#because I would have believed the possessed if this is RL

[teafiend]

Gifs credited to @Nungchae (Twitter)

Such realistically raw, gritty scenes. Love everything about this episode ❤️‍🔥 Especially the partial focus on Kang Gil Young (and her developing relationships with the men).

The accusations made by the possessed about Choi Yoon - and Kang Gil Young’s reactions - gave me chills more than all the wailing, curses and screams of the woman because it was the most “realistic” horror in this indelible segment. A brilliant combination of writing, direction and performance (lighting, set up etc too). 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

[torawro]

currently thinking about… akatsuki!naruto     𝐜𝐰 ― canon divergent scenario. explicit content/language, smut, degradation, humiliation, exhibitionism, slight dumbification, mean!dom!naruto, stalkerish behavior. 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭!!

i want him to look at me like this.

i’ve been thinking about this way too much like my fantasies are rl running wild

akatsuki!naruto’s personality is colder & more vulgar. he’s possessive, aggressive with an even shorter temper. it makes you wonder how and why you got involved with someone so terrible.

he hates you. right off the bat. one of the reasons is purely because you hail from the village that turned him into the unfeeling ‘monster’ that he’s become now.

you’re so different from him. you seemed to be enjoying life in the hidden leaf, growing stronger, having friends and family to come home to, being loved and appreciated. on top of that you were so sweet and kind. all things he was not. and these qualities about you irritated him. 

which is ultimately what attracted him to you in the first place

you had the misfortune of running into your old friend while out on a mission, trying to stop the akatsuki in their tracks from carrying out their plans. unfortunately, you caught his eye immediately.

he was incredibly strong, more so now that he tapped into the nine-tails full power. despite him being a criminal now, you couldn’t help but gawk at his sheer strength, finding it slightly attractive.

yes, you were indeed beautiful, but more importantly, you were so...breakable. he wanted to destroy you from the inside out.

and when naruto has his heart and mind set on something, he doesn’t give up. believe it.

the way he sneered at you in condescension, contempt and disgust, it made you weak in the knees. it frightened you. 

and he fed off it.

soon enough, he became infatuated with you. he began to stalk around the borders of the hidden leaf just to study you more, learning everything he could about you. 

he found immense pleasure in when things didn’t go right for you. like when you messed up on a mission, not being able to master that jutsu no matter how many times you practiced, and the like.

he even went as far as breaking into your apartment to watch you sleep, whilst destroying your personal property or  stealing articles of your clothing to keep for his own sick fantasies. he loved that look on your face when you woke up to your things in disarray and practically suffocating on the overwhelming amount of ominous chakra that flooded your room.

even now, with your body completely exposed, shuddering at the icy wind that nipped at your bare flesh, you still wonder how and why you got in this position: completely naked on the roof of the hokage’s office, where any passerby that wanted to go on a midnight stroll could see you and naruto’s silhouette’s clear as day.

you shriek in pain as your neck jerked in a sudden, backwards motion. naruto uzumaki had your hair wrapped around his rough palms, giving your scalp a harsh tug every once in a while to bring you back to the reality of him balls deep inside your dripping cunt.

the slapping noises of your sweaty skin alone made you whine in embarrassment. you would have scurried away on your hands and knees, but the iron grip he had on your hip in addition to the hand that took purchase in your hair prevented you from doing so. 

naruto ignored your cries and pleas to “slow down!” or “’s too much!”. his dark eyes that were clouded with a sick kind of adoration and lust for you were trained on the way your ass jiggled against his hips and sculpted abdomen. every time he pulled out, only leaving the tip in, he’d make sure to get a good look at the glossy, white rings of your juices and his pre forming around his dick, before snapping his length back into you, causing your entire body to jolt forward from the force of his thrusts.

the blond haired shinobi only added fuel to the flame that licked at your sweet pussy with the filthy and downright disrespectful words that tumbled from his lips.

he clicked his tongue in fake annoyance at your unceasing mewls and moans, “you’re so damn loud. you gotta be more quiet baby, unless you want the whole hidden leaf to know how much of a slut you are for my cock?” the mockery that dripped from his tone, along with praises of how good you are to him for letting him humiliate you like this, caused your pussy to flutter around his length.

why did such words excite you? shame washed over you with every collision of his pelvis and your ass. but the dangerously lewd strokes naruto gave you, making you feel so full, was enough to make you get over it rather quickly.

he felt you clenching him even tighter than before, causing his eyebrows to furrow and a sharp inhale to escape from his throat. with a wicked & sharp toothed smile on his pretty lips, he let go of your hair, using both of his hands to anchor your hips upwards, and began to fuck you at a faster, deeper pace. he bit at his lip hard at the way your arch was unintentionally deepened.

at this point, he was solely focused on his own release rather than your own.

you screamed into your arm at the new sensation. it hurt so good.

“oh, you like the sound of that huh? fucking slut, of course you do. imagine what your friends, your family, your sensei would think if they saw you getting fucked dumb by an enemy of the village.”

naruto was so mean for asking you questions knowing damn well you couldn’t answer them. never missing a beat, he curled his body forward until you could feel his warm breath on your ear and the warm, rough pads of his fingertips prodding teasingly at your clit. naruto’s voice dropped in to a seductive whisper, “huh, angel?”

you moaned loudly at the nickname, your cunt leaking arousal that trickled down your inner thigh. “n-nar..ut-to..! p-please—mmf!”

he snickered at your inability to form a coherent sentence. leaning back upright, he sent a powerful slap to your round ass, then another, and another. 

“ah, well, it doesn’t matter what other people think. what matters is that this pretty pussy is mine now. you’re f-fucking mine.” naruto growled, his voice dying in his throat because he was too focused on the way your tight hole hugged his cock just right.

soon, his thrusts began sloppy and erratic, his fingers dug into your flesh so hard you thought they would bleed. surely the bruise that would appear there in the morning will be ghastly.

the knot in naruto’s stomach tightened and pulled so hard, so quickly, he was sure it’ll snap at any second. panting, he ran his pink tongue over his top lip, “now, you’ll let me cum inside, right, baby?”

a/n― jwnehanwnwwn i wanna be hinata so bad :(tell me what you think! feedback is appreciated <3

[florrickandassociates]

TGF Thoughts-- 5x07: And the fight had a detente...

This episode is a wild ride, so if you haven’t seen it yet and you aren’t spoiled, don’t read this. Just go watch it.  

Ave Maria plays over a photo montage of cancelled men, including Kevin Spacey, Louie CK, and Scott Rudin. (Scott Rudin, if you don’t know the name, is a Broadway/Hollywood producer who treated his assistants like absolute shit. He’s the inspiration for the possessed producer episode of Evil—I think it’s the third episode of the series—and Robert King does not like him one bit.)  

And then the episode opens with Wackner, Del, and Cord discussing the Armie Hammer cannibalism ordeal. Whew, this is not what I wanted to be thinking about first thing on a Thursday morning. I do not think I can put into words how boring I find debating whether or not someone should have been “cancelled.”  Cancellation is usually about rich people facing consequences for shitty actions, and those consequences have never involved anyone’s rights being infringed upon, so why should I care about someone being cancelled? And, while I know that society/people on Twitter don’t always understand nuance, I’d like to think that when it comes to the most notable examples of cancellation... no one is losing their livelihood over false or minor allegations.  

There are so, so, so many issues in the world. Cancellation affects a handful of high profile, usually white, straight, male, celebrities. Why should I give a shit about, like, Louie CK not being able to make as much money as he used to? I just do not and cannot find it interesting.

I’m not surprised David Cord and Del Cooper find this topic interesting—Del likely hates worrying that all of his comedians could get cancelled and put him in a financially tricky spot; Cord probably says things like “Woke Mob” unironically. And as for Wackner, he almost certainly has a skewed understanding of what actually happens when someone’s cancelled and sees a place where he can step in and add some order. Blah. It’s just so boring.

"People are getting canceled without a trial, no evidence presented against them,” Wackner says. This is not it, Wackner! This is such a strawman argument. We don’t need the legal system to adjudicate people being assholes to each other, and in cases where a crime is committed or a particular individual can sue for damages, that is what happens. If you act shitty and then your sponsors realize you’re toxic and drop you, like, it is what it is. You can feel free to respond via a Notes App screenshot where half of your apology is actually just whining about cancel culture and then you say “I’m sorry if anyone took offense at what I did” instead of saying “I’m sorry I said/did hurtful things” and when people don’t take that seriously, maybe it’s because you didn’t take it seriously, either.  

“There are a lot of reasons these accusations never go to trial. The victims finally get to accuse the victimizer face to face,” Wackner explains. Were the victims asking for this?

Marissa shares my question, noting that if the victims don’t want to speak up, then the victimizer would have the court to himself. This raises a new question: who is even bringing these cases? Are Wackner, Cord, and Del just deciding they want to do things as cases and then getting everyone else on board? This sounds bad!  

Apparently, according to Wackner, “if #MeToo relies on mob rule, it’ll exhaust itself.” What... evidence is there for this? I get why people panic about the POSSIBILITY of this happening, even though I don’t share their panic, but is there any actual evidence that #MeToo is losing steam because of false allegations because cancellation isn’t a formal process? I don’t believe there is.  

The test case we have the pleasure of seeing this week is about “Louie CK two,” whom I shall refer to as LCK2 instead of learning his name.  

Now, suddenly, Marissa is asking one of LCK2’s victims to testify. She doesn’t want to participate because it’s just another way for LCK2 to get his career back. Marissa decides to be idealistic and say this is a real opportunity to confront LCK2 with his crime. I suppose she isn’t wrong, and that is what happens next, but, again, meh.

Apparently David Cord is going to defend LCK2. You know what would get cancelled in five seconds? A David Cord funded show that has David Cord actually on it, railing against cancel culture! Can you IMAGINE the thinkpieces?

God, when is this episode going to move on from this extremely irritating premise?

Marissa decides she wants to be the prosecutor. Wackner says if she prosecutes LCK2, she has to prosecute the academic who used a word that sounds like the n-word and lost her job for it.  Marissa thinks the academic shouldn’t have been fired, but Wackner insists she has to take both cases.

“Let’s go into court,” Wackner says, and, thank goodness, we do go into court: REAL court, where we are talking about REAL issues.  

In court, Liz and Diane are suing the police over the death of a black girl who was tased by the police. Her friend is on the stand and it’s quite emotional. Also, Diane tries to pass Liz a note and Liz ignores it. Why would you have two name partners on this case if they aren’t even going to try to work together?  

You can tell things are tense between two TGF characters when they talk at the same time in court but are on the same side.  

Hiiiiii Abernathy! ILY!

The victim had a heart condition, which the police lawyer argues is the actual cause of death. Police lawyer also argues that since this witness posted some ACAB lyrics on Instagram, she must be biased. Eyeroll.

Liz calls the other lawyer racist; the other lawyer tries to make Liz look like she is only on her client’s side because she’s black and that Liz is being absurd.  

Cancel culture court happens. We’re dealing with the academic case first. I don’t feel like talking about the cancel culture shit too much, so here is my take on this case as a whole: (1) I don’t think the actual word in question, which isn’t actually the n-word, is enough on its own to get someone fired (2) I also don’t think anyone can use that word, regardless of its meaning or history, without understanding how it will come across. (3) The teacher did not get fired for simply using this word once (4) This teacher believes that anyone who is from a group that’s been marginalized in history should have to confront that marginalization with as little sympathy and respect as possible because it will help them be more resilient. So basically, if you are from the dominant group then you don’t get challenged. She believes it is her job to do this. She is an egotistical asshole who has no business teaching.  

Cord wants everyone to have to say the full word in question. He says this pretentiously (though I don’t think saying “Said word” is that pretentious, tbh) and Wackner rules against him and also makes him wear a powdered wig for using “obtuse language.”

Marissa is not trying at all with this case at first, since she doesn’t believe in it. That’s shitty, Marissa. If you want to be a lawyer at a firm like RL you’re going to have to fight for all of your clients.  

Marissa makes a Latin joke and ends up in a powdered wig, too.  

The prof says, in one sentence, that she didn’t know what she was doing using the word and also that the black student who took offense thinks college is supposed to be warm, cuddly, and unchallenging. So it was a challenge, then, prof?  

I like this student. And I love that she calls Marissa out for obviously not trying.  

“The optics matter. Racially,” Diane says to Liz, who agrees. Diane, strategically, makes it about gender first (the cop is male, some jurors may react to a woman questioning a man), then makes it about how she should be the one questioning the cop since Liz is black. It would make the jury more “comfortable” (hey, there’s that word again!) Diane says. She says she is being pragmatic.  

Diane says that she could be “more dispassionate”. Be or come across as, Diane? Either way, Liz, who knows full well what the optics look like given that this isn’t her first time in court, doesn’t agree with Diane that they need to come across as dispassionate.  

Then Diane just changes the subject to the firm drama. “Liz, you’re shoving me out of my name partner position because of my race.” Like that’s the issue!  

“I am doing nothing. You are the one who got our racist clients to whine to STR Laurie about us,” Liz counters. “Those clients bring in a great deal of money, and they are not racists,” Diane insists. Yes. Sure. Diane just happened to choose white male clients who were “comfortable” with her to talk to. I have no doubt they’d have reacted poorly to any change in representation, but Diane was counting on those particular clients having some discomfort with their new lawyers.  

Liz calls her out and Diane’s still trying to play it like she just had to inform her long-term clients and it just had to be done this way. But, when Liz asks if Diane thinks the clients would’ve had the same reaction if their new representation were to be white, Diane says that maybe her clients are worried about racial grudges. So, what you’re saying is you knew exactly what you were doing, huh, Diane?  

I get why Diane doesn’t like being pushed out, because who would, but Diane, this isn’t about you. And if you didn’t want to make it about race, perhaps you shouldn’t have appeared on a panel about how great it is that your firm is majority black? You can’t have it both ways.  

Liz notes that Diane felt “entitled” to her name partnership. This is accurate, though based on revenue and stature I don’t think it can be denied that Diane deserves name partner status (generally speaking). Diane went over to RBK, was like, “sure, I’ll be a junior partner, thank you so much for the opportunity, I can’t even pay my capital contribution right now but what if I were name partner in three months?” and that is both entitlement and knowing one’s own worth, but mostly entitlement.  

(Liz does not act entitled, but if we want to get into who deserves their partnership more—again generally speaking, not their partnership at a black firm specifically—it is definitely Diane! Liz literally only has this job because her dad was important.)  

