#before dying in the most anticlimactic way possible

[rustchild]

I am reading an ARC about WWI war poets and it’s kinda wild how the first three guys are like. 1. Beautiful rich asshole with serious mommy issues who writes two sonnets about how majestic dying for England will be and then dies before the fighting begins from an infected mosquito bite. 2. Batshit insane American who keeps writing about how happy he is to be fighting for the good of France even as his friends bodies are mangled on barbed wire around him. And 3. Dirt-poor Jewish painter who hates the aristocracy too much to get a patron, enlists because he has no money, and then writes about how fucked and stupid everything is until the war kills him

[regallibellbright]

Sometimes I think about my ideal Batman story, in which the Joker is killed by some nameless random Gothamite in the middle of a scheme with no build-up whatsoever, no mystique, just some henchman who he's turning on just saying "fuck it" and shooting him or some hostage managing to get free and then hit him repeatedly with their own chair until he doesn't get back up. It's quick. No one stops them. They're all too shocked it's working to stop them, and at the end of the day, EVERYONE wants that clown gone. That's the first action sequence and it's done by the end of issue one, preferably even at the three-quarters mark. (As far as I can tell he is considered dead at the moment, but it was climactic and showy and while he presumably exploded we all know he'll be back and probably be revealed to have never died at all somehow, and I want him dying in the most anticlimactic way possible.)

The rest of the arc's just dealing with the fallout. We see his body at the coroner's and confirm it is disposed of (thoroughly and in secret, so there's nowhere for assholes to visit or necromancers to try and resurrect.) People across Gotham throw parties. Some people OUTSIDE Gotham throw parties. Batman is in the cave making sure literally every means of resurrection is NOT available to the Joker, thank you VERY much, because he gets to be JUST shy of fourth wall-aware and therefore recognizes this is never going to stick and he'll be back as soon as the next writer comes on. No alternate universe versions are able to come through. There is no DNA from which to clone him. It wasn't a body double, a Doombot, or an elaborate illusion. He has been 100% confirmed to be 100% dead like three times in this issue alone. No time traveling Jokers to account for. Everyone else thinks Bruce is overreacting but when the Joker does inevitably come back ideally Bruce does get a scene being utterly unsurprised because on some level he understands that he is stuck with this fucking clown forever no matter what he does.

We get a mention that the random Gothamite IS put on trial for murder but it's unanimously ruled self-defense. This is the one circumstance where I'm willing to give this Gothamite a name. It is important to me they never appear again after this. They are here to kill the Joker and then recede back into the crowd.

Because the point is that the Joker dies like a fucking loser, because he's not some unkillable mastermind force of chaos, he's just a clown whose biggest win was killing a twelve-year-old, a feat he only got away with at the time because of an incredibly convoluted and even MORE incredibly racist plot point about him somehow getting named an Iranian ambassador. (No, seriously. That happened. It is every bit as terrible as you're thinking. There's a reason why adaptations cut it, but it's TELLING that the writers felt the need to come up with this contrived reason for why the Joker could kill Robin and live to tell the tale so they wouldn't have to utterly BREAK Batman as a character whether he breaks the rule or not.) Jason Todd is alive again. His second biggest win was shooting someone I'm pretty sure he didn't know was a superheroine, which was entirely incidental to his desire to torture her father which was ITSELF incidental to his desire to prove a point to Batman. And I have the DEEPLY mixed feelings of a disabled person who thinks Barbara Gordon's treatment in TKJ and especially editorial's approach to it was atrocious but who still deeply appreciates Oracle as a wheelchair user and such a nontraditional superhero, but ultimately: Yeah that's no longer a win for him, either.

So the Joker dies, it's made entirely clear that he is dead, he dies in a way that underlines how fundamentally pathetic he is and how fundamentally RIDICULOUS it is no one in Gotham did it before that point (because if you're going to die either way, why not go down swinging?), everyone celebrates, eventually even Batman's hypervigilance is appeased enough to eat some cake, and we get a good few years without that fucking clown everywhere until he inevitably returns. Hopefully by that point, everyone in reality considers how absolutely BORED they are of the Joker as some Ultimate Evil Super Successful Murder Clown of Doom, and when he does come back it's a version who's much more funny than scary.

Yes, my favorite episode of BTAS is Joker's Favor, but I don't think that changes the fact that the clown is overplayed and that having villains around who routinely kill is just narratively and objectively a bad choice to put with a character who you're defining by "does not kill". Like, you as the writer are weakening your own central thesis and then you have to come up with elaborate justifications why Batman Not Killing is right (because these comics are nominally still being sold to children, and also editorial will never let you ACTUALLY do it) when you could just solve the problem by not having the villains Batman fights routinely kill people. Knock it off. Yeah it's unrealistic but superheroes are inherently unrealistic, and yes, I'm including Batman, do you KNOW how much any given injury writers consider routine ACTUALLY fucks you up long-term?

Don't even get me started on Victor Zsasz.

Anyway I saw DC's doing a Joker Year One next year and just wanted to get that off my chest. Carry on.

[greenandhazy]

don't mind me, I'm just thinking about this concept again and talking through some difficulties

so I'm really committed to the idea of WWX dying and coming back in roughly the same circumstances as canon, and in the intervening years MY and XY being imprisoned (or in XY's case "imprisoned") by the Lan and the Jin respectively and then getting their "fuck yeah the boys are back in town" moment. I also think MY needs to be involved in getting the burial mounds settled, both because that fits his skillset and because I quite like the idea of him going "fuck this I'm out" during one of those big meetings and getting to truly stick it to his father.

BUT of course this causes issues with the whole resurrection plot, because if MY shows his colors before then, obviously he's not playing "Cleansing" for NMJ and causing a qi deviation, so what is the overarching reason for the resurrection?

THE SWAP SOLUTION:

the first thing I toyed with was the idea of swapping the function of Nie Mingjue and Jiang Yanli's deaths in the narrative. Mingjue dies in Nightless City (protecting Huaisang maybe?), Huaisang is the sibling who gets the big "Wei Wuxian, go to hell!" moment before he dies, Jiang Yanli is killed afterwards by... someone... and Jiang Cheng is the sibling who convinces Mo Xuanyu to make the sacrifice so Wei Wuxian can help him find/prove who killed her.

potential problems:

I mean no offense to Yanli but it seems like she probably dies in battle easier than Nie Mingjue, so there's a believability issue there

in the case of her being DELIBERATELY killed rather than accidentally--who the hell would want to do it? from what I've seen so far she's universally beloved

that character would also have to step in and fill the Big Bad Mastermind role the JGY holds in the canon narrative, which requires competency that most of the other Little Bads don't have

does Jiang Cheng have the subtlety to go the Huaisang route? (counterargument: does he need the subtlety? maybe he goes around for a decade shouting at people to try and solve this mystery, and the second WWX is back he storms up to him and is like "hi yes hello it's me the guy who brought you back, tell me who I can stab on behalf of my sister.")

THE FUGITIVE SOLUTION:

the other possibility is that, contrary to my first instinct, MY and XY aren't immediately captured when WWX dies. they manage to escape and evade capture for a while, and figure out a way to kidnap/murder NMJ in a way that's more aligned with canon before being caught--but their role in NMJ's death isn't discovered at that time, so Huaisang still gets to have a few years of fuming before deciding that MY's nice cozy seclusion among the Lan isn't enough of a punishment, he needs to be exposed and his beloved dead brother is going to do the exposing for extra drama. this also has the convenience of letting this-Meng Yao keep canon-Jin Guangao's "the bad guy at the center of the bad stuff" role.

potential problems:

believability again. absent slow qi poisoning, can two canonically weak cultivators take down Nie Mingjue? (counterargument: I keep forgetting to give Xue Yang a shard of Yin Iron in this verse but ig that would help.)

also, a major clan leader who has had public beef with two wanted criminals while they're on the run. does anyone need to be told whose fault it is?

I haven't figured out how I want this verse to end fully, but... it kind of leaves Meng Yao in a darker place than I want? like I do really like the idea of MY/WWX/XY being beloved by the common people in spite of everything the great sects say, and I feel like having the three of them uncover an act of corruption among the sects and having a "see! we told you so!" moment is a more satisfying ending than having Huaisang go "see! he's a murderer just like we've said all along!" and having the public go "we don't care." it's just a little anticlimactic.

THE SPY SOLUTION:

Similar to the above, except in this version, everyone knows that Xue Yang fought on WWX's side, and thinks that Meng Yao actually opposed him--he basically went from spying on the Wens for the Sunshot Campaign to spying on the Jins (/the other great clans) for his brother and the unaffiliated cultivators running the proto-watchtower/refugee camps. he could have been funneling money into them from his official position, and while Xue Yang is imprisoned (or "imprisoned") in this verse, Meng Yao is essentially in the exact same position as he is in canon--Jin Guangyao, popular Chief Cultivator, secret murderer. also makes it a bit more believable that this refugee camp idea would be feasible.

potential problems:

again with ending on a darker yet anticlimactic note. kind of exacerbated, even, because in the first version we at least have the momentum of Meng Yao being freed from seclusion whereas in this version he's already in a good place

it means I have to give up my "Xue Yang loses it on the battlefield and Meng Yao has to calm him down" scene AND my "Meng Yao tells Jin Guangshan and every member of the cultivation world to go fuck themselves on behalf of his brothers" ideas and I really, really like those.

THE SIMPLE SOLUTION:

I go with my original plan for MY & XY--they ally publicly with WWX, get captured, get imprisoned, but because of the timeline, NMJ doesn't die and Mo Xuanyu gets the idea to resurrect WWX all by himself. the fourth person he's meant to get revenge on is Jin Guangshan. added advantage is that... I'm not planning on writing a huge 100k fic of this, just a handful of related oneshots in a series, and this is an ending I can probably toss in somewhere for background purposes without having to do this whole THING.

potential problems:

it leaves MY and XY with not much to do for most of the time jump. might feel anticlimactic as well?? idk

it would definitely frontload a lot of the drama, because right now the majority of the ideas I have are for pre-death, and this would mean that the ONLY thing WWX has to do in his second life--no hunting down body parts, no Yi City arc, etc--is wake up, draw the OBVIOUS conclusion of "one of Jin Guangshan's bastards wantts me to kill Jin Guangshan" and boom presto, he's done. doesn't exactly show off much, does it?

right now I'm leaning to either the Swap or the Simple solutions... I do really like it when I can make an Alternate Universe fic that preserves as much of the original as possible in creative ways, so the Swap is fun for that, but the Simple is also good for like... stopping myself from going WAY overboard? and also might leave the door open for some endgame 3zun which would be cool......... I'm gonna keep musing.

[kylermalloy]

also. sorry second message, because i thought of something else. i’m personally tied into this reading of the end of the originals because i’ve started my great Legacies ReWrite, but also tomorrow is the last episode of legacies and we can finally put all of this to rest but i’ve been perpetually two episodes behind, but i am going to figure this out ie break down exactly the Differences we have when we approach the end of the originals but it will probably be AFTER i watch the finale (klaus will be there so idc about ANYTHING else, which i think is our main point of difference which is that i am entirely klaus focused, which weirdly IS an outlier, like i don’t really care about elijah at all). anyway, so maybe next week but i think it will be good, for me at least, like we’ll finally be speaking the same language when we talk about the originals.

fwiw i was shocked and appalled when klaus and elijah died and i think that i believed solely in elijah’s death and not klaus’ and it kinda ticks me off that he’s dead still but after some time i don’t believe in any timeline where either of them make it out but not because there’s a story that makes sense for both of them to die.

so.

Hi again love 🥰 so Legacies has now officially ended and of course they had Klaus come back and cry (because of course he did, bless him) and the tvdu has come to an end. (Let’s keep it that way. No prequels, sequels, or spin-offs, you hear me? We can’t all be Star Wars. But why would you want to be Star Wars is another question.)

Anyway. My relationship with the ending of TO is a weird one, because there is so much I don’t like about it, and yet we still got the best case scenario finale. I even use that as a talking point when I try to lure people into the show. (hey, do you like brothers who die in each others’ arms? Somehow I’ve only ensnared one person. 🤔)

I remember very clearly thinking about the ending the day before the finale dropped. There were three possible endings in my mind—Klaus dying, just like the trailer indicated, Elijah dying in his place, or both of them dying.

I figured the second scenario was most likely. The trailers telling us exactly what would happen (Klaus says goodbye then dies) seemed anticlimactic, and we were in 2018, peak Subverting Expectations era.

Now, it was a bit weird that Elijah had offered to take his place in the previous ep and was rejected—you’d think that should be a surprise for the finale, if that’s what they were planning—but I still thought it was the most likely “solution” to the dumb problem they’d set up.

Personally, I hated the idea that one brother would die and the other would live—they’d be eternally separated, and I’m not about that life. That’s why I hoped for the third and most distant possibility: they both die. So I was pleasantly surprised that I actually got the dream ending.

Now, I say “dream ending” but it is very much not that. Given the way the rest of the final season played out, I got the best ending I could have. Since I have no control over anything the writers did, I am simply happy with the cards I was dealt.

If you asked me what my ideal ending for TO would be, I would back the story up at least two seasons and start from there.

You have to understand, my taste has less to do with character arcs and narrative payoff than, like…characters existing together. It’s why I don’t care to examine whether or not Sam Winchester actually wanted to live a normal life after losing Dean. I’ll gladly read discussions in both directions, but the only thing I really care about was that he was reunited with his brother in the end (and the car, how can I forget the car? Sampala endgame…) At the end of it all, I am a woman of shallow tastes.

But considering that the entire show was about Klaus and his “redemption,” it’s counterintuitive for him to die at the end, especially when he’s still been Pretty Awful up to and including this final season. Having him die and Elijah be like “nah you’re good, bro” right before is a pretty weak cap to the show About Klaus’s Redemption.

I don’t see an ending where Klaus dies organically and satisfies the rest of the story. I’m of the opinion that the reasons for killing him were exclusively Doylist.

As for Elijah, his character development took a cliff dive after season 3, where it was already on shaky ground with the Marcel business. Given how they were driving him into the ground, I can’t see an ending where he makes it out alive—not unless we, again, back his character up a few seasons and do some rewrites. (I’m not saying nix the atrocities, because I love murder Elijah. I’m just saying…treat the atrocities with more care.)

I expected TO to do a tvd-esque ending where Elijah sacrifices himself for Klaus because to the unenlightened mind there is no difference between the Salvatores and the Mikaelsons. Not because that’s what I wanted—just, I couldn’t expect anything better. The signs were there: Elijah commits evil and has a Depression about it, Klaus commits evil but has a symbol of hope that things will get better for him.

Typically anyway “has a child” is shorthand for “is/can be a good person” which is like…what they were doing with Klaus the whole time. (Although no matter what, they were planning to send Hope off to boarding school again, so really what does it matter what they do with Klaus.)

Then there’s the weird morality trip the show went on starting in season 3, in which we posit the Mikaelsons Don’t Deserve To Live Because They Are Evil but like…we knew that. We know that. That’s never been what the show is about. It’s always been about these people who can’t be killed, so they can do whatever they want because regardless of whether they deserve it, they’re gonna live forever—but then everything changes because Hope.

Wait where was I going with this?

…this got weird. The short version: I’m not happy with the ending on any level except “otp.” These idiots died in each other’s arms and they can find peace with the other dead people they love. My monkey brain is happy. However, it’s not supported by the narrative unless we look at it from the lens of “spin-off coming to the CW this fall.”

