#and while sorting through the BtVS guys

[takaraphoenix]

Came across the chart again and realized that the BtVS characters slot in there pretty darn perfectly, with my headcanons (Harmony: aroace, Oz: demisexual, Dru & Darla: pansexual aromantic). And yes, I think that Ethan is somehow both a disaster and a distinguished gay, he has the range.

[thissharktypes]

Spike (btvs) x reader

Sensitive crybaby reader x bitchy Spike lol GN reader College age Scoobies and reader

You swing your legs back and forth on the kitchen counter, nibbling on a peanut butter drenched apple slice while you watch Buffy, Giles and Xander bicker back and forth about the best way to dispatch of yet another group of vamps. The door swings open and Spike stalks in, boots thudding loudly enough to pause the chatter before they resume bickering. You hop down and trot over to Spike with a big grin on your face and a handful of apple slices. “Hi Spike! How are you tonight?” you chirp up at him, your smile faltering only slightly when he scowls at you, rolling his eyes and dropping himself down on the couch. You follow suit, sitting on the edge to give him space, you hold out you hand “Do you want an apple slice?” his mouth curls down in disgust “Can’t you leave me alone? Everytime you’re around it’s talk talk talk,” he makes a talking motion with his hand “Starting to think you’re just drenching your panties every time you see me at this point.” you retract your hand and stand up “Sorry Spike! I’ll leave you alone.” Your voice still bubbly despite the tears clouding your eyes.

Blinking rapidly you duck your head and quickly maneuver into the kitchen, busying yourself with making dinner for the group. Focusing on cutting veggies and stirring pots, picking out spices here and there, all these little things help you brush off another one of Spike’s outbursts “Hey, you okay?” Willow touches your shoulder gently and you nod “It’s fine, really! I know he’s just cranky today.” she sighs “Y/N he’s always like that, why do you keep trying to be nice to him?” you shrug, suddenly finding your shoes very interesting “I guess,” you hesitate “I guess I feel a sort of connection to him?” you squint at Willow “Before I met you guys I had nobody, I was just the weird kid.” You laugh softly “I know that deep loneliness, Nobody deserves that.” you whisper. Willow lets out a soft ‘awwwe’ and throws her arms around you. Out of everyone she had always been your closest friend, stumbling across her in the college library and immediately hitting it off by bonding over your similar fandom shirts you had both worn that day.

After a plan had been agreed on you set out bowls and plates, Willow trailing behind with silverware and cups. A big pot of pastina, fresh bread and a wonderful salad decorated your table. Cooking was something you took pride in, always so happy to share with your loved ones. But your eyes flickered towards Spike who had taken a seat near the end of the table, a spoon tightly grasped in his hand. You know in your heart that Spike could be kind, but the fear of him insulting the only thing you felt like you could offer to the group was rattling around in your skull.

Despite your hesitation you give him the benefit of the doubt and settle yourself in a chair too, letting everyone grab what they want before you serve yourself. Praises and compliments of how good it smells and how pretty everything is make you beam with pride “Okay okay enough talking, everyone eat!” you flap your hands dramatically. Everyone seems pleased with the food and casual conversations spark up before a groan followed by the loud clattering of a spoon and a chair being pushed back “I know the little one doesn’t have any useful skills for your merry little crew, but the food isn’t that good.” he turns on his heel and leaves, the door slamming shut behind him. All eyes are on you while you desperately try and keep a smile on your face while choking back tears, a hand slides into yours, you already know its Willow “It’s really good Y/N, you always cook for us when we’re sick or sad and it always makes us better, we wouldn’t keep coming over for meals if we didn’t like it.” Xander nods in agreement “You know me, I can’t lie about food.” he says through a mouthful of pasta and bread. You let out a watery laugh “Thanks you guys, It’s okay, I’ll keep trying. One day I’ll make him like me!” you wipe your eyes, ignoring the frustrated looks the group passes each other, all of them knowing you had spent every moment you could fighting to make Spike happy despite how much they all hated him.

Weeks pass, cookies laughed at, little clay sculptures insulted, clothing picked at, hair messed up, you took it all. Every last insult, every angry look, you tried so hard with your gifts, never giving up, until he took it too far.

Buffy had been gushing about some guy she met on campus, you and Willow sipping tea while the rest of the gang sat around the tv nearby “Ugh, I can’t even explain it!” she squealed happily “It’s like he’s perfect, and absolutely no vampy, demon-y, creepiness at all!” you and Willow give fake applause before you three melt into a pile of giggles “That just leaves you Y/N,” the red head wiggles her eyebrows “Everyone here has someone except you,” her nose scrunches “And crabby pants.” you swat her arm gently, laughing “I have a better chance at getting someone than that poor sod,” Spike shouts at the group “Nobody would pick such a boring creature like Y/N.” he snickers.

Your head swims, you have no idea why that hurt so much worse than anything he had said before. You stare at the table, trying to will away the sob that was bubbling up. Slowly standing, you push yourself away from the table, tears streaming down your cheeks. His grin drops as soon as he sees your face, but you’re gone, the front door flung wide open, silence falling over the room while your retreating figure gets farther and farther away. Willows fists clench, she had bit her tongue for the sake of you, but screw it “You fucking asswipe!” she chucks a plate at Spikes head, eyes wide, he ducks, just barely missing it “Every time Y/N does something nice you stomp on it! Do you know how hard they worked on every little gift for you?” her feet guide her in front of the now cowering blond man “And every single time you. made. them. Cry.” she jams a finger in his chest each time to punctuate her words “But they never give up, no matter how many times we all warn them about you they still pour their heart and soul into caring about you because they believed you deserved love and affection.” Willow snarls the last bit out, her rant more rage filled than any of her friends even thought she could muster.

Willows chest heaves, suddenly out of breath. She steps back, about to follow her friend outside before a hand stops her “I’m sorry. I’ll fix it.” Spikes face is hard as he leaves, unsure of how to handle the new information.

Over an hour of searching with no sign of you, he kicks a nearby tree, bark and wood splintering into the air “Bloody ponce!” he rakes his hands through his hair, aggravated “Such a bloody idiot!” Spike paces back and forth, a slew of self hatred spewing from his mouth. A twig snaps but he doesn’t even notice “Spike?” you sniffle, eyes puffy and red “Are you okay? Did you get hurt?” he whips around to face you, drinking in your pouty, quivering lips, how you’re hugging your elbows and shivering, the mud staining your pants. All this and your first thought is to comfort him? He has you pulled into his arms, face buried in your hair, gripping you against him, before you can even repeat your question. A muffled ‘Oh!’ as your face is smothered in his chest. You both stand like that for who knows how long, Spike’s fingers carefully running through your hair, pausing to unravel tangles or pull out little bits of twigs or leaves. You squirm, your legs hurting from holding you up for so long after running. He shifts and suddenly you’re both on the ground, you on his lap, now swaddled tightly in his jacket. Spike presses kisses all over your face before guiding you to nuzzle into his neck, he’s rambling and you’re barely able to catch each word “I’m so sorry love, I truly am, I shouldn’t have been such a wanker to you.” he tucks his jacket under your chin “I was…” he swallows “Scared, I ‘spose. You were just so sweet, absolutely dotting on me pet, I’m not used to it.” your hand curls into a fist, gripping his shirt “I’ve been right smitten with you since you tried to give me that dinosaur band-aid,” you smile against his skin, remembering that day “You had said somethin’ about you having ‘Ello Kitty ones too but you didn’t want me to be embarrassed.” he pulls you even closer “I kept everything, ate all your little treats too, took everything in me to not beg you to cook for me.” you pull back and look up at him with such a soft look on your face his breath catches in his throat “Really?” your voice is so quiet he almost didn’t hear you, but he nods, his now messy hair falling across his forehead “Pet… You scared me when you ran off, Willow put the fear of capital G-O-D into me, threw a plate at me and everything,” he chuckles “Your friends love you, so vocal about how much they care, made me a bit jealous I think.” he nods “I could write a thousand sonnets about your kindness and it would never be enough to even begin to explain how much I cherish you.” your lips are pressed to his the second he finishes. Wrapped in each others arms, soft kisses, sweet nothings whispered in your ears, everything you could have hoped for and more.

[forgiveness-in-the-misery]

I do want to post about the concept of a soul in BTVS because the show sort of fucked itself into a corner immediately with season one by introducing it as a big running theme.

Angel was a crappy human who then became a vampire and as a vampire he was beyond evil but then he was cursed with having a soul again and forced to feel guilt for all his crimes.

Which okay fine that works. If you are incapable of empathy then suddenly can feel it one day then yes every bad thing you did would make you feel horrible. Then he lives as a vampire with a soul for many many years….until he has sex with Buffy and loses his soul all over again.

Which is now where things become mildly complicated.

Angel no longer possessing a soul goes right back into being the world’s shittiest white guy. Admittedly I prefer Angelus cause Angel within this series is just a prop most times, while in his own spinoff show where they often tease the fact he is broody and weird only for him to admit he’s just immensely socially awkward.

Of course once Angel gets his soul back he goes back to being a good person.

Which is kind of a problem for me? We already before this were introduced to Spike as a new villain character in the show and he isn’t like other vampires. Spike despite being a soulless monster “stinks of humanity” according to another demon. Spike loves intensely, Spike is poetic and gentle with Dru, Spike mourns often, he can be depressed or anxious. He protects Dawn fiercely, he genuinely adores and loves Joyce, he mourns Buffy when she dies. There is the point of Spike having a chip preventing him from killing but that is literally all it does, it prevents him from killing. There is nothing about the chip making him be gentle or caring or showcase empathy constantly.

So after living quite a few years cursed with a soul wouldn’t Angel change overall? Does it solely depend on who sired you? Is Angel a lunatic asshole because he was sired by one? While Dru is more empathetic but even her own empathy is immensely short and we have seen how easily she can drop Spike over his own genuine humanity. So siring doesn’t seem completely in line.

Is Angel just a fucking crappy person with a weird white guilt thing going on? The dudebro who goes around apologizing for what he is but lowkey enjoys the privilege that comes with it?

Even outside of vampires there are some incredibly shitty humans in the show. We see plenty of human characters do things as horrifying as vampires and other demons.

So what is a soul?

A soul through Angel just seems to be a vehicle to make you depressed and never want to do a bad thing and the same happens for a time when Spike acquires a soul. For a short period he goes insane with guilt. But then Spike goes back to normal, a soul made no real difference in him as a character other than costuming changing his appearance so he looks more “trustworthy” which I personally find shady and dumb but that’s me.

I know over all it could all be just fantasy rules played fast and loose, but the show repeatedly makes a fucking point of souls. Souls seem to be the key of being an insanely good person despite the main characters being humans doing grossly shitty things, human villains doing repulsive things and random characters again doing and saying gross horrible things.

