#flash season 5 trailer

[swagginmun]

To destiny...

[cacophony-eg]

Okay so saw the trailer for Season 5 of LMK and the discord that is happening. So I did a little research and here’s some information all LMK fans should be aware of. (EDIT: new information has come forth)

Link (One of the people who worked on Monkie Kid at FlyingBark has now made a statement, I’ve rebloged the tweet for anyone who may not have access to twitter)

Looks like it’s official that Flying Bark will no longer be working on LMK.

https://issuu.com/brunico-issuu/docs/kidscreen_febmar23_lowres/s/18007818 (<- Link to article)

It looks like LEGO has given WildBrain studios the license to LMK for the next 2 seasons plus a Special.

(It has been shown to me, that I have mis interpreted the information in the Kidscreen article and I apologize for that. I was trying to find some string of answers and jumped onto the first thread of evidence I could find.

What does remain true is WildBrains credentials and to please not point your annoyance, frustration, and disappointment onto either of the animation studios, or their staff, if your goal is for better animation your best corse of action is still to push LEGO company about it)

Now first off I want to say that The Vancouver studio they are talking about is pretty good, they used to be DHX and the part of DHX that did My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, along with Carmen Sandiego, so they do know how to animate 2D pretty well but it’s all rigged 2D either done through Flash or Harmony, so doubtful we will get the kind of battle animation we got from Barks studios.

PLEASE don’t stop supporting or watching LMK that’s not going to help, it’s probably already set in stone that WildBrain will have LMK for the at least the next 2 seasons plus special, also don’t attack WildBrain that’s like complaining to a cashier about how a store is run don’t do that. Also don’t go after the show runners(ie: writers); they are the cashier supervisors; When it comes to massive properties like LEGO, they have no control over who the company hires to be cashiers.

If you're going to complain to anyone, complain to LEGO company, (the part that has control over shows, not the one that has control over lego sets). Now don’t say things like “if you keep this studio I’m gonna stop watching Monkie Kid and buying your merch” don’t do this it will only cause LEGO to drop the show, if a show doesn’t have the view numbers or the merch numbers, they’ll drop the show regardless of the praise or complains about said show.

Question Lego about their choices, request Lego for animation the same quality as the previous season, question lego how to get flybark’s animation back.(new info has come in, please read link to twitter statement or the reblog of the twitter statement)

Please reblog this, or screen shot and repost what I am saying; this is the one case where I give permission. I know a lot of fans are spinning (Me included) right now and I don’t want anyone to take out their annoyance, frustration and disappointment on the wrong people.

[cherllyio]

Macaque will be trapped in The Underworld - A season 5 theory

Now, why would this make sense? Because it would fit perfectly with his characther devolpemt so far.

So, lets look at the evidence for that.

Macaque has through these 4 seasons gone from someone who does everything for his own sake, because of his own personal trauma, to someone who is starting to develop direct friendships with our main cast. (which this person talks more about in depth)

Therefore, it would make sense, if we start going into the most mysterious part of this monkey’s past: His time in the Underworld.

This would make sense for two reasons:

We could get answers on how he ended up in The Underworld in the first place (aka Shadowpeach lore)

We could get answers on WHY all our mystic monkeys are getting accused of breaking the sky, but we would also get some more answers about this guy, The Traitor.

The Shadowpeach part makes sense, therefore I want to go into more details with the whole “Macaque meeting The Traitor” - part of this theory, because they are actual scenes that indicates this in the trailer.

As this person mentioned in a breakdown of the trailer, it looks a lot like here that Macaque is getting sucked into Li Jing's Pagoda (because of that flashing light that looks awfully similar),

and after I made a timeline of the trailer, I realized that Macaque doesn’t really show up in the following scenes after he supposetly gets trapped in the Pagoda.

So, from a story perspective, it looks like Macaque stayed behind to fight off Li Jing, while the others got away in the car, while he himself got captured. This would then lead to Macaque again getting trapped in The Underworld, so they could keep an eye (pun intended) on him.

This would then result in Macaque getting (PTSD) flashbacks to his time in The Underworld, where there is a pretty realistic chance, in that time, he MET the Traitor.

Think about it. The Traitors whole goal is “chaos”, and our mystic monkeys are nothing but CHAOS. (talked more about this here)

There is also the fact that a theory (you can find it here) going around that The Traitor was the one who released Azure Lion from his prison, but erased his memory so he didn’t remember how he even got out:

(Season 4, ep 10)

Wukong: Wait, how are you here?

Azure: What, what kind of question is that?! You know exactly how-

Wukong: No, here and now. I put you in The Underworld myself. How did you get out? How did you get the scroll? I know for sure you didn’t steal it, you couldn’t have.

Azure Lion: I- I don’t know… I was…

Wukong: Azure! Who gave you that scroll? Because whoever it was, they must have known this would happen. WANTED this to happen, and they used you to do it.

Azure: I just wanted to make the world a better place.

There is then a good chance that he did something similar to Macaques memory, where one of thoughs memories could be his final fight with Wukong.

The Traitor could have made it so that Macaque remembers it as Wukong DIRECTLY killing him, but as David Breen mentioned, that’s just how Macaque views it.

Therefore, that’s what is going to be Macaque next character development in this season:

What happened in the past? More specifically what ACTUALLY between him and Wukong. Because we, the fandom, don’t know, but maybe MACAQUE doesn’t even know himself.

We can also, with this new information, figure out another important of his next arc: The theme of understanding.

We also know that a lot of the reasons for Wukong and Macaques fallout, is because they MISUNDERSTOOD a lot what the other actually intended.

We also know that Macaque is starting to realize that too, in the way he reacted when he saw his and Wukongs fight again: He realized HE MISUNDERSTOOD what Wukong had meant.

The seeds have been planted everyone, and we are know going to see what they are turning into. And that is a story of Understanding, growth, and friendship (or whatever the hell their realtionship is at this point).

[sugarcoatedstarkey]

Drew and Chase's ex part 2. Drew feeling a 'little' pissed that he wasn't included in the flash forward (let's say he filmed something for it) and seeing everyone speculate that he won't be in season 4. And then out of spite that none of the cast have neither confirmed or denied the rumour in interviews he decides to fuck yn in one of their trailers while filming season 4 and that is how they all find out 😂

And since they wanna be chill with Chase I would say either Jonathan's or Austin's because they're good friends.

Leftovers p2

(Gif credit to owner)

Pairings- readerxdrew starkey

Summary- follow in from part 2, read above.

Warnings- unprotected angry kind of public sex, hair pulling, choking, fingering, hand job, language. (18+)

A/n- hey anon, I changed it up a little. Just found it easier to write it prior to season 4 filming. I hope you don’t mind! Let me know what you think 🥰 also this is unedited atm but needed to post as my drafts are being so weird and I can’t open word doc.

Part 1

"Okay, but if I’m in season 4. Why is no one saying yes in the interviews?” Drew argues, he’s pacing the living room floor.

The vein in his arm is protruding from the way his fist is tightly balled up. “Why am I being told not to say anything?”.

You knew if you weren’t over, half his furniture would be turned upside down and his knuckles would be bruised. He didn’t know how to calm himself down when you weren’t around, he usually bottled things up until they tip him over the edge.

“Whatever”.

You watched as he hung up the phone and brought his arm above his head to throw the phone. “Drew” you sing, his eyes meet yours.

All the anger that had been radiating from him vanishes, he drops the phone onto the couch and walks towards you. Taking a seat next to you, he grabs your face and kisses you. “Thanks for being my anchor” he smiles, your heart skips a beat.

“Do you still want to go to this party JD is throwing for end of season 3? We don’t have to, I mean I know how angry you are” you question, you didn’t really want to go.

You both had been seeing each other on the down low since the night you had sex, so exactly 5 months. You had planned on speaking to Chase but with Drew being busy with interviews and you working in the office until late most night, no one’s schedule ever matched.

That was until you got a text from Chase inviting you to the party, neither of you had hard feelings. You had seen photos online of him with other girls and assumed he had moved on, but you just weren’t sure how he would react to the two of you getting together.

“Oh, we are going” he states, he has a look of mischief on his face but he’s standing and exiting the room before you can even question what’s running through his brain.

-

2 nights go by and you’re stepping out of a taxi, dressed in a black and white checked dress that meets your knees. You had a good amount of cleavage on display and the waist was snatched.

You and Drew had decided to come separately, not wanting to draw attention to the two of you if paparazzi where to find out about the party. Lucky it was on the down low, and you go unnoticed.

“Hey!” JD yells, he wraps his arm around your shoulder and pulls you through the house. He guides you to a bar and grabs you a glass of wine. “So good to see you Y/N! Chase is here somewhere”.

Just as he finishes his sentence you see him walk through the door, he gives you a bright smile and walks over. “Hey!” He greets you, giving you a soft hug and kissing your cheek.

You had only seen each other once since the split, thankfully the second the hug ended, you knew you no longer had feelings for him. You just hoped he felt the same way, you didn’t want to keep you and drew a secret anymore.

“How are you?” You question, taking a sip of the white wine JD had given you. The sweet taste danced over your taste buds.

Conversations begin to flow between the 3 of you and soon the whole cast is gathered in a circle, catching up and chatting about new projects. You said a few things about your own work, but really you just listened.

You still hadn’t seen Drew, you kept checking your phone to make sure he hadn’t bailed. You knew how angry he was, you tried to keep him calm but the second you left his side it just hit him, and he’d search the interviews online.

What seemed like an eternity later; he strode on in. Dressed all in black and frames on his face. He waved at everyone, but you could tell he was anxious. He didn’t like not knowing the future.

“Drew!” Everyone cheered, you waited your turn until you could hug him and say hey. You could feel his lips linger on your cheek and his fingers dig into your hips as a way of saying ‘missed you’.

The rest of the night went by in a blur, you saw Drew occasionally, but he was off talking to everyone. You could see him talking to the show runner and the conversation must have started to get heated as Drew’s fingers kept running over his scalp and his jaw was tense.

You didn’t want to interrupt so made your way to a bathroom, you would do your business and then go back out and see if you could grab his attention without having to go over and interrupt the conversation.

A couple of minutes went by, and you opened the door to leave the bathroom, but Drew stood at the entrance. His hands grip your shoulders and push you softly back inside, closing the door behind him.

He grips your jaw and presses his lips to yours, needy hands touching all over your body. Pushing you up against the cabinets, he helps you onto the countertop. Pushing himself between your parted legs.

