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jeffersonhairpie · 2 years

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Pokemon teams for your local ghost

Exactly what it says on the tin. I’ve tried to build a Pokémon team for each of the Button House ghosts.

I’ve used personality, ghost powers and time period to come up with a full team that I think makes thematic sense for everyone. Where possible, I’ve tried to give everyone the fully evolved forms of all their teammates, but this doesn’t always work out. All Pokémon have been given a Nature, Ability and Item along with a full move-set that feels appropriate for the team they’re on.

My one hard rule for myself was that everyone needed to have at least one Ghost type Pokémon on their team. Less hard but a rule I still stuck to was that everyone gets a full team of six.

This post got super long, so see below for full teams and explanations.

Robin:

Robin’s team is made up of Pokémon that could have been around 40,000 years ago. Robin was part of a hunter-gatherer society, so he would have moved around a lot and had plenty of opportunities to train and catch Pokémon in different locales. Given the presence of a whole lot more animals (and Pokémon) that would have been dangerous to humans back when Robin was alive, it was essential for him to have a pretty tough team that could help protect him from day-to-day threats His fighting style is a combination of aggressive and troll-ish, and he’s not afraid to have one of his team faint in order to deliver a finishing blow. Watch out for paralysis, increased crit ratios and sound-based moves. Just don’t expect your Ground types to be any use here.

The items on all of Robin’s Pokémon are naturally occurring and he would have had to forage for them. None of his Pokémon know any TM moves as these were several thousand years away from being invented. None of his Pokémon know any tutor moves as he wasn’t able to travel far enough to meet any tutors. He would have hollowed out his own Apricorn balls to store these critters, which I would imagine were not particularly good at staying closed. Robin does not have any Steel types because he lived in the Stone Age

ANNIHILAPE – Fighting/Ghost - Male

Adamant Nature

Ability: Defiant

Held item: King’s Rock

Thrash

Rage Fist

Screech

Final Gambit

EXPLOUD – Normal - Female

Naughty Nature

Ability: Scrappy

Held item: Razor Claw

Thunder Fang

Supersonic

Screech

Boomburst

GREAT TUSK – Ground/Fighting – Unknown

Impish Nature

Ability: Protosynthesis

Held item: Leftovers

Taunt

Close Combat

Headlong Rush

Substitute

LUNATONE – Rock/Psychic - Unknown

Modest Nature

Ability: Levitate

Held item: Hard Stone

Moonblast

Moonlight

Stone Edge

Explosion

MAMOSWINE – Ice/Ground - Female

Naughty Nature

Ability: Snow Cloak

Held item: Never Melt Ice

Endure

Amnesia

Earthquake

Blizzard

ROTOM – Electric/Ghost (Fire/Water/Ice/Flying/Grass) - Unknown

Rash Nature

Ability: Levitate

Held item: Quick Claw

Thunderwave

Hex

Thundershock/Overheat/Hydro Pump/Blizzard/Air Slash/Heat Storm

Uproar

Annihilape because there’s something a bit Robin-esque about its stance. Plus, Ghost/Fighting seemed like an appropriate type combo for him to have in his team

Exploud because Robin loves to be loud, and this is as noisy as Pokémon get

Great Tusk because Robin isn’t old enough to have a fossil Pokémon nor young enough to have lived when the technology to revive them had been invented. BUT he is old enough for a Paradox Pokémon and Great Tusk reminds me of a boar and a mammoth, both of which Robin mentions as animals that were alive when he was

Lunatone for the moon.

Mammoswine because it’s a mammoth

Rotom because he needs an Electric type and seeing as he’s always messing around with the Button House electrics, he should have one that can infect different devices. The third move slot depends on what forme his Rotom takes, with Rotom formes being something he’s been experimenting with for the past hundred years or so as electronic appliances have started to appear in the house.

Humphrey:

Humphrey is a noble from Tudor England, a time when national borders were drawn and they mattered. As such, his team is built entirely from Pokémon found in the Galar region. Pokémon used for hunting and to show off status are a must, and everyone’s into breeding their Pokémon to ensure the best possible offspring, so you’ll see egg moves galore on this team. And would you look at that! Steel types now exist!

TM’s still don’t exist and while most items are still naturally occurring, technology has come far enough (and Humphrey is rich enough to afford) incense as a held item for one Pokémon. Humphrey would have been able to afford for an artisan to make his Apricorn balls from some of the breeds that were being specifically cultivated for catching Pokémon.

AEGISLASH – Steel/Ghost - Female

Brave Nature

Ability: Stance Change

Held item: King’s Rock

King’s Shield

Shadow Sneak

Sword’s Dance

Sacred Sword

BOLTUND – Electric - Female

Hasty Nature

Ability: Strong Jaw

Held Item: Electric Gem

Nuzzle

Bite

Howl

Play Rough

CORVIKNIGHT – Flying/Steel - Female

Bold Nature

Ability: Mirror Armor

Held Item: Power Herb

Leer

Taunt

Steel Wing

Sky Attack

HYDREIGON – Dark/Dragon - Male

Mild Nature

Ability: Levitate

Held Item: Dragon Fang

Crunch

Scary Face

Outrage

Head Smash

RAPIDASH (Galarian forme) – Psychic/Fairy - Male

Serious Nature

Ability: Pastel Veil

Held item: Odd Incense

Agility

Morning Sun

Psychic

Dazzling Gleam

ROSERADE – Grass/Poison - Male

Modest Nature

Ability: Technician

Held item: Big Root

Grass Whistle

Leech Seed

Giga Drain

Extrasensory

Aegislash - too soon?

Boltund because, as a noble, Humphrey would have considered hunting a fun pastime and he would have needed a pack of hounds to assist in this. He got the gem on Boltund from his wife as they’re available in Kalos but not Galar. Sadly, this Pokémon isn’t able to make full use of its ability due to TMs not being invented yet but the extra jaw strength does help on the hunt.

Corviknight because, during Tudor times, status was expressed through the birds of prey you flew. Also, for hunting purposes.

Hyderigon because it makes for a great coat of arms. Also, there are legends about how you can cut off one head of this Pokémon and another will appear, which I’m sure he just hates to be reminded of these days.

Rapidash because a horse would have been an essential form of transport and, being noble, Humprey would have wanted the most magnificent horse around. This stallion fits the bill.

Roserade because theatre was all the rage in Tudor England, so Humphrey would have needed in house entertainment to keep high status guests amused. This Roserade probably performer for Henry VIII

Mary

Mary was a poor farmhand throughout her life and so her Pokémon are intended to serve a more practical purpose than battling. Which isn’t to say that she won’t try to kick your ass when the moment’s right. When she does fight, Mary plays defensive, making sure that all her attacking moves have 100% accuracy and won’t knock any health off her Pokémon with rebound. Come prepared for long, drawn out battles.

As a skilled farmer, and without much time to go foraging for other items, all of Mary’s Pokémon have a berry as a held item, which Mary probably grew herself. Because these Pokémon were caught for practicality above all else, they are all wild caught (save Morpeko, which was a gift) and so none of them have their Hidden Ability. Even if TM’s did exist yet, I doubt Mary could afford one. Like Robin, she would have needed to hollow out her own Apricorns for balls, but I would imagine she was able to do so with a cultivar better suited for catching than the ones that grow wild.

APPLETUN – Grass/Dragon - Male

Hardy Nature

Ability: Ripen

Held Item: Iapapa Berry

Protect

Apple Acid

Iron Defence

Dragon Pulse

LAMPENT – Ghost/Fire - Female

Bashful Nature

Ability: Flame Body

Held item: Petaya Berry

Will-O-Wisp

Hex

Inferno

Minimize

LEAVANNY – Bug/Grass - Female

Docile Nature

Ability: Chlorophyll

Held item: Occa Berry

False Swipe

String Shot

Leaf Blade

Me First

MILTANK – Normal - Female

Quirky Nature

Ability: Thick Fat

Held item: Ganlon Berry

Defence Curl

Milk Drink

Charm

Body Slam

MORPEKO – Electric/Dark - Female

Naive Nature

Ability: Hunger Switch

Held item: Lansat Berry

Crunch

Tickle

Agility

Aura Wheel

SKUNTANK – Poison/Dark - Male

Docile Nature

Ability: Stench

Held Item: Custap Berry

Flamethrower

Screech

Toxic

Nigh Slash

Appletun because Mary worked the fields throughout her life and apples would have been a big harvest. Plus, in a time before sugar, I bet apple-based puddings were some of her very favourite sweets

Lampent because Mary would have needed to keep a lamp lit to see what she was up to after dark. Also, as a Ghost/Fire type it comes close to being a representation of how she died. Unevolved because Dusk Stones would have been rare and expensive.

Leavanny because it’s a Pokémon known for sewing and weaving, and as a poor woman of her time, Mary would have had to make all her own clothes (and her husband’s, and her children’s) so she could use some help. Also, it helps to have a Bug type to pollinate crops in Spring.

Milkank because having a family cow for milk is always useful. Also, baby wants its nilkies...

Morpeko because Mary is usually pretty unassuming but when she gets angry, she goes apeshit

Skuntank because Mary is the stinkiest ghost, so she needs a stinky pal

Kitty

Kitty’s a simple woman. She likes pink and purple things, she likes soft things, she likes moves that look pretty and she likes having friends. She also, every now and then, likes to kick ass. Her Pokémon’s moves tend to be selected for aesthetic or emotional reasons, so you can never be quite sure what she’s going to pull on you, and a lot of her Pokémon have been with her since she was a child. Watch out for hard hitting moves out of nowhere, and remember not to judge a book by its cover/Pokémon by its appearance

Being from the landed gentry, Kitty didn’t have to catch many of her Pokémon herself. Her father lovingly arranged for most of these critters to come into her life. As such, breeding moves are more than fair game and you’ll see that we’re getting quite advanced with some of the items Kitty’s able to use. Because she wasn’t catching her own Pokémon, Kitty doesn’t really know much about the Apricorn balls they’re stored in, beyond that they look very pretty.

BEWEAR – Normal/Fighting - Female

Adamant Nature

Ability: Fluffy

Held item: Metronome

Baby-doll Eyes

Double Edge

Superpower

Rollout

GRUMPIG – Psychic - Female

Timid Nature

Ability: Own Tempo

Held item: Protective Pads

Teeter Dance

Power Gem

Zen Headbutt

Bounce

POLTEAGEIST – Ghost - Unknown

Modest Nature

Ability: Cursed Body

Held Item: Big Root

Teatime

Sweet Scent

Giga Drain

Shadow Ball

SAWSBUCK (Spring forme) – Normal/Grass - Male

Brave Nature

Ability: Serene Grace

Held item: King’s Rock

Horn Leech

Headbutt

Zen Headbutt

Energy Ball

TINKATON – Fairy/Steel - Female

Careful Nature

Ability: Moldbreaker

Held Item: Clear Amulet

Sweet Kiss

Play Rough

Ice Hammer

Gigaton Hammer

VIVILLON (Meadow forme) – Bug/Flying - Male

Timid Nature

Ability: Friend Guard

Held Item: Destiny Knot

Safeguard

Bug Buzz

Quiver Dance

Hurricane

Bewear because it gives the best hugs! Kitty just wants to cuddle a giant teddy bear and really, who wouldn’t?

Grumpig because you know Kitty had to raise a Spoink out of morbid curiosity to see if it really would die if it stopped bouncing. She never could be sure because sometimes she had to sleep, and her sister refused to take turns and watch her Pokémon while she was napping. All the same, Kitty is very fond of her Grumpig and has had it wearing the Protective Pads since it was a Spoink to help it not die from reasons unrelated to bouncing.

Polteageist because you need tea to have a tea party with your friends. Once upon a time, Kitty’s father gave her and her sister each a Sinistea, not realising that one was an Antique and the other a Phony. Kitty got the Antique and her sister talked her into trading, thinking she was being oh so very clever, but it turns out Kitty didn’t care whether she had the genuine article or not, she just likes her teapot Pokémon.

Sawsbuck because it evolved from Kitty’s first ever Pokémon - a pretty pink Deerling that she BEGGED her father for. It has a classic kid’s set up of all damaging moves with a redundant second Grass type attack, all because Kitty thought she was being very clever by picking moves that worked well with her Pokémon’s ability.

Tinkaton because it is the most Kitty-core Pokémon to ever exist. She is going to crush you with her little pink pal. And oh look! It’s wearing pretty jewellery

Vivillon because scooping up caterpillars in the grounds can sometimes give you a pretty pink butterfly.

Thomas

I tried to give everyone a good team but that simply wasn’t possible here because Thomas is not a good trainer. His Pokémon like him as much as can be expected but they’re not well set up for winning battles, much as Thomas will swear blind that he’s working on a killer strategy that never seems to involve changing anything about his line-up. Expect to defeat him easily, though if anything’s going to give you trouble it’s his Charizard.

Thomas’s ability to relate to his Pokémon, or to see something poetic in their nature, is far more important to him than selecting Pokémon which might actually improve his standing. He believes that tragedy makes people and Pokémon alike stronger, but so far, he hasn’t proven this on the battlefield or in his poetry. Still no TMs, still unable to access a lot of held items and poor Thomas doesn’t really understand how Abilities or Held Items work. His Apricorn balls are made by someone else and bought on the cheap. He’s always grumbling about how Byron could have afforded better balls.

BANETTE – Ghost - Male

Adamant Nature

Ability: Insomnia

Held Item: Dark Gem

Spite

Will-O-Wisp

Hex

Role Play

CHARIZARD – Fire/Flying - Male

Rash Nature

Ability: Blaze

Held Item: Charcoal

Smokescreen

Air Slash

Scary Face

Flare Blitz

CUBONE – Ground - Male

Lonely Nature

Ability: Lightning Rod

Held Item: Thick Club

False Swipe

Stomping Tantrum

Focus Energy

Bonemerang

SMEARGLE – Normal - Female

Lax Nature

Ability: Moody

Held Item: Full Incense

Fake Tears

Metronome

Present

Sketch

UNFEASANT – Normal/Flying - Male

Hasty Nature

Ability: Rivalry

Held Item: Destiny Knot

Leer

Feather Dance

Roost

Sky Attack

YAMASK – Ghost - Male

Quirky Nature

Ability: Mummy

Held Item: Stone Plate

Crafty Shield

Grudge

Shadow Ball

Destiny Bond

Banette because it has been discarded and is looking for someone to love it and Thomas can relate so hard

Charizard because its whole line will die if the fire that powers them goes out and Thomas can relate so hard. This one’s holding the Charcoal Thomas used to doodle with between poems

Cubone because its whole deal is being sad and Thomas can relate so hard

Smeargle because if you’re an artist of any kind you need the Painter Pokemon on your team. As you can see, Thomas hasn’t been very successful in Sketching decent moves with his, and he has misunderstood the purpose of a Full Incense, but he’s certain that newly open Sketch slot is going to bring him glory

Unfeasant because Thomas needs somewhere to get feathers for his quills.

Yamask because it is always crying about the person it could have been and Thomas can relate so hard. Here he’s misunderstood the type of his Pokémon but he thinks an Arceus Plate adds prestige

Fanny

Fanny has always preferred animals (Pokémon) to people. What’s more, as a very intelligent and wildly under stimulated woman in a loveless marriage, she became a very good Pokémon trainer. Her team is almost entirely made up of Pokémon based off real world animals and she is a lot closer to being competitively viable than the rest of the ghosts. Expect everything to be thrown at you. Absolutely everything.

Once she was married, Fanny’s finances would have allowed her access to all sorts of fascinating new items now available in the modern age. Breeding and trading from other regions were also no object to the woman trying to have it all with her Pokémon. This of course extended to the latest in Apricorn ball and Pokéball technology, as the first non-organic balls would have been in circulation towards the end of her life. And what’s this? Metagross has an extremely modern move on it. HMs have now been invented!

BASCULEGION – Water/Ghost - Male

Lonely Nature

Ability: Adaptability

Held Item: Life Orb

Last Respects

Scary Face

Head Smash

Wave Crash

INCINEROAR – Fire/Dark - Female

Sassy Nature

Ability: Intimidate

Held Item: Heavy-Duty Boots

Knock Off

Parting Shot

Scary Face

Flare Blitz

METAGROSS – Steel/Psychic - Unknown

Impish Nature

Ability: Clear Body

Held Item: Leftovers

Zen Headbutt

Strength

Meteor Mash

Rest

MUDSDALE – Ground - Female

Relaxed Nature

Ability: Stamina

Held Item: Heal Bell

Iron Defence

Earthquake

Mega Kick

Super Power

STOUTLAND – Normal - Female

Adamant Nature

Ability: Scrappy

Held Item: Silk Scarf

Work Up

Retaliate

Play Rough

Last Resort

TALONFLAME – Fire/Flying - Female

Jolly Nature

Ability: Flame Body

Held Item: Focus Sash

Flare Blitz

Defog

Roost

Brave Bird

Basculegion because a frail male Pokémon that can still do a huge wop of damage is something that probably resonates with Fanny. I bet she feeds it lots of bitter food and it absolutely hates her.

Incineroar for Apollo the tiger. Plus, it’s one of the most dominant Pokémon in competitive play and has been since its introduction. No way Fanny would be foolish enough to go without one.

Metagross because it’s wickedly smart and very good in competitive play. As a maths whizz, Fanny needs to make sure she’s got a biological super-computer on her side.

Mudsdale for Montague the horse! This isn’t a Pokémon that’s seen quite so much competitive play as her first two, but she loves it and understands the value of having a solid Ground type on the team.

Stoutland for Dante, and because anyone who isn’t scared of this tanky little dog has never had one pop up on the Battle Subway. There’s nothing flashy about Normal types, but they’re a pain to get off the field.

Talonflame for Jasper the Falcon. Another Pokémon that has seen good competitive use over the years. This one, of course, relies on its speed to sweep

The Captain

When it comes to Pokémon, The Captain is not a particularly complex man. He likes soldiers, so he gravitates towards Fighting types, and he likes defenders, so he gravitates towards Steel types. Appearances are very important to him, so he leans towards Pokémon that give the appearance of being soldiers more than anything. Safe to say, his team isn’t particularly diverse, and you’ll only need a couple of counters to take him down. But if you don’t bring those counters? Expect a world of pain. The Captain’s Pokémon are well trained and always opt for moves that cause the most damage, even if they damage the user. Expect suicide strats and Hail Mary’s and a trainer who treats this as life or death.

The Captain’s Pokémon were probably trained on the Button House grounds, with some to all of them being military issue. A limited number of TM’s had been invented by the time he died, so you’ll see some moves out with standard learn-sets starting to crop up. He would have had access to standard issue British Army Pokéballs so that’s what all his Pokémon are kept in.

