#again the fact that i hate the body horror element. which is what i would call it even though i suppose its mild as body horror goes. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

that-ari-blogger · 25 days

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This Is About Relationships (Hell's Greatest Dad)

I feel like we are seeing more and more stories that draw on horror elements as of recent times, with mixed success.

Critical Role, for example, has put some heavy emphasis on body and cosmic horror in their most recent campaigns, and I think that has worked really well. They are telling a story about feeling powerful in the face of adversity, and so having villains who are either unknowable or far too knowable really works for that idea.

On the other hand, the horror elements of Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness actively took me out of the story, because they didn’t fit with the rest of the franchise at all, and I found that rather jarring.

Then there is Hazbin Hotel, which isn’t scary, but it definitely draws on some of the tools of writing horror. Although it doesn't do that in the way you might expect. Specifically, it uses the character of Lucifer to both embody and subvert the very nature of Gothic horror itself.

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD: (Hazbin Hotel, Ratatouille, Paradise Lost, Frankenstein)

I have made my stance on genre extremely clear in the past. I think it exists, but I think it is bollocks, and Hazbin Hotel kind of proves my point.

Because, yes, you can boil Horror down into however many constituent parts as you would like in order to organise a bookstore, but however you spin it, Hazbin Hotel fits that, with the exception that it isn’t scary.

Then again, being scary is entirely subjective. For example, I am completely fine with ghosts and ghouls, so the only thing that gets me about games such as Phasmophobia are the jump scares, and Jump Scares aren't horror. By the same score, I am incredibly squeamish, so Hazbin Hotel itself was more difficult for me than a few of my friends.

Which leads me to gothic horror, which has a distinct aesthetic to it that isn’t actually essential at all.

The name actually comes from its aesthetic. Gothic fiction got started in the 1700s when Gothic architecture was popular but gained traction in the early 1800s when authors such as Edgar Alen Poe and Jane Austin got involved. The latter of whom wrote Northanger Abbey in 1818 to parody the overdramatization of the genre in a book that I personally despise.

Austin’s book comes across to me as incredibly insincere. I have an infinite respect for Austin’s work, but there is a deep sense of contempt in Northanger Abbey that drives me up the wall.

I want to be clear here, this is not me saying the book is bad. It is incredibly well written. I just hate it with every fibre of my being.

To me, Northanger Abbey missed the point of the gothic genre. Gothic isn't about the emotion, it's about the humanity. The fallibility, the force of will, the instability and resilience that come and go like the wind.

Gothic horror turns that into fear, specifically the fear of morality. It’s the Ratatouille genre. Any angel can sin, any demon can rise. Or in other words:

“Anyone can cook.”

Gothic horror is the fear of inconsistency. That someone you trust can betray you, or spiral into awful deeds, or that someone you despise might be right. It’s the fear of redemption, and conversely, the terror of good motives leading to bad ends.

Other subsets of horror draw on the fear of the unknown, or of not knowing. Gothic fiction is steeped in the terror of what you know being wrong.

Case and point, Frankenstein is both the archetypal science fiction book, and a phenomenal Gothic story. The terror is derived from the fact that it’s titular character can be so great and yet such an absolute monster, as well as the horror of creating a conscience.

The creature is intelligent, and its intrinsic morality is up for debate the entire time. Frankenstein calls it his "Adam", for Pete's sake. It kills multiple people, but as a reader you are unsettled by how much you agree with its motives.

Gothic horror is the fear of absence. There is no good or evil here, just people.

There’s a reason I brought up Ratatouille. The conflict of the series is derived from Skinner’s visceral fear that someone he despises as much as Linguine can actually be competent, combined with a field rat rising from the gutter to run a restaurant. “Anyone can cook” is a threat in this movie, but it gets better explained by Ego in a way that I really like.

“In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto: ‘Anyone can cook.’ But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.”

According to one of the greatest fanfics ever written, Paradise Lost, Lucifer rebelled against G-d’s vision and fell, which can be taken any number of ways. It’s written so that you sympathise with the main character, who is, may I remind you, the literal devil.

Worth noting, Frankenstein's monster reads Paradise Lost. I wonder if there is any significance to that.

Lucifer from Hazbin Hotel is nominally the same character as his biblical counterpart, except that he is blissfully unaware of any of the themes surrounding him. Kinda.

He has grasped the fact that anyone can fall, but the reverse of that hasn’t quite registered to him yet.

Case and point, he doesn’t understand people at all. He has sought escapism through “stuff”. By which I mean the ducks, but I also mean his song, Hell’s Greatest Dad.

Part of the gothic theming in Hazbin Hotel is that people aren’t static, and that relationships are more important than anything else. Angel Dust and Pentious don’t become better people through trust falls, the find it through love and companionship, both platonic and more than platonic.

To demonstrate this, we contrast Lucifer with Alastor, who once again doesn’t sing his own song but steals it off someone else. Alastor’s relationship with Charlie is so obviously sinister, and that will be better explained two episodes down the line, but at least he has a relationship with her.

The agony of this is that Jeremy Jordan is a phenomenal voice actor, who, along with Lucifer’s stellar writing, endears the character to you from his first scene.

Alastor is a villain; Lucifer is an absent father. Who do you side with here? That’s gothic fiction.

“Sailors fighting in the dance hall, Oh man, look at those cavemen go. It’s the freakiest show. Take a look at the lawman Beating up the wrong guy Oh man, wonder if he’ll ever know He's in the best selling show. Is there life on Mars?”

This is the chorus of a David Bowie song called Life On Mars. It centres around someone seeking escape through television and storytelling. It points out the futility of this, but the fact that it works. It’s a stable dynamic that doesn’t go anywhere.

Remind you of anything?

“Who needs a busboy, now that you've got the chef? Michelin tasting menu, free à la carte I'll rig the game for you because I'm the ref Champagne fountains, caviar mountains, that's just to start!”

Lucifer is offering Charlie anything she could dream of. Any thing. But Charlie doesn’t need an object. She needs a father, and she needs her relationship with Lucifer.

Enter Alastor, who, up to this point, has been generally benevolent to Charlie. He’s basically the embodiment of that old Tumblr textpost that described someone as “chaotic gay. I haven’t done anything evil yet, but my general aesthetic and demeanour tell you that I will, any day now.”

Side note, I know this post exists. I have seen it, I have screenshots of it. But Tumblr’s search function is so legendarily awful that I cannot locate it. Tumblr’s search function has beaten the FBI before, and I don’t have that much patience.

In any case, Alastor offers up his own curriculum vitae in the form of this:

“Who’s been here since day one? Who’s been faithful as a nun? Makes you chuckle with an old-timey pun? Your executive producer.”

He’s pitching himself via his relationship with Charlie. But what I wanted to point out specifically was how the two characters relate to the beat of the song.

This song is inspired by Friend Like Me. I know it's subtle, but I'm onto something, and I can pick out the clues. If you look closely at his moustache in this shot...

Lucifer is clicked to the rhythm, or rather, his backing music is. The band hits ever downbeat as one, looping back to play the same thing every few bars. It is incredibly stable. The one thing that isn’t, is Lucifer.

The man misses every single beat by a fraction of a second. Not much, but when you contrast him with the entirely of the rest of the song, you notice that tiny imperfection, especially when Alastor doesn’t share it.

Alastor starts singing by matching the beat perfectly with his opening sounds, then going free within the restraints. Later, when he co-opts the song, the band begins playing along with him and matching his melody.

The Radio Demon understands people incredibly well, and he works on relationships. As such, his music has a much more symbiotic relationship between each of the parts. Lucifer’s feels like a creation, Alastor’s feels like it was created, if that makes sense. There’s a human element to Alastor’s take on this song.

Which brings me back to the gothic stuff going on here, and the relationship between Lucifer and Alastor. Alastor is, of course, a manipulator. He takes issue with Lucifer because he wants Charlie isolated. But Lucifer has no reason to get upset by Alastor, right?

Alastor shakes up Lucifer’s entire worldview, to the point where I find some of the double dad dynamic between them rather compelling. Most of it.

Alastor is risk incarnate; he stands for the idea that anyone can do anything. A radio presenter can be a cannibal, and have parenting instincts take over with Nifty and at times Charlie. But he is unsafe. Because he is such an unknown, he is untrustworthy. You don’t know where you stand.

Lucifer, meanwhile, is terrified of this fact. He likes the safety of knowing where he stands, he can protect himself there, but he can also protect others. In my eyes, that’s why he was so absent with Charlie. He found something he could understand and kept it because he didn’t want to shake up the rhythm. But that was futile, and he realises this over the course of this episode.

But you might say “wait, Alastor is ace, he can’t be with Lucifer,” and my answer is twofold. First up, I am ace too, that doesn’t prohibit relationships. I’m not even talking about romantic stuff here, Alastor is the poster boy for being aromantic, but more importantly, parenting isn’t just about the other parent.

The two can both be dads, joined by their mutual care for their daughter, rather than affection for each other. I find that compelling. Charlie needs both the security and the sign that everything is possible. She needs someone to lift her up, but she also needs someone to catch her when she falls, and Lucifer and Alastor both play different roles in that dynamic.

Any angel can sin, any demon can rise. Anyone can be a dad, anyone can cook.

Final Thoughts

Jeremy Jordan is a global treasure and even if this series doesn’t stick the landing with its next season (we will see), Lucifer will be amazing.

Do I have a crush on this man? No. No, I do not. Why do you ask?

In all seriousness, I think episode five should have been two episodes. One for this song, and one for the next. Lucifer would join the Hotel’s crew for a few days, befriending Pentious and co., being utterly disrespected by Husk, and being eased into the fact that morality isn’t binary.

I don’t even mean this from just the pacing perspective, I think the series would have so much more thematic weight if it devoted more time to the literal devil learning the thesis of the series and becoming on board with redemption. I think that would be cool.

I'm also just now realising that this is a Gothic Horror musical, so of course Alex Brightman got cast in it.

In any case, next week is More Than Anything, which is yet another case study in why Jeremy Jordan is amazing. Stick around if that interests you.

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#rants #literary analysis #what's so special about...?#literature analysis #character analysis #hazbin hotel alastor #hazbin hotel lucifer #hazbin alastor #hazbin lucifer #jane austin #mary shelley #mary shelly's frankenstein #david bowie #life on mars #gothic horror #gothic literature #paradise lost

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elemit · 9 months

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A Gift, A Curse

A story in which we discover just how damned an ascended vampire can be, and just how far you will go to save the spawn you loved.

Read in full on AO3

dead dove/not beta read

fic warnings: Abuse, Angst, Biting, Blood and Gore, Blood Drinking, Bondage, Dom/sub, Dubious Consent, Food Restriction, Hate Sex, Horror, Mental Coercion, Mind Control, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rough Sex, Sexual Coercion, Torture, Total Power Exchange, Trauma, Vampire Bites

Chapter 5: Forever

Forever, it seems, is a lesson in patience.

When you first came to, Astarion had been by your side to hold you through the wracking spasms, to stroke your hair as you wretched up more bile and blood than a body should be able to hold, to clasp your hand as you wept through the rush of conflicting emotions as the last remnants of your living self died within you.

He had handed you your first goblet of blood as soon as the twitching and nausea stopped as if he’d known that you would instantly be overcome with a seemingly unquenchable hunger. At the time you were too ravenous to ask where it had come from, but he has since convinced you that he has several willing sources to sate your new taste for blood.

“It’s much more simple, really,” he says when you bemoan your new diet of blood and wine. “No need for cooks or kitchen maids.”

You do have cooks and kitchen maids, of course. Astarion is enjoying regaining his mortal appetites. Every evening you sit down to dinner together, and you find you cannot stop yourself eyeing the feasts you find laid on the table with a jealous twinge as you reach for one of your two cups of red.

But he managed this in reverse, you tell yourself, for the entirety of our travels together. It is really not much of a burden to bear.

The hunger, though? That is a hardship you’re not sure you can endure. It is a constant thorn in your side. The physical pain of it leaves you curled and cramping on the floor on bad days. Sometimes the respite of a cup of blood only lasts an hour or two. Sometimes it gives no relief at all.

“It will get better in time, my love,” Astarion tells you. “But you see now why I needed to make you my spawn first? This way, if it comes to it, I can compel you not to harm others. Imagine the danger you would be if I wasn’t able to help you.”

It makes perfect sense, of course. You don’t need persuading. You feel so lucky to have someone by your side who can guide you through all of this. You stop asking him when he will transform you into a true vampire; you know you are not ready. You scare yourself, sometimes.

One day, he comes to you with a ring.

“We should be wed,” he says. “We are bound by something so eternal already, but the city will not understand our love until it has been declared through their banal system.”

He does not kneel. You do not mind. From the snatches of memory from your childhood that you have seen, you do not think you were ever the kind of girl who dreamed of a romantic proposal. Besides, what is more romantic than the love you already have?

You accept the ring with sincere thanks. Thanks for his love, and for this everlasting life, and for his taking care of everything as you go through this latest change.

The wedding preparations begin immediately, but mostly without you. You are too often confined to your room with fits of blood-hunger. You are happy, though. You are excited.

The fact that you have no idea when you will be able to feel the warm sun on your skin again makes your chest tighten with a greater sense of loss than you have ever felt.

#astarion #bg3 astarion #bg3 fanfiction #astarion x reader #astarion romance #bg3 spoilers #astarion smut #astarion x you #astarion x tav #a gift a curse

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booksandabeer · 7 months

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TV Round-Up | Jan-Feb 2024

One of my "goals" this year is to keep better track of things I read/watch/listen to (well, other than fanfic) because I'm getting old and forgetful and there's just so much stuff. And isn't this what ✨blogs✨ are for? Due to The Worst Flu in the History of the World, I've been watching a lot of TV recently, so let's start with that:

Barry | Started watching this on a whim about a week ago, am now already on season four and completely losing my mind over it. Why the fuck did no one tell me how good this show is? I mean, I know a lot of people love it and it has received a fair amount of critical praise and awards attention, but that in no way prepared me for just *how* good it is. It's unlike anything else I've ever watched; I wouldn't even know what to compare it to. Maybe Breaking Bad /Better Call Saul, but not because it's thematically or even tonally similar, but because, just like with the Gilligan shows, you never know what the fuck is going to happen next. It takes some WILD swings but until now every single one has landed for me. Season one was very entertaining, season two really hooked me, and season three was mind-blowingly good: It's the showrunners—and the show itself—slowly turning towards the audience until they're looking them right in the eye, and going 'See? This is what we’ve been doing all along. You felt safe in the assumption that this is a comedy, but really, none of this was ever truly funny to begin with; you simply chose to laugh about it. And what does that say about you?' MASTERFUL.

Masters of the Air | Given that I'm a Band of Brothers superfan, I'm the primary target audience for this...and yet, 4 episodes in, I cannot muster up more of a reaction than 'eh, it's fine?' The first warning that this would be a bit of a disappointment came in the form of the overlong opening credits sequence, which is dripping with patriotic kitsch (and yeah, if you already thought that was one of BoB's flaws, believe me, you are not prepared for this). Everything is too clean, too glossy, there's an artificial sheen and a flatness to it that prevents any real immersion into the story. It doesn't help that I do not for a single second buy baby-faced Austin Butler (still doing the Elvis voice!) as a tough USAF major, leading his men into aerial battle. Callum Turner and Barry Keoghan are slightly more convincing in their roles, but it's all giving 'Boyband Goes to War.'

The Curse | I've watched four (?) episodes of this now and I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with it. It's not a bad show at all, but essentially, it's the Succession problem for me all over again. Just like Succession, The Curse is very well acted, produced and directed; it's sharp and funny in that relentless 'secondhand embarrassment' way that you either love or hate (and I don't love it), but in the end, it's a show about terrible people doing terrible things to themselves, each other, and—because they have so much money and power—to the world at large. And I just don't know that I have the energy or the desire to watch them do it for 10 hours—especially when it's often presented in such an irritatingly smug way.

True Detective: Night Country | This is a bit of a weird one. There are a lot of things that I like about this season. The two female leads radiate with impressive presence individually and have great chemistry together; the set design feels both authentic and telegenic; there are brilliantly staged atmospheric and/or body horror sequences (I love The Corpsicle!). And yet there are also a lot of things that don't really come together for me; subplots or characters where I'm left to wonder why they were included at all? Like, Christopher Eccleston, good to see you sir, but why are you even on this show? Everything hinges on the final episode which will (hopefully) reveal that a lot of the elements that are not quite working for me now were in fact not evidence of bad writing, but instead either clever misdirections or hints towards an explanation that is both surprising and satisfying. I sure hope for the latter.

The Fall of the House of Usher | Look, there's no nice way to say this, so I'll just say it: I hated this. It's silly, trashy tv masquerading as a prestige drama. It certainly looks expensive and it has some good or at least beloved actors in it, and...yeah, no that's all I got on the positive side. Not to bring up Succession again, but it really felt like the brief here was 'Succession but dumber and with more gore and sex and mystery!' I made it through 2.5 episodes before admitting to myself that I didn't care about any of the characters and was almost spectacularly uninterested in the central mystery. This was the second TV show that I've started watching based solely on one (1) tumblr gif-set. Unfortunately, it was not nearly the delightful surprise that IWTV turned out to be.

_____________________

Back in early January, I also finished the fifth season of Fargo (excellent performances by Juno Temple and Jon Hamm; overall very good season even if some of the narrative threads felt unresolved; the puppet theater sequence remains an absolute highlight) as well as the third season of Slow Horses (just highly entertaining spy tv; Unlike its protagonists, everything about this show exudes competence and yet no one seems to take themselves too seriously. Kristin Scott Thomas as "Darth Tavener" is magnificent—as is her character's wardrobe. I love this show and I hope they'll renew it forever.)

#tv ramblings #tv round-up

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brightbeautifulthings · 8 months

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Find Him Where You Left Him Dead by Kristen Simmons

"'You're more likely to get eaten by an alligator than die in a plane crash, which is twenty-nine million to one, by the way.'"

Year Read: 2023

Rating: 3/5

About: When they were kids, five friends started a mysterious game called Meido. Only four of them survived. Now in high school, the remaining four are summoned by the ghost of their dead friend to complete the game by dawn or be trapped inside its uncanny Japanese underworlds forever. I received a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publishers at Tor Teen. Trigger warnings: character death, body horror, gore, captivity, violence, fires, drowning, spiders, neglect.

Thoughts: This is such a great title, isn't it? I would have picked it up based on that alone, but the premise of a horror game really grabbed me. I forget sometimes how hit and miss that trope can be, and it's not my favorite here. The readers don't know the rules because the characters don't know the rules, so there's never any sense about what's working or not working in the "game" or when/why they're going to be punished for breaking the rules. Everything is sort of hastily (and sometimes wrongly) explained after the fact. The game structure ultimately ends up being a bit flimsy, and I feel a little bait and switched into reading what's more like a standard other-world dark fantasy novel.

And we know I struggle with fantasy. It was extra hard for me here because each time the characters "level up," I had to reinvest myself in an entirely new setting with new monsters and NPCs. The chapters are plenty long enough to do this, and Simmons excels at world-building and descriptions, but it didn't stop me from feeling bogged down in all the changes and details. I suspect this has far more to do with me not really being a fantasy person (not even horror fantasy, unfortunately) than anything the novel does wrong. The Japanese folklore elements are really interesting and creatively done, and that was probably my favorite aspect of the book.

The characters are enjoyable and distinct enough, if not terribly memorable. The book relies a lot on their past friendships to ground the group, but given that we're not present for that and they all hate each other now, it's not as effective as it could be. Then there's also the fact that the game makes them randomly start forgetting things, so they suddenly start acting like friends again. There's not a lot of consistent development among the five of them, aside from a couple shaky romantic subplots. I did like the build-up to one character reveal far more than I liked another. It works well the first time, and the second time I was just bothered that everything kept changing. Pick a plot point/setting/backstory and stick with it, please. I suspect most of this would come clear on a second read, but I'm not invested enough for that, nor to continue with the series.

#book review #kristen simmons #find him where you left him dead #death games #ya horror #netgalley #tor teen #3/5 #rating: 3/5 #2023

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nicosraf · 2 years

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Can I just say that the part where Lucifer's tears turn into lilies was so ugh! It was so chef's kiss, I read it over and over again.

Just the fact that even in pain, Lucifer was never allowed to be ugly. Pain like that is inherently ugly yet even that is robbed from him as his tears are turned into a spectacle. He is meant to be beautiful and that's all there is, God wouldn't allow him to be anything else.

Maybe I interpreted it wrong but ugh I'd love for you to explain that part to me, I've been ripping my face off trying to find someone who noticed the things I did. I have so much I want to talk about.

