#normal is second and bug is third

[greyymon]

FIGHTING TYPE MIKU MY BELOVED !!!!

[the-amber-droid-dreams]

[ID: "normal distribution" in flaming letters]

[moondustbaby]

You’re Still My Girl

Blue collar!Rafe x Wife!Reader

a/n: based on this request! 💌

Summary: It’s your first formal event since having the babies, and dress shopping brings out every insecurity you’ve been trying to ignore. But Rafe’s not having it—not when you’ve never looked more beautiful to him.

⸻

You should’ve been excited.

It had been months since you and Rafe had gone out—like really out, somewhere nice, somewhere that didn’t require packing snacks and extra diapers. When the wedding invitation came in the mail, he grinned like a kid. “We’re going,” he said, already setting it on the fridge. “Mia and Jace can stay with my sister. You and me—just us.”

And it sounded perfect. Until you had to find something to wear.

The first dress you tried on barely zipped. The second clung to every part of you that still didn’t feel like yours. By the third, you were blinking back tears in the dressing room, hands trembling as you tugged at the fabric.

Your body had grown two babies. It had been stretched, softened, changed—and most days, you were proud of it. But not here. Not under the fluorescent lights, with Rafe waiting outside, hopeful and smiling like this was supposed to be fun.

You cracked open the door.

He stood up immediately, eyes lighting up like they always did when he saw you. But the second your arms crossed over your chest, his smile faltered.

“Baby,” he said gently, stepping closer. “Talk to me.”

You shook your head. “I look terrible.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I do, Rafe. None of these fit right. I hate the way I look—I just… I don’t feel like myself.”

He was quiet for a second. Then, without asking, he pushed open the door the rest of the way and came inside. His hands found your waist, rough fingers brushing against the curve of your stomach.

“You feel like you to me.”

Your throat tightened.

“I mean it,” he said, voice softer now. “You think I care that your body changed? I watched you carry our babies. I watched you wake up every night, feed them, rock them, love them when you could barely keep your eyes open. You think I look at you and see anything but the strongest, most beautiful woman I’ve ever known?”

You looked down, tears blurring the cheap tile under your feet.

His thumb brushed your cheek. “I know it’s hard. I know it’s different now. But it’s still you. You’re still my girl.”

A breath caught in your chest.

“I love you,” he said. “All of you. Always.”

And maybe it wasn’t the dress. Maybe it wasn’t your body. Maybe it was just the pressure to feel like everything was back to normal when your whole world had changed. But with Rafe’s arms around you, forehead pressed to yours, something inside you softened.

You ended up picking a dress you hadn’t expected to like. A soft navy blue one that flowed where it needed to and hugged where it didn’t hurt to be held. Rafe’s eyes practically bugged out when you stepped out of the store in it.

“You’re gonna ruin me in that,” he murmured, hand resting on your lower back like he couldn’t help himself.

That night, he zipped it up slow, whispering praises into your neck, kissing every inch of skin he could reach.

And when you walked into the wedding, hand in hand, his pride was louder than anything you wore.

༶⋆｡ﾟ☽✿⋆˚✧✿☾ﾟ｡⋆༶

a/n: this one’s for the girlies who cried in a Target dressing room and still made it to the event!! blue collar!rafe doesn’t give a damn about stretch marks or soft tummies—he just wants his girl to feel like the goddess she is. let him hype you up and zip your dress, ok?? also rafe seeing you in that navy gown? he’s not surviving the night.

♥️ lani

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@lolabunnyworldss @superlegend216

[kismetlotts]

Kinktober 🎃 day nine: Cheating!

cw: cheating, dubcon, noncon, mentions on rape, open relationships? (Johnny and Simon share), rough sex, mentions of blood, mentions of saliva, fingering, oral sex on reader, bruising, voyeurism, ‘don’t get caught’ trope, ignorance, degrading names such as ‘whore’, vocal Simon, creampie, mentions of having a child

Simon and Johnny who are so used to sharing each other’s little toys: their own girlfriends. It’s a weird bond that brings the two of them together. It’s sick and fucking perverted but it’s something to talk about when the weather turns cold and on a mission.

Sipping on their drinks as they recharge their batteries mumbling a, 'Remember so and so?’ getting a ‘Yeah, they were a good fuck.' in response.

It was more than likely one of the reason why the two blokes struggled with keeping their girlfriends. Most of them rejecting and breaking up with them when they’d bring it up because what woman who was looking for a family, a life, love, would want to fuck their boyfriend’s best friend? Or be tampered with?

The two of them had grown a lot of respect and loyalty for each other from this little routine. A ridiculous amount when you put it against how much respect they gained from each other at war. Protecting one and others lives, killing for each other, just doesn't help the same than sharing some good pussy. Weird logic that not even they understood but with all said, they were tight, close.

So when Johnny got his hands on you, a pretty little thing that refused to fuck until the third date he knew not only was he in danger, but you were. He knew how much Simon would ruin you, take that precious little hole of yours and stuff you so deep you'd feel it for days. Johnny just fucking knew it would happen and when you'd finally let him inside, invited him into your heavenly cunt- he couldn’t let him steal you.

Too delicate and light for Simons heavy way with sex.

"So when's my turn?" The gruff, masked man would ask Johnny. Conversation of you being brought up and the words just tumbled from the cracks of his lips. Normality and need seeping through his tone because as it was such a statement in his and Johnny's relationship, he’d think no other way.

Not once would he even consider the possibility of Johnny turning around and refusing, saying no. Telling him that your pussy- your body- is just for him. Claiming you against his own kind. Barricading and locking you away from him in his designed cell of greed.

It wasn’t going to end well, Johnny was sure of it, so with an awkward laugh and the rub of his neck he spun around facing him, eyes catching Simons through the mask before clearing his throat. Words coming across shakier than intended because he wasn't intimidated by Simon, more fretful of what he’d do knowing that you were off limits.

"Actually, lass is a good' ne. Think she might be a keeper Si." Silence filling the room for about five seconds, the slow click of the clock on the wall the only audible thing. Simons gaze not changing once and it killed Johnny, bugged him harder than a kick to the teeth.

Everything about him yearning to know what Simons brain was thinking or what he was planning, wanting to reach out and shake him, beg him to back off. They were getting old now, it was bound to be called off at some point- when they properly wanted to settle down and have kids and a family, right?

"Oh really?" His accent and words a monotone warning but Johnny was so flushed with relief that he hadn’t exploded and raged at him, his ears missed it. Missed the way his blinks slowed, analysing the man in front of him. Missed the way Simons personally and mindset changed. New thoughts drowning his head so hard he forced out exhales to think straight. Did he think he was better than him? More deserving of your body than gruff ol’ Simon over here? Worthier?

He was fucking seething, the metallic taste in his mouth potent as he bit his tongue, refraining to tell Johnny to go fuck himself, stand up and find you. Go track you down and make you cry both of their names just so he can hear which one sounds better or which one turns him on more.

Moaning your boyfriend’s name so loudly while his friend hits that one part. Choking out, crying out for Mactavish as your eyes roll back, tongue drooping out the side of your lips too. He’d be a liar to say his dick wasn't twitching at the thought.

"Yeah, I'm so sorry Simon-" But he was already shaking his head, hand waving him off with a sly smirk on his face as he told him no worries! Told him that's its alright and that he completely understands. Barely moving an inch the rest of the night as he came up with plans on what he's going to do to you. What he did in fact do to you.

Face down in yours and Johnny’s double bed. Panties damp with your cum from how many times Simon had already made you orgasm, shirt wet with tears and saliva. Rubbing your clit so harshly and fast your body trembled at every little touch. The fine line between touching and fucking, abuse and rape being blurred but you craved it. You longed for it, days of wishing and wondering when he’d come back to please you again.

He’d force your legs apart, holding you by the ankles while he ate like a mad man. Devouring you messily, the noises sounding like a fucking porn movie. Ruining your makeup, your sheets, your body. You couldn’t look Johnny in the eye when he got on all fours, kissing your thigh and humming against the soft skin while asking how you’d got another bruise.

Day and night- when Johnny's downstairs and when he's away. He'd have you begging to stop, pleading him to let you go before you’d lose yourself. His thrusts silencing you, cries turning to moans back to cries to screams of joy- it was mesmerising and so fucking bad of him.

“Oh shut up, babe. You know you want me.” He’d grunt, eyes shutting as he took you in again and again. Eyebrows furrowed in annoyance and ignorance for your cries. Knowing it was only a matter of time before you gave in again, joining him and thrusting back against his cock.

What made it worse was the moans that came from this man. Johnny was never vocal- never vocal enough for you but Simon sounded almost in tears. Each thrust like he’s on the brink of orgasm, you felt so good he couldn’t stay quiet- he didn’t want to.

His favourite memory was when he snuck into your window, almost kicking the stupid Halloween decorations Johnny had put up outside on his way up. The sky pitch black and your bedroom likewise but he could see you in his night vision goggles, sneaking behind you as you changed out of your clothes getting ready for bed.

Bending you over the bedframe, peeling down your panties and thrusting into you for a quickie. The sound of Johnny's electric toothbrush coming from the bathroom one room away only adding to his excitement. He could step in any minute by now, luckily from the darkness Simon had an advantage and most likely enough time to hide if he wanted to. If he wanted to leave your pussy.

Gloved fingers slipped into your mouth for you to suck or bite. Anything to help silence your moans. It excited him the fact that Johnny could find him, Johnny could catch him and realise all this time he though you were safe and committed to him you’d gone behind his back. His precious little girl who actually is just a dirty whore. A dirty whore who lets her hole be used. By men she doesn’t even know.

He wonders what you do when Johnny brings him up in conversation, I mean, he figures you haven't spilt the beans to him yet so do you just laugh and nod on along? Hearing his name, acting like you don't know his touch or how his tongue feels. Pretending he's a stranger, just some stranger who's dick is drilled into your memory. He doesn't fuck like Johnny, he's bigger than him, hits all the places that Johnny can’t. You can never get Simon out of your mind.

Filling you up with his cum and laughing deeply at himself. He's got to be careful with it- what if you two were trying for a baby? That would be a shock, wouldn’t it? Gorgeous little kid coming out looking just like Simon- Simons eyes, Simons hair; a little mini Simon left all for you to raise.

Maybe Johnny would be too thick to realise, too slow to pick up on why his son looks so much like his best friend- that the son he’d always wanted actually belong to Simon. Oh fucking hell, he was a dark deluded arsehole- who thinks like this? Slipping back out of the window and shutting it the same time as Johnny walked into the room.

Large soft body crawling on top of you and pushing you further into the bed. Lips attacking your sensitive neck as his already hard cock slips its way inside of your warm, creampied folds. The darkness hiding all the evidence and leaving him to believe it’s just how wet you are for him. How needy and desperate you are for him.

Blissfully unaware that the wetness lubing his cock up, letting him fuck you with ease and making him feel so hot and so good, was no other than his best friends cum. Dribbling out your hole and onto your thigh as he picks up the pace.

[wonderjanga]

batman keeps trying to put trackers on marvel's costume, but none of it actually comes off, and the parts he can put trackers on are all like, magical, so they break the trackers and he's so mad about it

Bruce has tried so many ways to track Marvel it’s honestly driven him mad.

First he tried looking for the man using CCTV cameras only to realize Fawcett doesn’t have any. Oh no, no no no, he got the grainy, haven’t been used since the 80s, security cameras. So he ends up combing through all of these cameras because of how old they are because he can’t use the software he normally uses to quickly find people. He also had to do this all on his own because Barbara was busy, and none of his other kids wanted to help him because they all like Cap. And then, when he finally finds the Captain…

Batman: *staring at the Batcomputer intently*

Marvel: *standing in an alleyway* “Shazam.”

Batman: *doesn’t understand what he said, because the audio is too crappy to decipher, but doesn’t have enough time to register that as the cameras immediately cut off*

Bruce nearly… What did Tim call it? Ah yes, crashed out. Bruce nearly ended up crashing out over this. But whatever, right? There’s always multiple solutions to a single problem.

So, he then tried a more simple solution: trackers. Small tiny little things no bigger than his pinky finger. He stuck one onto Marvel’s shoulders as the Captain was leaving for the day.

