly perfect timing, she spun around once more and brought her bat slamming down on the falling target, sending the ball flying once more in a blaze of neon green glory over the city’s horizon.

“HOME RUN!!”

#tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt #tmnt au #donatello #donnie #Raphael #Raph #michelangelo #Mikey #Leonardo #leo #April

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anachilles · 3 years

Text

» somewhere in the crowd, there’s you ♪ julie/luke [ juke ]

If they weren’t already dead Julie swore she would kill them. Luke especially.

Actually no, that wasn’t fair. This time she couldn’t completely blame them for what was admittedly a dumb decision on her own part. But see it from her perspective - the boys hadn’t seen the Mamma Mia movies. They didn’t even know of their existence. That had to be remedied.

TL;DR - The boys are introduced to the Mamma Mia Cinematic Universe. Alex spectates, Julie sings ABBA, Luke falls further in love, and Reggie ends up reliving the horror of high school math class. Also BROT4 couch cuddles.

link to read on AO3: [x]

taglist: @wokealex @blueruby31

If they weren’t already dead Julie swore she would kill them. Luke especially.

Actually, no, that wasn’t fair. This time she couldn’t completely blame them for what was admittedly a dumb decision on her own part.

But see it from her perspective - the boys hadn’t seen the Mamma Mia movies. Didn’t even know of their existence. They had just been finishing up a group jam session when she’d made some off-hand joke about them hitting the big-time and having their music turned into a movie-musical series “like ABBA”. Reggie’s face had lit up and he immediately jumped on it, “Wait, they made a movie out of ABBA music?”

“Multiple movies?!” Alex had cut in, looking disbelieving but nonetheless delightfully intrigued.

Luke snorted with laughter, throwing his hands up as he turned to look at Julie. “That’s it - I know what we’re doing tonight” he exclaimed, and pointed at her “Do you have them on ta-”

He catches himself before he can finish the word ‘tape’, but Julie’s eyes still narrow, her own smile now challenging. The boys really weren’t that bad at picking up the basics of modern technology, but slip-of-the-tongues still happened and Julie loved to tease them about it. Luke most of all just because he always dogged the other two the most about it when they did it. Also, perhaps a little bit, because he was kind of cute when he got all defensive.

“On what, now?”

Luke floundered for a second, and Alex and Reggie traded a look between them. Suddenly though, a lightbulb dinged above his head and his expression turned smug.

“DVD! Do you have them on DVD”

Julie laughed, making what was meant to be a loud ‘buzzer’ sound. “Wrong answer! Not the most up-to-date form of media storage, but nonetheless thank-you for playing”. Her expression softened though when she heard Alex and Reggie hound him a little behind her, “However, we do have them on DVD because my dad likes having physical copies of stuff”.

She was about to leave to go grab them from the house, only the time on her phone caught her attention and her heart sank.

“Hey guys, I can go get them for you but I don’t think I can stay the whole way through both. I’ve got school tomorrow.”

All three boys erupted in protestations, Luke’s notably the loudest of all, though on Alex’s suggestion she conceded to stay for at least the first one, then they’d pick up the second one tomorrow or something.

Honestly, it hadn’t taken nearly as much convincing as it should have.

She just really needed to physically be there to witness the three of them watching Meryl Streep jump off a pier to the tune of ‘Dancing Queen’ and Pierce Brosnan absolutely butcher ‘The Winner Takes it All’ for the very first time. Also, talking to them about the movies had made her realise it had been way too long since she’d last watched them herself, and they always made her feel so light and happy. As silly as it may sound, the care-free, sunshiney tone but with genuine moments in them had helped carry her through some really dark days. Since then, they’d always been comforting to return to.

So that’s how she ended up squished on the beat-up old studio couch with three ghost boys from the 90’s, having the absolute pleasure of seeing them react to ‘Mamma Mia’ for the very first time. It was a bit of a tight squeeze, and required Reggie to be sitting with one leg straddled over the arm of the couch and the rest of him pretty much glued to Luke’s side, but they made it work.

Although just as she was getting herself comfy in her spot between Alex and Luke, something niggled at the back of her mind. Something she forgot to do? Maybe? She wracked her brain for a couple of minutes, but her attention quickly and all-too-easily drifted to the screen as the opening chords of ‘Honey, Honey’ sounded, like some sort of siren call, and she couldn’t help but mouth along to the words. She knew them pretty much by heart.

What certainly didn’t help with her cognitive functioning however, is when during ‘Money, Money, Money…’ she felt Luke shift where he was pretty much flush against her side and his arm stretch out behind her neck. His hand settled somewhere near her shoulder; teasingly close but not quite touching it. Her heart rate kicked up a notch, but she was determined to keep her eyes on the screen in front of her, daring not to look his way or even let on that she noticed.

The boys were touchy-feely and generally very physically affectionate with each other, she knew that just from generally being around them these past couple of months. Julie had always found it really sweet and endearing, how unashamedly tactile they were with each other, but at the same time couldn’t help but feel left out as her own friendships with all of them got deeper and she grew closer to them all. Now that they were corporeal, at least to her, suddenly she’d become privy to all that as well.

Now she couldn’t imagine not being able to do stuff like hold their hands during band circles, or not knowing the utter warmth of Alex’s hugs (it was undisputed that he gives the best ones) when he noticed she’d had a tough day at school, or even what it felt like to not have Reggie gleefully grab her hands, or arm, or shoulders when he got super excited about something.

She’d already been falling hard for Luke before when she couldn’t physically feel him under her fingertips. For all intents and purposes wasn’t fully there there, but now? When she’d felt the brush of his body behind her when he’d lean over her shoulder to look at sheet music, or his thigh press up against her leg as they shared a piano stool during their little lyric brainstorming sessions? When they could high-five, lean into each other’s side, playfully shove each other when one thinks the other is being annoying, grab each other’s hands and dance around the room in celebration when they manage to book another gig? All those little moments they could have now added layers to what she already felt.

However, even if she felt something between them, that spark, and her gut told her Luke possibly felt so too, Julie also couldn’t deny that that kind of affection wasn’t any different to the kind he showed towards Alex and Reggie too. Plus, she didn’t really know how ghosts felt about having relationships, especially with the living, or if Luke would even want to go there. So she tried not to read too much into what kind of felt like Luke pulling that old “arm around shoulder whilst distracted by the movie” move.

So although she never really could forget how close he was, Julie let herself become immersed back in the movie. Her life was generally good, labels and certainty or not, she was happy. The happiness of the movie fed into that. The boys seemed to be having a hoot with it as well, if how much Alex especially was grooving in his seat was any indication.

Julie’s not quite sure what possessed her to say it in the moment, or what she expected to transpire when she did, but when they got to the ‘Super Trouper’ scene coming straight off of the, uh, heaviness of ‘Lay All Your Love on Me’ (during which Luke went weirdly quiet for some reason, prompting Alex and Reggie to share a fleeting look over the top of both his and Julie’s heads) and the opening chords sounded she blurted out

“Oh, this used to be my karaoke song when I was a kid”.

Luke’s eyes immediately went wide and she knew she was in trouble. He quickly urged Reggie to grab the remote and pause the movie, ignoring Alex’s soft “Hey, I was watching that!”, before turning his attention fully towards her.

“Well now you have to do the routine; get on up there and show us what you’re made of!”

Julie’s jaw hung open a little and she wasn’t sure whether she could really be annoyed at anyone but herself for practically handing this to him on a silver platter.

“No! I really don’t…” she tried to argue, though his mischievous smile was infectious and damn her lips threatened to twitch into a smile too. “It’s been years! And anyway, I only bust it out for audiences that are deserving of it”.

Luke met her with a challenging gaze. “Bet it’s cause you don’t know the words” he said, turning to Reggie, his tone dripping in antagonism. “Hey, did you hear that the great Julie Molina won’t perform because she doesn’t know all of the words to Super Trouper by ABBA?”. Reggie’s eyebrows shot up and he immediately played along. “Y’know what? I actually did hear that somewhere. Huh…”.

Julie shot a withering look at Alex, a wordless “Can you do anything?” shining in her eyes, but he has the nerve to just shrug (!) with a silent, smiling “I’ll allow it”.

She could’ve got them to drop it if she really had wanted them to, she knew that. Maybe Julie from three months ago would have. Actually, no, that version of herself definitely would have made them drop it; the darkness shrouding her life day-in, day-out smothering any semblance of silly, carefree happiness and convincing her that simply having fun just wasn’t for her.

But she didn’t feel like that anymore.

Julie pulled herself to her feet, eyes fixed with new determination. She crossed the room to the open space, taking a stance mirroring that of the one they’d paused Meryl Streep in and fixed Luke with a playful glare, even though she was addressing Reggie.

“Unpause the movie”.

The performance was one for the history books, if she did say so herself. The boys watched on in amazement as she remembered every word, near enough every step and dance move (the big sleeve shimmy was an interesting one though with sweater sleeves nowhere near dramatic enough to match Donna’s) and personally she thought she sold it.

About halfway through Alex snuck a glance at Luke by his side, and realised karma must be having a slow night given how fast it was paying the other boy back, because he was undeniably staring at Julie with what was clearly pure, open adoration.

“‘Cause somewhere in the crowd, there’s yooooou” she finished with a flourish, heart thumping, and lowered her arm to point at all three of them in turn, but finishing ultimately on Luke even though he was sat in the middle. His face scrunched up with a cheesy smile and he let out a loud whoop of appreciation, kicking off the round of applause before the other boys joined in, Reggie coming in clutch with the standing ovation and everything.

Julie felt breathless but joyful as she flung herself back into her seat, and Luke leaned forward to grab her soda, handing it to her with what looked like contrition.

“I guess I stand corrected, huh?” he said, defeated, but not entirely sorry to be so.

She shrugged, taking a sip of the drink. “I guess you are. It’s a good look on you”.

Luke snorted with laughter and they laughed together for a brief second, an apparent blush rising to sit on his cheeks (Could ghosts blush? How did that even work?).

Before the situation could get weird or questionable though, he turned back towards the movie, but slowly. Like he wasn’t quite ready to leave this moment just yet; like he wanted to stay looking at her just a bit longer. Julie just nudged him and settled back in, trying to go about it in such a way that would implore him to put his arm back around her like he had before.

It didn’t come until the scene where Bill confesses to Sophie that he thinks he’s her father, but eventually that now familiar weight settled behind her head again, setting off a whole herd of butterflies in her stomach.

The first movie came to an end, and things wouldn’t have been awful if she’d just called it a night there and gone to bed. But she was having so much fun and they were all so comfy, and the boys seemed very excited for the prospect of a half-prequel-half-sequel.

“Surely they’ve already used all the good ABBA songs in the first one though, right?” Reggie argued, causing Alex to swing round to look at him, scandalised.

“Are you insinuating that there’s a bad ABBA song?”

While they hashed it out in the background, Luke backing Reggie up just to get a rise out of Alex, Julie acted on impulse and jumped up, running towards the garage window. All the lights in the house were out, meaning her dad was already in bed and everything. As long as she was super quiet sneaking back in and remembered to bypass that squeaky floorboard on the stairs, he never had to know.

“Alright; Here We Go Again - let’s do this”.

Turns out Julie had kind of underestimated how late it was and how long the day had been. She could feel herself getting tired around the ‘Waterloo’ mark, eyelids growing heavier and heavier as she gradually sunk lower and relaxed deeper into the couch. By the time young Donna makes it to the Kalokairi her head had come to rest in the crook Luke’s neck, his flannel soft under her cheek as his cheek leans against the top of her head. Maybe it was a testament to how sleepy she was, but she couldn’t bring herself to move away. The posture felt natural.

She was so comfortable, surrounded by warmth and the soothing hum of the old second-hand TV they’d bought at a garage sale and moved into the garage, she was right on the verge of dozing off… when a realisation crashed into her mind, seemingly out of nowhere.

Julie shot up poker-straight, suddenly very awake. “Oh, crap!”

The three boys startled, most of all Luke when her movement meant he almost fell face-first into the couch cushion.

“What is it?!”

She groaned and fell forward into her hands. “I have a math test tomorrow. And I was going to study for it before bed tonight.”

So that’s how she ends up with Reggie hanging uselessly over her shoulder in the middle of math class, the exchange that came after the realisation still ringing in her ears.

“Hey, hey! It’s fine. Take Reggie - believe it or not, he was good at math” Luke offered up hurriedly.

Reggie himself looked a little stricken. “Yeah, 25 years ago, dude!”.

“Do the rules of math go out-of-date, or…?” Alex teased, though still placed a comforting hand on Julie’s back.

“No, Alex, they don’t - so relax, you’ll be fine, man! You can’t make the situation any worse by trying”

“Don’t give him that challenge, Luke”.

Though admittedly she loved him just for actually turning up and trying, he was staring down at the test with as much confusion as she was. Apparently math had changed over the course of 25 years. They exchange a mutually panicked look. Clearly, neither of them knew shit. Instead, Reggie just runs up to the front of the room and peeps on Mrs Ford’s answer sheet, Julie’s hopeful eyes following him as he dodges around desks and backpacks lying on the floor.

“Are you sure?” she mumbles to him under her breath when he gets back. Apparently not quite low enough though, when the guy next to her turns to give her a funny look, and she has to make a show of furrowing her eyebrows and counting on her fingers, muttering appropriately as she goes.

Julie can feel Flynn’s discerning gaze from across the room and she knows she knows there’s some ghost-like foolery happening. It’s a mess. She’s a mess.

Eventually the bell sounds and signals an end to the ordeal, and Julie takes out her (locked) phone to genuinely thank Reggie for his help all the same.

“Ehhh I’m not sure how much help I was, but you’re welcome” he says, laughter coloured with self-deprecation.

Julie smiles genuinely, and she would’ve nudged him if she wouldn’t have been nudging thin air in public. “Hey, I think we got about three quarters of those answers down and that’s 75% more than I would’ve gotten without you”.

Reggie looks pleased, and stands up a little straighter as he walks alongside her. “Do you mind if I hang out here for a while, by the way?”

Julie’s a little taken aback. “I mean, sure, but why would you want to? It’s just school”.

Reggie shrugs, and there’s something unreadable in his eyes. It’s weird for him; he’s generally such an open book. “I don’t know. I never graduated, we were still going when we… y’know…” he trails off, eyes scanning the halls and the throngs of students laughing and chatting together at their lockers, going about their normal day. “Kind of miss it”.

“Well, you obviously have free reign to look around wherever you want. If you want me to show you anywhere in particular, just let me know. I’m meeting Flynn for lunch now though, so that might not be as fun for you...”

The way he says it makes something ache in Julie’s chest, and she wishes she could give him a hug. With the boys so real now, and so immersed and predominant in her life, it was getting easier and easier to somewhat forget that they were actually dead and had both led and left lives behind. Being reminded of that was starting to hit her that little bit harder.

Reggie nods sincerely, mirroring her slight chuckle. “Thanks, Julie”.

Approaching the cafeteria, Julie sees Flynn in the distance, and is about to put her phone away when she suddenly stops in her tracks, and keeps it held to her face.

“By the way…” she smirks. “If Alex or Luke ask, I scored a 95 and it was all down to you”.

#jatp #julie and the phantoms #juke #julie molina #luke patterson #jatp fanfiction #mine #my writing

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jumpship90 · 3 years

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i have to leave, you can't come with me, and this goodbye kiss, it's going to last longer than any of our other kisses because i can't bear the thought of not having you near - Kiss prompt for Jaq and Phin please :)

Thank you so much for this prompt! It was perfect for Jaq and Phin and I'm probably going to make this a stand alone chapter of my long fic for them! This one is super indulgent and mushy and angsty and romantic - roughly 1500 words, so more under the cut

Byzantium had never seemed more soulless to Jaq than when they walked Phineas to the landing bay and into the shadow of the shuttle that would carry him back to the Hope.

The rain that had been threatening all day had finally started to make itself known in the form of a fine drizzle that left the ground beneath their feet slick and created a haze in the air. Though they could feel themself growing damp already, Jaq couldn’t help slowing their stride, eking out each step in an attempt to fend off their inevitable parting.

The knot of tension that had been sat in their chest all afternoon tightened as they glanced over at Phineas. His expression was drawn and resigned, agitation showing in the deep lines that creased his brow. It was nothing like it had been this morning, when they had awoken still tangled together beneath the sheets and both grinning the elated, unrestrained grins of partners who had spent a night in each other’s arms.

A single night, Jaq thought in frustration, as they surveyed the man walking beside them. A single night and now who knew when they would see him again. The deposed Board members were planning a coup and even after everything Jaq had done, it had once again fallen to them to thwart the grasping, greedy ambitions of Halcyon’s former elite. It seemed even in its death throes, the Board was still managing to take everything from them. They gripped the hand in their own a little tighter and felt Phineas return the squeeze.

Despite their slow pace, eventually, they both halted before the shuttle, the Unreliable squatting beside it. Junlei and a handful of mardets were waiting at the base of the landing ramp and the Chief gave Jaq a nod to acknowledge their arrival. Jaq didn’t wish to keep her waiting, grateful that she had agreed to safely see Phineas home for them, but still they stalled, turning to him.

“This is becoming something of a routine for us, isn’t it?” he said, a wry smile turning up the corner of his lips. “You dashing off to save the day, me toiling away in a laboratory, awaiting your heroic return.”

They knew the bitter note to his voice wasn’t aimed at them, only the reality of their situation, but still, Jaq felt the words strike a sharp blow.

“One day, we might get to spend longer than a few hours in each other’s company,” Phineas continued his fingers worrying at their own. “Until then, well, I suppose we just have to make do with memories don’t we? A shame mine’s not quite what it used to be.”

He gave a forced, strangled laugh at his joke and Jaq’s attempt at stoicism in the face of their departure crumbled entirely.

They wrapped him in their arms and clung to him, his wiry, angular frame pressed as tight to them as they could manage, and when they buried their face in his neck they could still smell a trace of the expensive Byzantine products they had bathed him in the night before. The scents didn’t seem quite right on him - on their brilliant, eccentric scientist. He should smell of chemical and old leather and the grease of frying cystybits. Of all the things that had come to mean home to them.

“I’m sorry,” they whispered in his ear as bony fingers clutched at their armour. The slow pitter-patter of raindrops against the metal encasing their body was beginning to increase. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to leave you again.”

“I know,” he soothed, and pressed his lips to their cheek. “I know. I’m sorry too, Jaq. I’m sorry things are like this. That those corporate swine are still breathing down our necks. Still stealing from us.” He relaxed his grip on them a little and drew back just enough that Jaq could see the determined, near manic spark in his eyes. “But you’ll stop them. You’ll put an end to their meddling. I know you will.”

