#I’m going to watch some post canon stuff and then make a retrospective post | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mittensmorgul · 4 years ago

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So, Signs that 15x20 isn't real: El Sol beer; warm, saturated lighting; Dean's choice of clothes. Signs the writers were silenced: cut-out-tongue-vampire-thing. Sign it's about sexual repression: Vampires! Sign it's all about the gay: Dean was nailed from behind. Anything else to add to that list of symbols? Because this looks like the writers winking SOS at us in a kidnapper's video.

oh gosh... I keep meaning to rewatch the finale and make a full list of it all, because this is tip of the iceberg stuff. But I just... heck I just don’t want to watch it again :’D

That rewatch is on the agenda, and I’m currently watching 15.09 on the eternal loop. According to the TNT schedule, they’re showing 15.20 on Tuesday, looping directly back to the pilot immediately afterward. So... if I do decide to watch that (and I haven’t decided yet), that’s... gonna be some wild whiplash...

But anyway, back to the question!

You have a pretty good list going there...

I’ll add these things that made the episode feel like not-a-finale:

-no Road So Far segment, or even any sort of “important moments from the last 15 years that brought us to this point” sort of montage/retrospective of their lives

-no Carry On Wayward Son at the beginning, but TWO versions of it back to back at the end

And these things that were just general wtf moments for me:

-Sam? cooking breakfast? since when does Sam make breakfast, ever? that’s Dean’s thing

-Dean, with a dog? since when has Dean ever wanted a dog? That’s Sam’s thing

-Dean makes his bed, and it looks messier when he’s done than before he started (this is... not Dean-like... I actually went back and checked previous shots of his room)

-they never, not once in the episode, act like they have even one (1) single friend or any sort of goal or direction in life, which is weird...

-apparently they’d been unable to find a hunt, making it seem like the supernatural world had been quiet (for a moment I thought maybe monsters were no longer a problem in a post-Chuck world), until they stumbled on a hunt out of nowhere after choosing to go to a pie festival... as if the moment they chose to do something to move on and just have fun, suddenly there was work for them to do and they immediately abandoned everything to hunt these mystery monsters from John’s journal, which turned out to be a trap for them (specifically for them? considering the rando s1 vampire seemed to have lured them there?)

-The fact Dean recognized this vampire he never even interacted with and somehow magically knew her name, despite it never having been stated in canon and, again, Dean never having interacted with her outside of watching her escape with the vampire who actually DID bear them a grudge from 1.20...

-the weird lingering close up shot of the rebar during the fight scene

-the invocation of “destiny” and “don’t have a choice” as they went into a freaking pie festival... this hits bad right now because I’m rewatching 15.09 in the background as I type this, and it was almost word for word what the Dean in Chuck’s vision of the future said to Sam as they resigned themselves to go off on their final hunt (which was vampires btw), which they lost because in the next scene Sam and Dean have become vampires and are both killed... so like... this was Chuck’s story. The trappings might’ve been different, but it was still fundamentally the same... Cas locked away in a terrible place (ma’lak box in Chuck’s story, Empty in Dabb’s), Dean resigned to his fate because of a vampire hunt gone bad.

-then the pie festival itself... Dean’s got a huge tray with half a dozen different varieties he’s excited to try (purchased from Dabb’s Pies...), is eager to taste them all (like... metaphorically trying out different “apple pie life” ending scenarios, because he’s finally free to explore and maybe he actually wants the pecan pie life...), but before he can even taste the first bite, Sam... chooses one and smashes it in Dean’s face.

-even weirder, Dean never once in the episode says Cas’s name, or seemed even once to give a dang about Cas at all... and handwaved it when Sam mentioned Cas and Jack. It had been like... days, on screen (if they’d intended for more time to have passed, they would’ve indicated that on screen, and they did not... they showed us MAYBE three days passing since the events of 15.19). So like... did Dean have a personality transplant or what. Sam says Cas’s name in the ep, Bobby says it in Heaven. Dean... never does. Which is weird, considering how many times he’s said Cas in canon over the years, to the point it’s literally become memes...

-jumping around a bit here, but why Masked Vampires? Why had John failed to figure out they were vampires originally? Because he believed vampires were extinct? because he hadn’t been told they existed at all yet when he’d confronted them in 1986? Was John suddenly just A Bad Hunter after years of canon reinforcing that he was actually a really good hunter?

-and why THIS WEIRD CONGLOMORATION OF JOHN-RELATED CASE NONSENSE? From his journal to the murder clowns to rando vampire from their first vamp hunt? It’s like the perfect storm of erasing the last 15 years just to “bring it back to the start” to end it all like it could’ve had this been s1 still.

-speaking of John, and the El Sol in Heaven... WHY would Bobby hand Dean “John’s Beer” in Heaven? Especially since Dean expressed the fact that he didn’t even like it? Like... why wouldn’t he have been handed a beer he actually ENJOYED in Paradise? Why force a John Beer on him when he could literally have anything he wanted?

-and why was Heaven for Dean, in a place where he could literally have anything he wanted, go anywhere and do anything, why was he just driving through the woods along back roads? After years of talking about how he wanted to go “toes in the sand,” take a vacation, go fishing, or even finally get to eat a piece of pie? Or like ANYTHING he’d talked about wanting to do over the years that he never had a chance to... but apparently the thing he’d arguably spent the most time during his life doing is the only thing he wanted to do now that every possibility was open to him? Yeah, no that’s stupid...

-Tree (the final shot of 15.04 with bobblehead Sam and Dean by the tree like they didn’t have a thought of their own, Chuck’s plastic figurines dancing on his orders, very much like where they randomly parked and had the “vamp mime” conversation)

-Dean casually resorting to the threat of torture after YEARS of the show condemning this choice. Dean gratuitously being “a killer” when his acceptance of the fact that that’s not who he was in the previous episode was literally the thing that defeated Chuck... like... this was entirely stupid...

-just... the pacing of the episode was so weirdly wonky, with random cuts and no sense of time passing anywhere, nor interconnectedness between scenes, and the weirdly uncomfortable interminable death scene. Like, it looked like the death scene of a soap opera heroine. It was upsetting when Dean hit the spike and realized what had happened, but then he just... lingered... dangling on the hook for Sam’s benefit. Like Dean was nothing more than set decoration like a framed portrait for Sam to hang up and walk away from. Which is weird... and stupid... Dabb knows how to do pacing, and it’s like he forgot everything he ever knew about writing to force this “good way to die” trope, as if the previous 15 years of the show hadn’t been spent denouncing (and Dean finally overcoming) this mindset of “I always knew I’d go down swinging” or whatever. WHY. IT WAS STUPID.

-Wig

there’s probably more, but I’m tired and have reached my daily limit for the wtf of this episode >.>

Anyone else, please feel free to add more.

#spn 15.20 #Anonymous

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shoechoe · 3 years ago

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Do you have any JJBA ships? And if so, what are they?

yeah, I do actually. I think I listed a couple of them on my "about me" thing but I haven't really talked about them yet, so I will. (I will start with the more popular ones and work my way down.) This turned out to be kind of long so I’ll put it under a cut as well.

probably the most relevant/popular one that I ship is Bruno with Abbacchio. I don't really have any complex takes on it, but it just makes sense to me. abbacchio is a character that generally has really low self-esteem and doesn't really feel any inherent worth about himself due to trauma-related guilt, and the only way he feels like he has a purpose is when he's following bruno. he was also the very first person that bruno invited to his group, which means they've been together the longest out of anyone else. when I got to the boat scene and abbacchio told bruno "the only time I feel inner calm is when I'm with you," I was like "woah, okay. that's kinda gay."

when abbacchio is found dead and bruno has to pretend to be calm and collected, but you can clearly see he's holding back a breakdown, it was depressing, man. it's honestly tragic what happened to the two of them in the end (but there does seem to be an implied afterlife in Jojo, so... maybe they're ghost married right now. Who knows?)

I guess it just seems like a nice ship to me based on how much they rely on and care about each other canonically. I will say that some of the fanon content kind of annoys me (specifically the “Bruno is the mom and Abbacchio is the dad” thing... I don’t understand why people have to project a straight relationship onto a gay one, you know? it reminds me of when people go up to a gay couple and ask “oh, who’s the masculine one and who’s the feminine one?” That’s not how it works, lol.) despite that, though, I still like the ship a whole lot.

the next one is Josuke and Okuyasu. I think they’re cute together. what kind of platonic teenage friendship involves taking each other out to a fancy italian restaurant? trick question. the answer is none. i didn’t really initially ship this after watching part four (i’m not really a person who’s super geared towards shipping most of the time considering canonical romance plots tend to bore me more than anything) but i warmed up to it after seeing some of the fanon josuyasu stuff and also thinking in retrospect about their scenes together. i think the pairing works really well.

i also just really like their dynamic. due to the fact that okuyasu isn’t very smart, he’s not really capable of or confident in knowing what to do on his own, so he often relies on other people to follow and basically help guide him through life. the initial person he did this with was his brother- when he dies, you can tell just how scared and confused he felt. i think that’s the main reason why he befriended and started following josuke so quickly afterwards. i think josuke became that new person for him, if that makes sense? (I should really get around to rewatching part four lol just writing this is making me remember just how good it was.)

i also really like jolyne x hermes. this just seemed like an obvious one from the start when i read part six. i talked a bit about why i like their relationship so much in that one jolyne post already, but that was a while ago. just watch the way they interact with each other- they start off hostile due to their environment, but eventually grow to respect and admire each other and start having fun. it’s really nice. (i also have a lot of problems with how jolyne and anasui’s relationship developed in canon, but that’s not really what matters considering i started thinking they’d make a cute couple since before anasui was introduced.)

i also like this scene especially. you can just tell how much they care about each other- the fact that hermes (who’s been hardened from her time in prison) is comfortable enough around jolyne that she’s willing to cry at her side is just sorta heartbreaking, you know? i guess their relationship just works for me.

the last main one here is avdol and polnareff. i think i’ve expressed my opinion on how Stardust Crusaders is my personal least favorite part, but i did always like avdol and polnareff’s relationship. I have mixed feelings on Avdol because i feel like his character was easily the most underutilized and least developed out of everyone (which was a shame, because in my opinion, there was actually some potential with him based on what we do get to see of him and what we saw with his relationships with some of the other characters like Joseph) but i always thought he was at his best when he relaxed his stoic and reserved attitude and started fucking around with the other characters- which pairs really well with polnareff, who’s a total goof and tends to easily befriend and bring out more personality from the others.

I especially like their scenes together. That one moment where they decided to mess with their enemy by literally pissing down his breathing hole was such a shitpost-tier scene that I can’t help but like how absurd it was. They have a really nice mix of serious moments showing how they like each other and funny/relaxed moments that makes their relationship feel super nice to watch.

The only thing that I really dislike is how Avdol’s false death and revival was handled (especially in regards to how everyone just let Polnareff stew in his own guilt and lied to him for weeks until Avdol recovered, and literally no one gave a shit when he clearly felt hurt and betrayed by this to the point where he broke down crying), but... I feel like if I let myself rant about that and Avdol’s “death” here I would be going off-topic lmfao. Even then, it goes to show just how much Polnareff cared about him, to the point where he was willing to do pretty much anything to bring Avdol back.

another one I think about sometimes is Kars x Esidisi. I don’t ship this one too seriously, but it’s funny to me. i mean, they did run away to raise a child together, so... (also the pillar men are pretty much the saving grace of part two to me so i easily think about them the most lol)

as for canon ships, i always liked Jonathan x Erina and Tiziano x Squalo. I don’t have real thoughts except that I think they’re cute. I actually think that Jonathan and Erina’s relationship should’ve been shown a lot more than it was, which is a rare sentiment for me because i usually find main character love interest plots to be boring. It’s also always nice to see an actual gay couple in media in regards to Tiziano and Squalo (even if the canon LGBT+ rep in Jojo admittedly tends to be iffy.)

don’t judge me for this last one but I also kind of have this crackship with Pucci and Diavolo (I call it pucciboss). it was basically the result of me bashing my two favorite villains together like a godless heathen. i think i’ve mentioned this a couple times before, but not in depth because i was pretty sure no one wanted to hear about it. it started off as just a joke like “ha ha, what if they were in love?” but then i started making headcanons about it and thinking “hmmm... you know this actually sort of makes sense” and it pretty much became a thing in my brain.

the thing with pucci and diavolo is that like... a christian priest and a dude named “Devil” is kind of inherently an interesting setup for a ship in my opinion tbh. (Especially considering the fact that diavolo had a christian upbringing just like pucci.) not to mention since Made in Heaven has the ability to alter fate and reset the universe to shape it to the user’s liking, would pucci theoretically then be able to stop the death loop?? (I actually have one joke concept where resetting the universe caused some unintended consequences to the world and freeing Diavolo happened to be one of them, meaning pucci and diavolo met that way.) i also feel like considering just how much jojo villain content there is, there is extremely little content of pucci and diavolo interacting which was always sort of disappointing to me.

i would continue to ramble about this but i feel too embarrassed at this point, soo.... become a pucciboss stan now everyone (/j)

#asks #hell yes... asks...#ships #jolymes #josuyasu #avpol #bruabba #shipping is fun #sorry most of my thoughts on these kinda just boil down to 'i think theyre cute and i like them together' lol #shoe talks a lot

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loregoddess · 3 years ago

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Roland Glenbrook for the character asks?

oh, prince of suffering...

First impression: He and Frederica were the two I was most interested in going into the game blind. Starting the game, I loved his character design and overall I thought he was interesting, especially since he was the second prince and not the crown prince, although his being second but a main character also clued me in that his family was probably going to be dead city by the story's halfway point.

Impression now: Hoo boy, this kid has a lot of baggage to unpack. Initially I was really thrown off by his Ch17 pitch, same as basically everyone who played the game I feel like, but I wanted to protect him anyhow which played in part to my choosing Frederica's endroute over Benedict's. Despite the shock of the Ch17 pitch, now that I've combed through a lot of the narrative text, I really appreciate the complexity of his character, and the fact that his being this 20 year old kid who gets saddled with *vaguely gestures* all that feels very believable bc like, being in your early 20s is like a second teen phase, it can be really hard. I still love his character a whole lot, even if I know that Ch17 pitch chilled him to a lot of others, and I think that his writing overall is really interesting. Glass canon though, dude cannot take a hit even if he can dish out damage.

Favorite moment: Actually, seeing his character growth in his personal fight against Gustadolf in the golden route was just, so, so rewarding. Like this is the turning point, I feel like, where Roland really comes into his own strength that he needs to be a good ruler. Just, Roland's entire part of the Ch18 golden route is really good. That said I also enjoy suffering in fiction, and I loved his battle with Serenoa at the start of Benedict's endroute, it gives so much insight to Roland's mind and heart (and also gave me major MGS vibes which I am certain was entirely unintentional). And the end scene of the epilogue for that route, where Roland’s in the abandoned village tending to the sick was just chilling to watch, since it really set up what the future of that timeline might look like. That said, really my favorite thing is to see characters grow positively, and like hopeful stuff, and so his entire arc in the golden route was probably my personal favorite for him, since I really liked seeing him finally grow into the role of king that he really is strong enough to fill even if he doesn’t realize it for the entire story.

Idea for a story: His character stories left a lot to be desired for me, so like, building off the “what if there were more character stories” from my Corentin post, I’d want to explore Roland’s relationships with some of the other characters. Cordelia is an obvious one since she gets so little relevance in the story past a certain point, and Hughette, but I also think it would be really interesting to have Roland interact with characters like Ezana or Medina who could paint a different picture of Hyzante (or even Geela for that matter), or to have him interact with more characters from Aesfrost like Flanagan. Having him talk with Archibald or Groma would be really interesting too, since they have many more years of life experience to offer him advice or just like, a different perspective. Of course, having him get a proper conversation with Avlora would be fascinating as well.

Unpopular opinion: Uh, I dunno. I guess retrospectively his Ch17 pitch makes sense given everything going on in his life and isn’t out of character per se, even if I still personally hate the pitch.

Favorite relationship: Obviously I find his dynamic with Serenoa to be really interesting, since it tends to be the crux of a lot of his personal story arcs, but I’m also really interested in the dynamic between him and Hughette. Not in a shippy way really just, it’s interesting to see how lord-bodyguard relationships get handled by different writers, and Roland and Hughette’s relationship is somehow a lot looser than I would expect, but that could be bc the writing focuses more on Hughette’s motives for remaining his guard than on Roland’s perspective to her being his guard. Also, I only got a handful of “blink and you miss them” lines to support this, but I am very interested in how his interactions with Svarog develop after the Ch18 golden route battle.