Batman: “Captain. I would like to say that you fought wonderfully today.” *puts hand on Marvel’s shoulder and places the tracker*

Marvel: “You think so? Thanks.” *sunny ahh smile*

Bruce in fact did not think so, but he needed an excuse to touch Marvel’s shoulder. Anyways, the tracker didn’t even last an hour before he got a notification that it was broken, or rather fried, by electricity. Honestly, that might as well have been Bruce’s fault. One of the man’s major powers is electricity for Christ’s sake. So after a bit, he went and upgraded the trackers to now be electrical resistant.

Marvel: *walking to the zetas*

Batman: “Captain, you own a tiger, yes?” *starts walking with him*

Marvel: “Ah, yes, why?”

Batman: “Robin’s been asking about getting a tiger.”

Marvel: “Oh really? You wanna know some tips or something?”

Batman: “If you’d be willing to share, I’d appreciate it.”

Marvel: “Oh, okay then!” *proceeds to yap about tigers the whole was to the zetas*

Batman: *sneakily tacks the electric resistant tracker on him*

Bruce learned a lot about tigers that day. He never seen the man so informative and passionate about a subject other than magic. If only he’d put that same passion into his reports. Seriously, who alternates between their left and right arm on a professional report? At least do it on a piece of scratch paper or something. (This is a reference to post I saw a while ago about Marvel and Billy writing reports together. Because of that, half of the report was in super duper fancy shmancy handwriting and the other was in chicken scratch)

But anyways, back to the second tracker. See, it actually did the opposite of what it was designed to do, which was track and be resistant to electricity. It actually ended up shorting out and therefore losing its ability to track. Bruce now realized he underestimated Marvel’s electricity.

Now onto Bruce’s third attempt. He had the tracker enchanted with magic.

Batman: “Marvel, I’d like to talk to you about Junior.”

Marvel: “Sure? Is he in trouble?” *sounds concerned*

Batman: “No. You see, Robin’s been wanting to have a play date with him.”

Marvel: “Oh uh… I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” *sounds hesitant* “I’ll have to ask him about it:”

Batman: “That’s fine.” *pats his shoulder and plants the tracker* “Get back to me when you’ve both come to a decision.”

Funnily enough, Bruce didn’t even get ten feet away before he got a notification that the tracker was destroyed. Billy felt the magic in the tracker and honest to the gods he thought it was a bug and swatted his shoulder.

Meanwhile, Billy’s confused but happy that Batman has been talking to him so much recently.

Eventually, after much trial and error (47 attempts) Bruce finally got a tracker that worked. He watched on the GPS as Marvel dipped into an alleyway and… dipped off of the face of the earth? He stared at it for a solid minute wondering if he should be concerned. It’s not like Marvel knows he’s been trying to track him. He has no idea how upset the man would be so he waited. Five minutes passed of Bruce waiting for the little dot representing Marvel to reappear. He then couldn’t take it anymore and started spamming Cap’s comm and was about to notify the other JL members until he finally picked up.

Batman: “Captain? Captain, are you there?”

Marvel: “Yeah? Yeah I am Mister Batman Sir? Is something wrong?”

Batman: “The GPS on your comm showed that you disappeared off the map for fifteen minutes.”

Marvel: “Oh really? Well I’m sorry for worrying you, Mister Batman Sir. I just went to the Rock of Eternity. That’s probably why I didn’t appear.

Batman: “What is the Rock of Eternity?”

Marvel: “Oh, it’s this rock that’s the cent- OH SHOOT.” *loud crash comes from his end*

Batman: “Is everything alright?”

Marvel: “Yeah- look I’m sorry but Black Adam’s here and he just threw a building at me. See ya, Mister Batman Sir.”

So yeah. After everything he went through only to come up with no results, Bruce is mad. Rolling in his grave even. The worst part is that he doesn’t even technically have the right to be mad, considering the fact that he was going behind one of his colleagues back’s and trying to track them without their consent. Though to be fair, Bruce did it because you can’t just have somebody that powerful running around and unchecked without a recorded weakness. But what makes him even more mad is that just when he was about to get the slightest semblance of information, a villain ruined it. At least he has a name now. The Rock of Eternity. It’s probably a magic thing that he’ll end up asking Zatanna about. He hates magic.

[lovebugism]

steve request for adjusting back to normality with him after the upside down ends? however much u wanna write 🤭🤍🤍 ur writing is gorgeous btw

ty angel! hope you like it!! — steve helps his agoraphobic gf leave the house for the first time since the world ended (established relationship, hurt/comfort, cw for mentions of agoraphobia | 1.5k)

bug's summer fic fest (⁠ꈍ⁠ᴗ⁠ꈍ⁠)

You sit on the stairwell and tie your shoes, trying desperately to ignore the trembling of your anxious fingers. The thin laces threaten to slip from your tremoring hands as you knot one loop into the other. You couldn’t hide from your worry if you tried.

Steve’s heavy footsteps sound behind you in a steady, even rhythm as he walks down the stairs. You can hear the dull clapping of the boy patting his pockets to ensure his keys and wallet haven’t yet fallen from them. You know he’ll do exactly that another ten times before you step foot out of the house. He’s just as anxious as you are these days.

“Almost ready?” he says, huffing, though a smile is evident in his voice.

You nod to yourself and make careful work of fastening the laces. “Mhm,” you hum.

“Did you make sure to pack those Ants on a Log things? ‘Cause Dustin’ll kill me if we don’t bring ‘em,” Steve frets, for the second or third time that morning. He stills on the step just behind you and crosses a pair of golden arms over his chest. “Because, you know, he’s the only kid in America who actually likes celery.”

You tilt your chin to look up at him, smiling despite the fear pinching your chest. “Everything’s in the basket, Stevie.”

“Including the—”

“Yes, including the drinks. And the sandwiches. It’s all in the fridge,” you finish for him. “And the blanket’s in the car, so… Everything’s ready.”

Steve’s chest deflates with a distant sigh of relief. He’s been so used to doing everything on his own — carrying the load of that burden entirely by himself — that he forgot what it meant to have someone else to lean on.

“God, I’m so in love with you,” he murmurs fondly, mostly to himself, as he bends at the waist to kiss your hair. The plush of his lips brush your temple in a warm touch you lean instinctively into. 

With a wide hand on your shoulder, Steve feels for the first time how tense you are. All rigid, muscles taut, like cradling a rock in his palm. You’ve kept a brave face for him all day, but there’s only so much hiding you can do.

“You’re still okay with this?” he wonders aloud as he stands to full height again. 

His scruffy face is all twisted with concern, but you’re not looking at him to see it. You tie your right sneaker with a pair of graceless hands, where you seem to hold most of your anxiety, and scoff at the silly question. “Am I okay with the… picnic?” you echo.

“Yeah,” Steve shrugs, lips jutted, as he walks past you down the steps. He turns and leans against the railing, trying hard to be casual. “‘Cause, you know, if you weren’t, we could just have it in the backyard or something. Make all the little shits come here.”

It takes you a moment too long to catch his meaning.

Sometimes you forget that you haven’t left the house all year. You’ve fallen into such a routine here, at Steve’s house (which you’ve come to see as your own), that you’ve forgotten there’s a whole world outside of it. A whole world you shut yourself out of after it nearly ended — after it chewed you up and spat you out again.

You tell yourself that you survived. You tell yourself that you lived in spite of the unfavorable odds. But sometimes, when you feel like shards of flesh and bones instead of a real-life human being, you wonder if you’re alive at all.

“I’m good, Steve,” you assure despite the waver in your voice. Your hands fumble with the laces, and you have to start all over again. “It’s just the park, babe. I can make it to the park.”

Steve nods in response, raking an anxious hand through his hair. He swallows down any attempts to remind you that you’ve barely made it out of the garage, let alone to the park.

“Besides, I’m pretty sure it’s a crime to be this pale in the middle of July, anyway,” you joke with a forced laugh. 

The only time you really see the sun is when you’re sitting out on the patio — sipping at your morning coffee or watching Steve languish in the pool. You hardly last more than an hour, though, before a plane rumbles overhead or a car engine thunders too loudly. That’s all it takes for everything to come rushing back to you. The monsters, the soldiers, the blood. Then you lock yourself away all over again.

You hope this time is different.

Steve nods again, always hopeful, if only for your sake.

“Okay. Just… Just making sure, you know?” he trails off, then scrunches his nose. “Should we have a codeword, anyway? Like, for when the kids annoy the shit outta me, and I wanna get the hell outta there?”

You squint to yourself, pretending to ponder the question, as you rise from the stairs. You take a few steps downward until you’re standing just ahead of Steve — a few inches taller than him now. 

“How about… Get me the hell outta here?” you offer with a mischievous glint in your eyes.

A wide, pink grin blossoms on his mouth. “That’s perfect, actually,” Steve muses sarcastically, then meets you halfway when you lean down to kiss him. 

It’s a chaste and very innocuous peck that tastes faintly of Steve’s mouthwash and the peanut butter you licked from the spoon after making Dustin’s Ants on a Log. 

Despite its fleeting nature, you hang onto the simple kiss your entire way through the front door.

The first step out of the house is the hardest. 

You struggle to feel the ground beneath your feet as your mind threatens to wander. Thoughts of death plague your mind despite your attempts to push them away — roaring demogorgons, exploding guns, screaming teenagers. You have to fight the urge to cover your ears when a helicopter whizzes overhead, hidden somewhere in the clouds but sounding much closer than that.  

Steve holds your hand the entire way. “Almost there,” you hear him mumbling beneath the heartbeat woosh, woosh, wooshing in your ears. Your eyes squeeze shut. He leads you to the car and squeezes your hand. “You’re doing amazin’, babe. Just a couple more steps.”

You’re at the car in five seconds flat, though it had felt like five minutes at the time — and took approximately five years off your life. You feel eons better when you’re tucked into the passenger seat of Steve’s 733i. You feel more grounded there — with the tires against the asphalt, and Steve’s hand on your thigh, and the radio cranked all the way up.

You’re still a shaking mess when you get to the park, but the kids are a good enough distraction. 

You opt to busy your anxious hands with the picnic — handing out food, protecting drinks, and ensuring the emptying basket doesn’t blow away. You sit in the shade in the center of Steve’s quilt as leaves rustle in the warm breeze, allowing bits of summer sun to peek through and glitter on your skin. 

You keep a watchful eye on the kids around you as they scatter mindlessly about, making sure no one ventures far enough where you can’t see them. Steve yells at them for it so you don’t have to — shouts at Max and El for getting too close to the tree line while he tosses a ball to Lucas. 

He’s slowly mastering the art of throwing with his left hand. He hasn’t been able to lift his right one over his head since Starcourt. There’s a persistent ache in his shoulder he hasn’t been able to get rid of.

He walks over to you when the distance grows too much to bear, twisting his arm with a screwed-up face as he tries to find the root of the pain. “Whaddaya got for me, sweet thing?” he asks with a lopsided smile.

You reach into the basket beside you and pull out the last sandwich of the bunch, which you kept aside especially for him, wrapped neatly in plastic.

You hiss playfully through your teeth, then squint faux apologetically up at him. “All that’s left is tomato-avocado…” you joke, feigning horror.

Steve’s face twists. “Ugh. Seriously?” he huffs in disappointment.

“No,” you hum in response, smiling as you pass him his favorite sandwich. “Here you go.”

It’s a simple turkey, ham, and bacon number with all the fixings, but he particularly likes how you make it. (You argue that it can’t taste any better than a diner-made sandwich, but Steve always insists otherwise.) 

Your fingers brush when it takes it from you. Steve finds it difficult not to melt for you entirely, and not just because of the sweltering summer heat. 

He’s spent half of his life believing that no one ever gave him a passing thought — or that, at the very least, he was only ever an afterthought. But you remind him every day that he’s so much more than the nothing he often sees himself as. You remind him, through silly picnics and sandwiches made with love, what it means to be truly cared for.

“I love you,” Steve hums quietly, adoration melting in his honey eyes. “You know that?”

You nod once, hiding a smile as you squint one eye from the beaming sun. “I know.”

