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jbarness · 4 years

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huh, that's new

a social media au

[27: news]

warnings: language, "pregnancy"?? uhh idk what else hehehe

a/n: this is a pretty long chapter i think? (2000+ words) im very nervous about this chapter cause its kinda a big deal asdfghjk anyways, please please please tell me what you think about this! and ik this idea is very odd HAHAHAHA but what else would you expect from two dumbasses named bucky and y/n? hehehe i really hope you enjoy this chapter!! ♡

flashback is italicized

huh, that's new - masterlist

You wanted to laugh so badly.

For some reason, your housemates are panicking over who the hell set this gender reveal party up in the living room.

It was you. With the help of Bucky of course.

Natasha and Wanda have been shouting “I’m not pregnant, I think you are!” to each other for about 10 minutes now. Steve decided that he needed answers too, so he joined in the shouting. Pietro’s talking to his camera, probably vlogging the whole thing. Peter’s talking on the phone with MJ asking if she set this up. Sam’s the only one enjoying the food. Bucky was looking at you from across the room, keeping the smile from forming on his face.

Just about an hour or so ago, you and Bucky were just setting the whole thing up. Bucky was pushing the table to the living room when you arrived with the cake. You placed the rest of the blue and pink food on the table along with other decorations. There were many variations of food, but the cupcakes that have toppers that said: “Here for the Sex” were Bucky’s personal favorite despite not knowing how they taste. The balloons were still lifeless when both of you hung the streamers on the walls with the banner that matched the topper of the cupcakes. After finally finding the balloon pump, blue and pink balloons filled the living room. Some were on the floor while you hung the others on the wall. When you were content with the appearance of the room, you and Bucky went your separate ways.

You got the idea of throwing a gender reveal party when you were working at the diner one evening. “You’ll be at the gender reveal party next week right?” the woman at the booth asked her friend. “Of course, Jill asked me to pick up the cake,” Her friend says. When you got the idea, you thought it was silly, so you dismissed it. Later on, you thought of more ideas and details to add, then in a blink of an eye, you were in the bakery, asking the baker if they can make a three-layered cake of your favorite flavor with the inside colored blue.

“Maybe P set this all up for a prank again?” Nat looked at Pietro who was filming the whole thing. “Just because I have a channel that doesn’t mean I always prank!” Pietro said, turning off his camera.

Steve sighed, “Okay, one by one. Nat and I were the first ones here, but it was all here already when we arrived. Wanda was the next one here, she was in the bookstore the whole morning. Bucky and Sam were next and they only came here because he saw the Instagram story of Nat. Pietro and Peter came home today from LA and Peter from Tony’s. Lastly, Y/N came home from the cafe,” everyone nodded.

After a couple of minutes of silence, you couldn’t handle it anymore, “Okay, I can’t do it. I give up. It was me. I set this up,” you laughed.

“But why Y/N?” Peter gasped, “Are you pregnant?”

Everyone’s eyes were on you now. Natasha’s eyes widened, “Wait, who’s the father?”

Bucky was laughing internally, you could tell. He wasn’t looking at you anymore, he turned around to look at the window. You could see his shoulders slightly shaking, he’s definitely laughing. Good thing the attention wasn’t on him. “I uhh… I don’t know,” you said. You technically haven't met Bucky's dad, you were being honest.

“Doesn’t matter, my sweet Y/N! We’ll support you and help you. Anything you need” Sam swallowed the macaroon whole before going to you and hugging you tightly.

“I know you will.” In less than a minute, you were trapped in the middle of the group hug.

“Why didn’t you say anything sooner? We would’ve known the gender by now!” Pietro said as the group untangled from the hug.

You laughed, “I was enjoying the show.”

“Well, come on! I wanna know if my godchild is a boy or a girl!” Wanda yelled excitedly and went to the kitchen to grab the knife.

Bucky walked towards you before you could join the others who are now gathered at the table, waiting for plates and the knife. “I’m tellin’ ya, doll, they’re gonna be frustrated at us,” he said. You shrugged, “They already are.”

Wanda handed you the knife to cut the cake. Everyone took out their phones to take a video of the “soon-to-be-mother”. You were trying very hard not to laugh at this point and so was Bucky, who was taking a video of his friends’ reactions to what they’re about to say.

You sliced a triangle on one side of the cake and pulled it out, showing blue. “Oh my God! It’s a boy!” Peter yelled, jumping around with Pietro. Sam and Steve took turns hugging you and they were later pushed aside by Wanda and Nat. “I’m happy for you, hun I am, but I really hope that a girl comes out of you,” Natasha said while hugging you and Wanda tightly.

You cleared your throat, catching everyone’s attention, “It’s actually a Bucky” you said, nonchalantly.

“Bucky?” Wanda pulled away slightly from the hug, making Nat do the same. “A Bucky? As in it’s Bucky’s baby?” Steve asked, wide-eyed, obviously excited, looking at Bucky who is now looking back at you, covering his mouth with his hands, to keep himself from laughing.

“I meannnnn… Bucky... is my... baby,” you said while extending your arm, inviting Bucky to come closer, which he did.

Peter was still confused and it shows, “You’re Bucky’s mom?” he asked, making Pietro smack his head, “Pete, it means they’re dating... Right?”

Both you and Bucky nodded, “We are.”

“Oh my God! Fucking finally! I was starting to think you’ll never tell each other how you feel! Do you know how frustrated you two made me?” Sam yelled, throwing a pillow at Bucky.

Natasha was yelling “I fucking knew it! I told you so!” repeatedly to her boyfriend while Wanda kept pinching both your and Bucky’s cheeks saying, “CUTIESSS!”

You looked at Bucky, “they don’t look frustrated” you said which made Bucky roll his eyes and smile. Both of you laughed when you saw Steve silently saying “Yes! My ship!” Either that or something about shit.

“Calm your asses. Now, this party isn’t just for us to announce that we’re together. This is also a party for Natty and Steve. Sorta like the part one of the roomies night we’re gonna have” you said, looking at the couple.

“Thank you, Y/N, but I don’t wanna think about moving right now. What I do want is for you two to give us the fucking details about how you two finally got together” Nat said, making everyone agree and sit down and get comfortable in the living room.

Bucky cleared his throat and looked on his left, where you sat. “It happened the night that her friend came to the city.”

☆

To say you were excited for tonight was an understatement.

Last night, you already picked out the clothes you wanted to wear tonight. It was simple, really, just a pair of jeans and the most comfortable hoodie you owned. Or should you go with a plain sweater instead? Printed shirt? Oversized shirt? Your grey sweatpants? They look comfortable. Or your black ones?

You ended up with your first choice.

Wanda and Nat noticed how upbeat and cheery you were the whole day. It wasn’t exactly like you to be this happy at 7 am. You cooked a lot more food than usual and you haven’t even had your coffee yet. “Maria’s in the city today!” was the only excuse you thought of every time they asked you. You had some errands to do that day, its something you find really boring and exhausting but you found yourself skipping to the bank. Skipping, not walking.

At the tower, Bucky was a nervous wreck. He couldn’t focus much on what he was doing. He would zone out and forget what he was typing, then he remembered he wasn’t typing at all, he was fixing a floor plan. Sam being Sam, noticed how Boinky was acting. He kept teasing Bucky about being distracted while Steve kept asking him to stop. “What’s up with you, Buck? What’s making you zone out?” Steve asked, giving Bucky some water. Bucky just shrugged and continued whatever the hell he was doing.

The evening came too fast for Bucky and too slow for you. You got home, got dressed to meet with Maria for dinner before seeing Bucky. When Bucky got home, he changed into something more casual and fixed himself at his bathroom. “Tell her tonight, you fucking idiot,” he told himself, looking at the mirror before grabbing his helmet and his old helmet that you proclaimed yours when you were hanging out before. He smiled at the memory then remembered that Dot never even got to see his motorcycle. Huh.

He picked you up at the hotel that Maria was staying at. In a few minutes, you were at the bar that you two used to go to. You two bought a couple of drinks before going to the spot - your spot. You almost forgot how beautiful it was there, especially at night.

“After tonight, you’ll only have one night of free drinks, use it wisely,” Bucky said, breaking the silence.

“Yeah, I’ll have to find another way to have free drinks from you,” you joked.

He looked at you, “You can just ask, you know? You don’t have to blackmail me,” he smiled.

You laughed for a moment and it became silent once again. It felt... awkward. You two were seated a couple of inches away from each other, the closest you two have been since you avoided each other, but you wanted to get away. You remembered the last time you were here, in this exact same spot. Drinking the alcohol of your choice, laughing with Bucky, talking about your high school selves. Many things have changed since then. It feels so weird and new to you, sitting next to someone you genuinely like, your friend. You took a deep breath and stopped thinking.

“I like you, did you know that?” you said out of the blue making Bucky wonder if he was just imagining it and he was just hearing things. He stayed silent, deciding that it was just his mind saying that cause that was what he wanted to hear.

You turned to Bucky, waiting for his reaction. Nothing. “Buck?” he turned and looked at you as if he hadn’t heard you. “I like you,” you said once again only this time, it was louder and clearer.

“You like me?” Bucky asked, finding it hard to believe for some reason. “Like, you like-like me?” You nodded, smiling at his creased eyebrows and slightly tilted face, like a confused puppy. You almost didn’t notice how your heart is beating quickly as if it wanted to jump out of your chest. It was taking Bucky too long to reply, and that made you anxious. All you wanted was to take it back and change what you said. You should’ve said “I’d really like to go back to being close friends” or maybe ask him why he avoided you or somethi--

“Did Wanton ask you to tell this to me?” he asked with an accusative tone. “No, why would I agree to that? Even if I did, I’d only agree to say something like that if I really meant it,” your voice getting louder every word.

“So it’s true? You like me? Romantic styles?” You nodded, slightly annoyed that he would think that you would play with his feelings. “Yes, it’s no big deal. I just wanted to tell you, I don’t expect you to like me back. I just- I want you to--”

"I like you too. Romantic styles," he said holding your hand. "That was why I set you up with Loki, why I avoided you after that and why I was avoiding you until you invited me to join you and Pietro. I kinda got a bit… slightly, sort of jealous so I agreed to go with you."

"Wait, hold on, you like me... and you... set me up with Loki? I don't get it"

"I like you and… That doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you’re happy, and I'll do anything to make you happy,” he said, offering you a small smile.

☆

"Then we kissed and… yeah,” you smiled at your friends’ faltered smiles.

Sam stood up, “Why was everything else so detailed and the kiss was just ‘then we kissed’? What’s that about?” He said, grabbing more food from the table. "And, I fucking told you so, Boinks!"

Bucky rolled his eyes, “Do you wanna hear how I kissed her softl-”

“Excuse me?” You said, raising your eyebrows at your boyfriend. “I kissed you, and it wasn’t soft”

“Y/N stop saying soft!” Peter shouted, covering his ears.

Wanda wiggled her eyebrows, "You didn't come home that night, hun."

"Yeah, I invited her to my place, we had some wine and we just talked for the rest of the night. Nothing happened. Okay? After talking we just slept. That's it,” Bucky defended.

Steve kept nodding his head, “Hence the Instagram story, mhmm, mhmm. Alright.”

“Whatever happened that night, I’m glad it did. And, I’m really really reallyyyyy happy for you, dumbasses,” Nat laughed.

Peter walked to you, “I’m happy for you too, sis. But please, don’t get detailed with… you know. I don’t need to know that.” You laughed, holding his hand. “And Bucky, if you ever hurt my sister, I’ll hunt you down and beat you up,” Peter looked at Bucky squinting his eyes, trying to look intimidating, which made Bucky laugh.

You looked at Bucky, “He’s serious. And very strong. He gave Steve bruises when they were boxing at the gym.” Bucky looked at Steve who was nodding.

“O-oh”

☆

taglist:

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swiftlythebest · 4 years

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In Defense of Lake Meriwether

All right, strap in folks, we’re discussing an unpopular opinion! Lake Meriwether is not a bad character and she goes through some realistic growth. Additionally, she and Felix are shown good development and I ship it. Yikes, lots of unpopular opinions in so few sentences.

Sidenote before I delve into everything: there is certainly a danger in media made for children and young adults being looked at through the lens of someone not in that target audience. I am 26, meaning the way I’m going to consume media differs from that of a teenager, especially considering that we’re apparently in different generations (which is weird, but that’s a whole other story). All of that is to say that I am an adult talking about a piece of media made for teenagers by older adults. It’s complicated, and I am in no way claiming that what I have to say is universally correct.

This whole whatever it is ended up being really long, so I’ll put it under a cut. Also, I know a lot of people probably won’t want to read it.

Sense of Identity

First of all, let’s keep in mind that Lake is 15/16. I have no idea how old people reading this post are, but if you’re older than 16, and out of high school, try to remember how you were at that age. Your brain hasn’t fully developed and much of your sense of self comes from interactions with your family and peers, not so much the world at large. That’s certainly altered by the widespread reach of social media, but someone that age is still navigating identity and their place in the world with limited experience. We can’t expect a girl who has grown up in a privileged bubble to be a bastion of morality. We can’t hold her to the same standard we would a full-fledged adult. She acts like a typical 15/16 year old who is insecure and trying to hide it while living in the shadow of her best friend.

And hey, it’s true, Lake is primarily known as Mia’s best friend. Mia is described by Felix as the hottest girl in their grade and loved by everyone. Mia has the affection of the cute new boy, as well as the popular jock that Lake initially likes. I’m glad they don’t fall into the trap of making that friendship toxic and unbalanced, which is so often the case. I think within their friendship, they are very much equals who love and value each other. But to the public, Mia is more liked than Lake, and she is definitely at least somewhat aware of that. Lake is not Summer Roberts or Lydia Martin in the sense that she is not viewed as a highly desired person in the same way those other two characters are; she is viewed that way by the nerdy love interest, but not the student population as a whole. There are definitely parallels to be made with Summer and Lydia (Summer especially when you consider the intense similarities between Lake’s speech about public couples being scrutinized and Summer’s incredibly similar speech to Seth in Season 1), but that’s not one of them.

Lake’s mom sucks. It’s clear that Lake has grown up in a household where her every move was judged and she was made to see more flaws in herself than she had. Think about how that must have affected her psyche and pressured her into believing that who she was to the public was what truly mattered. That’s ingrained in her. We see that almost immediately with her being obsessed with Creek Secrets and trying to make herself more appealing to Andrew at the party. I’m not sure she knows who she actually is, just who she’s been molded to be. She wants approval and in the beginning, it’s clear she really only gets that from Mia and Felix, albeit, the latter is from afar.

Importance of Friendship

Once she and Mia begin to hang out with Victor and Felix, she begins to shift. We do see it even before when she confronts Andrew at the Battle of the Bands, showing us that she at least in some way knows her worth, but I’m not sure how much at that point. Victor and Felix add a new dynamic to her friendship with Mia and give her more people to genuinely think she’s great and make that known to her. While she’s still clearly insecure, we can see that start to chip away. When she impresses them with her excuses, something she’s likely only done to Mia so far, you can see how their approval makes her light up. And Felix’s compliment is quite possibly the first step towards her developing feelings for him.

DJ F Bomb on the Track

So we’ve now arrived to the Felix of it all. I want to say that I absolutely love Felix. I think he’s funny and sweet and a great friend; he was my favorite right off the bat and that opinion was only reinforced as the series progressed. Our first introduction to Felix is outside of whatever image he has at school and with his peers. We are told about his status as an outcast by him a few scenes after we’ve gotten to know him, so we already have formed our opinion of him beyond his public image. We know he’s quirky and anxious, but it comes across as endearing; the audience doesn’t know that his unique personality is not the main thing working against him. To Lake, and a vast majority of his peers, he’s Lonestone, an awkward and weird boy who doesn’t fit in and has a truly unfortunate nickname and reputation. We don’t have five years of taunting to affect how we view him. The audience view of Felix versus his peers’ view is important to distinguish when talking about why Lake is so hesitant.

Felix initially comes on too strong. He recognizes that in Episode 7 and, with the help of Pilar, he learns to back off a bit. The angler fish speech is sweet, but was I the only one a little put off by how obsessive it sounded? He’s saying someone should sacrifice everything for the one they love, which is a lovely sentiment in a fairytale, but a bit much when you’re 16. His growth isn’t as explicit as hers, but he still does have to soften his approach in order to really make it work. And I want to be clear that while Felix is definitely a better person than Lake, I’d caution to say he’s a better character, in the sense of complexity and growth. I like him more, as I think pretty much everyone does, but Lake is a layered character with logical development, which shouldn’t be overlooked because you may not like her as a person.

It’s supposed to be Felix for her. We as an audience, as well as Felix, know it when she says the same thing he said about DJs in episode 3. She catches on a couple of episodes later after they steal the cake, but she’s clearly in denial. Lake likes Felix. And she seems to like him more and more as the season progresses. But he doesn’t fit into that perfect image she has spent so long cultivating and trying to maintain, so she’s having to come to terms with that throughout their relationship. When she shoots him down for the dance after seeing his apartment, you know she doesn’t want to. It’s clearly killing her to say it, but she’s not there yet. And Felix knows his worth so he ends it, which also clearly kills her.

She told him upfront that no one could know, and she repeats it a lot. He can walk away if he’s not comfortable with that, and we do see him almost do that in episode 8, until she tells Mia. He’s right to want to revisit that part of their relationship around the dance, and especially after baring his soul to her at his apartment. He’s right to break it off when, after such an emotional afternoon for them, she still won’t be seen with him. He’s right to accept an invitation from another girl. His reaction is completely valid.

She doesn’t expect to be jealous at the dance because she thinks it’s the natural progression of things. Kieran is the kind of boy she always saw herself with: a popular jock. And then he’s boring. He talks about working out and fantasy football and it’s boring. She can’t be herself with him. Then there’s Felix, at the dance with another girl who seems to make much more sense paired with him. He’s wearing a goofy ruffled shirt and joking about the smell of his hair and telling Lake he just wants her to be happy. I think she needed to see that what she thought she wanted she actually didn’t, and also that the boy she liked genuinely cared about her as a person, not just an object of desire. He makes her happy, something I’m not sure she had fully admitted to herself until that moment. And yeah, the big public declaration of love is a huge cliche and overdone and all that, but it works so very well in visual media.

Conclusion?

Look, all of this mess is to say that Lake is not a bad person, nor is she a bad character. We all latched onto Felix pretty quickly, so naturally, our standards for him were going to be sky-high. But in a show of tropes, this relationship was obvious from the start. Lake felt authentic, like a scared teenage girl navigating her self-esteem, public image, overbearing mother, and falling for someone unexpected all at the same time. She grows and develops, learning to go for what truly makes her happy, not what she thinks should make her happy.

TL;DR: Lake is a complex, realistic portrayal of an insecure teenage girl with an overbearing mother, who spends a lot of time in her best friend’s shadow. She’s in denial of her true feelings for Felix for a while, going so far as to sabotage something she knows is good and right in order to continue to feel secure. By the last episode, she has grown and learned enough to understand her own autonomy when it comes to her happiness. We should all cut her a little bit of slack and let the immature 16-year-old be immature and 16, while learning how to be just a bit more mature.

