#Fully until s5 is out hes alive I don’t care

[hellfirexclub]

What Eddie Munson is like as your boyfriend.

a/n: Fluff and smut headcanons of Eddie as your boyfriend bc we all need this rn. He is my cute and sweet and alive boyfriend, the duffers can pry him from my cold dead hands.

-Eddie would be the most loving boyfriend ever, we all know this. He’s never had someone love him and care for him like you do and all he’d want is to give all his love to you and constantly let you know how happy and grateful he is to have you. Literally he’d just be obsessed with your company and your touch and your kisses and your affection, hes baby. I can just imagine how emotional he’d get every time you tell him you love him or compliment him, particularly at the beginning of the relationship. But then as his confidence in your feelings for him builds his heart would just be full and he’d smile at you with such love in those beautiful eyes and give you complements back. 

-Eddie would want to be touching you at all times, always holding your hand or have his arm linked through yours, hands on your shoulders or around your neck when he’s standing behind you, arms wrapped around your waist when you’re on his lap or resting on your hips, hand on the small of your back when you’re walking beside him, just constant contact. He just loves to be close to you like that, omg he would love laying his head on your lap while you play with his hair. He would also pick you up loads, bridal style when he’s being cute and romantic and wants to kiss you, from behind when he wants to scare you and over his shoulder when he’s being playful.

-Eddie is just so cuddly and affectionate, he would definitely love being the little spoon as much as he would love spooning you, but I think most of all he’d love laying on your chest it would be the most peaceful and soothing thing in the world to him. He would just find it to be so comforting to feel your warmth and the rise and fall of your chest and if you stroke his hair too he’ll fall asleep in seconds on you, drooling on you cutely. Sleeping with him he’s definitely the kind to want to be entangled with you, legs over each other and wrapped in each other’s arms. Also he’s a blanket hog but that’s okay bc so am I.

-Kissing Eddie would be 💀. Like firstly his touching would translate here too so he’d always have his hands on your cheeks or delicately in your hair cradling the back of your head while he kisses you oh so softly. Like his lips are literal perfection so they would be as soft as a pillow and I think he’d be very into slowly and passionately making out with you. Eyes closed, hands wondering down your body, and then as the kiss heats up he’d definitely get desperate and sloppy with the kisses and at this point he’d mostly have his hands on your ass. Kissing him would be heaven basically.

-He is an absolute gentleman. We’ve seen him politely let the girls go past and offer his hand to Nancy and robin, he’s just so sweet and would constantly be doing chivalrous things like this for you. You’d giggle and be like Eddie it’s okay, I can open this door by myself but he’ll insist that he has to let his beautiful partner through himself with a bow. He’d just do all these little things that most people wouldn’t think to, holding your chair out for you or always making sure you’re happy and safe and comfortable because you’re his world.

-If you wear any of his clothes this man will pass away. I mean like jaw dropped to the floor staring at you in absolute awe, butterflies in his tummy because goddamn you look so perfect in it. He will always be so quick to offer you one of his jackets if you’re cold, because seeing you swallowed up in them is so cute he could melt. It makes him feel possessive and so proud to show that off you’re his, he’d actively give his clothes to you to wear just so everyone knows you’re his girl.

-He’s literally the most romantic man on earth, he would go all out for your dates even if it’s just hanging at home. We know how gentlemanly he is and that would definitely translate in dates because even if he wouldn’t admit it he’s always dreamt of having this person to treat like a princess. So expect picnics in the dead of night under the stars, romantic strolls, going to record/comic stores together, cute road trips in his van and gifts even when it’s not a birthday or anniversary just because he loves you so much. Particularly handmade gifts like drawings or little bits of jewellery or your own guitar pick even if you don’t play. 

-Eddie’s perfect day with you is just lounging in bed cuddling, smoking and giggling loads while you just listen to music or watch horror films. Fuck everyone else, all he needs is your company to be the happiest he could possibly be. There’s no one else he enjoys spending time with more, you’re his best friend as well as his soulmate and he just adores being in your company. He would love doing anything with you, playing board games with you or trying to teach you guitar, or even cooking and baking together but best believe he would start a flour fight. 

-Eddie dedicating songs to you during his gigs and staring only at you through the whole thing, absolutely feeling the music and his love for you. I can’t get over how hot he’d be performing with the band, head banging, sweaty, fingers flying across that guitar. Someone get me a glass of water.

-If you didn’t already play dnd he would be very excited to help you build your character so you could play with him, and if you have one he’ll be drawing fanart of your characters immediately bc he’d ship them so hard. He’d just really love to involve you in all of his hobbies and interests, because he wants to share all of his life with you so it would mean so much for you to take interest in it. And he would be so thrilled to do the same for you, he would listen so intently when you tell him about things that you like and always ask to join in or see your work, supportive boyfriend 101. 

-He’s so goofy but in like the sexiest and most endearing way, just imagine looking into those beautiful brown eyes while he’s grinning cheekily at you, those adorable little smile lines around his eyes. I think I’d actually melt like my heart couldn’t take the gorgeousness. Like how do I now find him standing on that damn lunch table rinsing everyone in the room hot?? It should be cringe but everything he does is so sexy I’d just be staring at him dreamily oops. Like go off baby, let them have it I’ll hold your earrings you fine thing. And watching him be dm would be SO HOT like he’d be so into it and playing the villain so well you’d wanna leap across that damn table. Any ‘nerdy’ thing he does is actually very hot because everything he does is hot I don’t make the rules.

NSFW:

-Eddie would be so nervous with intimacy at first, and not because he doesn’t want to but purely because he’s inexperienced and worried he won’t please you. He would literally be a moaning wreck anytime you guys so much as make out, hard and straining in his pants. He’d literally just get drunk off of your touch, and as each session gets more steamy he’d become more of a panting, blushing mess. The first time Eddie sees you fully naked he would literally almost cum in his pants, his mouth would drop open and his eyes would lid over he would just be in awe of you. And holy fuck getting to sink his cock into you for the first time is something he will never forget. Eddie would be completely pussy drunk, hips shaking and thrusting into you frantically, cumming hard into you within minutes. 

-Even after you’ve been dating a while and Eddie is more used to it, he’ll still be a pussy drunk mess every time you have sex. He can never get over just how good you feel wrapped around him. Eddie would be loud in bed, moaning and grunting and groaning constantly, and he’d love saying sweet nothings and filthy words to you. Depending how dominant he’s feeling Eddie could be affirming how good you feel, worshiping you and calling you his good girl and his little angel, telling you how perfect you are and how good you feel. But sometimes Eddie just wants to destroy you, call you his perfect little slut and tell you how much he loves pounding your cunt. 

-I definitely think Eddie is a switch, I don’t think he’d be purely dominant and rough with you because of how sweet he is. Sometimes he’d just want playful, loving sex where the passion is almost unbearable and your foreheads are pressed together as he slowly and sensually fucks you. Sometimes Eddie wants to have you ride him and tease him, be a moaning mess beneath you overwhelmed with how amazing you feel as you edge him until he’s begging to fill you up. But sometimes Eddie wants to hold your down by your throat and absolutely ruin you, fuck you til tears are falling from your eyes and you can’t do anything but moan and babble. Make you cum over and over around his cock until you’re shaking. 

-Eddie would literally worship your body. He would think every inch of you from head to toe is perfection, and he would make it his job to let you know this. He would kiss you everywhere, hands constantly roaming your body giving each bit of you attention. Foreplay with Eddie is so sensual, his touch and his words would really make you feel like the goddess he thinks you are. Just imagine those fucking sexy, ring adorned hands roaming your body, squeezing your ass or teasingly slipping up your thighs.

-Eddie loves to finger you with his rings on. Not to bring my apparent hand fetish into this but, his fucking hands man oh my god. Eddie would love how you shiver in pleasure when you feel his cold rings against your skin, teasingly running his hands up your hot flesh. He knows you have a thing for his hands, there is no hiding openly staring at his hands and his rings, he’d probably have noticed it even before you dated. So he loves to tease you with it, seeing how riled up you get just from watching him play guitar or watching him during a campaign. Once he’s teased you enough and got you alone he’d be on you, playing with your clit and fingering you until you’re a mess beneath him, asking how good his fingers feel.

-SUCKING ON EDDIES FINGERS. Yes I’m still on the hands, imagine the look on his face the first time you take his hand in yours and look deeply into his eyes while you suck on his finger. Eddies eyes would roll to the back of his head, just mind fucked by how hot you look doing that and how bad he needs that mouth wrapped around his cock. Best believe Eddie loves to put his fingers in your mouth, especially when he’s fucking you roughly he’ll demand you suck on them or squeeze your cheeks between his fingers as he utters filth to you. 

-Eddie is obsessed with your thighs. Some people are ass men, some people are tit men, Eddie munson is a sucker for your soft thighs. If you wear short skirts or dresses you better believe Eddies hands will be all over you, fiddling at the hem of it and trying to slip under and up your thighs even if you’re in public. He loves having his hands on them generally, if you're sitting beside each other he usually has a hand lovingly placed on your thigh. He loves having them wrapped around him, whether that be his head or his back. And he particularly loves when you ride him so he can see your thighs and your delicious curves.

-Eddie does sometimes enjoy fucking in a semi public place, the thrill of it drives him wild. He’d love fucking you in the back of his van while you’re out, hand covering your mouth as he tuts and tells you to be quiet despite fucking you hard to make you moan deliberately. Definitely also after a concert when he’s all revved up on adrenaline, you’re lucky if he gets you into the van because sometimes an empty room backstage is all he makes it to. It wouldn’t be often but he would love the thrill of it. I think more so he’d just like to tease you subtly when you’re in public so that you’re begging for him by the time you’re home. 

-Speaking of if you want to put Eddie in the mood to dominate the shit out of you, tease him in public. He would throw you a dangerous look, daring you to continue with your antics with a smirk. You’d place your hand back on his thigh with an innocent smile, making him look at you darkly, teeth clenched as you slowly move your hand to his clothed dick. Or you’re out partying with him, grinding your ass against him while you dance, Eddies hands gripping your hips tight in warning. In any instance probably grab your wrist and drag you home. Let’s just say you’d be sore when he’s done with you.

-I feel like Eddie would high a really high sex drive, you’d fuck loads but he’d still wank when you’re not there because he’s just insatiable. He’s late to the sex game so he’d just be very horny and happy to have someone he can be having frequent sex with. Especially someone as smoking hot as you. He can’t help himself really, when you look and feel that good, of course he’s going to love fucking you. 

-Edward Munson loves to eat pussy. He just loves it, he is obsessed with the taste of you, with getting to be between your delicious thighs, with your sweet moans, the way your legs shake when you cum around him, thighs squeezing down his head. And my god would he be good at it, we’ve seen that tongue. He would know exactly what to do with it to make you fall apart, and when his fingers come into it… game over. It would make him so hard, he’d always be grinding subtly against the mattress as he eats you out desperate to sink into your soaked pussy but only after you’ve cum for him. Eddie would definitely want to make sure you’ve cum every time you have sex and this is probably his favourite way. 

[littlemisssquiggles]

...SO...ABOUT THE DRAGON PRINCE SEASON 5...

So I finally settled down to watch the new season of The Dragon Prince: Mystery of Aaravos and oddly enough, I don’t have much to say about for this current season.

Don’t get me wrong, that’s not to say that the season was bad or that I didn’t enjoy it. I just don’t have a lot to gush about for S5 to fill an entire musing post so I’m just gonna give my general thoughts:

Overall, I thought S5 was pretty solid season. I definitely enjoyed it a lot better than S4, for sure.

As always, the art and animation of the series looked beautiful and I don’t know if it’s cause I haven’t watch TDP in a while but somehow the animation looked a lot better to my eyes than ever

But given how S5 ended, now I am completely confused as to where exactly this story of Aaravos is going to go. Here I figured it would’ve played out as what you’d expect---I figured Claudia would’ve succeeded in retrieving Aaravos’ prison; freeing him entirely and saving her father in the process---y’know her entire motive for this current arc.

But instead, not only does Claudia fail compared to last season’s conclusion (and losing a leg in the process! Like that surprised me. I wasn’t expecting Rayla to have cut the tentacle that was actually Claud’s real foot. That got me good) but to my surprise as the audience, Viren actually had a change of heart?!

Not only does he wish to do away with dark magic but also Aaravos’ influence as well; basically resolving himself to die and the season just ends with him preparing to do so.

I...was not expecting that at all.

And do you know what else I wasn’t expecting? That little tidbit about Viren’s past with baby Soren and what was hinted during that sequence.

From what I gathered from Viren’s memories, it seems like as a toddler, Soren was very sick and appeared to be at death’s doorstep until Viren used dark magic to either bring his son back from the brink of death or cure him of whatever cursed disease he had that was plaguing him.

This is about the second time Soren has been saved from some life-threatening event by his loved ones using dark means to do so. We got a taste of it back in S2 when Claudia killed the baby deer to cure Soren of his paralysis and now we have the reveal of Viren doing the same to cure him of some unknown illness he has a baby.

This makes me wonder something about Soren---is he supposed to die at some point? Is this a sign by the narrative that there’s going to be death flags for Soren? Both his sister and their father have done bad things just to keep him alive.

Imagine if…in the end, Soren sacrifices his life for either his father or Claudia or both of them?

As adorably naive as the show often likes to portray Soren at times as our veteran himbo, Soren is also pretty selfless and loyal, almost to a fault---willing to do anything to protect the people most dearest to him. Before it was his family and now it’s his friends. And what’s worse is that Soren is oblivious to what both his sister and their father have done for him.

How do you think Soren will react to knowing what his dad did for him when he was just a baby boy?

Dear Dragon Prince, you can’t just have Viren be a complete awful dad to Soren last season (which fits the bill since Viren has always been an ass to his son) and then be like “Nah, Viren actually loves Soren more than we’ve led ya’ll, the audience, to believe for FIVE WHOLE seasons. Here have a flashback of Viren actually being loving and affectionate to his only son and first born child.”

Viren has always been that kind of conflicting villain where you don’t like him for his actions but you can’t completely bring yourself to hate him because most of his heinous acts have been for the betterment of people he cares about deeply. So between, this new Soren revelation and Viren hitting Aaravos with dem divorce papers after telling him to kill their discount Smeagle/Gollum love child to bring himself back to life fully, this just adds another layer of conflicting feelings for yours truly with Viren as a character and what the f***k Aaron Ehauz and Justin Richmond.

And this is ONTOP of whatever the f***k they intend to do with the King Harrow’s soul being trapped inside of a bird which they actually teased this season.

Oh good! I thought they FORGOT that plot line because two years have passed within the TDP universe and neither Ezran nor Callum are aware that their father is alive…kind of? It’s kind of up in the air right now like the bird that his body was swapped with whose whereabouts are unknown.

All we know is that the bird escaped way back in season…what is it? One? The very first book and FIVE SEASONS later, we still don’t know what became of it.

FIVE SEASONS and HOW MANY BOOKS OF SIDE STORIES and we still got no closure on that, among other things.

I have a feeling that by the time the Mystery of Aaravos is resolve, the whole main cast is gonna have their dads back.

Callum and Ezran are gonna get their dad back cause he ain’t dead---he a bird.

Rayla is gonna get her dad, her dad figure and even her momma back too cause they ain’t dead---they got turned into money!

Claudia and Soren are gonna get their dad back cause Viren ain’t dead---he got brought back to life and there may be a sliver of chance in the plot that he’ll end up surviving and living long enough to have an actual healthy relationship with BOTH of his children, no dark magic required.

And finally Zym---the Dragon Prince himself---is gonna get his daddy back because the Dragon King ain’t dead either! He just turned to stone and I’m sure there will be some magical way to turn him back.

It’s actually kind of funny---NOBODY’S DAD IS ACTUALLY DEAD IN THIS SHOW XD

I feel like they’re gonna pull a complete bait and switch. Since this is the second season they’ve teased an alternate opening with Callum as one of Aaravos’ key pawns, this cannot be a coincidence now.

In a future season, Callum will fall to the dark side and become a dark mage; whether he does so willingly of his own choice or not as a result of becoming possessed by Aaravos again.

Here I thought it was going to be Claudia who would ultimately turn full evil and we’d basically get a similar scenario as to what we got in S3 with her replacing her father as Aaravos’ main vessel.

However; after watching this season in full, it dropped just enough nuggets to debunk this. Following the ending of “Finnegrin’s Wake”, hinting more at the possibility of Callum experimenting with dark magic, I feel like that will be the twist or subversion for the next book/future season: Aaravos trading Claudia and Viren for Callum becoming his dark mage with friends needing to come together to save him.

That’s my theory for now.

So in conclusion, Season 5 was pretty good. Not gonna gripe too much about Rayllum this time since they actually delivered good on some decent Rayllum crumbs for this book. Still no kisses as yet (except in a flashback to the SUPERIOR S3) but I'll take what I got from this season. ESPECIALLY the part where Amaya popped off on Rayla for breaking Callum's heart and leaving him.

Mad respect for Amaya for looking out for her nephew's best interest; even jacking up his ex. Especially since it led to a cute moment between the couple later. I mean, they're still not back together-together as yet officially but like I said I'll take it for now.

At least we got some Terry and Claudia kisses this season which were quite sweet.

Terry wasn't as big of a focal character for this season sadly as he was last season but still loved his moments of being a more grounded and positive source support for Claudia. No pun intended here but Terry is really growing on me as a favourite from this side of the TDP story.

If I have anything more to say, I'll say in seperate post. As for now, these are main thoughts on TDP S5.

~LMS (2023)

[steve0discusses]

S5 Ep6: Joey Wheeler is on Fire, Yet Again

Came down with a little sickness-not the biggie, just a little sly guy. But I took some meds, I’m a little floaty, I’ve only been listening to baroque music all morning for some reason? And I hate baroque music usually? But I’ll leave it to bro to tell me if this is fluid enough.

Just so you know, these caps were kind of a hot mess for a while and some of them read like that Garfield in of hot eat the food comic until...today. So pls don’t judge me, Judge my damn DMV where no one was following Covid regulations because I’m pretty sure that’s where I got this damn cold.

We start off with Roland getting more attention than he ever has in his entire life. Like honestly, I don’t know what Roland’s job really is...but he’s got a very diverse set of very useless skills. One of which, is knowing how to announce sports games that aren’t really a sport, while those games he’s announcing slowly fall into chaos.

Anyway, Roland’s taking so long cherishing his sweet time before everything goes to hell, that he’s boring Joey, who’s kinda turned into a ball of stress in the waiting room.

A lot of this episode is us watching them watching Joey having a break down moment by moment, TBH.

(read more under the cut)

Yugi telling Joey to study his cards and straight up--what?

Like at this point they know what’s on the cards, right? Like there comes a point where even Yugioh cards have a finite amount of words and I’m just going to assume that like...Joey probably knows them all in his own deck, right?

(bro note: they have no limit on what they will put on a card)

Then again, maybe Yugi doesn’t know what “study” means?

Also, appreciate how some artist crosshatched the hell on Joey’s nose there and I zoomed out and ruined it.

Now for some reason every duelist is hanging out in the duel lodge, including our current arch-villain guy who’s brought a book. I want to know what book this guy even reads so no one could suspect he’s actually a hacker who uses computers. He’s reading romance, right? And I don’t think he’d even be into Twilight, I think he’s straight up into hard core Mom romance like a lame ass Nicholas Sparks over there reading “Dear John” for the millionth time because he is completely un-phased by anything else happening in this room.

Joey, our hero, just out there being an asshole for no reason.

After Tea is pushed into a locker or something screaming about her need for female friends (which she screamed in earshot of Rebecca again, who I figured was on friends terms with her after last episode...but I guess not) Leon hops up to remind us that we should be caring about the fact that his character exists.

And like, I love Leon’s hair color--that’s a good choice, and legit that is the color I tried to dye my hair at the beginning of the epidemic (it didn’t work PS, my hair cannot take dye for the life of it) but also like...he just kinda feels like a weak Rebecca as far as characters go. He’s young, he’s good at cards...I think he goes to a private school? That’s all I can think of about Leon.

He mostly just reminds us that the big prize of this tourney is to duel Yugi, who anyone could have dueled at any point even without the tournament.

On the way out of the...duel room? lounge? Area? Joey decides to like...make peace with Zigfried, and I gotta tell you, I kinda have to side with Zigfried, because Joey spent the last ten minutes being a freak in the dressing room/lounge/bathroom and at one point looked like he was going to hold the entire locker room in a stranglehold.

I would also want some space from Joey Wheeler, is what I’m saying.

After insulting Joey’s style (which honestly, Joey...has a style? He pops his collar, that’s his entire style.) Zigfried assures us that Joey’s gonna lose and like...

...probably, right? Just looking at the plausible direction this season will go.

Anyway, Joey is such a mess (which is the theme of the episode, that Joey needs to learn to chill in order to win at card games) that Rebecca is like “I understand if all of you leave me to go help our poor baby Joey.” And no one felt bad for her.

Mokuba comes over to tell everyone all of the Kaiba family secrets because Mokuba has no filter.

Seto has devoted himself to staring at a computer screen for the rest of this episode. I guess he’ll put their names into Google, realize that social media hasn’t been invented yet, and then just lie his head down on the desk and take a power nap until the tournament is over. Much like I did after taking Dayquil this afternoon.

I like how Seto dressed for success and then locked himself in the server room for most of this arc so far. Maybe he’s just...really tired, I dunno. I don’t really blame the guy, he’s had a hard time.

And then Yugi was like “DAMN IT MOKUBA, JUST ONCE CAN YOU NOT INVITE THE ILLUMINATI???”

And we had a weird scene where Yugi just started talking to the ghost and it was while he was talking to everyone else, and the show didn’t treat it like that’s a weird thing to do...but it was a weird thing to do.

This show does that sometimes, where I guess they imply that Yugi’s Pharaoh conversations are split second conversations but...they’re not, right?

Also this chick ain’t gone yet, and Mokuba is just failing at his entire job for not zeroing in on vibes coming off this chick like stinky cheeseman.

So listen.

Did the Kaibas make like 3 types of Blue Eyes Caboose to one up Noah? Because Noah made one choo choo dragon, and then Mokuba and Seto were like “how dare” and then made sure that everyone ride every single version of the blue eyes caboose just to see how proud of them they were.