You wrap your arms around his neck, his hands caressing your hips. Pulling you close to him as he lets his tongue explore the inside of your mouth.

The music outside is drowned out by your heartbeat rattling in your ears, your skin was on fire from his touch. You could feel his erection against your clothed pussy, you needed him right there and then.

“Can I touch you?” He breathes, you nod your head. Taking a moment to catch your breath, he reaches between the two of you. Pulling your panties to the side, he pushes you back slightly.

Angling you to lay back against the mirror, nodding for you to bring your feet up onto the countertop, when he’s finally happy with the way your sat. He runs his fingertips between your soaking folds.

An almost pornographic moan leaves your lips, he chuckles into your hair. You can’t see his face, but you know he’s smirking at how easy it is for him to get you wet. He pushes two fingers inside of you, your mouth gaping open.

“Dre-w, should we be doing this?” You breathed, your walls fluttering around his fingers. You could feel your self-growing wetter, the movements of his fingers becoming fast and sloppy. You don’t doubt that you have covered his hands with your juices. “Hell, yeah we should baby”.

You don’t argue with him, you’re riding your high in JD’s bathroom. Zoned out to the world, grinding your hips into his hand as he brings you over the edge. Your orgasm washing over you with a sense of release, your moans are hidden by his mouth on yours.

You’re reaching into his pants to grab his cock, pulling it out of its confinements. You use your arousal to pump your hand up and down his shaft as he sucks and bites down your throat.

One of his hands fisting the back of your head and pulling you head to the side to give him better access. “Fuck”.

“Feels so good”

“Yeah?”

“So good, I need to be inside of you”

He’s rushing to undo his zip and doesn’t give you time to move position, he’s pushing inside of you with ease. You let out a yelp when he grips your hips and pushes you down onto him harshly. “Fuck, harder Drew”.

“How hard?”

He was still cautious with how he treated you in the bedroom, not wanting to upset you. You had told him a million times he could carve his name on your skin, and you’d still suck his dick. “Make me scream baby”.

He pulls out of you, repositioning you to lean over the countertop. He gives your ass a slap and pushes inside of you again. Bunching your dress up to your hips so he can get a good view of his cock drenched in your juices.

“Oh shit, please Drew harder” you beg, you grip onto the counter. He grips your hair and pulls you back against him, moving his hips inside of you as he reaches around to kiss you.

His hands caress your body, groping your tits. Reaching down to massage your clit, his other hand grips your throat tightly. His eyes are watching the way your own roll to the back of your head, he’s so close to coming just from the way you looked euphoric right now.

“Your so fucking perfect”

“Your mine”

“We are telling Chase”

“I need everyone to know your fucking mine”

You’re coming hard around him, screaming his name out. He places his hand over your mouth to muffle it out slightly, he holds you firmly against him as you shake around him. Your walls pulsating around his cock, milking him until he’s completely dry.

The anger that had once been raging inside of him had gone, he was satisfied and happy. The feeling of you in his arms had him humming with delight.

“Did you mean that last part?” You questioned; he nodded his head. Looking at you through the mirror. You have him a soft smile and turned your head to give him a kiss.

“No way”

You both jump at the voice behind you as Austin stood at the door, his eyes wide as he takes in the scene in front of him. He steps out without saying another word and closes the door behind him.

“I mean, at least it wasn’t chase?” Drew laughs, he slips out of you and helps you clean up. You’re both trying to work yourselves up to get out of the bathroom and to speaking to Chase, it had to happen now. If Austin knew, it was only right Chase did.

“So why did we just have sex in JD’s bathroom?”

“Just me being pissed off with what’s going on with season 4, kind of wanted to just let some steam off. I mean, I’m pissed no one has just said yeah, he’s in the next season.”

“I’m just being salty”

You nod your head in understanding, you would be pissed to if your cast mates pretended like you weren’t going to be in the next season.

“Guys, Chase is coming” Austin barged through the door and pushed you away from one another. He leans against the counter and nods when Chase came up to the door. “Sup man”.

Chase looked between the 3 of you and quirked his brow, peering over your shoulder at the bathroom counter. “Not doing drugs, right?” He laughed nervously.

You all laughed, it was awkward, and your heart felt like it was in your throat. You were nervous and it made it even worse that Austin was in the room, but as though he could read your mind, he pointed his finger to the door and exited.

“What’s going on guys?” Chase questions, he noticed the both of you being awkward. He could tell someone wanted to say something because you both were still in the bathroom waiting. “Chase, man I need to tell you something”.

Chase nods his head and looks at you, you know he wants to ask if you need to be in the room but when he looks back at Drew, he turns to look at you again.

“So those pictures online?” Chase states, no doubt talking about the pictures that those teenage girls had posted online 5 months ago. “Are you seeing each other?”.

Drew looks over at you, making sure you’re okay with him answering. “Yeah” you whisper, you know you shouldn’t be nervous. Your both adults, these feelings honestly can’t be helped, and Chase would know that.

He had to deal with his old feelings with Maddi when you started dating, he was still getting over her and you were fine with that. You gave him his time and he came around in the end.

“Oh shit” Chase breaths, he runs a hand through his hair. He chuckles to himself; Drew can tell your even more anxious now.

His eyes fall to you as you sway on the spot, picking at the skin around your nails. “I’m sorry man, I’ve been meaning to talk to you”. Drew states, he puts his hand on Chase’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry Chase, we did mean to talk to you” you start, your about to add that you didn’t want him to be upset and that you both weren’t walking around hoping to be photographed together but he stops you.

“Hey, hey. It’s totally fine” he says, there was a slight hesitation when he says fine, but his caramel eyes meet yours. “I promise, I mean sure it’s a shock, but we ended things months ago” Chase finished, he gives you a soft smile.

“I’m happy for you both”

He pulls Drew in for hug and gives him a rough pat on the back, you can feel slight tension from them both. Unsure how to react to each other, Chase was understanding. Yes, he felt a little strange that his ex was now dating Drew who had become a close friend of his since season 1.

But if Y/N could deal with Chase having had feelings for Maddi then the least he could do is deal with the two of them becoming a couple. So, he pulled you into a soft hug and before you could pull away. He brought his lips to your ears.

“He will be good for you”

“Thanks Chase”.

-

[worth-the-chaos]

Adventures in Babysitting - Steve Harrington x female!reader - Chapter 18

Chapter Summary: You venture into the Upside Down once again in an attempt to find Vecna and stop him in his tracks before he can bring about the end of the world as you know it. With Steve and your friends by your side, you fight against time to get to Vecna before he can get to you.

Content Warning: ANGST, swearing, scary Upside Down nonsense, violence

Word Count: 7.2k

Author’s Note: Sorry this took a while for me to post! This is the last chapter of season 4 and at the time of writing, we unfortunately do not have season 5 content yet, so this story will be put on a slight pause while we wait (semi) patiently for season 5 to come out! Don’t worry though! Feel free to send in requests and I will do my best to write as many of them as possible (you can send requests set in the Adventures in Babysitting universe or requests that are unrelated!)

Message me to be added to the taglist and get updated when the next chapter is posted! I highly recommend this if you want to keep up with the story since I don’t do regular updates!

Series Masterlist | Part 17 | Next Part

***

There you stood, back at the entrance to the Upside Down in the ceiling of Eddie’s trailer. You wiped your sweaty palms on the front of your pants, trying to psych yourself up for the hell that you were undoubtedly about to endure.

You were in the middle of trying to take a deep breath to calm down when Steve gently grabbed your elbow, pulling you away from the rest of your friends who were putting the finishing touches on their packed gear.

“What?” You asked Steve, your voice hushed to preserve the obvious secrecy he was trying to maintain by moving somewhere a little more private.

A million thoughts were racing through his head. He wasn’t sure what you were all about to face or just how dangerous it might be. His heart raced as he felt fear creep up his throat. He pushed it down as he tried to get the words out that desperately needed to be spoken.

“Look, we don’t know what’s going to happen in there, and I don’t want to leave anything left unsaid,” Steve began, and you felt a lump forming in your throat at the implications of his words. “So I’m laying it all out there…just in case. Y/n, I love you and you’re really one of the only things in my life that ever feels like it’s going right. I…I-I’d like to think that I’d have found my way if I had never gotten to know you, but I know I’m only better because of you. I don’t know what the future has in store for us, but I want there to be an us when all of this is said and done, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, don’t do anything rash…I know,” you agreed, but he just shook his head.

“That’s not what I mean…I mean, obviously, I mean that too—don’t you fucking dare do anything stupid in there—but….but I mean….I guess I just don’t want to lose you in a different way when all of this is over, you know?”

“What do you mean?” You asked, your voice barely a whisper, your eyes searching his wide and wild ones as you tried to make out what he could possibly mean by that.

“Y/n, don’t make me say it,” his words sounded strangled as tears began to pool in his beautiful brown eyes.

“Baby, you’re scaring me,” you put a hand on the nape of his neck, pulling him towards you. “I…I-I just don’t understand.”

“I just don’t want you to fall out of love with me,” he finally spit the words out and you just stared at him dumbfounded, speechless yourself by his total misread of your relationship. Without your voice to fill the silence, he continued on. “Come on, y/n. I saw that way that you reacted when I talked about my six little Harringtons…I’m just worried that you’re realizing that we don’t want the same things.”

“Steve,” a watery chuckle escaped your lips and hurt flashed across his face before you continued, “you couldn’t possibly be more wrong, baby. I want that. I want that future with you more than anything else in the fucking world, but I…I-I’m just afraid that I’m not going to make it out of this one alive.”

Your voice dropped to a pained whisper as you explained your sadness from before, a tear slipping down your cheek as you thought about what seemed like your inevitable fate.

“There’s no way in hell I’m letting anything happen to you, you know that right?”

“But, Steve, if something does happen, I want to know that you can be happy without me…I-I want to know that you’ll be okay.”

“You’re fucking crazy if you think I’ll be okay without you. Y/n, you’re my whole fucking world,” Steve argued, taking your hands in his. This just caused you to cry harder, a small sob escaping your lips.

“Steve, please, just promise me,” you begged, tears falling delicately down your face. “Promise me you’ll be okay without me.”

You pulled a hand away from his, sticking out your pinky finger as your hand trembled. The sight was enough to break Steve’s heart. The fact that your last wish for the world was for him to be happy reminded him of how selfless you were, and even though he wanted nothing more than to respect your wishes, he knew that there was no way he’d ever find happiness without you.