I wish the narrative had either not done the soul thing at all or at least had gone about it completely differently. Because if Angel losing his soul and becoming a monster then regaining it and being harmless again that should have been questioned in the narrative way more other than the characters just having some trauma they needed to get over and accept Angel again.

The issue of souls is why season seven for me is my fall of season because seeing Spike suddenly redeemed by becoming Catholic guilt man just put me off…and Kennedy. God dear God I hate her.

[caricature-of-fic]

mini fic for btvs 1x05 Never Kill a Boy on the First Date

Buffy & Willow; gen; general audiences

---

coda.

“Willow, am I frivolous?”

“Hmm?” Willow kept her eyes on the page until she had finished the sentence and covered the period at its end with her index finger before raising her head. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“Frivolous.” Buffy wasn’t looking at her. Well, she wasn’t not looking at her, or at least, she was looking in Willow’s general direction, but she was doing it in a strange, avoiding-any-direct-looking way. Instead, she seemed distracted by the book, of all things. “Just… something that Owen said.”

“Owen said something? I thought he was kinda… you know.” An idiot who’d only gotten properly interested in Buffy once he realised she could give him adrenaline kicks, or something. “Out of the picture.”

“He is! Something he said before. Before all of… that.”

“Oh. Okay.” With only a small twinge of regret, Willow removed her finger from between the pages and replaced it with the bookmark. “What did he say?”

“Something about… that he doesn’t think dating is important. And that he doesn’t bother with it because he thinks most girls are frivolous. I kinda brushed it off at the time, I mean, he was on a date with me and dancing and all. But I just… Willow, he reads Dickinson. And I’m pretty sure he only thought I wasn’t frivolous is because I lied about liking Dickinson, too.”

A few potential responses ran through Willow’s brain at that, not all of them charitable. A lot of girls were frivolous, in her opinion. Which was what doomed Willow to unpopularity, because she wasn’t, but which also provided the comforting thought that she didn’t want to be like that, anyway. Not really. Even if it would be nice to be included, sometimes. Except she’d have assumed Buffy was like those girls, too, wouldn’t she?

And Buffy was, wasn’t she? She was pretty and stylish and got asked out by boys and didn’t like studying and didn’t care about books except when a cute boy made her lie about it. But… she also wasn’t like that, because she also cared about other people’s feelings and she hung out with Willow, which showed a clear at least sort-of disregard for her social status, and she spent a lot of time hanging out in graveyards and doing backflips at vampires before shoving stakes in their hearts. So that firmly differentiated her from, say, Cordelia.

Except. If Buffy hadn’t chosen to befriend Willow, Willow would never know all these things about her. She’d just see her as one more popular, shallow, frivolous girl with nothing but boys on the brain, someone Willow wanted nothing to do with while also desperately wishing to be accepted and included by, and she really preferred not to think too deeply on that contradiction because now it just made her wonder if maybe Cordelia was doing heroic things without anyone’s knowledge.

She probably wasn’t, but still.

“I tried reading Dickinson,” Buffy mumbled. Willow hoped this had been a natural continuation and not a despondence caused by her failing to answer for too long. “Why would you put that many dashes into a poem? You’d think she'd know how to finish sentences, if she writes so much poetry.”

“Not reading Dickinson does not make you frivolous,” Willow declared firmly. That much, she knew. “Reading it just makes you broody. Just look at Owen. 40 minutes straight, remember? See what reading dash-filled poetry about death does to you.”

“He wasn’t quite so broody anymore after seeing death for real.” There was a hint of bitterness in Buffy’s voice.

“I guess not. But, Buffy…”

“What?”

“Maybe—maybe someone who goes from ‘broody death poem reader’ straight to ‘let’s challenge death by starting bar fights at 3am’ isn’t really the best partner to have, anyway?”

“I… yeah. Yeah, maybe not.” Buffy huffed a laugh, and Willow grinned at her.

“There’s plenty of other fish in the sea. Or the school. Anyway, what’d that Angel guy actually want before we showed up…?”

[tuiyla]

Just saw a gifset you reblogged and the gears in my head started turning and I remembered some stuff from when I was googling timelines and the like and frok watching stuff, you get it. So here's some things that I find kinda fun

Season 1 btvs aired in March and in the same month Scream 2 was also greenlit. Scream 2 started filming in June, the month season 1 btvs finished airing. Which is fun to me because Sarah Michelle Gellar is in both btvs and Scream 2 (apparently she signed onto Scream 2 without reading the script because of the success of the first scream film but I've not seen the interview so can't confirm). She also stars in 2 live action scooby-Doo films (Scooby-Doo (2002) and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004)) along with Matthew Lillard who played Stuart in the first scream film. In Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed Seth Green plays plays Patrick; Seth also played oz in btvs. And this is all very fun to me you see.

Also, only tangibly related, in Scream (2021) (AKA scream 5) and Scream 6 Jasmin Savoy Brown plays Mindy. In Yellowjackets Jasmin plays Tai and Christina Ricci plays Misty. Christina played Wednesday Adams in 2 Adams family films (The Addams Family and Addams Family Values). She was also in netflix's Wednesday where the tituler character (who is the same Wednesday that Christina played in the 2 previously mention Addams family movies) is played by Jenna Ortaga. Jenner Ortaga stars alongside Jasmin in scream 5 and 6. Again this is just very fun to me.

Also also in a previous ask you said how you kinda enjoy monster of the week and me too!!! like some times an all-consuming overarching plot is just a headach and sometimes it's nice just to have a different random dude doing a kinda different thing each week while still getting a bit of character development for the main girlys.

Also also also I've only seen a few early episodes of btvs (it's been on my 'to watch' list for like a decade now) but I couldn't remember who Xander was until I saw you calling him annoying and then I instantly remembered, which isn't great for his character in the first, and maybe quite possibly second, season I don't think...

Anyways sorry this is long as shit and may not make sense, love ya xoxo💖

Heya bestie, sorry it took me a while to get to this. I loved reading your message! These sort of thought trains are exactly my kind of deal haha. Very fun to me too. I started thinking about how to tie Buffy and Glee together and the best I could come up with was through Veronica Mars because Alyson Hannigan and Charisma Carpenter were both recurring on there and Jane Lynch and Dianna Agron guest starred. Boom!

Now that I'm further along with BtVS I do think its overaching stories are done well and make for better episodes than the Monster of the Week formula but I'm glad they don't completely abandon it because it is fun. I see what people say about s1 in terms of it being different than the rest of the series but I still look back on it as entertaining and I don't find the episodes people consider to be tedious bad. I actually really liked The Pack and even the puppet one. The character development is overall strong on BtVS so as long as we have that I don't mind if a lot of episodes aren't about the given Big Bad of the season. So yeah that is to say I think Buffy is probably up your alley! It was on my to watch list for a looooong while too but I'm very glad I finally got around to it.

And yeah Xander lmao, well to be fair I think people expected me to loathe him and I kinda don't? I have a well overdue ask about him but being halfway through the series I maintain that he is annoying but have gotten better and I can appreciate aspects of his ch. If anything I think his douchebagery peaked (so far) in late s2/very early s3 and now he's rightfully taken his place as Just Some Guy. I might eat my words later on if he becomes Finn Hudson levels of annoying. I doubt it though. (Unless he outs Willow and acts as the hero afterward in which case I hope he perishes <3)

[restlesshush]

Godstiel vs Angelus vs Casifer

Ever since I saw this very fun post by @trekkiedean several months ago I have had had many thoughts stewing but now I’ve actually seen the Casifer arc I’m actually in a position to lay them out. So:

The big thing that interests me about the idea of Casifer being an attempt to redo Godstiel by making it more Angelus-y, is that as character explorations of the character involved go, Casifer is (on paper) the least interesting but arguably the most love interest-y. On the surface, it sounds like trying to have another go at a very interesting concept (Godstiel) by making it more like a slightly less interesting concept (Angelus) resulting in an even less interesting concept (Casifer). Except, of course, that’s not actually quite what’s going on because this isn’t about Cas in his own right.

The optimal Godstiel (or, indeed, Dark Willow) arc (an exploration of how the character’s traits manifest in an extreme situation designed to bring out the worst in them) would be a more interesting piece of character analysis than the optimal Angelus arc (all of the dark impulses of the character, with no agency from their regular self), which would be a more interesting piece of character analysis than the optimal Casifer arc (where aside from having the opportunity to explore the reasons the character would put themselves in this situation, it’s literally just some other guy). However, the thing is that while character analysis of Cas is ostensibly sort of the point of Godstiel (in order to justify killing him off) as Cas and Angel are both supporting characters, they are really not the focus for Casifer and (btvs s2) Angelus in their own right. I do think it’s informative to touch on, but they’re not really what we should be comparing in order to look at what the story’s trying to do with them, especially not for a show as pathologically protagonist-focussed as spn.

What we should be looking at instead, is comparing the ways in which Angelus and Casifer are designed to impact our leads, so Buffy and Dean respectively. An ideal godstiel arc has to have Cas as the focus, so by default isn’t going to be (and shouldn’t be) tailored around the effect on Dean in the way that btvs s2 Angelus is re Buffy. Casifer kind of falls in a middle ground, because purpose-wise, it is also a way to facilitate having Lucifer around again (not that there couldn’t also be other ways), and unlike Angelus where torturing Buffy (although also in the process her friends) is his whole raison d’être, Lucifer really doesn’t give a shit about Dean. However, in the season where Dean is suddenly strikingly nicer to Cas again it is definitely worth looking at the plausible story logic behind Casifer through the lens of what it shows about Cas and Dean’s relationship, and the primary function it seems to serve on a character level is simply damselling Cas.

Angelus instead is all about the ways this relationship gone bad hurts Buffy, while Angel himself is entirely absent (because yeah, schoolgirl, your boyfriend is dead). Buffy’s feelings about Angel serve no practical function anymore, they only make it more difficult for her to do what needs to be done. They’re also not new information for us: we know Buffy loved Angel, that’s why this happened plot-wise, and why we care as an audience. On the other hand – in contrast to Angelus which does still tell us things about Angel and also the rest of the Scoobies – the main thing Casifer does on a character level, is give opportunities to show that Dean cares about Cas and avoiding him being hurt, to an extent that goes both beyond practicality (Dean, why saving Cas step 0 in your apocalypse-stopping plan when it’s not even necessary?), and beyond the way other characters feel (“it’s not an ‘it’, Sam, it’s Cas”). Aside from briefly touching on Cas’s horrifically low self-worth, it is simply all about Dean’s focus on Cas’s well-being, which I find particularly fun to run through the lens of this illuminating post by @autisticandroids. Just as much as the Angelus arc, the Casifer arc is one that it makes most sense to give to a love interest, but specifically when you, the spn writers’ room, are looking at the relationship through the perspective of the male other party. What if not only was someone evil wearing your beloved’s face, but you also had to rescue your beloved from them?? Delicious.

