#crash the party like a record scratch as i scream

[lockedtowers]

The air chilled around her, dreary winds and broken bonds shattering the delicate balance she’d tried so long to build. Something was missing. Something was lost. The needle points of the grass poking into her torn up clothing as she tries to sit up, the pain still present even though the wounds had healed.

Hand moves up to her neck, and she feels something; there’s flakes coming off of her, and a certain stickiness she well acquainted with. The rusting scent making her feel dizzy, and the thickening scar on her neck making presently frail bones shake. Goose flesh forms on her skin as she feels herself, feels the way her hair’s dried to the rust and the way her clothing sticks to her skin.

She’s shaking as she gets up, falling out of the nest she’d been placed inside, tears burning her mismatched eyes as she stands up on shaking legs. She looks down as she climbs down the rotting staircase, swallowing the lump in her throat as she climbs down. Wide eyes welled with tears as she moves, the stench lessening as she moves away from it, slowly making her way through the grounds.

Breath’s heavy as she wanders, the Beast in the woods keeping a close eye on her, one she can sense, but doesn’t react much to. Something’s missing, something’s gone, and she doesn’t entirely understand what, or why, or who.

Boots nearly sink into the wet dirt from the rainfall, shaky breaths as she makes her way out of the brush, the riverside closing in. She glances down at the water, and her reflection makes her almost scream. Limbs feel as if they’re glass, shattering at the sight as she falls to her knees, tears falling freely as she sees the state she’s in.

There’s far too much blood, and she knows its hers. She just wished she knew where how it all got there. She covers her neck with her hand, struggling to breathe, spine fluid and mind spinning at the sight. Hand clings to her own neck, as if she could hold the blood no longer spilling in place if she just pushed hard enough. Her entire body burned, limbs barely able to steady. Spine straightens as she looks up, hands hugging her arms tightly to her as the tears fall.

A building on top catches her attention— the sputtering lights; ‘Tea House’ flashing as she starts getting upwards. She’s still shaking, but she recognizes the name, knows that’s what that man, the alchemist, told her about. That she was supposed to go there. Someone was supposed to be there. Someone was supposed to help her. She just had to get there.

Abandoned ship left on the coastline catches her attention, and she slowly walks over, climbing inside and waving her hand over the water. Her hands glow purple as the boat starts moving towards the docks, holding her breath as she travels. The shaking hasn’t stopped, her eyes glazed over in fear at every sound and sight.

The water splashes up, striking over her, the blood moistening from the water. She huffs, coughing out some of the excess fluids, gripping the edge of the boat tightly as it continues to move. Hair now wet, tangled, and crisp from the previously dried blood. Her torn clothes clinging even more so to her skin, ripped in just the right places for several of her sealed over wounds to show. She hates it. Hates how exposed she feels. How alone she is. And still, her freedom isn’t guaranteed, there’s still a chance she won’t escape. There’s still a chance he’ll find her again. She couldn’t handle it if he did.

The boat rushes over another wave, more water hitting her skin, but she only breathes in, allowing it to soak her. Between the blood and the water, she feels like a drenched cat. Technically, maybe she was.

As she reaches the docks, she climbs out. Slowly, steadily. She listens carefully, avoiding anyone nearby. Who knows who she can trust, who works for the crown, she just knows where she’s supposed to go.

She tries to change, tries to make herself disappear in the shadows. She keeps quiet, keeps as calm as she can given the circumstances. Skin still burns where she cried, each step up the thousands of stairs near collapsing her force. Nose waters and she wipes at it with the back of her hand as she slowly moves closer to the front doors. The hours flashing, but she isn’t wholly sure of the time. The night had barely faded, light steadily swarming the sky. Bloodied hands reach out and touch the doors, dried flakes coming off as she finds it surprisingly unlocked.

Slow yet steady, she walks inside, eyes blearing around as she walks further inside. Nobody’s there yet, but the walls are lined with the very thing the Hearts worked everything to ensure lasted. Blinking, she hears a noise in a room hidden down the hallway, and she walks towards it. She hears something behind the door. The fear rises in her spine, hand coming up to knock, but she holds back. She hasn’t felt this small in years, this terrified of anything. She got used to the treatment, she got used to how others would treat her, yet now she didn’t have a semblance of anything left. This was all new. This was all horrifying, terrifying.

Another deep breath, and she knocks, a man behind the door saying to come in. She shivers as she reaches for the knob, twisting and pushing. Slow steady steps on the mossy soil as she walks inside, grassy spots notable as she reaches further inside. Various furniture pieces made wholly of glass, multiple tables, seats, even a hat post that don’t exactly match the decor of the room. Arms squeeze to her sides as she walks further inside, large eyes looking over at the turned chair, spotting the strung straw hat atop what she assumes is the speaker.

“You the cat?” He asks, and she nods— then realizes he can’t actually see her. His brow furrows as he glances to the side, but she still can’t see him.

“Yes.” She responds, hands squeezing her elbows as she moves closer. Eyes still adjusting. She swallows, breathing carefully as she watches the seat. “Who are you?” The man stands, near a whole foot taller than her, and he lowers a cup down to his desk.

As he turns, he stops, dark eyes widening as he sees her. Quickly enough, his brows raise and fall, turning where he stands to look towards his desk. “You’re in a bigger state than they said you’d be.” He states, walking to his sink. A small towel taken from the side, he wets it, walking over to hand it to her.

“They?” She asks, large eyes turned upwards towards him as he puts the towel in her hand. She shakily grasps it, forcing herself to settle; she was alone now, she needed to stay strong. “Who’s they?”

So she didn’t know? That was surprising, but he knows what Dodo said. She was a necessity, she needed to stay alive, and he needed to watch her. Keep an eye on things and, above all, make sure she didn’t turn against them. Why, he didn’t get, she just seemed like a timid girl, though the amount of blood she was covered in did make a shiver rise up his spine. It couldn’t all have been hers, surely.

“Doesn’t matter. Still haven’t confirmed it, though. You’re the cat?”

“I…” She looks down, then nods, swallowing again as she starts wiping the dried blood on her arms off. “Yes. And you still haven’t told me who you are.”

“Good.” The towel’s already filled with blood, and he takes it back from her, bringing it back to his sink to rinse off and return to her. “Hatter. If you must know. Now. Got any other clothes?”

“No.” She stays eerily still, and her eyes seem even wider than normal when he turns back. With a raised brow, he walks back, putting it in her hand just as she continues. “I don’t have anything.”

He nods, turning back to his wardrobe filled with various coats. He pulls one, a brown leather jacket, out, bringing it over to her as she finishes cleaning off her upper half. He once again takes the towel, and puts the jacket in her arms. “Put that on, you’ll get a cold.”

“I don’t..” She glances up again, then shakes her head. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, don’t get used to it.” He leaves the towel in the sink, realizing this isn’t the most useful way to clean her up. With a sigh, he turns back, watching her cling to the jacket as he walks back. “Got anywhere to stay?”

“I… think so.” It’s a sort of. It’s a maybe. She doesn’t exactly, but the cabin she awoke atop of in the forest was empty. She had protection there, technically, with the Beast roaming. The Beast ready to watch her, eat others, ensure she didn’t get hurt. She shifts her weight from one foot to another, hugging the leather close to her chest as she looks up at him. “Why?”

“Making sure I don’t have to find that for you, too.” He states, fingers reaching out to touch her crusted hair. Fingers drag a strand away, the dried blood making him more curious. His eyes dart down, noticing the sealed gash on her neck. Brows raise and fall quickly again as he sniffs, stepping away from her. “That from the Queen?”

She straightens her spine, brows furrowing and nose twitching. He notices. “No.” But she pauses afterwards, thinking over again; really, she isn’t sure. “I don’t think it is.”

“What about the eye?” He sits again, taking his cup and sipping quickly.

“… My tutor.”

“That sealed up bullet wound on your side?”

He’s most certainly observant. “…. My father... Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

She shakes her head, looking around the room quickly. “He said he’s my father. I don’t think he is.” She tugs her torn shirt down a bit, cheeks flushing as she looks away from him. “He took me. He raised me. But it doesn’t-- didn't feel right.”

He hums, standing quickly once again and walking back over to her. To her surprise, he grins, nodding as he looks down on at her. His hand reaches out, tilting her head up when she tries to look away, which makes her eyes widen a bit as she stares up at him. “You can come back tomorrow. Once you’ve cleaned yourself up. I’ll get you settled up then.”

“Settled?” Head tilts, but he holds her still, tapping her nose quickly as he releases her. “What—“

“You’ll figure it out. Y’seem like a smart little cookie. Just.. Clean up first. You’re gonna get blood on my grass.” Her head tilts, far more than it should. That’s where he recognizes her name in her, she certainly seems to be able to bend like a cat. The fact she’s still alive, with all that blood on her; clearly escaped from something bad back with the royals, but he won’t question what just yet. She’ll tell him eventually, he just has to wait.

“If I don’t come back?” She asks, her voice much more headstrong than before. A brow raises, and she continues. “What then?”

“Then you don’t get my help, or a job. Simple, really.” He says, smiling again. Her eyes seem to hold onto his smile a lot. “Listen, let me make this a bit more clear. My help comes with a price, and while I’m willing to be your… friend, shall we say, I’m gonna need a little something in return. Okay?”

“… I’m not gonna have sex with you.” She responds, hugging the jacket tighter.

He stares, astounded at where her head went, then continues. “Wasn’t expecting you to. That’s not what we do here. Listen, Doormy will be here tomorrow, and they’ll be the one training you. So, just.. Come back, cleaned up. Doormy faints at the sight— and smell— of blood, really don’t want to add to their tendencies. Alright?”

She shakes a bit again, looking down. He walks to her again, once more tilting her head up to look at her. “Look at me.” Despite his bite, his hand is gentle on her skin, his gaze soft, if not analyzing. There’s a strange sense of familiarity within it, and she isn’t wholly sure where it comes from, but it does make her ease with him more. Expression softening, blinking quickly as she does; just looks at him. “Good. So you can listen.” He pulls away from her then, and she already misses the gentle touch— something else she doesn’t understand.

Her minds fuzzy at the reality of it all, and she doesn’t really get it. Tongue pokes out to wet her lips, nose twitching as she tilts her head again. Lips parted as she watches, following his steps. Her curiosity gets the better of her, and she follows him; careful not to step on the grass, legs stretching over to walk on the dirt spots instead. A deep breath in, and he looks to the side, realizing she’s followed him. A brow raises, turning fully to face her properly.

“What?”

“Cassandra.” She says, looking up at him. With another deep breath, her eyes look into his, a hint of recognition there, but she still doesn’t really understand. “My name is Cassandra… Why do you want to help me?”

He drops the towel in his hand back inside the sink, breathing in. “Do I have to have a reason?”

“Yes.”

With a sigh, he puts both hands on either of her shoulders, shaking briefly and looking into her eyes. As he looks at her, another thought comes through, but he doesn’t vocalize it. “Tomorrow. I’ll give you a reason tomorrow. Deal?”

The burning sensation creeps up her spine at his words, compelling her, her breath stopping as she stares at him. Eyes glance everywhere else, then back to him. She swallows, and nods, the burning feeling moving up to her head as she looks down, then up. She needed to learn better. She needed to know better. But she didn’t. This is how they trade, and it’s hard to deny the intensity a prospect brings. Blue-and-silver hues blink, and she nods once more, sealing the promise in her bones.

“Deal.”

[disillusioneddanny]

The Bats and TTPD Songs

This is just me sharing what songs I think matches each of the bats and why :> i take no criticism /j

Bruce Wayne-- Cassandra

Hear me out okay, the lyrics:

So, they killed Cassandra first 'cause she feared the worst And tried to tell the town So they filled my cell with snakes, I regret to say Do you believe me now?

This whole song just reminds me of Bruce and his contingencies, like he's constantly prepared for any situation and he's had people who have gotten mad at him for it before.

Dick Grayson-- Who's Afraid of Little Old Me

God where do I even start? I want to write a whole fucking fic based off of this song and Dick Grayson.

So I leap from the gallows and I levitate down your street Crash the party like a record scratch as I scream "Who's afraid of little old me?" I was tame, I was gentle 'til the circus life made me mean "Don't you worry, folks, we took out all her teeth" Who's afraid of little old me? Well, you should be

In this case, he was bright eyed and innocent until his parents were killed in front of him. Then he became Robin, then Nightwing and this man went through fucking hell and he has survived.

Everyone sees Dick for his smiles and his kindness but this man should not be crossed by any means. He's fucking lethal and has gone through so much shit in his life and he's just not the same bright eyed, innocent kid he once was. And you should be scared of him.

Jason Todd--Robin

So technically this song is about Christopher Robin from winnie the pooh, but I think it also captures Jason really well.

You have no idea The time will arrive for the cruel and the mean You'll learn to bounce back just like your trampoline But now we'll curtail your curiosity In sweetness Way to go, Tiger Higher and higher Wilder and lighter For you

I feel like this song focuses a lot on loss of innocence and growing up tbh, like the person this song is aimed at has no idea how hard the world is, how painful things can be but that they'll learn to handle it and bounce back. IDK the first time I heard it, it reminded me of how Jason believed that Robin is magic and maybe even like Bruce or Dick singing this to him knowing what was going to happen to him one day.

Tim Drake -- Clara Bow

okay, so there's not just one lyric that really sticks out to me but the overarching story that this song tells. It's all about being replaced with the next big thing. Taylor Swift is compared to Stevie Nicks who is compared to Clara Bow and one day T. Swift is going to be replaced with something shiny and new and that just reminds me of Tim.

Tim is the third Robin, he replaced Jason who replaced Dick and one day he himself is going to be replaced. There's a lot of HC where he's aware of this fact, that he knows that his role as Robin is not a permanent thing, that one day, he too will be replaced. And eventually, he is.

"You look like Taylor Swift In this light We're loving it. You've got edge she never did The future's bright ... Dazzling."

Cassandra Wayne -- The Albatross

okay Cass was really hard for me at first to pin down what song fit her but then I listened to The Albatross and holy cow.

The devil that you know Looks now more like an angel I'm the life you chose And all this terrible danger So cross your thoughtless heart She's the albatross She is here to destroy you

I don't know quite how to explain how this song makes me think of Cass except for how it just makes me think about how she decided to take her life in her own hands and become her own person. She was pretty much created with one thing in mind and that was all that was expected of her but she's become so much more than that. Now she's strong and powerful but in more ways than just how David Cain made her out to be. She's caring and loving and she's going to destroy the idea that she was ever just a weapon.

Stephanie Brown -- I Can Do It With a Broken Heart

Listen, listen, this woman has been through so freaking much and she has come out on top and with a smile on her face the entire time. She is resilient and she isn't scared to fight Bruce Wayne himself if she needs to.

'Cause I'm a real tough kid, I can handle my shit They said, "Babe, you gotta fake it 'til you make it" and I did

I know this song is about dealing with a break up but when I hear it, i think of everything that Steph has been through. Her dad who's a rogue, her mom who is struggling with addiction, getting pregnant and giving her baby up for adoption, not being considered good enough to be Robin, the list goes on and on and yet she does it. She rolls with the punches and she swallows it down and she smiles through it all and I just friggen love Stephanie Brown so much.

Duke Thomas -- Florida!!!

Admittedly, I don't know as much about Duke as the others (I'm so sorry, I just haven't gotten there in the comics quite yet, I'm just now getting to the aftermath of the Red Robin run and I haven't read New 52 yet. so this is purely based off of WFA )

Little did you know your home's really only The town you'll get arrested So you pack your life away just to wait out The shitstorm back in Texas

This song just makes me think about Duke because from what I've learned, kid's been through a lot and he's had to move in with the Waynes after what happened to his parents. I think of Florida as a song of starting over, picking up your broken pieces and finding yourself once again and that just feels like Duke.

He's been hurt and he's now having to figure out what to do and where to run. Now he's with the Waynes and he's slowly finding his place with their insanity.

Damian Wayne-- thanK you aIMee

Okay but imagine this song is Damian at Ra's al Ghul okay? Stick with me buddy.

I built a legacy that you can't undo But when I count the scars, there's a moment of truth That there wouldn't be this if there hadn't been you

And maybe you've reframed it And in your mind, you never beat my spirit black and blue I don't think you've changed much

Damian has grown so much since the days he was still with the LOA and he recognizes that not only has he grown but he's done it DESPITE what Ra's did to him and that maybe a part of him is created by Ra's and he has learned to love that part of himself and he recognizes he wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for Ra's and his mother being conniving and evil. He's created a name for himself as Robin that goes against so much of what Ra's brainwashed him to believe.

Barbara Gordon-- The Bolter

And I can confirm she made A curious child, ever reviled By everyone except her own father With a quite bewitching face Splendidly selfish, charmingly helpless Excellent fun till you get to know her Then she runs like it's a race

This song just gives the brave, strong, independent vibes of Babs. Someone who lives her life to the fullest and embraces who she is. She's just powerful and she knows that she's amazing and she doesn't expect anything less from herself. She has gone through hell and she's come out of it stronger. She rolls with the punches, she doesn't let it stop her from her dreams, her desires.

Alfred Pennyworth-- I Hate it Here

I hate it here so I will go to Secret gardens in my mind People need a key to get to The only one is mine

This song just makes me think of Alfred when Jason died. That time where it's just him and Bruce and he's struggling to take care of his ward and he's also going through his own grief and unable to heal. I think Alfred has his own methods for taking care of himself, I think he's like the world's greatest compartmentalizer.

oh my god that got so freaking long lol. I'm so sorry. Anyway, y'all can listen to these specific songs here

[bluejay-the-geek]

DC characters/moments as Tortured Poets Department songs/lyrics bc i have a light concussion and am very bored (in the album's chronological order)

(disclaimer before someone is triggered- some of the lyrics are taken out of context or interpreted differently than what they actually mean. this is just for fun don't come for me. also this gets pretty angsty towards the end so proceed with caution)

"I was supposed to be sent away, But they forgot to come and get me"- tim drake very obviously bc neglecting parents/boarding school

"I love you, it's ruining my life"- early harleen quinzel about joker

"My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys"- the whole song is just harley quinn idc (pre-harlivy of course)

"Now I'm down bad, cryin' at the gym"- nightwing def cried at the gym at some point

"I stopped tryna make him laugh, stopped tryna drill the safe"- dick grayson about bruce after moving out of wayne manor

"You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues? I died on the altar waitin' for the proof, You sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest days"- remember the whole selena leaving bruce at the alter thing? yeah

"I'd rather burn my whole life down, Than listen to one more second of all this bitchin' and moanin', I'll tell you something 'bout my good name, It's mine alone to disgrace"- I'm just getting red hood vibes from this no specific reason

"Now, pretty baby, I'm runnin' back home to you, Fresh out the slammer, I know who my first call will be to"- almost every gotham rouge to batman right after escaping arkham/prison. especially joker, catwoman and riddler lol

"At the park where we used to sit on children's swings, Wearing imaginary rings"- this one specific panel of tim and steph

"And this city reeks of driving myself crazy"- everyone who's ever been to gotham

"All my girls got their lace and their crimes, And your cheating husband disappeared, well, No one asks any questions here"- it's giving gotham city sirens

"Am I allowed to cry?"- maybe it's just me but i thought about clark kent discovering he had different biological parents and grieving about them even though the parents that actually raised him are alive and well

"So I leap from the gallows and I levitate down your street, Crash the party like a record scratch as I scream, "Who's afraid of little old me?", You should be" red hood's debut

"The scandal was contained, The bullet had just grazed, At all costs, keep your good name, You don't get to tell me you feel bad"- jason todd about the whole making batman choose between him and joker at the end of under the red hood

"You wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me"- this is 100% Bane bc he was born and grew up in prison for a crime he didn't even do!! also cassandra cain and damian wayne

(^this is actually the lyric that inspired this entire post lol)

"You caged me and then you called me crazy, I am what I am 'cause you trained me, So who's afraid of me? Who's afraid of little old me?"- kind of a stretch but remember that time they put jason in arkham?