#love victor #lake love victor #lake meriwether #felix/lake #felix weston #felix westen #long post #i have opinions and you're all welcome to ignore them #love victor spoilers

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ceruleanwhore · 4 years

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MLB rant

At this point, I am genuinely pissed at Miraculous. Among other things, Thomas has wrecked the quality of the show over shipping bullshit with episodes like weredad and, in the process, fucked everything over so that now, no matter what happens or who ends up with who, it’s going to be shit. In a lot of ways, he’s done to Miraculous what Bryke did to Avatar in the comics- ruined established characters and the overall story by trying and failing to take care of the relationships/shipping. At this point, Marinette’s character is so awful in relation to this that I truly can’t fathom how Adrien and Luka can still tolerate her, never mind actually like her. Where she should have been steadily improving this whole time, she is instead getting much worse. This, of course, is because the show is constructed such that there is only the few main plot aspects everything revolves around (Hawkmoth and the love square) but, even though Astruc is clearly trying to drag the show out, he isn’t adding any other layers to the show to make up for how flat it is, so in the process of keeping those main plot points static, he has ended up fucking over his own show and dragging Marinette’s character down. At the start of the series, Marinette was clumsy and socially awkward but in a somewhat endearing way. Now, a school year or so later, she hasn’t improved at all and, in spite of now being Ladybug which would be the perfect catalyst for her character development, she’s genuinely getting worse to the point where, as we see in Desperada, she now acts like she has brain damage or something.

The degradation of Marinette’s character is a direct result of Atruc trying to shut down side ships, including some within the love square, in spite of how completely unnecessary it was. He shouldn’t have been doing stuff like that at all, honestly, but things like that should have only been done if and when he was going into the endgame and setting up to finally put them into canon relationships. There are a few ways he could have done this more successfully:

1. In season 2, after Ladybug flat out rejects him, have that be enough to initiate the process of Adrien moving on and have him be completely over her by the end of the season but leave him single. Meanwhile, from the beginning of the show, it should be shown how the way Adrien constantly says that Marinette is “just a friend” wears on her over time, plus Luka showing up adds another element that would shake things up and leave her feelings for Adrien unsteady. Eventually, maybe later season 2, Adrien would make another comment like that again and that would be the last straw at which point she’d be done. Shortly after that, she’d get together with Luka.

2.Kinda like what I just described but after Adrien gets over Ladybug and Marinette gets over him, they could get together as Marichat in some rich dramatic irony.

So then there is the matter of character development. I’ve already lamented Marinette, but I’d argue that basically none of the characters have any significant character development. Chloe had the opportunity that got royally fucked over, which was probably also for the sake of maintaining stasis, but other than a couple people here and there, there isn’t much to be found. I think this is because there isn’t actually much content, when it comes to this show. About half of each episode is taken up by the akuma and what’s left tends to be more concerned with cute things like Marinette facetiming Alya about Adrien or bringing some macrons somewhere or whatever and, like I said earlier, there are no subplots that would provide more depth to the show and help promote character growth. I think it would work better if a) there were subplots and b) there wasn’t an akuma every episode, maybe just every couple. It gets really boring and repetitive to have half of every episode be basically the same and take up so much space so that there isn’t room to put in real shit and character growth around it.

Regarding Chloe, if they were going to give her a fucking miraculous, they should’ve been planning on using that to kickstart her redemption arc. It makes absolutely no sense to trust her with it and then have her proceed to not change at all. All it does is create a shitty situation where this bitch is now a superhero but she’s still a mega bitch so then when she no longer gets to be a superhero, that adds to her being a miserable bitch. Honestly, it doesn’t even remotely make sense why Marinette gave it to her in the first place and when I look back on it I think it’s literally nothing more than pure pandering in response to what people were posting on Tumblr. It would’ve made a lot more sense for her to have had some level of preliminary character development first before Marinette presented her with the miraculous. Also, maybe it could be after she’d made a bitchy comment about Chloe that then got a response that showed Marinette how she was wrong and made her feel bad and this is her way of making it up to her but, more importantly, showing how she’s getting over her prejudice and now choosing to put faith in Chloe and support the progress she and those around her have witnessed. Then, the miraculous and the responsibilities that go with it (plus Marinette’s inevitable end of episode apology) would catalyze Chloe’s continued growth and development but like the amount of growth she’d have already would be enough for her to act more maturely and keep her identity a secret, which would be A Thingᵗᵐ.

However, along that same vein, I think it’s absurdly stupid how they really went with the “everyone gets a miraculous (ﾉ´ヮ`)ﾉ *:･ﾟ ” thing. It makes sense to bring in one more but not this bullshit where everybody gets one but only sometimes. Bring on one more, permanently, maybe even add another later on (MUCH later on) if necessary but don’t just have this bullshit where Marinette just picks the flavor of the day. Also, her now being the guardian is the genuine worst decision, period. If it’s really that important to boot Wu and bring in a new guardian, have it be someone else like Alya, idk or, even better, a new character entirely. Wu said he had to be trained so I’d like to propose to have it so that he’s been training one for a while but we just don’t see them because since their training is incomplete, Wu can’t trust them with Ladybug and Chat Noir’s secret identities yet. But jesus fuck, Marinette should not be that person. She’s already quite Mary Sue already, she really doesn’t need that and the episode where she’s able to weild all the miraculouses to just throw in more shit about how she’s so good and so powerful and all that stuff.

So, then, there are inconsistencies in the writing, mainly in regards to their secret identities and shipping. In one of the episodes in season three, Master Wu told them they would have to give up their miraculouses if they ever learned each other’s identities, which is incredibly fucking stupid since he then just hands her all the miraculouses and makes her the new guardian. So she’s just supposed to hold that boundary because he told her to when she’s now the one who’d be enforcing it and taking the miraculouses if that ever came to be? So if (when) they learn their identities, she’s supposed to, as the guardian, take Adrien’s and give up her own miraculous but then keep on being the guardian? I think the line from Master Wu was supposed to add drama and suspence but that only works if you don’t go and negate it three seconds later. The other inconsistency that, to me, was glaringly obvious and just as annoying was when Marinette, Adrien, and Kagami went to Andre’s. Back when this guy was first introduced, the way it all worked was that when someone came up, he’d make them an individualized ice cream cone based on the person they love. In season three, all of a sudden, for no reason whatsoever, the fact that it’s three people coming up to get ice cream changes the entire system to some other bullshit all so we can get some over done, in-your-face adrienette vs adrigami tension in which Marinette is a Good Girlᵗᵐ.

Then, lastly, I find it extremely odd how there are practically no background characters and that the few there are tend to be recurring. If there are going to be 77+ episodes of “oh no that dude got akumatized”, it would be prudent to have more throwaway background characters to use for the akumas and then only use the main/recurring ones for that intermittently and only when it adds something to the episode and/or the plot as a whole. The classroom kids shouldn’t be the default, they should be used sparingly and with care. Not to mention how it also would be good to have more background characters just so stuff like scenes where they’re in the hallways in between classes don’t look so awkward because there’s just this one class of kids in this entire school (plus Marco) and literally nobody else. It’s a thing in every film or show that has ever been made but in this one, for no reason, there just are no extras and it feels so awkward at times.

The way that every single episode is set up the same and how there is that lack of background characters to akumatize so there ends up being a bunch of reakumatizations, plus the way that nothing much actually happens, in terms of plot progression, after season one all make it so that the show as a whole after the end of season one feels really stagnant. It’s like Astruc is trying to hold out and wait to drop actual resolution to any of the main plot points until later on but he hasn’t sufficiently constructed other layers to the story, like subplots, to have it still be engaging. In my opinion, MLB could’ve actually been completely tied up with the whole Hawkmoth business back in the season one finale, based on the content of the show, because there’s just not that much there. It makes me mad because the show has a great concept and I love the characters, but it’s just been shit and it’s not getting better.

#miraculous #miraculous ladybug #miraculous adventures of ladybug and chat noir #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #chloe bourgeois #luka couffaine #kagami tsurugi #hawkmoth #gabriel agreste #thomas astruc #anti mlb #anti miraculous #ml critical #mlb critical

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pendingproductivity · 3 years

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2020 READING RECAP!

This year sucked ass in so many ways, but it might be the best year of reading I’ve ever had. I discovered so many new favorites, revisited some old favorites, and even read a few books multiple times. In this post, I’ve listed my top five favorite books from this year in the order that I read them because I don’t think I could possibly rank them against each other. They have all become some of my favorite books of all time. I’ve also included a few honorable mentions which are ranked with my favorite listed first. And lastly, I have two notable rereads of some old favorites. I also added links to each book on goodreads and bookshop so you can easily add anything to your tbr or buy it! This is going to be a long one, so buckle up. Without further ado, here is an overview of the books I read in 2020!

s t a t s :

reading goal: 30

total books read: 31

new (to me) books read: 22

average rating: 4.2/5 stars

t o p f i v e f a v o r i t e s :

Beartown and Us Against You by Fredrik Backman

(Yes, I know I’m kind of cheating by counting this as one book but just roll with me here) Beartown takes place in a tiny community in rural Sweden which is defined by their hockey club. When the junior hockey team has a chance at winning the national championships, the entire town throws their full support behind them. The burden of the pride of their community rests on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys. For one, the pressure boils over and he commits an act of violence that leaves a young girl traumatized, and the entire community divided.

Late one evening toward the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barreled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else's forehead, and pulled the trigger.

This is the story of how we got there.

These two books were downright spectacular. Over the course of this year, I’ve completely fallen in love with Backman’s writing style (we love a good onomatopoeia) but more than anything else I just adore his characters. Each one is multidimensional, and even the most infuriating residents of Beartown have their redeeming qualities. I also love the attention he gives to even the side characters whose motivations shape the story even if they only appear for a few scenes. These are stories about right and wrong, courage and fear, and most of all, humanity itself. I laughed and cried and felt more emotions than I thought was possible. Beartown was amazing, but I actually thought that the sequel, Us Against You, somehow surpassed it, so make sure to read both!! (TW: rape/sexual assault)

goodreads - bookshop (Beartown) goodreads - bookshop (UAY)

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Paul Kalanithi was thirty-six years old and on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training to become a neurosurgeon when he was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. His memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, follows his journey from being a naïve medical student, to a brilliant neurosurgeon at Stanford, to being a cancer patient and a new father confronting his own mortality.

I began to realize that coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.

This memoir caught me completely by surprise. It was assigned reading for an English class and I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it let alone completely reevaluate my perception of the world around me because of it. Kalanithi discusses learning, medicine, life, and death as he seeks to answer the age-old question, “What makes life worth living?” and the unique perspectives that he offered fascinated me. When Breath Becomes Air is an unfinished manuscript, since Kalanithi died in 2015, but the epilogue written by his wife might just be the best part of the whole book. To tell you that I was sobbing while reading it would be an understatement. The reason why this book made this list is because I finished it in March, but I still think about it relatively often. When Breath Becomes Air has left a lasting impact on my life, and I highly recommend it!

goodreads - bookshop

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Evelyn Hugo was a Hollywood legend, but after her sudden departure from show business in the late 80s, she completely fell out of the public gaze. Now she is finally ready to tell the true story about her scandalous and glamorous life and she has specifically chosen Monique Grant, a virtually unknown magazine reporter, for the job. For Monique this exclusive is the opportunity of a lifetime. Evelyn tells her story of ambition, friendship, love, and of course each of her seven husbands. However, it becomes evident that Evelyn’s life has intersected with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.

It’s always been fascinating to me how things can be simultaneously true and false, how people can be good and bad all in one, how someone can love you in a way that is beautifully selfless while serving themselves ruthlessly.

This. Book. It was absolutely captivating. I’m honestly not even sure what to say here without giving too much away. The plot is truly a wild ride as Evelyn leads Monique through the story of her life. There are so many twists and turns: some that I saw coming and others that completely blindsided me. And that not even to mention Evelyn Hugo herself who is one of the strongest, smartest, most compassionate and deeply flawed characters I’ve ever read about. All the characters were complex and layered, but she was really something else. There were so so many emotions and so many tears and I really don’t know what else to say. I’m begging you to read this book; it will blow your mind.

goodreads - bookshop

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Ove is a curmudgeon whose life is turned upside down when a young, vivacious family moves in next door. That’s it. That’s the synopsis.

Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it's often one of the great motivations for living. Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury. Some need its constant presence to even be aware of its antithesis. Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival. We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.

You’ve seen the Pixar movie: grumpy old man meets young person who shows him life is worth living and they become buds etc. etc. Sure, you could essentially boil down A Man Called Ove to that simple plotline but it is so much more than that. It’s heartbreaking and hopeful and you’ll laugh and cry while reading it. This was the most wholesome story I had read in a long time, and I thoroughly enjoyed every last bit of it. I’ve already explained my love of Backman’s unique writing style, but this novel in particular does a beautiful job of tackling deep themes such as grief and purpose with a generous serving of humor. I also just adored the ending. While this book isn’t at all fluffy or entirely lighthearted, it gave me all of he warm fuzzy feelings I was craving. I cannot possibly recommend it enough!

goodreads - bookshop

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters must find wealthy husbands because upon their father’s death, the entirety of his estate will be passed on to a male cousin, leaving them penniless. Conveniently, a wealthy gentleman called Mr. Bingley moves into the neighborhood, bringing along his even wealthier although most unpleasant friend, Mr. Darcy.

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.

I definitely didn’t think that I was going to enjoy this book nearly as much as I did. The story truly is timeless, and I absolutely adored Elizabeth and Darcy. The biggest surprise I had while reading is that the humor is still funny today and of course Lizzy is fucking hilarious. She is confident, principled, and more than happy to roast the shit out of anyone who deserves it. And then there’s the matter of Mr. Darcy being so sweet and kind (after he stops being an asshole of course) and greatly contributing to the unattainable standards I have for men. It was also nice to have a socially awkward male lead, and in many ways I related more to him than to Lizzy. This book is everything I want from a romance novel plus class criticism and feminism and Elizabeth being an absolute badass. Enemies to lovers is my all time favorite romance trope and I loved reading one of the OGs. Also, I’d just like to add that Mary is the most underappreciated character of the whole novel because she’s really just trying her best. Mostly I was just completely impressed with how this novel has withstood the test of time and it has become one of my favorite classics! Please please give this book a chance even if you don’t typically enjoy classic novels!!

goodreads - bookshop - barnes&noble (this is the edition I have and it’s just so gorgeous I had to include it!)

h o n o r a b l e m e n t i o n s :

The Martian by Andy Weir

Mark Watney is one of the first people to ever walk on Mars, and now it seems like he’ll be the fist person to die there. A raging dust storm forced his crew to evacuate without him and he finds himself alone on the red planet with the entire world believing him to be dead. This book just barely missed being one of my top five of the year, but it was absolutely amazing. I love reading about people finding clever solutions to problems and that is basically what this entire story is. I maybe understood half of the technical science jargon if I’m being generous, but the story is plenty enjoyable even without extensive scientific knowledge. I adore Mark’s wit and mindset, and I loved watching him wriggle his way out of impossible situations with the odds completely stacked against him. The Martian is a story of perseverance and humanity, but it’s also absolutely hilarious. I highly recommend this one if you haven’t picked it up!!

goodreads - bookshop

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Shaker-Heights appears to be the perfect place to raise a family. It’s progressive, has low crime rates and is all around an idyllic bubble. This all begins to change when a single mother and her daughter move into town with a disregard for the status quo, and a custody battle erupts, dividing the community. This was a great book that ended up being surprisingly thought provoking, and I particularly enjoyed the novel’s criticism of liberal idealism. The story itself was entertaining and I think it’s definitely worth a read!

goodreads - bookshop

Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Alex Claremont-Diaz is the first son of the United States who finds himself intertwined in a damage control PR stunt with his sworn nemesis, Prince Henry. They have to pretend to be best friends to ensure that their confrontation at the royal wedding doesn’t get in the way of American/British relations. I’m sure you can guess where this is going. This is totally a feel-good love story, but it also finds the time to tackle real issues surrounding politics and societal expectations. I loved this book so much that I read it twice this year (the second time because I was so stressed about the election and I needed to distract myself with the fictional 2020 election that takes place in the novel) and also I’m just a sucker for enemies to lovers. (sidenote: the turkey catastrophe is one of the greatest scenes in literary history and you cannot convince me otherwise) 100% would recommend!

goodreads - bookshop

n o t a b l e r e r e a d s :

The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling

The Jim Dale audiobooks are my ultimate self-care tool when I’m stressed or sad; I just find them to be so comforting and I can’t explain why. Because of this I probably listen to at least one of the books every year, but it’s usually just whichever one I happen to be in the mood for. But it’s been so long since I’ve listened through the entire series, and this year seemed to be the perfect time to do so!

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

This used to be my favorite book of all time. I’m pretty sure I first read it in sixth or seventh grade and I’ve reread it so many times since. I’ve been planning on rereading this book my first year of university for such a long time, and the time finally came! The book especially hit hard this semester because Cath feels disconnected from everyone at school because she doesn’t want to go to parties or make much of an effort to find friends, and because of COVID, I ended up in almost the exact same situation, (except unfortunately my roommate doesn’t have a cute ex-boyfriend who hangs out in our room). This was definitely another comfort read like the HP audiobooks and it made me feel a bit better about being stuck in my dorm room.

If you actually made it to the end of all that, wow, you’re a real one. I hope you got a few new book recs out of this! If you want to see the thirteen other books I read this year, you can check out my 2020 reading challenge. I read so many amazing books this year I had hard time narrowing down my favorites, so there are still plenty more great reads that aren’t included in this post. If for some reason you feel like keeping up with the books I read in 2021, follow my goodreads account for dramatic and ranty book reviews. Happy New Year, and here’s to 2021 being full of wonderful books!

#booklr #reading #reading recap #reading wrap up #mine

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corvixa · 4 years

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This post is chaos

I've been on this website like 5 minutes and have collected 30 whole humans. Hi!

I do not know what lured you to this place, but I will supply pictures of my floofers doofs, random commentary of what polyamory actually looks like (because I know many people have this idea it's wall to wall banging. And I like confusing those people. Not that wall to wall banging poly is bad, I just like contrary tbh.)

Sometimes it's having your partner carve a pentagram in your front lawn. We are going to put a Rowan tree in the middle, so the two of us can dramatically yell 'MOUNTAIN ASH' at the ceiling, teen wolf style. (This is legit the only reason we picked that tree. We do this already at random, but we really wanted the tree to add to the drama) And she's going to put flowers in the sections and make it super pretty. Enter it into the local pretty garden competition because she thought it was funny.

Mostly rambling about my 3 fic universes.

100% serious. That's her, stood in the pentagram where the tree will go. She carved it early, so we literally just have a pentagram carved into our front lawn right now. Pretty sure she'll sit in it at some point sharpening her sycthe on a whetstone.

Also, ransom disibility stuff. Dramatic woman yelling at her body. That dislocates limbs in retaliation.

Now. It's the 'Oh my days did you really force your readers to wait for 300k words for 2 people to meet and leave it on a cliffhanger?' Yes. Yes you did. But, as I got the most ever comments on chapter 19, which introduced me to the sheer joy of having nearly 50 people most comments that were 50% screaming. This is not my fault. I am what you train me to be.

That were once dubbed, the short, the medium and the long.

The 'I wonder what short chapters are like' ... Huh. So that's how you amas 65 chapters, create multiple plot lines, have a section calls 'James Big Fae Adventure' and the incredibly well received "Avengers Recruitment Drive."

Finally. The pure, refined insomnia fic. Written by pure chaos insomnia muse that was a bit too chaos even for Avengers Recruitment Drive. Which, is pretty darn chaotic tbh. It is darkish, morality is an interesting concept that my characters unsubscribed to. It starts with a decapitation in a dystopian world and includes weird facts about my life at random. At some point it has soulmates and softness. Nope, I have no idea how this happened.

When I went to university as a mature student, I found myself, 24 years old, with a group of confused 18 year olds I collected who could not cook. So. I took them home and marched them into my kitchen and made them cook and have a well balanced diet.

The paintball stuff and most of the cooking in Desires also wholesale copied from my life. James Pie is a chocolate biscuit crust, with a chocolate baked custard thingy, a thin layer of chocolate fudge and a thick chocolate ganache with shaved chocolate on top. A friend asked for an "uber mega chocolate dessert" and I took it as a challenge because I have no chill.