“I think that Barbara Kolstad was shoved out because you felt entitled to her position,” Liz shouts. OMG, a mention of Barbara?!?!?!??!?!? THANK YOU, WRITERS!!!

(This is a slight bit of revisionist history but I’ll allow it, and I think it’s right in thought even if it’s not right on the details. Barbara wasn’t shoved out—Barbara chose to go to a different firm that offered her a better deal—but I don’t think Barbara would’ve been on that trajectory had it not been for Diane’s presence at the firm. Barbara was in charge of a firm that shared her values when, suddenly, her partner decided that they needed to pursue profit over all else and needed Diane to execute that strategy. Maybe no one made a move directly against her, but Adrian and Diane changed the mission of RBK until it was no longer somewhere Barbara wanted to work.

“We can’t work together if you don’t respect me,” Diane screams at Liz. “No, we can’t work together if you use race cynically,” Liz responds. Diane gets even angrier, swears a bunch, and then says “You want to come after me, you come after me with an honest argument about my lack of competence, my lack of worth.” Diane, you are fighting a completely different battle here! You can be entitled and also correct and also good at your job. This is what you used to accuse Alicia of all the time. The fact you’ve turned this into something about your skill level when it’s about the meaning of having a black firm is only proving Liz’s point.

“Your unworthiness—which you don’t seem to want to acknowledge—is that you can’t be the top dog in a black firm,” Liz says. Exactly. But Diane just storms off.

Now the cop is on the stand. He did not know the victim had a heart condition. Uh, obviously, why would he have known that?  

Liz is aggressive in court; Diane thinks this is the wrong strategy. Without knowing who is on the jury, I have no idea which one of them is correct.  

The next move is to get the cop’s ex-wife, who he abused, on the stand.  

Goodie, it’s cancel culture court. Things go well for Marissa, but Del wants to know why Marissa wasn’t that passionate about the n-word case. Marissa says she feels like it’s not the n-word, like that is a valid reason to not represent your client to the best of your ability. “It is. It always is,” says Del.  

Marissa heads back to RL, and as she walks, the camera follows her and moves through the space until we end up in Liz’s office, where she gets a news alert about the cop from the COTW. He’s been killed, seemingly in retaliation for his actions. The news is quick to suggest the trial might’ve encouraged the killing. “Oh, fuck.” Diane says as she watches the news. Aaaand credits (at 20 minutes in!)  

From the promos, I thought this was going to be a Very Serious Episode about police brutality. From the opening, I thought it was going to be an insufferable episode about cancel culture. I was wrong! (Though, I suppose, some of the cancel culture stuff is still insufferable.)  

Yay for Carrie Preston, who directed this episode. I read an interview with her and she talked about how there’s a “look book” for directing TGF episodes and I have never wanted to see anything as badly as I want to see this look book. (Am I exaggerating? Probably. But I might not be.)  

After credits, Marissa finds Carmen and Jay to ask them if “n-word-ly" is offensive. She acknowledges she’s being annoying but they let her continue anyway. Jay finds it offensive. Carmen does not. This seems fitting with their characters, and I love that this scene acknowledges that not every black person is going to have the exact same reaction to everything.  

I want Carmen to have more to do! While I’m glad the show isn’t forcing her to have a large role in every plot just because, I feel like she’s gone missing for the middle part of the season. My guess is that their priority with Carmen is setting her up to be an ongoing part of the cast who grows into being someone we want a lot from rather than forcing her plots from the start... but surely we could get a little more of her! I doubt she’s a one-season character like I assume Wackner will be.  

The cop’s murder changes the vibe in court. Abernathy calls a moment of silence in his memory. “We’re fucked,” Liz whispers to Diane.  

And indeed they are. The cop’s ex no longer wants to talk about how abusive he was—she wants to talk about how great he was. Whose idea was it to still put her on the stand?! Idk about legal procedures but this seems like a really avoidable mistake!

Diane argues that the cop’s death has prejudiced the jury. Abernathy decides to call a “voir dire de novo,” using an obtuse Latin phrase that would not be permitted in Wackner’s court. (Love the little parallels in this episode, like this, the transition between courts earlier, and how much of Marissa being called out on her whiteness feels like a thematic extension of everything going on with Diane.)

Cancel culture court continues. Carmen shows up.

I don’t really get how June, the victim of LCK2, potentially losing a headlining gig for a bad set instead of retaliation from LCK2, scores him a point. One, if she was a rising store, one bad set shouldn’t have damned her career. Two, isn’t it enough to prove that he masturbated in front of women who didn’t want him to do that???????  

Having June perform her act with no prep in Wackner’s court so they can judge whether or not she is funny is a wildly bad idea. So now Wackner is an arbiter of humor as well as cancel culture?  

This whole system is silly and I reject the whole premise but June should not lose two points for the logic that Wackner + the audience don’t find June funny --> June must’ve had her career derailed because she just isn’t funny (how’d she book the headliner gig, then?) --> LCK2 scores points??? He still masturbated in front of her without her consent!  

Using cancel culture to show Wackner’s court is going too far/slipping into bad territory: I’m on board with this. Using Wackner’s court to actually comment on cancel culture: Ugh. The writers seem to be trying to do both.  

Lol at Abernathy having Stacey Abrams’ book on his desk.

Marissa argues the n-word case more passionately, because these writers love to make situations that seemed clear cut seem more uncertain. It’s no coincidence they have the sexual harassment case look murkier (though, again, June being bad at comedy does not negate the sexual harassment!) right before they have the n-work case begin to tilt in favor of the professor’s cancellation.

Hahah what bullshit about trying to prepare the students for a world that won’t be kind to them. Do you seriously think your black students need YOU to prepare them?  

This lady thinks history classes have to describe rapes in detail to get students to sympathize. No, no they fucking do not.  

She also says she’d use the n-word if she were teaching a topic where it might come up. Um, no?

Mr. Elk (this is what I call Ted Willoughby, Idiot Reporter, after he said “things of that elk” in his first appearance) is attacking Diane and Liz on his show. Diane and Liz are, apparently, “Marxist slip-and-fall lawyers” and Mr. Elk plays a clip of Diane saying cops need to be held accountable. Obviously, this was before the cop’s death and meant to be about the legal system, but it looks like Diane’s calling for his murder. I also love how they go out of their way to only pause the clip on unflattering frames of Diane.  

Liz wants to use this in court—I forgot that Liz is super sneaky but this tracks; she is always quick to use things to her advantage and we’ve known that about her since her strategy with the DNC in 2x07 (to make outlandish allegations and then drop them before presenting proof). Julius wants to get Liz and Diane security.

That security is, apparently Jay. I think they’ve shown Jay as security before when Lucca went viral. I didn’t understand it then and I don’t understand it now.

I was, briefly, worried for Liz and Diane’s safety, especially after I saw all the angry cops waiting for them in court. Then I thought, oh, well at least they’re in court, they should be safe from being shot there. Then I remembered 5x15. Then I laughed at myself.  

Liz’s new strategy works and Abernathy uses more Latin. But, they can’t get any more jurors thrown. (They’re going for a mistrial.)

Oh, Carmen is back again! She did SO MUCH in that court scene where she appeared and then disappeared! She’s chatting with Marissa and spots LCK2 in the RL offices.  

Apparently, LCK2 negotiated a contract with Del, with David Lee’s help. (Why would David Lee be doing entertainment law?) Suddenly everything makes sense to Marissa.

She calls Del to the stand. This—and, honestly, everything after this—makes me wonder how much of this would ever make it to air. Why would Del televise this?

What a shock—Del wants LCK2 back on his streaming service (which I don’t think has a name LOL).  

Somehow Marissa’s questions become about Wackner and whether or not Wackner is an impartial judge, which doesn’t seem like the core issue. Wackner has made it pretty clear that his stance is that he doesn’t care if others are corrupt around him or try to use him; he’s going to be impartial no matter what. Why not play that up instead of making the entire show look staged and Wackner look complicit, Marissa?  

Like, why is Marissa asking Wackner if he’s prejudged the case?! Why isn’t she just trying to like, get him to declare a mistrial because there is a conflict of interest? She can make a version of this argument without accusing Wackner of PREJUDGING, which she knows—I know, so she knows—will set him off. Wackner truly believe he thinks he is impartial. It’s not smart strategy to question that (even if we all know that Wackner is not impartial!)

Wackner blows up at Marissa and shouts at her. He tells her to get the fuck out of court.

This is certainly dramatic, but again, would Del ever choose to air this? I doubt it.  

On her way to work, Diane notices hot pink spray paint in the elevator. When she exits the elevator, the whole firm is gathered in the lobby. Someone has painted COP KILLERS across the elevator bank. “Security doesn’t know how they got in,” Jay says. “Of course they don’t,” Diane responds. “They suggest we call the cops,” Jay says. I love this little exchange. I wasn’t exactly wondering how someone got in, but I like the show making it clear how unprotected Diane and Liz are right now and why.

Julius appears and says that Mr. Elk is saying something new. Diane and Liz sit down to watch and the tone of this episode completely shifts.  

I had forgotten completely that Liz’s dad’s assault issues are out in public until Mr. Elk called him “a disgraced civil rights leader.” It doesn’t feel like they’re out in public! Also I would believe Mr. Elk calling him disgraced for no reason at all.  

Y’all, when Mr. Elk said the name “Duke Roscoe,” my jaw dropped. WHAT A CALLBACK.  

This scene, and really, everything in this plot from here on out, is a delight. It just keeps going and going. It is the best kind of fanservice.

1x11 has been, for no real reason, on my mind since 5x04. It popped out to me as an example of this show’s humor so I talked about it in that recap. I nearly mentioned it in my 5x06 recap when Diane laughed at Julius’s suggestion that they start a firm together. I rewatched 1x11, by complete chance, like two weeks ago. How weird that I'm somehow on the show’s wavelength about this!  

Also I made a joke about Mr. Elk last week without knowing he’d be back this episode. I would like to think I conjured this.  

(1x11 is a really pivotal episode for TGW, even if it isn’t one of the most notable episodes overall. It's composer David Buckley’s first episode and that ending, with Diane laughing, is one of the earliest moments of TGW showing its sense of humor and playing to its strengths.)

Mr. Elk notes that they “rarely see” Kurt, which is apparently evidence that Diane is a lesbian. Hahahahahahah. Mr. Elk also wouldn’t want to note Kurt, despite his recent controversy, because to his viewers, Kurt’s beliefs would make Diane seem more sympathetic.  

GUYS, THE WRITERS DECIDED TO MAKE A CALLBACK TO AN ICONIC MOMENT FROM AN EPISODE THAT AIRED OVER A DECADE AGO AND THEN BUILD ON IT. I cannot express how fucking happy this makes me.  

Now, Mr. Elk says, Diane and Liz are an item!  

What’s better than Diane laughing hysterically at the original allegations? Diane doing it again, eleven years later, JOINED BY LIZ.  

This also works super well to cut the tension between Diane and Liz. I assume this isn’t the end of the name partnership drama, but I think it might be the end of Diane and Liz being pissed at each other. Since the name partnership drama was never really about Diane and Liz (Liz seems to want Diane to stay on...), I’m fine with that.  

Because this is an episode full of callbacks that delight me, Del asks Liz when he gets to meet her son! HER SON STILL EXISTS!  

It sounds like Liz and Del still aren’t fully official, which clarifies why they don’t seem to be a couple in public.  

Del brings up the Diane rumor (jokingly) and Liz jokes along. I love that we get to see this playful side of Liz.  

Wackner’s watching his outburst with regret. Del calms him down and notes that this is good TV (why... would Del air this... it makes DEL look worse than anyone!). Wackner calls Marissa to apologize; she picks up and accepts his apology.  

Abernathy calls Liz and Diane into chambers. He’s worried he was “insensitive”-- he's noticed the tension between Liz and Diane, but now he thinks it was a lover’s spat.

Diane puts on a poker face and leans in towards Liz. She starts nodding attentively and thanks Abernathy. Liz smiles and doubles down: she’s not just going to play along, she’s going to milk it. She gets a juror kicked for homophobia, which means a mistrial. Shameless. I love it.  

Diane and Liz playing off each other as Abernathy tries to look like as much of an ally as possible is comedy gold.  

Diane even calls Liz darling. Omg.  

LCK2 is on the stand, being charismatic and annoying. Of course he is. This is what happens when you give someone who is known for being able to connect with a crowd... a crowd and the benefit of the doubt.

LCK2 is talking about “stupid women” in his new set. Why... is Del giving that a platform at all? See, the fact that Del thinks it is not only interesting but also somehow essential to let LCK2 make jokes about sexual harassment is why I can’t take this episode seriously. Why should I be more outraged about someone who did something shitty not getting a trial for his shitty but legal behavior than I am about powerful people continuing to offer shitty people platforms? Only one of these seems outrageous to me.

Wackner decides that the professor did something “awful but lawful” and that’s it. So you’re saying that if it isn’t illegal, it doesn’t get decided in your court, either? What was the point of this, then?  

The professor says she doesn’t want that—she wants the school to know she’s being punished so she can get her job back. The student storms out, rightfully. Wackner’s job isn’t to offer someone who wants punishment some form of penance, like she can exchange community service hours for offensive remarks. It’s to... well, idk what it is to do, since this whole thing doesn’t really make sense and he makes the rules, but I don’t think his verdict has to be about giving anyone what they want. I’m disappointed that Wackner comes up with a punishment and I don’t think it’s going to get her her job back.  

LCK2 loses, too, because he hasn’t made amends. Wackner doesn’t want to fine him because he’s too rich for a fine to matter. Cord argues that LCK2 deserves a second chance. I mean, sure, but is he being denied a second chance? He doesn’t deserve an easy path back to his fame just because he wants it.  

Wackner mentions prison. At first I was like, oh, that’s a nice throwaway line that he mentioned prison! This ties into what I was saying a few weeks ago about how Wackner likes the institutions that already exist—he just thinks they’re imperfect! It’s fitting that he’s not a prison abolitionist!  

And then the episode actually went there: Wackner, thanks to David Cord’s private prison company, actually sentences LCK2 to prison. This is deeply uncomfortable (and of questionable legality). Wackner’s system is just going to recreate prison? Worse, private prison? He’s creating an unchecked, privatized legal system?! This sounds bad! Kudos to the show for taking this to some place so dark—I knew Wackner’s system would start to show cracks, but I didn’t realize they’d go this far.  

And I’m not sure what the end game is with this! All I know is I’m not on board with Wackner sending people to prison (except as a plot—I am very on board with this plot) and neither is Marissa.