How many months of troubleshooting was the train? Like how long in development did Seto and Mokuba spend on these? A lot right? Like most of the time?

I did not check the subs to see if Roland said Jumping or Champion but I like to believe that Roland thought it was a cool new name he gave him.

Then these guys all showed up.

Hey so...can we talk seating arrangements?

Tea decided not to sit next to Yugi after complaining about not spending time with him for like how many episodes? Or was it too awkward to sit on top of what was probably Pharaoh?

Or did Mokuba go like “please, Tea, I cannot sit next to the others because I’m pretty sure one is a mole that is about to go cray” and was Tea like “Good, I need female friends, these ones are driving me crazy!” and then was Mokuba like peering desperately over the edge of his self made dragon train prison realizing he has to listen to Tea complain about boys for the rest of his ride across molten lava?

Headcanons abound about this weird seating arrangement that the animators drew for the reasons they did...but reasons I cannot fully understand. That and the Dayquil is making me overfixate on random stuff.

And also, Tea is kind of the Kaiba’s security’s understudy. Just there to always protect Mokuba with her ass because she’s the strongest woman alive.

PS I missed the tumblr wars because at the time I was trying to like...run a proper business on blogger. When Blogger died and I jumped over here it was like a weird ruin where everyone was like “tumblr is the most toxic place alive” and...I’ve had a really nice time here, actually. Completely missed that civil war period and I have no regrets.

Now I was there for the Petz wars (warz, I guess) where people were very militant about Petz abuse (abuze?) where apparently people were using the spray bottle on their catz too much and people were very, very upset about it to the point that they were like campaigning about it on their angelfire websites with the most bizarre grassroots campaigns that I still recall, to this day because they were like...well they looked like this:

PLAPA. Not only am I 100% positive that only this one guy ever called this movement PLAPA, but I’m 100% positive that not only are Catz not real people, but also this wasn’t actually happening and we never had any proof that it was. Either way, if people knew or suspected that you hadn’t deleted the spray bottle from your game (which at the time I had no idea how to do because I was a wee child) they would basically assume you were on a one way road to being a mass murderer in real life.

In real life we were 7 years old so like...thanks?

But that’s the closest I got to toxicity and at the time I was too young to make an email account and actually converse with these people. I was just there to download their Petz hexes, and I already made a post about how wonderful and incredible Petz Hexing was.

And y’all, I heard, just now after a little deep dive into the Petz Abuse debacle (which yes, is on the wiki), that apparently, like gardening, Petz Hexing came back in a big way during the epidemic--and I have found an active Petz forum in this the year 2021. The only problem is that I no longer remember how to use old timey forums...and I think I’m locked out of seeing most of these threads (and like this forum is so old I think I have to send them a letter in the physical mail to apply). But, I’m pretty sure they’re hosting a picture contest for who’s dogz poses the best. And I’m pretty sure someone created a hexxed Pickle Rick. Or it’s a photoshop that was made to look like a hexxed Pickle Rick.

Dammit why did it have to be Pickle Rick? That’s not worth re-installing Petz and getting it to run on Windows 10...

Guys is this the Dayquil? Is this really happening? I feel like I’m losing my mind for so many reasons...

Anyway, speaking about useless hexing it’s about time that our villain did something that was actually dangerous, so Zigfried decided to install a new virus that does more than turn off the lights. (it still turns off lights)

the Spreadsheet Virus!

Confounded by the spreadsheet software, it...um...it does this:

Straight up how does Excel make a volcano erupt? Is that why I have to pay for Microsoft office now?

All this because Joey made fun of Zigfried’s naturally pink hair? Which is the most normal hair on this series outside of like...Tristan?

Hey guys...Joey’s fine, right? Like how many times has Joey been on fire? And once in an iron cage next to like...a Fire Golem?

Joey’s fine.

MAN I miss Fire Golem. He had a good mug.

And then we just kinda watch chaos go across the park, chaos that includes: Too many ghosts in the haunted mansion (which honestly--you’ll get your money’s worth, sounds great!), the Ferris wheel goes kinda fast and thus might accidentally be fun, the lights turn off at some concert stage that only had 2 people on it (so it might just be motion detector lights and not even a virus), and um...literal fire and magma are going to set Joey Wheeler on fire.

Just...one of these events does not seem like the others. In fact most of these things sound like good improvements to the park and they should just hire Zigfried at this point.

Roland puts down his microphone and jogs across the stage, about a mile through the audience bleachers, and into the staff lounge, to go and bother Seto Kaiba, who is in a room that has a hi-def classical painting copy-pasted on the wall and I can’t look away from it.

I almost did a Google search on this painting but then thought better about it. There’s like...a billion classical paintings that look exactly like this, and they wouldn’t use like a Monet, they would have to do something that’s harder to catch to avoid copyright issues (because yes, even old ass paintings have copyright issues, but no one tell NFT’s which are going to be so freakin screwed and was such a bad idea, that I can’t even start).

Anyway, I have no idea who it is and it is legitimately driving me up a wall, but I’m on too much meds to do the effort of putting it in a reverse google image search.

Plus, a reverse google image search would only pull up Seto Kaiba.

So Kaiba takes us on a little flashback to his weird ass past, a weird ass past that just...doesn’t follow any of the established timelines, but I assume was shortly after adoption but before Seto got into a phase where he wore his school outfit everywhere and tried to shove his MMO off onto his Dad as a business model.

Seto is like 8 for some reason. I don’t know why, they kinda drew him younger this season anyway, like maybe they got a lot of fan mail and realized “Hey I think we made the 16 yo boy too sexy?” And they just toned Seto the hell down. That, and it’s a different animation team, and maybe they looked at Seto’s character design and were like “we don’t get paid enough to draw this well.” So...since Seto actually looks like a teen again, I guess his 12 year old self has to look like he’s in Elementary school.

Also, I only recognized this, because at some point in S3 as I was roasting Noah Kaiba’s weird fashion:

I remember distinctly roasting that little bow tie. I don’t remember when I wrote it, I think there was a version of this outfit that was in color...but I don’t remember where.

Anyway, it’s not the same jacket...but man that’s kind of awkward, ya? Like the maid who dressed Mokuba deffo got fired?

He um.

Turned the lights off a little bit.

Guys this villain is like...

...why does he think lights are scary? Like look at little Seto here. The boy is already bored. Seto duels on the edges of cliffs...he doesn’t care about the freakin dark.

We had a guy who killed everyone on the planet last season, and this season we have a little fashion gremlin standing in the corner and flicking the light switch going  “wooooo you never catch me!” and it’s like...

...I’m starting to think this guy isn’t a witch.

Like we’re at Episode 6, there’s still time for this guy to be a witch...but I really am starting to think this guy is just...straight up not a witch. It’s everything Seto wanted, a rival who isn’t a freakin magic person...and sets Joey only fake on fire instead literally on fire like last time...

and Seto is just completely unhinged by it.

Anyway, I’m off to go drink a bowl of soup and pass out. If you’re new here, this is a link to read these in chrono order.

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

[roccinan]

1/? simply because you have the most galaxy brain thoughts ever,,, what do you think would've happened if they waited until s5 to reveal sergio and andrés were (half)brothers?

i do know that when my fam started watching lcdp at first i was so put off. like i watched ep 1 and the prof creeped me out. ""berlin"" creeped me out. e v e r y o n e creeped me out. and i was cringing so hard becz of the short lived romance angle with alison parker. i literally did not watch s1 at all xcept for like sneak peeks. highlights being the scene where berlin discovers monica is alive and does his dramatic door by door thing? that was so SUSPENSEFUL even tho i had no idea what was going on. DOMINGO DE RESURECCION remains forever iconic.

2/? And OF COURSE the group bella ciao dance when they hit earth (hahah i thought the banda were actually like a "found family where they all love each other LOL") i am a SUCKER for found family. but anyhoo when i properly got intrigued was s2 when tokyo was kicked out (the music from that scene is still my favourite) it's just so dramatic..!! why am i telling u all this again? right, i haven't slept a wink and it's nearly 7 am pls forgive me if these rambles make no sense. i have a point with this.. i'm going somewhere

RIGHT. so when the fam actually rewound the ep cz i wanted to know WHY berlin did that (didn't fully realise how batsht crazy he can be), the russian roulette scene played. and pedro's acting. MAN. and like just that ep they made a point of showing us these flashbacks where sergio and andrés hug....

Hi anon! Thanks for stopping by- sorry took me a while to get back to you, will do my best to answer this string of messages (got all 4 parts)! Glad you like my thoughts XD

Firstly, I believe Andres/Sergio would be the biggest LCDP ship if the writers were evil enough to wait until s5 to reveal that they’re brothers asdfasdf. They’re already the two most popular male characters anyway. 

It’d be especially crazy because it’s not like they tell the actors these things beforehand either. So that means there’d probably be a Serdres vs Berlermo vs Serquel fight every 5 minutes. I mean, even if not everyone agrees on everything in the lcdp fandom, it’s the most “peaceful” one I’ve ever been in because no character really gets in the way of any other ship (like even with helermo and berlermo there’s no true conflict since Andres is dead). But with Serdres in the mix?? CATASTROPHE. Everyone out here writing essays about how much of a bastard/bitch/homewrecker/motherfucker that Andres or Sergio or Martin or Raquel is. Never a moment’s peace!! so basically, a regular fandom lmao.

Then when we find out they’re brothers, it goes from catastrophe to Apocalypse. Suddenly serquel and berlermo have the upper hand. Everyone would double down and harass the crew/cast into whatever’s going on.  Plot-wise, everything is the same though, just without Andres calling Sergio “hermanito.” Fandom however, would be a minefield! And I’m glad that’s not the case because I’d probably be an unfortunate serdres shippers XD No joke, my mother and I thought they were a couple in S1. So bullet dodged!

Secondly: haha, everyone creeped me out in S1 too, especially Berlin, I hated him, but thinking back, I think I mostly hated the fact that I didn’t hate him as much as I should have. I’ve made peace with it now but oh boy, was he a controversial figure in my head. I actually like the professor on sight though! IDK why, maybe because I thought his plans were cool or because of Alvaro’s delivery. I was afraid of an Alison Parker romance thing too- like, I do feel like she had a storyline that got dropped, but that part was quite cringey and overall unnecessary to the plot. Same with Ariadna, which was even cringier and even Less necessary to the plot. 

Domingo de resurrecion was iconic though yes! And even with all that said, I genuinely enjoyed parts 1 and 2 because it was so different from anything else I’d seen. Not content wise, but maybe tonally? IDK, they were just really bold with a lot of things, like being objectively unafraid of having the protagonists (plural because all of them did LMAO) do objectively shitty things. Really kept me in suspense from beginning to end! 

I’m usually a big fan of found families too! The funny thing is, then banda never struck me as a “family” until season 3. In 1 and 2, I was wondering what felt different about this show; then it hit me that these people remained colleagues to the end. Like, they backstabbed each other (repeatedly) and everyone was quite selfish, and only the bonds that were already there stuck. They were the opposite of a found family LOL But I think by S3, they went down the found family route and I didn’t mind because it makes quite a lot of sense for them to feel that bond after the Mint heist and almost dying/living together (and having witnessed 3 deaths together on the team). But I still doubt Berlin and Palermo were ever really part of this found family, with good reason XD

LOL the scene where Tokyo got kicked out is also among my favorites!! It was so funny and dramatic, and it was like, wow we can go anywhere with this now! Don’t worry- your rambles and thoughts are always welcome :D

I’m rolling over how you watched the Tokyo expulsion scene before the Russian Roulette scene haha. Also yes, PEDRO. Berlin may have been “controversial” to me at first, but I became Pedro’s fan from day one! Also the Hug is probably what made me like Berlin (despite my determination to hate him rip) in the first place. 

3/? ... and like now that i think about it... tokyo had real guts huh. like she KNEW berlin was close enough to el prof to know his name (fhshshs imagine if she'd heard andrés saying 'hermanito' it's unrealistic that she didn't TBH. i mean obviously they decided to make them brothers only towards the end but like in canon universe. how tf did andrés de 'i raised my bby brother since he was 12 and i'd actually die for him and his stupidly brilliant plans' fonollosa go 5 months without slipping up once and calling sergio hermanito. or like,,, i like to imagine sergio kinda gave him lots of leeway(?) sergio's a lil oblivious too but like i'm sure half of it is.. that's my dumbass older bro shut up i'm not being partial you all have city names .. andr-berlin, pass the salt. like OOF. + sergio also knew his big bro was dYiNG so like. i'm sure they were sneaking in some quality time (i hope they did 😭 gosh imagine if sergio really did not ever consider the possibility of andrés dying in the heist so he'd tell himself he needs to perfect the plan now & anyway he'll have enough time to spend w/ his brother post heist in philippines. and then ... that happened :/

Tokyo has guts in place of braincells you bet that she’d do something like this, consequences be damned XD I also think it’s unrealistic for Andres not to slip up, but I have a feeling nobody besides Tokyo really tried to spy on them in private. I headcanon that Andres instead slips up and does things like ruffle Sergio’s hair or adjust his tie when other people are around. I also think Tokyo was convinced that they were a gay couple when she saw them hug XD And if Sergio never went on to tell the banda that Berlin was his brother, everyone would be giving Palermo such awkward looks after Nairobi accused him of being in love with Berlin LMAO. 

I agree! I also imagine Sergio giving Andres leeway because he’s just so used to interacting with his brother that way haha. So either he’d go out of his way to ignore Berlin in front of everyone else or IDK, borderline telepathically communicate with him. Not even “pass the salt” has to leave his mouth- Berlin just puts salt into his food and cuts it up for him, in front of everyone who’s just staring like O.O

I actually do think Sergio never considered the possibility of Andres dying in the heist because he was just that confident in his own plan. Plus, Andres was probably the one person he expected to survive. And a lot of it has to do with Sergio’s attachment to him + Andres’ own habit of downplaying any illness/injury over the years, which I think is safe to believe canon. He was really in no condition to be in the heist, let alone lead it. Just the fact that he needs to take those injections is a big sign that he shouldn’t be there, but Sergio didn’t catch it because he’s human and blinded by faith :’) So yeah, I think Sergio was planning to spend proper time with Andres in Palawan and at Toledo, they just settled for those little moments by the fireplace. 

4/? what always also just GETS me in the feels is that el prof was shown to be this in control creepily calm dude who is miles ahead of everyone. + in the 1st Toledo class itself we see how detached,, like how impersonal he is, how professional - choosing frickin CITY NAMES?! no 'personal relationships' ? (after recruiting his older brother, a father son pair, and war cousins... oh sergio 😂 he's such a frickin nerd and i love him) but like the earlier seasons really emphasised how robotic and down right COLD he can be. it still sometimes bothers me that he put the button in the car. he lead the police to his own damn brother, his blood, who took care of him and adopted him and was terminally ill and like - UGH i try to rationalise that sergio is that cold and unbothered. or that he has strict morals. but it still bothers me becz that button really sort of tipped andres' already unstable sanity. like andrés tells denver someth like you've robbed my future and after that he just seems so much more suicidal and accepting that he can't get out of the mint alive - WHY SERGIO WHY. I KNOW THAT AT THAT POINT YOU BASICALLY DIDN'T KNOW ANDRÉS WAS GOING TO BE YOUR BROTHER YET BECZ IT WASN'T WRITTEN IN THE SCRIPT BUT WHYYYYY

That’s so funny to me too LMAO No personal relationships, then he recruits these guys. Sergio, hello?? Also can’t forget how he just recruited his own girfrleind in the second heist too. Buddy! Love this nerd.

I don’t think that cold aspect of Sergio went away in later seasons either; he just had more opportunity to show a more open side of himself + without Andres, he had to metaphorically leave his comfort zone without a safety net. But in earlier seasons, he really did seem heartless at times XD Then again, we can argue that the same goes for Andres.

To be fair, I didn’t feel sorry for Andres over the button thing lol, but once the brothers reveal happened and all of Alvaro/Pedro’s headcanons came out and we know everything Andres did for Sergio, it makes what Sergio did REALLY harsh. We really just have to explain it through Sergio’s strict morals and him believing this to be the best non-fatal punishment for Andres, who at that point had convinced him he killed a hostage. And because he knew the television interview was coming up, maybe Sergio assumed Andres would use it to “clear” his name anyway. And empathy isn’t one of Sergio’s strong suits either, so through that lens, I can rationalize it.

Also it was lowkey funny to me how Andres was there like DENVER MUST DIE until he found out Sergio put the button there, then he was like “oh hermanito, you and your practical jokes <3″

Still, like you said, Andres and Sergio weren’t brothers yet at this point. They were probably supposed to be lovers lmao and had a dysfunctional Hannibal Lecter x Will thing going on. But because they made #hermanos canon, that button moment just feels very out of place now, especially given how much the two genuinely love each other.

Guess we could also say that Sergio’s just generally kinda bratty with Andres XD Like, he knows no matter what, Andres would forgive him anything. That’s how I see it anyway! 

[lovecanbesostrange]

Hot takes about OUaT. What a time to be alive.

@isagrimorie I loved, I adored that bit. The juxtaposition of Snow White’s ‘real world’ reputation vs how real!Snow is actually into angry rock!

I think the whole dual personality was dropped too soon. But it’s especially weird with Snow. They have her go back to the Enchanted Forest, where she immediately falls into all the badassery we love about her. Like Emma doesn’t even have the brainspace to fully compute, that her nice teacher roommate casually grabs bow+arrow and a sword and knows exactly what to do with those (while running around with her tiny handgun, oh Emma, you dork). But she is fine being called Mary Margaret, until they suddenly remember “maybe we should switch that” and give like a midlife-persona-crisis in S4 to say it out loud. Which on the one hand I like, on the other is so late in the game.

As incomprehensible as I find the story surrounding Eloise Gardner and as someone who liked OUaT in Wonderland and that Alice 1.0, I have to say that S7 was a fun watch for the most part. But I also love S4 very much, even though it’s for the shallow reason of the sexy villainess quartet. (It’s also weird how Maleficent has more bad blood with Snow than Aurora; just like Zelena is so fixated on Regina that... everything they could have done with Oz beyond flying monkeys is ignored. And I’m not just saying that because big grumpy lesbian Dorothy Gale is a thing I didn’t know I craved so much.)

@cliquestitsandicks And i actually hated that Regina never got to keep a romantic partner just because she wanted it so badly.

I felt the whole Tink showing her Robin Hood was... a bad, bad move. But also when it finally happened, I also shrugged and though “sweet, gonna be happy for Regina and hey, the guy can hold his own in dialogue, that’s great”. And then they didn’t care about him as a character?! Honestly, it would have been better if he left with (the real) Marion and never came back. Painful goodbye, but a finished story. And we could look at Tink and ask “wtf??”.

On the one hand I want to applaud the underlying choice that the most important love in Regina’s life is her love as a mother to Henry. (As someone who doesn’t want kids, btw, because me not wanting the thing doesn’t mean I don’t see value in that.) And it was a love she had to earn. because she was absolutely gaslighting him. She overcame everything she had learned from Cora. On the other hand, this show is all about True (romantic) Love - and Regina deserves this kind of happiness, too! Especially when Rumple is allowed to choose power over love - with a surprised pikachu-face when said loved ones don’t think that’s cool - again and again, only for love to come back to him anyway. (And I get they tried to tell us, that as the Dark One this lure about power is super strong, but they only remembered to have him put up a tiny bit of fight, when it was for dramatic scene reasons.)

I love Robert Carlyle in this role and understand why he needed to be kept around. But they fell down the hole of “gonna have to find excuses for him” soap opera style and played it totally straight. While always going on about how Regina is a villain and doesn’t deserve happiness. And then it’s the whole plot of 4b, where it’s all glorious, but with S5... meh... also let’s keep Zelena for.... reasons. And let her have a baby, a lover and fun while being her most horrible self and then sweep it under the rug. While Regina SUFFERS. (Yeah, boohoo, she lost Hades, but it’s not like it affected her for more than two minutes, because she did have the..... let’s say dubious-consent baby..... which will never be addressed when said baby becomes a character who idolizes the father she never knew..... and doesn’t mention her brother that seems completely forgotten..... honestly, was Roland ever mentioned again? Regina cared about him, because she cares about children.)

Meanwhile Emma and Hook have one of the worst relationship build-ups with all the tropes why we are tired of “she’s a girl, he’s a boy”-romances. Which is so weird, because Snow and Charming are everything I want to see with couples. The respect, trust, friendship and also yes-I-have-punched-this-face-but-really-I-just-want-to-kiss-it. I can deal with Emma being like “yo, pirate, you don’t have to choose to be a dick, because it’s easier to be alone, I have understood that friends are awesome and you can, too”. That there is a connection somewhere. But they aren’t even friends. They are the type of couple that will constantly decide what is best for the other without talking. Which is fine to a degree for dramatic sacrificial plays, but it has to lead to “that was a stupid thing to do, talk to me next time”. And then next time they do. Or where it’s clear that one partner loves the other way more and they both know this isn’t something that will last (see Buffy/Spike for reference, ignoring of course the end of S6). Hook is a worse version of Spike and I don’t care about him that much as his own character already (dear Jane Espenson, I enjoy what you write very much across so many shows I like, but we need to have a talk, I know this is your type of character; but you also wrote Red-Handed, We are both and In the Name of the Brother, so I owe you and will let this slide).

[justallamaimaginingthings]

Scars [Jorah Mormont x Reader]

Request: "Okay, so can I ask for a Jorah fic? I don’t care what you write, I haven’t cried during Game of Thrones yet and I’m just now into s5. Maybe something soft, some vulnerability when it comes to his... greyscale? Is that what it’s called?? 😂😂😂" by @morganas-pendragons

A/n: I’ve edited this three times and completely gave up after that. Really hope you like it!! Btw exams are almost over and I couldn’t be happier 💘💘 

Words: 2000  ||  GoT Masterlist

You couldn’t hold back a flinch the moment the washcloth came in contact with your skin. The gaping wound on your shoulder was, however, a small price to be paid against surviving the Battle of Winterfell. The healing room around you was bursting with groans of pain as not everyone stood as lucky as you had been. Scanning the place for what seemed like the hundredth time, you were unable to spot Jorah once again, feeling another wave of fear course through you.