I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)- again the whole song is harley about joker

"Your arson's match, your somber eyes, And I'll still see it until I die, You're the loss of my life"- bruce about jason. out of all the robins that died, jason's death hit him the hardest. even now when bruce sees red hood, he still sees that happy little kid that he lost

"I can read your mind, "She's having the time of her life", There in her glittering prime, The lights refract sequin stars off her silhouette every night, I can show you lies"- bc we all know Nightwing is always dying on the inside, and it was very true in the discowing era bc it was right after he left the manor

"'Cause I'm a real tough kid, I can handle my shit"- jason pre-bruce

"I'm so obsessed with him, but he avoids me like the plague"- ok so we got joker about batman, cupid about green arrow, hush about bruce wayne... and a bunch of others but it's too many to write lol

"And you deserve prison, but you won't get time"- fucking tarantula that bitch

"The smallest man who ever lived"- the atom! not any of the messages in the song tho ofc he's just very small

"What if I told you I'm back? The hospital was a drag, Worst sleep that I ever had, I circled you on a map ,I haven't come around in so long, But I'm coming back so strong"- joker to batman after escaping arkham again

"I haven't come around in so long, But I'm making a comeback to where I belong"- jason coming back to protect crime alley after being away from gotham for years after his resurrection

"Even if it's handcuffed, I'm leavin' here with you"- batman and catwoman<3

I Hate It Here- imagine the whole song as homeless jason todd taking shelter in the library💔

"I built a legacy that you can't undo, But when I count the scars, there's a moment of truth, That there wouldn't be this if there hadn't been you"- bruce built a legacy as batman, and created a huge family he loves, and it hurts to think about but he wouldn't have any of it if joe chill hadn't murdered his parents

"Please, I've been on my knees, Change the prophecy, Don't want money, Just someone who wants my company"- kid bruce grew up all alone in a huge mansion, but he'd give all his billions away in a heartbeat if he could change his parent's fate

"So, they killed Cassandra first 'cause she feared the worst"- ok so you might think i chose cassandra cain for this only bc of the name, BUT- cass notices things others don't (like cassandra the prophet...), bc of her skills and abilities she is feared the most (Ik the song said "she feared" not "she is feared" but idc lol). like if someone knew so much about you just by looking you'd think she's some kind of a witch too

Peter- picture this: jason had a childhood friend back at crime alley. he left to live in wayne manor and become robin, and said goodbye to his old friend, promising they'd reunite again in the future. 3 years pass and his friend reads an article about jason's death. now listen to the song and try not to cry (if someone writes that fic send me the link IMMEDIATELY this has been haunting me) here's the link to the song with lyrics bc ik you're too lazy to look it up. also jason's middle name is peter:)

"Splendidly selfish, charmingly helpless, Excellent fun 'til you get to know her"- brucie wayne vs batman

"Started with a kiss, "Oh, we must stop meeting like this" But it always ends up with a town car speeding, Out the drive one evening"- catwoman and batman of course<3 the town car is the batmobile speeding out the batcave to catch catwoman (to arrest her or make out with her? probs both)

Robin- ofc we have to go robins for robin! imo that's bruce to dick and jason's robins, and dick to damian when he was his robin. dick and jason- despite the hard times they went through that led to them becoming robins, they were still mostly happy curious kids that run around covered in mud while bruce tried (unsuccessfully) to maintain the innocence they had left. as for damian- it's more of a stretch than the other 2 bc he had no childlike innocence before robin, but dick tried his hardest to extract the child that was hidden inside the ruthless assassin the league created, finally allowing him to experience normal kid things. idk

"He said, "I'm not a donor but, I'd give you my heart if you needed it", She rolled her eyes and said, "You're a professional""-to me this is clark kent completely in love and lois with her sass

"And at last, She knew what the agony had been for"- almost every hero. they suffer, they sacrifice, they fight, and sometimes they want to give up- but at the end of the day, they save lives, so it's all worth it

and that's it folks! feel free to add more/share your insights!!

sorry for any spelling/grammer mistakes, English isn't my first language plus like the title said i had a minor head injury a few days ago and I'm tired soI'm not proofreading this bc I'm going to sleep rn goodnight to all✌️

[sendhearthhome]

Zuko and Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?

“The who's who of who's that? / Is poised for the attack / But my bare hands paved their paths / You don't get to tell me about sad / If you wanted me dead, you should've just said / Nothing makes me feel more alive / So I leap from the gallows and I levitate down your street / Crash the party like a record scratch as I scream / Who's afraid of little old me? / You should be”

This whole first chunk, to me, is Zuko confronting Ozai in Book 3 episode 11 The Day of the Black Sun Pt 2

“The scandal was contained”

Book 1 E12 The Storm, Zuko’s crew thought Zuko had been burned in a training accident, not by his own father

“The bullet had just grazed”

Within the theme of abuse, Ozai and Azula minimise the abuse Zuko endured, Ozai just 'grazed' Zuko’s face

“At all costs, keep your good name / You don't get to tell me you feel bad”

Ozai keeps his reputation, while Zuko is banished to spend over 3 years trying to get his honour back (which he never truly lost)

“Is it a wonder I broke? Let's hear one more joke / Then we could all just laugh until I cry / So I leap from the gallows and I levitate down your street / Crash the party like a record scratch as I scream / Who's afraid of little old me?”

“I was tame, I was gentle 'til the circus life made me mean”

Zuko was a gentle child, but Ozai thought he was too soft. The circus life can connect to the pageantry and brutality of the Fire Nation Empire

“Don't you worry folks, we took out all her teeth”

In Book 2, when he’s a refugee, Zuko feels humiliated and powerless, having gone from a prince to a ‘nobody’, his shame critically culminates here in Ba Sing Se

“Who's afraid of little old me? / Well, you should be (you should be) / So tell me everything is not about me / But what if it is?”

“Then say they didn't do it to hurt me / But what if they did?”

Ozai burned Zuko to “teach him respect” but really, it was just abuse

“I wanna snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me / You wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me”

These two lines truly encapsulate the rage of realising how fucked up your childhood was only once you’re out of it. You couldn’t see it when you were in it but you survived hell, and now that you understand that, you’re so fucking angry

“So all you kids can sneak into my house with all the cobwebs / I'm always drunk on my own tears, isn't that what they all say? / That I'll sue you if you step on my lawn / That I'm fearsome and I'm wretched and I'm wrong / Putting narcotics into all of my songs / And that's why you're still singing along”

People have preconceived notions about Zuko: he’s spoiled, selfish, and volatile. While these are areas where Zuko has genuine growth in the series, it is important to remember that they’re used by adults in the Fire Nation (ex. Ozai and Zhao) to discredit and demean him

“So I leap from the gallows and I levitate down your street / Crash the party like a record scratch as I scream / Who's afraid of little old me? / I was tame, I was gentle 'til the circus life made me mean / Don't you worry folks, we took out all her teeth / Who's afraid of little old me? / Well, you should be (you should be)”

“'Cause you lured me / And you hurt me / And you taught me / You caged me and then you called me crazy / I am what I am 'cause you trained me”

 Zuko’s autonomy and free will are really what led him to join the Gaang. He realises he never deserved Ozai’s abuse, never lost his honour, and his actions are his own. 

But you can’t deny the poetry of ‘you created the thing that destroyed you in the end’

“So who's afraid of me? / Who's afraid of little old me? / Who's afraid of little old me?”

I lowkey want to write a zuko-centric song fic...

Let me know what you think and if you interpret the song differently!! <3

[mindkiler]

― ❛ CLOSED CONNECTIONS. ❜ ; who's afraid of little old me ?

press #001 to sing : ❛ the tortured poets department ❜

❝ you’re in self-sabotage mode, throwing spikes down on the road but i’ve seen this episode and still love the show. ❞

bee e pietra são melhores amigas, sempre foi & sempre vai ser assim. opostos, raio de sol para sua poeta torturada, pietra segura a mão de bee nos piores momentos, cuida dela quando os calafrios vem e o mundo está alto demais. bee tenta ao seu máximo retribuir mesmo quando está em modo de auto sabotagem, mas não tem nada que faça pietra partir. ( @pips-plants )

press #002 to sing : ❛ my boy only breaks his favorite toys ❜

❝ here we go again. the voices in his head called the rain to end our days of wild. the sickest army doll, purchased at the mall. rivulets descend my plastic smile. ❞

bee e brook eram amigos, e visitavam um ao outro ocasionalmente quando estavam longe do acampamento - no entanto, em uma destas visitas, brook viu um lado de bee que jamais conheceu. (tw: menção ao uso de drogas e consumo de álcool ) não a artista ou a guerreira, nem mesmo a reclusa que podia ser ; e sim, a pessoa doente que escolhia o esquecimento invés das vozes na sua cabeça. pílulas e bebida na mesa, um sorriso plástico no rosto da amiga adorada fez com que lhe virasse as costas - não conhecia aquela pessoa, mesmo que ela precisasse de si. bee nunca superou a vergonha, mas teria brook se arrependido de quebrar seu brinquedo favorito ? ( @mcdame )

press #003 to sing : ❛ who’s afraid of little old me ? ❜

❝ i leap from the gallows and i levitate down your street. crash the party like a record scratch as i scream. “who’s afraid of little old me ?”. i was tame, i was gentle ‘til the circus life made me mean. “don’t you worry, folks, we took out all her teeth”. ❞

muse e amara chegaram ao acampamento próximos um do outro e sempre competiram por tudo, a rivalidade aumentando quando colocavam os primos e irmãos nas rodas de chacota. bee se tornou irada e impulsiva como era - irresponsável. os dois na arena, amara mais forte e bem treinada, quase lhe arrancou todos os dentes, mas enquanto celebrava vitória, bee levantou-se do chão cuspindo sangue, e lhe acertou uma flecha as costas ; covarde e sabia mas ainda sim, riu maníaca e gritou : ’ você não duraria uma hora no manicômio que me criaram ’. desnecessário dizer que não saiu barato. ( @amaranthaes )

press #004 to sing : ❛ don't call me angel ❜

❝  don't call me angel , you ain't got me right. don't call me angel you can't pay my price / i make my money, and i write the cheques so say my name with a little respect. all my girls successful, and you're just our guest /  i fell from heaven, now i'm living like a devil, you can't get me off your mind ❞

BEE, BISHOP & YASEMIN são irmãs e primas muito unidas, a melhor família que BEE poderia ter pedido, elas a entendem & se preocupam consigo, sem esperar nada em troca. juntas sempre que a confusão começa , fariam qualquer coisa e iriam a qualquer lugar para proteger umas as outras. ( @apavorantes ) ( @misshcrror )

press #005 to sing : ❛ speed drive ❜

❝  she my best friend in the whole world, on the mood board, she's the inspo & she dressed in really cute clothes. kawaii like we're in tokyo. devon lee smile, teeth a white row. got a classic, real deep, van gogh, she got loyalty, she says, "i love you, girl" -  i love her more ❞

NATALIA e BEE são melhores amigas, especialmente na hora de fazer péssimas decisões , elas tem lealdade e diversão no currículo mas no mundo mortal já teriam sido presas algumas vezes - por aqui, escapam por pouco sempre.  ( @pavlcva )

press #006 to sing : ❛ from eden ❜

❝  honey, you're familiar like my mirror years ago. idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on his sword. innocence died screaming - honey, ask me, i should know ❞

BEE , YASEMIN e MAXIME são o trio de ouro quando se trata de missões, sucesso garantido mesmo que voltem apenas o pó. para BEE foi difícil confiar neles e voltar a ir para missões depois do fracasso que foi uma de suas primeiras onde perdeu as duas pessoas que amava embora de maneiras vastamente diferentes. mas fica feliz que foi, pois hoje são quase inseparáveis.  ( @maximeloi ) ( @misshcrror )

press #007 to sing : ❛ would've, could've, should've ❜

❝  if i was some paint, did it splatter - on a promising grown man ? and if i was a child, did it matter if you got to wash your hands ? ❞

BEE e THOMAS foram o primeiro amor um do outro - não lhes faltava nada , de companheirismo a afeto ; mas algo entrou no caminho - a própria beatrice. quando o namorado descobriu que ela andava se drogando , exigiu que parasse , e ela se recusou , partindo o coração dos dois com o fim do que tiveram. ( @thccmas )

press #008 to sing : ❛ achilles come down ❜

❝ achilles, come down. won't you get up off the roof ? the self is not so weightless, nor whole and unbroken, remember the pact of our youth. ' where you go, i'm going, so jump and i'm jumping since there is no me without you ' ❞

BEE e PACIFICA eram amigas, até que um dia, depois de notar uma mudança no comportamento de BEE , CIF teve um medo e o seguiu até o final, achando o esconderijo das pílulas & sendo ignorada ao pedir que BEE parasse, teve de entregar a evidencia para alguém que pudesse confiscar . oque não parou BEE, mas lhe rendeu um grande ressentimento da amiga - bem, ex amiga.  ( @paseafica )

press #009 to sing : ❛ glorious ❜

❝ you know i'm back like i never left. another sprint, another step, another day, another breath. been chasing dreams, but i never slept. i got a new attitude and a lease on life & some peace of mind. seek and i find , i can sleep when i die ❞

BEE e KAITO são amigos um tanto improváveis, mas ela precisa da calma para sua tempestade. um homem honesto que não se esconde por trás de fachadas e mentiras, sua cabeça está em paz quando estão em algum lugar sozinhos apenas deixando que o silencio fale por si.  ( @kaitoflames )

press #010 to sing : ❛ darkside ❜

❝ do you want to meet all my monsters ? think you're tough, i know they'll drive you bonkers. meet them once and they'll forever haunt ya. there's no heroes or villains in this place, just shadows that dance in my headspace. leaving nothing but phantoms in their wake. there's parts of me i cannot hide , i've tried and tried a million times. cross my heart and hope to die - welcome to my darkside. ❞

BEE foi tola ao tentar desafiar TADEU e quase destruiu a vida dos dois, os causando uma dor que não pode ser medida em palavras. seu segredo, seu pecado que antes pertencia apenas a si mesma agora é carregado pelos dois.  ( @nemesiseyes )

press #011 to sing : ❛ shhh ❜

can see your expression clearly - a written question mark. you're gonna want a girl like me. wake up from a dream, we're just here to vibe. this is me, everything off of me looks holy, i'ma dance in the rain so slowly ; hey, can you feel me now ?

VERONICA e BEE são amigas desde a adolescência, chegaram no acampamento perto uma da outra e logo se deram bem - hoje compartilham tudo , inclusive o temperamento , digamos , difícil de agradar. ( @mcronnie )

press #012 to sing : ❛ saturn ❜

❝ stuck in this paradigm - don't believe in paradise. this must be what hell is like. there's got to be more, got to be more. sick of this head of mine. intrusive thoughts, they paralyze. nirvana's not as advertised ❞

BEE é uma ótima desenhista, e pintora, de paisagens a retratos , ela sabe fazer de tudo mas com suas dificuldades , acha difícil se concentrar no hobby - mas com YEON, se diverte fazendo oque gosta já que compartilham a paixão pela arte. ( @yeonniesong )

press #013 to sing : ❛ drama ❜

❝ into the REAL WORLD, climax on deck - don't be afraid. you and i. together we write this story , past hurdles, no more. push boundaries every day. i'ma make it my way. out of the way. ❞

KITTY e BEE eram grandes amigas, porém na única instância que saíram do acampamento juntas pra uma festa mortal, o cheiro de duas semideusas , ainda mais uma filha de hades, atraiu monstros . a casa pegou fogo e muito morreram ou foram feridos no ataque. BEE quis ficar e lutar enquanto KITTY achou melhor ir buscar ajuda , no tempo desta discussão, houveram ainda mais vítimas. ( @kittymook )

press #014 to sing : ❛ favorite crime ❜

❝ know that i loved you so bad - i let you treat me like that. i was your willing accomplice, honey and i watched as you fled the scene. doe-eyed as you buried me, one heart broke, four hands bloody ❞

BEE e AIDAN tornaram-se amigos rapidamente quando ela chegou no acampamento - ele mais velho & encantador aos seus olhos. viveram muitas aventuras juntos , e ela guarda seus segredos em um cofre dentro de sua mente pois confiança era algo que não os faltava. porém, os sentimentos de jovem BEE começaram a mudar & ela se declarou para AIDAN, que deixou claro : não podia e nem iria reciprocar seu amor. agora são estranhos que guardam para si os momentos mais miseráveis e felizes um do outro. ( @aidankeef )

[w3ath3r-0f-sw34t3rz]

lyrics that only a tortured poet could write

(pt 1 because)

and i love you, it's ruining my life

and who's gonna hold you like me? // and who's gonna know you, if not me?

once i fix me // he's gonna miss me

for a moment i knew cosmic love

i saw, in my mind, fairy lights through the mist

i stopped CPR, after all, it's no use // the spirit was gone, we would never come to

i'm pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free

stitches undone // two graves, one gun

and you say i abandoned the ship // but i was going down with it

and my friends said it isn't right to be scared // every day of a love affair // every breath feels like rarest air // when you're not sure if he wants to be there

you swore that you loved me, but where were the clues?

i just learned these people only raise you to cage you

i'm havin' his baby" // no, i'm not, but you should see your faces

i'll tell you somethin' 'bout my good name // it's mine alone to disgrace // i don't cater to all these vipers dressed in empath's clothing

god save the most judgmental creeps // who say they want what's best for me // sanctimoniously performing soliloquies i'll never see // thinkin' it can change the beat of my heart when he touches me // and counteract the chemistry and undo the destiny

if all you want is gray for me // that's just white noise, that's just my choice

my friends tried, but i wouldn't hear it // watch me daily disappearing // for just one glimpse of his smile

well, me and my ghosts, we had a hell of a time // yes, i'm haunted, but i'm feeling just fine

so i did my best to lay to rest // all of the bodies that have ever been on my body // and in my mind, they sink into the swamp // is that a bad thing to say in a song?

am i allowed to cry? ... am i bad or mad or wise?

one slip and fallin' back into the hedge maze // oh, what a way to die

what if i roll the stone away? // they're gonna crucify me anyway

they don't know how you've haunted me so stunningly // i choose you and me religiously

if you wanted me dead, you should've just said // nothing makes me feel more alive

so i leap from the gallows and i levitate down your street // crash the party like a record scratch as i scream // "who's afraid of little old me?" // you should be

is it a wonder i broke? let's hear one more joke // then we could all just laugh until i cry

i was tame, i was gentle 'til the circus life made me mean // "don't you worry, folks, we took out all her teeth"

so tell me everything is not about me, but what if it is? // then say they didn't do it to hurt me, but what if they did? // i wanna snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me // you wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me // so all you kids can sneak into my house with all the cobwebs // i'm always drunk on my own tears, isn't that what they all said? // that i'll sue you if you step on my lawn // that i'm fearsome and i'm wretched and i'm wrong // put narcotics into all of my songs // and that's why you're still singin' along

you caged me and then you called me crazy // i am what i am 'cause you trained me

the smoke cloud billows out his mouth // like a freight train through a small town

but your good Lord doesn't need to lift a finger // i can fix him, no, really, i can // and only i can

who's gonna stop us from waltzing back into rekindled flames if we know the steps anyway?

i thought i was better safe than starry-eyed

still alive, killing time at the cemetery // never quite buried

a con man sells a fool a get-love-quick scheme

what we thought was for all time was momentary

you cinephile in black and white // all those plot twists and dynamite

i wish i could unrecall // how we almost had it all

dancing phantoms on the terrace // are they second-hand embarrassed that i can't get out of bed 'cause something counterfeit's dead?

it was legendary // it was momentary // it was unnecessary

oh, what a valiant roar // what a bland goodbye // the coward claimed he was a lion

"i'll never leave, nevermind"

our field of dreams engulfed in fire // your arsons match your somber eyes

and i'll still see it until i die // you're the loss of my life

there in her glittering prime // the lights refract sequin stars off her silhouette every night

lights, camera, bitch, smile // even when you wanna die

breaking down, i hit the floor // all the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting, "more"

i cry a lot, but i am so productive, it's an art // you know you're good when you can even do it with a broken heart

i can hold my breath // i've been doin' it since he left // i keep finding his things in drawers // crucial evidence i didn't imagine the whole thing

you hung me on your wall // stabbed me with your push pins

were you sent by someone who wanted me dead? // did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed?

i would've died for your sins, instead, i just died inside

and you deserve prison, but you won't get time // you'll slide into inboxes and slip through the bars

you kicked out the stage lights, but you're still performing

and in plain sight you hid // but you are what you did // and i'll forget you, but i'll never forgive // the smallest man who ever lived

'cause the sign on your heart // said it's still reserved for me // honestly, who are we to fight the alchemy?

this happens once every few lifetimes

all your life, did you know // you'd be picked like a rose?

this town is fake, but you're the real thing // breath of fresh air through smoke rings

crowd goes wild at her fingertips // half moonshine, a full eclipse

the crown is stained, but you're the real queen // flesh and blood amongst war machines // you're the new God we're worshipping // promise to be dazzling

beauty is a beast that roars down on all fours // demanding more

it's hell on earth to be heavenly

you look like Taylor Swift in this light, we're lovin' it // you've got edge, she never did

[sorehsu]

i'm trying to write while listening to ttpd but "so i LEAP from the GALLOWS and i LEVITATE down your street, crash the party like a RECORD SCRATCH as i scream WHO'S AFRAID OF LITTLE OOOOOLD MEEEEEE" has me in a chokehold

[evierena]

The Demon Brothers catching MC listening/Dancing to their songs

I know that Belphie’s song has been out for a while now, but I still wanted to write something to celebrate all seven songs were blaring on replay on my phone so, here it is. 

INTRO:

For this time around, MC (and Solomon) has somehow convinced Diavolo that in the human world, people felt more at ease with music, with songs that reflected the character of the singer and that could move their hearts.

So, to further expand this idea and to see if it could prove useful to his goal of uniting the realms, the Demon Prince entrust the task to none other than the demon brothers.

Now, with all the songs out and blaring all over the Devildom, MC had found themselves to be quite fascinated by a particular song they just couldn’t stop replaying.