I do not think viewers of the reality show will like the prison twist or the fact that Cord is financing a court and prison! Can you imagine the scandal!

And what do the contracts look like that allow Wackner to sentence someone to prison? Can LCK2 leave any time he wants? If so, then how does the prison sentence help? If not, is that legal?  

Del wants it to be a 2 week sentence, not 3, because this means LCK2 will have to miss his taping in two weeks. I have many questions. (1) Is Wackner’s show airing live? If not, then why do they need to rush the taping of the special? They could push it quite easily. (2) Why can’t they push the taping? This guy is a huge deal and enough potential $$ that Del wants to rehabilitate his career... so why does the taping have to be on this particular day and time?  

Is there really an Exxon Mobile case, I wonder?  

I like that we spend a good amount of time watching Marissa’s reactions to this latest addition to Wackner’s court. Combined with the score, Marissa’s facial expression serves to underline that private prisons are not good here! This isn’t Wackner getting legitimate methods of enforcement... this is just opening a pandora’s box of highly questionable extrajudicial practices.  

I do love that this episode ends up here: it starts out like it’s going to be about cancel culture silliness and ends up being about the escalation of Wackner’s tactics.

Funny how both of the cancelled people end up being found guilty by Wackner, huh! Almost like they actually did something wrong and faced the consequences!  

Liz and Diane get called in to talk to Liz’s favorite department: HR. They’re asked to sign “love contracts” to confirm things are consensual. I find it hilarious that HR gives them the paper before even asking if it’s true.  

Liz grabs a pen and signs. Diane follows her lead. They look at each other and smile politely at HR.

I am... not sure how to read this last scene! Is it a fuck-you to HR? A way of easing tensions? A way for Liz to get people to stop talking to her about removing Diane as name partner because no one will want to ask if they’re really involved? Something else? Help me understand!

Curious to see where things go next. I can see LCK2 coming back for another episode but it also wouldn’t surprise me to never see him again. Similarly, I could see some glances/discussion of Diane and Liz’s romantic relationship next week, or I could see it never being mentioned again, or I could see it being mentioned next season out of the blue.  

[cloveroctobers]

How would you have wrote a Hope route/her character?

Okay so after the season ended? Or at least when i finished my first round of the second season, I decided to go through the tags of litg and it’s been said that it became common for the writers to make the black female characters kinda the villain or either easy to dislike and that’s not okay? They did it with Erikah and they attempted to make it a issue with Vieve when it came to Harry (if you go his route that is) but THANKFULLY they listened and didn’t go full force with that.

I’ve been pretty vocal about any of the characters that worked my nerves/had problematic moments throughout each season and Hope was probably number 1 which sucks! (and then it became Lottie) I wanted her to be my MC’s bestie but it’s like their feelings have to be pushed to the side for Hope’s benefit. Nobody else matters but Hope and Noah and that’s exhausting! Especially if you’re not given the chance to romance noah...yikes. + I’ve dealt with that before in rl so maybe that’s why this was so triggering for me lmao?

We’re not here to talk mainly about Hope’s faults because that’s been done already and I’m tired of speaking on what’s common knowledge for her. Hey and by no means is there a perfect person/character! that’s just not the way things are, I get that. So to polish a Hope route? Idk since there were people who attempted a route where she did end up as your bestie but that was easier to do because you most likely weren’t after her man—BUT if you were!!! you were being pretty petty 😭 and I don’t blame you. Take back what you wanted from the beginning! My second round I wasn’t taking her shit and was being a bitch to her...mostly when it called for it.

ANYWAYS. A Hope route? It would probably be a bestie to lover trope and who doesn’t like those? A lot similar to a possible Hannah route, yeah? She confides in MC for a lot of her decisions throughout the season when it comes to Noah. However MC is not stuck in the shadows or sidelines watching Hope romance Noah, they’re out to do their own thing too. Why sit around and wait for someone to care about you in the way that you want them to? Sure MC’s thought about Hope that way but is positive that she doesn’t feel the same and wants to keep her as a friend so they don’t question Hope and keeps it moving much like Hope did with Noah. It takes a MOMENT for Hope to realize that she doesn’t like MC’s attention on anyone else but her...much like Noah. Hope has insecurities, no doubt and when she loves she loves hard!! yet it’s not healthy the way she goes forth with things. This is something she doesn’t realize until she’s out of the show and watches herself on the screen. This is a fact.

Hope does know when something feels off and finds that she’s comfortable with Noah. She put all her chips in with Noah and they have a intense connection that many don’t understand or want to understand, so when she shared that there might be some feelings for MC...Noah has to wrap his mind around this. He won’t lie, he’s a little hurt but he tries to be understanding because he adores hope and he wants her to be happy. He wants to make her happy...so in a sense he’ll show that he’s listening but will make the mistake of ignoring those true feelings as the game goes on because he feels like “okay, Hope has these thoughts but they’re not like ours. We’re secure.” Which is a con for him, he assumes sometimes and that’s a bit selfish.

He’ll be more affectionate when MC is around because he’s scared to lose hope. He put his all into Hope as well and he doesn’t know what’s outside of that, even if others have shown interest for the both of them? That’s the issue, they don’t know what’s out there beside each other...they’re not as open because they feel like they’re soulmates. So the moment Hope actually feels something for someone else and it’s not Noah this time? He’s panicking because they’re half way through the game now. He might also believe there’s only one soulmate in this lifetime. To each their own right? So they’re stuck and not exactly sure how to get through it until they talk to MC together and separately.

This throws MC for a loop because they haven’t thought much about it since the first couple days in the house. Ofc they and Hope are the closest...at least it seemed that way...but at this point MC’s also in another relationship and now this puts that relationship in jeopardy and Hope HATES that she caused this but she’s also been about her business. She’s always willing to take risks—she did it from the beginning with Noah and she can’t say she regrets it. 

So why not do it again?

She fears this ruins her relationship with MC but MC just says they needs time, even if there isn’t much time now. I think ultimately they would stay in their couples trying to win the game and after the show would be the time to figure out what to do about their feelings and relationships.

Another route? Getting the chance to steal Noah back while trying to build a friendship around that? Probably a mess like MC dating Gary and having Lottie scratch at your back and face??? Yet Hope wouldn’t be passive aggressive, she would know how to have a conversation...but again this is on her terms. Then they’d both realize that what they truly wanted was each other and not Noah oops

Or if Hope is building something with Noah and you’re trying to build something with Marisol? Since Marisol and Hope were more on the friendly route...that would be interesting to see too? Hey!! maybe you’ll all be in a poly relationship and live happily ever after! Again don’t really know how long that would last since Hope can be possessive and yes Marisol is open to new ideas but she knows how to push against boundaries! Hope HAS boundaries and Marisol can tend to be emotionally oblivious when she feels like things are pretty clear-cut? 🤔

[three--rings]

Can you imagine any of your OTPs being in a poly or open relationship? I'd love to here your thoughts on which and why yes or not.

I’ve been sitting on this ask for a while, just, like, putting off actually answering it.

So, first off I’m a BIG fan of triads/threesomes in general.  Less so just wide open relationships, though I’m not, like AGAINST it.  Just less personally interested in it.  (I’ve seen SO MUCH poly drama in my RL that though people I love and care about are dedicated to that life, I kinda want to scream and run the opposite direction.)

But let’s get specific: Wangxian...nope.  They are both FAR too possessive to ever make that work.  Like I try to imagine it working on even a really limited, one-time kinda basis and just...nope, Lan Wangji would lose his shit.

My other MDZS OTP is 3zun, which basically already qualifies.  I could even imagine it being more open than just the three of them in the right situation.  They are already so complicated and messy with the various emotional connections between them you might as well add more.

Wenzhou, my current obsession, mmm, Wen Kexing is canonically jealous as fuck and vaguely murderous towards anyone ZZS even talks nicely to, so...probably not.  Though after a certain period of established relationship, POSSIBLY I could see them involving someone else in, like, a kinky way.  Probably not someone emotionally important, but a temporary partner perhaps.

Victuuri...that’s an interesting question.  I think they may somehow be the most emotionally mature of all my OTPs, SOMEHOW, and so...perhaps.  I could see it but probably not having equal emotional connection to each other.  More like maybe sleeping with a friend sort of thing, I could definitely see them going in that direction.  But actually DATING anyone else I can’t see.

Other OTPS:

Narumitsu aka Phoenix Wright/Miles Edgeworth (the forever OTP) - It really depends on what you headcanon as the progress of their relationship because they have what could be either a five year gap where they very well may have dated other people OR they could have been long distance during that time and I could see being open as well.  I know the people who have Wright with Kristophe Gavin in some capacity during this time would probably agree.  So...given the right circumstances, maybe.

Jupeter aka Juno Steel/Peter Nureyev (The Penumbra Podcast) - Totally.  Like, again, they have so much on again/off again to them and they’re both, like, such canonically big sluts, that 100% I could see that.  Though if they haven’t quite worked out everything between themselves then Peter’s insecurity issues might become a problem.

Oh, I thought of one that, while totally an OTP, I’ve never written but WOULD qualify.  Adoribull or The Iron Bull/Dorian.  I totally think they would be open/poly.  I mean Bull is basically canonically poly (and pan) in the game and though they are ASSUMED to make a commitment to each other in the same way both their characters do in their romances, they are separated a good amount of the time and I think they’d be flexible.  

My problem in general here is that in real life I believe in healthy communication and not being possessive and jealous of your partner/the importance of trust...in fiction I find jealousy really hot.  So a lot of my OTPs tend to be jealous and possessive types. 

[myevilmouse]

Are there any tropes you dislike in fic? Like for example I dislike a lot cheating (in general) as a form of drama or conflict.

Dear Anon,

Cheating is a major turn off for me in fic.  I just won’t read it.  I don’t see it being something that is surmountable in RL (this is me personally) so I definitely do not see any of my OTPs finding a happy ever after after someone is unfaithful.  And I am HERE for the Happy Ever Afters!!!

I never had to think much about my turnoff tropes until I signed up for my very first ever fic exchange, the Star Wars Rare Pairs in 2019.  And so part of that was writing “Do Not Wants” to tell the author what you most definitely didn’t want in your gift fic.  Most of mine were kink related, like please no mpreg, etc.  But I had cheating/infidelity/adultery right at the top.

I don’t have a lot of “don’t likes” in the trope world, because I think almost anything can be done well...but yeah, cheating is never cool for my ships.  Never.

I would say my #1 turnoff for any fic is if I see the character as just insanely OOC without a disclaimer.  Not a trope, just a thing.  Like if you want to write a fic where Luke is a psycho rude asshole or make a movie like that, you have three options:  1)  straight up tell me “This is OOC, I am not even trying” so I understand what is happening and maybe will read out of macabre interest? and 2)  take me on a dark twisty journey and let me believe my hero can actually become that psycho rude asshole 3) get him possessed or make it all a dream or something XD  I actually have read (even written!) and enjoyed such fics. 

WITHOUT that disclaimer, if I start a fic and Luke doesn’t feel “Luke” enough as I see him in my own evilmouse brain’s interpretation of his character (which I recognize is subjective in many ways but not all, thank you), I am not going to get past the first jarring “ugh”

Fanfic is for fun and there is room for every trope.  Some people may get off on reading about someone named Luke cheating on someone named Mara or vice versa, but what it comes down to is:

look it’s my most-overused gif! 

Thank you so much for the ask anon!  Cheating-hating solidarity! <3

[potteresque-ire]

(I wrote this as a response to another post. It got long, potentially upsetting, so I decided to move it here.)

(TW: Criticism of Draco Malfoy under the cut.)

I think the best analogy I can come up with for Slytherins in an Americanized Hogwarts is if they are the children of the tech giants (Hello Draco Bezos) and multi-company conglomerates, the top-earning Wall Street hedge fund managers, the property moguls like the Trumps and the Bloombergs, and the legacy politicians like the Bushes and the Kennedys. This would be a fairer comparison to the social-economic power of Slytherin families in the books because conservatives in the USA mostly do not come from privileged homes. And I suspect even this American analogue may pale to its UK counterpart, for it lacks the centuries of practice ("tradition”) as a convenient excuse for continuing its underlying bigotry.

Draco Bezos or Draco Trump or Draco Bush has as little choice as being of these surnames as Draco Malfoy. The members of the Americanized Slytherin house, likewise, don’t deserve to be seen as all evil, and maybe — and very likely — they’re not. But consider what Americanized Ron would think about the Slytherins as a group, bearing in mind that the books are written in the POV of Harry, a child himself and Ron’s fierce friend, if…

(Under the cut, for I’m VERY talkative today ...)

- If this Americanized Draco still buys his way into the Quidditch team with a Nimbus 2001. The obvious bribery aside, everyone in this Slytherin team can readily afford the same thing, and likely already has, at least, a Nimbus 2000 in possession.

- If Americanized Lucius also interferes with school policy with connections to Washington; he rubs shoulders with Secretary of Education Umbridge, who he got to know back when they were lobbying together in the capital.

- If the execution weapon of choice for Buckbeak is a golf club, a gift from the President Goyle of MACUSA. Walden McNair, former Slytherin, has just received a medal of honour for being able to wield it with style. This is a tale retold by a very bitter Theodore Nott, whose father owns the golf course resort where President Goyle plays but Nott Sr. only gets to keep the hamburger wraps of the President’s lunch. The other regular attendee of these lunches is the landowner of the entire Hogsmeade, who happens to be Gregory Goyle’s father.

And speaking of Hogsmeade...

- If Goyle Inc. hikes the rent of the town after every visit by Hogwarts students. Prices of items sold in Hogsmeade shops hike accordingly to deflect the cost. The Weasleys haven’t been able to afford anything there for years.

Goyle Inc. has also been looking to invest in Ottery St Catchpole, re-develop the area into one with ... farmer’s market. Lots and lots of farmer’s markets where a loaf of bread costs $10.00 apiece.

- If American Hogwarts is also free but God knows for how long. Its profits from the previous years — sorry, not profit, but endowment as should be referred to for non-profit organisations — has been channelled into the stock market and the stock market hasn’t been doing so well. Mrs Zabini, the manager of the fund, still gets her commission even if Hogwarts goes bankrupt. In fact, a volatile market with high trading volumes is a godsend for her income, and her yearly bonus is large enough to run Hogwarts for a year. She’s very generous, however, and donates 1% of it to the school, which gets her name engraved on the Gryffindor-Zabini Tower.

Meanwhile, if the Weasleys go home every summer not knowing if they can return to the same tower on September 1st.