[mainscastle]

Crash bandicoot 2 cold hard crash all boxes

Oh, and unless you get another checkpoint, dying after respawning from the above will make the game remember the true amount of crates. However, it's possible for the box count to reach more than the level expects you to have, making you unable to get the "destroy all crates" gem, so one should watch out for the box count as they respawn and go to the level's finish while breaking just the right amount of crates. This allows the player to get more crates without taking the harder-to-get ones, allowing for easier box completion. This glitch is only possible if you have numerous enough crates in the bonus round and/or the bonus round finish platform brings you quickly enough to the main level. You can then break those same crates again and the game will still count them. That's normal, but what's not normal is that, due to the game still adding the box count after you respawn the crate count now counts both the crates in the bonus level and any of those crates that you broke before the bonus round, the latter of which normally shouldn't happen. You'll then respawn in the most recent checkpoint you made (or the start of the level, if you didn't break any) with the boxes between the bonus level and the checkpoint (that you might've broken) intact. note It occurs if you finish a bonus level, then die before all of box count of the bonus level are added to the level's total box count. You can also reduce the number of runs needed for Air Crash from 4 to just 2 by dying after getting the Death Route gem along with the crystal and finishing on the secret warp for Snow Go. This also allows you to get the purple gem in Bee-Having without getting through the rest of the secret path and get 2 gems at the same run from Turtle Woods, Hang Eight, Plant Food, Cold Hard Crash, and Spaced Out when you normally need separate runs for each of them. Since extra lives are handed out like confetti, simply killing yourself the moment you get a gem from an alternate path seems far more appealing than backtracking manually. Once you collect a crystal or gem, it will remain in Crash's inventory as long as he remains in the level, even after he dies. This is the source of many Sequence Breaking in the game. This can be done with the slide-jump (which isn't a glitch) for an even higher jump. You jump, then you immediately spin, causing Crash to jump higher than normal. The same moment in "Un-Bearable" is also avoidable, but this time, with a simple slide jump. In fact, this trick was one of the many objects of this game's Tool-Assisted Speedrun, kindly demonstrated here. Gameplay Derailment: Trying to grind some more lives on Turtle Woods? You think the moment when you fall into pit with cyberrats is annoying? Well, there is a legit way which, if it doesn't work at first, is possible to pull off with some skill: just jump above the pit through the faux-walls.Even Better Sequel: Many agree that Crash 2 and Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped are much better designed and more enjoyable than the original game, representing the pinnacle of the series, introducing most of the characters fans are familiar with.The only thing that makes the battle challenging is the awkward jetpack controls and the limited time to finish him off. And the final boss battle is extremely anticlimactic - Crash just chases after him and spin-attacks him three times, and he doesn't even attempt to defend himself or fight back. The final boss battle against Cortex is based around the jetpack mechanic - as in, the mechanic that was only introduced five levels ago in a game 25 levels long. Additionally, the camera is positioned directly behind Crash rather than above him facing downwards, as in the other levels, which makes discerning the relative positions of obstacles even harder than it ought to be. In contrast to the rest of the game's free-flowing fast-paced platforming, the jetpack uses a completely different control scheme to the rest of the game, is awkward and finicky to use, and requires the player to move extremely slowly and carefully around tightly enclosed areas. Disappointing Last Level: The final warp room introduces the jetpack mechanic, which is featured in two of the last five levels.Never mind in-game, considering how obviously shady he is while interacting with Crash. Captain Obvious Reveal: Cortex being the game's Big Bad and betraying Crash can be easily deduced by just looking at the game's subtitle.It makes a Blackout Basement, of all things, feel hard to get lost in, it offers a creative Bonus Stage that feels like an Auto-Scrolling Level you're in complete control over, and its music is also the credits music, serving to give off the sense of finality in the stage. For a Secret Level, it sure as heck feels fair and accommodating.

[kaebedom-me]

okokok i knowww!! i just requested!! but,, am bacc with two more request!! one! crhistmass umu,, chaeya mistletoe hcs,, could be soft,, could be spicy???? who knows?? second! not so important or festive but! im a slut for the trope 😔👉👈 this chaeya with reader uwu,, reader gets kidnapped and the rest is up to you because!! ilysm and i want you to go ham and write what you wanna write 🥺💞💖💕 anyways,, drimk water, sleeb well,, eat three times a day✨ luv u🥺💞💖💕💞💖💕💞💞💕 -⭐

Star nonnie 👉🏻👈🏻 would you be angy if you find out i eat like 2 meals a day 😔 but you're the best best bestest ok ily smsmsmsm 🥺 you take care of yourself too ogei ily mwah!! And myur kremsas

This is request number 2!! I'll do request 1 on a different post uwu

Reader gets kidnapped

All hell boutta break loose ok the people who kidnapped you will not survive

For the kidnappers sake, it's best that they took you while you weren't around Childe and/or Kaeya

Cuz if it happened in front of them and the kidnappers escaped with you then Childe's gonna lose it

All logic and thoughts go out of his brain, his only thought is getting you back safe

Unlikely it'll happen though, because criminals do be cowardly and if anyone's bold enough to try to capture you in front of them surely don't mind dying in the most painful way

And they'll make sure you're ok ya know uwu you won't get taken while you're with them

Also cuz Kaeya's so smart and observant, he'd like know immediately before someone even tries

Secretly tells Childe and he's gonna go like "oh I'll just buy this one thing I'll brb" and get rid of all of them rip uwu

You know even know there was a kidnapping attempt

But anyways

So, you went ahead and got yourself kidnapped while they were away

Mostly probably while the two of them were busy with their own assignments and you've just been hanging on your own for awhile now

They prolly had personal vendettas against Childe and/or Kaeya? Otherwise they wouldn't go for you

But it do be a little dangerous for you because you are dating a Fatui Harbinger AND Calvary Captain of the Knights of Favonius

They come back to any empty house and they just know

Contacts the other partner immediately because its just a better move than hunting you down on their own

Also cuz the other person needs to know umu

I say contact like they'll give each other a call or letter or smth. No, i mean them just barging into each other's workplace/ area confusing the rest of the people there

It's urgent man the love of their life is gone

When the two of them are dead serious they could prolly figure out the culprit within a day or even a couple of hours even if there's no clue left behind for them

Let the man hunt begin!!! ✨

Wastes no time, everything is calculated to get you back in their arms safe as quickly as possible

They're just kskfg worried ok? They don't know what the kidnappers have done to you or are planning to do to you and it stresses them out big time

Childe just unleashes all his stress and anger on the people who kidnapped you the moment they step into enemy territory

Let's Kaeya to the thinking about where they could be hiding you

Kaeya doesn't even need to worry about security, he just needs to figure out the fastest way in because Childe: Unhinged is a whole threat

When they do get to you Kaeya immediately has you in his arms; asking if you're ok and checking for any external injuries

Childe is off murdering the rest of the people in the room if there are people watching you

They don't even need to know why what they the kidnappers wanted from them, only thing that matters is you're alive and they're not

If the kidnappers have you like at hostage like knife to your throat type beat they'd be seething

But the fights going to be so anticlimactic because they're both so strong? And their synergy is so good they just have everyone in the room frozen and dead in 7 seconds flat

But if y'all are here for the drama then uwu i imagine Kaeya's super good at negotiating terms

Very calm and collected, he's angry, you can see it in his eyes but he won't let his emotions betray him and will trick the kidnappers to let you go in exchange for something more valuable

The second they do, the millisecond you're away from their grasp Childe's already committing mass murder

Like have you seen him in foul legacy? 8 seconds flat dudes, all gone. It'll take a miracle for him to leave any soul that's involved alive

Comforts you the Most™ you must've been so scared and what not

Zoomer reader to the kidnappers like "ooo y'all are gonna die so hard, when my bfs find me it'll be all over for you" or "kill me i have nothing to live for lmao" HAHAHA

Promises to never leave you alone again cuz they don't want your life to be threatened in any way

At some point, when you get over your Trauma, you'd have to reassure them a whole bunch because they're just that overprotective

They're just worried you know they know how dangerous their line of work is and for something bad like that to happen will really break them

They'll set up like a whole system where one of them is with you if the other is gone for long periods of time? But jskf it can get a lil overbearing so you gotta reassure them you're ok and you'll be more careful

[phis-corner]

statue of ice

yes i am still updating this fic lmao

main masterlist ◈ maribat masterlist ◈ ao3 link

She only lasts a few weeks before caving and telling her brother that she’s Ladybug.

The Guardian – Fu is his name – was vehemently against revealing her identity again, already annoyed that she’d told Jason. Privately, Marinette thinks that Fu can “go fuck himself”, and maybe Jason would have said it out loud, but she does not.

Instead, she ignores his wishes and tells Tim anyway.

To his credit, her brother isn’t even surprised. He just quirks a smile during their scheduled video call and says in a light voice, “I guess it runs in the family, then, doesn’t it?”

Marinette is inclined to agree. After all, what are the odds that both of them ended up being protectors of two cities?

.o0o.

A week later, Tim calls her to confirm Marinette’s suspicions that Gabriel Agreste is Hawkmoth.

“He’s slippery. Paid to have all the security cameras around his home removed, but I traced akuma sightings on social media and marked them on a map and what do you know, his house was right in the center of the circle. I also checked out the property. He literally has a butterfly window, Mari. Everything in his house is butterfly patterned. It checks out.”

“Thank you, Tim-Tam. I’ll take care of it from here,” Marinette says. Her mind is already working, forming a plan to take Gabriel down. Permanently.

It has to be public. The city wouldn’t believe it otherwise, and some are already accusing Ladybug and Chat Noir of creating the akumas themselves so that they can make themselves look good by defeating them.

Exposing Gabriel as Hawkmoth would cause the downfall of his company and result in the loss of thousands of jobs, but Audrey Bourgeois had a Parisian branch of Style Queen that was still fairly new and looking for employees, and she knows that Audrey would most likely hire all of Gabriel’s employees out of spite.

“Are you sure you don’t want us to help?” her brother asks. “You don’t have to do this alone, you know.”

She knows. She wants so, so badly not to do it alone, to have her brother by her side as she faces down a magic user that could turn her into a puppet in the blink of an eye if she allowed herself to feel just a little bit too much, but she can’t bring him into this. Can’t bring anyone else into this. Tim already spends his nights stopping rapists and murderers and seeing all the horrors that Gotham has to offer. He doesn’t need to see what Paris throws at its people as well.

“It’s a miraculous matter, Tim-Tam,” Marinette says instead of voicing any of those thoughts. “Besides, bringing anyone else in puts them at risk of akumatization. It’s best to keep as few people involved as possible.”

“Okay then,” Tim responds, not fully managing to hide the disappointment and apprehension in his voice. “Good luck, Mari.”

The corners of her lips twitch upwards in a tiny smile. “I am the living embodiment of good luck, Tim-Tam. It will be alright.”

.o0o.

It is easy to poke and prod at Gabriel’s ego until he thoughtlessly lunges, crashing through his own window onto the street below when she dances out of his way.

Ladybug follows, dropping and rolling with a familiarity that comes from being forced to do that same motion countless times, and she toys with him, dodging, ducking, but never really attacking, until the news helicopters start circling overhead.

Chat Noir arrives just as she sweeps Gabriel’s legs out from underneath him, and he doesn’t quite manage to stifle his gasp of horror, all irritation at Ladybug for taking Hawkmoth down without him forgotten when he sees who is underneath the mask.

Ladybug may find Chat Noir (Adrien Agreste, she reminds herself,) a nuisance at best, but she is not heartless. She knows what it’s like, to want to believe that one’s parents are good people. She knows what it’s like when that illusion one tries so hard to maintain finally shatters, and it’s something that nobody deserves to experience.

Chat’s face hardens as Ladybug starts murmuring words in an ancient tongue underneath her breath, casting a spell on his father, who gave up the fight as soon as the butterfly was removed from his hands, to ensure that Gabriel will never be able to touch another miraculous again. He won’t be able to exist within three feet of one.

It’s a good thing she chooses that spell too, because it protects Gabriel from his son’s wrath.

As the authorities are cuffing his hands behind his back, something cold settles in Chat Noir’s eyes as he calls up a Cataclysm and lunges at his father, the clawed hand rippling with dark magic outstretched, ready to disintegrate a living, breathing human being.

Gabriel is yanked backward by an invisible force, pulled out of harm’s way, and Chat’s Cataclysm lands on a chunk of debris instead. The Black Cat is held back by his partner before he can try something else.

“Chat,” Ladybug hisses, as he struggles in her hold, still trying to go after his father, who is being put away into a police car. “It’s done. It’s over. He won’t hurt anyone ever again, and the justice system will deal with it.”

Chat Noir slowly starts to resist less and less at her words, and she takes that as a cue to continue. “It feels anticlimactic, and I know you want to do more. You think we should do more than just let them take him away, because you’ve been fighting on the front lines of this battle since the beginning. But our part is over. Our duty has been fulfilled. He won’t be acquitted, if that’s any consolation. There are mountains of evidence against him.”

Her partner turns around, suddenly, and buries his face into her shoulder as his body jerks with what she realizes are sobs. He’s crying,Ladybug realizes. He’s crying for his father. For who he thought his father was.

When was the last time she cried for one of her parents?

Ladybug reaches a hand up and awkwardly pats Chat Noir on the back for a moment before she spots the reporters.

“Let’s take this to our usual meeting spot,” she whispers to her partner, and he nods, composing himself in an instant. Janet would have liked Adrien, she thinks. Gabriel’s parenting style was evidently similar to how Marinette had grown up.

Five minutes later, they’re standing on the Eiffel Tower, overlooking the city they’d sacrificed so much to protect.

“This is it, isn’t it?” Chat Noir asks, turning to her. “This is the end? There’s no use for us anymore.”

Ladybug inhales slowly, taking in the view from above one last time and committing it to memory. Not that she needs to – her eidetic memory ensures that she’ll never forget. It’s for the sentiment, she supposes.

“Yes,” she murmurs. “We have to give them back now. Say goodbye to our kwamis.” She’ll miss Tikki’s company, she thinks, but not as much as she misses Jason’s. The kwami was sweet, yes, but she didn’t understand Marinette’s need to do something other than being Ladybug.

“Where do we even return them to?” Chat questions, and then she remembers that he’d never been told of the Guardian’s existence.

Ladybug unhooks her yoyo from her side, tossing it up and down one last time as she prepares to swing. “Follow me,” she says, and then she throws the yoyo and leaps off the side of the Tower.

.o0o.

Fu’s massage parlor is just as inconspicuous as ever, and somehow, no one is walking along the street when Ladybug and Chat Noir enter.

The Guardian has been expecting them – there are three cups of tea sitting on the table in front of him.

“Ladybug, Chat Noir, please sit,” he says in his wheezy voice. They oblige, but the tea remains untouched on the table.

“Chat Noir, it is time to return your miraculous,” Fu states, and the two of them stiffen, immediately picking out what’s wrong with that sentence.

“Why am I not included?” Ladybug inquires, her polite tone holding an undercurrent of danger. “There cannot be a Ladybug without a Black Cat.”

“Well, you see, you won’t be using the Ladybug,” the Guardian explains with a slightly condescending look on his face. “But there can only be one Guardian, and I’ve chosen you to be my successor.”