BISHARP – Dark/Steel - Male

Brave Nature

Ability: Defiant

Held Item: Black Glasses

Iron Defence

Retaliate

Iron Head

Swords Dance

CERULEDGE - Fire/Ghost - Male

Brave Nature

Ability: Flash Fire

Held Item: Power Herb

Shadow Sneak

Sword’s Dance

Solar Blade

Flare Blitz

Escavalier – Bug/Steel - Male

Brave Nature

Ability: Swarm

Held Item: Choice Band

Double Edge

X-Scissor

Iron Head

Giga Impact

FALINKS – Fighting - Unknown

Brave Nature

Ability: Defiant

Held Item: Focus Sash

First Impression

No Retreat

Close Combat

Megahorn

MIMIKYU - Ghost/Fairy - Male

Sassy Nature

Ability: Disguise

Held Item: Life Orb

Wood Hammer

Shadow Claw

Play Rough

Pain Split

SIRFETCH’D – Fighting - Male

Brave Nature

Ability: Scrappy

Held Item: Leftovers

Knock-Off

Swords Dance

Brave Bird

Meteor Assault

Bisharp because it’s got that straight backed, stiff upper lip temperament that The Captain loves so much. Of course, he hasn’t evolved it, he’s looking for soldiers, not commanders (also evolving Bisharp is hard)

Ceruledge because it’s got that knight in shining armour swag and literally has blades for hands so it can’t help winning fights

Falinks because it’s a little soldier Pokémon that gets in formation and stays in formation

Mimikyu because it has a secret which it hides beneath an exterior it thinks people can’t see through

Sirfetch’d because it’s a proper soldier that comes to battle with its weapon in hand

Pat

Pat has picked most of his Pokémon for how much help they could be in teaching badge-worthy skills to a group of Scouts, or by how hungry they make him. Being ruled by your stomach doesn’t always pay off when it comes to picking Pokémon, as it turns out, and a few critters that Pat would have liked to have kept on for companionship reasons wound up becoming final evolutions that might actually have some battle utility simply so he could stop thinking about eating them. Who’d have guessed? Expect a mixed bag when battling Pat. You can never be quite sure why he added a particular Pokémon to his team so some are well set up to kick ass and some are...not.

We’ve hit the 70′s! More TMs are on the market and while not cheap, they’re widely available. Pretty much all held items are also now up for grabs, with some being more expensive than others. Pat is proud of his foraging skills though (he’s got the badge and everything) so when in doubt he loves sticking a good Berry or Ore on his Pokémon. Pat has his Apricorn carving badge, but I’m sure his troop would tell you that even using specialised Apricorns, the balls he makes don’t stay closed for long.

ARCANINE – Fire - Female

Naughty Nature

Ability: Justified

Held Item: Choice Band

Flare Blitz

Crunch

Extreme Speed

Wild Charge

CHARCADET – Fire - Male

Bold Nature

Ability: Flash Fire

Held Item: Charcoal

Leer

Clear Smog

Night Shade

Ember

DRIFBLIM - Ghost/Flying - Drifblim

Mild Nature

Ability: Aftermath

Held Item: Flame Orb

Minimize

Gust

Tailwind

Explosion

EXEGGUTOR – Grass/Psychic - Male

Quiet Nature

Ability: Harvest

Held Item: Sitrus Berry

Grass Knot

Psychic

Sunny Day

Rest

MUNCHLAX – Normal - Male

Sassy Nature

Ability: Pickup

Held Item: Leftovers

Lick

Stockpile

Swallow

Amnesia

TOGEKISS – Fairy/Flying - Female

Bold Nature

Ability: Serene Grace

Held Item: Babiri Berry

Air Slash

Aura Sphere

Wish

Thunder Wave

Arcanine because Pat loves dogs, and he also has a bit of a punitive streak so giving him the signature Pokémon of cops everywhere seems appropriate

Charcadet because it was Pat’s best demonstration Pokémon for his scouts. It’s always raring to go and can show you how to build a fire in no time, plus it keeps the tent warm

Drifblim because Pat is convinced it’s a totally normal baloon. Nothing untoward here! It can held in all sorts of baloon and kite related activities and nothing bad will ever happen.

Exeggutor for eggs. Pat used to think he was never going to evolve his Exeggcute but he wanted to eat them too badly and had to switch them up for something a little less obviously edible. Exeggutor is useful for teaching young scouts how to tie grass knots, mind.

Munchlax because it’s temperament is Pat-adjacent. Another favourite of his scouts, though mostly due to the problems it caused due to eating everything not nailed down.

Togekiss because it’s another egg that Pay has had to evolve in order to stave off his munchies. Also because it pays to have at least one properly strong Pokémon on your team if you ever need to demonstrate battling.

Julian

Julian is a dirty old man (affectionate) first and a Tory politician (derogatory) second. His team reflects these key aspects of his personality perfectly. Everything is here either for reasons of sexual innuendo or because he’s trying to swindle you, it’s really not that complicated. But, if he could stand to commit to the bit just a shade less, he might be able to put together a functional team. Expect to win against Julian, not because his Pokémon are bad but because his movesets are trash. Just know you’re going to hate the self-satisfied smirk he shoots you telling his Pokemon to use Lick.

TM’s are now a fully functional part of team building, and while they’re still pretty expensive, Julian has no qualms about spending his constituents’ money on such things. It’s Luxury Balls only for this group of horny shitposts.

CLOYSTER – Water/Ice - Female

Impish Nature

Ability: Overcoat

Held Item: Zoom Lens

Leer

Liquidation

Helping Hand

Blizzard

GRIMMSNARL – Dark/Fairy - Male

Naughty Nature

Ability: Prankster

Held Item: Leftovers

Flatter

Nasty Plot

Play Rough

Body Press

FROSSLASS - Ice/Ghost - Female

Naughty Nature

Ability: Cursed Body

Held Item: Absorb Bulb

Double Team

Aurora Veil

Water Pulse

Ice Spinner

HYPNO – Psychic - Male

Sassy Nature

Ability: Inner Focus

Held Item: Amulet Coin

Pound

Confuse Ray

Role Play

Future Sight

LICKILICKY – Normal - Female

Bold Nature

Ability: Cloud Nine

Held Item: Binding Band

Lick

Wrap

Power Whip

Giga Impact

LOPUNNY – Normal - Female

Naive Nature

Ability: Limber

Held Item: Blue Scarf

Baby-Doll Eyes

Bounce

Draining Kiss

Assurance

Cloyster because we all know what this Pokémon sort of looks like and Julian finds this highly amusing

Grimmsnarl because it’s a ghoulish little goblin, just like Julian

Froslass because Julian 100% would follow a pretty lady into a snowstorm

Hypno because every politician needs a sidekick who can confuse and bamboozle the opposition.

Lickilicky because Julian is a whore

Lopunny for all the reasons that make it the most likely Pokémon for you to run into some unsavoury fanart of

Some closing thoughts:

I like to think that the King’s Rock used here by Robin, Humphrey and Kitty is the same one re-found several times

Let’s not think too hard about how these Pokeon would still be alive so many years after their trainers had died. They’re alive and they can see ghosts! Woohoo!

#bbc ghosts #ghosts bbc #ghosts #pokemon #shitty text post #do NOT ask me how long I thought about this #happy to answer any other questions about it lmao

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residentdormouse · 1 year

Note

Fanfic Asks

A, D, F, J, T

I'll leave the fic up to you - talk to me about your favourite!

💖 Thank You for the Asks! 💖

I reordered a bit for spoiler purposes - hope you don’t mind.

A: How did you come up with the title to [insert fic]?

Something like a Spiral - Honestly, probably should have just went straight ‘Spiral’, but too late, no take backs, it stuck. Its a song - Spiral by Godsmack. Very thematic to the whole story. Randall Flagg’s fuckery and being stuck in these reiterations. It just… fit.

Just Keep Diving Down - ‘the rabbit hole’ would finish it off. Reference to Alice in Wonderland (Are we really surprised here? It's kind of my whole thing…) I mean hell, Glen has the line “Let’s see how far down the rabbit hole goes.” which I have plastered on my Tumblr header. To completely solidify the decision, I heard it in ‘White Rabbit’ by Central Egypt when I was debating titles as well. While the song doesn’t completely fit the whole vibe, it stuck.

D: Is there a song or a playlist to associate with [insert fic]?

Oh boy, and how. I’m crazy with my playlists. While there are story playlists, I much prefer my character playlists. Oh it’s a Glen chapter, let's vibe for a bit. Lloyd? Ok, switch it up. Etc. I have all of my playlists on Spotify, and linked in my ‘Jumping to Wonderland’ main post.

F: Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

I really liked how this turned out, because it was one of those times where I hit a block. I wanted Glen to be comforting, stop her from crying, and it wasn’t flowing right. Felt stale. So I talked with @impuretale , and she gave me sage advice: What if he made it worse? And that worked. Well, at least I hoped it did…

Laughter mingled amongst her crying. While his smile met his eyes in that familiar twinkle, it still pulled at her heart. “I don’t know that I can protect you.”

"Maybe you can't, Giggles…"

It hit her like a punch to the gut. Her stomach dropped while his smile remained. Twinkling eyes while her insides felt hollowed out. "Maybe this is what was always meant to be. And maybe there's some truth in what he told you."

Her breathing started to quicken in pace, and she attempted to hold it in her lungs if only to feel some sort of control. How could he say that? New tears stung her eyes, and the burn went all the way to her throat where she held back the air desperately wanting to escape in a breath.

"Maybe you shouldn't ‘waste your energy on dead men’, as he put it. You need it for him. To make this all mean something."

She couldn't hold it any longer, and the tears broke past once more. He pulled her back in another embrace, and she buried her face into his chest as the sobs racked her body. He held her solid, reassuring and comforting while still completely shattering her heart. There was no holding back now; these were harsh truths she might have to accept. Her breathing began to even out as he rubbed circles on her back. Once it was regulated, he pulled away; just enough to look her in the eyes.

"Mother Abagail said that we need to have faith. I'm not sure what's beyond here. God. An afterlife. Heaven. Hell. I don't have much faith in all that. But I have faith in you. If this is going to be successful, you'll need to be ready for him."

He put a hand on her cheek, and her shoulders slumped down, head leaning forward to rest against his. A brief moment passed before he urged her to look back at him. Her eyes still shimmered wet, but held anything further at bay.

“So what do you say, Giggles? Give this another shot?”

T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand?

I mean, if it's well written, I’ll read just about anything. I don’t tend to seek out stuff like A/B/O, and honestly, not into a whole lot of overly explicit smut without a good solid plot to accompany. (I know I know - I write it, but I’m smut light, at best.) Plot heavy and hurt/comfort is my jam. But again, if it's written well, I usually don’t have any ‘no go’s.

J: Write or describe an alternative ending to [insert fic].

Going with ‘Just Keep Diving Down’, and since this is major spoilers - putting below a cut.

The major character death aspect of this really fucking destroyed me. Since you’re here, you most likely don’t care about spoilers, so towards the end, Glen dies. Again. The thing I started writing these goddamn stories to fix. I struggled with this for months. In denial. Not happy. Very upset. (Hell, I still am. Can’t listen to ‘Run Away to Mars’ without crying anymore because it was the song playing when I was writing it all.) I knew the goal was to bring him back, ghost form. Gives him the best of both worlds then, travel with Hayden to new worlds pain free, while still being able to see his prior wife. Win win. Still fucking hurt.

So alternate would have been Not. Fucking. Doing. That. It was the original plan. Hayden and Glen were going to be working for the organization still, taking things in a better direction. That was the goal, and one day, my Glen muse hit me with a ‘yeah, you won’t like this, but…’ Why couldn’t we just follow the plan guys? WHY CAN’T WE FOLLOW THE PLAN?!

(Fanfic Writer Ask Game)

#thank you for asking #mouse's tag games and reblogs

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mythicalmongoose · 2 years

Text

Back at it again with the controversial(?) meta.

On today’s episode: I don’t think Daniel needs an apology for the things Johnny did to him in high school... But Daniel maybe needs to apologize to Johnny? Sort of? Bear with me here.

Alternate Title: Explicit apologies are meaningless in a lot of cases. This is one of them. Daniel needs to take the first step before either of them can make amends with one another. Please stop sending me mean messages about my opinions on the karate show; it is making me very anxious and sad.

These men are in their fifties. High school was a lifetime ago. Were they both to blame? Three sides to every story or whatever? Not really. Like, Daniel is impulsive and mouthy and unafraid of antagonizing the Cobras, but Johnny and co. definitely both initiated and escalated things.

Thematically, the show comes back around to these two manchildren being stuck in the past a lot. Johnny peaked in high school. It was pretty much downhill from there.

“8 A.M. tomorrow I'm a senior, and I've got one year to make it work.”

spoilers: He did not make it work.

Daniel, meanwhile, has led a charmed life, bouncing back from battles to the death and being dangled off cliffs remarkably well. (And, no, I don’t think he’s bottled up the trauma from that and is smiling through the pain-- But that tangent probably needs to be its own meta.) He isn’t as stuck on the past as Johnny, (At least not until the reemergence of Cobra Kai.) but, for the most part, he does look back fondly on it.

Daniel is one flimsy fourth wall away from knowing he was the underdog protagonist in an iconic 80s family movie. There are moments from his past that he prefers to gloss over or simply not discuss. High school is not one of them. He sees it as a kind of origin story and exaggerates what was done to him. It left him with sympathy for victims of bullying. Not the best radar for bullies given that he raised one. Kind of understandable given that he was never really the kind of vulnerable and insecure that typified teenaged bully victims in 80s movies. He can be a little confused, but he got the spirit. He means well.

The point I’m awkwardly getting around to is that high school was not a traumatic time for Daniel. You don’t typically embellish your hardships to an audience that’s heard them a million times if you’re recounting trauma. If you want to call it that? idk. I feel like fandom plays kind of fast an loose with that word to the point where it covers anything bad that happens to someone ever... which is technically true, I guess but in the process the word has lost most of its weight? -- idk. I’m getting off topic and swerving into aforementioned Daniel meta.

Had Daniel and Johnny struck up a friendship after the AVT, an apology would be necessary. Those wounds hadn’t healed. There would be a lot to discuss. But they’re not kids anymore. Which is pretty much the stance Daniel takes when he spots him at the dealership, which felt genuine even if he was a dick about it at moments.

It’s not until Daniel spots Cobra Kai at the strip mall that the Kill Bill sirens go off. His problem is with Cobra Kai, which I genuinely feel has more to do with grief than trauma. Cobra Kai outlasting Miyagi is untenable. Aaand now I’m resisting a tangent again. Again, different meta for a different day.

Anyway! Cobra Kai flips a switch. Suddenly, everything is underdog 80s movie binary. Johnny brought back Cobra Kai. He was wrong to give him the benefit of the doubt. Suddenly Johnny is the villain and Daniel is the underdog.

Except Daniel isn’t even sort of an underdog anymore. He is the only character on the show that hasn’t seen through Johnny’s whole manly badass facade and just takes his attitude at face value. And, because of that, he spends an awful lot of time punching down. Especially in the earlier seasons, but even now he’s stuck on the idea that Johnny is the bad guy.

Johnny associates Daniel with the day things started going downhill for him. Daniel associates Johnny with all the worst parts of Cobra Kai. And, in present-day Daniel has the upper hand. He has money and a loving family and connections. Johnny is an alcoholic with an estranged son and low self-esteem. The worst he can do is draw a dick on your billboard. The worst Daniel can do is raise the rent on a whole ass stripmall.

And that’s not to shit on Daniel. I absolutely adore his character because of those 80s movies subversions and what a petty bitch he can be. But I feel like character growth for him does mean making amends with Johnny for never truly giving him that benefit of the doubt again. ex. After using the pressure point technique at the points match, Johnny calls the move dirty... Which, yeah, in this setting and context, it kinda is. Daniel counters with the assertion that Johnny is the only one here that resorts to that sort of thing. Even though, iirc, Johnny has not “fought dirty” in the present.

I feel like any apology Johnny gave Daniel would be for his own benefit more than anything. Daniel doesn’t need an apology. He might appreciate it, but those wounds aren’t fresh anymore. I don’t think it would mean much to him. Like with Chozen, Daniel’s forgiveness was for his benefit. An explicit apology would mean nothing, Chozen’s actions (Post-hilarious I’m going to murder you in this secluded location practical joke.) speak for themselves.

But Johnny isn’t as self-aware as Chozen is when it comes to translating his issues into any sort of succinct discussion. And Daniel continues to expect the worst from him. Those wounds are pretty fresh, especially to someone with the self-esteem of a bruised lemon. They need to be equals before Johnny can do anything to make amends, and Daniel is the one manning the gate there.

For all the insults he throws at him, it’s pretty obvious, imo, that Johnny thinks Daniel is a better person than he is. He doesn’t argue with Robby when he says as much. He doesn’t have any words to defend himself with if and when Daniel hits a nerve.

Daniel needs to work through his trust issues regarding anything even Cobra Kai adjacent. He has valid reasons for them, but they blind him to such a degree that he initially doesn’t trust Miguel and has the kneejerk reaction of kicking Robby out without giving him a chance to explain himself.

Johnny has bad blood with Daniel. An apology won’t fix all that. Actions speak louder than words, but those won’t mean anything to Daniel either if he keeps looking for and expecting the worst from Johnny.

And it looks like this might be the direction things are going in as of the s4 finale? Daniel takes that first step of approaching Johnny and admitting that, okay, I was sort of wrong. Which Johnny reciprocates... though it means a lot less coming from Johnny since he’s wrong a lot and had already come (temporarily) upon the conclusion that he needed to try harder to meet Daniel halfway.

And did I mention he’s wrong a lot? Because he’s wrong A LOT and he knows it.

Daniel meanwhile:

God, I could ramble on about Daniel, but I’ll stop myself here and tackle that later. This is enough of a wall o’ text as-is. I love that asshole and sometimes worry that I love him for a lot of reasons fans try to excuse or explain away or call ooc. I wouldn’t love him nearly as much if he wasn’t a mess. He and Johnny are both awful in complimentary ways. I pray that everyone celebrating Daniel finally having someone unconditionally respect and listen to him in Chozen is wrong. Dear God, that is the last thing he needs.

#cobra kai #daniel larusso #johnny lawrence #all this aside #i'm still impatient af for the 'you're all right larusso' moment to be addressed #ramblings

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arlakos · 3 years

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Miraculous Rant

Actually, you know what, while im still mad from the previous post I made, lets go off on a rant. No punches pulled. Lets do this.

The lovesquare is the most terrible ship in this fandom. One girl is a hyper obsessed stalker who tracks her crush with her planner for 3 whole seasons, while the boy couldn’t learn to take a hint and stop flirting for 3 whole seasons until he decided to move on with another girl. Ironically that makes them perfect for eachother, but its in a creepy kind of way, not a loving kind of way.

Adrigami and Lukanette in the S3 Finale were wasted events and never should have occured because they were immediately axed in the first few episodes of the next season. I feel sorry for those that were hoping their ships could be real for at least a short actual while, and it makes me want to curse the writers for their story-boner for the status quo of teases

Despite what I said earlier, none of the girls are good for Adrien. Marinette’s stalkery and a borderline yandere, Kagami’s somewhat controlling and too similar to Adrien help him grow as a person, Chloe is a queen bee beyotch and honestly too much like a sibling to Adrien, and Lila is garbage. Fuck it, have Luka date Adrien and they can play some sweet music together (not like that you pervs, I meant they both play instruments).

Nino needs more love. Not only that, but there needs to be more Adrien/Nino bro moments. If Marinette and Alya can have moments together, why not the bros?

Chloe’s character is a mess, and is neither redeemable, nor notably evil. Her role as a villain in season 1 is very hamfisted, such as in the episodes Mr Pigeon and Kung Food. Not only that, Chloe also lacks any of the qualities that makes a good “bully villain” or rival to Marinette, and her sympathetic moments (which are Written by Sebastien) are mostly overshadowed by the fact that Astruc wants her to be a bully, so it just makes her bipolar and confusing when her character is tugged between two writers.

Chloe should not have joined Hawkmoth in Miracle Queen, see my other post as to why I think so. TLDR, its kinda ooc for her to go full on 2d villain like Hawkmoth especially after Miraculer, plus Lila was being build up to be the main antagonist of S3

Chloe got kicked from the Team in Miraculer because people know her identity? Fine. Kagami gets to be Ryuko again despite being known to Hawkmoth in Ikari Gozen? Not cool. Ladybug shouldn’t be a hypocrite and be willing to break her own rules just because “Kagami is my friend and Chloe’s not”. Same goes for her breaking the rule with secrect identities with Alya, only for her to go on and on about the rules to Chat when he pries.

Zoe is a bland character who’s only notable trait that she likes Marinette, which automatically makes her worthy of a miraculous after two episodes and no actual development.