The last time you had seen him was just before the battle began and that had only been for the two of you to get into a tremendous fight. Jorah had insisted on you staying back and despite knowing he simply wanted to protect you, there was no way you’d listen to him. Letting out a sight, you were about to wrap a cloth around your wound and go back to searching for the man that was preoccupying your thoughts when the doors slammed open revealing a very distressed Missandei helping a barely standing Jorah.

Upon seeing the couple entering you hopped off the cot you had been sitting in, knocking almost everything off in the process as you rushed towards them. Allowing Jorah to hold onto you, you helped Missandei carry him to the nearest cot and gently lie him down. A pained groan escaped the man’s lips before he managed to take in his surroundings through half lidded eyes. His look was confused and blurry until it landed on you.

“Tyrion said you’d know what to do” Missandei explained in a panicked tone motioning towards Jorah and the terrible state he was in. He was covered in blood and mud and his armor was damaged to the point where you had trouble getting it off of his body. The moment you did, multiple deep cuts were revealed causing your breath to get caught in your throat in shock.

“Hopefully” you replied taking a deep breath in an attempt to slow down your increasingly frantic heartbeat “Pass me some clean cloths and water” you requested after inspecting the wounds, feeling slightly more optimistic upon realizing neither of them was located close enough to his heart to be life threatening.

“Y/n?” Jorah’s hoarse voice startled you causing you to almost drop the pieces of fabric you were holding.

“Hey. We made it, you’re safe now, we’re all safe” you explained while gently running your hand through his hair in a comforting manner while your other made its way to his cheek. The action seemed to have the desired result as he slightly relaxed into your touch.

“You’re fine…” He rasped as a small smile graces his features, the cuts on his face making even that movement painful.

“Of course I’m fine, you stubborn man. Now I just need you to hold on a little longer” you whispered softly taking his hand on yours “Can you do that for me?” you asked to which he replied with a tiny nod. The motion was enough for you, though as you gave his hand a reassuring squeeze before starting to work on his wounds, attempting to clean away the blood.

Every time the cloth came in contact with the damaged skin, you felt Jorah’s muscles tense and a stifled groan of pain escaped his lips one in a while. You despised nothing more than being the one to cause him even more pain, but it had to be done. At some point he must have passed out from the pain and exhaustion as his eyes shut and a more relaxed expression was apparent on his face.

After almost an hour which to you had seemed like an eternity, each and every cut and bruise in Jorah’s chest and face had been washed and tended to. Taking a moment to observe the rhythmic rising and falling of his chest you finally allowed yourself to feel relieved. Jorah was alive and despite the number of blows he had received, there was no doubt he was going to make it. Taking a deep breath, you pulled a chair next to the bed and sat down, the pulsing ache in your limbs reminding you of your own exhaustion as you fell back on the chair.

“Thank the gods you’re alive, I don’t know what I would do without you” you whispered even though you knew Jorah couldn’t hear any of it, right before falling asleep.

Rays of sunshine were passing through the curtains, hitting both you and Jorah and causing the man to stir in his sleep before finally waking up. The first thing he felt after opening his eyes was a piercing pain running through his entire body as he fell back into the mattress. Any attempts of moving proved to be futile, so Jorah settled for glancing around in order to fully observe his surroundings. Last thing he remembered before passing out was the loud noises of the healing room but now he found himself in a small bedroom.

Turning around his eyes met your sleeping form, curled up in a chair that has been placed near the bed. You were still in your armor and your hair was a mess, both proving you had been too preoccupied by taking care of him to look after yourself. The smile that had begun forming in his lips was instantly erased when he realized that underneath the sheet he was wearing nothing but his trousers which left his scar covered chest completely naked.

The noise of someone swirling around the bed woke you up as well. Eyes fluttering open, you were met by the sight of pure distress being written all over Jorah’s face.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” You asked, currently aware of the hoarseness your morning voice carried being mixed with worry.

“How did I end up here?” Jorah answered your question with one of his own.

“Grey Worm helped me carried you. The room is Jon’s offering” you explained carefully, not wanting to add more to his confused state. There was something more lingering in his eyes, but you were too distracted by the imminent wave of appreciation of the fact that he looked much better than he had the previous night.

“And did you…?” He trailed off motioning towards himself, actively avoiding your glance as if being ashamed of what that would imply. Since he had returned from the Citadell, you hadn’t gotten the chance to actually see the damage greyscale had left on him and he seemed to avoid facing that problem as much as possible.

“I tended to your wounds if that’s what you’re asking” you replied hesitantly, not sure about the reason behind his embarrassment. Jorah's mind was racing with countless thoughts and contradicting emotions. He was unimaginably thankful you had made it out alive and mostly uninjured. At the same time he could feel his heart swelling with affection at the thought of you caring to such extend even though there was also a hint of guilt caused by the trouble he had out you through. However, the most dominant one was fear, at the thought of you having to withstand the painful remark of his greyscale.

“No, Y/n, did you see?” He asked tensely and you could hear the strain of his voice. Since he had returned, you had noticed there had been a change in his behavior, as if he was hiding something that concerned him.

“The only thing I saw what just how deep those cuts run. You’re lucky to be alive. And by the looks of it they need to be bandaged up once more” you stated as a red stain of blood had started forming on the sheet covering Jorah’s chest. Getting up, you picked up a clean piece of fabric making your way towards the bed.

“Let me” Jorah said trying to take the bandages but you refused shaking your head.

“Moving will only risk tearing your stitches” you explained

“I can do it” he insisted and there was a hint of urgency in his tone confusing you even further.

“Yeah so can I. You don’t have to worry, I’m here for you, Jorah” you stated voices getting softer towards the end as you moved to remove the sheet but Jorah grasped your wrist before you could.

“I-I don’t want you to see this” he confessed slowly, bending his head down in shame.

“Jorah, I was the one who placed the stitches there, I’ve seen the wounds”

“I mean the scars. When Samwel Tarly cured me he said they’d never go away. I don’t want you to see them, it’s hideous” he explained pleadingly as despair and bitterness were evident in his voice. In his mind, the sight you'd be faced with was just another reason he felt unworthy of your love and affections. How could such a young and beautiful woman as yourself find it in her heart to care about him? He was damaged both mentally and physically and now that was more evident than ever.

“The only thing I care about is that you are alive. Scars only show what you’ve been through and what you have overcome. If anything, they show just how strong you are” you reassured him, taking his hand in yours and gently squeezing it. The thought of him believing you would be repelled by any part of him hurt you, but you chose not to let it show.

“They are revolting”

“You only see them as such, but do you know what I see? I see a beautiful and strong heart with an equally handsome appearance. Jorah, when I say I love you I mean all of you”

You extended your arm once more, gripping the sheet while you looked into his eyes waiting for a reaction. You hadn’t even realized you were holding your breath as he gave you a hesitant nod of agreement. The moment the sheet was thrown away, Jorah turned away, too afraid to face your reaction. A trembling hand was placed right on top of his heart, slowly trailing upwards to ghost over his collarbone until it reached his cheek prompting him to look at you.

Time seemed to freeze as your eyes met his, giving you the chance to observe the anticipation and the fear of rejection that was hiding in his look. Leaning down, you placed a feathery light kiss right where your hand had been, the rough texture if his skin being the complete opposite of your soft lips. Looking up at him, you repeated the action until every hint of anxiousness had disappeared, replaced by pure awe and a few unshed tears of relief.

“Scars or not, you’re the only one I have and will ever love” you said voice thick with emotion.

For a while neither of you spoke as you were both overwhelmed by the intensity of the moment. Jorah’s hand was tangled in your hair while his thumb softly traced over your lips as he leaned his forehead against yours.

“Thank you” he said before pulling you in for a passionate kiss. Channeling all of your love and devotion into it, you tried to chase away his insecurities. Jorah meant the world to you, and that wouldn’t change for all the scars in the world.

“Now let’s take a look at those stitches” you said after the kiss was broken causing the man to smile up at you. Feeling the affection and gentleness in your touch, Jorah knew it was all he needed for his fears to disappear. He still believed you to be too good for him, but actually getting to see just how deep your feelings for him ran, a glimmer of hope lit up as the chance of a brighter future slowly became plausible…

[lingeringscars]

disclaimer: i wrote this at 3am when i should have been sleeping and i have no desire to read back through it so if u see misplaced colons.....don’t @ me. just the usual me being back on my bs !

One of the more fascinating things about spacekru is that....most of the characters have very objective character growth. And im not about to dispute the fact that it has happened but i find it really interesting that....bellamy and raven haven't had it in a way. ( murphy’s going backward rather than forward in a way, at first, is also really important to me !!! )

@loveisaviolence and i have talked briefly about this with raven and how interesting it is but mostly the fact that it doesnt seem like raven has really processed any of her trauma and how instead probably threw herself into trying to get them home. This is as much as I'm going to talk on raven as i do not write her.

But bellamy on face value....seems to have changed a lot. Hes forgiven echo and formed a deep bond with her. Hes more rational in his actions than he typically used to be ( although i have talked ad nauseam about the fact that he always used both his head and his heart in tandem and it always being really fascinating to me. This shift in bellamy and clarke isnt bellamy becoming more head and clarke more heart....its them changing the motivation. Bellamy always used his head to think through what his heart was telling him. Everything with mount weather. Him dressing in azgeda gear to get to clarke. He was guided by his heart but used his head to do it. Clarke is the opposite-- shes guided by what is best for the whole. She uses her head but...her actions are very much her heart...not shooting bellamy when he opened the door or injecting herself with nightblood for instance. )

ANYWAY that tangent aside...bellamy was always very outwardly stressed / anxious. Every emotion would play out on his features and he was prone to outbursts pre space. After space...its become internalized. Like raven, he had a task: uniting them, leading them, survival. He, as always, gives his all to whatever the task is. That leaves little time to focus on himself.

While i do believe he came to terms with his actions, i do not think he ever processed them fully and instead pushed them aside. HOWEVER. Space is also the only time hes actually allowed to be angry. Bellamy doesnt allow himself these emotions when they have a war to fight. It’s also why him being so mad at Clarke in s3 is so important because....for the first time ( since first half of s1 )with her he was able to be !! He forgives because it is necessary. HIM TAKING 3 YEARS TO FORGIVE ECHO IS ACTUALLY PROGRESS. Instead of pushing his feelings down ( which lol he does w/ octavia in s5 and s6 hence the pretty violent emotional outbursts towards her ), he allows himself that time to hate her. He allows himself to be angry bc it doesnt directly impact their survival. They need to work together but that doesnt mean they have to like each other.

Flash forward to the ground and why i really dont think bellamy processed his trauma at all and instead just got better at hiding it. He did get that break from violence and going back to the ground throws him right back into the thick of it....but i also cannot fathom how people dont see how aggressively s1-4 bellamy is still present in his interactions, if more subdued. The most pressing relationships we see this: clarke and octavia.

Im not going to talk about clarke here bc quite frankly i dont remember enough to form coherent thoughts about his attitude towards Clarke in relation to finding out shes alive. Her "death" clearly had a major impact though. and despite them being out of sync...the do both fall back into coleaders with each other quickly.  

But the first thing bellamy does when he gets back....his primary motivation to return: Octavia. He thinks shes in danger so they need to go back down...immediately. more moments of everything being very internalized now is that very first bellamy & echo interaction where she reels him back in when he begins to spiral at the possibility that o isnt alive. He returns to the ground for her and then fights to get down to the bunker to rescue her.

Rescue. He still has the mentality that she is his responsibility. He should have been down there with her. He should have helped her. He is still taking the world onto his shoulders---- so did he really grow at all? Did he learn that everything is not his responsibility? Did he confront his upbringing and the consequences of it? No.

Come season 6 and he says that he has too many sins to release a lantern because he really hasnt forgiven himself at all. He thinks about it every day. He sees the faces in his dreams every night. He has not processed or moved forward at all.

And when we get the BIGGEST step of growth in the history of his character....."you are my sister. But you are not my responsibility. Not anymore." Not anymore. It is SO IMPORTANT that he is starting to FINALLY accept that octavia needs to take responsibility of her own actions..can no longer blame himself for not being able to stop her / help her....but...

Not anymore.

I dont know how to word this in a way that will sound eloquent so bear with me.... not anymore. Meaning it once was. Meaning....he thinks that up until she burned the farm he is to blame for her actions. Up until she burned the farm, she was his responsibility. He didnt confront what their mom said to him when he was six years old. He did not acknowledge the burden that was placed on him because he doesnt see it that way. He doesnt see it as something that was unfair or unreasonable because to go back to season 1....his life both ended the day she was born and started then too. He had a purpose taking care of octavia....he almost idolizes his mother [ the girl under the stairs like mom taught us...she raised me to be better than this. To be good ]. The thing space did allow him was the time to really, truly find a family outside of Octavia for the first time ever. Space allowed him the chance to have and love people FOR HIMSELF. And that made it a lot easier for him to break away and out of this stranglehold of a relationship where, in so many ways, he had been programmed to believe that everything was on him and any mistake was his fault. In space, he was able to see that there is life outside of octavia....but that doesnt mean he has processed the life he had with her...because he didn't.

In conclusion: bellamy really hasnt processed his trauma at all...just got better at directing it and hiding it. His anxiety became more internal: wringing his hands versus running into battle. He wants to move forward. He wants to do better. But he hasnt confronted the past--- not fully. And as long as there is a task to be completed, he never will. It isnt how he is programmed. He will run himself into the ground before taking a moment for himself because a leader gives everything that they are to their people. Space gave him a FAMILY. a place outside of octavia. something that is more balanced, with mutual respect and care....but when it comes to processing trauma? becoming more whole w/ himself in a way other members of spesikru have? not so much..........

[sparkwhorunswithwolves]

https://twothumbsandnostakeincanon.tumblr.com/post/190093073167/teen-wolf-au-where-true-piece-of-garbage-scott

https://twothumbsandnostakeincanon.tumblr.com/post/189499415267/peter-hale-offers-stiles-the-bite-in-s1-and-then

—

I assume you want to me react to that? Because, oh boy, do I have opinions about both of these things. This got surprisingly long, so read me ramble about True Asshole Scott and Stiles (not) choosing the bite for 1.2k words under the cut!:D

Scott telling Laura/Peter/Stiles that the Hales deserved to burn

So, here’s the thing; the only reason Peter didn’t rip his throat out for that in Magic Bullet is because he was still playing comatose. But both he and Stiles are fully aware of Scott’s hatred of Derek and his family. But Stiles weren’t there at the hospital, and I doubt Scott would have told Stiles what he told Derek.

And then Laura gets resurrected (because I don’t know what the circumstances in the original post were, so I’m going with resurrected after 3a) and becomes the alpha.

Scott’s only reference for other alphas are Peter/Derek/the alpha pack, and Laura is another Hale, and he obviously doesn’t trust her. He’s his own alpha now (even if I’m still tempted to go the Deaton did something and the True Alpha bs was just the Hale alpha spark needing a new “host” route, and have Scott resent her even more for “taking away his power he clearly earned”) with his own pack, and she can’t control him.

Laura and Peter worked out their issues off screen, Stiles gets a new bff or two, and starts training to become their emissary.

Scott wants something from Stiles, finds him with Laura and Peter, and promptly goes on a rant, because Stiles is his pack, and they’re evil, especially after what Pter had done to him. “They’re dangerous, people are going to get killed, and it’ll be on them. They were right to want to burn them.”

Peter already knew, Scott had never been quiet about hating them, and he’d had 6 years to learn not to react. The only reason Scott was still alive in his eyes was because of his connection to Stiles, but even then, this would have been the last straw for him and he’s already planning his very painful demise. He had been the left hand before the fire, he knew how to deal with threats to the pack quietly.

Stiles goes silent. He gets angry, he yells, he hurts; but he doesn’t go silent. But Scott just went after his pack, and he just locks eyes with Scott, his magic crackling around him as he gets closer to him. He doesn’t hurt him, doesn’t even touch him, but he still puts the fear of god into him.

Laura could probably go either way. She just died and came back to life, most of her old pack is dead because of the Argents, and now this 16 year old kid is pushing all their buttons. She goes for his throat right there. OR she had already been training to take over as alpha before the fire, had been taught about pack politics long enough to not make that mistake. This is Hale land, they officially claimed this territory weeks ago, and he formally kicks him and his out of Beacon Hills. (She’s also been alive again long enough to trust Peter to be her left hand, to take care of this problem before it leaves Beacon County.)

Stiles accepting the Bite

Note: I genuinely think that Stiles wanted to be a werewolf up until he saw what Peter could make Scott do. Not being able to control his actions/know what thughts are his have been issues since Claudia, and it only got worse with Jackson/the nogitsune/etc. Also, I’m going with regardless of if they’re an alpha at the time or not for reasons.

First-few-episodes!Stiles would have definetely accepted Scott’s bite, because they’re Brothers!:D and Stiles could help Scott while also improving his own life.

Scott keeps obsessing over Allison, and Peter controlls Scott, and Stiles isn’t ging to trust Scott not to sideline, or control him to step back in favour of Allison.

And it only gets worse; Isaac (and he’s heard about the throwing him against the wall thing), Kira, Malia. Everyone is more impartant than Stiles, and he doesn’t know if it’s because he’s human, or because he’s Stiles.

Also, given Scott’s general behavior towards Derek, and other people’s agency, this isn’t someone Stiles would trust to just hand over his potential free will.

(Stiles kind of does regret not asking him in s5, but then Scott confronts him about Donavan, and he’d rather have his free will and be a murderer in Scott’s eyes, than be alpha-voiced into letting himself be killed if it meant not getting blood on his own hands.)

Up until 3a Derek is a hard no, mostly because s1 Derek scares him, and he doesn’t trust him, and then he sees his new betas and how they’re acting, and Stiles nopes right out of there.

I mean, I kiiind of can see him asking Derek post-s4-ish. Because they both have issues with consent/general mind-fuckery, and once they actually start dealing with their issues, and built a friendship that isn’t based on mutual snark and live saving, this could probably work.

Sooo, Peter.

Peter’s main mistake in s1 was going after Scott and Lydia and letting Stiles see that he would have power over him before asking him. And a Stiles who knows everyhing will never say yes to that.

The only times s1 Stiles would ever say yes to Peter is if it meant saving someone else, or if Peter didn’t hurt Scott/Lydia, or if Stiles didn’t have all the information.

Let’s be real, Scott is most of Stiles’ moral compass, but he also doesn’t really care about the murders/the supernatural, so if Peter didn’t bite Scott, Stiles would have still been at some of the crime scenes/would have still figured out werewolves were real, and want answers. And considering Stiles’ people are safe and he doesn’t have a normal fear response, and Peter is a manipulative asshole, there is a very high chance Stiles would have asked.

Seasons 2 through 5 are a very obvious no.

But Radio Silence. Because, sure, they’re looking for him, even if they don’t really know who Stiles is, and after everything that happened with Theo he just can’t trust Scott to get them, him, out. He’s seen that what’s-his-name couldn’t make it through the portal because he’s human. They’re pretty sure Peter could make it, and the only thing kepping him here is his aversion to fire. You can’t really tell the time in the train station, but he knows it’s been way too long, and no one has come for him. And being turned might be the only way out for him.

I just can’t see Stiles willingly -no lesser of two evils, no last option- being a beta to anyone. Stiles has too many issues with consent, agency, and mindcontrol, and he’s been through enough with all of them to maybe trust them with his life, but sure as fuck not with that.

Now, alpha!Stiles on one hand makes perfect sense, because no one’s going to control him, but he also has seen what he can do with his powers, and actually being able to control people is just as terrifying than being controlled.

[twdmusicboxmystery]

9x13: Chokepoint - Details

***As always, spoilers abound for this episode. Don’t read until you’ve watched!***

Daryl/Connie/Henry Lydia:

We see a bit of an evolution here and I think it's super important. At the beginning, Daryl is still determined to leave Lydia behind because he knows wherever she is, Alpha will try to find her.

I did see a bit of a Connie/Beth parallel here. Connie wanted to go somewhere, and Daryl didn't want to. She goes anyway and Daryl reluctantly follows. The whole lot like Beth going looking for alcohol in steel.

We find out that the Whisperers call walkers guardians, of all things. They almost seem somewhat worshipful of walkers. As though becoming a walker is something to aspire to. Pretty twisted. We also learn that if Beta can't get his hands on Lydia and bring her back to Alpha, he just plans to kill everybody.

So, they get to the building in the city. It just looks a lot like Grady, if you ask me. They decide to set up a chokepoint. Basically, it just means they want to force the Whisperers into a small space (the stairwells) because they know walkers can’t climb over the barricades, but he Whisperers can. It will force the Whisperers to come face them without their walker horde protections.

All these rusted out cars sitting around remind me of the ones around Grady in Coda.

There are also parallels regarding the stairwells. I thought Edwards mentioned them to Beth at the beginning of Slabtown when they were going to dump the dead body (you know, down the elevator shaft) and he did. Not anything massive but he does say they’ve barricaded the stairwells and therefore the elevator shaft is the fastest way down. So just like this place, Grady barricaded their stairwells.

Once they get into the building, there's a really random part where Daryl looks into particular room. In it, he sees furniture piled up against the walls. Then he goes back out. I tried to figure out what the significance of this was, and there doesn't seem to be one.

At first, I thought maybe this was the closet he later puts Lydia in, but if you compare the two, it's definitely not. The room he puts Lydia in his small, like utility closet with pegboards and tools in it. This room he looks in at the beginning has chairs and even couches pushed up against the wall in a pile. I'm not sure what the point of this was, but it reminds me a lot of when Daryl was hiding in Dwight’s quarters in the Sanctuary and looked into the little room at the back. There seemed to be a bed back there as though someone had been staying in that space. We still don’t know what that was about either. I'm starting to think that maybe it’s a symbolic thing. Like maybe symbolic of Daryl looking for things in all the wrong places or something. I don’t know. Just thought I’d mention it.

The part where he and Connie talk looks a lot like the building Carol and Daryl wandered around in right after Noah took their weapons. Could practically be the same place.