So instead of taking your pinky in his, he reached his arms around your waist, pulling you in for a hug that felt a goodbye…just in case.

He swayed side to side as you buried your face in his chest, placing a gentle kiss on his neck and basking in the feeling of being loved. He placed a kiss to your temple before pulling away and placing the sweetest of kisses to your lips. It was a kiss that said more than words would ever have the capacity to, and you thanked your lucky stars that out of all the women in the world, Steve picked you to love.

When you finally pulled away, Steve wrapped his large hand around your small one, and led you back to the room with the rest of your friends. You stared at the rope from before, still dangling precariously and precisely around a point that defied physics…or at least what you knew of physics from tutoring Eddie.

“You lovebirds ready to go fucking kill this guy?” Eddie asked, a smile that didn’t quite touch his eyes plastered across his face.

“I suppose it’s now or never,” you spoke up, nodding at Nancy who nodded back and then quickly began ascending the rope.

And just like that, there you all were, making your way back to the hell you’d just escaped.

***

Eddie and Dustin stayed back at the Upside Down version of Eddie’s trailer while you, Steve, Robin, and Nancy made your way to Vecna’s lair. You tried to keep your nerves at bay while you walked alongside your friends, but it was hard to when you had to constantly pay attention to make sure you weren’t stepping on any vines. It would really suck if you alerted Vecna to your presence before you could try to end him once and for all.

“Robin! Remember the hive mind!” Nancy yelled out to your clumsy friend as she hurried ahead to make sure she was paying close enough attention, which left you and Steve with a moment to yourselves.

“So…” Steve spoke up, glancing at you with a timid smirk stretched across his face.

“So…” You replied with a smile. The air between you was a bit awkward, but it was the kind of awkward you basked in. It felt like a normal, teenage sort of awkward that made you feel like your life could maybe be blissfully ordinary once you made it to the other side of this.

Steve chuckled before picking up the conversation again. “Okay, so I told you about my idea for the future, so now it’s your turn. What do you want?”

You hadn’t really thought much of it, and you didn’t like the pressure the question put on you. Your mind flashed to the acceptance letter you’d been waiting on so that you could stay close to Steve. Beyond college, though, you hadn’t really thought about it. You constantly were just fighting to survive, but after hearing Steve’s wishes for your future together, maybe you should be fighting to live. Even though it was all just semantics, it meant something to him and you wanted to give him the world.

“I mean…I’m still waiting on my acceptance letter from Purdue,” was all you ended up saying.

“Is that where you really want to go? Or is it because it’s closer to Hawkins than the other places you’ve applied to? Y/n, I don’t want you holding yourself back from what you really want for me,” Steve sighed. It was an argument you’d had before and the reason why you didn’t really talk about college. The conversation always became stilted and tense.

“Steve, how can I even care about college right now with everything that’s going on? What difference does it make if that piece of paper says Purdue or something else? Besides, Purdue is a good school; it’s not like I’d be throwing my future away,” your voice grew angry and you hated yourself for it. You didn’t want to be this person. You didn’t want to fight with him, but you were under so much stress it was hard to hold back your frustration.

“I just don’t want you to resent me for it,” Steve’s voice was small, and you felt a pang in your chest at the way he said it.

“Baby, all I want is you. I would never resent you for a decision that I made, so please stop thinking that way,” you assured him, but he still had a far off look in his eyes, so you decided to double back to his question that started this whole conversation. “Okay. I see us having a few kids—maybe not the six that you are crazy enough to want, but still a few nonetheless.”

He whipped his head around to look at you. He was in awe of how perfect you were. He thought it was kind of a shot in the dark, talking about kids the way that he had. You were both still so young, and he had spent all this time worrying that you didn’t want the same things. He stared at you, mouth agape as you continued.

“And…and we have a dog. Like a big dog that we can take on hikes and walks. The kind of dog that makes us the boring stereotypical suburban couple, but we don’t care…and I finally have my drivers license.”

Steve couldn’t help but laugh at your last small hope for the future. “Well, maybe when this is all said and done, I can take you out for a driving lesson, how about that?”

“Sounds like a date,” you replied, smiling up at him. You both were beaming the way that young people in love can only beam and everything would have been perfect if it wasn’t for the fact that you were traversing through the absolute worst place on earth.

“Holy shit!” You heard Robin exclaim, and the two of you hurried to meet your other friends. Robin’s words didn’t even do the sight justice. You felt your stomach drop half way to hell at the sight of the Creel house. None of it felt real.

“Okay, we’re there,” you breathed into your walkie talkie.

“Initiating phase three,” Dustin’s voice crackled through the static and you thanked the universe that the damn thing worked in the Upside Down. The bats that were swarming the house suddenly darted off into the distance.

“Dustin, please be safe,” you begged, holding your breath while you waited for his reply.

“You’re the boss,” his voice rang out again and you shook your head at the fact that he was way too nonchalant about all of this shit.

You all walked up to the door of the Creel house and you sucked in a deep breath. You hated the way the vines writhed and slithered against the frame of the door, the stained glass rose much dimmer and duller in the permanent storm of the Upside Down. You went to grab the handle, but Steve pressed an arm across your shoulders, holding you back as he took a step forward. You rolled your eyes at the way he was always protective to a fault.

You gasped as the door creaked open on its rotting and rusting hinges. If you had been nervous about stepping on a vine before, that anxiety increased ten fold as you saw that the interior of the house was filled nearly wall to wall and floor to ceiling with the trip wire that was Vecna’s vines.

“Holy shit,” Steve whispered as you all stopped to take it all in. “That’s not good.”

“No shit,” you breathed out, your dry remark losing some of its edge at the sheer shock of how fortified Vecna’s not-so-secret hiding place was. The thought of it kind of pissed you off in a way. “So he just gets to hide in here with basically a state of the art security system, meanwhile we’re out there with a bum lightbulb thinking the world is gonna fucking end? Two words: Bull. Shit.”

“Well, I mean I guess when you’re essentially a ruler of the underworld you get to make the decisions. Why fight fair when you don’t have to?” Robin spoke up and you grumbled in response.

Steve took a cautious step forward, before quickly jumping from bare patch to bare patch of the floor.

“What the fuck, Steve?!” You whisper shouted across the foyer. “This isn’t mother fucking hopscotch! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Steve just shrugged in response and waved at you to follow. You rolled your eyes, seething at how careless your boyfriend could be, before you took a careful step forward. You continued to carefully navigate with Robin and Nancy following close behind. Your eyes had been glued to the floor, but as you got closer to the stairs that Steve was standing at, you looked up, noticing the nervous look plastered across his features as he watched you navigate your way through the room.

“Absolutely not. Wipe that look off your face,” you pointed a finger at him as you took a final step towards him. However, you had spoken too soon, slightly losing balance as your ankle rolled and you began to topple towards your side. Steve was quick to snake an arm around your waist, righting you before pulling you in to his chest.

Anything else you were going to say died on your tongue as you looked up into Steve’s eyes. You suddenly felt like you did before you were dating, when you were just some silly girl with a crush on a boy that was way out of your league.

“You were saying?” Steve smirked at you, which made it really easy to snap out of your momentary blast to the past. You rolled your eyes and hit him gently with the back of your hand in the chest in a dismissive gesture.

Moving up the stairs wasn’t too difficult, and you were actually feeling optimistic for a change. The hope in your chest faltered when the ground began to shake, and the four of you huddled together to brace yourselves. Dust and ash fell from the ceiling, and you coughed a dry cough as you inhaled it, trying desperately to regulate your breathing despite the anxiety coursing through your veins.

The walkie talkie in your pocket suddenly roared to life, static spilling through the speaker before Dustin’s frantic voice rang out.

“Y/n! We don’t know how much longer we can hold them off, the bats got inside Eddie’s trailer and we think—“

Your heart dropped as his voice cut off. “Dustin!” You screamed into the transmitter, “talk to me! Say anything, just let me know you guys are okay!”

You let go of the button and listen as static crackled through the receiver. You felt the blood drain from your face when a different voice filled the airwaves.

“Y/n,” a raspy voice echoed through the walkie talkie. You gasped, instinctively dropping the device to the floor as if it had burned you.

“We need to get out of here,” you whispered, staring wide eyed as your gaze darted back and forth between the petrified expressions of each of your friends.

You barely had time to register the subtle squelch beneath your feet before you realized it was too late. A vine wrapped itself around Robin’s ankle pulling her to the wall before several other vines wrapped around her limbs and torso.

Steve darted forward, swinging his axe as hard as he could in a futile attempt to free Robin from the vines. Nancy grabbed the sawed off shotgun from your back, using the butt of the gun to hit the vines around her arm. You sprung into action to, unholstering the knife at your hip jabbing and stabbing wherever you could, but the vines wouldn’t relent.

Steve swung his arm back to hack at the vines once more when something wrapped around his axe, pulling him to the other side of the room, before you knew it, Steve was being pulled up on the wall by his neck, and your heart stopped as you watched his legs kick and flail while he wrestled with the vine around his throat.

You didn’t even have time to react before Nancy was pulled up against the wall as well, struggling as she attempted to fight against her restraints.

“Y/n! Go!” Steve screamed with all his might, his voice straining against the vines that were slowly constricting around his neck. “Please.”

The word came out in a whisper, but you froze, hyperventilating as you spun between all of your friends, helpless and bound to the walls around you. You willed your legs to move as you ran a hand through your hair, trying to breathe through the obvious panic attack that had you in its clutches. You felt a sickening feeling settle in your chest as a creak rang out on the stairs above you.

A slow and solid step sounded as your tear filled gaze slowly ascended to take in the form in front of you.

There Vecna was. No mind tricks. No gimmicks. Just him in the flesh standing right before you.

“What do you want?!” The words came out as a guttural shriek as you fell to your knees, him taking another sure and resounding step towards you.

Steve felt the vines around his neck relent slightly, realizing in horror that Vecna wanted him to be alive enough to watch. Seeing his clawed hand and ragged, decrepit skin, Steve felt nausea settle in a pit in his stomach as he realized the constant terrors you had been facing in the confines of your own mind. This was the monster that you had already met face to face countless times before. This was the man who was using your own mind—your own memories—against you.

This was the man who had taken you from him, over and over and over again.

Vecna didn’t answer your question, simply taking another step towards you.

“I said, what do you want?” You cried out again, the words dissolving into sobs as he grew ever closer to your shaking and dejected form. Ever since that day in the Byers’ living room, you always seemed larger than life to Steve. Seeing you look so small and defeated and terrified on the ash covered landing of the Creel house broke something in him.