- If Skelegro and other potions in the infirmary are rationed due to high cost and every time a Weasley find themselves injured in a Quidditch match, the Malfoys, father or son or both, would remark on the Weasleys having more children than they can afford, and recommend the school board that these potions should be rationed by surname as well. The Slytherins have no such concerns of course; the Parkinsons are heads of an international potion conglomerate and they can always import extra potions from Brazil, which are sold at a small fraction of the cost they sold to Hogwarts (yes, they have the licence and patent to produce the Skelegro. Why did you ask?).

…

Perhaps -- assuming my understanding of UK’s class system isn’t too off the mark -- these if’s can provide a sense of Slytherin’s privilege in canon to the American audience, and related to this, how Draco’s prejudice towards Ron cannot be put on the same moral scale from Ron’s prejudice against Draco. I’d also like to emphasize this: I haven’t touched at all, on this list, on Voldemort’s reign of terror. I haven’t touched, at all, on the fact that Voldemort’s war had been spearheaded by the parents of many current Slytherin students, and this war had only been suspended -- not ended -- for just short of a decade when the Class of Harry Potter entered Hogwarts. The wounds were still fresh. Arthur and Molly could’ve easily suffered similar fates as the Potters and the Longbottom’s. The bigotry of the Slytherins, and of the Malfoys, wasn’t merely a suspected thing in the canon years, like how we feel about a celebrity who’s made a questionable tweet. Not only was their bigotry a fact in the canon years, but it was also a real, ongoing threat that, if permitted to run its course, could and would ruin the lives of the Weasleys.

Ron seeing the Slytherins as a threat arguably served the dual function of keeping him safe -- perhaps not at the moment, but in the future. Draco, on the other hand, had nothing to fear about Ron and above all, the socioeconomic class that the Weasleys represented.

They never stood on equal grounds.

And here’s the thing I don’t understand. Or I think I understand it, having seen this Ron-is-as-bad-as-Draco-and-Slytherins-are-victims-of Dumbledore’s-prejudice debate in various forms over the years — this isn’t new or controversial, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this has become the dominant view within the ship — and I’m not sure I can get myself to face what I’ve understood, because what this is is worrisome for me.

Please hear me out.

The Drarry fandom on Tumblr has, in my observation, always taken a very strong, hardline stance against prejudice. The post that says something along the line of 10 people who sits with a Nazi makes a table of 11 Nazis get numerous likes and reblogs. And yet in this situation, we have a boy, Ron, who is directly affected by the prejudice, who’s familiar with the connections between his Slytherin classmates and those who have not only worked to make their brand of bigotry the law but helped murder those who do not agree, and his distaste for these oppressors as a group is somehow seen as equal as his likely future oppressors’ disgust at his presence.

The reason given is inevitably a variation of this: Draco was a child. He was parroting his parent’s beliefs. He was too young to be responsible for his words, or his actions. He was a victim.

I’ve not seen this defence offered, not even once within the Drarry circle, for a real-life bully. Tumblr’s user base is young, and many have a history of being bullied due to their race, gender, sexuality, disability, socioeconomic class. After a bit of subtraction (Young Age - Bullying History in Years), I’d take that many of these RL events happened when the victim and the perpetrator were about the age of Ron and Draco in canon. And yet, not once have I seen a shipper on my dash suggest the bully was a victim, or that they weren’t at fault because they were only parroting the prejudice of their conservative families, their schools, their religion etc. That maybe they didn’t mean what they were saying or doing.

This is a (very) good thing. But it also makes me wonder: defenders of Draco and the Slytherins do know, deep down, that the excuse they’ve offered Draco isn’t nearly good enough to exempt him from his behaviour.

Draco might not have understood the greater political ramifications of his bullying, but he knew he was hurting Ron. Bullying cannot a be mindless act; it cannot be a passive reflection of one’s lessons from school or family for It’s a pre-meditated, targeted behaviour, and a good bully like Draco — he came up with a bullying chant that the whole school knew in the end — tailors his acts to serve a specific purpose of hurting the victim. Draco might not have known that calling Hermione a Mudblood could devalue her life enough to make it ripe for elimination when Voldemort came to power, but he knew perfectly well that the term was derogatory. This is especially true if one agrees with the common headcanon that Draco was second only to Hermione in marks in school, that he was no Crabbe or Goyle and he was intelligent.

Our ship celebrates Draco’s sharp tongue, but that tongue was used exclusively to ridicule, to bully in canon -- it’s fandom that has given it a better / higher / romantic purpose. His father’s tongue spoke the language of bigotry to the ears of the Ministry; this was the Malfoy’s weapon of choice and Draco was forging his own in the books. His bullying ways in canon was written with humour, with Weasley is Our King being the epitome of the laughs. I don’t believe it was JKR’s intention for her readers to fall in love with Draco via his bullying style, however. The HP world was built as a mirror of our own (rather than as a manual of what an ideal world should be, as many in fandom has seemed to assume), and Weasley is Our King showcased how easily bigotry can creep into our day-to-day language when it’s masqueraded as a joke (Even Luna was singing it at some point):

Oh, relax! It’s perfectly fine for everyone to know the Weasleys were born in a bin, into poverty! Funny, isn’t it? HAHAHAHA!

Imagine seeing this kind of behaviour on Tumblr. Imagine trying to defend this kind of behaviour on Tumblr.

I have faith that most of my Drarry friends cannot, will not do the latter.

So please, please reconsider what you’re really saying when you call Draco the victim, the vulnerable one, when you insist that he and the Slytherins had been wronged. I don’t mean to start another debate and I don’t plan to engage in one; this isn’t a call-out post either, I enjoy reading all the opinions expressed and I understand many of the sentiments I’m questioning comes from a place of love. I just hope that everyone who’s reading (thank you) can sit back, think a little. Imagine for a moment that table with the Nazis. Even if, at the table, there’re actually 10 Nazis and 1 who isn’t, who is more vulnerable? The non-Nazi sitting with the Nazis? Or the person who refuses to sit at the table and makes a bad judgement call on the 11th sitter by assuming they are a Nazi as well? Who is more the victim, or more likely to become one? The 11th sitter who’s wrongly labelled? Or the standing person who is being eyed by the 10 Nazis with disgust, the 10 Nazis who already have a family history of hunting down the standing person’s family and friends?

Or does the answer -- and this is the understanding I’ve got but haven’t dared to face -- does the answer depend on if he character in question had white-blond hair that glinted so beautifully in the sun? Is that the reason why Draco Malfoy, bigot, bully, has been given this special treatment, this carte blanche in the sense that he’ll always remain on our good side, be exempt from our moral judgement regardless of what he did, because his physical description doesn’t contain a single hint of melanin?

[divagonzo]

Quarantine (Romione, One-shot)

Ao3 // FF.net (will post them there tomorrow but Tumblr gets the first crack tonight)

A/N: I’d intended to have this posted last week but RL got in the way and so much fell onto my plate as “back-up daughter” to friends who are out of state for their elderly parents. What little time I had was claimed by so many other things too. I know there is a Princess somewhere mad that RL interfered in my life once again. One of these years my life will be only dramatic in the stories I write. Alas.

Rated M (so much smutty goodness in this one!) for Lemons, Limes, Citrus galore. Not Ace Safe in the least (This means you @headcanonsandmore​)

TW: Mentions of current British events involving a towheaded cockwomble and his deputy. Tagging @hillnerd​ and @abradystrix​ just ‘cause.

Give me my demarcation line darn it!

“I swear to Merlin that I am going to strangle that sod,” Hermione growled before putting the two-way mirror down in her office. “That cockwomble!”

“Love?” Ron poked his head in, wondering what got Hermione into a bit of lather this morning from her noon call with the Muggle PM.

Hermione took off her reading glasses and rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes, wondering how much more cocked up the world was going to be in the interim.

“What’s happened, dear?” Ron stood at the doorway, wondering too what was going on. “I heard you cursing. Did you speak with that tosser of a PM?”

“I did,” She hissed. “Do you remember that boring ministry dinner we attended last weekend? The one where I was seated across from the PM and his partner, talking boring politics while you tried to keep from complaining about the rubbish chicken they served for the main course?”

“Of course. Who could forget that Merlin awful chicken that even you could cook a better one than what was presented to us? Who did they get to cater it, Malfoy?”

“You’d think, right? Anyway, it seems the PM has gone and contracted some virus, one that appears to be worse than the flu for some people. Unfortunately, now, since we were within close contact with the bastard,” 

“Please don’t tell me.”

“We’re quarantined for a fortnight because that sod insisted on shaking everyone’s hand when they arrived, including yours.”

“Shite.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought too. At least the kids were off at school.”

“That – “ Hermione tuned out for Ron’s caustic rant about the current PM who seemed to have less brains than Flint seems to possess. “I can’t believe he did that.”

“So we have to be home, inside, for 2 weeks. We can’t even go out shopping for groceries, you to work, anything.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“I know. Fortunately, we’ve not been to see your parents since we met with the PM.”

“And your parents?”

“I’ve only talked with them on the phone. I’ve not been by there in 2 weeks.”

“Harry & Ginny. I mean she is at home with a toddler and Harry’s been working on a case for weeks now with his group. I had a meeting with him last week to discuss training for the new class coming in.”

“Then we need to tell him and others and let them decide.”

“Bugger. How bad is this virus?”

“From what he said, most people get a little sick but it’s not a big deal. The problem is that for one in five, it’s serious enough for a visit to the A&E. From what he said also, there’s about 1 in 20 that need critical care.” Hermione sat back in her leather office chair, sighing. “I need to contact St. Mungo’s and let them know to prepare for this. I think I also need to share this with the Wizarding population, too, so they can take care of themselves too.”

“That bad?”

“You know how I talk about history entirely too much?”

Ron grinned, thinking about how often Hermione would pick up a tome for a bit of light reading. “Of course I do. Last year you were reading something on the Dark Ages. Seemed quite bad.”

“Oh, it was. It was how a plague back in the 14th century and how it decimated the European population.”

“Sounds grim.”

“It was. There are articles by historians that the plague killed between 25 and 50 per cent of the population of Europe. Only a few places were reasonably immune to it.”

Ron frowned. “Please tell me it won’t be that bad for us.”

“It won’t. We have better medicines and potions to take now unlike back then. We have a level of hygiene now that makes the transmission less likely.”

Ron said, “You mean how we take a bath or a shower daily?”

“That and always washing hands when coming out of the loo.”

“Who wouldn’t? That’s gross.”

Hermione grimaced. “You know there are plenty of men who don’t wash their hands.”

“True and they’re disgusting.”

“Anyway, we’re going to be home awhile.”

“We’ll need some groceries to tide us over.”

“I’ll firecall Neville and let him know to keep the kids at Hogwarts until this passes for us.”

“Good idea. Looks like we’re going to break out that industrial-sized Mirror you got for me when I was laid up on bed rest with the kids.”

“I’ll go get it and put it up in here for you.” Ron stopped. “So if you’re infected, then I am too, right?”

Hermione smiled, thinking of a delightful Sunday lie-in they had last weekend. “Yes, you would be.”

“Well since I’m on the same broom you are, it’s not like you have to sleep on the couch or anything.”

“No, neither of us has to sleep on the couch.” Hermione stood up from her leather office chair and went to the doorway, pushing her husband gently into the doorframe. With a glance, she ran her fingers through the fringe and his hair, appreciating the softness of the hair on his head. “And no illness will keep me from doing this,” She stood on her tiptoes to gently kiss him. 

Ron reached for her hips and pulled her body flush to his own. “Keep that up and we won’t get any work done this afternoon.” 

Hermione kissed him on the nose before pulling his head forward, resting her forehead on his. “And once again, you’re right. I did say I needed to do a couple of things before this evening.” She sighed. “But I would enjoy dessert tonight.” Her smile turned wicked. “I think we would both appreciate some quality stress relief.”

Ron pulled her close again, snogging her breathless. “I’ll hold you to it.” He hugged her tight, pressing his nose into her hair. “I’ll go get the mirror out of storage and set it up. Then I’ll firecall everyone to warn them off, including Harry and Ginny.”

“I admit this is going to be, well, interesting.”

Ron erupted in a cheeky grin. “Remember the last time we had a fortnight to ourselves?”

“You mean that little cottage in the French Alps at Mont Fort? That was quite nice of Fleur’s parents to rent it out for us for that holiday.” Hermione smiled thinking of that particular Holiday. “The Muggles only saw one hut out there in the middle of nowhere but didn’t see the Wizarding village down the side of the mountain. I don’t know of any Holiday we’ve ever taken that was better than the one there.”

“You certainly weren’t complaining that we were snowed in that week and slept in front of the fireplace every night to stay warm.” Ron ran his hands along her face. “And to think, nine months later Rose came along.”

Hermione snuggled into his chest. “So you’re hoping for that again, aren’t you?”

“That’s up to you, love. While I would never turn down another child, it’s not my decision, is it?”

“Maybe I wouldn’t be on bed rest for months if I was again?”

“You weren’t with Hugo.”

“We’ll see what happens,” Hermione stood on her toes and kissed Ron again. “But first, we have to take care of the business stuff.”

Ron kissed Hermione on the nose. “I’ll get your mirror up in a moment, right after I talk with Mum and Dad.”

Ron left Hermione in her office while she considered how she was going to do her job to her standards while stuck at home for a fortnight.

Demarcation line for the win!

Ron finished with the last dish in the sink after their dinner of cottage pie and salad. The grocery budget shrunk back down to a reasonable amount once the kids went back to Hogwarts after Winter Hols. He didn’t mind since the kids had everything he lacked growing up, with enough food to feed a small army every meal for them and provided them treats from time to time as well. But the household budget would strain slightly with two teenagers eating their weight daily. How his parents managed all the kids on his Dad’s meagre salary he’d never understand except to respect his Mum and her skills.

Two small yet strong arms wrapped around his midsection, hugging her front to his back. “I’m so glad you’re home with me. I’d go completely mental if I had to spend two weeks away from you during this barmy time.”

Ron pulled Hermione to him, lifting her onto the ledge of the counter. The kids never noticed that the counters were the perfect height for him and a little tall for Hermione. She didn’t mind, not when they were still young and working too hard and grabbed a shag whenever they could manage it those early days of owning their cottage. Tonight, though, they had plenty of time on their hands. His hands went to her thighs, rubbing his calloused hands up and down her smooth skin. “I’d have walked into our quarantine to keep you company during this time. Might I remind you that our vows said In Sickness and in Health? I think this qualifies as in sickness.”