You interpreted right! I think the emphasis on Lucifer/Satan's beauty in the Bible is a lil interesting (mostly the passages in Ezekiel 28, which most Christians take to refer to him). There's very little about Satan's strength, particularly as an angel, and I think in media we hear a lot about the powerful and strong Lucifer, rather than the beautiful, wise, innocent one who became vain on account of that beauty, which was what the passages actually say:

You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: carnelian, chrysolite and emerald, topaz, onyx and jasper, lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared. You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. You were blameless in your ways (NIV Ezekiel 28:12-15) Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. (NIV Ezekiel 28:17)

But, at least for humans, beauty is a lot of pressure!! (a lot of models, influencers, & celebrities struggle with body dysmorphia), so I wondered if Lucifer's beauty was ever a burden for him / if he hated his body. And I wondered about God's role in creating that (and knowing it would make Lucifer suffer), and how he would reinforce the idea. (And obviously I wondered what the point of a most beautiful angel even was, which led to the pretty creepy relationship between God and Lucifer.)

I thought a lot about the trappings of beauty, about God forcing Lucifer to be beautiful no matter what (especially in the crying flower scene), and how that was just another assertion of God's control over Lucifer's body (which eventually manifested itself as SA, inspired from Ezekiel 16). I chose Lucifer crying flowers because, as you said, authentic crying is ugly and flowers are pretty. It turned Lucifer's sadness into beautiful sadness.

And there's another major element to it, ofc: God trying to hide the horror of what he's doing, covering it up with flower-giving, an expression of love. But who is God covering the horror for? For himself? For Lucifer? Hmmm

#thank you for the ask!!!!#ive been having a lot of thought about Lucifer and God recently #and beauty and etc #angels before man #mine #ask

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monstermaster13 · 6 months

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Rise Of The Dum Dum Plague

NOTE: This is a were-aykroyd transformation story that features ‘dum dumification’, weight gain, flatulence, and body horror-esque elements as well as weirdness in general, if you don’t like crude humor then I suggest reading some other stories instead.

When Nathan first got his were-aykroyd powers he didn’t know that he would end up being stuck in the middle of his worst nightmare, his nightmares were always of that specific type of were-aykroyd…a gluttonous stupid looking one known as a ‘dum dum’, which he hated, he hated what dum dums represented, the utterly disgusting almost hedonistic worship of their own body fat, their flatulence, how they took what to him was cool like being a were-aykroyd and making a grotesque mockery out of them.

It all started back when the master from his original world tormented him with a nightmare, a nightmare of turning into a fat stupid were-aykroyd at a concert to humiliate him, yes he acted like loved him, but said master or the ‘creator’ as he was called, clearly had other intentions for him. Since then he had become afraid of becoming like that.

Luckily for a while after that he never had to deal with it often, at least unless on certain lunar dates or if he ate too much, the were-aykroyd dum dum always came out when hunger was involved, hunger was his motivation, he wanted to always grow out of Nathan.

Nathan went from universe to universe and master to master to find a master who would actually love him, and when he did, he found one who initially viewed him as a pet but the relationship became like that of a parent and child, and of course he’d feed him and care for him, what made this relationship even better was the fact he was a fellow were-aykroyd and he could help him with his problems.

What seemed like a perfect ordeal for him eventually started to become worse when Nathan came home one afternoon to see his master looking rather different than normal, his master was in the state of being a dum dum were-aykroyd, watching a television show about dum dums.

He couldn’t believe what he saw..it looked like some kind of weird fake commercial for something called ‘dum dum food’ which was some type of were-aykroyd food, what made it different from human food was anyone’s guess but it was still odd to see. He was disgusted at what he saw, fat dum dum were-aykroyds eating the food, forcing others to eat it and making them into dum dums too.

Nathan tried to switch the channels and he flicked through various channels, dum dum were-aykroyds popping up on every channel as if this was some kind of bad Twilight Zone parody episode. The dum dums seemed to have invaded every channel.

He switched over to a documentary channel…hoping to see a soothing natural documentary featuring the calming presence of David Attenborough, and he did and he then saw a documentary about were-aykroyds, and he saw those dum dums again.

“Dum dums again?”

“Aren’t these dum were-aykroyds delightful?”

“Uh no they are disgusting.”

“But you will like them.”

His master lumbered over to him…’What has gotten into you, master? You definitely do not seem like yourself.’ ‘I am fine, I am a very good dum dum and you shall be a dum dum too!’ ‘What? A dum dum? But I don’t…’ ‘Oh but you will.’

There was something off about this, he groaned as he walked towards Nathan in a slow dum dum manner, making odd noises as he did so…’You’re a…a..’ ‘A dum dum, yes, I am. A good dum dum were-aykroyd and I want you to be a dum too!’ ‘I will never be like you.’ ‘Oh but you will, you will become very stupid and you will like it.’

This terrified him as he started to run and headed upstairs, he panicked as his master tried to chase him, his body swelling and growing as dangerously gassy farts emitted from his behind, letting off an awful smell that could be detected from anywhere in the apartment.

His master was growing bigger and fatter, as he became a bigger and fatter were-aykroyd, sniffing him and stalking him. ‘Come on now, let’s both be happy dum dums together.’ What was even more disturbing was that his master’s intelligence was dwindling even more along with his humanity, and Nathan felt sorry for him.

Nathan hurried upstage and tried to hide as the dummifying were-aykroyd that was his master stalked him, his master’s mind slowly shrinking away even further, and affecting his behavior..making him think that Nathan was his boyfriend, horrified about this…Nathan made a run for it and attempted to fight back.

At this point, his master was acting like an overgrown infant as he was crawling towards Nathan..feeling like he needed to love and infect him, he made a run for it and attempted to run before he encountered the dumbed up version of his master. ‘Hehe, does my boyfriend wanna play with dum dum?’ ‘Oh no, I don’t.’

The sight of the dummified version of his master frightened him, he was a massive were-aykroyd, one that was considered fatter than normal ones, he looked ridiculous and talked in a silly manner but what unsettled him the most was that the master that he had loved the most, was now lost, lost and trapped in the body of a dum dum.

He tried to look up the cure for his master’s condition and he found out it was a plague that was spreading throughout town, the plague had been spreading for multiple nights, turning humans into these goofy plus sized food addicted were-aykroyds and he knew that he was likely to be next, he hopped it wouldn’t come to that.

The dum dum version of his master lumbered towards him before crying, it was obviously he was trying to control himself but he couldn’t, the dum dum were-aykroyd that used to be his master was not in control of his body, he stopped for a bit as Nathan found the cure for it and he worked on making the cure.

Making the cure for his master, he presented his master with a bottle of sorts containing the cure and the antidote…the master reached for the drink and drank it, the drink’s contents slowly turning him back to normal, Nathan stood there, relieved.

However the relief turned to horror as he hurried down to the kitchen to find what appeared to be ‘dum dum’ cookies and dum dum were-aykroyd food in the fridge, he screamed as he saw what appeared to be a horde of were-aykroyd dums, all grotesquely rotound and hungry.

The dum dums break into his apartment through the door and groaned, all of them wanting to come near him. ‘There is the dummy, he must join us, he must join us.’ ‘Yes, be a dum dum were-aykroyd like us.’ ‘I will never be like you, you’re disgusting.’ ‘You will eat like us, you will feed with us, you will be like us.’

Nathan attempted to make a run for it and attempted to fight the dum dums, knowing that the dum dums would probably be too stupid to try and do anything back, but one of the dum dums grabbed him and touched him, he felt uncomfortable being around these dum dums.

He attempted to fight them off only to find himself clutching his stomach which was growling and gurgling, as it began to swell and inflate..his shirt slowly began to get tighter as he began to think about the cookies, thinking of those cookies made him feel hungrier than he normally would be as he couldn’t help but think about eating them. ‘Those dum dum cookies sure look good. Good enough to eat. And I must eat, I must eat and be a good dum dum for master.’

The words that came out of his mouth sounded alien to him, like he wasn’t usually this hungry, that’s when he saw his stomach swelling and growing even more, inflating with fat as brown hairs grew on them. ‘There was no way that was me who said that, that sounded dumb, like something those dum dum were-aykroyds would say.’

Yet he felt like he needed those cookies and he couldn’t help but digging into them, feeling the need to eat more and more of them, as he did..he belched loudly after each better, producing more and more belches after each cookie he ate, he couldn’t stop eating them. His shirt buttons slowly strained and puckered before popping off, he panicked as he stopped eating.

Looking at his shirt, he could it see it straining and slowly tearing apart as his chest and torso swelled and broadened, hairs growing on both as his arms slowly broadened and grew hairs on them as well. He groaned and attempted to get his shirt off only for it to slowly rip apart to exposure his upperbody and fattening belly.

He couldn’t help but rub his inflating stomach, cradling it and patting it as his hands enlarged and grew hairs on them, the fat was spreading all over his body and making his clothes grow tighter and tighter. He groaned as his stomach gurgled, he suddenly was finding the idea of eating dum dum food to be a good one as he began to feel incredibly hungry for the taste of it, he reached for the bucket of dum dum food and he started to chow down on what was inside.

His shoes slowly began to strain as his feet slowly swelled and grew, a loud snap was heard as his shoes burst apart, revealing his much larger feet, two of the toes on both feet sticking at the knuckle and giving him webbed toes. He watched as his pants slowly started to strain, his belt was straining as well as his belly inflated even more, pushing against his belt. ‘Hehe, dum dum loves to watch his belly grow and burst through a belt, tee hee! Oh no, why am I doing that?’ ‘Because you’re becoming one of us, a big fat happy dum dum.’ ‘I can’t be a dum dum, i’m intelligent.’

Nathan panicked and he attempted to stop himself from turning dum dum but he heard the gurgling in his stomach as he kept eating and eating, feeding on the cookies and the dum dum food, his rear slowly swelling and growing with fat as it pushed against his jeans, making his pants feel tighter on his growing behind.

His jeans slowly got tighter and tighter as his legs thickened as his rear enlarged, several loud gaseous farts emitting from his behind…’Tee hee, I love eating and growing. Master loves a good dum dum who loves to eat, tee hee hee! Oh no, please no…no.’ His jeans started ripping at the seams due to his fattening rear.

Instinctively he chuckled as he saw how large he was growing, his belt slowly snapping apart due to his stomach threatening to burst through it, which it did…bursting right through it. He rubbed his new stomach…’Do you like your stomach, dum dum?’ ‘Yes, my stomach is very big and soft, master. Wait, i’m acting like a dum dum, I shouldn’t be acting like one.’

He felt sick so he ran upstairs to the bathroom, when he went into the bathroom he closed the door and he reached into the toilet and threw up, coughing up the dum dum food, the dum dum food that had been spewed turned into another dum dum food piece which floated into his mouth, and forced itself down his throat.

Nathan attempted to spit the food out, and he spat it out only for said dum dum food piece to slowly morph into a miniature dum dum were-aykroyd in a manner that looked like something out of Hellraiser. It was an odd looking creature, very much like a not-quite-deformed pygmy were-aykroyd who looked equally as goofy offspring of the bigger were-aykroyd, and it unnerved him.

He couldn’t help but make odd dum dum sounds as more and more farts expelled from his rear as his jeans ripped apart, leaving him in his underwear, he was embarrassed, he couldn’t stop farting and laughing at his own farts. He felt like an idiot, a very stupid one at that.

That is when he saw even more weight that was being piled on to his body as he slowly elevated in height to 6’1 and his shoulders and back broadened, he felt like he was getting a bit too heavy for his own good and that he was going to explode out of his shorts. He groaned as his neckline felt funny due to his neck swelling and filling up with fat as he developed sort of a double-chin.

He gasped as his hair slowly lengthened and darkened, his forehead elevated itself up as his eyebrows thickened, his eyes widened as one turned from brown to green, his nose enlarged and developed a cleft in the middle as his lips slowly became kissable. His features slowly contorting to those of Dan Aykroyd as his face plumped up, giving him the appearance of having a chubby cuddly looking face.

Nathan couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw himself in the bathroom mirror, he was a large portly, hairy, dum dum were-aykroyd! He screamed when he saw his reflection, his voice deepening and altering to sound Aykroydian but also sounding very silly as well. He held his head for a little bit as he got a head-ache, he was beginning to have trouble thinking, he got out his phone and tried to call them for help but he couldn’t remember their phone numbers.

His mind was shifting and it was making him uncomfortable, making him having odd thoughts that felt very dum dum, his human intelligence was gradually being overtaken by the dum dum personality that was making him think about food. ‘Dum dum loves food. Does my dum dum love to eat food?’ ‘Yes, dum dum loves to grow, i’m, such a big happy dum dum for you, master!’

The dum dum mannerisms slowly spread more and more into his mind, making him feel more and more silly and hungry, like all he wanted to do was grow, feed, transform and spread his dum dum goodness to all of the helpless humans. ‘Hehehe, dum dum loves growing.’

A couple of seconds later and the dum dum mentality took over him completely, making him feel like he was extremely silly and also that he was a were-aykroyd. ‘I must remember who I am, i’m Nathan, i’m a scientist, i’m a human.’ ‘Silly dum dum, it’s so cute that you are pretending that you are a human, you have always been a dum dum.’ ‘No I haven’t, i’m human…my name is Nathan.’

“Silly dum dum, you are a dum dum, just like us!”

“A dum dum? But i’m human.”

“You are a good dum dum were-aykroyd and you love being my dum dum.”

‘I am a human..i’m human…I, am a dum dum who loves being your dum dum! No wait, no i’m not, get it together Nathan.’ ‘Aaaw look at you, my dum dum is trying to hold onto the belief he is a human and not a were-aykroyd! You are such a good were-aykroyd, and so silly too, tee hee!’ ‘You monster! How about you stop this right now or i’ll make you stop. You are a horrible were-aykroyd master and deserve to suffer!’

“That is no way for a dum dum to behave. Now say you’re sorry, dum dum.”

“Never! I hate this dum dum body, I hate this dum dum life, why can’t I be a were-aykroyd who is not a dum dum? It is not fair I have to be stuck as a dum dum, it is no fair at all!”

He protested, attempting not to lose his mind but ultimately he found himself giving in to the dum dum mindset as he felt less and less intelligent and goofer and dum-dumier each time, his human intelligence and memories of being human were replacing themselves, not completely though as he was still himself, his transformation completed itself and he was now fully a dum dum were-aykroyd, well mostly outward appearance and mannerisms wise but he was himself still and could still think, it’s just he had the ‘dum dum’ instincts inside him. This was horrifying for him, he was in the body of this grotesque gluttonous stupid were-aykroyd and he couldn’t control this body, this body acted on its own without any warning or hesitation.

The dum dum were-aykroyd pushed open the door to the bathroom with his massive hands, walking down the halls and down the stairs until he stopped at the bottom and arrived at the kitchen, that is where he saw his master and he instinctively cuddled him in a dum dum way. ‘I am sorry master, I am sorry this had to happen.’ He broke down in tears but his master comforted him…’There there, it’s okay.’

Nathan couldn’t bear to look at himself, when he first got his were-aykroyd powers he wasn’t expecting this, he wasn’t expecting to be turned into the dum dum form, he couldn’t stand dum dums and thought they were an utter joke and an insult to were-aykroyds, but here he was..as one of them himself. He wasn’t in control of his own body, he was stuck there on the inside as the dum dum were-aykroyd body occasionally acted on his own.

Which included raiding the fridge as if he was Slimer and very much eating everything in it and raiding stores, he remembered the first time this happened..he was spotted, on live tv, as a dum dum were-aykroyd and he felt embarrassed when he saw himself on tv like that.

That dum dum were-aykroyd who stared at him blankly and dumbly with that messy hair and goofy expression, if that was who he was to become every night from this point on, he definitely feared that he’d eventually become too stupid to even remember being human or even remember his name, he looked at himself and sobbed. ‘I’m gross and stupid, this isn’t how a were-aykroyd should be. I should be something cool like a conehead alien or a ghostbuster but here I am being a dum dum, who is fat and stupid and eeeew.’ ‘Well yes you could have, but you would have complained about that as well.’ the other dum dum were-aykroyd responded. ‘Ugh, I hate this dum dum form, I just hope it lasts for a night and I’ll turn back to normal in the morning!’

He sighed, thinking of how much he dreaded this form and how he wished he could have been a much better were-aykroyd, being stuck in the proverbial backseat while this gluttonous were-aykroyd took over the driver’s seat and took control of him, was a nightmare for him, he felt like this form wasn’t him at at all.

The dum dum he saw in the mirror wasn’t him, he was..this large, hairy were-aykroyd who was addicted to food. He felt like he had been degraded into being a useless animal, he felt like he was in those cow transformation stories in which the victim lost their intelligence and their ability to speak and could only be flatulent and gross because that’s how all of those stories would often be.

‘This isn’t me..this isn’t me. This is a dum dum were-aykroyd, not me.’ He kept telling himself, of course he was right, he was still himself mentally, it’s just he had the on and off again dum dum instincts which he had trouble controlling and it was going to make his horrific experience all the worse.

He poked his round stomach and felt embarrassed…surely this plague would not be one that would be lasting for a while, he turned on the tv and a news report came on in the style of Weekend Update, complete with Chevy Chase. ‘Good evening i’m Chevy Chase and you’re not, tonight’s top story. A strange plague has been going around that is causing people to be turned into goofy plus sized were-aykroyds who are very much like the character Homer Simpson. This situation is not unlike last year’s Treehouse of Horror segment Lout Break.’

On the screen Chevy was sitting at the newsdesk giving the news as one of the news reporters had been turned into a were-aykroyd dum dum and tried to chase him. ‘It is advised not to go any places were-aykroyd dums dums are including restaurants that may contain dum dum food, and it is advised not to leave the house when dum dum gas is around.’ the camera cut off before the dum dum were-aykroyd reporter got near him.

Chevy yelped…’And that’s the news for this evening, good night!’ as the were-aykroyd dum dum reporter grabbed him and hugged him before belching in his face, turning him into a goofy were-aykroyd that resembled a big cuddly version of his friend Dan Aykroyd.

“Aaaw crap.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Master, we’ve got a dum dum plague on our hands now.”

And so the beginning of the dum dum plague had started, spreading throughout the neighbourhood and turning all the human citizens of Oakendale into hungry, goofy, plus sized dum dum were-aykroyds who were obsessed with food. And now he was one of them, but he wasn’t like them, he was still himself and he didn’t lose his mind, however he felt like he was going to.

He was lost in this nightmare of dumbness and were-aykroydism, and he felt like he wasn’t able to recover from it, he sighed as he sat himself down on the couch and decided to rest for the night, he had become tired from all the eating he had done as a were-aykroyd, so he drifted off to sleep, laying on the couch.

As he slept on the couch, he tossed back and forth, having nightmares of the dum dum were-aykroyd version of himself he saw in the mirror, unable to control himself in said nightmares. Eventually the nightmares subsided as he slept throughout the night.

When the moon went down and the sun arose the next morning, he yawned as he awoke…’That was a horrific experience, I hope never to experience this again. But I guess i’m going to have to do this every night in this universe until I can find a way to contain the dum dum were-aykroyd.’

He looked around, the dum dum were-aykroyds were gone, there was only him and his master in the apartment together, he looked at himself in the mirror for a bit, seeing the dum dum were-aykroyd from the night before, but that was before he morphed back into his human form. ‘Phew, much better. I hated that body. But I guess I'm going to have to be stuck with that in this universe until I can find a way to either fix it or control it!’ ‘Good morning. Did you sleep well?’ ‘Well, uh..yes, master..I did but I had a nightmare about turning into a dum dum were-aykroyd, this new form I am going to end up turning into each night is terrifying and I do not like it.’

“There there, it is quite alright.”

“Oh, master…I love you!”

Nathan hugged his ‘master’ as he got up and got dressed before getting over to the kitchen to make breakfast. After making and eating breakfast he headed to work at the paranormal research facility, this universe’s version of Oakendale was different from his usual home, but at least he could make the most out of it.

He spent the day recovering from his nightmarish dum dum experience as he worked hard in the lab, working on new projects, it was a very strange world he had gotten himself into but at the very least, he was in one he could get accustomed to overtime and he felt happy with this world.

However, over at where the local bakery was..a dark were-aykroyd in a delivery boy uniform with boxes of the dum dum cookies, he placed the cookie boxes on the stand and gave them to a were-aykroyd dum dum baker. ‘The first step of the plan is complete. With the dum dum plague going around and turning people into dum dum were-aykroyds, we are going to make sure that these cookies and dum dum foods in general get sold in no time at all. And of course this will help us get more potential were-aykroyds to join us.’

He pulled out a phone from his pocket and he made a call..’Alright boss, stage two of the plan is ready. We’ve got all the cookies ready and they’re being sold, we shall soon have Nathan as a dum dum in no time.’ ‘Excellent.’