With that, he kissed them.

It wasn’t the tentative, gentle kiss that they’d both used at first, still so careful with each other and terrified to break the new, fragile thing between them by pressing too hard, too soon. Nor was it slow and indulgent, like the kisses they’d shared in bed the previous night as they’d enjoyed exploring each other for the first time. This was firm and certain – a promise. I’ll come back and I’ll be waiting for you.

When finally they parted a fraction, Jaq was conscious of the rain picking up. Drops coursed down Phineas’ cheeks, soaked through his hair, dripped from the end of his nose. It didn’t matter, they thought, as he cupped their face in one broad palm and followed the tracks of moisture down their skin with a weathered thumb. It didn’t matter that strangers running through the deluge to the interstellar shuttles might be watching them. It didn’t matter that Junlei and her mardets were waiting to leave. Nothing mattered but hanging onto this, onto him, for just a little bit longer. Jaq found themself wishing now more than ever that they could control the time dilation effect that plagued them, wished they could bring Phineas into it with them so that the two could defy the laws of the universe itself to snatch a few more precious moments together.

They returned to his lips, wet now and shining, the raindrops adding an unfamiliar taste to him. The two of them probably looked ridiculous, Jaq thought. Soaked through and clinging to each other like some clichéd scene in a corny aetherwave romance. They didn’t care. Phineas didn’t seem to either, and Jaq kissed him until they’d run out of air, until they couldn’t have continued for a second longer.

This time when they parted, a piercing whistle cut across the landing bay. Jaq looked over Phineas’ shoulder to see a mardet twirling his finger in a “wrap it up” motion. The engines to the Groundbreaker’s shuttle were warming up and Junlei was wearing an impatient - albeit apologetic -expression as she sheltered from the rain. There was no delaying any longer.

Phineas, following their gaze, glanced back and gave a humph of consternation.

“Don’t they know who they’re talking to?” he grumbled. Jaq laughed but reluctantly released him and he followed suit.

They crossed the last few feet to the base of the landing ramp together and just as Phineas took his first step upon it, Jaq suddenly remembered their gift for him.

“Wait!” they said, and grasped for his hand. Phineas turned, concern arching his brows as they dug in their pocket, groping about between the odds and ends they always carried until their fingers met something soft. “I forgot to give you this.”

Turning his hand over, they pressed into his palm the cork from the bottle of champagne they had shared in the bath the previous night. Phineas peered down at it, turning it in his fingers and tracing the lines where Jaq had carved both their initials into the surface. His lips parted in a silent “oh” of surprise.

“Something to jog your memory,” they offered with a weak smile. It had just begun to slip as Phineas’ lips met theirs in a final, brief kiss.

“Keep safe, Jaq,” he said as he drew back. “Please.”

Jaq nodded and took the cork for a moment, tucking it away in the breast pocket of his jacket. “I will. And I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

With that, they took a step back and watched through the rain dripping in their eyes as he climbed the gangway, surefooted despite his unfamiliarity with Terra 2’s gravity, and disappeared inside the airlock.

The last of the mardet crew followed suit and Jaq turned to Junlei.

“Thank you. For seeing him home for me.”

The Chief nodded and extended a hand in a firm shake. “Only right to return the favour. I’ll pass on my well-wishes to Parvati. Good luck, Captain.”

By the time Jaq had made their way into the cockpit of the Unreliable, the shuttle had taken to the skies, and before ADA had finished running through the take-off protocols, it had disappeared entirely behind the thick banks of cloud. Jaq let out a shaky breath and finally took their seat in the captain’s chair.

“Take us into orbit, ADA.”

“Aye-aye, Captain.”

#rain seems to be a running theme in my writing at the moment #i hope this wasn't too cliched and cheesy #jaq's just very sentimental #jaq/phin #captain jaq #phineas welles #my writing #tow fic

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dukeofonions · 4 years

Text

Thoughts on the new Asides

Alright, I’ve watched the new video three times at this point and finally have my thoughts together. Also just in case anyone was wondering no.

No I did not get breakfast magically delivered to me and had to eat a bowl of cereal.

Oh well, there’s always next time.

Anywho, spoilers below if you haven’t seen the episode yet I would not recommend reading this.

Ready? Let’s go.

So what are my general thoughts here, I loved it. Sure there were some things that didn’t make sense to me writing wise but overall this was an adorable, funny episode that provided us with a nice break from all the angst of the main series.

Now to get into the nitty gritty.

Right off the bat the art for this was just amazing. Honestly the idea to make this episode as an animatic was a brilliant move. Not just because of how things are right now in the world (but we don’t wanna think about that) but using this form allows the characters to interact in ways that they can’t when filming live. We got to see Roman and Virgil engaging with the world around them and how they interacting with Thomas when he’s not at home. It also gives us an idea of what the world of Sanders Sides is like. Everyone acts a little more cartoony, but it still feels like the real world as well.

Also the expressions on the characters, even the background ones, were perfect. You could tell so much from a quick expression or body language and as an animation nerd, I was in love from the get go. Honestly the team should think about utilizing this format more with these Asides as it allows more freedom for the characters which can help aid the story and can be used for comedy. Not saying every episode should be animated, but if they have an idea that they simply can’t achieve in live action, they now know that this format works.

And now, on to the characters.

So this is a Roman and Virgil episode, none of the other Sides make an appearance or are even mentioned. (Well I guess Janus is vaguely referenced with all the talk of lies going around) But I can understand their absence even though I would have loved to see them even briefly like how Remus and Janus were in Are There Healthy Distractions but besides one character (which I will get too later) I didn’t really mind and it didn’t take away my enjoyment of the episode.

As usual, Virgil and Roman have a great dynamic and are hilarious with how they bounce off one another. I do question the timeline of this episode given how relaxed Virgil is around Thomas, considering the last time they were together they weren’t on the best footing and he wasn’t present at all during Putting Others First. But I’ll probably make another post about that.

Starting with Virgil, it was fun seeing him act more like his pre-AA self. Getting onto Thomas’ case about every little thing was both hilarious and way too relatable (like way to call a dude out) and him explaining introvert culture was just *cheff’s kiss* It was nice to him slightly more laid back and worrying about something else other than whether or not Thomas is a good person and keeping a dark secret about his past hidden. Also the ending with him openly celebrating with Thomas and Roman was adorable. We’ve never seen Virgil with his guard down like this, letting himself be genuinely happy in front of the others. He always hides that part of him and seeing him like this just warmed my heart because that means Thomas himself isn’t feeling anxious and is allowing himself to enjoy the moment. Sure there are some moments of doubt here and there, but it was overall a great scene and I was glad they gave us a scene with them in the apartment.

Now Roman? Oh my gosh I needed an episode where he got his happy ending and it has arrived! Considering the punch to the gut that was POF’s ending I was ecstatic to see Roman finally, finally getting something he wanted. Think about it. Roman recently gave up the callback, which he wanted more than anything, only to have it all blow up in his face and be told that his sacrifice was all for nothing. Like, ouch. But here we see him once again pursuing something he wants, and he actually gets it! He probably thought it was going to be yet another loss for him, all their efforts were for nothing, but it wasn’t! That’s one thing I love about Roman, no matter how many times he loses he never stops trying. Even when he gets knocked down to his lowest he won’t hesitate to grab the next opportunity that comes his way. And as we can see, that will and determination has paid off.

Of course we can’t forget about Thomas himself. He’s so lovable in this, trying to just get through what should be a simple shopping trip at the mall only to have the most minor things continue to interfere with that. We don’t ever really see Thomas outside of his apartment so it’s nice to finally have an explanation for that. The focus of this episode though is his attempts to find out more about the handsome stranger across the food court and work up the nerve to talk to him. One of the funniest parts of this episode (in my opinion) is when Thomas comes up with the brilliant idea to use the stickers and pins as a way to start a conversation (which honestly could have been sparked by Logan who’s had enough of this) only for it to be shot down as a horrible idea because, what else would anxiety tell you? The monologue in the bathroom was another highlight of this episode and just, gosh Thomas’ acting here is just great. Even though we can only hear his voice there’s just so much emotion put into it. It honestly sounds like he’s crying in some parts and I loved it just as much as the bathroom guy did.

And finally, last but certainly not least, we have the wonderful Nico Flores. I did not expect to love him as much as I did but like, my gosh how can you not? He’s that perfect mix of cool while still being a bit of a dork. Like did he just grab a stranger’s food and wander around looking for them to return it? Had he noticed Thomas go in the bathroom and was just awkwardly standing around waiting for him to come out? His relationship with Thomas is already super cute and I hope that he becomes a recurring character and love interest for Thomas. (Note when I say Thomas I am referring to character!Thomas and not the real Thomas) Seeing as Thomas (now referring to the real one) said this episode would be important to the plot of Sanders Sides, I think it’s safe to assume Nico will be making a return and I for one can’t wait to see more of him, along with seeing how his relationship with Thomas develops.

If I had anything negative to say about this episode, I’d have three negative things to say.

I’ll start with one that I sorta brought up earlier which regarded the absence of a certain character that just didn’t really make sense to me, and that character is Patton. Now for Logan, Janus, and Remus, I can see why they wouldn’t be there. Logan doesn’t do feelings. Janus and Virgil would be having a hissy fit the entire time. And we all know what Remus would be doing. Not saying none of them could have shown up briefly, but their absence doesn’t bother me as much as Patton’s does.

Patton is Thomas’ heart, the core of all his feelings, why wouldn’t the heart be present during a time where Thomas is starting to fall in love? He wasn’t mentioned or anything! Not even when Roman was literally telling Thomas to speak from the heart. It just rubbed me the wrong way that he wasn’t brought up at all and the reason for that has to do with another problem I had with this episode, and that was the choice to have the main thing keeping Thomas from talking to Nico was him being a liar.

The episode starts with hitting the audience on the head with this idea that Thomas is struggling with lying. Despite the fact that nothing that happens is really his fault and everything else isn’t really a big deal. I just found it odd that this was the thing they were having Virgil and Roman get onto Thomas’ case for considering, well, we already had an episode (multiple really) that have already addressed this. One could say this was a result of Roman and Virgil teaming up and being upset over Janus’ partial acceptance. The reason I don’t think this is likely is because Thomas said Virgil finding out about Janus would be a major plot point and I doubt something like that would have happened off screen (honestly the timeline for this video is so confusing)

Another reason this bothered me is because Virgil comes to the conclusion that everything that has gone wrong (the rehearsing in the bathroom, the old friend in the food court, the plant, the pretending, the hiding, the god forsaken boiled carrots) are all lies and Thomas can’t build a relationship off of lies.

But... He literally wasn’t doing that?

At this point Thomas hasn’t even talked to Nico yet. He lied to the guy in the bathroom regarding the monologue (who wouldn’t) and he tried to pretend to be a stranger’s friend (which backfired horribly so lesson learned) I don’t even know how the plant would be considered a lie (and Virgil was the one who pushed him over there anyway) I’m not sure what Virgil’s referring to with the pretending and the hiding I can only assume is when they hid in a trashcan (unless I’m not meant to take that literally) and with the carrots Thomas should have just walked away the moment he saw the rainbow pin on the backpack. That was his fault.

But not once did Thomas lie about anything to Nico. In fact when they finally started talking Thomas was nothing but honest with him, embarrassingly so. The thing Virgil was claiming to be the source of the problem just, wasn’t true. It didn’t make sense to me and still doesn’t even after my third viewing. What I had originally thought was going to happen was that they’d come to a conclusion that tied into Moving On, the episode where Thomas dealt with the aftermath of a break up with Roman, Virgil, and Patton.

Wouldn’t that be something they’d be afraid of? Say Thomas managed to hit it off with this guy. They start dating, everything is going well, only for it to end the same way his last relationship did. Wouldn’t it make a little more since for the main thing to be holding Thomas back is the fear of getting his heart broken again? Of losing yet another person he loved?

Which brings me back to previous point of Patton not being there. Considering these three were the ones to help Thomas resolve things in Moving On, why shouldn’t these three be the ones to be by him when beginning a new relationship?

Unless Patton’s been avoiding these two since currently Virgil is still on rocky ground with Patton and after what happened in POF. But again we have no idea since we don’t know when this episode takes place (well as of writing this I have no idea considering how long it’s taken me to write this Thomas may have tweeted about it or something)

Another potential reason for Patton not being there is basically what I said earlier. In Moving On he was the one struggling the most since he’s Thomas’ feelings. He could have been overwhelmed by all the emotions Thomas was dealing with and simply couldn’t bring himself to show up. This has me hoping that we’ll get a follow up Asides episode where we get to see the other side’s reactions to Nico. If not all of them at least Logan and Patton since it’s been awhile since those two had an episode together.

If that’s the case then I can understand keeping Patton out of this one. But that doesn’t change the fact that I find the whole “lies” thing to be a bit ridiculous.

The final thing I have some of an issue with is how Virgil was the one to “save the day” in this. Throughout this episode Virgil was the one causing the problems (which isn’t to say anything bad about Virgil it’s literally his job to protect Thomas and that includes protecting him from rejection and heartbreak) while Roman was pushing Thomas to go take a chance. I dunno, this one isn’t as big of an issue since I still like the conclusion and Roman calling Virgil brave. It just would have been nice to see Roman going for something and getting it himself. Or at least him and Virgil deciding together that they weren’t going to let this opportunity go.

I dunno, I’m kinda impartial on that one. I just want to see Roman succeed.

And there you have it. Those are my thoughts. As usual, you may take them with a grain of salt. But also feel free to share your own opinions on this episode. It’s definitely become a favorite of mine and is up there with my other favorites.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go be sad because bathroom guy had his hopes and dreams crushed and he deserves justice.

#ts spoilers #sanders sides spoilers #dukeofonions

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becasbelt · 4 years

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Words: 4,874 Fandom: Pitch Perfect (Movies) Rating: T Relationships: Chloe Beale/Beca Mitchell Characters: Chloe Beale, Beca Mitchell Additional Tags: Angst, Pining, Canon Compliant Summary:

Chloe is in love with Beca, and Beca is in love with Chloe. Just… not at the same time.

In which Beca and Chloe can’t seem to figure out their timing.

Dedicated to my loving mother @darby-carter <33

* * *

Falling in love with Beca Mitchell isn’t something that Chloe necessarily expected upon their first meeting, but she can’t say that she’s particularly surprised by it, either. Chloe has always been free with her emotions- something that her mother always says she admires about Chloe.

Although she can’t really know for sure, Chloe likes to think that she generally feels things faster and stronger than most people. When she hates someone, she will go out of her way to avoid them at all costs. When she likes a show on Netflix, she will spend every waking moment watching it and looking up any information she can find on it. When she crushes on someone, they become all-consuming; Chloe thinks of them constantly.

So when a small spark of attraction starts deep in her chest for Beca, Chloe knows that it is only a matter of time before Beca completely takes over Chloe’s world.

And take over Chloe’s world she does, with startling swiftness and terrifying completeness.

Because even if Chloe has been in love before, every kind of love she’s felt in the past pales in comparison to how she feels about Beca.

And sometimes, Chloe thinks that Beca might just love her back.

Beca is a naturally prickly person, Chloe has noticed. Averse to almost any form of physical contact, affection, and intimacy. The emotional side of things isn’t much nicer. Beca hardly answers questions about herself and tends to get her way out of any conversation that seems like it may be heading in a sincere direction. It’s almost impressive how well she does at distancing herself from others, both physically and emotionally.

Maybe that’s part of why Chloe falls for her so hard and so fast; she just aches to make sure that Beca feels loved in some way.

So naturally, Chloe inserts herself into Beca’s life.

And Beca, shockingly enough, doesn’t really seem to mind.

At practices while Aubrey is lecturing Amy about her lack of cardio, Beca will slink away from Stacie’s attempts of showing affections towards her, only to allow Chloe’s arms to circle her middle from behind a moment later. Beca will answer Cynthia-Rose with some sarcastic quip when she asks why Beca is in the Bellas if she hates it so much, yet when it comes up in a late night conversation with Chloe a week later, she seems to have no problem opening up about how her dad will help her move to LA after the year is done if she ‘shows some real effort.’

Chloe seems to be Beca’s exception in almost every aspect of life, which thrills Chloe to no end.

Beca kissing Jesse is unexpected and surprising, to say the least.

Chloe didn’t think that Beca even liked Jesse as a person, let alone liked him as a potential romantic partner.

Watching Beca and Jesse kiss quite literally breaks Chloe’s heart. She cries about it on she and Aubrey’s couch for a solid week until Aubrey tells her that she needs to get over it, because it’s not like she and Beca were even dating or anything.

It was just a crush, Aubrey tells her. She hadn’t even known Beca for all that long, Aubrey says. You’ll be okay, she assures her.

But none of those things feel true to Chloe.

It’s funny, Chloe thinks as she watches the Hallmark channel, bottle of open wine cradled in her lap protectively. It’s funny how discovering that someone you have a crush on likes someone else feels like a breakup, even though you were never even in a relationship to begin with. At the end of the day, the person who broke your heart never technically had any obligation to love you back, because they never knew how you felt in the first place. It is an entirely one-sided heartbreak, which makes it all that much worse.

And since Chloe has always felt emotions more strongly than others, she thinks it’s pretty safe to assume that her heartbreak hurts more than it really should.

* * *

Failing Russian lit isn’t something that Chloe necessarily expected herself to do, but she can’t say that she’s particularly surprised by it, either.

The class was hard, and Chloe knew that she had done poorly on a lot of the tests and assignments in it, so her failing isn’t exactly the most shocking news of the day.

There are both upsides and downsides to Chloe having to stay in school another year.

Positives: Chloe has another year to figure out her life before she has to face the harsh reality that is the real world. Chloe gets to be in the Bellas another year, which is arguably her favorite thing in the world. Chloe gets to stay with Beca for another year.

Actually, the whole ‘staying with Beca’ thing could be a downside as well.

It’s a downside because Beca is dating Jesse, and Chloe is still tragically in love with Beca.

The thing is, Beca justmjust it so easy to be in love with her.

It’s in the little things that Beca does. Like the way she makes mixes for Chloe and gifts them to her with a shrug, telling her it wasn’t a big deal. Like how she looks so adorably grumpy cuddled up with Chloe under a blanket during Bella movie nights. Like how her cheeks flush whenever Chloe kisses her cheek, allowing it with only a small amount of grumbling.