Anyway, I love it when spn does things that won’t allow me to parse Cas as anything other than Dean’s love interest, and the Casifer arc thoroughly does that for me. This is strengthened not only by the parallels with the Angelus arc, but specifically by the effects of the fact that in contrast to Angel, Cas isn’t dead – Dean can still try to help him. And then most entertainingly the fact that the Casifer arc is less conducive to interesting character work otherwise, means cementing Cas’s position as at the very least someone Dean cares immensely about, but really as his love interest, is absolutely the primary thing it’s doing on that score.

[sandalaris]

001 Umbrella Academy and 003 Seth Gecko and 004 Buffyverse/Teen Wolf

Thanks @yossariandawn for sending this!

001 | Send me a fandom and I will tell you my:

Favorite character: Diego 💕 but Five is a close second.

Least Favorite character: Reginald! The only good thing I can say about him is that he brought the Hargreeves together. Oh, and I guess he did give Vanya her first violin. Still an awful guy though.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): Not sure I have a full five, but in no particular order: Lila/Five, Diego/Vanya, Agnes/Hazel, Luther/Alison, and Five/Vanya

Character I find most attractive: Probably Ben, but Alison is a gorgeous close second.

Character I would marry: Maybe Diego? Possibly Klaus after season two if he could stay sober.

Character I would be best friends with: Probably Alison. I feel like she and I would get along well in that regard.

a random thought: I hope there’s not an apocalypse next season, and I hope the next time they do an apocalypse, it’s not because Vanya loses control of her powers but rather some other siblings who sets it off.

An unpopular opinion: Luther was just as messed up as the rest of his siblings by Reginald and deserves the same amount of understanding/forgiveness for his mistakes.

my canon OTP: Luther/Alison are such a cute couple

Non-canon OTP: Lila/Five came out of nowhere and grabbed my attention in both hands and demanded I pay it the respect it deserves :P

most badass character: Five

pairing I am not a fan of: I can’t really get behind Ben/Klaus. Most of the other ships I’m at least neutral on, but that one just isn’t for me.

character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): I can’t say that they screwed her up yet, but if they magically bring the Handler back next season I think that’d be a major screw up on the writers back. Once I get, and I love the character, but they can’t keep killing her off and then bringing her back without the whole thing losing the impact it had the first time. (Now if they find a way to have her past self pop in now and again to make things sticky, I could be down for that, but I don’t want her back as a main antagonist again.)

favourite friendship: Ben and Klaus... which also might be why I don’t ship them romantically. They’re too much of a brOTP for me.

character I want to adopt or be adopted by: all the little Hargreeves! :( And maybe Lila too, let them have more normal childhoods.

I did the Seth one last because it ended on a bunch of gifs

004 | send me 2 fandoms and I will give yo my crossover OTP

BtVS and TW aired at two such different times that I don’t think I’ve ever thought about crossover potential between them.

And since I couldn’t seem to think of an OTP, I went with three potential dynamics I wouldn’t mind exploring XD

Is it odd that I think there’s potential between Willow and Peter? There’d have to either be some history there, maybe they bonded in early school years. Or else Peter manipulated and pushed Willow, either because he saw her as an easy target or because he sensed the magic potential in her and was poking at it, to the point she snapped back. Once its established that there’s some hefty bite behind the fuzzy sweaters and nervous babble, he’d get curious. And curiosity would eventually lead to some kind of relationship, whether romantic or platonic. Peter would become weirdly protective over her, but not in a physical sense so much as a he speaks to her in a way that isn’t designed to provoke, and will glare/threaten those who he feels isn’t giving her the care she deserves.

I think I could also at least mildly ship Scott/Dawn for some reason. I don’t know why, but I feel like his puppiness and her sort of optimistic awkwardness could click. Plus he’d take the whole “I was a glowy blob of energy for most of my life” thing in stride. 

Oz, being BtVS’ primary werewolf, would have been great as a Just Passing Through wolf who runs into the Hale pack circa Derek’s keeps-turning-high school-students phase and who ends up sticking around for a bit. He’s not an official pack member, he likes his lone wolf status just fine, but he’s discovered quite a bit of harmonizing with his inner wolf and ways of controlling a shift that he ends up becoming kind of a much needed mentor. He also has a plethora of much needed supernatural knowledge and unlike Deaton, he’s willing to share.

003 | Give me a character & I will tell you Seth Gecko

How I feel about this character: Sarcastic, grumpy asshole with selective morals! *heart eyes*

All the people I ship romantically with this character: Kate... that’s it, the whole list. No seriously, all the ship questions below have the exact same answer... Kate...

My non-romantic OTP for this character: Gecko Brothers are brOTP to the max. They are ride or die for each other and I love that they are such a package deal.

My unpopular opinion about this character: Not sure I have an unpopular opinion on him specifically. At least not one that I haven’t mentioned before, lol.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:  Whoops, almost missed this one. The show did a pretty good job at showing Seth’s journey, I’m not sure there’s anything I would change per say, but maybe getting to see a bit more of what was happening during the time between seasons. The Mexican Honeymoon and the Seth and Richie integrating into the culebra world, that sort of thing.

my het ship: SethKate 100%

my fem/slash ship: I really only ship him with Kate... so maybe Kade, the stubborn preacher’s son trying to hold his family together after the death of his mama when they’re family vacation gets hijacked by a couple bankrobbers trying to flee to Mexico.... and I actually remember seeing I think it was a gif set, but it might have just been some pics, of someone’s idea of a genderswapped Kate Fuller and now I’m trying to figure out the actor they used...

I’m kind of picturing this guy (only with a dye job and maybe some green contacts), but he’s got a more masculine version of Madison’s jaw and his nose, while not perfect (she’s got a pretty unique nose) is long and slender like hers, and his eyes have that sort of slight downward angle.

I found one other guy that might work, his mouth was spot on and his eyes were practically perfect, but his nose is all wrong, his look much edgier (although that could be easily changed), and his jaw/chin wasn’t quite right. He’s here if you‘re curious. :)

my OTP: SethKate... yeah, I’m pretty predictable :P

my OT3: I’ve at least enjoyed the occassional Seth/Kate/Richie fic, so that’d probably be the closet I have to an OT3 for Seth

my cross over ship: er... I’m not sure I’d put Seth with anyone else. Maybe for funsies I’d play with the idea of movie!Seth/show!Kate and/or show!Seth/movie!Kate, but that’d be as far into crossover territory I’d take him romantically.

my kink: I don’t know that I have a go-to one, but that little one sentence prompt where Seth tries to seduce Ms. Fuller? I really want to explore more of that. So student/teacher?

a head cannon fact: Seth, for all his rebellion and bluster and rudeness, doesn’t know it but he wants the approval of those he sees as father figures, to himself and others. With guys like Uncle Eddie it comes out as trying to please them, charm them, make them like him and find him worthy of their approval and praise. For others, like Jacob Fuller, who he thinks will never accept him, will always find see him as beneath him, he goes of his way to try and prove that he doesn’t want or need their acceptance, shoving it in their face at every turn.

my gender bend: Michelle Rodriguez is the first person I thought of. I wish I could find more pics of her in Seth approved outfits, but you’ll have to make due with what I did find :P

Now I’m picturing female!Seth and male!Kate (who will forever be Kade in my mind) during their Mexican Honeymoon and that tearful good-bye at the gate.

[dudebroreg]

There are a lot of shows and characters this could apply to, but I have never been fond of what I call “TV consolation prizes” for characters whose significance has been dropped in some way. When it is clear that a character is being given some sort of olive branch because another option is no longer in reach. For ships this is when, say, the character on the short end of romantic drama gets a “here you go, now the loser gets to be happy too!” love interest. Off the top of my head, I’m thinking Stefan/Caroline post Stefan/Elena/Damon. 

Don’t get me wrong, there are times when a “the person this character wanted to be with isn’t the person that they were truly meant to be with and now they’re finding out that this unexpected new love interest is their real happily ever after” story is beautifully executed, but Steroline wasn’t..that. At least to me, I heavily felt the “this is because Stefan doesn’t get to be with Elena but he still needs a girlfriend because he’s Stefan” vibe through that whole thing, even when they had Stefan say shit like “this isn’t what I had with Elena, but maybe... it’s... better...” implying that stability is better than passion, which may be true in life but doesn’t exactly inspire me on a show like TVD and knowing how passionate Stefan is about everything, nor is him asking if it’s even necessary to make a big spectacle of proposing to her when you know that that boy would have done the cheesiest romantic novel shit for Elena and at one time Katherine. (Of course, this is also completely unfair to Caroline Forbes who was one of the best characters on the show and deserved to not be a “TV consolation prize.”)

But Stefan was still a central character regardless of who he was dating, so ships aside, one of the biggest examples of a character given “TV consolation prizes” instead of core depth focus I can think of is Xander Harris on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Xander was a major central player in the narrative of the high school episodes. I would say even more so than Angel, since it was always a special occasion when we got to see Angel outside of Buffy’s perspective, whereas the program regularly honed in on Xander’s individual feelings/development/mistakes/triumphs/failures/romances through his own POV. I think after the high school episodes, for whatever reason, his character was just downgraded from that level of focus. Buffy and Willow continued getting these central POV stories (deservedly so, since the show is called BtVS and Willow is Willow, self-explanatory), while Xander in lieu of them (aside from his occasional “very special Xander episode”) got these “here you go, now Xander has cool stuff too!” cookies. We don’t get to see how it all happened, but while the other Scoobies are doing the important shit in the story, we check in now and then to see that Xander has a job, Xander has an apartment, Xander has learned to be more supportive! So on and so forth. I love Anya as a character, mostly for her hilariously blunt way of calling people out, but even that she was kind of brought in as his de facto girlfriend for the rest of the run of the show wasn’t something I was especially high on. I didn’t hate Xander/Anya, either. I just thought they were... there.

I’m biased in how this overall downgrade of his character annoyed me since (especially in the earlier episodes) I watched BtVS a lot from Xander’s perspective because he was the “every man” of the show. I totally get that with Buffy being a defining female empowerment series that the perspective of the character who represents the “average guy” is not as important as Buffy and Willow’s experiences, nor should it be, but Xander definitely deserved more than what he was after the high school episodes as part of the day one Scooby family.