Astruc is a petty frick who makes episodes that give the finger to fans of the show that have a different opinion than him. Queen Banana, Miracle Queen, and Reverser are good examples of this (Reverser did Nathaniel dirty).

Master Fu is a shit guardian. Read my post for more.

FRICK THE FEAST EPISODE. Not only did is ruin Fu as character, it ruined all the good theories as to why the order fell, and wasted the idea of a new villain being introduced or even taking over as the main antagonist! Speaking of Feast, despite the sentimonster destroying an order when he wasn’t even big, he still go beat by 2 kids even when he was supersized!

Marinette is not a good Guardian. Her ability to choose heroes does not make her capable, and just because “tradition is stupid” doesnt mean that Marinette shouldn’t be tested like others before her!

Despite the Kwami’s being ancient magical buildings, they seem to act like kids a lot, and that annoys me when in S1 they are supposed to apparently be mentors to their wielders, like how Tikki was before she was mentally de-aged.

Lila is trash and should be removed from the show. The only reasons her lies work is because the writers dumb down every other character in the show and ignore the fact the people have smartphones with google.

The “Miraculous” Ladybug spell should require both Ladybug and Chat Noir to cast, because not only does the power have nothing to do with creation, but it also “destroys” anything created by the akuma, which thematically makes no sense. Also it would place more emphasis on the two heroes being equals and “two halfs of the same coin”

On that note, Ladybug has too many powers. Not only is she the only one who can purify akumas, and can cast a spell that can fix Paris time and time again like its no one’s buisness, but she also now gets a new suit and the ability to nullify Hawkmoth’s akumas. Like COME ON! Give Chat some powers too.

Mayura’s feather’s shouldnt be able to be purified by Ladybug since they have no dark energy, and (thematically speaking) Chat should be given an ability that allows him to “vanquish” the energy in Mayura[’s feathers similar to how Ladybug can purify Hawkmoth’s akumas. At least it would develop a rivalry between Chat and Mayura, and would make Chat necassary against Shadowmoth rather than being replacable with any other hero.

The are too many temporary heroes. They should have just stuck with the 3 heroes from s2 and leave it at that. Sure, new heroes were cool, but the overuse has made the whole hero thing feel less special. It made sense for the first 3 to have them, but now it’s just like Oprah where everyone gets a miraculous. Except Gabe.

Chat Blanc was a stupid reason as to why secret identities cant be revealed, also Chat could have told LB who Hawkmoth once he returned back to normal was and the show would be over.

Hawkmoth should not be Gabriel. Frick the lore about Gabriel’s wife dying and him going evil to get her back, it makes the story feel too much like a star wars/Darth vader reference and leaves Gabriel acting bipolar, flipping from wanting to save his wife and doing this out of necessity to being a power hungry madman wanting to take over the world ( which is said in his canon music video). Having Hawkmoth be his own character means he can be an actual maniac who wants world domination and not just have villanous plot that rely on obtaining magical jewellery (perhaps doing other evil things/taking a more active role), while Gabriel being his own character means he can be a father that has become estranged from his son due to the lose of his S,O, and thus can have a plot about him reuniting with his son (I liked the end seen in Simon says, ok?)

On that same note, I think Mayura shouldn’t have been Nathalie. Considering Hawkmoth’s plans were repetitive as heck for most of the show, when I heard about the Mayura leaks back in Season 2 (when she was called “le Paon”) I was theorising that Mayura would actually being Hawkmoth’s boss, the villain the was responsible for giving him his Miraculous and the one who destroyed the Order of the Miraculous, and would take over as the main villain in season 3 due to Hawkmoth’s failures. However, that turned out not to be the case.

Not only that, but Mayuras power is a copy paste power with some modifications to make it complement Hawkmoth’s power, by basically giving his akuma’s magic pokemon.

Speaking of Hawkmoth’s power, for a miraculous that is supposed to be used for good, how can his power mind control people and make them become evil? More importantly, for a miraculous that is supposedly weaker than the main heroes of the show, having it be able to multiply and posses people to create an army is kinda strong.

Fuck the Maribat ship that the salt fandom came up with. Its trash, it was made to bash most of the Miraculous cast sans Marinette, and anyone thinks it is good are either those same salters or are the same people who think that Rey-lo and the Twilight Saga are masterpieces of romance.

Whew! I needed that vent. Hope you enjoyed it as as much as I did, and Tune in next time on the next episode of: Arlakos loses his Mind and Rants for 2 pages of writing!

#Miraculous Ladybug #Miraculous Ladybug Salt #Marinette salt #Adrien Salt #Everything salt #This whole show is a salt mine #Rant Time!#I love the show but I hate how its written

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sir-subpar · 2 years

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Hi! I'm a big fan of your work. I have a question about your theory on Peter being possessed by the entity...Well, it's mostly going to be questions and points I noticed in the theory

First off, since we don't know if the Entity and Peter are one in the same, Peter being possessed might not be confirmed until later, though I'll say this now: I love your theory and I do support it. Now for the other stuff

Question set 1: If Peter is conscious in his own body, and we see him shape-shifting into that one eyed pumpkin thing both in the Christmas DLC and the Valentines animation, do you think the entity is forcing Peter's body to change? Does it hurt when he transforms?

Question set 2: If Peter and the Entity are separate beings, how do you think Peter met the thing? How did it get inside him? Is it stuck there permanently?

Question set 3: If Peter is actually separated from the entity, do you think it could've shared its mind with him or something? Like, do you think Peter knows about the Eastwoods (and both Arthur and Sam) being trapped in the game? Do you think he could tell Andy what's happening, or ask the player to free the spirits or destroy the monster in his body? Is Peter self-aware?

Question set 4: Unrelated to the Peter thing, why do you think Andy is able to remember what Thomas Eastwood did? Why does the Entity say 'It's all your fault' in the Valentines day special? Are the spirits possessing everyone? Is that why Andy's friends kinda force him into the barn where something dangerous is? Like, did the spirits possess everyone that day thinking Andy WAS Thomas and they wanted revenge or something?

...Thanks for making such awesome work

Wow a lot to discuss here :)

I apologize if this is long, but I really like talking about this idea/theory/headcacnon of mine. (If future updates to the game end up disproving me, which is likely to happen, I'll just call it an AU and go ham on the concept for fun )

Thanks for the lovely in-depth ask! I don't get to theorize with people a lot, which is a shame cuz I love doing it.

Here we go! Below the cut, so that it's not too long for people who aren't interested in this and want to scroll past it

1. I headcanon that Peter's body contorting does in fact hurt, especially that weird neck twist/snap in some of those pictures.

And I can't imagine growing extra appendages or elongating previous existing ones is really comfortable (decided to make this kind of funny/angsty doodle)

2. I don't really know how exactly Peter would meet The Entity. I kind of assumed that the entity just... moved in, after Thomas & Co latched onto the other characters. Like: "Oh all the others characters are being used, what's left for me?" And then it just saw Peter and went "That works"

Or: My other idea, since pumpkins are commonly associated with things like Halloween & things that are scary, maybe the Entity looked at it from a thematic standpoint and thought Peter just worked best. The Entity is a demon(?) and Peter's a pumpkin, and maybe it just kind of fit a little too well. (Also it's unclear if the entity shapeshifted Peter to be taller or if he actually is by default 6'8, but it's something I just wanted to mention)

3. I think Peter and the entity can communicate in his mind. Kind of in that classic venom/demonic possession-type telepathy way. I headcanon that Peter is conscious most, if not all the time, but he doesn't have a lot of control over what happens.

I feel like the entity wouldn't let him help the others because this is meant to be Thomas's punishment, and it uses Peter to communicate. So I feel that Peter knows at least a bit of what's really going on, but is overall powerless to stop it. I think that even if the entity didn't fully explain to Peter what was happening, he could figure it out to some extent through context clues. (Especially since it's talking to Thomas using him, just as Thomas is using Andy to talk to The Entity)

4. I'm not entirely sure if Andy "remembers" the things Thomas does, but if he did/does, I think Thomas and Co. Can to some extent share their memories with Andy and co.

Either that, or Andy doesn't really remember what Thomas did, and "Andy's" Recollections of what happened are actually just Thomas communicating through him (like Andy saying "No, that was you!" Might actually be Thomas using Andy's body/voice.

Which to me would explain why some of the characters seem to react to all the creepy glitches

Note: Claus's nervous tone/stutter after the cutscene where Thomas kills Aurthur. It seemed really strange to me that Claus is one of the only characters who outright reacts to what happened. Like, I'm sure Andy can see it because he mentions it in the specials and what not. But I do find it interesting that Claus is one of the only other characters who seems genuinely afraid of what's happening.

I can't be the only one who heard the hesitation in his voice, right? Like, the stutter? "Here is your.. b-bonus sticker." Is kinda how it sounded to me.

Leading me to believe that certain Andy's Apple Farm characters are more affected by (and aware of) the spirits possessing/controlling/manipulating them.

I think the spirits are using Andy's friends to get to Thomas, and Thomas is using Andy as some sort of Shield.

Anyone else find it strange that Thomas just happens to be the one who possesses the protagonist of the game he made? Almost like a protagonist can't be easily removed from the game, and has some sort of plot armor keeping him there?

Now, there is a chance that the entity forced Thomas and Andy to share Andy's body, using the fact that players restart from checkpoints when they fail as a way to put Thomas into an endless loop of torment and repetition. I just want to make note of these things I noticed

#sorry if this is a bit disorganized #I just have a lot of thoughts on this and kind of just put them all down at once #aaf #aaf peter #headcanon #theory #aaf andy #aaf claus #aaf au #thanks for chatting with me #long post

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mittensmorgul · 3 years

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So for the most part, I outright reject the finale. But I do think, in light of the whole "Jimmy was supposed to be in the bar, and Dean was disappointed by that because his perfect heaven would have Cas in it" just makes me all the more convinced that the final episode was some kind of djinn dream. Like.... There's no other explanation in my opinion. If Dean's perfect heaven was supposed to have Cas, and he tragically gets faked out by Jimmy (????? Why tf would jimmy be there anyway), it just proves that it's not ACTUALLY heaven. That, along with he El Sol beer he's drinking is all the evidence I need. I think after 15x19, Dean and Sam got whammied by some monster, and are stuck in a hallucination, and that's what we're seeing. (My headcanon is that it's actually The Empty doing it, because it knows if it doesn't keep Dean and Sam occupied and spinning in circles, they'll invade the Empty to save Cas. So its trying to prevent that) :)

Hello, anon friendo! I am gonna start by offering the socially distanced version of a high five, because yeah... There is just so much to unpack here, and you provided such a succinct and all-encompassing series of statements to start from. Thank you!

*flings open array of questionable suitcases*

First off, Congrats on having rejected the finale. I know a lot of folks are still struggling with that one, for many reasons. But you have hit upon so many of the points I’ve been trying to make about the finale since it aired. I’d just like to start with some of the assumptions I’ve heard from folks about the finale that make it impossible for me to consider it fully honestly canon. Because so much about it just makes no goshdang sense... like... not at all...

One of the biggest issues I have surrounding the reception of the finale in parts of fandom is that it portrayed a “happy ending.” The show itself spent the entire final season telling us that a gravestone marked Winchester was not and never would be a happy ending (thank you Becky Rosen-- words I never thought I’d say, but honestly and most sincerely meant). Let’s break this down a bit.

Starting from the assumption that “heaven was fixed” so that characters could have true free will there, making it satisfying in any way that Dean died so young and never got to truly experience happiness during life, I would like anyone who has adopted this attitude to then explain Kansas the band. I mean... explain that in any satisfactory canon-compliant way. (hint: you can’t. it makes zero sense in canon, if heaven is truly reformed and “happy” with everyone in possession of free will.)

Which brings me to Misha’s comments about Jimmy being in the Roadhouse. Why, if heaven were truly fixed, would Jimmy ever in a bazillion years attend a party for Dean Winchester? If Heaven were truly a “happy” ending for Dean, why introduce this element of eternal tragedy and heartbreak to his heaven experience? Why taunt him with the eternal loss of Cas-- even if you don’t think he reciprocated Cas’s romantic feelings, he was canonically the best friend Dean ever had, and being forced to exist forever in a place where he had everyone else he ever cared for except for Cas? Is frankly horrific.

How the actual fuck is that a happy ending, in any sense of the word?

How is this the sort of heaven that Dean would’ve made for himself before it was “fixed?” At least in the memorex heaven, he could’ve lived in oblivious peace with Cas, even if it was always just his own memories and not ~actually Cas~. I honestly think that would’ve been happier than the abject tragedy of what we did get, and what we would’ve gotten had the original script played out.

All of this kind of makes me wonder if they ever even actually defeated Chuck. Like... it feels more like Dean got pulled into the Empty at that moment with Cas and Billie, and everything else after that point was the Empty’s endless experience of sorrow and despair we knew it subject its charges to. So that’s one potential for what could’ve actually happened. I mean, everything about the finale was sorrow and despair, you know? Dean didn’t even get to enjoy his pie at a pie festival because Sam smashed in in his face. How is any of it happy, in any way?

Because if that was actually heaven, there wasn’t actually any free will (because why tf would Kansas the band have chosen to put on that concert? why tf would Jimmy have been there, just to torment Dean with the taunt of Cas returning to him only to have that hope snatched away again? It’s cruel. It’s, in fact, a source of intense despair).

The djinn theory could also work, and I’ve read some excellent fix-it fic using that as a premise. But that doesn’t really explain what happened to Jack (and Amara, since she was in there with them) after hoovering up Chuck’s power, you know? I think the simplest explanations in canon are that Chuck actually won via the unified power of Light and Dark being transferred into Jack and effectively using him as a vessel. With Sam and Dean convinced they’d won, they effectively stopped resisting Chuck’s story for them, and using Jack’s understanding of humanity and the Winchesters specifically, Chuck finally was able to implement a version of his story that the Winchesters would just waltz into without thinking it was supernaturally influenced at all. Going bigger and bigger with monsters and cosmic troubles hadn’t worked, but going so small Sam and Dean would barely even notice the influence-- even with the incongruous reappearance of a vampire that appeared in their lives once, for like two whole minutes 15 years ago, and an unsolved case from the journal from more than 30 years ago that John had never even linked to vampires at all.

At this point, I need to mention that I’m watching 10.23 as I type this up. An episode in which we confront the Mark, along with Death, and Dean’s despair, where he learns a version of the truth (but by no means the full truth, or even accurate truth in some respects) about Chuck’s Story, Amara/The Darkness, etc. That would unfold more fully over the next five seasons. And what was the case Dean took in this episode? Vampires. LOLOL omg this show is nothing if not horrifically consistent, yes?

So because of this, I went haring off through my own blog looking for a post I made a long time ago about the symbolism of how various monsters are used on this show (because again, consistency). I got sidetracked by other posts in my monsters tag, including this from after 15.09 aired, which feels particularly awfully relevant. This was my reaction to Chuck’s Story he showed Sam in that episode, about what the future would look like should he successfully trap Chuck with a Mark, and which... yeah is basically exactly thematically consistent with what we saw in the finale, right down to a cheesy twist on vampires. Read the whole post right here, but this is the part that reached up and punched me in the face:

this is how Dean personally reacts when he loses Cas. We know how he reacts when he loses anyone else– think about what he did when Charlie died. He went on a murder rampage against the Stynes for killing her. When Mary died he broke some furniture and went full bore toward both resurrecting her and stopping Jack. But without Cas, Dean loses the will to fight. Sam has… always been different. He referenced Jess in 15.04 to remind us of how he was after she died in the pilot episode. Just like John, he picked up the revenge mission and ran with it. But for Dean, Cas is different. Without Cas… Dean gives up.

Because... Dean gave up. Sure, he and Sam weren’t overrun by vampires in the end. Chuck knew they’d never stop fighting the monsters, one way or another. The only way to get Dean to give up is something Chuck hadn’t quite figured out yet... maybe not until after 15.17, after confronting Cas in the hallway of the bunker, after absorbing Amara’s power, knowledge, and perspective on Dean.

Chuck needed Dean to give up, and honestly? Pushing Billie to clear him off the table and send him (and Cas, that pesky angel who never did what he was told) to the Empty would’ve been a direct way to deal with that... pretty much akin to having one sibling locked in a cage forever, yes?

Also, still looking through my monsters tag, I’m reminded of 14.15, and still cannot differentiate the version of Heaven in 15.20 from what was done to the people of that town. This... is not... paradise. This is actively what Dean has been insisting is the OPPOSITE of paradise since like… 4.22… No ending where Dean was a “Stepford bitch in paradise” ever had the possibility of being “happy,” at the core of things, and this “fixed” version of Heaven just doesn’t hold up to any degree of inspection. Something is seriously wrong here. https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/183465650390/so-can-we-talk-about-this-monster-of-the-week-for

And since I was unable to find the post I wrote who knows how long ago about Monsters and how they’re symbolically used on Supernatural to represent larger themes in the episode, I’ll just attempt to sum up what Vampires have been used for. Revenge. Vampires are always, in some way connected to themes of revenge.

(and hooray, I found at least a post adjacent to the one I’ve spent the last four hours trying to find... https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/187207052080/i-obviously-did-not-think-this-through, where I mention that shapeshifters are about revealing hidden truths (mostly about Dean since most shapeshifters are connected to Dean), zombies are about grief and the inability to move past it.)

So why... why at the end of their road is the monster that comes after them-- literally FOR REVENGE for something that had never been blamed on Sam or Dean to begin with, from season 1, directly connected to John’s revenge mission and the first time they learned about the Colt AND the first time they learned in canon that Vampires were even real... like... this feels very specifically like some kind of layers-of-meta levels of shade on them, you know? Vampires are for revenge, so what vengeance exactly is being visited upon Sam and Dean in this episode? If not Chuck’s entire story for them itself?

So yeah, 100% agree, something is incredibly rotten in the finale. And I am sick to effing death of people trying to convince us that anything about this was “good” or “happy” or “satisfying” in any way. Or even “how it was always supposed to end” with Dean dead bloody, as if the entire back half of the series hadn’t been suggesting that a true win was the subversion of all of Chuck’s story for them, and Dean finally being able to have his chosen family all alive, happy, and chilling on a beach somewhere watching the sunset. Nothing will ever convince me that the ending portrayed in 15.20 wasn’t exactly how Chuck thought he “won,” rendering it entirely irrelevant to the rest of canon, unless all of canon was ultimately the tragedy we’d been encouraged to believe would be firmly defeated in the end.

Folks, you can’t have it both ways.

#spn 15.20 #chuck's process #if this was the 'happy' ending for dean they sure did fail big time to make it actually happy!#it makes me feel sick thinking that dean's happy heaven ending was more like an eternal pit of torment #like actively tormenting him and taunting him with the fact that cas was truly gone forever #like wow they went all the fuck out to make it clear that even in heaven #dean would never be allowed to respond to cas's declaration of love #like... it's the most hurtful and hateful thing the show could possibly have done to us #and it still fucks me up knowing there's people who think this heaven was a 'good' ending for dean #like... fuck that entirely and with extreme prejudice #i feel like i have not been emphatic enough about my absolute hatred for this episode in these tags #but sadly there are limitations to expressing the actual feelings i'm feeling in the english language #sometimes the only effective word for these feelings involves velociraptor screeching #Anonymous

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hakasims · 4 years

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Shitty Luca Movie Recap, Episode 4

Can’t Watch Nina, Even For Luca?

Don’t Worry, Me Neither. Goodbye.

...

Ok, fine, I’ll talk about the damn thing.

So it’s a warm September night, and I’m in the mood for a Luca Marinelli feature. In my infinite wisdom I choose Nina. “It’s directed by a woman,” I reason, “and women know what’s up.” ‘What’s up’ in this particular case is code for ‘how to frame beautiful men for the female gaze’. Because women can be auteurs, too, and being an auteur means making movies about your own personal wank material.