The sound of Ladybug’s palms slamming on the table makes the other two people in the room jump. “Absolutely not,” she declares as she stands up. “I did not agree to become the Guardian. This has never been discussed.”

Fu looks up at her with confused eyes. “But you became a candidate when you agreed to put on the earrings, and Chat Noir is simply not fit for the job.” Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Chat Noir wince, but he does not disagree.

“I put on the earrings because people were dying,” Ladybug growls. “Because this city needed something, someone, to look up to, and there was no other viable option. The Guardian is never in the light. They spend the rest of their extended lives hiding in the shadows to protect a box of magical jewelry. The Guardian is not a symbol of hope, because nobody knows the Guardian exists. I put on the earrings to be a symbol of hope, not because I wanted to, but because people needed one. The people don’t need one anymore, and I don’t want to continue doing this.”

“I was fighting a war, Fu,” she spits, furious words laced with venom. “I was fighting a war with one ally by my side and we were both children. Now that the war is over, I am no longer needed, so I am leaving. I want the shreds of innocence I had before this war back, but that is not possible, so I can at least try to move on from this instead. Let me move on.”

Without warning, she reaches up and carefully takes the earrings out of her ears. She would have loved to rip them off in one swift movement, but earrings were not that type of jewelry. The Ladybug suit disappears in a flash of pink, and then she is Marinette again, standing in a massage parlor with a pair of red-and-black earrings in her hand and two sets of wide eyes fixed on her.

“Marinette,” Chat Noir breathes. “Oh my god, I… I’m so sorry.”

Marinette drops the earrings on the table in front of them. “Are you sorry for being an ass, or just sorry because the person you convinced yourself you were in love with was an illusion?” she asks, not looking at anyone or anything in particular as she pivots on her heel and strides for the exit.

When she reaches the doorway, however, she pauses, eyes still fixed straight ahead of her. “Oh, and Adrien?” she calls, eliciting two identical noises of surprise. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry too. About your father, of course.”

Then she opens the door and walks through, never once looking back as she sees the city that once weighed so heavily on her shoulders from the ground looking up, instead of from above, gazing down.

.o0o.

She’d spent some time wondering how she was going to adjust to life in Paris after that, knowing what she knew about Adrien and Gabriel and what Adrien knew about her.

As it turns out, she only has to go through one week of feeling Adrien’s green eyes on her at every available moment in class and going out of her way to avoid him, because her mother dies.

It’s surprisingly anticlimactic.

Janet Drake was always such a formidable woman. Her mere presence in a room could make grown men cower. To Marinette, she seemed almost invincible – always superior to everyone else, untouchable as she lashed out with quick with and a sharp tongue and long nails digging into her children’s shoulders. If there were ever any cracks in Janet’s façade, if it even wasa façade, she’d never seen one.

And yet, in the end, it turned out that she wasn’t untouchable after all. She’d died because she drank poisoned water out of desperation, even as Batman was right there. Batman had arrived to save them, he had freed them from their bonds, and the first thing they did was drink water poisoned with nerve toxin. Jack had survived, though he was in a coma and paralyzed.

Janet did not.

And that was it. That was the end of a woman that had dominated Marinette’s life for so long, a woman whose voice still hissed and lingered in her mind, reminding her to sit still and be silent and never, ever let your emotions show on your face.

Tim – he’d never had that mindset thrust upon him as forcefully as she did. After all, Tim had a father that didn’t despise him for his gender. Jack took charge of molding the son, and so Tim is crying, when he tells her all of this. He thinks he’s being subtle, but she’s his sister. She knows better.

Marinette didn’t care for her mother much, but she supposes she could give the dead at least some modicum of respect.

So as she packs her bags and books the next available flight to Gotham City, Marinette honors her mother’s wishes and does not shed a single tear for Janet Lynn Drake.

statue of ice

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[theimpossiblescheme]

sleep to you who wander

(As far as I’m concerned, The Castle of Cagliostro already has a perfect ending, especially for what’s supposed to be Lupin III’s final adventure.  But what happens after our heroes ride off into the sunset and life continues for them, anticlimactic as it might be?  I wrote this after pondering that very question, with help from @dying-suffering-french-stalkers and her reference to a simiilar scene in The Princess Bride, where the ride off into the sunset doesn’t go quite so smoothly.  We’ve had a looooot of DM conversations on the topic, and this was the result--I hope you guys enjoy it!)

“Did we lose ‘em?”

Meeting Jigen’s eyes in the rearview mirror for a second, Goemon glanced out the back window.  There was a reassuring lack of sirens on the road behind them.  “We lost them.  Fujiko must have headed them off at the border.”

Lupin let out a quiet chuckle from the passenger seat.  “Oh, so she wouldn’t share the plates, but…”  He trailed off and sank further down, tempted to tilt the seat back, but not wanting to scare the poor unsuspecting samurai sitting there (not that ending up in a blushing Goemon’s lap wouldn’t be nice…)

Besides, they’d have to make a pit stop soon, anyway.

“Hey, Jigen?  As soon as we find a petrol station, pull over.”

“We’ve got plenty of fuel still.  And don’t tell me you gotta take a leak—”

“Just pull us over, all right?  I gotta take care of something.”

A pause.  Jigen and Goemon’s eyes met again through the mirror.

“… Get me some cigarettes while you’re in there?”

“Done.”

The last of the Cagliostro countryside turned into the Italian countryside, and the back roads turned into the streets of Ventimiglia, Italy.  So many people were out on the sidewalks, perusing shop windows and outdoor stands, lined up across each block in herds, almost drowning out traffic… what day was it?  Lupin realized he hadn’t even been keeping track—the only indication he’d had of the time passing was the newspaper clipping of the Count’s failed wedding.  The fashion markets happened on Fridays, right?  He remembered Rebecca mentioning that to him… how long ago now?  It couldn’t have been too long, could it?  Maybe if he watched the crowds now, he could catch a glimpse of long blonde hair streaked with blue (or maybe she’d gotten bored of that color and switched to pink or purple or something.  Women did so love changing up their hair), but he couldn’t twist that far without a rib digging directly into his lung and making him gasp.

Where the hell was a petrol station when you needed one?

It took about fifteen minutes of Jigen honking furiously at pedestrians and growling for them to “share the goddamn road” before they were moving at full speed and finally pulling in beside one of the pumps.  Jigen emphatically buried his spent stub of a cigarette in the ashtray, driving his own point home.  “You promised—”

“Don’t worry, I’m good for it.”  Lupin tried to reach for the First Aid kit under the seat as nonchalantly as possible as he opened the door and rose to his feet…

Jigen was too quick on the uptake.  Grabbing his wrist and twisting his arm just so, forcing Lupin to look up at him?  “Whaddya need it for?”

“C’mon, it’s not a big—”

“What do you need it for?”

… Well, right now, the last thing Lupin needed was to have the truth choked and yanked out of him.  Even sighing made his chest hurt.  “Get my jacket off for me, would you?”

Jigen obeyed, pulling it off carefully by the arms and draping it across the back of his own seat.  At the same time, Lupin unbuttoned his black shirt until the wrappings and bandages underneath were showing.

There was actually less blood than he’d expected.  Maybe he hadn’t torn everything open… just enough to make a mess, though.

Over his shoulder, he heard Jigen hiss in shock and the back passenger door open as Goemon bounded out.  “Why the hell didn’t you tell us?” came Jigen’s choked voice as he almost jumped out of the driver’s seat, letting Lupin’s head fall back against it.  Lupin almost made a joke about how he’d been cheated out of laying in two very choice gentlemen’s laps, but it died in his throat as he let his back fully stretch out for the first time in hours.

“Wasn’t really the biggest thing in on my mind,” he admitted, unable to keep from wincing, but forcing himself to relax more as Goemon knelt and inspected his wounds.  “We had a wedding to stop, a princess to rescue, a treasure to uncover, a Count to defeat… kind of a packed schedule, even for us.”  Still, getting into a fight in a clocktower and then plummeting several hundred feet into freezing cold water on top of that didn’t exactly do wonders for multiple gunshot wounds and a concussion.  Who would’ve thought?

“You still should have told us you were in pain,” Goemon replied somewhere near his waist.  He lay one cool hand over where one of the bandages had come loose, a warning and a request, and Lupin nodded and gritted his teeth in anticipation.  “We could have helped you when you first came back.”

“Yeah, I know… I just had a lot of my mind.”  Goemon went slowly and gently as he tightened the wrappings, occasionally mopping up the blood with a paper napkin from the glove compartment along the way, and Lupin tilted his head back for any friction to distract from the sting and pull in his skin.  Normally when he was being treated like this, he would either playfully swoon over his wonderful nurses and how good they were with their hands, or he would rail loudly at how unfair it was and that he couldn’t be slowed down like this.  Right now, he didn’t have the energy for either.  His chest was still tight, and it had nothing to do with the bandages.

“If you ever need help, just let me know.  I’ll come running from anywhere on earth to save you.”

Just don’t need me yet, kiddo—I’m not in the best shape for it right now.

“You gonna be okay?”  Jigen’s voice again.  The seat right above his head dipped, and Lupin looked up to see him crouched right above him, his knee almost grazing the top of his hair.

“Oh, yeah, I’ll be fine.  You know me—it’s gonna take a lot more than this to knock me out of the running.”

“Says the guy who was knocked out for three days straight not that long ago.”

“But isn’t that why I have you?”  Lupin tilted his head further back and shot Jigen the brightest, most charming smile he could manage.  “To gallantly nurse me back to health when my strength fails?”

Jigen didn’t answer, but he did mutter something that sounded like “smug little prick” before raking a hand across Lupin’s head, fingers digging through his hair into his scalp.  Lupin shamelessly leaned into the touch—it was enough to make up for the lack of Goemon’s hands after he tied off the last of the bandages and buttoned Lupin’s shirt back up to the collar.  He still couldn’t tie a necktie, but Lupin didn’t want to bother with it right now.

“Do you know where we’re heading next?” Goemon asked, offering a hand to help Lupin straighten up.

“Not a clue.”  He tried to pass it off as casual, his usual devil-may-care recklessness, as he rose to a sitting position in the passenger seat once again.  “You guys have any ideas?”

Jigen shrugged as he climbed back in behind the wheel, but Goemon hesitated, still kneeling right outside with the First Aid kit in his lap… ears going slightly pink.  “I… may have one.”

“Oh?”  Now Lupin was extremely alert.  “Well, you know I’d loooove to hear it, Goemon!”

“I would like to go back to Japan--Suminawa’s village, specifically.  I have… some loose ends I’d like to tie up.”

No sooner had those words left his mouth than Jigen let out a knowing cackle.  “You’re wanting to see Murasaki again, aren’t ya?  Isn’t it about time you made an honest woman of her?”

Goemon’s extremely pink face was answer enough for both of them.

“Hey, that sounds great!”  Lupin leaned forward, shifting just so he could sling an arm around his partner’s shoulder.  “Tell you what—we’ll make a road trip out of it.  Just the three of us.  We’ll just drive until we need to find a ship across, and if there’s any place you guys wanna hit along the way, we can do it.  Doesn’t even have to be a heist—if you guys wanna go sightseeing or shopping or anything at all, just let me know!”

It felt a bit like stalling, and maybe it was.  Maybe he just didn’t want to let Goemon go just yet.  Maybe the prospect of him settling down (even if it was with a nice girl like Murasaki) felt a little too much like never seeing him again.  But he’d already left way too soon after the three of them hightailed it out of Monaco, and as nice it was to spend all that time on the road with Jigen… the Fiat’s backseat did feel pretty empty.

And there was still that tightness in his chest he wanted to put off dealing with for as long as possible.

To his relief, Goemon nodded.  “That does sound nice… as long as you don’t get us lost on the scenic route through Russia on the way.”

“Hey, that was one time!”

“And the only time, right?”

Before Lupin could say anything, Jigen was cackling again and actually aiming a gentle kick right at the small of his back, forcing him to his feet.  “C’mon, dumbass—you’re still on cigarette duty before we hit the road.”

***

He had planned for a couple of heists along the way.  Just a couple—there weren’t many places Lupin hadn’t already stolen from or at least had a memorable encounter therein.  At some point over the campfire, he’d dug out a collection of old roadmaps and traced the many annotations he’d left in it.  Every continent, every large metropolitan area in every country.  X-es and checkmarks over where he’d been, notes scribbled in the margins.  Lists of traps to look out for, supplies to bring with them.  Lather, rinse, repeat on every page.  Sheafs of hotel stationery tucked into the bindings with diagrams and estimated floorplans and arrows mapping out everyone’s positions, including Zenigata’s.

(Where was Pops now, anyway?  Was he still out there looking for them?  Had he given up?  Hell, there was a chance he’d stumble across their little campsites any second… in which case, Lupin was tempted to just offer him a sausage and tell him to take a load off.)

Very little empty, unexplored space left on any of them.  That, too, sat heavy somewhere in Lupin’s chest.

But he did want to eke out a handful of smaller jobs.  Mostly second tries at treasures they hadn’t quite managed to steal, moving from one museum to another.  The Faberge Museum had apparently found more eggs to display, and what the hell, it might be nice to have something pretty for the hell of it (and they’d lost their old haul somewhere in a Moscow hotel the last time) …

It seemed only appropriate that Fujiko beat him to it.

The Fiat had parked overnight along the Moyka River Embankment, nestled inconspicuously among the other cars.  The engine was running just enough to leave the heat on, and Goemon was sitting upright in the backseat, head lolled gently against his chest, while Jigen had tipped his own seat all the way back so that his head nearly rested on Goemon’s knee.  Lupin had spent the past six hours driving, and his jacket was actually buttoned for once so he could burrow into the neck, trying to force himself to sleep.  Jigen’s snores didn’t usually bother him, but right now they were unnecessarily loud.

He'd almost mistaken the rumble of Fujiko’s bike for another snore.

But as he leaned his cheek against the window, there it was.  And there she was.  Still blonde, her surplus military uniform traded for her old red biker’s gear.  Goggles pulled up over her forehead as she sidled up to the car, eyes finding Lupin’s and giving him a slight, amused smirk as he could only blink at her at first before rolling down the window.  She’d been so far ahead of them… how had she caught up?  Or rather, how had they caught up with her?

“Nothing there that we haven’t already picked over, unfortunately,” Fujiko said, hefting a large satchel into her lap.  “Still… I did manage to come away with a few little beauties.”  With some effort, she lifted out a large golden egg latticed with starbursts and topped with a diamond the size of an eyeball.  And when she cracked it open, a miniature red coach, also studded with gold and propelled by golden wheels, tumbled gently out.

Lupin couldn’t help but whistle.  “Very nice… I don’t suppose I can get you to share, Fujicakes?”  He pressed his hands together under his chin like a child praying at Christmas, tilting his head up and exaggeratedly batting his eyelashes at her.  “I’d settle for just the coach, y’know.”

“Not a chance.”  Fujiko quickly tucked the treasures back into her satchel.  “I know appraisers who would pay in blood just to touch the Imperial Coronation egg.  And last I checked, you came away from Cagliostro empty-handed.”

“Hey, I was the one who uncovered the Roman city underneath the lake—that has to count for something!”

“But you can’t exactly carry a city, Lupin.”

“Well, not with that attitude.”  As if he couldn’t still picture it perfectly, even after so many weeks.  Or months—had it been months since they started?  It felt like hours since he’d been there walking the ruins, jumping across causeways Clarisse couldn’t reach so he could catch her on her way over.  He’d stolen San Marino, he’d stolen Paris, he’d stolen New York City more than once, and now he had this little piece of Cagliostro… there was something romantic about that.  Something suitably grand for the world’s greatest thief.  Lupin the First would definitely approve.