Favorite headcanon: Hmm, I dunno there’s a few I’m fond of. I guess one I haven’t shared is that he does eventually learn hawk-riding from Hughette, but is initially kinda terrified of heights. He keeps at it though (trying to hide his unease from Hughette who figures it our pretty quickly anyhow), and eventually comes to really love hawk-riding and mostly gets over that fear as well. Also I spent my usual amount of time wondering what his mom was like, and came to the conclusion that Roland and Cordelia both resemble the late queen more than Frani, who takes after their father in appearance.

#lostchasingsilver #ask game #Roland's actually super interesting to me as a character which is great bc being one of the main characters means he actually gets like #a proper series of arcs and lots of writing and screentime to analyze #really wish he wasn't so glassy so I could have used his excellent movement stat for something other than running away from enemies #I still don't have an ask tag

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rwbyconversations · 5 years ago

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The Scarlet Letter: Let’s talk about RWBY’s male LGBT rep

I have been sitting on this post for nearly four weeks waiting until the 15th due to the Before the Dawn spoiler rules.

So let's start with a blunt statement: RWBY's male LGBT representation has not been good. If the series' handling of female LGBT rep is good (which... well there's worse shows) and the general standard for how you write LGBT characters in a show like this, its handling of male rep has been... how not to. And Before the Dawn kinda solidified the idea in my head that the show's handling of its male LGBT cast just isn't good enough, either by the standards of when RWBY began in 2013, or today in 2020 when compatively massive steps have been taken over the past decade to show a more diverse list of characters... or at least a more diverse list of female characters.

I don't wanna make this a pissing match over how over-or-under-represented male or female LGBT characters are, but I feel like it's safe to say that the majority of the trend-setters for modern romances, especially in western animation, have been between women. Korra and Asami from Korra, Chloe and Max from Life is Strange, Marceline and Bubblegum in Adventure Time, (insert the relevant Steven Universe characters here, never watched it), and more recently, Adora and Catra in She-Ra and Luz in Owl House.

Compatively, while studies have shown that in general male LGBT characters get more appearances on a purely numerical level, in general they're more one-off characters there to pad a roster, or played more for comedy (see Josh Gad in the Beauty and the Beast remake or the gay guy in Avengers Endgame that was more notable for how hard China and Russia snapped him out of existance). The only big male-LGBT focused media I can think of from the last decade would be Yuri On Ice, Moonlight, IDW's Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye (Chromedome/Rewind best pairing fuck you Roberts for issue 16) Love Simon, and the anime adaptation of Banana Fish.

So it's no surprise that RWBY basically follows these ideas. It's big romance is (unless the writers are very stupid) going to be between Blake and Yang, their first out character was Ilia, Coco got sent to the Book Dimension where she confirmed "I use my sunglasses to perv on women without their knowledge" which uh... yeah you can definitely tell RWBY is written by men... and Volume 6 had Saph and Terra being a good example of an LGBT couple without any real drama. In the last three years alone, the show has drastically increased its lesbian and bisexual characters, alongside even including its first out trans character in May Marigold (albeit only revealed on Twitter). In general, these depictions of sexuality have been pretty OK. Would have liked it if Ilia wasn't immediately written out of the show after Volume 5 as it made her feel a bit more disposable than intended but whatever, subject for another day.

RWBY's male rep though is a bit spottier. There's the plant bois in Volume 5's premiere, we nearly had Pilot Boi until some last-minute revisions, and... Scarlet.

Why Scarlet's a bad launchpad for male LGBT rep

I don't like Scarlet or how his sexuality has been handled. Scarlet's homosexuality wasn't revealed in the show, or by the writers, or even in anything that's actually canon. He's confirmed gay in his sole of dialogue in a non-canon fan anthology, where the manga's Twitter team had to say that Miles suggested the idea and approved of it.

In short, Scarlet is Dumbledore'd, where his sexuality is revealed in out-of-show material and in a way that doesn't make it supremely obvious (Miles himself never commented to confirm this so this news was limited in how far it could spread. I'm genuinely curious how many people still don't know Scarlet's gay), and Scarlet himself is a nothing character who was written out of the show after Volume 3 and only reappeared in Before The Dawn, half a decade after he vanished. Compared to Ilia, as this came out after Ilia's entire arc in Volume 5, it's not a great starting point for mlm rep. But things would have been forgiven if it had gotten better, if the show did have more male LGBT characters introduced, even just on the Saphron/Terra level of just being around for a few episodes before leaving. Then it would have been a misfire but then we could all say "Things got better."

It... didn't. Which is why when Before the Dawn released in 2020, a full two years after Scarlet was first confirmed gay, while the franchise had more than doubled its wlw rep, Scarlet remained the one male character in the entire franchise who had a name and liked men. I remember vividly a fake leak for After The Fall which claimed Yatsuhashi would come out to Velvet and admit to having a crush on Fox. And I remember as well how many people were disappointed when it was said to be false, because it would have been nice for Yatsuhashi's character, especially after the fleshing out he gets in the CFVY books. If Yatsu had come out as gay in the books I'd like his writing enough to say he's a good case for rep, albeit with the caveat of "This is all in side material." But in reality, the leak was fake and Coco was confirmed gay instead.

Unfortunately, Before the Dawn proceeded to ruin Scarlet and made me at times feel genuinely uncomfortable as a queer man! Let's talk about that.

Before The Dawn is crap and Scarlet's writing is borderline offensive

I hate Before the Dawn. It's... bad. I read it while on a vacation and the only solace I had about the entire thing was that I'd bought an M&M chocolate bar. The bar was finished before the book. That bummed me out. It's not a very well written book, the prose is very Early 2010s YA Writer, none of the characters are memorable and there's various Fun Incidents like "NGDO using children as bait for Grimm," and "Neptune's hydrophpobia being used as a threat to torture him and the scene is played for comedy."

Theo was cool. I can't wait to see him as written by good writers, he should be a highlight of the Vacuo arc.

I had two hopes for Before the Dawn- "Don't be bad," and "Let Scarlet and Sage be well written." I'd liked how After The Fall had handled some of its characters (barring, y'know, Coco perving on women), especially Fox and Yatsu who were surprising in how much I liked them. I was looking forward to seeing Myers give Sage and Scarlet similar treatment- two relatively nothing characters meant he'd have a blank slate to write them however he wanted, he could give them unique personalties and if nothing else it could be cool to see their Semblances.

And then I read the book. (Sage fans I am so sorry for you, you got baited harder than Johnlock fans)

Scarlet's a giant dickhead in the book. It's his sole character trait and his inner monologues go on, and on, and on about how much he hates Sun, how he revels in mocking him. Most of his dialogue is sarcastic put-downs about Sun and how lame he is, and Sun is never properly allowed to defend himself or point out how going with Blake meant he was able to help save Haven Academy.

(hey remember when Sun in Volume 6 expressly says to Blake "I was a bad leader for ditching Neptune and the others, and I need to work on that" only for Before the Dawn to have him staunchly refuse to accept that he let the team down? I don't think Myers did but I do)

Scarlet being a ratty bitch would be one thing if, again, the franchise had done more rep. He'd still be a badly written character, but it wouldn't sting as much. But because Scarlet is still the only expressly confirmed male LGBT character in canon (the book teases that Nolan is gay but there's never confirmation either way beyond him smiling at Scarlet), it means that he has to represent that entire ideal. So when the one gay man in Remnant is being an asshole and a snide loser, that means that by extension, this is how the franchise sees gay men. And that fucking sucks! I wanted to come out of Before The Dawn singing its praises, I wanted to like the book, but it was a massive letdown, especially coming off of the other big 2020 RWBY controversy involving gay characters.

Yeah. We're doing this.

Clover and Fair Game: Technically not queerbaiting. BUT:

Let's pre-empt this: Clover wasn't queerbaiting, and Fair Game, while cool and I dig it, kudos to them for becoming one of the top 5 RWBY pairings on AO3 in one year that's fucking impressive (I say with mild malice as an IronQrow main), never had a chance. The writing never seriously boosted it barring one interaction which was flirty (them talking in the lobby of the Schnee Manor), and everything else was out of show boosting through the social media teams and CRWBY hyping it themselves by saying they liked it. If you wanna blame people, blame the animators who went off-script with stuff like Kim Newman adding the wink as a deliberate nod to the Volume 4 waitress, or the social media team deliberately using the same policies for Fair Game as they do for Renora and Bumblebee.

It wasn't Eddy's fault that things escalated, and he himself has said that in retrospect, he should have warned people that this never had a shot.

But I can't blame the Fair Game fanbase. Because Fair Game took off like wildfire. It came right as the fanbase began seriously asking for more male rep, Qrow's pretty hot, and the Clover wink came right after the Great IronQrow Reawakening of November 9th, 2019. The rocket was primed, and they rode it to the moon. Finally, to these people, after seven years RWBY seemed to be doing something with mlm rep in show. People started getting into RWBY just for Clover and Qrow's interactions. And if heroes were boring, Watts and Tyrian also had a fantastic dynamic that made Nuts and Volts one of the more popular villain ships overnight. Things seemed to be turning around! RWBY was remembering that gay men existed! You could hear the choir sing!

... And for those people, that meant that episode 12 hit like Truck-Kun.

People got pissed. People were horrified. And it didn't help that some members of CRWBY had said in the build-up that episode 12 would have some shots that made them nauseous (probably the Tyrian thumb thing) Out of context, it looked to these fans like CRWBY were basically laughing at their suffering, like they were saying "Lol, you thought you had a chance, get fucked, I hope your vomit burns on the way up."

Yeah, Fair Game was never gonna be canon, and I think some people ran too far with it. But in the wider context of how desperate RWBY's mlm community had gotten for basic crumbs of content? I can see why they'd run with what they had. The writers aren't at fault for what happened, but CRWBY didn't help matters. And that desperate mix of what felt like official backing from the crew, jokes about how cute the ship was, and the hope that finally the show would have onscreen rep? I can see why people ran with it.

So why is the show more lackluster in depicting mlm characters?

Money. Let's be honest, most RWBY fans don't care if the show doesn't have good male rep. I'm willing to bet some of you reading this won't care and just dismiss it as not being that big a problem. I don't think the writers care if the show doesn't have good mlm rep because they're not poaching that market. They're after what they see as a bigger, more lucrative market, which in this case is female LGBT rep. That gets people buying games, watching shows, raising awareness and boosting awareness of your property, which means you make more money. In short: Two women kissing hits more markets and generates more attention than two men.

Am I saying that Miles, Monty and Kerry deliberately sat down seven years ago and said "We're not doing gay men because it won't generate enough ad revenue and traffic to be worth the loss in revenue from homophobes?" No, that's silly. But I'm saying that it's less important for them, and it shows in the things that are small and add up. Things like Miles not verifying Scarlet's sexuality or retweeting the manga account's confirmation to spread the message (compared to how he enthusiastically confirmed Ilia being a lesbian himself during the Reddit AMA). It shows in how Pilot Boi would have been the first mlm character only to die in his second full episode until M&K were told about the Bury Your Gays trope. It shows in how Shannon believes that Ozma is "megaqueer" and Miles jokingly laughs it off instead of confirming it, leaving it to just be Shannon's headcanon. It shows in how actor shipping is compared between the mlm and wlw ships, where Arryn and Barbara's frequent pushes for Bumblebee are seen as "official confirmation that it's endgame" while Michael and Kerry saying they enjoy Seamonkeys is treated as "well it would be cute if they did it, but they're never going to."

I'm not gonna say anything like "CRWBY are gonna have Qrow end up with a woman like Robyn out of spite against the bad apples of the Fair Game crowd." I'm not gonna say that I don't think CRWBY cares about male representation in the series. It is, however, definitely a low priority for them, and because that leads to gaffes like Scarlet's writing in Before The Dawn being offensive in his depiction, it only makes the contrast between the sexes all the more painfully apparent.

I'm kinda tired of waiting for Rooster Teeth to show that they do care about mlm. I'm kinda tired of RWBY's male rep being written like it came from a 1993 time capsule where I have to enhance the screen to see a guy holding a sign of Sun's abs or be content with the only onscreen rep still being the plant bois in Volume 5. I'm tired of how often the crew dances around answering basic questions about sexuality (and age, and birthdays, and heights, and so on) by treating it as a spoiler question, as if just wanting to know what way people swing would ever be a spoiler. I'm just... tired of all this. When the best mlm rep in Rooster Teeth's history remains the two dads in Camp Camp who show up in a few episodes, that should say something really bad about your company and your biases (To say nothing of the recent Red vs Blue seasons and their blatant queerbaiting for Grif and Simmons and the whole can of worms that is Donut).

I'd like to not feel like I'm borderline unwelcome because I'd like to see two men in this show kiss, and that the sole thing that represents people like me in this show is some British twat who complains about sand.

I'd just like to feel like my sexuality isn't a joke to Rooster Teeth (or at the very least, be like Donut and have it be a funny one). But at this point after the last few years? I feel like a very uncomfortable punchline to them. And it just sucks.

#rwby #rwde #fair game #queerbaiting #rwby before the dawn #mlm #lgbt #rwby analysis #Rooster Teeth #clover ebi #scarlet david

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e-vasong · 5 years ago

Note

Can I ask about your writing process?

Huge fan of your TUA fics here - the way you just GET the characters is incredible - its almost like reading a novel written by the actual show writers!

How do you go about your characterisation and your drafting process? Any tips on nailing the complexities of the characters (specifically five)?

Thanks!!!

:') This is literally so nice I don't know how to respond, oh my goodness. I wish I had, like, life-altering writing wisdom for you here, but I honestly feel like my entire process is kind of a mess. I'll share it with you anyways, though, just in case you can glean anything helpful from it. I’ll tuck it below a cut, but here it is (ft. some of my specific characterization notes on Five, since you asked :D).

Pre-draft: Concept stage! This can be a variety of things -- sometimes it's a specific scene. For me it's usually a challenge of some sort. I like to take things that I think are unlikely for a character (under what circumstances would [x] character ever become a bad guy? How would [x] character’s secrets get revealed if they never talk willingly about their emotions?) Then I build out from there. I outline sometimes now, but I’ve been winging all my pieces for so long that it’s pretty tough for me.

Draft one: Throw things at the wall. If I let myself, I will spend way too long agonizing on making every word perfect on the first go around, and I’ll never write anything. So draft one has permission to be as bad as it needs to be: sentence fragments, OOC dialogue/actions, clunky word choice, the whole nine yards. The most important thing is getting the words/scenes on the page.

Draft two: What sticks? Everyone is different -- I find it easier to edit than to write in the first place. So here’s where I look over my work from draft one. Is my sentence structure variable enough? How are their voices? Their actions? Does the narration work with the POV I’m using for the scene?

Like, okay. I’m working on chapter two of the end of the war right now. Currently, it includes this line:

“How did you even—” Five starts, then shakes himself. Absolutely not. He isn’t entertaining this. “Luther.”

In retrospect, I’m not wild about it. It doesn’t sound in character to me. I’m not pulling out receipts right now or anything, but the more I think about it, the more that I feel certain that Five rarely expresses surprise unless really shocked. Part of this is likely the contrast between him in his siblings (all the stuff about the Apocalypse and time travel is familiar to him and new to them, so the show has a lot of “Five explains [x] to his siblings while they look flabbergasted by him.”)

Anyways, it doesn’t sit right. So maybe, instead:

Five frowns, taken off guard. He could ask, but--quite frankly--he’s starting to think that he doesn’t want to know. He does, however, know what this is a preface to -- Luther is going to meddle.

“Luther,” Five says it like a warning. Luther either doesn’t hear it or doesn’t care.

Anyways, rinse and repeat step two as much as necessary, and you basically have my entire drafting process.

Characterization, though, I have a more thorough process for!

Fanon and meta is super, super helpful, but I definitely prefer to look at canon first and foremost. I find it easiest to build characterization by asking myself questions about the character! I mean, don’t get me wrong. The first step is just to...get your own read on their personality? And there’s no trick to that. Everyone comes away from watching a show/reading a book with a slightly different interpretation of a character’s personality. But when building off of that to write them, I find questions helpful. They vary from fandom to fandom, but, like, here are some of the questions I’ve asked myself while writing Five.