[sparrowlucero]

i enjoy ur bird abode thoughts! I was a genuine enjoyer of the show when it was airing, I’m no die hard fan though and love to see ppls personal takes on the overall story/plot. Im curious if you also would agree or have any thoughts on the impacts The Mouse’s cancellation had on the shows ability to be more than it was? srry im not super eloquent with my words, but basically ur response to that ask got me wondering if part of the reason the show like genuinely wasnt all that ground breaking or unique in the end plot wise (other than the villain faces consequences in the end ig) as far as YA/Teen animation goes, was because of The Mouse’s inability to let the writers flesh out the show before gutting it? i have a negative bias toward The Mouse franchise and obviously dont know anything about how writing a show under the eyes of a franchise that big would work, its just smth that rattles around in my head and wanna know what u think!

Well to an extent, but I think it's much more the effect the studio had on how the owl house started out as rather than it not getting a full season at the end - It didn't escape my noticed that the show was initially announced as being a "horror comedy" when it doesn't really seem like either, especially by the second season, and yeah, the original pitch bible is obviously aiming for that much more than the show proper is as it goes along (and is honestly seems quite a bit more funny, weird, and dark, with an overarching plotline about a giant bug being used to religiously suppress people, eda able to cure her curse by killing luz, and one of the major characters being a teen boy awoken from a sleeping curse who ends up being a weird little bigot because he's from the 13th century, among other things)

(side note, i just noticed they actually specifically describe the thing i assumed the show was gonna be about here. huh.) but ultimately the bulk of the show that was actually made seems very influenced by a writing team that was genuinely interested in making a tropey YA fantasy story rather than just being mandated to. I mean even in what aired you can see the show sort of settle in ways that feel less like studio interference and more like, you know, art students creating their ideal fantasy show, like how King is clearly Eda's roommate who's funny because he looks like and sounds like a little dog despite being an adult man at the beginning but by the end they've made him her adopted sad backstory son who's explicitly a child. While I think a third season would have made the show as it existed better, because they clearly didn't get to finish the plot they wanted to (frankly to the point where some major aspects of the show are a bit confusing, I'm still not sure what a grimwalker is), I don't really fault the show for that but also don't think that hypothetical season (which pretty clearly would have been mostly about the magic school teens going to normal school) would suddenly flip around into something that I personally found interesting and subversive. Nor should it, really; again, it being Queernorm Harry Potter thing is clearly the intended appeal of the show, it's not really a flaw but just not a genre I'm personally interested in when compared to what I initially expected the show to be.

HOWEVER I will say they robbed little weird girls of their representation and that can't be forgiven

[artdcnaldson]

patrick hive to the rescue because im thinking, as i often do, about friends to lovers with patrick where you're kind of upset because he and art have gotten around and you're still struggling on the dating scene, maybe you're shy, probably you just have standards, and its really just all starting to bug you because you're worked up!!!!! imagine hanging out with patrick during the summer - the room is sticky with humidity, despite the air conditioning being on full blast. you're hot and irritated and sexually frustrated. patrick being half clothed isn't helping, either - you can see the gleam of sweat on his bare chest - the dusking of hair on his thick thighs as he lounges back with a cigarette. you're going mad, it feels like you could detonate at any second your clit is so on fire - throbbing and achey and everytime you press you sweat slick thighs together it makes it worse.

patrick is looking at his phone - so you take the chane - just a small touch - just for some relief. you're on the bed, there's a plushi blocking his view - it cant hurt just to slide a sneaky hand down the band of your shorts and panties. just to stroke your swollen slit. surely he wont noitce if you just...... rub yourself a little. while you sneak glances at his toned body - just peeks, really. if you're very quiet (you do realize the sticky squelch of your cunt can be heard across the room, right? you dont) you might even be able to cum undetected

GODDDDD FUCK!!!! This was supposed to be a chill, normal, short response. Instead I ignored 2 work calls bc it’s that serious.

Rating: E (18+)

Warnings: SMUT (exibitionism/voyeurism, f!masturbation, not fingering but a secret third adjacent thing, extreme levels of horniness)

A/N: Patrick Hive we Linked and Built <3

Patrick thought it was so sweet that you invited him to visit your home for the summer. Apparently you’d sung nothing but his praises to your parents, because even though you were both eighteen, they let him sleep on the floor of your room on a blow up mattress, trusting him that much.

Which was annoying. You weren’t fucking Patrick (not for lack of wanting to), but they could’ve at least given you the benefit of the doubt and assumed that you might have some sort of sexual urges. It made your stupid fucking celibacy that much more embarrassing.

You’re home alone with him and the power’s out— a stupid, heat-induced rolling blackout. The open window only seems to usher in more hot summer air, so you’re both down to as few layers as would be appropriate. You, were down to a thin T-shirt and your panties. Patrick was only in a pair of grey nylon shorts. Sweat was beading down his bare chest, which was so fucking unfair.

Because it was Patrick, whose chest hair and happy trail made your mouth fill with drool any time you were treated to the sight of it. It was summer, and he was frequently shirtless, and you still hadn’t gotten used to the sight. Any sane person would want to lave their tongue along his chest, tasting the sweat and salt of his skin. That was… so totally normal to think about.

Patrick fucked your neighbor— the cute one who was going to a state school so she could be a kindergarten teacher. You didn’t know, but you were pretty sure. You’d been swimming in the pool during a cul-de-sac cookout, and they’d disappeared after a while. Patrick didn’t say anything that night, probably to protect your delicate sensibilities, but you could just kind of sense it.

God, it was unfair. All of the guys your age had girlfriends, or something. And the single ones were cute, but Patrick always seemed to fuck things up for you, either actively, or because you would always wind up talking about him. And because your parents thought it was totally fine for him to sleep in your room, you were surviving off of weak, rushed orgasms in the shower.

It was supposed to be a fun, sexy summer before you went off to college, and Patrick was totally ruining it. How was it fair that he got to fuck around and get his rocks off while you spent your summer feeling like you were wearing a fucking chastity belt?

And you were so wet it was uncomfortable, sticky between your thighs with absolutely no relief. Patrick was sitting on the fucking Air mattress, propped up by your cute, pink pillows and plushies that he’d stolen, watching a rerun of The Hills on MTV. His hand dangled out the open bedroom window so the smell of smoke wouldn’t get stuck in your innocent little bedroom.

He stretched, and you watched with an open mouth as he blew the cigarette smoke out the window. Pretty fucking lips, his muscles all taut as he turned. He looked back at the TV, and you exhaled a shaky breath. Fuck, you were so turned on you wanted to scream. Your pussy was just drooling into your panties, clit throbbing and aching for attention, your entire body felt empty, desperate to be filled up.

You were practically buried in your stuffed animal collection, which was embarrassing on any other day (Patrick had nearly laughed at the sight, but you’d insisted that you couldn’t just throw all of them away… they were nostalgic), but you’d never been more grateful until that moment.

You were already pretty well covered, thanks to the near life size bear sitting beside you— the perfect safety net. Your pulse was thundering in your chest, making you feel a little dizzy with anxiety or arousal, or a strange new mix of both.

You were burning hot between your thighs— throbbing and soaked all sticky and slick. Your legs twitched instinctively as your fingertips dipped into your core, where a pool of your arousal awaited. A shaky gasp escaped you as you moved your slick fingers up to your neglected clit, and you quickly muffled the noise into your pillow

It was like you’d never really touched yourself before. The level of need and desperation within you was completely unknown until that point. Your eyes rolled back as you began grinding up against your fingers. Your teeth dug into your lip to stay quiet as you played with your clit as discreetly as you could.

Patrick shifted to get more comfortable. Flexing his thighs just slightly, rubbing sweaty palms against the muscles there. He ashed his cigarette with his gaze locked on the TV. “This shit is so boring,” he muttered.

And fuck, his voice. You considered arguing with him, just so he’d get louder, and his voice would get more intense, and you’d be able to fuck yourself to completion to the sound of him speaking.

Your poor, neglected pussy clenched around absolutely nothing, begging to be filled by his dick, his fingers, your fingers, a toy, a hairbrush, fucking anything. Your panties were absolutely sodden— drenched to the point of forming a transparent little spot right above your cunt.

If Patrick had looked over, or, if he had unfocused his eyes just right and peered into the reflection of the TV screen, he would’ve been able to make out the sight of your fingers, moving steadily, desperately against your clit. If he had done that.

Your toes curled just slightly, thighs closing around your hand as you got closer and closer. It was loud— just how much you were moving. You needed— god, you needed so much in that moment. You grabbed a random plushie— a pink rabbit that you probably got with that years’ Easter basket— and held it over your lap. Yeah, that worked. Super casual, perfect way to hide the way your hand was working your clit.

And the pressure. Jesus Christ, the pressure of the warm stuffed animal over your cunt was too nice to resist. You’d have to throw it away after, you knew, but you couldn’t help but grind yourself up against it. If you closed your eyes, you could imagine it was his lap, or his thigh, or something warm and soft and hard for you to rut against.

But you couldn’t close your eyes, because you had to watch Patrick. To make sure he didn’t know what you were doing. An arm slung behind his head, the muscles highlighted by the shiny sheen of sweat there. You whimpered pathetically, muffled into the pillows. He probably heard, he pretended he didn’t. It was that level of feigned ignorance that let you keep going.

He probably knew, you could pretend he didn’t. The razor’s edge between you and a much needed, earth-shattering orgasm hinged on that level of ignorance.

So you pathetically humped against your fingers, and the stuffed rabbit, and chased at the bliss that was so fucking close you could taste it like metal on your tongue. Your thighs squeezed around the rabbit as you came, soaking through and making even more of a mess of your panties, and the rabbit, and your sheets, and your fingers.

You hadn’t realized how loud you were breathing. It was like someone had been holding you underwater and you could only just now hear the world with a shocking sense of clarity. Your body felt hot all over, your legs felt like jelly. You hid the stuffed rabbit beneath a discarded blanket, a problem for later. Legs crossed so you could hide the soaked mess between your legs.

Sure, you could play that off.

“You could’ve asked me to leave,” Patrick said around his cigarette. There was a twist to his lips, a sense of amusement. “Nah, you probably didn’t want me to. Too busy eye fucking me while you defiled that poor little bunny.”

He stood, noticeably hard in his shorts, which you weren’t looking at weren’t looking at weren’t looking at. He grabbed your ankles and pulled your legs apart, all while wearing the smug sort of expression that got you to this position in the first place. Really, it was all his fault. His eyes trailed up your legs, to the glistening mess coating your upper thighs, and the sheer mess of your panties.

“Huh.” His hands moved up your thighs and you exhaled shakily, parting them more to accommodate him, whatever he wanted, whatever he was thinking. You could come a thousand more times just for him, at his every whim. But that was the repression talking, not just because of him.

Your breath caught as his fingers hooked into the waistband of your panties and he peeled them down. His expression held the same sort of concentration that you saw him exhibit on the court. Focused on you, it made your heart pound.

“No wonder you were so loud, huh?” He teased, fingers gliding through your slit. It was embarrassing how wet you were, coating his fingers and palm in your arousal. Each light brush against your clit made your thighs twitch, made a desperate keen escape you. “I could hear it the second you started, by the way. But even before that, I could fucking smell how turned on you were. You could’ve said something, you know. I would’ve taken care of you, made it real nice.”

You moaned softly, eyes wide as you peered up at him. When he removed his hands from your pussy you fucking whined— pouting as he held his fingers up to the light and grinned at the glistening mess left behind. You watched those fingers disappear between plush lips, tongue sweeping out to clean them up. His cock jumped behind the shorts he wore from want.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” you insisted, sitting up to rub him through the fabric. “It’s hot, we’re both horny and bored. Just use me. It’ll feel nice.”

He didn’t take much convincing. He’d been rubbing his dick raw on that stupid fucking inflatable mattress every night when you were asleep anyway. How could he not? You were just too adorable.

@poppy-metal your mind amazes me no words no thoughts just this <3 thank youuuuuu for this in my inbox it truly kept me fed

[gallusrostromegalus]

How does each of the main aeiwam cast react to spiders?

Ichigo: "...Why's my leg itchyyYEAUGH! DAMMIT!" *scoops spider up in piece of paper, opens window and throws it out* "OUTSIDE! SHOO! I hate it when they sneak up and on me...