“Leave her alone,” the words came out much more confident than Steve felt. The vines tightened, and Steve gasped, wincing and struggling at the sudden tension.

“Please!” You begged, horrified at the danger your boyfriend and friends were in. “I’ll do anything….anything.”

The promise spilled from your lips in a whisper and Steve wished he had the strength to yell at you, to tell you to fight, to flee, to do anything but that. But he couldn’t.

“Stand up,” Vecna’s voice rang out, and you quickly rose to your feet. Steve’s heart broke as he watched the way your legs shook, your knee giving out momentarily as you stumbled and righted yourself.

You swallowed the lump in your throat as Vecna approached you, putting his clawed hand around your throat. You gasped, tears spilling relentlessly from your eyes. Your hands wrapped around his wrist, as you forced yourself to meet his gaze.

“Please. I-I…I don’t wanna die,” you whispered, your face contorted in fear of what the ending would feel like and regret for all the things you’d never get the chance to do.

Vines wrapped slowly around your ankles, snaking up to grab your wrists as well, binding them behind your back to minimize your struggle.

“Try and stay very still,” his deep voice shook your heart inside your chest. Steve wanted to scream, but he couldn’t, silenced by the vines around his throat as he thrashed to no avail. Tears streamed down his face as he watched, helpless to stop the cruel fate in which you would meet your end. “It will all be over soon.”

“Please don’t hurt them,” your voice was small, and sobs wracked your frame as your words came out through hiccuped pauses. “Let them go.”

When Vecna didn’t respond, you turned your head towards Steve, meeting his big, beautiful, brown eyes for the last time. “I love you, Steve.”

With that, Vecna’s large clawed hand reached up, opening in front of your face and Steve watched as your eyes rolled back in your head.

“No!” Robin shouted, her strained, guttural cry something that would haunt Steve for the rest of his days. They all watched as your body twitched and small whimpers escaped your lips. Blood began to drip from your nose, and you breathed out one last shaky breath, and then the world went still.

Just like that, Vecna’s hand dropped and your head lolled to the side. He stepped away from your lifeless form and the vines holding you up released, and you dropped like a rag doll to the floor. Vecna turned and made his way back up the stairs, leaving you all behind. The vines released their grip on your friends as they each collapsed to the floor in a coughing fit. Steve scrambled to the heap on the floor that was your body and scooped you up in his arms.

He cried out as he cradled your head in his hands, the weight of it something so familiar as he thought back to all the times he’d cradled the nape of your neck and watched as your mouth turned into a small smile before he would kiss you. All the life, all the loveliness, everything that made you you was gone, disappearing on dust and ash as Steve could swear the room grew ten times colder. He gently wiped the blood away from your nose with his jacket sleeve, trying desperately to fix the carnage in front of him.

“No….no, no, no, no, no! Robin, I didn’t get to say it!” Steve sobbed as he pulled you into his chest to shield you. “I-I…I didn’t get to tell her I love her.”

Robin didn’t know what to say. There was nothing she could say to make any of this better. She choked back her own sob while she tried to piece together the right words. “She knew, Steve.” Tears streamed down her face as she dropped to her knees next to him.

“You don’t understand,” his words came out in a strained whisper. How could he ever find the words to explain how he failed to even be there for you? How he couldn’t even comfort you as you cried out? “It’s all my fault.”

He buried his face in your neck, his wet tears mixing with the not quite dry ones staining your face. “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you,” he whispered into your skin, his hands running over you hair, delicately holding onto you the way he wished he could have. The way he’d never be able to again. As soon as you started having visions he should’ve put you in the passenger seat of his car and drove off as far away from Hawkins as he could get. He thought about the way you would’ve looked with the pale light of the moon filtering into the car as he watched you smile and laugh and sing while the radio played songs that neither of you really liked but you both inexplicably always seemed to know the words too. He thought about the way you could’ve started over, the way he could have made something of himself instead of being the posh, depressed, and mediocre man his parents always wanted him to be.

He thought about the love that filled his chest that would never have anywhere to go, instead just sitting there like a weight he had to carry, a fire that would spread and fester and consume.

Nothing would ever be okay again.

Nancy stood back, her jaw set with an anger that could burn the world to ashes. Hot angry tears streamed down her face as tension set across her entire body.

Steve laid his head down on your chest, and his tears flowed faster at the complete sound of silence. He tried to lose himself in a memory, but it became tainted with the pain of losing you as soon as he had conjured it in his mind.

“I can’t believe you would do that! What the hell were you thinking, y/n?!” Steve yelled as he slammed the door to his bedroom.

“Steve, please, just calm down. I’m okay! I promise! Can you please just let it go?” You begged. You tried to gently grab his wrist in an attempt to make him turn to face you, but he shook your hand off and roughly ran his hands through his hair.

“You could have died.”

He wasn’t wrong. The two of you hadn’t been working at Family Video that long and it was one of the days that Robin had band practice so it was just the two of you running the store.

You were working the register and Steve was getting a box of movies to restock in the back when a man walked up to the counter.

“Welcome to Family Video, my name is y/n if you need anything at all!” Your customer service voice dripped like honey.

“How about you open the register?” The man had asked. Something in his eyes didn’t look right and you had felt your heart rate pick up as you opened your mouth to speak.

“Excuse me?” You asked with a chuckle, hoping that keeping a light demeanor would keep the situation calm.

“I said, open the register,” he repeated himself, slowly lifting his arm, a pistol nestled between his fingers and pointed shakily right at your chest.

“You don’t have to do this,” your words sounded even and confident, even though inside you were falling apart. Dealing with the supernatural on a semi regular basis had prepared you for the unpredictable, and you slowly raised your hands up to show compliance.

“I said open the register, bitch!” The man shouted, and your heart stopped as you heard Steve’s footsteps bounding towards the front of the store. The man quickly turned to his right, training the pistol on Steve.

Without thinking, your arms had darted out and you grabbed the gun out of the man’s hand, quickly pointing it square in the middle of the robber’s chest. Your hands didn’t shake, confidence radiating from your stoic form as the man’s hands slowly raised as he backed away.

“Get the fuck out of my store,” you shouted as the criminal in front of you quickly turned heel and ran. Steve quickly locked the door behind him, and you calmly set the gun down on the counter. Steve looked at you like you were insane, but you just quietly picked up the phone and dialed the police.

After an entire evening of showing the police security camera footage, explaining what happened, and still trying to manage customers, needless to say, Steve was understandably a bit pissed off. So standing in the middle of his bedroom, you tried to calm him down once he was finally able to release all of the anger and fear he’d been bottling up all day.

“You could have died too! What was I supposed to do?” You argued.

Steve sat down on his bed, sighing as he held his head in his hands. You felt guilty. You knew he’d been stressed ever since all the shit at Starcourt happened and his parents were on his ass about having a job. This little incident didn’t do anything to help his mood.

Quietly, you sat down next to him, pulling his hands away from his face as you beckoned him to lay down next to you. He complied, and you pulled his head against your chest, laying his ear down right over your heart.

He closed his eyes as he listened to the gentle and rhythmic reminder that you were okay.

“See. I’m fine, baby,” you whispered as you ran your hands through his hair. “My heart’s still in there, still beating. All for you, baby.”

Yet here Steve was now and your heart that was always supposed to be beating strong was still. He cried as he stayed there trying to listen for something, anything. Placing a gentle kiss to your chest, he continued to fall apart. “Please, y/n, please just come back to me. I’ll get you your dog and your white picket fence—I promise—just please don’t leave me here alone,” he begged.

Suddenly, though very faint, he swore he heard the familiar thump of your heart. His eyes shot open and he held his breath as he listened closer.

“Steve, we have to get out of here,” Robin spoke up, tears still falling down her face as she pulled gently at Steve’s sleeve, doing all that she could to avoid looking at your lifeless form in his lap.

Steve quickly shushed her, listening closely, as he heard another beat of your heart against your ribcage. It was weak and it was slow but it was there and it was you.

He sat up abruptly, and began to shake your shoulders. “Y/n! Y/n wake up! Please y/n!”

“Steve she’s gone,” Robin tried to explain, looking at Steve with pity and sorrow.

“She has a pulse, Robin!” Steve exclaimed, a watery laugh escaping his lips as he wiped at his tears and placed a kiss to your forehead. He quickly grabbed Robin’s hand, placing her fingers on your neck. She felt like she could drop to her knees and just cry at the rhythmic tapping of your heartbeat.

Nancy quickly dropped to the floor next to the three of you, pulling a water bottle out of her backpack. She quickly poured the cool liquid onto the sleeve of her shirt, pressing it to your forehead. After a pause that felt like an eternity, you began to stir as you groaned, your face contorting into a pained expression.

Relieved laughter surrounded you as Steve pulled you into a sitting position, pulling you into the tightest hug you thought you would ever receive. The reality of what just happened began to sink in and you started to cry with the relief that Vecna had respected your wishes and left your friends alone.

“I can’t believe he didn’t crack me like a glow stick,” you croaked as soon as you could speak.

“This is a miracle,” Robin breathed as she pulled you into a hug as everyone helped you to your feet.

“Then we better not waste it,” you replied, your voice even and steady. You took the shotgun from Nancy and cocked it. You had escaped the worst fate imaginable. You were not messing around.

“Phase four,” Steve breathed, his hand snaking around your waist. He didn’t think he’d ever let you go after what just happened. His voice was about as shaky as his hands, and he took a deep breath to try to calm his nerves to lock in for the next part of the plan.

“Flambé,” Nancy chimed in, you looked at her stern expression and nodded, taking a step forward towards the attic.

When you silently entered the room, you watched as Vecna hovered in the center of the room, vines attached to him from all angles. You shuddered at the sight of it as Robin placed her bag down on the floor, each of you grabbing a Molotov cocktail from the bag. You heard the click of the lighter and watched as the flame began crawling up the rag in the bottle in your hand. You thought back to the same click of the lighter in Jonathan Byers’ living room the first time you encountered creations of Henry Creel’s design. You thought about the chaos that followed you since, the people you’d lost, the pain you’d felt. You thought about the life and future you’d almost just lost at his hands.

“Fuck you,” you whispered, hurling the bottle towards Vecna, watching it erupt into a spray of flames as it hit Vecna square in the chest.