Fujiko just hummed skeptically and let it go, repositioning her bike in preparation to drive away.  “So where are you all off to?”

“Back to Japan—Goemon wanted to patch things up with Murasaki, and I told him we’d make a trip of it.  What about you?”

“Mmmm… I haven’t decided yet.”  There was a note of wistfulness in Fujiko’s voice, in her eyes… Lupin always found that particularly beautiful.  Not that she wasn’t a knockout when she was confidently conning her way through droves of men, himself included, with that hard set in her face and that edge in her smile—lesser men had died just for a glimpse.  But these spare moments of uncertainty, especially in the dim light when she still had some plausible deniability, were that much more precious.  Lupin had missed seeing them, now that they weren’t in such close quarters anymore.  “I know at least one dealer in France who would pay pretty handsomely.  And I haven’t been back there in a while… you know, I actually miss it.”

“Even with all the bullshit from last time?”

She actually laughed, if only just a little.  “Even with all the bullshit from last time.”

“Hey, say hi to Ami for me.  And save me a reservation at the Ritz—we could catch up.”

There was something oddly final about this, too.  Maybe he was just overthinking things; after all, this was Fujiko, who couldn’t be bothered tying herself to any one city or any one man or woman.  They’d see each other again someday.  It was almost inevitable.  That was why he didn’t bother giving her a date—maybe it would be months, maybe even years, but at least that table would be there, waiting.

Still… he pictured this going differently.  Maybe after one more grand heist, one more merry chase through the hallways of some huge museum or manor house before they emerged onto a balcony and Fujiko leaped onto the ladder of a waiting helicopter, leaving him with empty hands and tingling lips once again.  Or maybe one last tumble, for old time’s sake (not that there was room in the car for that, and Jigen would bawl him out if he dragged them all to a hotel just for her).  This felt… weirdly anticlimactic in comparison.

Maybe that was only fitting.  It wasn’t really an end per se, or at least it didn’t have to be.  Nothing ever really ended between them.

Fujiko smiled.  “We’ll see how things turn out.”  And she started to turn around to leave…

“Oh, Fujiko?”

She stopped midway through lowering her goggles.  “Hmm?”

Lupin was tempted to ask for a kiss, or even to just take her free hand and kiss it in farewell.  But neither felt right at the moment, and on the chance she’d refuse he didn’t want them to leave on bad terms.  So instead he just gave her a smile.  “See you around.”

Her own smile brightened, and she gave him a wink in return before revving her engine and riding off down the road.  Lupin watched her go until the motorcycle was a dot in the distance before sinking back into his seat, not even bothering to roll the window back up.  There was a breeze coming in from off the river.  Beside him, Jigen had backed nearly all the way up and off the passenger seat toward the back, still laying flat with his hat over his face, but nearly on top of Goemon, who barely registered his presence.

It was a nice night.

***

It was a nice night when they finally dropped off Goemon as well.  They’d long since lost track of how long they’d been on the road--the Fiat had lasted several dozen tanks of gas, two flat tires, one fussy engine that Jigen had taken multiple attempts to jumpstart, and a barge across the Sea of Japan.  By the time they reached Murasaki’s village, the air brushed coolly through the open windows, the caps of snow on the mountains nearby had grown whiter, and the trees rustled red and gold.

The world had been green when they started out, Lupin noted.  Maybe he just hadn’t noticed the change.

Halfway through a familiar glen, where a small roadside garden stretched slowly into view, Goemon motioned for them to stop.  “I can walk the rest of the way.”

“You sure?”  Lupin pulled over to one side and parked, but didn’t kill the engine just yet.  “We can drop you off right on her doorstep, it’s no problem.”

“I think I would rather talk to her alone when I get there.  We’ll have a lot of ground to cover… since I’ve been gone so long.”  Climbing out of the backseat, sword in hand and travelling hat tucked under his arm, Goemon came to stand in front of them.  “So we can say goodbye here.”

Oh, to hell with that.  The second he and Jigen climbed out after him, Lupin reached out and took Goemon’s hands and, when he seemed receptive to that, swept him into a hug, one hand on the back of his hair.  There was so much he wanted to say… most of it variations on thank you.  For putting up with his nonsense, for coming through every time they needed him and every time they didn’t, for staying by his side even when Jigen couldn’t, for being so absurdly loyal and brave, for making him laugh and feel alive even from the moment they met, for letting Lupin make him laugh when he thought he never would again, for letting him be a part of his life at all… they’d be here all night if he kept counting the reasons.

For now, one quiet “Thank you” would do before he pulled out of the hug and gave Goemon a kiss on each cheek.  “You take care of yourself, okay?  Her, too.”

Goemon nodded, throat suspiciously tight as he moved onto Jigen, who wrapped him into his own tight hug.  “Don’t be a stranger,” Jigen murmured before dropping his voice and whispering something only he could hear into his ear.  Lupin didn’t try to listen, tempting as it was--he just stood back alongside them, hands in his pockets.  When Goemon finally stepped away, his jaw stuttered with the beginnings of half a dozen parting words before snapping closed as he gave them both a nod.

“Travel safe, you two.  I’ll… I’ll be in touch.”

Lupin gave him the same smile he’d given Fujiko, feeling it pull even more at his lips this time.  “We’ll hold you to that, y’know.”

And with that, Goemon turned, let in a deep cleansing breath that eased the remaining tension in his shoulders, and started off down the road.  His partners watched him go until he, too, was only a dot disappearing around the bend in the wake of a tiny indoor light glowing yellow and drowning him out.  Saying goodbye to Fujiko had felt strangely unsatisfying, but somehow just right.  This… this just felt right. 

Didn’t stop his eyes from burning against the dark, though.

Lupin hadn’t realized how dark it had gotten--how long they’d been standing there--until Jigen nudged him, a fuzzy indigo blur in the shadow of the car.  “C’mon.  Let’s find a place to sleep.”

Neither of them moved for a few minutes after that.  Even with nothing left to see but the fireflies in the grass.

***

“You can take that off now, you know--it’s starting to creep me out.”

Lupin grinned behind the mask of Zenigata’s face.  “Hey, maybe Pops’ll take the hint and join us for a breather.”  It had been almost a year since they’d seen hide or hair of the good inspector (hell of a thing to process), and Lupin was starting to miss him.  And after all, no matter where he was in the world, there was no better way to summon him than somebody reporting a false sighting.

Jigen rolled his eyes, but patted him on the shoulder as the elevator landed and he peeled back off down the hotel hallway.  “Yeah, well, you go change.  I’m gonna go check out our room--they better have been serious about the bar.”

Once he was alone, Lupin ducked through the doorway to the courtyard, glancing around him before pulling off the mask and tucking it into the pocket of the great brown overcoat before slinging it over his shoulder.  There were still a few weeks left before the snow stayed down in drifts, so for today the sky was blue and clear, and piles of grey slush clumped around the remaining patches of grass and the little patio that had once been surrounded by summer flowers…

He’d almost walked right on past, but his eye finally caught the figure sitting on the sofa.  Surrounded by large antique suitcases, flanked by an old man in rough-hewn gardener’s clothes and  two hulking security guards the size of professional wrestlers.  A petite figure in a purple dress, red hair pinned elegantly at the nape of her neck and hidden by a wide-brimmed hat.

Lupin recognized her in an instant.  She recognized him, too--as she rose and rushed over to meet him, her arms went out as if to hug him, but at a start from one of her bodyguards, she resisted and forced them back down to her sides.  Instead, she held up a hand for him to kiss, as befitting a proper young lady, but as he did so her voice was breathless with excitement.

“I knew… I just knew we’d meet again someday, Mr. Thief.”

And the ache in Lupin’s chest yawned so fiercely he feared it might swallow him.

***

Their hotel room did not, in fact, come with a bar.  With much grumbling, Jigen had taken them to the one across the street.  It was admittedly a very nice place--the staff were friendly, the drinks were great, and the in-house jazz band had the tact to slow things down after a certain hour and more than a few patrons needed cut off for the night.  Right now they were playing a melancholy piece for saxophone and piano, more of a reflection than a true song.

It gave Lupin something to focus on… the ice in his glass was melting and the condensation leaving rings on the table, but he couldn’t bring himself to drink.

“Been doin’ an awful lot of sighing there, buddy,” came Jigen’s voice beside him, slowly nursing his own glass of scotch.  When Lupin didn’t rise to the bait, Jigen heaved a long-suffering sigh of his own.  “Look, I’m not gonna choke it out of you in front of a buncha strangers, so you might as well tell me now.”

“All, right, all right…”  Where did he even start, though?  It was all a disorganized jumble in his head, and that bothered him more than anything.  That, and the stupid lingering anxiety of how Jigen might react.  He raised his melting glass and downed it, desperately drawing energy from the burn in his throat.  “You’ll never guess who I ran into earlier when we first checked in.”

“Better not have been Pops--at least not while you were still wearing his face.”

“Nope.  Clarisse.”

Jigen’s face softened a bit.  “No kidding?”

“No kidding.”  Lupin wanted to smile, but he only managed a slight upturn of his lips.  “She’d snuck into Japan to ask for help establishing a tourist program for Cagliostro.  She was just on her way home, though, so we… we didn’t actually get to talk much.”  But there was so much more to the conversation, short as it was, that Lupin wished he could go into.  How Clarisse had dedicated so much to dismantling the tools of her family’s corruption and making public statements to the world about undoing the damage.  How she was personally helping to convert the underground printing press into shelters for the poor.  How she’d spent her seventeenth birthday touring her kingdom and getting to know her subjects, even taking the afternoon to make tea for an old woman and her grandchildren.  How Christopher was still a good friend, how Karl was still lively as a puppy even as “an old man in dog years.”  How healthy she looked now that she was no longer a prisoner in her own home, how she wore the poise of a queen when she was still so young.  How much difference a year had made for her.

How much it hurt to say goodbye to her twice.

“Glad she’s doing okay.”  Jigen’s voice was soft, as if intuiting everything Lupin wasn’t saying.  “She’s a good kid.”

Lupin nodded, staring down into his empty glass.  He was tempted to ask for another, but the way his mind was now, it would only lead into a dark drunken spiral, and he didn’t need the additional static in his head.  This was a conversation he needed to have sober.  “I don’t know how I’m ever gonna top it.  Cagliostro, I mean… we saved a princess, we saved a whole kingdom, we uncovered this whole conspiracy, we found the city under the lake… kinda hard to go any bigger.”

Jigen tipped his head in agreement.  “Not to mention how often you almost got yourself killed.  More than usual for you.”

Oh, if he only knew… there had been a split second, right before he and Clarisse hit the water, that he thought if he were to actually die--not just faking it for the sake of a scheme, but for real--it wouldn’t be a bad way to go.  Foiling the Count, shielding her from the impact.  Being the hero for once.

A few more drinks, and he might wonder if it was a shame the fall didn’t kill him after all.

“What haven’t we done at this point, Jigen?”  He knew how tired and pathetic he sounded and couldn’t bring himself to care.  “We’ve been on the road together for how long, and now it’s just us… what else is there left?”  He thought back to his collection of maps, how many checkmarks and X-es marked where they’d all four stayed and stolen.  How many places they could never go back thanks to bounties on their heads and warrants for their arrest, how many people they’d left behind.  It was hard keeping in touch when you were constantly moving around; so many unopened letters and dropped calls from Rebecca, Ami, Maki, Laetitia, and he’d lost track of how many others sat waiting for replies that would never come.  Before it might have felt freeing, but now it was just lonely.  Especially with Goemon and Fujiko gone and the roads ahead of them drying up.  The world felt so much hollower.

It took a few minutes for Jigen to answer.  The saxophone wailed plaintively from the bandstand as he drained the last of his scotch and sat contemplating, leaning heavily forward with his arms crossed over the table.  “You remember a couple years ago in Paris?  I told you to consider retiring now that things were getting more complicated?”

Lupin looked over at him.  “You still think I should?  Just… pack it in for good?”

Jigen gave the briefest of shrugs.  “It’s an option.  If you ever wanted to.”

It was strange to even think about now.  He’d joked about it on plenty of occasions, and Jigen had promptly barked at him to shut up and not treat the topic so lightly.  And he’d taken breaks before, usually for the sake of a woman who’d caught his eye and even once for Fujiko.  But the idea of well and truly retiring… how would he even spend it?  His grandfather had still taken undercover jobs on the side--as a tutor, a museum curator, a Minister of the Interior, even as a private detective.  That might not be a terrible idea; Lupin had rather enjoyed his last stint at solving a mystery rather than causing one.  And even if he didn’t go with that, he’d still promised that girl Marie he’d ask after her someday after she’d helped him.  He might actually have time for that now.

His father had died in a train crash that left only two survivors.  Even as a teenager watching the last car go up in smoke, Lupin had promised himself that he’d never die like that.  Every close call, every false alarm since then had simply been to head off what everyone said was inevitable at the pass.  To steal himself more time.  And now, for once, he had an abundance of it.

At least until he looked in the mirror one day and found more wrinkles under the makeup, more grey under the black.  He’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

For now, he managed a small, humorless chuckle.  “Honestly… it’s the one thing I still haven’t done yet.”

“Figured out what you wanna do?”

“Not yet.  I might stay here for a while, make a few calls until I do.”

“Well, you’re not gettin’ rid of me, I hope you know that.”

“... What?”

“You heard me.”  Jigen tipped back the brim of his hat, exposing his eyes and the total honesty therein.  “I know we’ve been having this whole farewell tour, but… where you go, I go.  I meant it then, and I mean it now.”  A few years ago, there might have been some flicker of uncertainty in his voice, as if afraid that Lupin might turn him away, but now that fear was gone, replaced with a gentle conviction.  Offering reassurance instead of asking for it.

Lupin wanted to cry.  He hadn’t even begun to plan how he would say goodbye to Jigen, even on the way to the hotel.  Nothing seemed like enough, even the wildest, tenderest night of passion before they parted ways.  Knowing his track record so far, it might have been something unremarkable, a final cigarette or meaningless conversation in an alleyway before Jigen exited one way and Lupin another.  Either way, one last goodbye in this endless series seemed inevitable.

But here was Jigen still.  Until the end of the line.  Sparing him any more.

He still felt unbearably tired, but he let that fatigue sink comfortably into him as he leaned against Jigen’s shoulder and slipped a hand into his.  “I’m glad.”

[hamliet]

Tbh I get the sense that everyone just wants snk to be over lol. Zeke seemed like one of the better written characters in the series (which is saying a lot) and while he did contribute in the end his arc feels kind of anticlimactic. Also it is a little strange seeing the most suicidal character in the series get what he wants

I couldn’t disagree more, and I wouldn’t call him the most suicidal (that’s Reiner; also Armin or Historia). You’re entitled to your opinion, though, and I’m sorry you feel that way! I just think the ending as a whole is shaping up to be pretty great. Zeke’s not the most original part of the end, as I already said, but it still works for the narrative. Historia is the real blight on the ending. 

Do you think ending seems rushed? People have been complaining about some inconsistencies like eren didn't need zeke/royal blood anymore bcz he got ymir on his side and that's why zeke failed. But now somehow killing him stopped the rumbling? I think it might have stopped for a while but next chap it resumes and that's when real tragedy strikes.