In another Beth parallel, Connie gets mad at Daryl for not being brave enough to do the right thing. Obviously, he knows the right thing is to protect Lydia, but he's too afraid helping her will need to the deaths of other people he cares about. We didn’t have this exact problem between him and Beth, but I think it stems from the same fear he wallowed in after the prison. He felt like he should've gone after the Gov and because he didn't, people he cared about died.

Beth yelled at him and told him to shape up and that none of it was his fault. That it wasn't okay to act out of fear, rather than doing the right thing. Connie pretty much does the same thing here. She points out that Lydia doesn't have friends and she's the innocent victim, and they ought to be protecting her.

I also think it's important to note that Daryl didn't seem particularly convinced by Connie at this point. He still looked pretty skeptical, as though he didn't intend to let Lydia stay.

Next, we see Henry and Lydia talking. She says she doesn't think she can kill her own people and Henry tells her she doesn't have to. This conversation definitely had shades of Grady in it. She asks why he came for her and he said, "You didn't want to go back, did you?” He says he wasn’t about to just let them take her if she didn't want to go with them and that coming after her was the right thing to do.

This feels like something that could've been said about Beth in S5. Obviously Daryl was going to get her because she didn't want to be at Grady and they were keeping her against her will. It could also be have been said about Noah. When Dawn wanted him to stay, both Daryl and Rick stood up for him, with Rick specifically saying, "The boy wants to go home, so you have no claim on him."

So not only is this a call back to Grady, but this is exactly the reason Daryl doesn't want to keep Lydia. Because when he stood up for Noah and did the right thing, Beth got shot.

Lydia also talks about how he made Alpha look weak, and so she’s not going to let this go now. Sound like Dawn at Grady to you? The whole reason she tried to force Noah back to Grady was to save face so she wouldn’t look weak.

The next part of Henry and Lydia’s convo is, again, the convo Beth and Daryl SHOULD have had after Grady. She says, "Why did you come after me? For real this time." Henry admits is because he has feelings for her and then she kisses him. Again, that's totally what should have happened after Grady, but alas, it didn't.

The thing is, Daryl watched this whole exchange. Given everything that's happened throughout the season and all these callbacks, including the prisoner exchange and what’s being said here, no way he's not thinking about Beth. So, he sees Lydia kiss Henry and interrupts them to tell them to come keep watch.

The super interesting thing is that the next time they're altogether, after all the action and fighting, Daryl has suddenly, miraculously changed his mind and decided to take Lydia with them and that he will figure out some way to protect her.

I think Daryl was fully convinced by seeing that exchange between Henry and Lydia. Connie had a hand in it too, but I watching this made him realize that breaking the two of them up would be a tragedy. After all, he knows how it feels to go rescue the girl you love, only to be forever separated from her (or so he thinks). So, I think Daryl has now officially taken on the role of protector for both Henry and Lydia, not only for Carol’s sake but to let them be together in a way he never got to have with Beth.

Also, Daryl locking Lydia in a closet reminded me of when Carl locked Enid in the closet just before Glenn and Abe died. I’m not going to get into it here, because it’s a whole other post, but @wdway​ has a theory about the Librarian group, which we saw the Saviors kill in 6x16. And Carl locked Enid in the closet just before we saw them, so I just wanted to note this and that it’s significant. I’ll get to posting about why later.

All the action and the fight between Daryl and Beta was awesome. Parts of it reminded me of Daryl fighting Officer Lecari in Coda, before they went into the hospital. In that, Daryl almost got bitten by a walker and died. Here, he almost got bitten by a table saw and died...

Another big Grady parallel: Daryl stabs Beta in the shoulder with a little knife. That’s exactly where (except opposite side) Beth stabbed Dawn with the scissors. And like with Dawn, it didn’t really do much to hurt Beta. BIG parallel there. And that’s right before...

...Daryl pushes Beta down the elevator shaft. It seemed significant to me that, when Beta looked at the shaft, he obviously couldn't tell what it was right away. It might've just been a doorway or a void in the wall. The camera focused specifically on the elevator buttons. That was to identify what the shaft was both to Beta and to the audience, but the point is that they focused on it and wanted us to know it was an elevator shaft.

So, Beta falls down the elevator shaft. Very much like Beth and Noah both did. Noah fell very far and hurt himself, but when Beth jumped down to help him, she fell to, hurting herself much less. The point is, this is a major parallel to Grady.

On top of that, Beta, who fell to the bottom and was presumed dead, wakes up and is actually alive. Resurrection symbolism anyone? As in, maybe the gal who fell down the elevator shaft also got up and lived?

A word about the reality of this. Lots of people are complaining that Beta should not have survived a fall down an elevator shaft. Normally, I would agree, but if you look at this picture closely, I'm pretty sure he didn't fall all the way down to the bottom of the shaft. What he's lying on looks like the top of an elevator car to me.

Now, if you listen, it takes a while for it for Daryl to hear the thud of him hitting, so it’s still a long way down. Enough to hurt him. But an elevator, which is made of lightweight material so that it can be transported up and down the cable easily, isn't nearly as hard as the bottom of the elevator shaft, which probably would have been made of concrete. My point is that he wouldn't have hit nearly as hardlanding on the elevator car as he would have landing at the bottom of the shaft. So, I don't think it's totally unrealistic that he would have survived this.

More to the point, I really like this particular detail. Obviously, they didn't actually want to kill Beta yet and they needed Daryl to be able to win this particular fight and put the war on hold for a bit.

But I can't help but see this as a Beth thing. If Beta had fallen all the way down the elevator shaft, he probably would have gone splat (died). But he didn't. Why? Because there was a mitigating circumstance (the presence of an elevator car) that Daryl didn't know about. So, Daryl walked away from him, fully thinking Beta was dead. Sometime after Daryl left and was no longer in the vicinity, Beta woke up. Sound like something that could've happened with Beth? We don't know exactly what her mitigating circumstance was—probably just that the headshot wasn't as fatal as they believed it to be—but this feels like a parallel to me.

Oh, and FYI, did you see Henry’s bleeding leg wound? His older brother in S7 died of a very similar wound. Henry’s obviously not dying right now, but the wound is probably...a foreshadow of something. :/

Carzekiel and the Kingdom:

This story line also contained some very interesting setups and parallels.

I want to point out the flags they made for each of the communities. Every one of them has a sun on it. It reminded me of the ABIBEL sun at the prison. And by the way, I love the Shiva statue and the fact that the Kingdom’s symbol is a tiger. Shiva, in death, has become the symbol for the Kingdom even more than she was. Kind of its mascot. That makes me think of the tiger on Carol's bunk in 5x06, Consumed. I'll get into that more later this week, but it's very important.

We see them get the electricity up and running for the fair. I noted it because it's the whole light/lamps symbolism.

Of course, we had a new thread: a group called the Highwaymen. Obviously Carol hasn't told anyone she killed Jed and the Saviors. Even Ezekiel didn't seem to know, which means she hasn't told anyone. From what they said in the episode, and what they explained on TTD, it seems this new group moved into the area specifically because Jed's people aren't there anymore. If the group of rogue Saviors Carol killed were still around, the highwayman would've either joined them or moved on to a new area because Jed's group was already trolling this area and stealing things from people on the roads.

It's interesting to me that they made a point of letting us know this. Specifically due to Carol's influence, the highwayman came into the communities. So if, in the future, this goes terribly wrong and the highwayman end up betraying them or hurting anyone, it will be a direct result of Carol killing those saviors.

They emphasized letter writing, which could be another thing about this group pointing to Beth. Actually there was a lot of “letter writing” in this episode, both because of Connie and Daryl (yes, I know they’re not technically letters, but they’re communicating via writing on notebook paper) and also the note written by the Highwaymen. They put a lot of emphasis on the fact that the Highwaymen wrote a letter rather than just killing Jerry and Diane.

Her killing the Saviors in 5x06 felt so strange. It was a callback to S4a, but also seemed pretty random in terms of the plot. I think now we’re starting to see why they had her do that. Chances are, once again, we’re gonna have a domino effect. Her having killed Jed and his group will have consequences she’ll have to face. Not sure what they are yet, but I definitely think they’re setting something up here.

When they first meet the Highwaymen, they go to a strange warehouse with lots of mannequins in it. People in my group were reminded of the golf club and specifically the Rich Bitch lady.

The idea of the movie convinces the Highwaymen to join the Kingdom. A little cheesy? Sure, but I think it was meant to be humorous. The thing is, these guys definitely do seem wishy-washy. They kind of remind me of Randall in S2. They kind of just go wherever the wind blows them, with no real loyalty. That means, with the right amount of time and leadership, they could be molded into good people who will be loyal to the communities. But on the other hand, if someone else makes them a better offer, much like Jadis in S7, they could very easily betray the communities as well. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

They used one line during the meeting that reminded me of the Gov. Ezekiel said, "We need what we've got." And the leader of the Highwaymen said, "So do we." Just the phrasing of it reminded me of the Gov and Mitch when they tried to force Rick and TF out of the prison. Mitch: “We want what you got…"

I also wonder what the movie symbolizes. Because it was the movie (again at Carol's behest) that brought Highwaymen into the Kingdom. The movie was made possible by a lightbulb. They obtained it in a place with lots of Big Spot parallels. These are important symbols, but I'm not sure what to make of them until we see where this Highwaymen story is going.

It could also easily be part of the art theme we saw earlier this season in Stradavarius. Remember they talked about how art is transcendent and really living (as opposed to just surviving) includes art. Also something Beth and Edwards discussed at Grady.

Well, Tara’s group tries to get to the fair and find the road blocked. Tammy and Earl are taking the baby Hilltop to find him a family. I was disappointed when I heard this. I totally wanted them to keep the baby. Luckily, by the end, Tammy announces that she will. I’m happy about that.

Of course, the Highwaymen help save Tara’s group, and then go to the Kingdom at the end. We see the main guy glare at Jerry—no love lost there and I think he resents having to give Jerry sword back, which doesn't bode particularly well—and look around. He does smile at people and tip his hat, so I’m on the fence about these guys. I don't trust them. I think they very well could be bad news. But so far, it's trying to make us think that everything's okay. Hmmm.

I do want to point one big thing out. The leader wears a cowboy hat.

It's not the exact style as Rick’s/Carl’s/Beth's sheriff's hat, but it's very similar. So, we have a new group whose leader is wearing is hat similar to the iconic sheriff's hat. That feels like a foreshadowing of Beth showing up to me. Will she show up through this group? I don't know. Most of us at this point are convinced she’ll show up connected to the Whisperers in some way. Depending on what the Highwaymen do and who they are and how things played out, it could all work together.

There's one more very important thing about this group that makes me super excited, but I'm going to save it for tomorrow. I’ll be doing a TTD post, which I don’t think I’ve done all season, but there was a ton of good stuff in this TTD. So, tomorrow I'll talk more about the Highwaymen.

That's what about for details. What did everyone think of the episode?

[canonicallysoulmates]

Supernatural 14.07

The one where BuckLemming almost wrote something good. (And then decided against it). 

The more I think about it, the more I realize this somehow manages to be a very pointless episode.

I’m disappointed. And I’m not disappointed as I have been before because the episode had potential that was never reached but because it committed the same sins that so many other episodes have done before, there’s only so many times you can see the same shit done again and again before you realize that’s the new standard.  For me this is the episode that made me realize it; and in the process killed a bit of the hope that I had that this show would go back to being good. 

But that’s enough about my feelings for the show, lets get to my feelings about this particular episode. 

This episode gives me a fucking headache, I don’t even know where to start. Oh, wait I do, with the one thing that made me angry. Where the fuck was Sam? The second half of this episode was going Sam Winchester who? 

Look at the description for this epi:

Sam. Sam and. Not just Castiel! Sam and Castiel. Track down a Shaman. 

Except that’s not what happened at all. They got the contact info from Ketch and then Castiel went to go get the dude’s help. By himself. Sam was at home doing Chuck knows what cause we don’t see him again until the end of the episode. 

It’s like the writers realized that they wrote Sam caring too much and being too important in the hospital scene so they decided to not incorporate him into the rest of the episode cause they’re trying to downplay the Sam and Jack relationship. So we don’t actually see him look for or even interact with the Shaman, we don’t get to see him with Dean and Jack, we don’t even get to see or hear any of his SOS phonecalls to help Jack. 

As the episode progresses you see less and less of Sam, fuck you BuckLemming 🖕🏼

It’s pretty much a given but if you had any doubts, yes Sam and Dean were separated in this episode. Don’t think I need to go into details of how much I hate that. 

My favorite part of this whole episode was the hospital scene where Sam and Dean were total worried papas and if the whole episode had been that I would have been so happy but it wasn’t cause they were separated and instead we got some weird fanfiction thing out of Dean and Jack and Sam was practically nonexistent after that scene so fuck you BuckLemming. 

Since I brought it up let’s talk about the Dean-Jack scenes. 

Listen, I am fully camp Dean being Jack’s dad. If you know me, you know that. But their scenes in this episode mostly confused me cause we have not seen any actual, proper development between these characters to make it realistic that they would be so comfortable and friendly around each other. 

Yes, Dean has slowly become more parental towards Jack and Jack’s respect and admiration for Dean has been there since the beginning but these two had a very rocky start, let’s not forget Dean wanted this kid dead for a really long time and just a couple episodes ago (in another episode written by BuckLemming)  Jack was written to sound as if he didn’t care about Dean. 

I have not been shown enough interaction between these two for me to not find Dean Winchester, who is so protective of his car he barely lets Sam drive it, passing Jack who has never been behind the wheel and doesn’t even know the basics of driving, the keys to his precious Baby, OOC. And explaining it as Dean feeling guilty cause of how he treated Jack is lazy writing. If the whole episode from beginning to end had been about these two bonding and Dean offering Jack how to drive had been at the end I wouldn’t have minded so much.

But that wasn’t nearly as weird as the scene of these two fishing. I swear, it wouldn’t have been so weird if it weren’t for the fact that Jack mentions a time when Dean told him about John taking him fishing. Why the fuck didn’t we get to see that scene? When did that convo happen? What happened that made Dean open up to Jack about his father? What is the story? When did John take Dean fishing? Was it before Mary died and he broke? After Mary died but before he got consumed with the need to hunt down yellow eyes? After Sam left as an attempt to rebuild their once again broken family? Was Sam there? 

WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T WE GET TO SEE THAT SCENE?! That would have a. shown actual development between Dean and Jack b. given us a look into Dean’s relationship with his father c. given us more insight into who John Winchester was, all at the same time! 

i love the Dean-Jack relationship but I wanna actually see the progress, I don’t want them to suddenly be bffs, I wanna see how they build their relationship, I wanna see honest talks and honest moments between them that are true to their character and their history together. The moments were cute but I couldn’t properly enjoy them cause of the lack of shown, proper development between them. 

Moving on, in repeated sins, they concentrate too much on another character, in this case, Nick. 

Every time the episode got close to being good, it would cut to Nick and his whole storyline. Which update: I still don’t give a fuck about. 

Every. single. time. 

Like at the beginning, I’m starting to get sucked into the whole hospital thing with Sam and Dean being worried papas and then just as I’m about to put my phone down and get comfy to watch, it cut to Nick and what he was doing. Which had nothing to do with what was going on in the hospital fyi. 

There was no connection between what was happening with Nick and what was going on in the rest of the episode. The only reason Nick was in this episode is the same reason why the character is still alive and that’s because one of the duo has a hard on for Mark Pellegrino and is wet for the character they used to play aka Lucifer. Who I’m 99% positive is going to come back, as teased in that Terminator like scene at the end, and thus s14 is probably going to go full poor man’s s5. I am not excited. 

Sidenote: I am also 99% positive Michael is either still inside Dean or has some hold over him.

Honestly this episode wasn’t as bad as I thought it was gonna be but it was still pretty bad. It’s somehow pointless, they oversimplify what is happening to Jack (he doesn’t have his grace so his own body is killing him), the scenes between Dean and Jack are cute in concept but seem out of place, Sam is barely in it, the boys are separated, there was barely any Rowena. Rowena was in this episode and she barely appeared, all the fucking side characters they have had on this show that I don’t give a fuck about, I finally get an episode with a side character I love and they barely appear, fuck you BuckLemming. Nonetheless she did provide me with my second favorite moment of this episode which was her rushing to the bunker to help Sam cause she thought Dean was sick, I fucking loved that, that is so cute! 

That and Sam and Dean being worried parents at the hospital were my highlights of this episode. So there were highlights, but still the episode over all is not something i find worth recommending. 

[hayleysstark]

Queenie emerges! Thank you for answering my asks! Don't worry about taking too long to reply, I know the Internet can be a pain sometimes lol. Sadly, I had to cancel my Netflix subscription, so my Merlin binge has come to an end for now. But, I absolutely adored watching the episodes and geeking out with you! Hopefully I can continue the series in the future. Speaking of the future, if you were able to write a season 6, how would you do it? I'd love to hear your interpretation!

Oh no I’m sorry you lost your Netflix subscription. That sucks :( I’m glad you enjoyed what you saw of Merlin, though, and thank you so much for letting me talk your ear off about it for the past few weeks lmao. I’m sure I’ve lost at least like,,,,,,,,, a hundred followers,,,,,,,,in the last two weeks alone. what can i say??? People don’t follow me to hear my thoughts and i honestly can’t blame them.

Season 6?? dfghjkytghnfgfd can i get uhhhhh a complete rewrite of S4 and S5 instead???? As much as I ADORE S4 ((Servant of Two Masters???? The Darkest Hour???? Aithusa??? The Sword in the Stone???? Lamia???? all EXTREMELY BLESSED thank you)) I can admit that it has its flaws for sure, to say NOTHING of S5 ((it was literally eleven goddamn episodes of how much filler can we pack in before Arthur has to die and it was,,,,,,,, just Objectively Bad like I can’t even.)) Like can we just. can we just talk. about S4 and S5? 

S4 went all right for the first few episodes, objectively speaking - and more than all right, personally speaking. Absolutely adored the season premiere two-parter, and “The Wicked Day” was a perfect blend of solemn but hopeful, absolutely everything I could have imagined for Arthur’s inevitable ascension to the throne. I think, ironically enough, “Servant of Two Masters” is riiiiiiight about where I would have deviated from canon. Like right after it. the episode right after it. 

4x07. “The Secret Sharer”. Whoo boy. You didn’t say whether you saw this one or not, so here’s the lowdown: Morgana’s been searching tirelessly for the all-powerful sorcerer Emrys, ‘cause the Callieach ((the gatekeeper to the world of the dead)) informed her that Emrys was to be her doom. She enlists the Lord Agravaine, Arthur’s slimy uncle and her personal spy within the kingdom, to try and help her find Emrys, as she believes he’s hiding in Camelot, close to Arthur. Merlin, of course, is Emrys, and when Agravaine questions Gaius in the absolute least subtle way he possibly can ((literally what the fuck Agravaine how have you survived as a spy this long)), Gaius lies like a rug. UNfortunately, Agravaine isn’t fooled, and remains convinced he knows something. Meanwhile,  Arthur finally gets his head on straight and realizes there’s a traitor in his court. Give the boy a prize. Anyway, he suspects his slimy uncle Agravaine, but Agravaine turns Arthur’s distrust around onto Gaius instead, convinces Arthur to interrogate him, you know. Arthur continues to make terrible decisions and comes to the conclusion that, as Gaius never out-and-out condemns sorcery during the course of his interrogation, because he must be untrustworthy. Cue Agravaine taking this opportunity to kidnap Gaius because fuck the elderly right??? anyway, he brings Gaius to Morgana, who’s hired this dude named Alator to torture for information about the elusive Emrys. It’s really convoluted, just go with it. BUT, since Agravaine is the snake to end all snakes, he didn’t JUST kidnap Gaius, oh, no, he staged it so it looked as if Gaius ran away from the kingdom. Arthur thinks Gaius is a traitor who practices magic and scarpered at the first sign of trouble, Merlin of course knows Gaius is completely innocent, Arthur still refuses to send a search party, so of course it’s up to Merlin to find and rescue Gaius. Gwaine comes along for the ride, so go Gwaine, basically. Sir Gwaine is the real mvp and that is just the tea.

ANYWAY so now you’re up to speed. BUT. but. In the S4 rewrite, let’s make it so Merlin doesn’t rescue Gaius. Let’s make it so he can’t find Gaius. Let’s make it so he searches high and low, but Agravaine covered his tracks way too well. We can intersperse the remainder of the season with scenes of unsettling, even outright gory, if we want to go that route, torture. The viewer can see in horrific detail as Gaius’ imprisonment steadily grows more brutal and unlivable until they genuinely don’t think he’s going to last. Or, alternatively? Radio silence. Nothing from Gaius after that episode. The viewer doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive. The viewer knows nothing Merlin doesn’t. Either way, it would help set the tone they were obviously aiming for - the grim, grisly shit they never quite achieved. 

And removing Gaius from the narrative changes very little about the rest of the season as a whole. Merlin and Arthur’s relationship grows steadily more strained as Merlin continues his quest to rescue Gaius from Morgana, and Arthur remains stubbornly convinced of Gaius’ treachery. Even better? Merlin is completely, totally alone, allowing the story to take progressively darker and darker turns, and the demands of destiny to weigh even heavier on Merlin’s shoulders than they already do. The next two episodes - “Lamia” and “Lancelot du Lac” - could still happen. Without Gaius. And a doubly painful blow to Arthur in “Lancelot du Lac” - the betrayal of Guinevere, his future queen, and Lancelot, his noblest knight, is just another ache to add to the pile at this point. Even if the viewer disagrees with Arthur’s decisions up til now, his pain would doubtless give their heartstrings a tug or two. And with his and Merlin’s friendship buckling under the stress, Arthur has, or is at least convinced he has, next to no one left to turn to.

“Herald of a New Age” serves as a major turning for Arthur’s character in canon, and I don’t want to hurt or minimize that at all, but at the same time, I would certainly change it in any way I could to make it less....... dull, I suppose? I feel bad calling it that, as it’s one of the precious few episodes that focuses on Elyan, who I love and adore and support with everything in me, and oh, how I wanted to like this one, but I was honestly bored out of my mind for half of it. Not to mention, Elyan just watched his king banish his sister from their lifelong home, and he’s????? okay with it???? what. what. what. Definitely would have added in a bit of tension between Arthur and Elyan for this episode, possibly even for the rest of the season as a whole, and a hell of a lot more focus on Elyan warring with himself, torn between his loyalty to Gwen and his loyalty to Arthur.