I even considered slicing it into triangles, freezing and then dipping into a chocolate shell mix. But even I thing that was one chocolate too far. I was raised by a head chef, I'm a tyrant in the kitchen, my word is law, but I also teach as I go. My nemesis is blunt knives and the danger the pose.

I like to think I'm at least helpfully chaotic when I collect other socially awkward people? I am chaos mom. They also thought I was also 18 and occasionally still find pictures of me and lable them proof I am a demonic Fae creature who does not age. (There is 1 benefit of having Ehlers Danlos and that's the weird velvet soft skin that doesn't wrinkle much, so few people realise I'm 32. 😂)

It it is not fairly obvious by the general strange chaotic nature of this post, this is a 56 hour insomnia Philly. Which really hammers home Desires as 100 hour insomnia Philly.

#writing #insomnia wrote this #easily excitable autistic woman #Fluffy Autistic Woman #I just like typing #if that wasn't obvious #By Frostbitten 😂

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inkrediblegamer · 6 years

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Trash Tour

Prompt: 8- Mischief Night

Trigger Warnings: Police Brutality, Homophobic Cops/Parents, automotive accident (If I’ve missed anything just DM me and I’ll add as appropriate)

Rating- PG13

“So…” began Todd, not really sure where to take his sentence from there. “Why aren’t you allowed out on Halloween?”

This question and all the bullshit that preceded it had taken up most of the morning and half of the day before, after a group of early trick-or-treaters dropped by the apartment wearing toilet paper and ruined sheets a whole day before convention allowed it. Dirk was the one to turn them away in the first place, but what had followed was a full twelve hours of melancholy bitching about ‘the unique and enchanting mystery that only a child, loosed from societal convention, feels when presented with Halloween and its innate call for rebellion.’ There was more to that speech, but Todd and Farah had only caught it in passing.

Dirk sniffed. “Why, Todd? Why aren’t I allowed out on Halloween? For the same reason I’m not allowed to do anything else normal.”

“Ok-” Todd saw where this was going, but before he could interrupt, Dirk interrupted himself by blowing his nose. Todd coughed, tried to keep his lunch down, and put a cursory hand over his mouth to make it look like he was yawning and not grossed the fuck out. Dirk had a cold. This had turned him into a soundboard of wet and slippery punctuation, which came flying out of his nose whenever there was a break in conversation. The tissues were a gift from Farah, who was keeping her distance until the threat was eradicated. Todd couldn’t blame her; before the gifted tissues had been thrust upon him, Dirk had been using any fabric he could get his face close to instead. Including his own sheets.

“As I was saying,” said Dirk as he regained his scant composure. “My whole life I’ve been nothing but a project for people to test and probe and pressure until I spit out something of value. It’s not like I could ever be in a school play, or play Hoop and Stick with my friends, or beg at the homes of strangers asking for loose snacks, some of which can’t be identified.”

Todd took a seat on the couch across from Dirk’s armchair, which was going to have to be thrown away when all this was done. “What the hell are you talking about? I mean, yeah, you can’t do all the dumb shit you missed out on as a kid, but Halloween isn’t just for kids Dirk. There’s parties, movies, I mean some people just spend it vandalising shit, they call it Devil’s Night- you do plenty of that, don’t you?”

Dirk gave Todd what might have been a withering look. It was hard to tell through the swollen rims of his eyelids. “Look, Todd, I know you’re trying to help, but I think we both know I’m not exactly a Party Boy. Man. Party Man. I’m just awkward, wrong, unbefitting. I’ve missed my chance, lost whatever grasp-”

“You might have had on the fleeting and fickle love handle of that sweet lady, Mischief,” finished Todd. “You’ve been over that.” He paused for a moment, mouth open, ready to say his next thing but simultaneously forgetting it and thinking of a brand new, smarter thing that’d be much better to say. “What if we did a case?”

“What?”

It was perfect. “It’s perfect,” he said. “You wanna do something this Halloween? Just do a Dirk thing. Solve a case, follow the seam on the fabric of reality or something. Halloween’s all around us; as long as we’re doing something, that must count, right?”

“Ok…a lot to unpack there Todd but I think the main question I’ve got is, what case? It’s not like there’s anything going on, the detective agency’s been a resounding failure; nothing but missing jewellery and affairs for the last four months-”

“Not sure that counts as a failure but go on.”

“Oh God, the whole thing’s a mess isn’t it?” Dirk threw himself back on the armchair. It was more tissue than leather at this point. When all this was over, Todd was going to have to take it out to the yard and shoot it. He’d lost his concept of ‘all this’ and when it’d be over a long time ago, but he held onto the concept anyway. “My agency, my life, my memories, all worthless drivel ham-fisted together by a-”

“It doesn’t have to be a big case!” said Todd, desperately, “It could be something fun! Something simple, but fun. That’s super Halloweeny. What about, uh…” He looked around so fast he heard the joints pop in his spine. The first thing he caught sight of was, as it happens, something he’d already been meaning to bring up. So, the connection of both that, and the necessity of something bring-up-able made him vault the couch, bang his forehead on the coffee table then flail the scrap of paper in front of his roommate like a chimp presenting its testicles to a tourist. “How about this, huh? Who ever heard of a Trash Tour? No details, no social media hook-up, just an invite from a total stranger. Doesn’t that look shady to you? It’s tonight.”

“Obviously it’s tonight Todd,” Interrupted Dirk, standing up and stuffing the pale cabbage of tissues he’d accumulated bit by bit into his sleeve. He paused for a second, took the flyer and looked it over. Yes, thought Todd to himself.

The flyer as a shitty piece of notebook paper that’d been laminated twice to keep its shittyness intact and was covered in felt-pen doodles that just barely made up the name, location and time of what its distributor was calling a Trash Tour. It was like a logo for a pop-punk band that all wore matching school uniforms and sang about how much they hated their parents. That a tween might have scrawled the logo for in a hurry, maybe in a notebook with anarchy symbols scratched into the back and a B average report card tucked inside. Todd figured that at worst it was a case they could crack. At best it was a party. This thought was interrupted, like a lot of Todd’s other thoughts, by Dirk who on this occasion swept his assistant up in his arms and squeezed. It was a hug. Kind of. Todd was pulling his body back from the closing vice of poorliness that Dirk had recently been reduced to, so it felt more like being restrained by two elastic belts that you weren’t so hot about.

“Thanks Todd.”

“It’s cool,” Todd patted Dirk on the back as lightly as he could. “Go take a shower. We’ll head out at eight.”

“Sure,” Dirk released him and scooted around the couch to the bathroom. “You know Todd,” he said as he reached the door, spinning around and slinging, in a less-great feat of chance, a string of mucus away from his nose, leaving it to dangle off his chin. “I think this is an absolutely marvellous idea. I mean, think about it- worst case scenario is that we end up at some boorish party with some drunk teenagers, get a couple of drinks down us and stagger back shit-faced and covered in sick, and best-case we get caught up in a…a seasonal conspiracy, full of subterfuge and secrets and malevolent organisations, and danger, lots of danger, and we’re in the middle of it all! Dirk on Todd, on another whirlwind adventure!” He disappeared behind the door and blew his nose so hard it shook the fillings in Todd’s back teeth.

Todd smiled to himself, felt around in his pockets for a second for nothing in particular, and took a seat on the couch.

“Fuck.”

The Purple Nurple was like walking into the sock of a college student one week into their first semester. That smell of rum-and-cokes that you mix together with half-price own-brand diet coke of which you use maybe one, two capfuls, then drown the rest in the dregs of the last bottle of rum you could afford, and that you choke down in the hopes it’ll get you too drunk to remember what you had to drink to get drunk in the first place. It was also slippery. Not really sure why. It was like it’d been oiled. Just a little. Basted almost. And the florescent and, of course, purple lighting rebounded off the moisture so it swam over everything in sight, like a layer of film.

A cluster of high-schoolers were gathered at the back. Todd’s spine went up. Little fireworks of anxiety went off on the surface of his skin and dispersed into a thin sweat that let him blend in well with the patrons - the Purple Nurple was super warm inside. Obviously. The embarrassment of it. How old, he thought to himself, do you have to be before groups of high-schoolers stop being so unnerving? You only had so much ammunition against teenagers. And what could you do once your threats had been ignored and they were still making fun of your squeaky voice or undescended testicles? Walk away? Impossible.

Dirk was already sliding over there with the grace of a young Michelle Kwan. Todd managed to follow by steadying himself every couple of steps on the bar-stools and less awake barflies. It was fairly full for a Monday; some bars in the city didn’t even bother opening on this early in the week. But this was a bar in the same sense that Dirk and Todd were a Detective Agency. Meaning, by a fairly loose definition.

The teens (there must be a different word I could use, thought Todd) were deep in conversation, backs to the rest of the bar and to Dirk. All of them were wearing white T-shirts with Trash Tour drawn on them in the same dreadful handwriting, which was the only identifier they’d bothered with. No sign or anything. There were four of them in total; one with a bomber jacket and a lit cigarette behind his ear, fizzling away unsmoked. He had the build of an athlete, maybe baseball, and he was dreamy-ish. Todd could admit that. The kid across from him was sporting a mullet and had cut the sleeves cut off his shirt, so you could tell he was…cool? Was that the look he was going for? The main thing Todd took away from the look was that it was halfway between David Bowie and a high-school bully from an eighties movie. The kind of kid who might set a nerd’s hair on fire, instead of the refined emotional bullying Todd was familiar with. The other two were your average braindead background goons. The kind of kids who stand by and laugh but don’t join in when the aforementioned testicles are getting stomped, in case they get expelled. Thing One and Thing Two, Todd would call them. And he’d only feel a little mean about it later.

“Excuuuuse me,” started Dirk, leaning over their conversation. “Would you be here for the Trash Tour?”

“Read the T-Shirt, buddy.” answered Bomber Jacket Kid. His voice was dripping with a New York accent that could well have been fake. “You wanna come wit?”

“What is that Trash Tour, for starters?” said Todd, presenting what he assumed to be their flyer. “Before we say yes, can we at least find out what this whole thing’s about?”

“Well why would you wanna know something like that, pal?” Inquired the Mullet. “Where’s your sense of mystery?”

“Dunno. Probably got kidnapped, cut to pieces or used in a satanic ritual by one of the other super trustworthy breakfast club rejects that hang out here. What’s the Tour about?”

Bomber and Mullet looked at each other for a sec, didn’t change their expressions in any way. Then Bomber said, “We lead the tour around town every year. Bustin’ up mailboxes, scaring kiddies, maybe egg a couple houses…you know. Halloween stuff.”

“Every year?” asked Dirk

“Yeah,”

“So, every Halloween, the four of you just…go house to house in Springsborough and wreak havoc until…?”

Mullet sighed, “until the cops show up, stupid. Or till we get bored and go home. It’s tradition. Can’t have Halloween without somethin’ scary, otherwise it’s no different than…what was it you said earlier?” he gestured at Thing One.

“Easter,” Thing One belched.

“Easter, that’s it. Otherwise it’s the same as Easter, right? No presents, no time off, just candy, and kids dressed like dickheads.”

Todd was just about ready to leave. “Ok, I think we’re gonna-”

“Sign us up,” said Dirk, before the order could be given. “I’ve always wanted to do something like this.” He screeched a barstool over to the table and perched himself like a canary among them, beckoning for Todd to do the same.

“Seriously?” Todd asked. Dirk was a glass vase full of bird bones compared to these kids, “I didn’t think-”

“Oh, come on, Todd, you know I don’t respect the establishment. In fact, I think I was just saying this morning, there’s nothing better for getting rid of a bad mood like destroying the private possessions of people you don’t even know. I mean, what idiots, right?” he raised his eyebrows at Bomber, “working their whole lives just for a couple of trinkets that can be smashed to pieces in just one swoop. What sheep, am I right?” He was talking to Bomber, but his eyes kept flicking up to Todd at intervals, as if he was trying to say something in Morse code.

And so, he took a seat, and agreed. No reason not to, right?

The van swerved around a trail of pre-schoolers and Todd felt his heart and stomach smash into each other as abject horror shrivelled up any thinking power he might have used to get himself out of here. They missed the huddle by a hair and before anyone had time to look out the window (where they would have seen unscathed but horrified children crying through their parents’ painstakingly rendered face-paints and clinging to their glow-stick-covered crossing guard), they were already too far away to see anything but the vapor trail off the van’s shitty engine.

“This isn’t very holistic,” whispered Dirk from behind him. They were standing up, bracing themselves in the back-corner of the van which was absolutely not theirs. It also didn’t have any seats except for in the front leaving Dirk Todd, and the two Things to fend for themselves as far as surviving Mullet’s driving went.

“In my defence,” Todd whispered back. “things were going pretty well till we hit that mailbox.” The ‘we’ in that sentence was more of a courtesy, a shared responsibility for Bomber, who was leaning out of the window with a golf club which he’d so far managed to connect to three streetlamps, six passing cars and one mailbox, the mailbox that started it all. ‘It all’ meaning the terrified screeching away from said mailbox and down every side street and wide-ish alley that Mullet could make out with the one good headlight the van had left. Bomber hadn’t been too bothered and was still racking up a score with his club, but Mullet had been silent for what felt like an hour. Probably more like fifteen minutes, in the real world where time moved properly. Somewhere back there, the family of the newly deceased mailbox were probably calling the cops and reciting the plates, giving descriptions and all that jazz. The van would flag up as stolen and before nine-thirty this would be a high-speed chase.

“Whooo!” howled Bomber, clipping the sign off a passing pizza delivery car. “Anyone else want a turn?” he swung the club toward Todd and Dirk so fast it cut the air in two, and in the teensy puff of wind it gave as it came to a halt in front of him, Todd caught a noseful of smoke and B-O.

“I’m good,” he said.

“Very much ok here,” agreed Dirk. He waited for Bomber to turn back. “What the fucking hell did you think you were doing!” he whispered at Todd. “we’re going to be arrested, Todd. If we don’t get run off the road and explode into a ball of fire, that is. Oh, and I do very much love the company too. Do you know, Jeremy down there has a wallet in his pocket that’s just brimming with pictures of human eyes? Just their eyes.”

Mullet revved the engine and they shot forward a little faster. Todd’s feet slipped, and it was a couple of minutes before he could answer, bracing himself against Dirk and vice versa to untangle their legs. “Hey, you were the one who was so hot about…wait, really?”

“What?”

Todd jerked his head toward Thing Two, who was glowering at something on his phone. “Does that guy really just have…human eyes, in his wallet.”

“Of course not, Todd,” said Dirk. “He does.” He gestured at Thing One. Thing One had his hands deep enough in his pockets to make Todd feel uncomfortable looking.

“Whatever. You’re the one who got all excited about this when you saw the flyer Dirk. I just wanted to do something nice for you.”

“Well-” They both heard it at once. “Fuck.”

“Fuck” agreed Todd.

“It’s the Pigs,” yelled Bomber, pulling his head back in and hucking the club over his shoulder. It clanged against the uncarpeted floor and the sound. Was. Awful. Blue and red lights strobed in through the windows and instinctively both detectives scrunched themselves down to sit on the floor. Thing Two had already appropriated the club, sadly. Wouldn’t hurt to have a weapon, Todd thought to himself. He didn’t really know who he expected to hit with it.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” said Mullet. His voice didn’t inspire confidence. For someone who claimed to do this once a year, he didn’t seem too cosy with the idea of cops tailing him. That said, neither was Todd, and he’d been one for a little while.

“Chill, man,” drawled Bomber, patting his friend on the shoulder. “Jus’ drive, let me take care of the fuzz.”

“The fuzz?” Todd whispered. Dirk didn’t answer. He also hadn’t jumped into his routine of freaking the fuck out, even though they were pretty obviously boned. This was starting to smell an awful lot like a secret-keeping type situation. Dirk couldn’t usually stay quiet for this long unless he was either hiding something or having some kind of existential crisis. Suppose it could be the latter, but for all their maniacal driving you had to admit that criminal damage and a police car chase was enough to make you feel alive.

The van squealed round a tight bend and slowed down for such a painful couple of seconds that Todd thought he might pass out. The lights got brighter, the sirens crept in behind them, so close to the door that they rattled with the vibrations off the cop car’s bumper. Or maybe Dirk was just shivering.

“To the driver of the silver minivan, reduce speed and pull over at the side of the road,” the nearing cop cars whined. Really whined, actually, absolutely squealing with feedback. Like, Todd wouldn’t have been surprised if there were a kid in the cop’s back seat with a slide whistle, being an absolute shit while his mom or dad tried to talk down six drunk joyriders. Except they weren’t even drunk. That sucked.

The siren wafted away from the back door and toward the side, Bomber’s side, then started closing in. Slowly but definitely Todd could feel the cars make contact, feel the shudder of two metal bodies shagging against each other, pushing the van to the side. Without a word Thing Two passed the club up to Bomber. You can guess what he did. But you don’t have to, because Todd watched this insane and Godless fucker lean out of the window wielding the club, and while his position didn’t let him witness it, the sudden and absolute disappearance of the red-and-blue haze that’d settled around them told Todd enough. In brief, they were all going to fucking jail.

Two, three smashes later, Bomber leaned back in. Not a hair out of place. Not a sweat stain or flush or look of unease. He chucked the club back at the congregation, then rested a hand on Mullet’s shoulder. Mullet took a hand off the steering wheel, reached up, squeezed, then floored it. Hard enough that Todd felt his legs go out from under him and the sudden but impressive pain of the metal doors colliding with his skull.

Todd woke up thirty seconds later. Dirk was holding his head in his lap, staring down, teary and not at all phlegmy, which was a little weird. Probably adrenaline.

“You’re ok,” said Drik. “thank God.” His face brightened up a fraction. You probably wouldn’t have noticed it if he wasn’t so miserable already.

“Don’t thank me yet,” mumbled Todd, sitting up. He tried to find something else to focus on except the ringing-car-alarm like pain shooting off the back of his head. “wait,” he paused. The air was deader than before. Not the absolute silence you’d get after a shooting or a particularly cutting remark at a family reunion. More like when you’re in a crowd and you can hear someone in trouble, but you can’t see through all the people or make out what they’re saying, yet you know there’s danger somewhere under all that noise. A rumbling, yet consciously dire silence. “where are the cops?” the penny finally dropped.

Dirk shrugged. “Gone.”

“Fuckin’ pigs,” spat Bomber’s New York drawl from the front seat. His hand was sloping down Mullet’s arm now, though both of Mullet’s were back on the wheel. “Every year. Pussies, all of them. Right Grish?” he elbowed Mullet, who was apparently called Grish but who Todd was going to keep calling Mullet because he had so this far and didn’t want to confuse himself.

“Right Scott,” Mullet yelped back at Bomber, to whom Todd was going to apply the same logic.

“Where are we going guys?” piped Todd. “we must be out of town by now.”

Bomber called back over his shoulder. “Aw, come on! Where’s your sense of mystery?”

“Why do you keep saying that?” asked Dirk.

“What do you mean?” asked Todd, sitting up. The last time he’d heard that he’d gone from accessory to accomplice, holding back the loose wires while Mullet hotwired the tin mess they were currently stealing. “this is the Trash Tour, right? There’s nothing left to trash.”

“Look man,” Bomber leaned around his seat to face them. He was classically handsome, you might say. Blond hair flexing its even waves across the top of his head. Strong jaw. Eyes that made you feel inclined to trust him- dreamy was the right word. “Haven’t you ever wondered what’s beyond this place? This shitty little borough?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” asked Todd. “you can take a drive out of town any day of the week, that doesn’t mean you’ve gotta destroy half the neighbourhood and have the cops chase you out!”

“I don’t mean just visiting the next town. I mean leaving. I mean startin’ up a new life. No parents, no school, no fuckin’ judgemental pricks to…to judge you.”