The were-aykroyd put the phone back in his pocket and walked off before hopping into a delivery truck and driving off into a disclosed location, he arrived at the location and jumped out, handing the cookie boxes to another group of were-aykroyds. ‘I’ve got the cookies ready, all the stores are selling them.’ ‘Excellent, the boss will see you now.’

He pressed a button on the wall which opened a doorway to a secret area, which of course was a high-tech dark were-aykroyd lair, he walked through the halls of the lair and over to what appeared to be a room of sorts dedicated to Christmas with a vegas type vibe, Mariah Carey’s hit song ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ was blaring out of the speakers.

The dum dum were-aykroyd made his way towards a special office that was located in this room and that is where he saw the ‘boss’, the boss turned around, revealing himself to be Vic Frohmeyer, who was the leader of the Aykroydnastiums (a rival group to Nathan’s Aykroydantium hero group). ‘Excellent work, with these cookies being sold throughout the city and with the dum dum plague, we shall have an army of dum dums in no time.’ ‘Thank you, sir.’ ‘No problem.’

Vic smiled as he turned to inform the others…’Nathan may have defeated us last time but there is no way he will able to stop us in this universe. The dum dum plague is spreading and each night we will make more and more dum dums to serve us. These dum dum were-aykroyds will serve us well.’

“What about Nathan? What if he does try to stop us?”

“Well we’ll just make sure that his inner dum dum takes control.”

‘How? He is not like those dum dum were-aykroyds that live in this universe.’ ‘Oh don’t you worry about that, i’ve got that covered, dum dums have a way of working their magic on humans and fellow were-aykroyds, he shall be ours in no time.’ ‘Good.’ ‘And when he does become ours, he’ll be our were-aykroyd to control.’

‘Are you going to make him into a dum dum were-aykroyd to serve you?’ ‘Oh no, I have other were-aykroyd plans for him.’ Vic and all the dark were-aykroyds laughed maniacally as they reveled in their hideous plan.

Back in Oakendale, Nathan had finished work when he returned home later in the afternoon, in the evening he decided to relax and take it easy, he remained alert and vigilant though, for he knew those dum dums would make a return again soon. But he decided to take it easy, and rest up for a bit before making himself an early dinner.

And that is where the ending of this part of the saga comes in, he had now become a permanent resident of this new universe and of this new home, it was like his usual home and his usual universe but different and special in its own way, and even though he now would have to deal with dum dum were-aykroyds every night, he didn’t mind this predicament.

In fact he genuinely liked this, he really liked this, it would take some time to get used to this strange new universe, but he grew used to it over time and he knew he could always count on his master to protect him.

Sometimes even though a new home can be scary, it is actually not difficult to get adjusted to it even if the challenges come at you more than they normally would, and that is something even were-aykroyds can learn too.

And thus the first chapter in the ‘dum dum plague’ saga, has come to a conclusion but beware dear viewers, for the plague is out there and so are the dum dum were-aykroyds. Remember not to eat any strange cookies that are irresistibly sweet or you’ll turn into a dum dum were-aykroyd too. And remember no matter what happens, if this story has offended you or frightened you, remember it’s just a story, and there is no such thing as were-

#Monstermaster13 presents #dum dum plague saga #were-aykroyd

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miriael-the-cozy-witch · 1 year

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Fear the Reaper, Part 3

This is part 3 of how my WoL made their pact with their voidsent, and became a reaper! I hope you enjoy it! Click here for Part 1! Click here for Part 2! Click here for Part 4! The scythe should've been heavy.

It was a huge chunk of metal, weighty and thick, at the end of a heavy oak handle almost as tall as I was. I should've had to use leverage to wield it, much like I'd done with farming and harvesting in my botanist work.

But no. That wasn't... right.

It felt natural in my grip, light as a feather. Almost lighter than my sword, which should've been impossible.

My sword had been at my side for over two years... and now it felt foreign in my grip, it's weight unfamiliar as it dangled on my hip. It felt... unthinkable that the weapon that felled Zenos, then again as Shinryu, felt like holding a writhing snake.

How it'd become this... thing that I hated to touch... I didn't know.

The moment I got back to Gridania from Ul'dah, I wanted to toss it aside. Hang it up, give it the rest I so desperately wanted. Gods knew it deserved it.

As much as the scythe on my back felt amazing to use, I was still more familiar with my blade. I would not give up on it so easily.

I would keep both weapons at the ready.

For now.

I walked back through Gridania's mossy paths, my boots putting soft steps onto it's grass covered streets. I wanted to look at the people, my friends and neighbours, look to them forÂ hope... But I was barely able to notice anything other than the tug, pulling me towards... Something.

The faces Gridania's citizens eyed me warily as I marched past, a few examining the weapon on my back with fear and awe.

It wasn't the first time I'd been seen in my home city with strange new weapons, in fact it was seen as almost to be expected. An Astrologian's globe, a white mage's cane, a warrior's axe, a black mage's staff. All these and more I had mastered.

But always, always there was a sword at my hip.

But never before, experimenting with new soul crystals and weapons and combat styles... did my blade feel like a broken limb.

It felt like...

My lance.

I imagined the most elder of Gridania's citizens, who remembered the first time I'd been seen without a spear or lance on my back. The panic on their faces.

At least then then there'd been a very obvious reason for the change.

The bandages over my eye.

Little did they know that I'd suffered similar damage. It just wasn't to my body, it was to my soul.

Alone with my thoughts as I strode quietly through Gridania, heading out Blue Badger Gate for the wilds of the Shroud, I latched onto the feeling of of the pull in the core of my being, using it to avoid remembering Zenos and his voidsent in the snows.

I'm here. I have this feeling. This urge. I need to follow it. Then I will never again be vulnerable. My strength will not falter.

Concentrating on breathing, I avoided the stares of the Wood Wailers at the gate, beginning my journey through the Jadeite Thick.

If this were any other day, it'd almost be a pleasant journey. But uneasiness seemed to simmer in the forest. The very trees irked with worry and anxiety. I could tell that the Final Days were wearing upon the Elementals, my training under E-Sumi-Yan had long taught me the method of listening to their moods. I could never hear what they said, that was left to the Padjal, but their displeasure on worry was as easy to translate as breathing.

Despite the Final Days and the displeasure of the Elementals, the sun was daring to gleam through the leafy canopy above, showering the forest floor in glorious beams of light, dying everything a warm orange glow. A breeze shuffled the branches, a ruffling of leaves audible for malms, as birdsong echoed all around.

It was peaceful. Lovely even.

Part of me wanted to sit and let it's beauty fill my weary soul.

But then who would save it? Who will fight the horrors so that every other soul who walks this same path may continue to do so?

I closed my one good eye, stopped, and listened to the balm of the forest. For any of my gods to tell me that I could lay down my arms. That I'd done enough already for the world.

But there was nothing. No voice in my head telling me I was free to enjoy life.

Not yet.

I breathed in this glorious moment for just a few more breaths, and then with a heavy sigh, squared my shoulders and marched forward.

The Soul Crystal's pull guided my way.

Through Jadeite Thick, over Bentbranch, and into the Southern Shroud, I met the swampy marsh of Rootslake, it's waters smelling of rotting wood and life. Morbils, Orobons and all sorts of creatures thrived in these pools.Â

I walked along it's shores, seeing Camp Tranquil rise out of the centre, with the ruins of Amdapor beyond it. The Elementals had long since hidden the lost city away, but had given me access to clear a void cult before. But we weren't going to the city.

Where the pull was leading me now fairly obvious, as I turned north from Rootslake into Snakemolt, the stone ruins rising out of the woods, the stone skeleton of a lost civilization presenting my destination.

Amdapor Keep.

The great stone doors had long since been opened, first by yet another void cult, followed shortly by my own efforts half a lifetime ago, and then again months later when it turned out a stronger void monster had orchestrated it all.

The monsters I slayed in this hall were the very reason I thought Voidsent to be mindless creatures, only capable of grasping hunger, the screeches of the terrorized starving.

Never had I seen them hold back like the spirit in the passage had. A moment of stomping through the undergrowth made me realized that very passage was likely below my feet right this moment.

And now... I held a void-touched Soul Crystal In my hand, used by generations of Reapers, in search of... What?

What was I even looking for?

How do I find a Voidsent that won't attack me on sight?

Without a better plan, I passed into the Keep, with only the tugging feeling as my guide.

The halls of the Keep were still as they were the last time I was here, years ago. Greenery overtaking the stone, the keep disappearing into the forest one brick at a time. It would be an effort of ages, but one day, this keep would be nothing but dirt under the ground.

The only evidence of it's recent occupation was the remains of my battles through it's halls. The scaring of blades and magic against the walls, a pile of bones from a long decayed corpse here, a dark splotch of blood-stained floor there.

It was gruesome, but not the worst I'd seen. I remembered the cultists here, and how they'd sacrificed their bodies and pets, summoning voidsent with their dying breaths, putting them in statues to throw at us. Cursing our names with the invocation of their fake god, the moon that served as Bahamut's prison.

I shook my head in pity as I stalked through the halls, the beginnings of a rainstorm pitter-pattering on the stone ceiling above, making waterfalls in miniature cascade through long failed roof tiles, became a calming balm in my own anxiousness.

I was close to my goal. Or at least, assumed I was. It was obvious where I was being led, and like a dutiful canine hound, I followed it's leash knowing my reward was close at hand.

Stepping over rubble and jumping gaps between failed overhangs, I found myself mounting the stairs to what passed for Amdapor Keep's throne room. If I remember correctly, the Amdaporians called it a 'The Presence Chamber'. I didn't care then about what 'presence' it denoted then, and I didn't know if I did now. I knew it only as the chamber in which I'd murdered Anantaboga.

As I neared the doors, the tug cutting through the fog in my mind grew in strength, the feeling undeniable. I mounted the last step, taking in the great carved entryway, I shoved aside the great doors...

And felt a jolt of the tug, pulling me inside.

I all but stumbled into the room, catching my feet in a rush before standing up to see what had pulled me with such force.

And saw nothing.

The room was empty, almost just as I'd left it, years ago.

Rubble in every corner, the ruin of statues that had been possessed by voidsent, the throne sitting almost pristine, only a few chunks of stone missing from it's plinth.

Cracked and broken glass windows in the dome above and behind it, letting in more of the forest, eager for the keep's removal.

Yet there was nothing, no one here.

As I stepped into the middle of the chamber, the exact spot where Anantaboga died... Even the tug disappeared.

Feeling suddenly untethered, I seethed, twisting my head towards every corner, looking in vain for the creature that had called me here.

"Where are you?" I asked through gritted teeth, my hand straying to my sword.

The only sound that answered me was the echoing fall of rain, running in a rivulet through a hole in the roof above.

"Answer me!" I screeched. Twisting in a circle, searching.

My eye scanned every rock, every stone, every chair. But there was nothing here.

Wherever the creature was... It was gone.

There was nothing, no one, waiting for me here.

And I...

I'm not strong enough.

My breath caught in my throat, as my eye landed on the plinth of the throne. My heart began to rage in my chest, and my anger fizzled out for something worse.

Defeat.

Failing here... Meant I would never be stronger than Zenos. He would cut me down, just as he had then. If Fandaniel didn't wrench my soul out of my body-

No. No no no no. I'm not there, I won't die, he wouldn't-

But I will. It's inevitable.

My legs fell out from underneath me, as I sank to my knees in the middle of the chamber, the rain a dull roar overhead.

"Please..." I murmured, the beginning of sobs clenching in my throat, as I grasped the loose dirt before me in some vain hope of... something here to change my fate.

"I just need... " I pleaded, still unsure what I was even asking. "Please."

"Oh. Just say it... Say 'please', just, one more time darling."

I jumped to my feet, a serviceable backward dash, my reflexes expecting an attack. Mid-air, drawing my blade out, lifting it into a Meikyo Shisui guard stance as my instincts took over.

Once I landed solidly on my feet, my eye focused, my head twirled, my ears perked, all searching for the speaker.

"Show yourself." I demanded, my voice steady, yet still with a hint of the broken sob I'd just silenced.

"Now where would be the fun in that, darling?" The voice replied. Sultry, smooth, delicious to listen to.

But also, right there.

Duskwight Elezen ears never failed. We had to listen for the tiniest reverberations through tunnel walls when we lived in Gelmorra. The instinct to listen had only intensified once I'd lost half my vision.

The voice was speaking from the throne. And once my eye knew to look there... A dull shimmer hovered around it. An illusion magic of some kind.

I shifted my stance ever so slightly...

And sliced through the air, upwards with enough force and charged aether, to cut through the distance, a sharp angry blade of energy angling towards my unseen foe.

A textbook Enpi slash.

In less than a second, the cut crashed into the throne, separating stone from rubble, a loud crash of blade on rock as if I'd cut it myself from a foot away.

I'd expected a direct hit, a gruff of pain.

But all I heard was laughter.

It was... I didn't know how to describe it. Like if laughter had aÂ taste. It was sweet and sticky... warm even. Like hot apple cider, fresh from an orchard.

"My darling, you are perfect."

"Show yourself." I demanded of the unseen voice, my eye locked onto the shimmer around the throne. "If I have to ask again, it'll be with my boot on your neck."

The voice intoned a disappointed sigh, before the shimmer dissipated in a slow wave, revealing a humanoid figure, covered in wrappings and swirling shadow.

Deep red eyes, staring out from the inscrutable darkness, a solid figure somehow sitting in that void of light.

The same eyes I'd seen in the passage below.

How did I miss them?

They stood from the throne, almost floating to their feet. It was hard to make out details of their person, but I could only assume they were a voidsent of some kind. They had to be for those glowing red eyes. And slowly, as if sauntering, they began to step over the rubble.

"You've been, such a pleasure to watch over the years, Miriael Vess."

My entire body shifted taut as I heard my name on their lips. My stomach dropped, as if i was falling from a great height. Somehow... Someway... it felt... right.

Â "You know my name?" I asked, shifting my weight ever so slightly with each step she took to get the best angle of attack. My handsÂ wantedÂ to lurch the scythe on my back free, but this was no time to test new weapons with an unknown threat.

Especially one that had gotten so under my skin.

The creature laughed, it's silent steps getting closer with each passing second, my grip tightening around the handle of my blade.

"Know you? Ha." A small breathless laugh. As light as air, somehow robbing the room of all the noise from the rainstorm above. There was nothing else in my focus but the blade in my hand and her approaching figure.

"I would think that a joke. You are, without a doubt, the most famous woman in the world, Miriael Vess." they outstretched a hand to point towards me- No.

That's not a hand.

That's a claw.

It resembled a hand at first, a delicate wrist bound in crisscrossing grey wrappings, a smattering of smooth pale skin underneath. But as the wrist widened into their palm, their fingers elongated into talons, shifting from pale looking human skin to almost black needlepoints, dipped in the colour of blood.

That thing, that claw, was only meant for slaughter.

They stopped in their advance, as if seeing their claw for the first time.

"Ah yes. I do forget the Source's obsession with... appearances." They intoned, and with a flex of their fingers, the talons retreated into her palm in an instant, shifting into long nailed fingers wiggling in a wave, the nails painted black and red.

The eyes in the mass of hidden wrappings and shadows flashed, somehow looking amused. "Should I do the whole outfit as well? I do want us to get off on the best foot after all."

And with a snap of those pale fingers, the shadows melted into nothing, showingfor the briefest of moments a tall muscular woman covered in those wrappings from neck to foot, criss-crossing every inch of her body, hints of skin here there pockmarked everywhere. I barely got a flash of white hair around her head before the wrappings around their frame glowed in red hued magic... Shifting her whole frame shifted from shadow-clad creature of the void, to...

The most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.

My eye widened in surprise as heat rushed to my cheeks.

She stepped forward out of the transformation, the only hint of the creature she glowed red in the irises of her eyes.

She looked at me with a painted smile set into a knowing smirk, with a pale face and dark lashes. A mane of black hair down her back, covering what almost looked to be an oddly designed duster, covering a flimsy looking dress shirt of some kind with a generous plunging neckline.

Looking at her now, there was almost no way to tell she was of the 13th.

"What do you want creature?" I muttered through gritted teeth, nearly spitting the words as my fingers tightened around my blade's hilt. I would not let her appearance dissuade the danger I knew she posed.

She paused, just a step away. I could cut her down right this moment. But as she pouted her lips at me, the sight stirred a rumble of longing in the pit of my stomach as she tapped her chin.

I didn't cut her down.

"Dearest, really. We can get to that after." She suggested. "Because we both know you're here because you want something."

I wanted to deny her. To tell her she was wrong in a million and one ways.

But I couldn't. It would be a lie.

She began walking again, but not towards me. She began to circle, looking at nothing in particular, continuing to tap her chin with a dainty fingernail.

I slowly twisted in place with her as she circled, always keeping the threat in front of me. My eye glued to her hands, watching for threats from those claws, and not the sway of her hips.

"But to.. exactly answer your question, I've been keeping track of you ever since you murdered my mother." Her eyes flashed towards me, either appreciative, or angry. I wasn't sure which.

My nose flared as I let out a surprised huff, but didn't shift in my stance. She could attack at any moment.

"Your mother?" I asked, every muscle tense for the inevitable aggression that I expected of her kind.

Her nod was slow as she paced, the click of her boots seeming to be the only noise I could hear with how concentrated I was on her every move.

"Before you get the wrong idea, I was glad you dethroned her. I hated the old hag. It stirred up everything back home, players long waiting made their moves the moment you dissipated her to reconstitute herself."

Her eyes took in the walls of the keep, the draining holes from the storm above, before she laughed quietly to herself.

The way she explained it, there could only be one. The only time I'd ever slain a voidsent in the 13th... The only place where Voidsent could regenerate...

"The Cloud of Darkness." I murmured under my breath.

Her eyes flashed with recognition.

"You catch on quick." she said with a pleased smile that left me wanting to do nothing but see it again. "But yes. I've been watching you grow, becoming stronger and stronger ever since."

She closed the distance in a blink of my eye, suddenly her face inches from mine, the point of her fingers at my throat.

I didn't dare move. Not with her blades for fingers at my throat.

Her mouth opened ever so slightly, as if she was debating to bite donw on my neck...

But instead, she closed her eyes, and inhaled.

"And for your efforts... You are delicious." She whispered, her breath not hot like a person's would be, but cold. As it shuddered against my ear lobe it forced my skin to rise in goosebumps.

Yet another blink of my eye, she disappeared, the point of her nail at my throat gone.

Instincts took over as I stabbed at the place she'd been.

If she was the daughter of the Cloud of Darkness...

She was powerful.

So why isn't she attacking?

My eye caught a flicker of movement on the throne where she'd reappeared.

She settled back onto it, crossing her legs over the arm of one side, leaning onto her hand on the other.

"Which brings us to the moment of truth, my darling." She murmured, beckoning me with an outstretched finger.

I didn't want to move. But if it meant I got answers... about Zenos. About Fandaniel. About becoming stronger then them both...

I took a single step forward.

"You've plateaued."

Her words, while still tasting of warmth and welcome, cut like ice dripping down the back of my spine.

"You are as powerful as you will ever be. Blessed by the Echo, by the Twelve, you've absorbed the eyes of dragons, and you've even merged your soul with of one of your reflections." She listed these details of my life as if ordering from a menu.

"You are, the most powerful being on the planet." She said longingly, licking her painted lips.

I took another step, a grimace on my face as she listed my truth to the gallery of silent stone and forest.

"And yet."

The bite of her tone was cold in it's knowing. "Your opponents are not of this world. They've made their own bargains and transcended limits, possess abilities long forgotten to history. They, are stronger."

The stones shifted under my feet as I stepped onto the dias of the throne, now just a few steps from where she sat with all the grace of a entertained queen.

"So, what, do you want Miriael Vess?" She asked as she sat up, as if she hadn't just outlined why I'd sought her out in the first place.

She leaned forward towards me with outstretched hand, making me feel a supplicant to the crown, begging for scraps. "What, can I," She pulled back her hand, patting her chest with the faintest of taps. "daughter of the void, do for you?"

This is it, isn't it? This is what I must do.

With a exhale of breath I was sure I'd been holding ever since I stepped inside this ruined keep, I finally dropped my guard, the sword now hanging loosely in my grip.

I almost didn't care anymore.

I closed my eye to her, letting my head fall back in silent defeat.

The memory biting in my mind's eye was enough for me to admit it. Grasping through the cold snow and the biting frost with long dead hands, crawling back to my friends where Zenos used my own body to murder them...

If this is what it takes to save them...

"I... I need..." I stuttered out, almost unable to admit it to the world. I opened my eye, staring at the ceiling, almost feeling the burning in it at the beginning of tears.

"I need to be stronger. Stronger than anything. I need... to have enough strength to save them all."