Turns out, sometimes a woman’s wank material consists less of a gorgeous male form and more of fascist architecture. We’ll discuss the former in due time, but for now, what’s Nina even about? Well, at its core it’s a simple story about a young woman who doesn’t know what she wants, set against the backdrop of the Rome that is almost entirely empty due to most people leaving for the summer. This could have been a fairly straightforward coming-of-age film, but Nina is too indie and up its own ass for that. Literally nothing of note happens in this movie, and it’s all long static wide shots of empty streets, endless stairs, and domineering largeness of Rome’s most famous fascist buildings such as the Palace of Italian Civilization, the Sapienza University of Rome, Palazzo dei Congressi, and, most prominently, the Fountains Hall. (Google what they look like if you don’t know.) Now, I’m guessing those locations weren’t chosen by accident. They could have easily added to the creepiness of the movie — and I’m assuming creepiness was intended; otherwise how do you explain these hoverboarding nuns?

Anyway, the employment of the locations could have been atmospheric and thematic had the shots not been so bland. But they are. Bland, flat, and always looking the same no matter what is happening in the scene. Usually audiences are willing to sit through slow uneventful movies because of interesting visuals or characters worthy of attention, but Nina has neither. The titular character herself is tedious. Even her bad fashion sense is bad in a boring way that doesn’t tell you anything about her. Is she stuck in perpetual adolescence? Is she searching to get in touch with her sensuality? Who knows. The only thing I’m certain of is that she needs to learn to tuck her tops into her bottoms.

Nina spends her days giving singing lessons, going to Chinese calligraphy classes, eating cake, exercising and taking midnight walks in the empty city. She wants to go to China in September — it’s the closest thing to a goal she has — yet she’s done no preparations, and instead of learning Mandarin she’s studying calligraphy. And she’s real bad at it, too.

There are reoccurring visual elements in the movie besides the vast emptiness: stairs, white columns, a jogger, a red dress, animals… You’d think those were very straightforward symbols, but they’re used too sporadically and inconsistently to hold any meaning. For example, animals. Nina is tasked with both helping out in a pet store and house-sitting an apartment with a German shepherd (a good boy named Homer), a guinea pig and a tank full of fish. The instructions she’s given are absurd, like feeding the dog sleeping pills and putting the guinea pig on a diet. And then there’s a supposedly American TV show always playing in and out of diegesis about dogs living in cages and swimming happily in pools, and it looks and sounds like a video off the political section on the dog version of YouTube. It contains timeless classics like “You are a dog born in the age of consumerism” and “Depression is an evil illness now spreading amongst dogs of every breed, dogs belonging to every social class.” The butter commercial from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend could never. And I wish the whole movie was as surreal as this TV program but unfortunately it’s as bland and directionless as Nina herself.

And boy is it directionless. There aren’t any subplots in the movie, no cause and effect, no acts, no structure, no flow; only scenes that happen, and I can’t even find any reasons for the order in which they happen. The scenes also don’t start or end; they just interrupt each other, not leaving any emotional impact. For example, there’s a scene where Nina sees her future self. She’s on one of those midnight walks with the good boy Homer when she sees a couple being romantic. The woman is wearing a long red dress, and the man is in all black. The shot is wide, so it’s impossible to see their faces, but the woman is obviously Nina:

And the man is definitely Luca. I recognized his ass. I’m not joking, guys. It’s his ass:

Also I was later directed to the website of the photographer who took the set photos, and yes, it’s Nina and Luca.

I never forget an ass.

Anyway, Nina, who at this point hasn’t properly met Luca’s character, Fabrizio, sees herself from the future acting romantic with him, and doesn’t react. We don’t even know if she recognizes herself or him or whether it’s even a real scene or a dream. How are we supposed to empathize with a heroine who isn’t allowed to react to her environment?

Whatever, it’s time to talk about Fabrizio. He plays the cello and he’s obnoxious. That’s it. He first appears as a patron of Caffé Palombini, the real-world café Nina frequents (and buys her cakes at). She’s drinking her usual milk shake and reading. At some point, their eyes meet, but neither says anything, and then Nina gets up and runs after the good boy Homer who decided to take a little stroll by himself. She leaves all her things behind: her milk shake, her handbag, at least three books, a whole stack of paper for calligraphy, and her diary. It’s obvious she’s going to come back as soon as she gets the dog. And yet before her feet are even out of frame, Fabrizio gets up, goes to her table and fucking steals her diary!

His next several appearances are random and sporadic, and it looks like he’s stalking Nina, but by the time of his first actual scene she is following him for some reason. Obviously, he can’t let a woman outcreep him, so he ambushes her:

He tells her blankly, “You’re following me,” but I think this scene deserves better dialogue. Thankfully, we have a whole well of predator/maiden media to pull from.

Though I personally believe this is the most appropriate line:

Fabrizio lets Nina know he has her diary in the dickiest way possible: he quotes from it to let her know that he’s read it. He then informs her that he’ll only give it back to her if she continues following him. And it’s not blackmail; “it’s an agreement.” What an asshole! I’m weeping for the dignified cuckoldry of Joseph.

And what was the purpose of that “agreement” plot point if the next time they meet is by chance? Quirky love interest writing, duh. So quirky that the accidental meeting happens when Nina is walking past a phone booth where Fabrizio is… doing a phone prank? I don’t know, I got nothing. Anyway, he’s annoyed their meeting is unintentional on Nina’s part, but he returns her diary, and I guess they start dating? He watches her sing once with what could only be described as a complete absence of emotions:

In the next scene she watches him play the cello after which they go on a date. Nina is wearing the red dress from the vision, but Fabrizio’s shirt is different. I fucking give up.

Their next (second?) date is a romantic dinner on Nina’s roof, and they’re dancing for entirely too long. She then tells him she’s scared of how much she’s enjoying his company, gives him a ridiculously chaste kiss goodnight and… completely ghosts him afterwards. And if you didn’t dislike Fabrizio before, you will now as he starts calling Nina at ungodly hours (including 5:30 am) and leaving her very whiny and increasingly more passive-aggressive, entitled, and accusatory voicemails. At some point he even leaves a voicemail for the fucking dog! He’s like, “Homer, I’m worried, meet me at the café.” Again, quirky love interest writing: extortion, phone pranks and a voicemail for a dog.

Fabrizio then lets Nina know he’ll be leaving town in three days in case she’d like to see him one last time or whatever. And she never fucking does! In any other movie she’d be chasing through the airport, but here she just drops him like he’s a well-tucked shirt! She tells the kid she’s befriended (she hangs out with an eleven-year-old boy the whole movie, don’t worry about it) that she’s afraid to be “like everyone else”, with a job and a boyfriend, so she doesn’t even say goodbye to Fabrizio. At some point she goes for a walk with the good boy Homer, and Fabrizio is also there, and they just miss each other. Even fate isn’t interested in that romance.

And then all the fascist buildings get covered in gigantic paper figurines, and the red-dressed Nina runs into Fabrizio’s arms. Because of course.

Nina is one of those movies where the main theme — a struggle to grow up — is obvious, but the rest of the elements are a mess only the writer-director could decipher. And I don’t really care. Again, I had to read Japanese postmodernists at university. What I do care about is the male form I mentioned at the start. I know I have no one but myself to blame for my expectations of how the director should have framed Luca’s body or face, but it’s one thing to frame him blandly and a completely different thing to isolate him as the only character (or actor) she’s deeply uninterested in filming competently. Everyone else in the movie gets their fair share of close-ups and decent lighting whilst Luca — whose name is literally second in the credits — gets, um, neglected.

This is his introduction:

These are literally all his close-ups:

Should I even count this last one? What’s with the lighting? Like, this is as well-lit as his face gets:

Oh, the shot is too wide and you can’t see his face properly? Well, tough poop:

Are you kidding me with this shit?

Nina may not be objectively the most terrible of the movies Luca’s been in: I’d argue both Mary of Nazareth and L’ultimo terrestre are worse, as is Slam, whose time’s a-coming. Nor is it the movie where Luca appears the least (The Great Beauty’s literal one minute of screen time is saying hi). But it’s the only movie I have no reasons to watch: it’s blandly shot, poorly structured, badly themed — and it’s actively obstructing Luca’s beauty and charisma. So no matter which film you’ll ask me to do next, at least in terms of the visual component of my posts, we have nowhere to go but up.

#luca marinelli #nina #nina 2012 #sh*tty luca movie recap

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c-is-for-circinate · 3 years

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I'd love to hear more of your thoughts about why P5R didn't quite land for you. I had the same reaction to it, but I've never quite been able to properly articulate why the last section fell so flat.

God okay so I've tried several times to answer this, and it seems like the answer is 'I still have way too many feelings, personally, to say this in anything less than thirty pages and fifteen hours of work', because Persona 5 the original is a game I loved a lot and care about a great deal. And most of the reasons I disliked Royal feel, in my head, like a list of ways it broke some of the things I liked best about P5--which means explaining them feels like I need to explain everything I loved about the original game, which is a book in itself, complete with referents to P3, P4, Jungian psychology, the Joseph Campbell mytharc, and fuck all even knows what. And that is too much.

But today I realized that I could instead describe it from an angle of, Persona 5 Strikers succeeds really well at doing the thing I think Royal was trying to do but failed at. And that I think I can talk about in a reasonable amount of wordspace, hopefully, behind this cut because I have at least one friend who hasn't played Royal yet.

Note for reblogs/comments: I HAVE NOT FINISHED STRIKERS YET. I got through the jail that pretended to be the final jail and have not yet gone into the obviously inevitable 'ohshit wait, you mean there's something more than simple human machinations behind all of this?' dungeon. (I got stuck on a really frustrating side quest, put the game down, and then dived into Hades to avoid throwing the Switch across the room for a while--and anyone around this blog lately knows how THAT'S been going.) Please no spoilers past Okinawa!

So, one of the many, many things I really appreciated about Persona 5 was its straightforward and unashamed attitude towards abusers and their acts of violence. Because, while yes P5 is a story about the use of power and control to make others suffer, it fundamentally isn't about those abusers themselves. It's about their victims, those that survive their crimes. And this shows up repeatedly over the course of the game.

We do not give a shit why Kamoshida wanted to beat and rape his students. We really don't. Kamoshida does not deserve our attention one moment longer than it takes to make him stop. Because, ultimately, that's the goal of P5, start to end. We don't know for sure if what we're doing is fair, if it's justice, if it's questionable. What we know is that people are being hurt, badly, actively, right now this second. What we know is that victims are suffering. What we know is that we, personally, us-the-protag and us the Phantom Thieves at large, are in danger. And in those circumstances, we don't care about the abuser's side any more. We don't. We don't have the space or time or capacity to care, because that is not the point.

The point is to help the weak. To save the people who need saving, right here and now. To give others the courage to stand up on their own behalf. We're not even out to change society, not really--that's a byproduct. We are reactions. We are triage. We are important.

There's something so empowering and validating about that as a theme, y'know? In a media landscape so full of "sympathetic villains", the idea that, you know, maybe sometimes you don't have to break yourself to show compassion that might possibly heal the bad guy--that sometimes you can just make the bad guy stop hurting people--feels both refreshing and satisfying. I really appreciate it as a message! I liked it a lot!

And yes, there's nuance to that theme, and the game is not without compassion. We save Futaba, because 'make the bad guy stop hurting people', in that case, means 'make this person stop hurting herself'. We give Sae a path forwards, help her fix her own heart. Yet it's worth pointing out that in both of those cases, while we were very glad to do those things, to save those people, we also went into both of those palaces for extremely practical reasons to begin with. We needed Futaba's help. We needed Sae's help. The fact that we chose to talk Sae into a change of heart rather than simply stealing her treasure, while ultimately a very good thing for her, was absolutely a practical choice predicated on the need for her palace to still exist to save our life. And yes, we wanted to save her, for Makoto's sake--yes, we wanted desperately to save Futaba. But Sae and Futaba let themselves be helped, too, and that doesn't change the overarching themes of the story itself.

Akechi (and to some extent Okumura) would not let himself be helped. Akechi's another interesting nuance to this theme, because of all our villains, we do learn the most about what drove him to the cruelties and crimes he's committed. He's at that intersection of victim and villain, and we want to help him, as a victim--but we also know that stopping him as a villain is more important. We'd like to save him from himself if we could, because we save people from their sources of trauma, it's what we do. We regret being unable to do so. But in the end, what matters to the story is not that Akechi refused to be saved--it's that Shido and Yaldabaoth need to be stopped, for the sakes of everyone else they're hurting now and may continue to hurt in the future.

The thing is, there's space and maybe even a need for a corollary discussion of those places where victim and villain intersect. It's an interesting, pertinent, and related topic. Strikers made an entire video game about it, a really good video game. It's centered in the idea that, yes, these people need to be stopped, and we will make stopping them our priority--but they're not going after us, and that gives us some space to sympathize. Even for Konoe, who specifically targets the Phantom Thieves--compare him to Shido, who actively destroyed the lives of both Joker and Futaba, who ordered Haru's father's death, who's the entire reason the team is still dealing with the trauma of Akechi's everything. Of course the game can be sympathetic to Konoe where it can't with Shido. There's enough distance to do that.

But right--Strikers is a separate game. It's a separate conversation. It's, "last time, we talked about that, so now let's take it one step further." And that's good writing. (It's something Persona has done before, too, also really well! Persona 3 is about terrible, occasionally-suicidal depression and grief. P4 is about how you can still be hurting and need some help and therapy even if things seem ok. Related ideas, but separate conversations that need to be separate in order to be respectful and do justice to either one. P5, as a follow-up to P4, is a conversation about how, ok, changing yourself is great and all, but sometimes the problem is other people so how do you deal with that? Again, still related! Still pertinent! Still alluded to in P4, with Adachi's whole thing--but it wasn't the time or place to base a quarter of the game around it.)

So one of Royal's biggest issues, to me, is that it tries to tack on this whole new angle for discussion onto a game that was originally about something else.

Adding Maruki's palace--adding it at the end, which by narrative laws suggests that it's the true point that everything else should be building up to--suddenly adds in about a hundred new dimensions at once. It wants us to engage with "what in this abuser/manipulator's life led him to act this way?" for basically the first time all game (we'll get to Akechi later). It wants us to engage with, "if the manipulator has a really good reason or good intentions, does that mean we should forgive them?" It requires us to reflect on, "what is the difference between control and cruelty?" It asks, "okay, but if people could be controlled into being happy, would that be okay?" (Which, based on the game so far, is actually a wild out-there hypothetical! Literally not a single thing we've seen in the game suggests that could ever happen. Even the people who think being controlled is safer and easier are miserable under it. Control that's able to lead to actual happiness is completely out of left field in the context of everything we've encountered all game so far.)

That's too much! We don't have time to unpack all that! We only have an eighth of the game left! Not to mention we are also being asked to bring back questions we put to bed much earlier in the game about the morality of our own actions, in a wholely unsatisfying way. Maruki attempts to justify his mass brainwashing because "it's the same as what you're doing", and we know it isn't, but the game didn't need Maruki calling it out in order for us to get that. We already faced that question when we started changing hearts, and again several times throughout the game, and again when we found our targets in Yaldabaoth's cells. The fact that we change hearts does not mean we think "changing hearts is fine and kind and should be done to everyone, actually." Changing hearts has been firmly established in this game as an act of violence, acceptable only because it prevents further systemic violence against innocents that we must prevent. The moral question has never once been about whether it's ok to change the hearts of the innocent, only about how far it's ethical to go against individuals who are actively hurting other people. Saying "you punched that guy to keep him from shooting a child, so punching people is good and I will save the world by punching everyone!" is confusing! and weird! and not actually at all helpful to the question of, how much violence is it acceptable to use to protect others! So presenting the question that way just falls really flat.

(And right, I love Strikers, because Strikers has time to unpack all that. Strikers can give us a main bad guy who wants to control the whole world for everybody's own good, because Strikers has earned that thematic climax. It has given us sympathetic bad guys who started out wanting to control the world to protect themselves and ended up going too far. It's given us Mariko Hyodo, who wanted to control the world to protect other people and went too far. It's given us a long-running thread about police, the desire to serve, and the abuse of power that can lead to. And since we are actively trying to care for the people whose hearts we're changing in Strikers, we can open the door to questions about using changes-of-heart and that level of control to make other people happy. We can even get a satisfying conclusion out of that discussion, because we have space to characterize the difference--Konoe thinks that changing peoples' hearts means confining them, but the Phantom Thieves think it means setting them free. We have seen enough sympathetic villains that we as an audience have had the space to figure out how we feel about that, and to understand the game's perspective of "stop them AND save them, if we can possibly do both." And that message STILL rests firmly on Persona 5's message of "it is Good to do what you have to do to stop an abuser so long as you don't catch innocent people in your crossfire.")

It's worth noting that the general problem of 'asking way too many new questions and then not answering them' also applies to how Royal treats its characters, too. P5 did have unanswered questions left at the end! The biggest one, and we all knew this, was Akechi, and what actually happened to him, and how we should feel about him, and how he felt about us. That was ripe for exploring in our bonus semester, and to Royal's credit they did in fact try to bring it up, but by god did they fuck up doing it.

Akechi's probable death in the boiler room was absolutely the biggest dangling mystery of the game. It was an off-screen apparent death of a key antagonist, so all of the narrative rules we know suggested that he might still be alive and would probably come back if the story went on for long enough. So when Royal brings him back on Christmas Eve, hey, great! Question answered. Except that the situation is immediately too good to be true, and immediately leads to another mystery, which leads to a flat suspicion that something must be wrong. We spend several hours of gameplay getting sly hints that, oooh, maybe he's not really alive after all, before it's finally confirmed by Maruki: yup, he really died, if we end the illusion we'll kill him too. Okay, at least we know now. Akechi is alive right now and he's going to be dead if we do this, and that doesn't make a ton of sense because every other undead person disappeared when the person who wished for them realized they were fake but at this point we'll take it. So we take down Maruki, and okay, Akechi really is dead! Probably! We're fairly sure! Aside from our lingering doubts!

And then we catch a glimpse of maybe-probably-could be him through the train window, and I just want to throw something, because come on.

Look, it is just a fact of storytelling: the more times you make an audience ask 'wait, is this character dead or aren't they?', the less they will care, until three or four reversals later you will be hard pressed to find anybody who gives a shit. Royal does this like four different times, and every iteration comes with even less certainty than the last. By the end, we somehow know even less than we did when we started! Did Akechi survive the boiler room to begin with and Maruki just didn't know? Or was Maruki lying to try and manipulate us further? Or was he actually dead and then his strength of will when Maruki's reality dissolved was enough to let him survive after all? Is that even actually him out the train window?

Where is he going! What is he doing! How did any of this happen! What is going on! We all had these questions about Akechi at the end of the original P5, and the kicker is that Royal pretends like it's going to answer them only to go LOL JK NO. It's frustrating and it's dissatisfying and it annoys me.

The one Akechi question that Royal doesn't even bother to ask, though, let alone leave ambiguous, is how does the protagonist feel about him? The entire emotional weight of the third semester rests on the protagonist caring about Akechi, Sumire, and Maruki. Maruki's the person we're supposed to sympathize with even as we try to stop him. Sumire's the person we're trying to save from herself. And Akechi is our bait--is, we are told, the one thing our protagonist wished for enough to actualize it in this world himself. Akechi's the final lure to accept Maruki's deal. Akechi's survival is meant to be tempting.