Diff asks but answering together!

I personally don’t think it seems rushed, and I don’t think it’ll resume or there will be any massacre. The tragedy left is Eren, and he’s probably going to be killed by Mikasa. It’s possible it’ll restart for like a second, but there are two chapters left so I doubt it. Like, with three chapters left and presuming the last chapter might have some kind of epilogue, I’m really not sure what people expected. 

There’s still Ymir’s curse to deal with (I also don’t think Ymir has royal blood, right? it’s her creepy “husband” that did) and Eren, because he’s not gone and if you recall he will always move forward. So he’s not gonna stop because Zeke’s gone. 

Eren dying is tragedy enough. I talked earlier this week about what tragedy means to me courtesy of Arthur Miller, and it isn’t grimdark nihilism but instead cruelty and beauty mixed together. 

tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and that its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker’s brightest opinions of the human animal.

That said, I have been let down by endings before, so people are allowed to feel that way! I am sorry, too. I personally am satisfied rn. 

[delicatewhumps]

More Time (Reddie Drabble)

Eddie’s lying in Richie’s arms, and he’s dying, and he’s almost completely gone. His eyes are heavily lidded; his chest rises and falls in strained breaths. Blood stains his chin and the front of his shirt. He isn’t dead yet, Richie keeps telling himself. You still have a bit more time with him. You can still talk to him. It’s not too late.

“Eds,” says Richie, in a whisper gentle like he’s trying not to knock down a house of cards. “Eddie. Eddie.” He doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be able to say Eddie’s name purely, before it will all of a sudden carry the weight of death.

“Yeah,” sighs Eddie. He sinks down into Richie’s lap, and the blood and life and everything is leaving him, and he’s leaving, and Richie isn’t ready and will never be ready because no one can be ready for something like this.

“Eddie.” Richie says his name again. “Eds, don’t look at me like that.”

Eddie half smiles, reaching up with his right hand and touching Richie’s face. “Like what?” he says, but he knows, and Richie knows he knows, and neither of them are saying it out loud because that would make it real. His hand drops from Richie’s face.

Richie grasps Eddie’s numb fingers tightly and desperately, clutching onto him like he can keep him forever. “Stop,” he says. “I know what you’re thinking.” He can see deep into Eddie’s doe eyes like looking at the reflection of trees in the quarry water.

“Should have been a mind reader, then,” Eddie murmurs. “Hell of a lot more respectable than a stand-up comedian.” He grins bigger now, eyes crinkling in the way they always did, dimple appearing in the cheek uncovered by a bandage.

“Fuck you,” Richie says because he has to. “Like you did any better in life.”

Eddie’s smile droops. He swallows, fingers moving in Richie’s grip. “Don’t.” His voice is low and soft. “Not now.”

The dam in Richie’s chest breaks. Tears slip and slide down his cheeks. “Shit, Eds, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Guilt makes his throat close up.

“No, it’s just-“ Eddie’s breath catches. He considers his next words carefully. “You, Bev, Ben, Bill. You all did something, you all got somewhere. Stan didn’t. Mike didn’t, but he will. I... I didn’t, and I won’t ever get to.”

Richie chokes on a sob. “Eds,” he manages. He doesn’t know what else to do but lie through his teeth. “You will. We’re gonna get you out of here.” Once more: “We’re gonna get you out of here.”

Eddie just shakes his head. “You’ve always been such a shitty liar, Rich.” He tenses suddenly. A coughing fit overtakes him; bright red blood bubbles past his lips.

You still have more time with him turns into your time is up you fucking coward. Richie leans forward, panic constricting his lungs. “Hey, hey. Eds. Come on. Eddie- Eddie-“ And the confession won’t leave his mouth, tasting bitter on his tongue. He can’t spit it out. His time is up and he’s wasted these last precious moments with empty comforts and meaningless jokes. Meaningless, not because he didn’t pile intent behind them - he did, he filled the silence with so many sentiments disguised as lighthearted cracks, masking things he couldn’t say with things he could. No, meaningless because despite the current circumstances, Richie kept his emotions so well hidden that even Eddie didn’t stand a chance of being able to see past the facade. So they truly were worthless. Richie Tozier’s final act, the most reprehensible one yet, was to lie to a dying man.

Final. This isn’t only the end of Eddie’s life. It’s the end of Richie’s, too. Not in as literal of a way, of course. But up until now, whether Richie knew it or not, he and Eddie have been walking side by side. Even during the forgetting, Richie had the concrete vagueness of childhood to fall back on, to breathe in like Eddie’s camphor water. Now for the first time, he will have to navigate things truly alone.

Eddie gazes up at him helplessly, shaking with the effort it takes to breathe, with the effort it takes to try. “Rich,” he gasps out, eyes drifting closed.

It occurs to Richie that Eddie’s just used some of his breath to say Rich, that Eddie’s dying word could have just been his name. And like a thump on the back, that works to allow the useless admission to tumble out of him. “Eddie I love you,” he says, four words, four of the most important words he’s ever spoken and ever will speak.

Eddie’s mouth twitches into a smile. One last smile, the best and worst thing Richie has seen in his entire life. He doesn’t say anything else - can’t - but he does flash open his eyes briefly, giving Richie a knowing look.

(Richie’ll agonize over this look for the rest of his years, running dry every reason, gathering every possible bit of meaning from Eddie’s vulnerable expression.)

And...

Eddie slightly furrows his brows. His chest shudders to a still; his grip tightens and loosens sporadically on Richie’s for several moments like he keeps forgetting to stay.

Then he’s gone all at once. Because parts of him, the blood parts and the breathing parts, were slowing down before - leaving before Eddie could. But he stayed until he couldn’t anymore. He was Eddie until the very end. And Richie can sense it when he’s not, can feel it like he knows his own heartbeat.

As far as dying goes, it’s pretty anticlimactic. A pulse stops. Eyes close. After a while, brain waves cease. Things go from well he might breathe in a little and come back to me to he’s all the way gone for good. It’s the moment when whoever is unfortunate enough to witness something like this lingers on the cusp of denial, tilting dangerously to either side until the weight of it pulls them down one way or another.

But the sight of it, the awful heavy intensity, has been frozen and stamped on the backs of Richie’s eyelids permanently - for him to see eternally whenever he blinks, like some acidic aftertaste of the deadlights.

“I love you, Eddie,” he says again. “I love you.”

It doesn’t bring Eddie back. Never will.

[herding-octokittens]

Five People The Mechanisms Have Met Who Have Tried to Live Forever (And One Who Might Have Succeeded)

So I know that October is technically over, but I’m still here!

Mechtober Days 22-25: Immortality

ao3 @mechanismszine

The Mechanisms had met many beings over the years who craved immortality, and yet in all their travels, they had never actually met anyone else who succeeded. At some point in their travels, they had started collecting the records of failed immortality. What had originally been a pet project of Ivy’s, a small section of her library with a few handwritten notes, had twisted and turned and eventually become the official Traveling Museum of Idiots Trying to Live Forever, the largest collection of information on those who tried to not die. It was entirely non-profit and tax-exempt, and somehow maintained an entry fee of exactly nothing.

One of the oldest exhibits was that of King Cole, back when it was just Jonny and Tim and Brian and Ivy and Ashes and Nastya and the Toy Soldier and the Toy Soldier in a slightly different timeline. He’d made it a little over two thousand years before they first ran into him, through various measures of science and sorcery.

Unfortunately, he had had his still-beating heart viciously ripped out of his chest before he could get much farther. Still, two millenia was not shabby, especially for such an awful ruler. Even hundreds of years later, there were still drunken discussions among those who had fought in the rebellion, wondering how it had taken more than two thousand goddamn years before someone finally decided to overthrow the bastard.

~~~

Another early exhibit contained the only surviving records of Labyrinth anywhere in the universe. Those records, however, were lacking much substance beyond recounting the tale of how Ashes O’Reilly, quartermaster and professional arsonist crime boss god, had taken over the Acheron. While there were many tales that had circulated the City pertaining to Hades’s rather sudden appearance, their actual entrance had been rather quick and anticlimactic. At least, by their standards.

The Thanatos family had learned the hard way that what they had was not even close to true immortality. There’s only so much that can be done to prolong one’s life when Ashes takes it as a personal challenge to burn their houses, businesses, spouses, children, parents, friends, enemies, people who owed them money, people they owed money, and them to the ground in as little time as possible. 

To the dying days of the planet, there was not a single record left of the original guardians of the Acheron.

~~~

The most colorful exhibit was Odin’s.

The All-Mother’s human lifespan was not particularly notable among the others on display, especially considering the average Asgardian lifespan was already in the mid one hundreds. However, given the extent of the destruction caused by Odin’s mad quest, a significant amount of energy had been put into her section. The amount of glitter glue used on the train tracks alone was probably enough to build a new Bifrost.

Also, as best as the Mechanisms could tell, she was probably still alive. The last record of her on the Black Box did technically involve her falling into a supernova, but eldritch gods had a tendency to mess with what counts as dying. Given that Yog-Sothoth had come through the Bifrost eventually, it was entirely within reason to believe that it had decided to keep her alive in some state, whether as punishment or a gift.

~~~

The follow up to the Thanatos exhibit had been hastily constructed by Jonny and Raphaella, and detailed how the rest of the Olympians died because of a significantly smaller fire. 

The oldest of the Olympians - Zeus, Poseidon, Hestia, and Demeter - were nearly five thousand years old a piece by the time the Acheron fell, which put them very high on the “how long can a regular mortal live” list. Of course, the entire crew considered the lot of them to be the height of idiocy and assholishness, so the exhibit ended up tucked away in a back corner.

It also had a tendency to combust at random, and upon almost burning down two other exhibits early in the museum’s history, Ivy had moved it far from the rest of her carefully-curated displays.

~~~

A small exhibit off to the side was notable only for the giant neon sign above it, loudly announcing the number 35. As it happens, the subject of the exhibit had only lived for thirty five years, about fifty years shy of his species average.

Dr. Pilchard had earned his spot through the sheer audacity of his attempt at immortality. In all their travels, the Mechanisms could name three people who had ever successfully taken them all out at once. One of them, a pissed-off aristocrat with a stunning ability to conceal daggers on his person, had only been at it for the fun of revenge. Another, whose name was never said allowed and the mere mention of her existence tended to incur at least one rage-fueled murder, had done so on multiple occasions for any number of reasons.

