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#also the whole romance he had with emma was so very strange
goosin-around · 5 months
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neal has gotta be one of the most unlikeable guys ever
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acotars · 9 months
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i saw your list of top 5 romance authors and ilona andrews was there so clearly you have great taste but i also saw christina lauren - i read love and other words and ADORED it until the end, which i thought was so incredibly awful that it totally ruined the entire book and the author for me. what did you think of LAOW/did you think other books were better? the whole "cheating but actually rape but skimmed over and never clarified or discussed" REALLY threw me, esp bc i loved it so much before
first of all, thank you!!! secondly, this is so real and it totally surprises me that this isn't talked about more. i've had great conversations about it with some mutuals but it's.... bizarre the way the end of love and other words goes down and in my experience, so unexpected from CL. putting the rest of this under a cut because it got long!!
what happened to elliot was rape, hands down and without question. but the narrative never (never!!) treated it with the gravity it required? and because it happened to him at the same time that he lost macy without any explanation, all of his feelings about each experience get so tangled up and intertwined with each other. when he sees macy again, he drops everything in his life to make things work with her, and we get the distinct impression from the (very few) glimpses into his adult life that it's taken him a very, very long time to rebuild. his recent ex rachel even says something snidely to macy about how much she "fucked [elliot] up," how what macy supposedly did to him impacted elliot and rachel for the entire year they were together. this, combined with other subtext throughout the book suggests elliot had a very hard time with physical intimacy, and his ex-girlfriend rachel very much believes this to be macy's fault.
without digging into blame too far (no one is at fault in what went down on new year's except emma, the girl who took advantage of someone far past the point of consent), i find it so intensely strange that CL still have elliot apologize to macy, that macy still feels justified in her anger at him, that after allll the pieces are laid out between them, macy laments the tragedy — not that elliot was assaulted, but that this "tiny whimper of a drunken misunderstanding" blew up their lives so completely.
the simplest course of action would have obviously been to never write this scene into existence at all — there are so, so many other ways to have broken them apart and left them both reeling for years. any book featuring on-page rape is a massive undertaking, as this is a subject that requires so, so much intention and care in the writing. love and other words handled it so poorly, it ruined the book for a lot of people. and i don't blame them!!! of all the christina lauren books i've read, this is the only one to feature on-page sexual assault. it is also the only book by then two of them that was published as women's fiction and not romance, which i think contributed a lot to the tone and introspection of this book. it could very well be that romance publishers are stricter about guidelines when publishing sexual assault scenes and that influenced the genre switch. it could also be that christina lauren never intended for elliot's new years encounter to be considered rape (even though it so clearly is) — they write about it with a flippancy that is so incongruous with the stances they've shown in other books. the whole thing confuses and disappoints me, but luckily isn't present in their other books.
i really enjoyed the soulmate equation by them — i think it has similar levels of yearning and pining, with less of the will-they-won't-they and none of the assault. others have loved the unhoneymooners but it wasn't totally my thing. the then-and-now situation is also explored really well in twice in a blue moon, but i found the "now" portions less compelling. i would recommend checking out their other books if you feel comfortable doing so, because as far as my memory serves, none of the rest of them feature anything similar to the train wreck that is the end of laow. but also! if that ending was enough for you to never read another book by them, more power to you!!! it was.... so bad and it still doesn't sit right to this day.
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babymetaldoll · 3 years
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Family probation period (Matthew Gray Gubler/ Reader)
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Requested: Yes 
Summary: Matthew Gray Gubler meets his girlfriend’s family on Christmas eve. Just one detail: none of them knew she was dating. 
Warnings: Cursing, mentions of abusive relationships 
Category: Fluff
Pairing: Matthew Gray Gubler/ Reader 
Wordcount: 3,5K
A/N: A late Christmas story, but I think we are still in the holiday season... right? also: requests are officially open
Masterlist 
- "Are you sure about this?"- (Y/N) looked at Matthew and he nodded with a huge grin on his face. They were parked outside her parent’s house. They had driven from Los Angeles to San Francisco to spend Christmas Eve with them. 
- "Why not? I bet they are gonna love me"- he answered with his “Matthew Gray Gubler’s certified to make you drop your panties smile.”
- "I don’t know, I’m nervous"
- "Well missy, it was your idea to drop by your parents and surprise them with the news of your adorable boyfriend, so?"- (Y/N) smiled and nodded. 
- "And you thought it was a great idea, by the way, that's why you are here"
- "Yeah"- Gubler sighed and looked outside- "Why do you still trust my good judgment?" 
- "Well…"- (Y/N) looked at me and bit her lips- "You are very convincing"- he smiled and kissed her lips softly.
- "It's gonna be ok, they love you, I love you, which means we are gonna get along"- she nodded and smiled. 
- "Alright, I'll pretend that makes sense"- Gubler chuckled and kissed her again
- "Let's do this, Bunny".
-
Matthew and (Y/N) had been dating for over ten months. At first, they decided to take things slow, get to know each other better, try to make things work with their crazy schedules. But soon, they realized they had fallen in love, and “taking things slow” was not their thing. 
(Y/N) had decided to wait for the right moment to tell her parents she had found someone. Her last relationship had been a nightmare, and she knew her family (especially her brother) was going to be apprehensive about her new boyfriend. However, she was eager to tell them how happy she was with Matthew and how great he was with her. 
He was, hands down, the best boyfriend she had ever had. He was sweet and thoughtful. Sure, he wasn’t perfect. He would forget many things 'cos his head was in hundredth places at once (she was almost sure he had ADHD). And sometimes it felt she had a boyfriend and a son all wrapped in the same 6 ft adorable manchild she was dating. But still, he was the best boyfriend.
She was hoping her parents and family would see he made her happy.   
-
- “Ok, here we go”- Matthew rang the bell and turned to (Y/N), excited. She laughed and opened the door.
- “I still got my key.”
- “Right.”
- “Hello? Mom? Dad?”- she took a step inside and looked around. Her father stood up from the couch quickly and nearly ran to the door.
- “Peanut! You are home!”
Matthew smiled and held their bags staring at the scene. In all the time they had been together, he had heard a lot about (Y/N)’s parents. She loved them deeply, and he knew she wanted to share their relationship with them.
Her last boyfriend was an abuser, he hit her, and she kept it from everybody for months before breaking up. That’s why he could understand why her family would be apprehensive. And he was ready to show them how much he loved her.
- “My baby is home!”- (Y/N)’s mom appeared from the kitchen and hugged her daughter, who was still wrapped in her father’s embrace. 
- “Guys! I can’t breathe!”- she pretended to be suffocating and giggled. 
- “Too bad! You are never home! So bear with it!”- her father chuckled and kissed the top of her head 
- “By the way, (Y/N), who’s the man standing by the door?”- her mother asked and frowned, looking at Gubler. He smiled and waved, making his best to look as nice as possible. 
- “Guys, I want you to meet Matthew Gray Gubler… my boyfriend.”
And the silence in the room was as thick and uncomfortable as possible.
- “Hello”- Gubler smiled and shook their hands- “It’s a pleasure to meet you, (Y/N) talks so much about you”- but neither of them knew what to say. 
- “Guys, it’s ok, he is a good guy”- (Y/N) wrapped an arm around Matthew, and he immediately kissed the top of her head. 
- “Did I hear my sister has a new boyfriend?”- footsteps coming down the stairs surprised the couple, and (Y/N) wide opened her eyes immediately.
- “Adam!! You are home!!”- she hugged her brother so tight, he couldn’t help but laugh.
- “I’ve got the feeling you missed me.”
- “So fucking much!! When did you get home?”
- “Last night, mom said you’d be coming for Christmas, so I thought I could surprise you.”
- “And where are my nephews? I wanna spoil my babies!”
- “With Emma getting the last few things mom needed from the grocery’s, but they should be here any minute. I missed you, kitty.”
Adam kissed her forehead and looked at her sweetly. It was clear he loved and cared about his little sister. But as soon as his eyes reached Matthew, his whole face changed. 
- “And who is this?”  
- “This is my boyfriend, Matthew”- (Y/N) walked back to Gubler and held his hand- “He is awesome, so be nice, ok?”
- “Nice to meet you, Adam. (Y/N) talks so much about you. I was looking forward to meeting you”- Matthew shook his hand and smiled. 
- “Funny, she never mentioned you.”
- “Yeah,”- (Y/N) explained- “I wanted to give you guys a surprise, and I knew if I told you over the phone, you were going to stress out, so I thought it would be better if you just met him”
Her family nodded but didn’t look pretty convinced. 
- “I know you are all real apprehensive about (Y/N) having a new boyfriend, but I promise you, I’m nothing like her ex, and I wanna show you how much I care for her if you let me.”
Gubler was sincere and upfront. (Y/N)’s parents nodded, but her brother just crossed his arms and frowned.  
- “Adam, be nice”- she warned and grabbed her bag- “Let’s leave these in my room, Gub.”
- “You are not sharing rooms with a boy!”- her brother instantly replied, but she ignored him and walked upstairs. Matthew took the bags from her hands and followed her.
-
- “Sorry”- (Y/N) whispered and closed her eyes, embarrassed. Gubler left the bags on the floor of her room and walked towards her to hold her hands. 
- “Hey, it’s ok, they are just shocked,”- he whispered and smiled at her, trying his best to make her feel better. 
- “I would be shocked too if our daughter walks into our house and tells us she has been dating nearly a year with some guy I’ve never heard about.”
(Y/N) chuckled and sighed. The words “Our daughter” had been enough to make her forget everything that troubled her. The idea of a future with him was too sweet to worry about anything else. 
- “Now, back to what really matters here”- Gubler took a look around and pointed at the walls- “Did you have some kind of obsession with My Chemical Romance growing up, or is it just me?”
- “Eh… nope”- she simply answered and laughed. There were many posters of the band on every wall in that room. 
- “I don’t know, I’m getting the vibe you had a thing on that guy… he kinda looks like a vampire.”
- “Gerard? he was…”- (Y/N) made a pause and looked at the walls- “I had a little crush on him”
- “Little?”- Gubler raised an eyebrow
- “Yeah, just a little, nothing to worry about… I just wanted to marry him, that’s all.”- he chuckled and leaned in to kiss her.  
- “I guess you never know someone until you walk into their teenage room.”
Matthew was nervous, but he was never going to face it. He wanted to make a good impression, and he wanted (Y/N)’s parents to like him. He was in that relationship for the long run, and it was important for him to have her parent’s approval. And clearly, now her brother’s too.
-
- “So, Matthew, what do you do?”- Adam asked him as everybody gathered in the kitchen, drinking eggnog and setting the last few things for the Christmas dinner. 
- “I majored in film directing in New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts"- (Y/N) bit her lips and smiled. She was torn between feeling embarrassed and enjoying the moment.  
- “Film directing”- Adam looked at him and raised an eyebrow. 
- “Yeah, I always loved making movies and telling stories”- Gubler sipped his cup of coffee and smiled. 
- “But, do you have a regular job?”- Adam asked and raised an eyebrow- “Making movies doesn’t sound like a real job to me.”
- “Adam!”- (Y/N) looked at her brother with daggers in her eyes
- “What? I’m getting to know your boyfriend, isn’t that what you wanted?”
- “Yes, but you don’t have to be a dickhead”- the young woman walked a few steps closer to her brother and raised an eyebrow- I haven’t seen you in six months. Can you just be nice?”
Adam meant no harm, but he was worried. He had been the one his sister called after her ex-boyfriend hit her. He had been the one who took her out from that apartment, picked up her things, and took care of her. Of course, he was scared she might get hurt again. 
-
- “And where are you from?”- (Y/N)’s mom asked him as they all walked to the living room and sat down. 
- “Las Vegas,”- Matthew answered and smiled- “My family still lives there, and we visit as often as we can.”
- “So, you’ve met his family”- Mrs. (Y/L/N) looked at her daughter and raised an eyebrow, surprised. 
- “Yeah, they are the best! We spent Halloween with them this year. We took Matthew’s nephews trick and treating. It was really fun!”
Mrs. (Y/L/N) nodded and stared at the scene. Gubler was sitting next to her daughter, holding her hand and looking at her in honest and deep adoration. It was strange and shocking, but at the same time, she could feel he was a nice guy who loved her very much. And that was all she needed to know. 
Meanwhile, Mr. (Y/L/N) started asking Gubler questions about his family, school, and what he did for a living. 
- “Right now, I have an acting job.” 
- “Really?”- (Y/N)’s brother raised an eyebrow, surprised- “TV?”
- “Yeah.”
Adam was about to keep asking about it when his wife, Emma, walked in with their five-year-old twins.   
- “Aunt (Y/N)!!
- “Munchkins!”- the young woman opened her arms and hugged them at the same time as the kids held her legs tight, almost making her fall.
- “You are so big! why aren’t you two babies anymore?”
- “(Y/N)! hey”- Emma walked over and looked at her, but suddenly she just gasped. 
- “What?”- Adam asked, confused- “What is it?”
- “Oh shit!”- she nearly dropped the bag and wide opened her eyes, suddenly- “Why is Spencer Reid in our living room?”
Matthew looked at (Y/N), and neither of them knew what to do or say. So he just stood up and walked over to shake her hand. 
- “Hi, I’m Matthew, (Y/N)’s boyfriend.”
- “No freaking way!”- Emma whispered and held his hand, repeating a little slowlier- “No freaking way”. 
Adam looked at his wife and didn’t understand a word she was saying. His parents didn’t get what was going on, and (Y/N) just bit her lips, trying not to laugh. She never thought that could happen. 
- “I’m gonna put an eye on dinner…”- Mrs. (Y/L/N) said and stood up- “(Y/N), can you give me a hand?”
- “Sure mom”- she said and smiled at Gubler. He winked and watched her walking to the kitchen with her mom. Things were a little weirder than he thought. 
- “Ok, what was that?”
- “What was what, mom?
- “Emma nearly died when she saw Matthew. Why?”
- “‘Cos he is in a tv show and she recognized him, I think”- Mrs. (Y/L/N) looked at her and sighed.
- “Is he good with you?”
- “The best”
- “‘Cos he looks like he is a nice guy”
- “I swear, mom, he is the sweetest. He wanted to come and meet you to show you he is nothing like Bret”- (Y/N) held a bowl with roasted potatoes and smiled at her mother- “I love him”
- “You can tell… and he loves you too, especially if he is willing to put up with your brother”
- “Can you tell Adam to stop being an ass?”
- “I can tell him, but that won’t stop him”.
-
When (Y/N) walked to the dining room, she looked at her boyfriend, who was now sitting on the floor, doing magic tricks for her nephews. She felt her heart was about to burst, staring at the scene. The twins were laughing, and Gubler kept making pennies disappear in front of them. 
She couldn’t stop hearing his voice saying “our daughter” over and over again. It was a dream, and it was too soon to even think about it, but it felt so right. It made so much sense.
- “I like him”- her father’s voice took her from her thoughts and forced her to turn around
- “Really?”
- “Yeah… he’s good with kids, and it’s clear he loves you, that’s all I need to know”- he kissed the top of his daughter’s head and sighed. 
- “Your brother hates him though”
- “I kind of figured”
- “The fact Emma is drooling over him is not making things better”- (Y/N) looked at her father and just laughed.
- “Are you kidding me?”
- “No, he took her upstairs to cool her off”
- “Shit… well, it could be worst” 
- “How?”- she looked at her father in silence
- “Well… Adam hasn’t tried to kick him out”
- “Yet”- Mr. (Y/L/N) chuckled at his own joke and shook his head- “Don’t worry peanuts, Matt is safe”. 
- “Actually, can you not call him Matt, please? bad memories.”
- “Sure, Matthew it is?”- she nodded and smiled. 
- “Thanks dad”
-
- “Dinner is ready”- Mrs. (Y/L/N) announced after half an hour. She walked to the living room where Adam, Matthew, and her husband were talking. 
Gubler was having a good time talking with Mr. (Y/L/N). He was fun and kept telling her funny stories about (Y/N). Adam was still a dick, but at least his father wasn’t paying him much attention, so neither did Gubler. 
- “This smells amazing”- Gubler said as he sat down next to (Y/N)- “I’m guessing this is Mrs. (Y/L/N) ’s signature turkey recipe. (Y/N) talked about it the whole way over.” 
- “She has the recipe, by the way, if you like it, she can cook it for you”- Mrs. (Y/L/N) smiled proudly.  
- “Yeah, just make sure she won’t burn down the house”- Adam joked and felt his sister’s angry eyes on him- “What? I’m making an aimless conversation. Isn’t that what you wanted?” 
- “Shut up”
- “She is a great baker”- Matthew continued talking- “She is actually making me gain weight in the latest months”
- “Sure, like you could get fat”- (Y/N) snorted and looked at her boyfriend
- “Hey, you are making me eat cinnamon rolls, cake, and cookies like three times a week”- Gubler chuckled and looked at her- “My pants almost don’t close”
- “So, Matthew”- Emma said suddenly- “How did you two meet?”
- “He actually said I smelled like cinnamon rolls the first time he met me”- (Y/N) smiled and looked at her sister in law.
- “We met at a party, her friend Ana is dating my friend Charlie. And when I saw her, I knew I had to talk to her ‘cos she has the most gorgeous smile I’ve ever seen”- Emma was nearly sighing at those words.
- “And did you recognize him?”- Adam was embarrassed by his wife’s questions, but he couldn’t stop her. 
- “No, I had never seen the show…”
- “And do you know the rest of the cast now? Do you hang out?”- Adam looked at Emma and frowned- “What? I’m just asking”
(Y/N) blushed and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and felt her boyfriend’s hand on hers, knowing what she was about to say. 
- “So, we are here today because I wanted you to know Matthew. He is the best guy on earth, and he makes me happy every day”- she made a pause and looked at him. 
- “You make me happy too, Bunny”- he whispered and smiled. 
- “Ok, so you are in love, is that what you wanted to tell us?”- Adam said with an annoyed voice.
- “No, we wanted to tell you we are moving in together.”
(Y/N) bit her lips after delivering the news. Her parents looked at each other but didn’t seem mad, just surprised. Adam, on the other hand, frowned immediately. 
- “Before you start freaking out and yell at me,”- Matthew said with a soft voice- “I need you to know and understand how much I love your sister, and I would never hurt her in any way. Never.”
Her family looked at him in silence. Her father nodded and smiled. 
- “It’s clear you are a good guy, Matthew,”- he said, and (Y/N) sighed, feeling relieved to hear those words- “And I know you understand we will always be a little scared something bad might happen to our baby again.”
- “I completely understand. I just want you to know I will never hurt her. I love her, I wanna live with her. I’m here for the long run, and I wish you could all give me a chance”. 