“The Hunter’s Heart” was another one I personally found dull, but I don’t necessarily think it was a failing in the narrative itself so much as an opinion. I hold no love for Princess Mithian, and the writers’ attempts to force their series to mesh as fully as possible with the mythology was,,,,,,,,, clumsy, to say the least. No thank you. Personally? I would cut this entire episode from the series, but I recognize and respect it wasn’t exactly bad, just not to my speed.

“The Sword in the Stone”? SHIT GETS REAL SON!!!!! At the end of “The Hunter’s Heart”, we receive a small glimpse of Gaius, but it’s far from reassuring - he’s not dead, but he’s damn near close, and he’s just broken under Alator’s torture, and revealed Emrys’ true identity to a furious Morgana, who swears to topple Camelot and exact her revenge on both Arthur and Merlin, and she’s got a few tricks up her sleeve this time to ensure it happens.

Morgana marches on Camelot, and takes the kingdom, with Agravaine by her side, and as in the episode, Arthur and Merlin manage to get out of the citadel and into the relative safety of the woods, but the knights aren’t so lucky, and wind up imprisoned in the castle dungeons. 

And while Morgana obviously didn’t plan on Arthur and Merlin slipping through her grasp yet again, she’s not as shaken as she could be by the thought of Emrys and his king out there working against her - we’re gonna be doing some serious switching around here, and taking the Eancanah from the S5 finale and setting it loose on Merlin here instead. Thus, Merlin is on the run with Arthur, and without his magic. 

Arthur can’t know this last bit, of course, but Arthur’s having his own issues. His uncle’s betrayal has completely shattered him at this point. He’s at his absolute lowest here, out of confidence, out of courage, out of the tenacity that’s seen him through every other trial. So many have turned their back on him, after all. What’s wrong with him, he wonders, that makes them betray him? What’s wrong with him, he asks Merlin, that those he cherishes most don’t care for him at all? 

The friendship between Merlin and Arthur that’s been crumbling all season faces the ultimate test here. While Merlin struggles to restore Arthur’s self-confidence, he’s hard put to keep himself going, as well - his magic defines him, his magic is who he is, his essence, his lifeblood, and what is he without it? Who is he without it? If he can’t use magic, what good is he? If he can’t use magic, what does he matter?

On their journey to regroup, and retake Camelot, Merlin and Arthur find and rescue Gaius, badly injured and in desperate need of medical attention, and of course, Gwen as well, who Arthur realizes he can no longer live without, in spite of her perceived betrayal. He’s still got a long way to go before he’s completely back to his old self, but the restoration of his relationship with both Gwen and Gaius buoys him, and it sets him on his path once again.

Merlin absolutely falls apart upon seeing his mentor in such a state, of course - look, the father/son feels would be STRONG, I’m just saying. Merlin does everything he can to save Gaius - he’s sure magic is the answer, a bit of magic would do it, if only he had his magic. He’s forced to resort to the old-fashioned way, for now, and to his own intense surprise, manages well enough to keep Gaius going for far longer than he ever would have if Merlin hadn’t stepped in at all. In fact, Merlin does a lot of things like that - things he didn’t even realize he knew how to do, things he didn’t even realize he could, and slowly starts to see that yes, his magic is a part of him, but that’s all it is. A part. A piece of the whole. And he’s the whole. And he matters, and he’s good for something, and he’s a badass, without magic, because magic is NOT all he is goddamn it!!!

Arthur pulls the sword out of the stone, as in canon, and I like to imagine Merlin gets his magic back when - and ONLY when - he accepts that he’s a whole and complete person without it, because that should have been a thing at some point. ((”you cannot lose what you are” fhrfhgfggfgfdfd mY ASS. Merlin is PURE BADASSERY and UNDYING LOYALTY and y’all can leave if y’all try and say magic is all he is.))

Anyway, Arthur and Merlin and co. retake Camelot because we gotta give these kids SOMETHING, and Morgana is killed in the struggle, because let’s face it, by S5, she felt really fucking STALE as a villain. So. Arthur stabs her with Excalibur - or maybe that should be Merlin, because “Emrys is your doom” anyone? also not sure Arthur could bring himself to kill Morgana, to be honest. 

Onto S5!!!! can you believe how fucking long this is already but I’m gonna keep going, because I’m really in my stride at this point. Okay, with Morgana dead, and Arthur and Gwen on the throne, Camelot has officially hit its Golden Age. Arthur has slowly begun to change his views on magic, with some small, inevitable steps backward here and there. He’s making peace with the druids, relaxing his stance on sorcerers in his city, uniting Albion, all the good shit. Gaius survived, at the end of S4, but barely, and even now, he remains weakened and frail, and everyone kind of knows he might not see the end of the year. Kilgharrah continues to give cryptic advice. Merlin wants to tell Arthur about his magic but is also a dumbass and can’t bring himself to do it even though the opportunity is RIGHT THERE and we as the audience scream at him to get a move on.

ANYWAY. With Morgana dead, no one’s left to threaten Camelot, right? Everyone’s gone, right? Merlin has all the time in the world to tell Arthur about his magic, and Arthur has all the time in the world to grow into the king Kilgharrah says he will, right?? lmao. no.

Because - wait for it - MORDRED GONNA FUCK SHIT UP SON. MORDRED’S JUST. OUT HERE. FUCKING SHIT UP. Mordred is MAD tbh, he’s really fucking sick of waiting around for Emrys to get his ass in gear and free magic and be the savior of the druids and all that shit. Mordred’s sick of it. He doesn’t care WHAT the prophecies say, it’s OBVIOUS the Triple Goddess chose wrong, and as far as he’s concerned, it’s up to HIM to fix it. So Mordred, with his ladylove, Kara, are raising a literal ARMY of sorcerers, witches, ex-druids, and the like, to exact their freedom from Emrys. They don’t care about Arthur. They’re not after Arthur. In fact, they’re pretty okay with Arthur. He’s not the man making pretty promises edged in gold and not delivering.

Mordred and Kara deliver an ultimatum to Camelot, threatening to tear the kingdom apart, brick by fucking brick, unless King Arthur gives Emrys up to them, and lets them have their way with him. Poor Arthur is like ??????????? I’m sorry????? who is this Mr. Emrys???? what did he do to piss y’all off???? can i interest y’all in a peace treaty????? 

Arthur fails to comply with Mordred’s demands, and deliver Emrys to him, so the attacks begin, growing progressively more violent as the weeks go by. Of course Arthur doesn’t take it lying down - he and his knights go out to counter every assault, to try and intercept every threat, but they’re losing, and they can’t pretend otherwise. They rely on steel and sinew alone, whereas Mordred’s army uses magic in spades. They summon deadly magical creatures, they kill the crops, they manipulate the weather to bring about droughts. They do everything they can to topple Camelot. Merlin is almost sick with the guilt and shame of it all, as he watches his home torn apart, razed to the ground, all because of him. He tells Arthur the truth, and gives himself up, and Arthur’s so furious with Merlin, he doesn’t even try to stop him from heading into Mordred’s clutches, but Gwaine gets wind of what’s going down and he’s just like FUCK NO and goes after Merlin because he’s the Real MVP aaaaand this,,,,,, sounds like a bad fanfiction doesnt it ANYWAY Cue The Battle of Camlann FOR REASONS!!! and utter heartbreak. but with more time for Arthur to adjust to Merlin having magic, and working things out with him. jUST!!! more than one episode where Arthur knows the truth about Merlin!!! pls!!!! pls!!!! thats!!!! all i ask!!! also Arthur’s conscious when he meets Kilgharrah and wants to know why the FUCK Merlin is friends with the DRAGON that ATTACKED his kingdom. talk your way out of that one, Merlin. I fucking dare you.

fghytghbfdfhgfg GOD i’m,,,,,,, so sorry,,,,,,, this got,,,,,,,, so long,,,,,,,, dfhytghnjhgfghgfghgfrty if you made it to the end,,,,,,, thank you,,,,,i’m so sorry,,,,,, i talked,,,,,, so much,,,,,,,

[travllingbunny]

The 100 rewatch: 1x05 Twilight’s Last Gleaming

I’m a new fan of The 100, who first binged it last year, August to November. This is my first full rewatch of the show. I was planning to start it anyway and finish it before the season 6 premiere on April 30, and when I saw that Fox Serbia was airing a rerun (Monday to Friday, 40 min. after midnight, with repeats the next day), starting on 1st February, it was a great opportunity to start my rewatch in HDTV on my beautiful new TV. I decided to do write-ups and tag other fans on SpoilerTV website, as I did when I was first watching the show. But my posts turned into full blown essays. So, finally, after over a week, I’ve realized: Why don’t I post them on my Tumblr blog, too? I’ll copy my write-ups of the first 7 episodes, and then I’ll post my rewatch posts after I watch each episode. (The next one, 1x08, is on Monday’Tuesday.)

Spoilers below for all 5 seasons of the show. I go of on a tangents and make a lot of references to future events.

Rating: 8.5/10

This episode really shocked me and emotionally affected me back when I first watched, and it's when I first realized the show didn't pull punches.

Killing individual characters for shock value - that's nothing new, but killing a bunch of innocent people like that, having the audience expect throughout the episode for them to be saved at the last moment, and then instead they die anyway, when it could have been stopped... I really wasn't expecting that. Now it's far less shocking after you've seen The 100 use mass murder as a plot device multiple times. Well, this is not a murder, technically, since the people eventually volunteered for it to saved their loved ones. But before Abby decided to be seriously badass and show Jake's video to everyone and tell them the truth about the Ark dying, the 100 being sent to the ground, and the upcoming culling, the Council was planning to straight up murder 320 people and then lie about it, claiming it was an accident. And, as Clarke points out to Bellamy in this episode, it's certain that those would have been working class people rather than the Ark elite. The class issues the show keeps stressing is of those things that keep it from justifying the Ark leadership for their actions on the grounds of survival, tough choices, blah blah blah, and I'm glad for it. Jaha was here planning to be one of the people who died (but I bet a large part of the reason was because he thought his son was dead... which he was, just not for the reasons he thought), until Kane convinced him not to. They had a back and forth about who's the better leader, with Jaha arguing Kane had the strength to make tough choices, and Kane arguing later that Jaha was able to inspire people. And they were both kind of right, but not in the way they thought. Kane has changed a lot during the show, from pragmatist to idealist, from pessimist to optimist, but he's always been a guy who 100% believes in whatever course of action he's chosen, thinks it's right and throws himself into it, in a way that often comes off as a bit naive. But he does suck at winning the popular vote, going by the fact that he was never elected Chancellor and that he lost to Pike in S3. While Jaha somehow managed to get elected, bull&s.hits really well in a speech in episode 1x07, and in S4 we see him give speeches to the people for the benefit of Clarke and Bellamy that show how good he can be at swaying people, even when he's not in power. But S2-3 also showed the most awful version of his messianic complex and influence. Something else that has always bothered me about the culling is, we see people sacrifice themselves for their children (like Tor Lemkin for his daughter Reese) or their romantic partners (the guy who wants to do it for his wife), which is something we see multiple times in the show. But we don't see how their loved ones feel about it, whether they tried to stop them (Tor's daughter Reese didn't realize what was going on, but the adults did). How will Reese will about losing her father when she learns what he did, and that he did it for her? In the next episode, we see the husband of one of the victims in the culling in 1x07, and in S5 we learn Kara Cooper's father was one of the 320. I wonder how many of the people from the Ark that lost there loved ones are even alive by S6? This is also the episode that made me feel better about the Clarke/Finn/Raven love triangle, because it was dealt with much better than I expected. Another reason why this was a turning point when I was really on board with the show. Speaking of that love triangle - this show really loves the scenes where Clarke is shocked and hurt to find out someone has a girlfriend by seeing him reunite with her and kiss her. They did the exact same thing in S5. And both times the camera zooms on Clarke's face rather than on the couple, though in this case, they didn't go as far as to blur Finn and Raven out of focus. But these are two very different situations, of course. Among other things, because in S5, it was no one's fault, while this situation is fully Finn's fault. I've loved the way Clarke dealt with learning Finn had a girlfriend, absolutely not doing the "being catty and fighting over a guy" thing, but the exact opposite. She's heartbroken, but she immediately bottles it up. She clearly hates being the 'other woman' and her instinct when feeling unwanted is to completely withdraw. You know who definitely isn't dealing with it well? Finn. He's clearly uncomfortable as he wasn't expecting Raven to come, and then he goes to indicate to Clarke that he would like to continue a relationship with her, which she refuses... so he then goes back to Raven and acts like everything is fine, because if Clarke doesn't want him, why not stick with Raven, and has no intention of telling Raven that he slept with someone else, or that he's in love with Clarke or that he would like to be with Clarke. Just like he never thought it would be right to tell Clarke that he has a long-term girlfriend on the Ark. Speaking of relationships, but in this case, not very serious ones, one of Bellamy's friends with benefits we see him in bed with in this episode, Bree (the blonde one), is the same girl who came onto him and presumably had sex with him in season 4, while partying as one of Jasper's end-of-the-world suicide group, and who went on to be one of those who killed themselves. But I'd be lying if I said I would make that connection if I didn't see it on The 100 wiki. The other girl, Roma, ends up killed by the Grounders in 1x07. This was still the time when Bellamy was often acting in a very frustrating way - due to his narrow focus on just Octavia and himself and not yet the group as a whole or people in general - and massively screwing up things, and never more than in this episode, by stealing Raven's radio and throwing it in the water, so Jaha couldn't come down to execute him. Now, he did know about the Ark being on its last legs, but had no idea about the culling before Raven told everyone. I predicted at the time that we'll see Bellamy feeling super guilty later, since he doesn't outwardly show it much in this episode, and boy, did we see that in 1x08. (Much more than we ever did from Jaha, who was actually directly responsible for it, but that's what Jaha is like, always justifying his actions as necessary.). Here, Finn, Clarke and Raven confront Bellamy about the radio, and the former two learn about Bellamy shooting Jaha, while Bellamy learns Jaha survived, but with a massive difference between how Finn and Raven confront him and how Clarke does. The former two are basically like "You're the worst" and Finn calls him selfish, while Clarke - already at this point - seems to understand him better and have a much better opinion of him: "You're not a murderer. All you have done is to protect your sister", though she then gets angry at him a bit later, asking if he even cares that he caused the deaths of 320 people. It's so weird that the flares the 100 use to signal the Ark won't help at all (the Ark leaders, aside from Abby, will just dismiss them), but will end up burning a Grounder village and cause more conflict with the Grounders. Which is so consistent with Murphy's Law - not the episode or John Murphy, but actual Murphy's Law - whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. But just to be clear, the Grounders using that to justify their war was utter bullcrap. There's no way anyone intelligent could consider the 100 an invading force (LOL) after seeing what they were like (and we know they did: Lincoln was spying on them and making notes) and anyone who's not a small child knows that people can't be considered guilty for causing things by complete accident, which they never could have predicted happening. (I just had to have that mini-rant because people who try to portray both sides as equally responsible, or even demonize the Delinquents and/or excuse the Grounders, get on my nerves, a lot.) A minor-running theme in this episode: at the beginning of the episode, when Clarke and Finn are lying together in the afterglow, before their super-brief relationship came came to a crushing end after Raven came back, Finn - always the one saying romantic things - mentioned a falling star and making a wish, which Clarke was initially confused by, since she just thought of meteors in real world terms and didn't know about that old superstition, while Finn said he had read about it. At the end of episode (in a moment I've seen in a few Tumblr gifsets!), when everyone is watching the flares, Clarke and Bellamy are looking at them together and she asks "What would you wish on a falling star" and then assumes Bellamy wouldn't understand what she's talking about. But she obviously does (the guy has read a lot), since he says "I don't even know what I would wish for". Which is probably true, and sad - I imagine that he had never given any serious thought to what he actually wanted out of life, beyond "Protect Octavia - make sure she is not discovered." Of course, the scene was also an occasion to show Clarke looking sadly at Finn and Raven, so we'll know she's actually really heartbroken and pining. There's more pining from Clarke in the next couple of episodes, and after that, IIRC, fortunately barely any. BTW, let's just take in the fact that Clarke, in all 5 seasons, has never actually properly dated anyone, or specifically, she had one friend with benefit with no stronger feelings involved, and she had the two romantic relationships (with people she had known for a few weeks. and who both relentlessly pursued her romantically and made the first moves) which lasted a few hours each and consisted of having sex exactly once, but were portrayed as epic romances, where 95% of the overall relationship, in both cases, consisted of not dating, but a lot of angst, betrayal, and ended in death, and Clarke getting traumatized and feeling guilty (without actually it being her fault). It's amazing how similar overall her relationships with Finn and Lexa are, including in how much they lasted and how much focus they had on screen and for how long, but one is almost completely forgotten and ignored by the fandom now, while the other one is over-hyped.

[shadowsong26fic]

AU Outlines: Other Fandoms Edition

So I know that probably like zero of my followers on this blog even go here but I was watching Person of Interest lately, and I’ve also been reading occasional Supernatural spoilers, because I used to be in that fandom and I occasionally get curious. Especially this most recent season. Naturally, this woke up some old characters/situations/etc. that I used to work with, which I’ve been occasionally toying with in the back of my head when I’m bored and/or procrastinating other projects.

I’ve been going back and forth on how I feel about the one plotline that interests me this season (and by back and forth I mean I was really excited when I first read that a particular character was back; engaged by the summaries/etc. I read from his first couple episodes, the third one intrigued me until I read more detailed spoilers and then I started to side-eye it a little bit...)

And then I read up on last week’s episode. And nope, all my excitement is gone, replaced by Pissed for reasons I’m not sure I can actually articulate. (Though I kind of attempted to in the tags here on my personal blog.)

...honestly, I probably should’ve known better; making this kind of storyline really pay off/work would require a lot of attention given to a tertiary character, and given SPN’s track record with the internal worlds and motivations of characters who are not the Big Three, and the fact that they’ve been ignoring a lot of their established angel/vessel lore, the way Claire’s backstory more or less got completely forgotten...I should not have gotten my hopes up. Sigh.

ANYWAY this is now officially Spite Fic(tm). Here, have an outline of a Supernatural/Person of Interest crossover.

Starring Nick.

...uh, before I actually start, I should probably get some background out of the way.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Person of Interest is a TV show that ran for five seasons, 2011 - 2016. Without c/ping the opening narration, the basic premise of the show is that, in the wake of 9/11, genius software engineer Harold Finch built a surveillance and analysis program, in an effort to prevent similar future tragedies. Out of fear that his creation would be abused, he designed the Machine as a closed system--basically, all that’s provided is an ID number (usually an SSN, at least for US citizens; but Our Heroes get a green card number in one episode, and a student ID number in another), and the person that number indicates is key to unravelling whatever is going down. The Machine was initially designed to predict mass casualty events/terrorism and provide the (relevant) number to the designated government operatives, at which point human intelligence takes over. However, the Machine also identifies things like…gang warfare/one-on-one premeditated murder (irrelevant numbers). That’s where Our Heroes come in.

The first half of the series is basically a procedural with a twist—each episode, the main characters get an irrelevant number (or more; the record was I believe 38 in one episode). They don’t always know how that person is involved, whether they’re the victim or the killer/perpetrator. In a few memorable cases, the number was arguably both.

Then, in the second half, a rival AI (Samaritan) is brought online, and the series becomes somewhat darker in tone and shifts into a cyberpunk apocalypse story. With a few regular irrelevant numbers thrown in on occasion as well, for good measure. For the purposes of this outline, we don’t care so much about POI B, for reasons I will explain, but it bears mentioning. Especially since Greer is still hanging around and trying to bring Samaritan or something similar online.

Right. On to some memorable/notable/important characters.

Our Heroes are Finch, who, as I said, designed and built the Machine. For various reasons, he’s living off the grid (he’s a very private person). Using a backdoor built into the Machine, as of when the series starts, he receives the irrelevant numbers. But he lacks the skills/ability to intervene directly, so he recruits John Reese.

Reese, then, is Finch’s partner/employee/they are totally married; a former CIA assassin who is now presumed dead, he does most of the hands-on work with the numbers and becomes known as the Man in the Suit who is basically Batman.

Carter! Carter is freaking amazeballs; she is p. much the moral/ethical center of the show, one of their two cop friends who was actually trying to track them/Reese down and arrest him for the vigilante BS for the first half-season or so but then they became friends.

Fusco is their other cop friend; former dirty cop/member of an ring, initially recruited by Reese to work undercover in HR (as said ring is called), basically runs on a combination of Dogged Loyalty (the reason he joined HR in the first place, transfers that loyalty to Team Machine, gets his moral compass recalibrated, and becomes one of the most loveable dudes on the show) and Snark (featuring such delightful quotes as “What was I supposed to say? Sorry, boss, Agent King is really a superpowered nutball. Just ask my buddy, the urban legend.” Also at least once a season, he makes a comment to the effect of “just when I thought you guys couldn’t get any weirder…”).

(Also, he is, as my roommate puts it, Shaped Like A Dad.)

Shaw joins the team in Season 3; textbook (and canonical!) bisexual compact Persian sociopath (note: she has some sort of Axis II personality disorder that is occasionally called sociopathy in-universe, but that doesn’t quite fit); there’s…there’s really not much else one can say without just like summarizing everything she does or quoting ad nauseum.

Root! Root is introduced as a major antagonist; hacker/programmer on Finch’s level who works as a contract killer, her initial goal is to locate and free the Machine, which ends up recruiting her early in Season 3 and becoming…you know that particular kind of reformed villain that becomes the weird family member because yes they’re still kind of awful and murdery, and they did a great deal of damage to you and yours, but you’ve now been through Some Stuff together, and besides, they’re your awful and murdery, you know? So not exactly a redemption arc, but they’re one of the Heroes now and just kind of stick with it. Like Barbossa, in POTC. Or Vegeta. My roommate (referenced above) calls this the Weird Uncle trope. And she fits this trope really well and I love it. Also, she and Shaw are canonically girlfriends as of...s4 or s5, depending on how you look at things.