“So? Go, move! You’re what, seventeen? Eighteen? Once you graduate in a couple months-”

“I’m sixteen,” said Mullet.

“Fifteen,” said Bomber, “we grow ‘em tall.”

“Ok, so you’re a little young,” Todd tried to butt his head through the interruption and get to his damn point. “It doesn’t matter, you’ll be out in a couple of years. You don’t have to run away.”

“Or do you?” interjected Dirk. “what’s happening here?” there was a pang in the way he asked. A genuity that made Todd stop, turn and look at him. It occurred to Todd that something about running away from home might resonate with someone who’s spent his whole life being pursued. Just like Dirk to have a moment of comradery with the people who were becoming, metre by metre, their kidnappers.

Now the silence was absolute. Todd could hear the shudder of Mullet’s breathing, and the air around Bomber hardened till you could almost see it. Really. Todd could swear he saw the streetlamps outside bouncing off it.

“None of your fuckin’ business,” said Bomber finally, turning back around in his seat.”

Thing one and Thing two had been painfully silent for this. Both were staring into their phones, like they were in a totally different room. Car. Car room. A separate garage altogether.

The engine took over the talking for a while after that. When there was enough noise to cover his whisper, Todd grabbed Dirk by the front of his shirt and dragged his face close to his own. “Tell me.”

“Sorry?”

“You should be. You’re hiding something from me. Again.”

Dirk sighed some very not healthy breath into Todd’s face. “Yes. Sorry, Todd. It’s just…”

“What?”

“I didn’t think you’d believe me.”

“We travelled in time together,” Todd despair-chuckled. “try me.”

Dirk seemed to chew the idea for a second, then took the leap and pointed a finger at Bomber, who was, again, holding Mullet’s shoulder. His finger was tracing a circle around a cluster of moles that poked out from under the jaggedly cut edges of Mullet’s sleeves.

“I think they’re ghosts.”

Fuck. Todd had to concede, that was one of the less difficult to accept things he’d had to consider in the last year or two. So, his reaction was just fuck. Because, appropriate to the season, it was kind of spooky. Very spooky, in fact. “What makes you think that?”

“Well…not very much, really. More like a feeling. A hunch. A solid hunch.”

“Well could you try to push it one way or the other?” said Todd. “there’s kind of a big difference between ‘definitely dead’ and ‘alive and capable of dying if Todd has to cave their heads in to escape whatever kidnapping bullshit they’ve dragged him into.”

“Hm.”

“Well?”

“It’s just-”

The sirens howled in through the windows like water flooding through the holes in a sinking cruise liner. They filled Todd’s ears and washed out Dirk’s mouth. Anything he was saying or tried to say just spurted out as water of another temperature, a cup of tea plinking into the ocean.

“PIGS!” screamed Bomber, sweeping up his club. The van slammed forward, but not fast enough. The sirens were scraping off the back of the van, Dirk’s head was backlit by the runoff of the headlights just outside the doors. If they turned the noise off, you might have been able to hear the cop car licking its lips over the tasty little piece it was about to impound.

Mullet started crying. It took Todd a second to find the noise, and he when he did he felt his heart sink and crack a little at the same time. He’s only sixteen, Todd thought to himself. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. This kid was really, really scared.

“Mu-Grish?” Todd called. “you ok man?”

Bomber looked back in and his own face fell, then screwed up into a red tissue, eyes disappearing behind his purpling cheeks. “No! Not this year, come on! It’s ok.” He was not an attractive crier.

“I’m sorry, Scott,” said Mullet. “I’m sorry, I screwed up again, I grabbed the wrong car and-” the car shunted to the left and all six joyriders flew a foot over. Everyone in the back wound up crushed against the side where they could hear the wheels roll off asphalt and onto the cushioned bounce of grass, smell the balm of damp earth as it broke under their tires. By the time Todd had righted himself Mullet and Bomber were already upright again and screaming at each other, Mullet squeezing words in between wails like the intercom voice that cuts in every few seconds during a fire alarm, Scott yelling over him.

“Not again,” yelled Bomber over the sound of someone’s bumper, probably theirs, being crushed under the wheels. “We can’t do it again. Keep driving, you can do it, I’ll-”

“I’m so-ho-ho-ry,”

“Don’t be sorry! Just drive!”

“I can’t Scott, we’re gonna die if we-”

“No, we’re not! They chase us every year, baby it’s ok,”

“We’re gonna die, we’re gonna,”

“Stop!”

“We, we need to-”

Thing One and Two were still just. Sitting there. Still looking at their phones, almost indistinguishable from each other.

“What the fuck is going on!” screamed Todd, right before the van flipped.

It was mostly silence after that.

Until it wasn’t. Todd woke up in the sand, which was already a sentence he hadn’t expected to hear- or think- that day. It was a sandbox, he realised, when his hand grazed the faded redwood border that was serving as poor boundary between the grass and the teensy desert.

“Dirk?” he mumbled through a mouthful of what he hoped was his own blood.

“…Here,” wheezed the unmistakably sorry-for-himself voice, from not too far away.

“You ok?”

“Well…I’m not dead, I think.”

They could work with that. “Dirk,” Todd said, rolling over and beginning the long journey to sit up. All his bones felt like they’d been hollowed out. “all things considered I should tell you, I only tried to make this a case so you’d stop bumming me out and…you know…blowing your nose on my stuff. I, uh, wasn’t that interested in a case. I just wanted a simple Halloween.”

“You did?”

Oh no. “Uh…yeah.” Todd angled his head and found Dirk, not two feet away, draped over the seat of a swing like a cardigan left by someone who didn’t want to get their clothes dirty from what was, markedly, a pretty shitty swing. Bruises galore, but in one piece. Still, his face was wilting. “Figured…I mean, we just almost died, so, you know.”

“And otherwise you would have just, what? Let me believe that you, Todd, my best friend, wanted to give me a real Halloween to make up for everything I’ve missed?”

“Look, Dirk, I-”

Two cop cars screeched to a halt just inches away from Todd’s face and scared the bejesus out of him. Literally. As in, the bejesus lost its shit and flew away.. Two doors opened and slammed. He didn’t get to look up in time to see their face, but a well built set of legs and smart black shoes stomped over to him and yanked the scruff of his shirt forward hard enough to drag the rest of Todd with it. He landed a good three or four feet away on damp grass, where the van groaned on its side nearby. He’d been thinking that they’d just rolled it, nothing too major if you don’t have four unbelted people in the back, but no; the whole thing was totalled. The windscreen had sneezed its fragments in a wide sharp circle in the grass, where the busted headlights lit them up like those lights you see outside movie premiers. You know the ones. The hood was coughing and smoking and stunk like a gas station; the rest was all dents, one door was torn right off and littering the jungle gym all the way across the park. Mullet, Scott and the Things were on the ground not far from Todd, looking roughed up but intact. Mullet was still crying. Scott had rolled onto his back and was saying something to the cop standing beside him that needed a lot of expletives to express. She had her gun pointed right between his eyes.

It was a revolver. Which in and of itself wasn’t too much of a big deal, but it made Todd notice her outfit. The long sleeves on the coat, the shape of the hat, the whistle that dangled down her chest like the crucifix on a Catholic. That outfit was old. Real old. And her hair too, it was styled in this neat peroxide curve you’d feel anxious lighting a match near.

Drik thudded passive aggressively into the dirt beside Todd. He didn’t even bother to say ‘ow’.

“Dirk, I think you’re right- I don’t think these people are…real.”

“Hm.”

“Oh, come on. Are you really gonna ignore me at a time like this?” Todd’s question answered itself, sort of. A boot struck the side of his head so hard it knocked the thoughts right out onto the grass. There they were, twinkling and dribbling off the blades and oh no, wait, that was blood. His ear was bleeding. “Ow.”

“You hayve the right to remayn silent.” Said the cop in just barely recognisable southern dialect.

“No,” whispered Dirk. “Though I am very angry with you.”

The cop with her gun on Scott made a sudden move and Mullet yelped. But she was just readjusting her pants, which were a size or two too big. Then she started helping Thing One to his feet.

“What the fuck?” asked Todd, bracing himself for another kick. When it didn’t come, he continued. “why are you letting him go?”

The lady cop ignored him and started helping up Thing Two.

“Thaynks for the help boys.” She said, shaking Thing One’s hand. It was a pretty one-sided engagement given how engrossed he wasn’t in his surroundings. “Yewe helped us tayke down two dayngerous perverts tonite.”

“Indeed they did. We’ll make sure these two end up where they belong boys, you get yerselves home.” Added the other one, stepping over and shaking Thing Two’s hand, unfazed by how deep in his pocket it’d been before.

When did they cuff me? Todd wondered suddenly. He didn’t remember, but they were there. Real as anything, cutting into his wrists.

“Fuck you,” spat Scott. His eyes were bloodshot and his jacket was in tatters around his elbows, but somehow the waves in his hair just kept on waving. They didn’t have a rock to break against. “fuck both of you. Every fuckin’ year, every fuckin’ year, don’t you ever get bored? What entertainment can you possibly get out of it all? Aren’t you tired of this?”

“No,” Thing Two’s voice boomed low. Lower than you’d think. Then he was gone. Thing One, too. Scott thrashed on the ground like a worm on the end of a hook, overlooking the bottomless ocean.

Grish was quiet. On his side now, watching Scott wriggling around in the mud. His face was all busted up, his nose was only just about intact, and the side of his head was matted with already crusty blood. He had the beginnings of a shiner. He was almost serene, though. Just observing the events in front of him, like he wasn’t really there at all. Like it was all happening to someone else. But then the lady cop grabbed him by, you guessed it, the scruff of his neck, and all the panic from earlier came flooding back. She dragged him on his belly into the middle ground between Scott and Todd pushed a boot down on the kid’s back and pointed her gun at his head. Todd felt cold. He could feel his pupils dilating, feel the blood leave his vitals. He was panicking. Mortally. Fuck.

“Mom, no! Please, God, no.” cried Scott.

Oh.

“Not now, huney,” she said over her shoulder, cool as you please. “momma’s busy.”

“Go fuck yourself, let him go. Why are you doing this?”

“You’re a good boy Scottie.”

“What?”

“You’re a good boy and I’m not gonna let you get all mixed up with a kid like this. He’s confused you, baby don’t you see that?” she wasn’t looking at him, just straight staring at the back of Grish’s head. “you don’t wanna abandon everyone you love just to…live in sin with this goddamn criminal, do you?”

“Yeah, I fuckin’ do, ma’. I wanna do that more than any of the boring shit you’ve forced me to do in the last fifteen goddamn years.”

I think I’m getting the picture. That was a new feeling for Todd, really. He tried to catch a glimpse of Dirk’s face to see if he was feeling it too, that feeling like a load of joints are locking into place and the mechanism’s starting to turn, but he couldn’t angle his head right. The gun cocked and the tension in the air solidified.

“You don’t mean that baby,” said the cop. “you don’t wanna leave us. Me an’ Officer Craig here-”

Grish’s voice sounded like it’d aged about forty years. “Officer Craig’s gonna kill your son when you’re done with me.” he tilted his head toward the cop standing behind Scott. “Ain’t ya, dad?”

“You ain’t no son of mine.” He said, not missing a beat. “You got me an’ this good woman sneakin’ around like common criminals tryna catch you two while we still cayun. ‘fore you can turn her son into some no good-”

“He’s gonna kill Scott the minute you put that bullet in my head Ma’m. Just wants himself some leverage, see? So you don’t chicken out and call-”

“Call who, boy?” Snapped the officer known as Craig. “Who is she gonna call, exactly?”

There was a silence. You could almost feel the energy seep out of the grass, feel the wind stop and freeze in place in a filmy layer over everything that made it a little slippery. Like in the Purple Nurple. Hear the sound of children playing far away getting dimmer, till you were sure you were imagining it. The sound of a fleeting thing getting farther and farther out of reach.

“Wait,” said Todd. He didn’t actually mean to say it but said it anyway. He rolled onto his back and managed enough of a sit-up to roll his weight onto his feet and stand up. It hurt, unsurprisingly.

“You could do that all this time?” asked Dirk.

“Shut up, not important.” Replied Todd, realising that the other four participants in what was the least cool Halloween ever were staring at him with heightening mania. “I just- I wanna make sure I’ve got this straight. You two are in love, right? Scott and Grish?”

“I wouldn’t use those terms,” huffed the lady cop.

“Well I would, and I didn’t ask you, did I? Lady? No? Then Scott, Grish, you’re in love, right?”

“Yeah,” said Grish. “I love ‘im.’

Scott nodded. “Yeah.”

“And you two are in some kind of… I wanna say a relationship?” Todd nodded at Craig “But you’re also in a murder pact where you’re going to- and I really do want to get this part correct, because by God is it stupid, murder this guy’s sixteen year old son, to try and stop them from being together?”

“I love her with all mah heart,” Said Craig. “I’d hayte for such a thing to happen ‘cause of my inability to teach my son the right moral character.”

“How does that even work?” said Todd. The mechanism in his head was churning along now, and he was slowly realising that it was just…a really stupid mechanism. “they were already running away. You were never going to see either of them again! What, lady? Did you think your son was just going to settle back in at home, meet a nice sorority girl and get over this like a bad cold? That he was what, going to thank you? Look at him!”

“My boy is sick, I know what he-”

“Look at him!” Todd was on the wrong side of her to see how exactly she interpreted that order. But Scott’s face was hardened into stone and he returned her gaze with nothing, admirably, nothing but neutral certainty. “You’re sick, Lady” Todd continued. “And what about you, Grish’s dad? Whatever your name is.” Todd walked a little ways towards him then stopped abruptly as his pistol rose, stopping just at the right height to pop Todd in the forehead if he felt like it.

“You think that’s the first time I’ve had a gun pointed at me, huh? What, you’re planning to kill three people in one night and just wake up tomorrow like nothing’s changed? If you care so much about Scott, if all you wanna do is save him from your own goddamn son- by the way, really shitty job as far as dads go- then why did you run him off the road? They both could have died, it’s pure luck they didn’t.”

“I’ve been on the force for twenty five years boy,” said Grish’s dad. “I know how to neutralise a moving target so that-”

“Whatever, man. You guessed. You can’t perfectly calculate a car accident, you’re not a genius. Clearly. And even if you did, why are you getting her to shoot your own son? If he’s such a big problem to you, why aren’t you the one taking care of it?”

There was a beat. One too many.

“I wanted to-”

“You really are going to kill Scott, aren’t you, Craig?” accused Todd. His heart was, as far as he could feel at the moment, somewhere around his ears. It was a miracle he could hear enough of Dirk’s voice to jump at the sound of it.

“You already have.” Dirk was standing just next to Todd, grass-stained and smelling just a little of dog shit. He regarded Todd. “I…you know, stood up.”

Todd’s brain-type machine whirred a little faster and his face lifted. “Right?”

“I didn’t think you’d catch up so soon, Todd,” said Dirk, his narrow features all flared and aquiver with excitement. He was lighting back up. “I mean, usually I’m the one with all the theories and conjectures and you kind of lag behind broodingly, but this time around you’ve kept in step pretty well.”

“Dirk, uh, you might want to start explaining,” said Todd, who could feel the adrenaline starting to subside within himself. Already he was struggling to make eye contact with Craig’s gun like he could before.

“Oh yeah. Right, so, this has all been happening year after year for, judging by your clothes, about fifty to sixty years.”

“Fifty four,” groaned Grish.

“Thank you. You see, this has already happened. This all went down fifty four years ago, in the mid-sixties. It seems like Grish and Scott, who must have been polar opposites in the schoolyard, fell in love after being thrust together by their parents’ lukewarm romantic fling.”

Todd chimed in, “but your parents are homophobic dickbags. They freaked out, and Grish’s dad, being a violent sixties cop, decides it’s better to kill the both of you. He convinces Grish’s mom to be his accomplice to make sure she doesn’t change her mind and turn him in, but you two catch wind of the whole deal and try to escape during Halloween night, when cops are the busiest.”

“But there was a betrayal,” added Dirk, pointing at the space where the Things had been. “two friends who asked to come with you in your escape from Springsborough, were actually homophobic dickbags themselves, and tipped off your parents with all the details. They hunted you down to this very spot.”

“Yes.” Snapped Scott, the only party still on the ground thanks to a helpful boot planted by Craig. “We know. Who do you think you’re explaining this to for Christ’s sakes?”

Ah. The realisation seemed to bounce off of Todd’s chest like a hard-thrown volleyball, leaving behind it a purple bruise that he recognised as good old fashioned shame. They’d gotten too carried away. The emotional charge of the situation had kind of evaded him until then; he’d been elevated, looking down at a map where all the lines were intersecting for the first time in his life. But these were two kids, two real kids. Who died. Unfairly, and alone. With nobody to protect them. There was a pause, and in it the two detectives felt the weight of the night pressing down on all of them like a smothering, spectral hand.

Todd swallowed, “Sorry. Craig, Scott’s mom? This has already happened. Fifty-four times over. The, the pain you two caused your children on Halloween all those years ago, the hatred and the injustice and the uh, the anguish of it all, it’s kept all of you trapped here. You’re ghosts. Repeating the same night, once a year and every year. Your children try to escape from you, and every year their friends betray them. Every year you put them through this. And it doesn’t change a thing. I mean, like, they still love each other, they still try to escape, and they still stick by one another right until the very end.”

“You’re not fixing anything,” agreed Dirk. “think about it. Do you remember what you did on November first last year?”

“Don’t you talk to her,” rumbled Craig.

Scott’s mom frowned. “We always visit my mother’s, to help clean up. She has a party, every year like clockwork.”

“That’s your tradition,” said Todd. “but what happened last year? In twenty-seventeen? What do you remember about actually being there?”

“I remember, she…” a hard to decipher look came over her face. “she made us dinner, pork. But no, we don’t eat pork anymore since I got…so would it have been turkey? But she doesn’t have an oven. Or does she, when did she move into the Home? But if she was in the Home, how could we have…” She was mumbling to herself now, like how a sleep-talker might, bubbling syllables off her lips and floating them off to the rest of the group.

“You haven’t been in decades,” said Todd. “all this time, you’ve been under this…this delusion that you’re doing something important. But it’s all futile, it’s all pointless. Your sons are gay. They love each other. All you’ve ever done is cause them pain for it. You haven’t fixed them, you can’t fix them, there’s nothing wrong with them. They’re doing what they’re supposed to do. And if you thought you were saving them from some eternal damnation, looks like you fucked that up too.”

“Irene don’t listen to ‘im,” said Craig, cocking his gun. “he jus’ wants ta confuse you.”

Irene was starting to disintegrate. Trembling like a small dog afraid of the fireworks.

“Irene, honey, let’s just end this an’”

“Mom,” said Scott, beginning to struggle against Craig’s boot, trying to get some ground towards his mother. “Please. They’re tellin’ the truth. This happens every year. What happened to you? What happened to Nina and Jay after I was gone? Did they even miss me? I wanna be with them, don’t you? And I wanna be with the man I love.”

“A-all you have to do it drop the gun, Irene,” said Grish, making an effort to roll over. She hopped back and pointed her gun back down at him and you could feel everyone’s backs being drawn up, like pulling a loose thread on a shirt and watching the cloth gather behind it. “I-I love your son. I love him more than anything else in the world. Just like you do, right? I’ve seen you do this over and over again, and it doesn’t work. My dad doesn’t even wanna save us. Not even you. He just wants us gone.”

“Irene,” said Dirk. The woman looked dead at him, almost as if she hadn’t really noticed him before. It was like a wave of electricity had briefly, but markedly, rippled through her body. “The only way to stop all this, the only way to fix anything at this point, is to stop. Put the gun down.”

“Don’t you tell her what to do,” snapped Craig, lifting his gun to Dirk. “She ain’t your wife.”