(Y/N) felt like crying when she heard those words. Matthew was telling her family how much he loved her. He was showing them he wanted to be with her. Nothing could be better than that. 
- “And have you thought about where you’ll live?”- her mother asked, smiling.
- “I recently bought a house,”- Matthew explained- “We are planning to move in after the holidays. Meanwhile, we’ve been busy getting a few things we needed”- he looked so happy, no one could doubt he was excited with the plans. 
- “Listen”- no one but Adam, apparently- “If anything happens to my sister, I’m gonna hunt you, I will find you, and I will make you pay.” 
- “Adam…”- she tried to argue, but Gubler smiled at her and nodded
- “I know there is nothing I can say that will make you believe me, so I will just ask you to give me the chance to show you how much I love her.”- but Adam didn’t say a word. 
- “I know what happened to her was awful, and I know you don’t want anyone hurting her, but that’s not what I wanna do. I just wanna make her happy. If she wants me to.”
Adam looked at his sister, who had tears in her eyes. He couldn’t bear to see her cry, though those weren’t sad tears. She looked at Matthew, and he smiled at her, wiping the tears from her cheeks and kissing her lips sweetly for a second. He whispered, “I love you,” and she giggled. 
- “Oh come on!”- Mr. (Y/L/N)- “Even I can see he loves your sister! stop being a dick and be happy for them!”- Adam sighed at his father’s words and stood up.  
- “If you fuck it up, you are dead”- he said and reached out his hand to Gubler- “But I trust you won’t”- and Matthew quickly stood up and shook it. 
- “I know you just want to take care of her, and I completely understand that”
- “You are in family probation period.” 
(Y/N) smiled at her brother, and he winked at her. Finally, she sighed, relieved. 
- “I can’t believe you are gonna move in with Dr. Reid!!”- Emma almost shrieked
- “Please don’t”- Adam frowned and looked at his wife- “Don’t make this harder”
- “You are gonna have to watch the show with me, you are gonna love it. I swear you won’t be able to hate him once you know Reid”
(Y/N) looked at Matthew and whispered in his ear. 
- “Your family wasn’t embarrassing. Mine was. I’m sorry”- he nearly laughed at those words and shook his head. 
- “My friends are embarrassing if it counts”
- “Your friends are my friends, Gubler”
- “Fine, we have embarrassing friends, we are gonna have to live with it”
Gubler moved a little closer, and was ready to kiss her when Adam’s voice stopped him. 
- “Just don’t make out with my sister in front of me while you are on probation, dude!”
- “Sorry!”- Gubler nearly jumped on his chair, and (Y/N) chuckled- “Sorry!”. 
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gayfilmbro · 2 years
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ok so just rewatched clueless and whenever i watch this movie i always feel like im being too harsh on it bc it's dubbed as a classic teen movie but they reallyyyy needed to do 1. more character development with cher earlier on and 2. more work on her and josh's relationship to make the ending truly work bc. i think they spent almost too much time at the start with the whole teacher match making and trying to find tai a boyfriend thing (the latter of which was completely pointless in the long haul like, tai hung out with this guy a couple of times, not even in a romantic setting, and was heartbroken enough when he didnt like her to keep 'momentos' of their short (non existent) relationship ??? that doesn't tie (ha tie. like tai.) in w her earlier characterisations at all and, even though she's been changed by cher we see that, in reality, she's barely been changed at all. she goes full circle. but anyway) and less on actually building up to the end of the movie.
their relationship, at the start of the movie, is shown as a sibling type relationship. josh is the older brother, teasing her even though he does care (see: when he drove to pick her up after being mugged, etc.) and cher actually has nothing positive to say abt josh at all, he's just lame and annoying. it's a very strange dynamic to start off with once you know that, at the end of the movie, they get together with one another romantically. almost as if the writers didn't realise that was the route they were going to take (even though they probably did since the movie is based off of emma by jane austen, but i haven't read the book so) when they started writing.
now, their relationship has some foreshadowing throughout the movie, sure, even if they are pretty much all one sided with josh going out of his way to help out cher because she's clueless, but this could easily be interpreted as platonic in my opinion. i remember watching it for the first time and, around two thirds way through they focused on josh's face as cher did something and i thought no. no fucking way are they gonna do this, right? you're joking. because it was so unexpected after the way they acted towards one another at the start of the movie ??? especially cher who, again, didn't have anything nice to say AT ALL abt josh towards the start, and by the end she was madly in love with him. there wasn't even a transition stage, a switch from josh being annoying to josh actually being an ok friend and someone she valued spending time with because that only happened after she realised she loved him. before that we didn't see her indicate any romantic feelings or touching or whatever towards him . there wasn't even a THOUGHT of romance, as we know from her narration/inner dialogue.
also when did josh stop thinking about cher as immature and lazy? when did he stop mocking her about being selfish and like her enough to defend her (when she'd clearly done something wrong) against someone who he was WORKING with even though he really enjoys the experience he's getting and doesn't wanna lose the opportunity due to a petty fight with a colleague/someone presumably his superior. we don't see how their relationship changes from his pov it's just one minute he's annoyed by her and the next he's sneaking glances at her? they should've at least made it consistent if they weren't going to clearly show his pov and had him subtly in love with her from the start but he's clearly just. not. also it's implied that he had feelings for tai so what happened with that? cher considered tai's view of their relationship by thinking there was no way they were gonna happen because she liked that skater dude but she didn't even think abt whether josh liked her or not?
they needed to spend more time morphing their relationship from "hating" to "loving" each other for the ending to truly feel satisfying, and also they could've done without it feeling extremely brother-sister like throughout the movie (even though they were. they were step brother and sister. i just. ok) with josh even calling her dad his own dad (WHICH IS JUST WEIRD, RIGHT?) anyway ive run outta steam on this one kinda forgot where this was going. on the upside christian is transition goals
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themattress · 3 years
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OUAT AND ME: SEASON 6
Story - Season 6 returns to the single-season story arc structure, with its story being the Savior's Fate Saga. The story deals with Emma reaching the point that all Saviors eventually reach: burnout in the lead-up to their Final Battle. And Emma's Final Battle comes courtesy of the Black Fairy, the creator of the Dark Curse who wishes to extinguish all light magic.
And yes, that is the core story of this arc. The problem is that it only constitutes about 25% of it; the rest is dedicated to subplots upon subplots: all the people who were brought in from the Land of Untold Stories, the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Evil Queen split from Regina, Regina and Zelena's sibling rivalry reigniting, Belle and Rumple's relationship growing more toxic then ever before, Aladdin the Savior of Agrabah and the Princess Jasmine who is looking for him, a new curse befalling Snow and Charming, the mystery behind how Charming's father died, a new realm being created by a genie's power which brings about the "return" of Robin Hood, a multi-realm quest undertaken by Hook, and flashbacks that have jack shit to do with anything....this season is so packed, it's insane!
If the core story was particularly strong, maybe this wouldn't matter so much. But it's not, since it relies upon yet another bullshit redefining of what it means to be "the Savior"; all of a sudden it's an ancient position that has spanned across all of time and through every realm, like a fairy tale version of the Slayer concept from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And anything empowering about being the Savior is totally gone with this new definition, as now it's a requisite that all Saviors get worn out and die in their Final Battles, doomed to never obtain their happy endings. What a cheap, lazy, miserable way for the writers to raise tension after realizing that all of the epic, mythological stakes raised last season would be hard to top.
Not helping is that in a pretentious way of subverting expectations, they have the majority of the Final Battle...not actually be a battle. Instead, it's a ham-fisted "full-circle to Season 1" situation for Emma and Henry, while everyone else is getting to do more exciting things in the Enchanted Forest. Even the actual battle part of it ends up being underwhelming. Everything does still get wrapped up in a pretty suitable ending, but it's undermined by both the infernal status quo the show's been stuck in since 3B and an intrusive sequel hook into the ill-conceived "reboot" that is Season 7 which never should have been allowed to happen.
Tl;dr: this story arc sucks.
Characters - It's the lowest point for so many of them...
* Emma is a little better in Season 6 than she was in Season 5. She's still generally treated terribly due to the very nature of the arc and has some horrifically shitty things done to her, but she is also able to catch a break every now and then rather than the misery being an uninterrupted stream. She also marries Hook by the end and even plays a decent role in the finale showing how far she's come since Season 1. It was as good a note to go out on as she was going to get, and Jennifer Morrison made the right call to make this the end of her story.
* Snow and Charming...what is there to even say about them at this point? I guess I can say that not only have Goodwin and Dallas' performances largely flatlined and not only are they still written as more parental toward Regina than to their own goddamn daughter who Regina separated them from for 28 years, but they now have retcons applied to them that are ludicrous at best, character assassinating worse than Season 4's eggnapping subplot at worst.  No wonder that Goodwin and Dallas were all too glad to call it quits after this trash!
* Henry, despite all odds, is still one of the better characters in this season! Jared Gilmore continues to prove what a better actor he's become and bring a likability to Henry that sometimes is even enough to counteract less-than-ideal written material. Also, getting to see him more invested in Emma again after being hogged by Regina for so long is great.
* The Savior's Fate Saga is a tale of two Reginas. The Regina Mills of Storybrooke is still as insufferably written a Mary Sue as ever, but now we also have the Evil Queen, the dark side of her personality that split from her. With the exception of one episode, the Evil Queen is played excessively campy by Lana Parilla. Adam and Eddy's claims that this "purely evil" Evil Queen would be even worse than the previous one are laughable when we end up seeing what's actually on screen; the Evil Queen from the first two seasons was a legitimately frightening and formidable villain, whereas this Evil Queen is a clown. Sometimes she's an entertaining clown, while other times she's a cringe-inducing clown. But what she most certainly is not is a worthy adversary to the heroes, especially this late into the show.
And then there's the irony in her ultimate fate: rather than destroy her, Regina mixes her heart with hers so that they are both equal and both redeemed. On the one hand, this is a mind-boggling new level of Creator's Pet for Regina to reach, as you would think that the whole point of the Evil Queen is for Regina to suffer the karmic fatal punishment that she deserves for all her years of atrocities without actually having to kill Regina off. And yet in the end Adam and Eddy couldn't bring themselves to kill off any version of Regina, even after they gleefully killed off alternate versions of Snow and Charming a few episodes earlier. But on the other hand, the redeemed Evil Queen is honestly more likable than the redeemed Regina, actually apologizing to Snow for everything, temporarily sacrificing herself for the greater good of everyone in the finale, and getting to have a happily ever after with an alternate version of Robin Hood following a romance closer to what that relationship should have been from the very beginning. In the end, though, I'm just left wishing that the writers had done a far better job redeeming Regina so that this split Evil Queen wasn't necessary. Who knows, we might have had a better season if so many of it wasn't wasted on her.
* Rumple is awful in this season. Just...the absolute worst. After resolving the plotline that the Season 5 finale left him on in the premiere episode, he cuts his hair short and takes his Darkest Dark One shtick to a whole new level of unpleasant and abusive. He stalks and harasses Belle, attempts to take her baby away, makes out with the Evil Queen, and continues to casually threaten Storybrooke without any remorse or any repercussions. And once his new son Gideon and his mother the Black Fairy enter the picture, he dicks around in nonsensically written plotlines in both the past and the present, while Belle essentially takes him back yet again despite the horrific abuse he inflicted upon her. It's painful to watch, especially when Robert Carlyle has completely given up and is phoning it in like mad, with his regular delivery of lines being in a sleepy tone of voice that actually gets grating to listen to.
Much like in Season 5, Rumple improves in the last five episodes of the season, with Robert Carlyle regaining some energy as he declares war on the mother who abandoned him (if you know Carlyle's life story, you can understand exactly why this is) before learning the shocking truth that he was born as a Savior with his mother being his fated enemy, and that she was banished after she cut him off from that fate. Finally exhausted with it all - light, darkness, heroism, villainy, everything - after the emotions of this revelation hits him, Rumple lays his last cards down on the table, joining his mother's side for the Final Battle but with a magical contingency in case she betrays him (which she does). He then kills his mother, chooses to do the right thing for Belle and Gideon's sake even against the temptation of his dark side, and is rewarded for this one good deed by getting a do-over with the two of them as a family and even being accepted at the table with the other heroes. To quote Rumple back when his character was of the exact opposite quality as it is now: "Well, that was a bit of a letdown!"
Now, the "Rumple was born as a Savior" twist is out-of-nowhere nonsense, but it might have worked if Season 6 had been the final season. Not only would it had made him an effective foil for Emma, but it would also add more dramatic weight to his ultimate fate: his death. Yes, Rumple was in fact all set to die if either the show hadn't gotten renewed for another season or if it was and Robert Carlyle turned down returning for it as he actually was very close to doing, sacrificing his own heart in order to break the spell on Gideon's, conquering his dark side once and for all. A very similar scenario ends up being utilized for Season 7's finale, but it lacks the punch it would have had here, where it's the would-be Savior who, after having reached burnout, dies in his Final Battle, rather than the actual Savior who is able to survive thanks in part to his sacrifice. Of course, I still would have preferred Rumple's death after him being the sole Big Bad of a two-part series finale at the end of Season 5, but I digress. Bottom line: Rumple was a complete mess this season and it's sad how far he’s fallen.  
* Hook starts off well enough in this season, being Emma's stalwart emotional support who accepts her offer to move in with her (a pay-off that we should have had in the Season 5 finale if it only wasn't so crappy), bonding further with Belle and Henry, resolving the hanging plot thread of his younger half-brother while gaining a new father figure, and eventually making plans to propose to Emma. But then...it happens. It's revealed to both him and us that in the most contrived situation possible, Hook was the one who killed Charming's father. This derails his entire character for most of the remaining season, initially torn between telling Emma about this and covering it up before having a break with her which causes him to go mope and dope for a while before being forcibly sent off on a multi-realm misadventure by Gideon and, once he's finally gotten back to Storybrooke, has his transgression easily forgiven by Charming and his marriage proposal re-accepted by Emma, making this entire stretch of time absolutely pointless! Hook has some good moments in both the musical episode where he and Emma's wedding happen and the finale, but they aren't enough to salvage this from being his weakest showing in any season. Dark Hook was better than this!
* Belle...nope, not even gonna talk about her. Like I said before, she's done as a character.
* Zelena is this season's screwed over regular, and in comparison to Archie, Ruby, Neal, Will Scarlet and Robin Hood, she's got it easy. Her problems have less to do with her character, which is one of the better ones in the core cast at this point, but with her material. First, she and Regina have a sudden falling out because Regina...blames her for Robin's death. OK, all of that talk about how far Regina's come for not going evil over the loss of her romantic partner in the Season 5 finale isn't really worth much anymore when she's still resorting to blaming other people who aren't the actual murderer for that loss! Zelena then goes back to living at her isolated farm house, entering an alliance with the Evil Queen where she'll help her out in small ways but also not commit to fully teaming up with her as a villainess since she has a baby to take care of, plus she rightly doesn't entirely trust her alternate sister.
After the Evil Queen betrays Zelena but Regina still doesn't forgive her for what she blames her for, Zelena is absent or in minor roles for several episodes before she ends up joining the heroes' side out of altruism and the desire to become a good example for her daughter, eventually sacrificing her magic powers to aid the cause, which finally gets Regina to forgive her (probably because it's a sacrifice she's never been able to make). And that's about it.
Oh, but she does get to hit the Black Fairy with a car. That was awesome.
* The Black Fairy / Fiona is the Big Bad of the Savior's Fate Saga. Jamie Murray does a great job portraying her, being whimsically evil like you'd expect a dark fairy to be, and the Black Fairy being the person who created the Dark Curse actually makes a lot of sense when you go back and rewatch Season 3's "Going Home", a Dark Curse-heavy episode that first talks about her, or the Blue Fairy's knowing, worried expression upon Rumple's mention of a curse back in Season 1's "The Return". Unfortunately, that's all the praise I can afford her.
The core problem with Fiona as a character is a simple one: she is too derivative of previous, better Big Bads...especially Regina and Peter Pan. Like Regina, she is a powerful, larger-than-life villainess that Emma has always been destined to face as the Savior, and who ultimately casts the Dark Curse which makes herself mayor of Storybrooke, Henry's adopted mother, and a foe that Emma can only defeat if she believes in magic. And like Peter Pan, she is a parent of Rumple who also chose power over love and abandoned him, becoming the all-powerful ruler of a dark realm who occasionally went out and kidnapped children to bring there, and who is positioned as the story's Ultimate Evil who makes her last stand casting the Dark Curse in Storybrooke and being killed by her own son. This is especially bad when we already have an evil version of Regina to contend with this season and when it's following off of Hades, who was a better successor to Peter Pan's style of villainy (ruler of a dark realm that the heroes venture into to save someone) while still being unique.
She did improve somewhat in the last few episodes, where we see that she at least has sincerely loving Rumple as a differentiator from her ex-husband, has a warped belief that eliminating light magic and wiping out all realms but one is actually the right thing to do, and plays her role in the finale well. But it's too little too late for her to be considered as belonging among the great OUAT villains, let alone the Ultimate Evil that she's billed as. She needed a lot more originality and a lot more truly heinous deeds if that was ever to work.
* There are tons of new side characters in this season, usually either well-handled or not.
Well-handled side characters include the Tremaine family (particularly Lady Tremaine) who make Cinderella's life miserable in both the past and present, Captain Nemo who serves as a father figure for Hook and his half-brother Liam II, Gabriel the Woodcutter who makes an entertaining villain in an otherwise dumb flashback, Robert the father of Charming who is well-depicted in spite of how he dies, and Roderick, Gideon's brave but ill-fated friend.
Poorly-handled side characters include the Oracle who is a plot device character if there ever was one, Edmond Dantes (the Count of Montre Cristo in name only) and his lover Charlotte, Beowulf (another in name only character), Stanum the Tin Man who is pointlessly shoved into Zelena's backstory, Tiger Lily who is an exact carbon copy of Tinker Bell, and almost all of the Wish Realm characters because, as I will discuss later, the Wish Realm episodes are awful.
Then there are the in-between side characters, the ones that are handled...well-ish.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde carry over from the Season 5 finale at the start, then are both taken out of the picture in the 4th episode. Their backstory is well written, they are both well acted, and their death contributes to the ongoing Evil Queen plotline. However, it can't help but feel disappointing - we'd only just gotten a working relationship going between Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Whale in the previous episode, and now that's rendered pointless. And Sam Witwer is such an entertaining presence as Mr. Hyde, so it's sad to see him cut down so soon.