And what happens when the author of said song catches MC singing and dancing along? Let’s see…

Lucifer

You were waiting for him in his study, so probably you shouldn’t have expected much privacy really.

But, in all honesty, how could you not sing along to Arcadia?

The music was alluring, and his voice was simply enticing, it compelled your body and soul to let go, to allow being embraced by Lucifer.  

So you did.

You had forgotten your headphones, so you just had your D.D.D blaring Arcadia on replay, and once the lyrics began, you started signing along, your already dancing hips gaining rhythm and sensuality as the song progressed.

And while you were having a blast, dancing and signing in Lucifer’s study to his song, he was right outside, with the door half open, staring at your figure.

He was as captivated by your dancing as you were by Arcadia.

His heart was both full of love and pride, although he would only publicly admit to the latter. Because, you already knew about the first. And that was enough for him.

In one of those twists and turns you did while dancing you finally lock gazes with the deep crimson irises of Lucifer.

But, instead of stopping all together, you were encouraged by his powerful eyes, and decided to continue signing without breaking eye contact.

Lucifer was amused to say the least, by your little show, and he started to approach you with slow, determined strides until you both were inches away from each other.

The atmosphere grew heavy with his proximity, and you found yourself lowering you tone, adapting it to a soft whisper only loud enough for his ears.

His hands found purchase in your hips, stilling your movements, and to your surprise he joined you in your quiet singing.

And like that, both enraptured, lost in each others eyes, basking in the others presence, the song ended.

Your D.D.D ran out of battery, and the study was suddenly filled with tentative silence.

Lucifer had a smirk in his lips and you were smiling, your hands traveled to his shoulders, and you reach out to him to close the final gap between his mouth and yours.

But just before sharing a kiss that promised so much more, you both were startled by a loud crashing noise somewhere in HoL, and then a series of cursing and screaming.

Let’s just say that the punishment for whoever it was that interrupted Lucifer’s and his human moment was… terrifying.

However, that night you received a visit from Lucifer.

“Why don’t you sing for me again, my dear?”

Mammon

Mammon had invited you to a night out in the casino, and for such a thing you had decided to doll yourself up a little in your room before going out.

That’s what you were doing, when Are you Ready? Started to play in your D.D.D and well, you started to dance in front of the mirror.

The song always managed to bring a big ear to ear smile to your face and it brought out your party self. You really enjoyed it.

The music was so fun and Mammon’s voice reached the best parts of your heart and soul. And the lyrics, in your opinion the lyrics were the best part, specially because you had been there when Mammon was writing them.

It just warmed your body and made you happy.

Speaking of Mammon, he was on his way to pick you up, when he noticed you door was open so he let himself in, just to found you dancing and singing to the mirror his own song.

A deep blush spread in his cheeks, his eyes not entirely comprehending that his human looked that happy, making funny faces and dancing while listening to his song.

Once you caught onto the figure behind you through the mirror, you could see that the fiery blush on your demon grew even deeper. And so did your smile.

So, in your Are you Ready? Induced state, you went for him across your room.

Mammon tried to stop you, but in all honesty, we all know he could never say no to you, not really.

So you brought him next to your still dancing body and spurge him on to do the same.

It took a few seconds for his brain to process the situation, but once he saw the true joy and affection shining in your eyes, he felt himself relax and follow your lead.

Fortunately, the song was on replay, and your speakers were connected to your D.D.D so finally, both you and Mammon fall into a semi party just dancing, jumping to the rhythm, singing along and enjoying the others movements.

Eventually, Lucifer appeared and order both of you to shut up, and in giggles, with your cheeks aching, Mammon and you sneak your way out of HoL, and once you were in his car, on the road to the casino, he put Are you Ready? Again in the speaker of the vehicle.

All the way, both of you sang to the night in the Devildom, him stealing glances at your ecstatic face, and you staring at him while signing using your D.D.D as a pretend mic.

Once you reach the casino, Mammon felt so happy and elated to have you right by his side while he gamble his money away, he actually did manage to win a small fortune.

You both were in a rush with adrenaline pumping and serotonin flooding your brains, you suddenly found yourselves back in Mammon’s room.

Where he catch your body with his, and he stared deeply into your eyes, showing off his white pearls, no glasses covering his eyes so you got lost in the beautiful, divine blue and yellow.

“I’m just crazy for you, MC”

“And I’m madly in love with you, Mammie”

Leviathan

You wanted to surprise him, ok?

It’s just, you really appreciated that he had gotten over his insecurities and power through the whole recording and making of the song. So you wanted him to know that it meant a lot for you and that you truly loved his song.

So you got a Ruri-chan cosplay from Akuzon, pretty much spending all of your savings in a really good one, made up from scratch a choreography for My Chance! And went to work

With all of this motivation you were in the planetarium, recording video after video to just make sure everything was perfect. Of course, it was not your intention to post the video, after it was ready, you were going to send it to him privately.

But, of course, when did things go exactly the way you wanted them to without complications?

Yup, pretty much NEVER.

Honestly, I couldn’t blame you either, after being dressed up, dancing for at least three hours consecutively, perfecting your moves, editing and deleting the unwanted clips, pretty much being exhausted AF, you just hit the wrong button without realizing and post it to the DevilTube channel you had with the brothers, besides sending it to Levi.

Well, good news: it went viral. Bad news: it went VIRAL.

Leviathan couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the video.

You were so, so, so cute!!! And he couldn’t understand why would you choose HIS song to make such a good video? Like, why would you want something he made (with you in mind of course, but he couldn’t for his life say that out loud without combusting) a icky otaku like him?

So, after you realized your mistake you went to his room to clarify things.

Boy, was he flustered just by seeing you. Although you weren’t wearing the cosplay anymore, he couldn’t make eye contact without blushing furiously, stutter and imagining you in all sorts of different cosplays.

When you explained that you wanted the video to be something private for just the two of you as a token of appreciation for his song, because you didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, he understood and said thank you in between stutters and mumbles.

But you also said that you weren’t ashamed that everyone got to see you enjoying his song, almost as if you were bragging about him.

By the end of the day, he truly believed that you loved his song, and somehow both of you had agreed to make another video, dancing along My Chance! But as Henry and Lord of the Shadow.

“And I’ll be the one to make our cosplays!”

“Of course, Levia-chan”

 Satan

In all fairness, you hadn’t realized he was there the whole time you were in the library, trying to study but miserably failing the moment Read My Heart started to play in your earphones.

Singing softly, almost to yourself, your eyes unfocused on the textbooks in front of you, slowly rocking your head side to side, tapping your fingers as if playing the piano, you were enjoying Satan’s song.

You didn’t even felt the green eyes of the blond demon zeroed in on your form, and he wasn’t sure whether he liked it or not.

In the beginning he just followed the quiet noise because it was distracting him from his reading, until he noticed it was you, and after paying more attention to your voice he realized you were singing his song.

A faint blush spread on his cheeks, but his eyes couldn’t stray away from you unaware of your audience, you continued signing over and over again.

He felt warmth, feeling all fuzzy and giddy in the inside without showing much in the exterior, but the small, tender smile he wore in his beautiful face along with the pink in his cheeks said otherwise to anyone who looked.

Lucky for him, it was only the two of you in that moment.

So he decided to indulge himself in the adorable sight that was you, softly and inadvertently signing for him.

However, soon enough he just wanted to be closer to you, so he did.

Slowly, he approached you until he sat beside you.

That’s when you finally noticed him.

You stared at his eyes, and found a glint of amusement at your bashful reaction, but the tenderness in them and his own blush eased your nervousness.

You stopped signing, but he took one of your earphones and put it in his own ear, and then, he also started to softly sing along.

Wide eyed, heart throbbing and your soul melting at the sight of his deepening blush, you let yourself listen to his voice only occasionally adding your own.

Somehow, you ended up resting your head in his chest, and he used one arm to bring you closer, your earphone long forgotten, your ears capturing the sound of his heart in his chest and his soft singing.

After he ended one last time, you sneaked your arms around his midsection.

“It truly is a beautiful heart, Satan”

“And it’s yours, MC”

Asmodeus

On your way from RAD, you had passed by Majolish, and, through the window, caught a glimpse of the pink haired demon, dressing in what appeared to be another brand new outfit, posing in front of mirrors, being praised by a group of lesser demons.

You saw the practiced, smooth smile and postures Asmo was putting on, and couldn’t help but remember when both of you were in his room while you were trying on face masks among a bunch of other products, how carefree and relaxed he looked, how even his flashy and over the top personality had seemed to be calmed down a bit, and how he just enjoyed your presence and allowed himself to be engulfed in the comfort of the moment.

A tender smile sneak its way on your face, watching attentively as he continued on posing through the windows, and you started absentmindedly singing the lyrics of Pomade.

Not long after, Asmodeus locked gazes with you, and your heart flutter at the immense and dazzling smile he flaunted in his beautiful face.

So you continued on with your one-man audience performance.

He mantained eye contact through the mirror, and eventually he understood by reading your lips what you were saying, which brought a bashful blush spread on his cheeks that punch the air out of your lungs.

It should have been illegal to look that exquisitely magnificent. You thought it was fair since he was indeed a demon.

Finally, tired of not being right by your side as you made his own heart throb with such a gentle affection, he grab his bags filled with new products and gifts for the both of you to share, he made his way out of Majolish.

He found you waiting for him with a smile, open arms and sweet benevolence in your eyes, he almost melt instantly in your embrace.

Asmo, with a teasing smile said:

“Baby, you want my love?”

“Yes, I need your love”

Beelzebub

In the middle of the night, you and Beel had decided it was time for a snack. So now, in the kitchen, while you tried to keep as quiet as possible, you watched the gentle giant of a demon that was him, working to make the both of you a few sandwiches and some other snacks you knew he would eat the most of.

You both were sharing AkuPods, and you were in charge of the playlist for the silent raid to the fridge.

Suddenly, Hungry Six-Pack started playing. A fond smile formed on your lips, noticing that the demon himself didn’t seem to realize what was playing on his ear, so you began following the lyrics, making small movements to go along with rhythm.

You gained confidence, and a little mischievousness, so you boldly turned up the volume of your voice. Little by little, your dancing became more jumpy and louder.

Finally, while you were immersed in one of your twists and turns, you felt the warmth of a chest on your back and strong, gentle arms surrounding your dancing figure.

Giggling freely in Beel’s arms, you continued singing to your favorite song. It didn’t took you by surprise when you hear him behind you, joining your little display of talent.

Fortunately, you were able to discern the steps of someone coming over to the kitchen, and as you and your sweet demon scurried back to the safety of his room, the song kept on playing on your ears.

Once inside his room, you flopped into his bed, a wide smile on you, finally being able to see the pure adoration plastered in the orange haired demon towering above you.

“Forever?” he asked.

“Forever, Beel”

Belphegor

Late at night in your room, unable to sleep, your D.D.D screen the only source of light, you were absentmindedly reading a children’s book that you had downloaded earlier that day.

Still, dreams seemed to elude you that night, so defeated you stood up and went to your switch, to distract yourself with some doodling on your desk.

You put on your favorite soft playlist to further help you in getting sleepy.

Then Dreamscape started playing.

Firstly, your moved your head to the rhythm, then your fingers stopped holding your doodles and followed the lead, later, you started humming.

So, you let yourself be comforted by Belphie and his voice, staring through the window, unfocused on the bright Devildom moon, recalling the demon’s face and his gestures while you gave in and began singing the lyrics.

The soft music unexpectedly didn’t get you sleepy, if anything it reinvigorate you by bringing happy memories of the two of you, dissing Lucifer, sleepovers in the attic, some with Beel others not, stargazing, sleepless nights like the one you were experiencing right then just talking about dreams and their very weird, complex, simple or absurd meaning, or, of course, just basking in the others company in a comfortable silence.

Absentmindedly, you had keep on singing and what you didn’t know is that your favorite cuddle buddy was right behind your door, struggling to hide the blush on his face at hearing you sing his song, pondering on whether leave you be or demanding to sleep together.

In his own side, lost in his thoughts, he missed how your voice was approaching the door, you were also on a mission to find him to sleep by his side.

Once you both were face to face, it became obvious what had happened, so you let a small giggle leave your lips, and grabbed him by the arm, turning off the lights, forgetting the doodles in your desk and dragging him to your bed.

There, both of you snuggle closer until the maximum amount of coziness was reached. Limbs tangled between the two, Belphegor’s head ended up resting in your chest, his arms surrounding your midsection, while your hand played with his hair.

In the quietness of the atmosphere, you dared to once more humming the melody of Dreamscape, to your surprise, that earned you a tighter hug and a satisfied hum from the sleepy demon.

By the end, the only thing you could murmur, eyelids barely open and voice hardly understandable, was:

“G’night, Belphie”

As the seconds went by, you fell asleep without consciously hearing his answer, but your dreams were filled with that simple phrase and the face of the demon in your arms.

“Good night, MC”

Thanks for reading and have a peaceful week!

Here's a little playlist with all the songs and audios from Obey Me!

Atte.- Evie

Let's see if you can guess my top 3 favorites from this HC 👀

[thetvmoviefan]

Nabrina FanFics Part 10

Sabrina Spellman & Nicholas Scratch (Nick Scratch) FanFics MASTERLIST (UPDATEABLE PINNABLE)

Updated: September 20, 2020

As we await for news on Part 4 and when exactly when we will get the final part of CAOS, here are some fantastic Nabrina Fics by some wickedly good writers. Escape into their amazing and magical creations through their amazing writing as we wait on a final part. Make sure to leave some Love/Praise or Kudos through the comments on their work. Or maybe given them a little message to how much you enjoy their stories, they are the heroes through this Nabrina/CAOS hiatus. 

As always have a Wicked or Hell-ish these fics and ENJOY!!!!

Fics in order by Last Update: 9/20/2020

[Key: AU=Alternate Reality - AH=All Human/All Mortal - * = New Fics to List]

1. “Wicked Winds”*

Author: sarahkwut @sarahwyland

Summary: Nicholas Scratch winds up at the Academy of Unseen Arts after being kicked out of several others for being too smart - and too powerful - for his own good. He’s got a chip on his shoulder and he’s not in Greendale to make friends. But then he meets Sabrina Spellman, a witch that’s not only beautiful, but just as up for breaking the rules as him.Except she wants nothing to do with him.His old friend Prudence places a bet that he can’t get her to give into him - but things get complicated as he not only starts to fall for Sabrina, but a deadly darkness settles over Greendale. Rated M - Chapters 1/? - Last Update 9/19/2020

2. “Let’s Fall in Love for the Night”*

Author: shotgunkitten @shotgunkitten​

Summary: Hilda Spellman once said that their meeting was fate. And while neither Sabrina Spellman nor Nicholas Scratch were sure if they believed in that kind of thing, they were sure of this: They never wanted to find out what their lives would be like without each other. AU/AH- Rated T - Chapters 10/? - Last Update 9/18/2020

3. “Cruel Summer”

Author: thoughtsaboutshows @thoughtsaboutshows

Summary: A mix between AU and Cannon, where the young members of the Church of Night also attend Baxter High. The young witches and warlocks then go to the Unseen Arts Summer Camp to bolster their gifts. However Sabrina, being half mortal, only began attending after her Dark Baptism. To the mortals of Greendale, Unseen Arts Camp was for the wealthy. An elite sector of the Baxter High youth that attended a camp deep in the Greendale Wood far upstream of Sweetwater River. Many had tried to find and break in, but none have succeeded. To the mortals, the divide between the camp attendees and the not was of money and status. When in fact, the difference lay with light vs. night.Set between two timelines- the present and the summer, Sabrina attends camp for the first time and grows closer to Nick only for them to be torn apart as school starts. Rated Mature - Chapters 24/? - Last Update 9/17/2020

4. “Unwritten”

Author: Miss_Kath90 aka @misskath90

Summary: Tired of her aunt’s matchmaking attempts, Sabrina decides to tell a little white lie… and now she needs a boyfriend to accompany her to her hometown for the holidays.And who better to play that part than her good friend Nicholas Scratch? There is only one little problem… He had a crush on her since the day they met. When two friends pretend to be in a relationship, what could possibly go wrong? Rated T - Chapters 9/? - Last Update 9/15/2020

5. “Before the Devil Breaks Me”*

Author: willowaus @willowaus

Summary: All Sabrina wants to do is enjoy the last few years with her mortal friends. Attend college, party a little too hard, and make endless memories with them. But when you're a Spellman nothing ever goes as planned, especially not when she meets her handsomely mischievous classmate, Nick Scratch, who introduces her to a side of witchcraft that she's never thought possible.When people start ending up murdered in ritual sacrifices on campus Sabrina knows she can't keep both of her worlds apart any longer. Especially when it seems each murder is a message for her. AU - Rated Mature - Chapters 19/? - Last Update 9/15/2020

6. “If You Let Me”

Author: bunivy aka @bunivys

Summary: After pouring all of her time and effort into obtaining a law degree in the city, Sabrina Spellman moves back to Greendale for one last summer before she departs for good. She's fully intent on enjoying her stay in her hometown, even deciding to pick up a part-time job at her Aunt Hilda's cafe to save up some money. The only problem is that the boy in the bookstore across the way is one she's had some not-so-good history with and it's becoming increasingly harder to ignore him. Before long, she finds herself exploring the complexities of old high-school grudges and what-ifs, all while trying to sort out her present-day relationship with the boy she has long since deemed as non-existent.Meanwhile, Nicholas Scratch wonders if it would just be easier to remain non-existent. AU/AH - Rated Mature - Chapters 23/? - Last Update 9/04/2020

7. “Off The Record - One Shots”

Author: sarahkwut @sarahwyland

Summary: Missing scenes from my completed piece, 'Off The Record.' AU/AH - Not Rated - Chapters 8/? - Last Update 9/07/2020

8. "Free Pour”

Author: sarahkwut @sarahwyland

Summary: He's a bartender with a perfect free pour and a Ph.D. candidate. She thinks she wants to be a lawyer and wishes she had taken more chances in life. Both of them are trying to move on. But when their paths collide, Nick's hand is no longer steady with the bottle and she's far more willing to take a risk. AU/AH - Rated Mature - Chapters 23/23 - COMPLETED 9/01/2020

9. "Burning House”*

Author: thoughtsaboutshows @thoughtsaboutshows​

Summary: Sabrina hasn't seen him in months but she still sees him everywhere. Nick sees her every night in his dreams. They both know what they want, but won't let the other have it. Not yet. Not when Nick will hardly talk to her and Sabrina used well...THAT candle... ONE-SHOT - Not Rated - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 8/28/2020

10. “Born To Love You”*

Author: thoughtsaboutshows aka @thoughtsaboutshows

Summary: So Sabrina left Harvey at the altar for Nick. What now? Tune in for snapshots into Nick and Sabrina's life now that they've admitted their true feelings. What happened after Sabrina left Harvey and ran to Nick? Did they live happily ever after?This will be a collection of snapshots of this version of Nick and Sabrina. I don't know how often it will be updated, but we will get a look into their life together.I enjoy writing my fics based on songs, so if a particular song screams this Nick and Sabrina to you please message me on tumblr or comment below and maybe I'll write a scene based on it! ****Follow up to One-Shot Marry Me. Go READ it first!****  AU/AH - Not Rated - Chapters 3/? - Last Update 8/15/2020

11. “The Four Pictures”

Author: Copper_16

Summary: It’s been 10 years. Nick and Sabrina are teachers at the Academy along with some familiar faces. It’s been a decade there can’t be that much chaos anymore, right? Wrong. Rated T - Chapters 4/? - Last Update 8/04/2020

12. “Marry Me”*

Author: thoughtsaboutshows @thoughtsaboutshows

Summary: “No, No, No.” Nick said as he shook his head at Prudence. “Sabrina is my best friend. That’s it.”“Sure.” Prudence shrugged her shoulders.When she explained to her brother that they were likely more she had said it as a statement, not an invitation to have a conversation about it. She was entirely annoyed by the Spellman girl, and had found it odd and irritating that she and her brother had been attached at the hip from a young age.“Besides she’s marrying Kinkle, Prudence.” Nick explained more to himself than to Prudence. His eyes were wild and looking around the room, searching for something to land on. “Not me.”“Do you want her to?” Prudence asked as she leaned forward. Nick paused, unsure how to answer that question. Nick had been in love with Sabrina Spellman for most of his life. But she was happy with Harvey Kinkle. Prudence rolled her eyes and stood up sighing, and placed a hand on Nick’s shoulder. She was rarely affectionate and this was as comforting as she got. “You may want to figure that out.” AU/AH - Rated Mature - ONE-SHOT - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 7/11/2020

13. “The Chaos In the Stars”

Author: willowaus @willowaus

Summary: Nick sacrificed himself to save her, but Sabrina's not about to let him fester away in Hell. But what happens when saving the one she loves brings about a series of apocalyptic events that Sabrina and the rest of the Spellman clan need to thwart?Alternate part 3. (Part 3 Fic) - Rated Mature - Chapters 24/24 - COMPLETED 6/30/2020

14. “A Little Wicked”