I shuddered, gripping the blade in my hand, cursing my next words with fire and fury as I lowered my gaze towards the voidsent smiling in the throne before me.

"Because... I'm not... strong enough." I had to force the words through gritted teeth. the blade shaking in my hand.

A softer expression grew on her face, as she let out her own sigh.

She began to stand, and while my instincts told me that she was a threat, a monster, aÂ voidsent, I did nothing. I didn't raise my blade to her.

Instead, as I stood there, facing my own admission of weakness, she reached forward, her delicate fingers just barely tracing along my jaw, a thumb rubbing my cheek just under my eyepatch.

It wasn't... unpleasant.

Gods. If I'm thrilled at getting touched like this by a fucking voidsent, then it's been too long since I've been laid.

"My dearest. I'm so sorry that you've held this weight. But I'm so glad, so so glad, that I have an answer for you."

She smiled, a full smile, as I brought my gaze to look her in the eyes, as her expression mixed from pity to excitement to joy. This, was the moment of her ascension, I was sure.

How long had she'd been waiting in the wings for me to seek her bargain? How many years? She'd said just as much. Watching me ever since I'd killed her mother. That was... a lifetime ago.

And now, here she was, offering me the very thing I needed most.

And with this... They'll all be safe.

"Make the fucking offer then." I muttered, a demand as solid as the stone beneath our feet.

She lowered her hand, but didn't pull it back all the way. Now it was there as an outstretched handshake.

"Make a Pact with me Miriael Vess, and I will make you not just the strongest woman in all of the Source and it's Reflections..." She said with a sharp toothed smile, her voice tasting like a drop of honey after decades of drowning in salt water.

"I'll make you the stronger than the gods."

#ffxiv #ffxiv oc #ffxiv wol #short fiction #me #my writing #voidsent #reaper #my wol is so hopeless you have no idea

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robbyrobinson · 3 years

Text

WILLIAM AFTON RANT

So, I do like most of the Five Nights at Freddy's series. The series had its highs and lows, and has really evolved from being the point-and-click survival horror game in 2014. The first game is pretty solid; the second is good; third, kind of a drop in quality. The fourth one was the one I legitimately did not like because it through a monkey wrench towards speculating on the timeline. Sister Location was the tipping point where we get more bits of the lore to chew on. Pizzeria Simulator, to me, was the perfect way to wrap up the mainline games by burning it all in a blaze of glory with heavy drops on the lore with character revelations and the finality of it all. VR...not much of a fan on because it brought back a recurring element that I felt the games knew when to cut ties with. It being the main antagonist of the series William "Purple Guy" Afton. I should probably state that the first problem with the Afton story line had to be the fact FNAF didn't start off with an overarching story. Scott Cawthon developed the first game as a last hoorah when he felt that his dream of becoming a game developer was through. But, luck would have it, the game blew up in popularity namely because of let's players like Markiplier playing the game and the rest is history. The first FNAF game was relatively simple: survive five nights at a pizzeria where you'd have to conserve your power and check the screens all while trying to keep homicidal animatronics from stuffing you into a suit. A very, very simple plot where you did not have to think too much on. That is not to say that there weren't any hidden secrets in the first game: there are occasional newspaper clippings of reports on five children being led into the back rooms by a man dressed up in a mascot costume. They were never seen again, and the animatronics started to reek from mucus and other fluids suggesting that the kids were killed and stuffed into animatronic bodies and possessed them. Beyond that, there was not much to chew on or speculate about. Which would become an issue with Afton himself. To say that he really evolved over the course of the series is an understatement. From the games he goes from: a nameless serial killer; the CEO of Afton Robotics; an undead rabbit animatronic who was burned; an even more horrid-looking rabbit who gets burned (again); and eventually becomes a computer virus. The dude is seriously a supervillain at this point. Not helping that we then are given information on remnant which is at best a glue trapping souls. I hated that remnant was introduced to the series largely due to over-complexity. Simply saying that the Puppet brought the animatronics to life by having them possess the animatronics is simple enough: explaining remnant is as bad as when midchlorians were introduced to explain how the Force worked. Which goes into... Afton. Keeps. Fucking. Coming. Back. I get that it was a nod to the "He will come back. He always does. We have a place for him" tagline from the third game, but this is getting ridiculous. I'll be frank when I say that Afton is not a good villain. For starters, even when we get more insight to him being the CEO of a robotics company and arguably the worst father in gaming, we have no clue what his motivations actually are. Sure, you could claim that he wanted to achieve immortality as revealed in the Silver Eyes and its two sequel books, but ignoring them entirely, virtually nothing is there to pin in the games. Or is it that he wanted to resurrect the Crying Child from FNAF 4 on the assumption that the CC is his son? So it would mean that all of his actions were the results of him experimenting around with technology and remnant? It looks like he was already a psycho killer as evidenced by him describing the designs of Circus Baby to his interviewers. Even with that idea, it was always weird that if the Crying Child was in fact an Afton then why is it so explicit unlike with Michael and Elizabeth who are both confirmed as his children. With me, I did actually think the Crying Child was likely

Henry Emily's child going off the SN books with Cassidy; as in, William, for whatever reason, liked Henry's boy (and gave him the purple phone to conduct experiments on him with the Nightmare Animatronics), and secretly created replacements each stage representing a point in the CC's life. But then that would only complicate things like explaining the whole "I will put you back together" line and if Michael knew about the sudden appearance of a robot in his life, but that is straying from the main topic. So, yeah. Afton is a total enigma whose motivation for what he does is unclear. At most, you could say he kills kids because he's evil. Okay. Not a satisfactory answer, but from the sprites in the game, he always has a smile on his face. It wouldn't be that much of an issue if he was at the least interesting. But he is not. Afton is no Freddy Krueger or Chucky; even Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees have better characteristics and the latter two don't even talk. If anything, Afton's main flaw is that whatever his motivation was gradually changed as the games continued to evolve, but it came at the cost of making him an OP villain who keeps reappearing making him shoe-horned into the plot of the game when he does not belong. Makes me really wish that Vincent was made canon. You remember Vincent, right? He was an interpretation of Afton made years before the name drop. He was a homicidal maniac who was laidback and evil. Yet, he was a hilarious character and was full of personality. Like take Security Breach. Taking Glitchtrap (who may be his virtual ghost or something relating to him), the game's focus should have been entirely on Vanny. But even then, Vanny is not her own antagonist due to her basically being implied as a "reluctant follower" of Afton's which by itself makes Afton hijack the game instead of making good with a new threat. And then Afton of course comes back this time as Burntrap which pisses on the ending of Pizzeria Simulator which causes Cassette Man's goal of putting an end to the horror all for nothing. But even then, the bastard had survived burning alive at least twice leading me to think that remnant being destroyed by heat is total BS. Afton had no reason to be in Security Breach making his appearance shoe-horned. He of course has to have wrangle the plot of the game over and make it all about himself yet again. And he doesn't even do anything eventful there because the Blob just catches him and takes him away. I sure hope that finally, finally this means that Afton is dead for real and we could move on to making a new main antagonist unrelated to the Afton family, but I doubt it. Don't get me wrong: the Afton family story line plays a crucial role in the lore of the franchise and I feel that just having a basic game about surviving animatronics would not make the series last for as long as it did. But, besides theories and speculation, really what more can we expect to get from the story? We have threads of a story there, but the series prefers to leave some details vague. It is JJ Abram's mystery box all over again further showing that there were no long-lasting plans for the franchise. The series itself also took on a more science fiction aesthetic which further compounds a bloated story. It was already a willing suspension of disbelief that the animatronics were advanced enough to walk around in the 1980s, but now, we have remnant as a concept and the alternate continuity books where they take nosedives with how high-tech the animatronics are and overcomplicating a simple story of kids possessing animatronics to get revenge on their killer. Are those moments still scary? Yes, but I feel trying to explain the mechanics behind it lessens the intended effect. Ultimately, my problem with Afton lays solely on how he was written as a nameless killer in the first game with no foreseeable larger goal beyond that. As the series continued, Afton was forced to evolve, but as a consequence, Afton's motivations behind his actions are underdeveloped being reliant on the books and fan

theories. He lacks interesting traits and characteristics besides "I kill kids because I am evil." But worse, Afton continuing to return to the games despite constant burn attempts makes him an invincible villain which lessens the stakes and makes any actions to put a stop to him meaningless.

#five nights at freddy's #william afton #rant #afton family #security breach #ranting #fnaf

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lesbianrobin · 3 years

Note

What do you think are the good and bad aspects of each season of ST?

ok 1. thank u for this question omg and 2. this answer may or may not be a mess, but either way it’s long (almost 7k words lmao) bc i’m insane, which is why it’s under a cut. it’s still by no means an exhaustive list but these are the things that just kinda came to mind.

also i realize you asked “good and bad” and i wrote this whole post as “strengths and weaknesses” which um. is not Exactly what you asked. but close enough <3 i also ended up including a lot of au ideas ksjdckmn bc like i personally hate when people say a certain plot or whatever was bad without suggesting anything that could have improved it yknow so whenever possible i tried to provide Some idea for fixing the issues i had with the show!!

season 1

strengths (this is probably gonna be the longest section but that’s because a lot of these strengths also apply to s2/s3 by default)

nostalgia and authenticity

this one’s pretty simple, but i think that season one did a good job of blending classic eighties media homages (such as the many many e.t./el parallels) with explicit pop culture references (such as mike’s yoda impression, mentions of the x-men, etc) to create a show that’s essentially dripping in early eighties nostalgia without it feeling too forced. before st, i think the most popular depiction of the eighties in mainstream media was that overly exaggerated neon scrunchie aesthetic from the mid to late eighties, and it was usually done in a comedic sense first and foremost. st took a different approach, instead focusing on the early eighties, a time that’s often ignored in favor of going either Full Seventies or Full Eighties, and i think that this choice likely resonated with adults who lived through the eighties and hadn’t yet seen something that felt quite so accurate to their own adolescence. a lot of young people who watched st were totally unfamiliar with this period of time, unfamiliar with books/movies like “stand by me” that st borrows from heavily, and i think st lent more seriousness to the eighties than most young people had experienced so far, and this was refreshing and interesting!

the use of dnd in the show is also quite genius in a way i’m not sure i can articulate?? it isn’t something Everyone would have played at the time, but it’s something that existed within a different context back in the eighties than it does today, and it really lent a sort of authenticity to the naming of the show’s sci-fi elements. like, of course these kids would name parallel dimensions and monsters and superpowers after these similar things in their favorite game! it just feels so real and it grounds st in our reality moreso than you might expect from the typical sci-fi or horror universe.

utilization of existing tropes

almost every single character in st clearly originates from some popular trope. the plot itself is riddled with classic eighties movie tropes. almost every single element of stranger things can be clearly traced back to some iconic eighties film or just to, like, overused horror/sci-fi/mystery/coming-of-age movie tropes in general. this might sound like a bad thing, but it really works in st’s favor! starting off with familiar tropes gives st the ability to easily create a lot of complexity and make a big impact by selectively deviating from those familiar, comfortable tropes!! while el’s whole plot, hopper’s character, etc, are all examples of this in action, i think the steve/nancy/jonathan plot is the greatest example. even from the start, the fact that good girl barb dies while nancy is off having sex with her asshole boyfriend is an incredibly thorough inversion of the most well-known horror movie trope in the book. how often do girls in horror movies have sex for the first time, walk home alone in the dark of night, and live to tell the tale? nancy and jonathan’s dynamic at first glance is a sort of classic “good girl meets boy from the wrong side of the tracks, discovers he’s actually got a heart of gold” thing, but instead of following this well-trodden path, st diverged. nancy is brash, impulsive, and at times downright insensitive. jonathan is angry, bitter, and actually a bit of a creep at first. while they have the capacity to emotionally connect and support one another, they can also bring out each other’s darker side, which is not what we’ve come to expect from that initial tropey dynamic.

in addition, steve, the popular rich asshole boyfriend, is actually... a human being! unlike the cartoonishly evil jocks that we’ve come to expect (especially from eighties movies), steve has complexity. despite his initial immaturity and selfishness, he’s also kind to barb, he backs off when nancy says no, he’s gentle and sweet when they sleep together, his first big Dick Move of the season is in defense of nancy, he realizes the error of his ways after the fight and does what he can to fix it, he’s worried about nancy when he sees that she’s hurt at jonathan’s house, and to top it all off, he ends up saving both nancy and jonathan’s lives when he could have just walked away, and the three of them all work together to fight the demogorgon. like... steve began as the most stereotypical character of all time, and by the end of the season, he had one of the most compelling and unique arcs among the whole cast!

finally, at the very end of the season, instead of dumping steve for jonathan as expected, nancy ends up getting back together with steve, and they’re both on friendly terms with jonathan. i realize that i just kinda. summarized s1. but my POINT is that i don’t think the dynamics between the monster hunting trio would be nearly as fun and interesting had the characters of nancy, steve, and jonathan not been set up to follow certain paths that we already had charted in our own heads. like, within the first couple episodes of s1, it’s pretty obvious that nancy and steve are gonna break up, nancy will get with jonathan, and steve will either die or go full evil or just never be seen again. like, duh! you’ve seen this story a million times! you know that’s how it’s gonna go! so, when the story DOESN’T go that way, the impact of each character’s arc and the relationship dynamics become stronger due to their unexpected complexity and authenticity.

distinct plotlines separated by age group

this one’s rather obvious, but the way that the adults in s1 were essentially in a conspiracy thriller while the teens were in a horror flick and the kids were in a sci fi power-of-friendship story and all three converged at the end... wow. brilliant showstopping etc. not only was it just really well done and unique, it also gave stranger things near-universal appeal. like, there’s genuinely something for pretty much everyone in season one!

casting

obviously this applies to every season sorta by default, but when i think about what made season one So successful, i always think about the cast, and not just winona ryder. yes, she’s absolutely amazing in the show and it’s very doubtful that st would be as big as it is today without her name being attached to it from the start!! however, i think the greatest determining factor in st’s success is the casting of the kids, particularly millie bobby brown. like... el is just absolutely incredible. she’s amazing. this has all been said many times before so i won’t harp on it, but millie and the other kids are all So talented and charismatic and i think their casting has been instrumental to the show’s success.

strong visuals

the way that multicolored christmas lights which have been around for decades are now kinda like. a Stranger Things thing. jesus christ. those lights are probably the biggest stroke of stylistic genius on the show.

atmosphere and setting

this is probably like. the least important one here for me sdjncdsc because i think s2 and s3 both had like Even Better atmospheres and shit but s1 was good too and it laid the groundwork!! i know a lot of people would have preferred st be set somewhere more Spooky with lots of fog or giant forests or whatnot, and while i do enjoy thinking about alternate st settings and how they might alter the vibe, i think hawkins indiana was a good choice. as the duffers have said, placing stranger things in a fictional town allows them more flexibility than if they’d gone with their original plan of using montauk, new york. besides that, i think the plainness and like... flatness... of small-town indiana just Works. like, the fact that hawkins is never really scary on the surface is a big part of the horror in the lab’s actions and their impact. hawkins isn’t somewhere that people just disappear all the time. it isn’t somewhere known for strange occurrences (prior to s1, that is). it isn’t somewhere shrouded in mist and secrecy. hawkins on its surface seems like the sort of place with no secrets and nothing to fear, and that’s the point! the lab is out in the open! it’s right there! everything is so close to the surface, yet so far out of the public eye, and i think that really works.

the byers family’s whole deal (specifically the joyce/jonathan dynamic)

this is going here bc i miss it so bad in s2 and s3. i’m not one of those people who believe The Byers Are The Whole Point of the show, because st is and always has been an ensemble, and el, hopper, and the wheelers are just as instrumental to the plot as the byers, but ANYWAY, i do think the byers were one of the most interesting aspects of s1. joyce’s difficulties with supporting her sons as a poor and (implied mentally ill) single mother, jonathan’s stress as a result of having to earn money, care for his brother, and keep the house in order when his mother is unable to do so, and the resulting tension between them when will’s disappearance and supposed “death” brings the situation to a tipping point? holy shit! it’s so good! that argument after they see will’s “body” is just incredible and gut-wrenching. their relationship feels so real and messy and i think it’s just... good. also winona ryder REALLY acted her heart out and she carried a lot of s1 which i think people often forget to mention so i’m saying it here.

weaknesses

pacing/timing

ok so pacing is probably going to go in each season’s weaknesses, to be honest, because i think they all had a blend of some good and some bad pacing. good pacing is invisible pacing, though, so i probably won’t be putting it in any of the strengths sections and will only be focusing on it in the weaknesses. i’m also probably not going to talk about weird day/night cycle things, just because i don’t want to get nitpicky on timelines because that would require going back and rewatching things to double check timing which i don’t wanna do at the moment lmao. anyway, when i think of bad pacing in season one, i primarily think of two things: nancy’s little trip into the upside down and subsequent sleepover with jonathan, and the sort of staggered nature of the climax in the final episode. the latter is simple so i’ll explain it first: while i understand that each group’s respective climax is like part of a chain reaction and that’s why each big moment happens separately and at different times, i think that st is strongest when the whole group is together, and i think that makes the stakes feel higher too, so i’m not In Love with the way s1 separated everyone and gave each group their own climax.

okay, now on to the nancy/upside down thing! idk if i’ve ever talked about it before, but i think the worst decision made in s1 by far is the inclusion of nancy’s brief trip into the upside down, wherein she dives headfirst into another dimension with absolutely no backup, watches the demogorgon chow down, freaks out and runs around for a minute, and then leaves. like... what the fuck? even putting aside what an idiotic decision this was (because i do think nancy’s tendency to rush into things headfirst is an intentional and consistent character trait), it just kind of destroys any remaining suspense surrounding the demogorgon and the upside down, and it accomplishes basically nothing besides scaring nancy enough to have jonathan sleep over, which is lame. i will break it down.

like, first of all, nancy just getting to waltz in and out of the upside down and get a good, long look at the demogorgon makes the entire thing far less mysterious, and by extension far less scary. like... before this scene, we the audience haven’t got a good look at the demogorgon. we’ve seen its silhouette briefly and we’ve seen a blurry picture of it, but nothing more, and i think that is far more effective at building fear than this jaunt nancy goes on which gives us a full view of the thing and makes it into less of a horrifying nightmare and into more of a humanoid animal. like, maybe this is just me, but i found the demogorgon far less intimidating after that scene than before. it also lets nancy and jonathan know For Sure that they’re right without providing any crucial information that they need to fight the demogorgon (aka it’s unnecessary to the plot), which removes a very compelling story element (the faith nancy and jonathan need to have in order to keep going against a vague and poorly understood enemy, the doubt they might have about each other and their own sanity, the possibility that they might be wrong, the trust they need to have in each other) a bit earlier in the plot than i believe is ideal. at the end of episode 5, nancy goes into the upside down and jonathan doesn’t know where she is and it’s intense!!! you’re thinking like, oh fuck, not only is nancy missing and fighting for her life now too, jonathan might be implicated in her disappearance!! some people already think he’s the one who killed will and people know that he took creepy pictures of barb and nancy before they both disappeared, maybe this is gonna cause some serious problems for him!! maybe nancy will find will in the upside down and she’ll help him survive!! fuck, maybe she’ll actually die!! this is huge!! and then episode 6 starts and they’re immediately like oh nevermind jonathan found the tree and got nancy out and she’s fine. my point with all of this is that nancy entering the upside down could have done A Lot in the grand scheme of the plot, but all it did was just... get jonathan to sleep over so he and nancy could have some awkward romance moments and steve could see them together and pick a fight. which could have honestly happened at Any point while nancy and jonathan were working together to hunt down the demogorgon, without ruining the demogorgon’s and the upside down’s mystique. so yeah <3

weird behavior and dumbass decisions that make no sense (aka the whole camera thing)

gonna go off about the teen plot again sorry but: why was nancy so unbothered and quick to forgive jonathan for taking those pictures? girl what the fuck are you doing? why wasn’t that a bigger deal? why was jonathan’s motivation for doing it so weak and why did they just kind of forget about the whole thing? why did nancy TRACK HIM DOWN AT THE FUNERAL HOME while he was PICKING OUT HIS BABY BROTHER’S CASKET to be like hey can you tell me what’s in this creepshot you took? it’s insane. it’s so insane. i mean i think the funeral home thing is hilarious and i don’t mind it being in the show necessarily but like my point here is that i think a lot of character decisions in s1 just kind of.. happened because they Needed to happen for the plot. like, they wrote this plot that required jonathan to be secretly taking pictures of the party and required him and nancy to work together after seeing something odd in the pictures, but they didn’t like... really consider what that event would mean for their characterization and relationship. the whole thing was sort of just dropped with minimal discussion and i think it did both nancy and jonathan’s characters a disservice and was really mishandled.

lighting and saturation/color grading

i am literally begging horror/sci-fi shows to let me see shit. i GET IT okay i understand that when you’re doing cgi effects it helps to keep the lights down and i’m not mad at any of the lighting in the demogorgon/upside down scenes!! i’m really not i think the demogorgon scenes in s1 all look sick!! but like... dude. the colors. where are they. why does everyone look like a vampire. i know blah blah this was probably an intentional stylistic choice intended to mimic film at the time blah blah but dude a lot of old movies are very colorful!! please just let people have color in their faces so everyone doesn’t look like a sheet of paper!!! also i’m white and not a professional lighting designer so yknow grain of salt but i think lucas was kinda poorly served by the lighting sometimes in s1. not Hugely so, not to the degree that i’ve seen poc be poorly served by lighting in other shows, but there were some times where it felt kinda like the lighting setup was just not designed with darker skin in mind.

horror

i just personally don’t find s1 very scary like... ever. i don’t think they were really Trying to be extremely scary yknow so i’m not counting this as a big deal, but i do think that each season has improved on the horror aspects. i think s1′s horror lies more in the mystery and the unknown than in what’s seen onscreen, and as i’ve said already, i think s1 kind of fumbled that suspense ball.

season 2

strengths

the possession plot

i’ll warn u rn this whole s2 strengths section is probably gonna be really short bc idk like. how much there is to really say i feel like it’s all so self-explanatory skjncmn. anyway yeah the possession plot!! eerie as fuck, and noah OWNED. so did winona tbh and finn and sean etc but like. noah. wow! i think the possession plot helped the show maintain a good amount of tension and suspense throughout the season, and a lot of scenes with possessed!will are flatout disturbing to watch. in a good way. i think the mindflayer and will’s possession were far more genuinely frightening than s1′s demogorgon, and it provided a new layer of depth and intrigue to the antagonist besides just “bad monster want eat people.”

tone and aesthetics

halloween season... literally halloween season. halloween season. that is all.

actually i will elaborate a bit and just say that i think s2 did a good job of having the sort of foreboding vibe that s1 was often going for, but without the annoying darkness and desaturation. so points for that.

also st2 is like one of the best Autumn pieces of media ever like it just. like steve and dustin on those train tracks with the fallen leaves all around them.... god. god the vibes are unparalleled. all of the halloween stuff also really contributes to the nostalgia st runs on yknow it makes you think about childhood and trick-or-treating and you kind of get transported like damn... i remember going to the rich neighborhoods to score the good candy..... idk i just think the whole thing is incredibly effective.