Robin of Locksley, the Wish Realm version of Robin Hood who crosses into Storybrooke, is cool in that we get Sean Maguire back and he is allowed to play something slightly different, since this version of Robin is a selfish, sarcastic asshole instead of a noble, chivalrous hero. However, it also reinforces how badly handled Robin Hood in general has been. Much like with what I said about Regina, I would have rather him and his romance with Regina been written well from the beginning so that this "do-over version' wouldn't be necessary.
After much hyping by the network, Aladdin and Jasmine kind of suck. Aladdin has an inexplicable cockney accent that is really distracting, he's written more selfishly and immaturely than his animated counterpart, and making him a Savior in order to tie him to the main plot is stupid. Jasmine fares better, especially when she receives some development in the 15th episode that largely focuses on her, but before that she was just kind of there and didn't possess the same strength of character she was so known for in the animated film.
Jafar, the Big Bad of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, is featured too. He is now played by Oded Fehr, and while Naveen Andrews is missed, Oded is one of the best replacements possible and does a stellar job. But while he's great whenever he's on screen, that's the problem - he isn't on screen very much at all. He also doesn't accomplish anything relevant to anyone beyond Aladdin and Jasmine in the time he has - even when he is released from his bottle in the present day, all he does is have a confrontation with Jasmine before BOOM! He gets turned into a wooden staff by magic dust thrown into his face and that's it for him. This was yet another sad waste of a great character with a great actor, but then again, Jafar returning in any medium tends to elicit diminishing results compared to his initial outings.
Finally, we have Gideon, Rumple and Belle's son and Emma's direct opponent in the Final Battle. The problem with Gideon is that the writers keep changing his character on a whim. First he's a projection of Rumple and Belle's future son from within Belle's womb, who masquerades as Morpheus in order to put Rumple through a test which he fails miserably. Then, after being kidnapped by the Black Fairy and taken to the Dark Realm, he shows up as angry, Kylo Ren-esque villain who claims that he wants to kill Emma so that he can somehow absorb her power, become the Savior and defeat the Black Fairy. But then it turns out that this was an act he was forced to play - after having been raised to be a villain by Fiona, Gideon rebelled, so she ripped his heart out and has been using it to control his actions so that he could free her from the Dark Realm for good. So he's a pure innocent, then. But then, in the Final Battle, he is rewritten by Fiona's curse into a stingy, spiteful businessman before reverting back to his innocent but controlled self...and then reverting back into a baby. Gideon, you've come full circle....and I still have no idea just who the Hell you are.  
Returning characters include Violet, Ashley / Cinderella, Dr. Whale / Victor Frankenstein, the Dragon, August Booth / Pinocchio, King George / Albert Spencer, Baelfire, Tinker Bell, Ariel, Blackbeard, Malcolm, and Isaac Heller. Some of these returns are successful (I always love to see Ariel, and Isaac receiving some closure as a character was fantastic to see), others not so much (Tink's cameo was contradictory and pointless, and there was no excuse bringing back Baelfire in a flashback - for God's sake, Dylan Schmid is as tall as Robert Carlyle now!)
Atmosphere - There really isn't much of one anymore for the majority of the season. There is nothing remotely special about Storybrooke or the Enchanted Forest at this point, new places like the Dark Realm are woefully underexplored, and there aren't any locations like Camelot, the Underworld, or the Land of Untold Stories from last season that make a big impact.
However, there is certainly atmosphere in the two-part season finale, "The Final Battle". Unfortunately, instead of being an epic atmosphere like you would expect, it's dark and miserable and claustrophobic up until the happy ending. Kind of sums up the show now!
Episode Quality - A few episodes in this season are so bad that they're downright unwatchable, and I was able to watch the worst of late Season 2. "Changelings" is all about Rumple taking his abuse of Belle to a new level all while the episode tries to use the Evil Queen and the Black Fairy as scapegoats so that you can feel bad for him. "Ill-Boding Patterns" continues the whitewashing of Rumple at the direct expense of his sons, completely butchering Beowulf in the process. "Page 23" is an exercise with boredom in both the flashback and present day stories and comes to a truly awful conclusion for Regina's character that doesn't even make sense for her. And "Awake" has the ugliest-looking, most ill-conceived flashback story ever: Snow and Charming actually woke up during the Dark Curse and then woke up Rumple so that he could take them to Emma, only to then choose to abandon her so that she can achieve her destiny as the Savior before everyone goes back to sleep (quite literally in Charming's case, how the fuck does that work!?) The only reason this exists is so that Adam and Eddy can say "See? Snow and Charming totally DID abandon their daughter!" whenever anyone says it's Regina's fault Emma grew up without parents.
Perhaps most insidiously, we have the two-part midseason finale, "Wish You Were Here" and "Tougher Than the Rest". Aladdin is turned into a genie and the Evil Queen takes advantage of a passing statement Emma made about sometimes wishing she wasn't the Savior by making a wish that Emma's desire was granted. Thus the Wish Realm, an alternate world where the Dark Curse was never cast, is created. And the insults just keep piling up from there: the depiction of Emma as a wimpy princess if she had been raised by her parents, Regina trying to prove to Emma that "none of this is real" by crushing Wish Snow and Wish Charming's hearts (I can vividly envision Adam and Eddy having an orgasm over this scene), Emma snapping out of it when Wish Henry tries to kill Regina and that's "everything Emma never wanted him to be" (a fucking hero who will bring down the monster who slaughtered his grandparents!?), Charming similarly being considered "dark" for trying to kill the Evil Queen, the explicitly stated notion that Emma owes Regina for ruining her life because that's what made her strong, the appearance of Wish August who is so much more boring than the real August, the appearance of Wish Hook as a fat old drunk, and Rumple and Belle getting back together due to what's going on with Gideon, with Belle asking "What have we done to each other?" (NO. There is ZERO moral equivalence between Belle and Rumple here.)
"The Savior", "A Bitter Draught", "Street Rats", "I'll Be Your Mirror", "Mother's Little Helper", "Where Bluebirds Fly" and "The Black Fairy" are all watchable, if not particularly good.
All the other episodes have their strong points. "The Other Shoe" is a fun breather episode the likes of which this show desperately needed more of. "Strange Case" features a great take on the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. "Dark Waters" has Hook and Henry at their best and introduces Captain Nemo played by the great Faran Tahir. "Heartless" is the only episode in the season where Lana Parilla plays the Evil Queen with old-school menace, with the curse she ends up placing on Snow and Charming being legitimately ingenious and diabolical. "Murder Most Foul", until its literal last minute twist, is a highly engaging story and features a (rare at this point and thus even more appreciated) explosively emotional performance from Josh Dallas in its climax. "A Wondrous Place", if you ignore the awful Storybrooke scenes, is a weird and wacky crossover between characters of various stories that reminds you why you liked this show to begin with, and features Oded Fehr's last and best performance as Jafar where he is finally able to match Naveen Andrews in raw intensity.
Then there's the musical episode, "The Song In Your Heart". This is the textbook definition of an episode that is really good and enjoyable in a bubble, but is utter nonsense when applied in context. The flashback is a total filler story about a musical curse being cast by the Blue Fairy so that its result can be used by Emma in the present, and it’s only being used by Emma in the present because the Black Fairy suddenly decides "forget casting the Dark Curse and having the Final Battle, I'll take the Savior out now!", and when she fails it's right back to casting the Dark Curse and having the Final Battle as if nothing ever happened! And Emma and Hook having their rooftop wedding where the whole town starts singing and dancing about "a Happy Beginning" despite knowing damn well that the Dark Curse's arrival is imminent is hysterical- all logic dictates this should have been saved for after the crisis is over, not before it's even begun! It's dumb as Hell, but the songs and dance moves are fun (except for the Snow and Charming vs. Regina one, that was just cringy) so it gets a pass.
Lastly, there's "The Final Battle". For all of its many, many faults, it is better than Season 5's two-part finale (and also better than Season 7's, as we'll get to in the next post), and the areas where there could have been improvement are so blatantly obvious that what could have been is easy to imagine (ex: Rumple dying, a few questionable shots from the final happy ending montage cut, and the entirety of the dumbass Season 7 lead-in framing device removed entirely). It's the closest to a decent series finale we have, even if in terms of satisfaction it pales in comparison to the likes of "A Land Without Magic", "Going Home", "There's No Place Like Home", and Once Upon a Time in Wonderland's "And They Lived..."
Overall - I need to issue a formal retraction about the statement I made in this long-ago post. Not about how Season 5 would have been better with an even stronger connection between its two arcs; I still believe that. But returning to a full-season story arc format was a terrible idea, because with Season 6 we see that Season 1 was lightning in a bottle that's never getting recaptured. Every other time Adam and Eddy are given a full-season story arc, their ADHD style of storytelling won't let them stay focused and they'll end up throwing everything but the kitchen sink into it, resulting in a disjointed, convoluted, borderline incoherent mess. This is especially bad at a point where the vast majority of their most talented scriptwriters have long since departed from the writing team. Season 6 isn't the worst season (that comes up next), but it's probably the most miserable and depressing one, especially considering the fact that it was enough to make several main cast members quit. Back in Season 3, I'd have been ecstatic if you told me that this show would be getting 3 more seasons. Now, when actually at Season 6, I was horrified when I was told that it was getting 1 more season. 
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How I Letterboxd #10: Chad Hartigan.
Filmmaker Chad Hartigan talks to Jack Moulton about his prescient new sci-fi romance, Little Fish, why radio silence is worse than a bad review, and his secret system of Letterboxd lists.
Chad Hartigan has won prizes at the Sundance Film Festival and the Film Independent Spirit Awards for his acclaimed films This is Martin Donner and Morris From America. He’s also been a Letterboxd member since way back, joining what he proclaims as “my favorite website” in 2013. Hartigan has always been an obsessive logger: he has transcribed all of his viewing data since 1998 and continues to work on filling in the gaps in his downtime.
Like many ardent Letterboxd members, Hartigan is a diligent list-maker, keeping tabs on his best first viewings of each year and assembling an all-time top 1,000 films over the summer (with an accompanying 26-minute supercut). Perhaps unusually for a member of the film industry on Letterboxd, he’s unafraid to hold back his opinions and regularly voices his critiques on even the most acclaimed films.
Hartigan’s newest film, Little Fish, is a sci-fi love story starring Olivia Cooke (Sound of Metal) and Jack O’Connell (Unbroken). Written by Mattson Tomlin, it’s set during an imagined pandemic—shot long before our own actual pandemic—wherein a disease causes people to lose their memories. It was set to premiere at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, and then postponed due to Covid-19. It’s now out in limited theaters and on demand, and we were delighted with the excuse to put Hartigan in the How I Letterboxd spotlight.
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Olivia Cooke as Emma and Jack O’Connell as Jude in ‘Little Fish’.
You made a pandemic movie before the pandemic. How do you feel about accidentally hitting that unfortunate zeitgeist and now consequently being asked questions like this one? Yeah, strange. The questions are fine. If it wasn’t this one, it would be another that you would have to answer over and over again. One of the things that drew me to the project was that it felt like a fantasy that wasn’t necessarily rooted in reality in a way that my other [films] were. I liked that it’s old-fashioned in its attempts to purely take you somewhere and wasn’t intended to hold up a mirror to our times—but then in the end that’s exactly what it’s doing. I’m curious myself, and I’m checking Letterboxd to see the reactions from people because I really couldn’t guess what it would have been like [now].
Are there any prescient details you’re proud of getting right? I’m so grateful and happy that Jack [O’Connell] is wearing his mask correctly. That’s the number one thing that I’m glad we got right. I think it was very smart of Mattson to focus the movie on [the relationship] rather than the details of this global pandemic. I feel the reason it’s not in bad taste is because it dealt with those things as a backdrop and instead focused on people just trying to remember what’s important and clinging onto those that they love.
Onto our own favorite memory aid, Letterboxd. How did you discover us and how did you manage without us? I’ve been on since 2013, so I’m probably one of the earliest people to jump on it. I love the interface and the diary, just aesthetically it was really fun. I’ve been keeping track of what I see with analog [methods] for as long as I can remember. I have diaries and planners so I logged all that old information. If I was running for president, my platform would be that everybody is required to use Letterboxd comprehensively, because I just love to know what everybody is watching all the time.
Do you talk about Letterboxd in the real world with the other filmmaking people? Yes, and I’m often trying to convince them to join. Other filmmakers are more concerned about having their opinions on peers be public knowledge than I am, I guess. I’ve made four films now and each one’s been bigger and more widely seen than the last. The very first one was a total no-budget affair that couldn’t get into any festivals and I was very excited when I finally got it into the Hamptons Film Festival. It was about half-full and one or two people came up to me afterwards and said they liked it. This was pre-Twitter so I spent the whole next day Googling to see if anybody had written anything. I was so curious to see what people thought and there was nothing—not a review, not a blog—just total emptiness.
When the next film got into Sundance, there were people tweeting their reactions and actual reviews and I read everything. People were asking if the bad reviews hurt me. Absolutely not—nothing can be worse than the radio silence of nobody caring about the first film. The fact that people care enough to sit and write about this movie—good or bad—is a win, and I’ve carried that onward. I like to see what people think, it can be helpful in how you view the film as a success or failure. You learn and move on.
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Jack O’Connell at least remembers how to wear a mask in ‘Little Fish’.
Some filmmakers have told us they’re kinder to films after making their own, but you’re not shy at all about being critical. How did making your own films change your perspective as a critic? I don’t consider myself a critic so that’s why I’d be less concerned with someone reading what I thought. Why should they put any stock into what I think? If they get hung up on it then that’s their own stuff because I’m not a critic. Like everyone else on Letterboxd, I just love watching movies. Obviously I can appreciate and understand some of the technical aspects maybe moreso than people who don’t make films, but at the end of the day, rarely that’s the thing that makes you love a movie or not. There’s a great bit in Francis Ford Coppola’s commentary track for Finian’s Rainbow where Fred Astaire’s doing a dance number and [Coppola admits] he totally messed it up because Astaire’s feet aren’t fully in frame. He’s very honest about his mistakes because it’s one of his earliest movies. Then he goes on to say that he thinks there’s the same number of mistakes in Finian’s Rainbow as there are in The Godfather, it’s just that he made mistakes on the things that don’t matter for The Godfather. No film is perfect, but if it can latch onto this one magical aspect that connects you to it, that’s what makes you love it or not.
You had a project where you chart the best films made by directors at certain ages as you reached that age. Tell us more about it. That was a great project. I got the idea when I was 26. This was back when I had a Netflix DVD subscription and it was just hard for me to randomly choose DVDs to throw in the queue. I needed a system. I decided to watch movies from directors when they were my age and see if there’s some common denominator, something I can learn. At that point, there weren’t many, there were films like Boogie Nights and Fassbinder films. Not many people had made stuff when they were 26 or 27, so it was very feasible. Every year there were more movies and more directors to add to the list and it became time-consuming. I did it all the way up until I was 34 and the reason I stopped was because I had a son and there was no way I could continue this level of viewing output.
My favorite part of your account is the fact that you log every viewing of your own films. You know for a fact that you’ve watched Morris From America 26 times and Little Fish fifteen times. Why do you log them? What counts as a viewing? I’ve clearly watched those movies many more times in little chunks but I’ll only log it if we’re sitting down and watching it from beginning to end. I have a ticket to see Little Fish in the drive-in on Saturday, so it’s going to be logged again. Why do I do it? Like I said, I wish everyone was required to use Letterboxd comprehensively. That’s what it’s there for for me, an accurate log of what I watch. This is psychotic behavior but I’m tempted to have a Letterboxd account for my son. I’ll do his views for him once he starts watching movies until he’s old enough to take over. It’ll just be, like, Frozen a thousand times but he’s not old enough to watch anything yet, so we’ll see.
Have you discovered any films thanks to Letterboxd discourse that influenced your approach to filmmaking? For sure, I can’t maybe say specifically, but once I dropped the directors my own age system I didn’t replace it with nothing. I’m a Virgo and I have a little bit of OCD, so I have to have some system. I’ve replaced it with a new complicated system where I pull from different lists and that’s now my main source of how I choose a movie to watch. I have like ten or twelve different lists, each about a thousand movies with a lot of overlap. One of them is my own list of every movie I’ve seen in a theater and I’ll go and look through that and if it’s something I want to revisit. Recently I rewatched Twister, which I hadn’t seen in a long time and is an old favorite from when I was in high school.
I have a bunch of private lists I cycle through; every movie nominated for a Spirit Award, every movie that’s won an Oscar, every movie that’s played in competition at Cannes, the top 1,000 films at the box office. There’s another great website that I use as a biblical resource which is They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? and their lists of acclaimed films for all-time and the 21st century. I hit those up often. Something that I watched purely because of the very high Letterboxd rating and really loved is Funeral Parade of Roses. I try to see as many movies as I can that have a 4.0 rating or higher.
You respect the Letterboxd consensus. I do, but I don’t always agree with it.
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‘Little Fish’ director Chad Hartigan.
Which is your most underrated or overlooked movie according to Letterboxd? I can say I was the very first person to log a movie called Witness in the City, which is an Italian noir movie I watched when I was doing my ‘directors my own age’ series. Literally nobody had logged it, so my review was like “whoa, I can’t believe I’m the first person to log this!”. It was very exciting for me because it’s great, but I’m the OG logger of that movie.
From your list of every film you’ve seen in a theater since you were twelve, which was your most memorable experience? The cheap answer is that it’s hard to top my own movies. The Sundance premiere of Morris From America at the Eccles Theater is maybe the best, but if I’m disqualifying my own films, seeing Scream 3 in a very packed theater in Virginia Beach was really fun, really rowdy. There was a trailer for a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie and I remember the climax was Van Damme going “you lied to me!!!” and everyone laughed. Someone did a George Costanza move later during Scream 3 and yelled out “you lied to me!!!” and everybody laughed again—so that’s a high. That’s the thing I miss the most about movie theaters, and the worry I have if theaters go away, is that so much of how we feel about a movie can be tied to the experience; who we saw it with, what we did before or after, what the crowd was like, or if anything strange happened. There are a lot of movies I have strong memories and affection for because of the experience of seeing them and I probably wouldn’t feel the same way about if I just watched it at home on my laptop.
I typically like to cap interviews off with what filmmakers thought was the best film of the past year, but we have your data to hand. For you, it’s Garrett Bradley’s documentary Time. Can you talk a bit about what makes the film stand out for you? One thing I learned about myself from the pandemic is that the motivation and desire to see new things is very closely tied to the theater-going experience for me. Once that was taken away and you could watch a new movie at home, it joins the pile of all the other movies. The fact that it’s new doesn’t really do anything for me. Why would I press play on Da 5 Bloods when I still haven’t seen Malcolm X? I gotta see Malcolm X! There wasn’t an urgency, so I saw far fewer films than in an ordinary year. But Time I found incredibly moving and important. Similar to what I liked about the Little Fish script, it’s so hyper-focused on one relationship and within that one story it has so much to say about larger issues and the world at large. It was an emotional and rich viewing experience.