“It’s not like I even feel off. Maybe it’s that cockwomble of a PM who is an idiot.”

Ron opened her pyjama top, exposing her chest to him. It was almost 25 years after the fact and even with all of the changes to her body from having kids, the curse scar along with the gold galleon burns along her chest never faded. They’d healed up well enough but those early days, when he was still learning every square inch of her body, he’d kiss each scar, each burn spot, each memento of a moment when her bravery cost something, some bit of pain in their lives. “Fucking gorgeous,” he growled. “Damn gorgeous.”

“You’re barking,” she smiled as she worked at lifting the tee shirt up his torso, leaving small kisses on various freckles on his body. He finished the job, tossing the shirt behind him so she could appreciate his body. While he wasn’t out running with the kids daily now since his ankle ached a bit from time to time, he wasn’t a gangly teenager like he was at 14. He’d filled out some and put on some muscle on his shoulders and back which Hermione never failed to appreciate. “Deep in thought?” she asked.

Ron looked back at his wife and saw her smirk. “Yeah, just wish I’d been able to tell 14-year-old me to quit being such a tosser and that he’d eventually get the girl of his dreams.”

“You’d already had me but I had to learn to appreciate you,” She worked her hands down his lean torso, settling them on the tops of his hips. “How could I have been so stupid to not realize that you express love to people by giving your time and affection in doing things for people. Once I figured you out, I realized you’d been telling me for years how much you loved me. Once I realized that I was being selfish in thinking you had to express affection the way that I understood you so much more.” She pulled his hips close, feeling his sleep trousers straining the front. “I’m glad I pulled my thumb out.” She grinned at him before shrugging out of her top, leaving her in her skin. “And I’m glad that you put something special in.”

Ron laughed but dropped his sleep trousers, leaving him in his skin. “You mean like you want right now?” he stepped between her knee and then pulled her hips forward to the edge of the countertop.  

She pulled on the back of his head down for a tempestuous kiss, feeling his excitement poking her thighs. Releasing his lips for a moment, she breathed, “here or somewhere else?”

Ron lifted his hands from the sides of her hips to her breasts, feeling the tips harden under his fingertips. “Oh we’re staying here,” He cheeked before kneeling before her. “I want dessert first.”

Hermione leaned back on the counter, holding onto the edge while Ron feasted on her tender flesh, giving her so much pleasure and joy that if she could cry, she would. Instead, she let go, embracing the vulnerability she could express with her husband. Ron was the only one on the planet who could quiet the racing raging thoughts in her head, slow down the near-constant anxiety that she had to always be the best at everything, and temper her sharp edges that so many others presumed about her.

A shudder rippled through her body followed by the frisson that she gladly welcomed, all given freely by her wonderful husband. She reached out and found the soft ginger hairs on his head and ran her fingers through them, appreciating the solid feeling under her fingertips while he used his to make her groan in ecstasy. 

Another rush of pleasure coursed through each nerve in her body, leaving her quivering in the abundance of sensory overload. She would never tell anyone besides Ron but what he did for her before they had sex was her favourite part. Everything he brought to their intimate moments only magnified how much she adored him.

Two hands reached up her body to tease her breasts, pinching the tips under his well-practised fingers. 

“Oh God,” She moaned and felt the jolt of pleasure erupt from her core, spreading out to her fingertips and toes. 

When she could open her eyes, Ron was standing in front of her, patiently waiting for her approval. She nodded once, having lost the capability to speak anything coherent some time ago, and felt the pleasure of having his cock inside her.

“Shit, this is fucking amazing,” he kept still for a moment to make sure she was ready. Twenty plus years of making love to this wonderful man – and the shagging and, as crudely as it was factual, the fucking – she never grew tired of it. Like the loaves of bread he made for Sunday lunch for the family, he never let it grow stale or trite.

Hermione reached up to hold onto his shoulders, to have any kind of leverage while he continued to make love to her. While he might have popped off in a minute when they were much, much younger, he had stamina now to last long enough to make her satiated. Who knew that she could feel that much from a shared intimacy with this amazing man she called her husband?

“Yes, right there, feels amazing,” she praised him for every second she could articulate. Her husband thrived on being praised and told how well he was treating her. It took too many rows after they finally pulled their collective thumbs out - and some tears on her part - to realize what he needed to flourish. 

“Gonna fuck you hard, Hermione, going to make you walk like a bloody bowtruckle for a week when I’m done with you,” he’d cheek back.

“Yes, please do, yes” each moment he spent driving her spare, with his hands, his manhood, his mouth, anything he could use to afford her pleasure and joy. “It’s not like anyone is going to notice us, right?”

“No one’s going to interrupt. I’ve locked the door, the Floo, and put us under a Fidelius Charm. 

Ron kept going, eventually pulling her hips forward and resting her legs on her chest and her feet on his shoulders. Hermione pressed her heels into his collarbone, changing the angle he fucked her. “Yes, right there, keep going,” her praise for him only grew more incoherent, more broken as he nattered on, offering filthy comments in response to her. He understood her best of all. He was the only one who got to see her vulnerable, this candid for him. 

A sheen of sweat covered both of them, rattling the cabinets and drawers underneath them. Noises echoed in the kitchen into the parlour along with the occasional groan of wood underneath Hermione’s arse. The slap of wet skin against wet skin echoed along with the growing cacophony into the cottage.

“Hermione,” Ron’s voice rumbled.

“Whenever you are,” she replied. 

Ron continued for another dozen strokes, fighting like mad to hold on. He looked down at his wife and saw her tits jiggling on her breasts while one hand had slid down her slick body to where they were joined, pressing her fingertips into the crevice where her bundle of nerves was, rubbing in tight little circles.

“Oh fuck,” he growled before exploding. He pulled her hips flush to his, feeling her clenching around his length. 

She groaned like the long-departed ghoul in his childhood attic, imitating a banshee with a bad cold. She shivered, not stopping even after he’d quit thrusting into her welcoming body. He pulled back, gasping for breath and stretching his back. She continued to quiver from all of the sensory overload while he hid the smug grin on his face from making her behave in such a wanton fashion. 

Seconds which felt like minutes later, Ron pulled Hermione from the edge of the countertop, lifting her onto his shoulders and carried her to their couch. She scrambled off with him plopping down first followed by her cuddling into his side. She scratched the soft ginger hairs on his chest while he caught his breath.

“We get two weeks like this,” said to the top of his wife’s head. “I never expected to have daily shags ever again, not after that first summer.”

Hermione looked up and smiled before resting her head back on his chest and crossing her knee over his thighs. “I guess we should take advantage of it before everything goes pear-shaped again.”

“Would you say it’s fortunate that we got this earlier than later than everyone else?”

“Honestly? I’d rather get it and get it over with and get back to work helping the rest of our country survive this disaster.”

“Disaster?” Ron rubbed her back, feeling the hairs standing up under his fingertips. “You mean that walking fuckstrumpet of a Prime Minister for the Muggles?”

“If I thought that the populace was manipulated into voting for that sod, I’d open an inquiry. But I don’t trust the Muggles and their discernment of the propaganda that passes for the media now.”

“You’ve never trusted the media, Hermione, not after that bint Skeeter defamed you repeatedly when we were younger.”

“I recall you being shirty too after she went after our kids that one time at the Quidditch World Cup back in 2014. Good thing Ginny gave her what for on Harry’s behalf.”

Ron wrapped his arms around Hermione’s shoulders, pulling her more onto his still heaving chest. 

A soft continuous thumping on the window made them turn their heads. Sure enough, it was raining but also an oversized Barn Owl was on the railing, tapping with his beak in the utter darkness.

“Merlin, can’t even enjoy the moment,” Hermione growled before getting up from Ron’s comforting embrace to stroll to the window and open it, bringing in the very wet owl inside. “I must answer this immediately, isn’t it?” she asked the owl who hooted softly. “Bugger, OK. There are rashers on the countertop for you. I’ll send this back straightaway.”

Hermione saw the MoM seal on the outside of the parchment and cracked it with a fingernail, watching the three feet unroll. She scanned the document before her eyes grew as large as tea saucers then read it again.

Ron sat up on the couch, watching his wife standing only in her skin by the window, the fireplace behind her lush arse highlighting it and silently making him drool, yet she had not a care in the world who might see her form, already engrossed in what had been sent to her.  “That bad, love?”

Hermione turned her face back to Ron and saw the thunderheads rolling across her face. “That bloody PM didn’t bother to listen to the Muggle doctors and is being admitted to the hospital tonight. The sod has left that other tosser - “

“He’s the bloke that looks like he was used for quaffle target practice, right?”

“That’s the one.” She took a deep breath. “That means I’m now the Shadow Minister, temporarily. The real Shadow Minister is also under quarantine.”

“But so are we, right?”

Hermione’s smile erupted. “Nothing like a bubblehead charm to go into work, which I, unfortunately, must do for an hour early tomorrow morning. That Ruddy idiot wants to talk about the state of the Ministry before going forward at 7 am.”

Ron stood up from the couch, looking fanciable and fit in his skin. Four strides and he was next to her, swallowing her up in an enormous hug. “I guess that means we need to get to bed so you can sleep, right?”

Hermione looked up at Ron, his beard shining like gold in the amber lights of the fire in the locked fireplace. “Eventually, love. I would prefer round two.”

Ron turned, pulling her with him as he walked back to their bedroom. “Round two, huh?”

“I need to work this stress off and you’re the medicine I need tonight.”

[eisforeidolon]

Prophet and Loss

This episode did actually do a few things really well, a couple decently well, and then there was the usual.

That intro is just … horrific.  Even knowing from being spoiled that it's only a dream?  Just - holy crap, Jensen.  That Dean clawed up the walls in his sleep he was so deep into it?  Gah.  So much no (but in the best way).  

In a similar vein, I also found the scenes with the screwed up prophet guy really creepy.  The look on the actor's face, the methods of his murders, him creepily stalking the second victim, the Enochian chanting from nowhere?  I thought it was a pretty effective piece of horror, so that was great.  I mean, Killer Prophet sounds like an awesomely terrible slasher flick, so.  

In terms of the acting, I thought all of the scenes with just Sam & Dean were great – in the motel, in the car, at the end.  These guys really are just that good at being these characters.  I got a genuine sense throughout the episode of Sam holding back his frustration with Dean's chosen path and goodbye speeches until he just sort of falls apart and explodes at the end.  I like it when the writers let Sam actually get angry at things instead of just playing peacemaker doormat guy.  In an abstract sense, this is a really good place for conflict with Dean not seeing another option and Sam refusing to believe there isn't one and they both sell the moment really well.  I had actual emotions and everything!

Unfortunately, the impact of these scenes are a little spoiled by the scripted content of the conversations in a few places.  Again, is Dean's plan here really that much more extreme than what he planned to do with the Mark?  Are we supposed to read it as some kind of (OOC) machismo thing that instead of insisting that there is literally no other way Dean doesn't try to convince Sam there just isn't time to find another way because Michael isn't that secure?  The latter would be a legit argument, whereas insisting there can't be another way is pretty obtuse after they've found another way around just about every hurdle they've faced.  I suspect the writers were so focused on trying to get to the emotional payoff of the scene at the end with Sam talking Dean out of it that they just didn't bother to make Dean's rationale make sense, which is lazy.  Then there's the car conversation where suddenly we have this random retcon about Dean periodically running off (previously always talked about as a kid as good soldier, obedient Dean) actually also sometimes being John telling him to GTFO (paranoid about monsters around every corner John Winchester).  What? and also Why?  with a little Huh? thrown in.  Even the end conversation – I wouldn't normally mind them trying to throw in something that feels like a take off of RL stuff (Donatello always kept never quit fighting!) except when it's so obviously shoehorned.  Donatello not giving up lead to the deaths of two perfectly innocent people, is that really the moral you want to go with here?

Like, I wonder if perhaps the gruesome twosome heard all the fan talk about liking parallels and decided that was something they were good at.  Because this episode had the weird obtuse Donatello to Dean one and it also had the twin smarming on about losing his older brother and I just … lost it, had to stop and have the giggles for a minute.  I mean, J2 and the other actor were doing their best but that dialogue was laid on so thick in such an absurdly on the nose way – it really only belonged in some kind of straight up parody spoof.  Not even to mention that I guess that's what they must have been going for with the whole Nick thing in a way, and I have not found a single thing about that storyline interesting or sympathetic or in any way worth breaking vessel canon for.

A few more random things, then.  I kind of liked that Rowena and Castiel were both looking into trying to find other things to help, though I'm still annoyed at trying to play like the Book of the Damned is a catchall solveall (what does damnation have to do with archangel possession?).  I actually liked the phone conversation between Dean and Castiel – Castiel's complete inability to not immediately spill all the beans and Dean just flat out ignoring him trying to speechify.  Considering the close relationship between the victim and the killer and his obvious tattoo with symbols similar to those carved into the victim, I had to wonder about both the existence and the competence of the cops in whatever town this took place in.  Like, the killer was just a fucked up human and it was kind of weird a murder investigation didn't get there before the Winchesters.  Similarly, since he was just a human being fucked up by outside influence the whole scene of beating on him 'til he killed himself was just … weird.  Or was that just me?

Also, what even was that Donatello storyline?  Seriously?  IIRC, he lost his soul to Amara and then when they tried to have him translate the demon tablet he went evil, so Cas turned him into a vegetable.  But now, suddenly, even if there's a spark left they have to try and bring him back and he'll magically not be evil now because …?  Did I miss something to explain why he has a magical reset button in his head now?  Not to mention that they all suddenly really care about Donatello being *gasp* a vegetable trapped between life and death … when he's been that way since 13x13.  These writers really do seem to write as if everything that’s not happening right on screen is in some kind of static limbo they can just ignore or focus on whenever they feel like bothering and ignore when they don’t - souls in the veil, heaven falling, Donatello’s coma, etc.

I remember at the time reading some people really upset that Sam stopped Dean here because of the threat Michael poses.  While I kind of get where that's coming from, I've never felt like the Winchesters have any kind of moral imperative to sacrifice literally everything for the world.  As such, I'm never going to be bothered by either talking the other out of making a sacrifice play.  Especially when it's a case like this where the writers have worked so hard to set up a false dichotomy; either they go with Dean's plan or they take literally no preventative measures until they find another way or Michael bursts free – middle ground, what's that?