“She ain’t yours either, you two-timin’ fuck,” said Scott.

“What?” said Irene, coming back to herself a little.

Craig pointed his gun Scott’s head.

Irene yelped and turned hers on Grish, “if you touch my baby I’ll blow his head clean-”

Todd and Dirk, deciding that things had escalated quite enough at this point, simultaneously and in a great feat of holistic initiative-taking, did something inadvisable to most people. Which was to run headlong, arms tied behind their backs, at two armed ghosts.

I can’t let this happen, not again, thought Todd to himself. And besides, if these two are ghosts, maybe their bullets are too.

Don’t shoot don’t shoot don’t shoot! thought Dirk urgently and without much more elaboration.

Irene flailed around to see Todd coming at her, and her gun went off with its end pointed at his stomach. A moment later he smacked into her, tripped over Grish and both fell to the ground to join him among the discarded cigarette butts and fox shit.

Dirk flew into Craig, bounced right back again, and landed flat on his back. Then Craig shot him in the kneecap.

Craig chose this moment to turn his gun back on Scott but caught a bullet in the side of his own head before he could so much as cock it. He fell to the ground like deflating blimp, one limb at a time then finally sagging into himself and out of thin air. Irene lowered her still smoking gun, then quickly did the same.

Todd quickly tried to remember if he’d been shot before. He didn’t think so, and thus decided the best way forward was to scream in pain while clutching at his stomach until someone who had been shot before told him what to do. As such, he wasn’t lucid enough to see Grish and Scott, free from the spectral handcuffs that had, like their owners, disappeared into the mist, hold each other. Scott kissed Grish on the forehead, the lips, the neck, anywhere that remained within a PG 13 rating. Grish just sort of held Scott’s face in his hands whenever he could. Felt it. Committed the lines to memory. It was a lovely scene that neither detective got to see very well. Dirk was too busy trying to hold his kneecap together which was just as impossible and painful as it sounds.

“Wait,” said Grish, pulling his face out of Scott’s range. “we should probably…yeah.” He waved a hand at Todd, and just like that the pain stopped.

“Oh shit, you’re right.” Said Scott, doing the same in Dirk’s general direction. The sensation of his kneecap reassembling itself was, in a word, shite. But it was over quickly and immediately began to disappear into the past, so that was something. The respective bullets dropped out of each boy’s hand and into the damp grass, to be found later and eaten by whatever was stupid enough to eat them.

“That was incredibly stupid,” said Grish, not unkindly. “you both could have died.”

Scott couldn’t stop smiling. It was an earnest smile too. A wedding day, first baby born, random act of kindness smile. “Thank you. Nobody’s ever done that for us before.”

“We’re not the first people, then?” asked Dirk, lending some weight to his fresh kneecap and turning significantly less pale when it didn’t immediately shatter. “you’ve invited other people onto the…trash tour?”

Scott turned pink. “Uh…yeah, sorry. I didn’t, uh. I just…”

“We just wanted it to end,” said Grish. “We didn’t want anyone to get hurt. This happens every year, you know? Always the same. We hoped that if we got some more people involved that something might change, and it did. You changed it. Thank you.”

“In my defence, I thought they’d be ghost bullets,” confessed Todd, who was still groaning a bit and hobbling over to them in only slightly exaggerated discomfort. “But it’s worth it.”

“How many came before us then?” asked Dirk, “and what about those two guys in the van, the…?” he jutted his jaw forward and lowered his brow like a Neanderthal.

“When we decided to run away from home, they asked to come with us,” said Scott. “they were in the next year up at high school. Carlos and…what was it, Grish?”

“Gary,”

“Stupid name. Anyway, they told us they were together and that they wanted to get out of town too. I mean, maybe they really did. But either way that didn’t stop them from spillin’ everything to our parents the night before. Maybe my dad was blackmailin’ them.”

“Maybe,” agreed Grish. “But that was a long time ago. After the first couple of times we knew that they’d always do the same thing, and after that there were no surprises. And they just turned into these pieces of furniture, you know?”

“You two were maybe the tenth group we convinced to join the tour. It’s hard to get the word out when you’re a spectre and stuff. Even then, most people just ditched out when the cops came or when we started smashin’ stuff. One got all the way to the park but ditched when the cops showed up, had weed on him or somethin’,” Scott shook his head. “Pussy.”

“What happens now?” asked Todd. He was thinking about all the questions he desperately wanted to ask, but all of them seemed inappropriate. Asking these two what it was like to die felt similar to asking a stab victim about their attacker’s star sign.

Grish put an arm around Scott’s shoulders. Scott was about half a foot taller than him, but he squeezed Grish’s hand and held him back all the same. “Dunno. We’ve never got this far before. Could be another cycle next year. Could not.”

“After all this effort?” said Dirk. “No. Absolutely not.” He fumbled around in his back pocket and pulled out a folded square of plastic. Unfolded, it exposed the Trash Tour logo and the ruled paper from the flyer they’d put through his door. “If I see you two around Springsborough again, if I get one more of these through my door? Forget about it. I’ll be all over you two like…like…”

“We’ll make it our responsibility,” finished Todd. “if you end up stuck here again. If your parents come back, or if those guys do anything to try and screw things up for you again. Just put another flyer through the door and we’ll find you.”

Being hugged by a ghost felt an awful lot like being hugged by a person. The main difference was the weight behind it. Being hugged by a person, you feel you can lean on them for a second, take a fraction of the weight off your usually overtired feet and depend, just for a moment, on the strength of another. On a ghost you don’t have this feeling. Just the weightless sensation of their arms and chest against you, the way it feels when a cat rubs itself against your leg. An unburdened closeness. The feeling stayed with Todd for a good long minute before he realised that the boys were gone. As was the van, thankfully. He’d been quietly expecting it to explode for a while now.

“Todd,” began Dirk.

Todd was doing an awful lot of things that were senseless today, his next words included. “No,” he said. “I’m going to get there first. You don’t get to be mad at me. You were acting so miserable. For hours. And you were getting snot all over my stuff and you were crying and you drove Farah out of the apartment with all the germs and the blowing your nose on my stuff- real uncool by the way- and yes, I’m sorry. I grasped at straws and I dragged you into this because I wanted to get you out of the house. I didn’t care about giving you a case and I should have been honest, and I wasn’t,” he started laughing. “But Jesus, man! We just met ghosts, real proof of the afterlife! And they were in love, and they were trapped and, and we helped them! We freed them and we got shot but we’re ok, and we got to smash mailboxes…”

“Todd,”

“Wait, but do you think those people whose mailbox we destroyed were real or not? Maybe the real cops are after us, we should maybe talk to Sherlock, he might be able to pull some-”

“Todd!”

The bejesus once again left Todd. “Jesus, what?”

“I was just going to tell you, thanks. For believing me. About the ghosts.”

“Why wouldn’t I believe you? It makes so much sense.”

“Because it’s ghosts, Todd. Real ghosts.”

“I know!”

“I know!” they lit up like a pair of fireflies hailing each other. “So, um. What now? It’s only, like…”

Todd whipped his phone out of his back pocket. “Wow, it’s only ten. Wanna find a party to crash?” he asked. Mostly joking.

“Sure, why not?” replied Dirk, who did not seem to be joking at all.

“Really? You’re…wait, I forgot.”

“Hm?”

“Why aren’t you allowed out on Halloween? You never actually answered me before.”

“Yes, I did, I told you-” A low siren bowled up from somewhere far away. Dirk, Todd noticed, was starting to paw at the ground. Hop from foot to foot.

Todd felt a wave of dull resignation come over him, “Dirk.”

Dirk recoiled affectedly, so affectedly that Todd felt a little insulted. “What?”

“Why aren’t you allowed out on Halloween?”

Dirk eased his response gently into the split halfsecond he waited before sprinting away. “Last year I maybe sort-of broke into a haunted house in the next town over which maybe wasn’t actually haunted, and was perhaps housing a lovely birthday party-”

“Dirk!”

“Which subsequently led, in consideration of my past offences, to my being under curfew on Halloween night which I may have just broken.”

“How could they know you’re out?”

“Well, at a guess…that mailbox was probably real, wasn’t it.”

Red and blue lights, and a very real cop car pulled into the park.

“I fucking hate you,” laughed Todd, raising his hands above his head.

#dghdaspookfest #dghda #dirk gently #todd brotzman #halloween #dirkgently #homophobia #spooky

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that-fandom-sucks-tho · 6 years

Text

Circuits of the Heart

Title: Chapter 1: Just Look Up What a Hug is Okay?

Warnings: Small amount of swearing

Summary: Circuit (code name) is the newest member at Mount Justice and your first meeting with the team. Interactions with humans are hard especially if your brain is a computer and your technokinesis only allows you to connect with technology. And especially if one of those people is Nightwing.

A/N: So um this is my reintroduction into writing. This is an old idea I stumbled across because of nostalgia. It can be read as Nightwing x reader/ OC because only the characters code name is used. It's a slow burn so not too much romance touchy feely stuff. Umm like this if you want more because this is only like 6 pages of the 11 I have so far. (I just didn't know where to split it so it kinda just ends)

Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8

I entered feeling more nervous than ever. Batman was to my side and basically dragging me along to the training area. He said that was where most of my new teammates were. I was in my new costume, it was a metallic gray color with purple and yellow trim. It helped me to better connect with technology because of its a metallic inlay and magnetized fingers. Before all of this I didn’t have a special suit or a special name. I was just a girl who liked to play with computers. I was just the hacker girl trying to figure my way into the Wayne Enterprises computer system.

Now I was a girl being dragged by Batman through mount justice to meet a bunch of people I didn’t really want to. It is not like I hadn’t thoroughly searched through my new teammates background and history; I knew everything about everyone and probably some things even they didn’t know about themselves. So when I saw Artemis's green suit my mind immediately began to swim with sportsman, cheshire, and tigress, etc. I hadn’t meant to but I put Artemis’ entire life into graphs and numbers.

“ Hi I’m-”

“Artemis number B07 one of the newer members of the team besides Zatanna and now me. Age 19.”

Artemis just stared and then laughed “ Hey Wonder Boy we’ve got a new you on the team.”

Though Batman was my mentor I hadn’t yet met any of his other prodige. Batman said it was because I wasn’t really part of the bat fam. Which I tried to pretend didn’t hurt but it did a little bit. Sure I had actual powers but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t belong with them.

“I told you not to call me that or I’d call you Mrs. West.” A tall boy with black hair turned and said this. I recognized Nightwing immediately from the hours of research I did. He had his signature black and blue suit and domino mask.

Artemis yelled and lunged but a girl with green skin (probably Miss Martian) held her back. “You are so luck Wally’s not here and M’gann is or you’d have an arrow to the jugular.” Artemis said with a cool glare. Then Nightwing turned to face you.

“Hi the name is Nightwing. Not Wonder Boy.” He winked from under his mask.

“No your real name is Di-” I started.

“Woah woah lets not let that slip.” Intervened Batman hastily.

Nightwing looked shocked that I might know his real name. “How in the world could you know my real name?”

“It’s part of my powers.”

“I thought you had a way with technology not fortune telling.” Nightwing joked still staring at me intently. I shifted under his gaze suddenly feeling like he could see my circuits.

“No I can hack any database, write any algorithm, and program any tracker I need. Finding out who you are was easier than hacking NASA, the Pentagon, and the NSA at the same time.”

“Well my new team mate that is quite impressive I am sure you will be a valuable asset to us.” For some reason that made me blush. I had never had such a strong reaction to a person. Being a tech mutation made people all that much more confusing and incompatible to my brain.

I immediately took two steps back and added the peculiar reaction to my database on Dick Grayson. I turned to face M’gann.

“Hello M’gann B05 from the now deceased planet Mars.” M’gann smiled and offered no other reaction to my greeting.

“You can just call Megan and I am so excited for you to join this team and become part of our little family.” Megan went in for a hug but I didn’t understand the movement. Stiff and confused and awkward I just stood there as Megan wrapped her arms around me.

“What is it that you are doing? Is this a normal human social interaction?” I inquired in a clipped tight voice. My eyes were wide and were looking at my fellow teammates. Most were trying to hold in their amused laughs.

Megan quickly let go and stared at me in shock.

“You don’t know what a hug is?”

“Well I know theoretically what a hug is. It is the joining of two bodies in an embrace. Is that what you were trying to accomplish?” At my mentioning ‘the joining of two bodies’ the whole team burst into laughter. When I heard Nightwing laughing I felt a heated rush to the apples of my cheeks.

Again with this strange reaction to him. I was going to have to investigate this further.

“Well, um, kind of… I guess?” Megan responded with confusion.

“As much fun as it is to see teenagers fumble with social interactions, I’d like to help settle Circuit so she can get started as quickly as possible” Batman motioned for me to follow him to the housing arrangement he had set up for me.

Growing up in a lab that doesn’t exist anymore means I don’t have a lot of places to stay. Walking down the hallway that is an odd amalgamation of metal and rock, I sorted through my internal memory to find the schematics of Mount Justice. Hacking the system was pretty easy and my first mission will be to change that.

Batman showed me to my room and informed me that my boxes had been delivered earlier and that I should unpack my belongings and try again to interact with the team.

“Look I know that your childhood was, less that optimal in the interacting with humans part, but you have an infinite memory and can learn anything you download so just, look up what a hug is” Batman said before turning with a dramatic swish of his cape.

I turned to face my door. There was a lock on the door and I realise I wasn’t given a key or passcode. These were the moments that my powers came in handy. I had technokinesis and while in the lab they turned my brain into a computer. Basically by touching any technology I could control and interact with it. From hacking to controlling weaponry, as long as it had a microchip it was mine to mess with. The brain part, while a little messed up, meant my body acted more like an interface for a motherboard rather than organs. It also meant that the memories stores in my old brain were no longer mine. I has no idea what my life was before the lab.

I reached out and touched the keypad. Instantly I felt the connection and how the electronic was just waiting for my command. Technology was a living and breathing being to me. I felt the pulse of its electricity and how it spoke to me in binary. Closing my eyes I told the little box to open up for her. It immediately flashed ‘open’.

Walking through the threshold I took in my new living quarters. A single twin bed was pushed off into a corner. Three walls were the metal that outfited the volcano hideout and the other wall was the volcanic rock. A desk with a computer was off to my right. Just from looking at it I could tell it was inferior to my needs. I’d have to make improvements. As Batman had said my boxes were already in the room. I didn’t have much so packing would not take me long.

By the time I was done the room hadn’t really changed. There was a new pillow on the bed and the desk was now covered in random computer parts that I has been experimenting on. The closet that had only contained a thin layer of dust now had my few outfits. I decided that this was as good as it was gonna get and that I should greet the rest of the team. Hopefully with less awkwardness. I followed Batman’s instructions and downloaded basic interaction procedures. Hugs, hands shakes, and common greetings were apart of this new information. Sifting through it would take a while so I just add the protocols to my programming.

Using the schematics I found the kitchen/ living room. Sitting on the couch playing video games were Kid Flash and Nightwing. Kaldur was on the adjacent loveseat with a book. Megan and Superboy were sitting on the stools along the kitchen counter talking. As I walked in the group turned to look at me. Locking onto my newly learned social interaction protocols I stepped forward to greet some of the new members. Kaldur was the person that was closest to me so I walked up to him first.

“Hello Kaldur B02. I am offering my hand for the customary human greeting” I held my hand out to shake Kaldur’s. My movements were sharp and choppy but the general idea was there.

“Ah yes that is the customary greeting and it is nice to meet you Circuit.” Kaldur laughed light heartedly.

“Thank you, I downloaded basic human interactions since I messed up meeting Megan,“ I looked over at Megan in embarrassment, “human’s social interactions still vex me but I’m working on it.”

“You said ‘human’ as though you are not one. Are you not human?” Kaldur questioned.

I could tell that the rest of the team was also expecting the answer. I took a second to ponder the question.

“Well, genetically I am of a human species but,“ I paused trying to figure out how to put the next part of my sentence, “ my brain is now a computer and there are parts of me that contain circuits. Would you count that as human or something else?”

They all sat and puzzled the question I had proposed. It seemed that no one had an answer. A sudden breeze and a whooshing sound were accompanied by an arm around my shoulder.

“Whatever you are you’re hot and I’ll help you with all the ‘interactions’ you want.” The red headed Wally West stated, a smirk he assumed was smooth was plastered on his face.

“I do not believe that I have a fever. My internal alarm would have told me and the temperature of this room is at 69 degrees. So my outer temperature is also at baseline.” I rattled off with a confused expression.

Wally’s confidence was now shattered due to the misunderstanding of his compliment and the fact that he would no have to spell it out for me. Trying to pick up the pieces he continued on.

“No, um, I meant that you are attractive. Like your appearance.”

“Oh, well I have no protocols for that but we can participate in a hug if you wish?”

“Boy would I-” Wally was cut off by Nightwing shoving him to the side. He turned and glared at Wally.

“Dude leave the poor girl alone, she doesn’t understand and we don’t need you to corrupt her.” He lectured as Wally rubbed where he had hit his head. Wally sat up grumbling.

“I was just gonna hug the girl geesh.”

Nightwing turned and faced you with an apologetic look.

“Sorry about that he hasn’t learned his manners yet.”

Nightwing put his hand on the small of my back and glided me over to where Superboy and Megan were.

“This is Superboy and you already met Megan.”

Superboy greeted my in a grunt and head nod. I nodded back and smiled. This was my favorite meeting, quick and simple, no mess human things.

“So now that you have met the whole team just get comfortable and make yourself at home.” Nightwing offered a smile that made my stomach feel fluttery. Again these symptoms were peculiar to me.

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lightsandlostbells · 6 years

Text

SkamFr Episode 6 reaction

For some reason the read-more keeps getting removed from my long-ass posts even though I make an effort to put it in, I apologize for that.

This episode contained some really great things (Alex 💖💖!) and also made me able to articulate something about the remake that is part of why, despite having things I’ve enjoyed, I don’t feel it is that emotionally resonant. It lacks fragility.

Clip 1: Lucas gets the dirt from Emma

You know I don't have a problem with Yann being a skateboarder or whatever, that's where they're going with his character, but it low-key exasperates me because (as we just heard this week) Jonas was into skateboarding because Marlon Langeland was. Similar example, Sana played basketball because Iman Meskini plays basketball in real life. I believe Eva’s Black Swan costume was a nod to Lisa Teige being a dancer. Is Yann’s actor into skateboarding IRL? I don't know. Maybe he is. But by sticking to the original characters so slavishly, they're missing on opportunities to personalize them and play to the actors’ strengths. Like these are really simple things they could do to differentiate the characters to make it more of a personalized production.

I mean it’s totally fine and even a little charming if Yann is kind of a crappy skateboarder, lmao (I am not an expert).

I forgot how much Isak leads into this conversation with Eva, trying to get the details. But that actually makes more sense to me because in this version, Lucas just sits down, asks if everything is okay, and then Emma confesses right away. If this has been weighing on her (which it has), she could have told one of her girls, who would have been a “safer” choice to tell? Maybe not Daphne, but Manon wouldn’t have cared and wouldn’t have any reason to tell Yann - ignoring Lucas’ real motivation at this point, he is also Yann’s BFF and might feel a sense of loyalty to him. Any way you look at it, not a great person to confess to. Isak was at least leading Eva a bit and encouraging her to open up, so it makes sense that she would cave and share with him in that moment.

I never noticed before but at the beginning of the original clip you can see Isak and Eva walking together, cute.

No offense to these actors but Lisa and Tarjei are the ones from the original I miss most. For all of the social media for Lucas and Emma that makes them seem like good friends, within the clips themselves I don't really feel like they're close.

Clip 2 - girls at lunch

On the one hand, I get why they picked episodes 7 and 8 to merge, gossip travels fast and I could see these events unfolding rapidly. On the other hand, there’s a lot of really weighty material in these episodes so it’s unfortunate.