[wombathos]

1.8 i robot... you jane

- this episode is so late nineties, it’s beautiful

- what is up with the starting scene where the pretty boy is asked to profess his love to the wrinkly moloch (the corruptor) demon 

- so i robot… you jane is a fun episode title (riffing off tarzan) (also asimov! specifically I’m guessing his robopsychologist stories got to admire the man’s commitment to cool scifi versions of psychology about positronic brains and stuff) and it’s not like those influences are entirely absent from the episode itself but… eh. the tarzan and jane stuff is there in the interactions between characters from different........ cultures, fine, I guess? and I suppose one form of a positronic brain would be some ancient demon consciousness as a machine, sure that’s what asimov had in mind

- the scanning magic words and thus letting the demon loose in the computer is admittedly a neat idea, playing off the whole ~power of the words themselves~ trope and trying to bring the magic and tech worlds together (though contrast with s4 episodes that just had unabashedly scifi villains like adam without needing to explicitly involve magic, iirc anyway). also like how the words disappear when they’re scanned - which reminds me of dark willow sucking those magic shop books dry, ~uploading~ them as a source of power

- bit of a tonal disconnect between a character going “I’m jacked in I’m jacked in I’m jacked in” but then in the next shot committing decidedly disturbing self harm

- “to read makes our speaking english good” is just a beautiful line

- one thing I appreciate about btvs episodes - as someone who gets really strong second hand embarrassment - is that even though main characters occasionally have to be idiots for plot purposes, they usually don’t go too far. willow does get suspicious pretty quickly when malcolm knows too much about buffy. and despite how it did tackle the whole ‘oh well you never know who you’re talking to on the internet!’ by going ‘it COULD be a robot/ancient demon’, which... well. it does at least devote some time to the students’ loneliness and why willow might want to believe that the internet guy is real

- “okay, for those in our studio audiences who are me?” nice fourth wall nudge by xander there

- the ‘suicide’ of the boy catches me unawares every single time I watch this episode. it’s such a jarringly dark moment. idk, it’s not like btvs doesn’t normally switch up tones and I can’t attest to how this would’ve played to audiences in the 90s, but I think where I struggle is that despite alluding to plenty of serious fears of technology, the actual plot is... really quite silly (especially the way the fritz character is written), but it doesn’t necessarily feel like the episode is acknowledging that in the same way other episodes might or even seem to be aware of it - so a lot of the dark stuff feels quite cheap and used only for shock value. hence the tonal disconnect

- the robot in the military facility gives it a proto-s4 vibe

- “the divine exists in cyberspace” ha

- about the technopagan thing - it is interesting as a s1-ism since after the early years there’s a lot of emphasis on magic and science as oppositional worlds, which is discussed a lot in relation to willow but isn’t exclusive to her either. like in a post-s2 world, they could’ve gone with willow continuing on with jenny’s path to find a sort of union of the two worlds, contrasting that with giles old-school approach, but they don’t, really. there’s moments where the two meet, like when willow uses magic to make a computer search go faster at some point in s6, but even for willow they mostly remain very separate? she’s adept in both, but in s4 it’s all about how she’s into all the ‘new age’ witch stuff now (not so much in love with those computers any more, she’s into that new trendy thing, get it, get it), then in s6 and in bits of s7, she tries to replace magic by going back to her computer skills. so there’s not really a lot of technopagan-ing going around (not really thought through the implications of this, but I feel like this could’ve been something interesting for her to explore in s7 when she’s trying to forge a new identity of sorts? then again, that would mean you’d need a concrete idea of what technopaganism constitutes beyond ‘using the computer to research stuff’ and ‘doing remote magic circles’ and the more I think about it, it does feel kinda gimmick-y. here it’s fine because it’s the contrast between new and old but… at most tech could be reintegrated into s7 in that faintly utopian noughties spirit of finding community through the internet and willow making her own way, reaching out to others like her, all that collective empowerment schtick) and WOW this is a tangent and a half, anyway

- this is an odd episode for cordelia to miss since it feels like she would’ve fit right into pushing the lonely nerds a little further in their loneliness and their ‘no one else understands me’ thing, except maybe given the dark turn of this episode, they felt like that’d make cordelia look a bit too bad/distract from the main plot

- speaking of lonely nerds, on the balance of s1 villains, the bullied do end up being the villains more often than the bullies, don’t they? for the former you get fritz, invisible girl, admittedly fake-out villain of puppet show. then while the nightmares kid isn’t bullied or a villain, he is abused and thus also a victim. for the latter, there’s the pack. other villains are a teacher, a coach and a mother - all authority figures - and then various vampires who don’t at all fit into the high school hierarchy. all in all, there’s a lot of characters using the supernatural to lash out at others, often their bullies, with sometimes more and sometimes less sympathy afforded to them. but then you also have the protagonists, who are themselves put-upon nerds but ones who don’t (yet) reach to supernatural solutions to dealing with their high school enemies, as well as the negative ways in which the figures at the top of the hierarchy, including cordelia, are portrayed throughout the season. so maybe there’s a fairly even split in how the supernatural is both used in tormenting the weak but also used by the weak to lash out in turn, reacting to their powerlessness (but not in a way the audience is meant to see as good or right)

- moloch telling willow “you are mine”, even robots are doing the male possessiveness thing these days

- “let’s face it. none of us are ever gonna have a happy, normal relationship” press f to pay respects

[yourstreetserenade]

📖?

So I have a very old idea that’s been sitting in my docs for roughly 8 years, it was written for BTVS/Angel verse.

It was an Angel/Cordy fic that sort of diverged mid-Season 3. In canon, Angel and Cordelia begin to fall for each other but their getting together is thwarted when a past love interest of Cordelia’s, Groo, arrives in the middle of the season. 

I basically reimagined the love triangle scenario and instead of using Groo, I introduced Phantom Dennis as a love interest. If you recall Cordelia’s apartment was haunted by a ghost, Dennis, who often acted as her protector. There was an episode in season one that told the story of how he died and came to inhabit the apartment, 50 years prior to Cordelia’s arrival.

So the story opens up in Dennis’ POV, we see how he watches and protects Cordelia, how he longs to be human again and how he even came to build a friendship with Fred (which is hinted at in canon). Unbeknownst to Angel and Cordelia, Fred and Dennis have been working together. Dennis wants to be human again and Fred has been researching ancient texts, trying to find some kind of spell that will restore Dennis. 

One night Fred and Dennis are experimenting with one of these spells and there’s a blast and some charred carpet and wah-la, Phantom Dennis is no longer a Phantom. He’s alive and human again, living and breathing. When Angel and Cordelia arrive at her place (after a night of patrolling) he’s there. Angel is very apprehensive, he’s somewhat territorial over Cordy and he’s not aggressive with Dennis, but he’s definitely nervous about his arrival. Cordy, meanwhile, is shocked but very welcoming. Dennis has always taken care of her and now that he’s human again she wants to help him get on his feet.

The rest of the story is about how Cordelia helps Dennis adjust to the modern world with cell phones and malls and such. They grow closer as Angel grapples with his jealous, with lots of awkward, bumbly Angel that endears him to the reader. Cordy lets Dennis stay at her apartment because it was his before it was hers after all and she doesn’t want to kick him out of his only home. There’s scenes of Cordelia trying to help him talk to women at clubs, there’s a scene where Dennis takes Cordy for a malt. They have several long meaningful talks. Dennis finds her high school year book and says he wishes he could’ve known her then. Cordy reminisces about her time as a mean girl and admits she probably wouldn’t have been very kind to him. Dennis says he would’ve seen through all of that, to the real her, to the woman she is now, the woman she would become. Over a period of time it becomes evident to everyone but Cordelia that Dennis is in love with her.

Over the course of the story Cordelia has been urging Angel to utilize Dennis on missions. She suggests he be a part of the team along with Wesley, Gunn and Fred. Angel isn’t for it but relents eventually to allowing Dennis train with Wesley and Gunn. He lets him hang around the hotel answering phones and running errands but insists he stay out of their fights.

Until one night a Big Bad is on the loose and the gang has to fight it in some dark, damp alley way. Things go down and despite being told to stay behind Dennis follows after and after a mistep, Cordelia is injured in the fight. Angel is livid and blames Dennis and it results in Angel biting his head off (figuratively) and he basically tells Dennis this never would’ve happened if he had just stayed a ghost. Dennis, with his tail between his legs, goes back to sulk at Cordelia’s apartment.

Cordelia recovers after awhile (I believe she has super healing at this point in the show if I’m remembering correctly) and she and Angel have a huge fight over Dennis. They go back and forth about him and Cordelia finally says something like ‘’are you angry at him or are you angry at me?’’ and they get into the fact that Angel has felt insecure about Cordelia spending all this time with him. Cordy and Angel have been dancing around their feelings for the entire season and they finally hash it out with Dennis being the catalyst. 

Cordelia and Angel end the conversation in an uncertain place, they’re both still upset....

...I have all of this written out, my problem was each time I got to this point the story told me that organically, I felt like Cordelia should end up in Dennis’ arms. I started it as a Cordy/Angel fic but I kept going back to Cordelia and this background ‘’character’’. Dennis is very much a silent entity on the show so I could make him be whatever I wanted him to be. I made him into a charming slightly dorky guy who’s just a little bit out of his element (being from a different era and all). Throughout the fic there are scenes of Cordelia and human Dennis having conversations about what it means to be alive and to be the best version of yourself and I found myself falling in love with what is essentially Cordelia/OC.

No matter how much I walked Angel back and made him more understanding, more vulnerable, no matter how much Angel/Cordy banter I injected, it still felt like Cordy should end up with the ghost lol. Phantom Dennis is pretty beloved in the fandom but I wasn’t sure if that was something anyone would want to read.

I truly believe it is a beautiful story and while it sounds a little grey, it was actually really funny in some parts. I read it three months ago and was really pleasantly surprised at how engaging it was :)

[whatspastisprologue-blr]

Writing Advice, the Completed Version

This is a follow up to this post: https://whatspastisprologue-blr.tumblr.com/post/184968470815/writing-advice. I’d written that on my phone, I think, and goofed somehow, so I didn’t post the entire thing. 

Now, to start, I love reading what you guys have to say, and I consider you guys basically geniuses. You spend hours, or what seems like hours, analyzing SPN (and also other works as well, but mainly SPN), and you’re willing to put up with horrible backlash from people too dumb to realize they’re wrong. 

And I keep thinking how I would love to write something, be it a novel or a TV show, that people love so much that that they’re willing to write meta for it. Contrary to what I’ve seen around about some creators being upset when their audience figures out what’s going on, I’d be delighted to know that people care so much that they pay close enough attention to figure it out. As for things like subtext, I see myself jumping up and down like, “You’ve got it! I thought you would! I put that in there to see if you’d notice and you did! Yay!” To me, meta has become a high form of praise just by its existence, but from the standpoint of literary criticism and how art both reflects and transforms society, also absolutely necessary. Please, critique art!

Which leads me to part two: how do I actually put stuff into the work for people to write meta about? Like, I’ve seen mini-essays ranging from fictional parallels/references/shout-outs to alchemical practices to entire discussions about, for instance, specific shirts (”x character is wearing x shirt again!”) to various pieces of decor to the meaning of various types of food (bacon, cake versus pie, burgers) and how food is used (Sam and food, or Cas and food). I’ve seen posts written analyzing songs used in episodes and how they inform the episodes or a character’s arc, etc. I’ve watched fascinating yet trippy videos about narrative spiral that make me wish I was approximately 400% smarter so I could properly appreciate and understand what I was watching. I’ve seen meta about colors and symbols, and the symbolism of different types of beer, which means that someone must have thought of it.