Every single little thing that Beca does is endearing to Chloe, which is as frustrating as it is wonderful, because Beca gives Chloe so many reasons to hope that they could be together someday. It’s in the things she says:

“I’ve never known anyone like you before.”

“You’re the only person I feel like I can trust in this world, Chlo.”

“I don’t deserve you.”

If Beca didn’t have a boyfriend Chloe would swear that Beca felt the same way. If Beca didn’t have a boyfriend, Chloe would have absolutely told her how in love with her she is by now. But the reality is that Beca does have a boyfriend, one which she is very much in love with.

So for now Chloe will just ignore all the different ways that Beca Mitchell can make her heart clench and selfishly hope that Jesse and Beca won’t work out in the end somehow.

* * *

Chloe is still selfishly letting herself hope three years later, with no end in sight.

Emily asks them if they’re dating one day over lunch, causing Beca to almost choke on her food. Chloe pats Beca’s back as she tries to fight the blush blooming on her cheeks, avoiding sweet, innocent Emily’s curious gaze.

“What?” Beca squeaks out as soon as her airways are clear again.

Emily blushes deeply. “I was just wondering if you guys are dating, because you’re always holding hands and sharing a bed and saying ‘I love you’ and you just seem to know each other really well.”

Beca laughs as if the idea is absurd, and Chloe ignores the slight pang of hurt that it sends to her chest. “Oh wow, no. We are definitely not dating, Chloe’s just super affectionate.”

She’s still laughing as she says it, as if it’s the funniest thing in the world, which makes Chloe feel slightly offended. “You make it sound like dating me is the worst thing that could ever happen,” Chloe says coolly, raising an eyebrow at Beca.

It’s almost comical actually, the way both Emily’s and Beca’s eyes widen in response to that.

“No no no, that’s not what I’m saying at all,” Beca rushes out. “I just don’t think we’d never date.”

Chloe’s pushes down the tears suddenly threatening her eyes. “And why not? You don’t think we’d be good together?”

Beca shakes her head and laughs in astonishment. “Jesus, dude, that’s not what I’m saying.”

“That’s what I’m hearing.”

“Why are you pushing this so hard?”

Chloe shrugs in an attempt to act indifferent. “I just want to know why you wouldn’t date me.”

“Because you’re my best friend and I don’t think I could ever like you like that.”

Silence follows Beca’s statement, filling the kitchen with tense energy. Emily looks between Beca and Chloe nervously while they stare at each other. And as much as Chloe is hurt by Beca’s words, by her claim that she could never see Chloe as more than a friend, she still can’t help the way that her eyes drift down to Beca’s lips.

“Thank you for the clarification,” Chloe says quietly before forcing her eyes away from Beca’s face. She stands from the table and moves to set her plate in the sink, excusing herself from the kitchen without another word.

Beca doesn’t come after her.

* * *

Somehow Chloe ends up moving to New York with Beca.

Well, Beca and Fat Amy, that is.

Chloe never expected to move to New York, but she can’t say that she really minds it all that much. It’s vibrant and exciting, full of people and possibilities; exactly Chloe’s type of scene.

Except, Chloe usually spends the night in with Beca instead of experiencing all that New York has to offer.

Beca, who is recently single for the first time in nearly four years.

Beca, who came out to Chloe a couple months ago over an intimate dinner at a nice restaurant.

Beca, who will never see Chloe as anything more than her best friend.

And Chloe, being the hopeless, stupid romantic that she is, still can’t help but feel a tiny bit of hope that something will change between them. The hope is small, nearly completely put out at this point, which is exactly how Chloe likes it. Being in love with Beca at this point is more like embers in a fire bit rather than a raging inferno: still there, still warm, just not quite as intense.

Although, some nights those embers spark into a small flame, and those nights are usually aided by alcohol.

Tonight is one of those nights.

And Chloe honestly really hates herself, and hates Beca, and hates emotions, and doesn’t understand what the point of anything is anymore.

But damn if Beca still isn’t just as breathtaking today as she was when Chloe saw her at that activities fair five years go.

Beca is talking about… something. Chloe honestly isn’t sure what she’s going on about, because she’s had nearly a full bottle of wine and it’s making her head fuzzy and right now Chloe is positive that Beca has never looked so good in all the years they’ve known each other, even if she is only wearing sweatpants and an old Barden t-shirt.

“And like, I asked him if he was happy with that take, and he just shrugged so I was like ‘do you want to run it again?’ and he shrugged again, which really made me want to shove his fucking sunglasses down his throat.”

“He’s stupid,” Chloe says distractedly, though she doesn’t know who Beca is even talking about at this point. She’s too busy admiring the earrings lining Beca’s ears, and the curve of her neck so perfectly on display thanks to how Beca's hair is pulled up in a messy bun, and the shape of her lips and how kissable they look.

Chloe was sitting on the other end of the couch from Beca. She knows she was because she purposefully sat on the other end at the beginning of the evening to keep herself from reaching out a touching Beca impulsively.

So Chloe was sitting on the other end of the couch, but she is definitely not sitting on the other end when she pulls Beca in for a kiss by the back of her neck.

As soon as Chloe realizes what she’s done, she is immediately mortified with herself and starts to pull away. Hands coming up to cup her face halt her retreat, however, and a mix of confusion and elation overcomes her when Beca starts kissing Chloe back.

Their kisses become increasingly more frantic the longer they last, Chloe eventually pushing Beca back against the couch cushions to lay on the top of her. Chloe isn’t sure how long this dream that she’s in is going to last, so she figures she might as well enjoy it for as long as possible.

Chloe deepens the kiss, tongue pushing its way past Beca’s lips as Beca groans beneath her. Beca’s hands tighten in Chloe’s hair, not necessarily pulling or pushing in any way; just holding as if Beca is trying to anchor herself. Chloe knows that she’ll have to pull back for air soon, but she’s scared that as soon as they stop the dream will be shattered, so she tells her lungs to suck it up and pushes her lips harder against Beca’s.

Beca is the one to pull back, her head pressing against the cushions beneath her to gain some distance between Chloe’s lips and her own, chest heaving as she tries to steady her breathing. Chloe is panting too, but instead of taking the time to breathe probably she begins pressing lights kisses to Beca’s neck, unwilling to part from Beca quite yet.

Beca’s breathing starts to even out and she lets out little sighs of contentment at Chloe’s ministrations, hands stroking softly through Chloe’s hair. Eventually Chloe’s lips stop moving and she relaxes her body fully on top of Beca’s, enjoying the closeness as she buries her face into the crook of Beca’s neck.

The hands in Chloe’s hair move until they’re running lightly over her back instead and Chloe resists the urge to shiver. She remains quiet, not wanting to shatter the calm that surrounds them. Beca says no words either, and that is the way they remain, tangled up on their shitty couch in their shitty New York apartment until they fall asleep.

* * *

The next morning, Chloe wakes up still entangled with Beca. Beca is still asleep – which doesn’t surprise Chloe, she’s always been the earlier riser between the two of them – so Chloe carefully climbs off Beca and makes her way to the kitchen to make some coffee.

Beca wakes up with a grunt just as the coffee finishes brewing, and Chloe smiles a little at the familiar action as she pours coffee into two mugs, settling down in one of the chairs at their tiny kitchen table.

“Morning, Bec,” Chloe says once Beca is sitting up and looking a little more alive.

Beca grunts again in response and shuffles over to the table, plopping herself down across from Chloe and reaching for the second mug of coffee. She takes a generous sip and curses when it burns her tongue, and Chloe can’t help but chuckle in response.

It’s a few minutes later when Beca is finally awake enough to form actual sentences, and what she says makes Chloe choke on hot coffee.

“So what was last night about?”

Chloe coughs as she tries to clear the liquid from her throat. Beca winces in sympathy. Chloe uses the choking as an excuse to find her words, because she honestly had not expected Beca to confront her about their impromptu make out session.

“Um, I don’t know,” Chloe says hesitantly after a minute. “I was just drunk, I guess.”

It’s a lame excuse. A terrible excuse, in fact.

“Oh,” is all Beca says.

“What about you?” Chloe questions, turning the question on Beca. “You kissed me back.”

Beca shrugs and avoids eye contact with Chloe. “I’m not sure. Like you said, we were drunk.”

Disappointment fills Chloe as Beca opts for the easy cop-out as well. “Right,” she says, looking down at her coffee. “Just a drunken mistake. Nothing more than that.”

And in that moment, Chloe feels those burning embers within her completely die out for good.

* * * * * *

Falling in love with Chloe Beale isn’t something that Beca expected upon their first kiss, and she would be lying if she said she wasn’t surprised.

Because Chloe has been Beca’s best friend ever since her first year at Barden, even if she tried to downplay just how close they were a lot of the time. She didn’t want to say that she saw Chloe as a sister, because there would be a lot to unpack there if that were the case, but Beca definitely never thought of Chloe in a romantic sort of way at all.

Sure, Chloe was kind and thoughtful and always knew just how to make Beca’s day better. She was always there when Beca needed someone to talk to, or a shoulder to cry on, or just a good hug because she’d had a shitty day. And Chloe really did give the best hugs, and Beca always felt so at home in her arms, especially when they were cuddled up together after falling asleep while working on Bellas stuff or homework or just talking until they could barely keep their eyes open. Plus, Chloe has always just understood Beca in a way that nobody else ever has…

Shit. Had Beca been in love with Chloe the whole time?

The realization that Beca had possibly been in love with Chloe for years causes Beca to pull away from the kiss that had grown decidedly more heated than any friendly kiss should ever grow. Her chest heaves as she struggles to catch her breath, both overwhelmed with the passion of the kiss and the way her thoughts have attacked her in such a sudden onslaught. Chloe moves to kiss her neck, seemingly undeterred by Beca’s withdrawal, and Beca is torn for a moment between pushing her away and pulling her closer before ultimately deciding to do neither.

Beca remains silent – save for the involuntary whimpers and sighs that escape her due to Chloe’s lips moving against her body – as she processes her new emotions. Eventually Chloe stops her ministrations and settles her weight against Beca, and Beca waits for the inevitable moment that Chloe pulls away and makes them talk about what just happened.

Except, that moment never comes. Chloe only burrows herself deeper into Beca, apparently content to remain silent for the remainder of the night.

Which she does- which they both do, actually. Chloe falls asleep soon after, leaving Beca to stare at the ceiling in the dark of their apartment and wonder how her heart is still beating so fast in her chest.

* * *

Beca holds off her curiosity about the whole thing the next morning for as long as she can, but ultimately ends up caving only about half an hour after waking up.

“So… what was last night about?” Beca attempts to sound casual, but is painfully aware of how much she’s failing.

She asks the question right as coffee goes down the wrong pipe in Chloe’s throat, causing her to start coughing for a few moments. Beca winces and internally curses her poor timing.

“Um, I don’t know,” Chloe says once she can speak again. “I was just drunk, I guess.”

Beca’s heart sinks. Of course it was because they were drunk, why else would Chloe have kissed her?

“Oh,” Beca says lamely.

“What about you?” Chloe asks suddenly, glancing at Beca. “You kissed me back.”

Panic fills Beca at the question, so she tries for an indifferent shrug and stares into her coffee. “I’m not sure. Like you said, we were drunk.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Beca thinks that Chloe’s shoulders might slump a little. “Right,” she says softly. “Just a drunken mistake. Nothing more than that.”

Beca looks back up at Chloe only to see that Chloe’s eyes are directed down towards her drink. The sun shining in through their apartment's sole window shines over Chloe, bathing her in golden light. Beca’s heart pounds painfully in her chest at the sight and fuck- right there in that moment she feels herself fall hard.

* * *

Being in love with your best friend is difficult, Beca has decided. On top of that, being in love with your best friend and living with them and sharing a bed made it all that much worse. Beca wouldn’t ever wish it upon her worst enemy.

Beca wishes things could go back to the way they were before, when neither of them were secretly in love with the other, and when Beca’s heart didn’t feel like it would burst out of her chest when Chloe came home from work in the evenings, and when Beca felt like she could tell her best friend anything.

Beca wishes she wasn’t in love with Chloe.

But the thing is, Chloe makes it so easy to be in love with her.

It’s in the little things that Chloe does. Like the way she always makes coffee for Beca in the morning, even though Beca has two perfectly good hands and could make it herself. Like how she’s always willing to give Beca a back massage after a long day of Beca hunched over a soundboard or computer for work. Like the way she doesn’t seem to mind Beca’s frequent awkwardness in most aspects of life, telling Beca that it’s ‘endearing’ to her.

Which Beca thinks is unfair because every single little thing that Chloe does is endearing to Beca. Chloe makes Beca feel like the most loved person in the world without trying. It’s the way she says things like:

“You’re my favorite person in the world.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you in my life, Bec.”

“I’ll always be here for you, no matter what.”

Beca has never had someone that is such a stable in her life like Chloe is. Beca never has to worry about if Chloe has her back, or if she can trust her, or if she’s someone Beca can count on because Chloe has done nothing but be dependable in the six years they’ve known each other.

And while Beca would like to tell Chloe how she feels about her, she can’t. She can’t tell Chloe and risk losing the singular best thing that she has ever had in her life.

* * *

Beca doesn’t know who this Chicago guy is, but she does know that she hates him.

She doesn’t know why exactly she hates him- actually, no, scratch that because Beca actually has many reasons why she hates him. At the very of top of that list is the way Chloe can’t seem to get enough of him.

From the very first moment Chicago stepped into view and introduced himself, he had Chloe following him around like a little puppy. Beca had tried to keep up with them at first, trailing uselessly along Chloe’s side, attempting to jump into their conversation every now and then, but ultimately decided that it was no use.

Chloe was hooked on this guy, which meant that Beca’s presence when she was around him was obsolete.

Beca didn’t like it.

For years now, Beca has been used to being Chloe’s favorite person in any given situation. She’s gotten used to (and fond of) the way Chloe clings onto her in some sort of way when they’re together- holding her hand, looping their arms together, hugging her waist from behind. Except now Chicago is the one on the receiving end of Chloe’s physical affections. Chloe is always pushing his shoulder playfully, or brushing a hand down his arm, tugging on his hand; any excuse to just touch him, it seems.

Beca feels colder than she has in a long time without Chloe’s presence near her.

And Beca has never been one for physical affection. Physical touch is decidedly not one of her love languages. Beca has always been more of a quality time type of person, where no contact or words are necessarily needed for her to feel close to someone, but now that Chloe has stopped directing all her touchiness towards Beca, she realizes just how much she craves that connection with Chloe.

Throughout the course of the entire USO tour, Beca begins to feel like Chloe is pulling away from them- whatever them is. Beca has never felt so much distance between them, both physically and emotionally. The whole situation is rapidly spiraling out of Beca’s control and she has no idea what to do about it.

So Beca decides that she’s going to tell Chloe how she feels. She’s already losing Chloe as it is, so she might as well say fuck it and go all out.

Beca dedicates her final performance to Chloe, even if she never actually tells anyone she’s doing so. She thinks she makes it pretty obvious, though, what with the way she doesn’t take her eyes off of Chloe for the entire first half of the performance before inviting the rest of the Bellas onstage. Their eyes connect and Beca smiles from the stage, thinking that maybe there is a chance that Chloe feels the same way.

When all the Bellas rush to hug her at the end of their performance, Chloe the first one to do so, Beca has to resist the urge to kiss her right there onstage in front of everyone. Beca doesn’t want to rush this, she wants to do it right.

As soon as Beca is able to break away from all the ‘important’ people she needs to talk to afterwards, she starts rushing around to find Chloe. Her thoughts start spinning in her head as she tries to figure out what exactly she’s going to say.

You’re the greatest thing in my life.

I’ve never wanted to be with someone as much as I want to be with you.

I love you, Chloe. I love you I love you I-

Beca finds Chloe.

Chloe is kissing Chicago, looking happier than Beca has ever seen her before.

Suddenly Beca understands exactly what people mean when they say their heart has been broken.

Because she feels it happening to her right now.

* * *

The silence between Beca and Chloe in the car is uncomfortable, which is how all their silences have been since returning home from the USO tour.

It’s an unfamiliar feeling, having uncomfortable silences with Chloe. Pretty much since the first time they hung out, they have always been comfortable around each other. Part of that is because Chloe is a natural at interacting with people and makes conversation easily, but even when they weren’t even talking things were always easy with them.

The silence between them now feels like it’s trying to choke Beca.

Arriving at the airport feels almost like a blessing to Beca, because it means that they don’t have to endure the tension any longer, but it is also most definitely a curse as well.

Because arriving at the airport means that Beca is leaving for LA soon. It means that she is leaving Chloe soon.

They walk through the airport until they get to security, making small talk along the way. Beca stays mostly quiet, though, internally debating with herself the entire way. Because she is quite literally running out of time and now is her last chance to tell Chloe how she feels, but she knows that Chloe is with Chicago now and it would be unfair to dump all of her feelings on Chloe before she jets off to the other side of the country.

And Beca is afraid. Afraid of losing Chloe, afraid of telling Chloe how she feels, afraid of never telling Chloe how she feels.

But Beca figures it’s now or never.

“I have to ask, Chloe. Did you… do you think we ever could have been something together? Something more than friends, I mean,” Beca says quietly, uncertainly. She swallows before adding, “Do you think we could have loved each other?”

Chloe smiles softly and gently laces her fingers with Beca’s. She leans forward and brushes a kiss against Beca’s cheek, and Beca’s eyes instinctively close at the feeling. “Beca, I think you I both know that we loved each other. We just… never seemed to get the timing right is all.”

Beca’s breath hitches at the words. Chloe smile turns a little sad and she squeezes Beca’s fingers once before letting go.

The speakers above them inform Beca that her flight is ready to board, so Beca grips her suitcase handle and prepares herself to walk away.

“I love you,” Beca tells Chloe before she can lose the nerve. “I think I’ll always love you.”

Some expression flashes on Chloe’s face – regret, sadness, clarity, maybe – but it passes too quickly for Beca to tell exactly what it is. “And I think a part of me will always love you, Bec.”

And somehow that’s all they say before Beca is turning around and walking through the gate of her flight, all of her senses feeling completely numb. She wills herself to turn back and rush towards Chloe; to kiss her, to tell her that she can’t go to LA, to tell her that she can’t live without Chloe in her life. She wills Chloe to call out to her and tell her to stay, tell her that she loves her, to give Beca a reason to stay.

Beca doesn’t turn back, and Chloe doesn’t call out.

And maybe that is the most unexpected thing of all.