Orihime: Had an intense close personal friendship with a Joro Spider that had made it's web on her apartment balcony when she was six. It's death at the end of summer was her first real experience with mortal loss, and she mourned it for weeks. She still recalls "Joro-San" fondly.

Uryuu: Secretly dreams of Spiders large enough to spin actual ropes of silk- the stuff is a marvel of chemical engineering, and would be incredibly useful to him as a Doctor or Fashion Designer. He feels like the difficulty of harvesting Spidersilk is the main thing holding back a Golden age of Humanity, and is disturbed to find out he shares ANY opinion with Mayuri Kurotsuichi.

Tatsuki: Paralyticly Phobic of spiders. Understands and appreciates their importance in the ecosystem, knows they can't hurt her and that the phobia is an irrational reflex, and even thinks some of them 'look cool as hell'. The second there's a live one in her presence, she locks up and can't move until someone removes it. (Usually Ichigo, because Orihime will just stare at it, fascinated).

Chad: Has a Pet Kitchen Spider. thought about shooing flies in it's direction, then felt bad for the flies.

Kon: Is a cat, hunts them, and will have nuanced discussions about how different spiders taste with Yuzu, the one person who will tolerate that analysis.

Keigo: Screams theatrically and jumps away and into someone's arms if they're there, but that's just how he reacts to anything that startles him.

Mizuiro: Fascinated by them, will stare at them with Orihime and tell her fun facts about Joro-Gumo Yokai and other lore, which delights her to no end.

Yoruichi: Like Kon, enjoys toying with them before eating them.

Urahara: Curled into the farthest corner, screaming, crying, throwing up, and begging Yoruichi to STOP FUCKING AROUND AND GET RID OF IT!

Rukia: *entirely genuine, with a huge spider crawling on top of her hair* "...what Spider?"

(Seireitei Squad Under The Cut)

Yamamoto: Utterly fails to notice or care. There are so many things he's seen that are so much worse, and honestly? Even when he was a young man he didn't give a shit. He slept rough delivering messages, waking up in the dirt with half a dozen bugs on him was normal.

Sasakibe: Thinks they're delightful. So many elegant designs! Such perfect sense of when to strike! Such patience! He finds out about Diving Spiders and goes Ape Shit. THEY MAKE THEIR ON SCUBA TANKS!!

Soi Fon: Spiders are cool but not as cool as wasps and hornets :)

Omaeda: Also has a Pet Kitchen Spider, but does not feel bad about shooing flies into it's web at all.

Gin: Isn't actually sure what spiders are, or if they're even real. He's seeing sixteen dimensions at once, something that minuscule gets lost in the noise. Still thinks that someone Screaming "SPIDER!" and everyone flailing around in fear or suddenly attacking the walls and furniture is a social game like "The Floor Is Lava"

Rose: Thinks they're cool right up until they're in his personal space and then they are VERY SCARY.

Izuru: Was the designated spider-wrangler for the third from the first day he transferred in, because everyone else is a huge bitch about them. he plays it cool, but he's actually creeped out by the really big ones.

Unohana: Spiders are garden Friends :) often heard verbally encouraging them to destroy her garden pests with calls of "GET HIS ASS!" coming from the Hydrangeas.

Isane: Everyone is sort of surprised how chill Isane is about dealing with spiders- even Yamada's Actually Dangerous Specimens- and she shrugs and tells them that she deals with more dangerous things every day, especially over in Pharmacology. It keeps the focus off the Bug she's actually terrified of: Butterflies.

Hanataro: Do Not Ask The Head Of Toxicology And 11th Division Pocket Medic About Spiders Unless You Are Prepared For A Seven-Hour Lecture With A Pop Quiz At The End.

Aizen: HUGE fan of Spiders. What splendid creatures- look at how carefully the spider selects the anchor points of it's web, the skillfulness with which it weaves. Such incredible patience, waiting for the lines of tension it's woven to snare it's game- though I suppose such patience is easier when the fly's capture is inevitable >:)

Shinji and Hiyori: *Screaming and flailing, hitting things at random (mostly each other) in a blind panic, because they share a braincell and that cell is TERRIFIED of spiders* "It's so fast!" "It was huge! It had to be a tarantula!" "We should burn the division down, just to be sure."

Momo: Escorted the little garden spider outside in a cup like ten minutes ago, and forgot about it because that's such a routine chore, and she was having a more important phone call at the time.

Byakuya: Rarely notices spiders, but sometimes one will scuttle across his desk and he'll stop to watch it for the seven minutes it takes to actually cross his desk with a neutral expression, before resuming whatever he was doing. It's a pleasant diversion for him, not unlike watching the koi fish swim around in the compound pond, and he resumes his duties feeling spiritually refreshed by that chance encounter with nature.

Renji: Not bothered by Spiders. VERY Bothered by his Boss's fucking peculiar-ass reaction to a spider wandering across his desk because to Renji, it looked like Byakuya had never actually seen a spider before and was staring at it with an expression that indicated his higher brain functions had ceased entirely. Is currently making plans to study "The Captain Kuchiki Spider Brain Glitch" by catching a bunch of spiders in a jar and releasing them into his office to see what happens.

Komamura: He's particularly fond of Jumping spiders, because they sing little songs while hunting that he can hear if it's really quiet. They're very cute. Gets very upset when people kill spiders or talk about killing them.

Iba: Not afraid of spiders but doesn't know what to do when they're in his way. Killed one in front of Komamura once when he was a little kid and Komamura was still his babysitter, Sajin gave him a huge and very upset lecture about respecting life in all it's forms... but did not actually teach Iba how to remove them. So every time he sees one he sorta stands there for a minute and hopes it will move, before yelling "BOSS!"

Shunsui: Does not want to admit how much Spiders freak him out. It's not fear, precisely- more of a disgust reaction. All bugs make his skin crawl and he understands how important they are, but can they do all that ecology stuff Far Away From Him, Please And Thank You?

Nanao: Like Unohana, reveres spiders as pest control. She takes it a step further, and actively collects Jumping Spider egg sacs as she finds them in the archives and tends to them over winter so when early spring comes, she can release several hundred thousand spiderlings into the archives to destroy the mites, bookworms, moth larvae and other archive pests before they can get a foothold. She usually does this while dumping out the entire terrarium and cackling manically.

Lisa: Immediately joins in on Nanao's Spider Propagation Project, much to Shunsui's horror.

Tousen: If there is a sudden shriek and burst of profanities and hexes in the ninth division, 90% chance it's because Kaname walked into a spider web again, his LEAST favorite texture in the Universe. Yes, including the curse nails. He'd keep them in his spine if it meant he'd never walk into another spiderweb.

Kensei: Often cracked open a beer while watching the evening news during his exile in the living world. Sometimes it was several beers, or something stronger if he'd had a rough day. One night, it was a bottle of Fireball as he watched the news, and felt too intoxicated to change the channel from the newshour, so he kept watching when PBS Nature came on, and damn near pissed himself laughing when he saw the Peacock Spider's Mating Dance. Full on Howling, tears streaming down his face, barely able to breathe, Pterodactyl-noises laughing. Nothing has been funnier before or since to him, so now whenever he sees a spider he starts guffawing and stop to explain WHY.

Shuuhei: Deeply confused by the fact spiders keep coming indoors. "Why are you all here?" he asks, doing a cobweb patrol with the broom before his boss gets back from the inter-division meeting. "What are you eating? Crumbs? Lint? Is it Lint you eat?"

Mashiro: Has a grasshopper-type Zanpakuto who is not a fan, so she attempts to destroy any spider she sees in solidarity. Usually misses and destroys something else.

Matsumoto: Spiders are cool, but not as cool as snakes :)

Hitsugaya: Grew up on a farm, and shares Momo's total non-reactivity to them. It's even deeper, because his constant ambient chill means spiders never climb on him if they can't help it.

Zaraki: Used to agitate Yumichika and Ikkaku by eating them. Now he agitates them by wandering off the trail during 11th Division Boot Camp or other deployments and coming back with extremely dangerous ones and handing them to Hanataro "fer yer collection". The 11th Division's Pocket Medic has explained toxicology at length to him, and now Zaraki thinks of various medicines as "Spider Pills" and "Scorpion Juice".

Yachiru: Still eats spiders. She's the sole exception to the Wrath of Komamura, because there is no malice or fear in her actions- it's perfectly natural and morally upstanding Carnivory. The rest of you are being irrational and jerks.

Ikkaku: Sometimes regrets his life choices when he sees the freak he's sworn loyalty to walk out of the trees with something venomous enough to kill half the gotei-13 with a single bite crawling over his face, then realizes that's FUCKING BADASS and is assured that he made the right choices.

Yumichika: *currently sneaking up behind Ikkaku with a fake spider on a string to affectionately terrorize him*

Mayuri: Unlike Uuryu, Mayuri isn't a Weenie, and he's making his dreams of Milkable Spiders the Size of Cattle a reality.

Nemu: Helping with that. This one is hers. She named it #47, after it's designation, Specimen Number 47.

Ukitake, *entirely genuine, with a huge spider crawling across his forehead* "...There's a spider in here?"

[forsaken-headcanons]

SOME HEADCANONS :33

1. Noob was female before becoming Genderfluid,, yesyes I Headcanon that Party Noob is them before they came out.

2. They came out to their parents right before becoming forsaken, the coming out didnt go so well so they ended up running away. The parents eventually accepted Noob's identity, making a “missing” poster for them and using their correct pronoun. The parents regret not accepting them sooner. ( Noob genuinely thought their parents hadn't accepted them during their time in forsaken, before seeing that missing poster in the lobby / cabin. )

3. Elliot was one of the first people to arrive at the cabin, 007n7 was second, Twotime was third, Noob was the fourth!!, Chance was the fifth, Guest 1337 was Sixth, Shedletsky and Builderman was Seventh and eighth, TAPH was the ninth, and duskesar was the final one!!

4. The Npcs are canon in the lobby, but!! The surviours don't think much of them since they don't talk much. Robloxians and Npcs are different from each other. ( Robloxians Were built different, you see.. )

5. Mafiso's group are actually a group of survivors too and are jst, beefing with the other group since chance was one of them. ( Pre-forsaken. )

The Spectre has the groups separated from each other and live from across each other. ( yk how if you walk outside of the uhh.. cabin inside the lobby and go to the docks?, you can see an island in the distance. I hc that that's where Mafiso's group live at. They CAN cross over to where Our group is but it's rlly far so they don't really bother going over. )

The only times they cross over to our group, it's when Mafiso is REALLY pissed off ( normally after rounds. ) or if their planning on stealing from our group.

The spectre makes them have rounds with each other. ( Mostly rare, this is actually how the groups found out about each other's existence. )

Mafiso has Personal connection with the Spectre ( 😱😱😱 ) and so, bc of that, Mafiso sometimes talks to our group's killers.

6. Elliot also has personal correction with the Spectre...

7. Elliot greets everyone when they first arrived. ( Exception to 007n7 as they were both teleported together and Elliot having a disliking to him. )

8. Elliot actually helped Noob alittle with their transition!! ( Ex: cutting their hair and giving them clothes. )

9. Noob got forsakened on their birthday.

10. Jane Doe and John Doe were Npcs!!, both soon became sentient, because of this, They were turned to surviours.

11. John had a bug in his system which was his arm being all glitchy and stuff, John wanted to cut his arm off to prevent it from corrupting him with a sword but Noob stopped him which eventually became John doe's demise.

12. Noob thinks it's their fault and feel horrible for it, if they hadn't stopped John doe, maybe things would've turned out okay. ( Which kinda is, kinda isn't. John was bound to be corrupted regardless. )

13. The last Guest is actually a movie in the forsaken universe.

14. Noob And Guest 666 used to have plushies of each other. ( Noob still has the plush. )

15. The spectre does have a physical form.

16. Telamon exists !! 😋😋, he's more treated like a Old myth/legend but he did actually existed!!

17. Noob talks in slang sometimes.

18. When everyone arrived in the first round, they weren't sure how their abilities worked and wasn't really sure of what was going on. Noob was the first to die in that round. ( Everyone thought they were gonna die for real, obv. )

19. Surviours respawn but it used to take weeks or days to. Twotime is Mostly the one to respawn immediately. ( The first time they had, they almost went insane though to them thinking all the other survivors were just hallucinations as the others took a long time to respawn. ) however, As the rounds proceeded on, the respawning took alot faster.