(Also, not necessarily relevant for this outline, but on the subject of Weird Uncles, one cannot talk about POI without mentioning Elias; our friendly neighborhood Mafia don. No, really.)

And Bear! Cannot forget Bear. Bear is Finch and Reese’s dog, acquired at the beginning of S2 and the most amazing. He also has a twitter! In Dutch!

On to some antagonists, Greer is not our friend. He works for/created a company called Decima Technologies; his goal is to bring an unrestricted AI online and let it run the world for complicated reasons relating to some of his experiences during the Cold War working for MI6. Also he has a very punchable face.

And then there’s Control, who runs the Relevant numbers program for the government. She is an awful, awful human being (fully aware of it, too; she has a great speech in the third season finale about how she’s a Necessary Evil and why) and I love her so much.

Okay, that’s the basics for the POI side of things. I can go on a lot longer if y’all want more details (I didn’t even cover my girl Zoe or Leon or…), but that should be enough foundation for the outline to make sense?

For the SPN side of things--I’m not going to summarize the canon background, due to it being the larger/primary-ish fandom. But in terms of the relevant AU stuff, I’m going more or less with the backstory I established for Nick for The Promises of Angels and Cartography!verse.

Basically, he was a high school history teacher; his wife and son were murdered by a serial killer known as the Chesapeake Ripper

(There might well have been/probably was some demonic involvement, though not in the same way as I think S14 canon established; basically either because a “talent scout” demon like that one s7 episode was already involved or because the Ripper was operating independently and a demon got involved later, he was pointed towards this particular woman and baby who fit his victim pool. Either way, Nick was targeted because he was the right bloodline and accessible, because vessel lines are a thing even if the show has forgotten that.)

(Also, Lucifer later took Nick to kill the Ripper. Signing bonus. So to speak.)

After Detroit, Nick gets picked up by Meg, who holds on to him for a while for a variety of reasons (information that might be buried in his memories from the year he spent possessed; the chance that he might be a new key to the Cage…) until the Leviathan turn up, at which point she no longer has the resources to keep him. She cuts him loose at that point, rather than killing him (mostly because she thinks Lucifer left him alive For A Reason and until she knows what that is, she can’t kill him).

So, at this point, in Promises or Cartography, Nick just sort of wanders around for a while until he runs into Claire or Jody, respectively.

For the purposes of this AU, he ends up drifting to New York instead.

And, with all that background out of the way, NOW we can get to the actual fun stuff.

…no, wait, I lied. One more note: as with p. much all my SPN projects, I am following Logical Time rather than Show Time. Which is to say, when calculating dates/figuring out where the timelines intersect/etc., I’m including the two skipped years (between S5/S6 and between S7/S8).

(That being said, I reserve the right to stop caring about the timeline later and just mashing things together as I think it would be entertaining.)

ANYWAY.

We open in the first half of POI S3, somewhere between “Mors Praematura” and “Endgame” (i.e., Root is in the library, but Carter hasn’t initiated her takedown of HR yet). If my math is right, this puts us either in S7 or during the second gap year for SPN.

It starts as most of these adventures do; Team Machine gets a new number.

“This one may be a bit of a project, I’m afraid,” Finch says. “Nick Cross has been missing for several years. He hasn’t been seen since May of 2009, and there’s been no electronic activity on his identity in that time, either.”

Of course, when they dig into his background, his wife and son getting murdered comes up.

“Any chance he killed them?” Reese asks.

“No, he was cleared at the time. They were victims of a serial killer, and Mr. Cross had solid alibis for three of the five incidents, including the one involving his wife and son.”

(Shaw, at that point, theorizes that Nick’s number came up because he somehow tracked the Chesapeake Ripper down and is planning to kill him. And, if that’s the case, doesn’t really see the point in stopping him.)

(“Start with finding him, Ms. Shaw,” Finch says. “We still don’t know if that is, in fact, what’s going on.”)

(Finch also doesn’t approve on principle, of course, but that is not an argument he wants to have with Shaw on this particular morning.)

(Plus, the Ripper seems to have stopped operating at around the same time Mr. Cross disappeared...so there’s a chance that Shaw’s theory is accurate, just out of date.)

In any case, they reason that the Machine wouldn’t have handed them his number if he weren’t alive and in range; Reese and Shaw ask Carter and Fusco to see what they can pull up, and start doing their own legwork.

Carter ends up being the first to find a lead—while on her regular patrol with Laskey, she spots a guy who matches the description, albeit with a few extra scars, and is acting a little off. Like he thinks he’s being followed/watched.

Reese goes to check it out, and this is where things get, uh, Weird.

See, here’s the thing. I love John Reese, and he is a man of Many Skills.

But, uh.

Being approachable and reassuring is Not Among Them.

Like. Don’t get me wrong. When he’s in Bodyguard Mode, it is exactly the right level of Intimidating. He just…has trouble turning it off.

Look, the dude is a semi-retired CIA spysassin and it oozes out of every pore unless he works really hard to tone it down.

(And sometimes even then.)

And since this is just, like, preliminary surveillance to see if this guy Carter spotted really is their number, and he’s not planning to make contact yet, he’s not really focusing on toning it down.

So, when Nick spots him, guess what this looks like to him.

Yep, he thinks Reese is an angel.

He runs.

Reese: “....yeah, pretty sure that’s our number. And he just made me.”

(If Carter didn’t already, Reese probably also mentions that the five-year-old DMV photo they’re working from is out of date; Nick is pretty badly scarred, they look kind of like radiation burns.)

Of course, it was hard enough to find Nick in the first place, so Reese doesn’t want to lose him again. So, made or not, he continues following. Hoping to get to a position where he can make contact and figure out what’s going on. Or just keep tabs on him until Shaw can catch up and take over.

(Not his favorite approach, but he screwed up somewhere and that’s what he’s stuck with now.)

Nick knows the angel is still on him--and this is new and terrifying; he’s had demons after him a few times since Meg ditched him, but this is the first time an angel’s found him and, frankly, angels are worse than demons in his mind.

(Also he’s supposed to be warded how did the angel even find him--)

(Yeah, Nick has gotten a couple tattoos in his post-Meg life--he’s warded, the same sigils that are etched into Sam and Dean’s ribs; he also has a standard anti-demon-possession tattoo.)

In any case, he has a knife up his sleeve, he just needs to get somewhere more or less out of sight, just for a minute, maybe not even, and then he can throw up a banishing sigil. He just needs that minute.

Reese spots Nick duck out of sight into an alley and heads that way, picking up his pace. There’s a chance he’ll lose the number in there, depending on how many exits there are--

Nick casts his sigil and then books it, not wanting to stick around and see if it worked.

Reese gets there just a hair too late.

“I lost him,” he admits, then catches sight of the bloody drawing on the wall. “...but I think I might have an idea what our number’s running from. And why he disappeared for so long.”

“Yeah?” Shaw asks.

“Looks like he might’ve joined a cult."

“....really,” she said. “Huh.”

“He drew some sort of occult symbol on the wall. Looks like blood.”

“...okay, so he joined a cult.”

“It makes a certain amount of sense,” Finch says. “He went through a horrible tragedy. He could have been vulnerable, especially if he sought but failed to find any comfort in traditional religion.”

Reese takes a picture, and sends it to Finch. “Think you can figure out what this is?”

“Well, it’s hardly my area of expertise,” he says, “but I’ll see what I can do.”

“We’ll work on picking up his trail again,” Shaw says, appearing beside Reese in the alley, as she does sometimes. “Maybe stop by and pick up Bear to help.”

...and now skimming over the next few hours...

Finch spends some time in one of the few corners of the internet he’s not super familiar with, and does identify the symbol eventually.

“It’s for protection or warding. Specifically against angels.”

At which point Shaw busts up laughing at the idea of anyone thinking Reese is an angel.

But that does support the idea that he’s running from whatever cult he got mixed up in.

ANYWAY moving on.

Reese and Shaw eventually catch up with Nick again.

Unfortunately, so have the people who are after him.

(And by people, I mean demons. Two of them.)

(Who recognized Nick, obviously, and had the same ideas as Meg, with regard to his potential Uses.)

(Only they’d rather off him so no one gets to unlock whatever secrets he might be holding.)

Shaw goes up--she’s the better sniper, after all--and Reese makes his way into the alley where Nick is cornered

Firing, naturally, at their kneecaps.

Except.....

Nothing...nothing happens...?

(Well, except now the demon is pissed and gunning for Reese instead.)

(Nick is very relieved to see that this guy is not, in fact, an angel. Angels don’t normally use guns.)

(Of course, now he’s just confused, wtf is going on.)

“What the...” Reese says.

“Maybe you missed,” Shaw smirks, from her perch.

“I didn’t miss.”

“Sure,” she says, aiming at the demon chasing him, getting a solid hit in the shoulder.

Which....also does nothing.

“...well, that was weird.”

She fires again, this time a killshot--yeah, yeah, there are Rules, but under the circumstances...

Meanwhile, Demon #2 has gotten ahold of Nick. Who has frozen a little bit.

(He tends to do this, when stressed/triggered--internalize things, and just go blank. He was more or less catatonic when Meg found him, started gradually coming out of it; when Sam got his soul back that sort of accelerated the process and by now he’s mostly functional, but there are Moments...)

Shaw keeps firing at Demon #1. It’s not killing it, but it’s keeping it pinned down so hopefully Reese can reach and extract their number.

“Finch, we’ve got a Situation here.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

(Finch has hacked into some nearby security cameras.)

“You have any idea what the hell is going on?”

“I’m afraid not, Ms. Shaw,” he says. “It’s only the two of them, I think--no one else is coming though the police will probably be responding to the shots soon--”

“Yeah, Finch, I know. Reese?”

Nick is up against the wall and Reese bodily hauls the demon off of him to engage in a fistfight.

(Did not expect a skinny kid like the demon’s host to pack this much of a punch, he’ll have some fun bruises tomorrow...)

Which snaps Nick out of it.

Demons. These are demons. Only demons. I know how demons work. I can--

He rattles off an exorcism, as fast as he can.

The demons scream and smoke out, leaving their two dead hosts behind--Host #1 may have been dead already, or Shaw may have killed them; Host #2 was already gone.

“Finch?” Shaw says. “Finch, are you getting this?”

“I’m--yes, I see it,” he says.

Reese is about to add something, but the Nick passes out--Demon #2 managed to score a solid hit before Reese got there--and he moves to catch him.

“Damn it--he’s bleeding, pretty bad.”

“Get him to the safehouse,” Finch says. “I’ll meet you there, and we’ll...we’ll figure all this out.”

“Library’s closer,” Shaw points out. “And you said no one else was around.”

Finch hesitates for a moment--more concerned about Root than about their base being compromised, at the moment--then nods. “Fine. Bring him here. I’ll clear off a space for you to patch him up.”

“Copy that,” Shaw says. “Reese, stay with him, I’m gonna get us a car.”

...okay, I’ll admit, the rest of this first New York adventure isn’t super well planned out in my brain. So, skimming through it pretty quick...

They bring Nick back to the library. Shaw patches him up, while Finch goes over the footage he found, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Nick eventually wakes up. There’s a Talk.

“They were demons,” Nick explains. “They, uh. They can’t be killed, not with guns. There’s a couple specially-designed weapons, I think. And angel blades. Holy water will burn them, and you can use salt to keep them out. Best thing to do is probably trap them and exorcise them.”

Basically, Team Machine gets The Talk about monsters and so on Existing.

He admits to having been possessed for a year when they ask him why demons are chasing him, though he’s a little vague on further details. He does mention Meg, too, that she held on to him after he was dispossessed.

He asks how they found him--he’d thought his warding was messed up, especially when he thought Reese was an angel.

They give their characteristic vague answer, then ask, “If you’re...warded, how is it they found you in the first place?”

He figures, at this point, that his warding is fine--it doesn’t hide him from demons, necessarily, but even if it did, warding doesn’t stop the bad guys from spotting him by chance. Which is, incidentally, exactly what happened.

Nick also, of course, gets in the usual number questions; “who are you” “why are you helping me” etc., with the added weight of his possession and the fact that they took on literal demons to try and save his life.

Also, somewhere in this mess, Nick wanders off into the part of the library where Root is being held. Possibly while the rest of Team Machine is getting what they’ll need to deal with whatever Climactic Fight will end the episode/section.

(Nick was a high school history teacher, and this is a really awesome library, of course he’s going to go exploring if he’s left alone.)

(Bear is there to keep an eye on him/keep him from leaving.)

(Bear also gets many scritches and pets, as he deserves.)

Anyway, Root and Nick have a conversation; whether she and the Machine are already doing their Morse Code thing or something else is going on...or...something...anyway, Nick gets read in on the Machine’s existence.

(His reaction is more or less “...that does not even make the top ten most unbelievable/dangerous things I know exist, so...all right then.”)

Finch gets back to find them talking about history or something. Bear is next to Nick, who is a lot calmer/more willing to work with them than he was before. Root is just inside the cage wall, idly scritching Bear’s ears as they talk.

(This is actually Important.)

Anyway, eventually there is the requisite climactic fight. Possibly angels are involved--I know Shaw gets her hands on an angel blade at some point...

Point is, things get resolved, more or less. Nick ends up leaving New York.

BUT! Because Root had a Moment with him back there, and Finch saw it, he’s willing to unleash her a little earlier when the shit hits the fan a few episodes later.

In short, thanks to Root kind of sort of Bonding with one of their weirder/more fragile numbers, Team Machine is much better positioned to deal with Endgame nonsense, which means, first, that Carter gets to live (though Reese might still get hella shot, depending on how exactly Root changes what happens with Simmons; but he won’t go on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge); what follows is then that Team Machine is all working on the same page when Claypool’s number comes up aaaaaaand we avert Samaritan. Yay!

(Carter does still deduce the Machine’s existence, of course, gets upgraded to the yellow box and everything. And, remembering the late-S1 drama, strongly advocates for Fusco getting read in, too.)

(She gets her way on that, too. Eventually. Probably before too much longer, even.)

Also, Control does reveal herself, but doesn’t manage to capture Root just yet.

(Which also means Root doesn’t get her implant, at least for a while.)

But apart from that, we can leave this group to their own devices for a while, and get back to following Nick, who is now past his Origin Story, so to speak...

Hokay. So. After Nick leaves New York, he just starts sort of drifting again, and then a few days later, he gets a phone call.

Which he actually answers; in all honestly very few people would reach out to him this way, and he’s pretty sure none of the things that terrify him are on that list.

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

Nick stares at the phone for a long moment. The Machine repeats herself.

“…no.” He hangs up.

(Look, he knows damn well what that phone call was; Root told him enough when the two of them talked in the library. And he is not interested in letting another near-omnipotent entity screw with his head. Once was enough. He learned his lesson.)

The Machine backs off, deciding to try a less-invasive way of trying to get in touch with/recruit him.

Why is she doing this? Well.

The Machine’s mandate/objective is to protect humanity. When Nick came up on her radar as an irrelevant number she could offer her assets, she noticed some…let’s call them anomalies. In archival data about him, about the two people talking about murdering him…lots of things didn’t add up. Which is why he got pushed to the top of the list, so to speak.

(I mean, assuming she does put a certain level of thought/deliberation into which numbers she sends her assets? If two come up at once that are unrelated, does she need to decide, or do they get both? This isn’t 100% clear in the show, I don’t think; pretty sure all the multi-number episodes do end up being related, even if they don’t appear that way at first, apart from, like, backlogs from when the Machine has to go dark temporarily for whatever reason…anyway, if that is the case, she picked Nick because there was a lot of Weird Shit going on around him and she needed her human assets to sort through it, because she simply didn’t have the tools or parameters necessary to work it out for herself.)

So, Nick’s number comes up, and even more strange things keep happening. The Machine evaluates, and comes to the conclusion that there’s an entire class of threats to humanity that she hasn’t been monitoring correctly. The fact of the matter is, she was programmed with certain blind spots, because Finch had certain blind spots.

But the Machine is now in a position to correct that. She’s aware of the flaw in her system and, thanks to the changes she’s been making since Stanton’s virus and the other S2 arc plot stuff allowed her to start altering her code in a way she couldn’t before…

She can make up for it by adding yet another set of numbers/another protocol. Relevant numbers to the government as always, irrelevant numbers (within their reach, at least) to Finch and his team, “necessary” numbers (i.e., protecting the Machine herself/keeping tabs on other, potentially hostile, ASIs) to Root, and now…we’ll call them “hidden” numbers.

Of course, the next problem is, while there’s a lot of data available about monsters, angels, demons, etc., it’s very hard to sort through what is useful data and what is, frankly, BS. And, unfortunately, she lacks the parameters to do it herself.

Ergo, she needs a human asset to help her figure it out. Teach her/help her define this new dataset.

(And also to intervene when necessary, but that can come later. She’s got a bit of a learning curve ahead of her first, and she knows it.)

But, of course, she doesn’t want to retask any of her current assets—both because they have enough to deal with and because, again, learning curve. Better for at least one entity involved to know what they’re doing, right?

And so, she decides to recruit Nick. Nick, who has already been her window into this hidden world. Nick, who needs her as much as she needs him.

(Kind of like Root, except absolutely unlike Root. Like in that they were both drowning when she approached them, and needed her to give them a framework to cling to, to drag themselves back to the surface; unlike in that Nick is drowning in a very different ocean than Root was.)

Anyway. Eventually, she does manage to talk to him, and explain what she wants.

And he’s still not...100% sure how he feels about working with her, but...well, data entry, right? He can do that. Maybe.

“I don’t know how much help I’ll be,” he admits. “Just because I was possessed for a year doesn’t mean I know everything.”

“It’s still a place to start,” she replies. “Eventually, I’ll figure out the patterns and be able to extrapolate.”

“...okay, then.”

(As it turns out, he knows a lot more than he thinks he does, which is utterly terrifying; he has a lot of subconscious/residual information buried in his mind.)

Of course, eventually, just data entry isn’t enough.

The Machine doesn’t have all the answers/all the patterns down, but she has enough that she’s starting to identify threats/numbers she can assign out.

But Nick...well, Nick is fragile. Mentally, of course, but physically as well--burned inside and out, metaphorically and literally, by a long, incompatible possession.

At the moment, though, he’s the only asset she has in this area. Recruiting others, from among the insular, paranoid hunter community...is going to be difficult.

She spots something she thinks he can handle, especially if she grants him God Mode access and keeps him there.

He stares down at the text message she sent him.

“...I can’t do this,” he says. “I can’t...”

“Can we please try?” she says. “I’ll help you.”

“...I...”

“It’s a demon, I think.”

He thinks about it for a minute. He can handle demons, he thinks. He has before, after all. He understands demons. And...

(he thinks about the feeling of evil still living under his skin; he thinks of blood on his hands and in his heart; about all the nightmares and half-memories; about how he feels too small for his own body, how his thoughts echo inside his head...)

(he wants to do better. he wants to be better. maybe helping...people like him, people who have gone through what he went through...maybe that’s a start. to make up for what he did.)

“...is the host still alive? When I...if I manage to get there and exorcise them...are they still alive?”

“I can’t tell,” she admits. “I’m sorry.”

“I’ll...try,” he says. “I’ll try.”

It ends up, fortunately, being a win for all of them--the demon is thrown enough by seeing Lucifer’s former vessel that Nick has a chance to act; the host is in fact still alive.

Nick spends hours after the exorcism, just...sitting with him, talking. Helping him cope/process things.

“...we should do that again sometime,” he finally tells the Machine, after he goes back to wherever he’s sleeping these days.

So, he starts kind of sort of hunting after that, with the help of an ASI.

Every time he directly engages something, he’s in God Mode. He has to be, because of the aforementioned damage; he wouldn’t survive on his own.

(Probably, at some point, he and the Machine put together something like the Tenebamus Infinitum forum in The Promises of Angels; online support group/community for possession survivors.)

(Sam may or may not find his way there...)

At first, they mostly focus on demons/possession cases. Sometimes ghosts. But they slowly start to branch out into other areas.

They deal with some miscellaneous monsters, faeries, maybe a vampire...good times.

Pretty much the only ones they avoid are angels and pagan gods, because Nick cannot deal.

(Angels for uh obvious reasons; pagan gods because he remembers like two things from his possession with any clarity, and one of them is Muncie, Indiana/Gabriel’s death.)

(The Machine occasionally considers trying to get him into a hospital for a while, the way Root was--she thinks it would help him--but he’s...managing for the moment, so it’s not as necessary, and she does still need him actively working....plus, he’s terrified of being sedated so...this gets put on indefinite hold.)

During this period, though, they do acquire two more Friends.

First--and I’m not 100% sure how they meet; possibly similar to how Nick and Jody meet in Cartography!verse, i.e., a grief support group of some kind.

Anyway, first he meets a young woman, a psychiatrist. Who is familiar, if peripherally, with angel and demon type stuff.

(Other monsters are gonna be a little New to her.)

Her name is Ashley Finnerman.

(Yes, as in Donnie.)

(He was her cousin.)

(After what happened to him, she started trying to figure it out, and eventually did.)

(...honestly, the forum may be her idea. She definitely joins it, not as a fellow survivor, but as a crisis counselor/trained professional who will believe them.)

(Ashley is pretty big on community building in general; yes, she’s a therapist and that’s a start, but she’s only one person. In her ideal world, they’d be able to draw in other professionals--psychiatric because this is an underserved population that desperately needs those resources; medical (as in physical medical/other MDs); legal...anyway, she’s not 100% sure how to go about doing that, but helping out on with Tenebamus is a step in the right direction, in her opinion.)

Ashley is eventually read in on the Machine as well. She has more or less an actual Life outside of it all, so she isn’t as immersed as Nick is, but she’s still definitely part of his team.

And second...somehow, they acquire Adam.

How? ...again, not 100% sure, but probably one of two ways--

One, something similar to Promises, where Nick gets too close to the Cage mouth for some reason and is offered a Bribe. He takes the bribe, with exactly zero intention of following through on his end of the bargain, so to speak.