#fanfic #pitch perfect #bechloe #theresa wanted angst #so i wrote some angst

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thanksjro · 4 years

Text

More Than Meets the Eye #14- Everything’s Coming Up Overlord

Our issue opens up with a prologue.

Two miles below the surface of the moon, two miners are going at it, as they discuss the merits of their respective tools. As the guy with the pickaxe hits the floor below him, he exposes a bright green light hiding in the ground.

The miners, amazed, make a call to their boss, Momus; the very same Momus who would one day become a Senator and eventually be killed by the Senate for his Decepticon sympathies.

Momus, once made aware of the situation, makes his own call to the Functionist Council, siting that a Code 113- because of COURSE it is- is taking place. The Council responds by shutting down the mine and sending a representative to check things out. The representative claims his name is Three of Twelve, but I know The One Electronic when I friggin’ see him.

The green light, once authenticated, is scheduled for retrieval and “nurturing”. Because Momus is in charge of the mine, and this green light is a super big deal, Three of Twelve grants him the status of Alt-Mode Exempt; he can basically do whatever the hell he wants, free of Functionist meddling. Dang, Whirl should have tried digging one of these things up! Would’ve saved him a lot of heartache.

Guys, c’mon, it’s Momus! You ought to know by now that he’ll fuck you, but he doesn’t fucking need you. You ain’t getting a thing, and you also won’t have any time to unionize, because you’re going to be dead by the end of the day.

That green light turned out to be a spark, the sort of “soul” that a Transformer has at the core of their being. That murderous little ball of light is a robot zygote.

…They really let the guy with the well-documented thing with pregnancy handle the reproductive aspect of the world building, huh?

Anyway, it’s time to see what Milne’s take on Last Stand of the Wreckers looks like.

Wow, that is just the uncoolest line. I mean, wow.

Make note of Overlord’s lips here. We’ll be seeing a lot more of them once the lady robots make an appearance.

Overlord makes quick work of Springer, punching him into the dirt, and we see someone who most certainly was NOT present for the events of Last Stand.

We do that, jumping to the part where Ironfist explodes Overlord with his mind.

He didn’t say that! My immersion in this story about giant space robots is broken!

This obviously leads to Overlord being reduced to a flaming skeleton, and he screams at Chromedome to scoot his boot so he can get at Verity. Chromedome refuses, antagonizes the guy who’s at least three times his size, then initiates a scene change with a literal snap of his fingers.

Lot of good reference material for Chromedome in this issue. Artists take note.

Here is our first taste of mnemosurgery on someone who isn’t dead or dying, as well as our first taste of Chromedome having something resembling self confidence.

Outside of Overlord’s brain foyer, Chromedome stands on a forklift, with both of his horrid, needly hands punched into his patient’s head. Overlord is still very much in the position we saw him in issue #6, hooked up in a full body harness in something called a slow cell.

Overlord, still very sad that he got stood up by Megatron, tells Chromedome to kill him. Chromedome refuses, saying that he wouldn’t even if he could.

Hey, Chromedome. Maybe don’t tell this guy you can’t kill him. Just seems like maybe not the best idea.

Chromedome gets back to work, getting perhaps a bit too comfortable as he pulls himself up a chair from- I dunno, Overlord’s brain aether.

This really is your element, isn’t it, Chromedome? You’re just straight-up power tripping right now. No wonder Rewind has to literally beg you to not do this.

We jump into another one of Overlord’s memories, where’s he’s getting his shit absolutely destroyed by Megatron in a gladiator fight. We get our first taste of information creep as a concept, which is referred to as eidetic decay here.

I wanna know what the purple guy with the blue visor’s face situation is. Don’t think we’ve run into anyone like that before. It’s a little concerning, if I’m being honest.

We move on to the next memory, but it looks like “same shit, different day” is a huge part of who Overlord is as an individual, because it’s just more of him getting whaled on by Megatron.

After this uncomfortably intimate moment, Megatron puts his bucket helmet back on and states that Overlord is finally “ready.”

Ready for what, you might ask?

You remember that obscene sort of fascination of Roberts’ that we keep running into? We’re about to delve into some of that right now. But first- the set up.

We’re in a new memory, in a place called the Foundry, and Overlord’s been stripped down to his robotic skivvies and placed in a large glass tank. Megatron walks up, berating Rossom (of Rossom’s Trinity fame) and saying “to hell with safety protocols, I’m Megatron and I say we make Overlord into a Phase Sixer, meh meh meh.” Shockwave is there.

Rossom’s concerned about this project, because A) they’re going to be using the last of their ununtrium to do this, and B) if it works, Overlord’s going to be the strongest motherfucker ever, and he’ll probably try to kill Megatron.

Ununtrium is something that actually exists in the real world, though it in no way works like it does in MTMTE. Ununtrium is actually an outdated name for the element Nihonium, a synthetic chemical element, whose most stable form has a half-life of 10 seconds. It has no known properties or qualities, because it simply doesn’t last long enough to be studied that in-depth. So why use this element in the story? The answer lies in the placeholder name itself. Ununtrium was named so because it’s the 113th element in the periodic table.

In other words, Ununtrium was used because Roberts is a massive nerd.

Because Overlord’s a Point One Percenter, and in fact that murderous little spark we saw at the beginning of the issue, he ought to be perfectly fine. Shockwave has planted a killswitch in the guy’s brain in case he tries something funny on Megatron.

The narrative is interrupted for a moment as Chromedome chastises Overlord for being kind of sleepy in his memories. Then Chromedome lets something slip that he probably really shouldn’t have.

With the contingencies in place, it’s time to get the Phase Sixer show on the road.

Well, there it is.

Oh, and a bit more.

Overlord thanks Rossom for all his hard work by crushing his skull, and thus the story of how he became a Phase Sixer draws to a close.

Megatron, you had literally zero reason to say that. This is how you can tell Roberts wrote this scene to fuck with people.

Back in the white void, Chromedome’s patting himself on the back over a job well done. In the background, Overlord’s smiling.

It’s never a good thing when Overlord smiles.

If Chromedome had just kept things professional and didn’t keep bringing up their shared history, Overlord wouldn’t be able to have another flashback- this one’s got Starscream and Thundercracker in it! No word on where Skywarp’s gotten to. Skywarp doesn’t get a ton of attention in IDW Transformers.

The three of them are bombing what appears to be a wasteland, on word from Decepticon intel that there’s something worth looking for in the area. Turns out, intel was right.

Chromedome, suddenly antsy, pulls them out of the memory, demanding to know why this is happening. Overlord just smiles.

Oh, hey Brainstorm. What brings you to the New Institute?

Chromedome, your war crimes are showing! Turns out Mnemosurgery and Shadowplay are the same fucking thing.

As Chromedome assists in what appears to be an empurata in progress, he’s shot in the gut, as present-Chromedome screams and reaches for himself.

Overlord and company release Soundwave, who is in no way grateful for the assist. They leave quickly, Overlord taking Trepan as a souvenir, because that’s just the kind of guy he is. He kidnaps people.

As Chromedome in the past lays bleeding out on the floor, Chromedome in the present decides it’s time to share his feelings.

Prowl did Chromedome a solid after Zeta came into Primehood, and got him an internship at the New Institute. The one time Prowl was nice to his partner, and it’s to hook him up with a job that can and will kill him the more frequently he does it.

Chromedome was so good at poking people in the brain, he got a nickname out of it. That nickname? Chromedome.

Yeah, his real name is Tumbler.

Chromedome remembers himself, and the fact that they shouldn’t be seeing any of this, because Overlord is the patient and he wasn’t there for this info dump.

Overlord’s still smiling.

Overlord may be a lot of things, but he’s no dummy. He took Trepan with him to learn mnemosurgery, in an attempt to learn the secrets of the Achilles Virus Shockwave planted in his brain. He didn’t complete his training, because Megatron caught wind, but major smart boy points to you, Overlord.

Now he’s going to use his own mnemosurgery skills to bust on out of here.

Chromedome, Overlord has been killing fools since literally before he was born, and you basically handed him a rope to hang you with.

SMASH CUT TO:

There he is, Cybertron’s #1 Bastard Bachelor! Of course he’s involved with this!

All that stuff Rung told Fort Max in issue #6, about Overlord’s spark being in a whiteout vacuum? A giant ruddy lie fed to the public, to give High Command a chance to figure out what they were going to do with him.

Prowl, they are MARRIED, you giant space ass.

Prowl has a theory that Phase Sixers aren’t born, but made. We as the readers, of course, already know this, but we’ve got to know where we’ve been before we can figure out where we’re going. He’s invited Chromedome to his office to ask him to mnemosurgery Overlord up and get the secret Krabby Patty formula Phase Sixer recipe.

Chromedome, doesn’t want to do that, though. He wants to live in a peaceful world, where Rewind doesn’t have to worry about his impending, work-related death.

How exactly mnemosurgery kills practitioners is never exactly explained. I, however, have a theory.

We’ve already established that if you inject enough times, you start getting crossover with your patients’ memories in your own brain. We’ve seen it happen with Chromedome in the Annual, and it was vivid enough that he wasn’t sure if the memory of committing suicide by way of Gideon’s Glue was his own or not.

Because Transformers are very similar in bodily functions to humans- because this isn’t hard sci-fi- it stands to reason that more than just memories reside in the brain module. The brain controls movement, organ regulation, chemical balances, all that jazz.

Where does the line for memory get drawn? Who’s to say that bodily functions wouldn’t start bleeding through the connection? If you can have memories bleed through and have to double-check with someone on whether or not they’re yours, who’s to say that it can’t happen with other parts of the brain? Like programming for your robotic organs? If a patient clearly remembers how hard their fuel pump was going during a stressful situation, does that stress response translate for the surgeon’s body type, or does it stay at what it had been for the original brain?

If Chromedome’s fuel pump starts going at a rate designed for a guy the size of Fort Max, it’s probably going to explode.

Getting back to the story at hand, Chromedome says “thanks, but no thanks” and is walking out of the room, when Prowl does something kind of stupid:

He starts threatening to blackmail the guy who has pointy mind-wiper fingers and doesn’t really like him all that much.

This is one of the larger seeds involved with a dropped story plot, in which it would have been revealed that Chromedome had been part of the mission that led to Dominus Ambus’ disappearance. It was seeded very early on in MTMTE, but never came to fruition, mainly due to the fact that Roberts didn’t want to give Chromedome and Rewind’s relationship that much of a trench to jump over. I mean, how would you even handle that, finding out that your current husband was complacent in the disappearance of your first husband? It’d be messy. Way too messy to be wrapped up cleanly. There’s other aspects of that plot thread that I’ll cover later on, but trust me when I say it would have needed its own spin-off series to be properly handled and resolved. A spin-off series that it wouldn’t have gotten.

As it currently stands, the interpretation of what exactly Chromedome did that would warrant him getting cagey here is wide open. Was he involved with the Ostaros situation in Sins of the Wreckers? Did he have a past with a Decepticon that Rewind wouldn’t have approved of? Was he a Decepticon at some point? Does he not like dogs? It’s up to YOU, dear reader!

Prowl’s threat goes about as well as you’d expect.

I mean, really, what did you THINK was going to happen?

Chromedome wipes the memory of making the threat, as well as the information that made the threat possible, then leaves, and Prowl is none the wiser.

Overlord’s not done yet, though. He moves on to the next memory, which involves a giant, naked human. Chromedome enters Brainstorm’s lab, while he’s hard at work on the holomatter avatars. Brainstorm has stolen Perceptor’s sniper sight and is wearing it on his head. Why does he have it? What purpose does it serve him? Who knows!

Drift is accompanying Chromedome on this little visit, and thus the identity of the mystery door-whisperer from issue #12 is revealed.

Watch out for his hands, Drift.

The mystery of the oddly threatening medical drone is also revealed- Brainstorm had them all loaded up with a speech recognition program that would alert Drift whenever Overlord was mentioned.

With introductions to Project: Total Insanity out of the way, it’s time to get technical.

Five seconds for Overlord is thirty minutes for the rest of the Lost Light. In theory, if he somehow broke loose from his bindings and escaped his cell, they’d have plenty of time to scramble the troops and get ready for him.

Let’s see how that theory works when applied to real world testing, shall we?

Overlord gets the code to the cell, thanks to this merry little jaunt inside Chromedome’s brain he’s decided to take, rips free of his bonds, and makes his exit. Chromedome, temporarily paralyzed and mute from the strain of doing such a long deep reading on Overlord, can only watch as he walks out the door, making a promise to find Rewind first when he starts killing everyone on the ship.

Oh man, this next one’s gonna be a doozy.

#transformers #jro #jro punches me in the face #mtmte #issue 14 #maccadam #Hannzreads #overthinking about robots #text post #long post #comic script writing

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kingdomblade · 4 years

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Digimon Kizuna thoughts

All spoilers will be under the cut!

Fresh off of Tri when Kizuna was announced, I wrote up some hopes I had for this movie. Without looking back at that list, I'm pretty sure this movie managed to not hit any of the things I wanted off of that list - but I'm still walking away completely satisfied. The characters, the story, the setting all feel like completely natural progression from how I remember them, it manages to tell a compelling story in a fairly short movie, the animation and designs are drop dead gorgeous. It's clearly a labor or love and I'm thankful for everyone who worked on it. In some ways it leaves me wanting more - I'd love one more entry with the 02 group as a focus, and I think there would be a lot of value in an entry that focuses more on Digimon intigrated with the human world rather than yet another story about kids discovering Digimon. But if this is the last time we see these twelve in this form, what a way to go.

This is absolutely stream of consciousness writing while I’m on my second watch through of the day (In lieu of livetweeting - I’ll spare my followers that much lol). Is it rambling? Absolutely. It may or may not be of interest, but I thought it would be something fun to do regardless. If you decide to read, I hope you enjoy!

----

Tom Fahn’s Agumon is noticeably a bit lower pitched even compared to Tri, weather he can’t take his voice up as much or if it’s a different portrayal I’m not sure but it still fits him really well - Tentomon’s voice feel slightly different too. Funny enough Gabumon is somehow lighter and more childish than his original portrayal, but it also fits him well.

Both Tri and Kizuna have such a weird process to their casting - They got back actors that as far as I can tell haven’t done much if anything since their days on Digimon, they’ve gotten back actors for side characters with bit parts. They’ve hired new actors that seem to take the original voice into account and take their own spin on them, and then they hire actors with absolutely no regard for how the original sounded to the point that it just plain conflicts with the established character. It’s all over the place and it’s weird.

Johnny Yong Bosch's portrayal seems slightly different from Tri, maybe he's playing him slightly older, maybe it's the slightly different personality, maybe I'm imagining it. Something about it reminds me of Doug Erholtz's portrayal, which is an added bonus when JYB was already one of the best of the recasts. Minutes in and I'm completely sold on Nicholas Roye's Matt as well, it sounds like a natural progression from his Adventure voice.

In a vacuum Griffin Burns is a decent Davis, but he's one of the recasts that immersion breaking because not only does he sound nothing like Brian Donovan, but his take on Davis is higher pitch than Donovan's so it's impossible to hear him as older. The fact that Donovan was supposed to reprise his role is just salt on the wound. With the insane amount of delays that this dub got, they surely could have brought him back onboard... It's a shame that 2 our of 3 roles I've heard of Burns have been a replacement of another actor, hope he can get more roles where he can shine more. On the other hand, Bryce Papenbrook as Cody is brilliant casting coming from his 02 voice for what little we get to hear of him.

Yolei didn't sound to great in her video message, but by the time we see her in person her VA has gotten into the role and captures her really well. Hawkmon sounds fine enough, but I'm way more upset than I should be about Armadillomon's voice considering he doesn't have many lines. A recast was mandatory here, and 'medium-deep southern accent' should honestly be pretty easy to replicate but what we got was horrific. What casting director knew enough about the characters to know that Hawkmon had a British accent but not enough to know what an armadillo sounds like??

Mimi is just straight up Sakura now! I actually thought Kate Higgens would have made a great Yolei, kinda funny to see her here as Mimi now.

Not only did Agumon's "Polly want a cracker?" line slay me, but there's something about Tom Fahn's portrayal that really hits me, even though he's not even my favorite Digimon. It hasn't even been a long time since I've heard it - Tri wasn't that long ago, and I just rewatched Adventure/02 within the past few weeks, but hearing him made me a bit emotional, ha. Same thing happened with his first appearance in Tri, and that was after having seen it in Japanese and knowing what was going to happen!

The opening battle is like a complete screw-you to Tai's arc in Tri with Greymon smashing into buildings and Tai completely unfazed. I'm here for it, lol.

The remastered Digivolution sequences are nice but in true nostalgia fashion I kinda prefer the originals, haha.

Izzy's computer is counting down a 'time rimit'.

Agumon says something to the effect of “Aren’t I always hungry?“ and I don't feel like it’s a reference/jab at Tri, but it got a chuckle out of me anyway.

Tai's classmate is blatantly voiced by JYB too, ha.

Matt gives his location as 'inside the restaurant' when calling an ambulance which seems... not helpful. Love that Tai's reaction to a girl collapsing is a confused "Is she drunk?"

An article on Tai's phone is written in perfect English and he gets message from the name Izzy specifically so I'd assume this is a change for the US release. Subtitles would have been perfectly fine but it's a nice effort to keep immersion.

"The ol' Izz-master" I’m so, so glad they got Jeff Nimoy to write this script, bless Toei.

Only 4 of the Digidestined participating in the battle against the Digidestined is kinda disappointing until I realized that it was a throwback to Our War Game - TK and Izzy get to participate more this time around! As per usual Tentomon (Kabuterimon) manages to sneak in a hilarious line here.

'Lime Magazine' just doesn't have the same ring to it...

TAI'S MAGAZINES...

Tai calling Agumon 'little buddy' is the second scene to hit me right in the feels.

Matt is the only one to reach out to the 02 kids during the movie, I wonder if he felt guilty about what went down in Tri and kept in touch with them a bit more since.

Seeing Kari and TK tied up in a dark room like that is actually one of the more shocking scenes in the movie. That could have ended very differently if this was a different movie...

Meiko shows up for literally one scene with Meicoomon which has... interesting implications. This movie retroactively makes her more tragic as well, as even if she didn't sacrifice Meicoomon there's a chance their partnership would have dissolved anyway - almost a complete lose-lose, there was no way for them to be happy together.

Himekawa is also retroactively more tragic as it's possible she would have been able to see Tapirmon again here - one shows up in the crowd shot!

Honestly this is the movie Himekawa deserved - she was a really interesting character that got wasted and underused in Tri, and while Menoa parallels her in a lot of ways her stoicism just isn't as interesting and Hime's decent into madness was.