What motivates them? For Five, this is a super easy one. He literally says it at multiple points throughout the show. He’s motivated by his family. To the point of wanting to save the world because they’re a part of it. Five troops through injury and pain and discomfort, but one reference from Handler about a deal to save his family is enough to coerce Five into 1 - working with her when he doesn’t want to and 2 - taking a job that he doesn’t seem like he wants to take.

How far are they willing to go to get it? For Five, he’s willing to do pretty much anything.

Are there any contradictions in their characterization? This is a weirdly specific question, but! People are inherently contradictory. Sometimes in TV or movies or books, it’s just bad writing. But sometimes it’s because people are complicated. So, in TUA, Five is consistently a big-picture thinker throughout the series. He seems to view his job at the Commission with apathy because he knows that it’s part of maintaining the timeline and necessary for him to get back home and stop the Apocalypse. He plans to kill an innocent person because he believes the butterfly effect of their death could stop the end of the world. He is, in many ways, a utilitarian -- the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. The greater good sometimes requires a lesser evil. Pull the lever in the trolley problem, and kill the one to save the five. Unless that one is one of Five’s siblings.

For instance, his dialogue with the Handler in season one seems to imply that he is willing to give up fighting the Apocalypse if and only if she can guarantee his siblings’ safety (though this admittedly turns on how honest you think he was being with her -- I think he was honest, but smart enough to know she’d never follow through, but a fair argument can be made either way.) There are a million ways to read this, and the fun of playing with characterization is that you get to experiment with them! I read it as proof that Five is so driven by his desire to save his siblings that he actually places their wellbeing above his own moral compass (whether his moral compass is right or wrong is a whole other debate.)

What are they like at their best vs. at their worst? At his best, Five is strategic, driven, independent, determined, loyal, and protective. At his worst, he’s controlling, suspicious, bloodthirsty, temperamental, and obsessive. Of course, most people don’t just switch between these two extremes, and these traits frequently coexist, interact, and manifest in milder ways. Five being suspicious usually manifests as him being cautious until he’s confronted with a character (in season two, Lila) that strikes him the wrong way. Him being obsessive is often just a side product of the fact that he is determined, loyal, and protective. The fact that he can be controlling is connected to how independent he can be -- the same reason that Five tries to keep Diego in the mental hospital, never tells people that he’s injured, and hides things from them is the same reason he’s so quick and effective at getting things done. This is just a handy way of compiling a flaws/virtues list, and I like to look at it in terms of the potential extremes because I think it makes it easier to see how they interact to create the middle ground where the character actually exists.

How do they talk? Arguably the most important question for actually getting their voice, and the easiest way to nail this down is to just...look at the canon dialogue. Does the character use really big words? Do they talk in long gusts or in short, clipped sentences? Do they use contractions more or do they not shorten things? This is the hardest part of writing Five for me, because my first impulse is to make him talk like an Intellectual (tm) and Very Erudite Adult. Like, I default to that when writing him, and it’s a horrible habit (in my opinion) because...while he does speak that way sometimes (usually when explaining things to his siblings) that’s not actually how he talks most of the time. (Like, for instance, I tend to default away from Five using contractions in my first drafts of things. He actually uses contractions a lot, and frequently shortens words--”got to” is “gotta” for Five, “because” becomes “‘cause”, etc.)

Other examples:

Five: Billions of people are about to die tonight. You can change that.

The Handler: Tonight, tomorrow. So little difference in the scheme of things. Don't you remember the Commission's raison d'etre? What's meant to be is meant to be, or, as I like to say, que será, será.

Five: It's bullshit in any language.

I love this exchange so much :D. And it establishes some great things about the way Five talks! He doesn’t dance around the issue or debate her or try and prove her wrong. He just tells her he thinks that that opinion is dumb, obviously. He’s blunt, straightforward, and honest. (This seems to tie into the thing I was saying about Five and contractions -- he picks the most straightforward way of saying things unless he’s giving a technical explanation.)

Five: Okay, Luther, but be careful. I mean, I've... I've lived a long life, but you're still a young man. You got your whole life ahead of you. Don't waste it.

Five talks like an old man. Not all the time (though there’s a wonderful gif set out there somewhere of Five using old timer slang -- wait, I found it here.) He doesn’t use the old-timey slang all the time -- and I personally like the idea of mixing up Five’s slang habits and including slang from all sorts of eras because he’s a time traveler whose primary source of interaction after four decades alone was other time traveling assassins. But! He also talks in a way where he shows his age.

Regardless of where you think Five’s psychological age falls (I have my own Opinions on this), he seems to unilaterally view himself as the Big Sibling, and by a very large margin at that. That’s reflected in how he talks. Not always, since not every line of dialogue is relevant to his age. But stuff like this, or related to it, crops up a fair amount. He counsels his siblings on their problems (as when he comforted Diego post-Eudora’s death), and there are little moments like the quote above, where the point is that Five has indeed seen many more years than his siblings and has the perspective to reflect that.

Well, this is way too long now, and it’s really late where I’m at. I feel like the comprehensibility of this post has been steadily declining the whole time, but if other writers have tips that they want to add onto this, please go ahead!

#asks #writing #writing advice #which im not super qualified to give haha so! again #if anyone else has tips and tricks they want to add #esp if you're familiar with five like anon is asking!#feel free to chime in

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thewatsonbeekeepers · 5 years ago

Text

Chapter 1 – A Mental Mindfuck Can Be Nice – an introduction to EMP theory

I amused myself whilst writing this meta by coming up with referential chapter titles – the song to title this chapter can be found here! (X)

I’m not the first person to propose EMP [extended mind palace] theory and I certainly can’t claim to take the credit for it! After TFP (well, after Apple Tree Yard aired really) I left the fandom, and only rejoined tjlc this year during lockdown and discovered the theory that the entirety of S4 takes place in Sherlock’s Mind Palace, not just TAB, and that even more crucially, the EMP section of the narrative doesn’t happen because of Sherlock’s overdose but rather after Mary shoots him in HLV. Other people have elaborated as to why this is in greater detail and I certainly don’t want to steal their thunder – you can find some of my favourite metas on this here! X X X The original founders’ post is here and great X – it should be noted that the concept of EMP theory appeared way before the superficial shitshow that was series 4, so it was not invented as a fix-it – far from it!

As well as that, tweets from Arwel Wyn Jones (production designer) and Douglas MacKinnon (TAB director) here X X suggest that a lot of the inconsistencies that make HLV onwards quite dreamlike are absolutely deliberate, which has never been explained in the context of the show. In fact, Douglas MacKinnon specifically suggests that the plane could be in Sherlock’s mind, which has no bearing on the superficial plot unless you buy into EMP theory. We’ve also already been shown that the modern day, particularly when it’s fucky, can be in a mind palace illusion in TAB, and we can read that as a kind of rehearsal for the proper fucky mind palace stuff in S4, a clue that everything is not as it seems – much like the Mayfly Man’s murder rehearsal in TSoT.

It's worth pointing out that there are several different versions of EMP theory – I personally subscribe to the idea that this is Sherlock’s mind palace after being shot by Mary, but there are plenty of popular theories on John’s ‘Mind Bungalow’, blog theory, which I don’t want to dismiss out of hand. However, I think the obsession with the figure of Sherlock Holmes and who that might be throughout the fourth series is thematically consistent with it being from Sherlock’s perspective, as is the precedent from TAB.

The other thing I want to lay on the table as foundational to this theory is the fandom’s obsession with TPLoSH [1970 Billy Wilder queer Holmes adaptation, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes]. Mofftiss have long stated their love for TPLoSH and even that it is the adaptation that has most inspired them, and I don’t know a single tjlcer who doesn’t have this quotation from Wilder emblazoned onto their memory.

I should have been more daring. I have this theory. I wanted to have Holmes homosexual and not admitting it to anyone, including maybe even himself. The burden of keeping it secret was the reason he took dope. X

What I’m proposing here is that whilst we’ve thought about this quote quite a lot, we’ve always focused on the first half – that Sherlock Holmes is a homosexual – and not the second, which is that that’s the reason he’s on dope. We talk a bit about Sherlock being upset in HLV about John’s marriage and that being why he turns back to drugs, and likewise when TAB first aired a lot of people (myself included) thought he was ODing because he wasn’t going to see John again. I now think – and will provide evidence through the meta! – that it isn’t his feelings of (seemingly) unrequited love which are sending him to drugs, nor that the EMP is a place where he’s discovering his feelings – my meta here X is not the first to point out that Sherlock almost definitely deduces his own feelings for John in TSoT, in a case of the worst timing in television history. Instead, much like Wilder’s Holmes, I think our Sherlock is dealing with a huge amount of shame and internalised homophobia, which has metafictionally* been building up since Conan Doyle started writing – hence the trip back to 1895 in TAB. S4 is about breaking through over a century of Holmes adaptations which have formed Sherlock’s own version of himself, so that he can break out of them into a ‘Private Life’ outside of established canon.

*Metafictionality is the defining idea around my version of EMP theory, so for anybody who’s not familiar I’m going to do a quick run down. The idea behind metafictionality is that Sherlock is aware of itself as being a work of fiction and deliberately plays with that – in this case, I’m arguing that the character Sherlock is subconsciously aware of the history of book/film/tv adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, and his existence outside Sherlock builds up to create his internalised homophobia. Sounds mad? Maybe. But stick with me here. The reason it’s taking so long for Sherlock to process his sexuality is not just because he’s repressed, but because he’s dealing with the weight of other Holmes adaptations – which is the reason arguably that a modern audience would also take so long to accept it, longer than were this character not such a huge part of the Western psyche.

My aims from this meta:

1. To prove that tjlc remains endgame (eh, if there’s a series 5)

2. To show that s4 is about Sherlock trying to break out of his MP coma after being shot by Mary

3. That s4 engages with the history of Sherlock Holmes adaptations through the character of Sherlock investigating his psyche

4. That in the real (non-MP) world, John is suicidal, and Sherlock has to wake up to save him.

Chapter 1 – A Mental Mindfuck Can Be Nice: a quick summary of EMP theory

Chapter 2 – Look up here, I’m in Heaven: the height metaphor

Chapter 3 – Death Cannot Stop True Love [HLV 1/1]

Chapter 4 – It is always 1895 [TAB 1/1]

Chapter 5 – Hey, Soul Sister: Who is Eurus?

Chapter 6 – So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish [TST 1/2]

Chapter 7 – There’s Something About Mary [TST 2/2]

Chapter 8 – Dream a Little Dream of Me: parallels with Doctor Who

Chapter 9 – Rock’n’roll Suicide [TLD 1/2]

Chapter 10 – Oh No Love, You’re Not Alone [TLD 2/2]

Chapter 11 – The Importance of Being Earnest [TFP 1/3]

Chapter 12 – Three Men in a Boat [TFP 2/3]

Chapter 13 – Out of My Dreams [TFP 3/3]

I’ll (ideally) be uploading a chapter a day for the next 13 days. Some of these chapters will contain links to later chapters; if that chapter isn’t uploaded yet, I’ll add in the link retrospectively, so that might be why the links don’t all work on first read. With chapters that have an episode in parentheses beside, I strongly recommend either watching the episode before reading the meta, or even better to do a simultaneous read and watch through with your finger on the pause button. The only episode which doesn’t do a play by play is TLD 1/2 , purely for time reasons (my college term starts very soon and I really needed this meta put to bed for the sake of my degree!).

The other thing worth saying is that if you want this meta as a word document for some reason, drop me a message – I’m more than happy to share it that way as well. It is a cool 50k so takes some reading. This chapter has been a bit of a nothing, but I hope it lays the groundwork for what to expect from the next 12 – I’ll see you over the next 12 days!

#emp theory #thewatsonbeekeepers #my meta #chapter one #mine #introduction #then I get the fun job of working out how to actually organise my tumblr so people can actually find the shit i write

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panharmonium · 5 years ago

Note

Stiles?

[disclaimer for other folks before I start this one: I HAVE ONLY WATCHED SEASONS 1-4 OF TEEN WOLF. I *am* going to finish it, and I have been carefully avoiding spoilers for anything past Season 4, including general impressions of whether or not people like various seasons, comparisons of quality between seasons, etc. PLEASE do not reply to this post or talk to me about Teen Wolf unless you are scrupulously avoiding ALL discussion of seasons 5-6. Thank you!]

First impression:

Positive! I already have a weak spot for smart, witty side characters, so I liked him from the start. But I didn’t get super interested in him until the episode with the parent-teacher conference - the sequence where each parental group is having a conversation with a different teacher and something is revealed about each of the kids is actually what got me hooked on Teen Wolf as a whole. Before that, I’d been kind of casually interested in all the characters, but then the show turned around and was like, “hey, remember the character tropes we set you up for with these kids? SURPRISE, WE’RE SMARTER THAN THAT! EVERY SINGLE OF THESE CHARACTERS IS FULLY ROUNDED AND FLESHED OUT AND DOESN’T FIT IN A BOX.”

The whole way that sequence is edited is just fantastic. How it cuts between what the teachers are saying and what the kids are doing at that moment - amazing. The minute I heard about Jackson’s adoption/Scott’s missing dad/Stiles’s mom/Lydia’s intelligence + her parents’ separation, I was a goner for that show.

Impression now:

Love him. It’s hard for me to say “favorites” with Teen Wolf, because I really do adore every single character. But he’s one of my favorites. XD

Favorite moment:

Way too many. One of the smaller moments that I really love with him is during 3A when they’re trying to escape with Cora from the hospital, and they’re exiting the ambulance, and Stiles stops midway out and the scene kind of slows down as he stares at the intake form hanging on the ambulance door, because he just saw the signature line that said “Parent/Guardian” and he’s figuring out that Jennifer isn’t actually aiming for “warriors” right now, she’s aiming for “guardians.” And then he takes off running, because he knows Jennifer’s going to go for Melissa.

I love the way that entire scene was cut, and the way they start playing this song as he begins to figure it out, and the way everything else slows down and the world falls away as realization sets in. I just really love seeing how smart he is - his brain is always working, even when they’re in the middle of a crisis. Like Lydia says, “You’re the one who always figures it out.”

Speaking of Lydia - another favorite Stiles moment is at the dance in 1.11, when he tells her he knows how smart she really is and that she’s going to "write some insane mathematical theorem that wins [her] the Nobel Prize.” I just - I will legitimately go to the mat over lazy, provably incorrect takes that try to argue that Stiles was just immaturely idolizing the “image” of a girl he thought was pretty. The entire point of their relationship is that Stiles has always seen past the airhead image Lydia puts on to survive their high school jungle - he doesn’t shame her for putting it on, but he doesn’t lie to her about believing the act, either. He knows she’s a genius. He admires her so much. He thinks she’s the coolest damn person in the world.

[^Someday I will type up the infuriated rant that rises in me every time I see some unbearably misguided take on Stiles’s relationship with Lydia falling into the “Nice Guy (TM)” category (when it is canonically the EXACT OPPOSITE), because every time I see someone say that I get the urge to start breaking stuff.]

Idea for a story:

Oh, boy. Well, I have about 50k of unpublished Teen Wolf fic (from both Stiles and Allison’s POV) on my computer, which was all part of a massive two-part project that in retrospect I think was maybe a little too ambitious for me at the time. I’m not abandoning it, because I love what I’ve written so far, but it needs to be seriously re-worked before it can be continued.

Ultimately, the project was my answer to some things about 3B that I found unsatisfying on a storytelling front, but it was a bigger thing than I could pull off successfully at that stage of my writing life. I’ve been getting a lot more experience with longfic and plotting from my Merlin work, though, so I think once I pivot back to Teen Wolf I’ll be better placed to tackle this project.

Unpopular opinion:

If there’s anybody here who ships the Big Teen Wolf Ship, you’ll probably want to go ahead and scroll on by this bit.

I have generally been very diligent about avoiding the TW fandom, just because I’m still avoiding spoilers for the seasons 5 and 6, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been, uh...exposed to way more information about its ship distribution than I ever wanted to know. And I remain BAFFLED about why it looks the way it looks.

I say this every time this topic comes up, but there are some ships that I just don’t care for, and then there are some ships that I literally cannot comprehend where on earth they came from. Derek/Stiles is a ship where I can’t understand where it came from. It squicks me so badly. Literally just the tiniest glimpse of it makes me want to crawl out of my skin.