Author: Miss_Kath90 aka @misskath90

Summary: Sometimes, in the darkness of her room, unable to sleep, she thought about how easy it would be to fall in love with him. And she was sure a part of her was a bit in love with him already, but she kept holding to the past and that was hurting them both. Rated Mature - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 6/16/2020

15. “Crash Into Me”

Author: thoughtsaboutshows @thoughtsaboutshows

Summary: Set after Part 3 and some time after Nick and Sabrina's breakup. Just a little one-shot of a mission they get sent on by Zelda. Tough conversations and some tears...and one bed ONE-SHOT - Not Rated - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 6/15/2020

16. “Heaven can’t help me now”

Author: bunivy @bunivys

Summary: Soulmates are a universal law, the way of life. Sabrina's soulmate is Harvey, but she'll pick Nick every time, in every way. ONE-SHOT - Not Rated - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 6/13/2020

17. “I knew you were trouble”

Author: Miss_Kath90 aka @misskath90

Summary: Sabrina didn’t know that being away from home for the first time could be so hard.Away from her aunts, friends and her-lifelong-boyfriend, Sabrina have to deal with the nostalgia but also with the new challenges College's life mean: get used to share a room with a not-so-nice roommate, put up with long hours of study and very few of sleep, learn to live from pre-cooked meals instead of her aunt Hilda’s homemade ones, find balance between her studies and her new social life… And resist the temptation a certain Nicholas Scratch mean for her. AU/AH - Rated Mature - Chapters 28/28 - COMPLETED 6/06/2020

18. “A Thing or Two to Learn”

Author: gracefulchaos

Summary: What if Sabrina and Nick weren't in the same coven, and they met each other later in life? AU - Rated Mature - Chapters 1/? - Last Update 6/06/2020

19. “When the Bones are Good”

Author: sarahkwut @sarahwyland

Summary: Sabrina Spellman is enjoying her life as a normal teenager. Sabrina Morningstar is reigning Hell with an iron fist. Ambrose Spellman is searching for a solution to bring them back together and close the time loop, Sabrina's wishes be damned. And Nicholas Scratch? He's faced down his own demons and he's desperate for redemption.Except the clock is ticking.On time and Terrors. (Part 4 Fic) - Rated General - Chapters 28/28 - COMPLETED 6/05/2020

20. “Bury a Lie”

Author: raeinthedark

Summary: Sabrina is comfortable with death. It's her job. But everything is changed on a rainy October morning. The life and work she was accustomed to are forever different in the wake of tragedy. There really isn't coming back from this, unless she can figure out who's behind it. AU/AH - Rated Mature - Chapters 3/? - Last Update 5/04/2020

21. “I run to you”

Author: thoughtsaboutshows @thoughtsaboutshows

Summary: Nick and Sabrina love two things. Research and each other. But their research often takes them to far away places, and far away from the person they love most. AU/AH - Not Rated - Chapters 1/1 - One-Shot COMPLETED - 5/21/2020

22. “My Body Is A Canvas For Your Love”

Author: Unseemingowl aka @unseemingowl

Summary: Sabrina had no love for the whip or the belt or the cane that Nick had used to enjoy so much, but restraints... That was another matter entirely. Rated E Mature - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 4/29/2020

23. ”Ground Beneath Her Feet”

Author: mindlesshappy aka @feministstree

Summary: Sabrina is born out of a miracle - one that she wishes would repeat for her, but when she is destined for someone else, how much can she resist before her heart decides to give in. Alternatively, Nick is Sabrina's soulmate, but she really just wants Harvey to be it. Also, in the backseat are all the other possible ships, getting their own soulmate glories. Rated T - Chapters 18/? - Last Update 4/17/2020

24. “in your eyes (there's something burning inside you)”

Author: jessequicksters

Summary: Nicholas falls in love with Sabrina as fast as a mortal sells their soul to the devil. The only problem is, in the Church of Night, everything has a price. Even love.Especially love.(He bleeds every time he dreams of Sabrina and when they kiss, it happens too, but love isn't supposed to hurt, right? Except he's never known about love; the only thing he knows is that this half-mortal is going to be the death of him.) Rated Mature - Chapters 5/5 - Last Update 3/22/2020

25. “The Institute for Divine Craft”

Author: rayo aka @its-nabrina-bitch

Summary: After a humiliating spat with Father Blackwood pushes Sabrina away from her witching life and the Academy, Madam Satan crafts an alternative solution to move Sabrina Spellman further down the path of night. Ultimately leading her to the Institute for the Divine Craft. A handsome Headmaster with mysterious ties to her father, convinces Sabrina to abandon her mortal life, and cultivate her abilities as a child of the Church of Lucifer. AU - Rated Mature - Chapters 19/? - Last Update 3/22/2020

26. “My Lover of Blood and Milk”

Author: Unseemingowl aka @unseemingowl

Summary: It didn’t feel as though it had only been a few hours since she had made her way to the Greendale woods for Lupercalia. As she sat there, shivering in her muddied and bloodied silk slip, it felt as if a completely different person had made her way back out of the forest...... Or how Sabrina struggles with lust and trust after her disastrous Lupercalian night with Nick. Rated Mature - Chapters 4/4 - Last Update 3/15/2020

27. “I Need to Know”

Author: raeinthedark

Summary: Love isn't that easy to erase... and that song is on again. Rated General - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 2/29/2020

28. “Be True To Your School”

Author: rayo aka @its-nabrina-bitch

Summary: Nicholas Scratch is the Golden Boy™ of Baxter High; star athlete, top of his class academically, and devastatingly handsome. Sabrina Spellman sees Sophomore year as an opportunity to expand her horizons; joining the cheerleading squad, running for student council, and making new friends along the way while working to maintain her relationships with her old friends. What Sabrina Spellman doesn't know: sophomore year is about to turn her world upside-down. Rated T - Chapters 6/? - Last Update 2/23/2020

29. “Ocean”

Author: sarahkwut

Summary: AU, M-Rated. Nicholas Scratch has everything working in his favor. He's got a decent job as a history teacher, his roommate Melvin is always up for video games and getting high, and Sabrina Spellman lets him mess up her sheets frequently. Sabrina knows Nick isn't good for her, but she can't stay away, no matter how hard it is to pretend she's completely okay with their casual arrangement. But when life takes an unexpected curve, Nick is forced to face a new normal he doesn't know how to navigate. And Sabrina may or may not be there to help him through it. AU/AH - Rated Mature - Chapters 27/27 - COMPLETED 2/10/2020

30. “I’ll be there”

Author: Miss_Kath90 aka @misskath90

Summary: She couldn’t stop looking at him, since she had recovered him from the claws of the Dark Lord, she felt unable to be apart from him and had to admit that part of her was afraid he would disappear if she moved from his side. And Sabrina wouldn't let anyone or anything separate him from her again. Never. Rated Mature - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 1/30/2020

31. “Walk away”

Author: Miss_Kath90 aka @misskath90

Summary: Pain. Could he someday escape the pain? He sometimes thought it impossible. It was strange, his relationship with the pain, it was an enemy and a friend. The pain numbed him. The pain didn’t let him sleep. The pain hurt him and soothed him. It was unhealthy, the way the pain helped him relieve the pain. But it was the only thing he had left. Rated T - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 1/27/2020

32. “To Hell and Back”

Author: sarahkwut

Summary: Sabrina was successful in her efforts to retrieve Nick from Hell, but the damage - physical and emotional - is deep. Sometimes, the only way to heal is to go your separate ways and trust things will work themselves out in the end. (Written before Part 3 - an alternate take on how Nick recovers from his time in Hell - with and without Sabrina). Rated Mature - Chapters 3/3 - Last Update 1/26/2020

33. “The Morning(star) After”

Author: rayo aka @its-nabrina-bitch

Summary: A Painful NickxSabrina Reunion Rated T - Chapters 1/3 - Last Update 1/24/2020

34. “My only love sprung from my only hate”

Author: filmharlot

Summary: High School AU where Nick is based on the version of him that Sabrina creates in her dream during the Batibat episode. Harvey and Sabrina have broken up and don't want to work together on the Romeo and Juliet assignment in Drama class, so she ends up being partners with Nick AU - Not Rated - Chapters 8/? - Last Update 1/19/2020

35. “A very witchy Christmas”

Author: Miss_Kath90 aka @misskath90

Summary: Just a bit of silly Christmas fluff that I couldn’t help but write, placed in the series universe after a huge jump in time. Not Rated - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 12/25/2019

36. “Mortal Little Christmas”

Author: HeartsInJeopardy

Summary: ‘Twas the night before Christmas – and the first for Nick Scratch - but Sabrina’s holiday movie was not a good match. Rated T - Chapters 2/2 - Last Update 12/21/2019

37. “Lessons in the Unseen”

Author: bunivy aka @bunivys

Summary: Academy Teachers AU. Sabrina Spellman lives as simple a life as a half-mortal half-witch can. Despite her dislike for the headmaster, she enjoys spending her time teaching Ritual Magic at the Academy of Unseen Arts, hoping to positively shape the minds of young witches and warlocks. However, with the sudden dreadful announcement of her aunt Zelda's engagement and the appearance of one mysterious - and strikingly handsome - Nicholas Scratch, Sabrina finds that her life is not so simple anymore. Or all that safe. AU - Rated Mature - Chapters 32/32 - COMPLETED 12/17/2019

38. “Just a Little Obsessed”

Author: eyerys

Summary: Nicholas has developed a tinie-tiny crush on Sabrina. Nothing like major or whatever. It's not like he thinks about her all the time or daydreams about what it would be like to be with her or how cool she is. No, not at all.Sabrina doesn't have a crush on Nick. No, not at all. Uh-uh. She has Harvey. Sweet and loving Harvey Kinkle. But for some reason, she can't help but find her mind wandering. Rated T - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 12/13/2019

39. “As The Moon Rises”

Author: venzaren

Summary: Sabrina Spellman is tired.Tired of living a double life. Tired of facing discrimination at the hands of her pack. Tired of dealing with her status as an Omega. And most of all, she's tired of people hounding her about finding her mate.Then Nick Scratch returns to Greendale. AU - Rated General - Chapters 1/? - Last Update 12/07/2019

40. “Thirteen Memories”

Author: tempestbreak

Summary: (Set at the end of Season 2) Sabrina and her friends go to Hell and rescue Nick -- but what happens when that's the easy part?It turns out, having the Dark Lord inside your mind for months can do some damage, and Nick comes back different. His memories of the events leading up to his sacrifice, including his relationship with Sabrina, are gone. How can Sabrina help him regain his memories of their time together when she's not even sure she trusts her own? Rated Mature - Chapters 6/? - Last Update 11/02/2019

41. “But The Greatest Is Love”

Author: sarahkwut

Summary: The acheron captured Lucifer Morningstar, but their problems are far from over. The coven is decimated, the Church of Night is no more, Father Blackwood is on the run, and Nick and Sabrina's relationship is in ruins. How do they pick up the pieces and move on? There are more questions than answers and the consequences could be of biblical proportions. Rated Mature - Chapters 25/25 - COMPLETED 10/28/2019

42. “Back to You”

Author: nadiaselite

Summary: Sabrina brings Nick back from hell. Rated T - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 10/11/2019

43. “The Open Road”

Author: paradiamond

Summary: Nick wants her back, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes. In fact, he insists on it. Rated T - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 9/22/2019

44. “The words “I love you” aren’t enough”

Author: Miss_Kath90

Summary: “Look at me, Nick” he was reluctant but when he finally looked up she took his face in her hands making him unable to look away “What you did that day… Nick, you sacrificed yourself for my sake, even when I mistreated you and told you all those horrible things. You did it for me, because you love me… Don’t you see? You’re incapable of being evil.”Or... Sabrina gets her boyfriend back but things don’t go as smoothly as she thinks they will. Rated Mature - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 9/22/2019

45. “Mission: Let’s get my boyfriend back”

Author: My_Evak_Heart

Summary: Sabrina and the Fright Club ventures on their first mission: getting Nick back from Hell Not Rated - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 9/7/2019

46. “Jealousy is a killer”

Author: Melissa1226

Summary: Will Sabrina and Nick Start something new? and who is watching them from the shadow full of jealousy? Rated Mature - Chapters 8/? - Last Update 8/28/2019

47. “The Jock”

Author: mikaila_ealum

Summary: An Alternate Universe where Nicholas Scratch is Baxter High’s quarterback along with one of the most popular boys at school. With few knowing the truth, Scratch is living a double life as a warlock at the Academy of Unseen Arts. Sabrina takes a hiatus from the Academy to get more in touch with her mortal side. When Sabrina gets back she becomes partners with Nicholas for a project in theatre class. AU - Chapters 8/? - Last Update 8/07/2019

48. “act 5, scene 2 (thou and i are too wise to woo peaceably)”

Author: ghostemo aka @wickedscratch

Summary: When Sabrina Spellman rose to a challenge issued by Prudence Night, she never imagined she’d actually make the varsity cheer squad - or that doing so would upend life as she knew it. Now she has to navigate her new role within the social hierarchy of hell -er Baxter High as well as trying to get her boyfriend to actually communicate. It certainly doesn’t help that she’s been paired up with the annoyingly handsome Nicholas Scratch, captain of Greendale’s beloved football team, for a project in her theater class. It’s exactly as, if not more so, cliche as it sounds. AU/AH - Rated T - Chapters 3/? - 7/25/2019

49. “Off the Record”

Author: sarahkwut

Summary: AU. Detective Nicholas Scratch left New York for Greendale in desperate need of a change of scenery. The small town takes some getting used to, but local reporter Sabrina Spellman quickly grabs his attention. It's the fresh start he needed until Greendale's residents start turning up dead. With a murderer on the loose, no one is innocent - and anyone might be next. AU/AH - Rated Mature - Chapters 29/29 - COMPLETED 7/22/2019

50. “Bring You Close To Me”

Author: BridgetMcKennitt

Summary: Sabrina and her friends managed to bring Nicholas back from Hell. There was a lot the two of them needed to discuss, but tonight, they had this. Rated E Mature - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Last Update 7/13/2019

51. “A Brief Moment”

Author: bunivy aka @bunivys

Summary: Ever since he's returned from Hell, Nicholas Scratch has been having nightmares. With help from Aunt Hilda, Sabrina unknowingly shows him a light and for a moment, Nicholas knows everything will be okay. Rated General - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Last Update 6/24/2019

52. “To Hell and Back”

Author: swtnerdgirl

Summary: A year has passed since Sabrina and her friends rescued Nick from Hell. No one came back the same. They all had their scars. Some emotionally. Some physically. In the days leading to Hilda's wedding, they all prepare for their lives to change and heal their wounds. Rated Mature - Chapters 16/? - Last Update 6/06/2019

53. “Dead Witch Walking”

Author: rayo aka @its-nabrina-bitch

Summary: Faced with the possibility of being harrowed to death by her classmates, Sabrina finds an escape. Rated E Mature - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Last Update 5/26/2019

54. “Moonlight Beneath Rough Lips”

Author: ivylikeveins

Summary: After the encounter with the thirteen witches of Greendale, Sabrina enters the dining hall with moonlight locks bathed in soft blue hues, and Nick does not know what to do. He ends up with a soft and small Sabrina pressed into his chest, sleeping, and wrapped around his very much over-sized jacket with Nick's lips pressed into the soft, pearly strands he wants his soul to get entangled within. Rated Mature - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Last Update 5/19/2019

55. “The Hunt”

Author: OnlyInAutumn

Summary: Nick howled into the night, up at the stars to signify that he was ready on the eve of Lupercalia, the darkness of midnight around them. The first sound of the horn sent them into the forest. The hunt had begun. Rated E Mature - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Last Update 5/11/2019

56. “Secrets, Secrets are no Fun”

Author: filmharlot

Summary: Sabrina is the new kid for the first time in her life. Choosing to go to the Academy full-time seems to be a hard transition than she was expecting. With the Weird Sisters harassment at an all-time high, dealing with leaving her mortal friend's and condescending teachers, Sabrina is suffering. She's not even allowed to have Salem for comfort. It's not all bad though. She is finally free to do magic whenever she wants, and there's a charming warlock who is being particularly nice to her. Plus, someone is leaving kind gifts on her bed at the end of the night. She just wishes she knew who it was. Not Rated - Chapters 1/? - Last Update 5/06/2019

57. “Unsettled Nighttime Creatures”

Author: mindlesshappy

Summary: We all know Sabrina is going to save Nick. This is how Nick reacts to being saved - which, spoilers alert - is like a very stupid warlock. Rated T - Chapters 5/5 - Completed 4/25/2019

58. “Selfless”

Author: sarahwut

Summary: Sabrina Spellman dragged Nicholas Scratch back from Hell. But Hell might be better than a world in which they aren't together. Rated General - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Completed 4/23/2019

59. “Homecoming”

Author: cherrystems

Summary: After several months Sabrina is able to get Nick back from Hell with the help of her family and friends. However, Nick has to adjust to Earth again while dealing with PTSD and anxiety. This tells the story of the growth of Sabrina and Nick's relationship over the recovery time. Not Rated - Chapters 3/? - Last Update 4/20/2019

60. “Under Your Spell”

Author: londonmarie

Summary: Sabrina doesn't hesitate to have her Dark Baptism and things go differently. Rated T - Chapters 10/? - Last Update 4/18/2019

61. “Photographs”

Author: Greyowl9831

Summary: It's been at least 150 years since Sabrina signed her name in the Book of the Beast. One day she finds an old photo album. Will the memories it contains be a great walk down memory lane or will it be more than she can bare? Not Rated - Chapters 4/? - Last Update 4/14/2019

62. “An itch That Needed Scratching”

Author: umbrellacorp

Summary: What if Nick slayed his familiar and Sabrina and Nick got to experience the last night of the Lupercalia festival alone. Tonight, Sabrina would be transformed. Nick was going to show her power that she never knew she had, an innate carnal power. They were about to become the most powerful union of the Church of Night. Rated E Mature - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Last Update 4/13/2019

63. “and I keep waiting (but I won’t say I’m waiting)”

Author: lost_n_stereo @lost-n-stereo

Summary: You would think that it would hurt less as the days go by, since it’s been nearly two years since Nick sacrificed himself for the greater good and Lilith took him to hell. Except, he didn’t sacrifice himself for the greater good, he sacrificed himself for her. And that makes it a hell of a lot tougher to let go. Rated General - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Last Update 4/10/2019

64. “Fire”

Author: OnlyInAutumn

Summary: Their power—together—was overwhelming. It was something that she had not felt either, the consuming feeling of expanding power. It was entirely addicting. Rated Mature - Chapters 2/2 - Completed 3/24/2019

65. “something I can believe”

Author: Anry

Summary: Missing scene after Sabrina's baptism. I wouldn't say that it's really a relationship here, just conversation. Rated General - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Last Update 1/25/2019

AND THERE YOU GO!!!! Have fun everyone, if I missed any Fics or you have any recommendations for the list message me or send in a ask and I’ll add it to the list. Hopefully by the time you’ve checked out some of these stories we will finally know something about Part 4. 

[touchingoldmagic]

Day 4 - Favorite Ghost

Day 4 of the 30 Day Ghostbusters Challenge!

Author's Note: I'm not counting Slimer or any major villains for this one, since there's specific prompts for them later on. Also this is my first time writing the 2016 team, hopefully I did okay.

"Do you think he used to be a music lover when he was alive?" Abby wondered, scanning the darkened vinyl record store.

"This is the second time we've found him in a musically inclined location. Maybe this feels like home to him." She and Erin drifted to the far right side of the store, while Patty and Jillian spread out on the left. The building had been evacuated and the electricity had been cut by the time they got there, the only sound the high-pitched hum of their equipment.

"I think he has bad taste," Patty muttered. "Did you hear that band that was playing at the Stonebrook?" It wasn't a large record store. They could easily keep in contact with each other without the use of radios. Also she could keep all her teammates in sight, which Patty thought made this much better than their usual busts.

Erin shifted uneasily, trying to catch sight of anything in the store that seemed out of place. Their perpetrator liked to possess things to hide in, taking great delight in springing out at the last minute. She followed behind Abby, who had the PKE meter. "I just hate facing the ones we've gone up against before," she said worriedly. "I feel like he knows all our tricks by now. This is the third time in a month we've tried to pin him down, it's like he's got really good at it!"

"Well they say third time's the charm," Abby said, shrugging.

Erin had a habit of babbling a bit when she was nervous. "He was the first successful test of our equipment, remember? Maybe this is fate? Maybe he's supposed to be the lovable green scamp that always shows up, causes some mischief, and then escapes at the last minute to bother us again another day. You know, like a mascot?" She raised her eyebrows at her teammates hopefully.

Patty rolled her eyes. "He has literally killed people, Erin. I don't think he gets a 'get out of jail free card.' Back me up, Holtzy."

The petite blond grabbed her proton pistols. "Nobody knows all my tricks--least of all myself," she said, which seemed to be her way of agreeing. "Party at one o'clock!" Her three teammates jumped as twin streams of protons lit up the darkened store, streaking toward the back wall. A life-sized cardboard cutout of Sting was haloed in light in the instant before contact. Afterward, a smoking hole remained where the smirking face had once been.