“babysitter” steve

by sending nancy and jonathan off together, the show created a problem: what to do with steve? this problem pushed them to create the unconventional and unexpected duo of steve and dustin, and the world is so much brighter for it. seriously though we all know steve and dustin are great i don’t need to argue that point. all i’ll add is that i think allowing steve to grow in this way, serving as a mentor figure and becoming genuine friends with someone so unexpected, really took the originality of his character to the next level. no longer content just to defy his archetype, in s2 steve begins branching out in ways that never would have been considered in s1, creating an incredibly complex and interesting person from the sort of character that most shows would have simply written out or killed off for convenience’s sake. and it works and steve and dustin are such a joy to watch and i love them. <3

the lucas/max plot

so first of all max mayfield is the most perfect baby girl on god’s green earth and idk what i would do without her but anyway. i think lumax is the best romantic relationship in the show and not just because they’re the only ones with like an age-appropriate approach to the whole thing. it’s also because their relationship accomplishes more than just putting the two of them in a relationship!! lucas and max spending time together motivates billy to do his evil shit, providing more conflict in the narrative, and it also helps establish max as part of the group in a relatively natural way while giving both her and lucas a great subplot. lucas (and dustin) has a crush on the new girl, they start spending some time together, and lucas ends up needing to decide whether he’ll keep the secret of the upside down and lose her, or risk both of their lives by telling her the truth. that’s a pretty big, character-defining decision that he gets to make!! max has to choose whether to trust this boy she barely knows and endanger herself, or to walk away and stay safe, yet another great character-defining choice that also contributes to the sense we get as an audience of max as somebody who’s incredibly lonely and desperate for love and connection. this post is way too long already and i have a ton more to say so i’ll stop now but yeah i think lumax really Works in the show without ever distracting or detracting from the overall plot and narrative in the way that some other ships (coughjancycough) often do.

balance between the normal and abnormal

s2 i think did a pretty solid job of melding daily life with more fantastical sci-fi horror elements. i enjoyed seeing so much of the kids at school in the first few episodes!! you really get a strong sense of where they’re at in life, what their daily lives are like, and you get a sort of gradual shift into madness that makes everything feel more grounded than i think it would if they had just leapt straight into the horror shit, yknow?

the el and hopper dynamic

go back and rewatch s2 and tell me that’s not one of the most moving portrayals of parenthood and trauma and growing up that you’ve ever seen. you can’t. or well you can but i won’t listen. i really can’t imagine stranger things without el and hopper’s relationship, and it’s my absolute favorite part of s2. their whole dynamic is so beautiful and complex, and gives them each amazing personal arcs in addition! the black hole scene is literally one of the show’s greatest moments of all time. any given scene between the two of them in s2 is just guaranteed to be heartwarming as well as heartbreaking, and i think that makes for an incredible show.

weaknesses

flashbacks

okay this applies to Every season they All have too many flashbacks but in s2 specifically... please stop showing me shit from season one. i watched it. i know what happened. you don’t need to spoon feed everything to me!! flashbacks can be a really helpful way of delivering information to an audience, but st has a bad habit of not only being kinda demeaning in how often they flash back to shit that the audience already knows, but they also have a bad habit of using flashbacks almost as a crutch to avoid having to deliver information subtly and naturally.

you know i gotta say it... the lost sister

this is so sad. the lost sister really is like a great concept for an st episode, and i’m not mad about the idea of st taking a break from the normal action to focus on one story for a full episode, but the execution of it was just dreadful. kali and her crew feel very over-the-top and stereotypical, and its placement in the season totally kills the tension and excitement that was built in “the spy.”

i think the lost sister honestly could have gone over far better, even with the stereotypical fake-feeling gang kali has, if they had just swapped it with “the spy” like... ok, the end of episode five has el setting off to find kali and will collapsing on the ground seizing. right? imagine if, instead of immediately following will to the lab, we’d followed el. we don’t know what’s happening with will, but it’s a very simple cliffhanger that leaves us on edge without making us feel cheated by the show cutting away. we follow el on her little journey, everything happens much the same as canon, and then at the end, el sees hopper in scrubs. she sees mike, screaming, sees that they’re both in danger. holy shit!!! what the fuck!!! what’s happened since we left will seizing on the ground??? we feel el’s fear and confusion. she decides to go home. and then... boom. “the lost sister” is over. now, we rewind, right back to will seizing on the ground, and “the spy” commences. we learn how they got into the danger that el saw in the end of “the lost sister,” and we sit on the edge of our seats all through “the spy” and “the mind flayer,” KNOWING that el is on her way back to save them but not knowing when she’ll arrive!! idk i don’t think that would have necessarily saved lost sister but i think it may have alleviated some of the issues that i and many others have with it, timing-wise.

the nancy/jonathan sidequest

once again, the idea of nancy going off on her own little mission to find justice for barb after s1 is like. amazing. genuinely i love that plot for her and i can’t imagine anything better for her to have focused on in s2. unfortunately though i think her and jonathan’s little trip to see murray was just kind of... lame. the whole thing just felt like an excuse to get the two of them alone together, yknow? which is fine i guess people contrive all sorts of situations to get characters alone together for romance reasons but in this case i think it just really doesn’t work for me because of what it’s juxtaposed with. like, will is POSSESSED, and jonathan is just off on a mini road trip and sleeping with his bestie, and jonathan never seems to communicate to joyce/will that he left town, and joyce never like... thinks to tell him that will is like sick and fucked up and they’re looking at him in the lab??? like it’s so weird i know joyce always forgets about jonathan when shit’s happening with will but jfc you’d think at some point in that like... 72-ish-hour period where jonathan was out of town she would have thought about him. like at least once. maybe i’m forgetting something and she mentioned him sometime and i missed it but even still, i hate the juxtaposition of nancy and jonathan just like cheers-ing at murray’s place and sleeping together and whatnot while everyone else is dealing with possession or trying to hunt down dart yknow? it feels really boring in comparison and i think it could have been done far better. like it was SO insanely easy for them to get into the lab and get an admission of guilt and escape with it!! i think it might have been a lot more engaging if maybe someone from the lab tailed them to murray’s place and they had to like lose the tail and race to get the recording out to as many news outlets as possible before they got caught, or something like that. the tension in their plotline is completely resolved in episode four!! episodes five and six are just them screwing around and addressing envelopes. while there were a lot of strong ideas in this plotline (i really enjoy nancy going out of her way to get justice, and the fact that they have to water down the story to make it believable), i just think the focus on nancy and jonathan getting together hindered it a lot without adding a ton to the plot or their individual characters.

season 3

strengths

starcourt mall as a setting

while i don’t think the mall was utilized quite to its full potential (something i could make a separate post about if anyone’s interested), i do think that starcourt was a genius addition to the series. i’ve said this before, but building a new mall is a literal Perfect in-universe justification for a significant leap forward in fashion and aesthetics, and it provides a great location for characters to just... be characters. idk how else to articulate this i just think that the mall is a great setting to let people interact with each other and to bring people together who may not have been otherwise (i.e. scoops troop). not to mention how sick it was to see the mall get wrecked toward the end kdjncdkm like they were able to do so much more with the mall in terms of like The Finale than they could with just the byers house or the cabin or the school or even the lab. i love all the back tunnels they run through it’s such a fun like acknowledgement of how this glitzy eighties mall is just a real place where employees get shipments and take out the trash and shit idk it’s all about the perfect facade and what’s hidden what’s underneath what’s hiding in plain sight etc etc i’m just saying words now. anyway.

willingness to experiment and go against expectations

gay robin. neon aesthetics. giant fucking meat monster. i know some people hate both the neon and the meat monster but i personally think they were kind of amazing and like. yknow regardless of personal tastes i think it’s impossible to deny that s3 had a lot of incredible visuals, and they’re all visuals that just wouldn’t have been possible if the show were too afraid to stray from its s1 aesthetic. robin being canonically gay (and her resulting friendship with steve) and the season’s striking visuals are two things that most everyone (besides like homophobes skjncdknm) can agree were great, right? and they were both departures from where the show began and what we all expected!! so yeah i think while some of the experimentation in s3 wasn’t ideal it was also that experimentation that allowed for some of the season’s strongest elements to come about.

the hospital sequence (and the season’s action/horror scenes in general)

this one is fairly self-explanatory. while they may have underutilized the “body snatching” element of the season, the hospital sequence with nancy and jonathan fighting off their possessed bosses did an amazing job of building tension and creating a genuine sense of really intense and personal danger.

in general i think that s3 melded action and horror rather well, particularly in the sauna test, the hospital, and when the mindflayer busts through the roof of hop’s cabin. horror can come from many things, and in this case, st elicited horror largely from the feeling of helplessness, and it was really effective for me personally. i think it worked better for me than s1′s brand of horror because it doesn’t rely so much on a lack of knowledge or a sense of suspense that inevitable disappears upon a second viewing.

the body horror we got in s3 was also really fun! that’s it i just think all the blood and guts and slime were fun and i would like more of them. once again, the impacts of body horror are less dependent upon the viewer being in the dark or unsure as to what’s happening, and as such i think it tends to be a little more effective at eliciting reaction in the long term.

timing and mechanics of the battle of starcourt/finale

i think the battle of starcourt is just fucking awesome, and beyond that personal opinion, i think it’s the most high-stakes and intense finale of all three seasons, and this is for two main reasons! 1. el is out of commission, and 2. (almost) everyone is in the same cental location. this means that (almost) everyone is in danger all at once, and they are all working together at the same time to fight the same threat. s1/s2 have their groups more fragmented for the finales, and while i understand why in each case and i wouldn’t call either season’s finale necessarily weak, i do think the centralized nature of the s3 finale just Works on another level. in s1 and s2, large segments of the cast are already perfectly safe by the time el dispatches the primary threat. in s3, however, everybody save for dustin and erica is still in danger up until the last moment, and el is seemingly (you can def debate how much power she still had in her when she peeked into billy’s mind and whether the memory broke the mindflayer’s hold on him or if she was actually controlling him to some degree) completely vulnerable. this increases the tension and raises the stakes, making the finale a real crescendo to fortissimo as opposed to a series of little mezzo forte moments. i hope everyone reading this knows music idk how else to phrase that my brain is stupid.

emphasis on friendship and adolescence (but in a different way than s1/2)

this is definitely a controversial one but i think that s3 really did like... show a side of friendship that had been more or less unexplored thus far in the show. el and max were amazing, and i think it’s really nice that we got an opportunity to see the kids have some growing pains as well as see them support each other through Normal Adolescent Stuff like boyfriends and breakups instead of just like. death and trauma. this is maybe just a personal preference, but i think it can be really enlightening and provide a lot of depth when you get to see how characters respond to normal everyday conflict and not just how they respond to giant world-ending conflict!! letting el use her powers for goofy teenage shit like spying on boys and messing with mean girls at the mall is not only fun for her and the audience, but it also really emphasizes just how much those powers are a part of el, making it that much more devastating when she loses them at the end of the season.

weaknesses

tonal dissonance

so this is like. obvious. but it must still be said! i won’t go on and on about it since we all know this so i’ll try to like talk about it from an angle people don’t usually? anyway. it seems to me like they were maybe a little worried about s3 being too dark. while the choice to really lean into humor was definitely driven by the sorts of eighties teen films from which s3 drew inspiration (like fast times at ridgemont high), i think it was also done in an attempt to alleviate the more troubling implications of some events in the season, particularly the russian bunker plot. like, yeah, st can be incredibly dark, but if they’d played the whole “children being stuck inside of a foreign military base, tied up, tortured, and drugged” thing completely straight without the humorous elements that exist in canon, it had the potential to be like... disturbing on a new level. steve and robin don’t have powers like el yknow their kidnapping/torture doesn’t have any sci-fi elements to sorta soften the blow. they’re just innocent teenagers being brutalized and traumatized by grown men. so anyway yeah i think maybe the writers were concerned about this storyline coming off as too dark and they wanted it to be a little more whimsical but they ended up pushing way too hard in that direction and creating extreme dissonance at times. this goes for joyce/hopper/murray/alexei too, but to a lesser extent. i think the ridiculousness in that group felt a lot more like... realistic. but still.

newspaper plot

once again i feel like i don’t even need to say this skjdncmn we all know it was insane how the show basically ended up delivering the message “while misogyny is a serious problem poverty and classism are not” and i’ve said it on this blog a million times so i don’t need to repeat myself. i’ll focus on another weak point of this plot: the fact that it completely separates nancy and jonathan from everyone else. once again, the show’s preoccupation with j/ancy held them back! like... can you imagine a version of s3 where nancy and jonathan both worked in the mall? i have a lot of ideas about this possible au and like how the plot could play out differently if they worked in the mall but first of all it’s just more realistic, second of all it further utilizes the mall as a central setting, and third of all, it would bring everyone together. as it is in canon, nancy and jonathan were unnecessarily isolated from the rest of the group, and this isolation was detrimental to both of their characters. like, they only ever get to interact with each other! if they’d gotten summer jobs in the mall, they could have had more interactions with the kids/steve/robin, and they absolutely still could have had a similar argument! maybe in this case, nancy notices the rat thing (or something else odd) herself when taking out the trash behind the mall, and she wants jonathan to ditch work with her to check it out bc she thinks it may be related to the lab. jonathan doesn’t want to ditch work because he needs his job, nancy argues that they’re working shitty mall jobs anyway and who cares if they get fired, and we get more or less the same thing as s3 without the cartoonishly over-the-top misogyny. i mean honestly i think the rat shit could have been cut entirely it didn’t rly... accomplish much of anything. in my opinion. like imagine s3 without the rat plot you literally would not be missing anything except it would be more surprising when the dudes melted into goo at the hospital. so yeah i think it would have been better if nancy and jonathan had jobs at the mall, weren’t isolated from everybody else, and were maybe absorbed into the party’s plot or the scoops troop’s plot from very early on, allowing them to interact with more characters and have a less... dumb.... plot. like god splitting up nancy and jonathan between the party/scoops troop would have been So Much better i just. sdkjcnksdmn anyway yeah.

briefness of group reunion/separation of groups

remember in s2 at the beginning of “the gate,” where mike and hopper had a confrontation and max and el met for the first time and el hugged everyone and steve and nancy had their sad little moment together outside... where’s that energy? obviously the s2 reunion wasn’t that long either, but it made space for some significant emotional moments to take place. s3′s reunion had some hopper/el/mike resolution, but besides that... there was nothing, really. i just think that the whole group getting together in s3 was SO exciting and powerful the way they did it (with both the scoops troop and the adults having their own Big Moment reconnecting with team griswold family), but the emotional potential was more or less squandered.

i also think in s3 at times they were really stretching to keep everybody separated even though it made no sense. and like... in s1 the separation worked bc nobody else knew that (x group) was experiencing weird shit too, and beyond that, each group (as i mentioned in the s1 section) was sort of operating within their own genre and bringing something unique to the season. they’ve stopped doing that though! now, the groups aren’t separate bc each plot is tonally/structurally different, the groups are just separate bc... they need to be, because it’s a big ensemble cast and you can’t just have them all be together for a whole season or it would be way too difficult to coordinate things and keep the show dynamic. all this is to say that i’m excited for s4 because the location differences make it so there’s a Reason for each plot to be separate at the beginning, and i think that’ll work better.

general ridiculousness

i dont mean like i think it’s bad that they made jokes this is just me lumping in all the dumb shit like hopper not worrying about el and not wanting to check on the kids, him and joyce bickering long after they both know they and their children are in danger, max seemingly forgetting that billy is a racist abuser, etc etc. i think many of these are just a symptom of the show 1. trying desperately to keep the groups split up a certain way even though it may not make any sense, and 2. trying to fit into a certain genre/trope mold when their actual characters are more complex than the tropes they’re imitating. this is so fucking long already i am not gonna elaborate further rn but i trust u all know what i mean.

soooo... yeah, that’s about all! i mean it’s not all there are definitely many more things i could talk about and i know i focused sorta disproportionately on the teens which is my bad :/ but i’m done for now. thank you for asking, and apologies for the delay in responding!! i’m sure some people reading (if anyone read this far) will disagree with some of what i’ve said and that’s alright like i’m not The Authority on st or anything i’m just trying to talk about like my own thoughts yknow? so yeah luv u all i hope someone enjoyed reading this!!

#asks #em talks #lesbianrobin.canon #stranger things #if u actually read all this i love u and im sorry #these r just my opinions!! and im sure i misremembered some shit my brain is swiss cheese #i did my best tho

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lioncunt · 3 years

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any way the wind blows review!!!

gonna put it under a cut but tl;dr i really really loved it and even the things that i was on the fence about i’ve decided i love as well lmfao

so i kind of knew going into both this and wayward son that the plot wouldn’t really EVER be as narratively satisfying as carry on’s. it would definitely be interesting and have a lot of cool thematic elements, but in terms of being a grand deconstruction of the “chosen one” genre, it couldn’t ever get better than carry on. and i’m so happy rainbow didn’t try to MAKE it that. she didn’t pull a supernatural and up the stakes to impossible, outlandish degrees. both wayward son and awtwb had realistic, fascinating plots that served as a metaphor for the internal struggles of the characters.

the reason i’m beginning this review by talking about the plot is because it’s what i’ve seen the most criticism directed towards. and like i DO get it, i also was taken aback at first at how the actual plot is kind of background noise for the first couple hundred pages. but like...i think it WORKS. again, this whole trilogy is a deconstruction. that’s its PURPOSE. obviously it’s doing other things as well, but it started by taking this well-worn and well-loved trope and completely turning it on its head, giving us permission to acknowledge all the damage it causes and how our love of this type of story is honestly kind of harmful. we turn off that part of our brains when we read harry potter or something else with traumatized child protagonists, in order for us to actually enjoy it, but the simon snow trilogy has always said, “hey, this is kind of fucked up, huh? you’re allowed to think that.”

anyway, the way that translates to the plot here is that there’s not always some huge mystical big bad, or obviously evil antagonist. the horror can be going on in the world around you, in the background of your day-to-day life dealing with your own shit, creeping up on you until suddenly your loved ones are spouting off nonsense that is an absolutely CHILLING allegory for eugenics, by the way, which i’ve seen NOBODY talk about. the clear political parallels were so well done, but not heavy-handed, and they worked wonderfully as an ending to this story. simon at the end being a target for an angry mob, who are victims of intense ableism themselves (the metaphor of being a weak mage = having a disability), how these religious extremists will point at what they deem abnormal and use them as a scapegoat, the disgusting “survival of the fittest” mentality leading to “i can make this society great again” - it was all just incredibly well written, in my opinion. and the fact that it happened so slowly, in the background, made it all the better. you don’t really notice how bad it’s getting until it’s BAD.

it also, again, works so well as a manifestation of the characters’ inner strife. others have put it better than me already, so i won’t talk about it too much, but the fact that the book is saying you don’t need to be like everyone else in order to accomplish great things and have a good life, you don't need to have magic, you don’t need to be human, you don’t need to be neurotypical or able-bodied or straight or white or ANYTHING these people will have you believe in order to make you obedient to them and hateful to others -- it’s fantastic.

this kind of segues into the other big criticism i’m seeing, which is simon and baz’s one-day breakup. again, this has already been analyzed well, so i won't ramble about it, but wayward son was their breakup. metaphorically speaking. and i’m glad that it didn’t take some big, grand moment for them to get back together, even though it would have been narratively cathartic. that’s not how life works - it was so much better and realistic to have simon face the harsh difficulties of TRYING than dragging out a separation plot line that would have added NOTHING to his character. or baz’s. the only thing about their entire relationship that i would have done a bit differently is shorten the timeline, because a year and a half is a very long and honestly unrealistic time to go in a relationship without talking about sexual history or going on dates, even if there’s a lot of baggage. but that’s not that big a deal and i’m easily able to look past it.