I don’t know if people just...don’t understand that Derek is canonically in his twenties????? Or if they’re all fast-forwarding the timeline and aging Stiles up; I don’t know. I’ve never investigated. But I don’t understand why this ship ever even occurred to anyone. I don’t get it. I was teaching high school when I was Derek’s age. There is NOTHING romantically compatible between a 16 year-old and a 22/23 year-old, in any non-fucked up version of reality.

So there’s the grossed-out factor, for me, and then there’s also just the fact that this ship is yet another example of fandom’s inability to read any relationship with a fascinating, complex dynamic as anything other than romantically-motivated, despite the fact that a romantic relationship is indisputably NOT present in the canon.

Anyway. I could say more about this, but ultimately I’m a “you do you” person. I’m not going to bother anyone for shipping this, and I don’t care what people do with their own fandom time. But my personal unpopular opinion is that Derek/Stiles is the most bizarre, textually unsupported, squicky ship I’ve ever seen.

Favorite relationship:

Stiles and Scott, Stiles and Lydia, Stiles and Allison, Stiles and Melissa. And STILES AND HIS FATHER.

Favorite headcanon:

This is WAY old, but to pull from an ancient post: a friend and I used to talk about the Great Flu Epidemic of 2005, which brought down the entire McCall-Stilinski clan over the course of a single weekend and which has never been definitively traced back to its source. To this day, the four of them still argue about who brought it home first.

Stiles does a science project on it in the fourth grade and on the one hand his teacher is actually impressed and relieved that Stiles was finally able to focus on something long enough to finish an assignment, but when little Scott McCall keeps interrupting Stiles’s presentation to present contrasting evidence it turns into a Production of Epic Proportions and the class gets too riled up to focus on anyone else’s projects.

The call home that time is basically like:

Mrs. Gordon: “So the good news is this project was surprisingly well-researched - ”

Papa Stilinski: “Oh, god.”

#thanks friend! :D #replies #teen wolf

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spaceorphan18 · 4 years ago

Note

What are all the projects you’re working on?

All the Projects, Nonny, lol

Okay, well since you asked...

The Fic Writing:

There are two that I’m primarily focused on...

1. 99 Perspectives on a Single Love Story -- which I’ve decided to parcel out a little at a time. It’s a big project, that I could easily burn out on.

2. Chasing Pavements - which is almost coming up on a year. I need to buckle down and just finish it. I have all the chapters outline, it’s just a matter of focus. I also feel really bad I haven’t updated in a while, especially since it’s currently on a cliffhanger.

There’s one I’m writing writing as well as these two, but am not posting until it’s finished. However, since it’s just in my head, I’ve been kinda picking away at it, too. It’s called Head Over Feet, and it’s a reunion fic set in the future when Klaine are in their mid-30s. And it might be my favorite thing I’ve ever been writing.

There are also a few projects I’d like to get back to when these are done -- One being The Spaces In-Between, which is Kurt’s story in canon and two, the fic based on my Final Season sketch that I wrote a few years ago. I wrote the first couple of chapters, and really like it -- I think I’ll wait until that’s finished before posting as well.

And, I have numerous one-shots and smaller ideas written down just in case I ever feel like writing those. We’ll see!

The Fic Blog:

The Author Spotlights are still going on - on TDBfic, and those take some time to put together.

Plus, I’m trying to figure out ways to help keep it active, as well as getting ready to set up a Summer Exchange for people to participate in (and am hoping to get some help in running that).

Meta:

You guys ask a lot of questions, which I love! But I don’t always get to. Some of them take some time to answer, I have a few very old ones that I haven’t replied to yet, just because I know they’re going to take some time. I also have to set up my queue, which sometimes means digging into old posts and seeking things out to fill the space. And, there are things in my likes that need responses, and I’m always behind on that -- like, posts that I want to make replies to, or memes people have tagged me in.

Meanwhile... There are the Rankings 2.0. I know I sometimes pause for days on end, and I’ve been griping a lot, but I’m not kidding when I say watching the show this way has been incredibly fascinating. I now have a real understanding of things that bug me about the show. In about ten episodes, we’ll be getting to episodes I like more than I don’t, and the tenor of discussion will change. I’m looking forward to being positive about it again, lol

There are also two projects that I haven’t posted about, but I’m working on...

1. The Grey Project - which is a deeper analysis of ATOG’s sequel Grey. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years, and it’s a follow up to the analysis we did on the TDB Podcast. (As an aside -- I think I want to visit the older fics on my master fic rec list, because I haven’t read any of that in years.)

2. Glee Music Retrospective -- where I look at all the music in the show. I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, too, so I’m finally doing it.

The Book Blog and Marvel Movie Night:

Most of this is non-Glee related stuff.

The Book Blog is just a way for me to keep track of things I’m reading, and share with you guys new recommendations for published works. I’m also rereading all of the Agatha Christie novels (because I love them) and working through X-Men comics (which I’ve been wanting to do, and tried starting a handful of times). All of this is a labor of love.

And then there’s the Marvel Movie Nights -- where I watch a Marvel movie... all of them... including non-MCU ones. I kind of wanted to see everything, even the terrible ones, just because. I’m about half way through the list, and just getting into the MCU, which of course is my favorite.

Other (mostly boring adult stuff):

Of course, real life things are a constant. There’s work (and now that I’m a manager(ish) I have more obligations there; cleaning my house - a never ending project; prepping meals; making sure I’m working out; doing needed errands, etc, all that fun stuff that takes up time. As well as making sure I’m doing some kind of socialization and doing things just for fun -- like watching TV shows or playing video games.

And of course, there’s my dearly beloved, neglected child - my original novel. It’s called The Legend of Melaynia; it’s a fantasy, and I’ve been working on the world building for twenty years. I am no Tolkien, but it’s been my love, and at some point, I would like to actually focus on it.

Because I love organizing, I bought a white board that helps me keep everything straight -- and today, I think I came up with a schedule that will help me not feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff I’m working on.

#thanks nonny for asking!#now you know :)#Anonymous #my brain is also way more active at night for reasons i don't fully understand

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pronouncingitwang · 5 years ago

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pre-canon Jon/Georgie | 4.3K words | for @the-magnace-archives

“Laundry detergent is practically a self-contained emulsion—not that it has to be a mixture of anything, but it has a hydrophilic and a hydrophobic end,” says Jonathan-Sims-but-I-usually-go-by-Jon-oh-and-it’s-nice-to-meet-you-too, and Georgie grins. She hadn’t expected much when she dragged herself out tonight, prompted more by the vague feeling that she really ought to make some friends this year (apparently, her tutees don’t count, thanks Mum) than any real desire to do so. Then, she’d looked across Balliol Bar to see the student who’d interrupted their Modern-ish Lit prof in lecture yesterday, holding a briefcase in his lap and scowling at his beer as if it too wasn’t planning to analyze Jane Austen through a post-colonialist lens this year. Georgie had headed over as a gesture of BAME Literature student solidarity, and now it’s been an hour and she’s still here, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Jon doesn’t seem to be a fan of eye contact, which gives Georgie plenty of opportunity to observe. None of his initial red flags—being dressed like a professor on TV, for one—have proven to be signs of a deeper rottenness yet. There’s something in Jon’s gestures—abrupt, abortive, like he’s holding himself back—that assures Georgie that he’s not just doing this as an ego boost. This is all to say that the last three hours of banter and infodumping have been wholly pleasant. Probabilistically, it can’t last.

“Do- do you want to go back to mine?” Jon asks, and god does Georgie hates being proven right sometimes. It’s not that Jon’s unattractive, per se—Alex would have called him “hot in a murder victim kind of way” (and the memory of her voice hurts, but less than it would’ve a year ago)—but Georgie had hoped for a little more class. Plus, even if Jon seems harmless and even if Georgie's not scared, she'd rather not run the risk of being called a bitch tonight. She starts scanning for nearest exits.

Something about her silence must’ve clued Jon in because he quickly exclaims, “Not like that! God, sorry, not like that.”

Georgie pauses in her room surveyal. “Oh?”

“Sorry, sorry, I just meant that- that I’d like to keep talking to you, but it’s really loud here and I can’t think of anywhere quieter that’s open right now. I promise. But in retrospect, I can... I can see how that might’ve sounded.”

He looks earnest enough, and a little flushed as well. Georgie wants to—does—believe him. But she takes a second to size Jon up anyway. Between the eyebags, height (or lack thereof), and twig limbs, he looks like someone she could defend herself against if needs be. Also, she kind of does want to learn more about emulsifiers, or just watch him as he talks about them.

“Well, as long as you mean it—” “I do.” “Then, let’s go.”

(Georgie wakes up seven hours later with a crick in her neck and an Oxford sweatshirt she doesn’t own draped over her shoulders. Her hair’s a mess—she hadn’t pineappled it last night, and the back of this chair(? yeah, it’s a chair) is definitely not silk—and the time is… shit. Oh, and there’s Jon, perched on his bed and looking at her.

“You, ah, fell asleep during the ghosts debate? I didn’t know whether or not to wake you.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Georgie says, rolling her neck and wincing. “Sorry for stealing your chair.”

“Tea?” Jon asks, holding out a mug Georgie’s almost certain was just in the godforsaken microwave. Not that she hasn’t done the same thing on many an occasion.

“Sorry,” Georgie says, “I should probably be going; I’m gonna be late for a lecture. But before I leave—do you want to do this again tomorrow?”)

Georgie spends some time deliberating over when to pop the question. It’s not fear holding her back; it’s practicality. There’s only a small window of feeling—after “certain she wants this” but before “starting to think losing Jon’s company would require her to take another gap year”—where taking the risk is worth it, and the second stage is coming up much faster than anticipated. (She’s never thought of herself as someone who falls for people fast—she hadn’t even realized her feelings for Alex until it was far too late—but now this. Maybe it’s another side effect of getting a philosophy lesson from a corpse. Or maybe it’s just a Jon thing.) All in all, it’s only been three weeks after their first meeting before she asks.

“Are you seeing anyone else?”

“What?” Jon asks, eyes jolting from his book to scan his room for uninvited apparitions. They’d both been unusually absorbed in their readings for the past hour, only interrupting the silence with scoffs and huhs.

“No, like, are you seeing anyone else romantically?” Jon frowns, and a thread of doubt worms its way into Georgie’s throat. “That is what we’re doing, right?” Granted, lunch meet-ups in the dining hall that spill over into long and unproductive study sessions might not scream “date,” but there’d also been a fair amount of (well, okay, Georgie-initiated) arm-around-the-shoulder action a few times. Also, hand-holding, of the fingers-intertwined variety.

“Oh. Um, yes, we’re romantically involved, or I suppose I should say that I hoped we were and didn’t know how to ask for clarification”—note to self: communicate clearer in future, Georgie thinks—“and no, I’m not seeing anyone else.”

Georgie had thought as much, but the confirmation is nice. “Cool. Me neither. Want to keep doing that?”

“Seeing each other?”

“And not anyone else, yeah.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe even start calling each other girlfriend and boyfriend?”

“Oh. Um.” Jon’s leg starts to bounce, which doesn’t seem like a good sign. Georgie waits.

“It’s not that-” Jon begins, then cuts himself off with a frustrated sigh. “It’s not that I don’t want to, believe me. I just—I have a… ground rule. That you may not be happy about.”

“Just one?”

“What?” Jon looks startled out of his worry for a second, which Georgie counts as a success.

“Well, I mean, if you’re talking about boundaries, I’ve got plenty. Routines that I’d need you to work around, stuff I don’t want to talk about, and if you’re ever even slightly sympathetic to the Tories…”

Jon doesn’t even laugh at the last one, and she knows he’s not a Cameron cocksucker. Something’s really bothering him.

“This one is… a pretty big deal.”

Georgie tries to keep her tone reassuring. “Let me be the judge of that, yeah?”

“Okay,” Jon says, “okay, yeah,” then nods decisively. “I’m… not going to have sex with you.”

What?

Jon continues, hands fluttering nervously as he explains. “I mean, I can’t say for certain that I’ll never change my mind, but if we’re doing this, it should be under the assumption that I won’t. And it’s not—it’s not a you thing, I swear, it’s just the thought of doing that with—with anyone is just…” he shudders slightly, and Georgie gives him a sympathetic wince. “And I know that’s a dealbreaker with a lot of people. I think I’m—well, it’s called asexuality, there’s some books I found if you don’t believe me, here, I’ll write the titles down—” Jon reaches for his briefcase, presumably to find paper and pen, but Georgie grabs his hand before he can.

“Jonathan,” she says. He tightens a little at the sound, and damn if that doesn’t near break her heart. “Jon. I believe you. And”—she squeezes his palm—“I still want to be with you.”

“Are you—are you sure?”

“Completely. Honestly, I’m kind of relieved?” Georgie says, realizing as she replies just how true the words are. “I’m not sure how I feel about sex yet either, really. I’d wondered, each time I’ve been over, if you’d try to… and then you never did, and I was always glad. I’m not like you, I don’t think—the thought doesn’t repulse me, it just… might not be something I’m ready for yet.”

“But you think you’ll want to later?”

Georgie shrugs. “Well, yes and no? People are hot, but even if I changed my mind about sex, I wouldn’t ask you for anything you don’t want to give me, and I doubt I’d be so horny that we’d need to renegotiate our relationship. I’ve been doing just fine dealing with everything single-handedly. Or,” she amends, “sometimes double-handedly.”

And there it is: Jon laughs, a rusty exhale that makes Georgie smile more than anything.

“So…” she whispers, bumping her nose against Jon’s, “Unless my boyfriend has any more objections…”

“Just to—just to clarify. That’s me?”

Despite her best efforts, a giggle escapes Georgie’s throat. “Yes.”

“Well. In that case. He does not.” Jon says. “Oh. Except. Can I kiss you?” he asks, which conveniently answers one of Georgie’s unvoiced questions.

“Absolutely.”

Their lips meet despite Jon’s grin, but only because Georgie’s smiling just as wide as he is.

That conversation, it seems, marks the beginning of Jon-initiated physical affection. Georgie had assumed before that his lack of cuddliness was fully a result of touch sensitivity, but it's clear now that although the sensory stuff was a factor, Jon had also been holding himself back, trying to avoid any touch which could be seen as either too clingy or a prelude to sexual activity. Now, on some days, there’s a head leaning against Georgie's shoulder in the dining hall, a leg swung over her lap as they sit on his bed, an arm around her waist when they walk to Modern-ish Lit together. It’s not all effortless—Jon still moves like he half-expects Georgie to bat his hand away, and sometimes Georgie forgets to ask before she touches Jon—but they’re getting there.

Currently, Georgie’s wheeling a shopping cart around Tesco with Jon draped over her back like a very determined lichen. It was Steve-from-down-the-hall’s birthday last night, so Jon and a few of Jon’s acquaintances-turning-friends from a budding local urban exploration group had come over to duck into the party and snag several bottles. Georgie’s more than a little hungover, and Jon is no better for wear—he doesn’t drink, but staying up all night has taken its toll.

Jon’s wearing a sleeveless top that, on second thought, may actually be an old skirt of Georgie’s. Either way, he looks great. Georgie’s in her pajamas, and also, for some reason, a top hat? Between the outfits and Jon’s posture, they’ve gotten a few looks, but being literally fearless does wonders for one’s ability to ignore that stuff. Plus, Georgie knows almost all the employees here. They’ll have her back if needs be. Georgie’s not bothered, not by the other shoppers and not by her barnacle boyfriend—Jon’s not heavy, and he matches her every step, only disentangling himself to add items to the cart. She’s just glad they’ve both stuck around long enough to see each other like this.

In fact, there are a plethora of behaviors Georgie can sort into pre-commitment and/or post-commitment Jon things. She’ll make a Venn diagram once she’s certain her observations are solid. Pre-commitment things that Jon has since dropped include making his bed in the morning and keeping his professorial garb on at home. Things that go into both categories are Jon’s love of debate, the posh accent (though sometimes, after Jon’s just finished up a stilted call to his grandmother, his “of”s sound more like “off”s), and the fact that every time Georgie comes over, he opens the door before she knocks, like he’s been listening for her the whole time. Post-commitment, there’s calling her “George” when he’s sleepy; launching into completely sincere dramatic readings of his assignments to help him think passages through; stimming without looking self-conscious about it; and luckily for Georgie, cooking.

“Pasta tonight?” she asks as Jon squints at two identical-looking tomatoes so hard Georgie thinks they might explode.

“Mm.”

“The one on the left is a bit bigger?”