‘Little Fish’ is on demand and playing in select theaters now. Images courtesy of IFC Films.
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bi-bard · 4 years
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Foreign Exchange Student- Arthur Broussard Imagine (SKAM France/Belgique)
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Title: Foreign Exchange Student
Pairing: Arthur Broussard X Reader (I’m trying to make this gender neutral)
Requested: Nope
Word Count: 2,927 words
Warning(s): I mean... it’s gonna be a little long... maybe some fear of the future/commitment, general awkwardness and fear of being in a new place
Summary: (Y/n) thought that a foreign exchange program would be fun... until the actual day to move comes. Now (Y/n) is lonely and is completely out of their depth. Everything feels like it can go wrong... whether that be immediate or at the end of the program.
Author’s Note: Alright, this is an experiment of sorts. I would love to write for Skam if that’s what people want to see. If you would like to see more Skam (or if you think I should back away from Skam), let me know. I’m really looking for reader input on this.
Also, I don’t know when this would take place... just go with it. 
I tried to do as much research as possible but I am so sorry if I got something wrong.
Finally, I was planning on making the host family (if that’s the right term) a family from the show but I am not having very much fun with that and where is the joy of writing if you can’t enjoy the hard work you’re doing... at least a little bit.
---------------------------------------------------
My mom always said that I had a habit of popping my thumb. I never really admitted it until now. I think the constant clicking calmed me in some way. I just wish it would work right now. (A/n- Sorry to interrupt but this thumb-clicking thing is something I actually do a lot).
I was trying to grab my bags without making everyone think I was a total idiot or a total asshole. I almost missed one of them but a man next to me grabbed it and handed it to me. He gave me a comforting grin as I cringed at myself and mumbled a thank you.
I grabbed my phone and opened my photos. I continuously looked from the picture to the amount of people in the airport. Shit, this was not enjoyable. 
I looked up from my phone and saw a sign with my name on it. I double-checked my photo and sighed in relief. Thank god. 
A teenage girl waved at me with a small smile. I copied her movement with my hand that was holding my phone. I couldn’t hear her mom but the girl was quick as she walked over and grabbed one of my bags. I thanked her quietly.
“(Y/n),” her mom greeted me kindly. “You probably remember but I’m Louise and this is my daughter Eva.”
“Hi,” I replied awkwardly. After a few more awkward moments, I followed them out of the airport.
The rest of the day seemed to go by in a flash. We got some food, I got some notes on my pronunciations (thankfully before I had to go to school), and then went to the house. Now I was organizing what I had brought.
“Want some help,” I jumped when Eva popped her head in. I chuckled at my own reaction.
“That would be great,” I said. Eva walked over and grabbed some of my shirts, carrying them to the drawers. “This room is gorgeous.”
“My mom wanted to make sure it was ‘comfortable’,” she explained, pretending to be snooty when she said comfortable. I chuckled, going to put my pants away.
“Remind me to thank her for that,” I replied. 
We spent the rest of the unpacking time making jokes and talking about our interests. This was nice. It had only been a few hours and I was already more comfortable than when I walked off that plane. 
“Are you ready for school tomorrow then,” Eva asked after I had shoved my bag into the corner of the room. 
“Probably not,” I replied with a small laugh, plopping onto my bed. “What’s it like?”
“Depends on who you hang out with,” Eva shrugged, sitting next to me. “I could try to introduce you to people.”
“Sure,” I nodded. “That sounds great.”
“Good,” Eva stood up. “I’ll go check on dinner.”
“Okay,” I said.
Once Eva walked out, I laid back and stared at me ceiling. My head was spinning. In a matter of hours, I had found myself in what could be called some kind of new home. This was so strange. 
I jumped when my phone rang. I reached over to it as quickly as possible. It was my mom.
“Hi Mom,” I smiled.
“Hi sweetheart,” she replied. “Did you find your way alright? How are you?”
“I found my way... eventually,” I chuckled to myself, standing up to look out my window. “I’m good. I have my own room. I really like it so far.”
“So school starts tomorrow,” she continued. 
“Yup,” I confirmed.
“Are you going to be telling me about any cute boys or girls next time you call,” she asked. I sighed before chuckling and pinching the bridge of my nose. “That wasn’t a no.”
“Mom,” I snapped. “Can we not talk about that? Please.”
“It might be good for you,” my mom explained. "A cute romance.”
"Why would I even focus on that,” I asked. “Can we just not talk about my love life... or lack thereof?”
“Alright, alright,” she sighed. “Just try to enjoy your time in France, okay?”
“Okay,” I mumbled. “I love you.”
“Love you too,” my mom whispered back. “Be safe. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.”
“Bye,” I hit the end call button and sighed.
Him. I couldn’t believe he was acting the way he was. Everything was fine until we broke up. What I thought was a relationship ending on good terms turned into a jealous ex who now thought I went to France to “run away” from him... even though I had been wanting to do this for years. 
“Hey,” I looked at the door to see Eva peeking her head in. “Dinner is ready.”
“Okay,” I replied. I plugged my phone in and followed Eva to the kitchen, who pretty much bounced to her chair.
The rest of the night is calm. We talked about what I could expect tomorrow, what I thought I was going to miss the most, and other smaller topics that seemed to just flow with the conversation. I didn’t expect to be so comfortable so fast but I definitely wasn’t complaining.
**Next Day**
“Come on,” Eva shouted as I jogged out the door to follow her. 
“Thank you so much for telling me the wrong time for us to leave,” I said sarcastically. She just shrugged with a smirk. “Did you do that on purpose?”
“I have to keep you on your toes,” she replied. I rolled my eyes as I continued following her. 
It almost felt like no time at all before I was leaning on a wall next to Eva, going over my schedule. She was pointing from one direction to another. I nodded along, hoping that I could remember all of this.
“I’ll walk with you to the first class,” Eva said, moving from the wall. I followed close to her. I looked around the halls and my schedule. I tried to make a mental map so everything would make sense... not that it really helped. “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” I replied, heading inside and giving her a wave.
I walked to an empty desk in the corner and kind of kept to myself. I started clicking my thumbs again. 
“Excuse me,” I jumped, snapping out of my thoughts when someone spoke up next to me. A blonde girl was smiling at me. “May I?”
“Sure,” I replied nervously, suddenly realizing that no one was there to correct me if I said something wrong. 
“Are you new,” she asked as she sat down. I nodded. “Wait... are you the girl staying with Eva?”
I nodded again, confused as to how she knew that so fast.
“Eva told me about you,”  she explained. “She was actually really excited about the whole thing.”
“Oh,” I grinned, looking down at my desk.
“I’m Daphné,” the girl said. I looked over at her.“(Y/n),” I replied. “Sorry for being so... weird.”
“You’re okay,” she shrugged off my awkwardness, adding a wave of her hand. “It must be strange to be somewhere so new.”
“Exactly,” I nodded, chuckling lightly. 
“If you want, I have some friends that you could meet,” Daphné offered. I nodded.
“Sounds good,” I replied. My attention went to the front of the room as someone else spoke. Maybe I could be kind of comfortable here.
**Later That Day**
“(Y/n),” I smiled and walked over to Daphné, who was excitedly waving at me. I waved back as I got closer. She wrapped an arm around my shoulders and introduced me to everyone. “This is Emma, Manon, Imane, and Alexia.”
“Hi,” I said with a small grin. 
“This is (Y/n),” Daphné explained to her friends. “The exchange student staying with Eva.”
“Really,” Alexia asked. I nodded. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too,” I replied before Daphné kind of pushed me over so I could sit down with them. 
“So,” Manon started awkwardly. “What do you miss most from home?”
“Oh, my family, really,” I answered. “My mom wants me to call every night and really pushed me to do this.”
“That’s really sweet,” Alexia commented. I nodded in response.
I was about to talk but froze when a group of guys came walking over. Or stumbling... whatever you wanna call it. Everyone greeted each other but I sat there awkwardly.
“Oh, guys, this is (Y/n),” Daphné motioned over to me. She copied what she had done with the girls earlier. “(Y/n), this is Lucas, Yann, Basile, and Arthur.”
“Hi,” I waved at the all. They all said hi back. My eyes seemed to focus on Arthur a second longer than everyone else. I forced myself to blink again before turning back to Daphné. 
The entire group dove into a conversation. I didn’t say much, making the occasional comment every now and then, which got a few chuckles from people. I felt like I was adapting. I was feeling happy. 
I was trying to join in the conversation when I decided to look through the corner of my eye. I made eye contact with Arthur and he sent me a smile. I smiled back before looking over his shoulder.
Eva was waving at me, motioning for me to follow her. I nodded and held up my index finger to tell her one minute. She nodded.
“I have to go,” I turned to the group. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”
“Bye,” a few of them called out at different times. I waved to all of them as I walked backwards for a second. 
“Look at you,” Eva wrapped her arm around mine as we started walking. “Already fitting in.”
“I’m trying my best,” I chuckled, shrugging.
“Well, you’re doing a good job,” she replied. “Looks like you’ve even got a little boyfriend.”
“What,” I asked.
“Arthur,” she answered.
“We literally said hi to each other,” I rolled my eyes.
“And he literally watched you walk from your little group over to me,” she continued. “It was adorable.”
“Oh shut up,” I closed my eyes, looking down at the ground. “I’m not even looking for anything like that.”
“You can’t control that kind of stuff,” she explained. “If it happens, it happens.”
“Too bad it won’t,” I dropped my arm from her’s, sticking my tongue out at her. 
**A Few Days Later**
Everything had been going very well since I had arrived. Daphné had invited me into her circle of friends so I wasn’t nearly as lonely as I thought I’d be. They had just accepted me into their ranks. It was great.
My mom was still calling me everyday. She loved hearing about what I was up to. She was really excited when I said that I had made some friends. She was still pushing to find out if I had met anyone who had caught my eye. I thought that I could avoid that conversation... and then I mentioned Arthur.
Arthur and I had probably been the closest in the group. We just seemed to get along really well and our conversations just seemed to flow really well. I guess my mom thought that meant I had committed to a relationship in a matter of days.
I was currently waiting for Eva. Everyone seemed pretty busy today so I was just planning to head home. Eva was taking forever to say goodbye to her friends. 
“(Y/n),” I looked over my shoulder to see Arthur walking over to where I was sitting.
“Hi,” I waved as he circled over to sit next to me. “What’s up?”
“Well, there is a bit of a party or club thing that the group is going to,” he explained. “I was wondering if you wanted to go with me... or us?”
“Sure,” I nodded. “When?”
“Saturday... Tomorrow,” he smiled. I bit my lip and glanced at the floor, hoping to hide my blush.
“Sounds great,” I replied. “Should I meet you there?”
“Sure,” he said before rambling off an address that I was going to need to write down later. 
“I’ll see you there,” I grinned before turning around and walking over to Eva, who was finally done saying goodbye to her friends. 
As we walked, I quickly scrambled through my bag and pulled out a piece of paper. I quickly scribbled down the information that Arthur had given me.
“Ooo, what’s that,” Eva asked, looking over my shoulder. 
“None of your business,” I sassed. “I’m going out on Saturday.”
“A date,” she asks, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me excitedly.
“No, it’s a get-together with the whole group,” I chuckled at her. 
“Sure,” she replied sarcastically. I rolled my eyes. “Why didn’t you write that on your phone?”
“I forget about stuff when it’s on my phone,” I shrugged. “If I can put it on my wall, I’ll remember it better.”
“Interesting concept.”
“I don’t remember asking for your opinion,” I sassed. She laughed loudly as we continued moving.
**Saturday**
“(Y/n)!”
I laughed as Daphné hugged me tightly as soon as I walked through the door. I hugged her back and said hi quickly as I looked around.
“Isn’t this place cool,” she asked.
I nodded. There was loud music, flashing lights, and people dancing all over. I could see some people drinking and trying to talk. I looked back at Daphné, who could see how stunned I was.
“Come on,” she shouted, tugging on my arm.
She dragged me through the crowd and we soon found the rest of our friends. We were in our own little circle. Everyone shouted their greetings quickly... and all of them were jumbled together.
I completely lost track of time after that.
I found myself dancing freely with a smile on my face. I was being twirled around by Daphné, who was clearly just trying to make sure that I was comfortable and happy. 
The music had stopped bothering me and I had finally adjusted to all of the lights. Daphné must have noticed because she had finally let go of my hands. I had just accepted it and continued dancing.
I spun around without really looking and ended up running into someone. I blinked a couple of times before focusing on Arthur. I was going to apologize and step back but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. 
Arthur and I had completely stopped moving. Slowly, I smiled at him. He smiled back at me. It was like everything had faded away.
I wasn’t sure who leaned in first but I knew that each movement was careful. My breath hitched my throat as our lips touched. It was short and soft and gentle and... perfect. I cupped the sides of his face as he touched my waist. 
After a minute, we stepped back. We looked at each other and smiled at each other again. He grabbed onto my hand before twirling me around again. He chuckled at my shocked expression and I laughed with him, pulling him closer.
**Two Weeks Later**
The next two weeks were a happy blur. The day after we kissed, Arthur had asked me out on an actually planned date and here we are.
The weekend was quiet. I was leaning against the wall, reading a book that I had brought along with me. This was really the only chance I had to sit down and read.
“Hi,” I looked over at the door. Arthur was leaning his head in from behind the door frame. 
“Hi,” I replied, waving for him to come in. 
He leaned down and kissed my forehead before sitting down and wrapping his arm around my waist. I leaned my head on his shoulder and kept reading. 
We were sitting comfortably for about ten minutes before I finally placed my bookmark in between the pages. I set the book next to me before moving so I was facing Arthur, my legs now crossed. I grabbed his hand. 
“Can I ask you something,” I asked quietly. He nodded, rubbing his thumb over my knuckles. “Well... I’ll have to go home eventually...”
“Yeah,” Arthur trailed off, trying to get me to continue talking.
“And that’s all the way across the ocean,” I continued. “...Do you actually want to commit to something like this knowing that it’ll have to end?”
“Who said it had to end,” he asked, furrowing his eyebrows. I shrugged. “Why are you so focused on that?”
“I guess I’m nervous,” I shrugged. Arthur moved so he could lean forward and kiss me softly.
“Can we ignore that idea that this will end when you leave,” he nudged his nose against mine. “We deserve to be happy. That bridge is so far off in the distance, I can barely see it.”
I chuckled at his response. He sat with a small smile on his face until I leaned forward and kissed him again. He cupped the side of my face and leaned in a little bit more. I pulled back with a grin.
“We will talk about this,” he promised. “But why not live in the moment a little while longer?”
“I like that idea,” I mumbled. I uncrossed my legs and draped them over Arthur’s lap and move so I could cuddle into his side. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he answered. There was a moment of silence. “Your room is pretty empty.”
“You can help me decorate later,” I chuckled, closing my eyes. “I don’t want to move right now.”
“Deal,” he said. I bit my lip to keep from laughing. 
Arthur was right. This moment was better than worrying about what was going to happen when I went home. It was so much better.
---------------------------------------------
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When Worlds Collide (Doctor Who Crossover Series) Masterlist
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leothelionsaysgrrrr · 3 years
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💋🍒🧡📙🍋🌠 for EREN bc i miss him
THANK U BB I MISS THE BIG GRUMPY MAN TOO :’) 
💋 How affectionate are they with their friends? Their family? Their romantic partner(s) (if they have any)? Are they more physical or emotional when it comes to displaying their affection? Why?
Eren's not an inherently affectionate person, but his family all are and have been his whole life.  He’s fine with that, mostly, because they generally understand and respect his boundaries, and because being affectionate with his parents and grandparents and siblings and their wives and children doesn’t draw the same kind of scrutiny as showing the slightest hint of interest in friendship or romance does.  Historically, he’s always been aloof and insisted he have his own space and time to be alone, focused almost entirely on his training or work.  It became something of a game amongst his peers to see who could get him to smile at or speak to them, or even to try to seduce him, which let’s be real is pretty uncomfortable and embarrassing.  It’s a shame because he’s capable of being really gentle and sweet, but he only feels comfortable sharing that part of himself with the person it’s directed to when they’re in private, and only when he knows it isn’t just for show or going to end up with the whole clan talking about it behind his back.  
🍒 What kind of things do they expect from their relationships? Does this differ between platonic relationships and romantic ones? Is your OC “demanding” or a door mat? What kinds of things do people expect from them in a relationship?
Like with his family, he expects that they understand he has boundaries and respect them, that they pursue friendship or romance with him based on his own merit and not based on his relationship to anyone else, and that they have some patience with him.  He does really, really like to be alone and given his own space, and he appreciates when people wait to be invited into it rather than intruding or acting entitled to his time and space.  I wouldn’t call him demanding, since he’d never dictate to anyone else what they should or shouldn’t do or want out of life, but he knows what he wants and won’t compromise to be with someone if it means he has to give up on his goals or give in to things he doesn’t want.  The worst thing to him is someone who doesn’t see him as Eren, but rather as ‘Tasalin’s brother’ or ‘Nathra’s son’ or even ‘Davhal’s apprentice’ or something else to that effect, and who would see him as their friend/lover/husband rather than his own person.  He wants to be recognized on his own merit for his own accomplishments, and framing him and what he’s done or is capable of doing as someone else’s doing is a really low blow to him and basically guarantees the end of any relationship with him of any kind.
🧡 Who is your OC’s favourite person? Why is this person the top of their list and have they actually met them (an idol or rolemodel or celeb can be someone’s favourite after all!).
Probably the younger of Tasalin’s twin sons, Ashralan.  He’s a quiet boy who’s often considered quite strange, but Eren’s been able to connect with him and understand him where he often confuses everyone else.  He also loves his mother, Lilya, a great deal, as she’s always been nothing but kind and supportive to him even if she hasn’t always understood him very well.  Tasalin was his favorite person for a long time, but their relationship has been strained since Tasalin removed him from warrior training and sent him to apprentice with the forgemaster instead.  And, of course, Emma, eventually.  He likens being with her to welcoming her home as opposed to inviting her in; he feels like she belongs in his space, and always has, rather than like he’s had to make room for her, and that’s one of the most comforting feelings he can have around another person.
📙 What kind of subjects (of conversation, of discussion, in school or whatever) does your OC find interesting or engaging or that they can talk for hours about? What kind of stuff do they just find fun?