Someone, at some point, decided, “let’s have a beer that symbolizes family, a family beer”. And others agreed. And someone else, or perhaps that same person, decided, “let’s have a beer that shows up whenever things aren’t as they seem”, and again, others agreed, so now we have a running list of El Sol appearances. 

I’ve seen some truly mind-blowing, fantastic meta that’s been written, but obviously, that analysis works because there’s something to analyze. It wasn’t pulled from nothing, as some mistakenly believe. We can talk about the Red Shirt of Bad Decisions because there’s evidence for it in the text. Someone put it there. Someone made sure to include El Sol enough times in episodes with a similar theme (things being not what they seem/alternate realities/djinn hallucinations) that we can talk about its significance and know, in upcoming episodes, that when we see that beer, it’s a sign that there’s incorrect assumptions being made by characters, that what we see isn’t necessarily real, etc. 

So, how do I put content into a work so that people can pick up on it and then write about its meaning and significance? 

I guess, relevant to this, is a third question, that could possibly help me figure all this out as well: what makes “Supernatural” worth writing all this meta about? That might not be phrased right to get my meaning across. While, granted, I have fandom lanes that I stay in, so I could just be unaware of meta being written for that work, but I don’t hear of people analyzing, say, “Psych”, or “Bones”, or “NCIS”. I don’t hear of long, in depth-articles about how food is used on “Glee” to give insight into a character’s mental/emotional state or closeted bisexuality. Is that just because there’s nothing to write meta about for those shows, or is it because, even if there is something to write meta about for those shows, “Supernatural” lends itself to that analysis and criticism in a way those other television shows don’t?

On a related note, people have been publishing books and YouTube videos and even teaching college classes at least partially about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and its spin-off, “Angel”, for 20-odd years. Is all of the meta surrounding “Supernatural” the progression of that phenomenon, with SPN at least partially reaping the benefits of what BtVS helped establish? Does it have something to do with being a paranormal genre show?

Don’t get me wrong, I truly and wholeheartedly believe that SPN is a show worth writing meta about, and I’m always excited to see more of it. So it’s not whether or not the show is worth it that I’m questioning, but what specific qualities contribute to the show’s worthiness that so many other television shows don’t seem, to my knowledge, to have?

As a budding literary critic, meta is fascinating; as a creator, it’s kind of overwhelming, because that’s a lot of analysis of a work, a lot of studying with a magnifying glass. But, as someone who’s starting to see the willingness of people to write meta as a benchmark or grade of how good that work is (because people, I would assume, wouldn’t spend several hours writing an analysis of a show that sucked), it means that I want to do a good job of putting things in there for people to pick at, and I want to do what I can to make sure that what’s being analyzed is something good (as in, the messages are positive and/or useful, no harmful lessons or unfortunate implications). 

I’ve been working on the backstory for my series for at least a year now, and I still feel like I’m less than halfway done. I don’t want to start writing without a clear plan of where I’m going, at least for a little while (my idea is to have a few “little endings”, thinking for if this is going to be a TV show one day, and if the show gets cancelled before the “Big Ending”, I still want there to be an ending that’s satisfying, even if it’s not the Big Ending that I hoped to get to, so I suppose I could plan to the first little ending). Sometimes, I feel like I’m behind, drastically behind, that I should have at least one book (or season) planned by now, but then I think about how I’m still in my early twenties, and how I want to write something worth writing meta about (and thus, the work needs to contain something to write meta about) and part of me wants to freeze and is grateful that the going has been slow so far. 

But, with “Supernatural” ending, and given my love for the sandbox that it’s helped define and re-define, with episodes that push the bounds of storytelling in so many fascinating and delightful ways, given my appreciation for shows such as SPN, BtVS/Angel, and Wynonna Earp (and also Stranger Things and Lucifer), I’m inspired to write. Part of it is to honor SPN’s legacy by re-defining the sandbox even further, by taking what it’s done so wonderfully and, sort of like a relay race, doing my part to carry the baton a little farther--because that show has been so amazing that, since I truly love and appreciate it, how do I not pay it forward? Pay tribute? How could I just drop the baton? And part of it is because the general sandbox that those shows play in is just one that I love, one that I want to play in and expand on, and help continue to demonstrate that genre shows are (or can be) awesome, transformative pieces of art, not just some semi-obscure show about fighting monsters. 

To do all that, however, I’d really appreciate your advice, and if you think of others who should weigh in, I’d be thrilled to hear from them as well.

Thanks!

@mittensmorgul @occamshipper @tinkdw @dimples-of-discontent @drsilverfish

P.S: I saw this GIF, or a picture of it, before I knew it was from SPN. When I saw it in an episode, I was just like, “?!”. (Oh, the things I’d seen from SPN before realizing it, or all the scenes I could recognize/quote that I’d maybe seen clips of at most, because I’d seen GIFs and screencaps so many times--that show took over my life before I ever started watching it). Anyway, as much as I truly love storytelling and I want to do it for my life because I love it and because I want to inspire hope in people through art, I’ll leave with this:

[buffster]

The Yoko Factor (BTVS 4.20)

This is part of my ongoing Buffyverse Project, where I write notes/meta for every episode in an attempt to better understand the characters and themes of the shows. You can find the BTVS list here and the ATS list here. Gifs are not mine.

All I remembered about the Scooby fight was that it happened. I had forgotten how, and I actually do think it makes more sense now. It wasn’t about their friendship, it was about attacking each of their insecurities and making them feel that everyone else in the group had noticed them too. This was possible because the friendship has been so fractured that no one feels supported or even seen. They have no reason not to think they’re being judged. 

Unfortunately, the resolution to all this never really comes around. There is a ton of good stuff here--Buffy’s increased reliance on herself, Willow’s moving away from her computer skills and into witchcraft as a solution to everything, Xander not feeling respected and seeing Anya as an extension of that, Giles losing his sense of leadership and importance--but we never really get an acknowledgement of any of that until much later. And the real problem that Spike landed on--that the Scoobies aren’t paying a bit of attention to one another--gets a quick patch over but continues to be a problem. Yes, Buffy isn’t judging Willow, but is that a good thing or just a symptom of her ignoring her entirely?  

Spike is the one who comes up with this plan to incite drama, which I do feel makes sense for his character. He’s insightful and incredibly good at stuff like this. It’s also fun to see his perspective on Buffy and how fascinated/afraid of her he is. He keeps insisting to Adam that he needs to consider her a bigger threat. You can sense the admiration beneath the irritation. 

Adam: You feel smothered. Trapped like an animal, pure in its ferocity, unable to actualize the urges within… Clinging to one truth like a flame struggling to burn within an enclosed glass… That a beast this powerful cannot be contained. Inevitably it will break free and savage the land again… I will make you whole again. Make you savage.

This is the episode in which Forrest is killed. He claims his problem with Buffy is that Riley is willing to commit treason over her and turn against their “family”. I would have loved to see some more backstory on Forrest: either have him be an orphan who found his family through Riley and now he feels abandoned or have him have a romantic interest in him. Then you could even have had him join Adam willingly as a way to get his family back. 

Angel’s return also doesn’t fit into the story well. I covered over in Sanctuary why his coming here made no sense, and his drama with Riley was nothing but fan-baiting. It also felt like a bit of a step back for Angel’s character; he always seems less mature over on Buffy. On Angel he seems sad but resigned to the fact that he can’t have Buffy and she comes off as wanting more than he can give. But here he seems like a petty, jealous ex. I don’t see a scenario where he would like Riley, but beating him up, refusing to explain he’s not evil, and insinuating he might have slept with Buffy is ridiculous. The end scene where he says “I don’t like him” in a tone of resigned sadness makes more sense than everything before it.  

Buffy: Look, I… you weren't entirely wrong, what you said in L.A. We don't live in each other's worlds anymore. I can't just barge in on yours and make judgments.

Angel: I'm still sorry.

Buffy: Thank you.

Xander is the one who gives Riley the information on what turned Angel evil. Why does he have this habit of venting inappropriately when it comes to Buffy’s boyfriends (here, and when he tells Dawn Spike tried to rape Buffy)? In the script Xander decides to tell Riley even though it’s clear Buffy doesn’t want him to know, but in the episode it plays like Xander accidentally spilled the beans. 

As far as Buffy’s decision on this, I get it. It’s a bit easier for Willow, for example, to be totally honest with Tara about her past with Oz. She loved him, the wolf thing became a problem, he left. Angel will always hold power over Buffy and she will always have feelings for him, and basically the only reason they’re not together is because they can’t be. How do you tell a boyfriend that if your ex suddenly became human you’d be tempted to run right back into his arms? It’s unresolved and messy. 

Riley: I went a little nuts, you know? I mean, on the one hand, I should believe in us. But, on the other, sometimes things just happen between ex's and then I saw he was bad

Buffy: He wasn't bad.

Riley: Seriously? That's a "good" day? Well there you go. Even when he's good he's all Mr. Billowy Coat King of Pain and girls really-

After their talk they say I love you to each other and then Buffy has to tell him about Forrest. He abruptly leaves, and the cliff-hanger is that he goes to Adam.

Let’s get in to the Scooby drama. It’s clear Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles haven’t been paying much attention to each other lately, but you know who has been paying attention? Spike. 

Spike: Think you're neglecting the past tense there, Rupert. Besides, she barely listened when you were in charge. I've seen the way she treats you.

We’ve seen a few hints that Giles is insecure about losing his job as librarian and, more importantly, Watcher. He was fired way back in season three, but when Buffy belonged to the Council she continued to look to him for guidance and ignored the replacements. When she decided to drop the Council and stop taking orders she also stopped looking to him. She’s the leader now. 

Xander: This is so like them lately. It's all about them and the college life. You know what college is? It's high school without the actual going to class. Well, high school was sort of like that too but the point is, I'm the one working hard to earn a living and it's a huge joke to them.

Anya: They look down on you.

Xander: And they hate you…

Anya: But they don't look down on me.

Xander is struggling to find his footing post-high school, which we actually have seen hints of throughout. The ironic part is Buffy and Willow will be in the same place after college, but by then Xander is finding a place in construction and doing a bit better. Spike suggests they mentioned him going to the military, which was a strange choice. It would be fairly easy for them to shut down having ever said that if it came up. Spike only gets away with it because the fight is so chaotic. 

Willow: I am a whiz!

Tara: She is a whiz.

Willow’s insecurity is about her new relationship with Tara and her friend’s feelings about it. Spike slips up here; he says Xander said she was being trendy but Xander doesn’t even know about the relationship at this point. Spike points out something interesting here--Willow isn’t as focused on her computer skills lately. But that’s not something she or anyone else will be concerned about for awhile. 