L'il Joe has black hair now?

I'm pretty sure Menoa doesn't say "Oh shit" but honestly I'm gonna pretend she does.

I mentioned on Twitter how Leomon doesn't die in this one because he never showed up, but there's one fighting an Eosmon in what I think is Osaka and he doesn't die, and GOOD ON HIM, HE BROKE THE CYCLE!

Omnimon having limbs sliced off got an audible gasp from me.

Matt ACTUALLY got to curse in this movie, character development!!

"Just one thing: Meow" I had to pause the movie, I lost it

Story wise, theme wise, character wise I get it, but mad Sora got screwed over in this movie. Would have been nice if 'To Sora' was included inside of the movie at least.

I still don't like Agu and Gabu's new evolutions, but they did feel really earned and a natural extension of the plot. What better way to spark an evolution than such a huge sacrifice? Izzy's perfectly timed 'prodigious' was the icing on the cake, coming at such a fitting emotional moment and possibly being the last time we'll hear it from Izzy.

When the Eosmon start disappearing all over the world there's a shot of an exhausted lone Numemon who had clearly held off the Eosmon with all the poop that is strewn about. THAT is the next story I want to see.

Unfortunately this movie is in the Tri School of Only Using Champion Level. It's actually pretty inexcusable that we we don't see WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon one more time, but even the other characters should have gone up to Ultimate if not Mega for one final sendoff. I wish we could have seen them truely fight as a team once more, even just for fanservice.

My strongest complaint with the movie itself is that it just kinda... ends. The ending is super emotional, but it just skips ahead afterwards and says 'things are going to be ok!' and ends. I would have liked to see the rest of the kids once more, seeing how they handle the fallout or how they might support Tai and Matt - or maybe a little about what Tai and Matt have taken away from this whole things. Just felt like we needed an extra couple of minutes.

Will we see these particular versions of these characters again? From what I can tell this movie did well in Japan and it’s trending pretty well on Amazon, so who knows. I hope if we do, it’s because the writers come up with an idea they really believe in and not just for the sake of a sequel. But if not, I’m definately greatful for what we have.

#Digimon #Digimon Adventure #Digimon Adventure Last Evolution Kizuna

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retphienix · 3 years

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youtube

Holy hell, this, look Yakuza is a fucking phenomenal series, this one scene might just be the best in the whole damn thing thus far and I don't know where to begin.

I'm legitimately gonna have to rewatch it and pause to type to avoid ramblin'.

There's a lot, so I'm gonna bullet point key things and just ramble after.

18:00 - Katsuya isn't our big bad, though it's curious that his prints appeared for both Morinaga AND Fujita's death, still mocking that up as a setup though since he wanted to attract Saejima maybe he orchestrated that I don't know or frankly care at the moment.

26:00 - This is what happens when four fucking meatheads come together. Katsuya says the real big bad wants them to fight to the death so they can pick off the scraps and these four FUCKING GENIUSES are like "Well. Sounds like that's a good way to meet the big bad. Let's do it!" This is peak Yakuza meathead logic and it's so fun and charming and stupid that this moment is just good stuff.

27:00 - Considering I was spamming and haven't practiced it at all in regular fights, my god the komaki tiger drop is overpowered as sin.

28:00 - Conversely, the other Kiryu exclusive move (heat mode) is fuckin' garbo in this. Becoming invulnerable for a short while is nice, but the strength of the mode is big damage on his normals and every challenging fight blocks like hell so the most you can do is throw which is such a waste of heat. I suspect this mode is VERY GOOD in random fights (but who uses it?) so it's probably good on like hard mode challenge runs for random encounters (that's who probably).

29:00 - Compare heat mode's use with Saejima's ENTIRE KIT giving him super armor when he has heat- that one passive (despite just being super armor and not invuln) makes heat mode feel obsolete lol.

30:00 - I wasn't conflicted at all in my choice but man I want to do both fights but I'm not willing to reload the save lol. Saejima vs Kiryu was a highlight of Y3! And I wanted to beat Kiryu again! BUT my gut screamed to play as Kiryu because he's the best and we all love em.

30:00b - Take this with a grain of salt, but because fighting both of them would be cool I think the fight should have been from both perspectives. Like you start as Saejima and end as Kiryu after a mid round "Oh did Saejima win?" moment because you know they want Kiryu standing pretty. Not that it matters for this scene, just saying. I think it'd be more fun if you did the fight, they slam into the wall or something, then you shift perspectives and 'do the fight again' against the other protag to end this. That'd be cool.

34:00 - THE REVEAL THAT THE DETECTIVE GUY WAS THE OMI BOSS IS A GOOD DAMN ONE. It's believable because both Kiryu and Saejima have plausible ignorance on what he looks like (Kiryu moreso), it adds a layer of "The team almost figured it out!" since Katsuya saw him (possibly) while coming in to Kamurocho. It explains plenty and implies a lot of close calls along the way without being ridiculous.

36:00 - The omi chairman treating those under him is a MUCH better twist than Daigo doing the same at the end of 4- they mostly justified it in 4 as Daigo growing cold and calculating and distancing himself from things or some nonsense- but considering Daigo pre-4 it still felt weird to have him suddenly treat those under him as disposable. But we don't know much about the omi dude, so it's a much more surprising and immediately believable twist instead of a head scratcher.

39:20 - THIS IS A HIGHLIGHT OF THE SCENE FOR SURE. Kurosawa reveals himself as a dirty as fuck unfixable shitstain of a yakuza for one, which is just kind of enjoyable you know? Having a villain that's just dogshit evil? We have a plethora of deep characters going on here so having a villain that's puppy-kicking evil is fun, you know, as a treat. BUT ALSO he lists what drives each of these four and says they are flaws and it's such a fucking sick wrap up of each of them. It's simplified and lacks some nuance, but it's a fantastic read on em.

Watase: Fighting strong opponents, drives him.

Saejima - Protecting your allies, drives him.

Katsuya - Passing on your dreams, drives him.

Kiryu - Laying your life on the line (you know, for things that matter), drives him.

Perhaps "drives them" is a poor choice, these are strengths and inspirations each find and work into their understanding of being a yakuza, and Alllll that, and all the nuance and deeper understanding each of these include? TRASH GARBAGE! according to Kurosawa :P

40:30 - Katsuya sacrificing himself to protect Watase? Beautifully done.

45:00 - I like the bonus explanation to things where Daigo used Kurosawa's plan to remove traitors from the Tojo- it's dark, but it's a sort of evolution towards being a better leader from what he attempted in 4- making a hard decision for the better result or some nonsense like that.

48:00 - I love Daigo showing some more growth, I mean I don't recall lack of mercy being EXACTLY his problem the few times the series explores Daigo (it was more a disassociation with respecting his peers and treating things as some form of power broker business I think?) but it's still an insanely good show from Daigo- especially in showing his reverence for Kiryu and trying to make good on the clan Kiryu wanted the Tojo to be. It's fucking sick.

49:00 - SETUP AND PAYOFF MY BUDS. NO RUBBER BULLET ASSPULLS THAT ALLOW ANYTHING TO HAPPEN AND BE WRITTEN AWAY AT A MOMENTS NOTICE! JUST GOOD OLD FASHIONED SETUP AND PAY OFF!

Namely, this slimeball from Katsuya's company was shown to be one of the lowest of the low for a clan and Kurosawa just went on and on about respecting those that play dirty so his showing up here makes perfect sense and is a GOOD DANG PAY OFF to quietly sweeping him away earlier in the story.

49:50 - Kiryu freaking the fuck out to go save Daigo despite that being a deathly drop is so good. It's such a show of emotion. But it's nothing compared to-

50:30 - I fell speechless at this. Kiryu has had the spark of hope in his life threatened, he can't help Daigo, he's watching what happens all the time happen again as those around him suffer all while he attempts to prevent it- his act of prevention seemingly being the CAUSE of the suffering. This is 4 fucking games of build up for a damn near breakdown and it's unbelievable. It's beautiful. Heart wrenching shit.

So I think that does it. This isn't even the end, they gave us an emotional scene like THAT and there's still more to do.

#RetPlays #Yakuza #Yakuza 5 #Youtube

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softderekhale · 4 years

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from the archives: snippets of a sterek pacrim au

hey y’all! i definitely haven’t been super active on this blog or tumblr at all lately, for a lot of reasons but mainly just... life. doesn’t that suck sometimes? but i really, truly hope everyone is doing well and you + your loved ones are staying safe. (long reflection + tumblr fic after the cut, lol)

i’ve been in kind of a funk with writing since the last time i “had” to do it, which was 12 days/sterek secret santa like, 6 months ago. it’s frustrating to me that i went from writing my longest fic ever exactly 2 years ago to having almost zero output now, but i’m trying not to be too hard on myself and i know writing is a really fickle pastime. anyway, this is a really long leadup, but i decided to just release some stuff i wrote into the wild. it’s either here or my google drive, so i might as well see if anyone wants to read it!

pacific rim is undoubtedly one of my favorite movies of all time (it was only bumped down by into the spider-verse, but they’re almost tied ;D). it came out right after my sterek obsession began, and i always imagined writing a sterek au based around derek and stiles being drift compatible. that whole concept has always been so lovely to me and fits in nicely with some of my favorite soulmate-y tropes. this idea always felt too ambitious, though, and i didn’t write a single word of it until i rewatched the movie in november/december 2019. i wrote the following stuff in an extremely giddy haze over the next few weeks. i’m not good about pushing myself to write, so i never added any more, but i still really like what i had/have! i hope maybe someday i’ll feel the urge to come back to it. but anyway, here’s my completely self-indulgent homage to one of my favorite movies and one of my favorite fandoms. in my au chronology for this, following the events of the first movie, global governments and the ppdc decided to deploy jaegers for continued deep sea exploration to further benefit scientific discovery and avoid wasting such expensive tech/training. this lead to a lot of corporate interference re: treasure hunting, etc. (national treasure, but make it underwater). oh, and werewolves exist (because wouldn’t they make great jaeger pilots?!). also, A SECOND PACIFIC RIM MOVIE WAS NEVER EVER MADE. THE END. laura and derek were copilots before a kaiju-fighting incident forced them into early retirement. laura is still alive, though! (because it’s me.)

***

“Mayday! Mayday! LOCCENT, do you copy? This is Luna Geminae paging for backup. LOCCENT! Danny, we can’t hold them much longer…”

Laura’s growl of frustration rang in Derek’s ear as he strained against the beast.

“Keep holding it, Derek. You can do this. I know you can. They’re so close, Derek, they’ve gotta be. Just a few more—”

Derek never knew how Laura intended to finish that sentence. All he would ever remember was the scream that tore out of her throat. Later, he would describe it as the first time he ever understood the meaning of “bloodcurdling.”

“Laura!” Derek gritted his teeth as pain roared down his left arm, causing his vision to blur and spark white around the edges.

“My arm, Jesus, my fucking… They got my arm, Derek—”

As water poured into the cabin above and around him, the last thing he remembered hearing was Laura’s anguished howl. Then the sky became fire, and everything went dark.

***

The day of the accident convinced Derek that his world would never stop burning.

For months after, when he lay staring at the ceiling until the early hours of the morning, the staticky shapes his eyes created to fill the darkness always melted and formed a wall of flames no matter how many times he scrunched his eyes shut and buried his face in his pillow. The noises, too — the ambient whoosh of the Dome’s ventilation system and the soft heart-like thud of the power grid soon coalesced into a unified, rhythmic chant that sounded more and more like Laura’s scream the longer Derek listened: Derek! Help!

In the days and weeks following their accident, Derek had tried every trick he could think of to reassure his subconscious that Laura was alive and safe, and would remain so even after she left his line of sight. For almost a week after she was released from the medical bay, he slept in the spare bunk above her. As reticent as he normally was to invade Laura’s privacy any more than he had to, experiencing her near-loss allowed panic and instinct to envelop Derek’s frayed nerves. He never fully explained it to Laura, but he didn’t have to — she never questioned his presence, nor did she point out that Derek always waited to fall asleep until he was certain she had already drifted off.

Eventually, though, Derek realized the routine was leaving them both sleep-deprived and irritable. He resolved to move back to his own quarters, not wanting to smother Laura with his relentless, anxious presence. But he knew she still sensed his distress — every evening at 2300 hours, like clockwork, she knocked on his door to tell him goodnight and gently pressed her right palm against her brother’s neck before waving and returning to her own room. It was a routine they continued even now, half a decade beyond the fight that had left their Jaeger decimated.

They had made progress, which Laura was always quick to remind her younger brother. Nothing could have prepared him for the aftermath of the accident, though, and the dark places where Derek’s mind would drift when there was no one around to distract him. Alone with his thoughts, no reassurance was strong enough to quiet Derek’s memories.

He shifted again in bed, his half-awake mind scrambling to remember the breathing exercises Deaton had taught him over the years.

Inhale through your nose. One. Two. Three. Hold. Exhale through your mouth. One. Two. Three—

Derek!

Start again. Inhale through your nose. One. Two. Three. Hold. Exhale through your mouth. Slower this time.

Good. Again.

***

This comes way after the scene above lol sorry

“Right hemisphere locked. Left hemisphere locked. Vitals are steady. Initiating neural handshake.”

Danny’s voice echoed through Derek’s head as he let his eyes flutter shut and tipped his head back. He’d been anxious about this moment for days now, but he would be lying if he said he wasn’t secretly a little — or a lot — excited, too. Drifting was a heady, emotional experience, and if he and Stiles were truly compatible, Derek might finally get to settle the unease he had felt since his connection with Laura was severed.

“Alright,” Danny said. “You should be feeling it in three… two… one.”

Derek’s eyes flew open, but his gaze defocused as he felt his center of gravity list forward before returning.

As his sense of internal balance returned, the tingle of the neural link fizzed over his scalp. There it is. Slowly, then all at once, he felt the rush of Stiles’ mind meeting his own. Their emotions flowed over one another like water, memories flashing and sensations pulsing before slipping away into their shared flow of awareness. Derek had trained himself long ago to let himself float until the waters steadied, and he could feel Stiles, ever perceptive, do the same.

“Neural handshake established and holding at 100 percent.”

Without having to think twice about the gesture, Derek felt his knuckles meet his palm as he dipped into a customary bow. As he and Stiles led Luna in her first exploratory steps, Derek felt the weight of any lingering fears melt away.

With Laura, Derek had always felt like they were extensions of one another, movements and decisions cascading seamlessly from a fully unified thought process. Drifting with Stiles, though, felt unlike anything Derek had ever experienced. They were two sides of the same coin — each aggressive and reserved in equal, opposite measure. If Derek and Laura were reading from the same script, he and Stiles were finishing each others’ sentences as they improvised the same scene.

When they first met, Derek had found Stiles anything but graceful — but now, as they nearly seemed to glide across the ocean floor, he felt foolish for not realizing the instinctive adjustments and calculations stiles was constantly making based on his surroundings. As they steered Luna across the testing ground, Derek felt his temples begin to thrum with an energy he hadn’t felt in years. Best of all, he knew Stiles felt it too — he could literally trace the path of his elation as it wrapped around Derek’s senses and amplified his own excitement.

“How are you doing?” Derek shouted across the rig. It wasn’t a question he needed to ask verbally, but he chose to anyway, knowing it would help ground them both in the present moment and prevent any stray thought spirals from taking over their link.

“So good, dude. This is — this is unreal,” Stiles replied, slicing through the air with his left arm to test the angle of the jaeger’s knuckle daggers.

Derek smiled. “Not exactly like the simulators, huh?”

“Nothing like the simulators, man. Holy shit.”

As they continued to acclimate to the drift, Derek took Stiles through a few more of Luna’s signature maneuvers. Stiles’ extensive research showed, and combined with the knowledge he and Derek now shared, the moves seemed to come naturally.

“Do you want some music?” He and Laura always played music when training, but he didn’t want Stiles to feel—

“That’s all I want right now, Derek.” Derek’s grin broadened as Stiles flicked through the controls hovering in front of him. A heavy bass line thrummed through the cabin, and Derek finally did what he never thought he would be able to again in his lifetime: he let his mind relax and free-fell into the drift.

***

Two hours after he and Stiles had eaten dinner and finally parted ways, Derek still couldn’t stop thinking about their drift.

That wasn’t unusual, all things considered — emotional transfer was common, especially for werewolves and especially during the first few drifts with a new partner.

Every time Derek thought about his connection with Stiles, though, and the experience of their emotions weaving together, his mind kept snagging in one place. It was a place that had struck Derek even during the high of the neural handshake, not because it felt odd or foreign, but because it felt hauntingly familiar — but looked ugly and sinister looming over someone else.

It was anguish. It was a grief that had been doused in shame and set alight. It was a feeling of loss and self-loathing that made Derek feel like he was suffocating. It was exactly the way Derek had felt every day for years after the fire, and again after the accident.

He had tried to explain it to Laura as dispassionately as possible all the times she chided him for blaming himself or expressing guilt over what happened to their family, but he never knew how to describe it until he experienced it through Stiles’ memories. It was sore, like a bruised rib, a persistent ache that radiated out from the point of impact and lingered at the edge of his consciousness. Distractions might be able to push away some of the pain, but as long as he kept breathing, it would always be there.

Derek hadn’t seen exactly where Stiles’ pain radiated from, but it seemed to shroud the memories of his mother especially strongly. Stiles told him she had been sick, though — why would he feel guilty about her death?

He sat up, his leg bouncing as he fidgeted absently with a hangnail. Since deciphering what that unexpected shared emotion reminded him of, Derek couldn’t stop thinking about it. This, he knew, was normal too — without an outlet, emotional transfer tended to create a feedback loop as a co-pilot bounced back and forth between their own memories and their partner’s.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Derek shot up and strode to the door. It was late, almost midnight, and the full body experience of drifting had left Derek racked with fatigue. But — he just wanted to talk to Stiles. To be near him, again, as if it were a substitute for the feeling of absolute synchronicity they had just shared. It would only take a few minutes.

He was so distracted by his own jumbled thoughts that it took him a moment to register who stood just outside his door as he flung it open — it was Stiles, hand paused in mid-air.

“Stiles.” Very eloquent, Derek, he chided himself with an internal voice that sounded suspiciously like Laura.

“Oh— Well. Um. Hi.” Stiles gave a small wave before shoving his hand in his pocket. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were about to—“

“I was about to find you.”

Stiles paused. “Really?”

Derek stepped back, nodding toward the doorway. “Really. Do you want to come in?”