And then there was Dr. Pilchard, who had one by one taken out the entire crew without ever resorting to murder. If he hadn’t died bloodily due to an understandable apprehension at trusting one of his prisoners, there was a decent chance he might have actually succeeded.

~~~

The last exhibit when you left the museum was easily the most interesting. It was by far the most professionally set up, and had a clashing mixture of well-preserved scientific notes that were entirely illegible, large cardboard signs with nothing but spray-painted obscenities, old polaroids of blurry people that appeared to have been taken on the lost planet of Malone, and an old walking cane. 

There was no name attached to the display, the placards explaining the items were almost entirely redacted, and if asked, none of the Mechanisms would explain it. Ivy would sometimes say it had earned it’s place of honor from how long it’s subject had lived, but she wouldn’t give a number. 

Without fail, it was cleaned and taken care of, the glass cases sparkling in the low light of the museum.

[tatticstudio55]

Jon and Dany – both beyond the Wall at the end?

DAY SEVEN (Sunday, August 2nd) Leadership  |  Free Choice  |  DoS: Royal Retirement / Passing the Torch

This is less meta-ish and borders more on the speculative side, but I’d like to discuss a Jon and Dany (potential) ending I’ve never seen anyone talk about before: them ending both beyond the Wall, living with the free folks/as free folks. So, basically, the ending Jon got on the show, but with Dany by his side. I would even go as far as to say that the showrunners might have considered it.

This is not by any means “my ideal” Jonerys ending. That would be Jon and Dany settling on Dragonstone with a bunch of targlings and wild dragons. I do not, alas, think this is where the story is going. I do not expect either (or both) of them on the IT either. On the other hand, an ending with them both beyond the Wall seems to me like it could work with the overall story. There is already some book evidence/foreshadowing pointing to Jon’s endgame there, notably in ASOS when he (forgive my French) “finds himself” beyond the Wall:

“On the edge of the haunted forest, where the tents had been, Jon found an oakwood stump and sat.

Ygritte wanted me to be a wildling. Stannis wants me to be the Lord of Winterfell. But what do I want? The sun crept down the sky to dip behind the Wall where it curved through the western hills. Jon watched as that towering expanse of ice took on the reds and pinks of sunset.

[…]

He wanted it, Jon knew then. He wanted it as much as he had ever wanted anything. I have always wanted it, he thought, guiltily. May the gods forgive me. It was a hunger inside him, sharp as a dragonglass blade. A hunger . . . he could feel it. It was food he needed, prey, a red deer that stank of fear or a great elk proud and defiant. He needed to kill and fill his belly with fresh meat and hot dark blood. His mouth began to water with the thought.

It was a long moment before he understood what was happening. When he did, he bolted to his feet. "Ghost?" He turned toward the wood, and there he came, padding silently out of the green dusk, the breath coming warm and white from his open jaws. "Ghost!" he shouted, and the direwolf broke into a run.

[…]

He had his answer then.” Jon XII, ASOS

Dany is more of a wild card, but even the show gave us SOME reasons to believe that D&D played with the idea at some point: the pregnancy bait, Dany’s comment in 7x07 about King’s Landing and how “constrictive” the Dragonpit felt, Dany’s “we could stay here a thousand years. No one would find us” line in 8x01. Most importantly, back when I was watching season 7, this is the impression I was getting (from the showrunners):

Dany is a good person at heart, but she would not make a good queen nor would she like being queen.

I do not wholly agree with this, especially if we are talking about bookDany, who would make – and is – a much better queen than she is given credit for, but it looked to me like this is where the show was going with her. Or, at least, this is the message they were trying to communicate. They were not trying to “hide” Dany’s dark turn from the audience by making her or trying to make her bad-good-bad-good-bad-good, they simply had another endgame in mind for the character. I do not want to make this about the show but had to get this out of the way.

Now onto bookDany:

A while ago, I posted a meta where I discussed a pattern in Daenerys’s story: twice she succeeded at something magical, highly dangerous and related to dragons, and twice after she ended up in a desertic environment, thirsting, starving and nearly dying from exposition. Following the rule of 3 (which is especially predominant in her arc), it will probably happen again and – since there is no Great Grass Sea in Westeros – the “desertic environment” swallowing her afterward will be the frozen lands beyond the Wall. It could mean that she will die there, but it could also mean that she will simply disappear there. Her fate could also be revealed to the reader while remaining unknown to most characters. This would fit with Dany’s current representation in the story so far: she is an enigma, a rumor; nobody really knows her whereabouts, who she is, what she is, what she wants, what she has, if she is even real.

There are numerous parallels to be drawn between Daenerys and Mance Rayder, which I covered here. I would love the irony of Dany coming to Westeros thinking she is reclaiming her family’s lands, only to settle in the only part that was never conquered by the Targaryen. There is the (disputable, ok, but) fact that the only region in all of the continent where dragons could turn up useful for tree planting would be beyond the Wall (so frozen soil can be thawed and warmed up for plants to grow there again). Martin hung a pretty riffle on the metaphorical Wall when Silverwing refused to fly across in Fire and Blood. There is this pattern of wildling women making up Jon’s romantic prospects; first a wildling “commoner” (Ygritte), then a wildling “princess” (Val), then a wildling “queen” (Dany, eventually, if this theory proves to be correct). So of course, you will ask –

If this is Martin’s intended ending, why couldn’t the d’s just go with it?

Well, because the d’s never gave Dany any incentive to go beyond the Wall, apart from a brief rescue mission back in season 7. If Dany must end up there, something has got to bring her there and the show scrapped or discarded all of it : no Lands of Always Winter, no curtain of light, no this, no that, no nothing. And once she gets there in the books, because I am quite sure she will, she will not come back. The North is Dany’s ultimate destination. No yoyoing back and forth North and South like what the show did. That was just dumb. Travel time and distances should mean something, even if you have dragons (plus, Dany’s armies would have to travel on foot, horseback or by boat, like everybody else). The closest of yoyoing we have ever gotten in asoiaf was probably with Catelyn, it spanned three books, and she never made it back North anyway.

Did the d’s consider going with that ending? They might just. The clues were certainly there (see above…) but at some point, they must have realized that it would not work with the hole they had dug themselves in.

Now about the elephant in the room

I know some people will think that Dany ending beyond the Wall does not make much sense for her story, which technically (so far) does not have much to do with the lands beyond the Wall. In a way, I agree. Some people would also find such an ending anticlimactic to her arc and a waste after everything she has learned about leadership and politics in Meereen. I also agree. On a watsonian level, an ending with, say, Dany as a queen in Westeros – I think it works. Of course, I do. Where it does not work is on a doyalist level. Dany already had her arc of becoming queen. She achieved that by the end of book 3. Then she had to learn all the nit and gritty and dirty work of ruling over the rubble of a corrupt system while trying to make the lives better for everyone. If Dany becomes queen in Westeros, the same thing will happen again. Different setting, different people, same story. Some people have criticized the underlying message of Dany’s fight against slavery as “only a preparation” for what comes next in Westeros, saying it would undermine the real value of Dany’s work in Essos. I agree. However, the same problem applies if Dany becomes queen in Westeros: then her time in Essos is reduced to a prop up, a preparation, as if ruling Essos were somewhat less important than ruling Westeros. Furthermore, I cannot imagine an ending where Dany, still in possession of significant military forces – significant enough to secure her a crown, anyway – could choose to settle in Westeros without being plagued with guilt over leaving Essos’s slaves behind. I am sorry, I just cannot.

This is also, I think, where part of the “Dany is not a peace time queen” mentality comes from. Dany will never be a peace time queen, not because she prefers war, or because she does not want peace, but because what she is trying to achieve, in these times and places, means a lifetime of war. You cannot undo and rebuild an entire system that is rotten at its core in a single lifetime (heck, even show!Tyrion said this to her, for what the show is worth now…), much less in a few years. Dany is not a peace time queen because she is not a queen that is interested in maintaining the statue quo. At least that is how her time in Meereen revealed her. Arya would not be a peace time queen either. Jon would not be a peace time king. They could never be, less they abandoned their ideals and their ethics for a more comfortable life.

Then you might say that an ending where Dany goes back to Essos works too. It does – once again, on a watsonian level. What is the problem with this on a doyalist level? It turns Dany into a deus ex machina, coming to Westeros just in time to save it, then leaving it right after, as if neither the Others, nor her had ever been there.

The two remaining options are: either she dies a queen in Westeros, most likely during the Great War, or… the queen, Daenerys Targaryen, dies, while Dany lives.

That means that all reasonable possibilities, or choices, to keep on fighting as a queen are taken from her. Maybe her forces were severely depleted during the Great War. Maybe her dragons died. Maybe both. Maybe her function, not as an individual, but as a character in a specific story called A song of ice and fire, was to destroy an old system (AND to inspire others to follow in her footsteps, ensure that her efforts were not in vain, that the first steps will not go wasted, that the work she started will be taken up by other peoples, and others after them, and others after), not to rebuild the new one. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Frodo Baggins’ role in The Lord of the Rings was to destroy something evil. His gardener Sam was the one who planted the trees and went on to become a mayor afterward. One was a destroyer and the other was a builder, but in the end, they were both heroes.

Not to mention that Frodo did not die at the end. You could say that he went on to live beyond the Wall too.

[kaibutsushidousha]

Cat, Ghost, and Revolution Sunday - Chapter 2: The events from Wednesday (part 7)

[INDEX]

A ghost showed up out of nowhere.

Kei was in bed, with the lights off and his eyes closed, recalling that day's events. Remembering the cat he found, Murase, and a lot more.

While was thinking about the meaning of every piece, he heard someone call his name.

It was a girl's voice. At first, he suspected it was Tomoki's ability. He thought his friend was sending another boisterous message with that annoying ability of his. But he didn't hear Tomoki's voice.

Lacking other options, he opened his eyes. There was a ghost there. A ghost was nonchalantly floating in his unlit room. She was transparent and shaped like Minami Mirai.

(Take a deep breath, Kei. What the heck is going on here? I've never seen a ghost before. I'm honestly at a loss for words. I would scream if I was walking on a silent street, but with this ghost appearing to me so anticlimactically, I can't figure out the exact timing to be surprised.)

What confused him the most was the ghost's behavior. She was scratching her head with a blush and smile.

"Uh, good evening", she said.

(How are you supposed to scare me like that? Oh well, I guess I have to answer.)

"Good evening."

No one spoke for the next few seconds. Kei slowly forced his body to move and sat up.

(Ok, what do I do next? I'm really confused with this ghost I just found.)

"Minami?"

The ghost answered with a nod. This confirmed she was Minami Marai. Much to his chagrin.

Kei's head still wasn't running properly but he forced it to find the right words.

"So?"

One word, two letters. It was the vaguest question possible, but she accurately understood what he was asking.

"I woke up like this. Any idea why?"

"Nope."

(When you think of ghosts, you think of death, but here in Sakurada you don't necessarily need to die to become a ghost. And you probably wouldn't become a ghost from dying anywhere else.)

Kei shook his head.

"I have no idea. Is that an astral projection?"

(Makes sense for an ability like that to exist.)

As far as he knew, Minami didn't have an ability. That meant her ability could potentially awaken at any moment. When an ability awakens varies greatly from person to person. It's rare for it to happen to an adult, but gaining an ability as a high schooler didn't make you all that much of a late bloomer.

"Astral projection? That's a supernatural phenomenon. Awesome."

Minami bounced up and down in excitement. It's strange to say a floating object was bouncing up and down, but there was no other way to describe it.

"Pretty sure that's just an ability."

(Though she'd be right if we're counting every ability in Sakurada as a supernatural phenomenon.)

"My ability?"

"That's the most likely answer. Give me some time to think."

People learn about their own abilities having to try. That said, they don't have any instruction manuals. Just a vague feeling they can do something.

Suppose, for example, that someone had the ability to fly. That person would unconsciously know that they could fly before they tried it for the first time, but they would have no idea how high, how fast, or for how long. They'd continue living their lives without knowing how to take off, until one day they inadvertently start flying. Until they're floating in the air, they can't tell if they really have that ability or if it's just their imagination.

"Have you felt like you could become a ghost", Kei asked.

"I wanted to be one sometimes."

"I see. Anything else you wanted to be?"

"A vampire, a mage, a superhero, anything. I just wanted an ability."

"Any particular favorite among the list?"

"Not really. All options were interesting."

(This could go either way. I'll change the question.)

"What's the first thing you want to do now that you're a ghost?"

"Becoming a rumor, I guess. Like the kuchisake-onna. A rumor that will get kids hyped, hopefully."

"So, are you going to do that now?"

"Hm, I wanna try returning to my human form first."

"You think you can?"

"Nope. I have no idea what's going on. Did you figure anything out?", Minami asked, curious.

Kei answered he didn't. Then he noticed how wrong it was for him to talk to a ghost girl from his bed, so he stood up and turned on the lights.

He sat on his desk's chair. Minami was spinning in the air.

"What are you doing?"

"I can go upside down and my skirt won't turn over. That's convenient."

"Nice."

The people had a duty to report to the Bureau whenever a new ability was discovered. Doing that, the Bureau will follow their manual and deal with any potential problems. Kei decided to report to Tsushima, but before he could do anything, Minami swiftly approached his face.

"Think harder, Asai. What do you think happened to me?"

"Ok. Can you tell what you were doing before you became a ghost?"

"I can't remember. I just woke up like this."

Kei gave off an intrigued sigh. Her losing her memories didn't make much sense under the assumption that her ability was to become a ghost. Abilities have all kinds of restrictions, so this could be that, but there was a real chance that it was an external factor.

"Tell me everything you remember, in order. Do you remember getting out of school?"

"I do. You ditched me."

"So you went to search for the vampire alone?"

"Yeah. I guess I became a ghost because I went to the Ghost Mountain?"

"That could be related, yeah. Did you find the vampire?"

"I can't remember. Everything past me approaching the mountain is a blank."

"What time was it?"

"Not long past 5 PM."

Over 6 hours ago.

"When's your next memory?"

"Not too long ago. About 20 minutes."

"And you already a ghost?"

"Yeah."

Kei traced back his memories. Everything she said about the vampire.

"Years ago, someone collapsed from a vampire attack, was it? Do you know what happened to him?"

(Assuming this person really met a vampire, the same thing could have happened to Minami. If what happened to her is like astral projection, her body should be collapsed somewhere.)

She was speaking slowly as if she was trying to remember things mid-sentence.

"According to the files at the U-Res, he quickly regained consciousness."

"And what next? What happened to the vampire?"

"Oh. That's it. That person was also missing memories. That's why they don't remember the vampire's face."

(That's contradictory. I feel like I'll get sidetracked, but I'll ask just in case.)

"He couldn't remember the face, but remembered he met a vampire?"

"Weird, right? The vampire part is probably made up by the U-Res. Oh, I see, that might have been why the prez didn't care for the search."

(It figures... There's one really positive piece of information in her story. The previous vampire victim regained consciousness. That means Minami should be back in her own body in no time. This conclusion is a little too optimistic to my taste, but looking for pessimistic alternatives won't help here. If anything bad happened to her body, a Reset can solve that.)

But there was also one negative piece of information. Kei changed the subject, as he'd prefer to think about that by himself.

"By the way, why did you come to my house?"

"'cause you're with the Service Club. I thought you'd know how to solve the problem."

"Sorry, but Service Club requests need to go through the Bureau."

"What? Even for classmates? I thought you were nicer than that."

"I'll help on a personal level, of course, but you'd better leave for tonight. It's already late. Your family must be worried."

"Going home as a ghost wouldn't make them any less worried."

"I'll tell Tsushima to tell the Bureau. They don't take long to solve any ability-related problem. Tell your family everything is fine."

Minami frowned, displeased. That was a rare expression for her.

"If my body is collapsed in the mountain, I'm not really too comfortable with just leaving it there."

(Excellent point. I know it's fine because I can simply Reset, but I'm not supposed to tell my classmates about that. Tomoki has been the only exception so far. I absolutely don't want anyone casually asking me to rewind time for any trivial reason.)

Kei proposed a random idea to console her.

"So, do you want me to go check the Ghost Mountain now?"

(I really should have done that from the start. But if there really is an unknown threat on the Ghost Mountain and I make a big mistake... if anything happens to me, Haruki won't be able to Reset. I gotta set up a safety measure.)

Minami frantically waved her arms in front of her face.

"Thanks, but I'd never drag away someone who was trying to sleep. Will you go to the mountain with me in the morning?"

"No problem. That's better for me, too."

"Oh, but you have work for the Service Club tomorrow, right?"

Kei shook his head. That was a lie made to keep the pre-Reset world intact.

"I can do something about that. No need to worry."

"Really?"

"Yeah. How about we met at 9 on the staircase of the Hanamisaki Shrine?"

She agreed.

They said goodbye to each other and Minami left through the closed window. Being a ghost had its benefits.