Spike doesn’t say anything to Buffy, which makes sense because she’s sort of the center of this whole universe. Buffy has a lot of concerns, but her friends not liking or needing her isn’t one of them. The interesting thing about all this drama is that none of the friends care a bit about what the others are going through; they’re too focused on their own drama. Buffy and Willow don’t think about Xander’s employment issues, Buffy and Xander don’t think about Willow’s sexual preferences or her obsession with wicca, and Buffy, Xander, and Willow don’t think about Giles’ lack of employment in any real way.

Tensions escalate when they all convene at Giles’ house because everyone is overly sensitive (Buffy is totally lost). 

Giles: You never train with me anymore. Adam's gonna kick your ass.

Buffy: Giles?!

Giles: Sorry! Didn't mean to be so honest. Terribly sorry.

After seeing Forrest die, Buffy isn’t eager for anyone to come along with her. And that just further taps into their feelings of inadequacy. 

Xander: And if I did join the army I'd be great. You know why? Because maybe they'd give me a job that couldn't be done by any well-trained Border Collie.

Willow: Sure, you'd be wonderful in the army -- you think the umbilical cord between you and Anya would stretch that far?

Xander: I knew it. I knew you hated her.

Willow: Hey, I'm not the one being judgmental, here. I'll leave that territory to you and Buffy.

Buffy: Judgmental? If I was any more open minded about the choices you two make my whole brain would fall out.

Xander: Oh. And superior. Don't forget that. Just because you're better than us doesn't mean you can be all superior.

Buffy: Guys, stop this. What happened to you today?

Willow: It's not today. Buffy, everything's been wrong for a while. Don't you see that?

Buffy: Willow, what do you mean things have been wrong? Things don't have to be wrong, do they?

A major problem with the Scooby friendship is that Buffy is the leader--and she is both too distracted and too inclined to ignore emotional issues to lead effectively. Buffy is an avoidance type and so the entire group avoids talking or working through their feelings with each other. This is something Giles noticed in Once More With Feeling but it never gets fixed. The group is missing someone like Faith or Spike...someone who would be more willing to call out issues and bring them out in the open. Buffy hates that, but sometimes it’s necessary. Just look what happened to everyone in season six...

Character Notes:

The Initiative: They want Riley back. They (correctly) realize they can’t harm Buffy if they ever want to bring him back into the fold. When the relationship between them ends they do eventually lure him back, so good call there.

Spike: We learn he can’t even point a useless gun with the chip in his head. It appears to be activated by intent to harm rather than ability, which makes sense. He lists his past fun night outs as deflowering a virgin princess, killing a minister mid-sermon, and seeing the Sex Pistols in ‘76. 

Adam: His favorite Beatles song is ‘Helter Skelter’. 

[negasonicimagines]

“All Yours.”

requests: “Hii! Can request an ellie x reader imagine? I do not really care, I am giving you free hand because I am so thirsty for this girl :D thank you very much (maybe get kittens involved) [rq by @crazypurplesnowman]” + “10 FROM THE BUFFY PROMPTS COULD B PRETTY SICK LOOVE UR WRITING KEEP IT UP BABE”

[ 10: “I want to take comfort in you, and I know it will cost me my soul, and a part of me doesn’t care.” ]

notes: I wanted to try something new, so… Yandere!Ellie. Yeah, I’m writing that trope in 2019. This will probably be a flawed version of the trope, because I still want to be at least a little true to the character, and this will mostly be from Ellie’s perspective. Still 2nd person, but will be centered around her thoughts and feelings towards the reader, as opposed to the reader’s perception. DISCLAIMER: I am not encouraging fraud. This is literally the craziest fucking thing I’ve ever written and I LOVE IT. Like… Kittens, an iconic line from BTVS, Chuck E. Cheese, Yandere!Ellie…. Whew.

mini playlist for this fic:

superstar - marina

possession - sarah mclachlan

undisclosed desires - muse

happy place - terror jr

make you mine - public

tear you apart - she wants revenge

warnings: this is a yandere story, so just overall trigger warning. Ellie’s gonna be a little creepy and definitely a little OOC. Also, animal abuse mention & animal death. Also, graphically-detailed birth of kittens. (Here’s the video I watched for research, yes, it’s of a cat giving birth. The things I do for my thirsty ellie thots.)

There was just something about you.

Maybe it was your eyes, those perfect E/C eyes. The way you’d glance at her and smile, unsure of why she’s staring.

Or those lips. Every word you spoke was a song tumbling from between them, even if she didn’t like the fact that it was being sung to someone else.

Maybe it was your mutation. You both were mutants, you already had something in common, not to mention that you follow her Twitter and make her heart burst every time you retweet something from her. Same political opinions, same sense of humor, similar taste in music…

You rush in, a bundle in your arms. You’d gone for a walk and Ellie didn’t trust herself to be stealthy enough to follow you, not outside of the house. So, she’d sat on the loveseat by the door on her lonesome, waiting for you to return. You were all she could think of. She slinks over to where you’ve run, the infirmary.

She watches from the doorway, slowly entering as you open the bundle on one of the small beds used for long-term patients. It’s a large, fluffy black cat, some of its fur matted.

A stray? I love her… Ellie thinks. And it’s even black!

“She’s pregnant,” you tell the nurse, Annie. “I can feel it, the little lives. I’d say she’s going to go into labor very soon. I did some googling, and she’s already started the rhythmic purring.”

“So, you brought her here?” Annie asks, a brow arched. Don’t look at her like that. Just because they’re animals doesn’t mean they don’t deserve care. Ellie grinds her teeth, watching the situation. But, with you in sight, her anger is less intense.

“Well, where else was I supposed to bring her? I can try to heal her, but I can tell she might not make it through labor. I need help making her comfortable. Oh! Ellie, do you need something? I can heal you, if you have a headache or something,” you offer, distracted from your own cause by her. Me, Ellie thinks, lovesick.

“A bit of a headache,” Ellie lies. “But it can wait, if you want me to find some old towels or something.”

“I’d really appreciate that, thank you!” You beam, and she almost gasps in wonder, swiftly leaving to get the towels so you can’t see her blushing. She brings them into the infirmary, and helps you to organize them, hands brushing.

Ellie twitches away in surprise, cursing herself for her natural reaction to touch. While she knows that your touch feels good to everyone that you make skin-to-skin contact with, due to your mutation, which is to heal through touch, she feels that it must feel especially good to her, so she should accept the opportunity to feel your skin whenever she can.

“Thank you so much for the help, Ellie,” you say, eyes glimmering with excitement.

“No problem, Y/N,” she replies. “Anything else I can do?”

“Moral support would be appreciated, but I understand if you’ve got something better to do.”

Nothing’s better than you.

“Not at all,” Ellie responds, and the cat begins to meow. You go to pet her, and she purrs.

The cat starts to get a bit fidgety on the bed, wandering a bit. You and Annie make sure she stays on the bed, stroking her fur as she begins to yowl.

“Looks like we’re getting started,” you say, and Annie & Ellie nod. “Ellie, could you get us some gloves? Two pairs, unless you wanna help.”

Ellie gets three pairs of gloves, and the cat sort of squats on the bed, tail tucked. The yowl increases in volume, and she squeezes out the first kitten, a wet clump of black attached to a placenta nearly the same size. The mother cleans her child with her tongue, detaching the kitten from the placenta and eating it. Ellie notes the droplets of blood on the towels, and you nod.

“That’s normal, but we’ll have to be careful because if there’s too much she might be bleeding internally. It wouldn’t be surprising if she was, that man was kicking her really-” you sniff, clearly trying not to cry, and Ellie wants to slit his throat. “...Really hard.”

As soon as the first kitten starts meowing, another emerges from the mother cat.

“Good girl,” you praise the cat, petting her as she continues to clean her first-born, before moving on to the second. The two kittens, now mostly clean, move on to feeding from their mother, the three purring as she continues to clean them. After a short period of time in which she snuggles the two, and the bleeding starts to get heavy, another is born, and then another. She cleans and cares for them in the same fashion.

Ellie texts her groupchat with Piotr, Wade, Domino, Nathan, and her best friend, Yukio, about the situation, asking if they’d like to meet in the infirmary for an impromptu baby shower. They all excitedly agree, and she warns them that the cat may not be alive when they get there, but that the kittens are in good shape.

She listens silently as you hum to the mother, who you’ve nicknamed “Mama Cat.”

“She’s hemorrhaging,” you say, pointing out the increase in blood loss. “I read that could happen. I- I don’t know how much I can do without touching the wound, and it’s internal.”

“She knows you did your best,” Annie tries to reassure you, and Ellie tries not to glare daggers at the woman. You were Ellie’s to comfort. Ellie strokes your back, watching tears roll silently down your cheeks as you continue to hum to the cat and her litter.

“She’s gone. It’s all… I can’t feel her anymore,” you sob, and Ellie brings you into her arms, not caring about your amniotic fluid-soaked gloves one bit as you cry into her shoulder. But you pull away, and Ellie feels cold, empty. “I’m so sorry, we don’t even know each other that well, I just… I have a deep amount of respect and love for all living things, and this is so-”

“Don’t worry, Y/N. Come here, it’s gonna be okay.” Ellie wraps her arms around you again, and you accept her comfort. She tries not to let her excitement show, knowing that this is a solemn moment for you. She’s also sad, but your feelings definitely take priority over her own in this situation. In most situations. At least, that’s how she feels.

“We came as soon as we heard!” Wade and the gang enter with last-minute gifts and some decorations. Their joy dies down as they realize what’s happened. “Oh. That’s so… Oh. The kittens, are they…?”

You lift your head from Ellie’s shoulder so that your voice isn’t muffled, but you don’t exit her embrace, not yet.

“No, no, thank god. Just… Just the mom.” You pull away, attending to the tiny, helpless creatures. You dry the little screamers off a bit before bundling them in the least dirty towel and turning back to face the group. “I see you all brought gifts. Does there happen to be any formula?”

“I’ve got a good amount here, plus the equipment.” Domino fulfills the request. “Lucky guess.”

“Me, too,” Nathan adds. “I figured it wouldn’t be an easy thing to get ahold of. I was wrong, so I also got a PetSmart gift card.”

“Thank you so much, you guys,” you say, and Annie stacks the canisters on the counter. “Jesus Christ, that’s a lot.”

“Oh, right, I got some, too,” Wade says, and Ellie thinks maybe he got a can. Nope. The amount he got doubles the supply.

“Jeez, I guess we don’t have to worry about feeding them,” you comment. “Thanks a ton, you guys.”

“So...What are you going to do with them?” Yukio asks.

“I mean, keep them, I guess. The only official rules on pets here are that you can have them as long as you keep them away from those allergic and don’t let them make a mess or distract you from your studies. I could probably request a month of independent study while they need round the clock care, and as long as my grades don’t seriously falter, that’ll be fine.”

“Do you think you’ll give any of them away, once they’re weaned off milk and litter box-trained?” Yukio continues to investigate.