(as a side note I'm getting annoyed at seeing all these takes that there’s too much sexual content. like i get it because the first two books are solidly YA and this is being marketed as YA even though it’s definitely NA, but like....sex is important. sex scenes and sexual content are an extremely important part of depicting the human experience. and lack of sex as well!! every single intimate scene between them was NOT super graphic and had such incredibly important significance narratively and character-wise - and yeah that includes any kinks that were brought up, like jesus they’re in their 20s and have been in a non-sexual relationship for a year and a half i think it’s pretty fucking relevant that there are intimate scenes!!! anyway moving on.)

i really loved penny and shepard’s plot - their relationship was so wonderful and charming and excellent for their characters, and i only wish we could have gotten their demon plot threaded into the larger picture, because after shepard was cured it felt like they were just standing there. that’s one of my very few complaints about the book. but they’re such good characters and i love them SO MUCH.

AND THANK GOD FOR AGATHA AND NIAMH. like i cannot put into words how fucking happy i was when i realized where that was headed. the cinematic nature of agatha and niamh helping the goat give birth while simon’s flying in the chapel and being targeted by a mob was just. so cool like i can’t even describe it it was so coooooool and then agatha and niamh KISSING and agatha found her PLACE and I'm so happy for her.

just in general the characters and relationships were fucking exquisite. i can’t help but love the way RR writes, especially her dialogue. it’s so real and three dimensional and her characters truly come alive and i care about them and love them so much. i’m so happy they’re happy, i wouldn’t have been able to stand it if they weren’t.

and everything got wrapped up so well in my opinion!! i don’t know what the hell people are talking about when they say they still have questions, like girl what about??? simon found his family, simon got a sword that isn’t tied to trauma, baz found out that he’ll get to grow old with simon, all their families are okay, penny and shepard are in love, agatha’s herding goats and a lesbian, there will probably be new threats and antagonists but they'll be able to handle them, life will continue to be difficult but they’ll get through it like WHAT do you not understand what’s not clicking i genuinely want to know.

ok actually i have ONE single question and that’s. did baz pick up the sword at the end. because the way it’s written it sounds like he did and i like do not understand that at all. someone answer please.

anyway that’s my review 10/10 would recommend

#any way the wind blows #awtwb spoilers #simon snow #snowbaz #carry on

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alicehattera03 · 3 years

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What on earth Alice!!!! You're dropping new fics?! Have my prayers been answered! Well I have a fic request from the Sibap webtoon. I was prolly high when I dreamt of this. I was reading your bittersweet claudiana fic where Athy dies and her parents survive her. And my sis was pounding October horror into my skull. So I dunno how but I cracked a cursed fic idea. A horror au of your claudiana fic. I pray to the good heavens to pardon my sins. But I dreamt that all of them were vampires and obelias being the royalty they are, felily being vampire nobility and diana probably being a witch or something. Basically I dreamed up Diana being a mysterious, very old yet majestic hag warning strangers to not take a certain path to that one old palatial villa where the bloodied ashes of an extinct pure blood vampire child float. She alerts them of the villa being the lair of a deranged pure-blood monster(that thing is so disturbing that even the supernatural folk including the vampires call it a monster and avoid it).

Now that was my crack dream. The extinct pureblooded vampire child is Athanasia, Claude and Diana are her parents as usual but in this AU Athy becomes so emotionally and physically tired of Claude's tireless torture on her because he blamed her birth for Diana's death, that she commits suicide to escape but in order to not let her death go uselessly she plans to use it as an exchange for her mother's life. Nobody among her family friends and relatives are able to rescue her from Claude's tortures. So just like in your fic, this athy too sacrifices her life in exchange for her mother's. LLOL In my dream it was revealed in a flashback scenario that her mother being a witch after being revived without choice tried uncountable desperate/forbidden experiments to bring back her child but failed. And that's because the child was so horrified and disturbed that in her paranoia she completely annihilated her soul through rituals and the only remnant of her existence are those ashes. One cannot revive her back through those ever again but she being a pure blood vampire from the highest of royalty, directly inheriting from one of the most powerful vampires of the entire vampire clan, her father, happens to leave behind ashes which are charged with way too much of power. Even an iota of those ash particles if touched transfers the Obelian vampire powers to a person without turning them into a vampire. Legends spread about this through many travellers who passed near that estate, of those ash particles which have a habit of floating around due to the powers they are charged with endow heightened powers to any traveller who come in contact with it. So adventurers throughout the continent want to visit that place. Unfortunately that also promises mutilated body organs of theirs being found years later.

So back to the point. That insane vampire is claude. He only ever wanted to have a family and the loss of it (first his fiancé Penelope, then his mother, then Diana) had made him the crazed vampire that emotionally and physically abused and imprisoned his child. His prolonged experience with the fucked up reality had also made him dangerously possessive. Athy suffered a lot for this, she bore emotional torture from this possessive and abusive father of hers. He is possessive of his child because he has a paranoia of losing and being alone. Even if it is the child he hates, he could not kill her off because he'd be alone again(he would rather have had someone he could hurt or inflict the pain he was feeling)

So anyway when Diana came back, it took him a lot of time time to grasp the entire situation. And at the end of his realization, he was surprisingly gripped with extreme anguish at the fact that fate had sickly cheated him by robbing him of his child through his very own hands . So despite getting back Diana , Claude becomes convinced more than ever the cruelty the elements played on him by first driving him crazy through loss and then playing him with his own pain and madness till the end where again it took from him his child in return for his lover. Contrary to what people might think, instead of calming down due to Diana's return, she only makes him understand everything a lot better and it increases his bitterness, anger and madness against the world by a bazillion times.

So yes he is the monstrous vampire that roams/haunts the villa where Athy's ashes fly about and her resting place is situated. Diana is just too bitter, broken and severely penitent thus even though she and claude live together, she tries to prevent the crime that her child suffered by preventing anyone who might even come near the premises.

Claude is in extreme depression and anguish. His regret and comprehension of the terrors suffered by his child is what fuels his insanity now. His child's ashes are all he has and thus can't stand anyone coming in contact with them. Yes his possessiveness only took a turn for the worst.

And yes that was my crack dream horror fic request.

Lovely Alice could you please please include frequent Claudiana angry/hate/make up sex, all the gore that your pen can pass, and a bazillion more times of Claudiana fights on either their child, one blaming the other for the child's death like often couples do or Diana totally not approving of Claude's actions.

Will u bless me this Halloween with this mad cat fanfic dearie please. Please go full on with this and add as much sex and gore as u want to Claudiana.

Dearest anon, I uh, don't know how to put it lightly, but I don't really like Claudiana...*Sweats nervously* and oh Anon... you've already written the fic, it's almost 1k!!? But I can never pass up on gore, so Halloween gore it is!!! (Also to other potential requesters, I'm not taking requests! I just took a liking to the one I posted and one was in response to a post I saw that had an idea for a fic! This one is for the anon who spent a while with the request- 971 words?!- and I'm accepting it for the anon and their request for gore is all!)

"Don't ever go to the castle on the hill, where the remnants of the royal vampire clan of Obelia lays silent, death upon its doorstep. There, traveler, you will find no treasures, no gold, no gems. Nothing but the looming dread of a pure-blood's wrath, for once you turn the corner of a hallway, deserted of all light, you will see a hand descend upon you with the strength of a thousand men, and darkness shall reign forever upon the castle built from the souls of the dead."

Claude never did find peace at night, his eyes all too sensitive to the sun that tried to peek through the ragged curtains of the bedroom, cradling his head in his hands as Diana paces back and forth, biting her lip as she stares at the man that had abused her child that was supposed to be theirs.

She gave him another glance and she couldn't stand at how his eyes were glazed over with pain, as if he hadn't thrown her child into the dungeons night after night. As if he hadn't tossed her around as if she was the root of his problems- how could he treat her so when she had given her life for her?

She gritted her teeth and she found herself standing in front of him, uncaring about anything because- her child, her only child, was dead. It was because of her- no, it was because of him!

She slapped him across the cheek. The hard blow didn't even leave behind a red mark, because insufferably, the man she had loved and become one with, had a child with- was immortal, and thus- whether he wished for it or not, indestructible to almost all upon the world.

Claude's bloodshot eyes dart to Diana's and his hand snakes out, grabbing onto her wrist as he lets out a rumbling snarl, his teeth catching the light as he stands, twisting her arm behind her back before breaking it with a sickening snap.

"Ugh!" Her arm healed quickly enough, but Claude pushed her onto the bed, dust rising around them in clouds as she wavered, wondering if her child's ashes were near them even now, even here- and she feels Claude pause too. As if searching for her ashes floating in the air before them, but he finds they are not, and continues to press onto her back.

She hears a series of cracks, and can only realize that they're her ribs- and she screams into the bedsheets, thrashing around as she tries to twist away from his grasp, but his strength overpowers her- she who had only just recently come back from the dead with her daughter's magick.

Ah, Athanasia, my child. Why did you have to do this to us- why did I have to leave you alone with this man who did not deserve your presence in his life? Warm blood soaks her chin as she blinks hazily, and she can feel Claude mumbling under his breath as he tosses white fragments of her bones onto the floor.

"Athanasia, where are you- why can't I see you? Stop hiding, come out, come to papa, Athanasia. Do I scare you? Is that why I can't see you anymore?" he moves her body, her hands flopping at her sides and rips at her clothing, unseeing as he joins their bodies as he continues to look beyond Diana and at the child that was no longer there.

"Athanasia..." Claude was remembering the day before when he had caught an intruder within the castle. The human had been jumping around, hands grabbing at the air- no, at dark grey ashes..

Claude's fangs elongated, his nails lengthening, veins standing out as stark black lines raced up his arms. The hint of blood in the air, the very air seemed to tense as Claude made his way through the crumbling halls, right up behind the man who didn't notice until he bumped into him. "What the-!?"

"Not her, never her." His head was tilted at an angle as he reached out, his hand encircling the man's throat, and he held him away as he gazed towards Athanasia's ashes that were quickly fleeing from him. He turned back towards the man, rage filling his eyes as he squeezed, desperate clawing at his arms, gurgling red froth from his mouth as Claude's mournful voice came out before tossing the man away from him.

"It's because of you, human. It's because of you she keeps running away from me. She never waits for me anymore, only coming out when I'm not around her...it's like she hates me...always avoiding me even when I'm her papa..." Claude could feel something foreign at his eyes, something other than iron at his lips.

Diana can feel her ribs regrowing, blood still staining her chin as she strikes out, her curved nails exiting Claude's torso as he stares down at her hand stuck in his chest. His blank eyes gives her chills but her hatred gave her the strength to rip her hand out, the holes she left behind healing almost instantly, but she flips their positions, sinking down on him as she takes the lead this time.

Hating that she still felt good with him after all these years. Hating that she was doing this with someone who had continuously abused and berated her daughter who had eventually killed herself to the point of no return.

Diana's teeth sunk through her bottom lip, clacking together as she felt her insides churn at the taste as she felt Claude's hands grip her waist so tight- it felt as if he would squeeze her inner organs into the wrong places and as if to prove her right, blood seeped from her eyes as she blinked.

She grimaced, wanting to dislodge him, but wanting to bring him the same annoying pain as she shoved her fingers into his mouth, feeling the slip of his tongue against her skin before she dug her nails down and seeing his expression change for the first time in a long while, she yanked.

The sound of him choking on his own blood was satisfying until he regrew that insolent tongue of his, absentmindedly wondering if he had made her daughter choke on her own tears as he made her sob with every day that passed as he chose to stomp on her feelings by turning her towards mirrors before breaking them all in a show of, "You'll never be the beauty Diana was."

But he hadn't been overwhelmed with joy once she had been brought back because he had become used to Athanasia, her daughter, being there with him instead of Diana, and he had regretted but everything, of course, it was all just too late, and too much for her to bear.

No amount of bloodshed or potions could bring her back, and of course her brilliant daughter had counted her trying black magick.

Nothing...nothing worked anymore. Not any longer, for Athanasia was gone. Gone because of him, because of them- Diana didn't wish for her return to the mortal realm, but Athanasia with her dying breath, had believed with every waking breath, that her father loved Diana with all his might, and would wish her dead to replace her mother in the underworld.

Ah, my child.

Hot tears dripped onto his face and he looks up into her eyes at last, and both his hands hold her face in them, and she wonders for a split second if he's come to his senses, if they could speak, if only just for a moment-

And her minute hopes are dashed when the poison from her tears gives off smoke as they burn through Claude's skin, revealing the red muscle and the gleam of white bone, his still un-beating heart, and he flings her away and off of him as he stumbles to the door. "Get away from me- " he looks back at her, and she bares her teeth at him when she recognizes the regret lingering in his eyes.

"Why come back to me when the one who accepted the both of us is no longer here to save our wretched souls from eternal damnation?"

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hawkland · 3 years

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My (mostly) Destiel Recs, Round-up #6

Well, between working like crazy on my DCBB fic and GISH and injuring my neck last month I haven’t kept up with my rec posts, so this one is going to be LONG and have a LOT and I’m going to try to break it up into sections, from oldies but goodies (some things I found on very old rec lists) to smutty delights to just tasty little bits of fluff, hopefully there’s something or everyone here. Most of these are not super-long, largely in the 10-25k range, though there are a few beyond that. With all the stuff I’ve had going on I haven’t wanted to lose sleep diving into 100k epics (especially when I’m writing my own right now, lol.)

“Oldies” but Goodies: Here are two great fics written some time way back when but that still definitely slap.

Theodicy by manic_intent (11k) - Probably the most brilliant Godstiel fic I’ve read to date. One of Cas’s first acts as the new god is to make a new archangel. Dean isn’t exactly on board with having his soul re-sculpted into wings he hates on sight (especially as they seem magnetically drawn to Cas), but he isn’t exactly given a choice. He, Sam and Bobby struggle with how to handle their former friend suddenly becoming a vindictive deity - trying to make plans to kill him if they must, which is pretty hard when it seems like Cas is always one step ahead of him. Can Dean hold on to enough of his humanity to provide a conscience to Cas and try to steer him toward good acts instead of destruction? This is one that I can’t say has a perfectly happy ending, but it’s a hopeful and imperfect one that’s just right for how the story plays out.

My Eyes Are An Ocean by entanglednow (10k) - Season 5 AU where Dean averts the apocalypse through a spell that “powers up” all the angels and he sees Cas’s true form - before being rendered blind. Dean tries to adjust to his blindness, Cas tries to deal with his guilt, and it’s just a lovely little read with an ending that’s... *chef’s kiss*

Lots more recs below the cut:

More great reads from some of my favorite authors I’ve recced before:

The Cabin on the Lake by DeanRH (21k) - This may be my new favorite DeanRH fic...at least for the moment. The year is 2152, Sam and Dean are long gone to Heaven, while Cas - stuck somewhere between mortal and angel - remains on Earth keeping vigil, keeping up the hunt, assuming he’ll never see either Winchester ever again. But when he starts hearing things, and imagining Dean visiting him as an angel himself, he starts losing grip on what is and isn’t real, and whether he can trust anything he sees or believes to be the truth. This is one hell of a psychological rollercoaster that kept me guessing right along with Cas until the very end. It also has some super-creepy horror elements, a novel “monster of the week”, and the hot-as-sin smut scenes I always expect from this author.

X Marks the Scot by DeanRH (15.9k) A fun little romp through history in one of this author’s great not-quite-au fics. Crowley sends Dean and Sam back in history to the Scottish Highlands to stop a monster, and while there they meet a blue-eyed clan chief who makes Dean weak in the knees. There’s something familiar about him, too. a very clever au that ties back to canon for an unexpected fix-it. Also, Cas in a kilt. Enough said.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon by DeanRH (12k) - Sweet and slightly angsty AU. What if Dean was a gardener in ancient Babylon when a strange dignitary came to warn that the tower under construction was to be destroyed by angels? Lush, romantic and sexy with some wonderful tie-ins to canon characterizations (of Dean, Sam, John and of course Cas).

sufficient for thee by angelfishofthelord (21k) - This is a beautiful Cas angst-fest and character study that reimagines how angel grace works, particularly in regards to healing others. It covers the whole of Cas’s arc from Season 4 through a post-series fix-it, is absolutely stunning and features some great world-building in regards to the angels. (One important TW: those with cutting/self-harm issues may wish to skip or at least proceed with caution). I love that I can always count on angelfishofthelord when I need a good dose of Cas!whump and pain.

And laugh at gilded butterflies by ireallydidthistomyself (13k) - another great Dadstiel fic from this author featuring one of my favorite angsty subjects! I don’t know how I missed reading this one before. An AU where Cas is raising (baby)Jack on his own until the angels find the two of them and prepare to seal Jack away in the Ma’lak box. Cas begs them to let him go with Jack, so at least Jack won’t be alone for eternity. Meanwhile Dean is frantically trying to find what happened to Cas, and he gets some unexpected help from Crowley. It’s sad and sweet and all the characterizations are great. A+ Crowley use here, too.

what stays (and what fades away) by dothraki_shieldmaiden (64k) - a fabulous read with some great art, too, that started me reading a bunch of fic from this author. Cas goes missing, and when he’s found he seems deep under a spell. When they finally manage to awaken him, he doesn’t remember anything of this life with Dean, Sam and Cas in the bunker. The last thing he knew he was a nurse living with his wonderful husband, Dean, and their two adopted children, Jack and Claire. What I loved about this one was the clever twist as to who was behind Cas’s curse and also how well-developed his AU world/existence was. I’m not generally keen on mundane aus or the one-dimensional way a lot of djinn dream fics tend to go for them, but this one managed to capture a believable version of Dean and Cas living a “normal” life without monsters without making it sugary/too-sweet.

before knowing remembers by dothraki_shieldmaiden (14k) Post 15x04, a wonderful fic that plays with some meta topics in a clever way. Dean and Sam are happy - they have free will and they’ve won against Chuck, even if they suffered some big losses along the way (including Jack). But Dean can’t help but think he’s forgetting something...or rather, someone. Yet every time he thinks he remembers, the name and face of that someone slips from his mind.

weights on my ankles by dothraki_shieldmaiden (9k) Post-15x03 where Cas ends up going back to the Gas ‘n Sip and working with Nora after leaving the bunker. A bitter sweet divorce-arc AU and what I love the most is how it ends - not perfect, not tragic, just very real and believable.

15x18 and Post-canon fix-it fics:

Orbital Velocity Around a Celestial Body by LeverDrift (26k) - An angsty but lovely fix-it fic, one where it gets worse for a while before it gets better. Dean pulls Cas from the Empty, where he’d been living in a fantasy world with a dream!Dean who was giving him everything real!Dean is certain he can’t. Dean has to struggle with wondering if Cas would have been better off with dream!Dean instead of him. This is one that will break your heart before putting it back together again as Dean struggles with his self-worth issues.

so good at crashing in by Wintertree (36k) - Another post-finale fix-it where Cas is back, the world is saved, and things are still...not as easy as it should be for either Dean nor Cas. Monsters are gone, there’s no more hunting to be done, and Cas wants to move out of the bunker somewhere closer to Claire, to move on with a proper human life. Dean thinks he can move there with Cas and stay as “best friends”, even to the extent that Cas encourages him to go out and have sex with others/women. (And wants to hear about it after the fact!) But can Dean figure out what he really wants, and what Cas wants as well? A refreshingly unique take on what a post-series life could have looked like for them.