Jon puts the other one down with a scowl. “Maybe.”

The kitchens in Jon’s building have a stovetop and just enough counter space for prep. Georgie insists on helping this time, so she chops vegetables as Jon gets the noodles going. As the water nears boiling, Jon begins to hum something that Georgie thinks is meant to keep time, tapping his foot to the rhythm.

“Whatcha singing?”

“Oh,” Jon says, foot no longer tapping. “I didn’t notice—that is—it’s just. Something my grandmother sings when she’s cleaning.”

Jon doesn’t talk about his grandmother much, but Georgie can fill in the blanks. Again, she's been in the room for some of their phone conversations, and though she doesn't understand Urdu, she does understand silence. So she doesn’t push, just says, “Well, it sounds nice” and keeps chopping. Jon doesn’t sing, or speak, for the rest of their time in the kitchen.

Georgie’s dad said something once about vulnerability being a mutual exchange, and it’s stuck with her ever since. (Seems even more relevant now, since the no-fear thing means vulnerability doesn’t cost her much anyway.) Five minutes into a very silent dinner, Georgie speaks.

“You know, during first term, on the weekends, I didn’t eat dinner at all. Or any meals, really.”

Jon doesn’t move, but she can tell he’s listening.

“It made sense to eat on weekdays, because I’d always come across a cafeteria on my way to class. But on weekends, it was way too much work to drag myself out of my room, sometimes even out of bed. There didn’t seem to be any reason to. And I always had some rolls on hand that I’d taken from the dining halls earlier that week, so it’s not like I was starving myself. But still. Wasn’t great.” Jon nods, which is enough encouragement for Georgie to finish. “So I guess what I mean is, thank you? For being a good enough reason.”

Georgie takes Jon’s hand, and he squeezes back.

(A few days later, when Georgie’s almost forgotten the incident, Jon pulls the blanket tighter around them and says, “I think I’m going to tell you about my grandmother now, if that’s okay,” and Georgie says, “okay.”)

Georgie hasn’t had a bad episode in a long time, but then her dad gets into a car wreck and he’s fine, he’ll be fine, but the bill’s gonna be hell to foot, and Georgie should be calling her English course freshers to see if they or their friends want any more tutoring hours, but instead she hasn’t brushed her teeth in four days and she’s missed her weekly scheduled room cleaning and she has that marked in her calendar for a reason, she has a routine for a reason, but every limb feels heavy and she’d rather stare at the ceiling and wait for it to collapse on her the way it one day will and therefore always has been. She misses Alex. She misses home. She misses being able to move without feeling like she’s dragging her body in a bag behind her.

Jon finds Georgie on what she thinks is a Saturday. He takes a second to scan the room before his eyes alight on the pile of blankets she’s under. “You haven’t been answering my messages,” he says.

The one time Jon had a meltdown in Georgie's presence, he shouted at her to leave, immediately. Georgie thinks she should extend Jon the same chance to escape, never mind that Jon's brain in crisis does better alone and Georgie's doesn't.

“Please go away.”

Jon does go away, but only to the other side of the room—where Georgie had accidentally knocked over her laundry hamper two(? three?) days ago and then stared at it until it felt like her insides had been hollowed out—and starts picking up each item of clothing on the ground, inspecting it, and shoving it back in the basket.

“Is this clean?” Jon asks, holding up a pair of knickers. Under most circumstances, the image would be funny, but as it is, it’s just surreal.

Georgie sighs. “I don’t think there’s a single clean thing in this room.”

“That’s good to know,” Jon says, and then, “Maybe you should get up.”

“Make me,” Georgie says. He does not.

As Jon continues to tidy up the floor, he asks her various bite-sized questions—trying to ground her, she assumes. Where did she get these jeans? What’s that poster on her wall of? Does she need the notes from Thursday? How is she doing? That last one, she elects not to answer.

When Jon’s done with the laundry pile, he asks for a hand to lift the hamper upright again. Georgie considers calling him out on the ruse, but finds that it’s easier to take Jon’s hand as he half-pulls her out of bed. Standing upright makes her a little dizzy, but he holds her still until her vision clears.

But then they go to lift the hamper, and Georgie drops it again and Jon doesn’t catch it fast enough and the clothes go spilling over the floor again, and she screams something at Jon that burns in her throat and Jon blinks and blinks and hardens and yells something back and Georgie wants to throw something or hide or fall asleep but instead she just tells Jon to get the fuck out out of her room.

“Fine,” Jon snaps, and wrenches the door open. He pauses before he takes his first step into the hall. “I’ll be back in an hour, if you want me here then.”

Georgie curls up on the ground and thinks about what Jon breaking up with her would look like and she isn’t scared, just sad, and then she counts prime numbers until she falls asleep again. And then Jon does come back, and Georgie is no less frustrated and Jon is no less hurt, but he’s holding a takeout bag. (Georgie tears through the wrap, and then, upon Jon’s prompting, all of his kebabs too, and he sits there until she’s finished. Once she’s full, she feels a little less heavy.)

Georgie practically runs up the stairs to Jon’s room, phone still clutched in hand. “URGENT,” the text had read, and Georgie had felt a sharp curiosity course through her.

When Jon opens the door, he’s practically vibrating. “I figured out a way to get into the Sheldonian after-hours,” he whispers.

“No fucking way,” Georgie whispers back. “Seriously, how? We have to tell the others right fucking now. But how?”

Georgie had recently dragged Jon into her latest obsession—Oxford history—though “dragged” implies that he hadn’t come extremely willingly. She’d wondered if the incident in the medical building would come up, but Jon had quickly turned to fixate on something else. For the last month, Oxford’s main theater has been the subject of most, if not all of their conversation. That's spilled over into their conversations with their urbex friends (read: all their friends), which has then spilled over into their collective ability to engage in academia. Each member of their friend group—going on different days to deflect suspicion—has been on a tour to scope out the surveillance cameras’ blind spots. Plus, they’ve pooled their money to buy a fancy lockpicking kit.

“Well,” Jon says, hands flapping wildly as he looks for his phone, “I was talking to one of the violinists who played there last year, and then there were some blueprints in the Balliol Library—here, I took pictures—and…”

There’s more planning to do, obviously, if the six of them want to achieve their ultimate goal of “don’t get caught, like, seriously.” They practice treading lightly, quiz each other on floor plans, and (at least try to) confine themselves to a strict sleep schedule to keep their reflexes sharp. It’s unbelievably overkill, but such is life.

Then, there’s scheduling, which is difficult because Marie has two big assignments coming up and Steph works night shifts five days a week, but eventually, the expedition is a go.

Two weeks later, Georgie finds herself standing on the wood floor of the Sheldonian Theater, looking up at the barely-moonlit ceiling.

“Wow,” Jon breathes over a chorus of April’s “holy shit!”s.

“Kind of stupid that Truth is white,” Georgie says, but her voice is tinged with as much awe as Jon’s is.

Jon lets out a huff of laughter. “Next time, we can break in and repaint.”

“By stacking like ten ladders on top of each other?”

“Obviously.”

Georgie’s seen the ceiling before on daytime tours, of course she has, but those times, it was always just a painting, no less shiny and solid than the rest of the theater. The fresco she sees now is smudged with shadow, but that only makes it look more real. It depicts a vortex of orange clouds surrounded by scholars and cherubim. The figures curl themselves around the perimeter, simultaneously drawn into and bracing themselves against the storm. In the center of the swirling mass, Truth raises itself up, holding out its glowing hand. Structural support beams run over the mural to hold the ceiling up, sectioning off various parts of the scene. Every figure is drawn in exquisite detail; the shadows of their robes, the strands of their hair. But from down where Georgie stands, the whole thing just looks like an ancient mouth straining against a golden net, ready to consume them both.

“It’s beautiful,” Georgie whispers, and then, because one time doesn’t seem enough, “It’s beautiful!”

“You’re beautiful,” Jon tells the ceiling, though his whisper doesn't carry very far.

“You’re beautiful!” Georgie whisper-shouts at Jon. (Georgie senses, more than hears, an exasperated groan from Nick behind her, but she pays him no mind. She’s earned the right to be this sappy, thank you very much.)

“So are you!” Jon whisper-shouts back.

“I am!”

Most of their friends begin wandering farther off, but Jon and Georgie stay put. The Sheldonian is a flat-floor building. There’s no raised platform that draws the line between stage and audience, just an area with chairs and one without. Whatever secrets the two of them whisper to Truth, it is both call and response.

“Sometimes, I feel so lonely I could scream!”—from Jon.

“I wish I remembered what fear felt like!”—from Georgie.

“I don’t understand poetry and I never will!”

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong because I don’t know what I’m doing!”

“I wish I’d chosen a different course! I have no idea what to do after graduation!”

“When professors call me Georgina, I feel physically ill!”

“I hate having short hair!”

“I hate having long hair!”

“I wish I’d actually taken my Urdu lessons seriously when I was younger!”

“I don’t feel guilty about quitting all my clubs in first year but I feel like I should!”

“We should be a little quieter!”

“I agree!”

A pause.

“I’m going to fail all my exams!”

“Funny, I’m gonna fail all of mine!”

“I’ll always feel like a disappointment! And I love my girlfriend!” It’s not the first time Jon’s said it, but the words send a thrill through Georgie anyway.

“I stubbed my toe yesterday and it still hurts! And I love my boyfriend!” It is the first time she’s said it. It feels right.

“I’m going to try to get to the balcony without being seen!”

“Good idea!”

“I really do love you,” Jon says again, and begins to move towards the nearest staircase, where Steph and April appear to be arm-wrestling. As Georgie watches his back, she’s suddenly struck by another memory—someone else Georgie loves standing in a building she’s not supposed to be in, taking one of her very last steps away from her. The feeling that rises in Georgie isn’t fear, but it must be the closest thing to it.

“Wait,” she says. (Jon turns around. He really is beautiful.) “I’m coming with you.”

It’s third year, which means fast-approaching papers and goodbyes and post-graduation uncertainties, but it also means Georgie and Jon (and Nick and Marie, but they aren’t arriving until tomorrow) are moving in together.

“You’re gonna have to try to hold still,” Georgie says as she attempts to apply a second coat of purple to Jon’s pinky nail.

“I am,” Jon says. “Can’t you tape around it?”

“I don’t know which box the tape’s in,” Georgie says. “And since someone insisted on having his nails done before we began unpacking…”

“New place, new hands,” Jon says. “It just makes sense.”

“It really… doesn’t… but… there! That’s all of them! Now, just- don’t touch anything for the next ten minutes. I’m gonna do mine now.”

“Yes ma’am.” Jon gives a mock salute, and of course, grazes his nails against his hair in the process. “Oh, shit.”

“You’re the worst. I’m stealing all the blankets tonight for revenge.”

“Which blankets did you pack?”

“I thought that was your job?”

“It definitely wasn’t…”

“Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no…”

“What did you say the last time I asked you to check the packing list…?”

“Shut up!"

“No, I don’t think ‘shut up’ was it. I’m pretty sure it was more along the lines of ‘I’m not an idiot, Jon,’ but if you’re sure…”

“We can check if they’re still there after our nails dry, okay?”

“Okay.”

A few minutes pass.

“I think we should get a cat,” Georgie says. “Do you want to get a cat?” and Jon breaks the holding-still rule again by shouting something incomprehensible and flinging his arms around her.

(Later, over takeout and scuffed nails:

“This year will be a good year,” Georgie tells Jon. “I can feel it. And if it’s not, I’ll make it good.”

“I’ll make it good, too,” Jon says, “Or I’ll try to, at least. I promise.”

And Georgie believes him, and Georgie is not afraid.)

#jongeorgie #the magnus archives #tma #georgie barker #jonathan sims #magnuspod #fic #not sure why it says anonymous i think it's bc i posted to a collection

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trainsinanime · 5 years ago

Text

I think in retrospect, my post bitching about Ladrien was a mistake. It was written out of frustration, in response to a post that I perceived as trying to push Ladrien as morally superior to Marichat. That was probably not the right way to read this post. And even if it had been, the correct response would certainly not have been to vague-tumble (sub-tumble?) about it. I should just delete it.

…or I can double down and post more controversial Miraculous Ladybug shipping hot takes. Which one of these would be more fun? Difficult, difficult…

Adrigami vs Lukanette

I have seen more than one post argue that people prefer Lukanette over Adrigami because of racism, or because Kagami is too pushy, or similar. Now, for the record, I prefer anything above Lukanette and I personally love to ship Adrigaminette (specifically the version where everyone involved is really stupid about it). But I don’t think the moralistic argument can explain all of why Lukanette is so popular.

The problem is that we all love our point of view character Marinette and want good things to happen to her. Yes, there are exceptions in the fandom, but those are a small minority, no matter how loud they are. Adrigami is fun, interesting, engaging, they have both common points and interesting conflicts, and I’d absolutely love to watch a show about it… but Adrigami has one key drawback: It makes Marinette sad. And nobody wants that.

Lukanette, on the other hand, doesn’t make anyone (in universe) sad. Adrien and Kagami are okay with it, and it doesn't seem to affect Marinette's emotional state at all. (Yeah, sorry, not a fan of Luka, but I'll try not to dwell on it because my reasons for not liking him are not interesting, much like he is.)

Lukanette also works really well if you want to be salty about stuff but aren’t willing to go full Batman. The main salt objection to Adrien is that Chat Noir can be too pushy with his romantic feelings, which is arguably true, and that this means he is a horrible person, which I don’t exactly agree with. That cannot be said about Luka, who has no flaws, wishes, character motivation or similar nasty things that could get in the way.

All of these factors have nothing to do with Kagami whatsoever. Now, if you’re wondering why Lukanette is more popular than Kagaminette, then we’re getting somewhere.

Next up, more controversial opinions about other pairings:

Adrienette

Horrible, awful. Adrinette is king.

Marichat

Just to reiterate: I love Marichat moments. I don’t think regular Marichat dates, whether that is romantic dates or friend dates, works at all. Marichat lives from the fact that they’re both friends, yes, but also from the low-key spy vs spy antics where they try to convince each other that they’re not actually best friends yet. (Ladrien could do the same but they’re too busy awkwardly blushing at each other to get any sustained antics going)

Ladynoir

These two do not go on patrols in canon. I know every fan claims so, but there’s no canon evidence, except for Dark Owl/Hibou Noir, where the regular patrols are clearly established as something unusual that both of them want to end soon. Yes, I know there’s one instagram post, and supposedly one tweet (not that I’ve ever seen it), but it’s not in the show. And let’s be real, why would they go on patrols? Hawkmoth canonically creates Akumas whenever, including frequently during school hours. Patrols can’t help against that. That’s why our heroes canonically use alerting apps.

The reason why people love patrols is because it gets Ladynoir together without having to invent an Akuma. I can see the appeal behind that… but honestly, isn’t that just lazy? The show generally makes sure to show us the tail end of the adventure that brought them together this time, and I think that is more fun. Alternatively, sometimes, the show just doesn’t bother to explain why they’re together in costume at all (e.g. the end of Chat Blanc), and it turns out that this is also a thing you can do and nobody will hate you for it.

Adrinette

This may be my most controversial opinion yet, but I want these two crazy kids to kiss and hold hands and grow old together.

Adrigaminette

Yes, I know it'll never be canon. But I refuse to believe that they didn't realise people would ship it when they wrote the beginning of Heart Hunter. That whole sequence seems like it was designed to get me to ship it, and you know what? It succeeded.

Maribat aka Daminette

Kill it with fire.

Alyanette

We don’t have enough of this.

Alyadrien

People, including Zag, are sleeping on what a great platonic friendship pairing this could be. Just those two geeking out about how great Ladybug, Marinette, Nino and Carapace are.

Kagaminette

I have nothing but love for this pairing; I'm just including it here for completeness.

GabeNath

The problem with that ship is that I don’t want good things to happen to either of these people. Which means I'm perfectly okay with the canon version of this ship, where it's clear that both of them are emotionally stunted, callous and immoral and are never going to find happiness. The fact that it’s technically cheating only adds to that. I am not fond of fan versions where these two and Adrien are one happy family, though.

DJWifi

The pairing is perfect, but I have to say: Lady WiFi is cooler and fits better for Alya than Rena Rouge. Who ever thought to give the journalist the Miraculous that is all about lying and deception?

I’m very okay with Nino not being the Bubbler, though.

JuleRose

Come on Zag, they deserve to be unambiguously canon.