For firm Akechi fans, this probably worked out fine--the game wanted to insist that the protagonist cared for Akechi the same way the player did. For those of us who're a little more ambivalent, though (or for the many and valid people who hated him), this is a super sour note. Look, one of the Persona series' strengths is the way it lets players choose to put their time and emotional investment into an array of different characters, so the main story still has weight even if there's a couple you don't care about that much. It has always done this. The one exception, from P3 all the way through P4 to here and now, is Nanako Dojima, and by god she earned that distinction. I have never met a person who played Persona 4 who didn't love Nanako. Nanako is a neglected six-year-old child who is brave and strong enough to take care of herself and all of the housework but who still tries not to cry when her dad abandons her again and lights up like the sun when we spare her even the tiniest bit of time and attention. It is impossible not to care for Nanako. Goro Akechi is not Nanako.

And yet third semester Royal doesn't make sense if your protagonist doesn't feel linked to Akechi. The one question, out of all the brand new questions Royal throws out there, that it decides to answer all by itself--and it's how you as a player and your protagonist ought to feel about an extremely complex and controversial character. What the fuck, Royal. What the fuck.

In conclusion, I'll leave you with this. I played the original Persona 5 in March and April of 2017, as an American, a few months after the 2016 election and into the term of our then president. It felt painfully timely. A quick calendar google early on indicated that the game's 20XX was almost certainly 2016, and the closer our plot got to the in-game November leadup to an election destined to be dominated by a foul and charming man full of corruption and buoyed up by his own cult of personality, the more I wanted to laugh/cry. It felt timely. It felt important. It felt right.

I went through Royal (in LP form on youtube, not having a platform to play it on) in summer of 2020, with a hook full of face masks by my front door and protests about racial tension and local policing that occasionally turned into not-quite-riots close enough to hear at night if I opened the windows of my apartment. The parts of the game that I remembered felt as prescient and meaningful as ever, if not even more so. The new parts felt baffling. Every single evil in the game felt utterly, painfully real, from the opening moments of police brutality to the idea of a country led by a guy who probably would use his secret illegitimate teenage son as a magical assassin if the opportunity presented itself and he thought he could get away with it. Yaldabaoth as the cumulative despair of an entire population who just wanted somebody to take over and make things be okay--yes, yes, god, in summer of 2020? With streets full of people refusing to wear masks and streets full of people desperate for change? Of course. Of course that holy grail of safety should be enticing. Of course it should be terrifying.

And then Maruki. Maruki, who was just so far outside the scope of anything I could relate to the rest of the game or my own life. Because every single other villain in the rest of Persona is real. From the petty pandering principal to the human-trafficking mob boss. The corrupt politicians and the manmade god of cultural desire for stability. And this game was trying to tell me that the very biggest threat of all of them, the thing that was worse than the collective force of all society agreeing to let this happen because succumbing was easier than fighting back--that the very biggest threat of all was that the world could be taken over by some random nobody's misguided attempts to help?

No. Fuck no. I don't buy it. Because god, yes, I have seen the pain and damage done on a tiny and personal and very real level by the tight-fisted control of someone trying to help, it never looked like this. Not some ascended god of a bad therapist. All the threats to the world, and that's the one I'm supposed to take seriously? This one man is more of a threat than the fundamental human willingness to be controlled?

Sorry, but no. Not for me. Not in this game. Not in this real-life cyberpunk dystopian apocalypse.

#c plays persona #driveby meta attack #p5 royal spoilers #p5 strikers spoilers #holy crap I did it #I actually wrote a semicoherent essay of a length I'm willing to put on Tumblr #about my problems with this game #I have been trying on and off for MONTHS #I wanted to like Royal SO BADLY #it makes me SO UPSET #anyway #now back to your regularly scheduled Hades blogging #asked and answered #Anonymous

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pluto-art · 4 years

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PatB Fan Fiction - Rain

Type: Hurt/Comfort Rating: PG (for thematic elements) Summary: After a harrowing experience, Pinky must find a temporary caretaker for Brain. But L.A. is a big city, and he’s just a small mouse. Will he ever be able to find anyone...?

This is a shameful self-insert. I did this just for myself originally, then got to a point where any desire to finish it simply... dissipated. My super sweet friend @shuunthenonbeliever, however, encouraged me to keep going, and I’m glad she did because I feel better about it being complete, even though I don’t consider this my best work by any means. Other friends seemed to like it, though, so here it is for your viewing pleasure, albeit on Tumblr only. I’m too embarrassed to put another self-insert up on FF.net. Heh.

“Hurry, Pinky! Grab onto the rope!”

“I… I can’t reach it, Brain!”

“Then grab onto me! Come on!”

“I can’t, Brain! You’ll fall!”

“No, I won’t! Grab onto me and I’ll fling you up!!”

“But, Brain…!”

“NOW, PINKY!!!”

He took a deep breath… and jumped…

… and Brain caught him. Pinky smiled up at him.

“You caught me!”

Brain smiled at him. Of course he caught him. As if he wouldn’t.

But the support was breaking. Brain glanced up at his handhold and frowned worriedly. There was no time. He stared deeply into those brilliant blue eyes one more time -- the last time….

“Pinky…?”

“Yes, Brain?”

“...... I love you.”

And with all the strength he could muster, he flung Pinky back up onto the rafters before losing his grip and tumbling down to earth, many yards below.

“Brain!!” Pinky yelled after him, but already his cohort had disappeared into the blackness, leaving not even a scream to trail after him.

Pinky was already climbing down the rafters and to the base of the dilapidated building as fast as his lanky legs could carry him. As it was, he was forced to take the stairs, and it took him ten minutes to reach the bottom. When he got to its base, he found what he was looking for.

There at the end, on the bottom of the stairwell, lay a little snow white body, broken, bruised, and bleeding. The lankier mouse ran up to him, equally fearing what he’d see up close and unable to resist the magnetic pull that slid him ever closer to what was once his friend.

“B-Brain…?”

He received no answer. Neither would he ever receive an answer, or so screamed the unfortunate predicament that lay, unblinking and motionless, before him.

Pinky’s hands shook as he turned the little mouse right-side up… and gasped.

Brain’s left arm stuck out at an odd angle, as did both of his legs, undoubtedly broken. His mouth hung slightly open in a silent scream, and there was deep bruising along the side on which he was currently lying. The back of his head was bleeding a little, and his eyes were closed. Had it not been for the very light, unsteady, pulsating rise and fall of his chest, Pinky would have thought he was dead.

“Oh, Brain…,” Pinky breathed out, kneeling down on the gravel-coated floor, ignoring the way the rocks bit into his skin, and reaching out a shaky paw to cup Brain’s hand in his.

He gulped and felt for a heartbeat, just to be sure. Yes. Amazingly, he was still alive.

“Don’t worry, Brain,” Pinky whispered, swallowing thickly as he bit back the tears that threatened to fall. Already a few drops had managed to push their way past the dam to plunge into Brain’s ruffled fur. “I’ll get you some help. I promise!”

With the utmost tenderness, he slowly, gently, picked Brain up bridal style and carried him out of the building, out into the cold night air, and down a lonely city street peppered here and there with dusty yellow lights that cast their ghostly glow upon the hard pavement.

On and on he walked, uncertain as to where he was or how to get back to the lab, passing sushi restaurants, parlors, numerous salons, and the occasional gym, before finally reaching a set of apartment buildings with a huge sign in front of them labeled ‘The Terraces’. It was here that he rested for a moment, catching his breath proper as he sat Brain down on the dirty pavement. He arched his aching back, grimacing as he rubbed at it in an attempt to quell its screams. Brain was light to carry, at least for short distances, but he’d been walking for a good forty-five minutes with little pause in his search and he was tired.

After checking in on Brain to make sure that he was still breathing, he picked him up again. Brain hadn’t awakened the entire trip, and only now did he groan a little. Pinky suspected his friend would be groaning a lot more very soon, as it had, most unfortunately, started to rain.

Pinky’s ears drooped. He started to sniff. He tried to smile and whistle and talk to himself, or to Brain, like he’d been doing most of the trek, in an attempt to distract himself and keep from falling down an equally deep emotional pit, but this time he was losing the battle. He was cold, he was wet, he was tired, and, at this point, he was desperate; desperate for help.

“Help…,” he whimpered, voice barely more than a whisper. “Help me….”

He looked around for an awning; a thick enough tree to hide under; anything. His gaze settled on the cars in the apartment parking lot. He ran towards them, Brain nestled securely in his arms, choosing the nearest vehicle -- a little white Beetle -- to duck under. He shivered there, grateful to be out from under the rain, and readjusted his hold on Brain, pulling him a little closer as he did so, the better to nuzzle him gently, securely.

Two minutes later, he heard footsteps. They shuffled out from one of the apartment doors nearby, drawing closer, ever closer….

Of all the cars, they picked the one Pinky was under to unlock and open. The owner, a young woman by the sound of her voice, dug around in the car, muttering to herself as she searched for… something. Finally, she located it.

“There you are. Sheesh,” she exhaled, slamming the car door shut and locking it.

“N-Narf…?” Pinky queried, not terribly loudly, but vocal enough that it gave the girl pause.

She looked around, puzzled. Had she just heard a… narf?

“Hello…?” she asked confusedly, looking around.

“H-Hello?” a small voice replied, as Pinky stepped closer to the girl while still staying under the car. He didn’t want to get wetter than he already was.

The girl continued to look around curiously, although the voice sounded as if it was coming from under the… car. She bent down and looked underneath. Sure enough.

“Oh. Hello. What are you doing under there?” she asked kindly.

“Please, can you help us? I-It’s my friend, h-h-he’s…,” Pinky trailed off, teeth chattering a little, whether from the cold or his own emotions he couldn’t tell, and he held out Brain for her to see.

The girl went wide-eyed.

“Oh…. Oh, my goodness. May I see him…?”

Brain might have said Pinky was too trusting, and perhaps he was. His next decision wasn’t exactly the smartest one. Nevertheless, he passed Brain over to her without hesitation, a worried expression on his face as he strained to keep an eye on his friend.

She cupped the mouse gently in one hand, taking care not to shift any of his limbs as best she could. The poor little creature was in a pitiful state. His breathing was labored, and his eyes remained firmly shut. When she lightly stroked the back of his head, her fingers came out crimson.

“You poor baby,” she cooed. “What happened to you?”

“Can you fix him??” Pinky whimpered, a most desperate look on his face indeed. His paws were clasped together in a silent plea, hoping, begging.

“We’ll have to get him to a vet. Can you come along with him?”

“Yes, please!” Pinky exclaimed, mouth upturning in a hopeful grin.

“All right. Let me go get my things, okay? Here. Hold him for just a second.”

And she carefully returned the big-headed mouse to his friend, rushing back inside her apartment before coming out two minutes later, backpack in hand.

She unlocked the car door before holding out her hand to the lanky mouse.

“Okay. Come on up. Let’s go.”

And Pinky hopped in her hand, Brain still bundled in his arms, and allowed her to delicately deposit him in the passenger’s seat. They were much too small for the seatbelt to be of much use, so she drove slowly, making sure to warn him now and again when they took a particularly tight turn, and occasionally looking over at them to see if they were all right. Pinky never once loosened his grip on Brain, holding him as securely as he dared in light of his broken limbs, and now and again nuzzling him gently, or else whispering comforting words into his ear.

“It’s all right, Brain. We’re going to get you to a hospital, okay? You’ll be alright, Brain. I promise.”

Pinky wasn’t sure whether or not Brain could hear him, but he spoke to him anyway. He figured Brain would appreciate it either way.

They finally arrived at the emergency vet’s office, wasting no time in rushing up to the receptionist’s desk (as quickly as they could without hurting Brain any further, that is) and stating their urgent request. The receptionist groaned with sympathy at seeing the white mouse’s terribly broken up and bruised little body, and she called for a veterinarian immediately. Not long after, only two minutes after they’d sat down in the patient’s room to wait, the hospital door opened and out came the vet. He looked Brain over sadly.

“So, I can save him, but it’s going to take a couple hours. And it’s going to cost you a little….”

He gave out the figures, which the girl agreed to, albeit a little hesitantly. She’d have to work out a payment plan or something to afford this. Not that it wasn’t worth it. She motioned to Pinky to let Brain go.

“You’ll have to give him to the doctor, okay?”

Pinky nodded, stared up at the doctor nervously, looking from him to Brain and back again, then nuzzled Brain one last time before offering him up to the vet.

“It’ll be alright, Brain,” he whispered, lip trembling. “You’ll see.”

“We’ll take care of him,” the vet reassured him, before shuffling off into the back room, Brain in hand, as Pinky waved to his friend, misty gaze following him until the last.

-------

Pinky kept checking the clock. 8:35. 8:54. 9:01….

And he kept looking at the girl, his expression thickly coated in worry. She held him close, rocking him back and forth and petting him gently.

“It’s okay. It’ll be okay,” she reassured him, unable to keep a light hitch out of her voice.

9:23.

Despite the lateness of the hour, the occasional person would pop in with an emergency. One lady rushed in a little after the 9:00 hour mark, a twitching cat in her arms as it convulsed in a seizure fit. Another visitor, an older gentleman, arrived close to 10:00 PM with a Spaniel who was having breathing issues. Pinky felt for every single one of them. They weren’t Brain, but they were still someone with a friend who was hurt, just like him.

The vet didn’t return until 10:18 PM. In his hands he delicately carried a very limp, heavily bandaged up Brain. But he was breathing, and he wasn’t coated in blood anymore, save for a little spotting here or there.

“He’ll be alright,” said the vet, looking tired as all get out as he handed the little white mouse into Pinky’s outstretched arms. “But he’ll need a lot of care.”

He handed the girl a packet of gauze and tape, along with three pages worth of instructions, their fronts and backs detailing what medication to give him and when, how to address an open wound, what to do in case of an emergency, among other things. She gave it all a cursory read through as the doctor continued doling out information.

“He won’t be on his feet for probably another couple of months or so, so you’ll have to watch him like a hawk and make sure he’s, you know, comfortable and taking all his medication. Make sure he takes all of it or he’s not going to heal as fast. It’s… not the tastiest stuff, so you might have to mix it with applesauce or something pliable that he can easily swallow. Also, there’s a slight possibility he might suffer minor blindness in one eye, but it shouldn’t be a problem. Let me know if it is, though, okay?”

“I will. Thank you so much,” the girl answered, swallowing to relieve her dry throat. This was gonna be pricey….

“If you go to the reception desk Julie will talk with you about the bill. I wish your little guy a speedy recovery.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

Pinky hardly heard any of it. He’d been too busy nuzzling Brain, talking to him softly, letting him know that everything would be okay now and that he’d be back on his feet in no time.

The girl sighed, stood up, offered her hand to Pinky, who stepped onto it carefully, Brain still securely in his arms, and walked up to the receptionist’s desk.

“Hey. Everything go alright?” the woman named Julie asked.

The girl nodded.

“He did a great job,” she added.

“He always does. He’s one of our best vets on staff,” Julie said. “Okay, so…. Let me get your bill printed out….”

-------

The girl stared out her window, a little dazed, as she drove down the main road that led to her apartment. Pinky sat on the passenger’s side, Brain cradled gently in his arms. He kept nodding off, almost falling over onto the seat before jerking awake, internally (and sometimes outwardly) berating himself for letting the Sandman get to him, only for the process to repeat all over again.

The girl looked over at him sympathetically now and again. She also threw a shady glance at the vet bill in the driver’s side pocket every few minutes. $850 wasn’t the most she’d ever paid for an animal, but it wasn’t the least either, and that didn’t even cover the cost of medication. Little butt had tacked on an additional expense to her already high rent, but she couldn’t complain much. She’d offered her hand. Then again, what else was she supposed to do? Refuse? With the state that poor mouse was in, she could never have left that on her conscience.

Ten minutes later, they arrived at the complex. It took another two minutes to gently carry the two mice into her apartment, and another fifteen to get everything properly set up for them -- food, water, a small cat-like bed that was just the right size for a rodent, and warm blankets. She was grateful she’d kept that bed after her last rat had passed away. Came in handy.

Pinky cuddled up close to Brain, one arm wrapped around him as Brain slept soundly. He hadn’t woken up once in the last several hours. Pinky was beginning to wonder if he’d ever wake up.

“By the way, what’s your name?” the girl asked.

“Hmm..? O-Oh. Pinky!” Pinky said, struggling harder than ever to stay awake. “And this is my friend, the Brain.”

“The Brain…?” the girl repeated. Pinky nodded. “What a funny name.”

“That’s his name,” Pinky replied, actually looking a little miffed.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” the girl smiled. “It’s okay. My name is Key, by the way.”

“Hello, Key. Thank you for helping Brain,” Pinky replied gratefully.

“Don’t thank me. Thank the doctor. He saved him.”

“Thank you, Doctor!” Pinky called out into the nether, a genuine smile plastered on his face.

“Go ahead and get some rest, okay?” said Key, tucking their little blanket more snuggly about them. Already Pinky was beginning to doze off again. Barely a minute after being nestled in he began to snore, his head propped against his friend.

The girl sighed as she gazed sadly at the one called Brain.

“Boy, is he not gonna be happy when he wakes up….”

-------

The first thing he noticed was the pain. Pain in his legs. Pain in his hips. Pain in his side. And he had a throbbing headache to boot. What in the name of Isaac Newton…?

Brain groaned and blinked his eyes open… and went wide-eyed. The last thing he remembered was Pinky, and something about a rope, and falling…. Now he was in a room, in an apartment from the looks of it, in a little rat-sized cat bed propped on a small green couch, a couch, moreover, that was directly in front of a decorated little pine table and a roaring fireplace.

He looked about the room surreptitiously. Two stockings, one big and one small, were hung over the fireplace. A dainty bowl of candies -- mints, chocolates, and sugary treats -- sat ready and waiting upon a red and white doily on the table, along with a couple of thick books and a complementary planter of wildflowers. “O, Holy Night” played somewhere in the background and, completing the set, was a lingering scent of peppermint. It tip-toed up to Brain’s nose and tickled it, causing him to wiggle it a little. As he wiggled his nose, however, he suddenly realized that he couldn’t wiggle much else. From head to toe he was covered in bandages. This made it quite difficult to get the suddenly biting itch that nipped at his back, especially since moving in general wasn’t the most pleasant sensation at the moment. Even worse, Pinky was noticeably absent. That just would not do.

“Pinky...?” he called out. No answer. “Pinky! Pinky, come here at once!”

The last time he’d seen him was at the top of some rafters in a dilapidated building. The look on his comrade’s face as he fell was not something he’d soon forget. Despite it all, he couldn’t help but yell out a demand the first chance he got. He was so used to it.

There was still no answer, however; at least, not at first. Brain actually dared to let out a small whimper, but quickly stifled it as he heard a light shuffling from somewhere below and behind him. It came closer… and closer….

“Pinky…??”

“Brain?”

“Pinky…?! Is that you??”

The sound of scratched upholstery could be heard as someone clawed their way up the base of the couch, finally peeking over the top to smile at Brain.

“PINKY!!”

“Brain!!” Pinky exclaimed, practically flying up over the edge and rushing towards Brain, encasing him in a one-squeeze-too-tight embrace. “Oh, Brain! I thought you’d never wake up!”

“Ahhh! P-Pinky! M-My… my legs!”

He meant to say “My side!”, but everything hurt at the moment anyway, so he figured it was no big deal. Just as long as it got him to stop with the squeezing.

“Oh! I’m so sorry, Brain!” Pinky apologized, and he truly was as he set a rather teary-eyed Brain back down again, gingerly. Whether the tears were from happiness or pain, he couldn’t tell.

They were, in fact, from both, but Brain would never tell Pinky that. Instead, he kindly accepted Pinky’s apology and voiced how good it was to see him again, something he 100% meant. He could take the physical pain, regardless of how annoying it was. Never seeing Pinky again, however, was something he didn’t think he could handle.