Delicious smut:

Empty by squirrelofcelestialintent (43k) - Every day this fandom makes me rethink my previous squicks and DNWs in fanfic. Here I find myself enjoying quite a bit more dom/sub elements than I normally ever would! I think because I was absolutely drawn in by the breathtaking first chapter, capturing beautifully the emotions of Cas returning from the Empty in Season 13 if he and Dean had confessed their feelings right then and there. But Dean’s self-worth is all fucked up, he feels there’s no way he can be good enough for Cas, especially when his sexual desires run a little bit...let��s just say outside the vanilla and he’s struggling with shame over doing sex work when he was younger. This was HOT and POOR SAM really gets stuck in the middle of, well, hearing more about his brother’s sex life than he ever needed to.

He's My Mate by Hatsonhamburgers (22k) - This fic manages the delightful combination of humor and extreme hotness perfectly. Dean and Cas catch each other in some questionable masturbation situations. This leads Cas to decide he needs to buy Dean some proper sex toys. He’s just helping his best friend out, right? Sure. As I said, hysterical AND hot as hell.

Generals by nanoochka (9k) - Cas/Dean, Cas/Balthazar/Dean, implied past-Cas/Balthazar. An old LJ fic I found on an ancient rec list that is just scorching hot and a brilliant character study of Cas and Dean. Balthazar decides to invite himself in when he catches Dean and Cas engaging in some frisky business, and it turns into a bit of a power-play between the two soldiers of Heaven. Cas gets DP’ed and it’s all...well. It’s fucking good, read it.

The One With The Preening by HolyFuckingHell (5.5k) Can I do a rec post without including some wing!kink/wing!grooming in it? No, I can’t. (I also really enjoyed some of the other fics in this author’s series including The One With Dean's Horny Movies).

A Single Point of Light by Destina (2.4k) - This is a gorgeous Cas/Dean/Benny Purgatory short! A delicious balance of the two each caring for and caring about Dean in their own, protective ways, definitely a delight for any fans of this threesome.

Short and sweet, fluff to angst:

Snugglebird by almaasi (5.3k) - So, so soft and sweet and snuggly, just like the title. Dean’s things are disappearing from the bunker...and so, suddenly, has Cas. What’s going on? I do love my nesting!Cas fics, so...yeah. If you need a smile this is a good one to read :)

And Cleanse Me From My Sin by thisisapaige (1.6k) - another one for my beloveds who also enjoy wing grooming and sweet Dean-taking-care-of-Cas fluff.

Needle and Thread by Misachan (4k) - Season 5 wing!fic hurt/comfort. Cas’s wings are badly injured, Dean doesn’t quite know what he’s doing, but he’s stitched up Sam and himself enough times. He can do this. If you love caretaker!Dean and vulnerable!Cas don’t overlook this little gem.

Deceptive Preludes by sp8ce (2.7k) - One of those stories that delves into some of the difficulties Cas might have after coming back from the Empty a second time, especially in regards to accepting what’s real or not, understanding Dean, and how both of their communication issues can add to their struggles. Painful but hopeful for the future, felt very believable as I read it.

#my fic recs #destiel recs #my destiel recs #ok that's it for right now #should be plenty to keep y'all busy for a bit

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wiypt-writes · 3 years

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Stark Spangled Rebirth

Chapter 5: Rescue And Requisition

Summary: Steve, aided by Peggy and the Stark siblings, heads to the HYDRA base on a rescue mission, but little does he know Katie has a mission of her own.

Warnings: Bad Language words.

Pairing: Steve Rogers x OFC Katie Stark

Word Count: 8.2k

A/N: This series is my contribution of sorts to the CATF 10 Year Anniversary Challenge. As always, some creative liberties taken. And for anyone who is interested, Katie uses the term Midnight Requisition which is a military term- “To steal, scrounge. To acquire supplies for a unit from another without their approval or knowledge, usually after business hours/dark.”

This is the LAST catch up post, Chapter 6 onwards is NEW CONTENT!!! And continues the story, I’m so PLEASED finally to be able to share it!

Disclaimer: This is a pure work of fiction and classified as 18+. Please respect this and do not read if you are underage. I do not own any characters in this series bar Katie Stark and the other OCs. By reading beyond this point you understand and accept the terms of this disclaimer.

SSR Masterlist // Main Masterlist

Chapter 4

As soon as Howard Stark saw Steve, the Inventor’s face split into a huge grin and he shook his hand with vigour. Katie then explained that they needed his help to go rogue and bust the men out from behind enemy lines, causing her brother’s face to split into a huge grin and nod. The three agents quickly bustled around Howard’s tent, Peggy and Katie talking in low, hushed voices as they hurriedly grabbed various pieces of equipment before the four of them quietly and efficiently left the base, Howard slipping the guards on the perimeter gate a decent wad of cash for their silence.

It took them a little over an hour and was just starting to go dark when they reached the private airfield where Howard had stationed his plane. The waning light suited them, as Katie pointed out, it would be easier for them to operate under the cover of darkness, less chance of being detected. More money exchanged hands, something Steve had always hated, the fact that money seemed to be able to buy you anything you needed no matter how morally corrupt, but at that moment he couldn’t have given less of a shit if he tried. Before long they were in the air, Howard informing them that the trip of just over a hundred and fifty miles would take them roughly an hour and a half, which was far less than the four hours or so he anticipated it would have taken Steve in the jeep.

“You’d have run out of gas after about fifty clicks.” He had teased the soldier who had inwardly groaned as Howard pointed out the flaws in his plan. But then again Steve hadn’t been thinking all that much had he? He never did when it came to the people he cared about. He was a jump first, think later kind of guy, and the serum hadn’t done anything to change that part of his personality.

“So we’re here…” Peggy spoke, leaning forward slightly in her seat opposite Steve, pointing to the map in her hands as he checked the straps on his chute. “The HYDRA camp is in Kreischberg, tucked between these two mountain ranges.” She moved her finger a little right and from the distance it travelled and the scale on the map, Steve estimated they were no more than five miles out.

“Looks like a factory of some kind.” Katie mused, glancing at the map where she sat next to Peggy, flicking her braid back over her shoulder.

“We should be able to drop you right on the doorstep.” Howard called from the front of the aircraft, which was now shaking slightly with a mild bout of turbulence.

“Just get me as close as you can.” Steve called, before he looked back at Katie and Peggy, his voice dropping slightly. “You know you three are gonna be in a lot of trouble at the lab.”

“What else is new?” Katie shrugged, and Steve heard Howard chuckle.

“I’m surprised Old Chester ain’t sent you packing yet, Kiddo.”

“Well like you’re his best mechanical engineer, I’m his best front line agent.” She shrugged, “no offence, Peg.”

“None taken.” Peggy said somewhat sardonically, before she snorted. “We all know I’m the brains behind this operation.”

“Don’t hear me arguing.” Katie shrugged before she looked at Steve. “And you’re gonna be in just as much trouble.”

“Well, where I’m goin’, if anybody yells at me I can just shoot ‘em.” Steve replied, grinning a little. His spirits had been lifted exponentially now he was actually about to do something worthwhile, despite the fact he knew he was going to literally leap feet first into danger.

“They will undoubtedly shoot back.” Peggy fixed him with a look.

“Well,” Steve looked round at his stage prop shield that he had brought with him, which was leaning against the wall of the aircraft, “let’s hope it’s good for somethin’.” His knuckles rapped on the metal as Katie gave a little shake of her head and a side smirk, bending over to check the laces on her boots.

“Agent Carter, if we’re not in too much of a hurry I thought we could stop off in Lucerne for a late night fondue.” Howard called over his shoulder from the front of the plane and there was a moment’s silence as Peggy shifted a little awkwardly on the seat.

“Jesus, Howie, really? You’re doing this now?” Katie groaned as her brother chuckled.

“Hey, you asked me to come on this kamikaze mission.” He shot back. “I was just trying to lighten the mood a little.”

As the two siblings began to bicker Steve glanced at Peggy as he tugged on his gloves and the Agent rolled her eyes slightly. “Stark is the best civilian pilot I’ve ever seen. He’s mad enough to brave this airspace, we’re lucky to have him.”

“So are you two…do you…” Steve waved his arm between Peggy and Howard “…fondue?”

Peggy looked at him, completely ignoring his question and Steve supposed he couldn’t blame her, it was a personal question after all. His eyes then flicked to Katie who had stood up and was making her way towards the cockpit, swaying a little with the motion of the aircraft. With a swift flick of her hand she slapped Howard round the back of the head.

“Ouch, Kiddo! Do you want me to crash this thing or what?”

“Stop being a schmuck.” She shot at him before Peggy extended her arm towards Steve, a device held in her hand.

“This is your transponder. Activate it when you’re ready and the signal will lead us straight to you.”

Steve took it from her. “Are you sure this thing works?” he looked at it a little sceptically, turning it over in his hand, his attention flicking to the cockpit.

“It’s been tested more than you, pal.” Howard shot over his shoulder and Steve looked at him before his eyes flicked to Kate who was looking out of the cockpit window straight ahead of them. She raised her arm and pointed at something, her eyes narrowing in concentration.

“Howie…” she began to speak but before she could finish her sentence the plane lurched violently sideways and Steve gripped onto the side as the sky was suddenly filled with flashes and bangs from anti-aircraft shells which exploded all around them. Realising that it was now far too dangerous for them to take him any further, Steve shot to his feet and made his way to the door, grabbing his shield as he went.

“Get back here! We’re taking you all the way in!” Peggy’s voice rose but for the first time since he’d known her, Steve completely ignored the agent, exhaling loudly before he dropped and shuffled to the edge of the plan.

“As soon as I’m free, you turn this thing around and get the hell outta here!” he turned and looked up at Katie and Peggy.

“You can’t give us orders!” Katie scoffed, her hands on her hips.

“The hell I can’t!” Steve looked up at her, unable to stop the cheeky little smirk playing on his face, “I’m a Captain!” and with that he pulled his goggles down and flung himself out into the starry sky. The noise was deafening as he plummeted through the air, the sheer force of falling whipped his body with such ferocity he was sure his hair was going to fly clean off his head. With a sharp tug of the rip cord he deployed his chute and with a sharp jolt he was pulled upwards slightly before he began to fall at a much more civilized pace.

After what seemed like an age, Steve’s sharp eyes spotted the ground rising towards him and he landed heavily in a thud. With an easy, fluid motion he yanked his parachute down to the ground and then untangled himself from the harness. Once he was free, he glanced around and realised he’d landed on the outskirts of a thick, wooded area, the earthy smells of pine, dirt and damp filled his nostrils. He took a moment to get his bearings, pulling out the compass he had in his pants. He knew that from the direction the aircraft had been travelling in he needed to head due north. As the needle settled on the point, he realised he was currently facing East so he spun to his left and was just about to set off at a run when he heard something flying in heavily from above.

He spun round, just in time to see another chute sailing towards him and in a flash he whipped out his pistol as whoever it was landed with a thud some hundred yards or so behind him..

“At ease, Soldier,” a familiar voice, soft and quiet in the cover of night, spoke and Steve felt a cold feeling of utter shock and horror fill his chest.

“What the hell are you doing here?” He hissed as he strode towards Katie who was now untangling herself from her harness.

“Same thing as you.” She replied flippantly as she took a look around and began to take a few steps away from him.

“Are you insane?” He glared at her, his hand wrapping around her arm to stop her. He could have sworn she felt the tremble in his finger tips if it weren't evident in his voice.

“Not last time I checked, no.” She wrenched free of his uncharacteristically brash grip and spun to face him, her eyes blazing at him in the dim moonlight.

“You could get yourself killed!” He pressed, his voice carrying a little more than he'd liked. He failed to keep the element of concern out of it.

“Keep your voice down!”

“Damned it Katie, this wasn’t part of the plan!”

“No, it wasn’t part of YOUR plan.” She shot back. “It was, however, always part of mine and Peg’s.”

“Peggy knows about this?”

“Of course she does.”

“And Howard?”

“No way,” Katie snorted. “I'd guess Peggy is currently getting the full force of one of his verbal bashings.” At that she pulled out her compass. “We need to go North.”

“I know.” Steve said a little sullenly, a growl in his chest.

“So let’s move. Sooner we can fulfil our missions, the better.”

The plural of the word didn’t pass him by and through the downright anger and frustration, and dare he say it, fear he was feeling at the current situation, his logical side started to kick in and he knew there was nothing he could do about any of this now, bar keep her safe. So with a sigh, he shook his head and turned to follow her as she’d begun to walk away, his brain registering her last words.

“Missions?” he asked, stressing the word. “We have more than one?”

“One each.” Katie shot over her shoulder. “You’re on a rescue mission. Mine’s more of a midnight requisition.”

“Midnight requisition? For what?”

“Intel, tech, anything we can get our hands on.” She picked up her pace, scrambling up a slight incline. “I told you in the plane, I’m a damned good field agent and this isn’t my first raid. We’ve done a few over the past couple of months. But they’ve all been bust, well almost all anyway.”

“Bust?” Steve frowned “How?”

“They were smaller Nazi controlled labs.” She continued to speak as she weaved through the forest “The more we raided and the more intel we gathered, the more it became apparent we were right, Schmidt is marching to his own tune.” She paused and looked around. “The fight at Azzano wasn’t his first move, he advanced a load of troops into Norway a month or so ago of his own accord. Then, at Azzano, he opened fire on both Allied and Nazi troops alike. My guess is, and Peggy agrees, that this base will likely be under his control alone. And probably house more information about where his other ones are hidden.”

“Others?”

“This won’t be the only one.” Katie shrugged as she looked at her compass and turned right. “And without that information, Steve, we’re fighting blind. We can’t defeat HYDRA if we don’t know where they are.”

“You should have told me.” He replied, his tone still a little sullen. He didn’t like being in the dark.

“What, so you could blow the plan in front of my brother?” She scoffed. “He’d have refused to take us had he known what I was planning, he was bad enough when I had a full troop behind me.”

“You led a troop?”

“Don’t sound so surprised.” She chuckled. “You know I’m actually an ‘honorary’ Lieutenant, thanks to Colonel Phillips. Didn’t go down well at first, most of the men weren’t keen on taking orders from a woman.”

“So that’s what you meant when you called them all jerks earlier by the stage.” Despite himself Steve felt a smile curl across his face.

“Yup. They soon fell in line when a few of them ended up with my fist in their mouth. Not to mention a good number also found themselves on the end of a Phillips’ Special.”

“A Phillips Special?”

“Yeah, the term coined for when they’re stripped naked and made to run ten miles round camp by the Colonel.” She shrugged. “For all his bluster, Chester’s actually been really supportive of both me and Peggy. That, and he doesn’t like subordination in any form.”

“You don’t say.” Steve muttered as Katie continued, her foot-falls light and quiet as she weaved her way through the thicket of the trees.

They continued for about an hour, alternating their pace between a jog and a fast walk. Had Steve been on his own he no doubt could have run the entire distance a lot faster but he didn’t raise that issue, and there was no point being frustrated about it either. Firstly, there was nothing he could do about it, secondly, to be fair, Katie kept up a decent enough pace and thirdly, had he been running as fast as he could have he would no doubt have run straight into one of the various HYRDRA patrols they encountered within the woods. As it happened, the pace they were going at was perfect for his sharp senses to alert him whenever a passing patrol was near, enabling them to duck out of sight.

Eventually, the trees began to thin out and through the gloomy mist that had descended, which he had to admit was incredibly useful to keep their presence as covert as possible, Steve saw the perimeter fence and gate to the camp. He stopped dead, his arm out causing Katie to also pause and as he studied the gate, trying to figure out the best way in, he heard the rumble of trucks coming from his side. He spun just in time to see them approaching down the road which led through the wooded area and he crouched down, pulling Katie down with him.

“Reckon you can make the last one?” He asked, turning to face her.

“Yeah.” She nodded. “They’re not going too fast.”

Steve took another look around before he nodded and the two of them ran for the last truck, Katie springing up first and he heard her give a little sigh as he pulled himself up over the tail gate. “Crap.”

The reason for her curse soon became apparent as Steve landed in the back of the truck and came face to face with two HYDRA guards.

"Fellas." He nodded. There was a split second and they both lunged at him at the same time. He pushed Katie a little harshly to the right as he hit one with straight punch to the face, the other dropping with a groan as Katie had connected a well-aimed boot to his stomach. As both guards tried to scramble to their feet, Steve grabbed both their heads, smashing them together like a pair of cymbals before he tossed them straight out of the back.

“Impressive.” Katie looked at him, smirking and Steve rolled his eyes as she turned and looked carefully through a small tear in the side of the canvas of the truck. “They’re taking us straight in.”

“And then what?”

“I dunno, you tell me, you’re the Star Spangled Man with a Plan after all.”

“Oh for the love of…this isn’t some kind of fucking day’s outing!” He practically exploded and Katie groaned.

“Lighten up, Steve.” She turned away, looking back through the hole in the side of the truck. “It was a joke.”

“Well I see nothing funny about any of this, at all.”

“And you think I do?” Katie turned, her eyes once more full of an angry fire. “Let me tell you, Captain, my unit has seen things these last four months that no one should ever have to see. And you know how we dealt with it? By NOT dealing with it.” She brushed a piece of hair off her face. “We joked, made light of the situations we found ourselves in because they were downright fear inducing, and if we didn’t none of us would have lasted five minutes. So take that stick out of your ass and stop being so goddamned self-righteous.”

Steve blinked, but before he could respond to her angry outburst the truck slowed and then began to reverse. Eventually it came to a stop and Steve could hear someone at the tail of the truck so he gestured for Katie to get behind him, which she did. He simply raised his shield in front of his body and waited. The flap to the back of the truck opened and without hesitation Steve smashed the shield straight into the guard’s face, sending him flying backwards. Quickly and quietly, shield on his arm, he jumped out of the truck, turning to help Katie down and the pair of them turned left, jumping off the raised loading platforms and jogging, all the time keeping their bodies stooped and low.

There were lines and lines of tanks emblazoned with the HYDRA symbol and the two of them shared a glance at one another. It was clear to Steve that Katie and Peggy were right, Schmidt had been gearing HYDRA up to be far more than a science division for some time if this equipment was anything to go by. Together, they weaved their way through the lines of armoured vehicles, taking care to keep to the shadows and out of sight as they made their way towards a smaller outbuilding that looked like it led into the main base.

“Come on.” Steve gently nudged Katie and the pair of them ran across the ground. Steve hopped up onto a tank that was conveniently parked by the annex, offering his hand to Katie to pull her up. They both scrambled onto the flat roof and ran, hopping up onto a slightly higher roof before they reached a set of metal steps which led up the side of the huge base. Katie went first, scrambling as fast as she could up them where she paused on a platform approximately halfway up. She nodded to a thick, iron door which led inside the building and Steve moved to try it, shaking his head.

“It’s locked.”

“Yeah, and you have the strength of like thirty men or whatever.” She rolled her eyes “Open it.”

He looked at her, narrowing his eyes at the fact she was bossing him around but he didn’t argue. He moved towards the door, shaking his head “This isn’t gonna-“ he gave a sharp tug and with a squeal the door pulled straight off the hinges “-work.” He finished lamely, looking from the door to Katie who stood there, arms folded, smirking.

“If only you had as much faith in you as I have.” She said a little sardonically and once more he glared at her. Pulling out her pistol Katie made to go in the door and Steve put his arm out.

“No, I’ll go first.” He stopped her.

“That’s not gonna work because you need to prop the door back up, so when that guard patrol comes back it doesn’t look like someone broke in.” She shook her head. Steve let out an exasperated sigh, more frustrated that she’d pointed out yet another potential issue he hadn’t considered in his haste and she smiled at him, “This is what I’m trained in, stealth.” She shrugged

She stepped inside, keeping herself flattened to the wall as Steve followed, leaning the door back up before he paused as they both looked around, finding themselves in a corridor of sorts.

“Any ideas on which way?” He asked and Katie pondered for a moment.

“Well, the front of the camp is left.” She frowned and Steve nodded his agreement.

“So we go right.”

“Yup.”

“Keep behind me, stay in the shadows.” He couldn’t help himself but instruct her, but to her credit she didn’t argue, merely gave him a little salute as the two of them set off through the factory.

A short while later they reached another door, only this one was guarded, they could see through the etched glass window embedded within it. Steve signalled to Katie to keep back before he knocked. The guard turned and came towards them, and as soon as the door opened Steve punched him hard in the face before smashing his head between the door and the wall. As the guard went down he caught him, pulling him silently out before the two of them headed inside, taking care to shut the door behind them. They appeared now to be in the main munitions storage area of the factory, and it was busy. Guards swarming all over, people driving pickups laden with crates, and each soldier seemed to be carrying guns powered by some form of liquid that was glowing a bright, cobalt blue.