20. Noob thinks Jane Doe dislikes them though to the whole John doe situation, often avoiding her or apologizing to her.. ALOT.

what's this..? headcanons for.. for our goat Noob?? is this heaven /silly

NOOO NOOB!! honey no it's okay you didn't know :((

dude imagine how crappy they'll feel when guest 666 gets added as a killer... like. what was once a comforting face sown to the only fragment left of the past now brings more than just tears streaming down their face. no, it too now brings fear, and they can't help but leave it to collect dust, abandoned in the same way their hope for the future had been. guhguihaikuwljdhja can you tell we like noob /silly

[spinningwebsandtales]

Imagine Beetlejuice Helping You Through A Bad Day

Beetlejuice X FemReader

Rating: T

Warnings: Mentions of gross stuffs, dead things, Beej being Beej, suggestive themes

Word Count: 1k

(A/N:) I got a little gross with this one guys! But it's Beetlejuice what do you expect?! Consider this my second Halloween fic of the season! Happy reading and hauntings! ~Countess

Your apartment door felt so far away as you trudged up the stairs. Work had been awful, you woke up exhausted, all your chores were piling up, and you didn't know how you were going to get enough energy to make dinner tonight. You decided to order out, though it would be the third time this week. Biting your lip you fought back the tears as several people elbowed you while passing you on the stairs. You were an emotional wreck and you refused to break down until you entered into your apartment where you could be yourself. As soon as your bag hit the floor and your shoes went flying, you broke. Tears rolling down your cheeks, you let out all the frustrations of the day. You never let yourself break in front of anyone, you always waited until you made it home. But there was one person you felt comfortable enough to show your real emotions to. He had a knack for making you feel better, no matter your mood and he could be by your side in seconds. Sniffing loudly and wiping your nose on your sleeve you said the word that could bring your best friend to you.

"Beetlejuice."

The air grew still.

"Beetlejuice."

The temperature began to drop.

"Beetlejuice."

A evil cackle rang through your ears as your apartment began to shake.

Immediately the atmosphere changed and you could feel yourself getting better.

"What's up babes," that deep rough voice sounded behind you.

You turned looking up at Beetlejuice. He had the usual smirk on his face but it fell instantly the moment he noticed the tear tracks down your cheeks and how you seemed paler than normal. He was pale all the time so it didn't matter what he looked like. Normally he didn't concern himself with the matters of living flesh bags but you were different. You made him feel wanted and he didn't like when you weren't feeling your best.

"Rough day," he asked.

You nodded, trying to fight the tears again but it didn't work. The waterworks broke through and you mushed your face into his cold, stripe suited chest. Stunned Beetlejuice stood there, his undead heart dropping into his stomach. You hung on to him tightly until you were able to control your emotions a little better.

"You have no idea," you hiccupped. He dug around in the liner pocket of his suit jacket. All sorts of bugs and critters leapt from Beej's searching dirty fingers. Bits of unidentified things fell to the floor before skittering away, the ghost constantly muttering to himself as he searched for whatever he wanted in his pocket.

He pulled one piece out that looked like a centipede, "Saving that one for later." He winked and went back to digging. Finally he pulled a soiled handkerchief from the pocket and offered it to you with a slight flourish. You shook your head and went to grab a tissue from your bathroom counter.

"It's bad if you're desperate enough to summon me."

"You're my best friend Beej. Unlike the jerks I work with."

"That's a little sad there babes."

"Beej!"

"Hey I'm sorry," throwing his hands up. "I make your world go round huh?!" That time his head began to spin and you couldn't help but laugh. "You make my head spin around apparently too. C'mon over here and give me a hug."

You snorted but went to him anyway, "You're such an idiot Beej."

"I'm your idiot though."

You sighed before leaning back a little bit, "You smell like death."

Beetlejuice preened, "Only the best for you babe. It's a new cologne Eau De Dead Opossum. Main fragrant notes of bloated opossum, with a hint of maggot swill, and ending notes of sun baked dog vomit."

"Mmmm no wonder you smell like an atrocity to mankind," you snickered and tried to pull away.

"Don't run baby! Let Beej take all those bad vibes away and replace them with nightmares beyond your wildest dreams. Need me to bio-exercise someone? Possess them? Make their life a living nightmare? Makes my heart beat in excitement. Y'know if it still beat in there."

This time you couldn't help but laugh. "Thanks Beetlejuice."

"Ah ah watch it. Don't make me disappear too soon. The fun is just startin'! You get me all hot and bothered babe."

"Beej you're dead how can you get hot?"

"Trust me," he grinned, suggestively waggling his eyebrows.

"Gross."

"Now how about me and you go out and do whatever you living people enjoy doing! Kicking puppies? Robbing graves? Arson?"

You shook your head, "How about I order pizza and you watch a movie with me."

"Only if I get to sit in your lap," Beetlejuice picked at his teeth and wrapped an arm around your shoulders.

"You can lay your head in my lap," you retorted.

"Fine take all the fun out of my life will ya!"

"I could just send you back," you threatened. Though your tone of voice was anything but threatening.

"I'll be good I promise," Beej exclaimed.

"Your fingers are crossed behind your back," you glared.

"Curses caught again!"

He took your hand leading directly to the little living room, his fingers interlacing with yours. He kissed the back of your hand and waited for you to order pizza for delivery. It wasn't lost on you how the living made your life an absolute nightmare but you found a great friendship with the most obnoxious ghost imaginable. But he could be more real than anyone you came face to face with. That's why you felt like you could trust Beetlejuice more than others. And he made you laugh. He always seemed to be there for you and it was more than anything you could ever ask for from a person. As you sat by his side waiting for the pizza and discussing what you both wanted to watch, you completely forgot of all the horrors that had happened today. It was just you and Beetlejuice and you wouldn't have it any other way.

[evera-era]

heal me.

there’s a new medic in town, and ellie williams is about to find out who she is.

ellie williams x fem!reader, pt 2 here

warnings: fluff, mention of cuts/wounds, medical setting, suggestive themes. wc 1.3k

a/n: first time writing an ellie fic! if this does well i might post a second + third part <3

Ellie hated anything to do with doctors. She could take care of herself perfectly fine, she swears. But Dina witnessed her earning a nasty gash during a patrol, and wouldn’t shut up about it unless she got it checked out.

Word was that there was a new medic in town. Ellie’s pretty sure she’s seen you around Jackson. Walking around in those dumb white clothes, tending to everyone who needed you.

You’ve seen her too. Sneaking glances anytime you could. I mean, Ellie was pretty, and it was no big deal, right?

That is, until a flash of auburn hair ducks into the med clinic, and you nearly jump out of your skin.

Ellie clears her throat. “Uh… you guys are pretty much done for the night, right?”

She’s hoping you would say yes so she could just go back home and rest. Watch a movie, maybe. Have everyone fuck off and leave her alone.

You nod, clicking your pen, when you notice her clutching her side. “But I’ve got time for one more.”

You were on call, anyway, so your shift was never really over.

Fuck, she thinks. Ellie has always had trouble asking for help. She could take care of herself just fine. It didn’t help that you were so nice — nauseatingly so — but she figures that’s why you’re the town medic and she’s not.

“Follow me,” You add, motioning her over to the first room on the left. Even though meds were hard to come by, bandages were plentiful, and you weren’t gonna pass up the opportunity to tend to your crush.

Totally innocent crush.

“So, what was it?” You ask, eyes scanning over the girl as she takes a place on the edge of the hospital bed.

“Some fuckers we ran into, lone group. Nothing too serious... think they were looking to steal shit.” Ellie mutters. “But one took a swing at me and I fell on something sharp. My friend’s been bugging me to come here, get it checked out.”

Your conversation pauses as you take her vitals. Everything is in a normal range.

“The group…” You break the silence, looking down. “Are they a concern?”

“They’re gone, if that’s what you’re asking.”

You felt a light blush rise on your cheeks. Ellie was so strong, and brave. It showed, even in the way she just talks about her patrols.

You flit your eyes back up, trying to refocus. “So can I see? The wound?”

“Oh. Right.” Ellie’s fingers dip down to grab the hem of her shirt, and pull up. For a moment, you only see her toned stomach. You try not to get distracted.

Then you see the bandage under her ribcage.

Your fingers are gentle when they graze over the gauze. It’s a barrier, but Ellie swears it’s like you’re touching her directly. You move to peel it off of her.

Ellie absentmindedly sucks her breath in through her teeth. You whisper a small apology.

“It’s not… bad right?” She says after a moment. “I mean, I’ve had worse.”

She made a mental note to get onto Dina. This whole thing made her look like a fucking pussy.

“I’m sure you have,” You smile meekly, examining the cut. “No… not bad.”

After washing off your hands, you pull up a chair in front of Ellie. She watches you carefully as you sigh.

“Won’t need stitches, and no signs of infection.” You add. “But I can at least disinfect it and send you off with some new dressing.”

“I mean, it’s fine, I can—“

“No, let me.” You say quickly, cutting off her retort. “You’re already here, right?”

Ellie opens her mouth, then closes it. You had a point. She merely nods instead.

You reach down for the bucket of clean water. When you come back up, you notice Ellie has removed her shirt completely. The only thing clinging to her upper body is a flimsy sports bra.

“Oh,” You all but whisper accidentally.

“Hm?”

“Nothing.”

The rag becomes stained as you wipe the area. A few swishes, and the water in the bucket has turned a cloudy mahogany.

“So… your friend,” You add. “Was it Dina?”

Ellie raises her eyebrows slightly. “Uh, yeah. Yeah.”

“She must really care about you.” You say quietly. It takes Ellie a moment to realize what you’re implying. She’s quick to answer.

“Oh, yeah. Not like that anymore, though. It’s… just friends now.”

You take that as confirmation that their relationship ended. And even though in a way you were happy to find out Ellie is now single, it would be rude not to apologize.

“Oh.” You mumble. “Sorry.”

She looks down. “It’s cool.”

You disinfect the wound with some alcohol before applying new dressing with gentle fingertips. You smile up at the brunette.

“Good as new.”

She feels herself smiling back. She wants to kick herself; she didn’t even wanna be here in the first place. But now it doesn’t feel like a mistake after all.

“Thanks,” She says. Her gaze has softened.

You grab something out of the cabinet. Ellie realizes it’s fresh bandages when you outstretch your hand to her.

“So, just… use these. Every couple hours, change it out, till it scabs over. If you ever need more you know where to get it.”

Ellie knows this. But she realizes that she likes hearing you talk, so she thinks of something else to ask.

“Uh, and how do I know what to look for? If I have an infection?”

“Oh,” You say. “Here, lay back. I’ll show you.”

Something about the way you’re hovering over Ellie has her stomach fluttering. You were so tentative. Why hadn’t she tried to talk to you sooner?

“Gotta check it everytime you change your dressing. If it smells weird, or feels hot…”

Your fingers trace over her body yet again. Her eyes are stuck on you, the way your hair falls into your face. The way your lips move to explain everything. Not to mention how soft your skin felt on hers.

She thought the whole “hot nurse” trope was something that only happened in movies. It was pretty clear now that she was wrong.

“Got it?”

“What?”

Shit. She wasn’t listening.

“Do you get it now?” You repeat, looking down at Ellie.

She blinks before propping herself up with her elbows. “Uh… yeah. Think so.”

You smile again, leaning back so you’re no longer positioned over her. You take your place against the counter.

Ellie didn’t hear a word. But she’ll make the effort now to be extra gentle with herself, because of you. If that’s worth anything.

Silence fills the room once again as Ellie pulls her shirt back over her head. You sneak in one last glimpse before she’s fully clothed.

“If something changes you can always come back and see me.” You add with a breathy laugh. “I’m in here, like, all the time.”

“Oh yeah?” She asks, looking up at you. “I’ll have to stop by again sometime, then.”

Your heart skips a beat. Is she trying to flirt with you? No, it’s probably nothing.