“Oh, it’s so good to see you up and about again, Brain! You know, when you fell alllll the way down I thought you were going to smash into vanilla pudding!”

“All the way down…? Oh…. H-How long was I out?” Brain asked worriedly.

“Not too long, Brain. Key took you to the doctor and he patched you up right as rain!”

“Who…?”

“Who who, Brain?”

“Who ‘Key’. Who is Key??”

“Oh! Right. You haven’t met her yet! She’s the one I found who helped take you to the doctor. This is her apartment, Brain.”

He looked around it again. Only now did he catch a whiff of chicken cooking in the oven and wondered why he hadn’t noticed it before.

“Where is she?”

“Out shopping at the moment. I think she went to buy more egg hog?”

“I think you mean eggnog, Pinky.”

“Oh! Right. Nya-ha-ha! Narf!”

“Might I ask: How long will I bet in these unsightly rags?”

“Well, that’s not a very nice thing to say, now is it, Brain? It’s clearly toilet paper!”

“Wrong again, my friend. This is gauze and I assume I’ll be in it for some time. What did the doctor say about how long it would take me to heal?”

“Oh, umm… nine months, I think?” Pinky wondered, scratching his head.

“Nine months?!”

“No no! Maybe… nine weeks? Ahhh. I can’t remember, Brain! I’m sorry!”

“Perhaps my questions would be better served once your human friend returns from her shopping excursion. In the meantime, might I ask a… favor of you, Pinky?”

“Of course, Brain!”

“My back has been itching up a storm for the last five minutes, and if I don’t get immediate relief I think I’m going to hurl something.”

“Right-o, Brain! Let me go get the scratcher!”

“No need for that, my friend. Your own two paws will do fine.”

Pinky sufficed as best he could, despite the bandages hindering his work somewhat. Brain melted into the sweet relief as Pinky lightly clawed at the middle of his friend’s back for half a minute.

“How’s that, Brain?”

“Much better,” Brain sighed, rolling his shoulders a little in an effort to release some of the tension stored there over the past… who knew how long. “Thank you, Pinky.”

“Anytime, Brain!” Pinky beamed, saluting him and bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet.

Come to think of it, Brain wondered, Pinky had been a bit more bouncy than usual these past few minutes. He was constantly on his tippy-toes and had wrung his paws once or twice, not in a nervous way, but more in an anticipatory way, as if he couldn’t wait to be next in line to ride the bumper cars.

“Is there… something you want to tell me, Pinky?”

Pinky nodded eagerly.

“Yes, Brain! Umm… umm….”

“Yeeeees?”

Odd for Pinky to be in trepidation about a matter. Usually, he was so forthright.

“Well, I… I was wondering, if… you…”

But at that moment, the door opened, and in popped who Brain could only assume was Key. She was laden down with four bags of groceries, all of which she somehow managed to carry on her arms into the apartment. The girl was bundled up in a thick sweater, red mittens, and shoes rimmed with fake fur, and a leaf or two stuck to her poofy black hair, which Brain could only describe as an absolute rat’s nest of a mess.

“Sorry I’m late! The crowds were absolutely ridiculous,” she puffed, setting everything down in the kitchen in a huff before closing the front door, locking it, and proceeding to de-shoe herself.

“Oh, that’s okay!” Pinky piped up happily. “Look who’s awake!”

“Hmm?”

Key looked over at the couch… and smiled as she saw Brain sitting there, his little legs stuck out like a stiff doll, arms crossed as he gave her a judgy look-over. He’d have something to say about that hair if he wasn’t so grateful, not to mention the oven. The fact that she’d left the chicken cooking under Pinky’s supervision was cause for questioning, although he supposed that if she was daft enough to leave a mouse in charge of the apartment it wasn’t much of a stretch to suppose she’d also let him handle the cooking.

“Well, good morning,” she said pleasantly, offering Brain a warm smile. “Nice to see you’re finally up!”

“Good morning, indeed. You know your chicken is probably overdone?” he offered as a reprimand, one eyebrow cocked at her suspiciously. How typical that Pinky would lead them right to the house of a dodo. Birds of a feather….

“Dude, I put it on for an hour. It should be f-.... Oh, shoot,” the girl exclaimed, turning off the oven quickly as she realized it had gone thirty minutes over. She quickly pulled out the chicken, letting out a low groan in the process. “Well… it’s not… entirely unsalvageable?”

“Hmph. I’m sure,” Brain huffed, rolling his eyes.

“Please don’t get upset, Brain,” Pinky begged, looking hurt. “Look! She got you your favorite!”

And, jumping to the floor, he tossed something up onto the couch. It landed right next to Brain. He looked at it and swallowed thickly. It was a packet of dark roast coffee.

“Yes, I… I do like that…,” he admitted, ears reddening a little.

“You’re welcome,” Key smirked sarcastically, waving away the heat from the chicken and setting it on top of the stove to cool. “Butt..,” she muttered under her breath.

“What was that?” snapped Brain, glaring.

“Nothing,” Key said, smiling.

Brain narrowed his eyes at her, but said nothing. Pinky chuckled.

-------

The next few weeks was a time of unpleasant adjustment for the diminutive megalomaniac. Having gotten used to enacting feats of world domination how he wanted, when he wanted, and pretty much wherever he wanted, it was to his great dissatisfaction that all he could do was plot and plan and, well, not much else. Being waited on hand and foot wasn’t exactly his idea of a life of luxury. For one whose mind was constantly in motion, being a mouse of action was his modus operandi, and although he’d expected to certainly have servants and waiters and the like once he finally wore that oh-so-delicious crown of authority, he still wanted to at least… walk around and travel and do stuff. As it stood, he could barely write down his thoughts on paper for more than ten minutes before his arm started to hurt, and even feeding himself was a bit of a chore for at least the first week. The pure mortification was almost unbearable.

“If I have to live like this for the rest of my life I might as well just jump off a cliff right now!” he complained on the fifth evening, as he lay cradled in the crook of Key’s left arm like a baby.

She’d been spoon-feeding him chicken noodle soup, much to the pleasure of Pinky, who “awww”-ed and coo-ed at Brain’s darling state, now and again offering to take over in case Key got too tired. She’d happily oblige just to humor him, not to mention… it was rather funny.

“It’s okay, Brain. You’ll be back on your feet soon! Zort! Promise!” Pinky reminded him helpfully.

“Come on, man. It’s just for a week! You only have two more days of this and then we can move on to solids, and then you can even feed yourself! You can hold on for a few more days,” Key complained right back.

“I refuse to be treated like some sort of… infant! As your future world leader, I demand you unhand me immediately!”

“Uh-huh. Shut up and eat your soup,” she chuckled.

And he couldn’t help but oblige, at least for one more bite. He was hungry….

-------

Pinky’s role around the apartment over the next several weeks could only be described as one thing: U-PN -- Practical Nurse to Brain (the ‘U’ was for ‘Unofficial’). No. Scratch that. He was worse.

Helping him occasionally get down from the couch or pour orange juice into a thimble was one thing; constantly checking on him every five minutes, insisting that he refrain from surfing the tv stations by himself so as “not to damage his precious fingers”, and asking him if he wanted a story before bedtime every… single… night was a bit… excessive. Yet serve him Pinky did, and he did it well; a little too well….

Brain wasn’t allowed to eat solids unless they were cut up properly, Pinky would argue, and even his notorious stubbornness wouldn’t stop his pesky cagemate from getting him to swallow even the most disgusting of medication on his “get well” list. Brain knew it was all for his own good, and that Pinky was simply being kind and caring, but it was starting to get on his nerves. At least he appreciated one thing: the scratches. No matter where he itched, Pinky was always at the ready to relieve him of it. The meals were better, too. Key made sure of that.

Their host was another factor that somewhat annoyed Brain. She and Pinky were both at the ready to ensure his comfortability, and while she didn’t coo over him as much in words, she was almost worse in execution. It wasn’t difficult to tell that she enjoyed babying him, and he hated it. At least, he hated it most of the time.

Nightmares seemed to be a common occurrence for Brain post-incident, and even after a solid month of adjustments, in which every manner of making him more comfortable was explored, he still had trouble drifting off some nights. Sleeping pills were the only thing that worked, and those he considered a last resort, as they tended to give him a throbbing headache the morning after.

One one particular night, he found himself being attacked particularly badly. It was a shame that Key had awoken instead of Pinky. At least with Pinky he could sometimes console him enough to make him believe that everything was all right. Key, on the other hand, wouldn’t hear of it. Such was the case this night. Before he’d even awoken, she’d already picked him up in both hands and was now rubbing his trembling body gently in an attempt to rescue him from whatever pit he’d fallen into this time. He woke with a start.

“AH! Wh-... What?! Where am I?!?” he blundered, a wild look in his eyes as he stared this way and that. It had been so real that time. He could almost feel his legs breaking all over again.

“Hey. Shhhh. Shhh. It’s okay. It’s just me,” whispered a silent voice from somewhere over his head. He looked up and sighed. But of course.

“Oh, save your pity,” Brain groaned, deliberately choosing not to look at her.

“You were hurting,” was her delicate reply.

“Nothing I can’t handle. Oh, please, leave me be,” he retorted, eyes firmly fixed on the little bed he shared with Pinky… and on his friend himself. Key’s hands were warm, but not as warm as Pinky.

Key sighed.

“Come here, little one.”

And onto her bed she crawled, careful not to move Brain about too strenuously, finally taking a comfortable sitting position against the backboard and, as usual, cradling Brain in her arm.

“This is really not necessary,” he grumbled, arms crossed indignantly, only for them to untense a little as she began to massage his cranium.

His head bandages had come off a couple of weeks ago, but he still needed to be careful, as did they. He wasn’t supposed to make any sudden movements, and if the bleeding was to start up again they were to call the vet immediately. However, no bleeding had occurred in some time, and Brain did take precautions when moving about, so Pinky was allowed to pat him on the head every now and then.

But this was the first time he’d gotten a massage -- not just a head massage, but a full on body massage. She rubbed out the aches in his back, took care to address every single one of his fingers, scritched him behind the ears, and kneaded his cranium as tenderly and lovingly as if he’d paid for it. He practically melted into the touch, forgetting all about his nightmares, at least for a moment, and didn’t even bother to hide the smile now curling about his face.

After a solid fifteen minutes, she halted in her pampering. Brain looked up at her with pleading eyes, almost as if in offense.

“Don’t stop…,” he mumbled sadly.

Key simply smiled at him, bent over, and kissed the top of his head. He winced before looking up at her in surprise.

“I do have to go to bed, unfortunately, and so do you.”

She deposited him next to Pinky, who immediately turned over and subconsciously scooped Brain up into his arms, bringing him closer to him as he chuckled in his sleep, a goofy grin dancing about his lips. Brain rolled his eyes, but didn’t try to escape from the hold either. It was Pinky. What could ya’ do?

He stared up at Key one more time as she tickled him behind the ears.

“Thank you,” he coughed out, a bit embarrassed.

“Of course, little one. No charge. It’s on the house,” Key said, winking at him before retiring to her own bed.

The day after proceeded quite regularly. Pinky saw to his every need, as usual. Brain jotted down notes and plans, as usual. And Key massaged him again that night, which became usual. He wasn’t complaining. They were nice.

One strange thing that Brain couldn’t understand was Pinky’s embarrassment regarding a particular subject, whatever that subject even was. Since his first week back from the emergency clinic, Pinky had tried to ask him something, but was always either interrupted, self-conscious about it, or, more often than not, would simply forget that he even wanted to ask Brain a question at all. Only once a week he’d try, and always at the most awkward of times.

“Hey, Brain…?” Pinky queried one day, just moments after they’d woken up one morning.

“Yes, P-P-Pinky?” Brained answered, unable to stifle a yawn. “What is it?”

“Um… I was wondering if… you-”

But then Key would wake up, blotting out Pinky’s courage entirely, and he’d proceed to go about the rest of the day normally, as if nothing had happened. Despite his infrequency in bringing it up, after eight weeks Brain had started to get annoyed. He was considering pulling Pinky aside during what he knew would be a private, uninterrupted moment and asking him flat out what was on his mind, but he hadn’t felt it quite pertinent or disturbing enough to bring up yet.

Another thing that bothered Brain was the bills. On a Tuesday afternoon, while Key was at work, he unintentionally came across a vet bill she’d left on a table -- the very same one she’d been handed after Brain’s surgery. $850.00. Brain gulped. He knew the bill had probably been high, but he didn’t think she would have been forced to pay that much. Suddenly, he felt rather guilty for having called her a “hopeless sap” the other day. Not that she wasn’t, but… his ears laid flat all the same.

That evening, as she flopped onto the couch, noticeably upset about one thing or another, Brain attempted to crawl up onto her lap, as best he could anyway, which, in reality, meant that he couldn’t at all. A trained hand reached down, picked him up, and plopped him on her legs, but she said nothing otherwise, eyes intently fixed on the tv screen in front of her as she flipped through channels.

“Um…,” he began, clearing his throat self-consciously. Still, she refused to look at him. “So, um, h-how about those apples?”

Key cocked an eyebrow at him.

“What about them?”

“Well, they’re, um… getting a bit old and… malleable, if you haven’t noticed.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes.

“I’ll get more tomorrow. I ain’t going back out there right after I just shopped. No way.”

Brain bit his lip. Perhaps he’d been a bit too harsh lately. She had opened her place to them, after all, and fed them, not to mention was paying the vet bills, the price of which she hadn’t even told Brain about. Come to think of it, he couldn’t recall ever thanking her for… any of it.

He shuffled his feet. Acting as comforter wasn’t exactly his forte. That was Pinky’s job. He briefly considered calling him over for assistance, but Pinky was currently wrapping Christmas gifts for Brain, and he’d rather not interrupt him. So a solo venture it was.

“Hey, look, I’m… sorry.”

“It’s fine. I appreciate you bringing the apples to my attention.”

“No, I mean… I’m sorry for… neglecting to show my appreciation for your… services.”

That pulled her attention away from National Geographic. She stared at him questioningly.

“What I mean to say is, I….” He sighed exasperatedly. “Thank you.” And he flopped onto his butt, back facing her resolutely.

He cupped his cheek in his paw, feeling ridiculous and somewhat frustrated with himself, emotions he expected to feel after admitting all of this. What he didn’t expect was for two hands to lift him up into the air and pull him close to Key’s chest as she wrapped him in a soft hug, petting the back of his head gently as she did so.

“You’re welcome,” she whispered tearfully. “Thank you.”

Brain gulped and patted her chest awkwardly. He always felt so out of his element in these situations, but he supposed he was partially to blame for this one coming about. If he’d just thanked her earlier he could have avoided all these… emotions.

After a minute, she pulled him back to look at him properly.

“Hey, I’m… sorry if I’ve ever embarrassed you, or made you feel too dependent or uncomfortable or anything. I know I’ve called you a butt before, but I really do care about you.”

Brain stared down at her hands in which he sat, ears wilting a little as he swallowed thickly.

“Yes. Well…. I… probably deserved those comments,” he muttered.

“Yeah, you did,” Key chuckled. “Hey…,” and with a finger, she tilted his chin up a little. “Don’t forget that you’re loved, okay?”

Brain swallowed again. He didn’t know what to say to that, and so simply nodded, thanked her, and waited until he was lowered back down to the floor before heading to the back bedroom. He needed to get his mind off this sappy stuff and work on more important things. Climbing up a little make-shift ladder that Key had made for him so as he could easily access their little mouse bed at the top of the bedside table, he grabbed a little notepad and pencil off the table, sat down in the bed, and began to write down notes for his next plan, losing track of his mind only once in a while as images of Pinky smiling at him and being massaged danced into his head.

-------

Christmas Day ended up being a quiet affair, save for the occasional yelp and squeal of delight as Pinky unwrapped a present he’d been given. Key had bought him a little yellow doll’s scarf for those windy winter days, and Brain had gifted him a paint-by-numbers kit. He’d also gotten a big block of cheddar cheese and the complete collection of Gilligan’s Island. In true Pinky fashion, he loved them all. What Brain unwrapped was a bit more practical: a set of notepads and pens from Key, along with his own tiny red scarf -- the occasional nights he spent up late, working diligently and shivering his butt off, hadn’t gone unnoticed. Pinky had given him a drawing of Brain on top of the world, as well as a Frank Sinatra CD. Brain suspected Key had actually bought the CD, but he knew Pinky had done the drawing with his own two paws. Privately, he cherished it more than any other gift. Key herself had also been given a cute drawing from Pinky. Brain had given her a book on self care. She laughed at this.

Plenty of cookies and milk, Christmas dinner and a movie, and even a light sprinkling of rain later, and they found themselves heading off to bed at the end of a warm, satisfying day. Pinky curled up next to Brain in bed, as usual, his favorite marker from his paint-by-numbers kit and the little scarf wrapped in his arms lovingly. Brain placed the drawing Pinky had done on his side of the bed. He smiled at it as he slowly closed his eyes, ready to drift off into what he hoped would be a peaceful, nightmare-less sleep for once. But Pinky had other plans.

Brain opened an eye as he felt a hand gently shake his shoulder.

“Brain…? Are you awake?” Pinky whispered.

Brain rolled over to face his companion.

“Yes, Pinky? What is it?”

“Um…. About that thing… I wanted to ask you…,” he began, twisting his tail this way and that.

“Yes..?” Brain asked, opening his eyes a little wider. Perhaps he’d actually hear his inquiry all the way through this time. For once, Pinky hadn’t popped the question at an inopportune moment -- Key was already fast asleep, there were no tv game shows or shopping trips to distract him this time, and he seemed more determined to press forward.

“Do you… still love me, Brain?”

Brain cocked an eyebrow.

“Come again?”

“When you were falling, back in the house, you said… you loved me. Did you mean it, Brain?”

Brain wracked his memory, trying to think back to that unpleasant evening. Had he really said such a thing out loud? The whole incident was so muddled with various bits of panicked thoughts and last minute decisions that it was hard separating fact from fiction. Surely, he wouldn’t have admitted something so personal in front of Pinky? It was the one thing he could never bring himself to say. He’d rather die than admit it. But he was about to die then. That moment he’d looked into Pinky’s shining blue eyes, grasp steadily slipping, he knew he’d never see that face again. And as he dug deep into his memories, equally willing himself to remember and terrified of what he might find, he recalled three little words -- three little words he’d uttered to his lackey, his cohort, his friend -- before succumbing to this fate: “I love you”.

Brain went wide-eyed at the recollection and stared, open-mouthed, at Pinky, who looked right back at him sadly, anticipatingly. Brain sighed and hung his head. Well… the cat was out of the bag now. Not that it hadn’t been for some time. He was quite sure Pinky knew the answer, and was simply asking out of surprise that Brain had, for once, said it out loud.

“Brain…?”

With some effort, Brain looked back up, squarely into Pinky’s eyes, took hold of one of his paws, and said, firmly and genuinely:

“Yes, Pinky. Yes, I do.”

And he said it with a smile.

Pinky beamed.

“Oh, Brain!” And he scooped Brain up into a bone-crushing hug. “I love you, too!!”

“Nnnn! Yes, my friend, now… would you please unhand me?” Brain choked.

“Oh! Sorry, Brain! Narf!” Pinky said, setting Brain down, that goofy smile still plastered on his face. “Good night, Brain.” And with that, he settled back down into bed.

With a sigh and a shake of the head, Brain nestled back under the covers himself, grateful that Key hadn’t been awake to hear any of this.

As he stared once more at the colorful drawing by their bed, his back to Pinky, he felt a pair of arms scoop him up into a warm embrace. His ear twitched as Pinky’s warm breath tickled it.

“Thank you, Brain,” Pinky whispered, and from his tone alone Brain could tell that he was smiling. “I love you.”

Brain couldn’t help but smile back, even though Pinky couldn’t see it.