[merlin-wolfgang-trades-hale]

13 to 17 for the Writer's Ask Game if you're up for it 💕

13.  Describe your writing process from idea to polished:

Okay, so...the idea forms. They literally pop out of anything. I could be watching a movie or a show, driving downtown and the song would conjure up a scenario, or anything really. Sometimes I just hear the dialogue. An OC or even a canon character will be making a speech or monologuing and then the scenario builds. Whether it’s day or night, I put on my headphones, put the music on shuffle and skip to songs that fit the scenario in my head and act as background music. Once a scene is a bit complete I usually have to wait until late in the evening or at night to write as I get done with early morning chores and errands and won’t have to worry about being interrupted. Once the muse strikes for me it’s like being possessed and I’d rather reach the end of the possession than get struck in the middle because I can’t ever get the same fire back...sometimes I do fall asleep and have to pick up again but it just dampens the spirit when someone douses your fire, ya know? 

I stop when I feel like what I wanted to tell is told, but also leave some ambiguity to it because maybe I’d like to continue the idea later in the future but also, if I didn’t kill off the character then it’s not really the ‘end’ ya know? 

14.  How do you deal with self-doubts?

This is always a tricky thing. Everyone is different so what works for me, might not work for everyone. And that said...I am very insecure about a lot of things in life. And though I know my writing isn’t perfect, it’s one of the talents I have I don’t doubt myself on. I think that...the story...the plot...is bigger than my doubts. Will there be people who won’t like it? Sure. Will I get the occasional flame/mean comment...yeah. But as I’ve mentioned before...the story possesses me and it won’t leave me alone until it gets written. To misquote Avatar the Last Air Bender’s Mai “I love my story more than I fear doubt.” 

So...believe in the story you’re telling. Love it and it’s characters. Listen to them and not the naysayers. 

15.  How do you deal with writer’s block?

This is one of the hardest questions. I am not what you would call an organized writer. I’m also very impulsive. Starting new ideas even though I have many WIPs. It’s hella annoying to hear ‘just keep writing’ but it’s true. But it’s not the only thing. 

I, first of all, make sure I’m having a good day. If I’m happy, I tend to be more productive. I find a slot in my day when I know I’ll have time to write. So first off I make sure I tend to the chores and things that need to get done (work, homework, feed the cat, do the laundry, etc) that way I don’t have ‘RL responsibilities’ as an excuse. Maybe you can’t do all the chores that day but try to do one or two. Make sure you’ve eaten or have a snack nearby. Hunger is a distraction. Shower or bathe...you’ll feel better and hey, those shower thoughts? Totally can help move the plot along. Listen to music that’s related to the genre of what you’re writing to help you get in the mood. And I also help that if it’s extreme writer’s block, sit down and literally write on pen and paper. Whether it’s just an outline with notes of things you for SURE want to happen, or hell, even writing out the actual chapter as your first draft. It’ll give you the sense of accomplishment but also give you a ‘saved point’ like in a video game that you can always come back to if you’re feeling lost. 

16.  How many drafts do you need until you’re satisfied with a project?

I’m gonna be honest...I was that high schooler who wrote that essay the night before and turned in my first draft. I...I do that in fanfic too. I write it out and then post, sometimes at like 4 in the morning and then catch very obvious mistakes the next day that I edit. 

I’m trying to be better. Have a first draft at least but I’m impatient. So two. But I’ve got someone who might be my new Beta reader...once I finish a freaking chapter. It’s taking me longer but I’ve just been all over the place this last month. So we’ll see how I improve. But as a solo writer who mostly posts on ao3 and sometimes ff dot net one or two. 

17.  What writing habits or rituals do you have?

“Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”  You know when you have a call and you walk around your room, the house, the area? I put on my headphones, listen to music and walk around as I envision what I’m about to write. I’m usually carrying around a tennis ball that I drew a lightning bolt on, twirling and tossing it, playing catch with myself...sometimes if I find another two I juggle. Just to let my mind wander. 

Sometimes I bake. 

I like to have notebooks and pens nearby to doodle or jot things down that may not be right for the current chapter but would be nice to add at some point later. 

[linklethehistorian]

W.I.P. Week — Day 2 (February 25): A WIP Containing Your OTP

Since I actually have two main OTPs — and yes, I know the term doesn’t make sense when there’s more than one, but they’re both equal to me so that’s just the way it has to be — rather than just one, I was really hoping to get one of each up today, but in digging through all of my sketches/W.I.P.s., both old and new, I came to the realization that I actually don’t have any OdaZai ones that were of any recognizable substance yet, and only two that were ChuuArt related.

After I’d finished, I was trying to decide on which one to upload for today’s theme; ultimately, though, I found that impossible and instead ended up deciding that I would just upload the first one whole, and then include a portion of the second one.

So these are two ChuuArt related works — the first one tentatively titled “Already Gone” after the song by Kelly Clarkson (although the cover that inspired it was by Sleeping At Last), and the second yet untitled.

Bonus Question: Who Is Your Favorite OTP and why?

As I’ve said, I currently have two that I view about equally — OdaZai (mostly just platonically) and ChuuArt — which are both from the series of Bungou Stray Dogs. I plan to write bigger articles in the future about my feelings on these two pairings and why I think they’re wonderful, but for now I’ll try to sum it up best I can here in as brief a manner as possible.

Please bear in mind that this will contain spoilers for Dazai Osamu and the Dark Era/Season 2′s Ep. 13-16/the BEAST AU Light Novel and the Fifteen Light Novel, respectively. If you are not up to date on these, please do not read any further into this section of the post. Thank you.

OdaZai (Oda “Odasaku” Sakunosuke x Dazai Osamu)

Honestly, I think for anyone who knows the series at all, this is pretty self-explanatory, but there are just so many reasons to ship these two — especially platonically as I do. Odasaku was clearly the only person in Dazai’s life who truly understood him and saw him for who he really was inside — a lost and crying child who desperately wanted to find a reason to live and be happy, but who had known nothing but suffering, loss, mistreatment and misery his entire life; he was the only one who treated him like a human being and spoke completely honestly about his feelings as though there was no hierarchy gap between them without any ulterior motives whatsoever. Odasaku radiated the perfect light that Dazai needed and inspired him to seek that path and become a better person even after his own death.

Dazai lived only for him; it has been canonically shown that Dazai not only thinks of him all the time and dearly misses him — not only dresses very similarly to him, carries around the few precious possessions of Oda’s he has left and emulates him in every way he can — but also in alternate universe was willing to rewrite the entire world just so Odasaku could live, be happy, and become a writer.

The two very simply, plainly, genuinely, mutually love each other, and they are nothing but good for each other in every way.

ChuuArt (Chuuya Nakahara x Arthur Rimbaud/Randou)

Now, since this is a rare pair (as in, I’ve never met or even heard of ANYONE who truly ships them at all in any way yet and so I created their ship name myself), I’m sure this one will require some manner of explanation. 

I was actually just explaining this to a friend of mine the other day, but the long and short of it is that, although it’s true that we never (to my knowledge) really saw them get to bond much in the incomplete version of the Fifteen light novel, I wholly believe that if they had gotten the chance and/or circumstances had been even just a little different than they were, Chuuya and Arthur/Randou would have really become close and that they would have been extremely good for each other; Arahabaki’s fiery presence within Chuuya may indeed have been enough to warm Arthur’s eternally freezing form and given him someone he could depend on who truly understood and cared about him, without the fear of betrayal, and likewise, Chuuya would have someone who could have given him a reason to live, who understood him and his origins better than any other person in the world and would remind him that he is valuable as his own person and far more than just a safety device to a mass energy of unbridled, uncontrollable power.

As it is, it was extremely evident that Arthur/Randou was an extremely loyal person towards the people he loved, even if those people mistreated him and/or turned completely against him, and he would go to the ends of the Earth to save them, even if it meant risking or even sacrificing his own life. He also was shown to have been fascinated by Arahabaki’s mere existence and all but implied that when they met, Arahabaki’s fire burned him in a way that he could never be the same again; it was very obvious that, regardless of what some of the reasons may be, he continually sought him after that point and had a desperate desire to find and (for better or worse, in some manner) keep him. Furthermore, he was the only person who truly was implied to have thought of Chuuya as a pre-existing real person rather than a false personality and, in spite of himself, was remorseful that he had to tried to harm Chuuya for the sake of his old traitorous friend, Paul Verlaine, and very clearly wanted him to live.

As for Chuuya, it’s very obvious that he does care sincerely about Arthur to this day, even if only because their last interaction gave him something to live for; after all, he wears and protects Arthur’s only remaining possession — his hat — with his life and visits his grave often.

(Not to mention the fact that RL! Chuuya basically adored RL! Arthur and saw him as a hero of sorts, having been noted to even try to dress in exactly the same way as Arthur did at times and translate his works into Japanese.)

There’s honestly just too much to unpack right here and now, so I’ll continue this explanation another time.

TL;DR: They’re just really, really good for each other in spite of everything and it’s so, so sad that the only person who could honestly give Chuuya the support, understanding and closure he needs instead ended up dying at his hands.

Do not repost my artwork anywhere without my explicit permission or claim it as your own. See F.A.Q.s for details.

All of my other entries for W.I.P. Week:

Day 1 (February 24): Your Oldest W.I.P.

Day 3 (February 26): Your Canonverse or Your AU W.I.P.

Day 4 (February 27): Your Most Popular W.I.P.

Day 5 (February 28): Your Favorite W.I.P.

Day 6 (March 1): Your Previously Unpublished W.I.P.

Day 7 (March 2): Any W.I.P.

[nebris]

British Anti-tank guns in the Desert 

The portee of guns is a pretty basic and, generally, an ad hoc technique.  While it was often used in NA owing to the need for longer ranged mobility and lack of concealed gun positions, the British did use it in Europe.

The first British portee weapons in WWII occurred in France in 1940. They were augmenting their 2-pdr AT guns with French 25mm guns.  They were so flimsy that high-speed cross-country towing was impossible so they were carried by lorries.

Starting in 1941, the British developed the “en portee” method of mounting an anti-tank gun (initially a 2 pounder) on a truck. This was to prevent the weapon from being damaged by long-distance towing across rough, stony deserts, and it was intended only to be a carrying method, with the gun unloaded for firing. However, crews tended to fire their weapons from their vehicles for the mobility this method provided, with consequent casualties. This undoubtedly inspired their Morris C9/B (officially the “Carrier, SP, 4×4, 40 mm AA”), a Bofors 40 mm AA gun mounted on a chassis derived from the Morris “Quad” Field Artillery Tractor truck. Similar types, based on 3-ton lorries, were produced in Britain, Canada and Australia, and together formed the most numerous self-propelled AA guns in British service.

Lorry-mounted 2-pdr anti-tank guns on a practice shoot in the Western Desert. 3 May 1942.The 2-pdr antitank gun equipped RA anti-tank regiments and later infantry battalions for much of the Desert War. This 10mm-calibre weapon was mounted on an ingenious three-legged carriage, giving it a low profile and which allowed the travelling wheels to be lifted clear of the ground so that the gun could easily traverse through 360 degrees. An armoured shield fined with an ammunition box protected its 5-man detachment and it weighed 1,760 lb. in action. Many were carried portee on the back of lorries during the Desert War. but when used this way often proved vulnerable to both small arms and shrapnel. Firing a solid AP round and with a penetration of ’40mm at I,000m, the 2-pdr was highly effective against lightly armoured cars and tanks, but as the Desert War progressed it was quickly outclassed and could only engage with a hope of success from the flank at close range.

The 2-pounder was given a new lease of life by putting it on a lorry-the Portee mounting. This mounting used a 15cwt truck with the sides taken off the back so that it had a flat bed. Using two long ramps a 2-pounder was hauled up and set down on its platform. The wheels were removed and bolted on the sides of the truck. The gun could be fired from the flat bed or it could be unloaded and emplaced. By reversing the truck up to the emplacement and throwing down the ramps, it could be evacuated quite quickly, although it could not be done with safety by daylight. The idea gave the little 2-pounders some much-needed mobility and the Portee gunners soon evolved a technique in which they lay up behind a low mound with only the top of the shield and the barrel emerging round the side of the cover. This was safe enough until the tank moved to a flank whereupon the unfortunate truck began to catch the shot and the gun had to move. One anti-tank regiment lost almost a complete battery in one day early in 1942. When the first of the 6-pounders arrived, they too were mounted as Portees, though they were getting a little heavy for continuously pulling up and down the ramps.

5 CWT truck with Breda 20/65

During WW II Canada produced well over 850.000 military motor vehicles which includes one of the most widely used types: the 4 x 2 type Chevrolet 15 CWT. This vehicle was the backbone of the Australian, British and Canadian Forces but was also supplied to many of the other Allies including the Soviet Union, China and India. The truck was used or transporting troops, ammunition and other war material. The design was based on a British Army design and the vehicle was built by General Motors of Canada as well as in Australia. The engines were also supplied through American manufacturers.

BEDFORD QL with 6 PDR.AT GUN

In 1939 the British War Office placed an order with VAUXHALL MOTORS Ltd of Luton, a British subsidiary of General Motors to design a 3-ton 4×4 truck chassis which would form the basis for various vehicles. Originally this vehicle was built for the transport of 6-pound-guns type M-1 and therefore it was also called Gun-Portee. The gun was placed on the platform of the truck and thus it could not be identified. Thus the Bedford QL truck was created and from 1941 until 1945 a total of 52,245 chassis were produced. The QL was an excellent vehicle and soon became the most numerous tactical 3-tonner of the British armed forces. These models were used on almost all fronts during the Second World War and later served in Korea and the Middle East. In the British forces it was gradually replaced by the model RL.

#

It is important to note that in any battle a significant proportion of the AT fire suffered by British tanks did not come from other tanks at all, as perhaps British tacticians liked to assume, but from towed (ground-mounted) AT guns. The German 5cm gun was particularly potent, and their famous 8.8cm Flak gun even more so, although it was available in far smaller numbers. British tank crews often imagined that they were being hit by tank fire when in fact they were being hit by something much more serious; the literature is crammed with examples of this misconception. This led them to make a false comparison between the supposed power of the Axis tank guns and the perceived weakness of their own – which in turn reinforced the British belief that they did not particularly need to fire HE shells at the enemy. High explosive was not a good weapon against tanks, but was ideal against AT guns. Since the British doctrinal mindset was pre-occupied with tanks fighting other tanks, it simply did not take account of the need to shell AT guns with HE – in diametrical opposition to the German perception of what was needed.