So the big thing here is obviously that Alex hooked up with a girl! I saw the post about the actress confirming her as bi, so that’s terrific. What would be great is if this was integrated into future seasons - what if Kasper was a girl??? A deeply weird girl. I would be all kinds of into it. Or just keeping up the trend of her casually talking about girls, having her chime in to correct Vilde/Daphne’s ill-advised comments about lesbians, etc.

This is also pretty big because she’s apparently out, at least to her friends? There’s not going to be a coming out season for her unless it’s for her family or something. So should they decide to do an Alex season or involve her sexuality in a future storyline, it would be from the perspective of someone who is already open and seemingly comfortable in her sexuality. I seriously hope they do some exciting stories with this piece of information.

Poor Daphne clinging to her delusions. Her enthusiasm about double dating with Emma, Alex, and Charles is so sad.

Were the jerseys in the previous episode at all? Manon being like “I can’t stand seeing you in this jersey” when it’s the first time Daphne’s worn it (though I agree, once is enough). I checked and Daphne wasn’t wearing one, she had on some cute sweaters. Did Charles have to like ... order one in her size ... and the shipping took a week ... because that was a big thing to overlook, costuming wise.

I was going to say that they could have shot the rest of the scene in the cafeteria, with Manon pointing out girls in there wearing the jerseys, but we got Manon taking Daphne by the hand so that was nice. And I guess it might be awkward for Daphne to realize this at the lunch table.

OK, Emma launching herself at Yann for a makeout session during this heartfelt moment where Manon is trying to make Daphne feel better about a boy not liking her is rather insensitive. Read the room, Emma. (I know she’s trying to alleviate her guilt. It’s still pretty WTF.)

I know that a lot of criticism has been directed at the remake sticking to closely to the original, and I’ve certainly done my share of this, but I’m really disappointed they choose to cut Vilde’s line about feeling like there was something wrong with her. It was so raw and heartbreaking and real and it’s too bad that of all the things they’ve been keeping the same, they got rid of that part. For example, the Alex and Lucas “flirting” could have been cut to make room for that line; that moment felt forced and stilted anyway, and it’s the exact thing they should be cutting if they’re having to compress the story for time.

Clip 3 - confronting Charles

I thought the whole bit about Vilde not having dignity was one of the less excusable Sana moments from S1 since it’s not directed at something Vilde did wrong or said to help her, but Alex snorting after Imane says it is probably an added sting for Daphne.

Charles is the fucking worst. I feel like he’s even worse than William at this point, tbh. He just seems smarmier and sleazier. I’m not saying the actor’s bad or anything, I just find this dude to have an extra layer of creep. William seemed kind of checked out of the Vilde confrontation, what is this interrupting my day, Charles seems more deliberately trying to twist the knife.

Uhhhh I guess it’s nice that Charles and Alex have more of a friendship and Alex can tease him about getting verbally shredded by Manon and all but he was also cool with standing there as his best bro told a girl that he fucked that she wasn’t pretty enough for him so frankly, Raptor Alex is the worst, too.

I will go into Manon at the end but this moment was fine, it wasn’t my favorite thing she did this episode but I thought she showed more fire this week than in previous ones.

I also missed the moment where Vilde called Sana out on throwing water in Ingrid‘s face and Sana replies that she had a good reason for that because it was a little reminder of that incident and foreshadowing to the reveal of why she did it. I get why they cut it but it might’ve been nice since I’ve seen more divided opinions on Imane and whether, in making Daphne less offensive and less willing to speak up for herself, they’ve made Imane seem unnecessarily rude.

But also, in watching the original clip, I think Vilde was inspired or bolstered by Sana’s comments not to confront William (who are you to tell me what to do, you just put me down, you’re telling me not to ruin things when you also caused a scene) and Noora‘s encouragement (Noora had previously comforted her and given her the idea to confront him).

Clip 4 - The fight

Depending on your POV, the fourth wall breakage about a Norwegian tv show was either groan-worthy or cute. I thought it was sweet.

What kind of books do you think Daphne reads? I assume, much like Vilde, she reads exclusively The Secret, The Game and other self-help/relationship manuals.

I also liked Emma calling Manon “Booba” and giving her that little shoulder squeeze.

You know I never realized quite how much this would’ve been embarrassing for Vilde. Not just because of what William said, but because that was supposed to be her moment. Confronting William was supposed to be her proving to be a badass. Instead William cruelly put her down in public, and instead it was Noora who got to be the badass. You know, Noora, who in Vilde’s eyes is prettier, thinner, and cooler than she is, and who William instantly has an attraction to (not that Vilde got to see this). Vilde’s words didn’t land a blow to William at all, but Noora managed to leave William speechless. He didn’t put Noora down, it was Noora he was impressed with. So even when the girls are like good job, Noora, about this epic moment that Vilde didn’t see because she had to walk off in shame and hurt, Vilde’s empowering moment was snatched away from her. Ouch.

Manon was a boss in this fight. I kind of hate the term “mama bear” but that’s what came to mind here.

The fight itself went on for too long, Manon’s excellence aside. It also made me think that a physical fight inside the school would be a more serious deal than a fight outside of it, in the sense that teachers/adults are definitely going to notice. IDK how French school works but at my high school everyone involved would be hauled off to the principal’s office right away.

Clip 5 - Emma on the steps

The bit with Emma being called a whore on Facebook - I wouldn’t say that’s a NICE touch, but it adds to the aspect of social media being used for bullying.

Yeah Ingrid is straight up intimidating. Manon is like a little mouse beside her. But lmao at Sarah immediately folding when Manon stood up.

I did like Ingrid stepping in front of Sarah. That’s her girl.

THEIR INSTAGRAM POSTS ARE SO DRAMATIC. JESUS.

Clip 6 - Manon comforting Emma

The scene was cute, especially Emma starting to sing along.

I legit do not care what anyone ships but I’m so ????? at how people could ship Manon and Charles at this point except by already being a Noorhelm fan and having the knowledge that they are a future couple. Because like ... if you were watching this not having seen the original show, Charles’ role has to been to be a jerk to a girl he slept with and spoil this lovely moment between two friends in order to deliver some rapey as fuck dialogue about how No is a Yes in waiting. WTF. I don’t want to get into the discourse but he is deeply creepy here!

I would not be surprised if Blurred Lines is Charles’ cheer-up song of choice.

I kind of laughed about Manon watching House of Cards because isn’t House of Cards considered a prestige show, Spacey scandal aside? I watched several seasons of it; although it is like a political soap opera, I thought it was supposed to be kind of an award bait. It doesn’t seem that weird that Manon would watch it even if she’s not a TV person, lol. But maybe it is, I don’t know! I thought Suits was more of a sort of guilty pleasure procedural but I’ve never seen that show, so maybe my perception is all wrong.

Clip 7 - Daphne’s extraordinary meeting

Alex’s hair is indeed very pretty. Nice job.

Soooo this scene.

In the original, while Vilde tells the story about Ingrid and Jonas, the camera stays on a close-up of Eva’s miserable, guilty face while memories of what happened flash by in her mind. In the remake the camera focuses a lot on Daphne as she’s telling the story, with some shots of the group, and only cuts to Emma for a few short moments. The result is that this scene is much less emotionally effective. Yes, I already know the story, I know the twist, perhaps that matters. But I’m not deep in Emma’s pain. You really feel it with Eva, how her past is coming back to haunt her and how her mistakes are being exposed in front of her new friends against her will, and she probably feels like she deserves it. When I watched the original scene, I felt gutted for her. Here the emphasis is on Daphne’s judgmental face as she tells a story that she’s not personally involved in. That creates an emotional disconnect. This is the moment that should make us understand Eva’s behavior over the season even further, this is the moment that should explain the mysterious feud with Ingrid, this is a defining moment for Emma’s character and it’s not hers.

I do like that Daphne seem almost like she’s appealing to Manon by saying that people should know not to steal boyfriends, because that is the kind of thing that feminist Manon would be strictly against. Although obviously the attempt backfired.

Also lol at them working on the party “for months” it’s been one month since you even formed the squad! Though I do think it’s implied Daphne has been working on it for longer, and that she doesn’t want her pet project to be ruined.

The bit about Imane saying you stand for your friends “even when they don’t deserve it" was added from what I can tell; I think that’s a decent part though it might kind of be unnecessary, like sometimes less is more, the point is still there even without it, we get that Daphne just messed up. It’s not a huge sin or anything but there are a few occasions where I think the dialogue has been too on the nose (like Yann being all WOW SO MUCH TRUST BETWEEN US right after Emma cheated).

I do like Alex comforting Emma. I think Alex is a little more OK with confrontation then Chris was. Chris was a little flustered and didn’t know quite how to respond in the original, and we later saw that sometimes she struggled with how to be there for her friends, and Alex seems a little more chill with open displays of supporting her friends. She’s a very chill character in general.

Clip 8 - Yann and Emma in the skatepark

Time to talk about fragility.

When I think of Skam at its best, that is something which comes to mind. Not fragility of storytelling, but fragility in its emotions. Stripping away all the bullshit that you encounter in everyday life that leads you to put on a mask and say hollow words, as well as cutting out all the bullshit that you see in 90% of teen dramas and TV shows that go for noise and overblown, nonsensical emotions in order to produce drama, and just letting the characters say something real to each other. It’s not just about characters being sad, but being vulnerable. To be vulnerable means you can be easily broken. Fragile.

Not just Noora in the wake of her assault, but Noora telling Vilde about the nutritional benefits of potatoes as a way of talking about Vilde’s eating disorder, because to address the subject outright is too much. Not just Isak falling to the ground in tears, but Isak trying to talk around and delay his coming out to Jonas, turning it into a guessing game, because if Jonas rejects him or says the wrong thing, it would shatter him. Not just Sana crying alone in her room, but Sana writing a text to her friends explaining how much she feels she doesn’t fit in and asking her friends to forgive her.

And I heavily associate that concept with Eva’s season in particular. Every moment with her feels like we are with someone whose vulnerability is right there on the surface. Her old friends now hate her, her boyfriend seems to be keeping secrets from her, she’s struggling in school, her mom isn’t there and doesn’t know about her life, she just doesn’t know who she is. Think about how delicate a moment is the end of episode 2, when Eva is upset and can hear the boys laughing from another room, not caring, and she sees that Noora has accepted her friend request. A tiny, tiny gesture like that feels enormous. This really mundane thing because powerful because the show has demonstrated how Eva’s fragility, how much this friend request means to her.

The best scenes of Skam France, IMO, and the aspect has been working for me personally, is Daphne. And in a lot of ways, that is because she is fragile. We can see her hurt coming a mile away even if we hadn’t seen S1 before - because we can tell how much Charles means to her and how she is nothing to him. She is really, really fucking vulnerable when she puts herself out there for someone to love only to get rejected. She is vulnerable when she sends Charles a topless picture and when she tries to win back his attention. She is vulnerable when she tries to stand up for herself only to get put in her place. The show has done a good job with the actress and with demonstrating that raw, realistic pain.

Where I don’t feel that fragility is with Emma. Or Yann. Who knows if we’ll feel it with Lucas, with his upcoming parental woes and confession to Emma. But Emma is the focus of the season, and that’s a problem.

Some of it is in the acting, personally, and some of it is the writing. I know a lot of people like Emma and even prefer her to Eva because of her self-confidence, but I’m not a big fan and I think part of it is that her attitude and essence don’t work as well with the material. Like it feels less like a teenage girl having all her insecurities and mistakes bared. Again, it’s not just about Emma being sad. We have seen her sad. I don’t find her as fragile.

Another example from this episode: not focusing on Emma when hearing the true story of what happened with Ingrid. Eva’s vulnerability was the focus of that scene. We could not get away from her haunted face as she had to relive her past regrets. We missed a chance to follow how much the Ingrid incident has broken Emma.

Another non-Emma example: omitting Vilde’s line about feeling something is wrong with her and knowing she shouldn’t feel that way, an incredibly raw, wounded line we didn’t hear from Daphne.

There are several other key scenes where I think some aspect of the production has undermined a potentially vulnerable moment - what sometimes seems like the overuse of music, condensed conversations with less room for silences to speak for themselves, camera work that keeps us at a distance. Also some times where it has worked, too, I’m not saying there are no emotional moments like this, and I’m not saying that it needs to follow the original in these exact ways. But it’s a repeat issue.

This is not to say every character has to be troubled and vulnerable, by the way. But - this is a show about being young and dealing with problems. Vulnerability is vital in our ability to empathize with these characters. These are kids getting their first taste of adult problems and not knowing how to deal with them, they should be fragile. Almost all of the best coming of age films, books, and TV shows excel at depicting vulnerability. It doesn’t matter whether it’s French or Norwegian, youthful fragility is universal (and if not then why the fuck are you making a show about teenagers and their feelings).

Anyway, this scene.

This is an angry conversation. Sure I know Yann is upset. But I don’t feel that personal fragility coming from him. I have seen it before at time - like when Emma came over while he was playing video games with the boys, she made to leave, and he asked her several times to stay. Other times we’ve missed that vulnerability from him - for instance, when Jonas asked if Eva wanted a break, he genuinely seemed kind of fearful that she would say yes. When Yann asked Emma, he was throwing it in her face, and didn’t really seem afraid until she walked away and he gave her a dramatic speech.

Like Yann just skateboards up to her and doesn’t have much patience for what she says. He seems pissed. And hey, maybe that is how he expresses vulnerability, you could certainly make a case for it. But the acting and directing didn’t really make me feel it at all. It just feels like he’s angry (understandably).

However, Yann is also such a jackass here, jeeeeez. Obviously I can’t know for sure because I don’t speak French, but even his tone of voice to me sounds like he’s making fun of her. And of course he has to go on about her stupid parties and her friends, when I think Jonas seemed to mostly go for the idea that she doesn’t know what she wants. It wasn’t that Eva’s friends were dumb, it was that she changed who she was and what she wanted based on who she was with. But Yann seems to be mocking her specifically for trying to throw those parties and making fun of her friends. He's really aggravating and almost seems to resent that she’s no longer fitting into the image of what he wants his girlfriend to be. I do think Jonas did say something that cut Eva to the bone, but I don’t think he was trying to make fun of her. He was angry but he did seem vulnerable himself, not as much as Eva, but it was evident.

I do think Emma is being vulnerable here, moreso than we’ve seen her in some other scenes, but overall she doesn’t really have that vibe for me. It’s probably more effective for people who are fans of her character.

The last shot of Yann smashing his skateboard into the ground is a dramatic TV moment. The last shot of Eva sitting by herself, tiny against the skate park murals, is a fragile moment.

General Comments:

This was a really big week for Manon. The scenes were a little hit and miss for me. I think Manon lacks the withering disdain to really nail scenes like telling off Charles, but is stronger when she’s in full on angry protector mode, like during the fight or standing up to Sarah and Ingrid. She did finally make a much stronger impression with all of her big moments.

The moments where Alex ogles Lucas don’t really work for me and I wish they’d be cut to make room for other things, but you know how it could work? If Alex and Lucas form some kind of friendship later on, gay dude/bi girl solidarity.

There was a lot of social media this week after the big events, like Manon telling off Charles, the fight, etc. and it was like a flurry of vagueposting and flinging shade all over the place. I kinda feel like it’s too much, lmao? But I also kinda think teenagers are overly dramatic on Instagram.

Because they combined episodes seven and eight, several scenes are missing from the original, for example Jonas and Eva in her bedroom while Eva texts P-Chris, Eva and Isak in her room after Jonas finds out, and Eva arguing with her mom. It’s possible some of these moments like the Isak or mom scenes could come in later, like I guess they could have Emma and Lucas hugging it out this week. I did miss that scene because it was an important moment for their friendship (also fragile...) and more painful when we learned what Isak did. I’m not feeling the friendship between Lucas and Emma that much on screen and that could have helped. However, I do understand why these where the scenes they cut.

Personally I think having time limits to the French episodes is a strong case for doing more comprehensive rewrites, but blah blah it’s in the contract blah blah.

I was pretty nitpicky this time around but it was not a bad episode, there was a lot going on.

I sure hope someone did a parody of Yann spiking his skateboard to this song.

#skamfr reactions

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marvelandponder · 7 years

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Bling-Bling, Darlings

Really, what we’re asking when we pose a question like that is what is Rarity’s character based on. It’s more than fair to say at this point the Elements of Harmony themselves are obsolete, but they undoubtedly helped to form the characters and set a course for their development in the series as a whole.

And since the real aim of this post is to map Rarity’s character-arc over the course of all 7 seasons and counting, it only made sense to me to start at the beginning.

Or, rather, before the beginning, in the show’s very development!

Once upon a time, when Lauren Faust first dreamed up our main cast, all the Elements were pretty well the same as what they would be in the show. All, except Rarity. Before she was the Element of Generosity, she was the Element of Inspiration.

When I was looking over Rarity’s biggest lessons and teachings, I found that the themes of inspiration and creativity carried over into the show in interesting ways. Not just that she’s a dressmaker, and uses her medium to bring out the beauty in others, but that that creativity may have turned into her biggest character flaw. Her greatest tool and yet her biggest burden.

I think Rarity’s generosity still very much defines the core of who she is, but what I’ve always admired about Rarity is her complexity. Her versatility, her presence. All of these things are owed, in part, to the theme of her development: Expectation Versus Reality.

Of course, this is just my interpretation, but as far as I see it, this over-arching theme usually presents itself in either one of three ways:

How we see Rarity, and how she really is

How others see Rarity, and how she really is

And most importantly, how Rarity's flights of fancy (emphasis on the fancy) conflict with reality

So, this fashion week, I’d like to take some time to appreciate the true beauty that is Rarity. Finally. With this, every member of the main 6 finally has their own editorial (I... clearly didn’t time this out well), and so it seems we saved one of the best for last. Here’s to you, Rarara!

A Tale of Two Rararas

From the beginning, we knew Rarity always dreamed of living in Canterlot. And already, I want to pause in the episode-by-episode run-down to say the fact that Rarity never conflicts with Twilight over this just speaks to her strength of character.

Sure, there are certainly times when Rarity can be petty, but as Green Isn’t Your Colour proved very early on, even when she does feel envious, her selfless, giving nature wins out, and she won’t hold it against anyone. A far cry from most diva characters, isn’t she?

But to round back to the point, I always found it a tad ironic Twilight lived the life Rarity thought she wanted. Growing up in Canterlot, rubbing elbows with nobles and royalty, and even becoming a princess. The glamour! The intrigue! The... socially awkward bookworm who saw none of these things as opportunities to be taken advantage of.

A part of me thinks that if Rarity were to grow up in Canterlot instead of Twilight, that Rarity wouldn’t be nearly as down-to-earth as ours is. And whether she’s self-aware enough to realize that or not, Rarity’s never once begrudged Twilight for living out some of her dreams. Instead, she’s just dying to hear about it and support her.

Which leads us to the first major Rarity storyline, in Ticketmaster: wanting to marry a Prince she hasn’t met. This is, of course the set-up for an example of what I was talking about early, the whole expectation versus reality thing with Rarity’s fantasy of a perfect love life coming into conflict with the reality of the jerk she was fantasizing about.

So, we next move onto Look Before You Sleep, and it’s here where we give props to the Rarijack shippers: they’re not wrong that this relationship is cute and important.

This touches on the second part of the theme that I mentioned, how other characters continually learn that Rarity is more than meets the eye. Applejack and Rarity getting to know each other on a deeper and deeper level throughout the series is one of the bigger demonstrations of Rarity’s true depth.She’s not just about frilly dresses and all things frou-frou, as AJ initially believed.