“And I you, my friend. And I you.”

-----------------------

Author’s Notes:

This was originally written as a pure self-insert just for the heck of it, but the more I wrote it the less invested in the story I got. I was on the verge of abandoning it entirely, but my sweet friend Shuun encouraged me to keep going with it. While I’m still not satisfied with the result, I’m also glad she nudged me to continue on with it, as I feel better having finished it. The further into it I wandered, the more I realized that this was really about the connection between Brain and Pinky, and closing that “I love you” gap.

Speaking of which, I really jumped back and forth between leaving the “I love you” in or taking it out. Like Maurice LaMarche, Brain’s voice actor, I’m a firm supporter in the belief that Brain would rather die than admit that he loves Pinky, and this has been proven in the show. He simply will not say it. Nevertheless, Mr. LaMarche has, on at least one occasion, said “I love you” to Pinky/Rob Paulsen while in-character as the Brain, so even though it’s not technically canon, I took liberties here based on that. Ha.

The paint-by-numbers book that Brain gifts to Pinky was inspired by this fan fiction piece, in which Brain admires Pinky’s painting skills: Canvas of Life

Thanks for reading my embarrassing, shameful self-insert. Lol.

#fan fiction #pinky and the brain #tw:blood

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cyclogenesis · 3 years

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director's commentary for 'got a feeling that i'm going under' - especially the relationship bucky has with sam's family, and the scene with sam getting hurt.

Oh man, Got a feeling that I'm going under, the fic into which I put every single emotion I ever had. The idea came from the most fantastically random source - many years ago while chatficcing porn with a friend we were writing a 5SOS Harry Potter AU (yes, I deeply miss having someone to chatfic out my worst id garbage with) and I wrote a bit where I used the phrase "like being split open in reverse" about magical wound-healing. The image always stuck with me, and one evening I was thinking about Bucky Barnes, and what his whole fucking deal is, and the idea for the first scene popped into my head. The accelerated healing factor of super soldiers is so interesting to me, and we've seen so little about it - but like with any injury, it helps a hell of a lot if you set the bone/close the wound/etc. first.

I'm always interested in how Bucky went from sniper twink to the guy pitching himself off a motorcycle headfirst at another super soldier; that dude has gotten reckless as hell with his body! So he for sure gets hurt a lot, and I doubt that he was tended to with much care when he was the Winter Soldier, so I imagine he's gotten used to seeing to his own injuries while in the field, probably to the point of feeling awkward about someone else checking on him now. Thus: Local Man, 106, Really Trying to Go to Bed Still Bleeding, Realizes Horrified Partner.

I started writing it sometime after episode 3 or 4 (taking it on faith that the show was gonna have a HEA), initially because the other thing I was working on was taking too long to get to the porn, so I thought I'd write a one scene 4k or so little thing where Sam tends to Bucky's wounds, and they're tucked close in a motel bathroom and, you know, then they fuck, good for them. But then I was really enjoying the tension of that scene, and then I thought about artistically carved magical wounds, and things escalated.

Honestly, my usual approach to any fic is "write enough story to earn the sex scene", so that's sort of what I was doing, but in the way where I kept complaining to my friends that I was trying to get to the porn, but I just kept writing all these feelings. (I think at this point, with this pairing at least, I have to admit that I also always want to write enough story to make it clear that even if they don't say so in the fic, they are absolutely in love with each other.)

I was really struggling with how to finish out the first kiss scene, because I really wanted to get to the porn, but it was just kind of a logistical pickle. It took awhile to occur to me that I didn't have to write about the first time they have sex, which was mind-blowing as that's almost always what I write. Once I realized that, I also realized that (at this point, after the high of the show's ending) I desperately wanted to write a little established relationship for them.

So a kitchen injury to continue the theme was kind of a gimme, and having Bucky cooking dinner at Sam and Sarah's felt like it went right along with how clearly Bucky is part of their family now per ep 6, and would thus be comfortable enough there after awhile to cook in their kitchen (though he still wants to do a good job!). Plus the kids clearly adore him, and I think AJ's still at the age where he'd openly be more dazzled by Bucky and thus eager to help him do whatever. Indulge me in breaking down the following bit, because it's one of my favorite parts:

“I’m fine,” Bucky says again, looking at the stove as if it might betray him and his carefully constructed soup if he gets out of its sightline. “It just needs to simmer for five more minutes.” (Still trying to refuse help, but he'll get there, bless him! Also though he's put a lot of effort into becoming a good cook, he still doesn't entirely trust recipes and gets a little nervous when four other people are depending on him to be fed.)

Sarah, having already assessed the scene and identified what needs to be done, retrieves a wooden spoon from the drawer and pokes Bucky with it. “I got it, go.” (I love the mental image of the wooden spoon poke. Like first of all yes, jab the man, but also it shows quickly that in Sarah's mind at this point Bucky is basically her brother-in-law. 😭!!)

“The salad is looking good,” AJ reports to everyone. (Children are small insane people that still require attention and validation even when someone else is literally bleeding! Love that for them, sincerely.)

“It’s gonna be a great salad, buddy!” Bucky says to him over his shoulder as Sam directs him to the first floor bathroom. (But like, Bucky is so good with kids. He's happy to validate AJ and appreciates his help! He wants to help AJ grow up to be a good man and men these days have to know how to cook! 🥺)

Bucky is out here and he's ready to be a Barnes-Wilson (or a Wilson-Barnes. Or a Wilson. He's flexible)!!

And now the last scene, man, the last scene. Like the rest of this fic, it was absolutely not planned ahead of time in any reasonable way. Let me be super honest here: I ran across a Tumblr post that was basically like "fics where Sam takes care of Bucky are stupid garbage and so are the people who write them" (loosely paraphrased) and I was like OH FUCK this fic is thematically wrong and I Am The Problem, and after brooding about that for probably longer than I should have I realized, relatedly and fortunately, that the only way it made sense to end this fic was to flip the theme on its head and have Sam get injured and Bucky have to look after him. And how Bucky would freak out and become immediately invested in doing everything he can to make sure he can take care of Sam in every way forever. From there I sat down and wrote out the last scene pretty quickly!

I always get the most nervous about endings, so I'm really glad people enjoyed this one. I was pretty in my feelings after posting this fic, considering that I hadn't written a story since 2018, it was my first one for this pairing, it's a real stylistic switch from my past uh few decades of work, I hadn't written for a media fandom with a ton of canon in one thousand years, the central theme was magical wound-healing (?!), etc. The response to it was an extremely pleasant surprise and something I'm still grappling with as I've continued to write in this fandom. I hope someday I can write something else that connects with people the way this one did!

#1000-directions #asks #holy fuck i wrote an awful lot about this fic hahaha ha ha #thank you for asking!!

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sepublic · 3 years

Text

The Old West and Pig Baby Car!

I love Kez, she’s… SUCH a weird, chilled-out, unusually-attracted-to-anything little ding-bell! With her head constantly in the clouds and always sparkling like there’s stars obscuring her eyes… And her simplistic yet incredibly expressive design, those two beady eyes that as said, go stare into FOREVER…! And how she’s a remorseless disaster magnet and a weirdo who’s always vibing and on some weird wavelength that’s hard to understand, but once you get it, you get it!

Let me say it again, I ADORE how this show takes advantage of its premise and setting to always do something NEW with the characters, and I love how we’re building up to a conflict of Kez’s past enemies teaming up to get revenge! That seems to be a theme of this season so far, teamwork, coming together, etc., how ironic that collaboration is going to be a danger to the dynamic duo as well! Kez’s weird, clumsy, forgetful, and overall just… MOOD, and way of talk- I love her, I love her voice, she’s amazing! Also, I halfway called it with the sheriff caterpillar metamorphosizing… But into the judge, THAT I did not expect!

Also, it seems that in this world, only THREE things are constant- Death, Taxes, and Samantha the Cat! When I saw her I legit deadpanned my expression, but c’mon, we all saw it coming, and honestly she’s such a reassuring part of this show, in a sense; We know she’s always there and we can always count on her to be present, she’s SEEN some stuff and she’s a veteran in a sense! Weird thought, but could one say that Samantha is the true protagonist of the show, and the show is about her watching various passengers and their messes?

Perhaps a final book for the show would’ve had Samantha as the primary denizen, to round things up and cap it all off… Either way, I love seeing her differing roles and how she’s handled in each book- First as this unusual enemy and ally, then as a brief obstacle/cameo, then with emotional resonance and guilt and backstory… And it seems so far here, mostly just a cameo and an ally! It’s neat, I love seeing how Samantha’s story, brief as it may be sometimes, is handled in each book! Who knows, maybe Samantha is writing the books, and that’s why they’re called that! Now I’m waiting for Randall to show up…

And also, that GAG and cut to Samantha instantly flipping on a (literal) dime for money, even if she’s also collaborating with Kez, was hilarious and so wonderfully expressive of her character in a nutshell, even for veterans who’ve already SEEN her like this! Seems she hasn’t changed much, but with how she seemingly betrayed people, only with the plan to come back… Makes you wonder if that’s what she intended for her and Simon in that Cardboard Box Car with Ghom, only for Grace to inadvertently sidetrack things? Oh god, that’s dark- The idea that Grace unknowingly ruined things between Samantha and Simon, and that plays into Samantha disliking her… But at the same time, she doesn’t seem to hold things against Grace for it, so probably not.

But oof, that’d just play into Simon’s accusations of Grace ‘ruining’ him, while Grace wants to save and help others like with those kids in the Apex or Hazel, only to misunderstand… The concept of retroactive revelations to characters and thematic foreshadowing, SO GOOD, and it’s making me appreciate more this concept of a Book that takes place in the past, to establish additional context for previous and even later characters, perhaps!

Also, just… The colors, the zany hijinx and ideas, the premise for each car, the denizens- They’re all so wonderful and unique, and I applaud the crew for their creativity, for never letting things get old… Each car is such a fun place to get stuck in, well most of them… Pig Baby was unusual, and I can see what Owen was referencing with that one pig tweet! I think there’s a clever pun to be made in the way the numbers sync, almost like a duet for music… The motifs, man!

The jabs at post-war American cuisine were hilarious, and Ryan man… I’m glad to see him learn to cool down; But unfortunately, Min thinks it’s ONLY Ryan, and he doesn’t realize he has to collaborate as well! And I like that… This idea of like; Two people are both contributing to this mess equally, you can’t just pin the blame on one, and they BOTH have to make concessions and work together! It’s a contrast to Book 3, in that it seems Ryan and Min are actually slated to work things out, VS Simon and Grace… With Grace recognizing how the two of them screwed each other up, but Simon refusing to admit his fault! Duet then forms a duality with Cult of the Conductor, one about the downfall, the other about two reconciling… Hopefully, we’ll see later down the line.

It’s definitely going to be a hard pill for Min to swallow, that he also has stake in this issue- I wonder if he’s under this impression that… He’s more ‘mature’ than Ryan, and as a result, he doesn’t want to confront his part in the situation? Though to be fair, it could just be a matter of circumstance; Ryan was the first to have a puzzle dealing with his own fault, and Ryan was the one who got them on, so it makes sense that Min assumes it’s Ryan’s issue! But dang… I felt for Ryan at the end, I feel like he’s just incredibly lonely himself and desiring positive attention, to feel validated; Whilst Min sort of feels validated? At the very least, I don’t think it’s as much of an issue for him, whilst with Ryan he has to compete with his siblings…

Hopefully Ryan will be able to find that sort of positive attention, while also still respecting Min’s boundaries and his own needs as a person; Min can’t just attend to his every need, the way the Cow Creamer does for Pig Baby! Also, another random thought, but Kez’s very lax, go-with-the-flow attitude… Honestly, it kind of reminds me of like, the kind of partners that Ryan had, before he went back to Min maybe? I dunno, I recognize that Kez definitely has huge stoner vibes, and a hypothetical Human Kez in an AU seems like the type of person Ryan would’ve encountered… Hitching a ride, taking his van and thanking him, but not being THAT grateful, lol.

Nevertheless, that’s one stop- Onto the next one! And as Kez reminds us so importantly, it’s not JUST about the destination, but the journey… I’m glad to see Min be self-aware of the need to apply lessons here the way Lake was, and I bet this whole ‘journey and destination’ mentality might apply to Ryan’s whole thing of travelling around and doing performances! We’ll see… Next stop, passengers!

#infinity train #infinity train spoilers #infinity train book 4 spoilers #infinity train book 4 #infinity train duet #infinity train ryan #ryan akagi #infinity train min #min-gi park #infinity train kez #infinity train samantha #infinity train the cat #analysis #speculation

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brucespringsteen · 3 years

Text

thoughts on western stars (song) that are acquiring mold in my brain still:

right at the beginning with the narrator (a washed up rhinestone cowboy) boots being filled “instead of empty in the whispering grasses down the five at forest lawn” addresses the very american celebrity disneyland concept of death.. most of the album feels like a meditation on mortality. i used to call western stars the bookend to born to run and springsteen on broadway as fulfilling that theme, but i think letter to you expanded upon it outside of the personal aging experience into the collective one...

the exit in a blaze of glory is bullshit quote from born to run reappears thematically throughout western stars and blurs the line from when the aging cowboy is talking or bruce as an aging rockstar refusing to become a relic..or even ourselves trying to find meaning in where we are. i think the reference to forest lawn in western stars was just to drive the point home of that kind of sun-dried fame but i can’t help but wonder if bruce was also thinking of john denver’s satirical song about it, and its use of the hymn “rock of ages cleft for me” ...which bruce pasted into letter to you’s ‘last man standing.’ who’s narrator, similarly like the one in western stars, reminisces on his heyday and holds onto its meaning to give him purpose in present time. its this way of using the past to come full circle than be stuck in it..which i cant imagine the difficulty of doing at 70 when im 22 and its hard enough 😐 (as for bruces use of “rock of ages” i think the point is to be humbled everytime you fall and look to a higher power to lift you up. whether thats god or rock n roll. which are the same in springsteenology)

i love how bruce sings the line near the end of western stars “tonight the riders on sunset are smothered in the santa ana winds” which i bet is just one of his songwriting coincidences, but could be a nod to one of his 1973 wordy western-inspired ballads ‘santa ana,’ which although is more musically than lyrically sophisticated, it also grapples with death, youthful romanticism, and is arguably the first song where bruce explored the west to capture these themes. ‘santa ana’ waited for bruces songwriting to sharpen into desert songs like ‘promised land,’ the imagery in tom joad, devils and dust, and everything in western stars. compare the outlook of the narrator of ‘promised land’ when he sets out on the road next to the narrator of ‘western stars’... there’s hope in both songs, but the storm the guy in promised land is bracing himself for gave him the hard won wisdom in western stars..which proves it was worth it. this kind of reflection is what happens in racing in the street or drive fast fall hard like at least the choice was our own 🚶‍♂️

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aotopmha · 4 years

Text

Notes on an early scan of chapter 134:

-I'm really not sure how to treat Historia's plot thread at this point.

This made it pretty clear that Historia's pregnancy is probably very real, but at the same time it's still framed in suspicious ways. We still don't see any of her thoughts or any substantial answers to what is going on with her. It is still very much an unresolved mystery and I hold back my judgement in that sense.

I've said before that I don't see many ways (or any at all) in which the story could resolve Historia's character arc in a satisfactory way with the pregnancy being real; aside from being a gay-coded character that never showed any romantic interest in dudes before this, I feel she would never potentially doom anyone to a role they did not choose because since she was young she was pushed to play roles herself.

Perhaps this is the point, she is once again being forced into a role by the world and this time she is also forced do so with another life; perhaps her arc ends with the SL defeating Eren and creating at least some solution that doesn't need the Titan cycle anymore. Historia and her child would be safe to live as they want beyond it.

Perhaps it is something else entirely. I'm treating it as a separate thing because I think it, by nature, contradicts the series' themes. One of the ideas the story explores is disrupting the hurtful status quo, but pushing a gay character into a hetero box is the exact opposite of that and so is playing into the broken system the character initially rejected, even if it is supposed to be the tragedy of her character.

My biggest pet peeve with a story is when it is thematically inconsistent and right now the only inconsistency in terms of ideas in the story to me is Historia's character arc in this final arc. How I will see the story by its end considering the possible flaws in the writing of her character will ultimately pan out once everything about her is revealed.

So for right now I'm putting it in a separate box.

I'm in for the long haul because I think the story has been really strong despite the problems I have with it.

Will I be able to look past the flaws or will this ending stretch ultimately ruin the story for me? We'll see.

I think I'll always treasure the high points of the story, though. So I think no matter what, I'll never completely abandon it, lay out my likes and dislikes, sure, but I think it has been strong enough to stay in my heart no matter what comes in this final stretch.

Moving on from this box, then, other than the Historia moment, I actually feel like there wasn't much else to talk about in this chapter.

This is probably the first chapter in forever I felt emulated chapter 46/63/73 in that it was very low on actually new information.

The plane crew pulling it together and finally deciding to take action and take the huge Titan down is a rewarding cliffhanger, the spectacle is excellent and as expected the allied fleet is defeated easily, as a destroyed small hope as I expected, too, but there really isn't much for me to sink my teeth in.

There is the beginnings of understanding with the Marleyan soldier, Isayama does this perspective thing quite a bit by occasionally having some no names express their ideas.

He did it in chapter 14 with the citizens of Rose and Shina talking about Eren's power before his trial, he did it with the citizens in the Orvud attack in chapter 67-68. He has done it with Marley with the people talking about the Middle Eastern boy Ramsey and the varying reactions from Paradis people as the walls collapsed on them. He uses fodder as mouthpieces quite often and often also makes their perspectives more complex with further elaboration from actual characters. So I think the solution to everything will contain that idea, but will be a little bit more nuanced than that.

I've seen people say that the story is dragging a while now, but I've never felt it, to me some of the chapters even actually didn't get the breathing room they needed, but now I'm really feeling the story spinning its wheels.

The point of the speech to me is that mistreatment of people causes them to develop hatred towards the other side in return, so the solution is to, at some point, look past of it. It's the standard hatred creates more hatred idea we've seen thrown around a whole bunch with Nicolo overcoming it and Eren succumbing to it. In this chapter, Karina is also starting to see what exactly she put Reiner through. It's focus on small steps amidst despair (as is the name of the chapter) that will probably come to play in the finale of the story.

Strangely enough, the children are the future idea makes a return here. It is strange to me because it's been such a minor theme in the story and hasn't shown up in quite a while.

I could care less for it, take it or leave it. Doesn't change much of anything for me.

The scenes of people dying from the rumbling also leave me ambivalent this time around, we've seen it several chapters now and those cases fleshed out individual perspectives. Here it's just random crowds dying, which is awful and I am actually glad to see further substance that shows what Eren is doing is horrible, but also not as effective because of no real personal element to it.

In essence there isn't anything much new in here except the end with the 104th's resolve.

I would argue the only other new detail is that Eren is using the Beast Titan in a very separated way from Zeke. I think he created a separate version of the Titan itself to use. This means Zeke is probably still stuck there on Eren's Titan body and there is now an opportunity for him to contribute to Eren's defeat.

So I'm mostly fairly indifferent to this chapter. It's another setup chapter, but inspires very little emotion from me.

I am, however, still excited for what is coming next because of the unresolved mysteries.

Once the CR/Comixology scans come out, I might post some additional thoughts.

#Attack on Titan #Shingeki no Kyojin #AoT 134 #SnK 134 #Chapter 134 #AoT #SnK

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maxbegone · 4 years

Text

IT’S FINALLY HERE!

In an effort to spread some love to the fanfic authors in the Schitt’s Creek community, this post is a compiling of some of our favorite fics! Thank you to every single person who decided to participate in this dedication of love! And to the fanfic authors out there - thank you for being so wonderful and sharing your stories with us! Here’s to many more countless hours of reading - day or night!