You clear your throat. “Hopefully not under these circumstances.”

“Right,” She says. Her eyes widen as she realized she’s extended her stay. “I’ll, um… I’ll go. Get out of your hair.”

Ellie’s never used that expression before. She nearly facepalms. So stupid.

But then you laugh a little, and it’s such a beautiful sound when it hits her ears.

“I don’t mind.” You add bashfully. “But… you need to rest and get better. Go back to kicking ass, all that stuff.”

Ellie feels her face wanting to turn red again. You were so sappy, and shameless with it. She wasn’t used to this kind of attention, really. She didn’t think people like you even existed at all anymore.

She merely hums, unable to find the right words to say. If she sticks around any longer, she might actually develop feelings for you as if she hasn’t already. So she opts to bid you goodbye.

“Well… see you around.”

You nod, watching her head for the door. You hold the clipboard to your chest in an effort to soften your heartbeat.

“Night, Ellie.”

— part two

[blazeys-planet]

Dialogue digging!

Okay! so because im normal and enjoy Great God Grove way more than i anticipated i've decided to sit down and try and look for any interesting dialogue i've missed chapter by chapter if i can. And dialogue i don't think others have seen yet either! Spoiler uh, this is all inspekta and capo because they were the only ones with missed dialogue that i could find.

Images and thoughts under the cut! this is solely from chapter one. I may do more on chapter two later!

First one! Found via using the 'Tiny, weak little bug' bubble on Inspekta:

Huh, interesting. To me this feels a little like a mask-dropping moment? The initial response has about the most negative expression we get from him this early in the game and he is weirdly quiet until the last dialogue bubble. Like we struck a nerve and hes trying to play it off. Does make ya wonder what exactly was going on while he was mortal. Second interaction! Found via using the 'Tiny, weak little bug' line on Capochin.

Other than making this old man pop a blood vessel he is clearly pretty sensitive about that huh. Sorry Capo its all for science. Speaking of making him pop a blood vessel: Third interaction! found via using the 'GET BACK TO WORK YA LAZY PUP!' line on Capochin.

Capo idk how to tell you this but you did it to yourself. Anyway besides making him murderous, you dont gotta keep tellin me your his dog buddy. We Know. Interaction four! found via using the 'Dont worry missy! Inspekta will save the day!' line on Inspekta.

Inspekta i need you to never call yourself fucking Papa 'Ekta ever again or ill kill you. The fandom will use this for evil stop it. Uhh, anyway interaction 5 Found via using 'Goody job on the Goody work!' On Inspekta.

Lol, lmao get flustered idiot. Hard to see in these but in the first two images he blushes a bit but its blue so its hard to notice unless ya zoom in.

Thats all i could find for chapter one! if i find more i missed ill try and post em later, for now ill go to bed and try searching through chapter 2 tomorrow! Enjoy your old men gamers :)

[thewadapan]

thoughts on Transformers Animated

I would've been the perfect age to get absolutely oneshotted by Animated when it started airing on Cartoon Network, but my parents didn't pay for satellite TV, so after Transformers: Cybertron finished airing on CITV I was pretty much shit out of luck for Transformers cartoons for a while. I remember watching clips from the show on Monkey Bar TV, a section on Hasbro's website. The art style didn't really appeal to me. I do wonder about that alternate reality where I did get to see Animated as a nine year old. Would that have fucked me up?

This isn't a proper essay, I'm not here to tell you Transformers Animated Sucks And Here's Why, it's just some off-the-cuff thoughts I had, having now sat down to watch the cartoon in full for the second time in my life. I am going to have to break out the roman numerals, but only because I cannot shut up. So that's the epistemological status on this one.

I. Be a Hero

The thing with Transformers Animated is that it's a great Animated cartoon and kind of a terrible Transformers cartoon. My friend Jo recently put out an essay taxonimising the two different approaches to writing Transformers stories into Budianskian ("human-meets-robot") and Furmanist ("robots-fighting"), pointing to Animated as an example where the first season is grounded in human affairs and culture clash, only for the show to become progressively more preoccupied with conflicts between Autobots and Decepticons until, by the third season, Earth is basically just a backdrop used to create the illusion of stakes, a damsel-in-distress just offscreen. Well, having now revisited it, I honestly think it was Furmanist from the start?

I think the best way to approach Animated through a critical lens is to think of what it means to be an American boy/tween. What do you find cool? What do you want to be when you grow up? My equivalent to Animated was probably Ben 10, which I thought was the coolest shit; it was probably the best of the overtly-boy-aimed cartoons available to us Freeview plebs at the time. Ben 10 is a very empowering fantasy because Ben 10 can have pretty much any abiliity he wants at a particular moment. As a kid growing up you kind of do wish you could turn your flesh to solid crystal, or buzz around as a mutant bug, or just bowl over your enemies like a human bowling ball. These are normal emotions.

That's how Transformers Animated is written. A big part of Sari's character, as the obligatory audience-surrogate-human-child, is that she has an insane amount of freedom for a kid. She has a palatial penthouse, she's homeschooled, except she mostly ignores her Tutor-Bot, so in practise she can do whatever she wants. She gets given a magic key that lets her make any machine do whatever she wants it to, hilarity ensues, etc, etc. Some of my favourite parts of the show are when it teases out some of the pathos of Sari's character; her disconnection from other kids her age, the way the Autobots sometimes treat her more as a pet than a peer, her distant father with his Tom Kenny racist accent, the overly-mechanised and consumerist world she's adapted to thrive in.

The idea of Transformers Animated as a Budianskian story rings false to me because future-Detroit is about as alien from society as Cybertron itself; which is to say, not super alien, but still pretty unmistakably unreal. It's not trying to feel real. In fact, it's clear that the setting was chosen precisely for the sake of injecting Transformers sensibilities into the "human world" of the story, so that the show can be, on balance, more Transformers. This deliberate homogenisation strikes me as intrinsically Furmanist, which shies away from two-worlds-collide storytelling. Animated definitely has its moments of culture-clash, but they're not The Point, they're set-dressing.

Fundamentally, we're invited into the world of Transformers Animated through the eyes of the (all-male) Autobot cast. Between them they account for most of the episodic "learns an important lesson" character arcs, and as the show goes on, more and more of the screentime is devoted to their affairs. It's similar to how BIONICLE has two audience surrogates: the Matoran, who are weak and stupid like human children, and the Toa, who are cool and aspirational like teenagers or adults; the foundational text Mask of Light is preoccupied with the onscreen transmutation of the former into the latter, as if to say, this isn't just who you want to be, it's who you can be. The Autobots in Transformers Animated reflect the five key aspirational archetypes for young lads, as identified through extensive focus-group testing, these being: combination cop/firefighter, ninja, street racer, Engineer from Team Fortress 2, and angry old man.

Everything in the pitch slate for Transformers Animated is geared towards this being a superhero show that Hasbro doesn't need to pay license fees to Marvel for. It was literally called Transformers Hero at the start of its development. So like, taken as a superhero story in a toyetic kid sense (that is to say, there are no "secret identities", Superman is Superman full-time because kids find Superman sitting in an office boring), it's fine for what it is! This isn't like my Transformers One review where I'm going to try to convince you that the creative team weren't fucking trying, no, they were definitely trying for the most part, and they did a good job. It's purely a matter of taste.

Anyway! So!

Probably what had me be like, "man, fuck this"—and I've never heard anyone else mention this—was actually the Constructicons.

I know, right? Weird! If you're a veteran of the Transformers Animated discourse mines, you probably think of stuff like all the sexism, or the Tom Kenny Funny Accents, or maybe even something more abstract like the undercooked politics of the war. I dunno, maybe I'll talk about some of that stuff while I'm here. For me, though, there was more or less this hat trick of episodes at the start of Season 3, nearly three in a row, where for entirely different reasons I was like "man, fuck off".

II. Beneath the enemy scrotum

When the Constructicons are first introduced in Season 2, there's a genuinely tragic bent to their story. They're born into this alien world as fully-formed New Yoik Construction workers, they form this friendship with Bulkhead, the other Autobots are disproportionally suspicious of them, they get seduced by Megatron, they wind up getting their memories wiped. It's giving "Transmutate". And the arc that this introduction sets up for the Constructicons is like, hey, maybe when it counts, they'll remember who their friend really is, and they'll come back around to the side of angels. The thing with the Constructicons, right, is that they're stupid, and they're lazy, and they're selfish, and they think they're owed something when they're not. They operate on pure id, catcalling at cars, tossing back barrel after barrel of engine oil, and never really doing any actual work. And there's definitely an inherent humour to this image of an alcoholic digger sexually harassing random sportscars. So long as the show seems ultimately sympathetic towards the Constructicons, as if they might have a heart of gold under it all that separates them from the Decepticons, maybe it feels okay to laugh at them, because they're good people who just haven't worked it out yet. It's just a farce, a comedy of errors.

But every time the Constructicons come back, the show just... does an encore. They do more and more overtly evil things, and the show leans more and more on how crude these guys are. In "Sari, No-One's Home", they're cast in the roles of the robbers from Home Alone; if Transformers Animated can be said to have sinned, then it's an old sin, one drawn from a rich tradition of scorn for the working class, the ne'er-do-well, the wrong'un, the layabout. The Constructicons clearly have some valuable skill, when they can be motivated to work; the problem is that they're stupid and directionless. They're often banging on about their workers' rights, and making excuses not to work. While I don't think it's intentional on the part of the writers, the contrivance whereby they are "animated" (lmao) by shards of the AllSpark from regular human machinery does sort of separate them from the rest of the Transformers on an ontological, biological level. Wreck-Gar is similar, portrayed as basically just crazy, not quite a "full person".

Through a lens of writing as observation, the Constructicons are great; they're a distillation, a caricature, a cartoon of lots of specific things you've ever heard a workman say. But through a lens of writing as empathy, they're just kind of cringe, sorry. The show does not afford them the same internality as the Autobots, or even most of the other villains. It's hard to read them as anything other than a mean-spirited stereotype of labourers. On a narrative level, the purpose they serve is related to the Bush-era political morality play of the show; in fact, within the show itself, they provide perhaps the clearest view of who exactly Megatron is, what he believes, how he operates.

Again, I would've been eight when this show was airing. I had some consciousness of who the Prime Minister was, and I was cognizant of the election of President Obama, but it's fair to say that I had literally no perception of Bush-era American politics. Sue me. Most of what I know about it now, as an adult, comes from the spectre of the War on Terror on American culture. What I find striking about Megatron is just how abstract of a threat he is for almost the entire show. He almost never actually gets into fights with anyone. He's always lurking in some hole somewhere, making schemes to compel patsies to carry out acts of terrorism on his behalf. There are some occasions where he talks about Decepticons as a revolutionary movement, but only ever with a sneering self-consciousness that makes it clear that this is all talk, an obligatory performance he puts on in case anyone is dumb enough to believe him. Dude is in it for the power. He wants to be the boot. His complete immorality is what makes him dangerous more than anything—he doesn't care how many innocents get killed in the course of him getting what he wants—because even though he is a powerhouse, he's still just one guy, and he achieves most of his goals by being a liar, a schemer, a coward. And yeah, in the show, we see him take advantage of the Constructicons' stupidity/naivete (take your pick), playing on their sense of entitlement and resentment towards authority, directing their frustrations towards an invented scapegoat, the Autobots, who they've never met and don't know anything about. To me, that's political.

"Three's A Crowd" was what did it for me. Megatron's not even in that one; instead, there's this new guy, Dirt Boss, who forces the Constructicons and Bulkhead to fall in line. For their part, the Constructicons are basically onboard with the whole thing, and the language used in dialogue frames the situation as a workers' revolution (as the Constructicons see it) ruining everything. Scrapper gets something of a redemption later in the season, in "Human Error", but this is kind of unrelated to anything else involving the Constructicons; Mixmaster was always the brains of the operation, and he just exits the narrative after his attempted strike Goes Wrong. To me, the way it reads is something along the lines of like... look, the workers are stupid, and they're looking out for themselves, and wannabe-tyrants are always going to prey on that, so we shouldn't really blame the workers exactly... but also the workers should just stop fucking complaining, they should stop being lazy and contribute to society like the rest of us, and let the actually smart people tell them what's right and what's wrong. Maybe it's not exactly that. But it reads as something basically like that, to me, and sorry, but it just does nothing for me except make me feel bummed.