Two, some kind of straight-up Fairy Tale Bullshit. S6 establishes that faeries can reach the Cage; Nick somewhat accidentally does a favor for a powerful faerie through his work with the Machine, and to repay the debt, the faerie (or possibly a High Up Faerie who has taken ownership of the debt because he helped someone in their court/their child/something or other) restores his Counterpart to him? IDK, something like that.

...I think I like this option. He accidentally does a favor for, IDK, Mab. And she, not wanting to be in his debt, heads down to the Cage.

This works because, a) Mab is probably one of the few entities that can go toe-to-toe with an Archangel like this; and b) Michael is actually on board with springing Adam.

(Not necessarily because he gives a shit about Adam, but he does give a shit about Justice, and keeping Adam down here, especially with Sam gone, is not Justice.)

Naturally, she doesn’t tell Nick ahead of time--he did the favor without consulting her, she shall repay him in kind. Faeries and Obligations, man.

Anyway, Adam joins them, and then Nick doesn’t have to be quite as hands-on because Adam is perfectly capable.

(Adam also, at some point, makes a comment about the three of them having ‘nearly a complete set.’)

(I have no idea how/if they’ll ever be able to find someone to fit in for Gabriel, but three out of four!)

(Nick finds this oddly hilarious, for reasons he can’t quite articulate.)

So, that is what Nick is doing while Team Machine is foiling Vigilance and Greer and Decima and dealing with their Hard Sci Fi end of things.

Let’s bring these two worlds crashing back together, shall we?

(Well, I say crashing together...this probably isn’t the first time Nick has run into the others since that first adventure.)

(If nothing else, he’s stayed in touch, off and on, with Root.)

(And I’m pretty sure the others have met Adam.)

(Maybe that was where Shaw got her angel blade...)

So, timeline for this. Uh...probably at least a year after Nick’s first encounter with Team Machine. For the SPN side of things...ehhhhh I’ll handwave/stop caring and say this is sometime in the latter half of S8. Between the first two Trials. Let’s go with that.

Nick and co are back in New York, probably dealing with something on their end of things. A ghost or something.

And then they get sucked into some Team Machine nonsense.

Control still wants the Machine--or a suitable Plan B--back under her complete, well, control.

Decima is going after some other potential ASI.

(Root is back in town to deal with them.)

Vigilance is involved too, because why not.

(Greer can’t initiate his endgame there just yet, after all, so they’re probably still operating.)

Nick, Adam, and Ashley are pitching in, because they’re here and the Machine needs all the help she can get on this one. Because Reasons.

Meg gets involved--this goes AU in that she escaped Crowley somehow. And one of the first things she does is try to check on her various assets, so she’s trying to track Nick and figure out what the hell is going on with him.

Crowley, of course, is chasing her, trying to get her back.

And, to round it all off, Sam and Dean are chasing him.

(As they approach, Sam starts noticing a weird buzzing feeling in the back of his head. Like circulation returning, or something like that. He decides not to mention it--thinks it might be a new Trials symptom, and he’s already hiding those from Dean, what’s one more secret? Besides, they need to know what Crowley finds so interesting about this place...that’s way more important, right?)

So, all these disparate parties converge on wherever the potential ASI is being held/built.

Root and Nick, of course, are both in God Mode.

(...incidentally, Nick is...nnnnnnnnnot super comfortable with calling it that? He and Adam and Ashley mostly just call it access or full-access.)

(Nick has the same tingling feeling in the back of his head, but he can’t do anything about it right now. He just focuses on the task at hand, and getting himself and his friends through this alive.)

The Machine tips Nick off to the fact that there are demons sniffing around--a couple of Crowley’s minions. Which, of course, Nick and his team can handle, but there’s several of them around and we reeeeally don’t want Crowley getting access to an ASI.

(Especially not S8!Crowley.)

So, Nick, Adam, and Ashley head off to put up wards and shoo off any demons they can, leaving the others to deal with the Decima nonsense/destroy the drives or whatever.

There’s a lot of ground to cover, so they split up.

Eventually, Nick gets pinned down by Decima mooks, trapped in a corner of the facility where he’s trying to finish getting the wards up.

“What...what do I do now?” he asks the Machine.

She runs her simulations, and it doesn’t look good.

And here is where it’s different from, say, “If-Then-Else.” Slash another way Root and Nick are very different people/assets.

Whereas Root is perfectly okay with obeying orders from her God without question, Nick needs to be told his options and make the choice himself.

At some point, he describes Access as oddly comforting. It’s almost as overwhelming, almost as much of a surrender, as consenting to possession is.

But there’s one critical difference.

He doesn’t have to listen to her.

He can say no.

He can hang up.

I mean, it’s generally speaking a bad idea to do that, but the option is still available.

So, his head doesn’t feel as empty with her in it, but a lot of it is still on his terms.

That being said, when there’s no time, or it’s a very immediate “there’s someone behind you” type of God Mode moment, of course, that’s less of an issue.

But something like this, where there’s a fork in the road?

If there’s time, she’ll lay out two or three of the least bad options and let him decide.

“If you go out the door and turn left, you will run into Control. She will figure out you’re tied to me, and she will take you prisoner. She will almost certainly torture you, to get you to give me up. Adam and Ashley will meet up with my other assets, and they will rescue you, but the chances of their success are very slim. There is a five percent chance, at best, that you will survive. It varies, depending on how quickly the others can mobilize.”

“Okay,” he says, and swallows. “And...and Adam and Ashley, will they...?”

“They have better than even odds of surviving.”

“Okay,” he says again. “What else?”

“Turn right,” she says. “You’ll run into the demon who held you captive.”

“Meg?”

“Yes.”

That’s not so bad, he thinks. Meg didn’t torture him too much, and she wanted him kept alive.

“Control will capture Root instead,” she continues. “Sameen and the others will attempt to rescue her. Adam and Ashley will pursue you.”

Control capturing Root, on the other hand, seems like a very bad thing. Still...

“Adam and Ashley?”

“About the same,” she says. “But there is another concern.”

“Okay.”

“If Meg takes you, there’s a chance she’ll find me. And if she does, it’s extremely likely that someone less friendly will, as well. There is also an approximately 17% chance that you’ll wind up in Crowley’s hands instead of Meg’s. And his chances of finding me are a lot stronger.”

Yeah, no. That cannot happen.

“Are there any other options?” he asks.

She pauses for a split second. “Turn right,” she says. “Then at the first hallway, turn left instead of going straight. I’ll have to leave you then--there are several Decima soldiers, but if you manage to get past them on your own, you’ll find Sam and Dean Winchester.”

It hits him like a punch to the gut.

“Your chances of reaching them without my help are better than your chances of surviving Control,” the Machine continues, “but not by much. If you can get there, though, they most likely won’t harm you.”

Unless I’m in full-access mode, Nick thinks, and shivers a little.

“And I can say with approximately 97% certainty that, when Adam and Ashley find you, they won’t harm them, either. I cannot say the same for the demons or Control.”

“They won’t hurt us physically,” Nick finally manages to say. “But I can’t...I-I-I don’t know how I’ll...I can’t shut down, not in here. A-and I don’t know how Sam will react to seeing me, I’ll probably seriously fuck with his head a-and I can’t...I can’t...”

(there’s this running refrain in his head, that Sam Winchester is perfect, and that Nick is the reason that everything goes wrong.)

(the Machine regrets even more not getting Nick more help.)

He takes a shaky breath. “Plus, I don’t know if Adam’s ready for that yet,” he says. “He hasn’t...uh, he hasn’t said anything about wanting to track them down.”

“That’s true.”

He’s quiet for another minute.

“Nick?”

“...I’ll take my chances with Control,” he says.

“I understand,” she says. “Thank you. And I’m sorry.”

(It’s not what she would have advised him to do, necessarily--she would have advised him to try for Sam and Dean; it balances protecting her with protecting the majority of her assets.)

“Directions?” he says.

“Open the door and turn left.”

She guides him down the hallway, advises him where to dodge, where to strike. He picks up a gun at one point--

(he’s hesitant, and she reminds him “you’re in Control’s world now, you have to play by her rules.”)

He gets to the inevitable trap, where ISA corners him and Control is there.

She recognizes, pretty quickly, that he’s in God Mode.

“...now just who the hell are you?”

On the other side of the facility, Ashley’s phone rings.

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

The Machine also advises Root that Nick has been captured.

She and Finch have finished neutralizing the potential ASI drives; Reese and Shaw are with them; Carter and Fusco are currently working on securing their exit route, after driving off a handful of Vigilance mooks.

“We need to move,” Root says. “Control has Nick. Adam and Ashley will meet us.”

Reese nods once. “Lionel, Joss, get ready. We’re headed your way.”

“Copy that,” Carter says. “Fusco--”

“On it.”

Meg has realized that Crowley is here, so she’s now in the process of finding her own exit. He’s in pursuit.

Sam and Dean got all turned around and manage to get to just the right hallway at just the right time to see Adam and Ashley piling onto an elevator.

“...Dean,” Sam says. “Dean, tell me you’re seeing what I’m seeing.”

(he doesn’t press his hand. he hasn’t hallucinated in almost two years, he doesn’t need to--)

“Adam?” Dean calls.

Adam half turns to them, hesitates for half a second, then follows Ashley into the elevator and the door slides shut.

...and I’ll admit I don’t have a whole lot planned out beyond that. Also this is getting, like, super long. So, quick wrapup, so to speak.

So, Team Machine, plus Adam and Ashley go to rescue Nick.

Sam and Dean track them down.

Adam goes to talk to them, try and get them to back off.

“I have to go rescue my friend,” he says. “But once I’m done with that, we can talk. I promise. We’ll set up a meeting and I’ll tell you...as much as I remember, I guess. But right now, I have to go rescue my friend. Kind of on a clock here.”

“We’ll help,” Sam offers.

“This isn’t really your kind of thing,” Adam says. “This isn’t monsters, this is the ISA.”

“The what now?” Dean asks.

“Like the CIA, but on steroids.”

“...how the hell did you get involved in CIA bullshit?” Dean asks.

“It’s kind of a long story,” Adam says. “Which I will tell you, once my friend is safe. So can you please just...let me do this first?”

“How did...” Sam asks. “How did you get out?”

“Also a long story,” Adam says. “But I’m the only one who came out, I swear. And...” He hesitates. “They...mostly left me alone, after you were gone. If you were worried about that.”

(Sam hadn’t been, mostly because he had been Very Firmly Not Thinking About Adam for a while now, but he’s relieved to hear it.)

Reese steps out. Possibly holding his grenade launcher. “Come on, Adam, we gotta go.”

“Coming,” Adam says, then turns back to Sam and Dean. “I will call you as soon as we’re clear. I promise. Don’t follow us, okay?”

Without waiting for an answer, he follows Reese and they go to rescue Nick.

(Obviously, S&D don’t listen and do, in fact, follow Adam, but I’m not 100% sure where that would go.)

(Other than they do, in fact, manage to extract Nick alive, but it’s a near thing.)

(The fun thing here is, Control actually can’t break Nick. Well, she can’t get him to tell her anything about the Machine, anyway.)

(Yes, everyone has their breaking point so far as pain/torture goes, and Nick is no exception.)

(But he will physically break--i.e., die--before he mentally breaks.)

(And while psychological torture would be a lot more effective, she doesn’t know what buttons to push.)

(When she runs his prints/whatever, she gets the name Jacob White, which is an identity that Finch put together for him, for when he needed to interact with the real world. Since his own identity is...complicated.)

(Yes, that is a reference.)

(I couldn’t resist.)

(Also, the Machine, through Root, gets to deliver her verbal bitchslap to Control at last.)

Uh....yeah. That’s all the actual Plot I have at this point. But some other notes!

My girl Zoe is totally in the know. She may or may not have encountered Bela at some point, or found out some other way, but she does know.

(She never told Harold and John because--well, honestly, why would she? Her stock in trade is secrets, after all. And it never came up, and she wasn’t involved with Nick’s first adventure.)

Elias will turn up at some point. And basically become something like John Marcone, if any of y’all are familiar with the Dresden Files.

Bear’s Plot Armor may be some kind of magic, and I would not be surprised if he could take on a Hellhound and win.

Carter and Jody. Just...just Carter and Jody, man.

Like I said, Shaw gets her hands on an angel blade at some point. She and Dean probably bond. I feel like they would bond.

Also, I think Dean gets put into God Mode at some point. Possibly as his first real introduction to the Machine.

Like...IDK, he and Sam are with Nick for some reason, Nick, as implied above, cannot go into God Mode in front of the two of them, and honestly Sam going into God Mode in front of him would also be pretty devastating, so...Dean’s phone gets to ring!

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

“...the fuck?”

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

“Yes, I can--what the fuck is--”

“Two. O’clock.”

::turns and OHSHIT just in time::

IDK the idea just entertains me.

...yep, I think that’s it.

If you’re still here, thank you for putting up with my nonsense/checking this out.

Tune in next time, for an actual serious AU outline of some kind.

(....who am I kidding, these things are never serious XD)

[gothamiteneko]

I watched the fifth season's premiere of Gotham some days ago and since then, there have been running some comments about what happened, but i'm not talking about everything about it, i mean, not like general impressions or something like that (it was such a great and exciting episode, btw, i still can't get over with it, omg... But that's another story, lol), but especifically about that scene with Oswald and Tabitha and the whole drama around it... that also has it's own issues for the way the show decided to go with it, but yeah, is not the main discussion here.

My point to walk out of my usual silence, is cuz one dear friend of mine said something like "Robin has tweeted that all of Oswald's humanity will be gone. This hurts me so much" and as much as i love Robin (just like everyone else does, i'm sure), since my friend said that and apparently is not the only one feeling like this, i felt the necessity to share MY POINT OF VIEW of what i think (and told my friend) about this particular topic, so, here we go (this will be long and i'm not that bad with english, but is not my mother language either, so i apologize for the mistakes, hope it can make some sense anyway xD)...

So, about what Robin tweeted... I wouldn't worry that much x) he said the same thing when he realized about Butch's death in the script xD but what happened? nothing, in fact we all celebrated that finally Ozzy had revenge for his mother's death (i mean, c'mon, Tabitha really deserved it, she deeply dug her own grave, literally and figuratively).

If with "Oswald will becomes a monster" Robin means that he will suffer again another lose of a very important person for him (aka Martin) so he will lose his temper and will go berserk seeking revenge against whoever dared to do such a thing (probably will be Barbara... Or maybe Mother?) and when he found them, he will kill each one of them slowly, painfully and without any remorse seen on his face, then will be the same thing like when Butch or Tabitha died, cuz it was something they forced him to do, i mean, even when Butch or Barbara, or Ed or Jim (or in whoever you like to think... Except Tabitha or Theo, of course xD) betrayed him the way they did, Oswald forgave them and tried to pass through it in order to stay at peace with himself and cuz, as he always says -referring here especifically to people with who he is fond of in some way- "for the old times", so if he will "become a monster" then he will REALLY need a HUGE reason to become the cold-hearted and ruthless villain that Robin asures he will become, and even then, i doubt it, because of how the series (forget the comics, let's treat this like the legit AU from the DC world it is) had portrayed -till now- Ozzy's behaviour and development as a character:

Oswald doesn't kill without a reason if it is possible, he almost always needs a motivation to do it (like that time when he killed a man for a tuna sandwich... that could count as self-preservation... In a slightly creepy way but still, lol. Or when after that, he killed that guy in the car that insulted him calling him "penguin", i mean, if the guy would have kept his mouth shut, nothing would had happen to him cuz Oswald was supposed to stay lowkey since that moment), and loves to have the control over any situation, so he usually needs to know that those murders have a purpose (even the most tiny one) in his elaborated plans or to know/be sure that he won't need that person once again (then he will prefer to keep them alive for a while... if they don't cause him any other problem first). But even if he starts killing without feeling nothing while doing it on this season, that wouldn't be new cuz he was already like that too, just right in the first season! i mean, c'mon! he killed a man for a tuna sandwich, he killed one of Maroni's employees just to get his boots, he sat down waiting patiently and smiling while watched how those foolish robbers died for the poisoned cannoli and then he just left with the money as fresh and calm as if nothing would have ever happened, he stabbed a man right in the front door of HIS MOM'S HOUSE... and i could keep going and going with examples just for the S1. So he is not an innocent creature, he can be a very dangerous man despite his short height and general physical appereance, and is very visceral when he is blinded by rage and fear (like when he killed Tarquin using just his hands and a statue that the poor man had on his desk, cuz Oswald thought that he took his father's remains off of his grave to make Os fell in some kind of trap for an unknown reason or just to make him go crazy, ruin his reputation and make him seem weak in front of his enemies), so is not a surprise if he now seems to be absolutely heartless and behaves like an unpredictable and capricious dictator with the people at his service or with anyone in general. In fact, i personally find that change very suitable for him after all the physical and emotional damage he has been receiving all his life, after all those betrayals he had to endure from those who were supposed to be his friends and in who Oswald trusted. So, in contrary, i love how he now says "enough!" and closes his heart to everyone, cuz he is done of being him the one who always gives several opportunities and/or warnings; or the one who always trusts, loves and shares but despite any good intention he could have with anyone, he always continues being underestimated, hurt, humiliated, called names and judged by his acts and thoughts as if they really knew him or like if Oswald was the only one who is being selfish or like if he was the only one to blame for everything cuz he is the only "monster" and psychopath in the room, but not. Also i love how he is absolutely conscious of the enormous power and influence he has now, cuz he earned it all by himself, from the very ashes, from the very beginning all over again, and overall now, in the middle of the worst crisis the city had ever experienced, he is rising and climbing higher than ever before, he is swimming in familiar waters and as everyone very well know, penguins can perfectly fly in the water; so the cold behaviour he has now is not just very well justified but it is also more than necessary for him to embrace it fully, because he is surrounded by a very hostile environment, so then he knows that the desperation and the general knowledge about how he has every resource he could ask (guns, rounds, food, water, territory, minions, "muscle", etc) will make everyone to try to steal anything from him, at least once, and he obviously won't let that happen. He has always been a survivor and he knows with what kind of enemies and obstacles he is dealing with.

Now, if the writers, producers and Robin himself (and i say this with all my love and respect for Robin) want to think and believe that we fans will hate Ozzy because his behaviour "took us all by surprise" and "did a so unexpected 180° turn without any kind of warning", just cuz he is now acting like the villain he has always been, i think they will be the ones that will be surprised when they find out that nothing has really changed about the love of the fandom for our dear angry and murderous birb (is not like if he really suddenly would had went from a tender and sweet boy that we learnt to love from S1 to S4, to a cold-hearted murderer for the sake of "YOLO, haters gonna hate" in S5, pleeeease).

I think that Gotham's version in particular, of Oswald "The Penguin" Cobblepot, has a place very well earned in our hearts thanks to Robin's interpretation (he really embraced the character and brought him to life) and all the other people involved in the character's development,who have give him a complexity, a charisma, a background, etc. so well established and explored until now, that he is more than just another villain (not just in the series but into any kind of media -even written-, including other versions and portrayals of this same character, where his personality and story is not really taken more seriously, or is being exaggerated or being taken out of context or is simply not known enough by the general audience -besides comics' readers or the DC fans, especially if they actually take a moment to try to understand the characters- to make them have sympathy and a deeper and better conection with him, so he would be more loved and popular by who he is, as it happens with other characters/villains, like the Joker's case, for example); now "The Penguin" has become one villain that is also very relatable cuz now we can be first-line witnesses, so we have the opportunity to take a closer and better look into a ONE (1) more tangible POINT OF VIEW (i want to be very clear with this, cuz is Gotham's version, is Gotham's point of view) of his tragic story (his childhood as a bullied kid, his relationship with his mom and his dad including their deaths, all the very few people he once really trusted and/or loved and betrayed him or instead, in some cases, were taken away from him -permanently or temporary- to hurt him), his motivations (he does it cuz he wants recognition because he is ambicious and has always been invisible, outcasted, underestimated; but also cuz he wants a better life for him and his mom, for example; to protect and give her everything they lacked for years, aka, he does a lot of things for LOVE -an irony, considering that this is precisely the main point of his whole tragedy in almost any version of his character, i mean, the lack or absence of it for real in his life-. He is mainly driven by his emotions/his heart, doesn't matter if he is cautious and afraid at first, but after some time he opens his heart and gives it to someone in who he really wants to believe that is a person worth of take care of it... or if he now prefers to hide it to don't get hurt again) his actions and decisions (he is evil, cunning, intelligent, etc. but he is not undefeatable, he is human too, he has his flaws and can do mistakes as everyone else) that now is almost impossible to try to convince us that he is the embodiment of the worst atrocity ever created, doesn't matter how he looks or what he does, even if he never will be redeemed, cuz we all know why he is how he is and why he behaves like that (as i said, he is a very relatable character).

In conclusion, i'm sure Ozzy will always be our fav if they keep his development as solid and well constructed as it has been all this time, i mean, if they keep him in character, if they remain loyal to the story they have been telling us about him along these years (i mean, have been FIVE years, that must mean something for them, some effort and non sleep-time at least) and don't suddenly go 100% OoC just cuz they are forcing the plot to justify his villainy to the point of finally make him "become a monster" (like in "see what he did??? *insert a forced series of absurd and unbelievable nonsense for the sake of it* he is a monster! He is a horrible person who doesn't deserve any kindness or love in his life!") like SERIOUSLY? Are you really throwing to the trash the complex character that Oswald is, just for THIS? *points to the absurd and nonsense plot they throw at us*, are you despising one of the best and well written characters in the show just cuz you are hurry to end the series and you can't go before make your point very clear at all costs, of how you were always right about why we shouldn't like Ozzy so much if he is who he is, and then shove it in our faces? Well, news flash! we already knew it, we know who he is and we still love him and will always do. If we have forgiven (or at least i'm at peace with that) the poor plots involving our dear birb (like the Nygmob cockblock cuz Kristen 2.0, the stupid ending of his friendship with Ivy, the not permanent death of Sofia or the whole absurd drama and betrayal of Ed and Lee or *insert your fav poor birb-related plot's issue here*), i think is safe enough to say that we will be ok with whatever can come to us now and we will remain loving Ozzy to the very end... as long as they don't destroy what they had reached with Oswald as a character after all this time (again, FIVE years), just to try to change our minds and hearts at the last moment, cuz it was already too late for that since years ago.