"Oops. I mean, successful test. Ha."

Erin sighed.

Abby paced down one of the narrow aisles between shelves of records and cardboard sleeves. "Well he's definitely still here," she muttered, mostly to herself. "Maybe if we piss him off enough he'll come out."

Erin was just a step behind her. She stopped and peered at an old CRT-style television that sat at the end of one of the aisles, a fat little device complete with "rabbit ears" antenna. For a moment she wondered if it was functional or just decoration to help the ambiance of the nostalgic vinyl store, but suddenly it became a moot point. With a metallic screech, the rabbit ears on top of the TV bent themselves into clawed hands that reached for her.

Erin shrieked--it wasn't fear, it was a war cry to shake up the ghost, definitely--and her thumb slammed the button on her thrower. Immediately she jumped back to avoid debris as the TV exploded in a plume of shattered glass and smoke. In the back of her mind she took a moment to be thankful she had insisted their new insurance policy be in place before they took on any more of these close-quarters busts.

At least it had the desired effect. The smoking hole in the TV lit up with an urgent green glow and a wave of ethereal ectoplasm pushed past her, the ghost fleeing the device. He shot up into the air in the center of the record store and hovered, beady red eyes looking down at the four Ghostbusters with an expression of glee on his reptilian features.

"There he is!" Patty barked. "Circle up, ladies!"

They were in a prime position to surround the ghost Erin had nicknamed Mayhem. (It was an appropriate name, since he seemed to delight in causing as much trouble and property destruction as possible wherever he went.) Trying to act before he could react, they lashed out with four proton streams in the hopes of catching him in a cage of energy.

Mayhem, however, was as agile as he was troublesome. He flared his draconic wings and passed through the ceiling of the shop, while the proton streams left scorch marks across the ceiling tiles. As soon as they let up on their streams, the green ghost swooped back down. He skimmed just over their heads, letting out a mighty screech that somehow sounded like it was laughing at them while they scattered for cover. Abby and Erin both ducked behind a display of Top 50's Hits, but Patty crashed into an endcap of cassettes that fell over in a clatter.

"C'mon, girls!" Abby shouted encouragement. "This can't be our Waterloo!"

"I agree, it should be our 'Dancing Queen' or 'Take a Chance on Me'," Jillian said.

"She didn't mean the ABBA song," Erin sighed, trying to herd Mayhem toward Abby's stream using her own.

"How do you know?" Jillian asked, sounding honestly curious.

Patty picked herself up off the floor just in time to get a facefull of slime as Mayhem swooped down and smacked directly into her, screeching angrily. Perhaps remembering their first encounter, he grabbed her shoulders in his large talons and tried to lift her into the air. In the background, Abby yelped for the other two to hold their fire.

"Okay, that is IT!" Patty growled, spitting green goo away from her mouth. The tall Ghostbuster had been working on being prepared for all contingencies, and this time her preparation had paid off. As Mayhem yanked her higher into the air, Patty allowed her thrower to drop and pulled out the Proton Glove hooked to the side of her pack. Instantly the darkened record store was lit up in a burst of protonic sparks, as her uppercut connected with the ghost's chin. The impact was enough to cause Mayhem to drop her as he was flung backward directly toward Erin, who managed to thumb her thrower in time to catch him in her stream.

"You got him!" Abby called out in delight, craning her neck to look over a shelf of records to make sure Patty was okay. She was slimed and sitting in a pile of smashed music cassettes, but didn't seem injured. Quickly Abby turned and added her proton stream to Erin's. Mayhem screamed, a sound like a needle scratching a record made of glass, but he couldn't escape.

"Trap him trap him!" Erin gasped.

"Got it," Jillian said in a singsong, tossing out the trap out in the picture of nonchalance. It rolled into place under the writhing spirit and then it was all over. Silence fell and all light cut out, leaving the room dark and still. Cassettes crunched as Patty got to her feet. Abby coughed and fanned smoke from the broken TV away from her face.

"I'm glad our insurance is in place," Erin sighed reverently.

"I need a towel," Patty muttered. "Nasty."

[dispactke]

Infrarealism Manifesto

Manifesto of Infrarealism

——-

GIVE IT ALL UP AGAIN

first infrarealist manifesto

“It’s four light hours to the confines of the solar system; to the closest star, four light years. A disproportionate ocean of emptiness. But are we really sure there is only a void? We only know that there are no stars shining in that space. If they existed, would they be visible? And if there existed bodies that are neither luminous nor dark? Could it not be that on the celestial maps, the same as on those of Earth, the star-cities are indicated and the star-villages are omitted?”

— Soviet science fiction writers scratching their faces at midnight.

— The infrasuns (Drummond would say the happy proletarian fellows).

— Peguero and Boris alone in a lumpen room having premonitions of the wonder behind the door.

— Free money.

*

Who has crossed the city and had, as the only music, the whistles of his fellow man, his own words of wonder and rage?

The handsome guy who didn’t know

that chicks’ orgasms are clitoral

(Look around, shit isn’t just in museums.) (A process of individual museumification.) (Certainty that everything is named, revealed.) (Fear of discovering.) (Fear of unforeseen imbalances.)

*

Our closest relatives:

snipers, country boys who smash up cheap cafés in Latin America, people who fall apart in supermarkets in their tremendous individuo-collective dilemmas; the impotence of action and the search (on individual levels or good and muddy with aesthetic contradictions) for poetic action.

*

Little bright stars eternally winking an eye at us from a place in the universe called Labyrinths.

— Nightclub of misery.

— Pepito Tequila sobbing his love for Lisa Underground.

— I suck it, you suck it, we suck it.

— And the Horror.

*

Curtains of water, cement or tin separate a cultural machinery that serves as the conscience or the ass of the dominant class from a living, annoying cultural happening, in constant death and birth, ignorant of the greater part of history and the fine arts (everyday creator of its insane history and its hallucinatory fine artz), body that suddenly feels new sensations in itself, product of an epoch in which we approach the shithouse or the revolution at 200 kph.

“New forms, strange forms,” as old Bertolt said, half curious, half cheerful.

*

Sensations don’t arise from nothingness (the obvious of obviousnesses) but from conditioned reality, in a thousand ways, as a constant flow.

— Multiple reality, you make us sick!

So it is possible that on the one hand one is born and on the other hand we’re in the front row for the death throes. Forms of life and forms of death pass daily through the retina. The constant crash gives life to infrarealist forms: THE EYE OF TRANSITION

*

They put the whole city in the nuthouse. Sweet sister, tank howls, hermaphrodite songs, diamond deserts, we’ll live only once and the visions, more complicated and slippery every day. Sweet sister, hitchhiking to Monte Albán[i]. Unbuckling their belts to water the corpses. It’s something at least.

*

And the good bourgeois culture? And academia and the arsonists? And the vanguard and its rearguard? And certain conceptions of love, nice scenery, the precise multinational Colt sidearm?

Like Saint-Just[ii] said to me in a dream I had a while ago: Even the heads of aristocrats can be our weapons.

*

— A good part of the world is being born and the other part is dying and we all know that we all have to live and we all die: in this there is no middle road.

Chirico[iii] says: thought needs to move away from everything called logic and common sense, to move away from all human obstacles in such a way that things take on a new look, as though illuminated by a constellation appearing for the first time. The infrarealists say: We’re going to stick our noses into all human obstacles, in such a way that things begin to move inside of us, a hallucinatory vision of mankind.

— The Constellation of the Beautiful Bird.

— The infrarealists propose Indianism to the world: a crazy, timid Indian.

— A new lyricism that’s beginning to grow in Latin America sustains itself in ways that never cease to amaze us. The entrance to the work is the entrance to adventure: the poem as a journey and the poet as a hero who reveals heroes. Tenderness as an exercise in speed. Respiration and heat. Experience shot, structures that devour themselves, insane contradictions.

The poet is interfering, the reader will have to interfere for himself.

“erotic books full of misspellings”

*

The THOUSAND DRAWN-AND-QUARTERED VANGUARDS OF THE SEVENTIES are our ancestors

99 flowers open like an open head

Slaughters, new concentration camps

White subterranean rivers, violet winds

These are hard times for poetry, some say, sipping tea, listening to music in their apartments, talking (listening) to the old masters. These are hard times for mankind, we say, coming back to the barricades after a workday full of shit and tear gas, discovering/creating music even in apartments, spending all day watching the cemeteries-that-expand, where they hopelessly drink a cup of tea or get drunk on pure rage or the inertia of the old masters.

HORA ZERO[iv] are our ancestors

((Raise arsonist kids, get burned))

We’re still in the Quaternary Period. We’re still in the Quaternary Period?

Pepito Tequila kisses the phosphorescent nipples of Lisa Underground and heads off for a beach where black pyramids sprout up.

*

I repeat:

The poet as a hero who reveals heroes, like the fallen red tree that announces the start of a forest.

— Attempts at an ethic-aesthetic are paved with betrayals or pathetic survivals.

— And it is the individual who could walk a thousand kilometers but inevitably the road will eat him.

— Our ethic is the Revolution, our aesthetic is Life: one-and-the-same.

*

For the bourgeoisie and the petite-bourgeoisie, life is a party. They have one every weekend. The proletariat doesn’t have parties. Just funerals with rhythm. That’s going to change. The exploited are going to throw a big party. Memory and guillotines. Sensing it, acting it out on certain nights, inventing edges and humid corners for it, like caressing the acid eyes of the new spirit.

*

Movement of the poem through the seasons of rebellion: poetry producing poets producing poems producing poetry. No electric alley/the poet with his arms separated from his body/the poem moving slowly from his Vision to his Revolution. The alley is a complex point. “We’re going to invent it so as to discover its contradiction, its invisible forms of negation, even to clarify it.” A journey of the act of writing through zones not at all favorable to the act of writing.

Rimbaud, come home!

Subvert the everyday reality of modern poetry. The chains that lead to the poem’s circular reality. A good reference: Kurt Schwitters. Lanke trr gll, or, upa kupa arggg, happens in the official line, phonetic investigators encoding the howl. The bridges of Nova Express are anti-codifying: let him scream, let him scream (please don’t go pulling out pencils or little notebooks, don’t record it, if you want to participate scream along), so let him scream, to see the look on his face when it’s over, what incredible thing happen to us.

Our bridges to unknown seasons. The poem interrelating reality and unreality.

*

Convulsively.

*

What can I ask of present-day Latin American painting? What can I ask of the theater?

It is more revealing and more evocative to stand in a park devastated by smog and watch people cross the avenues in groups (that contract and expand), the avenues, where drivers as much as pedestrians feel the urge to return to their hovels, when the murderers come out and the victims stalk them.

What stories are painters really telling me?

The interesting void, fixed form and color, at best a parody of movement. Canvases that will serve only as bright advertisements in the rooms of engineers and doctors who collect them.

The painter adapts to a society that is every day more of a “painter” than he is, and there he finds himself disarmed and registers as clown.

If painting X is found in some street by Mara, that painting acquires the status of an amusing, communicative thing; in a salon it’s as decorative as bourgeois wrought iron garden chairs/a question of the retina?/yes and no/but it’d be better to find (and systematize according to chance for awhile) the unleashing factor, class-conscious, a one hundred percent deliberate deed, in juxtaposition to the values of “work” which both precede and condition it.

The painter gives up his studio and ANY status quo and fills his head with wonder/or takes up chess like Duchamp/a self-taught painting/And a painting of poverty, free or rather cheap, unfinished, collaborative, of questioning participation, physically extended and spiritually unlimited.

The best Latin American painting is that which is still being made at unconscious levels, the game, the party, the experiment that gives us a real vision of what we are and opens us to what we can be; the best Latin American painting is what we paint in the greens, reds, and blues on our faces, to recognize ourselves in the incessant creation of the group.

*

Try daily to leave everything behind.

May architects give up the building of inward-looking scenes and open their hands (or make fists, depending on the place) toward that outer space. A wall and a roof acquire utility not when they’re used just for sleeping or avoiding rain, but rather when they establish, for example, from the everyday act of dreaming, conscious bridges between man and his creations or the momentary impossibility of these.

In architecture and sculpture the infrarealists start from two points: the barricade and the bed.

*

The true imagination is that which destroys, elucidates, injects emerald microbes into other imaginations. In poetry and in whatever else, the entrance into the work has to already be the way into adventure. Create the tools for everyday subversion. The human being’s subjective seasons, with their gigantic, beautiful, obscene trees like experimental laboratories. Watch, glimpse parallel and heart-rending situations as a giant scratch on your chest, on your face. Endless analogy of gestures. There are so many that when new ones appear we don’t even notice, even though we’re making/watching them in front of a mirror. Stormy nights. Perception opens by means of an ethic-aesthetic carried to the limit.

*

— Galaxies of love are appearing in the palms of our hands.

— Poets, let down your hair (if you have any)

— Burn your nonsense and start loving until you come up with priceless poems

— We don’t want kinetic paintings but enormous kinetic sunsets

— Horses running 500 kilometers an hour

— Squirrels of fire hopping through trees of fire

— A bet to see who blinks first, between the nerve and the sleeping pill.

*

Risk is always somewhere else. The true poet is the one who’s always letting go of himself. Never too much time in the same place, like guerrillas, like UFOs, like the white eyes of prisoners serving life sentences.

*

Fusion and explosion from two shores: creation like a decisive and open graffiti by a crazy kid.

Not at all mechanical. Scales of amazement. Somebody, maybe Bosch, smashes the aquarium of love. Free money. Sweet sister. Visions frivolous like corpses. Little boys jerking off from kisses until December.

*

At two in the morning, after having been at Mara’s house, we (Mario Santiago and some of us) heard laughter coming from the penthouse of a 9 story building. They didn’t stop, they kept laughing and laughing while below we slept propped up in various phone booths. There came a moment when only Mario was still paying attention to the laughter (the penthouse is a gay bar or something and Darío Galicia had told us that it’s always watched by the cops). We made phone calls but our coins turned into water. The laughter continued. After we left that neighborhood Mario told me that actually no one had been laughing, that it was recorded laughter, and up there in that penthouse, some stragglers or maybe a single homosexual had silently listened to that record and made us listen to it.

— The death of the swan, the swan song, the last song of the black swan, IS NOT in the Bolshoi but in the intolerable pain and beauty of the streets.

— A rainbow that starts in a grindhouse theater and ends in a factory on strike.

— May amnesia never kiss us on the mouth. May it never kiss us.

— We dreamed of utopia and woke up screaming.

— A poor lonely cowboy that comes back home, what a wonder.

*

Make new sensations appear—Subvert daily life.

O.K.

GIVE IT ALL UP AGAIN

HIT THE ROAD

—Roberto Bolaño, Mexico, 1976

(translation by Tim Pilcher – TimothyPilcher@gmail.com)

[popculturebuffet]

Jake Reviews Stuff: Bojack Horseman: Horay Todd Episode! (Plus a little bit on girls with slingshots)

Happy final day of pride month everybody! It’s been a hell of a ride.. and not just because the current landscape of the globe feels like hell right now, And to close it out we’re taking a look at an often overlooked segment of the queer community in media: Asexuality. I first learned about asexuality from the web comic girls with slingshots, because I love comic strips as much as comic books and because mainstream media tens to be really bad about telling people about diffrent facets of the lbtqa+ community, proven by the fact It took me till 2010, 18 years into my existince, to learn trans people existed from the long running candian teen drama Degrassi, birthplace of candian rapper Drake despite his damndest attempts to make people forget that, and a show that actually tackled the subject really well and the horrible shit trans people have to put up with, especially at Adam’s age. I also bring it up to apologize for a lack of trans representation of this pride as I scratched my head trying to think of some.. only to forget “oh yeah that really damn good rocko special from last year exists and has been sitting there all month dumbass” as I was writing this. I’m truly sorry and will try to get a review of static cling out sometime in june as an apology. 

Back to Girls with Slingshots though because like with degrassi I want to give it genuine props and a talk here both for teaching me about it and being really good at queer representation in general. We actually meet the comic’s Ace representivie Erin, a shy 19 or 20 year old, when lead and professional dumbass Hazel hired Erin to find out who was dating her friend Jamie.. turns out

Given Jamie had only been dating men up to this point, and her one time with a woman lead to her assuming she wasn’t bisexual,  when Jamie TRIED to tell Hazel what was going on Hazel, being kind of a dim, assumed it was an aaron and Erin decided rather than just you know, show up and let the the hamster in hazel’s brain slowly figure it out to do this. 

Why yes that is a tiny asexual wearing the most transparent graucho marx-ish disguise ever. And why yes Hazel absolutely falls for it and even when Erin outright takes off the disguise it still takes Hazel a good minute to connect the dots. And why yes, this strip is awesome and is worth taking a large amount of time to talk about in an almost entirely unreatled article, more than i’d planned really. But eventually things hit a snag: the two TRIED having sex before Erin left to go to school in london.. and given i’ve out and out admited she’s asexual, you can guess it went badly, with Jamie feeling bad it was so uncomfortable and didn’t talk to her until visting her in london, where the two patched things up: They still loved each other, Erin was simply asexual and Jamie realized she was biromantic.  However this didn’t mean Jamie herself was asexual.. and to Corsetto’s credit she actually fully dealt with this. After Jamie accidently became a meme while complaning about how horny she felt, the two had an honest talk about it, with Erin revealing she was perfectly fine if Jamie hooked up with dudes to satisfy her needs. It was a nice compromise and one of the first times I also learned polyamory wasn’t just something some weird asshole on tv did where he forced three women into what looked like an utterly miserable situation. What i’m saying is polgamy isn’t the same as polyamory and sister wives is objectively terrible and i’ve only seen minutes of it. 

In fact the current daily reprint is up to this storyline and has Erin wing womaning for her girlfriend. And yes I do acknowledge this won’t be a solution for EVERY couple, everyone is diffrent.. it was really nice to show a relationship between two people of diffrent and wildly underrepresented sexual orentations that , rather get into a depressing thunderstorm over something like this, talk it out like adults and work out a resonalbe solution. Hence why I took several paragraphs of something else entirely to get into it. If you want more , check the strip out here. 

https://www.girlswithslingshots.com

Okay now that plot cul de sac is out of the way, though I don’t regret a minute of it, you see the problem: Girls was the exception not the role and media wise, has a small but loyal fanbase. Big shows just didn’t really get that asexuality existed. But then one decided:let’s go let’s do this... so now i’ve talked about something else entirley for a good few paragraphs let’s talk about Bojack horseman Bojack Horseman is, like SU last time, one of the best shows of the last decade animated or otherwise. And like Steven, and adventure time before steven, it changed the game on what a genre of animation could do. See while Animation was going thorugh another renicssance in the 2010′s, it was mostly on the kids side for the first half.. Adult Animation was...

While there were good shows,after all Archer is a child of the 2010′s, bob’s burgers premired shortly after, and venture bros was, and still is, goin.. they were the exception. Family Guy was devloving from a really funny show to a horrible, unfunny mess that was and probably still is the television equilvent of screaming racist and offensive things just to piss people off and thus get attention and Adult Swim hit a slump, with several great shows like metalocalypse slowly leaving, and most that was left were garbage like Mr.Pickles. It .. wasn’t a great time. 

But around half way two shows changed things and most adult animation stood up and took notice; Rick and Morty, which while i’m not as much of a fan these days was and still to some small degree is a really funny show while also having a deeply complex and deeply deconstructed lead. And around the same time. we got Bojack.  As you probably know, Bojack was the tale of Bojack Horseman, a former 90′s sitcom star who starred in Horsin Around, basicaly fully house if uncle joey adopted orphans with bits of other tgif shows mixed in. Also he’s a horse and this world has a mixture of humans and various anthropormphic animals. And they dont’ shy away from that either and use that for a LOT of great jokes. Anyways Bojack is now a washed up asshole whose done tons, and as the show goes on continues to do, terribe things to get where he was, and is now trying to hang on to the scraps of his career. Around him are Princess Caroline, a pink cat and his agent and ex-girlfriend who wants a real realtionshpi , a baby and her career to go somewhere, Mr. Peanutbutter, Bojack’s dim aquantince who was on a ripoff show (which only PB seems not to get and is even called “Untitled horsing around ripoff project” at first in a flashback) and is really nice but also really bad at reading people, Diane, PB’s wife for most of the series who soon becomes bojack’s friend when she’s hired to do his autobigoraphy, and today’s subject, Todd, a 20 something cloudcuckoolander who crashed on Bojack’s couch after a party, and just.. never left since Bojack thought todd was kicked out for being gay and brought him in for brownie points (he was just lazy), and then despite insulting Todd constanlty kept him around because he was crushingly lonely and before Diane, had no other friends.  There’s obviously more to it. more evolutions but as the episode title shows, today’s ep is all about Todd, so we’ll be focusing on what he’s been up to: Todd spent most of the first two seasons just kinda.. bouncing around. Whlie the a-plots could be more serious, most todd plots were wacky palette cleansears, from him ending up in jail and trying to court two gangs at once like it was that one episode of family ties every sitcom sense has copied, made a giant copy of his own head over months, or started a safe cab company for women that somehow ended up as stripper cabs. Season 3 however added more weight: Bojack’s various slights against Todd were piling up, and he was starting to get tired of it, the straw that broke the camel’s back coming when Todd’s ex emily, who todd failed to sleep with because he didn’t want to but, not knowing what an asexual even was, couldn’t comincate with it and bojack having a really bad track record of thinking with his dick.. you can kinda see what happened.