In fact, to skip ahead by one, she’s not your damsel in distress or the frightened princess, either. A Dog and Pony Show is among the classics of season 1 in my book because it’s one of the first times they just straight up tell you Rarity’s resourceful and capable without mincing words. Because hell yeah.

That’s one of the episodes that really play with audience expectation for Rarity, and having it relatively early on was an excellent way to establish Rarity has more character depth than most other fashionista characters in shows for little girls.

Going back to the one we missed, you’ll find another true classic: Suited for Success. I could argue this has a connection to both of the Elements Rarity was initially thought to embody. Her generosity is on full display, not only making these dresses out of the goodness of her heart, but tailoring them to each of her friends’ tastes despite being a fashion expert herself. Then of course there’s the inspiration or creative aspect of it, how Rarity’s struggles perfectly emulate the struggles of real-life professional creatives trying to please all kinds of picky customers.

To add on, I just want to say this episode made me admire Rarity quite a bit. Both her determination to make her friends feel beautiful and her savvy business tactics combined with her creative passion are wonderful traits to have at her core. As entertaining as her dramatics can be (a special thanks goes to Tabitha St. Germain, who never once makes Rarity’s explosions of emotion anything but endearing), have not one but two deeper layers to Rarity makes for an excellent main character.

As we would come to see, both of those core traits have their pitfalls. Green Isn’t You Colour is a fun example, though, because it plays on the negative side to Rarity’s Inspiration Element and yet the positive side of her Generosity. Rarity’s always dreamed of living the glamorous life of a famed seamstress, which leads to her being envious of Fluttershy when she gets to live that out (by the way, if you hadn’t guessed by now, Rarity’s extremely relatable to all creative types). And yet, it’s her giving nature that stops her from being selfish and greedy.

Next in chronological order is the Cutie Mark Chronicles, and this is one of my bigger arguments for the theme I’ve been talking about so far.

So, Rarity’s horn leads her to a rock, and I think with that long build-up of being dragged all over, there’s that expectation being built up in little Rarity’s mind that this must be important. Again, her tendency to dramatize things gets the better of her. Which is why she freaks out when she gets there and it’s just a big dumb rock---but we all know the rock itself breaks her expectations even further when it’s broken, revealing the true beauty deep within the layers.

Expectation, meet reality.

Speaking of, the Best Night Ever is all about that theme, and I think it goes without saying how Rarity experiences it firsthand like the rest of the girls.

Next up is Sisterhooves Social, and I could make the argument that Rarity’s expectations for her little sister not accounting for her well-meaning intent is what causes the conflict. As well as the fact that the reality is, as a little filly, Sweetie Belle isn’t yet capable of garnishing a breakfast the “proper” way, or doing laundry without shrinking the clothes. Rarity’s an adult with adult responsibilities, so really the lesson becomes about appreciating that inner-beauty/good intent that her little sister has while forgiving the lack of ability.

Then, Sweet and Elite happens, which is probably my favourite Rarity episode to date, in part because it reminds me of an excellent Simpsons episode, Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield. Rarity’s had dreams of living in Canterlot since before the first episode, expertly demonstrated by the song The Type of Pony Everypony Should Know.

But even though there are wonderful elites like Fancy Pants in Canterlot, Rarity finds the bullshit of devaluing ponies like her friends is in fact pretty damn toxic, and that the social hierarchy that she’s admired for so long would put ponies she loves at the bottom. Again, awesome episode, really demonstrates what you might think would be a simple story about Snooty Rich People v.s. Humble Country Bumpkins into a story about a character’s changing worldview on class systems.

After that, we move onto Rarity Takes Manehatten and--- wait, that can’t be right... What do you mean there wasn’t a Rarity episode for almost two seasons?!

I seriously had to have this pointed out to me by the ever insightful @digikate813 because as much as I love Rarity, I didn’t even notice until I really looked.

In part, you could argue because Rarity got so many episodes and starring roles in season 1, that might’ve been the reason they held off on developing her in season 3 (that, and obviously the shortened 13 episode run), but still, not a fun time to be a Rarity fan.

Anyway, Rarity Takes Manehatten. Season 4 was all about showing how the characters could either betray their Element, like Rainbow Dash and Applejack, or be betrayed by it, like Pinkie, Fluttershy, and of course Rarity. Twilight ended up literally having to choose between magic and friendship (which, by the way, still shocks me that her fatal flaw is that, to quote my favourite book series from my childhood, she “would give up the world to save a friend”...).

And for Rarity, her episode ends up being the antithesis to Green Isn’t Your Colour, where she’s at her best creatively, but her giving nature ends up biting her in the ass. And yet, it’s still the same overarching theme: with the blind trust she places in Suri Polomare with her fabric, Rarity fully expects that Suri is well-meaning. She doesn’t even for a moment hesitate until it’s too late, and the reality of, as Suri puts it, being in the big city.

After that, it’s time for more Rarijack, as we take a look at Simple Ways. Essentially my take away from the episode in terms of Rarity’s overall arc is that she and Applejack, at this point, know each other better than they know themselves, which continues the theme of looking below the surface to find the true beauty within.

Speaking of true beauty, next we have Inspiration Manifestation, which is the episode I first thought of when thinking about the theme of this post: that in some ways, they ended up using Rarity’s old Element of Inspiration as her biggest flaw.

Yes, you can argue that the greedy Rarity we see in Return of Harmony is the literal antithesis of our beloved fashionista, but you can’t deny that the delve into the dark side of Rarity’s dramatic imagination and expectations for how things should/will be much more, this episode being the prime example.

Under the dark magic’s influence, Rarity’s version of Ponyville is... really gaudy. Gold paved streets gaudy. What’s interesting about that is that it becomes more about glory than it is about making it aesthetically pleasing, because when she comes out of it, she seems really taken aback by it. This wouldn’t be Normal Rarity’s ideal Ponyville, it’s just a way of showing herself as the most creative, most beloved pony there is.

And honestly, again, Rarity is extremely relatable to creative types. How many of us have wished we could just manifest our creative thoughts instantly, no work required (but would probably end up abusing that power if it were real)?

Continuing on, we have Canterlot Boutique next, and as Rarity’s very own Magical Mystery Cure or Crusaders of the Lost Mark, it really does emphasize the theme I’ve been talking about. Rarity’s expectations for owning her own boutique in Canterlot and creating a dress known all across Equestria comes into direct conflict with the reality of the business aspects of it all.

To the point that her business manager is made to seem to the audience like a villain for a while there, until Rarity finds the solution and we realize Sassy Saddles isn’t evil, and can in fact help Rarity’s dream. Even the solution itself is to make her business (manager) work by her rules, and cultivate her creative expression. An excellent episode for an excellent end-cap to Rarity’s goal.

Now, here’s a question: did Rarity’s character arc end when her goal was reached?

Drama Horse Sans Drama?

Because up until this point, that whole expectation V. reality thing has mostly been centered around Rarity learning how to be more grounded, appreciate intentions as opposed to results, and realize her dreams of living the high life often don’t take into account what that might actually entail.

But in Canterlot Boutique, well, she did learn the harsh reality of that situation, but I don’t know that she applied it universally, realizing that she herself didn’t account for how difficult it might truly be.

I think it was a huge step in her development, but she’s far from done growing, and far from done being overdramatic about things. But there is a shift after this to Rarity teaching others.

Rarity Investigates! is an easy example. Rainbow Dash doesn’t have faith in Rarity’s deduction skills because she assumes(/expects) that Rarity’s focus on details is only frivolous.

In Made in Manehatten, Rarity’s main role is to reassure Applejack that even if she’s out of her element, she’s still useful and contributing. On the flip-side, Applejack’s “Day” Off demonstrates how close they are by having Rarity make Applejack relax for once.

The Cart Before the Ponies is an exception to many things, though. Here, Rarity’s once again the one in need of a lesson, as she gets lost in her pursuit of righting a past wrong to the point that she’s blind to the reality of her sister currently wanting to try making her own cart.

P.P.O.V. might seem to buck the trend of Rarity and Applejack understanding each other, but I think that’s due in part to how each character was trying to get out of their element, and thus, totally confused the ones who know them so well. So, yes, Rarity doesn’t understand the “sea madness” Applejack has.

Moving on up to season 7, Forever Filly has Rarity again in the student role, learning the opposite of what she did in Sisterhooves Social. There, it was that Sweetie was too young to be as capable as Rarity expected of her, but here, it’s that Sweetie Belle can’t stay young forever. I see what you did there, writers.

Honest Apple shows Rarity helping Applejack not be a dick about her opinions, and giving young, up-and-coming fashion designers a platform she would’ve killed for at their age. What a good horse.

And then we have Fame and Misfortune, an episode that showcases, among many other things, Rarity’s response to harsh criticism. The episode sets out to prove the mane 6 still have flaws, and it certainly does, proving that even though Rarity’s learned quite a few lessons, that Element of Inspiration in her/her creative side still wants to be loved and valued for her work.

But I’ll leave us off on her part in Campfire Tales, because while it may be a small role, it proves, in essence, what Rarity truly values is a blend of both the Elements I’ve been rambling about. Rarity admires Mistmane not for her popularity or status, but for the way she gives to others by spreading beauty. Generosity and Inspiration combined.

Just like Rarity herself whose proved herself more entertaining, more heartfelt, and more beautiful than meets the eye. I wouldn’t say she’s done growing, but whether it’s the knowledge she’s gained through personal growth or fashion advice, Rarity will always share beauty.

I do MLP editorials like this and MLP episode reviews for all your MLP needs! and here’s the last three things I did, featured:

Triple Threat Review, Campfire Tales Review, and Top 10 Lost MLP Content

Also to celebrate finally finishing all members of the mane 6, take a look here to see me go through the other girls’ character arcs and other mane cast related topics:

Sunset, Pinkie, Rarity, Spike, Twilight, Starlight, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack editorials

Year of the Pony

Header Image Wouldn’t be Possible Without...

Rarity by Flizzick Fancy Rarity by RegolithX

Go check out those talented artists!

Yours Ever, R

#rarity #year of the pony #mlp #mlp rarity #rarity mlp #yearofthepony #my little pony #friendship is magic #mlp:fim #mlp: fim #my little pony: friendship is magic #it isn't the mane thing about you #cartoons #animation #analysis #character analysis #mlp editorials

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unplacedpodcast · 7 years

Text

Chapter Three: Transient (Script)

Chapter three script below! Spoilers ahead:

(ding of audio recording starting)

NARRATOR: There are a lot of downsides to being invisible, but one upside is that I can creep on as many awkward first dates as I want to and nobody knows. I'm not saying I'm an expert at social interaction by any means, but some of these are just bad.

This one bar I've been people-watching at, I saw the same two people there twice, and both times the guy was wearing this raggedy-ass hoodie that looked like he'd slept in it. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure he was wearing the exact same outfit both times. I mean, personality counts, but put a little bit of effort in, right? He didn't exactly have it going on in the personality department either...he kept rambling about his ex and went through three well whiskies in an hour.

Anyways. Here's your regular update from the land of invisibility: I'm doing...okay, I guess. That whole experience with my mom…that was rough. It’s been a few weeks, so it stings a little less. We had our differences, but obviously, I loved her, and - I don’t know. She’s not having to deal with the pain of losing a child, I guess, which is good for her, but adds another layer to what I have to deal with. Grieving someone who doesn’t even remember you exist is…rough.

The apartment is officially not mine any more, but I was able to salvage some of the really important things. Basically, what I have is what I can carry on me at any given moment - so I have my computer, my phone, some clothes, a few other things. It’s like that whole minimalist backpacker trend, except I’m not doing it because I’m an annoying white guy with an urge to travel.

I do have a few things, like my wallet, out of sheer habit, but they're pretty much useless. Nobody asks for ID when they can't see you, and my cards stopped working a week or two after all of this started. I did manage to withdraw most of my money before they entirely stopped working, but again: you can't give cash to people who can't see or hear you.

Sometimes, I leave it at stores when I take things, especially the mom and pop stores or indie-type places. Even then, it's always a gamble, because there's no guarantee someone working there is going to see the money before some opportunistic bozo does and pockets it. There’s also not any guarantee that the person who sees it who does work there is actually going to put it back into the business instead of pocketing it.

We never covered this in my philosophy 101 class: If you physically can't pay the person you should be paying, and the best you can do is leave a few bills lying around, do you have an ethical obligation to do so, or is that just a futile attempt to soothe your own conscience?

If cash falls in the woods and nobody's around to pick it up, is it still money?

(sighs) Who would have known that being invisible would present you with a new existential crisis every day? I mean...probably anyone who thought about it, but I hadn't thought about it. Have you?

If you had asked me ahead of time, I would have...honestly, I probably would have said it wouldn't have bothered me that much. Honestly, I never felt like people really saw me, just their own assumption-filtered version of me - in a way, this is like having my metaphorical, emo headcanon made literal.

People make me nervous. Being around people makes me nervous. Before all of this happened, I mostly just wanted to be left alone to do my job, hang out with my friends - the very few people who don't make me get sweaty palms just from a casual conversation. Maybe meet a nice girl, settle down...I didn't want to be completely invisible, but I didn't want to be hypervisible, either. I just wanted to be left alone, to navigate my life with the least amount of confrontation possible.

That moment of confrontation has always been my kryptonite, the thing that makes my heart pound. It's probably silly - as a species, we used to fight mammoths or whatever, that's what those responses are supposed to be for. It always feels silly, anyways. I know it's a real chemical reaction, but when all you have to do is stand up for yourself, or someone else, or just say something, anything, and you can't, because your mouth is dry and your throat keeps closing and your hands are shaking...you feel like a coward.

What I used to do when that happened was sneak off, get a moment alone, and talk to myself, record it, and then delete the recording when I calmed down. Or sometimes, not delete it. Having those audio diaries, from times when I felt like nothing was in my control, and being able to look back through them and realize I came out of every situation okay - it was a surprisingly effective security blanket.

That's all really off topic as far as what it's like living in these united invisible states of America, though. So let's get back to that, since that's what you listeners are here for - juicy supernatural survivalist tips, or whatever. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

Tip one: If nobody can see you, you can crash wherever you want. Staying at a hotel requires a little sneakiness. I had to creep on the staff to see how they code the keycard for each room and copy that, but once you get the hang of it, you can pretty much hole up wherever. I've been camped out in this swanky five star place, which would probably be better if I could get room service, but it could definitely be a hell of a lot worse.

Tip two: Keep a go bag. The real survivalist nuts out there already know this one. Zombie apocalypse fantasies aside aside, a go bag is crucial for when the hotel room you're staying in gets booked and the (very baffled) maids come in to do the room check, only to find a much dirtier room than there should be. So far, I haven’t lost any of my stuff, but I did have to do a real quick scramble the first time that happened. After going through the Great Apartment Purge of 2017, I don't want to lose the few belongings I do have left.

Tip three: Be careful about where you get your food from - at least, if you have a conscience. After while of living off of premade food or whatever I could cook in hotel kitchenettes, I decided I wanted something fancier, and snuck into a restaurant. I mean, I didn't really sneak in, because that would imply I was concerned about people seeing me, which is pretty much a non-issue. But I digress. I went into the kitchen, creeped around until I saw a plate full of food that looked tasty, and snagged it. What I did not think about was the server getting screamed at by the angry person who didn't get their food. When nobody is interacting with you, it's easy to space out on how your actions are going to impact them.

That's...all the tips I have right now. There aren't all that many actionable takeaways from being an invisible half-ghost person, or whatever.

Actually, that reminds me - I had a theory that I wanted to test, and since I’m already recording, this is the perfect time to do it. Time for a field trip!

(sounds of the phone fumbling, recording ding as it goes off, then the recording dings on again with the sound of new-agey bell-chime music in the background)

When I made that crack about being a half-ghost, it reminded me that I wanted to see what an actual psychic would make of this business. So...here I am, in a medium's waiting room. I looked this lady up on Yelp and she's supposedly pretty legit, as far as psychics go. The last thing I want to do is freak out some poor unsuspecting client of her's, so I've been just hanging out until she's client-free. And...let's give this a go. She's standing over there behind the counter, scrolling through Instagram - I'm walking up to her

(noise of the phone moving, sound of footsteps)

NARRATOR: (to woman, slightly muffled since she's not speaking directly into the phone) HEY. Hey. Can you hear me?

(speaking into the phone again) And...yeah. Nothing. I'm over here talking to her, waving a hand in her face, I'll

(noise of things moving around on a glass countertop, muffled noise of fabric brushing)

(sighs) Yeah. I moved some crystals around on her counter, I poked her in the shoulder - nothing. So much for any extra sensory perception going on around these parts. Maybe I'll try another place, later, and see if they're any better at (makes "spooky" voice) perceiving the invisible.

Whatever.

(ding of door bell as she walks out onto the street, background noise of being on a busy street and then descending underground into a subway station as she talks)

For now, it's back to the hotel. Another fruitless experiment in my “what the ever-loving hell is going on" series. It's just so frustrating, you know?

If I knew what was going on, I think it would be a little easier to cope with. But instead, it’s all one big mystery, which is just...annoying. I'm glad there seem to be consistent rules that I can test and figure out, but I wish I knew if this was like, a magic thing, or a gamma radiation thing, or what.

Gamma radiation, there's a thought. Too bad this doesn't come with superpowers.

(sound of a subway door opening and/or a stop being called in the background)

Oh well. It could be worse. At least I've got a fancy hotel to crash at. And this car is fairly empty, so I don't have to worry about someone trying to walk through me, again.

(sighs) An upgrade in living accommodations might be an upside to this whole scenario, but the public transportation experience leaves a lot to be desired.

(a few seconds of silence w/background noise, then the noise of the subway door opening and people moving)

I guess that's just - wait. What the...this guy just got on and he...there's this thing on him...it's all over his back, it's on his shoulders, it's - I think it’s stuck in his head. Hold on, I’m going to get closer.

(sound of footsteps)

Sir? HELLO? Yeah, of course you can’t hear me, but I thought you might want to know you’ve got a freakin’ brain leech stuck in the back of your head getting a free ride. Maybe if I…

(sound of her touching/shaking him)

Oh shit. The thing - it's...it's moving...oh my god, I think it can see me. Holy f-

(audio recording cuts off suddenly)

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madleeindifferent · 7 years

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Love Stinks

Title : Love Stinks (Part One)

Pairing : TBD

Word Count : 2,443

Prompt : It’s Valentines Day and a local joint has left you and the boys suspicious of Cupid. However, maybe showing up to the party to keep the couples out of love was a bad plan in the first place. When you run into an old frienemy at the bar, you are stuck with two Winchesters who may or may not have been caught in the midst of a dangerous love potion. All is fair in love and war. (Not my gif)

“I just don’t know what the trouble is in the first place.” You snorted with a contempt grin before you started to add a layer of dark crimson color to your lips. “Why is it suddenly a bad thing that people are falling in love?”

“The trouble is we aren’t even sure these matches are meant to have happened.” You rolled your eyes and looked over your shoulder in the mirror to where Castiel sat on the edge of the motel bed, his blue eyes narrowed and fixed pointedly out the window. “Heaven seems to be perturbed by the sudden romantic relationships being sown in this town. My best guess is a rogue cherub.”

You let out a sigh and started applying mascara to your eyelashes, making a funny face as you spoke. “Well, as long as people aren’t eating each other to death, it sounds harmless to me.”

“Love is anything but harmless.” Cas grumbled, folding his hands in his lap. “If a cupid is rebelling then he will likely cause serious emotional and mental damage to any of the people he marks. Human souls are not capable of withstanding multiple profound relations. If a cupid marks more than one person with someone who is already paired off, we could be facing something much worse than those violent outbreaks.”

“Oh, come on, Cas.” You smirked. “You honestly think that those two bar fights were the result of a cupid malfunction? Valentine’s Day is like this every year.”