Eren’s job is his life, so it also tends to be all he really talks at length about. He’s genuinely very interested in techniques for crafting and maintaining weapons and armor, as well as knowing how to use them, and he will absolutely stew in quiet, seething rage until given an opportunity to point out when someone is very, very wrong about something he’s knowledgeable about. To get him to talk about anything personal, he’d have to be really close to someone, since he needs to feel like his point will get across and be understood despite him not being the best at articulating it.
🍋 Does your OC act petty and jealous easily? What sort of things make them feel like this and do they experience guilt for getting so worked up? How do they deal with these emotions when they get them? If your OC doesn’t feel like this often, why not?
He can definitely be petty, but very subtly, in ways that are only really satisfying to himself, and not in a way that would make people lose confidence in him or his work.  Jealousy manifests in him as more of an indignance that, if given a chance, he could do something better than someone else.  That one is mostly related to fighting - he doesn’t train with the warriors anymore, but trains himself on his own since the better he understands the use of a weapon, the better he can be at crafting them - and the lingering resentment over that being taken from him.  He’s a singularly talented smith and overall well settled into that role, but remains intensely bitter over the fact that his choice was taken away from him.  He doesn’t lash out, though, unless he’s being pressed to talk about it, and usually just withdraws when he starts particularly feeling this until he can calm himself a bit.    
🌠 Who was your OC’s first friend? Do they remember them or are they still friends now? Talk about some of the people your OC has lost contact with over the years. Do they have any regrets about losing these people and would they revist them if they could?
If we’re stepping outside the realm of ‘Leo’s ocs only’, his first friend who wasn’t one of his siblings would have been Avira, with whom he was able to establish a tacit, low pressure friendship largely based on mutual understanding as city elves adopted into the clan, and a kind of distance they felt from it.  Otherwise, he didn’t really make friends until he met Emma and Lux with the Inquisition.  He trained with a lot of his peers, but his focus was on the training and not the peers, and thus never came to consider any of them friends.  His mentor at the forge, Davhal, is pretty important to him and he respects the man a great deal, but it’s a very strictly mentor/mentee relationship and Eren does not consider him his friend.  The only person he’s ever really felt like he’s lost, honestly, is Tasalin, and on the surface at least he’s more bitter and resentful.  There is some regret there, but he’s quite stubborn and largely can’t shake blaming Tasalin for the way things have turned out between them.
Got any more?
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untapanimedraw · 3 years
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Ok, lets talk the Winter 2021 anime season
Dear god, there are so many shows airing. A ton of sequels, and a decent amount of new shows. I think I’ll actually break down what I’m interested in watching into two parts, sequels and new. Lets get started. 
Watching:
Sequels 
Jujutsu Kaisen - This is technically a continuation rather than a sequel, but the spirit is the same. This was my choice for favorite anime of the season fall 2020 so this continuation has me pretty hyped. 
Black Clover - Still continuing. The manga had a 6 month time skip and the anime did some anime only stories with the author’s direction to cover that time period and now it’s caught up to that time skip. Shit is about to go down and I am stoked. 
Attack On Titan: Final Season - So this started airing in December which makes for a strange airing schedule, but it’s technically continuing from the fall season into the winter season. Anyway, it is fucking fantastic and this week’s episode left us on a major cliff-hanger for 2 weeks. 
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime S2P1 - Ok, so first... HOLY FUCK I’M SO EXCITED FOR THIS SEASON, IT’S GOING TO BE AMAZING. Second, yes this is part 1. Thanks to covid there are some longer running seasons that are being split up to accommodate the production schedule. So this part 1 is airing in winter, then in the spring the 4-koma comedy re-telling is airing, and then in summer part 2 of this season 2 will air. it’s annoying, but 3 continuous season of slime is a welcome thing. 
Re:Zero S2P2 - Alright, so this is the second half of summer 2020′s season 2 part 1. I have high expectations considering what we’ve already been given. 
Dr. Stone: Stone Wars (S2) - HOLY FUCK I’M SO FUCKING EXCITED FOR THIS SHOW, I LOVED THE FIRST SEASON AND AM READING THE MANGA AND OMG I CANNOT WAIT FOR MORE.
The Promised Neverland S2 - More of the promised neverland. I’ve heard that this season will go even harder than the first season and Emma will prove even more why she’s best girl, so bring it on. 
The Quintessential Quintuplets S2 - A second season of a decent harem show? Bring it on. 
Log Horizon S3 - So I didn’t watch this when the first 2 seasons aired years ago, 6 I think actually. That said it’s always been on my PTW list and when I heard season 3 was going to air I decided that now was the time to catch up; and wow am I glad I did. I binged the first 2 seasons over the last 3 weeks and I am so fucking invested now. I cannot wait for this next season. 
Higurashi GOU - this is continuing from last season and I’ll keep watching it, though I’m still not quite sure how to evaluate it. 
Yuru Camp S2 - WOOHOO!!!!! This was the chillest of chill shows that aired winter 2018 and I absolutely loved it. I’m so excited for this next season for more camping and adorable girls being chill. 
World Trigger S2 - So I was under the impression that there were already 2 seasons of this show, I watched most of it I think but it’s been so long I don’t really remember much. But this is being called season 2... so either this is retconning the previous season 2 or that was really just 1 big season despite the notation on some websites. Also a S3 has already been announced so I need to hurry up and rewatch this before the new season airs. But with 73 episodes that might take a bit of time. 
Armor Shop for Ladies and Gentlemen S2 - This is a sequel to the short anime of the same name. If you like it, you like it. 
New
Cells at Work S2 - Ok, technically this is a sequel, but I’m including it here because of something cool that’s happening with the next title. 
Cells at Work: Black - Why yes, this is a different Cells at Work title. This is based on the spin-off manga of the same title that gender swaps the cells from the main series and covers their work inside an extremely unhealthy body. This is going to be a grittier, bloodier, and bleaker show than the main one and in a fun airing scheduling event, they will be airing back to back. I’m quite excited for the both of these. 
Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation - OMG I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS IS GETTING AN ADAPTATION! SADLY IT’S A SPLIT COUR SO THIS IS THE FIRST HALF OF SEASON 1 AND THE SECOND HALF WILL AIR LATER PROBABLY IN THE SUMMER. BUT THAT’S OK BECAUSE EVERYTHING I HAVE SEEN ABOUT THIS SO FAR TELLS ME THIS WILL BE A PRETTY DAMN FAITHFUL ADAPTATION AND IT IS GOING TO BE FANTASTIC. 
Horimiya - I’ve heard many good things about this romance show and am looking forward to it. 
Redo of Healer - Ok, here we go. This is going to be the outrage anime of the season. That is, if it is actually watched by people. It’s also getting 3 different levels of censoring so uh, I’ll have to check for the proper versions when it airs. 
So I’m a Spider, So What? - Ok, so funny story. I’d been hearing about this manga for a while so I decided to dive into it a few months back. As I read it, I thought it was pretty funny but I wondered if the anime adaptation would be great for a comedy manga about a reincarnated girl into a spider’s body. Then about 3 weeks ago, I realized I was reading the comedy spin-off instead of the main story. That said I’m still quite excited to see this adapted and I’ll get the manga after then anime is done. 
The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter - Hella ecchi, actually pretty fun manga. I’m looking forward to this adaptation. 
Suppose a Kid from the Last Dungeon Boonies moved to a started town - Hopefully this will be as fun as the manga was. Here’s a better synopsis than the Livechart one - Lloyd is the weakest person in his remote village but his dream is to become a soldier in the big city. So he moves to the city and strives to make his dream come true. However in a twist, it turns out that the remote village Lloyd came from is the retirement town for all the world’s strongest heroes and they are all massively overpowered, so when he gets to the city he’s stupidly OP but it doesn’t quite click for him. Shenanigans ensue. It’s fun and I’m looking forward to this adaptation. 
Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki - This is supposed to be not quite as good a romance as Horimiya this season, but still decent. If that is the comedy romance this is the drama romance show and hopefully it’ll be good. 
Kemono Jihen - Mystery, supernatural, Yokai. I’m intrigued in this show and hope it’s decent. 
Otherside Picnic - Shoujo Ai, Sci-Fi, I’m sold. 
Hortensia SAGA - This is based on a game, but I’ve heard that the story and scope are actually quite good and the PV actually looks quite good so I’m definitely gonna check this one out. 
SK8 the Infinity - Ok, so my first impression of this was nah, I’ll pass. But then I saw the PV and saw it was being animated by BONES and my impression changed to Ok I have to at least give it a couple episodes. 
2.43 Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Team - So this is supposed to be Haikyuu except lots more drama and less gameplay. It will really have to pull me in in order to get me to not think boring Haikyuu when I watch it. I’ll give it a couple episodes. 
Dr. Ramune -Mysterious Disease Specialist- - Doctor heals people from Yokai or something like that. The tags look interesting as do the character designs. I’ll check it out.
Back Arrow - Fantasy setting but BOOM... Mecha! That premise at least demands a couple episodes of my attention. 
Heaven’s Design Team - Here’s my chill comedy SOL show of the season. The premise is Heaven has a design team that creates/created all the animals. I’m very excited to see the shenanigans. 
Gekidol - Idols and stage acting. After watching the new Love Live last season I’m in the mood for some idol stuff. But most interesting to me is the next show on this list. 
Alice in Deadly School - It’s not currently known whether this will be a full series or an OVA or some other thing, but this is an anime of the stage play that is being put on in Gekidol. The same VAs in Gekidol that play the characters in this play are voicing the characters for this anime production. And I just think this whole setup is neat and am very interested to see it play out (pun fully intended). 
Idoly Pride - This seems to be a more straight-forward idol show which I’m going to check out. 
Maiko-san Chi no Makanai-san - Girl doesn’t quite cut it to do the thing she and her friend came to do, but she found that she can cook so uses her cooking for support her friends. SOL, lets go. 
Wave!! Surfing Yappe!! - Surfing show, the animation will make or break this show so we will see how it turns out. 
Wow, that is a lot of shows, lets add them up. 
13 sequels and continuations
22 new shows
35 total. I kinda hope some of these suck cause HOT DAMN, that’s a lot of shows. 
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contre-qui · 4 years
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Book 9 of 2020: Maplecroft
(at this point I'm not going to bother with the quarantine tally because this thing is gonna last for like a year)
Maplecroft by Cherie Priest
"'You're looking for magic, Lizzie. God doesn't give us magic, only science.'
'Last century's magic is this year's science,' I argued. [...]
'You're treading on dangerous ground.'
'We're living on dangerous ground. And we can't seem to leave it, so I'll work on making it less dangerous - which, yes, is a dangerous effort in itself.' Exasperated with both her and myself, I threw up my hands. 'I'm not sure what you want from me, Emma. I am doing my best and that's all that can be asked of me.'
'No one is asking more. But I fear for you, out there, downstairs, fighting monsters. You touch those things, and they touch you back.'" (112)
I haven't read a Cherie Priest book in years, but when my mom loaned me this one I was super excited. I had mentioned offhand to her about the Borden murders and my personal theories behind the killer(s), and she grabbed this little beauty for me to read.
       Maplecroft is a sci-fi/Eldritch horror take on the murders of Abigail and Andrew Borden in Fall River, MA. The book doesn't actually focus on their murders; it opens a few years after they have occured and Lizzie Borden has been found innocent by the court. Now, Lizbeth lives with her sister Emma in a new house they call Maplecroft, on the other side of town. Rumors abound about the both of them, especially Lizbeth. Lizbeth, however has bigger issues. Strange monsters threaten her home on a regular basis.  A collection of strange stones she keeps in her basement laboratory call to her. Her research has led to few answers as to what these creatures might be, or what they want. But her trusty axe tends to take care of them. Emma is significantly older than Lizzie, and is suffering from consumption. She has a correspondence partner at a university who believes her to be a man - a doctor of marine biology like himself. When Emma mails him a strange specimen she found on the beach for his examination and interest, he becomes sucked into this world of monsters too. And back in Fall River, people are starting to become affected with a strange sickness that bloats and slows the body, addles the mind, and looks eerily similar to what affected Andrew and Abigail Borden before their murders. These strange happenings are all connected somehow, but the full picture is unclear until the very end.
       This was such a well-written novel. The word choice was excellent, and I loved the way Priest was able to write her characters and their development. The novel switches between perspectives by using different correspondences and journal entries of the characters to round out the story and clue readers in to a number of factors and details before the characters themselves are able to get the whole picture. We also get perspective from the affected professor, which really adds a level of creep-factor to the whole thing. As he falls deeper into madness, his justification for his actions becomes twisted and terrifying, really adding to the strangeness of the story. I loved the cast of characters - from real people like Emma and Lizzie, to fictional add-ons like a local doctor, an actress, a government investigator, and even the one-off perspectives of people like telegram operators. Even characters we met only once were interesting and dynamic. I personally enjoyed the inclusion of a small romance between Lizbeth and an actress named Nance, who became involved in the whole situation as well. Not only was I pleased to see a queer relationship written so casually, even in a novel set Victorian Massachusetts, but it wasn't even the main focus of the book. I think the fact that Nance could have been a man without much changing the story really makes that little inclusion special because it shows a conscious choice on Priest's part to represent queer people in a time period when we are often written out of history.
Overall, if you're into creepy, Lovecraftian horror, you'll probably like this. Maplecroft veers more towards creepy and suspenseful than actually scary, but maybe if you're more sensitive to monsters/suspense than I am that might make it scarier. Plus, if you're also a fan of true crime or you know about the Borden murders, this is a super interesting take on a real event that doesn't have a distinct conclusion.
        Trigger warnings for violence, blood, monsters, character death, killing/murder/self defence, illness, weaponry (axe, gun), mentions of Christianity/religion, and general creepiness. Also Lovecraft was a massive racist so if you don't like things based on that type of Eldritch horror I guess keep that in mind, but this does not have racist leanings; it's just a use of that type of monster.
       My overall opinion: An extremely creative idea, executed brilliantly!
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I Could Use a Love Song - Ch 1: givin’ up on love, hey love’s given up on me
Summary: Emma Swan, small town orphan and up-and-coming country singer, is known for her voice, her penchant for leather, and her overall (earned) anger toward the world. She’s had a rough go of it – rough enough that every single song of hers is angry or sad – but on the road something (or someone) happens that might change her tune.
(Spoiler Alert: it’s Killian. Cue the gasps of shock.)
Also on AO3.
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The upside to a truly shitty adolescence? Lyrical inspiration.
Emma Swan grew up a little bit all over the place, but primarily in a small town that was most definitely above the Mason-Dixon line and yet half its population spoke with some kind of southern-esque drawl. Confederate flags were common on Chevy trucks. Friday nights in the Fall were dedicated to high school football and absolutely nothing else. Their town’s only radio station was country, though it played seven different church services on Sunday mornings. To say that the whole town’s dynamic read like a cliché country song… it was more obvious than Emma’s bright red leather jacket in a crowd of cotton camo.
So no one was particularly surprised when the beautiful, damaged orphan with the voice of a (really pissed off) angel hit the road with a country band.
They might not have been surprised, but oh did they talk. After her falling out with the pastor’s son and her quick escape to Pittsburgh, she was every negative stereotype of famous in a small town you could conjure. Lily, the closest thing she’d had to a friend outside of Neal, son of Pastor Gold, would keep her updated on the rumors and the hearsay. Not that she wanted to know, necessarily. She’d rather imagine that her name had simply fallen out of the collective memory of that god forsaken town. But it hadn’t. Her story was on the tongues of every bar patron, Baptist, and boy scout leader north of I-80.
It wasn’t her story, though. Not really. The tales they told of Emma Swan always somehow ended up with her as the villain and not the fairy tale princess, the lost girl with no choice but to suffer at the hands of assholes.
Her parents had been shit. Drug addicts, apparently, and she’d been taken from them. She’d been passed through the foster system from ages 3-12, the best foster parents mostly ignoring her and the worst… well, she couldn’t afford the therapy to even attempt to go there.
She’d wound up with an OK but definitely half-crazy woman by the name of Sarah just before she turned 13 and that’s where she’d stayed, that hick town that just couldn’t get enough of her little sob story. That’s where she’d met Neal, the charismatic son of one of the town’s pastors. His dad had seemed nice enough, did a lot of community work and even owned several businesses, boasting of his commitment to boosting the local economy. For once she’d thought she’d found some people who didn’t suck who might make her life at least somewhat normal.
She, as usual, was wrong. Pastor Gold was… well, off. Way too angry for a dude preaching the New Testament each week. But at least he’d never hurt her. No, that privilege was reserved for Neal, who would beat her to a bloody pulp and then tell his daddy’s flock all about saving his sweet girl from a drug deal gone wrong (poor thing ended up like her parents despite the best efforts of the system, you see).
It was pathetic. And after she went to jail for having the gall to defend her own life from that sociopath, well, that was it. She dropped out of high school during the homecoming pep rally and hopped a bus to the city.
That had been years ago now, of course, but it was her origin story, as they say, and something very important to her on-stage personality. And her internal struggle.
Life had fucked her over and she was pissed. And so for five years after leaving that sleepy, secret-filled little town, all she ever really focused on was her anger. She’d write lyrics on truck stop napkins and sit in a half-stranger’s basement strumming chords on the guitar she’d stolen from the church rectory (she wasn’t sorry). She started out performing at open mic nights and then somehow found some of Her People, those who loved country music but maybe hadn’t grown up in a Dixie Chicks song (if only she could have Goodbye Earl’ed that son of a bitch high school boyfriend of hers before he ever laid a hand on someone new…).
(At least he ended up in prison. You know, eventually.)
(And, hey, her rage got her out there and selling records. But that was on her, not him. Nobody saves me but me, she always said. And she wasn’t about to thank a monster just because she survived slaying it.)
Tonight’s show was in a dive bar in upstate New York and Emma was so damn ready for it. She and Ruby had done a few shots of tequila before slipping on their tight jeans and leather jackets, and David had just finished setting up their brand new sound system that made them sound like they could actually be on CMT and not just playing from someone’s garage. David and Mary Margaret, they were like Johnny and June with their sweetness and Emma could hardly stomach it. But they were her friends, her actual honest-to-god, wouldn’t-rat-her-out-to-the-forest-service-for-underage-drinking friends and she loved them. She loved them and Ruby and even Graham in the only way she knew how: teasing insults, cases of beer, and not running away in the middle of the night even when she was feeling like her whole world could crash town with one wrong word from herself or anyone else.
(She really did need therapy beyond the catharsis of angry singing to half-drunk strangers. Someday, maybe.)