Finding out much later, after Bojack used emily telling him not to as an easy way out of telling him and both were kinda stupid with that, and Todd eventually found out something happened.. but when Bojack tells him it was sex, Todd is genuinely suprised and had, for the last time expected better of him. Really Todd is a great deconsturction of the wacky sidekick in shows like this: the often abused optimist oppisite of the pesmist asshole protaganist. But here it shows.. that can only go on  so long. You can only treat a person like dogshit so many times before they grow tired of you and as Todd prepares to move out and bum around somewhere else we get one of the most iconic, and best, scenes in the series as Todd unloads on bojack after the horse tries apologizing.. couched in excuses. 

“It’s you bojack, it’s alwasy eben you” This scene hit like a truck, not just due to Aaron Paul absolutley killing it, but because as someone with a bad habit, even sometimes falling back into it, of justifying why I did something bad afterwords or blaming other people for far too long, if not NEARLY to the extent bojack did, it resonated. Sure those kinds of things may have LEAD you to the things you do but sometimes, your just doing shitty things and no amount of reason for it makes it okay. And it was a bold step to take: while the two talked on occasion and their friendship KINDA regrew, it never REALLY recovered from this. Things didn’t go back in the bottle. Bojack lost one of his best friends as his friend.. they were in the same orbit but it’d never be the same.  Todd did eventually tell Emiliy what he was dealing with and Emily told him what he was, and Todd started crashing on mr.peanutbutter’s couch because, unsuprisingly, the two eventually became close friends. So with Emily out of the picture, while she liked todd she needded sex and neither of them thought of an open relationship, that’s where we find Todd, grapling with his asexuality while getting into his usual wacky misadventures, which hadn’t and would never stop, as evidenced by the horrifying sex robot he created to try and please emily in a later season. So with all of that FINALLY out of the way. we can finally dig into horay todd episode after the read more. Because while i’m going to try doing that less to get more readers.. this episode is giant just at the introduction and is a half an hour long. 

We open with an orchestra, nervous Todd won’t show up for his solo.. because of course Todd’s a regular part of an orchestra now. He shows up in time to do his bit on the triangle, cheers all around

Att the bar, the various musicians wonder just who Todd is. Was in a prison gang? (Yes two in fact as stated above) A foreign prince?? ( He looked just like one and they swapizesd for an episode), a tech billionare? (For all of five minutes) Or is he both?... there isn’t a both here I don’t know why I did that. However the conductor roars in, he’s a lion, .. and it’s keith david everybody!

As you can probably wager Keith David is a faviorite of mine, one of the best voice actors around, a fantastic live actor, and just all around awesome dude.. and still pretty damn hot at 64. And while this is a minor role, ANY time keith david shows up is cause for celebration and I honestly forgot he was in this, so it was a nice suprise. 

We then find out how the two know each other, with the conductor calling Todd “The most giving man he’s ever known.” Accurate. Todd once saved his pregnant daughter from a shipwreck carrying her on his back, delivered said baby on a piece of driftwood then circumcised said baby while hanging from a rescue copter.. and also had a spirited but respectful debate before hand about how circumcion had fallen out of vouge, with them eventually deciding on it since the lions are jewish and she’d like the option for the baby to join the relgion if he so chooses when they grow up. Which is both a great gag and a nice nod to circumcisons not being popular these days, and makes todd even awesome. I mean not every man would not only be repsectful when talking to a mother about this, but do so while hanging from a helicopter. Also props to the old timey paperback illustrations, which doubly sell the sudden debate bit. It’s something I love the show: while it’s one of the most depressing in existance, it’s also god a wonderfully goofy sense of humor that helps ballance things out.  The conductor then explains todd later filled in last year when their triangle player died after getting his foot stuck in his triangle, another good one, but worries about todd and just how MUCH the man gives and wishes sometimes to see him not there when his part comes up, to see Todd give for himself. Then of course Todd spoils the move by coming out drenched in water with greasy hands, having tried to wash taco stains off his shirt, but then got greasy hands from said taco he ewa sstill holding and being trapped in a bathroom for an hour. That’s Todd in a nutshell: He can be legendary, selfless and utterly helpful or insightful one minute, and somehow get trapped in a hallway for an entire episode the next. That.. actually happened in case you either didn’t know or entirely forgot. Cue Credits.. a FIRST for this show suprisingly. Given most shows i’ve done are 11 minutes the credits usually happen before the show and I just forget to talk about them. I”ll breifly say the credits for Bojack are exellent and I love how they evolved and changed as each season wore on, and give the team kudos for doing what most shows just simply won’t or can’t do in western animation.

We’re at the peanutbutter residence, where PB is in the middle of his political campagin, working with his controlling and assholish ex wife katrina, and Todd gives him some pocket cheese to help but get’s shoed off and works on breakfast in the background with a giant egg for some reason. Probably because all animals are sentient here. And yes they explained how they still got meat. Anyways, Diane is annoyed that Katrina wants PB to decide if he’s for or against fracking based on public approval, insstead of you know just.. being against it because it’s wrong. She’s STILL better about it than that one episode of last man of earth I watched where the straw man liberal asshole argued with the consertaive asshole lead over a pothole they had and refused to just let his son belivie god exists because it calmed him down and in the next one forcibly dressed said son up as coal to mock his future mother in law because he’s as bad as the lead character, because this show is miserable and Ryan is what the writers apparently think a liberal is.  Anyways as this goes on we see Todd.. pulling his weight. He packs diane a lunch, leaves it by her purse as she gets ready to go to work, makes said giant egg into an omlette for pb and sets up a nice breakfast complete wtih his medication hidden inside because dog. We see that despite crashing there Todd has grown from where he was and is now making sure to actively contribute to the house as thanks for letting him stay. Anyways PB needs his glasses to take them off to seem sincer because he left htem at princess carolyn’s, she also represents Peanut Butter, Todd and Diane. Todd heads off, though dosen’t sign for a package as he once ended up with cremated remains, or cremains as he calls them and I now will, over it because of course he did and heads off while a mysterious horse in a trench coat watches... more on her in a bit.

At Carolyn’s agency , PC annoynces “it’s todd” with todd giving back an excited it’s me... he should enter the room like that every time. It really fits. Anyways, it turns out PC needed him for help with actress Courtney Pourtnory, whose in femalecentric Taken spinoff ms.taken, which i’m shocked wasn’t an actual movie. There’s also a lot of tounge twisting puns which as always Amy Sedaris flawlessly delivers and that i’ll miss now the show is gone. Anyways Courtney isn’t seen as relatable so PC goes with the oldest trick in the book: have some normal guy date the celebrity to see them as relatbale and well todd’s on retainer. Todd is reluctant, less so due to his  asexuality and more because he’s not only already busy with the sunglass errand, but has a meeting tonight. intresting. But PC ensures todd it’s no trouble and they can just do lunch for the paparazzi and todd does like the idea of having his picture taken. “It’s proof I exist.” It’s the same reason I hate having mine taken. It’s proof I still exist and this hell year hasn’t ended yet. 

Back at the campagin unsuprisingly what todd didn’t sign for was important and Katrina just tells him to sign for Pb next time, which is like giving a dog a play bone that also has a dart full of poison that shoots out of it into the rest of the living room. There’s no way this ends well and you should know that. So Katrina asks him to dance a little sidestep on the issue instead. 

This movie is eh but this musical number is awesome and I will use it at any opportunity. Rest in peace Charles Durning. It helps it’s still relevant as hell for both sides of the isle. Anyways Todd signs a letter to the state goverment because again, telling todd to do something without even remotely thinking about it is like giving a baby a boomerang loaded with nitro glcyerne, but soon gets cloroformed by our mysterious viewer. “And down goes todd. “.. said by todd himself because of course he did> God bless this man and aaron paul’s performance.  “And up comes todd!” .. whose, not suprisingly, apparently been drugged and/or knocked out enough to have a catchphrase for these situations. After grabbing a pool skimmer for defense because you know a stranger just kidnapped him, the stranger calms him down and introduces himself: And this is where we properly meet Hollyhock..  Manheim-Mannheim-Guerrero-Robinson-Zilberschlag-Hsung-Fonzerelli-McQuack which I copied directly from the wiki because this review is already running long and running behind, and I don’t want to spend an hour trying to copy that from the episode itself. The nightmare of a name, which is a running gag is because she was adopted.. by 8 gay men in a polyamours relationship. And one of them is apparently related to launchpad. 

Anyways Hollyhock, who called at the end of last season to no answer, thinks Bojack might be her dad and thus bought a spy kit to figure out. And used the cholorform, if apologizing for it because once you’ve got it you can’t not use it. Todd is unsuprised by both things; As bojack hilariously but horrifyingly put it his penis was like sun dried tomatoes in the 90′s: it was on everything, and Bojack himself had that kit, mostly using it on himself because of course he did. She tracked down Todd because Todd was in Bojack’s book as his roomate. Todd explains they no longer live together and Bojack has been missing, long story there though we do know where he was due to the last episode, but since Hollyhock really dosen’t need to meet him just wants his dna to find out if he’s related or not, so Todd suggest sher house. Time for more cloroform!

At Bojack’s place Todd wonders where to find a hair, since most ladies Bojack is with understandably shower afterwords only for Holly to find one.. and a sleeping unconcious clearly spiraling once again Bojack. Todd lament siwth an oh bojack: just because he’s mostly done with the guy dosen’t mean he still dosen’t care. Todd’s still a good guy and still dosen’t want to see his former friend go through this for the 80th time... he’s just done being the one to be there for him through it and that’s understandably.  Hollyhock yanks a hair which does nothing to wake him, unsuprisingly, but the mention of “blowing this place” makes Bojack wakes up as he thinks people has blow. it’s also telling that he’s worried Todd’s going to yell at him again and that he’s clearly stills marting from his understandable telling off. Todd is force dto make up an excuse since Hollyhock VERY understandably dosen’t want to tell him the truth, and Todd lightly rebuff’s bojack’s attempts to be pals again.. given he hasn’t really changed, it’s understandable. Also Hollyhock cloroforms him to get out of BOjack asking more questions and sends todd to take the dna to a place. Todd heads to  a 1 hour dna testing lab, because of course there’s one this is LA. But without Hollyhock’s dna they can’t do it but the guy says to come back with it in an hour after he’s done with lunch.. which gets Todd to realize OH SHIT I HAVES A DATE and he runs off. The fact he DIDN’T actually say that is a suprise. 

At the date Courtney transparently breaks up with Todd for publicity as Todd is utterly confused, before getting reminded about hollyhock. This scene just kind of happened so have the first gif I find typing “David Byrne” into gif search. 

Back at Bojack’s house all Hollyhock’s done is snoop around, finding Bojack’s box of bad reviews of other people’s sitcoms because of COURSE he has that, eat a full box of donuts and take a nap.. given the simliiarity todd isn’t sure they need that test. Hollyhock naturally refuses and just wants to use todd’s hair but since the dna guy said that don’t work, they find some in her comb. Todd however has to cover for the earlier Maid excuse he gave bojack, nice bit of foreshadowing there, and cleans up the house while Hollyhock sits around. I know she’s not his daughter, still related but still and even I’m having a hard time beliving the truth.  No sooner than does Todd put out that fire, than things get worse; Naturally the signutre was for pro fracking and while Katrina is pissed, not fairly as again, it’s like she handed a baby a shot gun for tots that make sa funny noise when you pull the trigger and is suprised that he shot up the couch. Anyways PB is understandabily more worried his wife will be upset he has to support fracking now, and Todd untietionally offers to distract her from the media while Hollyhock takes a nap because she feels.. really diffrent early on. While parts of her horseman traits would remain here she’s far less friendly or helpful than she would be later on in this half of the episode. it’s not BAD as sometimes it takes an episode or two for a character to properly become what their like for the rest of the series, it’s just WEIRD. Like Red Green’s monotone in early Red Green Show episodes it just feels.. off. 

Todd rushes off to Girl Croosh, the click baity blog diane works for because I forget when things happened sometimes, where Todd is doing the most todd distraction possible: Telling diane to look at him while he dances. Which to Diane’s shock has been going on for 45 minutes. 

Diane’s boss Stefani comes in voiced by the wonderful Kimiko Glenn who I admited to loving as a voice actress, and having a crush on back in my first close enough review and still stand by. She’s wonderful. Stefani berates diane for not being clickbaity enough, other plot for this season etc etc next todd crisis.  Princess Carolyn is annoyed they didn’t get a picture of courtney with todd.. even though she left first but this eems to be the “blame todd for things that are either not his fault or you should’ve expected by talking to him for five minutes” episode. Anyways PC says to be at the shark jacob’s fashion show in 30 minutes, and Diane bemoans trying to get people to pay attention to the world sucking. Todd shows some more competence and actually gives her a good metaphor: When mr.peanutbutter dosen’t want to take his pill, as I expected, Todd disgusied it.. though in the cheese. Just do that: put some hot goss around the rest of it. Todd, to keep her away from the computer with a literal headline that reads “Mr.Peanutbutter supports fracking and hasn’t told his wife yet”, because this show is amazing, makes up a story about Channing Tatum having an illgitamte daughter and gives her the testing hairs. The theme of this scene, and the episode really is that people underestimate todd: understandably the man got lost in a bathroom at the top of this episode and refused to sign a package because of past shenangians... but because of that they fail to see that todd is .. actually really compitent, insightful and caring. IN this one scene he actually suceeds in his mission in the dumbest, toddest way possible, then on the fly kills two errands with one stone while also giving Diane genuinely good advice. But the big question the episode poses is.. what does TODD want at the end of the day and just how much of this “doing everyones shit for htem” should he take?   

As Todd passes a sheep with a wonderful “The end of the wool is coming’ sign, he sneaks into the fashion show.. we also see a background model bird smoking that I SWEAR is a protytpe for tuca, just with a diffrent bodytype and a more aloof, supermodely face. Though if this is the same universe it could just be a sister of hers. It’s not out of the realm of posiblity. And yes I will defintely be talking Tuca and Bertie at some point, especially once it comes back next year. Being todd he ends up walking the runway instead, and it goes poorly, but Todd telling them that fashion shouldn’t be elitest somehow works and he become a hit. Also Tim Gunn is there as himself, beacause this show liked to mix animal versions of celebrites iwth the real ones, and sometimes had the real ones voice the animal versions of themsselves. Todd also gets a call from Diane: it’s a match. ALso I forgot Todd’s wonderful ringtone which is him , to the opening of that one betooven song going “todd todd todd TODD!” Magical Back at the horseman residence, Bojack’s sent hollyhock to go thank channing tatum for collecting his mail and goes through all the mail that piled up while he was MIA. He’s also wallowing about his miss opprtotunites, some involving pottery barn. He’s suprised by PB’s governor run, with Todd countering that of course he knew he’s been around and when Bojack asks how Diane feels Todd shoots that down right away and insists he just ask her himself, and again counters; Does she even know he’s back? Bojack insists he’s no tready, and he’s only told Todd he’s back.. and his various drug guys, channing tatum, and hollyhock. But not his inner circle. And given he and PB tend to not mesh well, though it is getting better at this point, he ruined things with Todd, he dropped PC for entirely warranted reasons.. Diane really IS the only person he has to call and he’s likely afraid of disapointing her. He then tells Todd to friend break up with channing tatum, with todd thinking his speech was about him and being understandably disapointed. I also like Todd’s attiude here: he’s done just.. taking Bojack’s shit and isn’t going to stick around for it and only really agrees to go to channing tatums because Hollyhock’s over there and he needs to tell her. 

Todd goes over and lies to hollyhock after warning her BOjack might not be readyf or a daughter and Hollyhock expresses her own doubts. Then diane shows up and Todd’s force dto play being channing tatum so they both don’t get arrested for trespassing. Diane confronts channig with her thoughts he’s the father, which hollyhock instnatly realizes exactly what that means, but relents on doing so, not wanting to be that kind of journalest and ruin someone’s life for her own benefit. Todd gives her a pep talk and she accepts it’s him because it’s what she thinks channig tatum would say and leaves with a cheery “love half your movies. Hollyhock meanwhile has fled, obviously upset and before Todd can deal with THAT, he gets another call, clearly tired at this point as am I as i’m not only not used to reviewing 22 minute shows anymore, let alone 30 minute ones, but I have a ticking clock due to my own procastination. She once again gets mad at him, this time a bit more understandably, and Todd darts off to meet courtney. 

The two talk, and Courntey is dressed like todd only her hat is 50 dollars.. and that’s a hella don’t... I miss Macklemoore. Anyway, Courtney opens up about being seen by everyone but not being seen at the same time.. which todd relates to even if courtney can’t fathom someone having the same feelings, but admits it’s nice to talk about it while Todd laments about his meeting, worrying h’es not ready yet. That what if it goes badly? What if the idea of something is better than the truth. I realate both due to my anxiety proving that and because as a comics nerd and general nerd, that’s happened more times than I can count, both with legendary stories that turned out to not be very good or something I really looked forward to turning out to be a mess, like It Chapter 2, or Zoolander 2, or Secret Empire or.. point is Courtney does relate to that and prefers fiction and the paparazzi, the same ones who tailed bojack for multiple episodes in season 1, eat it up with Courtney announcing their engagment iwth todd responding with “Horay i’m confused!”... that’s me all day everyday buddy. 

Todd goes back to Bojack’s to find Hollyhock, and being a good friend even to someone who certainly dosen’t deserve it at this point, tells Bojack the truth.. which he reflexvley denies before Todd admits she didn’t want to tell him and Bojack. understands and once again piles pity on himself. 

We then get the scene that got me to review this in the first place.. thanks asshole! All jokes aside, the two have an honest conversation: Bojack, while not outright saying sorry admits all he does is hurt people and he slept with the one person he ever saw todd be in love with... given it’s hard for him to give out a genuine apology, it’s still a good moment as it shows Bojack, even if he screws up constantly, is really apologetic about destroying their freindship. That part also shows WHY it was wrong: Sure todd couldn’t and wouldn’t sleep with her.. but it dosen’t change the fact Bojack SHOULDN’T have , knew what he was doing, did it anyway and then never told him. 

He continues with it though after todd wonders if he’s evne allowed to love. , saying he got more of Todd than he deserved, and all the guy asked for was a roof over his head and the ocasional smore in a baquet, and tells todd he didn’t deserve him and he really appricated him. This.. actually gets Todd to open up and he comes out as Asexual to bojack which after making it clear it means he’s not a sexual deviant, dynamo or what have you, a great wordplay gag, that he’s just not sexual.. Bojack.. shockingly and to Todd’s suprise dosen’t think it’s weird like he expected, but is thrilled and honeslty wishes sometimes he was asexual and we get what I consider to be the best joke of the seris.  Bojack; Maybe then I wouldn’t have A strain of herpes Todd; You have multiple strains Bojack: I know, it only works with the A.  Todd feels.. good.. while i’m not Ace myself I am bisexual and both times i’ve come out, first to my mom and a few friends, then to the rest of the world this month on facebook, it felt.. freeing. To not have to worry or hide no more.. to just be who you are.. and it feels.. good to Todd. While Bojack tries to slide back into friendship since todd isn’t mad about Emily anymore, Todd gently stops him: It wasn’t just here, as I made clear earlier, he’s not ready to be his friend again.. but hes ready to be more than NOT friends. While their freindship won’t be the same anymore, as Todd makes painfully clear.. Todd gives him a genuine i’t’s good to see you as he leaves. Again he may not LIKE the guy anymore and understandably dosen’t want to be the only person he can count on in bojack’s life... he still wants the guy to be okay, which the fans could probably relate to the whole damn series; Being fed up with his bullshit and TERRIBLE TERRIBLE actions, but wanting him to be better already. The door rings.. and it’s HOllyhock. We MIGHT get to that another time, but for now we close out Pride, and todd’s tale as todd goes to his meeting... which as it turns out...

While there is still more miles on Todd’s journey, ending his sham engagement set up here, a failed relationship and a sucessful relationship at the end of the series, not to mention reconcliation with his family... Todd takes an important step and takes what he wants, finding his people and being proud of who he is.. and that’s sometimes the best and hardest step. And we get a nice button on the framing device as Todd misses his solo for the first time, to the conductors delight. The End. 