MarcNath

See JuleRose. Actually, I think when directly compared to JuleRose, they could really do with some more development, some more scenes of them together. I do ship it, but they seemed to have gotten the “official unacknowledged gay boys couple” almost out of nowhere.

MarcNath where Nath means Nathalie

I don’t think it would be a good idea at all, but the troll part in me (which is responsible for this post existing in the first place) thinks it might be worth exploring.

MariLila

We need more of this ultimate crack ship.

Adrigamilukanette

Get rid of Luka and then we’re talking.

Chloegami

I used to think it was a stupid idea but I’ve read a number of very well written slow-burn stories about them, so now I ship it.

Felinette

I don’t get it at all. I feel like I should write more about it in a post like this, but I'm mostly just baffled by its existence.

Lukagami

Kagami deserves better.

Juleka/Lila

I just saw that this tag exists, on a "here are my drabbles" fic that was last updated in 2018, before it got to the Juleka/Lila part, and now I’m both intrigued and frustrated.

Adrichat

Hah, you had almost forgotten about that, hadn’t you?

#miraculous ladybug #mlb meta #mlb trolling

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found--family · 5 years ago

Note

Kinda want people to ask Jensen more about the episode at the online convention this weekend but I don’t want him to be bombarded either. I feel like he’ll say he wants to leave it up to the fans whether Dean feels the same. My interpretation is that they’ve both been pining idiots for years ;)

You mean the DarkLight Convention? (Google tells me DLcon was November 7 +8.. are there more days to be added?)

Hey, if they're going to book an online con right after an episode like 15x18 airs they gotta expect to be bombarded with questions! 😆 Jensen isn't anywhere near as active on twitter/insta as Misha is so any content we get from him, beit in a livestream or interview or podcast etc. is a gift because it's only now-and-then.

But, while I haven't watched this whole video yet (and if there's more vids to this session someone please direct me), Jensen's not in it and the DarkLight website doesn't mention him (or Jared) in the line up. I wonder why that is? Does anyone know? Is there another livestream event coming up?

Misha on destiel going canon | Darklight Online Convention (2020)

youtube

I think ambiguity is good right now because it keeps us guessing; we don't want Jensen to spoil The Upcoming Big Reveal for Dean - though I don't think he would (plus a little doubt about our ideal ending makes the eventual emotional catharsis that much more satisfying imho)!

And even if he - or any other cast member - teased something jokey/potentially UhOh-OhNo about the Destiel endgame, I wouldn't be worried. I'd love to hear Jensen's behind-the-scenes insight on filming and how he's feeling about the fandom's mixed reaction to 15x18, but I have confidence in the story so far and everything we've been clued in on that the final 2 episodes will 1) have Dean's vocal response to Castiel's love confession, and 2) see Dean and Cas end up together. What can I say? This nightmare of a year is turning into somewhat of a dream and I'm hopeful.

I'm looking forward to the finale retrospective and what everyone has to say, hopefully it will include stuff about 15x18:

The series finale is slated to air on Nov. 19 and will be preceded by a one-hour interview special titled Supernatural: The Long Road Home, for which series creator Erik Kripke will be in attendance alongside the show's stars and executive producers. [x]

.. But that's PRE-finale stuff, and obviously they want to avoid spoilers, and Destiel-related stuff is going to be high on the Do Not Blab list. So I'd love a post-finale livestream thing with J2MA etc. where they can finally speak openly about the endgame plot and their characters and relationships. There'll probably be some post-finale interviews (written or filmed) and stuff shared on social media, but yeah I'd love another livestream thing with questions from fans once the finale has aired. I'd barter part of my soul for it.

(sorry, this ask has gotten away from me 😅)

Wouldn't that be wonderful though? For Jensen to turn around after the finale (after Destiel goes Full canon) and admit to playing into the lovestory in past seasons without having official confirmation that anything would ever come of it beyond ambiguity? We know Misha ships it (has for years) and there's factoids like him being given the cue to play *the jilted lover* for Cas in 9x06 with Dean, but the Jensen/Dean side of things ship-wise has been left up to speculation more than fact over the years (correct me if I'm wrong; gimme your behind the scenes intel!).

Anyway. I too want to hear what Jensen has to say about Destiel post-finale.

#destiel #jensen #spn 15x18 #spn 15x20 #s15 spec #thoughts #15x18 #15x20 #q and a

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mocha-sim · 5 years ago

Text

“Old AU/fanfic ideas I’m probably never going to write” dump

(Long post warning)

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“Full Circle”, first fic I came up with when I got into the fandom around early 2018, your basic next-gen fic except the main focus is on the student council, who all somehow wind up involved in the case of Ayano’s daughter, Kataba (which is a dumb name in retrospect). Kuroko is Kataba’s teacher, and Akane is the guidance counsellor. Aoi and Shiromi don’t actually appear until after the first rival is killed (pretty early in the story), when Aoi - a bodyguard at Saikou Corp. - is sent to the school to watch over Megami’s son, and Shiromi is a detective/journalist assigned to the case. Weirdly enough, Megami’s son Haruki ends up being the one to trigger the “senpai effect” in Kataba

I had some ideas for rivals:

Haruki’s close friend Emiko, kind of a flirt. Gets stabbed to early in the story for the audience to really get to know her

Rikuto, leader of the gardening club, and a very emotional guy who may or may not have been suffering abuse at home. Iirc Kataba drops something heavy on him in the shed to kill him

Kano, leader of the (now-official) gaming club, grumpy and rude but has a soft spot for cute things, kind of a depressed attitude and maybe has drug problems. Gets driven to suicide

Kazumi, leader of the art club, an energetic girl who’s popular around the school, but a daydreamer. Suffering from an unwanted pregnancy

Chika, leader of the science club, cold and distant personality, others call her “ice queen”, looks up to Kaga who now has his own huge corporation. Kataba sabotages her experiment (a small robot) to quite literally blow up in her face at a science convention, which kills her

Isamu, leader of the school’s kickboxing team. I never really fleshed him out tbh

Tamotsu, leader of the delinquents, infamous throughout the school and has the kind of personality you’d expect a delinquent to have. I don’t remember the details of how I planned to have him eliminated but I think Kataba found some way to get him killed by a rival gang

Sadashi, a timid and quiet new student who moved from elsewhere in the country and is struggling to adjust to life at Akademi. Again, I don’t think I fleshed her out as much as the others, but there was something about her trying to get into the student council

Masumi, Haruki’s childhood friend whose family is constantly moving around for business reasons, but is always texting and video-chatting with him. Just like Haruki, she’s extremely rich and is one of the only people who can really relate to him. A very calm and polite girl. If I'm remembering right, I think she actually survives, but gets kidnapped and tortured by Kataba and never really recovers from the trauma

The tenth rival is actually Haruki’s bodyguard, Aoi. By this point in the fic it’s all gone to shit, there’s a missing person’s report out for Masumi, Akademi is in a state of panic and many students have stopped coming to class, and there’s been talk about shutting the school down permanently. The focus is kind of split between everything that’s going on (Masumi, the state of the school, Shiromi’s investigation, Taro and Ayano’s marriage falling apart, Kataba trying to kill Aoi) instead of just focusing on the current rival

I think had one idea for a student who’s not a rival: a Midori-like student called Tsuki Muun... but she was a gag character more than anything

There are other canon characters who appeared in the story, like Ayano and Taro, Megami (though she doesn’t play a major role), Info trying to help Kataba for her own benefit (I had a vague idea about her going undercover as one of Shiromi’s coworkers and trying to sabotage the investigation), possibly Osana and/or Hanako, and I considered having Oka show up as a ghost

Taro is kind of an ongoing obstacle for Kataba and is the one who rescues Masumi from the basement (he also hits Ayano with a chair when she tries to stop him from taking Masumi to the hospital by threatening him with a knife. King behaviour)

Kataba is actively trying to sabotage Shiromi and her coworkers. Early on in the story she kills Shiromi’s search dog as a “warning” to her

Shiromi and Taro end up becoming close friends whilst she’s investigating his daughter’s crimes. Ayano gets kind of suspicious but I don’t really remember where that ended up going. Also there’s this whole scene where they break into Kataba’s room while she’s out to find her bulletin board with notes/pictures of all the rivals and how to eliminate them

Aoi is not only Haruki’s bodyguard but his godmother as well, and he calls her “auntie”

There’s some conflict between them because he feels that she’s too overprotective and, being a teenager who wants to hang out with his friends, he doesn’t want some middle-aged woman lurking over his shoulder all the time

Over the story they start to resolve things and grow closer. Aoi supports him when he feels insecure about not living up to the “perfect” image of his family

Since the story would take place around 20 years in the future I think I was going to take some liberties with technology and stuff like that, especially during Chika’s week

Akademi’s uniform also changed over the years to something more fitting for a high school, the number of students attending grew much larger, and their sports club/martial arts club were replaced with something closer to actual high school sports teams

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Supernatural creature AU, where everyone except Taro and Hanako is some kind of monster/creature/etc.

Taro is oblivious to everyone around him being monsters and thinks the school he attends just has a lot of weird students, but he’s an accepting and non-judgmental person so he just takes it in stride. Hanako, however, knows what’s going on and has to constantly keep Taro from walking straight into danger

Ayano is a demon who Taro unknowingly sold his soul to in exchange for a bag of chips, and now she wants her repayment. She and Hanako are almost constantly at odds with one another, but on occasion they team up to protect Taro from a “greater threat”

Instead of an occult club (because I think that would be kind of obsolete in this AU), there’s some kind of support/therapy group for undead creatures like zombies, ghosts, vampires, etc. Oka decided to start it because of the struggles she’s faced as a zombie

The sports club are all aquatic monsters of some kind. There’s at least one merman in there

The science club are aliens and/or have some kind of “artificial human” theme going on (robots, Frankenstein-esque creatures, etc.)

The gardening club are all fairies - the kind who do things like tending to flower gardens and cleaning around your house

Shiromi, on the other hand, is more of a “trickster” kind of fairy who steals shiny things/valuables, gets people lost in the woods for fun, and may or may not eat human flesh (Hanako makes the assumption that she does and tries to save Taro from her). She doesn’t get along too well with most of the gardening club

Akane is a banshee who ends up serving as the student council’s “alarm” for when someone is dying

Aoi is some kind of reptilian/dragon creature who can breathe fire, but probably can’t fly

I don’t think I ever got anything set in stone for the rest of the student council. I was thinking of making Kuroko or Megami a seraph but that doesn’t really fit in with the “monster” theme

One of the bullies is a shapeshifter of some sort

At least one of the delinquents is a werewolf

Iirc the existence of monsters/supernatural creatures wasn’t common knowledge even in this AU and Akademi was created as a “safe” school for them to get an education without the threat of being discovered by humans. How Taro and Hanako got in... nobody knows. Maybe someone thought the two of them were a little too average and had to be hiding something

Most of the other students at Akademi are aware that the two of them are humans, and some find them fascinating or like to mess with them. Others are wary around them and try to avoid them out of fear that they’ll react badly. The rest of the students are just horribly confused and trying to figure out what they are

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Aoi x Shiromi biker/mechanic AU

Aoi is part of a biker gang, but her bike is an absolute rustbucket that’s constantly breaking down and there’s only one reliable repair shop in the small town she lives in. The mechanics keep suggesting that she gets a new bike but she has a sentimental attachment to her old one and doesn’t want to get rid of it. She’s gonna get fined for driving it eventually

Aoi doesn’t get along with her family in any AU it seems, and trying to stay away from the house as much as possible led to her getting involved with the biker gang (probably with the martial arts club members). Luckily, the gang she’s a part of is much more benevolent than the other major gang in town and mostly acts in defense of themselves or others. They’re politically active more than they are actually criminal, and the illegal things they do basically amount to protests and the like

The “rival gang” is the delinquents. They’re the ones who commit more crimes like theft, vandalism, drug trafficking, etc., and usually do what they do for money. They’re not afraid to use physical intimidation and violence to get what they want. Both gangs often wind up in trouble with the law for collateral damage during their fights

The delinquents hate Aoi more personally than the other members of her gang because of a) the amount of problems she’s caused for them and b) a rivalry with their leader, Osoro, which dates way back to high school. Aoi gave Osoro that scar on her face, and Osoro damaged Aoi’s eye badly enough that it had to be removed

Kaga and Shiromi’s parents died at some point when Shiromi was in high school. Kaga was already an adult at that point, plus a mechanical genius, and was old enough to take over the repair shop. He taught his little sister everything he knows so that she could help him after she graduated. They live in a small apartment right above the shop

Shiromi usually winds up being the one to repair Aoi’s bike (or at least helping) and the two of them start bonding over that

Most of the people around Shiromi’s age (19-ish in this AU) left town to attend college somewhere better, or get a job elsewhere, so she’s found herself lonely a lot since she graduated high school. Sure, there are the other employees at the repair shop who she gets along well with, but they’re all significantly older than her and she can’t really connect with them the same way she could with her friends from high school. She’s grateful for the opportunity to talk to someone close to her own age for once and potentially make a new friend (though Aoi doesn’t really want anything to do with that at first)

At some point Aoi comes in seriously injured after a fight, but denies that she’s hurt. Shiromi convinces her that she needs to go to the hospital and gets her there

Kaga already has some protective-older-brother tendencies (which Shiromi hates), but it practically doubles when she starts hanging out with Aoi and the rest of Budo’s gang. She knows Kaga just wants her safe and uninvolved in gang conflicts, but by this point she’s really attached to Aoi and wants to keep seeing her, so Kaga backs off under the condition that Shiromi stays on her guard and doesn’t go out at night

As Aoi and Shiromi start hanging out outside of the repair shop more often, the delinquents realize that Aoi has someone close to her that they can use to hurt her

They start making threats against Shiromi just to provoke Aoi, or otherwise messing with the two of them. After a fight in which Umeji suffered a major head injury that hospitalized him, and Osoro’s gang lost the drugs they were trying to sell, Osoro makes the decision to kidnap Shiromi to lure Aoi in and beat up/possibly kill her. They succeed in the kidnapping, but it falls apart when Shiromi tricks the guy who’s supposed to be guarding her and escapes on her own before Aoi even shows up

After this incident Kaga is full-on freaking out and forbids Shiromi from seeing Aoi, blaming her for Shiromi getting kidnapped. The two of them keep communicating through text and Shiromi sometimes sneaks out to see her

Before the story takes place Aoi wasn’t super close with the other members of the gang - they were acquaintances more than anything. Over the course of the story she gets closer to them and starts to learn more things about them (like the fact that Budo is/once was in the same situation as her - in love with a girl (cough-Oka-cough) whose family wouldn’t let her near him because of his lifestyle)

There’s a whole arc focusing on Aoi’s parents trying to get Aoi out of the gang, not because they’re genuinely worried for her safety but because they think their daughter being part of a gang reflects badly on them. They possibly try to get the other members of the gang arrested

After this arc, Aoi moves out into her own place near the repair shop, and Shiromi and Budo help her move in

Aoi and Shiromi end up happy together, Kaga and Shiromi resolve things between them, Aoi no longer has to deal with her parents, Budo ends up with Oka, the other gang members resolve their own character arcs, and the delinquents end up in jail

---

Magical girl AU which, tbh... I never really fleshed out. It was mostly an excuse to draw cute magical girl outfits. But I did have some stuff down for it!