He bellowed, vines retreating, as he fell from his perch in the middle of the attic. As he so roughly drew you into visions against your will, you just as abruptly pulled him out of his.

His burning body dropped to the floor, and you wished that would be the end of it. Your heart jumped to your throat when he stood up, his piercing blue eyes meeting yours as he stared at you with a focused contempt that sent a chill down your spine. He took a steady step towards you but was quickly knocked off kilter when Robin threw a second bottle at him.

You felt all the anger and resentment you’d been harboring since the Upside Down entered your life. You felt the rage of watching your friends suffer, of watching the kids grow up too fast, stuck in a battle that was not theirs to fight. Vecna had spent all this time making you feel shame and guilt, festering and spreading like a disease that wouldn’t die until it took you with it. You didn’t feel that shame anymore. Instead it was replaced with red hot hate at the man—no, the monster—that had spun this twisted web of suffering and carnage and destruction.

You aimed the shotgun square at his chest, firing the first shot. It hit him in the shoulder, knocking him backwards. You wasted no time as you cocked the gun again, firing off another shot that tore through his abdomen. You continued firing without mercy, knocking him back and back again until he stumbled through the boarded up window of the attic, falling with a sickeningly satisfying thud to the ground below.

You turned back towards your friends, a look of shock on everyone’s faces, including your own. In your assessment, you had just defeated evil itself. The four of you raced down the stairs towards the front door. You felt your stomach turn however, when you noticed that Vecna was gone, nothing left but charred patches of grass and a few sputtering flames.

He had escaped.

***

The news was saying it was an earthquake, but you knew better than that. You felt guilt settle in your chest when you heard about the fissures ripping through Hawkins.

It was exactly what Vecna had shown you.

Four kills. He had done it. You had been dead—albeit not that long, but dead nonetheless.

When you had made it back to Dustin and Eddie, Eddie was pretty banged up, but nothing some bandages and a few very not professionally done stitches wouldn’t fix. He’d have to hide out; there was no way the town was going to let go of the cult leader who was picking off high school students one by one. Luckily, it was petty easy to go off the grid and disappear in small town rural Indiana.

To your complete non-surprise, Jonathan, Will, Mike, Eleven, and Jonathan’s new friend Argyle had been dealing with similarly supernatural shit in California and were no strangers to the messed up load of shit that was going on in Hawkins, so it was pretty easy to get each other up to speed. Besides, at this point, exchanging stories didn’t result in incredulous disbelief; you pretty much believed that anything was possible at this point, much to your collective dismay.

But presently, you tried to shove all of that aside, as you, Steve, Robin, and Dustin carried in boxes of stuff to donate. Hawkins High had been turned into a makeshift clinic, resource center, reunification center, etc. So many people had been displaced and injured in the “earthquake” that normal day to day activity ceased, instead everyone put all of their focus on rallying around those who needed support after the recent events that had quite literally shook the town.

Almost as soon as the four of you had arrived, you had volunteer name tags adorning your shirts as you went off to help with various aspects of disaster relief.

Robin joined Vickie at the meal prep station and you couldn’t help but smile as they chatted away.

Your smile quickly vanished when you saw Dustin talking to Eddie’s uncle. It was easier for Eddie if everyone assumed that he didn’t survive the earthquake. You had questioned him multiple times to make sure it was what he really wanted, and though you were sure the answer would never be a whole hearted “yes,” he was convinced it was easier than his uncle having to deal with the emotional turmoil of watching his nephew face multiple counts of murder that the townspeople of Hawkins were more than eager to lock him up for.

Steve nudged you slightly and you tuned back into the kind woman who was explaining how the two of you were to sort clothing donations. Steve watched the soft and polite smile on your face as you asked a couple of clarifying questions, and he felt luckier than he ever had before.

You had been gone. It was the hardest thing he’d ever had to experience, and he knew one thing was certain: he would never, ever take you for granted.

He watched as you folded clothes, carefully folding up a children’s pajama set. It felt so inexplicably domestic and he took a breath as he thought about how his hope to have a future with you was still intact.

“Hey, uh, y/n?” Steve spoke up, his voice quiet.

“Yeah?” You replied, staring up at him sweetly. He was too nervous for you to be staring at him like that because he was sure if you smiled at him like that for much longer, he would melt right then and there.

“Well, when you were…when you were gone…I-I-I promised you something,” Steve whispered.

You saw how much he was struggling with talking about it and you quickly began to spiral. “Steve,” you replied softly, taking his hand in yours, “I’m sure you were under a lot of stress, and-and I’m so sorry that I put you through all of that—believe me, I wish it hadn’t have happened that way—but I don’t even remember it, on account of the fact that I was…well, you know…dead, so please if your worried about keeping your promise, don’t because it’s not like—“

Steve quickly cut you off, softly grabbing your face and tilting your head to look up at him. “Y/n, no it’s not that—and never apologize for what you went through. That was in no way, shape, or form your fault and if you worry about that one more time I’m going to lose my mind just a little bit.”

“Hey!” You mocked offense, crossing your arms and Steve just chuckled at your antics.

He took a deep breath before he continued. “When you were gone, I promised that if you came back I would get us the white picket fence and the dog and the future that we never get to talk about because we’re always so confident that we’re not going to have it. When you came back it felt like a second chance to…to just really go for it, you know? And I kept thinking before all of this shit that we were just too young, but after almost losing you, I realized that it’s pretty fucking stupid to wait when you know you’ve met the love of your life.”

Steve reached a hand behind his back into his back pocket and pulled out a ring box. Your eyes immediately started welling with tears. You were glad that everyone was caught up in doing their part to help the people of Hawkins because, even with what felt like half the town in your high school gymnasium with you, it felt like you and Steve were the only two on earth.

“Y/n, I know it’s not much, and I really planned on doing this in a way that was a little more special, but you know me and I really just couldn’t fucking wait…will you make my life complete and be mine, til death do us part?”

You didn’t respond verbally, instead you took a step forward and threw your arms around him and buried your face in his neck. You held him so incredibly close and breathed in the scent of his cologne. This moment, it was sweet, it was simple, and it was all yours; perfectly imperfect and lovely all the same.

“Absolutely,” you responded in a whisper. He gently placed the ring on your finger and you admired it. It wasn’t anything flashy, a simple stone set into a plain band, but it was probably the nicest piece of jewelry you had ever owned. “When did you have time to get this between ‘the earthquake’ and now?” You asked incredulously. You’d spent nearly every minute together since then, so how had he been able to get that ring after having his “why wait?” epiphany.

Steve’s face flushed and he chuckled awkwardly as his hand when to the back of his neck. “Well, the thing is, I’ve had it…for a while,” he admitted. You stared up at him in disbelief and he continued. “I actually had finally saved up enough to get it shortly before everything went to shit. I-I was gonna ask you after graduation, just because that felt right at the time, you know? I-I’m sorry it’s not super fancy or anything…my parents offered to help so I could get something a little nicer, but I wanted it to be something I got on my own.”

“It’s perfect,” you stared up at him like he hung the stars in the sky.

“Are you sure?” Gosh it was cute when he doubted himself.

“I promise,” you reached your hand towards his and he smiled, hooking his pinky finger around yours. He pulled you towards him and placed a sweet kiss to your lips and you smiled into it.

Everything was just so perfect.

You continued folding clothes, not wanting your proposal to get in the way of helping out your community, and you felt like nothing could take away the warmth that was radiating through your body. That was until the room darkened suddenly, and you felt a pit in your stomach. You quickly turned to Steve and you could see the worry painted across his face.

You followed the crowd that was making its way towards the windows of the gymnasium.

A chill ran down your spine as you watched white ash swirl through an overcast sky.

Steve’s hand slipped into yours, and that was when your perfect moment shattered into a million pieces before your very eyes.

***
a/n: AHHHHHHHH! It’s so crazy that we’re at (kind of) an end to this story! I wish we had season 5 out so that I could continue to write alongside the plot, but unfortunately we don’t! Keep on the look out for more stuff I write though! I have a couple of ideas that I’ve been brainstorming that I think could be good.

If you enjoyed this chapter, consider reblogging! It really helps inspire me to write more seeing the engagement and how much people are liking the story!

Thank you all for sticking with me! I love you guys!

taglist:

@season4steve @sassyheroneckgiant @tangledinthegreatxscape @palachannie @keeryverse @usaguisenpaisblog @emilieluckwood @sabrinadelreyy @mochminnie @xprloki @kitdjarin1 @kissmxcheek @daemonskitty @bethsvrse @aheadfullofsteverogers @quinnsadilla @chervbs @sheisjoeschateau @goosy-goose @frtfvthg @criesinlies @cycat4077 @kachelleee @killerqueenfan @newyorkangelbaby @spaghetittied @anxfl @huffledor-able541 @mikariell95 @nothergoaway @angie2274

[shatteredstarsart]

Things the new LMK animation studio, Wildbrain, could work on for the new upcoming season and season after:

1) Dont use flash animation style as a crutch, flash works with daily life shows, not so much with action/adventure cartoons. It makes it look like a content farm and we arent about that. Especially characters eyebrows, thats definitely a hand drawn thing to do for this.

2) Dont be afraid to play with the characters limb sizes. There's a lot of stretching and squishing with the characters, despite them being literal LEGOs, thats what makes the 2D animation for thus show great, you can break the LEGO figurine rules in the real world.

3) Dont be afraid to test out new things, Flying Bark did it all the time, with thier flashback sequences they often took inspiration from Chinese ink paintings

4) When designing new characters, dont directly take from the figurines LEGO gives you, use creative liberties and change certain aspects of the design from the figures. As much as I like complicated designs, I found in the actual show, the simpler you can make it while still making it feel complex makes it look good

5) Flying Bark used a 50% White overlay layer for the irises for all the characters, including Wukong and Macaque, it makes thier eyes look more alive, which i noticed Macaque was lacking in. Along with make making the irises and eyes slightly bigger, which i noticed Nezha (and what I assume in Erlang Shen) consistently had these weird inconsistencies compared to the other characters in the entire trailer

6) Use interesting camera angles, I guess this advice is more for the storyboarders of the studio, since thier job is to make the layouts and camera angles. Whenever there's a fight in the show it typically gave you an interesting way to look at it depending on what was going on, like for the Corrupted Wukong and Macaque fight in season 3, they were constantly going between being far away and up close to thier faces, depending how tense the moment was, the more tense, the closer you wanna be.