Final Thoughts: This was a really good rewatch.  While not AS heavy as some other bojack episodes, it still has plenty of good character work, moving along or setting up several plots for the season without any of it feeling forced whlie giving Todd added depth in his coming out story. Todd still dosen’t fully understand what his asexuaity is and is scared to be open with it.. but that beautiful scene above is what makes the episode work as is the ending right after: By finally telling someone he knows, and by being accepted by the last person he’d expect to not only understand what Todd is but embrace it.. he can finally find others like him to help him through it and finally find something for himself after giving so much to everyone else while asking nothing in return.  That’s also a nice bit of deconsturction here... while Todd’s happy to help we do ssee bouncing from storyline to storyline actually wears on him and that sometimes it’s tiring being the guy everyone assumes has nothing but time for htem. It’s a nice development and Aaron Paul does it beauitfully and I do stand by HIS casting, as unlike with Allison brie where they knew diane would be an vitamese woman and cast a white woman anyway, though to Ralph-Paul’s credit, he’s throughly apologized for this and Allison Brie herself recently also apologized for it personally in the wake of the recent black lives matter lead call to not have white actors voice People of Color anymore. Also props to Jenny SLate for, if a bit late , still leaving big mouth for the last two seasons and apologizing herself among with any other actor or actress whose dropped a role as a POC when their white. It’s a good trend. But here.. I get why they didn’t try and get rid of Aaron Paul. It was probably hard enough to get executives to give a shit about Ace representaation enough to let htem do it, adding “firing a big name draw to replace him wiht a likely no name” was probably a bridge too far and sadly, sometimes you have to pick your battles, and they picked getting to have an ace character at all and to Aaron Paul’s credit he’s been an Ace ally ever since. HOpefully in the future we will get more ace chracters and more ace actors and actresses playing the part, but every journey begins with a sigle step and this storyline was a huge one.  But overall the episode is truly fantastic, a highight in a series full of amazing episodes and it was a good note to go out on for this month. I won’t stop doing LBGTQA reviews obviously, and I should’ve added the a way sooner, but it’s been fun doing them and i’ve been proud too. Some have been better than others but the better one shave been some of my best work. So as we live in uncertain and stupid times, stay safe , black live matter and your all beautiful. I have other stuff in the works; a full steven unvierse arc, regular coverage and of course that “sorry I was a moron” static cling review, but until then, I love you all and i’d like, if I may, to close on a song... not by me obviously my singing voice is “sorta adaquate I guess’ at best. 

[argylemikewheeler]

102 Peach Street

|| started by this ask. will and mike are married and very happy ||

On Sunday mornings, Mike always liked to spend the early sunlight hours pulling weeds out of the garden. He’d stand in the warm sunshine, feeling the morning breeze on his arms and through his hair– he refused to cut it above his shoulders in the early nineties. Will would often stand at the kitchen window, washing the dishes, and smile down at him and their full green country yard.

It was part of Will’s therapy to tend to something that would grow and thrive if loved and taken care of– just like he would. The summer they moved out of Hawkins and into a place of their own, Mike helped Will plant greenery all along the front of the house and by the porch steps. Will watered and fixed the soil frequently, but Mike always offered to do the weeding; Will’s knees had gotten bad in his early college years from a childhood of incorrectly running (for his life) and couldn’t spend the hours hunched over like he used to.

Of course, though, Mike didn’t mind. He lovingly got his favorite pair of worn and tearing jeans and knelt in the dirt, reminding himself what it was like to actually do something with his hands– he really had something going as a kid with all those Lego projects. Those days, he really only spent time at his desk shuffling papers. Mike would willingly trade paper cuts for all that dirt under his fingernails. He didn’t dislike his job though, let that be known. Copy editing was a joy and writing in his free time reminded him of planning campaigns, but Hawkins just never had sunshine like this.

Will and Mike didn’t runaway from Hawkins necessarily, but they did give their (unwanted) family a very short notice before packing their car up and driving east. They unpacked their boxes in their small cottage, faint sounds of the ocean reminding them they were far from their childhood, but had finally come home. They eloped– in the way that they could– in ‘95. Neither spoke a word, but quietly changed the single, default name on the mailbox to both. Will painted it on with his best attempt at a flower that seemed to have a face of some kind– but maybe that was Mike’s interpretation.

Will’s middle school art students seemed to like the plant’s “face” when he drew it on their work too, understandably so: Demogorgons looked cute when they had googly eyes and smiley faces.

“Good morning, Mr. Byers.” Mike stood up and turned at the sound of a young voice behind him. A girl was standing at the end of their front walkway, holding up her bike. Her hair was in two pigtails on the top of her head, wrapped in pink fuzzy hair ties.

“Hi. What can I do for you?” He couldn’t remember her name, but he knew she lived just down the road. Her parents made them a pie when they first moved in. He was allergic to it– but he didn’t hold that against them.

“Do you know where Mr. Wheeler is?” She asked. They’d traded names so technically they weren’t noticeably married, but could still enjoy answering to the last name of the other. Mike really liked being a Byers.

“He’s just inside, I can get him if you want. What’s wrong?”

“I messed up my bike.” She sighed, holding it out to him.

“Oh! I can help with that.” Mike wiped his hands on his jeans and used his shoulder to nudge some of his curls out of his way.

“It’s not just the chain– I fixed that myself. When I fell I scratched the paint up pretty bad… and I know Mr. Wheeler has good paints in his garage.” She looked down at her accident’s handiwork– a long scrape going along the entire length of the frame.

“Oh! You need an artist’s help. I understand– I’ll be right back.” Mike grabbed the banister and swung up the front steps. He made sure not to leave any smudged fingerprints on the door as he opened it and stepped inside. He kept his dirty shoes on the doormat. “Oh, Mr. Wheeler, the girl from down the street is here to see you. She has an art emergency.”

Will ducked and emerged under the hanging cabinets in the kitchen. He’d cut his hair above his ears, almost to balance out Mike’s, and finally started letting his hair swoop back and show his forehead. He was the most handsome man Mike had ever seen, and Mike thought it every time he laid eyes on Will. He knew he was lucky just getting out of Hawkins alive, but he considered his greatest luck finding Will all those years ago.

“Sara?” Will placed his dish towel down on the counter and walked around, coming toward the door. “What happened?”

“She crashed and needs some new paint.” Mike held the door open for Will, letting him onto the porch. “Here he is, Sara.” Mike was glad someone remembered people’s names.

“Hey, sweetheart! What happened!” Will gripped Mike’s arm and braced himself as he took the stairs. Mike could practically hear Will’s joints squeaking as loudly as the wood steps.

“A car blew a stop sign and I skidded to stop so fast it went sideways and slid right out from under me!” She groaned, rolling it toward him and exposing the scrape.

“Oh, God. Are you alright?” Will asked, squeezing Mike’s arm in response.

“Yeah, I had my elbow pads and helmet on. I’m fine.” She said. “But Sandra here really got it.”

“You named her Sandra?” Will smiled and braced his knees to crouch and admire the flaking paint. His knees popped as he sank down. “I don’t think I ever named mine when I was growing up– did you, Michael?”

“Nope. Me neither.” Mike shook his head. “If I did, I completely forget by now.”

“That’s fair.” Will muttered. He adjusted his weight on his feet and ran his hand over the exposed frame. “I don’t know if I have the same color as your bike, so how about a stripe? I can give you a racing stripe right down the side!”

“Can you?”

“Of course I can.” Will laughed, nodding. “I can even do a little design for you– Michael, you know where my really nice white paint is, right? On the–”

“Top shelf of your metal cabinet, just by the garage door? Yeah. I know where.” Mike touched the top of Will’s head as he stepped past them. “I’ll get your good brushes too.”

“Thank you, Mike.” Will grinned, somewhat shyly due to their audience, and watched Mike cross the lawn.

The garage was disconnected from the house and held all of Will’s art supplies as well as Mike’s old typewriter. Will’s easel was leaned up against the model bench and Mike’s old manuscripts were still in a bit of a mess on the lid of one of Will’s toolboxes. He’d clean that later, after he found that one passage he’d written ages ago and suddenly found a way to repurpose.

It was a short paragraph, maybe three sentences, about a brief memory Mike remembered having as a kid, but knowing he’d never lived it. It was a image of this figure– this boy– passing in front of his vision and drawing him farther and farther in to him. It had been a dream Mike had, knocked out and lying on his local mall’s floor. He’d thought he was being drawn to death then, but it turned out he was brought back to consciousness by the faint tug of his heartstrings.

He wanted to find it and rework it for an upcoming anniversary. The manuscript had never seen the light or day or the desk of any publishing house, but it had stuck with Mike since he’d buried it under boxes of old bike parts and vinyl records.

Mike grabbed the paint and Will’s brushes by the door before backpedaling and going to Will and their neighbor. Will was sitting on the grass by then, legs stretched out and hands gently patting his left knee as he spoke.

“– it’s supposed to rain soon too, so my knees aren’t any better. I’m okay though, Sara. Mr. Byers and I are just old.”

“You aren’t even thirty.” Mike quipped, placing the paint beside Will and gently nudging his leg.

“I’ve got old man knees though.” Will said, rubbing them slowly. “Sara was just asking my why bones sound like popcorn.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No! No!” Will laughed, reaching over for her arm gently. “It’s alright! It’s funny. They do, they really do sound like popcorn. I got it from an old childhood accident.” He used the back of a paintbrush to pop the lid to the paint. Mike held the can still, letting his already dirty hands get covered in the flakes of dried white paint.

“Did you play a sport, Mr. Wheeler? My dad said he hurt his knee back in high school playing football.” Sara asked, gripping Sandra tightly by the handlebars.

“No, nothing like that. I just fell when I was a kid. I was running inside– which I shouldn’t have been doing, that’s never safe– and I tripped over something and took this big spill. Rolled myself up into knots and really bumped up both my knees.” Mike didn’t remember Will getting so good at telling that lie.

In reality, Will was running toward Hopper’s cabin, deep in the woods, completely barefoot. The ground was uneven and Will’s legs were flailing out in unhealthy and painful directions as he forced himself to go ahead another inch. It was pitch black and the rest of the Party was standing on the porch, waving him forward and screaming to go just a little farther. In the last stretch, and last jump over a fallen tree, Will’s ankle caught on a branch and brought him tumbling down to the ground. The growling behind him grew louder as he tumbled through the fallen leaves and into rocks and sticker bushes. Mike didn’t remember leaving the safety of the porch, but he remembered pulling Will out of the foliage and dragging him the rest of the way to the house. He remembered crying too. That’s all.

“I’m fine, Sara. Don’t worry, I’ve got Mr. Byers here to help.” Will looked over his shoulder and winked at Mike before leaning back to the bike with his dipped paintbrush.

“Is he your helper?” Sara looked at Mike with such innocence and kindness. There was an instinct to feel guilty– like it would all go away if she only knew the truth. But Mike knew it was a false sense of guilt. Their marriage was the best thing in Mike’s life. He wasn’t ashamed.

“No, actually Michael’s my husband.” Will said, his hand moving steadily and making a clean stripe on Sara’s bike. “I’ve known him since we were kids.”

“Oh. T-That’s cool, I guess.” Sara said, obviously taken aback. She didn’t seem bothered, just wildly surprised. She’d lived next door to them for most of her life, and apparently it never occurred to her that young, happy men could be married too.

Part of Mike was pleased to be a surprise. Typically, that meant the person had never met a gay couple before. Mike was glad he and Will could be her starting example.

“I’m going to leave you two to your work, alright?” Mike said, wiping his hands on his jeans again. Sara had stopped staring at him, but had now moved on to Will. Mike was sure she had more questions. “I want to clean up the garage, Plum. I’ll be back.”

—

Mike sat down on the garage floor and started separating the loose pages and clipped manuscripts. Mike avoided reading any of his very old writing– it was still embarrassing to think he was published in his college lit mag forever with such sappy love poetry. At least he still had the work’s muse living with him. Helped him improve and write the same message again, far better: later, said embarrassing poem became Mike’s wedding vows so it wasn’t all a loss.

Before Mike could reach the bottom of his stack, the garage side door opened. Will placed his paint and brushes down on the floor and slowly approached Mike’s sporadic piles.

“What are you looking for?” He stood tall but squinted to try and read the pages below him.

“Something I wrote in college. I remembered it the other morning– remember when I stumbled out of bed for my notebook?” Mike laughed, turning to look up at his husband.

“When you tripped three times just getting across the room? Yeah. I remember. I thought we were being robbed. But it was just you having a stroke of genius?”

“If you want to call it that.” Mike held his arms out to the scattered organization with a sigh. “Did you fix Sandra up?”

“Sara’s already on her way home! Gave her a stripe and even wrote ‘Sandra’ on the side. Gave her flowers and swords, the whole nine.”

“Swords?”

“She told me she’s learning about Joan of Arc.” Will shrugged. “I thought it was pretty cool.”

“It is. And so are you.” Mike placed his unsorted pages down, frankly not needing their words anymore. His world was right there. Being absolutely adorable. Will placed his hand over Mike’s face and shoved him playfully.

“Help me inside, Mr. Byers?”

“That bad?” Mike’s tone changed in a snap, pushing off the ground and getting to his feet. “We should change out those stairs, Plum.”

“No, it’s just the barometric pressure. They’re fine.” Will took Mike’s hand. “A convenient excuse to keep you around though, have to say.”

“Don’t make me carry you again.” Mike jokingly went to sweep Will off his feet. Will yelped and jumped back with a giggle. “I’ll only hit your head on the doorway a little bit this time.”

“I love having to tell the story of ‘no the bruise I got on my wedding night was because my husband walked me into the doorway’. My mom thought we were idiots.” Will sighed, following Mike out of the garage.

“Babe, we are idiots.”

“Yeah, but she didn’t need to know that this late in the relationship. We’ve kept it a secret for quite a while, I like to think.”

"Will, for every monster we fought on a school night is another ten reasons we’re both idiots.” Mike reasoned. He stepped up onto the stairs first, letting Will pull up on his tensed arm for leverage. “You taught me that.”

Will grunted quietly as he pushed himself up the rest of the stairs. At the landing, he broke into a smile. “I know. I’m just testing you, Michael. Just testing you.”

“Shut up and get inside.” Mike laughed, swinging the front door open. “Make sure all the windows are closed before it rains, I’m going to make you some tea.”

“What? That’s not how that works.” Will laughed, shaking his head as he kicked off his shoes. “You know we didn’t open any windows last night.”

“Welp, looks like you have to sit down and let me make you tea.” Mike said, dramatically sighing and starting off toward the kitchen. Will shuffled after him, trying not to slip in his socks.

Their house was about the size of Will’s childhood home, maybe a bit smaller. They didn’t need much room, if Mike was being honest. All their childhood they’d practically lived right on top of each other, being able to do so as adults was a bonus. Between the foyer and the kitchen was only a small alcove with their round wooden dining table. It only held the two of them; they rarely had guests anyway.

Every time he passed by the table, he remembered that first month, sitting in the morning silence and staring out the window at the long stretches of trees. Will was sipping tea, careful not to slurp too loudly and get under Mike’s skin at seven in the morning. Under the table, Mike could hear Will gently rubbing his feet together: a habit of comfort Mike had learned to observe. Mike had been drinking coffee and eating a bagel, definitely getting crumbs everywhere. He’d placed his breakfast down and cleared his throat– twice– and placed his hand on Will’s. Will still made him nervous sometimes.

“Hey, Will?” Mike had said, careful to break his peaceful look.

“Yeah, Mike?”

The words were so easy to say. Mike couldn’t remember a time when they seemed so far off: “Will you marry me?”

“So, what stroke of genius did you have?” Will asked, easing himself down into his chair. Mike placed the kettle onto the stove with a furrowed look. “You said your old writing– a new idea came to you?”

“Oh! Right. I got confused when you said genius.” Mike teased.

He got out Will’s favorite mug and placed it on the counter beside his teabag. Originally, it had just been a random floral mug his mother had found at a thrift store, just trying to get enough mugs for when the entire Party– and monster hunting congregation– found its way into the Byers house. Will had been drinking out of it when they solved their last mystery; was steeping tea when he got accepted to college, and nearly spilled it diving for the phone to call Mike; and brought it to his dorm for his four years at MICA. And, obviously, it was the one he was drinking out of when Mike proposed– if you want to call it that. Mike considered it a waking up of sorts, of finally getting his shit together and asking Will the most obvious question.

“So, what’s the idea?” Will asked, placing his feet up on Mike’s seat. “You know I like hearing about them.”

“Yeah, I know. But this one’s boring.”

“Your ideas are never boring, Michael. I love them.” Will said sternly, although his smile ruined the effect. “I’m listening.”

The kettle began to whistle and Mike tried to use it as a distraction, but he could feel Will’s eyes patiently watching him.

“It’s an old something I wanted to fix up… it’s from college, but it’s about back from before we started high school.” He waved it off before pouring their water.

“You say that like it’s not any good.”

"It’s just about… this dream I had once.” Mike sighed. He rolled his eyes at his own preface. “It was when– okay, so do you remember that time in Starcourt when I was hit? I fell down and smacked my head really hard?”

“Do I rememb– yes, of course I do.” Will exclaimed. “I thought you’d shattered your skull right open in the goddamn food court while we were running for our lives.”

“Well, it’s just about that. The dream I had while I was completely knocked out for five minutes.” Mike tried to nudge it away with another shrug. He returned to the table quickly, still trying to maintain a feeling of nonchalance. Will took the mug slowly, narrowing his eyes but still thanking him. “What!”

“You’ve never told me about this before.” Will said, moving his feet up off Mike’s seat so he could slide under them. Mike always let Will rest his feet on his lap. “How is this new to me?”

Mike set his jaw, trying to defeat his growing smile. “It’s supposed to be a surprise! Don’t ask too many questions. It’s your anniversary gift, so don’t go poking around.”

“Michael, you don’t have to do anything for me!” Will reached over and grabbed both of Mike’s hands. “I don’t want you to.”

“You married me and let me buy you a house.” Mike said, like it was the simplest rebuttal. “I have to thank you every year. Afraid my luck will run out.”

“How many times have I told you,” Will said, pulling Mike’s hand up to his lips, kissing it quickly. “It’s not luck. That’s not why we’re together. It’s–”

“I know, I know.” Mike sighed, smiling. “It’s fate.”

Will grinned, his face lighting up; it was what Will had said in his own wedding vows. The moment Mike heard it, unprepared and already wonderfully weak at the altar, he started weeping. Before then, he’d never thought that everything in his life had all been for something. All of his past suffering could stop hurting, even for a moment. It wasn’t going to come back and haunt him; he had finally reached his own, permanent happiness. The one his family never said he’d have, the one he started to believe he was never meant to experience– only write about, growing envious of his characters.

But Mike’s happiness was there, sitting across from him and all around. It was 102 Peach Street, house of Mr. Michael Byers and Mr. William Wheeler. It was waking up to the same faint sound of even and slow breathing– the reassurance he’d still get to live his best dream another day. On the hardest days, it was the paint-smudged young man that would come through the front door, smiling from ear to ear, already somehow knowing that Mike needed extra love– and an overly dramatic mwah of a hello kiss. On Mike’s best days, it was just Will.

No matter what, it was always Will. Mike had found his happiness, run headstrong into his fated future, and nothing was ever going to take it away.

Mike blinked, tears suddenly welling in his eyes, and thought of his dream. The floating figure was one he had always assumed as an angel– a sign that death was closer than it had ever been– and it was an angel. It was just that this one looked a whole lot like his childhood friend. Looked like his husband.

“Why are you crying?” Will moved his legs off Mike’s lap in order to pull his chair in closer. Will cradled Mike’s face, his thumbs moving over his cheeks slowly, waiting for a tear to fall. “Michael, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” Mike laughed, sniffling. “I just forget how kind fate was to me… I got the perfect house, the most beautiful husband with the most extraordinary heart, neighbors that bake us pies for fuck’s sake… Did you ever think we’d get all this?”

“No.” Will said, shaking his head. “But I always knew I’d have you. And that was always enough.”

Mike hiccuped a short but loud sob, laughing wetly. “God, you’re making me cry more. I love you. So so much.”

Will didn’t speak– he often never did when Mike was in his moods of disbelief. He just pushed Mike’s hair back from his eyes, looking at him with a sense of wonder, before leaning forward to kiss him.

When Mike closed his eyes, he knew the vision was no longer a memory and it definitely wasn’t a dream. No, it was a feeling. It was this feeling. One of comfort and relief, of letting Mike’s whole body relax into the warm touch of another person– another man. Laying on the floor of the mall, in danger and unconscious, Mike had been given a glimpse into his own future– and it was gloriously simple, safe, and sweet. It was Will.

ao3

[yourplasticlittlespastic]

ᴏᴜʀ ᴡᴇʙ ᴏꜰ ʟᴏᴠᴇ -- Peter Parker fanfic (2/of many)

Part 1

I wake up as usual and follow my itinerary, as soon as I finish I prepare my backpack and walk to the kitchen to grab a quick breakfast, I stop to see the whole committee. Everyone is already dressed to train. I step into the kitchen.

"Morning!" everyone says in unison and my eyes wander to the unmistakable figure

"Nat! oh God... where you've been?" I rub my eyes to see if it isn't an illusion

"come here you" Nat hugs me as if there's no tomorrow, her red hair is damp and collides with my cheek, oh, I missed her, she's the best

"no breakfast?" Steve says behind me and I pull away to look at him

I open the fridge and grab my already prepared lunch "this is my breakfast" I point to my overnight oatmeal  "I'll eat it on the way, bye everyone have a great day!"