I realise this is probably more ink than has ever been spilled on the Animated Constructicons. Look, I don't want to get some sort of reputation as the Animated Constructicons crank. It's not that I feel particularly strongly about this, and more that it's difficult to articulate. We'll be going back to more familiar discourse territory for the rest of this blogpost.

III. Green with envy

Moving along, we come to "Where Is Thy Sting?", which is the climax of the Wasp subplot introduced in the Season 2 episode "Autoboot Camp". I think this subplot is typically very well-regarded in the fandom zeitgeist; people like the reinterpretation of loyalist Shockwave as a deep-cover Decepticon double agent in the Autobot Elite Guard ranks (his sick design certainly helps), and people enjoy the reinterpretation of Beast Wars Waspinator as a foil to Bumblebee, and people especially like the twist where you're led to believe Wasp is the double agent, right up until the episode's closing stinger.

Did anyone actually believe that, though? I'm genuinely asking. I can't remember if I got fooled the first time I watched "Autoboot Camp", or if I had already been spoiled on the twist through fandom osmosis, or if I just worked out that Wasp was innocent while watching the episode. On rewatch, it felt to me like the episode was really struggling to sell the ruse; Longarm is overtly suspicious from pretty much the moment he first speaks. This paragraph has gone on too long already, this is a cartoon for nine-year-olds, this probably literally was Baby's First Plot Twist for some number of children.

Anyway, the idea of a Decepticon double agent has a lot of narrative potential, so it's a shame that its largest footprint on the narrative of Transformers Animated is the stock-plot-iest mistaken-identity-slash-doppelganger plot to ever stock. If you ask me to point at one part of Animated and accuse it of Not Even Trying, "Where Is Thy Sting?" is that part. The auteur theorist in me notes that the writer of this one was Todd Casey, whose other credits are the aforementioned "Sari, No One's Home", which is another mid stock plot, and "Nature Calls", which is so forgettable that thirty seconds ago I reacquainted myself with TFWiki's synopsis of it and now all I can tell you is… it's about space barnacles?

And you can totally see how it happened, because on the surface, on the logline level, it seems very fun and clever. Wasp is depicted in the show as a green repaint of Bumblebee… so what if he used paint to literally swap identities with Bumblebee? This is the kind of thing that would make a brilliant Ask Vector Prime entry, but it makes for a rubbish 22-minute cartoon. The problem is it just doesn't work. If you stop and think about how to contrive the situation for more than a second, it becomes immediately obvious that it doesn't work at all.

Wasp swaps helmets with Bumblebee and keeps his faceplate up to hide his face. Their voices swap, but their speech patterns don't; one of the episode's big running jokes is that Wasp-as-Bumblebee keeps making obvious slips like referring to himself in the third-person. He hopes to get rid of Bumblebee-as-Wasp as soon as possible to minimize the risk he's exposed, but he also wants revenge, for Bumblebee to suffer as he did. As for Wasp's plan as Bumblebee… well he mostly just wants to enjoy freedom, kick back and play video games, he hasn't really thought past that.

What makes an identity-theft plotline good (I mean, when they are good), is not what it says about the character being impersonated, but rather how it tests the limits of their relationships with the other characters. What makes "Where Is Thy Sting?" bad is that it doesn't tell us anything about anyone—expect perhaps, "all the Autobots are really fucking stupid?" Is that anything?

Like, sure, if we're imagining a character thinking realistically, it's a bit of a leap for them to start entertaining the possibility of bodyswapping. But one of the first things Bumblebee-as-Wasp says to his friends is "I'm not Wasp, I'm Bumblebee! Wasp swapped our paint jobs and is trying to steal my identity!" And the other Autobots are like, "Pssh, that's crazy," despite the fact that Wasp-as-Bumblebee is in fact behaving extraordinarily odd. It's proper "hollering at the telly like Dad three cans deep watching the Green Rectangle" territory. I think this episode needed like three more drafts.

From an Animated liker's perspective, hey, maybe this is one dud amongst what's otherwise a consistently great series.

For me, this episode is sort of a flashpoint for a wider problem with contrivance in the series. That problem has a name.

IV. Sentinel Prime

As the series goes along, it builds up this kind of hilarious impression of Sentinel Prime as being singlehandedly responsible for everything that goes wrong in the show: from his mishandling of the boot camp that let Shockwave slip into the Autobot ranks, to his Archa Seven field-trip that led to the creation of Blackarachnia, to his decisions as acting Magnus nearly allowing Megatron to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Anything Optimus Prime's crew manage to achieve, they do so in spite of Sentinel Prime's actions. In "Where Is Thy Sting?", Sentinel is the last holdout, who'd sooner believe that literally every other Autobot is "in on it" than admit he was wrong about Bumblebee-as-Wasp. The show relies extremely heavily on Sentinel Prime's too-dumb-to-live personality for humour, but also relies on it to contrive conflict.

So yeah, I just don't "get" Sentinel Prime. I am actually doubtful that most Animated fans "get" Sentinel Prime, from the opposite direction, because I know y'all are for the most part, like me, too young to actually remember the Bush administration. Did you know that the title of Season 2 Episode 3, "Mission Accomplished", in which the Elite Guard prematurely declare the Decepticon threat on Earth to be nonexistent, is a direct reference to a famous speech by George W. Bush given at the start of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, a bloody war that was still ongoing by the time of the cancellation of Transformers Animated in 2009? I didn't know about that speech until just now. Man, I would love to read a long-form, well-researched essay analysing Transformers Animated through the lens of the Bush presidency.

I can't help but observe history repeating itself with the release of Transformers One, where Sentinel Prime is used as an analogue for another idiotic Republican president.

If you squint, maybe there's something to it, in the Animated worldview, where this absolute brain idiot somehow blunders his way into ruling the whole planet by the show's finale, through no particular competency beyond craven opportunism and a delusionally-inflated sense of his own worthiness. Maybe Animated is a show that saw guys like this in positions of power and just wanted to laugh at them, bitterly, because if your president is bombing the shit out of people on the other side of the world, then if nothing else you can depict him as The Tick.

I dunno, it just doesn't do anything for me, never did. It's not particularly cathartic or entertaining for me when Sentinel Prime gets his head cut off—I would just rather be looking at any other character. My gut just tells me that I'm not looking at a character, I'm looking at some kind of narrative voodoo doll, who's getting humiliated to prove some point about something that exists in some other reality altogether. Put plainly, maybe it's precisely the fact that depicting Trump as the blue-and-orange man… didn't stop his election, and certainly didn't stop his re-election. If there can be said to be a culture war, then shit like this was on the losing side, y'know? It's as if we're conceding that all good people can do is console themselves, and pride themselves on their righteousness, while all bad people can do is whatever the fuck they want.

IV. Animated is cancelled

To be fair, Sentinel does get some actual depth at times, shades of nuance that gesture towarads the illusion that he could be a guy who really exists in a three-dimensional world. One of the best examples of this is in "Predacons Rising". Sidenote, weird that they reused that title for the Prime movie, isn't it?

These exchanges between Sentinel Prime and Blackarachnia are some of the best in the whole series:

"I just never knew, never imagined that something this… unspeakable could have happened to you. How can you even live like that?! It's horrible! It's disgusting!" "Okay, okay, I get it! It's bad, but it's not that bad, all right?!" "No. It's worse. You should have gone offline." […] "So that's it?! You just slag your old friend Elita-1?" "Don't say that name! You don't deserve to say that name! You're not Elita-1, you mutant freak. Elita-1 went offline a long time ago."

Sentinel Prime's xenophobia towards organics is played for laughs in most of the show, and he doesn't get many opportunities to actually act on it. This episode is different! In this scene, a healthy reaction from Sentinel would be relief that his old friend Elita-1 is alive after all. But he's so revolted by her mutant appearance—and, unspoken, by his own hand in disfiguring her—that he actually can't suffer her to live! As I've said, Sentinel Prime is often depicted as a delusional liar, an Autobot equivalent to Starscream, and this episode is special because we see him rewrite the narrative in his own mind in real time. At first he feels that Elita-1 should have died. Then he convinces himself that Elita-1 is already dead, so he doesn't have to feel bad about killing Blackarachnia.

I think this dialogue is very raw, and it's extremely distinctive—Blackarachnia's "Hang on, it's not THAT bad!" is hilarious—and it was only after watching the episode that I remembered it had been written by Larry DiTillio and Bob Forward, which certainly explains why. Beast Wars always walked a knife-edge between great comedy and messy feelings.

Ultimately, though, "Predacons Rising" has kind of a nasty aftertaste. It establishes this deliciously fucked-up dynamic… and then kind of doesn't interrogate it at all?

Some of the earliest criticisms I ever saw directed at Transformers Animated concerned its handling of female characters. In terms of recurring ones that matter, it basically boils down to Blackarachnia and Sari, with Arcee and Slipstream to a lesser extent, and the shared thread I would draw between them is that they all have something fucked-up going on with their bodies. Specifically, they exist in this state because of various men in the show. Blackarachnia's hideous mutation was caused by Sentinel and Optimus, frequently framed as "look what you did!" Sari's technoorganic body and abnormal development are effectively thanks to her father, and her relationship with him in Season 3 is coloured heavily by this. Arcee's memory wipe and millennia-long coma were done at Ratchet's hands. Slipstream is implied to be Starscream's "feminine side", defined explicitly in relation to him. There is a sense that female characters are just treated differently by the narrative, and I personally think it's reasonable to term this a misogynist streak, though it's complicated by the fact that both Sari and Blackarachnia have some of the richest characterisations in the show (contrast Elita-1 and Airachnid in Transformers One, who have literally nothing going on).

A curious thing about Blackarachnia is that the show typically presents her deal as being "I'm hideous!", but many of the male characters in the show are depicted as infatuated with her. Cinemasins ding? Derrick J. Wyatt's design for her may not be as horny as the Beast Wars original, but it's still horny. The "mutation" aspect of her design is a little hard to parse out, because despite her supposedly radically altered biology… well, she looks like a cartoon character, same as any other Transformer in the show. Because Blackarachnia is the only female Transformer for most of the series, it's unclear whether the male bots react to her this way because they've never seen a woman before, or if it's a specific factor of her horrible spider swag. I mean I guess it's the latter? And I dunno, it just bums me out. Everyone is into her, but only in a way where it's taboo, she's Othered. Blackarachnia thinks she won't be accepted back into Cybertronian society because she looks like a monster.

And she's right! In "Predacons Rising", Sentinel Prime's view of Blackarachnia is tacitly acknowledged as being basically correct on a narrative level; in fact, at the end of the episode, Optimus Prime surprisingly describes Sentinel Prime as a "good bot"... when the most unusual thing that Sentinel Prime has done this episode is just be very xenophobic. As the show presents it, Blackarachnia is a monster who no longer values the lives of others, and her trauma response has turned her into an evil influence on the universe. At the end of the episode, the problem is "solved" only because Blackarachnia is accidentally shunted into another fucking universe; to Sentinel and Optimus, it literally seems like she's died, and they seem relieved about it, glad they can finally have closure on the whole affair, which was entirely their fault. This was the "original sin" which got Optimus Prime kicked off onto the space bridge repair crew, the entire driving impetus for his arc to prove himself as a hero; but this arc isn't resolved by him "saving" Blackarachnia in any way, rather by him washing his hands of her, this little blemish on his record expelled from the universe. I'm pretty sure Blackarachnia isn't mentioned again.

(You actually see something very similar with Omega Supreme. Animated is pretty clear about the Autobots being fucked up in their own ways, and a big example is Omega Supreme being programmed to heroically self-sacrifice himself if needed. In the Season 2 finale, Ratchet only brings Omega Supreme back online as a last-ditch effort to stop Megatron, and is conflicted over the fact that he's reviving Omega only to have him sacrifice himself again. The resolution to this conflict... is for Omega to sacrifice himself to stop Megatron, because there's no other option, and then Omega pretty much exits the narrative in any way that matters.)