As he and Stiles stood facing each other silently, Derek scrambled for exactly what he wanted to say. Everything was so effortless when they were in the drift. Why was it so hard to find the words now?

To his relief, Stiles was the one who broke the silence. “Sorry, I’m sure you’re tired… I’m just kind of keyed up, I guess, and I couldn’t—“ Stiles ducked his head down. “I don’t know. I thought it might help to see you.”

“Don’t apologize. You have good instincts,” Derek assured him. “And I— I wanted to see you too,” he added, feeling the tips of his ears heat.

He could almost feel Stiles’ sigh of relief in his own chest. “Can I sit?”

“Of course.” Derek scooped a discarded pile of clothes off his bed and gingerly sat down after Stiles, mindful of the careful space between them. “Are you feeling okay?”

Stiles’ eyebrows jumped. “Yeah, I feel fine, I really do, but I just feel… jumpy, I guess. Which is normal for me, but I can tell this is different. I don’t know how I know, but…” he trailed off, gesturing abstractly in front of him.

Derek nodded. “I know what you mean. You can’t really prepare for the drift until you’ve done it,” he said, remembering how disjointed he felt after his first few test runs. “But it gets easier,” he added.

Stiles shook his head. “I’m not worried about it. I trust you.” His eyes shot up to meet Derek’s, as if challenging him to dispute the steady, honest heartbeat behind his words.

Derek was surprised to feel something behind his eyes sting at the pronouncement. He looked away from Stiles’ scrutinizing gaze, but he felt the other man’s eyes continue to study him. “I’m glad. I— that means a lot to me.”

Stiles nodded, remaining thoughtfully silent. Derek sensed he wanted to ask something, but wasn’t ready to admit it on his own.

“Is there anything I can do?” Derek asked gently, eyes seeking Stiles’ again.

Stiles looked pointedly away and bit at his thumbnail. “Um. It sounds stupid now. But I read… I read that physical contact can help,” he mumbled, so quickly Derek might not have caught it without his magnified hearing.

He realized Stiles’ admission may have felt embarrassing for a human, but for Derek, it was almost a relief. He reached forward slowly and cupped his hand over Stiles’ shoulder with a light squeeze.

“It’s not stupid. You felt how intense the drift is. When you separate from a complete mental overlap, it can be disorienting. And you know how tactile wolves are — that makes it even harder for us, so you’re probably getting some of this from my own emotional bleed.” He didn’t miss the way Stiles melted into his touch, his whole body swaying into their point of contact.

Stiles nodded. “Yeah. That makes sense. Thanks,” his gaze flicked up to meet Derek’s.

“Do you—“ Derek didn’t really know how to ask for more contact. It came so naturally with other werewolves, so he’d never really had to think about it before. “I don’t want to touch you in a way you’re not comfortable with. But if you want to lay down, or you want me to lay down or…” He took a sharp, steadying breath. “I’m trying to say that I understand, and I think it will make us both feel better, and I’m fine with whatever level of contact you’re okay with.”

Stiles laughed, a bright and unexpected break in the tension. “Jesus. Listen to us. I feel ridiculous, but— Thank you. You’re very considerate.” He paused, expression drawing almost imperceptibly tighter. “I want that too, though. I want you to feel comfortable. If you’re not, if there’s anything I do— I promise I’ll ask, first, and if you can tell me, I want you to.”

Derek felt a lump rise in his throat. Stiles’ words were sincere, but carefully chosen. He wasn’t sure how much of his own memories Stiles had observed, but it seemed to have been enough to understand that physical touch had once been a powerful weapon wielded against him.

“Thank you,” he answered quietly, before gently tugging at Stiles’ arm. “Here, lay down.”

The bed was barely wide enough for both of them to lay side by side, but it was just enough space for both men to settle on their backs with their elbows carefully layered between them. Derek hesitated for a moment before angling his head against Stiles’ neck. “Is this okay?”

Stiles hummed in agreement, the back of his hand flitting against Derek’s so softly he almost thought he imagined it. “This is perfect.” He inhaled deeply through his nose and tilted his head closer to Derek’s. They lay silently for a handful of minutes, and the rhythmic in-out of Stiles’ breathing nearly lulled Derek to sleep.

Suddenly, Derek felt Stiles still. “Why were you about to come look for me?”

Derek huffed. “I wanted to see you.”

“What, you had to check in on the rookie who can’t handle a drift?” Stiles’ tone was light, devoid of any real offense, and he jostled his shoulder gently against Derek’s.

“You did great. If anything, I— I hadn’t done it in so long, and Laura was my only co-pilot before you.” Derek frowned, remembering the heavy emotions of Stiles’ that had ensnared him earlier. He didn’t want to overwhelm Stiles, but he also wanted him to know that he both empathized with and thought highly of him.

“I never thought I would get in a rig again,” Derek continued. “I don’t think I trusted myself enough. I carry… I carry a lot of guilt, Stiles. But when I thought about piloting with you, the guilt didn’t win. You’re the first person who’s been capable enough, smart enough, strong enough, that I didn’t have to worry.”

Stiles didn’t respond at first, and a flash of panic seized Derek before he felt strong, warm fingers curl around his own.

“I won’t let you down,” Stiles said, his voice nearly a whisper and rough with emotion.

“I don’t think you could,” Derek whispered back, before he let his eyes slip shut and exhaustion overtake him.

***

When Derek awoke the next morning, he was startled — but it wasn’t in reaction to the way Stiles had draped himself over Derek in his sleep. Feeling Stiles’ arms around his waist felt oddly natural. The surprising part was how well he had slept — it was the first night of uninterrupted slumber he could remember having in months, if not longer.

***

yeah so... that’s all for now! if you read this, thanks and i hope you’re doing well!!! ❤️

#sterek #sterek fic #sterek pacific rim au #pacific rim au #my fic #tumblr fic

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renaroo · 4 years

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Super Brothers (1/12)

Disclaimer: Superman and associated characters are the creative property of DC Comics. Warnings: Child Abuse, Gender Dysphoria, PTSD and Anxiety, Character Death Rating: T Synopsis: Jon Kent knew he pretty much had the perfect family life, but something still felt wrong with himself. At the height of feeling like an alien in his own skin, however, his world got turned upside down when his parents took in a troubled child who embodied everything he felt he lacked. However, becoming a brother ended up being the smallest of the trials brought by adopting Christopher Kent. And being best friends with Damian Wayne has not exactly helped keep a neutral perspective on the matter.

A/N: I have made no secret over the last few years just how disappointed i’ve been by the treatment and reintroduction of Chris Kent, aka Lor-Zod, in DC Comics. This little guy is one of my favorite comic book characters in existence, and it feels so dirty to see what has become of him. For a while, I’ve wanted to do a story that really tried to rectify the Rebirth version of Chris and the continuity at large with the core of the character I love, so this story is my attempt at that. I can only hope that I bridge that gap gracefully.

On the other end, I didn’t want to erase Damian or Jon and all the positives I have seen with their relationship and additions to the DCU at large. For their parts in this story, I want to focus on being in the middle school age range, all the confusion that entails, and open a dialogue about issues of gender and acceptance.

Obviously, these are a lot of heavy topics, and I am certain that despite my intentions, there can and will be things I mess up. My hope is, when that happens, you all can keep an open dialogue with me on the subjects. I want to learn and better myself and my portrayal of the issues.

That being said, please pay attention to the warnings throughout this fic. I will touch on dark subjects, and I don’t want anyone to read and feel unprepared for the subjects broached, which is part of the reason I chose to make an opening scene that is rather dark and disturbing on some levels. It won’t be ALL dark and uncomfortable, but I want to make this plea now rather than later.

I hope the story is still worth your read <3 Thank you for your time!

Chapter One: The Cost of Friends

Jon hates this.

At the absolute worst of times, his tiny body reminds him of just how unreliable it is. He can’t count on it, it’s not consistent — it’s not a Superman body no matter how hard he tries to fit it in as one. His limbs are gangly, his bones poke through pale kin, and his messy black hair curls untamed out from around his ears. It’s not good it doesn’t do what he needs it to do.

And at that moment, Jon’s terrified that it’s about to get himself and his best friend killed.

Ordinarily, being half-Kryptonian, Jon would easily burst through chains and bindings without a second thought. And he’s still strong, he tore through the ripe around his waist like it was taffy, but the chains keeping his legs and neck locked to the floor aren’t budging. And Jon’s getting progressively tired.

There’s something strange about this macabre carnival where he and Damian take the center ring. Of course, there is, because it’s Professor Pyg and he’s the stuff of nightmares. But beyond even that, the spotlights on them show with a heavy red glow that is making Jon sluggish and weak.

So weak that he’s less than a circus ring away from Damian and he still can’t get to him.

“Come now, come now, wait your turn,” the grotesque villain squeals in delight toward Jon. “Little Bat has been scheduled for this appointment for such a long time! You must be patient, my little bird. So patient. Everyone has their time with the professor.”

“Superboy!” Damian snarls from where he is tied up, flat and without his utility belt. He’s laying on a gurney that looks far from sanitary and, if Jon didn’t know better, it might even look like Damian is actually concerned. “Focus! Red sunlight radiation shouldn’t dull your brains as much as it does your strength!”

Blinking, Jon looks up to the spotlights again and can see, with what vague telescopic ability he still has, that there is something unusual about the spectrum of light coming from them. “Is that what this is?” he asks, voice small but filled with relief all the same.

“Oh, my, I cannot, must not, pass an opportunity to educate my subjects, inform them of their peril,” Professor Pyg pantomimes his way from the circus ring with Damian toward the center stage with Jon.

Immediately, Jon feels his body stiffen on instinct. He looks warily at the flabby, disgusting pig mask as the rest of the pudgy and unkempt professor makes his way toward Jon. He knows he should be focusing on getting free, but it’s a difficult thing to do when he’s being approached by unmitigated evil and brutality.

He isn’t sure how Damian gets his suit on every night if this is what Gotham patrols are really like.

“It is your body,” Pyg snorts and chortles.

A cold splash washes over Jon. “My body?” he repeats with wide eyes.

“Get away from him, Pyg!” Damian roars, his gurney shaking and rocking with struggle.

“It isn’t right, doesn’t fit on your bones,” Pyg bemoans, jerking out his hip and slithering his own arms around his chest and waist. He sways back and forth on his feet with a sashay of his hips. “It misses the shape of your spirit, the delicate frame of your face. And it’ll only get worse with age.”

Despite himself, Jon feels his struggle slow to a complete stop. His eyes widen as he looks at Pyg. There is a chill that travels from the base of his spine up, standing all his hair on end.

Deep inside of Jon’s chest, muscles tighten and his heart thunders. He feels a shiver move from his core. No oh no oh no oh no. HIs guts churn, his jaw trembles.

“Oh, you feel it, don’t you, that deep deep down,” Pyg continues, approaching. “You’re in the last years of it being passable, of being acceptable. Before your bones grind and the sinews snap into shapes thick and unbecoming of your gentle nature. I see what you are, in that deep deep down, because I am an artist who shapes and molds my subjects out from their souls.”

“You’re a monster,” Jon whispers, his voice giving up halfway through.

Pyg’s eyes shine with something dangerous through the outsides of his mask. He reaches forward and cups Jon’s cheek with his itchy gloved hand. Jon doesn’t even know when he got so close; when he started towering so tall over Jon.

“You’ll be one of my finest Dollotrons,” Pyg promises, rubbing his thumb just under Jon’s eye. “But your clay’s too strong, have to soften you up, get you nice and fleshy, then I’ll shave and I’ll cut and I’ll shape you right up.”

It doesn’t come off as a promise, so much as it does a threat, one that terrifies and unsettles Jon deep down within himself.

Jon’s mind draws a blank, his eyes wide and unfocused and he attempts, desperately, to come up with some intelligent response. But he can’t, not while a fear racks his every nerve and turns his muscles to stone.

It takes Jon completely and utterly by surprise when a familiar whoosh in the air flies overhead before glass crashes and electricity sparks. He catches a glance at the familiar shape of a Batarang lodged into the spotlight directly overhead.

He’s instantly overcome with relief.

Pyg releases his cheek and steps back wildly, looking around. “No! Not now! My art is not ready!” he cries out before letting loose some piglike squeals and sobs.

Looking toward Damian, Jon expects to see his friend released but is surprised to see Damian still trapped. He squints, uncertain of what’s happening when a second then third Batarang plunge into the remaining red sun spotlights.

“Batman?” Jon wonders out loud.

“Ugh,” Damian lets out in frustration before struggling with even more force against his bindings. “Overdramatic, sanctimonious, can’t believe—“

Dollotrons are racing onto the tent floor while Professor Pyg whines and bemoans his ultimate fate, but as the lights extinguish one by one, the shadows take on a new form.

She moves like a dancer, each step and hit against the army of zombified victims perfectly paced and timed. She is all in black, save for her golden accents and bat, and she spares not a single motion. A kick becomes a launch for a leap becomes a smack becomes a twirl becomes a fist to the face of the blubbering Professor. And each and every movement grows in its momentum.

Jon has never seen anything like this outside of super speed, and he certainly hasn’t seen it using the shapes and silhouettes of the shadows like a comforting show curtain. He has so many questions and so many concerns that he forgets himself and getting free. Even if he could, with his body still unresponsively slow and dulled from the radiation.

Damian, at the least, is in motion, finally getting one of his hands free and using the points of his gauntlet to slice through the leather of the other bindings. He is muttering to himself, annoyed and embarrassed based on the flush in his cheeks. It’s not a rare sight but it is unusual for Jon to see Damian this way around one of his multitudes of siblings.

The shadowy bat launches into a final attack, knocking out the last of the Dollotrons before pouncing on the escaping Professor Pyg like a hungry lioness.

With her full weight on Pyg, the Bat narrows her eyes and for the first time can really be seen by Jon as she reaches over and yanks Pyg’s disgusting mask off of his face. Her lips curl in displeasure, but it doesn’t take away from her fair features or the delicate, smooth control she has over her body.

“Wow,” Jon hears himself say as Damian reaches his side and begins pulling out a small blowtorch for the chains. “Is that your sister?”

“SHH!” Damian hisses.

Jon strains to listen to whatever is being said between the Bat and Pyg, but it gets him nowhere, only words at a time coming in clearly as his powers remain in flux. Regardless, Pyg is squirming and blubbering too much for it to matter anyway.

“Took her damn time,” Damian snarls, letting Jon lean on him as he glares toward his sister.

“She saved our lives,” Jon reminds him.

Damian’s nose curls. “Tt, debatable.”

Cassandra apparently finishes whatever minor conversation she was having with Pyg and flips him over, handcuffing him swiftly. She’s powerful and strong without losing her leanness or size, it mesmerizes Jon in a way. By the time she looks up at them, her expression has completely changed.

“You okay?” she asks them both.

“No thanks to you,” Damian says at the same time Jon gets out, “All thanks to you!”

Something approximating a smile crosses her face before she gets to her feet and reaches up to her ear. “Oracle. Done.”

Looking at Cassandra, Jon feels like he’s found yet another new hero. “Whoa, your sister’s awesome. And cool. And so in control,” Jon tells Damian, his strength returning. “You’ve got so many siblings, can I have your sister?”

“Father would be displeased, otherwise I’d say yes,” Damian huffs in that way that Jon cannot tell, for the life of him, if it’s sarcasm or not.

***

Damian watches as his friend flies off.

It took the better part of an hour as well as a stop at Big Belly Burger for Jon to feel up to the task, but the half-Kryptonian flies home after departing from them and Damian watches him go.

Cassandra, as it turns out, is also there. She leans back against her motorcycle — a sleek but redundant design, like any of the numerous other bat-themed motorcycles or vehicles any of their extended family has access to — and watches Damian more than Jon.

They haven’t had much time with just the two of them. Their paths rarely intersect. And Damian is pretty sure he prefers it that way.

His cheeks are still on fire from the embarrassment of being rescued by her.

“I would have gotten out,” he informs her, crossing his arms. “Pyg was distracted and far away from me. I was working on my restraints.”

She tilts her head at him, a frown tight on her face. “Distracted you, too,” she points out.

And Damian knows she’s right about that, he was distracted. Just the look on his friend’s face, the growing horror and dread. Jon isn’t used to the types of villains that Gotham can throw at people, the psychological toll it takes. Damian is, or at least he likes to think he is, but Jon still can be scared and surprised.

But what looks crossed Jon’s face at that moment were unexpected even to Damian. He had never seen anything like it. Jon had been soaking up every word and phrase like it had been ripped straight from his dreams.

It was enough that it frightened Damian for his friend, and he didn’t even know why.

Over the course of an hour and a Big Belly Burger, Jon had refrained from mentioning a single thing about it.

That, too, was very unlike Jon.

Such things could be dwelled on at another time, though. Damian had the pressing matter at hand of his own reckoning. And his so-called sister.

Without looking up to meet Cassandra’s gaze, Damian kicked at the ground. “What are you going to tell father about tonight?” he asks.

“Truth,” Cass answers unhelpfully.

Gritting his teeth, Damian looks back at her, eyes narrowed and angry. “That’s not fair, you know,” he growls at her. “You never come around, never work with any of the rest of us, and then you pop in and judge us from on high. No wonder father speaks highly of you. You’re just like him.”

Her brows come together in a way that wrinkles her forehead. It’s hard to read her expression, even with her modified mask and hood. “I’m not,” she says. Her words sound final, but she apparently thinks better of them and shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “Judging you. I’m not.”

Damian looks her over. She hasn’t moved from her bike but her arms have dropped to her side. She is looking at him rather intently and it makes him want to squirm in his combat boots.

“Tt, sure you’re not,” he finally snaps back. “You’ll still tell father that I was captured by Professor Pyg.”

“Yes,” she said too casually.

“And that I let Superboy get captured, too,” Damian glowered more at that one, his eyes rest on the asphalt beneath his feet. He kicked again.

Cassandra paused slightly longer with that one.

When her hand snaked its way onto his shoulder, Damian flinched bodily. He slapped her hand away and twisted around to get away on instinct. He hated that — no one should be able to sneak up on him. He was trained by League of Assassins, he had been prepared since before he could speak to be on guard.

But Cassandra had, too.

She looked at him passively. “Not your fault, happens,” she said, in reference to Pyg.

“That’s not what father will think,” Damian snaps.

“I’ll tell him,” she promises.

Damian stares at her for a moment, sizing her up and considering all the ways he could make her more respectful to him. But it fizzles out quickly. He knows, as much as he resists the thought, that he isn’t upset with her.