The British believed that they themselves possessed an adequate antitank defence, although it was split into five distinct and different elements. The first was the infantry platoon’s 0.55in Boys AT rifle, which could be useful against very light armour, or sometimes against the flank or rear of heavier tanks, but for nothing much else. The next were the 2-pdr guns fitted on tanks, and the ballistically identical 2-pdr towed guns on ground mountings or portee vehicle mounts. While these guns were recognized as being the best in their category, by 1942 that whole category had become practically obsolete. The fourth prop of British AT defences was provided by the Bofors 40mm quick-firing AA gun, which in practice did some good service with AP shells, but was not often available at the key time or place. Finally and most importantly, there was the incomparable 25-pdr gun-howitzer. This was in fact almost precisely an 8.8cm weapon, although its muzzle velocity was considerably lower than that of the 8.8cm Flak. There were many occasions on which 25-pdrs in the AT role did succeed in beating off the Panzers. A major disadvantage, of course, was that as long as they were firing AP ammunition they could not be firing HE; their dual role thus served to reduce the availability of HE to the British in a ‘tank battle’ still further.

A sixth potential British AT weapon was the 3.7in (92mm) AA gun, which was ballistically better than the German 8.8cm Flak. The question has often been asked why it was not widely used in the same way, to which the answers are many and complicated. There were problems with sights – of which three different types were tried before an effective AT sight was developed – and with the production of AP ammunition. It took about ten minutes to remove the wheels and unfold the static firing platform; and the sheer height of the beast, which did not have a gunshield, made it a more vulnerable target than its German equivalent (although firing both guns kicked up a 100-foot dust cloud). There were also ‘political’ pressures for it to be kept nearer to the Army, Navy and RAF rear base areas than to the front line where it might encounter Panzers. All of these difficulties had been solved in theory by the summer of 1942 (notably by the energetic efforts of Brig Percy Calvert, commander of the 4th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Bde), but with very few exceptions the 3.7in was still not used against tanks.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this was ultimately because British doctrine saw all AT guns as defensive and static weapons, and therefore not really appropriate to take part in a mobile tank battle. If friendly tanks were defeated and forced to fall back upon their AT guns, then all well and good; but pushing the guns forward to accompany an armoured thrust somehow went against the grain. The Germans, by contrast, regarded the deployment of AT guns – including even the heaviest – as an integral part of all tank movements, in the advance no less than the retreat.

https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2018/05/31/british-anti-tank-guns-in-the-desert/

[feliciacraft]

Since you love dream interpretation, is there a dream that you find very meaningful? If it’s not too personal (:

Sorry it took me so long to reply! Hopefully I’ve picked an entertaining example below. :) It got long; full text below the cut (hopefully I did it right).

Here’s a recent dream:

I’m swimming through fast-moving flood water, fighting to keep afloat. The danger is real: an SUV and a jeep (all-terrain 4WDs?) are swept away right in front of me, the cars bobbing up and down as if they were mere bath toys, windows broken, murky water swirling within.

My eyes follow them to the left until they disappear; nowhere is safe. On the far left, with all the immediate danger surrounding me, I see, somewhere in the distance, perhaps down a perilous cliff where there’s no path, a beautiful, serene vista of an ocean blue and bountiful, the waves breaking like pretty, white lace. A humpback whale is doing that classic whale flippity thing with its tail (I’m clearly not a whale expert), and even more amazingly, a pod of orcas are playing nearby. They’re not impacted by the flood that has me fearful for my life. They’re undisturbed, at peace. IMAX quality nature documentary moment. It may even be happening in slow motion. It’s gorgeous and awe-inspiring and takes my breath away.

But there’s no time to admire the view. Without warning, the flood water recedes to my right, exposing jagged rocks on a sandy beach. Instead of celebrating safety, I recognize it as the sign of an impending tsunami (you know, where the water gets sucked back into the ocean before being reformed as a huge killer wave that’ll rush to shore), and I grab onto the jagged rocks while shouting, as loud as I can, “Anchor yourself! Brace for impact!” to the apparent confusion of random strangers behind me muttering to one another, “What impact? What is she talking about…?”

And it was with a sense of deep terror for both my own safety and those of the clueless strangers that I woke up.

Analysis:

My therapist very much believes in archetypes, that many human experiences are universal and result in the same symbolism/recurring motifs in dreams. A classic example is fear of falling. Seems logical. :) So he sees it as a Noah’s Ark archetype: end of the world type scenario. (Insert meme for: I should buy a boat.)

At the same time, awareness of your own personal history helps a lot when it comes to something as slippery as dream interpretation. I think in this case both the archetype and my personal history happen to point in the same direction, but that’s not always the case.

I hate water dreams: flooding, drowning, tsunami…all violent events where you’re rendered powerless. A monster you can fight off or flee (Buffy-style!), a fire you can put out. When you’re unexpectedly immersed in a body of water, especially if it’s cold, fast-moving, murky, the best you can do is try to survive. It’s overwhelming, it’s definitely symbolic for a lack of control. We’re land animals, so any coping strategy is short-term focused. There’s no winning.

The “lack of control” aspect is also echoed by the image of cars being swept away. Cars are how we get from point A to point B in a quick, safe, and predictable fashion. There’s Google Maps for guidance. There are roads so that you know your destination is an acceptable one (or a road wouldn’t have been paved to facilitate getting people there in the first place).

I get water dreams when I feel overwhelmed in RL. I compare emotions to waves, because that’s how they feel to me, so water sometimes represent an overwhelming emotional response for me.

Anyway, so when I had this dream I had been trying to make a big decision that would carry commitments for the rest of my professional career. I was reluctant to take on the challenge, the impact of which on my life would be so great that apparently my mind made it a tsunami. :) A flood may be severe or mild, and generally builds up from an accumulation of rain, and sometimes have predictable patterns. A tsunami is across the board a natural disaster, unmanageable, sudden and has the potential to completely erase human life and rewrite the geological features of where it hits. So if life is a journey, after a tsunami if I manage to survive, whatever map I may possess will be obsolete, useless; whatever plans I have would need to be thrown out and new plans made.

And because I’m focusing on the negative aspects on this challenge, I see the possibilities and rewards (the bountifulness of the calm ocean, possibilities as big as whales), but my primary emotion is still fear (in anticipation of something for which there’s no visible evidence), and my immediate action to hold on tight for safety, for a tsunami that apparently others don’t see and may or may not actually happen (i.e. a downside that may be blown out of proportion by the fear-controlled part of my brain).

Thoughts? Thanks for asking! :)

[awed-frog]

hi there! i dont tend to trust sdcc interviews but i figure i'd ask this so i could get your opinion! a big thing they were talking about was the aftermath of michael on dean.. if they do this right it could be SO good and SO interesting for his character.. so i was gonna ask what you think this means for his character? after he is done being possessed by michael?

Hi! I haven’t heard the spoilers, and to be honest my enthusiasm about the show is pretty much in free fall - under a cut and sort of bitter, okay?

So, the obvious parallels that come to mind are Dean coming back from Hell and Dean being freed from the Mark, and I think the time and energy the show spent of those aftermaths is very telling of what the narrative priorities are. 

If you look at the post-Hell period - was intense. I haven’t rewatched that season in a while, but I seem to remember they spent a lot of time on how broken and not himself Dean was? And the whole thing, of course, was revealed to be even more tragic than what fans expected when Dean decided to tell Sam about how he’d chosen to torture others. Ouch. That was some truly powerful stuff, especially because in the pre-Hell period Dean had mostly pretended to be carefree - scarfing down burgers for breakfast, having threesomes, and generally trying to convince himself (and others) that since he never had much of a lifespan anyway, this death made complete sense. All of that, of course, was masterfully contrasted with how Dean actually died - he never got the hero death I’m sure many were expecting, the beautiful and sexy death main characters and pretty people are mostly gifted (or burdened) with. Instead, it was terrifying, base, humiliating affair - Dean was literally torn apart by dogs as his baby brother watched (not to mention he regretted his righteous decision as soon as he landed in Hell, and found himself calling for Sam like a frightened child instead of suffering his fate in manly silence). Jesus Sycamore Christ. That was beyond sobering, as was the whole post-Hell period - and especially how Dean wasn’t, in the end, all that happy to be alive again. Again: ouch.

What happened in S11 was rather different. On the whole, I enjoyed that season a lot, but while there were some tense and emotional moments for Dean (like his conversation with God), I found it very odd - and somewhat disappointing - that nobody ever mentioned the Mark again. After all, it was implied (or stated outright? I honestly don’t remember) that the Mark didn’t exactly change Dean; its power was preying on people, and taking their worst instincts to horrifying extremes. For instance, Dean kept hunting, but where he would normally give people a second chance, or find a solution that didn’t involve a full-out massacre, MoC!Dean never cared about that at all. However necessary it was for Dean to choose this burden (and even that is debatable), it led very directly to the death of a bunch of innocent people - Charlie, of course, but also the NoHomo hunter, knockoff Draco Malfoy and Rowena’s godchild (you’d think she’d mention him again at some point, or that Sam and Cas would bring him up in a kind of ‘Hey, remember when we slaughtered an innocent teen on the off chance his beating and bloodied heart could cure Dean? Good times’, but nope). To make matters worse, those four deaths happened in the space of a couple of days? And I get that Dean had other things on his mind soon after he was cured, but I still found it bizarre that they never came up at all. I mean - sure, there were subtextual clues and all that - when are there not, amirite - but to me, it was too weak. Honestly, it looked like Dean (and Sam, and Cas) just didn’t give a damn about the trail of destruction they’d left behind. Because this is what’s never acknowledged in S11: that those deaths were on them. Whoever got killed when Dean had the Mark: on them. And, more directly and unequivocally, all those people Amara killed: on them. That’s some powerful stuff, and yet it’s never explored at all, because it’s not what the current showrunner is interested in.

All this to say: in theory, post-Michael!Dean should be huge. The fact Dean took the decision so quickly was already a narrative blunder, considering how he’d been in exactly the same situation (and worse) in earlier seasons but had decided to say no to Michael. I mean - Dean’s free will and how it clashes with his need to help others - that’s the core of the character, and yet it took one line of dialogue to erase it into nothingness. Now, heading into S14 it looks pretty likely that Dean will rid himself of Michael very early - we’re talking two or three episodes, max, and apparently that’s our fault or something (don’t even get me started), which means this Very Meaningful and Earth-Shattering thing is already losing importance in favour of - I don’t know.

(More KFC demons? Lucifer’s cousin Throckmorton? Bobby and Mary’s budding romance and how that is finally the thing that turns Mary into a Tupperware wife and removes her from the boys’ lives in a believable way? I guess we’ll see.)

Will it have an effect on Dean? Obviously I can’t say for sure, but I doubt it. 

Like, for one, Michael has no beef with Dean, and vice versa. These two characters are not connected in any emotional way. To Michael, Dean is just a random and contemptible human; to Dean, Michael is just another over-ambitious freak in need of a good beheading. As for archangel possession - that’s tricky. Some guys are left empty shells; Sam wasn’t, and Cas wasn’t (and Dean is another main character, so he can’t be hurt too badly). Sam suffered a lot, but that’s because Lucifer hated him and had a personal vendetta against him. As a comparison, when Lucifer possessed Cas, he basically gave Cas a nice TV and never bothered him again, and I think that’s a more accurate description of the connection between AU!Michael and Dean. Neither of them cares enough for this thing to escalate. So whatever happens between them (Michael dies; Michael is kicked back to the AU!world; Michael finds another suitable vessel; Michael is forced into an unsuitable vessel), I don’t think there’ll be a lot of focus on how that changes Dean.

On the plus side, there are solid narrative reasons for that lack of focus to make sense. For instance, Dean’s never been the emotionally stunted troll fanon keeps pretending he is, but over the last two seasons he’s really made an effort to make his feelings crystal clear, and he’s been berated and ignored every single time. So if I were him, I don’t think I’d be very eager to confide in Sam ‘What about MY feelings?’ Winchester, Mary ‘Ew, I don’t want to be your mom’ Winchester or Cas ‘You humans make everything so needlessly complicated’ Winchester (he’s a brother now, right? even if for some reason we’re seeing him less than Jack). No, Dean is likely to keep his feelings private - despite the fact this experience should, logically, be a turning point for him. We know Dean has big issues when it comes to giving up control, and possession is - inevitably - also a metaphor for rape, which is - canonically? - a part of Dean’s past (look at Alastair’s unnecessary queering, for God’s sake). So a post!Michael Dean - he could have less confidence in himself, especially if his decision ends up doing more harm than good for some reason, or he could develop PTSD and decide to retire because he’s got nothing left to give (narratively sound, but not a place the show can afford to go to) or he could become nihilistic and even more determined to get his blaze of glory ending, and sooner rather than later (after all, we know he gets suicidal when he feels he needs to atone, so).

From a RL perspective, I don’t know how much of that we’ll see. Considering how little they used post-MoC!Dean, I think maybe we can expect some new crisis which will keep the focus off Dean’s feelings and opinions. On the other hand, S13 was basically a ‘best of’ of the Kripke era, so it’s possible that S14 will revisit the post-Hell!Dean theme in some way. I don’t know. Lately, the show seems determined to prove our heroes are Good People Who’ve Done Nothing Wrong Ever, so from that perspective Dean saying yes to Michael should turned out to be a Big Mistake, because Dean saying no to Michael is basically half of what saved the world the first time around. Then again, I’m not seeing a lot of coherence on that front (I’m on team ‘Why was the AU!world even about Mary’, sorry about that), so, really - everything is anyone’s guess. At this point, the one thing we can predict about Supernatural is that if you’re interested in the characters’ inner lives and in them actually evolving in some healthy way, you’re better off with fanfiction.

I apologize. I know that was depressing and bitter. Here is a baby owl.

[ageless-aislynn]

Title: “Bad Habits” Chapter 4 Author:  @ageless-aislynn​ Characters/fandom: Caitlin Snow/Harrison Wells|Eobard Thawne (ReverseSnow), The Flash Summary: Caitlin is finally ready for a little heart-to-heart with the man in the yellow suit...  For Snowells Week 2018 Day 5, prompt: "I know you." Rating:  PG Length:  1,846 Spoilers/warnings: None Disclaimer: Definitely not mine but I do enjoy borrowing them just for a bit! ;) A/N:  I'm a few days late because RL has been particularly unkind this week. I honestly almost threw in the towel but I wanted to finish this chapter off if I possibly could. I love these crazy kids, what can I say? ;) So I turned on my "Eobard *hearts* Caitlin" playlist (everybody has one of those, right? ;) ) as loud as I could and just ~went for it.~ ;) There will be an epilogue following in a few days. Unless RL decides to sic an army of angry metahumans on me. Or something like that. I'ma try REALLY hard to get the epilogue in here before the "grace period" week closes, though. ;) If you read, I hope you enjoy! ♥

Walking back into S.T.A.R. Labs the next morning as if nothing had gone on had taken a degree of courage that Caitlin hadn't been sure she possessed. But she did it, ready to face the Reverse-Flash-in-Harrison-Wells'-clothing and to... What? Was she going to confront him in front of Barry and Cisco? Was she going to walk around the wheelchair she now knew he didn't need and try to pretend like nothing had happened?