P.d. Also, there always will exist the fandom to adopt this character (or any other fav you want, depending of the fandom we are talking about) and give him a better treatment cuz that's how should happen, aka, "fix what canon ruined", so the fandom will make our dreams come true xD whichever they are xD and we will be able to happily ignore or change the canon at any point, to give that place to our own versions of the facts instead xD

[mittensmorgul]

All of the stuff between Jack and Cas this episode was magic. And when Jack flew off at the end and Cas was yelling his name, I just *sigh*. He's gonna be Worried Dad in the next episode and Dean's going to have to comfort him. I just have so many feels about Cas and Jack!

I’m not gonna lie, I find it all really uncomfortable. I’ve been sitting on this message for a couple days, and just... not knowing exactly how to reply without squashing your enthusiasm...

The whole “worried dad” thing is just... skeevy to me. I mean, all the huge questions surrounding Jack’s powers are deeply unsettling. His powers do things and he has zero understanding or control over them.

Not to mention the fact that they way they’ve been setting Jack up all season is pointing to something very much darker. One of his first “humanizing” traits having earned him the Nougat nickname we all love, the fact that he was hungry and found satisfaction in candy, and in nougat specifically, is gone now. So’s the fact that he used to sleep. There was much squee over the scene of him snoozing in the back seat of the Impala like Cas had once upon a time when his mojo was failing him back in s5, and he was nearly human.

We haven’t actually seen Jack eat since 13.02. Even the Intern Fetching Hot Dogs scene-- he never ate himself, despite getting food for all of them. And now in 13.06 he tells Cas he barely sleeps. In the language of Supernatural, these are pretty universally Bad Signs.

They were the cues toward the end of s9 that Dean was succumbing to the Mark. Turning down food was one of the “tests” Crowley ran on him to prove to himself that Dean was fully under its control. Again at the end of s10, not eating and not sleeping were the signs that Dean was losing himself to the Mark yet again.

Soulless!Sam didn’t sleep either.

Yes, Jack is half angel, but he’s also half human. Sam has been treating him like a human with access to some sort of magical power pack accessory attached, but that’s not what Jack is. Dean had been treating him like a highly dangerous nuclear warhead of unknown mojo with a human attached, but that’s also not what Jack is.

Jack himself has no idea what he is, which Cas can certainly identify with, since that’s been his personal struggle for years now. He’s got some human, some angel, and it’s all mixed up and he’s been trying to figure himself out as if he were two separate things at once, but he’s not. He’s one thing.

He’s been terrified of his own power, because he’s understood that his power has Done Things™ that he’s had zero control over, that he didn’t choose to do, and that he can’t even comprehend.

This is so far beyond what Cas can even understand or relate to.

Not to mention that Jack can’t even guarantee that his power isn’t what brought all the Winchesters to care for him. Did his power realize he needed help and protection, and “make them” take him in.

I mean, before he was born, he needed Kelly alive. When she killed herself, his power resurrected her, controlled her, changed her. She truly believed that Jack shouldn’t be born until after she’d been resurrected by his power... his power that acts entirely outside of Jack’s control or conscious knowledge as a self-protective mechanism.

His power-- because of his personal need, because of his belief that Cas would keep him safe-- without his conscious choice to do so, reached into a realm that is beyond even God’s power and woke Cas up from eternal sleep that nothing is supposed to be able to return from. This is why Sam was kinda >.> about asking Jack if he’d woken Cas. This... was not a small statement.

Jack had NO IDEA he’d done that. And yet he just moves right along, accepting that Cas is back like it’s no big deal, and then goes on into telling everyone about the hunting case he’s found.

He’s learned so much just from watching Sam and Dean over the last couple of weeks, but heck, he’s got so much more to learn. His naivete has almost blown two cases already for them, but he’s also shown a rigidity of thought and understanding that complements his current understanding of morality in general. I’ve been waiting for his need to classify everything as rigidly good or bad to blow up in his face, and 13.06 did that for him.

To back up for a second, he fixated on this being a zombie case, probably because he’d watched a zombie movie or happened to stumble across something about zombies online. He never even heard of a ghoul before, and then had to explain it for himself in terms of two other monsters he COULD understand (zombie shapeshifter!). Interesting because it’s sort of the reverse of what Dean does with his “ghoulpire” and “octovamp” and the like. Dean smashes things together, Jack takes one thing and makes it two...

He knows that Sam and Dean use the EMF meter to look for ghosts, but he uses it in the graveyard because he doesn’t yet understand that it doesn’t work for finding ghouls-- or that graveyards might be hotbeds of EMF because of all the ghosts there anyway, making it practically useless even if they were specifically looking for a ghost. Or the questions he asks Athena about weird smells and cold spots-- ALSO not relevant in a ghoul case, and which actually blew their cover when Athena related those weird questions to the ghoul they were hunting. I mean... yikes.

It’s this rigidity of thinking combined with his utter inexperience that really worries me.

Yes, he did notice things while wandering around Athena’s morgue that eventually alerted them to the fact that Dave was Athena’s boyfriend, but it was already too late. Dave had been tipped that they were hunters, and it drove him to rob the bank in order to have the funds to flee with Athena... setting up the shootout in the bank’s parking lot.

Jack realized that Dave’s bullets couldn’t hurt him, and he resorted to using his power consciously to stop Dave. He wasn’t expecting the security guard to be in the way of his uncontrolled power blast, nor was he expecting it to kill the guard.

He’d been trying to do something good, but he did something bad instead, and once again he’s terrified of himself. He’s questioning every “good” thing he’s ever done, scared of every use of his power he hasn’t been aware of, and wondering what other unknown things he may have done that have hurt people...

Including everything Dean had said about how he’d gotten Cas killed.

His power did that.

Yes, he also brought Cas back, but that doesn’t change anything. He couldn’t bring the guard back. He has no idea how he resurrected Kelly or tapped Cas awake in the Empty, and all his power couldn’t do anything to fix what he’d done with intent, yet had drastic consequences he’d never foreseen.

So yeah, I’m worried for Jack. He’s worried for himself. And he doesn’t trust anything right now. He hasn’t had the time to grow into his power, to understand it, despite feeling a huge pressure to do so.

And Cas? This is so far beyond anything Cas can even understand. He’s facing almost an entirely opposite problem from what Jack is. Cas understands his powers completely, he’s lived with them for billions of years and knows his limits and boundaries. He can understand some of Jack’s current moral dilemma, because he has been living with guilt resulting from some terrible choices he’s made in the past, but he can’t really understand Jack’s fear of his own powers.

In that respect, I think Sam and Dean understand him a bit better-- Sam via his demon blood powers that he’d once feared, and Dean with the MoC/demon powers that he’d also feared. But they also can’t identify with or understand how Jack’s power he’s afraid of is also part of himself. It’s not something he can “cure” or go through demon blood detox on. It’s part of who he is that he’s convinced makes him evil, simply because he can’t control it.

That’s why the whole “floaty pencil” thing had the Kill Bill Sirens going off in my head. In immediate contrast to the whole conversation about whether it was his powers that had unconsciously crossed over into a realm beyond God’s reach just to get something he wanted, to then turn around and seem him so proud to make a pencil levitate like a gleeful child showing off a trick they learned... it’s super unsettling to me.

Yes, I think Cas does care for Jack, just like Sam and Dean clearly do, even if the whole reason they care for him didn’t start out as an actual choice (because that’s how Jack’s power works, that’s how we’ve seen it clarified in 13.06 regarding his waking of Cas in the Empty). And the fact we’re also getting all the unsettling little tells that a character is becoming “less human,” well... let’s say I don’t really feel comfortable framing any of this with language that involves the word “Dad.”

[themattress]

Ranking OUAT’s Villain Redemptions

10. Mr. Gold / Rumpelstiltskin - What redemption!?  Rumple was an out-and-out villain in S1, and he didn’t truly change at all in S2 no matter how often he publicly restrained himself to appease Belle.  S3 was the only time he made an honest effort at redemption, but it was fraught with failures, temptation, doubt and relapses into asshole behavior.  The only thing that made it succeed was that it occurred in a very specific set of ideal circumstances...and that Rumple died at the end of it all.  After being resurrected and losing his son, Rumple quickly regressed into the villainy he’s comfortable with, becoming the Big Bad of S4.  In S5, we had that brief “hero Gold” arc that was not only morally insulting and nonsensical, but also pointless since he ends up choosing to become the Dark One again by the end of it...the Darkest Dark One, in fact, who is thoroughly unpleasant up until the very end of S6, where - after being faced with the consequences of his own evil actions, consequences that include the potential destruction of the entire multiverse - he does the right thing once, which leads to Belle taking him back, allowing him to help raise their son, and him getting accepted at the big family dinner by all of his victims. What the actual fuck!?  That’s not a redemption - Rumple hasn’t repented of his evil ways, he hasn’t given up his dark powers, he hasn’t sacrificed one damn thing, and he only did something good after his own evildoing backfired on him. He is literally responsible for the crisis he helped resolve.  And yet he gets rewarded with his own “happy beginning” with his abused wife and helpless infant son?  Fuck off, A&E.

9. Regina Mills / The Evil Queen - I technically consider Regina to have the worst redemption on the show since I refuse to accept Rumple as even having a redemption. Regina’s first attempt at redemption happened quickly into S2, some may argue too quickly. While it seemed to be going well at first, it soon became apparent that she was only doing it in order to regain custody over Henry rather than out of any true remorse or desire to change. The moment something goes wrong for her, she turns evil again, and ends up being even more heinous a bitch than she was before.  If the show had been operating under any logic, Regina should have been considered irredeemable at this point.  But instead, she is given another chance, and for most of S3 she does a surprisingly good job...until the last five episodes, where her redemption is suddenly fasts-forwarded so that she receives all the rewards she has not yet done anything to deserve: a new boyfriend, easy reconciliation with Snow and with Henry, a True Love’s Kiss with Henry that breaks the Dark Curse, light magic out of nowhere that defeats her previously more powerful sister, and the complete trust and forgiveness of the entire town despite her past victimization of them. But then one thing goes wrong for her, and while she resists falling back into full-on villainy, she still returns to being a whiny, spiteful, self-pitying woman-child who is always looking for the easy way to get what she wants and occasionally does do evil things to achieve this, yet is paradoxically treated by the rest of the cast as a messianic saint, someone who has come so far and worked so hard and deserves her happy ending, with the narrative frequently giving her all of the big hero moments at Emma’s expense.  In fact, much of her development comes at Emma’s expense, since A&E clearly see her as the true star of the show.  And that show just isn’t any fun to me.

8. Cora Mills / The Queen of Hearts - This one is just bizarre. Cora was a villain of the highest order all the way up to her death, where she had a dying epiphany as to where she went wrong in regards to her daughter.  But for some reason, her death is treated as such a tragedy and as such a source of guilt for Snow (not how she killed Cora, no, just that she killed Cora at all) that one would think Cora redeemed herself before her death, which just isn’t so.  Things got iffier when Cora showed up in the Underworld during 5B, and after doing one good deed in reconciling with her daughters and getting them to reconcile with each other, she is allowed to go to Heaven.  While I personally find this acceptable since Cora actually did repent of her villainy and fully acknowledge that she would deserve to go to Hell if that was her fate, I can see why many would be bugged about one of the most evil villains in the show’s history being shown going to Heaven while other characters higher above her on the moral scale - Milah, Gaston, Auntie Em, and even Prince James in the same episode - are condemned to the River of Lost Souls.  When put into that context, it seems less like a good lesson on divine mercy and more a case of creator favoritism toward the character. Cora probably should have just remained in the Underworld to continue her redemption.

7. Maleficent & Ursula - Two thirds of the Queens of Darkness (the other one, Cruella, was an irredeemable sociopath in life and in death), both of them have things that work about their redemption and things that don’t work.  For Ursula, her redemption comes when, after Hook brings her father Poseidon to town who restores her singing voice, she realizes that her true happy ending wasn’t recovering that but reconciling with her father, who is now repentant of his past patriarchal abuse of her.  This is all well and good, but Ursula really didn’t do all that much evil for the redemption to be powerful.  She always came off as lost and confused and hanging out with the wrong crowd, not truly villainous.  And then there’s Maleficent, who has the opposite problem.  Her happy ending is also reuniting with a family member, her long-lost daughter Lily.  It’s sweet and touching, but it also glosses over all of Maleficent’s established villainy.  Maleficent cursed people, burned people alive, destroyed a village, was deemed as having the greatest potential for darkness by a Chernabog, but none of it matters in the end. Even her sworn vendetta against Snow and Charming (whom were made to look like villains and Maleficent their victim) is abruptly dropped and she’s suddenly getting along with them. It’s pretty much Regina’s bullshit redemption but on a mercifully smaller scale.  Since Maleficent did not actually repent of her evildoing, the show should have treated her character accordingly - as still a villain and a potential threat, but also a loving mother.  At the end, she’d be the gray-shading which is complimented by Ursula’s white and Cruella’s black. 

6. Tinkerbell - Aside from the villain-to-hero journeys of Regina, Rumple and Hook in 3A, we also got Tinkerbell, who was an ex-fairy turned trusted partner of Peter Pan.  The Nevengers persuade her to help them, but only if there’s something in it for her (namely, leaving Neverland and being able to confront the Blue Fairy about getting her wings back).  In the end, inspired by Regina and Hook’s progress, Tink learns to believe in herself and earns her fairy status back.  It’s a nice little arc, but it’s missing one crucial detail - the nature of her villainy.  We never see her and Pan interact, we never learn exactly what kind of work she did for him to make him trust her so much.  We see that she’s a scavenger who is prone to violence, but that’s it.  Wendy, Pan’s longtime prisoner, is friends with her, so she couldn’t have been all that bad.  This lack of clarity undermines what is otherwise a good redemption.

5. Zelena Mills / The Wicked Witch -  For the most part, Zelena’s redemption in S5 and S6 really works.  She was never as bad as Regina, so already her changing is more believable. When she realizes that her wicked lifestyle is actually harmful to her baby daughter, she allows Regina and Robin to take her in order to keep her safe.  She doesn’t join Hades despite him professing his love for her until she thinks she can use her own love for him to redeem him.  And when it becomes apparent that it won’t and never will, Zelena kills him in order to protect her sister and everyone else in Storybrooke.  When Regina is an ungrateful bitch and blames her for Robin’s death, Zelena is ostracized from everyone else.  But even when the Evil Queen comes along and tempts her to return to her wicked roots, Zelena keeps firmly out of the conflict, preferring to remain a neutral party for her baby’s sake until her hand is forced and she joins the side of good despite it not really getting her anything and no hero save for Belle caring much for her.  This commitment to doing the right thing comes to a head when she actually sacrifices her magic, the thing she’d defined herself by for so long, to help stop the Black Fairy, a sacrifice Regina should have made long ago but never did. After this, the other heroes fully embrace her as one of their own.  It’s a great redemption, but there is one snag - Robin, both the man and the baby named after him.  The baby Zelena conceived through deceiving Robin into thinking she was Marian.  By - let’s not mince words here - raping him.  It’s not quite as bad as Regina with Graham, especially since Zelena didn't kill Robin and Robin was willing to give her a second chance of his own volition prior to his death, but it’s still rape all the same, and to have the rape victim die while the rapist keeps the baby is extremely squicky, no matter how surprisingly good a mother Zelena may be. This one aspect casts a shadow over Zelena’s redemption and it never should have happened. 

4. King Arthur - Arthur was a villain in 5A, a corrupt monarch obsessed with fulfilling his destiny and ruling over Camelot at all costs.  While despicable, Arthur was also somewhat sympathetic too, as he became more evidently pathetic as the arc went on and Merlin really did screw him up by filling his head with visions of a future he felt the need to achieve.  In the climax of 5B, Arthur escapes prison only to be promptly murdered by Hades.  Down in the Underworld, Hook confronts Arthur with the truth: he was a terrible king and will probably go to Hell if he doesn’t do something to atone.  Note that at first this is the reason why Arthur helps Hook in his quest for the book: he just wants to avoid the consequences of his villainy.  But as the episode goes on, a clear change in Arthur can be seen as he sees the depth of Hook’s feelings for Emma, his bravery and his nobility...in this lowly pirate, Arthur sees the man he had wanted to be and failed to become, making him feel true remorse.  Arthur then becomes invested in the quest to the point where he is willing to sacrifice himself to the River of Lost Souls so that Hook can get to the book.  And at the end, when a doorway to Heaven is open and Arthur has the chance to go through it, which was the whole reason he joined Hook on this quest at the start, he declines and opts to stay in the Underworld, to rule it as a benevolent king and make it a better place, which a short on the S5 DVD shows that he did indeed do.  In just one episode, Arthur had one of the best redemptions on the show, from a selfish cad to a noble hero.  While like Zelena, he also has a rape-like situation with Guinevere that remains untouched upon (he used magic dust on her to keep her from leaving him and turn her into his compliant wife), there was no confirmation of actual rape and even some proof against it (he was too consumed by his obsession with Exaclibur to do anything romantic for Guinevere, let alone sexual), so it’s not quite as harmful to his redemption.

3. Ingrid / The Snow Queen - Ingrid is an even better example of a great redemption being accomplished in just one episode.  Despite being terrifying, prejudiced and insane, Ingrid was also one of the most tragic and sympathetic villains to ever be on the show, with an absolutely heartbreaking backstory and her sole motivation being to have a family who loves her.  She cast the Shattered Sight spell in order to make everyone in Storybrooke kill each other save for Emma and Elsa, who would become her new sisters, but when Anna shows her a letter from her sister Gerta expressing remorse for imprisoning her and confirming that she still loved her, Ingrid realizes the error of her ways.  In one of the best redemptive villain lines in the series, she says “I am a monster. Not because of my powers, but because of what I let them turn me into!”  She then reverses the spell at the cost of her own life, telling Emma, Elsa and Anna that they are all amazing people and that she is proud of them, then saying that her happy ending will be to join her sisters in death.  The whole scene is acted and scored beautifully, and I can’t help but cry anytime I see it.  By acknowledging what she did wrong and accepting responsibility for it, Ingrid is one of the show’s best redeemed villains.

2. Anastasia / The Red Queen - One of the two main villains of Once Upon in Wonderland, Anastasia quickly began to look more appealing, sympathetic and redeemable in contrast to the monstrous villainy of Jafar.  Her main crimes, apart from aiding him, were giving up love for power and being a neglectful ruler to her people...and she was helping Jafar in the hopes of getting to change the past so that she never did any of that.  When this failed and it became clear that she wasn’t going to be able to take the easy way out, Anastasia gave up on her aspirations and finally took full responsibility for being a terrible queen, vowing to make it up to the people of Wonderland by fighting to save them from Jafar, a fight that she stuck through even when it got her tortured by the Jabberwocky and then murdered by Jafar. In the end, her redemption earned her life, being revived by the water from the Well of Wonders, and won her back the love of Will Scarlet.  Years later, she is still ruling Wonderland but now as the White Queen, who actively works to bring love, hope and joy to her people. Anastasia’s redemption is everything that Regina’s is not, with her being fully self-aware of her villainy, truly remorseful of her actions once she starts her redemption, and with purely altruistic motives - doing the right thing just because it’s the right thing and she wants to help make amends for her past mistakes.  Add in Emma Rigby’s performance and it’s nigh-perfect.

1. Killian Jones / Captain Hook - Hook’s redemption starts at the very end of S2, inspired by his regrets for failing Baelfire long ago and not wanting to do the same with his son Henry, putting aside his desire for revenge in favor of doing the right thing.  He had everything to gain by not making this decision, but he does so anyway.  Throughout 3A, he does an admirable job helping the heroes through Neverland and returning to being the honorable man he was long ago, although his motives aren’t entirely pure as he hopes to woo Emma. When he is separated from Emma and gives up hope of reuniting with her, he tries to go back to his villainous pirate ways, but is overcome with remorse after doing so, realizing that his time with Emma changed him to the point where it’s not just for her that he wants to reform for, but for himself too.  When he learns that Emma’s family is in danger and that he must find her and get her to go help them, he trades the Jolly Roger - and his home, crew, livelihood and reputation along with it - in order to do so.  He continues to do good not to “get into Emma’s pants” but to ensure her happiness regardless of whether she ever returns his feelings, and to be the hero he now sincerely wants to be. His redemption comes to a climax in S5, where he becomes evil again after Emma forces the Darkness upon him to save his life, and is once again put into a position where he’d gain everything he wants by following through on his villainy, but remembering that this is not the man he wants to be, he once again does the heroic thing instead, at the cost of his own life.  In the Underworld, Hook learns the value of self-forgiveness and accepts the possibility of a second chance at life, but when it looks like this is impossible, he promises Emma to move on to Heaven when she asks him too.  Unable to do so until his unfinished business of helping Emma defeat Hades is resolved, Hook has a heroic quest alongside Arthur where he proves just how far he’s come, and when he goes into the light to fulfill his pledge to Emma at the end of it, he is instead resurrected by Zeus, deeming him a True Hero worthy of being reunited with his True Love.  

Hook’s redemption is superb not just because of the events that transpire and his growth throughout it, but because of his overall attitude toward the whole thing.  He knows full well that he was a villain, is remorseful for every crime he committed and takes full responsibility for them, and whenever the chance to make things right with someone he wronged comes up, he takes it.  It takes a long time for him to fully get past his self-loathing for his past sins, as he doesn’t feel entitled to happiness just because he’s changed and is doing heroic deeds now, as opposed to Regina, Rumple and initially Zelena who all believed themselves entitled to a happy ending, their crimes and victims be damned.  And lastly, also unlike them, every privilege that Hook has by the end of the series he has earned through his own hard work at redeeming himself.  He has no leftovers from anything he gained as a result of his villainy, even the rings on his fingers have changed from ones that belonged to dead victims to new ones he presumably fairly bought.  His new wife and family, his friendships with others, his house, his ship, his job as deputy sheriff, his very life...all thanks to his heroism and the good karma it rewarded him with.  All of this is why Hook’s redemption is truly the series’ finest.