Kei watched her go away. The rain was already over. There were no stars in the night sky, but the outside was lit by the city lights. Her dim glow made her look like a real ghost. After he could no longer see her, Kei closed the curtains and went to bed.

(Now, the negative information. That's ghost Minami's appearance itself. She didn't come to my apartment before the Reset. She didn't become a ghost. This changed despite my constant efforts to react the same way I did before. What caused this? Where did her future change? Damn it.)

The Reset caused this. She became a ghost because Kei ordered Haruki to Reset. Ghosts are associated with death. Kei couldn't stop himself from thinking about the girl who died two years before.

(Let's do what I can first. I have to tell Tsushima. He'll need to tell the Bureau, so I'll text him. Less information is lost in the telephone game when it's written.)

After sending his message, Kei opened his phone's contact list. He wanted to prepare insurance for the case of an unforeseen tragedy. He selected a saved number and hit Call.

The dialing sound soon stopped and he heard a cheerful voice. Nakano Tomoki. After he was done with the long-winded greeting, Kei spoke.

"I got a favor to ask if you don't mind."

[wiseabsol]

Karrin Murphy is going to be fine.

No, really, you guys. She’s going to be okay.

Here’s what killing her off for a book or two accomplishes for Jim Butcher:

- Dresden has more manpain to deal with. Is this annoying and cheap after pulling this same stunt with Susan and Lash? God, yes. But Butcher loves seeing Dresden in pain and pushing him to darker and darker places, and taking away Murphy helps accomplish that. It also means that Dresden has lost one of his voices of reason and his most stalwart allies, so expect him to flail around more in the future (that or he’s going to be forced to make smarter choices, since he no longer has Murphy to consult).

- Murphy was handicapped from the injuries she received in prior books. While the Shroud of Turin could have helped with this, and while it would have been nice to have a disabled character in our main cast for diversity, Butcher...kind of didn’t think of that. But Murphy becoming an einherjar gives her body a reset, and will give her a longer lifespan to match Harry’s (let’s be real, Harry is probably going to be immortal by the end of this, he has everything else going for him). And this is happening only a few books before the BAT, so it can be argued that the remaining vanilla mortals needed a buff to face it (personally, I don’t like that everyone has to have magic--especially Marcone, because he’s way more interesting without magic--but Butcher runs his stories on genre logic, and genre logic says to give everyone Eleventh-Hour Superpowers to deal with the escalation creep). Plus, the einherjar specifically return to the world to fight in Ragnarok. Pretty sure the BAT will qualify as that.

- Butcher dragged out the Will They/Won’t They aspect of Harry’s and Murphy’s relationship for as long as he possibly could (10+ books). Then he ran into the problem of, “Oh no, now they’re together and happy, how do I make this interesting?” And like many writers facing this problem, he throws in another obstacle to keep them apart--an obstacle which, to be clear, has to seem insurmountable to our hero, because if it isn’t, Harry is spending the next book fighting to get Murphy back, rather than engaging with the plot.

- Murphy was a vanilla mortal who saw tons of the magical world, helped organize the Paranet, was not a part of any Accorded Nation, and was a cop in Special Investigations. She would have been a solid, maybe even PERFECT point of contact between the mortal and magical worlds, now that the two are colliding (especially where bureaucracy and the Librarians are involved). Without her, there is going to be more tension between the two sides, which means there will be more conflict for Butcher to exploit. Also, this new society that Dresden and the others are setting up is going to be named after her. I’m calling it now.

- Murphy and Dresden were both getting pinned by Special Investigations about the vault robbery. Murphy dying--and how she died--is going to thrown that situation in disarray.

- Ramirez and, by extension, the White Council, believe that Harry is sleeping with Lara. This is part of why the White Council believes that he is being corrupted by the White Court and Winter. Now Mab has set up a betrothal between Harry and Lara, which seemingly confirms the White Council’s theory and fears. And Mab is only able to do that because Murphy is dead. So not only does it aggravate an existing issue, but it sets up another subplot to explore. It also contributes to what will probably be some sort of time skip. Notice how the marriage is set for a year away, and the starborn explanation will also only be revealed to Harry after another year.     

- If Dresden is going to travel to an alternate timeline where he is evil in Mirror, Mirror, then Murphy will probably be there and hunting him. The emotional impact of this would hit differently if Murphy was still alive in the main timeline. Not only will Dresden have to talk other!Murphy down from shooting him, but he’ll also be doing this fun (read: heartbreaking) thing where he is reliving how far they came in their relationship in his timeline, and be longing for her, even though he knows that this isn’t his Murphy. If his Murphy was still alive, this conflict would be played for laughs. Instead, it’s tragic. 

- Murphy not being able to finish telling Harry, “I love you,” and the two of them never Soulgazing are gifts to deliver to the readers at a later date. If Butcher was going to keep Murphy dead, both of these things would have happened earlier in the book to drive in the tragedy of her death. Murphy’s death was also anticlimactic, and Butcher followed it up by not giving her a proper funeral with her clan and former coworkers in attendance. To me, this signaled that we weren’t meant to take her death seriously, because so little effort was put into selling it to us. In short: this is not how you send off a character as important to the story as Murphy is. This is just how you Put Her on a Bus for a while.

In conclusion, Butcher is going to get a ton of mileage over Murphy being dead. But I can’t imagine that she’s going to stay that way, given that she’s one of the leads in the series, and Ragnarok is right around the corner.

Edit 1: Also, not enough characters got to tease them about finally getting together. Barely anyone knew, let alone reacted to it, even though they’d been waiting on this for years. Since when has Butcher ever resisted tormenting Dresden? 

Edit 2: Murphy is also our main female character. Only Mab, Molly, and now Maggie rival her in terms of importance and impact. I don’t buy that they don’t have thick as hell plot armor. 

Edit 3: There has been talk about Dresden still needing to break some of the laws of magic. Could be there’s a route there to get Murphy back (@gonewiddershins suggested memory manipulation on a mass scale, because Murphy can only come back when no one remembers her anymore. Also, Soulgazing brings back missing memories, I guess?).

Edit 4: What does Odin need Murphy’s body for, anyway? Wouldn’t taking her soul suffice? Seems sus. Especially when burying the body is such an important part of the grieving process. This seems like “Ghost Story,” but in reverse, with Harry being the one left behind.

Edit 5: I’m calling it now. Murphy is going to ride in on a winged horse to rescue Harry’s ass in a later book, with “Ride of the Valkyries” playing in the background. Maybe this will even happen at the Dresden/Lara wedding, because there is no way that that’s actually happening.

Edit 6: What purpose would keeping Murphy dead serve? Dresden loses his fifth love interest? To set up an endgame relationship with either his former apprentice or his half-brother’s half-sister? Like just imagine the amount of cringe from Thomas for a second. It would be enough to finish killing him! (Not knocking these ships, by the way! It just doesn’t seem like Dresden is interested in either of them romantically at this point, and it’s really late in the game to pivot on this point.)  

[wordsablaze]

Ch.12. Blinding Blue

Blue Buttercup Almost like buttercups, it took Jaskier a lot of time and trouble to bloom and find his place in the world, but it wasn’t all so golden… (aka: yennefer was his mother way before he was jaskier)

A/N: i’m a lil behind on crossposting but hey, i fixed the cliffhanger :) @dauntless-hufflepuff-pride​ @mayastormborn​

previous chapter

-

“Who the hell are you?” Yennefer snarls, instantly on her feet.

Julian whimpers again, clinging to her as if his life depends on it, his arms looped around her neck like some sort of peculiar necklace.

(It’d be her favourite necklace, of course.)

“What, Marcio didn’t mention me?” the man asks with a smirk that, in any other situation, she might simply have killed him for.

“The other mage, of course,” Yennefer mutters, stepping back as he steps down from the ladder so she can half-turn and keep Julian as far away from him as possible.

The man smiles. “Marcio’s better partner, Tymon, at your service.”

Yennefer has a dozen things she could say about his service or lack thereof but she has priorities and the child curled around her is far more important than any kind of satisfaction found in insulting others.

(She’s fleetingly shocked by how quickly Julian has become her priority.)

“What have you done to him?” she asks, her voice steady but cold.

Tymon glances over Julian with a curious smile. “That depends on what he is.”

Yennefer’s eyes narrow. “I’m not here for riddles.”

With a casual hum, Tymon walks over to the desk, chuckling when he sees the mess of her having looked through everything. “You read the journals, didn’t you?”

She frowns, tightening her grip on Julian. “You’ve been toying with things beyond your control, I’m aware. How is that relevant right now?”

The answer is obvious to her even as the words leave her mouth and Tymon must see that on her face because he just laughs, waving a hand and promptly sealing the makeshift door to the room before settling in the chair smugly.

(She hates herself for not connecting the dots sooner.)

Julian hadn’t even needed to touch or eat anything for whatever Tymon has built into the walls to take effect. It’s clever, to bring people or creatures down into a hidden room and slowly weaken them until they can be experimented on, but it’s hurting someone important to her and Yennefer will not stand for it.

“Do you expect me to applaud?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I expect you to hand over the boy.”

Julian sobs into her neck at that and she shakes her head without hesitation, her lips twisting into a snarl as she glowers at Tymon. “Over my dead body.”

She’s not expecting the other mage to try and attack her but she’s ready nonetheless, one hand stretched out in front of her to form a shield before his chaos even reaches them, the spell bouncing off them harmlessly.

Tymon’s jaw clenches as he stands, lifting his hands once again. “He’ll be more useful in my work than he’ll ever be with you!”

(She doesn’t need him to be useful.)

Yennefer just scoffs, one of her hands curling around the back of Julian’s head and gently playing with his hair to distract him from hearing anything Tymon is saying. She steps back again, this time only to brace herself properly, and smiles.

“If you’re ready for death, it’ll be my pleasure to see you off.”

Tymon scowls at her and immediately throws himself into another spell. Having anticipated that, Yennefer throws back one of her own, purple and black colliding in the middle of the room in a burst of almost blinding sparks until they implode, Tymon being thrown backwards into the shelf behind him.

Julian’s hands clench into tiny fists around her hair and Yennefer winces when one of them pulls awkwardly but she doesn’t try to untangle herself, allowing him the comfort of knowing she’s still right beside him.

(Allowing herself the same comfort in return.)

The other mage doesn’t seem to be moving so Yennefer turns back to the trapdoor, knowing that Julian needs to get out if he’s going to survive. If his life wasn’t in danger, she might even have been impressed by the standard of the subtle cage around them.

“No!” Tymon yells from behind her.

She’s too focused on figuring out their exit to notice the objects that fly towards them in time to block them all. Several books, an inkpot, a paperweight, and an empty pitcher slip through her shield, most of them hitting her but something obviously catching Julian because he cries out, his grip on her hair loosening as he starts toppling.

(She’s loath to admit her heart misses a beat.)

Cursing loudly, Yennefer stumbles and uses both arms to catch him, twisting her body as she does and then steadying him against her, tucking him into her chest, both of them breathing heavily.

“You’re wasting your time, only I can open the door again,” Tymon gloats.

Yennefer’s jaw clenches as she turns back to him. “Maybe you haven’t heard of me, I’m Yennefer of Vengerberg and I am far more powerful than the likes of you.”

Adjusting her grip on Julian, she throws a hand out, her chaos hitting Tymon directly above his heart before he can blink. He screams, his knees buckling, and mutters something under his breath that she doesn’t catch.

Though it’s not that hard to figure out what he’s done because Julian screams seconds later, a horrible noise that Yennefer would rather she���d never have known.

(Now she knows why they say ignorance can be bliss.)

“You’re okay, I’ve got you, it’s fine,” she murmurs to a now quiet Julian before turning her attention back to the trapdoor. Unfortunately, Tymon, despite having choked on his own blood and slumped to the ground as a result of his own arrogance, was right: the seal does seem to be linked to his magic.

Yennefer quickly concludes that it’d be far easier to overcome his seal if she had both hands. Gritting her teeth, she keeps one arm firmly wrapped around Julian, who’s worryingly limp at this point, and places her other hand on the trapdoor above them.

And pushes.

The door doesn’t give but she wasn’t really expecting it to so she just pushes with her magic as well as her fingers, stubbornly pressing chaos into the stupid seal even as she feels her knees weakening and beads of sweat rolling down the sides of her face.

(She’d rather die than let Julian do the same.)

She keeps pushing and she’s not sure if she’s actually yelling or just imagining it but just as her vision starts to black out, the seal shatters and the door finally, finally gives, splintering upwards.

Yennefer pants, stumbling up the last few steps and all but collapsing onto the half-dusty rug, Julian lying still on her chest as he goes down with her. It takes her a long moment to even register his presence, her head still pounding and her eyes still ringing, but she pushes herself upright again as soon as she does.

“Julian? Julian, hey, open your eyes,” she whispers furiously, gently shaking his shoulders.

(She definitely doesn’t panic at the sight of his pale face.)

“Come on, little one, that’s it. Open your eyes for me,” she continues, managing a smile as his eyes scrunch up and he groans softly.

He coughs before he follows her instructions, his hands reaching upwards. “Yenny?”

Relief floods into her heart at the sound of his voice and she nods even though he can’t see it, allowing him to curl his fingers around her own. “I’m here, I’ve got you.”

It takes several long moments for him to finally open his eyes and the first thing he does is frantically look around until his gaze settles on her, at which point he grins weakly but still widely enough for her to be sure he’s not dying.

(Never has she appreciated the colour blue so much.)

“Can we go home?” Julian asks her, climbing into her lap with tears shining in his eyes.

Yennefer frowns for a moment, and then frowns again when she realises that he’s referring to her cottage, that he considers home to be with her. She makes a mental note to worry more about that later and nods at him, exhaling softly as feeling finally returns to her exhausted limbs.

“That sounds like a good plan,” she agrees. Julian wraps his limbs around her again in response and without meaning to, she cradles him close, too tired to question how and why she’s become so strongly attached to this random child.

(She's not entirely opposed to be honest.)

-

sorry if it was lowkey anticlimactic, action is not my friend :p

-

thanks for reading !! masterlist | witcher blog: @itsjaskier | next chapter

[unwiltingblossom]

15x19 is just....just hilariously bad. It’s a hot mess of garbage and lost potential.

Let’s just say there’s one and only one way to salvage this story, and it’s that the entire story is just another Swan Song, and this haphazard ending was written by Chuck to give the boys a sense of closure and freedom that’s impossible for them to ever have from the moment they realized who Chuck was.

It’s literally that bad. it can only be excused by Chuck being a lazy hack in-universe to pander to Dean and Sam. Rushing the end of Castiel’s arc in like two minutes, with zero emotional payoff unless you’re deeply, deeply invested in Destiel and desperate for any crumb of it. Luci reappearing for five minutes and acting totally out of character before dying basically instantly right in front of Jack to conveniently charge him up, then Chuck killing Michael for literally no reason whatsoever (Michael did exactly what he wrote him to do) right in front of Jack, Chuck deciding just not to kill Jack because...........................................because, and also deciding to beat, but not kill, the Winchesters, and the most anticlimactic defeat of Chuck possible.

What was the point of him combining with Amara? Nothing, there’s no payoff, it’s just a way to write her out. For no reason in particular she vibes with Jack even though Jack betrayed and tried to murder her while Chuck did nothing against her. She has an entire arc about being an inseparable pair with Chuck, brother and sister from the dawn of time that no one else can understand, a bond that even the imprisonment couldn’t break, and then she’s like ‘ah yes, the ally of the person who betrayed and tried to kill me - who tried to do the same - the son of the angel who betrayed me and tried to seal me away, I like this guy and will go be with him and “harmonize” instead of staying with the brother that I love, or protecting him from this.’

What has changed between pre-season 11 (or really pre-season 14) and now? Has their god figure changed tactics at all? Literally no. Not even a little. Every part of Jack’s limp wristed speech just added up to ‘absentee dad who doesn’t come and help people because he doesn’t want to be a helicopter dad’. The current writers just balled up their fists and shook them at the sky angry about  a Chuck who literally just didn’t exist, and hurled insults at him for doing things that their new replacement is also planning on doing.

Dean and Sam aren’t even off the hamster wheel, they’re just now on Jack’s! Which is better, because they’re on the good side of their world’s god--wait, they were that already before season 15, oops. Chuck was literally personally indebted to them! Amara was in love with Dean! Nothing has changed!

But even if that’s the ending they wanted for some demented reason, the execution is awful, possibly the worst! Not only did Chuck and Amara’s abilities and personality become inconsistent with previous seasons, they became inconsistent with a few episodes before.

In the end what was Chuck’s personality?

Whatever you were about to think was wrong unless your answer was “Nothing, he didn’t have a personality, he reacted only as the plot required him to at the time with no rhyme, reason, or internal consistency.”

One moment Chuck is railing at the Winchesters for ‘not obeying’, the next he’s punishing someone for obeying him or saying that the only thing that interests him is how the Winchesters surprise him. One moment he refuses the white flag for literally no reason, the next one he’s demanding they give up. One moment he needs Amara to Great Reset and has completely lost interest in the Winchesters, the next he’s given up on the hard reset and only cares about the Winchesters again. One moment he revives his most rebellious son because he knows that son is obsessively devoted to him, the next he’s killing his most loyal son for reluctantly rebelling (exactly according to a previous plan). One moment he says ‘now Jack dies’ the next he goes out of his way to just not kill Jack for no reason. Does he want a fitting death for the Winchesters or not? He sure doesn’t know the answer to that!