“Uh, I don’t know… Maybe? Right now, though, I wouldn’t dream of it. Sorry,” you apologize, able to tell that the sweet girl wants to adopt one.

“Have you named them, yet?” Piotr asks.

“I think I’ll wait ‘til their personalities start to show,” you decide, and Ellie nods, wrapping an arm around you.

“You guys are gonna make great cat moms,” Domino comments, and Ellie finds herself blushing a little. Us? Cat moms? Together? It’s a dream come true...

“Maybe you should share room,” Piotr suggests. “So that you can care for kittens together. It can be arranged.”

“That’d be great!” you agree.

“Yeah, sure,” Ellie does her best to hide her enthusiasm, but based on the expressions of everyone in the room but you, it’s clear she has a crush. At least they don’t know it’s a rapidly-growing obsession, rising with every little interaction, even if that interaction is just you looking back at her and smiling.

“I will go file paperwork,” Piotr informs. “Do not hesitate to open gift while I’m gone.”

“Thank you so much, Colossus!” you cheer. Annie hands you each a pair of kittens and a pair of small bottles, allowing you to nurse your new children together.

Wade takes a picture, and Ellie finds that she can’t be annoyed. She was actually happy someone captured this, even if it was Wade.

“Thank you so much for all your help, everyone, especially Ellie and Annie. I couldn’t have done it without you guys.”

“Happy to help,” Ellie replies, and you smile at her.

“You’ve been such a help, El. Seriously, I- I couldn’t have done this alone.”

The two of you are feeding the kittens in your shared dorm, studying for an American Literature test at the same time. It’s been a couple weeks since the birth of the kittens, and the two of you became fast friends, now that she actually talked to you regularly.

“No problem, Y/N.” It’s my pleasure.

“They’re so beautiful, aren’t they? We can start weaning them off the milk in two weeks.”

“Incredibly beautiful,” Ellie replies, but she’s looking at you, not the cats. She can tell you notice this because of the way you blush, ducking your head. But, you don’t say anything, so she doesn’t either.

“So… What do the eyes of Doctor TJ Eckleburg represent?” You ask.

“The eyes of god over the lawless wasteland that America has become due to greed.”

“Nice answer,” you compliment.

“Thank you,” she replies, it’s getting harder and harder to hide her excitement.

“So, hey, I have kind of a weird question…” You start. Ellie’s heart immediately starts racing. Had you discovered her obsession, or any of the strange habits that came with it?

“Um- Uh… Shoot.”

“It’s nothing bad!” You reassure her. “I was just wondering if you wanted to maybe… Maybe go on a date, this Friday? I’m sorry if you wouldn’t want to, you probably just see me as a friend and maybe not even that, so-“

“I’d love to!” Ellie enthusiastically responds, not bothering to disguise the way she felt as a grin splits her face open.

“That’s great! I asked Yukio to kitten-sit if you said yes and she agreed, so I figured maybe we could go do something relaxing, like watching a movie, or… I don’t know, I honestly didn’t think you’d say yes.”

“You- You didn’t?” Maybe I’m too good at hiding my feelings for her. Her face falls, and you rush to explain yourself:

“Well, I know you didn’t really like me all that much before the kitten thing… I thought you were really attractive and seemed really cool, but you’d glare at me a lot and I didn’t know why, so I figured it was best to keep my distance and be nice to you in small ways in the hopes you’d forgive me for whatever I did. What did I do, if you don’t mind telling me?” You ask, cheeks flushed, and Ellie’s heart still hasn’t stopped racing.

“Nothing, nothing at all, I swear!” Ellie attempts to reassure you, even if the concerned expression on your face is adorable. She decides the best route is to be honest, now that she knows you do like her. “I- This is really embarrassing. I wasn’t glaring at all. I was, um, staring at you, because I really, really like you. If I didn’t think it’d freak you out, I’d say I love you. You’re just… Absolutely perfect.”

“No way!” You laugh off her adoration, and she wishes she could kiss you then and there, to prove that she’s serious. “You’re too nice, El.”

“Well, you saying that just proves that I really do like you, a lot. I’m not nice to people, I push them away. But you, I could never hurt you like that, or in any way. And if anyone else ever did, or tried to, I- I-“ Smoke starts curling off of her at the thought, eyes lighting up orange in fury.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay…” you tell her sweetly, putting your hand at the spot between her neck and shoulder, partially covered by the neckline of her tee shirt...but uncovered enough for the healing energy of your touch to radiate through her.

She happily allows this, taking a deep breath and calming down so much faster than she would’ve on her own. It was meant to be a reassuring hand on the shoulder, but she got so much more from it.

From you.

“Thank you,” she says gratefully. You yawn, removing your hand as you stretch.

“I have another question,” you say. “And please don’t be afraid to say no.”

“Okay,” Ellie replies, curious.

“Well, I was thinking… The cats always sleep on my whole torso area at night… So, to give them extra nourishment, I was thinking about sleeping without a shirt on? So I’ll have skin-to-skin contact with them. If you’re not comfortable with that, it’s totally fine, they’re doing really great health-wise, I just wanted to give them a boost. You know how worried I get, especially about Witchy.”

Twitchy-Witchy (nicknamed “Witchy”) is the runt of the litter and is, well, twitchy! She’s less social than the others, and will hide when anyone other than you or Ellie approaches.

“Yeah, sure. I mean, you could sleep without a shirt on if you just didn’t wanna wear a shirt,” Ellie tells you, returning to being glad about her ability to hide her feelings from you. Her anticipation is returning, and she’d hate for you to think of her as some sort of creep!

“Oh! Sorry, I just didn’t wanna cross any lines or make things weird. But I probably made it weird by asking, didn’t I?”

“No, it was thoughtful of you. You’re so thoughtful…” Ellie says, a mysterious glint in her eye as she looks you over, hoping it’s not obvious she’s imagining what tonight’s gonna be like. She probably won’t even be able to sleep, not that she gets very much sleep anyway with all those thoughts of you bouncing around her head.

You blush at her comment. Ellie wonders how much you’d heat up if you knew about her thoughts, and it’s tempting to tell you… But she knows it’d be too soon. She has to be careful, methodical. She wouldn’t want to scare you, her perfect, delicate flower, away.

“What do you wanna do for the date, anyway? I was thinking a movie, but we wouldn’t get to talk very much if we did that. But I want it to be relaxing, since we’re away from the kids- kittens, for the afternoon and evening.”

“Maybe we could go to Chuck E. Cheese and inspect the pizzas to see if they’re really made of leftovers,” she suggests, snickering a bit. “My family took me and my brothers once, and they have this co-op Terminator game that’s really fun, even if you haven’t seen the movies.”

“That sounds great!” You agree. “I love it.”

And I love you, Ellie thinks.

That Friday, the two of you have an amazing time at Chuck E. Cheese, giggling and bonding over jokes and games, somehow enjoying pizza the same texture as cardboard.

“Kiss my hand for luck, please?” You ask Ellie, watching the light spin in the game you’re playing, Cyclone.

She blushes deeply, but tenderly takes your hand in her own and gently kisses the top. You watch the light dance between the bulbs before pressing the button.

“Holy shit, jackpot! Oh my god, this is the most fun I’ve ever had in my life,” You declare, tickets spewing from the machine.

“Really?” Ellie asks.

“Well...Yeah. You’re just so fun to be around, I feel so safe and happy with you. Sorry if that’s dumb, I just really like you.”

“No, it’s not dumb at all. I feel the same way about you,” she admits. She liked how you made her feel, too. The only time you ever made her feel bad was when she thought she’d never be with you, and that was really her making herself feel bad by being insecure. She tears the tickets from the machine once they’re done spewing, folding them up and keeping them with the others you’d earned together. “Being around you just makes me feel... Better. No matter what.”

“That’s so sweet!” you cheer, giving her a peck on the cheek and taking her hand. You take her to the next game, Skee-ball. “I suck at this, but it’s still fun.”

“I’ve been told I’m pretty good, do you want me to help you?” Ellie bluffs. She was average at best, but the easy excuse to be in close quarters with you was too tempting.

“Sure,” you reply, and something in your smile and the way you blush tells her you’re at least partially aware of her scheme...And that you like it. You put the required tokens into the slot.

Standing behind you with her chin on your shoulder, she takes your wrist into her hand. “Let go in 3…” She says quietly into your ear, relishing in your poorly-disguised shivering before she gently sways your arm forward. “2…” Then, back. Then, forward. “1.” You let go, and miraculously, it rolls up the ramp swiftly before bouncing into the 10,000 hole in the top corner.

“I guess at this point there’s no denying it. You’re my lucky charm, El,” you decide, turning to your date, who smiles at this, pleased.

The two of you continue to play various games before eventually running out of both tokens and energy.

“Okay, Y/N, cover me. I’m gonna do a trick my dad taught me,” she mutters as the two of you walk to the ticket counter. You stand between her and the woman at the prize counter, subtly looking around for personnel while she holds the ticket in place, letting the machine read it over and over again until it gets to about five hundred. She lets the tickets go in, and does this with the next strand, and the next, and the next.

At the end of it, you two have five thousand, five hundred and fifty tickets, at least, according to the receipt.You both approach the counter, and the attendant looks at your receipt.

“Uh-huh…” she eyes you both, but shrugs, deciding either that you two looked skilled enough to have this amount of tickets, or that it wasn’t worth pursuing. “Pick out your prizes.”

“Ooh, Ellie, wouldn’t that mini gumball machine be so cute to keep the kittens’ toys in? Plus, gum. It’s three-thousand tickets, so I understand if-”

“No, I like that idea,” Ellie cuts you off, before putting an arm around your waist to bring you closer, not liking the way the attendant was looking at you: giving you her full attention, not even bothering to hide it. “We’ll have the gumball machine, please.”

“Alright… You’ve got two thousand, five hundred and fifty tickets left.”

“Maybe the giant slinky? We could give it to Yukio for pet-sitting, she likes colorful stuff and novelty stuff,” Ellie suggests.

“Ooh, yeah! And then we could use the rest of the tickets to get little things the cats can play with? Like the rubber bracelets, those should be fine as long as we keep an eye on them.”

“Yeah, that’s a great idea,” Ellie agrees.

“Oh, but what about you? You deserve something,” you insist.

“Y/N… I think I’m good,” Ellie chuckles, and you remember that most of these prizes are, in fact, for young children.

“Right…” You nod. “Alright, we’ll have the giant rainbow slinky and as many of those small rubber bracelets and plastic frogs as we can get, if that’s alright,” you politely ask the woman behind the counter. She nods, uses her calculator, writes down your desires, retrieves all the requested items, and gives them to you and Ellie in a plastic bag. “Thank you so much, ma’am. Have a nice evening.”

“You two...too,” she replies with a laugh, and you laugh back. Jealousy courses through Ellie’s veins.