If you're an Animated liker, the obvious argument to make is that the writers did in fact have plans for Blackarachnia… they just didn't get the chance to put them into place. We know that early pitches for Season 4 were very beast-focused, that the show staff were kind of bored of Megatron and wanted to do more with Blackarachnia. It's true! But I dunno, actually watching the show, I just don't see it. I look at the Constructicons, where it seemed like the can was being kicked down the road until they just got bored of it. We have a lot of behind-the-scenes insight into Animated, and it just does not strike me as a meticulously planned show. When Blackarachnia was introduced, I can't imagine there was a strong idea of how her arc might resolve itself, because the tension of leaving it unresolved is in fact the whole point. To me, Animated is a show constructed entirely out of these tableaus, these dynamics, which build towards a season finale but never a series finale. While people generally agree that it was a shame Animated was cancelled, if you probe deeper, you'll find a bit more of a split on whether or not is was cancelled prematurely; more accurately, it simply wasn't renewed. I think part of what confuses people about Animated is that it was never being written towards a definitive conclusion—but rather, with the intent that it it could go on indefinitely.

There's a lot to mourn about the show; it was really the last time—in fact, if you discount the Beast era for the Beast-ness of it all, the only time—that a Transformers cartoon was permitted to radically reinterpret pretty much whatever aspect of the franchise it wanted, to make up new characters, to rewrite the mythos. The "mythos", such as it were, did not exist yet; the Binder of Revelation had yet to be codified. In anything made after Animated, "Prowl" could never, ever, have been a motorcycle ninja. The ossifying brand-alignment that began with Prime and continues with the so-called "evergreen" production bible has stifled innovation in the brand; unless there is a radical change in brand management internal to Hasbro itself, there will never be another take on Transformers as radical as this.

But I guess the necessary flipside of this is that I don't think Animated is really the purest expression of Transformers that many people treat it as. Its writing and visuals achieve a basic level of consistent quality that is otherwise absent from most stories in the brand, sure, but this doesn't make it the "best" Transformers cartoon ever. Perhaps there's no such thing. "Transformers", whatever that is, it's something else. It exists in your mind as much as it exists in mine. True "Transformers" has never been tried.

Just kidding there is a best Transformers cartoon and it's Beast Machines, obviously.

[dumbass-tumbler-cryptid]

Guys I just read through the original Avatar way of water and I can't be normal about it and neither can you so lets get into it...

(Apologies for the bad quality btw. I was taking pictures with my phone of my tv.)

For starters Na'vi age faster than humans in the og script!

It says point blank in the script that Spider is 14

And it says this about Neteyam and Lo'ak

They're the equivalent of a 13 and 14 year old not they are 13 and 14. Coupled with the fact that in this version of the script Spider was five during the original war and he's only 14 himself in this script then if my math is mathing it's only been NINE YEARS since the og movie. In human years Neteyam and Lo'ak are 9 and 8 years old! That is crazy!

Speaking of crazy we get some interesting lessons on Na'vi anatomy

They birth chrysalis! Like mammals can be born still in their amniotic sac but a chrysalis?! Like a bug?!

and then..

Like the chrysalis just unfurls after the mother breaks tsalnu. That is so wild.

And then..

Like we already knew Kiri's "father" was eywa but a genetic clone of Grace? and we learn this in the first act of the movie?! Wild.

Also this conversation...

Like I'm shookith why👏🏽was👏🏽 this👏🏽 not👏🏽 in 👏🏽the👏🏽 movie! This seems pretty important not only for the plot i.e where Toruk is but also developing Jake as a character.

Anyway here's some little things that had me gobsmacked for better or worse.

First...

If my jaw was on the floor from the not dad i'm your commander line (after which Spider tells Lo'ak it could have been a lot worse and I'm like how?) then my jaw hit earth's core from Jake completely blaming Neteyam's death on Lo'ak. Like I know he's grieving but good god that's your son! who just watched his brother die! And you don't even know what happened! You just found them like that! Like...COME ON!

Second...

Lo'ak is really mean to Tuk. I didn't screenshot it but also there was a line from when Tuk tagged along at the beginning of the movie and Spider joked "well if she gets eaten it's not our fault." and Lo'ak said "that's what I'm saying" and as a youngest child I took that personally.

I have no commentary this was just really funny

Third

Ao'nung's name was orginally Nu'ung and I find that interesting.

Forth

I gasped. I'd get smacked if I talked to my mom like this. Like they don't seem to have a good relationship in this version because earlier Kiri calls Grace her real mom not her bio mom or even just her other mom. And Kiri also really wanted to know who her real dad is. I'm just glad they changed this angle because adoptive parents are real parents and the actual movie does a good job of showing that.

Fifth

This is right after Kiri's seizure. I think this should have been in the movie. A criticism I've heard about Jake is what a dumb move it was to call for help when Ronal was right there. This shows what a quick panicked decision that actual was and while it's still not smart it is understandable.

Sixth

Neytiri having P.T.S.D

and finally

yeah I think the only reason they cut this is because they knew we'd all be SOBBING to hard to actually pay attention to the end of the movie.

Anyway that's my general thoughts on this and I'd love to know what you think. 💙

[aj-lenoire]

i’m rewatching avengers assemble for the first time in years and y’know what it holds up much much better than i thought it would!! it’s given me a wistful nostalgia for the early MCU.

this is probably natasha’s second-best film (after winter soldier, obviously; maybe third after the solo film, but definitely up there) because she is minimally ‘exasperated mom to her all-male teammates’ and has several really cool scenes.

i’d also say this is the best thor we ever got, nicely expanding and reinforcing the characterisation of his solo film. plus it’s the best thor ever looked. i really like the slightly longer and messier hair, and the physicality of his costume—before it was all CGI and hemsworth was ludicrously, dehydratedly muscular. and sue me, i love the style of his and loki’s dialogue! i love how they sound so grand and fantastical, you can always tell they’re from a very different world to the rest of the cast.

and banner. the later MCU films just didn’t seem to bother with the inner conflict of the hulk, but this one you can feel the weight and desperation of it, ruffalo does a great job.

that being said, this film is not perfect. and my main gripe is how tony and especially steve are (mis)characterised.

almost all of tony’s actions/dialogue, and almost every line of steve’s after he and tony first meet, feel really wonky and out of character. especially towards each other. you can really see joss whedon didn’t care for steve, thought tony was the Coolest Guy Ever and didn’t really care to actually understand either character

case in point, i refuse to believe tony stark could plant a bug in front of dozens of spies, including natasha and hill, and no one noticed. if he wanted to plant the bug maybe put it in his lab once he’s away from everyone? or even manually access stuff once in the lab so banner or steve can ask what he’s doing, rather than him just telling them, ready-player-one-style, because oh he’s already done it because he’s just that clever!

tony’s interactions with banner are great until he just ruins them with a stupid joke about how banner goes green. the whole bit where tony pokes banner with a needle and steve chews him out about it is particularly weird—especially since it gets off to a really good start with tony inviting banner to the tower to do science-y stuff! it comes off as so mean spirited? especially given how they later have a heart to heart about the hulk being like tony’s chest arc reactor.

still, the tony stuff i can kinda forgive because A) he’s meeting the guy his dad was obsessed with, and that’s a sore issue for various reasons, and B) while the smug genius persona is not the real tony, these are all people he doesn’t know very well, so it makes sense for him to be playing that role in front of them—but what’s steve’s excuse??

steve says several astute, accurate things, like loki’s spear being like a HYDRA weapon and his plan to fracture the team. but then he pointlessly butts heads with tony. he just met the guy?? it’s like he completely forgot his own dynamic with howard stark. he learned howard would put himself in danger to help others, and further “the footage” steve has allegedly seen of tony as iron man would surely only prove that tony is even more selfless.

that “take off the suit, what are you?” line is just. so out of character. like even pepper wasn’t done that dirty (she was pretty normal when speaking with coulson, booty shorts aside 🙄) and she spends her only major scene making sexual jokes/promises(?) to tony!!

i was literally going “good line!”/“bad line.” because it was they obvious which were whedon’s version of the character and which were the guy we saw in first avenger. case in point, steve follows banner and tony’s suspicions up with “we have orders, we should follow them” which is the #1 Steve Rogers Would Not Say This line.

but then we have the narrative redundancy of him searching anyway. why not just have steve agree with tony that fury is being cagey?? i think it would’ve been more interesting and a more economical use of time to just have them agree. they can still disagree on methods; steve is always more tactile and brute force than tony, and that itself serves to contrast them without a weird OOC rivalry.

like you can pinpoint the exact line where they’re all arguing with fury about SHIELD building weapons, and it turns from steve, tony and thor being more or less themselves into three flanderised, bickering caricatures.

fury remarks “remind me how you made your fortune, stark?” (as if that fortune was entirely tony’s doing, and as if tony didn’t shut down stark industries’ weapons’ program two whole films ago) and steve gets halfway through a line that might be a defence of tony, might be a dig, but we don’t find out because tony interrupts “how is this about me?” and steve decides to snipe back “i’m sorry, isn’t everything?”

and sure okay i know loki’s using the spear to raise tensions but that scene would’ve been way more effective if tony and steve hadn’t been weirdly sniping at one another already for twenty minutes!! (not least because they were the only ones behaving out of character, suggesting it wasn’t loki yet!)

i will say this though—i do really like how “put on the suit” turns from steve and tony butting heads to teaming up for the first time. i like that they are still shown to put petty stuff aside when it really matters. i wish it was more consistent!

(also—and this is 100% me just being petty—what the hell was steve on about, asking natasha “can you fly one of those jets?” like he hadn’t been in a jet flown by natasha twice in the past twenty-four hours??)

(other than that though i think i’d say their dynamic is one of my favourites in the film. maybe it comes from johansson and evans being irl friends for years already, but they have a really fun rapport basically from the get-go)

rewatching has also given me new appreciation for the natasha/banner “romance” attempted in age of ultron. like setting aside how atrociously it was actually executed, i see the appeal of exploring a dynamic between “genius manipulator who you can never be sure of her thoughts/feelings” and “guy who you can literally always be sure of his thoughts feelings” especially given how scarlett johansson is playing natasha as being quite obviously terrified of the hulk—a creature of pure rage, self-defence made manifest, that no amount of manipulation can calm down. hulk requires, at minimum, sincerity, and that’s an interesting dynamic to completely goddamn waste.

this film is definitely still a product of its time (and cough cough of joss whedon). there’s like, three whole women (five if you count the shadowy council member and ashley johnson?) and i don’t think they ever directly speak to one another?? natasha seems to be having romantic teases with banner, clint and steve, and pepper is reduced down to a hot girlfriend.

and if you ever needed more proof that whedon lowkey hates captain america, you needn’t look any further than the godawful halloween-pyjamas suit steve wore in this film. easily the most atrocious cap suit, aside from the one he wore on the uso tour. i honestly don’t know why the costume dept didn’t just keep/remake the one he was wearing in the ice—it had a great tactical vibe and actually looked like body armour.

but still, i’d give this film a solid 7/10. It’s still a hell of a fun time.

closing out with a list of things that actually do hold up as genuinely funny and/or awesome:

when the scientist tells fury it’s gamma radiation and he’s like “ಠ_ಠ that can be harmful”

natasha easily breaking out of her restraints while coulson just sits in the phone listening to her beat the shit out of those guys

thor: now listen, brother! [gets slammed out of frame by tony] loki: …i’m listening?

the bit where thor strikes his hammer into steve’s shield and it levels the trees

thor: take care how you speak, loki is still my brother. natasha: he killed eighty people in two days. thor: he’s adopted.

tony pointing out one of the SHIELD techs is playing galaga

natasha tricking the literal god of trickery into revealing his plan

tony and steve working together to fix the helicarrier engine (minus the “speak english!” line 🙄)

coulson blasting loki with the prototype gun

loki trying to mind-control tony but it doesn’t work because of his arc reactor

clint’s delivery of you and i remember budapest very differently 😐

steve stepping up as leader after the cool panning roto-shot of them as a team for the first time

hulk body-slamming loki on the middle of his “i’m a god” monologue, followed by loki’s high-pitched groan

the schwarma post-credit scene. no petty rivalries. no stupid jokes. just the six of them hanging out.