He’s upset with himself.

“In the League, they trained us that there is a cost to every relationship formed,” Damian informs Cassandra like she doesn’t intuitively know from her own history. “Partnerships, even necessary ones, would cost you heavily. They could be deadly. And more relationships than strictly necessary should be avoided. All this family and friendship that is just around me all the time now. I don’t want to pay the cost for them.” He looks to the skies where Jon once flew. “I don’t want my friend to pay for them either. It’s not worth it.”

Cassandra stays quiet, but she places her hand on Damian’s shoulder again. He doesn’t attempt to knock it off this time.

“Sometimes it is,” she tells him.

But Damian isn’t so sure. Especially not hearing it from her. Cassandra does not work with others to the same degree as the rest of their family. She doesn’t go to school. She doesn’t join teams outside of father’s pet projects. She doesn’t operate in a daily partnership like Damian has with Grayson or father.

She seems to be living by those lonesome standards that the League taught Damian. And all anyone can do is praise her.

What sort of lesson is Damian supposed to learn from that?

***

Jekuul feels oppressively hot outside of the crystal palace.

Lor has watched his parents stand, looming in the skies, over the land’s natives as they constructed the palace for them. He watched as their eyes glowed threateningly each time the native population faltered, and he remembered how easily their bones cracked and snapped when corrected by the general and his lieutenant. It was equal parts thrilling and terrifying to witness.

Inside the palace, things are smooth and temperature regulated. The pantries are stocked with foods far greater than anything Lor had tasted within the Phantom Zone, but still foreign and sometimes unexpected.

If he questions what was on his plate, he is quickly reprimanded.

So he doesn’t ask.

It should be easy, if not simple, to follow the rules at this point. Stay in the palace, eat when told without questions, listen to his lessons from the Sunstones without fault.

He is the Last Son of Krypton, and he is supposed to inherit everything the universe owed them for their lost greatest civilization. All he has to do is stay in place, not ask questions, don’t be, don’t move.

But he was not born on Krypton, nor was he born on Jekuul — New Krypton, by his father’s declaration — he was born in the perilous depths of the Phantom Zone. A prison.

Inside of the Phantom Zone, there was no movement, there were no questions, there was not being or doing or screaming or aging — that had been the only thing he’d ever existed and it was torturous.

Outside of the Phantom Zone, he thought, things are supposed to be different. He is supposed to move and change and grow, he thinks.

So even though there is every reason not to leave the palace, Lor-Zod leaves in the oppressive heat and feels the sun against his Kryptonian skin as he flies under the two yellow suns.

As he moves across the lands, the violet skinned natives of Jekuul fall to their knees and avert their eyes. They whisper and whimper in a tongue completely foreign to Lor-Zod and it feels, well. It feels good.

Lor-Zod knows that they react this way to his parents, but to have even adults of the alien race fall in reverence to him, he feels more powerful. He feels like the Last Son of Krypton that his father insists he is.

He wonders, vaguely, if it is something his father would like to see.

Deep down, Lor hopes so. Because it is easy for Lor to imagine what his father would think or say when he doesn’t like something Lor has done. He has no concept of what would happen when he makes his father pleased.

He is nearly at the end of the primitive village when Lor’s eyes fall on an unusual sight.

One of the Jekuul natives, a young female no older than Lor and having not yet earned her yellow stripes, stands and stares up at Lor. She doesn’t drop to her knees or avert her eyes.

For a few seconds, Lor continues flying, arching his head back to watch for the girl to finally do as she is supposed to but she never does.

Aggravated and surprised, Lor turns in his flight path and descends, landing promptly in front of the girl.

“Why aren’t you kneeling?” he asks before his feet are even secure.

She stares at him, head tilting. Her black eyes are large and reflective, Lor can see himself in them.

He huffs at her, crossing his arms like he has seen his father do so many times before. “Don’t you speak Kryptonian?” he sneers.

After a quiet moment, she scratches at her head and looks around. That seems to answer Lor’s question for him.

“You’re supposed to kneel,” he groans. “Look, like this,” he says, bowing down to one knee and lowering his head. He’s seen so many others do it before.

Then he hears laughter.

Lor looks up and sees the girl covering her mouth as she giggles before she gets down on both her knees and dips her body down in a silly, teetering display. A mockery. Then she gets back to her feet.

“No!” Lor snaps, getting back to his own feet and grabbing her shoulders.

At first, she stiffens, surprised, and looks at him wildly. Her hands grip onto his wrists and she seems afraid.

“Like this,” Lor repeats, then pushes down on her. He dips with her, down to the ground on their knees. But when they both lower their heads, they immediately smack foreheads.

It feels like nothing to Lor, but for the girl, she jolts back and begins rubbing at her skull.

Instinctively, just like he follows his parents’ motions, Lor reaches up and rubs at his own head. They stare at each other as they both sit there on their knees, rubbing their heads.

Then, despite himself, Lor giggles.

The girl giggles.

They both giggle.

Once the giggles subside, they are both sitting on their knees in the dirt and staring at each other expectantly. They don’t speak the same language. They aren’t remotely the same and, yet, Lor has never felt more of a need to communicate with someone in his life.

He points at his chest, at the house emblem emblazoned on his armor. “Zod,” he tells her. “Zod,” he repeats.

For a moment, the girl is quiet, absorbing his words, then she points at her chest and the purple skin. “Jekuul,” she says.

“No, not what you are,” he mutters, catching on quickly. “I’m not…” He is a Zod, though. Maybe more than he is a Kryptonian, if only in his own mind. He sucks in a breath and tries again. He points at his face. “Lor,” he tells her.

Understanding fills her expression and she points at her own face. “Ti’ahl.”

And, maybe for the first time, Lor feels a wide smile cross his face.

From that moment on, their afternoon is filled with delight.

Ti’ahl points at every structure, every creature, every plant with words and phrases that will not stop saying until Lor repeats. Repeatedly, Lor picks Ti’ahl up easily, flies her from location to location, lifts up every boulder and animal they come across as she claps in delight.

It’s thrilling — and Lor laughs more than he has ever laughed before in his life.

By the time the second sun begins to set, a chill quickly crosses the lands, and Lor can see Ti’ahl gain a shiver. It makes Lor feel bad to see Ti’ahl uncomfortable in any way.

“Hold on,” he calls to her at one point, slowing her run through the grass. He reaches up and carefully unclips his cape from his armor. Grinning, he floats toward Ti’ahl and drapes her with the heavy fabric.

After Lor ties the cape closed over her neck, Ti’ahl looks down and touches the knot. A funny look crosses her face and she looks at Lor.

Ti’ahl leaps onto a nearby rock, standing tall and crossing her arms. “ZOD!” she declares herself.

Realizing what is happening, Lor giggles and drops obediently to his knees. “I kneel!” he laughs.

At first, Ti’ahl joins his laughter, but then she becomes strangely quiet.

Confused, Lor looks up at her. “Ti’ahl?” he asks before realizing that a shadow has crossed over them both.

Heart sinking, Lor twists around and sees his father, arms crossed, standing over them both. He looks displeased.

“Father,” Lor gets out, voice thin.

“Is this how I find the Last Son of Krypton? Kneeling before his lessers?” the general snarls. He drops his hands to his sides as Lor begins to stand up and easily kicks Lor back down. “If you lower yourself in the dirt for a mongrel child, you will stay there for your leader, do you understand?”

Breath catching in his throat, Lor nods. “Y-yes, Sir.”

“To the palace. Immediately,” General Zod orders, his gaze carrying over to Ti’ahl. “There will be a price to pay for this, Lor-Zod. Let us see if you are grown enough to pay it.”

Lor cannot bring himself to look at Ti’ahl as he leaps to his feet and takes off in the air. His blood is rushing to his ears, tears building up in his eyes even before he reaches his top speeds of flight.

It isn’t until he was home that he realized he had left his cape.

#Jon Kent #Chris Kent #Superman #Superboy #Damian Wayne #Cassandra Cain #writing #super fic #Super: Super Brothers #Professor Pyg #General Zod

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xsecretblastsx · 4 years

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2x01 Summer Kind of Wonderful

SEASON TWO HERE WE GO.

I was dying to get here, this is one of my favorite episodes in the whole show. It’s also the episode were I really turned into a Chair shipper, so there’s that too, also The Hamptons!! Honestly was not to love about this episode.

I think this is the longest recap I’ve done in a while. As usaul recap under the cut.

Thoughts I had while watching:

I’ve watched this before and yet I’m still surprised our first taste of S2 is Nate going at it

After the super promising tease on Nate and Serena on the S1 turns out... she’s covering for him while he sleeps around... 😒

Chuck being Chuck, still a womanizer, still obsessed with Blair and as always ignoring Serena’s disgusted face. Also hilarious his enormous basket with cuttlery and such.

Look Joe Goldberg!!! Or is it Dan Humphrey? This bookstore setting is making it even more confusing.

Hi Jenny! And her never ending disatisfaction with her place at whatever she’s trying.

This scene between Chuck and Serena is so underrated. Her mocking face is hilarious. Pimp all you want Chuck it’s useless. Good luck in your suicide mission indeed.

What’s a Jitney? 😆How about where Blair returns to the Hamptons with a new beau. On your face Chuck Bass! On the words of GG: ain’t karma a bitch? We know Blair Waldorf is.

“A hot lifeguard is like Kleenex: use once and then throw away, you couldn’t ask for a better rebound” so says Blair 🤔

“The only thing lamer than dating Dan Humphrey is mourning Dan Humphrey” speaking words of wisdom Blair Waldorf

Of course all the wisdom goes out the window when Chuck appears. With the most extra polo ever and the shortest shorts in the history of menswear

Not that Blair wasn’t transparent with all her talk about James but oh my god Serena’s is so bad a going along with it.

“You’re lying. Your eyes are doing that thing were they don’t match your mouth” Chuck Bass: a walking manual on Blairisms

“I bet you’ll like him as much as I do” “If by that you mean I won’t like him at all then you’re right” meanwhile Serena is trying to pretend she’s anywhere else and not there silent witness to that verball pin pong

I always wonder how Jenny and Dan end up being like that with a Dad like Rufus

So this is “Jenny admitting she was a bitch and that Eric didn’t deserve it” first season.

“A honk instead of a knock? Did someone order a townie?" Blair’sn lines this episode are hilarious

I feel bad thinking that Nate’s main contribution so far is looking really good without a shirt.

Chuck Bass: a walking encyclopedia on everything Blair Waldorf.

If only the show had given us more Chuck and Cece interactions.

I feel I should have kept a score for all the Chuck and Blair jibes to each. That pin play on Blair’s part was check mate though. Auch. I almost feel bad for Chuck. Almost

In terms of cinematography that scene were they talk about the pin is gorgeous probably my fave in the show only behind that scene in Paris in S4. The matching outfits, the colors and the scenery are sooo good. Also the acting.

Knowing her like he does it’s interesting Chuck doesn’t realize Blair only gave that pin to James to hurt him. But the fact that it works is very telling on Chuck’s insecurities and feelings.

Nate being kicked out so the husband won’t catch him wouldn’t be half as hilarious if it wasn’t for Serena’s “no effing way face”

“Damn that Motherchucker” a novel by Blair Waldorf

I love Blair’s summer dress by the way

“All I could see was that Chuck Basstard” the sequel novel, also by Blair Waldorf

What a difference a summer makes: Nate and Chuck talking about Blair. I do feel Nate’s like “thank god it ain’t me anymore”

“And unlike you I don’t lose something if I let it out of my sight” Blair strikes again, this girl is on fire.

This episode is kind of proving that I barely care for any other storyline that doesn’t have the original four. After those two side by side arguments, getting back to Dan is really annoying

I kind of love it when Rufus points out to Dan how he never stops talking and doesn’t let anyone else said anything. Is kind of boring already how he only seems to write about Serena and the UES.

Chuck’s cricket outfit reminds me of how I should enjoy the crazy outfits while they last.

Ofc Chuck’s has a PI on speed dial Eric, duh. Gotta love him though: “i know that face, that face is not your friend” sorry Nate

I’m still trying to come up with the reason why the show let the fake dating storyline between Nate and Serena be such a waste. Whyyyy????

Just in case I forget: this white party was sponsored by Vitamin Water. For real there’s product placement and then there’s this.

The constrast between Serena looking like a greek goddess next to Nate’s I didn’t bother of an outfit is making me dizzy.

Chuck’s outfit for the white party kind of deserves a post of his own. Then again is probably my fave outfit of his on the whole show.

James calling out Blair for using him, while mentioning charade feels kind of overplayed now. Anyway he’s already pointing out how Blair and Chuck are the same and that’s why they deserve each other.

“Don’t you see? We’re the same? Stop trying to fight it” “I will fight it to my last dying breath because any resemblance to you is something I would hate about myself” this whole dialogue feels like a premonition.

Serena and Nate kissing and being totally into it while paparazzi plays is the background is just one of those moments. This is the kind of content I’m here for. Only to be ruined by Dan Humphrey.

And here we are again Dan getting mad when he doesn’t have a right to, thankfully karma is a thing in the form of drinks poured all over him

And somehow is Serena the one busy cleaning that suit, useless Dan is useless

Chuck’s “I’m so screwed” face when his PI tells him Blair’s guy is actually a british Lord is priceless.

THREE WORDS EIGHT LETTERS SAY IT AND IM YOURS.

Epic scene aside they both look so good here. This episode is gift in matching outfits.

Dan, Serena and fireworks. 😪 here we go again

I loved this episod the first time I watched it and I think I love it even more so now. It’s really good, full of funny lines, great outfits and epic moments. Season two is as of now my fave season (i think this is also true for many people) and it starts with a bang. Quite literally actually with the opening scene being Nate going at it with an “older” woman, which I guess was meant to be shocking in part because we ended last season wondering if something was going to happen between Nate and Serena.

Sadly it didn’t and that’s my biggest complain for this episode because how on earth did they thought it was ok to waste all that set up, and to add insult to the injury they are like so Serena and Nate are secretly dating... but it is just like a throway line because except for that amazing kiss at the white party we never see them fakee dating and I honestly want to pull my hair out of frustration. Just imagine the possibilities that weren’t, granted fake dating is one of my favorite tropes but it could have been quite the storyline imagine: Serenate fake dates and that sparks the feelings that were pushed aside on S1 but that were always there, and now there’s nothing that can stop them to act on it, except Serena has feelings for Dan too, and she struggles because of it all the first half of S1 until eventually she picks Dan and breaks Nate’s heart, combined with all the other pressures in his life, he wants something easy and this happens to coincide with Blair’s downright spiral and that’s how Nair happens again in the second half of S2.

My point being you could add so many more moments in the Serenate saga, also give more force to the idea the show always tried to do: that Serena can’t really let go of Dan, because Nate and her are quite something and yet... and still have almost the same story on the second half which was important because it gave closure to Nair and also had both Chuck and Blair realizing a couple of things. Alas one can only dream and be happy that at least we got that kiss at the white party

So back to the episode, we learn that Nate is having and affair with a married woman, Serena misses Dan a lot and basically mourned him the whole summer meanwhile he was being an asshole in the City fooling girls he met at his intership and Jenny is working and trying to stand out in her own internship at Waldorf desings. Which reminds me Eric is such a gem of a character, he’s always have good one liners but whe’s also a nice counter balance to all the manipulation and bitchery going around him. Anyway all of these storylines are barely a tease of what’s coming, and they really take off in the next episode, so I’ll get into them then, so at the end of the episode Nate manages to keep the affair goin into the city, Jenny earns a bit of respect from her boss and Serena and Dan see each other again (thanks to Cece which is another character I wish we had see a bit more) they meet at the beach ready to see if there’s something to salvage between them. We’ll see.

The real star of this episode are Chuck and Blair. This episode belongs to them. I’ve seen comments that claim this is the season that made them epic and really take off and I quite agree, and this episode in particular sets up the stage for it, touching on a lot of the aspects that are going to be their arc for this season and even beyond. So at the end of S1 Chuck stands up Blair and she goes alone to Tuscany and he doesn’t goes after her the whole summer. Instead he spends the summer in The Hamptons being Chuck Bass, she ends up in France. We soon learn that while Chuck enjoyed himself during the summer Blair wasn’t far off in his mind:, the minute she’s back he goes aftet her, roses in hand only to find out she came back with a new guy, and she does everything in her power to rub that fact in his face which Chuck should have expected, it obviously bothers him but truth is they both know this is just Blair trying to get back at him for abandoning her, he hurt her, she obviously doesn’t tell him but he ruined his summer and she couldn’t stop thinking about the motherchucker

Shenanigans ensue but there are bits that really stand out: first of them the heart pinn. That's a telling bit about Chuck’s feelings, when that pin make its first appearance on S1 it was the beginning of the end for Chuck, the meaning of it was what got her to accept going to Cotillion with Nate and now she has gave it to James and Chuck buys it because I guess part of him couldn’t believe she would go as far as to use that to hurt him, that’s a low blow and she also didn’t gave it to him that week they were going out after the wedding, even though it went really well but most importantly he believes she can’t really feel that way about him because he’s just not the kind of guy someone can feel something for, but specially someone like Blair Waldorf, who dreams of finding her prince charming and such, and to his utter horror it’s revealed that Blair’s new guy is actually a british lord. Just his luck.

He’s anything but that, therefore not for Blair. He tells her as a much later in the episode when he let’s her know that he basically stood her up because he was afraid of her getting to really know him and see he was not good enough nor someone she could be with. And this is something that’s going to be quite the struggle for him for a long time, more than once during the show he’s going to remove himself from the picture because he believes she deserves someone better who can actually make her happy, and this season this happens quite a few times.

Thing is nothing is ever that simple, and this is the other bit that really stands out for me: when James calls her out on how she just use him to make Chuck jealous she justifies herself by pointing out Chuck’s an awful person, who lies and deceives so he kinds of deserve it, and James points out the fact that well she’s sort of the same, and they deserve each other. She lashes out at Chuck because of this and blames him for her argument with James, it’s his fault she played with James, and Chuck’s point out that no one force her to do anything she did it because they’re the same, meaning they scheme and manipulate to get what they want, so she should just stop fighting this thing between them, she rejects him claiming she would hate any resamblance to him. This whole argument is honestly quite interesting, because variations of it are going to keep popping up the rest of the show, and depending on who you ship you either take literally as if Chuck is the root of Blair worst tendencies or rather see this argument as representation of Blair struggles not with Chuck, but with herself.