Friend love was a strange, but manageable thing. Well, mostly. But romantic love? Absolutely fucking not. After she left Neal and that town, after she drank away the pain and the frustration, well she thought maybe she’d give romance another try. Turned out the next guy was even worse, somehow, leaving her bruised and bloody when she turned down his marriage proposal at a fancy restaurant in Cleveland (yeah, those exist). The physical pain she had been used to, but the emotional… he called her every name she didn’t deserve and a few that she probably did, and when he finished her off with a few choice comments about the baby she’d lost after Neal threw her out a moving car, well she was done. For good. Never ever would she trust a man again. Preacher’s son or furniture salesman – they were all just… evil. She couldn’t ever again take that chance.
But tonight – tonight she wasn’t thinking about romance or even the past, not beyond the bits and pieces that had made their way into her songs. She was happy, buzzed, excited. Their little tour bus (well, van) family was rising in the ranks and soon she could move far away and get her own apartment overlooking the thriving streets of Nashville. Soon she would be so busy with interviews and music video shoots that she wouldn’t have a single second to spare a thought to those who had hurt her. Soon she would be so rich she wouldn’t ever feel lonely because she’d always have male company in the form of all her Benjamins she’d backstroke through like Scrooge McDuck.
The previous night Mary Margaret had tried to set Emma up with the singer of their opening act, a guy they called August who carried a typewriter instead of a guitar (who she’d definitely seen leaving with a drunk after she’d turned him down, by the way), so Emma had already had her monthly I Don’t Want Love chat with her hopeless romantic friend. Meaning today she was free and clear to just… enjoy this new life she’d spent years building on the bones of all the good girls she could have been.
She high-fived Ruby and David kissed her on the cheek as they took the stage, starting the guitar riff as Emma sauntered out to the opening words of the song. This was one of her crowd favorites, a good one to set the tone for what kind of show to expect, and she was melting into her confident, badass, devil-may-care persona easily by the time they hit the first chorus.
I’m goin’ home, gonna load my shotgun
Wait by the door and light a cigarette
He wants a fight, well now he’s got one
And he ain’t seen me crazy yet
A few people in the front row were singing along and her heart was bursting with pride that she was on this road, that she’d turned such a goddamn nightmare of a life into something positive and productive and while overall it still wasn’t healthy… she damn well was on the road to actually being someone. To finally shutting up the idiots back in Pennsyltucky who were convinced she wasn’t going to amount to anything but a statistic just like her parents (despite having never even tried any drug beyond alcohol and nicotine, the judgmental fucks).
One thing that entertained her beyond reason was listening to Mary Margaret sing backup vocals on the songs Emma wrote. Emma liked to call Mary’s on-stage persona Snow White Trash and Ruby insisted that be the name of the band’s first mainstream album when their big break finally came and Emma actually fucking laughed in the middle of performing her angry song that night because she couldn’t stop thinking about the mismatch.
So when the song was over she apologized to the crowd, told them how much she loved her band and her friends, even the hilariously innocent of them, and asked someone to pass her a beer so she could stop the chuckles from trickling out during the next song.
Next on their set list was one that had been co-written by Emma and Ruby, two girls from two very different small towns, who still had so much shared experience. It used to hurt her to sing it, the depressing nature of where she came from threatening to swallow her whole, until Graham came to her one night after the show, quieted her tearful sobs with a kiss and told her to just pretend it was a movie. She was just telling a story. It wasn’t her town or Ruby’s… it was nothing but fiction.
And that’s how she belted it all out totally devoid of those pesky feelings that made her wish she could just crawl under a rock rather than relive her trauma for the seventy third time this fucking year.
If you ain’t got two kids by 21, you’re probably gonna die alone
At least that’s what tradition told you
This song was a lesser known of theirs so they don’t have as many mouthing the words back, but the energy in the crowd is still so high, despite this song being a little more bummer than banger. So she scans the crowd, watches the faces of the drunk, the joyful, the brooding, and best of all, those who understand.
Off to the left, just at the edge of the stage, she saw probably the hottest man she’d ever seen in real life. Black leather jacket, artfully mussed hair, a smirk that could charm her pants right off if she let him.
It’s not that hot guys didn’t come to their shows. They definitely did. But they were usually more the Jake Owen or Luke Bryan type, the ones that look like they were ready to meet your mama by the third date. This guy, he didn’t seem the take-home-to-parents type (just the kind for her, having no parents and all).
But there was something else different about him. Standing just off stage, standing alone, glancing toward David every so often. He looked a bit too confident, comfortable, like he already had some kind of connection to her makeshift little family, and that set up some red flags.
She was not accepting applications for any new friends at the moment. Or maybe ever.
She’d been staring just a little and people tended to notice stuff like that so of course he eventually locked eyes with her, for just a fleeting moment, and there was something in that one glance that told her he knew what she was singing, how she felt, on a level that most others just… didn’t.
So naturally she broke the gaze and didn’t look back.
Jack and Jill went up the hill.
Jack burned out on booze and pills.
Mary had a little lamb.
Mary just don’t give a damn no more.
From there, Mary Margaret had taken over lead vocals, her cover of Strawberry Wine a nice balm to the mood-dampener that Merry-Go-Round always was. And every show without fail, she always took that transition to gloat about how she’s most definitely not the Mary from that song because she has David and loves him so much and Emma almost always makes the universal gesture for “gag me” to the crowd eliciting laughter and a few errant woo’s.
She didn’t tonight.
First taste of love, oh
Bittersweet
And green on the vine
Like strawberry wine
(sorry Deana Carter, but there wasn’t always some sweet.)
They closed the show with Kerosene, like they always did: high-energy, twangy, and true-to-form for their actual fans. The whole bar was on their feet, jumping and swaying and shouting and spilling their $4 beers on the guy beside them but no one really cared because they were sharing a moment, Emma and each of them, singing out their anger and sadness and ten years of life’s-not-fair.
Crazy how a three minute song could effectively patch the wounds of a whole life.
And, yeah, maybe it wasn’t really patching anything. Maybe it was just distraction. Maybe she was just as much a drug addict as her parents, but her drug was the stage and the music and the connection she shared with every other person in each and every bar who didn’t get the benefit of a first love like any kind of wine.
She sang her song from the diaphragm – broadway voice – but it was like it came all the way from her toes. It was always her anger that defined her, drove her, made her feel alive.
Why not lean into it?
I gave it everything I had
And everything I got was bad
Life ain’t hard but it’s too long
To live it like some country song
Trade the truth in for a lie
Cheating really ain’t a crime
I’m giving up on love, cause love’s given up on me
Songs sung, merch sold, and bar tab closed, Emma headed toward the crew’s van, ready to sleep off the liquor in the third row seats while the lovebirds took the hotel room above the bar and Ruby and Graham found someone’s bed to put their boots under for the night.
It was odd, feeling like the fifth wheel when truly there was only one couple in the band. But Ruby and Graham, they were so in sync with where they were in their life – jand it was just not what Emma was looking for – that she still ended up left out.
Which was fine. Everything was just fine.
Until her path to the van was obstructed by the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen in her life, the smoldering-eyed, confident guy who’d nearly made her forget her own lyrics before she’d promptly remembered to forget him and any other person who might possibly hold the potential to make her heart skip.
(Hearts aren’t meant to skip. That’s not love; it’s a trip to the cardiologist.)
He was definitely about to annoy her, so shouldn’t he look properly… annoying? Not like a goddamn model. That was distracting her from her annoyance and inevitable hate. Because a girl like her? Every song lyric and leather jacket was a clear message: leave me the fuck alone.
He clearly wasn’t receiving the signal.
“Swan, I presume?” he finally spoke, her eyes certainly glaring daggers at him despite her tiredness and BAC.
“Uh, obviously? What do you want.” (It wasn’t a question.)
“To introduce myself, of course! Killian Jones, at your service.”
She stopped a few feet from him, one hand on her hip and the other reaching for the cigarettes in the back pocket of her jeans.
“I’m not interested in any services beyond handing me a lighter. Can you manage that one?”
He smirked at her and reached into his jacket, the click of the zippo lighter in his hand echoing off the brick alley the van was parked in. With a quick flick of his thumb there was a flame and he offered it to her, his eyes burning with something other than the reflection of the fire.
“Ah, yes, that’s something even a one-handed bloke like me can manage.” He clicked the lighter closed and deposited it back in his jacket, only to reveal his left arm – ending at the wrist – from where it had been tucked behind him.
Emma deflated a little, some compassion left inside her despite the unwanted nature of his approaching her. “OK, Captain Hook, what exactly do you want from me?”
(She had compassion, but also very little candor. For the record.)
“Ah, yes, I’ve never heard that one before,” he muttered, rolling his eyes and finally looking like he was receiving her please-go-away signals, but he still soldiered on. “I was meant to be here before the show started, but I had some trouble finding this hole-in-the-wall. I presume by your attitude that Dave didn’t warn you I was coming?”
“You presume correctly. Can you please get on with whatever garbage is happening here? I swear if they put you up to asking me out or something I’m going to kill them. Mary Margaret especially. Because we just talked about this and I know that it’s not your fault that they’re such meddlers but I swear I’m pretty much the same girl who sings on stage in real life and I absolutely want nothing to do with men. Or women, for that matter… I’m not a person who dates and if they thought..”
“Love, please stop. No, I’m not here to ask you out. Believe me, I know I’m not what you need. I mean, technically I am, but not in the romantic sense.”
He paused and waggled his eyebrows and Emma was too tired to roll her eyes so she just closed them, willing the moment to pass. “I’ve been hired to work for you. All of you. Roadie. Can’t play notes on a guitar anymore, but I can haul them in and out of these dumps you lot perform in.”
Ah. He was the guy David had suggested they hire but the group had then rejected the idea and apparently David decided to overrule them all because why would Prince Charming listen to a democratic band vote, anyway? (Ugh.)
“Can you maybe stop insulting the patrons that pay us since that same money is going to be what pays you?”
Drunk laugher and electronic music pulsed out of the back door of the bar they’d played in not long before. Almost closing time now. Emma needed to get out of the open before she had to break someone’s wrist for drunkenly groping her. Again.
“Ah, of course, love,” he replied, finally seeming to be at least somewhat chagrined. “Now if you could point me in the direction of our sleeping quarters, I’ll leave you to your business.”
“First of all, I am not your love. We’ve covered this already and I need you to keep up. Second, do you really think we make enough to have quarters? I’m not entirely sure how we’re going to both pay you and eat. So.”
“So, what exactly does that mean for you or I, Swan?” he emphasized her last name in an effort to prove he was capable of using titles other than ridiculous British terms of endearment.
“Well, Jones, that means that either you go shack up with David and the missus (10/10 would not recommend; Mary gets very horny while drunk and her voice carries), or you do like Graham or Ruby and find a local to make gross sex noises with. Or whatever they do. Don’t know, don’t ask, don’t care.”
“And you, princess?” His tone was a challenge. He wanted her to object to the sickly sweet nickname. And she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.
“I sleep in the van. And I do not cuddle.”
“Oh, it’s not cuddling I’m looking for,” he purred, waggling his stupid eyebrows again. (This time she did roll her eyes, annoyed enough to expend the limited energy she still possessed.)
“Then go find someone willing, buddy. Like I said.”
He shook his head and laughed, already turning back toward the van. “Damn. David said you were difficult, but I wasn’t expecting this. I’ll sleep wherever you don’t. Unless you snore?”
“No, I do not snore!”
“Great. Then we’ll get along just dandy.” He waited next to the van until Emma pulled out the fob to unlock it, sliding open the big door a second after the beep-beep to signal entry. “After you, not anyone’s love.”
“Thanks, Captain. I’ll be in the back. Touch me at your peril.”
They each crawled into the van and settled at opposite ends. Emma tossed Killian a blanket and Killian tossed Emma a pillow that had been lodged in the front seat and they both drifted off to the sounds of Garth Brooks on the Pandora radio Ruby had bought her to ward away the nightmares that inevitably accompanied the silence.
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lemonsorbae · 5 years
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*last updated 06/16/19
Some of you may have dads to celebrate today, some of you may not. But I think most of us can agree that Dean and Cas being dads/father figures should always be celebrated. Here are some fics in celebration of the two best would-be-dads on the planet!
-organized from lowest word count - highest
♦ Nice by: lemonsorbae (721 ♦ G)
Summary: Dean has an over-friendly, talkative daughter who's not afraid to make small talk with strangers in the check-out line at the grocery store.
♦ And Cas Makes Three by: lemonsorbae (1,033 ♦ G)
Summary: Here, have some fluffy, shmoopy baby fic. – Based off of this gifset.
**(The baby in the fic is Dean’s from a previous relationship. The mother of the child does not appear in the fic, nor is she mentioned.)
♦ Daddy Dean Does a Tea Party by: lemonsorbae (1,209 ♦ G)
Summary: Dean has an over-friendly, talkative daughter who's not afraid to make small talk with strangers in the check-out line at the grocery store.
♦ In This Life by: lemonsorbae (1,250 ♦ T)
Summary: Dean and Cas are anxious about becoming new parents.
♦ Two Scoops of You by: lemonsorbae (1,296 ♦ T)
Summary: Emma really likes ice cream, Dean really likes the guy who serves it to them.
♦ Dean is the Pizza Man, Cas is the Babysitter by: lemonsorbae (~2800 ♦ G)
Summary: Dean is the pizza man, Cas is the baby sitter. College!AU
♦ Sex After Children by: lemonsorbae (2,891 ♦ M)
Summary: Being parents is hard. Being parents to three kids is harder. Finding time and privacy to do the do as parents of three kids is hardest.
♦ It’s Only Monday, Mr. Mom by: twentysomething (4,932 ♦ T)
Summary: Castiel is utterly convinced he can't love anyone, but Sam, so when a strange occurrence at a carnival shows him otherwise, he doesn't know what to do.
♦ A Different Kind of Fairy Tale by: lemonsorbae (6,226 ♦ G)
Summary: The best part about Castiel’s day is going to work among the books.
That is, until the mechanic walks through the door.
♦ Jacob Verse by: literaryoblivion (7,460 ♦ G)
Summary: Dean watches as Castiel lies on the floor playing with their baby. He’s laughing right along with Jacob’s gurgles and giggles, and Dean’s heart melts. He shakes his head as he remembers the look of fear on Cas’s face when he had first suggested them adopting.
♦ Keeping Faith by: zoemathemata (~9,000 ♦ G)
Summary: After the apocalypse is over, Dean and Cas become a family when they take in a little girl.
♦ A Brief Glimpse by: cloudyjenn (12,356 ♦ NR)
Summary: Castiel is utterly convinced he can't love anyone, but Sam, so when a strange occurrence at a carnival shows him otherwise, he doesn't know what to do.
♦ Second Childhood by: cloudyjenn (16,369 ♦ G)
Summary: "Dude, I can't do this whole thing by myself," Dean said with far more desperation leaking into his tone than he liked. It would just be too much to make it through hell and death and Lucifer only to have Castiel bail on him because of a frigging baby.
♦ This Story Was Brought to You by Our Sponsors by: scaramouche (29,499 ♦ M)
Summary: Dean's post-apocalyptic life is a friggin' soap opera. Romance! Angst! Separations! Reunions! Pizza Dinners! A Child Dean Never Knew He Had! It's all very dramatic.
♦ Try-Something Tuesday by: almaasi (48,284 ♦ G)
Summary: Human AU. Dean Winchester teaches a third-grade class. He's new to this whole ‘bisexual’ thing - but by pure happenstance, he meets Castiel: a particularly dapper male librarian who moonlights as a substitute teacher. Dean's curious and Castiel is willing, so why the hell not? Except, fate never intended it to be one-time-only...
(with art by valiantparadox)
♦ The Day The World Went Away by: pyjamagurl (60,000 ♦ E)
Summary: After being reunited with Sam and leaving Lisa, Dean is finding that adjusting back into the hunting lifestyle is harder than he thought it would be. When a particular hunt goes badly, he gets knocked out, only to awaken five years in the future. Things are definitely different; Castiel is a hunter, Sam is married and things between Dean and Castiel have gone somewhere Dean really hadn't expected. And somewhere in all of this there is a lesson to be learned.
♦ Our Way to Fall by: lemonsorbae (75,802 ♦ E)
Summary: Dean and Cas reunite at their fifteen-year high school reunion and after one night together Dean’s ready to marry the guy. But then he’s got a daughter back home that doesn’t necessarily make that equation possible, and so he does the next logical thing: high tails it out of Cas’ hotel room and doesn’t look back.
Well, that was the plan anyway.
♦ The Shattered One by: MissAnnThropic (89,098 ♦ T) 
Summary: When it struck Castiel, he was in mid-flight. It dropped him out of the sky like a sparrow buffeted by gale-force winds. Castiel set down the first place he could find. He ended up standing in a field in Switzerland, swaying on his feet and staring down at his body, dazed by what it had just done.
♦ His Fucking Kids by: 8sword (96,000 ♦ G-M)
Summary: Dean watches as Castiel lies on the floor playing with their baby. He’s laughing right along with Jacob’s gurgles and giggles, and Dean’s heart melts. He shakes his head as he remembers the look of fear on Cas’s face when he had first suggested them adopting.
♦ Into Your Hideaway by: thepinupchemist (176,557 ♦ E)
Summary: Driving down a deserted road in the Rocky Mountains, Castiel finds something unexpected: An omega. Not only an omega, but a naked, injured, pregnant omega.
Dean doesn't talk much at first, but that doesn't change the brightness of his soul.
It also doesn't stop Castiel from falling in love with him.
[D/C Rec List Master Post] [all DeanCas recs] [fic rec tags]
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In My Dreams (Scene Eleven/Fifteen)
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Word Count: 1923
Pairing: Slow burn Dean Winchester X Reader
Summary: What happens when you wake up in the Supernatural Universe? And also happen to have a crush on one Dean Winchester! Will you make it back to your normal college life? Slow burn romance. Angsty Fluff.
Scene One / Scene Two / Scene Three / Scene Four / Scene Five / Scene Six / Scene Seven / Scene Eight  / Scene Nine / Scene Ten
Masterlist
Eventually two O’clock rolled around. Dean still nowhere in sight. I spent the whole afternoon pacing in the hotel room, Sam watching from the corner of his eyes as he tapped away on his laptop.
“Ready to go?” He stood up and pulled on his suit jacket.
I sighed, realizing that I wasn’t going to be able to apologize to Dean before the meeting, “Yeah, let me find something nice to wear.” I walked over to the duffel bag and shifted through the men’s clothes.
I pulled out a white dress shirt and holding it up, I caught a whiff of the heady, whiskey, woody smell that was oh so familiar. Dean.
Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply before ducking into the bathroom and slipping it on along with a pair of Dean’s jeans.
Walking out with Sam, I watched as he locked up the room and slid into the driver’s seat of Baby.
“Do you think he is okay? He’s been gone all day.” I couldn’t help but voice my worries. If I Knew the show Dean as well as I thought I did, he would be at a bar right now, getting shitfaced and flirting with anything with breasts.
Sam seemed to know which way my thoughts were drifting as he gripped my shoulder, his hand big enough to crush my head. A weak smile on his face, “He’ll be okay. He just needs to think things through. And he won’t blame you.”
I frowned, “But he should. I said some hurtful things,” I held up a finger to Sam as he opened his mouth to argue, keeping my eyes on the windshield, watching the town fly by, “and I know you said I should choose happiness for now, but I can’t turn off my brain. And it’s headache inducing trying to keep the two lives separate. Sometimes I wonder if I should just give in to this reality me and forget about the other one.”
The rumble of Baby cut off as Sam pulled into the parking lot of City hall, where various rusty trucks and mini Suvs were parked as well.
Before I could reach for the door handle, Sam spoke up, his voice soft and low, the tone of voice that I knew as him being sincere and hoping for a heart to heart.
“[Y/n]....I don’t think it’s a choice of choosing which one you want to be. I think it’s the choice of choosing to live in the moment. Who says the two realities of yourself are so different in their wants and desires? SUre, their pasts are different, but their future...your future, is right in front of you, right now, and you’re letting it slip away from you. Think on that.”
I sat, stunned, frozen, as Sam slowly unfolded himself from Baby’s driver’s seat. Shaking my head, I got out of the car and walked up to where Sam stood waiting before the doors.
Entering Ocean Shores City Hall, we found it to be quiet. The soft smell of seawater and mold tickled my nose. As we followed the signs to the meeting room, the low murmur of conversation grew louder.
Standing before a wide set of double doors near the back of the building, me and Sam stood for a minute to listen.
“The police are helpless, and they think we’re crazy!”
“Well, Donna, who wouldn’t. You went in their raving about mermaids and shouting that they were stupid! You ruined our chance at stopping more deaths.”
“Yeah right Carl, like you had a better plan.”
“Why don’t we ask Serena? After all, it’s her clan that is doing the killing.”
At that, Sam shot me a determined look.
Nodding back at him, we opened the doors and walked inside.
The room was white and empty, aside from a circle of metal chairs were five people sat, all staring at us in varying degrees of surprise and suspicion.
A big burly man with a wide, bright red handlebar mustache stood up and rested his hands on his wide hips, glaring at the pair of us, “And who might you two be? You ain’t from around here.” His tone was layered with distrust and his face was weathered and bore the look of extreme distrust.
A homely older woman with gray curly hair stood up and swatted the man on the back, “Oh you shush Carl!” Turning to us, she widened her smile and her hazy blue eyes sparkled, “We always welcome newcomers to the Mermaid Club! I’m Donna! The founder!”
Despite his girth, Carl seemed properly chastised by the grandmotherly elder, his countenance fading to chagrin. He took of his baseball cap and rubbed his balding head, “Sorry about that. Always been suspicious of strangers.”
I could feel that my mouth was open, watching the proceedings with something akin to disbelief and awe.
Luckily, Sam had experience, so he stepped up during my minor shock.
Sticking out a hand to Carl, and then to Donna, he gave an easy going grin, “Hello, I’m Charles Zeppelin and this is my Sister, Sarah Zeppelin. We’re moving in to town and saw your meeting flyer. Sarah here,” At this he placed a hand on my lower back and pushed me forward, jump starting my self-preservation as I smiled at Donna and shyly took her warm hand, “Swears she saw a mermaid last night by Pacific Beach and wanted to come to the meeting.” Sam let a slightly derisive laugh slip in, “Of course, I had to indulge her. Even though There’s no such thing.”
Carl glared at Sam while Donna gasped and whirled onto me, eyes wide with awe and wonder, “You saw a mermaid?”
I nodded, still play acting the shy younger sister.
Donna tugged my hand, pulling me into the circle where the other members still sat, watching the previous introductions.
She spun around, pointing out everyone, “The goth teenager,”
The fishnet, black eyeliner, bedhead teen glared through her bangs and hissed, “It’s Emo.”
“Is Emma. The Hippie looking blonde young man is Zack, and this here,” Donna dragged me to stand in front of a metal chair where a young woman, with shocking silver hair and porcelain skin sat, milky white eyes seeming to look through me, “Is Serena, our resident Mermaid.”
At this, Serena spoke, and my eyes widened as her voice flowed towards me. It was like windchimes, melodious, and soft and seemed to wrap around and trap me in it, “Could you describe what you saw?”
I shot a look over my shoulder to where Sam was stopped from entering the circle by a defensive Carl. He nodded at me, saying that it was okay, before he redirected his stare to Serena. I could see his hesitancy to believe Donna’s claim that the woman before me was a mermaid, she looked nothing like the thing we had seen last night.
I kept my voice meek as I described what I had seen, “There were big ripples in the water and then this blue person popped their head from the water. Their eyes were black as night and they had no hair. Their mouth was full of razor sharp teeth and they…” I stuttered for a moment, “They spoke to me.” I finished in a whisper, dropping my gaze to the dirty tan tiled floor.
A gasp from everyone, even Carl had turned around, taking his attention off Sam, while I told my encounter.
Serena stayed perfectly still and then she slowly raised a single hand. “What did they say?”
The words rolled off my tongue without my permission, “It’s not over.”
A musical sigh, Milky White eyes closing slowly as she breathed out. I took a moment and saw that her teeth seemed a little sharper than normal, but not as sharp as the creatures from last night.
“You have had an encounter with my Kin.”
A silence flooded the room. Stifling as if everyone held their breath waiting for Serena’s next words.
“You have no chance. If they have their sights on you, if they have shown themselves to you, you will die by their hands within the fortnight. Dragged to a watery grave where they will consume your flesh and laugh at your strangled cries for help.”
“Bullshit!” Sam’s angry, very loud exclamation startled me so badly, I yelped and fell to the ground, Donna’s hand slipping from mine as gravity took ahold.
Sam stormed up to where Serena sat, her white eyes open once again, settling in the direction of where Sam was.
He jabbed a finger at her, “How do you know? Why don’t you look like them and how are you walking around?”
Carl grunted as he moved to where Sam stood and barked at him, “Now! You listen here young man, you can’t just accuse-”
Serena interrupted him, “He is right to be cautious. After all, you are a hunter, are you not? Sam Winchester..”
I held my breath as I watched the blood drain from Sam’s face, a split second before he had the demon knife in hand and pressed up against Serena’s throat.
The group members screamed. The hippie Zack, running from the room. Donna leaping back and hanging off of Carl’s girthy frame, while Emma stared at the scene and smirked while whispering, “Finally something fun.”
A snarl ripped out of Sam, the sound so terrifying I forgot for a moment that it wasn’t targeted at me.
“How do you know who I am?”
Serena didn’t even flinch, her eyes staring through Sam, her creamy flesh pulsing against the knife as she breathed evenly, “I made a deal with a demon when I was still a younglin. I didn’t want to terrorize people. I wanted to walk amongst them and feel the love that my clan often spoke so callously about. They gave me legs and hair and skin to blend in, but they took away my sight. So that I could never see the beauty of Mankind. I heard about your kind from my Clan, and then when I was on land, I heard whispers as I wandered. Sam and Dean Winchester, the boy who lived and the demon boy king.”
She slowly rotated her head back to me, the blade that Sam held against her neck wavered as he took in her words.
“And [Y/n] [Y/l/n]...a ghost.”
I gathered my strength, and ignoring the excited whispers from the strange little emo teen and the frantic whispers from Donna dn Carl, I stepped forward and asked, “How do we kill them?”
Serena smiled, but it was not a pleasant smile, “Why?”
I cocked my head to the side in confusion, “What do you mean, ‘Why?’. They’re killing people! More people will die if we don’t stop them!”
Serena took in my passionate words, but then she spoke and shocked me again, I was starting to get irritated at her seemingly pleasant personality and her condescending attitude, “That is his reason,” She tilted her head to where Sam still stood bearing down on her with a frown, “But why do you care so much? What are you running from that has you so desperate to get away from this place?”
“I-I...wh-what? I-I..” My eyes flickered over to Sam, who wore a similar shocked expression.
I took a step backwards...and then another. And then I turned and ran.
“[Y/n]!” I heard Sam shout out in concern as the doors slammed shut behind me.
FOREVER Taglist:
@sxph-t @mialeelavellan @rainydaysrnevergrey  @platonic-plots @sociallyawkwardcircus-freak-hi @ayyidkeither @queenbbarnes @mythixmagic @chas-z @thefridgeismybestie @strangersstranger @princess-evans-addict
In My Dreams Series Taglist:
@jadepc @stevieboyharrington @clarinette07 @topthis808 @wolfkg @heythereamigodude @100kindsofblake @animegirlgeeky
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hi what about a universe where they go on a mission without Lucy and they come back to find out that she's in charge of Rittenhouse and it's super angsty!
I have taken FAR too long to get to this, my apologies! Here you are, my lovely, have a ficlet!
Note: Details about Lucy’s indoctrination inspired by Starlight and Strange Magic by @qqueenofhades.
Flynn hates it when they go on missions without Lucy.
At least this time it’s not because she’s moaning helplessly with pain, glassy-eyed and burning up with fever. That was far too close of a call and he still shudders when he remembers how she clung to the edge of life for days.
But he still doesn’t like it.
Things are ever-changing on the warfront. Sometimes Emma isn’t sending Rittenhouse on missions that need a historian. She’s sending them on missions that need soldiers. Or Lucy’s history knowledge isn’t the knowledge that they need--Jiya knows plenty about Chinese history thanks to listening in on the lives and histories of her friends in Chinatown, and she’s more of an expert on the late 19th century than Lucy. Flynn knows more about European history, and Connor’s got more knowledge about the British Empire which, thanks colonialism, is pretty damn important.
Today, they needed Jiya and Mason--so they brought Wyatt and Flynn along for protection. Not that Jiya needs much of it. She can kick ass and knows how to handle both a knife and a gun, but it’s good to have a second person with her, and Connor is still... well. Connor. So Wyatt bodyguards him while Flynn pairs up with Jiya.
The whole time, Flynn feels like he’s missing a limb. Missing Lucy’s smile, her wit, her quick mind, her sharp eyes, her voice. All of her. Normally he’d be glad that she’s safe in the bunker, out of danger, but--there’s the ever-present fear that something has changed, will change, that he will come back to find her dead or gone.
They climb into the Lifeboat, Wyatt a little bruised and battered and Jiya’s dress torn but all of them otherwise unscathed, and they jump back to their present.
Flynn gets out first, and offers a hand to Wyatt, who winces as he comes down the steps. But then he turns... and it’s not Lucy who’s pushed the steps up to them.
It’s a girl that Flynn doesn’t recognize. Long dark blonde hair, big brown eyes, a long, angular face... about Jiya’s age, and pretty, but utterly foreign.
No, wait. Not quite.
Something in the shape of her face and her eyes... it’s familiar to him. But wrong. Why does he feel like there’s something of a ghost he knows lurking in the lines of her?
Next to him, Wyatt stops short, and stares. “Amy?” he croaks.
Flynn’s heart stops.
Amy. Amy Preston. Lucy’s sister, the one Flynn inadvertently caused to go missing.
Lucy got her sister back, she’ll be so happy, she’ll... “Where’s Lucy?”
Everyone stares. Amy gapes, actually gapes, mouth open, and then looks like she might cry. “Is this some kind of--of joke?” she demands, sounding betrayed.
“What joke?” Flynn says, a little more sharply than he means to. “There’s no joke, I’m asking where my... where Lucy is.”
They haven’t said what they are, the three of them, but every night Lucy presses herself against his chest like she won’t make it through the night if she’s not hearing his heartbeat, and Wyatt presses his nose into Flynn’s neck and tangles their legs and balls a handful of Flynn’s shirt in his hand.
And Flynn... Flynn holds onto both of them with all he has.
Amy really does start crying then, turning away quickly and pressing a hand over her mouth. Denise strides forward, staring at all of them. Flynn gets down from the steps so that Connor and Jiya can shove past, Jiya hurrying over to Rufus, who’s manning the Lifeboat computers, and clutching at him, whispering, making sure their relationship hasn’t changed, too.
“What’s happened?” Wyatt’s voice is high pitched, panicked, and he grasps at Flynn’s hand like he’s drowning. “Where’s Lucy, what’s happened?”
Flynn’s heart squeezes painfully in his chest and he can’t quite breathe, but he manages to stay standing, stay still, because if he collapses then Wyatt will too and he can’t do that to Wyatt.
Denise has her Mom Face on. “I don’t know what’s gone on in your timeline, but here, for us... Lucy Preston is the leader of Rittenhouse.”
“No.” Wyatt shakes his head. “No, no, Lucy wouldn’t--she’d never, she’d--no, she--no--”
“Mom raised her,” Amy says, turning and facing them, her face pale, hands shaking, “to believe that she was a princess. Rittenhouse’s princess. Told her all about Rittenhouse from a young age. I wanted to be a historian too, like them, but it was never the same, never... I wasn’t pureblood. I wasn’t Rittenhouse, not really, and so I could see--the cracks, the faults, the... how wrong it was, and Lucy--but she wanted to be special and she didn’t see it that way and we argued and then--then you stole a time machine.”
Amy looks at Flynn, and he’s taken aback by the affection he sees there. It’s not romantic, not at all--in fact it reminds him of how Iris would often look at him, and he nearly sinks to his knees because he realizes, without even a word being spoken, what he is to Amy in this timeline, what she must be to him.
How instead of finding another woman to fall in love with, he found another daughter.
He’s only just starting to understand how much he cares for Jiya in that way, only just starting to open himself up to the possibility of taking on that fatherly role again in a small capacity, and he can’t--how did he, in another timeline, come to accept that? How did he move on like that?
Then again, he could ask himself the same thing about romance, about Lucy and Wyatt. But especially Lucy, Lucy for whom he fell so very quickly.
“You stole the Mothership, and Lucy was called in, but I knew--I knew that Rittenhouse had to be stopped. Mom and Lucy planned it as her big sort of... proving moment, stopping you, and assuming control of Rittenhouse. So I, um, I got in contact with you, through Lucy, I met you and I started helping you as much as I could, and then Denise, I told her the truth about Lucy, about... all of it...” Amy looks at Wyatt. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, you were in love with her, and so--you said, Flynn you said that Lucy gave you the journal so I don’t know what changed or what the original timeline is but--it broke your hearts when I told you the truth, and then she--she stole the Mothership, and blew up Mason Industries, and she’s been in charge ever since, with Mom.”
“What about Emma?” Flynn asks.
“Emma Whitmore?” Denise’s voice is sharp, businesslike. “She’s their pilot, teaching Lucy how to do it, if our intelligence is correct.”
“And Jessica?” Wyatt asks. “My--my ex? Is she--is the baby--”
Denise presses her lips together, gives a small sigh. “Your wife died in 2012.”
So Jess never came back, then. Never got pregnant.
Wyatt makes a noise like someone’s punched him and Flynn grabs him, pulls him in, uncaring if the others are seeing. “What do we do?” he demands. “How do we get her back?”
Amy and Denise exchange looks. Rufus, though, is the one to pipe up. “You want to, what, literally convince the woman in charge of the elite Death Eater organization that she’s wrong and poor non-white people aren’t so bad?”
“Lucy’s bi,” Flynn says, struggling to keep is voice under control. “And she’s a woman in Rittenhouse, surrounded by white men, that has to chafe. She never--the Lucy we knew, she was compassionate, openminded, she never judged anyone.”
“That’s not your Lucy anymore, though,” Rufus says.
“And if it was Jiya you’d just give up?” Flynn snaps.
Wyatt’s clinging to him, shaking, but not crying, and Flynn rubs his back. He knows it’s not just Lucy, although that’s bad enough. It’s losing Jess all over again, and his child--the child Wyatt was looking forward to, the child he was ready to do anything to save from Rittenhouse. That future is gone.
Rufus glares, but looks a bit chastened.
“Lucy’s... she’s practically been brainwashed,” Amy says, her voice weary and small like she’s had to say this a thousand times. “Mom’s got a hold on her. If we could get her away from Mom, maybe, we could... she’s not a... a bad person but. But I mean, we have a word for the people who joined the Nazis because of mistaken ideals, or because they were ignorant, or reluctantly.”
“We call them Nazis,” Flynn finishes. “I know.” He swallows. Tightens his grip on Wyatt. “But there’s also... there’s also when you think you’re doing what’s right, and you realize you’ve lost you’re way, and you’re in darkness, and you find yourself doing things you never thought you would, and justifying it.”
Like shooting Lincoln. Or selling weapons to the Nazis. Or blowing up an airship. To name just a few things.
He knows that Wyatt knows what he means, because he feels a soft kiss pressed to just underneath his jaw--a reassurance, an acknowledgment, a silent I remember what you went through and I love you.
Denise folds her arms. “Flynn. If you’re suggesting...”
“...that we kidnap Lucy, the head of Rittenhouse, yes, that’s exactly what he’s suggesting,” Rufus says. “Because he’s Flynn.”
“I don’t like the idea of taking her somewhere, anywhere, against her will,” Flynn explains. “But if we can get her out of that toxic environment...”
“And capturing the head of Rittenhouse will be a blow,” Jiya adds quickly. “If she does turn out to be awful in this timeline then we can use her as blackmail or a bargaining chip or something.”
Denise is silent for a long while. Long enough that Flynn’s heart starts to sink.
“Oh, come off it, Christopher,” Connor says at last. “Let them be bloody romantics and see if true love can’t win the day, eh? It worked for Jiya and Rufus.”
Denise looks like she wants a stiff drink and gives Connor the stink eye, but then looks at Amy. “She’s your sister, Amy,” she says. “And you were the one who really brought this team together. It’s your call.”
Amy’s lip trembles for a moment. She looks at Flynn, and then straightens her shoulders, raises her chin, and nods at Denise.
“All right,” she says. “Let’s... let’s do it.”
Flynn nods at her gratefully, and squeezes Wyatt. “Spasit ćemo joj, moju ljubav. Spasit ćemo je.”
He failed the people he loved once.
Not again.