So it was rather anticlimactic when she entered the Cortex and he wasn't there.

"There she is, my girl who's out socializing and everything! Let's hear about that date!"

Cisco came in behind her, grinning broadly.

"Sorry," she said, trying to school her expression. "Turns out it was a no-go."

"You got stood up?" he said, the grin quickly downgrading to a frown. "Give me his name and I'll ruin his credit."

That made her smile, even as she said, "Now, didn't we talk about this before? No credit ruining."

He scoffed. "You're no fun!" Then his tone and demeanor grew more sincere. "Are you okay, though?"

She gave a half-shrug. "Yeah, I wasn't really into him, anyway. I think it's for the best."

He patted her shoulder as he headed over to his computer.

"So," she said, in what was probably the worst attempt at a casual tone ever, "is Dr. Wells already here?"

"Nope," he said, dropping into his chair. "He called earlier, said he's got business out of town. Should be back in a few days, maybe a week."

Run, Reverse Flash, run, she thought sarcastically. Well, while he's avoiding confrontation in his life, we'll be here saving Central City from evildoers!

***

Several hours later, she rested her elbows on her desk and sighed out loud. "I can't believe not even one evildoer showed up today," she muttered.

"Slow day, hm?" Barry said sympathetically. "Might as well head out early then, what do you think?"

The notion of sitting at home, twiddling her thumbs, was about as appealing as watching the proverbial paint dry.

"Sounds great," she said, struggling to sound a proper degree of enthusiastic without going overboard.

***

The next few days were maddeningly similar. Perhaps the most frustrating part was that Harrison called in and spoke with Cisco or Barry a few times, all when she wasn't there. How he managed to time his calls so perfectly, she wasn't sure, but it didn't take long to get on her nerves.

I should've talked to him when I had the chance, she thought, walking home from the local store with a bag of groceries in hand. I guess I didn't realize I'd feel--

A hard strike between her shoulder blades sent her crashing painfully to her knees on the cement. Her grocery bag was yanked partially from her hand before it split and rained her groceries onto the sidewalk.

The distinctive sound of a speedster arriving made the rather vengeful thought of Now you'll be sorry! pop to mind.

"Hey, are you all right?"

She looked up, pushing her hair from her face, and found Barry in his Flash suit looking down at her in concern. He had a tall man restrained with his hands behind his back.

"Yeah," she said, her voice a little shaky. "I'm not hurt."

Barry nodded and sped off with his captive, then returned alone a few seconds later, helping her to stand.

"What happened?" he asked, gathering up her produce at super-speed into the new bag he'd brought to replace the torn one.

"I don't know," she said, taking the bag back when he offered it. "I guess I wasn't paying attention. I didn't realize he was behind me. Thanks."

"Sure. Let me run you home," he said, holding his arms out in an offer to pick her up.

"That's not necessary," she demurred. "It's not far."

"Come on, Cait," he urged. "It's the least I can do. I want to make sure you get home safe."

She finally agreed. He swept her up and deposited her on her doorstep in a matter of moments.

"Thanks," she told him again, giving a final wave before he sped away. She locked the door behind herself and turned--

--to find Harrison standing not three feet behind her, in his Reverse Flash suit with the mask pushed back.

"Are you okay?" he asked at the same time as she barely managed to crush a shrill scream down to a squeak. Her groceries once again hit the ground.

"How did you get in here?" she finally asked. "No, wait, don't tell me. It was 'speedster magic,' right?"

His only response was to blur away and, in a blink, her bag of groceries was off the floor and presumably put in the kitchen since the light was now on when he returned. "Caitlin, you were mugged. Are you okay? If something would've happened to you, I... I don't know what I would've done."

Anxiety radiated from him in palatable waves. It was so unlike anything she'd ever witnessed from him in either of his guises that, for a moment, all she could do was just stare at him.

He stepped closer, leaning down to be more on her level, his hands coming up as if to rest on her shoulders. At the last moment, they paused, hovering uncertainly in mid-air. "Caitlin?"

"I really wasn't mugged," she finally said. "He just knocked me down but Barry got there before he stole anything."

After the fact, she realized she didn't censor the name she normally would have. Harrison waved it away as if she'd said that part aloud.

"I'm glad he was there," he said, surprisingly genuine. "I want you kept safe."

His hands finally turned over, palms up, in a mute request and she placed hers in his before she even thought about it. He sighed, like he hadn't dared to hope for even that much.

"Can we talk?" he asked, just as her coffee maker chimed. "I, um, made coffee. Obviously."

***

It took a little while to get used to sitting at her kitchen table, drinking coffee with a man who looked like the friend and mentor she'd known for years but who talked more like the villain who'd been coming to her rescue for a while now.

"What do you want me to call you?" she asked after she'd tripped over the issue a few times and decided it was better to just ask.

He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it. "'Harrison' or 'Eobard,' either is fine."

Neither felt entirely natural. She just nodded.

They had already covered the worst of his deeds, such as the murders of Nora Allen and the original Harrison Wells: he'd spoke of them in a tone tinged with regret that also indicated he wasn't expecting forgiveness.

He had told her about his grudge against Barry in the future, though had omitted the actual details, had told her how he'd gotten trapped in the past. How every plan he'd come up with to get back to his own time had resulted in failure, then how he'd finally been forced to accept his fate.

There was still so much more to talk about than what could be covered in one night. Caitlin stifled a yawn, noticing the sun peeking around the curtains in her kitchen window.

"You need to get some sleep," he said softly, pushing away from the table. "And I know you've got a lot to think about."

She stood as well, oddly loathe for him to leave as she walked him to the front door. "Are you going to disappear on your 'business trip' again? Or are you coming back to work?"

He paused, looking down at the sleeve of his yellow suit as he straightened it while he spoke. "Do you want me to?"

She took a deep breath, considering her reply. For their entire conversation, she'd been testing out her feelings. Everything he'd told her had given her more of an understanding for his actions but nothing could make those actions acceptable.

She must've paused overly long because he said, "I know you, Caitlin. You're not just going to be okay with all of this."

"No," she agreed. "I'm not. And you could do wonderful, philanthropic things every day for the rest of your life and that won't erase the terrible things you've done."

He nodded, head down. "Yes, I understand if you don't--"

"But," she said, speaking over him, "if you do good things from here on out, it means something to me."

He thought about that for a moment, then said, "You haven't told Barry and Cisco. I'm pretty sure one of them would've mentioned that if you had, anyway. Are you going to?"

"I don't know," she said honestly.

"Fair enough," he said, then spread his hands awkwardly. "Thanks. I... I would like to come back."

"Why?" she asked, crossing her arms, tilting her head curiously.

"At the beginning, stopping crime, helping people, it was a means to an end," he admitted. "But somewhere along the way, I guess I fell in love with you -- with all of you."

She felt her cheeks burn even as he corrected himself.

"Once I knew I couldn't go back to my own time again, I knew I'd have to find a way to make a life here. I'm a pretty good criminal myself," he admitted, showing a hint of the roguish attitude she'd come to be familiar with from the man in the yellow suit. "But stopping other criminals became strangely satisfying as well."

"Bad habit," she murmured and he smiled at their shared joke.

"Bad habit," he agreed. "I'll see you tomorrow, then. Well, later today, technically."

"Goodbye," she said with a soft, crooked smile.

He pulled his mask on and was gone in a sharp gust of air.

She didn't realize until later that he hadn't actually put up her battered groceries, he'd replaced everything with unblemished duplicates.

I believe that's cheating, she thought and couldn't help but laugh.

***

Caitlin paused outside of the Cortex, hearing Cisco and Barry mock-arguing over some technical minutia, then a familiar voice dryly correcting them both. Her heart pounded as if she'd downed 10 cups of coffee instead of just one. Despite the lack of sleep, she felt wide-awake and buzzed, driven by nervous uncertainty. This was it, this was the moment when she had to truly decide: who was she throwing her lot in with? Did she keep the Reverse Flash's secret or come clean with her friends? Didn't Barry especially deserve to know?

It felt like she was standing on the edge of a cliff of infinite height, the bottom of which was concealed in smoke and darkness. She walked into the Cortex, looked at Cisco who was laughing, looked at Barry's innocent face, then looked at the man in the wheelchair she knew he didn't need.

She made her choice.

"Good morning," she said, smiling. "Dr. Wells, it's good to see you. How was your trip?"

[reyloeyesofmist]

Is there still hope for Ben Solo?

We saw two people in TLJ trying to kill Kylo in his sleep, Hux and Luke. The poor guy doesn’t get a moment of respite. Nowhere can he feel safe, it seems, neither with one side nor the other. There have been attemptd on his life from both sides. He is “a monster” in everyone’s eyes, so he’s hunted like one when there’s a chance.

During their first space Skype meeting Rey shoots him while he’s in a really vulnerable position, his wounds being tended by a droid. This makes me think of Finn and how he was treated by a human doctor and there were people worried about him. He was treated in a warm environment, that was personal. But Ben had a medical droid and our whiny brat didn’t even flinch while his wounds were treated. Snoke casually asked him about his wound (Why asking about one when he had several?) and kylo answered with stoicism that it was nothing. This shows the viewers how he’s been taught to behave and that he isn’t pampered or indulged on.

I bet he’s more used to the company of machines and robots than to that of “human” beings and Snoke has kept him isolated to prey on him, to groom him and control him, but his isolation started many years ago, with parents who couldn’t accept some part of him, his dark side, which probably in this trilogy doesn’t stand for evil, but for what society deems unacceptable. While Luke managed to find the good in Vader and eventually accept his deeply flawed father, Leia never could and Han couldn’t even understand all that Force s..t. So when Ben was born with ”powers” he wasn’t responsible for, they didn’t know what to do. They loved him but never accepted him for what he was.

They sent him to Luke as if he was possessed and Luke could exorcise him. And Ben is his light and his dark, he’s both. Darkness doesn’t necessarily mean evil but it does when there’s every intention to extirpate it. I think his Darkness is what the decent people in his ( or anybody’s) world won’t accept, be it mental illness, sexual orientation, religious fervour, etc. Anything that otherizes a person and makes them a threat, a misfit or both.

I think this is what made him fall, that he had never belonged, he never was accepted, not the whole of him. Luke could have but he had too much of an orthodox approach on their religion and Ben flirted with heretics, with a branch of their religion seen as dangerous for the good believers.

Luke stole his chance to choose between good and bad options and that was so wrong. That meant that once you are seen as a bad seed ( the misfit, the unacceptable) taking your freedom from you is right because you’re dangerous for good society.

Luke tríed to kill him before he "sinned" to prevent the pain he could cause instead of giving him a chance, and this happens every time an ex-convict or an ex-addic, or a mentally ill person, for instance, are shunned and told to go away so that the rest of us can feel safe. Fear is understandable, but is it fair to let it rule our decisions? The answer isn’t easy, it’s most difficult.

I think Rey couldn’t save Ben although she tried for two reasons :

1) her motivation wasn’t love for Ben but the greater good again. She sees him as hope for the good guys, the good cause, and Ben is exhausted of experiencing this. Leia and Han, and also Luke had a good cause that was always given preeminence over Ben. Rey did the same. She has feelings for him but her main reason to go to him was to ask of him what Luke refused to do.

2) Rey wants to change Kylo/Ben, she doesn’t accept him the way he is, with his shadows. When you love someone, you shouldn’t try to change them like Ben and Rey are doing to each other. I think only love and acceptance can save Ben.

Perhaps accepting that he is ambitious and craves power isn’t so terrible. Rey is agressive and distrustful, she clings to her “comfort” zone, to known territory too tightly and Finn wants to take the easy way out, doesn’t want to be involved in a good cause and only personal things, like his love for Rey matter to him. Poe can’t see the whole picture like a good leader should and this causes too may casualties.

Is Kylo so bad? He has caused death and so have Poe and Finn, but Kylo is on the wrong side and has unacceptable political ideas, this is true. But what happens when the good guys cause as much destruction as the bad ones? Does the end justify the means? Whatever the means are?

When there’s a conflict both sides often think they are right. Both Kylo and Rey want to make the other turn to their side and Kylo doesn’t have many reasons to think the Resistance is the good side. He may be wrong but doesn’t realise that. He has nowhere to go if he leaves the Order. How can he go to them? Wouldn’t he be executed? For them he is a monster and eventually he’s acepted this ( “you’re a monster”. “Yes, I am".)

I think TLJ posed very important questions and it shouldn’t be read literally. There’s too much symbolism and subtext in it for that.

The first time I saw it, it made me feel uncomfortable because I took it too literally, thinking that Kylo had gone too far wanting the Falcon to be brought down and leading a fascist organization, that if he killed his father for selfish reasons he was far gone. Now I think I was wrong and he stands for the abandoned child, the spurned lover and the lost kid who still has the chance to find the right path.

He has to learn from experience and he’ll suffer a great deal for the damage and pain he’s caused but he will find his way. Like every child he needs to experience unconditional love and acceptance, which doesn’t mean he should get a free pass for his terrible actions. He was always judged instead of being given support.

To save Ben, Rey should have gone to Snoke’s ship for his sake, not for the cause, because it seems nobody ever went back for him and the only person who did, did it for the wrong reasons.

When Han asked him to come back he was also there for the Resistance, not for Ben, and even Leia asked him to bring back their son, IF he saw him. Ben always came second, it seems. They were going to blow up the base, whether Ben survived or not. He killed Han but Han would have kllled him for the greater good if Ben had died on that base.

In a world with the same rules as ours, he can’t have a happy ending but this is a fairytale and rules are different in tales because they are symbolic and metaphorical.

I think Rian made this work and many people root for Kylo now and want him redeemed. If we apply RL rules to this story there’s no way it can end well for him, but Leia wouldn’t have gone so lightly on Poe after his disobedience and coup either. She and Holdo are satisfied that he learns and he isn’t punished. Can we hope for some leniency on Kylo? I think we can, he’ll suffer like a soul in Purgatory, but I think he’ll be given a chance.