The placeholder club leader/now the empty demon is the “Kyubey”-type thing that gives all of them their powers

I never really figured out whether I wanted to take a dark route or a more light-hearted one with this. I think my favourite idea would probably be something in between, though - not super grimdark and edgy, but not all sunshine and rainbows either

All of them got not only powers and weapons, but also enhanced physical abilities like running faster, jumping higher, increased strength, increased durability, and more stamina. But those abilities would only take effect while transformed. I was thinking one of them would get used to having enhanced abilities and keep trying to do things they can’t actually do in their normal daily life, which eventually gets them hurt

Kuroko has some sort of rifles and the ability to form hard-light shields to protect herself or others

Akane’s weapon is a bow for which she can produce as many arrows as she has energy for. She also got the power of flight/levitation

Aoi has a sword, like a really heavy broadsword type of thing that she can somehow lift with one hand, and the ability to breathe fire

I think I was planning on giving Shiromi a weapon at some point, but I don’t remember what it was... My other idea was her not having one single weapon, but being able to produce as many small projectiles like throwing knives, shuriken, etc. as she needs. She can also become completely invisible

I don’t think I really had anything fully decided for Megami tbh. I had a vague idea of what kind of outfit she would wear but I never drew any designs (at least, not that I remember)

They definitely have to do some travelling around Japan at some point

Ayano may or may not have been an “evil magical girl”, I don’t really remember

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Another one I didn’t flesh out a whole lot: the fic where a bunch of Akademi students go on a camping field trip

Info attends school as a normal student in this AU and is part of the group that goes camping

It’s Ayano, Info, Osana, Megami, Kuroko, Akane, Aoi, Shiromi, Osoro, Kaga, Taro, Umeji, Budo, Itachi, and Tsuruzo

There’s a scene where they’re all gathered around a campfire telling horror stories. Kaga offers to hold Megami if she’s afraid. Megami is not afraid, is sick of his shit, and tells him to go sit somewhere else

At some point they need more wood for the fire, but nobody wants to go into the woods to get it, so Shiromi tells the boys that whoever brings back the most wood can have a date with Akane. It gets most of the boys off of their butts for sure, but Kuroko scolds her for it. Shiromi just says that, once they’ve got the firewood, it’s not like they actually have to go through with their end of the deal. Kuroko heads off into the woods to collect some herself

Kuroko ends up bringing back the most wood and waves Akane off, saying that she just did it so that she wouldn’t have to go to dinner with one of the boys, but Akane insists on giving her that date when they get home

Everything is going great with the camping trip until they wake up one morning to find Osana missing from the girls’ cabin. They spend hours searching before someone finally finds her dead in the lake

Everyone is certain that this wasn’t an accident and the mood immediately plummets. Almost everyone has their suspects and is at each others’ throats. The teachers who are supervising decide that they’ll all pack up and be ready to leave tomorrow morning

However, Itachi and the delinquents want to figure out who killed Osana and bring them to justice. One thing leads to another and all the students end up lost in the woods. At some point the delinquents suspect Info and attack her, which injures her and splits the group in two

After that I’m not really sure where things go, but everyone is trying to get back to the main camp and get home safely. Aoi is in the same group as Info and is hella suspicious of her as well so not everything is peaceful. There are some people in Umeji and Osoro’s group who are pissed at them for attacking Info and splitting the group. Taro is extremely upset by Osana’s death and Megami comforts him, which leads to Ayano plotting to kill Megami as well while they’re still here, and possibly hindering the group/trying to isolate Megami as a result.

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I had a pirate/mermaid AU for Aoromi but I never wrote anything down for it - I just had a few really, really old sketches I never posted

Iirc, the general plot was that Aoi’s crew was struggling after the betrayal of Ayano and the death of the former captain Megami + many other crew members, and couldn’t really do anything but run from other crews who tried to attack them, their only advantage being that their ship was still the fastest. Then they fish up a mermaid, Shiromi, who they plan on selling for money to hopefully try and get back on their feet, but end up getting emotionally attached to her

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Superhero AU which I think I’ve mentioned before but

Anyone with superpowers is legally required to work under the government to defend the citizens whenever they’re called, but they don’t get any pay or significant benefit from it so they also have to work other jobs in their civilian lives. This causes huge amounts of stress

There are some who formed their own group to rebel against this system, which eventually evolved into trying to establish a new society in which they are above those without powers. Info is their leader. Her powers revolve around hacking, not just technology but people as well (though the latter is a lot more complicated and difficult)

Hanako is a sort of “sleeper agent” who doesn’t actually know that she has any powers, let alone that she’s one of the most powerful. Info finds out before she does and brainwashes her. Hanako constantly finds herself “blacking out” and then waking up in her room hours later with no memory of what happened. Meanwhile, a new member of Info’s organization shows up under the name “Nemesis”

Kaga doesn’t actually have any powers, but works for Info and her organization anyway. He’s a technological genius who built himself some kind of Iron Man-esque robotic suit to fight alongside them. He believes that if he works with the “winning side”, when they eventually take down the government, he’ll be spared/treated better than the others. Spoiler: he won’t. Info is planning on discarding him as soon as he outlives his usefulness to her

Also Kaga’s codename was “Dr. Bluescreen”. Clearly the most intimidating name ever.

Homu is a robot and one of Kaga’s inventions. She ends up developing sentience and emotions

Seiyo and Ajia are rivals in both their civilian and superhero lives. They work as waiters at the same restaurant

Being born with powers also comes with enhanced abilities like speed, power, endurance, etc. Ayano doesn’t have any actual powers, but has all the other enhancements (maybe even more so than the others) and is considered one of them anyway

Megami’s power is to calculate her opponent’s weaknesses and adjust her own powers accordingly. It sounds good, but it’s not so great when facing off against more than one person at a time

Aoi has fire-related powers and is in constant conflict with the fire department

Kuroko can produce toxins from her body, Akane can fly, and Shiromi can camouflage herself or other objects/people

Info and Shiromi go way back and Info is constantly trying to convince her to come over to her side. Info may or may not brainwash her at some point which sort of sets off Kaga because opposite sides or not, that’s still his little sister

At some point I was thinking of adding a “middle group” who don’t want to work under the government but don’t want to put themselves above people without powers, either. Maybe the delinquents

---

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critical-ramblings · 5 years ago

Text

Things that Mean More on a second watch-through of C2

Episode 8-10

"He burned alive in front of me" "Yeah you did that though" this is why I love Beau

Caleb identifying all the things and then not telling them what it is makes a first appearance! It's so clear here how little he trusts them, even as he jokes with Beau 'you look like a nerd' and Fjord 'yeah those manacles just stop you from being gassy"

Fjord snaps Beau's goggles almost immediately upon her acquiring them. so what I'm saying is that they've always had that sibling energy

Caleb purposefully manipulates Jester by giving her the wand--to distract her from the glove of blasting...too bad Beau is on the case.

Beau says she's getting her own room, and Jester says they've always been roommates...this is also the night Beau tucks her in, so....THIS IS IN EPISODE 8 PEOPLE

Jester extorting the starosta for Fjord's letter is still Incredible, as is the first appearance of "Fjord Tough." I still lost it with the rest of the table.

Caleb didn't have to roll a wisdom save after he incinerated the bandit leader because he was immediately knocked unconscious, but Liam makes up for it with the nightmare he has afterward (take them out, take them out!) LOVE ME SOME ANGSTY WIZARD

I already made a post about this, but I feel compelled to remind everyone that the shady guide they meet when they first get to Zadash is the abandoned business partner of Lawrence, Tary's husband.

First appearance of Pumat Sol! I love how much the cast love's Matt's voices

"Unpleasant one, let's go" "obnoxious one, I'm with ya" Molly and Beau are so good you guys

"There are those who believe [tieflings] are the result of the Curse of Ghor Dranas" cool world-building Matt!

"The Apple Tree Learning Center" is a soltryce-run 'public school' for children and adults...who wants to bet it was a similar school that discovered the blumentrio? Or at least encouraged them to apply

the first time Caleb transcribed a spell (unseen servant) he IMMEDIATELY invited Nott to help him. And Nott, though dismayed that it was going to take 2 hours, was willing to help out.

"What are you doing with my cat?" Molly won't be able to see through Frumpkin's eyes, but he's got the spirit

"When you compliment people it sounds like a fucking insult," Fjord and Beau are GREAT

Maye one reason we have a dim view of the Empire is because our first plot line in Zadash involved corrupt politicians...not to mention Caleb's whole Thing

First mention of the Cerberus Assembly: general complaints that they're grabbing for power and influence in Zadash and beyond.

Nott being afraid of the bath :( "a person could drown in that"

I legitimately forgot how much they treated Nott like a kid...from the swimming lesson, 'you'll get a sticker'

Caleb is SUPER paranoid, asking everyone how they feel about the Empire and sounding out these new party members. Funnily enough, it's Molly who is most on his wavelength as far as keeping a low profile goes

Yasha really didn't want to confess which god she followed to the rest of the Nein, but when pressed said, "he pulled me out of what felt like literally the depths of hell. I owe him my life." this is without even remembering Obann or what he did.

The contrast between early Beau/Yasha 'do I get a good view" 'roll for perv' and later Softness is...a lot

Caleb and Yasha bond over not doing the hugging thing

Nott LEANS AWAY after asking how dangerous the sewer job is going to be. She is Not On Board for risking her life the way the others are--not even for 700 gold.

'you kicked his cat into oblivion!' "I didn't!" Matt doesn't often distance himself from his NPCs, but when he does it's for animal cruelty and bad parenting.

Jester talking about her visit with the Traveler in the Pillow Trove is...Relevant. It's kind of crazy how early the line was drawn between Fjord and Beau not trusting him and Caleb being quick to prop up Jester's faith, "there are stories that tell of gods dabbling with mortals, not often but it does happen." whereas Beau says, "I'm interested in a god who kicks it with mortals. Never heard of that."

Caleb not wanting to get a new jacket because he knows this one is big autism feels (even if it is also his paranoia talking)

"she does see hamster unicorns. they're gods, right?" "No Beau they're just--they're just unicorns" I love them

"I've never been in a sewer" Molly says, excitedly, and also making me Feel Things

the evolution of Yasha's voice is really cute. we stan 1 Ashley Johnson

I think I was still listening to the podcast at this point so I totally missed all of the It jokes Liam did in the sewer job

Nott sees everyone getting ready to fight and takes a drink. It is interesting to keep track of her drinking, knowing everything we know now.

rat punching, the pasttime of lvl 3 adventurers.

Yasha, to Caleb: "are you very scared right now"

Caleb: "no because I am with all of you"

Nott: "I'm very scared right now"

Caleb advocating for looting the guards the spider killed is #vultureculture

It gets overlooked in later episodes, but 10 was when Nott's button collecting really took off.

They meet the Zadash Lawmaster Orentha and Nott immediately says, "she seems nice. I wonder why all those people wanted to rebel against her." if that doesn't sum up the themes of this campaign idk what does

Nott says, "and now we never have to do another adventure again" she's come so far

Caleb is VERY transactional after this fight, handing out loot for favors and goodwill with individual party members rather than splitting the loot.

This leads directly to Molly pinning him to the wall, which in retrospect was definitely a play for authority and dominance and not anything shippy.

Caleb straight up says to Fjord, "I don't trust you yet. I don't trust any of these people yet."

That whole conversation is actually Very Good:

Fjord: "That's too bad"

Caleb: "yeah I have...I have made mistakes in my life. And, I'm, I have harmed people. Not in a long time. *clears throat* you know I thought I was going to be something, someday, a long time ago, and now I. Don't."

"We've all harmed people, and I hope you come to trust me in time" this is why I ship widofjord (emphasis mine)

Nott going through Fjord's stuff is also this episode! Such shady motherfuckers

"If the money's right and it's not stupid" is a good philosophy for this group

"Your cat got kicked into another dimension?!" "Oh he had such a face, I will never forget this face"

They have fireflies in Kamordah and not Nicodranas. Canon.

#cr #critical role #the mighty nein #this one got Long

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avauntus · 4 years ago

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Supernatural - a retrospective

This is super self-indulgent, and I have so much else I’ve promised-- I owe a long-fic rec post, and ao3 comments, wip work, and that’s just my fandom stuff I’m behind on. *sigh*

But it’s late on a Saturday and now I’ve finished Supernatural, I want to share what I think are my top few eps, and a few other comments. I promise some of this will be different from the “greatest hits” you probably usually see, and I’ll try to make it worth your time. *wry smile*

Look, we have to have categories like: “Most Likely to Live in My Head Rent-Free for the Rest of my Life” and “Most Likely to Inspire Unnecessary Fanfiction” that are different from “Favorites,” because that’s just the cursed energy this show has. ;-)

My top five

#5 - 13.01 - “Lost and Found”

Written by: Andrew Dabb | Directed by: Phil Sgriccia

In fandom, this is most often referred to as the start of the “Grieving Widower” arc, tongue-in-cheek. Also has Alexander Calvert (Jack) walking around completely in the nude for the first third of the ep. (Neither of these are why this is in my top 5, but he has a good story about wardrobe for his ‘first day.’)

I didn’t expect much out of this episode the first time I watched it, but I’ve gone over this ‘section’ of the show maybe 3-4 times in my Netflix catch-up, and I watch this one in full every time. From Jack being...not at all what anyone expected and an unsteady vindication, to the stunning cinematography (there’s a post that compares shots to Brokeback Mountain, but I think the shots here might be better), to the sheriff who takes the time to remind her deputy that “...there’s no such thing as ‘weird.’ Everyone’s normal in their own way,” to the slow reveal of exactly how hard the events of the previous night (12x23 - All Along the Watchtower) are hitting Dean and Sam and in different ways...(how long the episode takes to reveal to you how Dean fucked up his hand, and what he was saying when he did. Augh!) The Winchesters are trying to rally, but they have been taking hits for a long time, and the cracks are showing.

#4 - 15.06 - “Golden Time”

Written by: Meredith Glynn | Directed by: John F. Showalter

Supernatural has a terrible track record with representation in all stripes. It is infamously consistent in killing off anyone minority, female, or non-White. One of the interesting things about the chaotic meta-narrative of season 15 is you can see the lack of fucks some of the writer’s room had to give about not even being subtle about tearing down that type of ‘White-male-hero-journey” now that they were in a literal “what will they do, fire me?” situation.

I’m a Cas fan, and this episode, which gives him an actual, ‘case-of-the-week’ hunter’s narrative where he gets to save the day on his own, successfully, was wonderful. I love that for him! But more than that, for me, this episode is emotional to me for other reasons-- the way Dean and Cas circle around each other on their angry phone call (with the body language! They are broadcasting so LOUD and neither can see because they’re on the phone!), Sam’s story here, where he’s inheriting things from Rowena that allow him in turn to save Eileen, to Cas’ speech and quick anger at the lake when you reflect on his entire journey of self-realization from a soldier of blind faith to an agent of free will... “You selfish little men in your positions of authority...” I just... *clears throat, grabs tissue*

#3 - 6.20 - “The Man Who Would Be King”

Written & Directed by: Ben Edlund

Speaking of Cas’ journey... I know some folks don’t like the angst and drama of the ‘Heaven and Hell’ plots of Supernatural, but I am here for it. Oh, did we need another reason to include this episode? This has some of the most metal quotes I have heard from any TV show. Ever.

I mean, look at this:

“If I knew then what I know now, I would have said: Freedom is a length of rope. God wants you to hang yourself with it.”

“Explaining freedom to angels is a bit like explaining poetry to fish.”

The delivery of: “It's not too late. Damn it, Cas! We can fix this!” “Dean, it’s not broken!” is one of those Supernatural bits that will live in my head until the end of time. All of Edlund’s episodes are among my favorites, but this (along with “5.04 - The End”) was on another level.

#2 - 5.16 - “Dark Side of the Moon”

Written by: Andrew Dabb & Daniel Loflin | Directed by: Jeff Wollnough

I think of this episode every time I hear Bob Dylan sing “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” This is kinda a giant montage episode, but the connecting concepts are so...satisfying.

“Heaven is your favorite memories.” “ It’s called the axis mundi. It’s a path that runs through heaven. Different people see it as different things. For you, it’s two-lane asphalt.” “This is your idea of heaven? Wow, this was one of the worst nights of my life.” “I don’t think I realized how long you’ve been cleaning up Dad’s messes.” “It’s awesome to finally have an application—a practical application—for string theory.” “Everyone leaves you, Dean. You noticed?” “Why is God talking to me? Gardner-to-gardener, and between us, I think he gets lonely.” “You son of a bitch, I believed in... ” Whoosh.

#1 - 4.01 - “Lazarus Rising”

Written by: Eric Kripke | Directed by: Kim Manners

So...this is the episode where Castiel, angel of thee Lord, shows up. And that’s primarily why it earns the no. 1 spot, because 80% of my enjoyment of Supernatural from this point on was Cas-adjacent. Plus this entire episode just hits. ALL OF IT. Dean’s homecoming. Ruby, my darling. Bobby’s entire vibe. Pamela Barnes, easily one of the most interesting women Supernatural ever introduced. Cas being so hot to say “Hi” to Dean he forgets he wounds people.

But beyond that-- the way the show writes their ‘oh, by the way, angels’ narrative! If you haven’t seen this episode, would you believe me if I told you that THIS EPISODE, the episode where Supernatural said “canonically, Judeo-Christian Heaven is real, btw” involves no churches but does involve a séance, a soulmark handprint brand, and a himbo angel that “gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition”...but they were all “no homo, guys” for years?