They said bye, Clint and Sam with a drowsy voice, and I walk to the lift trying not to overthink my first day, I'm always overthinking and that's my problem and I always end up stressing about everything. I wait and the doors open revealing my dad and my mom, I stepped in with a quizzical look at them.

"Hey! Thought you were sleeping... and you not at your lab, not sleeping..." I push the button and spin to look at them

My mom is wearing a black pencil skirt with a white blouse, her blonde hair is perfectly brushed into a ponytail and my dad, well... he likes his sweatpants and his Black Sabbath shirt.

"There's always time to say goodbye and good luck to our daughter," my dad smirks at me and I snort

"I love you baby" my mom tightly hugs me "you'll do amazing this year"

"Thanks mom, I'm feeling it's my year" I excitedly smile

"well please be safe and I put something inside your backpack that'll help you," dad winks and I just smile

"love you dad" I walk closer to him and slightly hug him, he returns it and smacks a kiss on my cheek

"kick asses and then kick them again and then again, you know, just for fun" he casually says

"Tony!" my mom slaps his arm in disapproval but he grins at me

"c' mon dad, me kicking asses? That's definitely not me" I wink  at him and when the doors open I walk away

That's definitely me

I search for Happy and get inside the car, we talk about the embarrassing moment my dad created yesterday for me and Happy was laughing so much about the fact that Steve Rogers was in a sex-ed video. He parks just one block before 36 Ave, only not to get attention from the others, I wave goodbye and take a deep long breath. Let's go Midtown, give me the best year, please.

I walk to the front and see everyone already in deep conversation with their friends, new kids who are totally lost and others totally shy and as I thought it will happen... All eyes are on me, I mean, I don't mind, I like attention, probably my Stark gene talking, but let me be clear on something... I'll never, ever be a pretentious snooty brat.

I walk to my locker, the sound of my steps rumbles through the hall.  Let's see if I remember the code uh... 80-10-20... it opens and I start reaching to some books and post-it's I left during the summer. I put inside my new books and the girl next to me suddenly is hugged by one of her best friends, a nostalgic smile creeps on my face... it's been a while since I don't have a true best friend. I shake off those depressing thoughts and skim my schedule and notice that my first class is geometry which is my least favourite subject...

I take out my notebook and the advanced geometry book and strut to the assigned classroom that was already crowded. Exactly when I enter a little scream, that I thought it was girl,  pops beside me.

"Oh yes! thank you, God! a familiar face in this sea of peasants!"

I throw my backpack and sit in front of him "Hi Flash, a new haircut or your head got bigger?" an external little laugh snaps behind me

He ignores my comment and an attempt of a smug smile forms in his face "oh Tannie you're always sooooo funny"

"wait... you're in advanced geometry?" I say in surprise "you shouldn't be at Woodwork?" the same laugh from earlier appears but with more strength

"I actually did my homework last year and paid attention so yes, I deserve to be in this class, I mean, it's not the best class... is full of nerds, Imma cool guy" he crosses his arms and cocks his head  "and you too Tannie you're the best" he shoots me a flirtatious smile and I wince

"of course yes" I simply answer, I was about to turn to the teacher who walks in but his hand grabs my shoulder

"listen mmm Tannie, this Friday I'm doing a little party, ya know just to celebrate the beginning of a new year, you are in the VIP list with me of course" he whispers and I quickly nos just to get away from his awfully strong cologne

The class starts and I begin writing everything down when I hear a whisper saying "oh man, my notebook, I forgot it" I look up and see the one who said it, it was Ned Leeds who's in front of me, I poke his shoulder and he turns to me and opens his mouth agape in surprise.

"Ned, don't worry I'm writing everything here so when I finish you can take a picture if you want" I kindly smile at him

"Ummm thank you, Tannie!" he exclaims with a wide smile " you're so kind unlike others" referring to Flash

"it's nothing, by the way, Ned, for the final project and other Homeworks in this class... do you want to be my partner?"

"me? I mean, yes! trust me... I'm disciplined, I can get the radius of a circle so fast and the area of any kind of triangles you can imagine... at record time" he excitedly says and I snort

"haha yeah of course! we can be a great team"

He then spins around and the class goes by too slowly for me, in the end, Ned was waiting for me outside the classroom.

"here Ned" I place my notebook for him to take a picture, he pats his pockets and takes out his phone, he tries to center the camera but before he can take it someone crashes behind him.

"hey man! I was looking for you everywhere!" a bubbly voice says walking in front of us

Then I see Ned with a killing stare at his friend and I look at him as well, a young face, brown eyes, and hair and thin lips, tall but not too tall and skinny guy who instantly opens his eyes when he spots me.

"Dude, I'm trying to take a picture here, I love you but... please?"

I continue to grab the notebook while staring at... uh... I do know his name... I see that he's staring at me too.

"I'm... Peter hey!" he fakes a hoarse voice which makes me smile, I see his blue sweater and the neck of his plaid shirt, is it too early for some witty comments? yeah, probably...

I cock my head and smile at him "Yeah, I've seen you around... I'm-"

"Tannie Stark!!" he excitedly interrupts me  "I mean... Tannie... Stark" he clears his throat and the tip of his ears turn red

"it's done Tannie, thank you," Ned tells me and pats my shoulder, Peter still looking at me

"sure! do we have other classes together? what type of timetable you have?" I ask him

"I have the S-30," he says  "what about you?"

"I have the S-28" I shrug in disappointment knowing that we would only share three classes together

"I have the S-28!" Peter quickly raises his hand and I turn to him

"why you weren't at geometry then? I quirk a brow at him and he gulps

"I overslept in my comfy bed... yeah" he slowly admits

"great then, I'll see you at...? let me see..." Ned starts checking both timetables

"P.E, Geometry, and chemistry" Peter rapidly says

"that's good man!" Ned palms Peter in the back "see you, bro! Art is waiting for me!"

I stand there without saying anything and Peter as well.

"well, shall we go to the next class?" I break the silence with the offer and his eyes go-round for a moment

"yeah sure!" he awkwardly says

We start walking through the hallway... silently. Sideways I spot him stealing subtle glances at me.

"so ummm, new year huh?" I finally say

"yeah! Sophomore year is a big deal" he says scratching his right shoulder and when he touches it he makes a painful expression

"are you okay?"

"yeah! it's a bruise, I fall from my bed" he quickly says but he seemed to regret saying it

"oh okay..." we almost arrive to the classroom

"so... what did you do this summer break?" he questions me and I open and close my mouth

"not much, I tried to finish a robotics book and then I reread the first three books of Harry Potter!" my voice betrays my excitement, no one actually cares for what I do except my family (including Happy) "oh! and also hear this... I actually tried to replicate my dad's A.I. but failed, he used this kind of weird algorithm..." I stop when I notice Peter smiling at me

"Sorry..." I shrug "hey we're here!"  I change the topic and stride inside the room

The benches are in a circle instead of the traditional way, I quickly sit down away from the door and Peter grabs the seat next to me. I take out my notebook and he opens his laptop. The class starts and I almost fall asleep, Ethics is not my strength, I peek at Peter's laptop just to distract myself and see he's watching some YouTube videos of Spider-Man.

-------

"I'm so tired and it's only third period," I dramatically groan and he laughs, we're walking together to Physics

"not only is the third period... the first day of school" he looks at me smiling

"thanks for the reminder"we keep laughing until someone shouts my name

"TANNIE!! Wait!" I turn around and see the Liz Toomes rushing to get to me  "hello girl, so... just wondering if you're going to Flash's party?" she cheerfully jumps showing a slight smile

"mmmm I don't really know but maybe?"

"Great! think about it, some friends want to meet you, bye!" she sways away and I turn to Peter who can harvest a nest in his open mouth

"You're drooling Parker," I chuckle and step inside the classroom

At Physics, Warren assigned us to our partners and I got Flash, we were seated in front of Peter and other guy and Flash kept annoyingly insisting in flirting with me saying things like "What's your resonance frequency gurl?"  I ignored him and remember that my dad put something in my bag, I open it finding the circuit board I began building this summer, the replica of Jarvis and Friday, I smile knowing my dad believes in me, then I spin it and spot a post-it and read it:

"You are simply amazing T"

-Love you, the other T in this family-

I did my best in Physics and Warren noticed, in the end, she told me she's expecting good things from me. I like it when others actually notice my effort. I got out and it was recess, quickly I tried to walk through the crowd to go to the Auditorium. When I got there, at least 8 tables were decorated with logos from their respective clubs, I skimmed them and found the Robotic's Labs table.

"hi!" I stop in front Tanner Chung who was reading a book

"hi, welcome to the Robotic's Lab's Club where we build the future and it's not like Terminator" he says with a tedious voice probably because he was sat there since morning

"thanks!" I tried to hide my excitement "where can I sign up?"

"Obviously, at that paper" he points his finger and then looks up to see me and he almost falls from his chair "I mean... please at this paper" hi smiles to creepily

"sure... so I know I have to submit a previous work, when can I present it?"

"umm... yes... It's the number one rule of the club but you know... it's not necessary Tannie"

"I think it is, I have many projects and I'm sure you'll like one of them" I kindly smile and he nods

"well, what about if you bring it tomorrow? today is just the introduction day" he again smiles "oh... hey Parker" he immediately stops smiling

"oh hey Peter!"

"hi... hi... I was about to sign up for the club" he shyly adds

"really? great I just sign up too, I'll see you there then" I spin to walk out of the auditorium

"it's in the classroom next to biology!" I hear Chung shouting at me

I then stroll to the cafeteria, avoiding not that discreet glances at me. But then stop in my track. Oh God, it's so crowded. Nope. Nope. I walk outside and reach to the football field and sit in one of the benches, I open my lunch and began eating while scrolling through the news. The New York Times has a section called 'A', all about the Avengers, including some news about Stark Industries. where they go, new threats, What they eat and how they work out, New witty comments from my dad, etc. In the end, I went to Music, played the piano and did my best suppressing too many laughs at Peter who was holding a flute but failing amazingly at that. Then Art class came and I nap behind the canvas. Last period is designed for our selected club so I search for the classroom and realize that every member happens to be all boys, great.

"Welcome! I'm Tanner Chung president of this Club!... I don't have any words to describe how happy I am to see that we have our first girl!!" he starts clapping and everyone else too

I wave at the boys, enjoying the little spotlight they were giving me. My eyes search for the shy boy I talked with today... Peter is not here. Chung was right when he said it was only an introduction, we read the syllabus for the class and the projects we were aiming to achieve, in the end, I quickly exited the room and went to look for Happy, then my phone vibrates, breaking news, the trending video shows this happened just blocks from Midtown showing a man running with a purse and then the Spider-Man webbed and punch the guy and he gave the purse to the woman, the title was "The Masked Hero: Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man" I hear a horn and spot the shiny black car.

"Hello again!" I wave at him and he smiles

"Hello again Tannie, how was the first day?"

"not bad actually, new core subjects that are amazing!"

"I'm glad yeah, keep studying kid, keep studying"

"hey did you saw the new "Masked hero of New York"?"  I say creating quotation marks in the air

"what are you talking about?"

"well, it's a new guy who is trying to help people and it seems like an amateur because he is not so good at martial arts, to be honest, you should create a Twitter account to see what's happening in the world" I point out

"why? I have you"

Minutes later, Happy drops me at the tower and with a quick pace I reach to the kitchen seeing my mom cooking? Oh, that's a first... no one else at the complex again.

"hi mom" I greet her and hug her

"oh god you look bigger today," she says being nostalgic "how was your first day, tell me everything please"

I grab some grapes and spin to her "well... I liked it, my classes are better than I expected, I already have homework and tomorrow I need to bring a robotic project I previously worked on"

"mmmhm" she hums "I'm glad baby... any prospects?" she asks making a weird face

"what?" I was confused "prospects?"

"yeah! for being my son-in-law?"

"you have a boyfriend now T?" Thor enters the kitchen and grins at me

"no!" cringe at the comment

"really? that's fast, niceeee" Sam then enters munching a protein bar

"what did I miss?" Steve comes... oh no...

"T has a boyfriend," Thor says casually  and Steve winces wrinkling his nose

"wow" he looks at me with a surprised expression  "what happened with 'I don't have time for one?'"

"Mom!" I rapidly spin to her  "can you please explain to them that you were... and I was ... oh, forget it" I quit this fight and I stride to my room

Seriously all this testosterone is bad for my health

I do most of the homework, then I tiptoe to the kitchen finding it empty, I grab some food and heated it in the microwave and slowly retreated to my room. I take one of my many robots and lined them in front of me, I need to choose the best for tomorrow. I finally made up my mind and chose the one that I know will make them open their mouths agape. I lazily finish my homework, I'm still getting the hang of it because when I was homeschooled homework was not in the picture...  Then I slump in the chair and unlock my phone looking the video of Spider-Man I left open. I remember when I was meters away from him, his suit definitely was something he needed to improve as well as his martial arts... and the webbing thing is weird, it's a natural power? if yes, then how he got it? before I could continue in my deep thinking I hear a knocking in my opened door.

"Hey Peanut," my dad says entering my room

"peanut?" I quirk a brow at him, he snorts while sitting at the edge of my bed

"yeah never mind, trying to be a normal parent" he says scratching his beard

"Nah dad, is not happening" I laugh at him

"so... I wanted to know how was your day"  he lays his back in my bed

"I like it, until now Physics is my favorite subject and I'm bringing that robot for tomorrow"

He quickly lifts his head  "which one?"

"that one" I point at it

"ohhh yes, they'll love it T!"

"what about your day?" I ask

"not much... I talked with the Secretary of State of the United States of America" he dramatically emphasizes the title

"and that's not much?"

"He wants to talk with other nations about the Avengers..." I rapidly spot the change of his feature  "but nothing to worry about!" he stands up and kisses me on top of my head  "Love you kid, have a good night"  he exits my room

I then unwillingly went to wash my plate and none of the Avengers were there, I then played a little with Friday and decided not to eat dinner. My heavy eyelids making me fall asleep thinking about the party Flash is hosting... maybe it's good to be social sometimes? what could go wrong?

A/N: hope you liked it! Also available in Wattpad! https://my.w.tt/sw2CZNdCv1

[charlettebffxiv]

Prompt #27: Fling

“That doesn’t happen with Seekers. Well, not normal Seekers anyway.” A’nidreah labelled another item, the arduous task of recording and storing away new objects The Order had confiscated being set to the apprentices. “I’m quite sure the non-tribal Seekers would not appreciate you referring to them as ‘abnormal’.” Charlette stood on the tips of her toes, the tall woman relegated in that moment to filling the highest shelves. “Well, that aren’t. Especially if they do that sort of thing. It sounds like a waste of time and a good way to get yourself in trouble. My old Nunh would never tolerate it, and he was a soft-hearted old man.” each new and extravagant piece she pulled from the crate set in the middle of the room was brighter than the last. The small tags tied to them giving the date of acquisition, name of the item and section they were to be stored in. A’nidreah writing every detail down into a large ledger that laid open on the floor next to her. “Hey, they found more Keymakers. Better watch Brianne or she’ll get in our chests again.” The blonde Midlander turned around the corner to stick her tongue out at A’nidreah.

“Once. I did that once and now I’m the thief? And it was funny, who knew Charlette had pink in her wardrobe?” the Duskwight giving Brianne a withering look, shaking her head as she placed another goop-filled jar on the highest point possible. “Excellent prank Brianne, the we all quite enjoyed picking our undergarments from atop the Library entrance on All-Saints. Frederick was impressed, so much so you’d think the two of you were related, the amount of trouble you both cause.” Brianne’s mock-insulted expression was as comical as it was exaggerated. “I am nowhere near as crass and disorganized as that clown! My jokes are careful, intricate and endlessly upstaging towards his two-word witticisms.” the upward turn of her nose and soft, disapproving huff all part of the act. “Careful Brianne, you keep being funny and Charlette might fall in love with you too.” a swing of a hand and a muffled snap as Charlette backhanded A’nidreah, whipping her fingers across the back of the Miqo’tes head. “Ow!” her hand coming up to rub at the sore-spot. Brianne didn’t say a word, but the smug grin on her face was not lost on Charlette, who looked her straight in the face and said one word. “Alistair?” Brianne’s mouth spreading wide as she looked about ready to give Chalette an aggressive talking-to. But instead she’d snap it shut and turn back to her crate, picking out a bright, silver mirror that reflected nothing but a blue and orange aura around her.

A’nidreah remained quiet during the exchange, constantly confused by the courtship and rules of attraction that seemed too common amongst city-people, or in this case, village people. The unspoken rules, the known rules, The Order’s rules on romance between members and especially apprentices. Everyone’s personal rules and how none of them made sense or fitted with how her own people had gone about it. “You two are idiots.” was all she offered, the three of them letting that subject die off as they went back to the job. It took hours, the work slow, the effort required to be precise exacerbated by Charlette’s perfectionism and Brianne’s constant distractions as she pulled out new items, starting them up, and caused chaos. Freezing over a section with an Amplifier and temporarily muting Charlette with a Siren’s Eye. It was, however, the last item she found that pushed her curiosity and mischief too far. A pair of Puppeteers Bracelets.

The items looked like plain, decorative, brass bracelets. But when powered properly, one would glow green and the other blue. Brianne latched the green one to her arm, coming up to A’nidreah and Charlette with the other behind her back. “What are you hiding?” Charlette asked, one brow raised at Brianne who was staring at the tall Duskwight with far too much interest. “Nooooothing…” her voice unconvincing as she took another step toward Charlette, passing A’nidreah who was still crouched over the ledger, tail raised and flicking from side-to-side as she entered another record. “I don’t believe you.” the grey-blue Elezen turning to face Brianne, dropping her hands as if she was preparing to stop a sudden tackle from the Midlander. One, two, three more steps and Brianne stopped. A moment of tension passing between them, A’nidreah humming a distracted tune while she worked. Like a flash, however, the Miqo’te suddenly tensed, her head shooting up and loud a “MMMM-ROWL!” escaping her. Brianne, scrambling away as the blue bracelet glowed, swinging from side to side with A’nidreah’s tail. Brianne having clapped it to the appendage while distracting Charlette. “What did you do?!” yelled the Elezen, coming forward to grab the tail and try to yank the device off, the action only making A’nidreah panic and scream once again.

“It’s just a Puppeteers Bracelet! Look! All it does is make me able to move it!” lifting the arm with the glowing, green bracelet, she’d wave it from side to side. A’nidreah’s tail pulling up high and doing the same. But the yank and sway of the Seekers tail brought another cruel hiss from her as she rounded on Brianne. Now, when people had told Charlette that making a Miqo’te angry is a terrible idea, she’d assumed it was just a suggestion to avoid unneeded confrontation. Not that it may actually be a life-and-death decision. A’nidreah, a notoriously chipper woman, looked practically feral. Teeth bared, eyes wide and slits flexing. The yellow glow of her iris flaring as her ears folded backwards and her hands came up, her nails looking far sharper than Charlette had remembered. “TAKE IT OFF!” but the words were pointless, as she lunged, a fist flying forward and hitting Brianne square in the face, her head snapping backwards as it made contact with an eye-socket. Cutting off the Midlander’s effort to reach out and remove the offending item. “Oof! What! What are doi-!” but she couldn’t finish her yell, A’nidreah literally leaping at Brianne. A pounce really, knocking the woman to the floor as the tiny Seeker started to beat and scratch and slash at her. “TAKE IT OFF! OFF! OFF!” Brianne’s hands coming up to protect her already bruised and scratched face. Charlette had been standing, watching, shocked at the sudden outburst from her Seeker friend. She’d never seen someone so suddenly violent, her hand in front of her mouth as she muttered. “Oh dear…” snapping out of her paralysis and lunging toward A’nidreah, wrapping her arms around the small woman’s chest and trying to yank her off the other.

“GET HER OFF ME!” “TAKE IT OFF!” “GET OFF OF HER!” “I CAN’T TAKE IT OFF LIKE THIS!” “TAKE IT OFF!” “I CAN’T GET HER OFF!” “TAKE IT OFF!”

Frederick and Alistair had ducked their heads into the room, stopping by to invite the others out on one of their fishing trips. They’d never had the three woman along, and at least two of them thought it would be a great idea, Loash having no strong opinion either way as usual. But, as the door swung ajar and the two peaked around it, all they saw were the three of them screaming, pulling, punching and swiping at one another. The tussle tearing up all their hard work as Brianne had made the fatal mistake of messing with a Miqo’te’s tail in the worst possible way: permanently gripping it. Eyes wide and their faces pale they’d both slink away with soft steps, sneaking out like mice that’d scurried into a party of cats. “Next time?” Frederick asked Alistair in the hall, the echo of shouting behind them. “PUT IT DOWN A’NIDREAH!” a loud crash making the red headed Hyur wince. “STOP FLINGING THINGS AT ME! YOU’RE BREAKING STUFF!” He’d nod, short and quick. “Next time.” the both of them jogging as far from the room as possible, just before Head Librarian Harriette came tearing down in the opposite direction, toward the ruckus.

“TAKE IT OFF!”