There are repeats! I understand that may seem a little redundant, but I wanted everyone who participated to share their favorite fics regardless of repetition, author, pairing, AU, size, etcetera.

A very special thanks to everyone who participated!

@bestwisheswarmestregards // @brighter-than-sunshine // @danieljradcliffe @darnitdraco // @imargaery // @justwaiting23 // @leopxld-fitz // @lickrustdavid // @loveburnsbrighter // @oceanavinfinity @poorguysheadcanon // @ratchet // @roguebabyinyourstore @stuck-on-your-heart // @thisbuildinghasfeelings // @vulcantastic @wlwbaudelaire

I’m going to go ahead and put everything under the cut, because this should be quite a long post!

**If there are authors on tumblr whose handles were not properly added, please send me a message!

@bestwisheswarmestregards

Fic 1: Ace Of Hearts by loveisallyouneed21

Why I like it: It is just really sweet and made me really happy. Plus I like seeing Patrick as an asexual being one myself. I don’t see a lot of ace characters in the media so seeing someone portray Patrick, a character I love, as one makes me really happy.

Fic 2: An Unexpected Arrival by @justwaiting23

Why I like it: It was one of the first fics I read in this fandom and I fell in love with it. Plus the Brewers are in it and I love anything with the Brewers.

Fic 3: Hammock by @maxbegone

Why I like it: This fic makes me so fluffy inside. Early morning and snuggles are one of the best combinations.

@brighter-than-sunshine

Fic 1: Your Wings Prepare To Fly by @icmezzo

Why I like it: I’m not the biggest fans of AUs/ Fantasy takes on fics, but the characterization of David and Patrick is so good here. It’s such a beautifully written fic, and I just couldn’t get enough of it when I first read it! A definite reread.

Fic 2: Today and All the Days that Follow by @unfolded73

Why I like it: This one is one of my all-time favorites, because it explores so many of the relationships between all the characters… I especially love the bits including Stevie and Alexis.

Fic 3: Little Reminders of our Love by @justwaiting23

Why I like it: The whole idea of David and Patrick leaving each other notes was too adorable not to recommend this fic!

@danieljradcliffe

Fic 1: Watching Through Windows by @helvetica-upstart

Why I like it: Some fandoms have those fics that just inevitably change the game and define what fanfiction can be and for me, this is that fic for Schitt's Creek. It is a staple that everyone's read and continues to talk about and recommend a year after it was published; I'm sure we will continue to talk about it for years to come and to recommend it as new folks come into the fandom.

Fic 2: Until Now Gives Way to Then by swat117

Why I like it: I just read this one-shot recently thanks to your (feel free to edit this how you need for your post) recommendation of their other fic, 'Exposed Brick.' This is a fic that (for me) completely captures why David and Patrick fit and work so well together and how their pasts have made it possible for them to be who they are as a couple in SC. I haven't read another fic that resonated with my own interpretation and appreciation of their relationship as much as this one. This author truly and completely sees them for all that they are.

Fic 3: Red White and Blue Jays by @grapehyasynth

Why I like it: I saw this fic published earlier this year and wanted to read it so badly but figured I should read the source material (Red, White, & Royal Blue) first so I did and absolutely fell in love with that book (who wouldn't?). I attribute this fic for inspiring me to read Casey McQuiston's book and so when I went to finally read it, I had extremely high expectations and even still, this fic exceeded them. The author does an amazing job of incorporating aspects of the original book (RWRB) while keeping the story true to the characters and relationships we know and love in Schitt's Creek. I read the entire fic in one sitting and then instantly, read it again. It is laugh out loud funny while being romantic as hell and keeps David and Patrick incredibly in-character throughout.

@darnitdraco

Fic 1: Red White And Blue Jays by @grapehyasynth

Why I like it: this fic is the reason I bought Red White and Royal Blue. Going into the fic, I didn’t know what the book was about so it was all new to me but it was great nevertheless. Now that im almost finished with the book, I love this fic even more. I know its an AU but I think the characters are written well and I pretty much love any fic when Rachel isn’t made out to be the bad guy. Its 13 chapters and I will 100% be rereading it after I finish the book.

Fic 2: Nothing Burns Like The Cold by @wildxwired

Why I like it: This is a one shot and definitely Patrick Centric. I thrive on Angst and Hurt/Comfort. I personally feel like it is Patrick coming to terms with a things he didn’t have control over and him getting closure on things of the past. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot but please read this guys!!

Fic 3: sometimes good things fall apart by @blueink3

Why I like it: I have reread this multiple times and it gets better each time. Its only 4 chapters but it isn’t rushed. As I said above, I THRIVE on angst and hurt/comfort. This has both, AND protective Patrick. It is a spin on what could’ve happened after the barbecue and it has a happy ending so don’t worry.

@imargaery

Fic 1: Dodgeball is f*cking stupid by alldaydream

Why I like it: This is a one-chapter piece that comes in just under 6k and yet the author manages to build a super rich AU experience and tell a complete story that is at once heart-wrenching, sweet, sexy, and thematic. If you want angst that doesn’t last too long, that leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy, this is the one-shot for you. I go back to it as much as I go back to some of my favorite D&P scenes from the show.

Fic 2: if not for you by goingmywaydoll

Why I like it: When it comes to fanfiction about our boys, there’s almost nothing I love more than a high school AU. This is that. But it’s also a ROAD TRIP. What better scenario is there for a slow burn, mutual pining, dialogue heavy love story with plenty of bed sharing and nobody bothering them?

Fic 3: Beneath the Winter Snow by Distractivate

Why I like it: Can you tell I love a good AU? This one’s about the Olympics and it imagines a world in which Patrick and David have already fallen in love, had a relationship, and have broken up. This is a story about them finding their way back to each other--which isn’t hard because they have to be around each other all the time and work through their issues. It’s written with grace and thoughtfulness, and walking with Patrick and David as they learn to communicate with one another and work on healing makes the reunion that much more satisfying.

@justwaiting23

Fic 1: hit me with your best shot by @ignisgayentia

Why I like it: This is a bit of a random one but it has stuck with me ever since I read it. It’s a short little AU about David and Patrick meeting at a baseball game where Patrick is one of the players. It’s really sweet and does such a great job of keeping the voices in character, especially with the flirty teasing and awkwardness and is one of those fics I go back to over and over again.

Fic 2: Spills & Thrills by storieswelove

Why I like it: This is one in a series of ‘Meet-Uglies’ that the author has written which I adore but it’s my favourite one out of them. It has the perfect mix of awkward interactions which make you cringe and also really sweet and fond moments between the two of them.

Fic 3: You Can Plan on Me by odofidi

Why I like it: This is a sweet little piece of marital fluff about the first Christmas after the wedding. It fits exactly with my idea about what married life would be like for them and is really sweet, plus I always love it when the Brewers are able to see Patrick so genuinely in love with someone like that so it’s definitely one of my very favourites.

@leopxld-fitz

Fic 1: best wishes, warmest regards (sent with confetti effect) by reymonova (costiellie)

Why I like it: This fic is just pure fun. The character voices are always perfect, and it’s such a nice addition to the series. This story is full of incredible one-liners and I think about “th*nk y*u” at least once a week. A must-read for anyone who loves a good Stevie-David friendship moment.

Fic 2: Going Down by @concannonfodder

Why I like it: This is a perfect AU. Rich David? Check. New York? Check. Patrick’s gay awakening? Check, check, check. This fic feels as real and in-character as any canon events of the show, and the author does an incredible job at lining up a love story for the ages all over again under completely different pretenses. Plus, who doesn’t love a “stuck in an elevator” trope? I would watch 10 movies based off of this.

Fic 3: I’ve Never Liked A Smile As Much As I Like Yours by hagface

Why you like it: I live for college AU’s, and this one doesn’t disappoint. I love how the author repositioned characters and events for a new setting, and David as a picky art major is all I ever could have hoped for. Character interactions are pitch perfect and there’s a true “paint me like one of your french girls” pining moment that was truly glorious. A great read!!

@lickrustdavid

Fic 1: Tonight I’ll Drift in A Dream With You by torakowalski

Why I like it: It’s rare to find such a well-written fic with a great family dynamic that makes you feel like you’re almost just reading a script for the actual show instead of an idea. There’s something soft and comforting about reading cohabitation with Alexis and David and Patrick doing there own things on separate sides of the motel room.

Fic 2: A Week with the Brewers by @justwaiting23

Why I like it: The dynamic with David and the Brewer’s is genuinely authentic and it’s made me flash back to some of my own experiences with partners parents. The fact that Patrick’s totally willing to have sex while his parents are there while David is mortified at the idea is also great and realistic. I feel like this fic also shows how partners grow and learn to communicate with one another and trust them.

Fic 3: Welcome to Cabaret by @vivianblakesunrisebay

Why you like it: The concept of David being more included in the whole Cabaret experience was something I definitely appreciated, since during the show I was kind of bummed with the lack of him. Stevie is wonderfully written in my opinion, and I really liked Patrick going on dates with the choreographer and watching David figure out how to cope.

@loveburnsbrighter

Fic 1: Small Projects by GCLane

Why I like it: My ultimate comfort fic. Soft relationship feels and loving, passionate discussion of fiber arts, plus nuanced discussion of coming out and fitting in and what it means to be queer. Also David trying new things and doing his best, which is also fun (he learns to knit!)

Fic 2: You and Me and This Temptation by @leupagus

Why I like it: Another comfort fic! Musician Patrick/manager David. It's funny asf and super sweet at the same time. Plus it does justice by Rachel, and made me totally love her. Also, I was never sold on AUs of any kind and this is the fic that converted me. I re-read it when I need cheering up and it never fails.

Fic 3: The Moment I Touched Down by rockinhamburger

Why you like it: Patrick learning about David's past and being the sweetest most sympathetic bean :(. This one is full of tragic backstory and good emotional hurt/comfort. Super cathartic to read, and it makes me want to wrap David and Patrick both in big hugs and protect them from the world.

@maxbegone

Fic 1: my heart was broke, my head was sore by @blueink3

Why I like it: This was the first fic I read since coming into the fandom. It’s canon-divergent, which, as it turns out, I kind of love. It’s so beautifully-written; a story about David meeting the Brewers much sooner than he anticipated, under unforeseen circumstances that take Patrick back to his hometown - and David is right along with him. And just like in every universe, Marcy Brewer is an angel.

Fic 2: Cleanser by @cypress-tree

Why I like it: Hello and welcome to my comfort fic! This is just the most soothing story. It’s my wind-down fic, and every single time I read it, it makes me want to do my own in-depth skincare routine (that I already do morning and night). But it’s not just about that - it’s about Patrick taking a look at his identity as well. It’s all so tender and sweet, and so intimate in its own lovely way. David pampers Patrick a little bit and shows him that “femininity” and “masculinity” do not have rigid divides. And the first time I read this, I was wearing a mask from LUSH.

Fic 3: keep my spirit strong, you do by fishypots

Why you like it: Content warning; eating disorders, food issues. This hit me square in the chest. It resonated with me in a way I knew it would but struck so much more within me. By the end of it, I was smiling because of how represented I felt. I know this is a difficult topic for some, but I needed to share this fic. As someone with dysmorphia and struggles with disordered eating, it was such a comfort to read about David, who is a character so vulnerable and his partner who doesn’t pester him with questions. Instead he listens, he does a little research (it’s Patrick, of course he does), and remains by him. It’s all written so realistically and tenderly, and without any jabs or awkward nods toward body image. This will forever be at the top of my list.

@oceanavinfinity

Fic 1: I Carry These Heart-Shapes Only to You by ladyflowdi, ships_to_sail

Why I like it: It is a work-in-progress au set in Paris during WWII. Patrick is a soldier on leave, and David is a gallerist who sailed to France to help Alexis (as usual). The characters are so, so true to canon, and the world building of Paris in that era will whisk you away from your current place. I love it.

@poorguysheadcanon

Fic 1: bright lights by falconeggs (series)

Why I like it: my favorite schitts creek fic is definitely the series “bright lights” on ao3!

@ratchet

Fic 1: In the Temple of Artemis by MoreHuman

Why I like it: This story has Stevie exploring (with some help) the identifier of Aromantic after navigating what she thought were her romantic feelings for David. Really sensitively written, with a scene that almost perfectly puts into words my feelings about David & Stevie’s soulmate-esque relationship.

Fic 2: David Rose, Your Husband Is At Guest Services by @patricksdavid

Why I like it: Husbands! At Costco! Giant muffins and comically large bags of doritos! 2071 words of pure domestic fluff! What more could you ask for?!

Fic 3: Fifteen Hundred Miles by MoreHuman

Why I like it: Okay so. This is very new as part of the Reel Fic Fest, but I needed to include it. I love Wild, both the book & movie, and I am very much a “deal with my problems by hiking/biking in the forest” so this spoke to me immediately. Patrick and David meet as strangers hiking 1500 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. There’s nature, pining in nature, tent shenanigans, tent emergencies! Stevie being an excellent friend from afar, a cribbage board, journaling, secret trail register entries, David in flannel, and an ever-present toque. It’s just a really satisfying and calming 30k words with literally 2 characters. I read it twice in 12 hours.

@roguebabyinyourstore

Fic 1: Fifteen Hundred Miles by MoreHuman

Why I like it: I like a good AU as much as the next person, but this one is just STUNNING. The descriptions of the pain and struggle endured by both men, both physical and emotional, was vibrantly visceral. David and Patrick’s relationship bloomed organically and you are hooked on their journey through the wilderness as they grow closer and eventually fall in love. Plus it’s Patrick’s POV. What’s not to love?

Fic 2: Getting Over Getting Older All The Time by Distractivate

Why I like it: You’ve heard of slow burn? Well meet glacial burn. This masterpiece takes us through 10 years of friendship, of missed opportunities, of pining and heartbreak. But most importantly it shows what we all knew - David and Patrick will find their way to each other regardless of time and distance. Also Patrick’s POV, I sort of love Patrick Brewer.

Fic 3: You Could Be The One by bigficenergy

Why I like it: I have a soft spot for early relationship David and Patrick. But almost no fic does it quite like this. This fic highlights points from our boys’ developing relationship scored by the incomparable Carly Rae Jepsen. This fic is so true to the characters, their voices and their story, that it’s all one giant headcanon for me. This fic is part 1 of a larger series and I highly recommend all of them.

@stuck-on-your-heart

Fic 1: a kiss from a rose by mihaly ( @davidroseshusband )

Why I like it: This was the first multi-chapter fic I read when I joined the sc fandom, and I hadn’t read fic of any kind in over a year. It’s a brilliant story where Alexis stars in a reality-dating show. All the characters are portrayed so perfectly in this fic, and you can hear their voices in every piece of dialogue. It’s sweet, it’s hot, it’s everything you could want in an AU. This story helped me fall in love with fic again so it has a very special place in my heart.

Fic 2: Rose’s Eleven by leupagus

Why I love it: This story honestly feels like a movie. I know the concept is based on a film franchise, but the writing in this fic is truly exquisite. It’s so complex and gripping, and there’s a heist which is always a good time. Despite the very different world these characters are in, they are still true to themselves, so it’s very exciting to see how they interact with one another in this universe. This is such a fun read from start to finish and just thinking about it makes me want to go back and read it again.

Fic 3: Simply the Vest by orphan_account

Why I love it: If you couldn’t tell, I’m obsessed with AUs. This fic is such a satisfying AU because it incorporates several tropes that we all know and love. In this story, Patrick is an FBI agent, and he has to go undercover as David’s boyfriend. So right off the bat there’s fake dating! And then it has pining because our boys are dumb! AND THEN it has a little smut if that’s your cup of tea. And while all this is happening, Patrick is being capable and looks very dashing in his FBI vest.

@thisbuildinghasfeelings

Fic 1: Happy to help by @vivianblakesunrisebay

Why I like it: This was the first Schitt’s Creek fic I fell in love with when I started exploring what was out there after bingeing the show for the first time. It’s basically a deep dive into Patrick’s POV from Motel Review through Grad Night. It really helped me appreciate Patrick as a character when I was fairly new to the show. I think I formed a lot of head canon regarding Patrick’s life and backstory based on the things I enjoyed in this fic. And it’s just incredibly well written.

Fic 2: turn down the lights, turn down the bed by @hudders-and-hiddles ( @wild-aloof-rebel )

Why I like it: I love this take on David and Patrick remaining just business partners until Rock On. I can be a bit of a canon purist, so I’m really picky when it comes to AU fic. However, there are actually quite a few I enjoy in this fandom. My favorite thing about this one is that it has the exact right amount of angst, to the point where it’s almost physically painful, but in the best possible way. Especially because you know how it’s going to end. This is angst with a happy ending executed perfectly. And it’s so good that it holds up to multiple rereads.

Fic 3: my heart was broke, my head was sore by blueink3

Why I like it: Another canon divergent AU that I love. This one diverges from canon after Grad Night, at which point Patrick has to go home for a family emergency and David goes with him. What I really love about it is how it puts Patrick in a position to be truly vulnerable and gives David the opportunity to kind of be the strong one and really take care of Patrick. This is something we don’t get to see to this extent in canon until maybe Meet the Parents, so it’s nice seeing it here so early in their relationship. Also, it’s just so beautifully written.

@vulcantastic

Fic 1: no other version of me i would rather be tonight by wardo_wedidit

Why I like it: I’ve always enjoyed the concept of love languages, and it was so sweet watching David do so much for Patrick to show he loves him. Of course, it stems from fear and anxiety that David isn’t doing enough for Patrick (especially with Alexis egging him on), which reads very realistically to me. I think we as the audience tend to forget that David has never had anything like this before, has never experienced the love of someone like Patrick. He’s still learning how to accept that love and return it, in his own unique ways. This fic does a great job of examining that.

Fic 2: Exposed Brick by swat117

Why I like it: To me this is the perfect “Patrick and David visit New York” fic. Patrick is characterized so beautifully here; we not only see how he aims to please throughout his relationship with David but in his interactions with Rachel and his family as well. I imagine there was a lot left unsaid on the show regarding Patrick’s uneasiness about moving to New York and David’s ultimate decision to stay with him in Schitt’s Creek--this is explored wonderfully here. Plus, as a new New Yorker, it was really nice to read about all the iconic places in and around Manhattan.

Fic 3: we’ll take the world together by sonlali

Why I like it: I am a sucker for stories that examine David and Alexis’ relationship before the start of the show. This fic in particular is heart-wrenching, touching on the trauma both siblings likely experienced before we as viewers knew them. I love the idea of David as protector of his younger sister, and to see that sentiment returned by Alexis now that they have grown (physically and emotionally) while living in Schitt’s Creek is beautiful to read.

@wlwbaudelaire

Fic 1: you’re my peace and my quiet by chocobos

Why I like it: This fic is just so soft and sweet and always puts me in a good mood whenever I reread it. It’s wonderfully written and I can truly see this as an actual scene in the show.

Fic 2: Terrified But The Truth is This by ryry_peaches ( @loveburnsbrighter )

Why I like it: As someone who’s had a headcanon that David is autistic since I started watching the show, this was the first fic I saw pertaining to it. I was happy to see how well it was portrayed, especially giving how poorly I’ve seen fics portray autism in other fandoms, and it even made me see the episode “Girls' Night” in a completely different light.

Fic 3: Putting Down Roots by @this-is-not-nothing

Why I like it: Absolute domestic fluff is my jam and this fic delivers it and then some. It gives me everything I could want in a post-canon fic where David and Patrick are happily married and living in their cottage.

Again, thank you to everyone who made this post possible! I am so happy we were able to spread some love and cheer to the fic writers of this community! Sending so much love to each and every one of you, and I’m hoping this provides some new material for the community to discover as well!

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