Truly no one was out here doing it like Supernatural even back in 2008.

Others--

15.18 - “Despair”

“Most Likely to Live Rent-Free in My Head for the Rest of my Life”

Written by: Robert Berens | Directed by: Richard Speight, Jr.

You know why this episode is here. It broke reality. I could be wrong-- but I’d put good money on this episode being the subject of academic theses in the future. That doesn’t automatically make for interesting story, but...

Has there ever been a case, in a mainstream US TV show where a major lead character (Cas) came out as queer so late in the game in a narratively-important way? I’m not aware of it, but I might just be behind on my television.

This episode has great writing, and (blessedly) amazing direction and blocking anyway. Check out the above gif - that is some next level foreshadowing going on in the cinematography, and this isn’t even the most remarked upon shot in this episode. (Seriously, I had to search for 40 minutes for this gif, please respect my game, lol.) Everyone who was involved in 15x18 is giddy talking about their investment, from the costume designer to the actors to the director to the writer...

...And then a bunch of them steadfastly have avoided posting much Supernatural-related since. So that’s...loud. There is a bunch of subtext in this episode that is screamingly loud; there is a bunch of text in this episode that makes several things clear fandom has been chattering over for years and years. The meta-commentary around this episode continues, months later. There are over 700 fics on AO3 with this episode tag.

I have more to say about the themes of ‘free will’ and ‘love’ and ‘identity’ tied to this episode, but seriously-- you’ve probably read 17 versions of it on Tumblr already, so.

This is the last time we see Cas, and the last time Supernatural can claim anything close to narrative consistency. For that alone, it’d earn free head-space.

Runners-up: “4.20 - The Rapture”; “5.04 - The End”; “7.21 - Reading is Fundamental”; “8.21 - The Great Escapist”; “9.06 - Heaven Can’t Wait”; “12.19 - The Future”; “14.08 - Byzantium”

6.17 - “My Heart Will Go On”/8.07 - “A Little Slice of Kevin”

“Most Likely to Inspire Unnecessary Fanfiction”

Written by: Eric Charmelo & Nicole Snyder (6.17); Brad Buckner & Eugenie Ross-Leming | Directed by: Phil Sgriccia (6.17); Charlie Carner (8.07)

Usually the show kills off it’s “one-episode” female characters, but do you know one time it didn’t? When the Moirai (the Fates - specifically Atropos, the shearer of the Threads of Fate) showed up in canon in 6.17. She was posited to have “two older sisters that were bigger than her- in every sense of the word,” ...and Castiel had to back down when she challenged him to a cosmic game of chicken over the Winchester’s lives.

Then they never returned to that idea again.

“A Little Slice of Kevin” is on here for the opposite reason -- an amazing idea that was really underwritten in the episode it showed up in. Dean Winchester has been dragging himself across the fabric of universes; the literal Word of God is in play in a warehouse in Middle America; Cas is back from Purgatory, but what does that mean, micro and macro? As a person on the street, what would it mean, or feel like, to learn you were a Prophet of the Lord, uncalled? That what you are, everything you are, is a cosmic contingency?

Maybe Fate has an opinion on all these shenanigans?

Perhaps all that doesn’t make sense, but it certainly made an impression on ~2012 me. To this day, it remains the WIP I can open up and fool myself with the ‘twist.’ I wish I remembered where I was going with it so I could finish it.

Runners Up: “2.20 - What Is and What Should Never Be”; “5.04 - The End”; “6.15 - The French Mistake”; 12.12 - “Stuck in the Middle (with you)”; “13.05 - Advanced Thanatology” “14.03 - The Scar”; “14.10 - Nihilism”; “15.15 - Gimme Shelter” ... and “15.20 - Carry On” (obviously)

Fifteen seasons. There were plenty of other episodes I loved that didn’t make these limited lists. But overall -- thank you, Supernatural, for the run. Even if I’m upset at the ending, I can appreciate the game. If you watch the show, what were your favorite episodes?

#spn #supernatural #meta #review

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ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years ago

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Come Home

Uh… I had an hour before work, was thinking about post-freedom Kauri and what I said to an ask yesterday about what he’ll be like post-escape, and… this happened. Consider this loosely ‘canon’ for Kauri’s future.

This is the last Kauri update for while, as I have some other stuff to work on, but he’ll be back in a week or so!

CW: Kauri is an abuse survivor and is still stuck in a fucky thought pattern about it. Includes thoughts about returning to the abuser. Stay safe.

Tagging: @maybeawhumpblog, @pepperonyscience, @haro-whumps, @18-toe-beans, @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @giggly-evil-puppy, @whimpers-and-whumpers, @whump-it, @lumpofwhump, @pumpkinthefangirl

This was entirely written along to Dear Evan Hansen’s Disappear and You Will Be Found on repeat, so… blame musicals for this.

“What are you doing?”

Kauri doesn’t look up, picking up the neatly folded, laundered long-sleeved t-shirts and laying them carefully flat in the bottom of the faded, ripped-up, duct-taped old backpack. “I’m not doing anything, Nat.”

“Yeah, you are. You’re leaving. Again Look at me, Kaur. What’s up?”

He pauses, glancing over at her. Nat leans against the doorway, resting her arm and hip against the frame, arms crossed in front of herself just below her chest. The long brown hair in its usual no-nonsense braid hung midway down her back and she wore a plain brown T-shirt and jeans, looking every inch the get-things-done house manager she is.

There’s a scattering of wrinkles around her eyes and her mouth, which Kauri thinks are beautiful. Sometimes he wonders if maybe he’d liked art, too, not just writing, poetry.

In the life he remembers and forgets, the knowledge of his interests and loves sliding back underneath the wall inside his head as swiftly as it came. They’d made him see a doctor, at the first place, who worked with people like him.

The doctor had told him when you find somewhere safe to settle down, it will come back more quickly.

Which seems kind of funny, in retrospect, since Kauri is pretty sure no such place exists.

No… he was right, in the end, when he said, you don’t even know who you are.

“Nothing’s up,” He answers tightly. On the bed next to the clean boxers and two pairs of pants he’ll take with him, Keira beeps reprovingly, but he ignores her. She’s starting to be a little too good at beeping at him judgmentally. “I just need to get moving.”

“Kauri.” He turns back away from her, wiping at his eyes with the back of one hand furiously, trying to look angry instead of how he really felt. “Kauri, honey, you need to stay a few more days-”

“No, I don’t. I shouldn’t, I-… I can’t.” His voice trembles, just a little, on the last word - and Nat must catch it, because she’s quiet for a while, watching as he packs in the rest of his clothes, grabs an extra few pairs of socks. Toothbrush, toothpaste, a couple little travel bottles of shampoo and conditioner. He’s made a kind of small nest, and when he lifts Keira up, he settles her carefully into it.

Gratitude expressing, Keira says, and Kauri finds a watery, uncertain smile for her. Kauri good.

“Not so much,” He whispers to her, aware Nat can hear, but he doesn’t care anymore. “Kauri doesn’t know who he is.”

What I am isn’t really a person, isn’t good enough. Just a collection of responses they taught me and the shit that breaks through.

And I don’t even know if all of that is real, either.

“Honey… you’re Kauri.” Nat sighs. “You are. Whoever you decide that is, it’s up to you, now. Or you can go back to being-”

“No,” Kauri interrupts her before she can say it. “I still can’t.”

“Let us work with you. We can make the headaches stop when you hear your name, I promise.” Nat moves into the room now - there are four beds in here, four pets sharing space to sleep, all of them with bags packed under their beds for moving quickly if things go wrong. “Every time you run you stall out your recovery.”

Kauri zips up the backpack, listening to Keira’s soft little chirp. He doesn’t look up at first, just staring at the black zipper - the actual pull part came off a while ago, but a guy he met gave him a safety pin and he’s been using that, it works well enough. “I don’t need that name, anyway. Owen’s still looking for me. If I don’t, he’ll hunt me down.”

“There are other safehouses-”

“I don’t want to stay in a safehouse any longer!” Kauri carefully pulled the sleeves of his shirt down, hiding the barcode and number on the inside of his wrist. He’d cut little thumb holes in the sleeve to make sure it didn’t ride up, and he liked to think it looked like he did it just to look cool. The neckline was high enough to hide the awful scar all along his collarbone on the right side.

He did kind of think wearing shirts like this looked cool.

Maybe he wore shirts like this before? Keira might know, the real Keira, but-

Kauri slides the hoodie on next, then pulls the backpack straps over his shoulders. When he turns to look at her, there’s a hard set to his jaw, a flash to his bright blue eyes, that have her backing slightly up to give him room. Still, her brown eyes are warm and understanding.

“If you walk out, you won’t have anywhere to sleep tonight. We can’t find you another bed anywhere else in time.”

“I don’t want another bed. I’ll meet someone somewhere, I’ll crash with them.” Kauri flashes her a smile, the best he can manage. It barely counted as a twitch of his lips, but it’s something. It didn’t hide the glitter in his eyes.

“Kauri, you can’t keep doing this. You’re going to run into the wrong people, or someone will turn you in. We’re worried about you.”

His heart stops, and then starts, and somehow the world kept turning. “Who’s ‘we’, Nat?”

She sighs, and gives him a soft, sad smile. “You know who ‘we’ is, Kauri.”

It’s petulant (why do I know the word petulant? couldn’t make me as stupid as you wanted to, Owen) but Kauri rolls his eyes. “I know who you mean, and I don’t… I don’t think that matters anymore.”

He moves past her into the hallway but she follows him, refusing to give up, even as he walks past the other rescues in the kitchen and living room, carefully avoiding him and each other except for a bonded pair sitting together on the couch, curled around each other like he used to curl himself up around Owen on the couch.

Kauri misses Owen so much it hurts, nearly as much as it hurt when he thought he was going to die with Owen’s hands around his neck.

I’m so fucking lonely.

Nat presses something into his hand, and he looks down to find a small green cell phone, the cool plastic that his fingers curve naturally around. His body still knows how to use phones even though he doesn’t remember it. Some things just come like nature, physical motions, routines and movements that he should know but doesn’t.

So his body knows it for him, and Keira tells him the rest.

“Call us,” Nat says softly. “I have my number in there already. I give phones like this to a lot of rescues who don’t stay still.” She hesitates, something he rarely sees her do, and then reaches out to lay a hand on his shoulder.

It feels so good. No one wants to touch the rescues, they’re not supposed to want to be touched, but Kauri is so starved for it that he nearly leans against her even though he’s trying very hard to be angry at her. He’s never been good at being angry, never been one to hold grudges- has he?

Was that a memory? Or just something he’d made up?

“Can’t stay still. Too recognizable.” He smiles at her, but she doesn’t smile back.

“Are you okay?” She asks, softly.

He wants to tell her yes. He wants to tell her of course he is, he’s free. He wants to tell her to mind her own fucking business. He wants to tell her that he can’t stay here, there’s too much weight in the air, the things he can’t say and the things he won’t say. He wants to tell her anything at all.

Instead, he just turns and pulls away - and it’s so hard to pull away from her hand, from her warmth and welcome, from the thin veneer of safety these houses provide - and walks towards the back door.

“Kauri, nothing gets better if you never stop moving.”

He pauses with his hand on the doorknob.

“Listen to me. I’ve seen rescues come through like you before. If you never stop running away, you won’t get better, and you won’t be safer. Please trust me. Please. You shouldn’t be out there all by yourself, you don’t-… you don’t have the skills.”

The other rescues are looking, now. They don’t like Kauri, or don’t care about him, and he wouldn’t blame them either way. They’re mostly Domestics and Platonics. Kauri’s the whore in the house, and it looks so easy when it’s not what you have to be.

He doesn’t blame them.

It probably looked really good, if you were standing outside of it, if you weren’t the one they made fall in love with a monster.

“I’ll be fine,” He says without looking back at her. “I have Keira.”

“Kauri… Keira is a robot. I know she helps you, but-”

“I’ll be fine,” He repeats, opening the back door, slipping out into the yard. There’s a fence he can climb - all that yoga and cardio and flexibility training came in handy - and he can stick to bushes, to the sides of houses, until he’s sure no one is watching, following, writing things down with the words they get to have but Kauri has to fear.

“Hey.”

Just before he reaches the fence, he stops again. “What, Nat? I’m not coming back in.”

“I won’t ask you to, just… do you want me to give… him… your number? I know which one he’s at right now. What about… what about your sister?”

He swallows against about a thousand words that want to tumble out, all at once. How much he wants to turn around and walk back inside, pretend he’s safe, pretend this is normal and he’s okay.

Are you okay?

No.

It’d be an easy as saying the word, turning around, letting her hold onto him and keep him here just a little bit longer. It’d be as easy as saying I’m tired, I don’t want to run anymore, I just want to go home but the only home I remember is with the man who might kill me if I go back, or erase me, and I’m so scared to lose what’s left.

But I miss Owen so much.

And… he was right, I don’t know who I am without him.

Instead, Kauri steadies his shoulders, clips the little front part together on his backpack to hold it steady while he climbs, and says, “Yeah, give him the number. Give them both the number. Tell them… tell him to call me, if he wants. I’ll answer the phone.”

There’s a him who isn’t Owen. There are so many hims who aren’t Owen now, but there is the one him, too, and for now, Kauri is running from them all.

“Any idea where you’ll be sleeping tonight?”

Kauri sets his feet just right, takes a run at the fence, jumps at just the right second to use his feet for purchase and get himself the height he needs to grab the top and pull himself up. He pauses halfway over, straddling with a leg on either side, and looks back down at her.

Nat has been the nicest shelter worker he’s met so far. She’s always there when Kauri appears hungry and dirty asking to do some laundry and maybe eat some dinner. There’s always a place found for him to sleep.

And she’s always, always asking him to stay.

To stop moving.

To stop trying to disappear.

“Nat, come on,” He tries for levity, isn’t quite sure it lands. “You know I never know who I’m going to sleep with until I find them.”

“I didn’t say who, Kauri,” Nat says firmly, shielding her eyes from the setting sun with one hand and looking up at him. “I said where. You need to stop doing this, you’re going to get hurt.”

“Too late for that,” Kauri says softly, and slips over the other side of the fence, landing on the ground with a thump.

Calculating route, Keira says, muffled, from inside the backpack. Turn north, one mile to Richardson Street, turn right, three-quarters mile to Fifth Street.

The little green phone thumps against his leg in the cargo pocket on the side as he takes off running along the fence line, sticking to bushes and trees, putting plenty of distance between himself and the safe house before he’ll let himself be seen on the street.

“Where are we going, Keira?” He asks over his shoulder, knowing her sensors pick up his voice even with all the other noise. She’s tuned to him, she always hears him.

Yenna’s Cafe. Locally-owned cafe serving small plates and drinks-

“I have like thirty dollars and nearly all of that’s in ones,” Kauri says, not even a little out of breath, dodging a tricycle and some other toys in a yard. “Why there?”

Most people in this neighborhood know what the house does, or suspect. No one minds the sight of a short, thin barely-a-man in oversized clothing and a torn-up old backpack sneaking through their yards.

Elizabeth Caradel poetry reading. Keira thought this appropriate for Kauri’s interests.

Kauri finds a small smile on his face - the first real one he’s had all day. “Got it. Perfect. Thank you, Keira. I think I can buy myself dinner and coffee for that.”

No one in the houses even looks at him. They don’t worry about him, all those people living their nice free lives with their memories intact know he’ll be gone soon enough. He’s just a blur of curly black hair and the black hoodie he never zips up, the long-sleeved shirts he never takes off, the beaten-up old sneakers that he’ll get rid of when the soles separate from the rest of the shoe, head to a Goodwill, buy some new used shoes.

And he’ll never stop moving. He’s always gone, always going. They can call him if they want and know he’ll pick up the phone, but maybe he’ll be sleeping in an alley, on a bus, in a homeless shelter, a new pet rescue, on someone’s bed, or just not sleeping at all.

He’s always finding someone new who will hold onto him, somewhere new to sleep, some new way to run from the voice of Owen Grant inside his head, calling him home.

No one will ever want you but me. They rewrote you for me. They made you new, just for me.

Without me, you disappear.

Come home, Kauri.

Come home.

Kauri keeps running.

#whump #trauma recovery whump #tw: abuse #tw: emotional abuse #box boy #pet liberation movement #pet whump #freed whumpee #whumpee #isolation #post-rescue #kauri's poor life choices

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