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TRR New Beginnings ch.24 - Here's To Us
The Royal Romance AU
Drake x Emma
Words: 1621
Warnings :NSFW
  Hey everyone! We have reached the conclusion of my New Beginnings series. I know I said there would probably be another 2 chapters, but as I wrote this I realized that this chapter accomplishes everything I originally set out to do, and I can’t think of a better ending.  I want to thank everyone who has read, liked, commented, and reblogged. This was my first fanfic series ever, and I'm really proud of it. I feel like it broke me into the fandom world, and I love you guys for making that happen. The support everyone has shown me since this series first began has been amazing, and I've made friends along the way. I have several other fics out right now, so this is definitely not the end of my writing! And who knows? Drake and Emma’s story may continue in the future 😊 (You can also catch them in Drake's Diary) I hope you've enjoyed this, and I hope this last chapter does justice to the series. Thank you again!!
 Masterlist
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  Drake and Emma sat out on the wrap around porch of the cabin. It was pouring rain that day, and rumbles of thunder were getting closer. He still couldn’t believe she had given up the duchy, and this cabin he had built for them was now their permanent home. Emma’s stomach was starting to show, And it was the sexiest thing Drake had ever seen.
“We may lose power, this is supposed to turn into a big storm.” He told her, thinking back to the first time a storm arrived and the power went out. She’d had such a bad panic attack and he wanted to do anything he could to prevent that from happening again.
  She nodded, seemingly lost in thought.
“Hey Rose. Did you hear me?” He asked
“Hmm? Oh, right, a storm, got it.” She acknowledged.
“Is everything okay? Are you feeling sick? Is something wrong with the baby?”
“Oh my god, Drake, no, everything is completely okay! It’s…better than okay.” She smiled at him
“You just seem kind of off.” He told her.
She smiled and leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder. “I was just thinking about how far we’ve come since I first returned to Cordonia. We got off to such a rocky start. Remember the first time you saw my bruises? You kissed them, before I pushed you away and yelled at you. That was...so so sweet.”
“I hadn’t thought twice about it. I just leaned in.”
“I hated you in that moment.” She admitted.
“What? Why?”
“Because I blamed you for everything. Because it seemed like you wanted to pick up where we left off and that just wasn’t possible. But you never gave up on me, on us, and I just want to say thank you. Thank you for your love, Drake.”
She turned her head up and leaned in, kissing him sweetly.
“I never had a chance against you, did I?” He asked
She chuckled lightly. “You mean the first time that I was here? No, no you didn’t. By the time you admitted we were friends I knew we were a lot more than that.”
He smiled and brushed his knuckles over her cheek softly. “I would argue but I would lose because you’re right. I still wanted to deny it at that point, but the feeling was there.”
“You know what’s kind of funny? The first time I was in Cordonia, I fought for you. The second time, you fought for me. I think neither of us ever had a chance against the other. I knocked down your walls, you knocked down mine. We were just meant to be.”
“I think you’re right.” He told her. He gently splayed his hand across her stomach. “Having a family with you is more than I could ever ask for, Rose. I hope you know that. Even if it took us a really long time to get here…we still arrived. The battle won’t be forgotten. But it has made us strong, both as individuals and as a couple.”
“Oh boy, here comes the marshmallow.” She laughed
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah yeah. But only around you.”
“I don’t know, Drake. You do have a tattoo of a rose on your chest. Any time you removed your shirt, anyone could have seen it.”
“Tattoos are very rugged. And manly.” His brows furrowed.
She laughed. “Right. A rose is the definition of rugged and manly. Not to mention there’s millions of women who also have tattoos. Are those rugged and manly as well?”
“I…erm…ugh, you kill me, Rose.” He was blushing again. She could always manage to do that to him. He decided to change the subject.
“So, Rose. Have you thought of any names for our baby?”
She looked back up at him. “We don’t even know what we’re having yet.”
He shrugged. “So? You’ve never thought about it?”
“Not really…” She trailed off, feeling guilty. “Have you thought about it?”
“Definitely. I have two great ones picked out.” He told her, his voice full of confidence.
“Really? And you’re not a marshmallow?”
Completely ignoring her last comment, he continued “I was thinking if it’s a boy, we could name him Jackson, after my father.”
“That’s perfect.” She agreed. “Definitely, I think that’s a really great idea, Drake. I think it’s so nice when people honor their family members like that.”
“And I was thinking if it’s a girl….” He took a deep breath. “We should name her Rose.”
She frowned. “But that’s weird. You call me Rose. We can’t both be called Rose. Plus, if we give her both our last names, she would be Rose Rose Walker. That just sounds ridiculous. Honestly, Drake, you didn’t realize that?”
“Well…I was also thinking…maybe your last name wouldn’t be Rose anymore. You’ll be Emma Walker.” He held his breath. This was the moment he’d dreamed about for so long. Everything was leading up to this very moment, and although he thought they were an amazing couple, he was nervous as all hell by what her reaction would be.
She slowly sat upright. “What did you say?”
He slid out of his seat and down on one knee. “Will you honor me by becoming my wife, Emma Rose?”
Her hands flew to her mouth. “Oh my god…”
He pulled out the ring he’d been saving for her this whole time. “This was my grandmother’s ring. She told me that someday I would meet a girl whom I couldn’t live without. And when I did, I should give her this ring. My grandparents were married 58 years, Rose. And I know she would adore you just as much as I do.”
“Drake…” She whispered. “Oh my god, Drake, yes! Yes yes yes!!!!” She flung herself at him, toppling him down onto the porch floor.
“Ooph!”
But she didn’t slow down. She peppered him with kisses, grinning the whole time, with happy tears in her eyes.
He chuckled against her lips “Perhaps we should move inside?”
She moved off him and practically ran inside, stripping off all her clothes. Once naked, she beckoned him closer with one finger, a flirty smile on her face.
He was instantly hard, knowing she was ready for him before he even reached her. “First things first, Rose.” He whispered. He carefully took her left hand and slipped the ring on her finger. She gasped as it caught the light.
“Drake, this is…this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Then you clearly haven’t been looking in the mirror.” He smirked.
“What’s the point of looking in a mirror unless it’s to watch you fuck me from behind?” She shot back
He groaned at that, and crashed his lips against hers, capturing them in a searing kiss. “I don’t suppose you actually want to do that.” He said huskily
“Wouldn’t have mentioned it if I didn’t.” She responded breathily.
He pulled himself away from her, grabbing her hand and leading her the up the stairs and into the master bathroom. He gripped her hips and spun her to face the large vanity, his hips grinding into her ass, meeting her gaze in the mirror. He wrapped her hair and around his hand, pulling her head back so he could shower her neck with soft kisses and bites. He trailed his free hand up her thigh, finally reaching the apex of her legs. She moaned and arched into him as he began to stroke her wet folds.
“You’re so wet, Rose.” He swirled his finger around her hard nub until he felt her begin to shudder, then kept one finger there and slipped another inside her. She let out a scream as she came, and once her orgasm subsided, Drake removed his fingers and sucked her juices off of them. He quickly tore off his shirt and pants, then took hold of her hair again, bringing her back into another searing kiss.
Aligning himself with her center, he slowly slid his cock inside her, grunting in pleasure as he went. “I’ll never tire of this, love.”
“Oh, Drake…yes Drake you feel so good.”
“How good”
“Oh my god, so so good.” She gasped
“Tell me you’ll marry me again.” He said roughly
“Oh fuck…yes, Drake.” He started pounding into her harder and harder
“I’m gonna marry you, Drake Walker.”
Drake let out a strangled moan at her comment.
“I’ll be your wife.”
He buried his head into her hair, his free hand gripping her waist to keep them in balance.
“Say it again.” His voice was muffled
“I’ll be Mrs Drake Walker!” Her voice rose, and he could feel her beginning to quake around his hard length and knew she was close. He brought his head back up and met her gaze once more in the mirror.
“I love you, Emma!” They fell apart together, completely out of breath, never breaking eye contact.
“That was…” she started
“Fucking hot.” He finished for her, laughing breathily. He dropped a kiss on her shoulder, then turned her back around to face him.
“You are my life. My world. My family. And I will love you until the end of time, Rose.”
A strange look crossed her face. “You’re not actually serious about naming our daughter Rose, right? Because that would be really creepy considering…”
Drake felt his face flush. “No. No, definitely not. I’m 150% against it. You have no idea how long I’ve thought about this; It’s completely embarrassing. I thought the name thing was genius. I just thought it was a really great line, and it took me forever to think of it."
She laughed. “For you it’s perfect. It’s you and me, Drake Walker, forever and always. I love you
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hekate1308 · 5 years
Text
Strange & Deranged
I couldn’t get the thought of a Drowley Addams family out of my head, and so I decided to write one for Valentine’s Day. Enjoy!
By now, everyone knew better than to disturb the mayor of their small town during his lunch break, so when three distinct knocks rang out, Dean sighed and drew back from his husband. “Guess we have to see what’s going on.”
“Oh, I am sure they can handle it, darling” Crowley drawled, trying to kiss him again.
“You are incorrigible.”
“And that is why you married me.”
Dean couldn’t very well deny it, but that wasn’t the point right now. “I am ready to bet that was Cas, and you know he only ever disturbs us when there’s an emergency.”
Crowley sighed. “You’re no fun when you’re being the voice of reason, Squirrel.”
“I am always fun, and you know it”. Dean quickly kissed him again, then re-arranged his clothing.
When he opened the door, Cas said, “I am sorry to disturb you, but we have a problem –“
“Yes, yes, I know, Apollo 13” Dean answered.
“I don’t understand that reference.”
“Of course you don’t. So while Crowley is busy pulling his pants up, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
The only answer to his corresponding grin was an unimpressed look.
“I told you it was nothing.”
“Crowley, a potential dam failure isn’t nothing. We’re lucky we managed to stop it.”
“If you say so” the demon replied lightly and Dean rolled his eyes.
“You’re just disappointed your lunch break was cut short.”
“What gave it away?” he asked, his hands settling on Dean’s hips.
“Oh, for God’s sake, can’t you two behave for five minutes?”
Dean sighed and once more stepped away from his husband. “Can you blame me, Sammy?”
The expression of their town’s sheriff seemed to suggest that he could and would indeed blame him for making him arrest them for indecent exposure. “The reporters are going to be here in just a few minutes, and…”
“Fine, fine, Samantha, don’t get your panties in a twist” Dean said. “We’re behaving, see?”
“Speak for yourself” Crowley said, his eyes changing to red because the bastard knew damn well it turned Dean on.
“Oh you –“
“Yes?” he asked innocently.
“You two are going to be the death of me” Sam sighed. “Aren’t you supposed to be getting back to school, anyway?”
Sadly, it was true, and so Dean kissed Crowley goodbye – maybe a bit more passionately than was appropriate, but what was the point if he couldn’t annoy his brother with his perfect marriage now and then? – and went on his way.
He only remembered it was Valentine’s Day when Charlie exclaimed, “Is that a hickey, Winchester? Have to say, I am not surprised, considering the date.”
Quite frankly, it was never a surprise when Dean showed up top work covered in hickeys, but one of the benefits of being the principal was that no one was there to judge him for it. “I just had lunch with my husband.”
She hummed. “Were the lunch, more likely.”
“Charlie Bradbury! Go look after your students!”
“Aye, aye boss”. She skipped past him with a cheeky grin on her face.
Sometimes, working with his closest friends wasn’t as much fun as Dean has always assumed it was going to be, but at the same time, he wouldn’t trade it for anything.
When he came home that evening, he was surprised when neither of the children made an appearance as soon as he opened the door. Normally, they cam running as soon as he showed up. “Emma? Gavin?” he called out.
Nothing. But there was soft classical music playing somewhere, and –
Oh. A trail of candles was leading from the front door towards the dining room.
Dean grinned.
This was going to be fun.
Crowley was awaiting him in the suit he had proposed to him ten years ago, the old softie.
“Hello there” Dean drew him into a kiss. “Are those your home-made burgers?”
“Yes. Since I have married someone with the appetite of a toddle, I have to bear the consequences.”
“Now, now, Mister, do you want to get lucky tonight or not?”
Crowley grinned, his eyes turning red again. “Oh, I do want to, and I will. You know I always get my way in the end.”
Dean just kissed him again as an answer then asked, “Where are the kids?”
“Cas took them to Charlie’s.”
Where they would no doubt get spoiled rotten. “Ah, so they helped?” Dean asked, indicating the roses and – was that a champagne fountain? On display.
Crowley hummed. “I originally planned the evening to include torturing our enemies, but Castiel assured me my esteemed brother-in-law wouldn’t have liked it.”
“He definitely wouldn’t have” Dean agreed. “I guess we’re stuck with torturing each other again.”
“Oh?” Crowley’s raised eyebrow was definitely a challenge, but Dean’s stomach was rumbling.
“Later, Casanova. I have to eat first.”
He sighed. “Serves me right for marrying a human with low stamina.”
“I am going to be showing off my stamina real soon” Dean grinned. “Just let me eat first.”
Crowley sighed again, but there was a sparkle in his eyes that Dean knew only too well.
“Now, what do you have to say about my stamina?” Dean sked quite some time later.
Crowley rolled over and looked down at him. “The night’s still young, Winchester.”
“I see” he complained, “Once the ring is on and you have two kids, the romance is gone. Is that how it is?”
“Says the man I just watched gobble down ten cheeseburgers against my better judgement.”
“It was five cheeseburgers, and you ate something too.”
“I snacked. There’s a difference.”
“If you say so, Peaches.” Dean hummed. “Mind, a little bit of torturing our enemies would have been nice…”
“Told him.”
“Well” Dean said with a grin, “I will just have to focus on torturing you instead.”
The next morning, Dean was woken up by a text from Charlie. Hey you two, I’ll be keeping the tow trouble makers until lunch time. God knows you need time to get it out of your system for a few hours at least.
“Seems like we have the morning for us” he announced just as Crowley materialized in front of him carrying a tablet.
“Is that so?”
“Oh yes” he happily accepted the offered breakfast. “Say, Crowley…”
“Yes?”
“Last night, you were completely unhinged. Every bit the scary demon people always assume you are. You downright scared me. Do me a favour?”
“Yes?”
Dean grinned. “As soon as I have finished these crepes… Do it again?”
It was a very happy Dean Winchester who all but skipped up the steps to Charlie’s house on this Saturday morning.
“Alright, I’m not even going to ask” Charlie said. “It’s pretty obvious someone had –“
“Dad!” The two children ran up to him and he quickly thank to his knees. “Did you have fun with Aunt Charlie?”
“Oh yes, and Uncle Cas stopped for dinner!”
Dean doubted that. In all the time he had known him, he had never seen him eat.
“I drew a picture. Look” Emma said proudly and held it out.
Huh. For a seven-year-old, she really did know how to draw her witch burnings. Dean showed himself duly impressed.
“And then we played car crash!” Gavin exclaimed, happily dancing around them.
There was a reason they loved staying with their Aunt Charlie. Uncle Sam usually tried to explain that car crashes were actually rather tragic and tended to cause people to die, which was little fun. Thankfully he and Aunt Sarah then came up with other games for them to play.
“Sounds like a lot of fun” he said, ruffling his hair.
“Yes! Did you and Father have fun too?” he asked.
“Oh, I bet” Charlie said.
“Yes we did” Dean said firmly. He spent his whole life being very very unapologetic about his marriage, he wasn’t going to feel ashamed about it in front of his children.
When he arrived home, he knew immediately something was amiss. One downside of marrying a demon was that their environment was magically affected by his moods, and the air around the house was cackling with static. If Crowley got any angrier, they’d have a storm on their hands.
Granted, that usually meant rather fun times for all of them, but the neighbours tended to complain eventually.
And so Dean left the children with Cas, who had returned from his day off, and went to see his husband.
He was currently on the phone, looking like he was ready to reach through it and strangle whoever he was talking to. “How dare you” he hissed. “I am perfectly capable of attracting –“
Dean thought it best to alert him to his presence since it usually calmed him down and he stepped up to him and gently laid a hand on his forearm.
Crowley’s eyes flashed up to him and he relaxed marginally. “You are lucky. My husband just came home. Do you want to talk to him about how I am holding him captive with my demon magic?”
Oh God. It was indeed lucky that he had returned. He quickly took the phone oust of Crowley’s hand. “Hello, Dean Winchester speaking.”
“Hello, Mr. Winchester.” He rolled his eyes. And he’d believed his husband sounded aggressively British when he wanted to. “My name is Arthur Ketch and I am with the Franklin Gazette. I was wondering if you were ready to comment on our upcoming story claiming that you were ensnared into marriage by –“
Seriously? Ensnared? He could only roll his eyes again. “Alright, listen, mister. I don’t care if you believe me or not, but I knew exactly who and what I was marrying hen I said yes. Yes, he’s a demon, and he can be a damn bastard when he wants to be. But he’s also romantic, kind and charming – again, when he wants to be. And he’s great damn good in bed to boot. He also tends to kill anyone who insults me or our children. I would tell you to be careful but frankly I am not concerned for your well-being at all. So now do me the favour and go to hell.” He hung up. “Is this going to be a problem?”
Crowley shrugged. “I was elected, so I have to assume people like me. And anyone who has seen us two together cannot possibly believe that you married me against your own free will.”
Damn right. And while they had been careful what information to release to the panic, Dean and the kids had figured prominently in Crowley’s successful re-election campaign. So really, this was just a storm in the water glass.
“I mean we can always deal with him if he annoys us too much…” his husband began hopefully.
“And have Sam bitch about it for the next ten years?”
He sighed. “Having the town sheriff for a brother-in-law is not the advantage I picture it to be.”
“So that’s why you proposed. You just wanted to use me to get to Sammy.”
“And what if I had?”
“Then, Crowley” Dean said carefully, reacting out and trailing a hand down his tie, “You need to be punished.” His voice dropped. “The children are with Cas.”
“Well then” Crowley drawled, “You may try to punish me although I doubt you’ll succeed.”
“Oh I have a lot of practice” he smirked.
Later that day, Dean was watching Crowley, Emma and Gavin play football in their yard, although he always thought that Crowley using his demon powers was unfair. The kids didn’t seem to mind, though.
Cas carried a fresh pitcher of lemonade out on the terrace. “Hey Cas. Come on, have a glass yourself.”
Their kind-of-butler-slash-kind-of-maid-slash-klind-of-nanny-slash-kind-of-roommate-slash-guy-whose-car-had-broken-down-in-town-one-day-and-who-had-apparently-randomly-decided-to-stay complied, although once again, Dean didn’t see him actually drink. The glass was empty after a few minutes, though.
“Your and Crowley’s Valentine celebration seems to have been… pleasant” Cas eventually said.
“Oh, hell yeah” Dean said, grinning at his husband, “It was.”
Alright, if he was being honest, so were most of their nights – and days – but that didn’t mean some couldn’t be more special than others now, could it?
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