Chuck was not a person, not even an entity. He was a formless, personality-devoid plot object pushed around the map to give the Winchesters something to react to and try to ‘defeat’. Billy was far more the arc villain - even Empty - than Chuck, and her ending was utterly anticlimactic and unsatisfying.

He acted exactly as necessary to get the very specific ending they picked, and nothing more. Every time up until the final conflict whenever he saw Jack he’d immediately kill Jack unless Jack was literally just dying in front of him. Every time he was irritated with someone and wanted them gone through the season, he would wave his hand and they’d vanish to ‘somewhere else’, implied to be very far away. Suddenly this one time, he instead sent Jack a very short distance away, so as to ensure he’d be close enough to absorb Michael’s power when Chuck SMITED him, not killed him in some normal way.

Shall we look at the very specific chain of insane events that had to happen to make this result?

- Chuck erases all of living existence except Michael, the Winchesters, Castiel, and Jack - the last of which he has zero interest in and very much wants dead.

- Chuck, instead of going to the bunker himself because he knows full well there’s literally nothing, nothing, that can kill him with Amara’s power (and also instead of just instantly resetting like he wanted to do with Amara), revives Satan and sends him to the bunker to make a new Death so that she can read Death’s book.

- The combined cleverness of him and the longest lived villain in the series due to his tenacity and cleverness don’t decide to peacefully take the new Death away for ‘security’ and kill her where the Winchesters (and Michael) can’t see, and instead instantly murder her in front of everyone before she can say how the end happens

- Chuck, despite making a point TWO EPISODES AGO about how he’s literally omniscient, and so though he can’t read the book that doesn’t mean it can actually be used against him, suddenly forgets that only Death can read the book. All of the time in the universe and he’s never learned this???? Even the Winchesters knew!

- Chuck evidently infused him with the power to insta-kill Death....somehow, but this power is not on display at any other point, especially not the crucial next moment:

- The most tenacious and sneaky villain on the show then slowly makes his way around the bunker with a fellow archangel who wants to kill him present, then lingers and offers to let a son he hates (and Chuck dislikes) that he believes is currently powerless to come with him. He then is unprepared for the very same trick that Gabriel tried to use on him 10 season before and failed back then with the phrase ‘I taught you all the tricks you know’, and gets immediately ganked by Michael with no fight at all

- Chuck LITERALLY WAS THE ONE TO GIVE THE WINCHESTERS THAT ARCHANGEL BLADE AND WROTE IT SO THAT THEY WERE THE ONES WHO KILLED HIM WITH IT THE LAST TIME. HE COULD NOT HAVE NOT KNOWN THEY HAD IT!!!!

- Dean and Sam then discuss their plan to trick the omniscient Chuck between each other and Jack. Chuck somehow doesn’t know this, even though it was established in the past that the warding doesn’t actually work against Chuck and Amara and he has literally nowhere else to be looking in the multiverse except at them

- Jack absorbs the power of an archangel, making him the third most powerful being in the universe currently, as all other archangels other than Michael are dead and Death is dead, and there is NO OTHER POWER ANYWHERE WHATSOEVER to hide him in, yet is undetected by Michael or Chuckmara

- Chuck appears when they attempt to do some BS to kill him, even though he would know full well that just wouldn’t work, and decides in that one specific moment, even though he doesn’t care one whit about Jack, not to go ahead and just delete Jack since he’s gonna do that in a minute anyway, he also doesn’t send Jack ‘away’ like he has with literally everyone else, nor does he control Jack and turn Jack on the boys. Nope. Just slap him vaguely to the side

- Rather than deal with Michael after the Winchesters, Chuck decides he hates his most loving and loyal son who has never once done anything wrong against him, and sought to do his will even when he was gone, even when Michael was stuck in the cage unjustly. He goes ahead and murders Michael for something he wrote as a trap for the Winchesters and doesn’t even wait to deal with Jack and the Winchesters first to do it

- CHUCK. SHURLEY. UNDERESTIMATED THE WINCHESTERS. THE ONE WHO WROTE THEM TO BE THE WAY THEY ARE. THE ONE WHO WROTE “AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO DOESN’T UNDERESTIMATE THE WINCHESTERS?!” FOR CROWLEY TO SAY.

- Chuck didn’t notice Jack absorbing the power of Michael LITERALLY RIGHT NEXT TO HIM, making Jack nearly Chuck’s power by absorbing the two most powerful archangels and literally leaving him THE ONLY FLAME OF POWER IN ALL OF EXISTENCE BESIDES CHUCK. STANDING RIGHT. NEXT. TO. HIM.

- Seriously, the energy of Michael didn’t dissipate, it sucked right into Jack, still in his peripheral vision. Chuck the omniscient!

- Chuck then decides, unlike every other time he faced the Winchesters or anything he wanted dead, no he won’t smite or erase the Winchesters or make them face some poetic fate, he’ll punch them down. But not once and obliterate them, oh no. Over and over so he can “leak god power” that he then doesn’t notice is being drained into Jack

- He literally does not notice a being as powerful or more powerful than him standing behind him. OMNISCIENT CHUCK.

- Rather than take the power back, flee, or do anything with his power or eons of experience (like transfer his consciousness to Jack along with the power), he stands there and immediately is drained

THIS is the path that had to happen, with no deviations, for the Winchesters not to just die.

And on top of that garbage plotline of perfect coincidences we’re expected to believe wasn’t written to happen in-universe, the execution is the saddest and most pathetic wet fart of a finale ever.

There’s been 15 seasons, and conveniently we can compare three different ‘true’ endings in the process. Let’s do that, shall we?

Ending 1 - Swan Song. Build up: 5 seasons

The other endings didn’t get the benefit of five seasons of build up, so we won’t factor in the first 2 or 3 seasons just to be fair, and only count the beginning of the apocalypse arc.

Primary villain: Satan, with the backdrop of demons and the corrupted faction of angels. Their personalities are well defined and compelling. Their behavior makes sense and are consistent, and draw you in to be invested in what happens, especially the eventual heelface turn of Castiel.

Stakes: Humanity, but far more importantly, the supporting cast whom you grew to know and love over the years, even including Castiel.

Over the apocalypse arc, we see the boys struggle against impossible odds and what appears to be fate, raging against the dying of the light because they cannot accept that the future can really hold the end of everything. They despair, they grow, Dean - a staunch atheist - prays to god for the first time ever. Slowly but surely they lose ground, with every attempted victory only resulting in more failure. Ellen and Jo who survived an early season fake out and became beloved characters end up fighting and dying in a long, drawn out sacrifice scene that matters, leaving the people behind shattered. Bobby is crippled. Sam and Dean both give up and almost give in.

In the end, the final confrontation still happens, Castiel finally makes a stand for the sake of humanity and free will and he dies for it. Only the love that Dean and Sam have for each other, the lifetime as brothers and their fierce bond of family, finally saves the day. And it only happens at the cost of sacrificing Sam and Adam’s lives, forcing Dean to live for them.

The final battle takes all episode, it’s dramatic and it’s emotional both good and bad.

Ending 2 - Alpha and Omega. Build up: 3 seasons

The arc with Amara once again was a long build up of the Winchesters constantly trying to make things better and only making things worse, but where Sam was the vessel and thus had the personal connection to the villain in the first arc, Dean was the vessel exploring the darkness and thus had the personal connection to Amara in this arc.

Primary villain - Amara, the bitter and angry sister of Chuck who doesn’t understand human morality but has a personal connection to Dean.

Stakes: Existence itself, but also far more importantly, the supporting cast built up from the last checkpoint.

The crushing hopelessness of fighting a being with ultimate power filled the arc, and Dean’s attempt to reason with Amara failed not because she was insane, but because her understanding of existence was simply different and incompatible. Donatello their prophet has his soul devoured by Amara and Metatron is killed in a diversion, but overall there’s not as much sacrifice because it wouldn’t have done any good anyway. However, it has its Ellen and Jo moment in the form of the hopelessness of the Croatoan episode. The city converted, the Winchesters helpless, Sam infected and slowly turning, while Chuck has given up and plans to die with the world. 

And honestly, that moment when Chuck begins to sing, when the amulet after so many years finally begins to glow and the clouds part, everything isn’t fixed yet but somehow it’s all alright because “Dad is finally here” is such a beautiful moment.

Many before have commented on it, but Chuck’s song and the moment he heals everyone is iconic and beautiful, as is the moment when the play sings ‘Wayward Son’ while Chuck watches in the bleachers with a smile. Things also get desperate, as Chuck nearly dies even after they get everything together as allies - even including the last arc villain - they put together something that will only maybe work so that at the very least, existence can continue.

Once again, the boys and everyone get together to fight the inevitable and impossible simply because they believe humanity deserves to continue to exist, and it’s the love of family - this time between Chuck and Amara, who truly, no matter the eons of rivalry and resentment and bitterness, don’t want to see each other hurt - that puts aside the end. The inevitable fade is prevented because of love and family (and isn’t that the point?) and even Chuck as a father redeems himself, taking the anger from Dean, Sam, and his own son and finally makes peace with them as well.

In the same way Chuck brought back Castiel stronger as a gift, Amara brings back Mary younger as a gift, and just as in season 5, they leave with the promise that Dean and Sam can handle things from here. Chuck even says "The Earth will be fine without me. It’s got you and Sam.” before he leaves.

The final episode isn’t a battle, but the solution takes all episode, and the ending is somewhat bittersweet, though more positive emotional than negative.

‘Ending’ 3 - Inherit the Earth. Build up: one season

They didn’t have much choice about this, because Jensen sprang ‘I quit’ on them, and they evidently didn’t want Jack to be the final villain, so the arc they were in the middle of had to be terminated (and the Michael arc ended at an awkward place so they couldn’t have just ended it at the end of s14 instead)

Still, the season of buildup....just isn’t. Most episodes have nothing to do with the inevitable impending doom, and rather than hopelessness, the Winchesters mostly live in a delusion that despite utterly failing to defeat Amara, somehow they can beat Chuck with less power. This conflict is fueled by sheer rage on both sides, as Dean has up and decided he hates that someone is controlling his life and thinks he gets a say, and is willing to endanger the entire world for his grudge against Chuck - even though this was something resolved back in s11 (the resolution with Satan was also completely undone by these writers instantly but that’s another matter)

Primary villain: Chuck, with an aside of Billie and The Empty - unfortunately this Chuck has no connection to the previous Chuck (or even himself episode to episode), Billie has always been extremely bland and doesn’t really accomplish anything through the season, and the Empty is totally unexplored and wholly exists to say “BE QUIET” and provide fanservice because it’s using Meg’s actress to do so. It has no personality beyond wanting to be left alone and getting vindictive if it’s not. It also can’t impact anything because it’s barred from Earth and nothing significant in the plot happens elsewhere this season.

Stakes: Humanity, and also some side characters you don’t really know or care about

Let’s talk about those, because it’s the biggest failing in the execution of this whole plot and why the ending has no oomph and doesn’t matter even if Chuck had a coherent personality and the ending had made sense.

Bobby is not Our Bobby, and despite bringing him back, the writers utterly failed to explore him or bring him into things, even in this final arc. There’s been no chance to bond with this Bobby. Even his ‘romance’ with Mary was offscreen and he had little more than grunting to say about her death.  We’ve also had our chains thoroughly jerked around by Bobby since season 6. Emotionally we’re dead to Bobby, and the writers seem to have assumed this by token returning him and then shipping him on a bus immediately (or maybe the writers suck, because they do this to Mary most of the time too and there’s no reason for people to be bored of her)

Charlie is not Our Charlie, and we’ve already seen her die (pointlessly). Once again, the writers utterly failed to explore her, even more than Bobby, and no one can point out anything that makes her any different from the original except that she has no connection to the boys. She’s also been shipped off and removed multiple times, so viewers are well acquainted with her being gone. She does nothing in the final plot to make people remember her or be invested.

Does Garth even die on screen??? Have we even seen him since the antiMichael arc? Oh right, he’s in the joke episode where he gives Dean fillings. You know who doesn’t even die on screen? Jody. She also has no role in the season. She doesn’t even appear in reality, only alternate versions of reality! Instead, Donna appears! Just long enough so she can die on screen painlessly in a plot twist about Billie. Presumably Donatello dies, but, y’know, it’s offscreen.

More importantly, none of these people who die are involved in actually helping to fight Chuck. They help the Winchesters a little in their cameos, but they’re not involved in a desperate fight for survival, putting it all on the line even though they know it’s hopeless, because humanity deserves to exist and no matter how impossible, they have to fight.

Three people of importance die or ‘die’.

Amara, who as mentioned is just written out of the show for no conceivable reason

Rowena, is the only person with an impactful sacrifice done to fight Chuck, no matter how hopeless it is. Unfortunately, it’s somewhat rushed, and Sam is over it pretty quick....because Rowena becomes Queen of Hell, completely undermining her death and really just giving the Winchesters an upgrade, because she’s even more reliable than Crowley in there (they proceed to never call on her)

And then there’s Castiel.

His death is rushed and hot garbage, as mentioned. He’s not dying to fight Chuck, or for something he believes in. It’s not a long and emotional or heartbreaking scene. It’s a useless and stupid one that only happens because Dean is an idiot, with the fakest suspense of Billie just open palm smacking on a door for a stupidly extended amount of time, just so they could fulfill an ‘oopsie’ plot hook they’d planned for far in the future with the Empty.

And the worst part? After undermining Castiel being one of the brothers and everything he’s ever done with ‘it’s not that I loved humanity and did what I believed was right, even in the face of adversity and those around me telling me it was wrong, it’s that I loved you and confessing this even though it’s 100% unrequited and we’re surrounded by doom and I know things are hopeless I’m completely happy, at peace, and have forgotten Empty’s promise (oops, forgot about that qualification, didn’t you?)’

After all that, Dean, Sam, and Jack aren’t even really broken up about it. Dean is sad for like five seconds and then they move on back to angry at chuck mode. Jack lost his actual dad, Sam and Dean lost their brother - forever this time - and they’re like ‘eh, we moved on from losing mom again and losing dad again, this is nothing’.

There’s no impact to this sacrifice whatsoever. Especially because in the very next episode we see that if you have Chuck’s power you can just yoink out someone from the Empty, and that very episode they already said that the Empty can’t go where Chuck doesn’t want him. That is to say: Jack can just rescue him now and there’s nothing the Empty can do about it.

And as for the conclusion?

What saves the day? Is it love? Does Amara’s appeal to Chuck as his sister work? Do the Winchesters swallow their pride and go to Chuck to plead with him to see reason and remember his love for his creation? Does the love Michael have for his father reach him? Do the love Dean, Sam, or Jack have for each other matter, overcoming the impossible to choose love, freedom, and family like always?

Nope.

They win because Chuck is angry and hateful and full of hubris, so he makes a billion mistakes in a row, allowing himself to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And is there a lesson about love in the end, something about freedom or family or forgiveness?

Nope.

They leave Chuck groveling as a human (like that’s different from how he’s been for eons, happily so), Jack fixed everything (except Castiel and all the angels and heaven and all the monsters and serial killers and cannibals)  and then gives a speech about how he is everything and is in everything but not Dean and Sam’s car because the only way to be good at his job is to go do the thing Chuck was doing and Dean raged at him about.

And it happens in a few seconds.

Completely anticlimactic. There’s no climax. There’s no build up. There’s no satisfaction or emotional payoff. There’s no closure that makes you say ‘yes, this could be the end and I would be completely satisfied’ except that they didn’t include the last second sequel hooks that were in s5 and 11 because they knew there’d be more seasons.

Also looping back to the logistical side of things again

There is no ‘godforce’, there’s no ‘grace but it’s divine’

Chuck and Amara are power

You can’t just ‘drain’ them of it, you can’t steal their power and leave a husk, because there’s no husk. They’re not inhabiting someone like angels or demons do. They are that power. Why do they have that power? Because they do, Because they are, they have that power in their world.

If you could somehow ‘steal’ the power you’d be stealing the ‘essence’. Just like with Amara moving to Jack, Chuck would move to Jack, and suddenly it wouldn’t be Jack anymore, because a human mind and soul can’t overcome him (see: he writes them)

Also, consider the sheer staggering amount of NERF!!!!!!!

Chuck + Amara, that’s Chuck doubled in power

is now canonically the power of “One human soul + two powerful archangels + a few punches worth of power”. That means by their reckoning, Chuck alone is only a punch or two stronger than Michael. 

think about that compared to what Death said to Castiel with all of purgatory in him.

And this

This is why I say

The only way to correct this episode is to reveal in the end of this next wrap up episode that it was all written by Chuck, for Dean and Sam. The only fix to this is to make it so the bad writing is just typical Chuck being a ham-fisted writer who is ultimately just doing what’s best for humanity and especially his two favorites: giving them closure, someone to let out their rage and hatred on, and true ‘free will’, by once again removing himself from the equation and letting them live their lives without him.