7) Try your best. LMK fans are quite picky, especially sense we've always held these high expectations from the show. I know the first season animation style was ... a little weird but its only gotten better from there. LMK fans may be brash at first, especially since we're all kind of miffed about having little to no news for the show to suddenly it could possibly be airing in a month and the studio we loved and adored said they are no longer working on it anymore. Im sure as time moves on you'll get better, but God please, move away from flash animation as if your life depends on it, it really only limits the ability of the show to tell its visual story as flash animation has so many limitations, especially for the genre

-yours truly, Monkie Kid fans <3

[wakeupthemembersofbylernation]

I just had a crack vision that they dropped a teaser trailer that looks suspiciously like a Mlvn wedding, with Mike and El shaped silhouettes walking down the aisle, causing all the Mlievens to cheer and Bylers to tremble.

And then Season 5 dropped and it turned out it was actually a Vecna vision. And this is how the audience realized that Mike was queer:

The wedding bells ring. All of Mike’s friends are present, watching this glorious ceremony. Ted is officiating the wedding.

“I can give you the life you deserve. The girl. The house. 2.5 kids. The picket fence. The yard. The dog. You can stay here forever and never have to leave. It can be an eternal dream.”

“Really? But I-”

“Yes Michael, really.”

Scenes from a picture-perfect future Wheeler American house flash on screen, as seemingly happy music plays. All is swell.

“But that’s not what you want, now is it?”

The music abruptly cuts out and the happiness ends, leaving only Mike standing in a dark void.

“No, there’s something else you desire. Something… forbidden. Something… unnatural.”

Various whispers start to surround him, a Frankenstein mixture of friends, bullies, and family members laughing and saying things like “Freak!” and “Sinner!” and even slurs.

Mike begins to scream and shout uncontrollably for Will who suddenly appears.

“Will, is that really you?”

“Yeah.”

Will is radiant and angelic. They proceed to hug, tears streaming down Mike’s face.

“It’ll all be okay. I love you. Crazy together.”

“Will I- I don’t know what to say. I’ve just being feeling so lost and- wow. You’re really here…”

The hug grows uncomfortably long and slimy, and Will’s warm embrace starts to grow tentacles, transforming into Vecna.

[multifunctionalnitroglycerin]

I haven't yet watched the second season of Blood of Zeus, and honestly, I am a bit scared to do so.

Not because I expect it to be any accurate retelling or anything, far from it. It was fun exploring a different course and not sticking to the mythos and not pretending to stick to the mythos.

I am not watching it for the plot and all its at times glaring insufficiencies, but for the art style and character designs, which are in many cases superb ( yes, I want a curvaceous Aphrodite that is vengeful and can sure as heck yield a sword, yes I want an Ares that isn't half naked and wears armor and a helmet ( no talks abt accuracy here I am not out to get them) a Demeter that looks like everyone's aunt that will force you to eat some more, has a green thumb and a heck of a temper, and frankly one of my favorite Athena designs in modern animated media )

What I do worry about, however, is the plot. Which yeah is all fun and games as far as myths themselves go, but even from the trailer I see Heron suffering main character and plot armor syndrome and I am a bit less than enthused.

S1 was bad enough with Zeus playing favorites among his bastard children, and being like, you are not a mortal you are my son.

Ehhmm sir, what are Apollo and Hermes and Ares then?

And they are present in the scene. So either Zeus is supposed to be an even more huge prick, clearly favoring his mortal offpsirng from the immortal ones. Who have backed him up. In several occasions in the show. Or well, plot.

And then we have the trailer with Heron fist fighting Ares I think, and getting 4 solid hits in. Which okay fun if you like Heron, but my dudes. You won't win a fist fight against the God of War. But he is the son of Zeus! And so is half the Pantheon.

And I am afraid we are going to overlook many 'logical' things, and nerf a lot of gods to make Heron seem as idk the rightful heir to the throne of Olympus or idk and yeah... it ll take a lot from the show.

Because wether we like it or not, Heron is a demigod. Not a God. And he has lived only a handful of years in comparison to the rest. I have trouble thinking that any of the gods would back down from taking the lead and giving it to Heron. Who will? Athena? Ares? Poseidon? Hera?

Especially in a time of unrest. Where supposedly Hades is behind the coup and wants to take over Olympus. Well, buddy, I wouldn't want to be stuck down there and constantly being a footnote, either. I can understand why he snapped within the premises for the show.

And it introduces an interesting theme. Civil War among the gods. Not the first time it has happened, but it has the potential to be interesting. I want to see them struggle, and fight while trying to organize a sort of defense against Hades and Persephone. I want Athena and Ares to fight over how to station their forces and who should lead them. I want to see the power struggle between the Queen of Olympus, the King's brother, and his first son. The power vacuum is delicious.

And I definitely want to see more of Apollo and Artemis and Hermes. Who I feel will more readily accept Heron among their ranks. On principle of their personalities in tandem with their status.

Anyway, bottom line I don't want to see an overpowered Heron for example and an Artemis that misses 3 shots out of 5, and Ares that can barely hold his own, a Hermes thats like a Flash lookalike, a himbo Apollo with little functionality and a goddess of battle strategy that cannot do battle strategy, all for the purpose of making the main character look better.

I might be going off a mile here, but I have learned to expect the worst usually, so forgive me. I d very much prefer to be pleasantly surprised, so fingers crossed for that.

[marvel-starwarsfangirl]

BB Season 3 Trailer Breakdown

I am very excited, as you know, for the final season of The Bad Batch. Despite its ups and downs, this show means a lot to me and I adore the characters, particularly Omega and Crosshair. So, without further ado, here we go!

The trailer starts off with the Empire pursuing the boys on a turbo tank as they escape from some sort of facility (I think). Later in the trailer, we see the same tank firing upon the Empire while they head away from wherever they are.

As Hunter, Wrecker, and Crosshair (he can be seen for a split second) realize that they can't get out of trouble with the tank, Phee drops in to pick them up, commenting "not exactly a stealth exit boys." This makes me wonder if the boys snuck in to get information on Hemlock or Mt. Tantiss. I also believe that this sequence with the tank chase correlates to the episode titled "Juggernaut." It makes sense to use a name meaning something big while the Batch are in a huge tank.

We then see some sort of transport (?) ship headed towards Coruscant. The next shot is of Rex and Hunter talking so maybe they're on the ship. Rex says that ending the war would mean that the clones would no longer be killed in battle. However, we see that's not the case; the clones are still used as soldiers, experiments, or left to die without a thought. The end of the Clone Wars only made things worse for them.

While Rex says this, we briefly see the palace on Teth, burning. I believe this is where we'll see Ventress as that's where we first meet her in Clone Wars. However, this is pure speculation because the only other place I can see her being is Dathomir. Then, we see a downed ship with two figures walking away from the wreckage. Based on the image of Omega desperately piloting a ship later in the trailer, I think she and Crosshair somehow managed to escape. Unfortunately, only Crosshair was able to actually get out. I think we could see this event happening between episodes 5-8.

Rex then says he was wrong about the clones' fate before we get a brief flashback to the railcar incident and Tech falling to his presumed death. Rex continues on, saying "we can't just walk away" whilst images of an imperial occupation flash by. Citizens run away in terror so this could either be Pabu, found at last, or another planet in which the Batch travel to. Rex finishes by saying "not with the Empire imprisoning the kid."

Then, we cut to images from Mt. Tantiss, including post and pre-time skip Omega. Omega walks in and sees a broken Crosshair. Since this looks like the first two are seeing each other, I think these are shots from the first episode "Confined." Hemlock is shown next saying to secure Omega in her cell. There are two Delta Squad commandos behind him. Now, I'm not sure what Omega is holding in the cell, but it looks like she's being scanned. We also see Emerie looking somewhat unhappy. Hunter says that Omega's been waiting for them for a long time and we see her pre-time skip in a cell overlooking the outside world. Perhaps this is a privilege for cooperating? Hunter also says a "long time," so I'm guessing that it's been at least a year since season 2. Hunter concludes with that the Batch's mission isn't over yet.

The next several scenes show a ship being chased (maybe the one Omega is flying?) and what I assume to be a mirrored shot of Hunter and Wrecker because of their facial characteristics being flipped. Then, we see Palpatine with Nala Se and Hemlock saying that their operation is most important to the Empire's future and Hemlock will have everything he needs. My crazy theory? He wants to build an army of force sensitive clones. Will this come true? Idk.

The Empire is seen firing upon a ship (again, the one Omega stole?) and we get a glimpse of a new antagonist, the dark armor-clad figure commanding the TK troopers. While I Initially thought it was Cross because of the helmet design, I feel like that's backpedaling on this character arc so I'm gonna say it's Tech or CX-1, a new clone we see later. If it is CX-1, then it makes sense why we hear him say that the Batch will be hunted down. I'm not sure who this is but I'll be theorizing later. Speaking of that line from CX-1, we see flashes of Fennec, Cad Bane, and Nala Se. While Cad Bane will definitely be after then, I think Fennec will help because she's spotted on the boat when Hunter almost gets eaten by an alligator.

We later see in the trailer, Hunter on Pabu, Wolffe hopefully leading an early clone rebellion, and two clones running towards a big explosion. I'm not sure what's happening, but it could happen during the "Infiltration" and "Extraction" episodes. There's also a clone with a flamethrower so it could be during the same sequence. There's one shot of Echo walking towards... the Batch, Rex... idk. We'll find out together.

Wrecker, in true fashion, asks for a "real challenge" so I think we hear this in the episode "Paths Unknown." It sounds like the Batch are trying to get money or something to pick themselves back up. There are several shots of ships flying; to where, I'm not sure. Hunter and Wrecker are also getting ready to fight. We see the same two clones from earlier in combat and Hunter, Wrecker, and Crosshair aiming at someone. Hunter says they're not big on following orders. This is proceeded by more shots of Tantiss, TK troopers being attacked by creatures, and troopers being shot at. Hunter tries to hijack a gunship as well. Maybe this happens during "Flash Strike" or the other action heavy episodes. We'll see.

The trailer ends with Asajj Ventress, alive and well, swinging her yellow saber as blaster bolts fly at her. She says that she doesn't plan on killing "you," but "you're" making it very tempting. She might be talking to the Batch. Based on the shot of Hunter and Wrecker, maybe they ask her for information on Tantiss or she is hunting them down. Idk.

Anyways, that's all I have for now. I will be doing some theories on CX-1 and the mysterious imperial as well as what I think might happen based on episode titles and Palpatine's ultimate plan so stay tuned for that!