They dodged between aisles, using whatever they could to keep out of sight and as they snuck between a collection of huge metal containers of some kind, they both paused as they spotted what appeared to be racks of small, rectangular shaped metal items all containing the mysterious blue liquid. It was eerie, like nothing Steve had ever seen before and he gently moved to a closer look, picking one up.

“What the hell is that?” Katie whispered as he turned it over in his hand.

“I have absolutely no idea.” He shrugged “Except, to state the obvious, it looks like some kind of grenade. But, I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“We should take them back to the lab.” She stated and Steve nodded his agreement, sticking the item into the pocket of his fatigues before they set off to continue their search heading even deeper into the base.

After another fifteen minutes or so of dodging as many HYDRA agents as they could, and subduing the ones they couldn’t, they reached a large room deep in the belly of the base and Steve took a deep breath as he looked around the room at the huge metal cages that contained easily over a hundred soldiers, if not two. He felt Katie still besides him as she also glanced around, her eyes flashing as she scanned the room, her attention instantly shooting upwards when they saw a warden walking above the cages on some kind of gangway, in which the large, circular tops of the cages were embedded. Steve also spotted another guard weaving his way amongst the large cells on the floor and took a deep breath.

“Right,” he turned to Katie. “I’ll take the one up top first, then I’ll drop down and-“

Katie took an exasperated breath, “don’t you trust me or something?” She hissed.

“Of course I do, but-“

“Then you go up high, I’ll take the one down below. I can do this, I’m not some fairy-tale princess that needs protecting. And whilst I appreciate your chivalry, as well you know, now is not the time, Soldier.”

Steve inhaled deeply and looked at her, her green eyes bored into his and he gave her a sharp nod deciding to go along with her, despite every part of his brain screaming at him not to. Without looking back, he ran around the side of the large room and found a set of metal steps which led up the side. He took them two at a time and then continued along the raised platform that ran round the side of the room, crouching as he went to keep out of the dim light that the small, barred windows let in. He spotted the guard coming his way and ducked even more, waiting, and once the man was within reach he grabbed his shield from his back and swung it with a huge arm straight at his face. The guard topped backwards and landed heavily on top of one of the cages out cold.

As Steve moved and began to search the guard for his keys, all the prisoners stood up, their eyes wide with shock and surprise.

“And who the hell are you supposed to be?" One of them spoke as the rest continued to simply stare at him in stunned silence and he didn’t miss the way a few of them eyed him up and down, taking in his helmet and shield painted in the stars and stripes of the American Flag.

“I’m…” Steve answered a little breathlessly as he hesitated for a moment as he began to look around for Katie, but he found no sign of her, “Captain America." He finished a little lamely, glancing back down.

"I beg your pardon?" Another man spoke, this one in a British accent as Steve grabbed the keys from the guard’s belt and ran back the way he had come. As heard he ran across the floor to the first cage, he heard the hisses and rumbles of excited murmurs he glanced up to see Katie jogging towards him.

"Merde," one of the prisoners uttered as all heads turned in her direction.

“Language!” Katie turned her eyes to the soldier who had spoken, giving a slight smirk which the man returned as Steve unlocked the cage he was in.

“You okay?” He asked Katie as they moved to the next cage and she nodded.

“Yeah, took him down with a choke hold then kicked him in the face for good measure,” she shrugged as they moved down to the next cage, then the next.

“Well, well, well, Lady Lieutenant!” A tall, wide man spoke and Steve saw Katie’s head snap in his direction, her smirk turning into a huge smile. “What took you so long?”

“Got here as fast as I could. I'll be outta here just as fast when Phillips finds out where I am.” Katie grinned, before she shook her head and sighed, her voice cracking. “Damned it Dum Dum, we thought you were all dead!”

“Take more than that to get rid of us.”

Systematically, they moved through the room, unlocking each cage as they went until they reached the last one, all the time Steve scanning the faces of the prisoners all as they all emerged, shaking hands and hugging one another. But the face he had been hoping to see wasn’t amongst any of them.

"Are there any others?" Steve whispered, pushing his way between the man he knew only as Dum Dum and an Asian man who was holding his dog tags up, looking slightly affronted. “I'm looking for a Sergeant James Barnes." He asked, turning to the British soldier who began walking alongside him and Katie.

"There's an isolation ward in the factory, but no one has ever come back from it." The British Man spoke.

“Alright,” Steve spoke, considering his options as he continued walking towards the door through which they had entered. "The tree line's northwest, about eighty yards past the gate. Agent Stark knows where it is.” He stopped and turned, nodding towards Katie, his eyes returning back to the group of men “You follow and take your instructions from her, you got it?”

The British man and a few others began to nod, the excitement and anticipation of a fight was easily sensed and Katie stepped forward, shaking her head.

“Steve,” she began to protest but this was one order he was not going to let her ignore.

“You said your mission was requisition.” His eyes locked on hers “So use these guys and do it. Get out fast and give ‘em hell. I'll meet you in the clearing with anybody I find inside."

For a moment he thought she was going to argue but she didn’t. Instead, she took a deep breath and nodded, her eyes still locked onto his. In that split second, Steve hesitated. There was so much he wanted to say, but, he couldn’t find the words to express what he was feeling. He wanted to tell her to stay safe, to keep herself out of danger, make sure she got out alive…but instead he looked at her, swallowing and she gave him a soft smile.

“I know.” She said gently, “you too.”

Steve gave her another curt nod, his chest tightening a little as he turned to go.

"Wait, you know what you're doing?" A soldier shouted after him, and Steve looked back over his shoulder about to answer before he heard Katie quip.

“He’s knocked out Adolf Hitler over two hundred times."

The prisoners furrowed their brows, before glancing around at each other with confused expressions on their faces and despite himself Steve gave a little chuckle, looking at Katie’s grinning face once more before he turned around and jogged out of the door, her voice ringing in his ears as she issued instructions to the troops.

“You heard the Captain. Now the base is heavily armed so we’re absolutely going to have to fight our way out. On the way, we grab as much tech and weapons as we can. Not only to use but also for further analysis by my unit….”

Her voice died down as Steve picked up a jog, shield on his back and headed off back the way they had come. It wasn’t long before a loud siren rang out and Steve took a deep breath, trying to push his worry away as shouts and loud explosions boomed in his ears, signalling the fight had begun. He continued making his way into the factory, fighting his way through a number of guards easily as gunfire sounded all around him, the angry yells and screams of fighting filled his ears as the freed prisoners began to engage with the HYDRA soldiers.

He fought his way up onto the gangway that circled the main factory floor, dispatching another guard with a swift, hard boot to the abdomen that sent him flying over the railing and he took a look around, the sheer size of the factory floor catching him off guard for a moment before he remembered what he was here to do. Pulling out his pistol he turned right, jogging round the gangway until he hit a dimly lit corridor. He continued round and, as he quickly made his way through in search of the isolation ward, he saw a short man in thick glasses, carrying a briefcase and a number of files in his arms emerge from a room. The man stopped dead, looked at Steve and then turned and sprinted away from him, heading round the corner. Steve began to run after him, but as he passed the room the man had emerged from, he slowed when he heard what sounded like someone talking, mumbling even.

Taking a deep breath, he entered the room, following the sound as it became clearer and then his heart stopped and he grew hot, his breathing deep as he knew that voice. It was weak but still so familiar, even if it had been months since he had heard it.

"Sergeant. 32557…"

He hurried through another door, glancing towards the end of the room and saw the man he’d come to this very place for, strapped to a reclined medical chair.

"Bucky?" Steve shot over, pausing at the side of the chair and looking down at his best friend. Bucky’s eyes didn’t move, instead he kept chanting his rank and number as he stared blankly up at the ceiling. "Oh my God." Steve swallowed was his eyes travelled over Bucky’s body, taking in the restraints that kept him strapped to the chair. He looked tired, weak, sick even, and it hurt Steve to see him in such a state. Bucky had always been the strong one out of the pair of them, normally looking after him. But, well, now it was time to return the favour. He swallowed and began ripping the straps around him with ease.

"Is that…?"

"It's me. It’s Steve.”

"Steve?" Bucky murmured, his face breaking into a smile as recognition flooded his features.

"Come on." Steve helped Bucky to his feet, holding onto his arms as he steadied himself before he gently reached out and patted the side of his friends face.

"I thought you were dead," Steve sighed as Bucky frowned, his eyes fixed on where Steve’s face would normally have been, and when he instead found himself looking at Steve’s chest, he raised his eyes up wards, puzzlement etched across his face.

"I thought you were smaller.” Bucky swallowed and Steve kept hold of him, helping him to stand upright as he became more coherent. Whilst Bucky was gaining his senses, Steve took a quick glance around and his eyes focussed on a map pinned to the wall, various positions highlighted upon it across Europe. Committing it to memory he then slung Bucky's arm over his shoulder, for the first time ever bearing his friend’s weight.

"Come on," he urged as he began to lead him out of the lab.

"What happened to you?" Bucky asked as Steve pretty much hauled him out of the room, keeping him upright as he stumbled, his feet struggling for traction.

"I joined the Army." Steve replied simply.

As they made their way back down the corridor, Steve felt Bucky becoming able to bear some of his own weight, and then gently nudge at Steve to let him go so he did. Bucky followed behind a pace or two his arm clutched over his ribs.

"Did it hurt?" He suddenly asked.

"A little," Steve replied, his head still looking around.

"Is it permanent?"

"So far." Steve nodded as they continued.

Suddenly, there was a loud explosion which rocked the factory and the two men paused for a second before they picked up the pace. Eventually they emerged onto the gangway Steve had walked round before and immediately recoiled back as another explosion sent a huge ball of fire up into the air. Steve held his shield up to protect his face as Bucky ducked slightly, his hand gripping one of the railings, other hiding his face. Turning away from the railings, Steve started to head up a set of stairs immediately behind him, Bucky following. The heat was stifling and it made Steve feel like he was stuck in a furnace as they quickly sprinted up the metal steps and emerged onto another gangway. Taking a right, they began to sprint down it, explosions and flames roaring below them. Steve’s brow beaded with sweat and he wiped it with the back of his hand, taking another look down. He had no idea whether the fire had been started by the men led by Katie or some self-destruction ploy by HYDRA to prevent any of their plans or weapons getting into their hands, either way he found it hard to care. One less base to deal with he supposed.

“Captain America!”

Steve stopped dead, turning to his left to see two men on the other side of the factory by an elevator door. One was the shorter bespectacled man Steve had seen before, and the other he recognised also, but only from photos. Johann Schmidt, HYDRA leader. He was dressed in a long black trench-coat of sorts, a large silver buckle bearing the HYDRA symbol spanned his waist and he turned towards Steve as he handed the other man a silver briefcase.

“How exciting! I'm a great fan of your films.” Schmidt’s thick German accent carried across the factory as he began to walk over the gangway towards Steve. Steve took a deep breath, his jaw setting as he strode towards the man, the anger surging through his body. “So, Dr. Erskine managed it after all. Not exactly an improvement, but still impressive."

At that Steve swung his right arm back and bridged the two or so feet in between him and Schmidt with a punch straight to the man’s face, the impact forcing the HYDRA leader back a few steps.

"You've got no idea," Steve snarled.

Schmidt merely smirked, before standing up, cracking his jaw slightly and Steve frowned at the way the right hand side of his face appeared to have sagged away from his eye socket. "Haven't I?"

Quickly, the man’s fist flew towards Steve, but equally as quickly he raised his shield to block it. The metal vibrated in his hands and to his utter shock the item dented with the force of Schmidt’s blow. It was then that Steve recalled Erskine telling him how the man had taken the serum, and that it had enhanced him too. In a flash he reached for his pistol but Schmidt was too quick and laded a punch straight to the left hand side of Steve’s jaw. He was knocked completely off his feet, falling backwards onto the metal of the gangway, the pistol he had been holding slid straight out of his hand and over the edge. Schmidt advanced towards Steve but he threw all his weight into a huge double kick, which sent the man sprawling backwards.

As Steve got to his feet, the gangway he was on suddenly began to move backwards, separating him from Schmidt who stood up, the two men not moving a muscle as the metal walkway drew them both back to their respective sides.

"No matter what lies Erskine told you, you see I was his greatest success!" Schmidt yelled as Steve stood still, his chest heaving, as Schmidt reached up for his face, grabbing at the skin at the left hand side of his jaw. As Steve watched, to his horror, he began to peel back the skin revealing that it was a mask, and underneath was a grotesque, featureless red skull.

Steve swallowed, his face wrinkling up as he tried to understand what the hell he had just seen. What he was still seeing, for that matter.

"You don't have one of those, do you?" Bucky mumbled, his attention also on the man in front of them.

"You are deluded, Captain. You pretend to be a simple soldier, but in reality,” Schmidt tossed the mask down into the flames, Steve following it with his eyes before he glanced back across the factory room “,you are just afraid to admit that we have left humanity behind.” At that Schmidt turned to his right and walked towards the now open elevator “Unlike you, I embrace it proudly. Without fear!" he gestured with his hand as he made his way into the elevator.

"Then how come you're running?" Steve yelled back. It was a pathetic shot really, all things considered, but it was all Steve could think about saying given what had happened. As expected, Schmidt completely ignored him and merely smirked as he pressed a button to his right and the doors closed.

Steve paused, still not completely sure what the hell had gone on when a large explosion rocked the platform they were stood on, causing both him and Bucky to duck once more from debris that shot up all around them.

They needed a way out. Steve’s eyes fell back on the elevator and he followed the shaft upwards spotting a set of doors right at the top which led, he assumed, to the roof. He followed the line of the ceiling, noticing there was a thin gantry that led over to the side they were on, and he spun round to spot another set of steps which led upwards.

That was it, their only way out.

"Come on," Steve turned around, grabbing Bucky’s arm and leading him to the stairs. "Let's go. Up."

Together they hurriedly climbed and reached the highest walkway that stretched across the factory floor that was now burning, Steve felt, hotter than hell itself. Explosions rocked the catwalks causing everything to shake and Steve glanced at the flimsy gantry that led over to the side they needed to be on, then back to Bucky.

“Let’s go. One at a time.” He moved to help Bucky climb over the railings to allow him to cross first. Bucky made his way tentatively across the thin beam of metal and as he was roughly at the halfway point, it began to give way. Bucky picked up his pace and threw himself off the edge grabbing the railings at the other side, but the gantry collapsed behind him leaving Steve stranded.

Steve watched as Bucky hauled himself over and then tuned to face him, the realisation that Steve was stuck evident on his face as he looked back at him.

"Gotta be a rope or something!" Bucky shouted hopefully. At that point another part of the factory below them fell with a loud crash into the fire below and Steve swallowed, shaking his head.

"Just go! Get out of here!" he bellowed, waving Bucky away. Bucky shook his head, his hands gripping the railing around the walkway.

"No! Not without you!" He screamed back, desperation lacing his tone.

Steve looked over at him, then peered down at the fire, before taking another look up. If he stayed where he was, he was a dead man. If he jumped and didn’t make it, he was a dead man. But if he didn’t jump, well he had no chance of making it at all.

Decision made, he pushed the now broken bars of the railings in front of him, bending it out of the way to create a gap large enough to jump through. He took a few steps back, once more gaging the distance before he sighed and grimaced a little at what he was about to do. His thoughts flashed to Katie, his only comfort out of all of this was that she wasn’t stuck with him now and had a good chance of having made it out. With a deep breath he set off at a sprint before he launched himself off the side, over the huge chasm below. His arms flailed, as did his legs as he spun them to try and maintain momentum, the flames and explosions licking at his boots and with a loud grunt he landed, his arms gripping tightly onto the remainder of the railing beside Bucky. Bucky was quick to grab him, hauling him over, the pair of them falling to the metal walkway. Steve landed with a grunt on his back and took a huge breath, turning to look at Bucky who was led besides him, his chest heaving.

“Thanks.” Steve panted as Bucky looked at him, incredulously.

“You’re thanking me? Whatever, punk.”

Another large explosion rocked the gangway they were on and they both rolled over, before pushing themselves up, stumbling a little as they made their way hastily through the door, bursting out into the cold night air. Steve took a split second to gather his bearings, his eyes flicking to the front gate of the camp before he located a set of the metal railing type rungs the same as the ones he and Katie had used to gain entry at the side of the building.

“This way.” Steve instructed as he led Bucky towards it, and started to descend, all the time keeping one eye on his friend in case he lost his grip and Steve needed to catch him. When Steve’s feet finally touched down on solid ground he felt like yelling in utter relief, but they weren’t clear yet. Once Bucky landed besides him, they both set off at a sprint across the outside area of the camp. There were still a fair number of soldiers running around but they were too busy trying to escape the burning building to pay him and Bucky any attention. Nevertheless, they kept to the shadows and made their way out of the gate, Steve taking a sharp right following the way he had come with Katie before.

As they walked towards the clearing they were aiming for, the hushed sound of voices and chatter hit their ears and he heard Bucky take a sharp breath.

“Steve?” Bucky asked as Steve continued walking, his feet crunching over the frosty ground under his boots. “Is that…”

“No, it’s not HYDRA.” Steve assured him. “We found a bunch of other prisoners before you, got them out first.”

“We?” Bucky asked, “there was someone else with you?”

“Yeah, it was….” Steve trailed off as they emerged into the clearing and a number of men wheeled round, guns raised. As they spotted who it was, their weapons dropped but before Steve could say anything, Katie pushed through the middle and stopped dead, her chest heaving. She looked a little roughed up- some of her uniform was torn, there was a cut to her right temple, a trickle of blood having seeped down her cheek and the same side of her face looked a little red and bruised, but other than that, she seemed fine.

Steve felt relief flood his system at the sight of her, and without a word he strode quickly towards her and she threw herself at him, wrapping her legs round his waist as he held her tight, one hand supporting her lower back, the other gripping at the back of her head, fisting softly in her untidy hair.

“Thank God.” he mumbled, closing his eyes as he held her close, pressing his face into her hair.

“You’re late.” She stuttered and he let out a splutter of a laugh as he pulled back to look at her. “I thought you were gonna stand me up.”

“Never,” he shook his head, his eyes locking onto hers. They stood still, no attention being paid to anyone around them at all and Steve swallowed, his eyes flicking down to her mouth. His face dropped towards hers, and then a voice spoke from behind them, completely interrupting him and reminding him that firstly he was in the middle of a still heavily occupied with enemy troops forest and secondly, that they were most certainly not alone.

“Well, this is nice.”

Steve closed his eyes and let out a sigh as he set Katie onto her feet, stepping back out of her space, blushing furiously. She peered round him, as he turned and saw Bucky smirking at the pair of them. He jerked his face towards Katie, arching an eyebrow.

“Hey, Doll face.”

“Barnes.” She scanned him up and down, taking in his appearance before she smiled. “Good to see you in one piece.”

“Yeah, I hate to break this little reunion up,” Dum Dum spoke and they all turned to face him, “but I suggest we get moving and tie up with the rest.”

“The rest?” Steve frowned, looking around, and for the first time he noticed that there were a lot less men than he had anticipated “Where…”

“We split into three main groups. We took a few losses but most of us made it. My group managed to take a few vehicles.” Katie explained. “Some kind of tank, two trucks. We also found a huge storehouse too and loaded both trucks with as much as we could take, weapons, ammo, and equipment, what ration packs we could find.” She took a deep breath. “There’s an old abandoned allied base some ten miles South East which someone suggested would be easier for us to hold up in whilst we waited for help. I sent a group ahead with the seriously wounded along with support. Said we would meet them there.”

Steve blinked, astounded at her planning, although he knew he really shouldn’t be. He nodded and then looked around, before a huge explosion made them all jump and Steve turned to see an enormous fireball erupt into the sky signalling that the HYDRA base had finally gone up completely.

“Okay, let’s move.” He instructed, as Katie began to bark out instructions again, before she hurried forward and fell into step alongside Dugan, who pulled out his compass before he pointed and began to bellow out for everyone to make tracks.

“So,” Bucky fell into step alongside Steve, and Steve kept his eyes focussed ahead as they began to walk “Somethin’ going on between you two or…”

“Don’t know what you mean.” Steve replied, but couldn’t help the smirk that spread across his face as he continued to avoid Bucky’s searching glance.

“You’re a punk.” Bucky snorted, nudging him.

“Jerk.” Steve replied simply, the smile on his face growing bigger by the second.

***** Chapter 6

#stark spangled rebirth #steve rogers x ofc #steve rogers x original female character #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers #Katie Stark #CATFA 10th anniversary challenge #captain america the first avenger #chris evans #chris evans characters

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