Blair struggles in accepting herself, at her core she’s an insecure person, and the fact that she has a dark side that she can’t exactly change because it’s so deep roothed in her bothers her even before she and Chuck were anything, to me it bothers her not because she really wishes she was nice & good person, but rather because Serena is nice person, who’s regarded as literal ray of sunshine at times, and Serena got two things she wanted for the longest time: positive atention from Eleanor and Nate’s interest.So that fight within herself was always there, it didn’t appear the day she started dating Chuck, is just that in the same way they brought out the best in each other, when things go bad between them the opposite sometimes happened, and even then when they blame each other for something half the time it was to share some of the hurt and to avoid dealing with their own shortcomings and mistakes. Truthfully Chuck and Blair did something for each other no one had really done for them they accept each other fully, Blair’s able to accept and love his darkness, and for Chuck there’s no darkness in Blair she’s the way she is and that’s what makes her wonderful. It was easier for them to love each other than to love themselves.

Finally the biggest stand out of the episode is that iconic scene, the one that really puts into place the dynamic they will have for the rest of the season: Three words, eight letters are brought to the table, and they won’t move forward until the words have been said. It makes sense, because they tried this twice before, the first one came out of nowhere and it ended with Chuck getting dumped in favor of Nate, and that burned him badly, the second one Blair was the one who got hurt, and both times this pretty much happened because they aren’t able of telling each other how they feel, particularly Chuck. The first time he didn’t let her know he actually cared and wanted to be with her, the second one he didn’t tell her he was afraid, and all of this was too much too soon. So Blair wants, needs some kind of reassurance, and it makes me wonder how that week after the wedding really went, what happened? how wonderful it must have been that even though he abandoned her a that helipad she still had hope in the fact that he may love her. He doesn’t say it, and yet I still love this moment so much for because jus by asking him to say it is in some way an admittance on her own feellings, and he fails to saythe words but he did try, and the fact that he did try is also a form of admittance and as such from here on no matter what happens, how much they fight and toy with each other there’s always an undercurrent of love behind their actions,and this is (borrowing a phrase from a certain popstar) the most amazing unspoken dialogue ever.

Random bits I’ve noticed

Chuck has a bouquet of yellow roses for his intent on getting Blair back. If my memory serves right, those were his mom favorites

I’m such a sucker for the little backdrop details like the Van der Bass house having all these background pictures of the wedding

Thanks to Chuck for giving us the rank on Blair’s favorite films: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Roman Holiday & Funny Face (even if he said Charades to prove a point)

I’ve read somewhere I think it was on twitter that Blair’s crying in the garden scene was unscripted, Leighton did because she got really caught up in the scene particularly by Ed’s acting. I’ve looked it up but so far I haven’t found anything on this.

There’s a bunch of miniature cyclists under the mirror where Cece’s doing the final touches to her hair, looks sort of weird.

that vitamin water is even on the invitation, agust 30, 2008.

#gossip girl recap #gossip girl rewatch #gossip girl #2x01 #summer kind of wonderful

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florrickandassociates · 4 years

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TGF Thoughts: 4x04-- The Gang is Satirized and Doesn’t Like It

The gang doesn’t like being satirized and I don’t like this episode.

No episode needs to be 57 minutes long. Is it possible that seeing the runtime put me in a bad mood before watching this episode? Absolutely.

Bianca is still trying to get Lucca to take a week off and come play on the beach. This is weird, right?

She’s using a drone to take a selfie which… yikes. Bianca asks what Lucca has in Chicago to match the beach. Lucca takes a look out the window and instead of seeing FakeChicago, she sees a window washer’s ass crack. Lucca protests that she has work in Chicago and can’t leave (are we going to mention her baby?). Before Bianca can ask more questions, David Lee calls Lucca into a meeting.

A former client who says he’s been “bouncing from one [firm] to the other” (which sort of explains why David Lee and Lucca would both have experience with this client who was at RBL a year ago?) is angry because he’s being defamed by a new play. He says his divorce is in the play and wants to sue.

Lucca ChumHums the playwright and recognizes him as a former associate. She brings the case to Adrian’s attention. Before Adrian understands that confidential info made it into the play, he talks about how you shouldn’t give satire oxygen because it will just go away. Easier said than done, huh, Adrian?

They DID actually fire Alan North for drug use last year. We never saw the actor but his firing was referenced as precedent for firing Maia. Thanks Alan, I guess?

(Right, I used to spend most of these recaps complaining about Maia! It is very nice not to be doing that anymore.)

Adrian jumps into the case to prevent the client from suing RBL.

We have to see the scene that ended the last episode again. That’s a little clumsy. Maybe trim the stuff we’ve already seen in an episode that’s this long?

How does Jay POSSIBLY know that one specific dude up at STRL is blocking Diane from searching “What is Memo 618” on Bar-Swarm? I have questions.

Diane immediately heads upstairs to ask this dude about Memo 618. Jay wonders if that’s smart and Diane doesn’t care. As I said to an anon earlier, I feel like now is the time to get a journalist on the case.

Even though Diane storms upstairs uninvited, she’s told “they’re waiting for you.” Creepy.

Diane meets a lot of people, including Bryan Kneef (of internet blocking fame) and a dude who won’t stop hiccuping.

Oh GOD are we going to have to hear one of these stupid stories from Mr. Firth in every single episode? No fucking wonder this episode is so long.

Bryan is mad at Diane for poaching his clients. Diane has no idea what he’s talking about. Diane seems to know that her investigator is checking his clients to figure out why he’s blocking her internet. Does Diane actually know Jay is investigating his clients? Or is she just assuming that’s how he found out who was doing the blocking? Because literally as soon as Diane heard Kneef’s name she ran upstairs; there would be no time for her or Jay to begin looking into his clients.

Mr. Firth asks for Diane not to steal Kneef’s clients and Kneef not to block Diane’s internet access. They agree, but it’s clear neither of them are going to stop doing what they were doing.

Jay discovers that one of Kneef’s cases disappeared… when he was losing.

Oh, Caleb’s last name is Garlin, not Garland. Noted. Also, I think I mistakenly said STRL was British a few weeks ago. It doesn’t appear to be.

Marissa bothers Caleb again and asks him to tell her a joke. He does, but she’s unimpressed.

Caleb has a photographic memory. I like Caleb so far. I feel like he’s kind of what they wanted Finn to be-- a charming good guy. But we’ll see; it’s early yet.

Caleb gives Diane the number of a legal code the judge needed to review. In a sequence that goes on 30 seconds too long, Diane discovers this code redirects to another code, which redirects right back endlessly. Fun!

When Diane goes to check a physical book, she discovers all the legal books are fake. Sounds about right.

Ah, this terrible attorney who hits on young women is back because of reasons related to the other case that disappeared. Marissa is now helping Diane with her 618 quest, maybe because she’s met this creep before?

Diane offers to represent him (he’s being sued for doing a shitty job on disappearing case).

Meanwhile, Adrian and Charlotte go to see “Cocksucker in Chains”, which turns out to be about an African American firm populated by characters who are clearly supposed to be the RBL partners. Julius narrates the play, Adrian likes to be dominated by the Diane character while roleplaying a slave to Diane’s dominatrix (yikes), etc. Adrian is named “Aiden” and Diane is “Dana”. This seems like a good time to remind you all of the original TGW character names from the Pilot outline: Alicia Follick, David Follick (and David Follick Jr.!!!), Dawna Lockhart, and Will Garvin.

The first time through, I was appreciative (and shocked) we got so few scenes from the play. Usually if the Kings have a device like this, we tend to get… more of the device than is necessary. Y’all know how this one turns out.

This play, from what we see of it, looks kind of terrible. That said, I think it’s SUPER realistic, and interesting, that a low-level black associate would see all the white people coming into the firm as “dominating” a black man who gets off on being submissive. I don’t think that’s an accurate characterization of Adrian’s actions but if you don’t know his reasoning or how things played out, it absolutely could seem like Diane has all the power. And I imagine that young, idealistic lawyers who signed on to work at a firm that was proudly all-black would not have been thrilled by Diane’s sudden appearance and all of the changes that followed. Remember how in season one RBL had things it stood for and then Barbara left and then all it stood for was money?

Relatedly, remember that little throwaway line about how Barbara donated MORE money to HRC than Diane Lockhart did? Heh.

Adrian, as the episode title indicates, DOES NOT LIKE BEING SATIRIZED and tells Lucca they need to shut the play down. That escalated quickly.

Please explain to me how I accidentally memorized the name of the actor playing Kovac but didn’t memorize the character’s name.

Diane tells Liz and Adrian about her latest Memo 618 adventure and Adrian keeps asking why this matters. “I’m not asking for your permission; I’m just filling you in,” Diane notes. “Maybe you should be asking for our permission,” Adrian counters because he does not want to be dominated by Diane. “Maybe. But I’m not,” she responds.

Liz thinks that Adrian acted weirdly. Adrian explains he doesn’t like how Diane insinuates she can overrule them. Liz has no idea what Adrian is talking about. So he explains the play. Liz still doesn’t think it’s a big deal and asks to take it over.

She then gets Caleb involved-- I guess Lucca is just done working now? Okay? It was nice to have Lucca scenes in this episode while it lasted!!!

Liz and Caleb go to see the play and now we get to see the scenes where Liz is satirized. Fake Liz sings, because of COURSE they are going to have the FAKE version of her sing. Her song is about how her daddy is a sexual predator. It’s quite upsetting.

Liz and Caleb stay for a Q&A in which the playwright says the client in the play was “based on” (not “inspired by”). (Actually this happens after my second bullet but meh)

Then there’s a white woman who goes on a rant that feels too ridiculous to be true but apparently it’s lifted almost verbatim from an actual incident that happened at a Slave Play Q&A (I am not New York enough to have gotten the reference without the internet’s help).

Monica is back! Yay Monica! Nikki just needs to show up on Evil next season and she’ll have been on every Kings show.

Blah blah 618 blah blah. I don’t dislike this arc but I don’t have much to say about it. Like, I get it, corporations are powerful and the law is fake and this is a way of commenting on the insanity of the world while backing away from the politics. But other than saying that and enjoying the twists and turns… I don’t have anything to add.

Man, I miss character based drama. That’s not a criticism of the show, but this recap format is way less interesting (to write, and probably to read) when I don’t have anything to sink my teeth into.

Adrian doesn’t want to settle because now Adrian is mad. The client gets what he wants and Adrian insists they keep going. I mean, if the episode stopped now it would be a reasonable, even short, episode, and we’ve got fifty seven whole minutes to fill..

Liz is also on board to prolong the case. Lucca, who actually has perspective, tells Adrian he’s not acting in the client’s best interest. Adrian denies it. LOL, sure.

At this exact moment Lucca receives (and looks at) a text from Bianca, who is still pursuing her. Tempting.

Liz asks Marissa if she’s heard of Cocksucker in Chains. She has, and she is getting a “gang” together to go see it, because of course she is.

David Lee enjoys the play. Diane and Kurt, less so. Julius and his wife do not like it at all. Also apparently we HAD seen Julius’s wife before and I somehow FORGOT?????

Play!Julius monologuing about justice makes Real!Julius reevaluate his decisions.

Then we get into this weird Diane and Kurt sex plot that is kind of about the idea of problematic kinks (like getting off on watching a fake version of your white wife whip a black man) but is mostly just an excuse for fanservice in the form of Christine Baranski in sexy get-ups. She’s got an amazing figure, but does that alone justify this subplot? (I say no.)

(Also I’d be way more invested in a plotline about McHart’s sex life if it didn’t begin and conclude in the back half of a single episode. It’s sparked by the play-- not any ongoing issues-- and concludes in a cute way so to me it is… nothing.)

Marissa goes undercover as a playwright. Everyone in the group dislikes the writer of Cocksucker in Chains… a lot. They hand over the drafts easily.

Liz and Caleb spend a late night reading smut said by fake Liz in an early draft script to each other. Over it already. I was never a fan of boss/employee plots, and in this era, with this character who has SO MUCH potential but never really gets plotlines of her own, I have zero patience for this bullshit. Liz deserves better.

What really confuses me is that somehow Liz/Caleb is supposed to be about… investigating what interracial relationships are like???? If they’re so insistent on showing this can’t they… do something other than this? Random stranger at a bar?

I do not like this thing that is happening to Liz where whenever she gets a plot of her own it’s about fucking someone she shouldn’t be fucking. I haven’t forgotten what the writers did to Geneva Pine in late season seven for LITERALLY NO REASON.

Liz would not flirt with an employee. Like, just stop. Liz has spent the last year coming to terms with her father being a serial assailant and we are going to deal with that by… having her make eyes at Caleb? That is not interesting or complicated.

And, tbh, it’s especially insulting to Liz when none of this feels motivated in character and ALL of it feels motivated in “we need a sexy forbidden romance so we can explore themes.” Get this plot away from Liz.

This episode is too long, in case I haven’t already said that enough times.

And now the scene in which Bryan Kneef, the latest Rebel Dude Lawyer, says the word “ass” many times. I repeat: this episode is too long.

Mr. Firth talks to Diane about pursuing 618. I don’t understand Mr. Firth’s deal. Why does he let Diane continue? Is he just a person who happens to be powerful who is actually trying to do a fair job and be understanding? This show just doesn’t have characters like that so you see why I am skeptical.

Again with the window washers. Of all the symbols of the problems with office life, this one?! (It plays especially poorly right now-- I wish that my biggest problem with my workspace was that there are people cleaning the windows to make my view nicer and not, you know, that my current workspace is my bedroom.)

Firth goes to see Lucca next. Lucca says she doesn’t like her new standing desk. Wait. They got desks that are standing ONLY without consulting the employees?

This scene is succeeding in making me miss the standing desk that I’ve only ever used as a standing desk, like, twice.

No one on this show has a monitor at their desk. I wonder if that’s true to life for law firms.

Now Bianca has found a way to make it part of Lucca’s JOB to come hang out at the beach and this is making me uncomfortable. Firth tells Lucca to go, even though Lucca shares her concern that Bianca just wants a friend. Firth somehow has a similar story to share and tells Lucca “the rich are not like us.” K. Sure. Maybe we can get away with calling Lucca well-off instead of rich but Firth? Rich. Maybe not ultra wealthy but dude is rich.

SERIOUSLY what is with the window washers?

Enjoy this scene of Diane the dominatrix, fans. It’s here for you.

(I don’t mean that snarkily against fans. I mean that snarkily against the show.)

The stock footage clip with the moon over Chicago is one of the more interesting stock footage clips I’ve seen the show use (plus it actually looks like the neighborhood Diane would live in!)

Oh I am just so thrilled that at the 44 minute mark, we are starting to do a series of unnecessary scenes in which the characters converse with their actor counterparts. What a good use of time.

And the sad thing is that I should like this device… but I don’t. None of this is actually building up the characters for me? How invested can I be in Diane and Kurt’s sex life problems when I’ve known about them for less than half of the episode? How interested can I be in deconstructing

And I don’t need a scene of Julius debating if he should be honest or not, because the scene of him watching the play was enough to make me understand he’s having doubts about complying with 618.

And you know what I REALLY, TRULY, DO NOT NEED? ALL OF THIS ATROCIOUS LIZ/CALEB PLOT.

Why is Play Liz so horny? What about Real Liz made the playwright write Liz to be like this? And if it’s not accurate, why is it getting under Liz’s skin like this? I get the Diane one because it was a turn-on and it makes Diane wonder about dominating (outside of the bedroom, too). I get the Adrian one because I mean holy shit that’s a big claim to make. And I get the Julius one because Julius loves to be the voice of reason/hear his own voice and feels like a hypocrite. But Liz? What the fuck is this nonsense?

Liz saying “I’m his boss” and talking about HR does not excuse the fact that we are pretending a boss/employee romance is a good plotline in 2020. And I’m so confused about why THIS is the way they are choosing to explore an interracial relationship.

I have watched TV shows before so obviously as soon as I saw Liz get on the elevator, I knew from the fact that we were watching her leave… she wasn’t going to leave. She was going to go and fuck her employee. Great writing guys.

This also managed to remind me of all my anger at the Red Team Blue Team Willicia kiss (they previewed it as a sneak peak and I was excited that it it didn’t end with them kissing because that’s so cliche… then I watched the episode and I’m still furious about it in season four of the spinoff.) so thanks for that too, writers.

Why is Fake Liz’s stupid song so goddamn long?

“Oh God help me,” Liz says as she knowingly goes to make an incredibly stupid decision I have NOT A SINGLE REASON to believe she would make. But this is The Good Fight, and on The Good Fight we care about plot more than characters.

(Oh. I am in a bad mood.)

The client wants out of the suit because… I mean, duh? He got what he wanted and this should have stopped at like the 20 minute mark?

If I never had to see another one of these “boss and employee awkwardly talk in the office about how it’s nbd they fucked last night” scenes again I would be OVER THE MOON. I watched all of Willicia and I will rewatch all of Willicia, is that not enough?!

I do like Caleb so far, but man, that just makes this worse! I like Caleb and I like Liz and maybe I could even like them together but I am so furious they’re doing the boss/employee thing it just makes me sad to see this happen to characters I like.

Diane is now circling the word “ass” in transcripts of the deposition, but the suit’s been dropped because the suit was settled for 1.8 million. (I am sure that’s a lot to the victim and absolutely nothing to the corporation.)

Also Kovac brings Diane a bird because WE LOVE WACKINESS ON THE GOOD FIGHT.

And now for a scene in which a mysterious visitor gives Kurt a warning to stop Diane from pursuing something dangerous. I thought we were done with this. This shit is what I hated about the Book Club arc in season three: the stakes got too high for me to take it seriously. They run the risk of doing the same with Memo 618. Keep it small scale.

Kurt tells Diane about his visitor, and Kurt and Diane both recognize that this is similar to what happened last year, so at least there’s continuity.

Diane says this isn’t about politics. I mean. Not overtly. But that’s the point. This whole arc is a thinly veiled way of exploring how the legal system breaks down when there’s no enforcement, and lack of enforcement is tied to politics, so… is this really as apolitical as Diane wants it to seem? Certainly it’s less political than Book Club but I don’t think a radical group should be the benchmark.

Diane promises she’ll drop 618, then gets an idea to spice up her sex life by modifying her dominatrix costume into a sexy cowgirl costume. (Diane is not going to drop 618. This is episode 4.)

Did Diane just grab a gun from the bathroom? Why are there guns in the bathroom? I guess it makes sense if she was planning this.

Oh and that’s the end of the episode!!! I DID IT!!!! I MADE IT THROUGH HIS EPISODE A SECOND TIME!

#the good fight #tgfthoughts

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