“Here, let me get the bag,” Ellie offers. She takes it and holds out her other arm for you to intertwine yours with. You do, leaving the arcade together. You rest your head on her shoulder the taxi ride home. She pets your hair, soothing you to sleep on the half-hour drive back.

It’s another week later when Ellie returns to her dorm from Poetry Club in a panic. She’d accidentally grabbed your math notebook, which could only mean you had her poetry journal.

She throws open the door, and finds her worst fear: You’re reading it.

“Y/N, I- I can explain,” she says, but she really can’t. Who can?

“These poems are really beautiful, Ellie. I can’t believe they’re about- About me.”

That’s not the reaction I was expecting. Maybe the one I was hoping for, but…

“Definitely not the reaction I was expecting,” Ellie breathes. You rise up from the bed, closing the notebook and approaching her. You give it to her, afterwards pressing your lips to hers in a gentle, but passionate kiss. She drops the notebook, holding your waist tightly. Eventually, you part, foreheads pressed together.

“Ellie, I- I read them all, and… I- I want to take comfort in you, like what you said. And I know that there’s a darkness in you, and that embracing it will probably cost me my soul… But a part of me just doesn’t care.”

“Perfect,” Ellie responds, taking your face in her hands. She presses a kiss to your forehead. “You’re all mine.”

You nod, looking into those beautiful eyes of hers.

“All yours.”

[atmilliways]

The one from LJ I bullied you into putting on AO3. It’s so crazy to me I read that YEARS ago and now we’re friends. What a world. Also Take Me to Church and that one I think you only put on Tumblr, where Charles dies in a car wreck but has the chance to go back in time and/or sell his soul? I think? It was so good.

1) Don’t Say No, You Can Do’s It

I wrote this so long ago that I don’t remember any particular secrets behind it. But the reason I didn’t post it when I started editing and transferring my old stories from LJ to AO3 was because, while I could still take most of the Nathan/Charles stuff I wrote back then seriously, that was not true of the majority of my Skwisgaar/Toki fics. The phrase back then was, I believe, diabeetus? (Because not a bumblebee I guess, idk.) Coming back nearly years later I felt a lot of it was intolerably dramatic and casually overlooking the fact that these are Grown Men. At least, technically. 

I was eventually going to back through more of my S/T fics and reevaluate, but I guess I forgot. Thank you for making me revisit this one! 

2) Take Me To Church 

 Nathan has been having premonitions since he was two or three years old. They’re not painful for him because he was “supposed” to have them, as opposed to Charles who sort of. Had it downloaded at a much later age and doesn’t have entirely comparable hardware for it. Nathan has never actually realized that these are (a) prophetic visions or (b) something not everyone experiences. 

3) May The Gods Watch Over You

That one! I did post it in my Nathan/Charles collection. That’s not the secret. The secret is… 

Each of the guys is represented in elemental god form, even though they haven’t awakened the dethlights yet. (Once they do, those gods will have always existed. So, in a way, they already exist. They just have limited purchase on this reality until they… exist.) Nathan is the ocean, Pickles is the wind, Murderface is the earth, Skwisgaar is the sun/moon, Toki is the sky/earth’s atmosphere. 

Magnus is global warming. 

But anyway, their limited purchase applies to Charles once he dies. Charles is just some regular lawyer with a below-average boring life. They take his spirit and, with his (uninformed) permission, turn him into a superb lawyer/manager/financial wiz with ninja-like skills and reflexes, etc., and send him to their human selves via the Church of the Black Klok. In doing so, they adjust everyone’s perception of the past to include this new Super Charles in it. 

I have… a whole complicated headcannon for “entities that have existed basically forever but at the same time exist as a finite human that was born far more recently, but they’re the same but they’re extremely different but they’re the same.” In an obscure, fanfiction-I-will-never-write-or-probably-explain way, I blame this on BtVS season 7.

(Tell me the one fic you associate with my username. In exchange, I’ll tell you a secret about that story.)

[dingoes8myrp]

♥ ☆ ∇ for Oz (btvs)?

♥ - family headcanon

Growing up, Oz hada small but close immediate family that included his parents, and a few favoriteaunts and uncles. They have frequent gatherings that are low-key backyardbarbeques.

But, he also has alarge extended family of distant aunts, uncles, and cousins. When the wholegang gets together for bigger reunions, it’s a whole lotta hoot and just alittle bit o’ nanny.

Oz’s parents werealways pretty laidback, allowing him room to grow, learn, and make his ownmistakes. As long as he wasn’t committing acts of vandalism or exhibitingcriminal behavior. Oz was always a smart, quiet kind of kid with a cool head.

Post-lycanthropy,Oz was never sure if he’d settle down and get married, have kids. How wouldthat work? Once in a while Dad disappears for a few days and no one knows why?Or he has to explain to some nice, normal woman that he’s occasionally amonster? He sort of made peace with the idea of being mysterious bachelor guy.For a while. Until he got a true handle on his lycanthropy (which he would withpractice and maturity).

Once he did settledown with a nice lady and have a few kids he’d enjoy being home with his family.He’d get some kind of normal job (in my head he always co-owns some kind ofnightclub or bar), but there’d always be something supernatural going on on theside (werewolf wrangling, occult consulting, etc.). Whoever he ended up withwould have to have some kind of understanding of this. But, no matter what hehad going on he’d always put his family first and he’d be scary protective. Anyhint of a threat toward his family would be a surefire way to see an ugly sideof Oz that doesn’t come out often.

He’d support andlove his children, being slightly more involved than his own parents were, butnot so much that they don’t have room to find themselves. Most of the time he’dbe quiet and out of the way, maybe seeming less than interested, when inreality he’d pay close attention (just discreetly) and he’d always have ageneral idea of how his kids were feeling. In my head, once he got a handle onhis lycanthropy he’d be a natural empath. Whenever one of his kids was upset orstruggling he’d check in with them at just the right moment - they’d always wonderhow he managed to do that - and he’d already have an understanding of what theyhad going on. But, he’d let them tell him what they wanted at their own pace,and he’d patiently wait and listen.

Oz would neveryell. When he was disappointed he’d merely say so, calmly and matter-of-factly,explaining why. The only exception would be if whatever dipshit thing his kidshad done got them into real trouble with monsters or demons. Fierce Papa Ozwould come out then and scare the hell out of both the threat and the kids - not out of anger, but fear.

He’d let his kids paint his nails and he’d wear any ridiculous jewelry his kids made for him: maccaroni necklaces, beaded bracelets, whatever.

Anybody wanting to take one of his kids on a date or to a dance would feel weirdly intimidated by the scrawny ginger dad wearing the old band t-shirt and they wouldn’t be able to say why that was. He’d be perfectly polite and offer them a drink of water, ask a few smalltalk type questions, tell them the curfew and to have a good time. But, for some reason they’d feel like they just got sized up (because they did, and you’re damn right he offered them holy water to drink after inviting them into his house - it’s not his first day).

☆ - happy headcanon

It doesn’t takemuch to make Oz happy. He appreciates the little things: a classic vinyl albumplayed on a record player through really good speakers, a nice microbrew beer,a walk through the woods on a sunny day. Oz has such a good poker face most ofthe time, but when he’s happy he gets a goofy smile on his face.

Big gifts orgestures (like parties) can make him feel overwhelmed, where his heart is sofull he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’d get very quiet and humble,but he’d be very appreciative.

Oz loves a goodparty with lots of people in good spirits, drinking and dancing, having a goodtime.

∇ -. old age/aging headcanon

Oz would have noproblem with getting old. At one point in his life, he wasn’t sure he’d survivehigh school. Every day after that has been a gift.

Oz would age well,despite an iffy diet and what others see as a lazy demeanor. But, turning intoa lupine beast once in a while to get a good workout in tends to keep onepretty active and fit. He’d also retain all his senses. They’d dull a bitcompared to his peak werewolf senses, but they’d still be considered good bytypical human standards. His hair would go gray and he’d be cool with being asilver fox.

He’d keep up withtechnology, particularly computers and laptops. He’d always have the newestcellphone, but he’d never know where the hell it was. He’d also constantly misplacehis keys and have to keep spares everywhere. No matter how old he got, he’dstill dress like he did in his twenties. 

Oz would introducehis grandkids to “real” music, insisting they listen to his record collection.He’d tell all kinds of stories about going to high school on a hellmouth,fighting demons on the regular, and insist one of his best friends was the mostpowerful witch he’d ever met. He’d have all kinds of stories from his years oftraveling around the world. They wouldn’t believe him, although they wouldn’tbe able to explain why he kept all those wooden stakes stashed around the house“just in case,” why they keep getting odd jewelry from a mysterious “great auntWillow,” or why there’s not a hint of silver anywhere in Grandpa Oz’s house.

[dvrkcst]

⟡⌜⇴ TOM HARDY ⌠ 36 & he/him ⌡: have you seen EVAN ROSIER ? HE is an UNSPEAKABLE who’s apparently also A DEATH EATER. When you see them walking around, be careful, because while they can be CONFIDENT and STRONG-WILLED. I heard they can also be pretty UNFORGIVING and IMPERIOUS.    ( alex & 26 & she/her & pst )

this man be my favorite sociopath

my guy has always had a certain way about him that screams he has not a trouble in the world, a mocking leer and a laugh are never far from his lips

sociopathic tendencies my dude. laws? i make them. sympathy? none from this bitch. and yet he is infectiously likable.  humorous. his smile convincing and bright.  he can’t turn down a drink and usually is the first to invite his fellow ministry workmates out. he’s a touch more rough around the edges than the usual pureblood elite. sometimes displaying some poor manners and disregard for any sort of delicacy. he has an admirable confidence and strength

the war has been good to him. and he has benefited from his death eater connections in a job that he might not have had otherwise. he is an unspeakable and OF COURSE takes a lot of pride in his secrets. he knows more than you ever will. does he tho? 

 as the only son and heir of the rosier name, he has a lot to live up to. SHOCKER. lol i think he would have always taken a casual approach to that though. like?? of fucking course i’m great. i live up to expectations just by existing. youre welcome.

he has a younger sister who he has a soft spot for. he dotes on her, showers her in praise and advice, and has a very typical teasing big brother sort of charm with her. but he is almost to the point of being controlling. (this is a wanted connection as well! i’m open to any sort of personality for her, similar or opposites. she can be rebellious or codenpendent. i have ideas for both although the latter would be fun. w/e you like! ) 

he had a fiance several years ago who died of somewhat mysterious circumstances. she was beautiful and vibrant which gives the story all sorts of fodder for rumors. most prominently that he had something to do with it. although he maintains his innocence to this day, his disposition changes whenever she is brought up.     mysteriousssss

cocky, brutish, selfish and yet undeniably charming. Evan is working his way through the death eater and ministry ranks in the pursuit of the only thing that really should matter to him. power. 

character inspiration: damon salvatore (tvd), spike (btvs), lucifer morningstar (lucifer),  killian jones (ouat)