“Better to be safe than sorry.” You turned at the sound of the motel restroom door being opened as Sam stepped out, fixing his tie. You smiled. Sam cleaned up nice. He looked over to you and his lips pulled into a sweet smile. “You look nice.”

“Yeah, well don’t get used to it. I only get dressed up for people I want to impress.”

“Well what about us?” Dean shouted from the bathroom as he shaved his jaw, shooting you a flirty look in the mirror.

“I don’t care what you think, Winchester.” You smirked. “If you boys can’t handle me covered in blood and gun-powder you definitely don’t deserve me in a cocktail dress.”

“Mmm.” Dean stepped out of the bathroom, wiping off his face with his eyes narrowed in mock seduction. “I don’t know which version of you is sexier.”

“Shut up.” You gave him a playful push as he moved past you to find his tie. You paused as he chuckled and looked at yourself in the mirror. Simple black dress, black heels, curled hair, you had to admit, you looked pretty okay. I mean, you weren’t Megan Fox by a long shot, but you actually felt pretty confident in the get-up. Plus you were going to be escorted into the party by three god-like men in suits. You didn’t have to really worry about freaks messing with you at the party, you were fairly confident. Even though you and the team had no romantic relations whatsoever, that didn’t mean you wouldn’t look incredibly off-limits with a six foot five giant like Sam on one arm and a suave, womanizer like Dean on the other. And of course, with Cas shooting daggers with his eyes at anyone who approached you, you were fairly confident that cupid wouldn’t mess with you. After all, you were the best hunters in the business.

You checked out your ass, before you ran a hand down your back side, making sure the dress laid flat. You narrowed your eyes at your reflection before you breathed in to make your stomach shrink before you asked. “When was the last time we actually went to a party like this anyway?”

“Are we counting the time we almost died at that Halloween party those high schoolers through in the basement of the morgue?” You narrowed your eyes thoughtfully at Sam’s sarcastic question as Dean laughed beside his brother, tying his shoe.

“No. Near death experiences don’t count.”

“So we can’t count that wedding we crashed either?” Dean chuckled and you threw your hairbrush at him with a laugh. Dean flinched and laughed louder as Sam rolled his eyes and you put your hands on your hips heatedly.

“So…never?” Dean finished before he turned to Cas to help him straighten out his tie. Cas sat still, his eyes narrowed in thoughtful silence as Dean slapped his chest roughly when he finished, giving the angel a thumbs up. “So this should be fun.”

Cas blinked, and cocked his head to one side. “What is fun about hunting down a rogue cherub?”

You sighed and Sam closed his eyes with a hopeless laugh.

“Nothing.” Dean hauled him up by the arm and lifted the flyer off the table, holding it up to Castiel’s blue gaze. “But you know what is fun? A room full of emotional, unattached women at a Valentine’s Day dance.”

The local club that was hosting the holiday dance was full to capacity by the time you and the boys got through the front door. Sam had to duck under confetti laden hanging hearts that bordered the door just to get inside, resulting in knocking some pink and white confetti all over both you and Cas.

You smirked to yourself as your eyes adjusted to the dimly lit bar. Ah, Valentine’s Day. The one day of the year that could successfully bring out the saddest and most lonely people in an attempt to make them all social. You laughed until you realized that you were one of those millions who was single and stupid and emotionally constipated on such a lovey-dovey holiday.

“I like these little pieces of paper.” You turned around at the serious, low voice behind you to see Cas holding a handful of confetti hearts and arrows in his hand. You grinned as he looked up at you, offering you a smile. From far away they are very beautiful. Up close they are simple and plain.”

You scoffed at the statement. “Poetic. I’ve never felt so relatable to confetti in my life.”

Cas narrowed his eyes at your words. “What do you mean?”

You laughed and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Nothing.” You cast a glance out to the dancefloor, where awkward couples were meeting and slow dancing or grinding to whatever music happened to play. Dean was already deep in conversation with three other young women, their faces bright from laughing at his jokes or the alcohol in their hands. Sam seemed preoccupied as he chatted with a bartender a few seats away, looking intelligent and intriguing to all the women sitting around him at the moment. You shook your head hopelessly. Your boys always attracted so much attention.

Just then, a beautiful woman sidled in between you and Castiel, her slender figure perched perfectly against the bar. You widened your eyes at her boldness as she tossed her rose-gold hair over her shoulder, acting as though you weren’t even there.

“Well, hello handsome.”

You bit your lip as the woman leaned toward Castiel, her dress sparkling golden white, like it was made of thousands of dewy pearls. You weren’t jealous, but you were interested to see how this would play out. After all, Cas was…well, Cas.

You watched as Castiel took a small sip of the drink that was on the bar in front of him, his eyes questioning as he looked over the woman. “Are you referring to me?”

The woman hesitated and then let out a musical laugh, the sound prettier than anything you had ever heard. You felt a twinge of jealousy creep up your spine as she reached forward and touched Cas’s hand. “I am.”

Cas blinked before he dipped his head at her respectfully. “Hello then.”

He tried to lean forward and meet your eyes around the woman’s body, and you almost laughed. She seemed like the type that was never over-looked. Ever. In fact, if you had been even a tiny bit bi, she probably would have had you around her finger by now. You blushed at the thought and looked away, hiding a foolish giggle.

“Would you care to dance?” The woman purred. At the question, Castiel’s eyes narrowed further. You laughed to yourself, hardly able to believe he was this oblivious. Suddenly, Cas opened his mouth. “You seem somewhat familiar to me—”

Before he could finish, the woman grabbed him by the collar and pressed a soft, slow kiss to his mouth. Your whole body tensed, the air of playfulness sapped from your body in an instant. Someone was kissing Cas. Your Cas. You wanted to slap her, but before you could think to move out of shock, she was already up on her feet, her hand reaching out to Cas, who was now staring at her with undivided attention.

“You coming or what?”

Cas didn’t exactly hesitate. He stood up, downed his drink and followed her.

For a moment, you sat, dumbfounded. When you finally could think again, the shock and disbelief wearing away, you felt a whisper leave your lips. “Son of a bitch…”

You looked around. You were completely alone at the bar. You felt a frustrated thump in your chest when you realized you were basically surrounded by other single women, too lonely or depressed to look up from their drinks to even notice you. You spun around on your chair and put your elbows on the bar. “Good talk…” You muttered to yourself.

“Wow.” You looked up to see the bartender, a middle-aged older man staring at you. You looked away as he sauntered closer, placing his hands on the bar as he looked out over your shoulder. “That bitch.”

You let out a soft scoff. “You saw that huh?”

The bartender let out a low hum. “I can’t believe you let her get away with that.”

“Eh.” You reached forward toward a drink that he had just placed down for you and took a swift swig. “He’s not mine anyway.”

The bartender clicked his tongue, but his eyes turned back to the woman now swaying on the dance floor with Castiel. “Shame.”

“Well, can’t say I’m used to it. Those boys are always bringing girls back to the house, and I just kind of go with it.” You bit your tongue as the bartender chuckle and you quickly caught yourself. “Roommates.”

“Oh, I get it.” The bartender murmured and you took another drink. You grimaced at the taste and looked down into the cup. The beverage was tinted pink and tasted almost too sweet. “Used to being out-seduced, is that it?”

You looked up at the blatant remark, your eyes narrowed as a wave of irritation swept over you. “You’re a charming fellow, aren’t you?”

The man leaned forward with a shrug, meeting your eyes, a flirty glaze in the golden orbs. “I can be…”

You shook your head and scoff, looking away. “Not interested, sorry.”

The man paused and you looked back at him. His eyes were solid gold, possibly the most beautiful color you had ever seen. You were sure you had seen them before…

“A girl as good-looking as you shouldn’t ever get cock-blocked by some bag of dicks like her.”

You smiled at his comment. “Thanks.”

“In fact I’m sure you could get plenty of action here tonight if you play your cards right.”

You looked up at the bar-tender. “I don’t think that I need that today. Just here to have a good time.”

“Oh, come on. You know you want those morons to at least see you as a woman.”

You shot the bartender a savage look. “Actually I don’t.” You hissed. “That would make my living situation a little tense. If I wanted to seduce my friends, I would have already.”

“You can’t lie to me, sweetheart.” You locked eyes with the bartenders golden ones, puzzled by his words. “But I’ll admit, I love your attitude.” He chuckled. “Girls like you make my job fun.”

“Alright, I’m going to go…” You started, hopping down from the barstool drink in hand before you heard the bartender. “I’d prefer to spend my Valentine’s Day by myself, thank you.”

“It’s a little too late for that, but I’ll remember that next time.”

You froze in your tracks and whirled around. “What did you say?”

The bartender stood silently behind the bar, his golden eyes fixed on you. Slowly, a smirk rose onto his lips and suddenly, his face changed. It was a slight change, but you noticed it, and suddenly you recognized those golden eyes. “Gabriel…”

The archangel shrugged and smiled widely at you. “Sorry, Y/N. All’s fair in love and war.”

You took a step forward, but before you could reach him, Gabe snapped his fingers and vanished right before your eyes.

You stood still, almost too afraid to move. Your eyes slowly flew down to the empty glass in your hand. You swallowed, caution making your hands shake. “Shit.”

“Y/N?” You wheeled around nearly falling over as your high heel slipped under your weight. You nearly tumbled backward, but before you hit the ground, a strong pair of hands caught your wrist. You let out a gasp and looked up, only to find Sam and Dean on either arm, their eyes locked on your face.

There was a terrible long pause. You felt your heart drop when you noticed the way that both of the Winchesters were staring at you. Sam’s hazel green eyes were locked on your face, his lips slightly parted and his cheeks slowly flushing deep crimson. Oh no… Your eyes wandered cautiously over to Dean, and you almost closed your eyes in horror as you found him quite literally checking you out. His green, piercing gaze traveled up your leg to your chest and to your lips and lingered there, as he pulled his bottom lip between his teeth, his fingers tightening on your wrist. Oh no…

Finally Sam hauled you to your feet, his hand resting lightly on your shoulder for just a second too long. “You okay?”

“Yeah, what happened to you?” Dean added, his voice gruff. You followed his gaze to see him staring at the way Sam was touching your arm. You grimaced, closing your eyes in dread.

Oh no.

You looked up only to find both brothers staring at you, their eyes intent, and their cheeks flushed. You looked down at the empty glass in your hand and back to the last place you had seen the Trickster. You hesitated and then smelled the drink again, only to grimace when you recognized the scent. Love potion. You dumped the last two drops of the drink on the floor and looked back at the Winchesters.

“I’m in trouble.”

END PART ONE

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emileehembrow-blog · 7 years

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The Latest Trends In Bridal Fashion Jewelry

The world is now too much acutely aware about style. Nearly day-after-day a brand new development makes headlines and folks quickly start following it. There's much affect of the western culture everywhere in the world right from hairdressing to styling their ft. One other thing that has grown Fashion expert is the usage of technology with fashion. It has a bigger hand in influencing the fashion. It is because whatever one attire up they take a picture of it and submit them on their individual social media profiles. Individuals who like them would certainly emulate the style after they get ready.

Fashion has not only influenced the common folks but it surely has impressed the workplace goers too. They also try to keep a trendy look although of their formal wears. Nonetheless, there are two sorts of people within the society. One group are the followers like now we have mentioned earlier and the opposite group are the ones who have little to do with vogue. They observe their very own model and add a distinct variation to the ongoing fashion traits. Even that generally becomes a pattern which others intend to comply with.

What fashion actually means?

Trend has nothing to do with hair or makeup. Neither it's concerning the cosmetics. It's the good looks the allure that one adds to his or her persona by sporting anything they like. All that matters is that how one teams up the equipment and the footwear with their costume. It doesn't must be the most costly clothes and equipment. An off-the-cuff one can also work wonders if accessorized in the appropriate manner.

What are the tendencies?

Vogue developments hold changing each season. It has additionally undergone a huge change from the sooner times. Earlier the English girls used to wear long gowns and flowery clothes with a hat on. Now the pattern has shifted to denims and tops.

Trend used to be a part of an actor's life but that has now change into part of the daily life. Trend has grow to be a big source of earning money. Many of the youths are making money by becoming vogue experts and giving folks recommendation. They're making channels in YouTube and internet hosting reveals on the television.

How will you keep warm this winter whereas nonetheless wanting cool? We have put collectively a information with some recommendations on which coats are hot right now. Starting things off is the aviator. This is a coat that's designed to maintain pilots heat while they're flying, so you recognize it is going to be nice at retaining you heat on the bottom. It seems especially good in black leather-based or tan suede, but there's an entire host of sorts you possibly can choose from to get the one which's best for you.

In the event you're after an extended coat, then the trench may very well be perfect for you. Ranging from knee to ankle length, these coats are tailor-made, that means they look improbable on everyone and their traditional lower means they will never exit of favor. Leather-based is a popular cloth for trenches but wool is also great for those cold nights. Go together with dark colours akin to midnight blue or grey so you'll be able to put on your coat with something, making it value for money in addition to timeless.

Maybe, although, you are not the kind of guy who likes tailoring, during which case, the duffel coat is an excellent different. It is definitely heat, and it's free becoming means which you could wear it over anything with out feeling restricted by the fabric. A key characteristic of duffel coats is their toggle buttons, which look fantastic buttoned up against the chilly, helping you look fashionable whereas maintaining out the nippiness. Put on it over anything for immediate winter style.

One other coat that provides effortless winter type immediately is the military coat. These coats are good and look sensible in dark blue and gray. They are often brief jackets or flooring size greatcoats, however it doesn't matter what, there may be bound to be an option to swimsuit you. This is one of those coats that's versatile sufficient to be worn by everybody and their close fit means they look immediately smart over any outfit while nonetheless retaining you heat on these cold days.

OK, so coats don't suit everyone's style. Possibly you wish to layer up and throw a lighter jacket excessive, or want a extra casual model. If so, then the denim jacket is a superb option. They come in loose styles or as a more fitted choice, which is brilliant for achieving the smart-casual look. Denim is one of those fabrics that goes with all the pieces, so you will not have to worry about coordinating. Once more, go for a darkish-colored coat to keep away from clashing and you'll't go far mistaken.

Right before she befriends diamonds, dolls are all the time a girl's closest companions. Hours will whiz previous them with not a single boring moment as they worry over their dolls. With regard to dolls, women by no means tire of the make-consider of sewing garments, doing makeover, dressing her up and many others. But in a matter of a few years, dolls resemble less and fewer the cute companion to a picnic on the park, and an increasing number of of the good and chic corporate girl. And now, such new tastes in enjoying makeover video games online at the moment are here as properly.

Cloe, Yasmin, Jade and Sasha, members of the teenage sensation Bratz dolls, have each fashion fancy you would dream of. As everyone the world over knows, Bratz are the new dolls on the block, with a ardour for passion, and are the teen answer to the queen of the fashion doll universe, Barbie. In case you are keen to catch their latest fashion adventure and be part of some learning on vogue, then a Bratz makeover recreation is your simple passport to their world. Once you'll be able to have Bratz video games as a part of your day by day routine, you'll be in the middle of the motion and on the scene as the unbelievable and the glamorous Bratz as they face head-on each fashion dilemma any social perform can present their means.

With Bratz makeover games, the seemingly distant dream of having the ability to check out any present outfit can materialize now with the Bratz. With the Bratz, women make the style, and never vice versa, so to speak. Each individual merchandise of clothes design now becomes a jewel that is a potential complement to effect you might be after.

With the Info Superhighway referred to as the Web at our fingertips, you could have at your disposal web sites that provide on-line makeover video games. Except for games where you can provide a gown makeover to your doll, there are available accessories too that are surefire flatterers and complements, like earrings, and necklaces. Discuss being hassle-free for fogeys! There may be completely nothing right here about sewing actual doll garments, collecting accessories and even buying an actual doll. Everything occurs on on single display screen.

Online games are very a lot known lately for being consumer-pleasant. Only one living proof for being rich in graphics too, are Bratz video games. What basically occurs is that you simply as a participant have to move several levels of difficulties and challenges to realize rewards like "cash" to purchase garments or meals in your doll. The video games are literally various in theme, ranging from gown up games the place you get to scroll via a whole bunch of dream outfits, to magnificence makeover video games, to timer- and buzzer-beating race games.

There may be nothing worse than taking a look at your clothes once you're on the point of exit and finding you "don't have anything to put on" what number of times has that happened you? And actually, no matter how massive your wardrobe is, unless you start to discover ways to manage it properly, you'll at all times run into this drawback. I hope I can provide you some useful tricks to get more out of your wardrobe.

Proper on the top my number one tip for you is to assume and plan in advance what you will put on for an upcoming occasion; discovering something to put on as your are preparing will make it nearly unimaginable to get your look right and time stress from running late, in the event you're like me, will greater than seemingly push you to put on something you're not 100% snug with. Having your garments deliberate and prepared will make actually getting ready so much less aggravating and depart you more time, and all of us need that, in your equally necessary make-up and hair.

With good planning in advance the garments you choose to wear will make you're feeling nice, a superb look gives you confidence and make you stand out from the rest and never depart you feeling awkward and hiding on the back.

An essential a part of planning is to study and understanding learn how to mix and match the clothes you've, coordinating your garments effectively is an typically ignored skill, however when you could have mastered it and know what goes properly with what, it'll make your whole clothes go further.

I've been buying garments for a while professionally, I see many people buying new outfits with out excited about the garments they already have and how these will match with them. Shopping for a new tops, for example, one that you could wear with objects from your existing wardrobe is not going to only save you cash it makes far more sense, cleverly recycling your clothes like this shows your smarter at vogue.

An awesome ideas for studying about coordinating is while wanting at the images exhibiting the clothes on our web site, you may get some very good concepts of blending and matching by seeing what the models are wearing as an outfit and not just the garment listed, see how the models can have matched the merchandise with different garments (by the way in which all the clothes are usually taken from our items that we've got) and try to see what you already personal which you could add to this in the identical method.

Another good idea is to have a look to see if the garment is available in completely different colors, trying on the same merchandise in numerous colours you will note other ideas for coordinating, as no doubt the garments will have been blended and matched once more. Keep wanting and studying this way until you understand the many totally different manner one single item of clothes might be combined and match many times, this manner the training is straightforward, fun and with none strain.

Apart from buying garments that can be swapped around with the ones you already have, try buying garments that may look great for a night out but can be worn at one other time when mixed with your day garments.

Do not forget that garments are supposed to be fun, don't get pressured about your wardrobe; by studying easy methods to handle your garments you'll find yourself spending less time getting ready and extra time having enjoyable.

I loved spending just a few moments to inform you my ideas on planning and coordinating your clothes I hope I've given you some concepts that may provide help to find out about planning outfits together with mixing and matching your wardrobe, in case you need some extra ideas you'll be able to at all times meet up with me on Facebook, the place in case you have not guessed, I do like to speak!

Two years in the past, in the event you ask me anything about vogue, I would simply stare at you questioning what you're speaking about. This shouldn't be shocking. I'm a style idiot in any case.

I don't even know how you can gown decently. That's probably why I am still single now. I just can't entice the attention of ladies. But I am determined to get myself out of this sorry state. That is why I've decided to study extra about trend.

And you realize what? I actually love learning about vogue. And I feel you must too! I'm not kidding! I am critical!

Why You Should Begin Paying Consideration to Trend

Are you aware why you should learning more about style? As a result of people do decide a guide by its cover! It's possible you'll not prefer it but this can be a fact. As long as you might be in this society, individuals are going to evaluate you want a e book. Individuals are going to have a look at what you are wearing, your coiffure and so on.

Once you begin selecting up new knowledge within the style enviornment, you gown sense will enhance. You'll start to know how you can dress well.

Whenever you look good, individuals will start to take you extra significantly. Individuals will begin to be extra well mannered in direction of you. You will discover that it's simpler to achieve success when you could have the 'image of success.

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