[disneytva]

Disney+ Unmasks ‘Star Wars: The Bad Batch’ Final Season For February 21st

Disney+ has released the trailer and teaser poster for the final season of acclaimed Lucasfilm Animation series Star Wars: The Bad Batch.

Synopsis: In the epic final season of Star Wars: The Bad Batch, the Batch will have their limits tested in the fight to reunite with Omega as she faces challenges of her own inside a remote Imperial science lab. With the group fractured and facing threats from all directions, they will have to seek out unexpected allies, embark on dangerous missions, and muster everything they have learned to free themselves from the Empire.

This third and final season of the critically acclaimed CG series will debut Wednesday, February 21 with the first three episodes; see below for episode release schedule.

The Bad Batch S3 Episode Schedule:

2/21:  Episode 301 “Confined,” Episode 302 “Paths Unknown,” Episode 303 “Shadows of Tantiss” (debut)

2/28:  Episode 304 “A Different Approach”

3/6:    Episode 305 “The Return”

3/13:  Episode 306 “Infiltration” & Episode 307 “Extraction”

3/20:  Episode 308 “Bad Territory”

3/27:  Episode 309 “The Harbinger”

4/3:    Episode 310 “Identity Crisis” & Episode 311 “Point of No Return”

4/10:  Episode 312 “Juggernaut”

4/17:  Episode 313 “Into the Breach”

4/24:  Episode 314 “Flash Strike”

5/1:    Episode 315 “The Cavalry Has Arrived” (series finale)

[mushroompapitheoriginal]

My feelings on the LMK(Lego Monkie Kid) season 5 trailer are so mixed. I know that the first 4 seasons were animated by Flying Bark Productions and now it was transferred to WildBrain. But it still scares me because everything feels stiff and flat. The movements look wrong, the lighting feels way off, and the way things flow erks me the wrong way. But my main grip is the backgrounds. Backgrounds make an everything in an animated series. For example Regal Academy, the animation is one I despise,but I'm really just there for the beautiful aesthetic of the backgrounds.

But the background right here doesn't look right to me. The lighting's off along with the shading feelings too blocky and artificial.

Also the fight scenes did feel flash animated and kinda fan animated.

Yes, I was jump scared by Li jing.

I hope have hope for this series and I know that the trailer doesn't mean final product, but I just help but be worried.

[crucian-tador]

(disclaimer: I don't claim to be is as a canon)

I just want to mention a couple of things that I noticed again and again reviewing the series with the mention of Fizzarolli (in the very big hope of seeing him soon in future series)

ahem

so

🤡 1. I think Fizz is passionate about child dreams and the stage and for this reason seems to me quite kind and sweet

he always liked to perform in front of an audience

his images flash on CHILDREN's cereals

his one of the very first robots (below I will explain why one of the first) is located in Loo Loo land

in the trailer for the second season, Fizz looks with admiration at something around, while he himself is in a clown costume, perhaps they came somewhere with Blitz, and Fizzy was happy about it

+ he often makes some random funny sounds or makes comical movements

🤡 2. Another thing to the fact that Fizzarolli seems to me quite cute: he is against blood and violence (that's why he probably doesn't like pirates)

and also in the scene with Asmodeus and M&M, even though they hit Fizz, A&F themselves didn't harm them at all

🤡 3. About the robot from Loo Loo land and why it seems to me that he was one of the first models created

this ROBOT (not Fizzarolli) is remembered by little Via, and this was definitely more than 10 years ago

the robot often glitchs and lags, hinting at its age and that it has not been replaced for a loooong time (also he is cheap ofcourse)

Blitz also remembers this robofizz, because he managed to work with it

and in turn the robot remembers who Blitzo is

I don't think they all have it in their memory from the beginning to remember who the Blitz is

plus we already know that Fizzarolli himself couldn't have been behind the control of this robot because they don't know who destroyed Loo Loo land

🤡 4. From all this, it probably follows that Blitz and Fizz worked together until some point, then Fizzarolli went further up the career ladder, they made one of the first robofizzes in his image and put this machine next to Blitz to work, because we all know

Blitzo to put it mildly is terrible on stage

«cheap ass robo rip-off of an overrated sell-out jester»

🤡 5. Maybe Blitz lasted so long in the circus sphere because Fizz didn't want to fire him and gave him a job (and in fact still a dream that Blitz told Stolas about)

🤡 6. Why did a child's dreamer appear in the products of an adult audience?

perhaps this is because Fizz met Asmodeus and the king has already found another application for robots like this

well, on the other hand, why should these goods go to waste

+ clearly more money for Mammon

🤡 7. As we can see, Fizz supports Asmodeus, but does Ozzi support him?

yes, because Fizzarolli is literally the only one in the whole sex club that doesn't look "sexy" and wears a clown costume completely covering his body

in what other sex institution will you see a presenter in a jester costume? So Ozzy lets him have it all

you will say that this is for recognizing the mascot image, but what would prevent Asmodeus from making an even sexier clown robot?

because Fizz himself doesn't want all this and Ozzy respects his opinion

thank you for reading my little theories, I hope you will like them♥️

[lemonyoatmilk]

Just woke up from a dream about a weird nightmare time season 3. Here's a rundown:

Hannah does street racing with some delinquent kids money

Shapiro and Bailey chases them, but they out speeds and out ma maneuver them across the streets

Cut to Paul and Emma I think? With another family chilling in their house. Probably Lex and Ethan, I'm not sure cause it felt like I was in the room.

Shapiro and Bailey shows up in the house to take away Hannah's prize money, then she runs away crying.

Meanwhile Bailey goes outside to a vending machine for a soda.

This next sequel is extremely unclear because it literally flashed around like those 5 second trailers, but I think Hannah or someone else kills Bailey????

Then Hannah is chased around the fruit section in Lakeside Mall.

There is a nigh scene inside a corridor somewhere but I forgot what happened.

It ends with Hannah on the bus, alone. Then is someone else there that might be an antagonist idunno? And Hannah's eyes glows and floats inside the bus for a fight I think?

Funny little coincidence how it's a show called *nightmare* time and I had a dream about it 😭 this feels like a fucking prophecy lmao I might have a touch of the gift frfr

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

ofmd s2e3 rewatch where i pause to jot down my thoughts and other random shit

squeezing this one in riiiiight before the next two eps drop lol. anyway these posts are about me processing these episodes and if you want to read them then that's cool too. but fair warning this is gonna be a fucking mess.

s2e1, s2e2, s2e3, s2e4, s2e5, s2e6, s2e7, s2e8

show opens on zheng leading a raid and INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH. this might be the first time we've seen a raid where like. the background music is kinda moody. and what's odd is that it has like the same level of comedically over-the-top violence and characters just having a casual conversation as like, the e5 cold open. but there's sad piano and strings doing tremolo in the background. i have no idea what this means.

god. zheng is so fucking hot.

i love olu's "no, no, sorry, bruv." and the FACE HE MAKES AFTER!!! so good

olu's a feminist

ZHENG IS SO FUCKING HOT

~champers?~ stede you are such a dork. i need to pinch ur cheeks.

yeah fuck the english!!

zheng saying "everyone's cracking down on the little guy" makes me wonder if the show is gonna do anything abt how the end of the golden age of piracy was like. a year off. which i only know from reading a few fics where the authors incorporated that into the plot. and there was the one trailer where we see zheng in jackie's bar while stede's giving everyone a speech so yknow what that might be where all this is going. big pirate battle at the end of the season, right?

another thing ive been wondering abt tho is just how much is this show gonna completely fuck with history. because like. is zheng yi sao gonna conquer the fucking caribbean. are we just going completely off the rails re: historical accuracy and inventing entire major historical events?? like crocs and pinocchio and pirates from different historical periods all existing at the same time and in the same place is one thing but if the characters like. overthrow england. then ofmd just straight-up exists in an alternate timeline at that point.

stede "the gentleman pirate kills with kindness" bonnet being so impressed with zheng is so cute to me tho

fhsjkgdhfushl oh my god when zheng snaps her fingers and stede hurries to refill drinks the other captain guy grins and flashes finger guns at stede and this is SO fucking funny to me

zheng being like "noooo it's stupid teehee" tucking her hair behind her ears ALSO very funny to me

whose job was it to make the letter N out of caviar for the title card in this episode bc it looks fantastic. got little serifs and everything

stede taking his towel duties VERY seriously and just. dropping them on zheng's desk for no reason. even olu is like "stede what the fuck are you doing"

obsessed with the running gag of stede being like "i always say that!" and other characters being like "no you fucking dont"

stede having zero impulse control and seeing the abacus and just being like "hey what the hell is this thing" and shaking it around. me too, king.

i wont lie tho part of me wonders if stede like. going overboard with towel duty and messing shit up is on purpose. like is he playing dumb so zheng lets her guard down just in case he needs her to think he's completely helpless?? bc at the end of the episode he does get one over on her and i assume it's partly bc she underestimated him. or am i just reading too much into it lol.

but idk it's weird that olu's like "ok stede zheng is busy" and stede's just like "im gonna shake this thing now teehee"

WAIT ALSO backtracking a bit. why were stede and olu shadowing zheng at the beginning of the episode. i mean olu i get, it's bc she has a crush on him (who can blame her) but what's the in-universe justification for zheng being like "yeah alright white boy u can come too"

stede's gay little run out of the room. GO GET YOUR MAN!!!!

awww the crew all look so sad at how messed up the ship is :( THAT'S THEIR HOME!!!

I KNEW THE GNOSSIENNE NO. 5 WAS GONNA KILL ME WHEN IT SHOWED UP IN S2 BUT THIS WAS TOO FUCKING MUCH. THE WAY IT TRAILS OFF AND WE JUST HEAR THE WIND ECHOING. FUCKINGGGGG CLAWING AT MY EYES

i love that there's knife stuck in the painting guy's dick. stupid gags like that never get old. also if that was izzy it's extra funny like what the fuck did he even do that for

also have we ever actually seen the outside of the door to stede's cabin like this before??? we saw those dutch guys get chased down this hallway but idk about. the door.

the crew is too busy feasting on raw bird like they're extras in a zombie film to hear stede calling for ed. love that.

the two people that the camera focuses on individually are jim and izzy. makes sense bc these are the characters who i think are gonna have the most important shit going on re: the fact that they all tried to kill ed.

stede's painfully awkward smile after "um... hi." i mean honestly tho what the fuck else do you say to walking in on this

oh shit jim was totally about to tell stede what happened tho. and then archie interrupted with "oh shit, you're stede?????"

this must be so fucking funny from archie's perspective tho. must've heard so much abt this guy and now she finally gets to meet the main character of the story she stumbled into about a third of the way through. and he's kinda just some blond guy.

stede sounds so defensive too tho when archie's like "i thought you'd be taller, charismatic, muscly" bc god that's exactly what he thinks he should be. i mean ok stede is charismatic in a very unique way but his whole e1 fantasy of having a beard and being all macho and badass was just putting all his insecurities on blast. and now archie is like "this is the guy blackbeard was so fucked up over?? really????"

shoutout to archie saying "got tired" when theyre all saying ed retired

also why was wee john in this shot. like not even just in the shot he's just sitting RIGHT behind stede listening to the whole thing. he doesn't have a single line.

stede rolling his eyes and ignoring izzy is so good. yes king dont take the bait

oh ok wee john was there so that we can see frenchie go over to him and give him a fist bump in the background while stede walks away to stare off into the distance

eddie on tha beach

piggie!

cave! remember when we were all like "CAVE KISS???? ARE THEY GONNA KISS IN THE CAVE??????" it would be funny if this is it for the cave. just off in the distance for one shot. cant actually tell if this is the cave they were posting pictures of last fall tho and idrc enough to try and figure it out

pig's name is ruthie. ed why did your subconscious name the pig ruthie.

why did ed's subconscious make hornigold tell him "open up for the cargo ship" ed your daddy issues are fucking insane

hornigold fully like rubs ed's chest for a second there. kinda a weird choice there.

"last time i saw you, you said you were gonna flay my skin and feed it back to me" man what is it with these pirates and forced autocannibalism, huh? i think getting flayed would hurt more but skin's probably easier to eat than toes so idk which i'd prefer. no i dont know why im pondering this either

smthng abt how this is ed hallucinating this whole bit where hornigold pinches his nose and force-feeds him soup is so funny to me. it's a metaphor for ed dragging himself kicking and screaming to therapy.

frenchie telling fang to stfu scjgdfchjxgk

fucking incredible line delivery from joel fry through the whole "it's quite hot, im burnin up here! should we go and get some coolin' bevvies?" bit. love it.

uhh line break

also bro auntie is dead-on about the guilt. i dont blame the crew at all for what they did but this + the whole bird-eating sequence bro. they all liked ed. they cared abt him. other than archie, they all knew him as a pretty cool person. like BRO im gonna have to make another post abt this but the trauma of like, someone you liked becoming so suicidal that he puts you in increasingly miserable situations hoping you'll snap and kill him and he keeps escalating it until you have no choice but to kill him for your own safety. but you know he was a funny and chill person before this. and you know he only did this bc he wanted to die. dude this shit is fucking heavy.

anyway cut to jimolu lol

bro what IS going on in towels. i love how stede just passes around towels for smelling. is this something people have done literally ever or is this just so we can have chloroform towels at the end of the episode

sorry i know in the last post i was sort of squinting at the bit where olu forgot how to pronounce china but the was he mispronounces eucalyptus is just so satisfying to hear i cant even be mad abt it

awwwwgh u can tell jim was scared to tell olu abt kissing archie

lmaoooo when jim says "i saw her boobs" olu's head WHIPS around and he's like "oh??" all wide-eyed dbhjgkhdfyjsk

naw im sorry this is cute. this is a cute tealoranges scene. yes it's jim telling olu abt how they hooked up with someone else but bro i LOVE relationships with this kind of comfortable discussion abt sex and abt relationships in general. i mean there's a lot more for them to talk about still but in a worse show this wouldve been a whole screaming match. instead we got jim saying "you're kinda the best friend i tell everything to" and joking about boobs and UGH. it's so cute!!!!

it's also so fucking funny tho. "i saw her boobs" "oh?? okay, nice" "both of them" "nope, too much" WHY IS THAT WHERE HE DRAWS THE LINE HFKHSGJKFKKJFHK

also when did jim see archie's boobs tho. like ok realistically they've seen each other in varying stages of undress just bc it's not that big of a ship and there's only so much privacy. but the funnier answer is that after ed kicked them out of the secret room and a few minutes later a gunshot went off (who did the rest of the crew think pulled the trigger, i wonder) and they think izzy's dead probably. and then jim and archie decided this was a good time to hook up.

wait i forgot abt the nebulous amount of time between the mutiny and stede walking in on them all eating a dead bird. who fucking knows how much time that was tho. but they could've hooked up then i guess

GNOSSIENNE NO. 5 PART 2 ELECTRIC BOOGALOO. IM SOBBING.

the song gets to play out more in this scene and ohhhh baby i missed this piano piece. also stede looks more annoyed than upset. he's just casually yoinking things out of the wall. and then he sees the ones on the ceiling and is like "really, ed?"

i think i said this in the tags of a gifset but izzy says "don't cry, bonnet" when stede's back is to him and i just think it's funny bc stede literally wasnt crying. he just looked kinda pissed off. izzy continues to not understand ed or stede even a little bit.

also i love how the music changes by just playing a minor chord and then there's like a spooky echo and then. no more background music.

i just realized izzy's crutch is literally just a mop he's holding upside down. this is funny to me for some reason

"he was a wild dog and we dealt with him like one" izzy hands racism moments

why does izzy even lie about this. why does he say "no i could never do that" when literally he did. he looked right at ed's face as jim hit it with a fucking cannonball. like. what fucking purpose does lying about this even serve. in what way does that benefit izzy. idgi

also ive heard that apparently ppl think he did this to spare stede or something but 1. why would he not want to specifically torture stede as much as possible 2. this is literally not sparing stede bc stede would spend the rest of his life scouring the entire caribbean hoping to find the island where they dropped ed.

RANDOM fucking idea tho but what if they did maroon him but it was on the island from 1x02. that wouldve been great for ed probably. get therapy from the old guy. have some coconut rum drink. chill out. oh well instead they shoved ed into a secret closet and left him there to die from a traumatic head injury.

hornigold calling ed "bro" was such a dead giveaway for me that this was a dream sequence or whatever. like from trailers and stuff i had already figured that this guy was hornigold and that he was probably a ghost or something but i think i mightve been questioning it a little bit at this point. but yeah anyway ed says "bro" and while obviously we dont know exactly what hornigold was like, he didnt sound like the kind of guy to say "bro"

i do love how hornigold's like "you worried you're insane?" and ed's just like "yeah a little bit!"

hornighost: you gotta move on or blow your brains out. or... we can make some soup. ed: yeah let's do soup.

wait stede told zheng that they marooned ed. and then zheng is like "well it's at least mutiny-adjacent" like no im pretty sure that's literally just a regular mutiny

bro rubio qian is so good at making faces

i love how ed's like "you ever thought about selling these shoes?" like who the fuck is hornigold going to sell them to. where does ed think they are.

OUGH RETURN OF ED'S HAIR ALL UP IN A BUN!!!!

ough... return of ed's trauma :(

ughughghuhguhughughgffffff every time i hear ed's voice in the bathtub scene i want to cryyyyy SOMEONE HUG THIS MAN I SWEAR TO GOD

also hornigold's mouth definitely moves in this shot where ed climbs off his body lol

hnnng... ed arm

oughuhgu and a strand of the wig came out of the bun WHY IS HE SO PRETTYYYYYYYYY

i cant believe for months i had my fingers crossed for the "person A thinks person B is dead" trope with ed hearing about the fuckery but instead i got it THE OTHER WAY AROUND. AAAAAAAAAAAHH

yo is hornigold wearing like. a flag. idk why i just noticed this but there's like a giant metal rung with rope tied through it holding his whole robe-ish situation together. is that a flag

very random thought but i love how tv shows just cut back and forth btwn plots and one plot might basically be one conversation but every time we cut back theyre in a different setting and we dont see how they got there. like the cut from stede walking in on the crew eating a bird to all of them back on zheng's ship eating soup. and now we went from ed yelling "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON" at hornighost's hut and now they're on a beach talking abt what the fuck is going on. why did they go there. who knows. doesnt matter.

ed is so fucking stressed abt being in the gravy basket. poor man is nervously playing with the big stick and trying so hard not to lose his cool.

damn he threw that stick really far tho. good arm.

im sorry but it's SO fucking funny how zheng is trying to seduce olu in this scene and she's like "whats the status of your boatmance is it... ongoing?" *unsheathes sword* like girl that's not seduction that's a full-on threat. i mean it's still hot dgmw but it's unclear what exactly you're going for here

YES STEDEY-BOY

loving the jaunty little escape music

archie and jim holding haaands

stede: you always say you have perfect aim black pete: ive never said that roach: you always say that lucius, throwing his beloved boyfriend under the bus: you said it today

buttons is so fucking loud fhjkhgyejkthfjkhg. ngl i relate tho

obsessed with the noise button makes when he slides across to the Revenge

and they use tea towels to slide over!! god stede really made the most out of his time in towels

~~

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE how olu is the one sitting on the desk with his legs dangling and kicking during this makeout session

also obsessed with how theoretically olu could've seduced zheng out of killing the crew and it's possible that none of this was necessary

wait i literally just realized that they stole the wheel not just so that zheng couldn't follow them but bc the Revenge didnt have one lol

ugh ed's tits look so good what the hell

ed in his head instantly associates the phrase "calico jack" with someone going "WHOOHOO" at the top of their lungs

oughu FUCK i did not fucking realize this but ed is taking hornigold's presence here as confirmation that he's not loveable. earlier hornighost said "you're afraid you're unlovable" but then when he's on the cliff and he's like "you brought me here because you hate yourself" ed is like "im not loveable." ohhhhhh fuck

and then hornigold is like "and you're afraid to do anything about it. but im not" and then throws the rock off the cliff. this is the shittiest part of ed's brain calling him a pussy for not killing himself and telling him he deserves to die. fuuuuuuuuck me.

oh boy okay. ed got yanked off the cliff. stede is heading into the secret room. idk if i even have anything to say about the mermaid sequence like i cant believe this shit is real. fuck. this is a fever dream. they really just... wrote this. filmed it. put rhys darby in a fish tail. FUCK

ok the two things i have to say about this. first: the fucking flashback montage in this sequence makes me stop breathing like every single fucking time. secondly: when theyre face-to-face in ed's mermaid fantasy there's a split second where ed sort of jolts forward a tiny tiny tiny half of an inch. and i have no idea if it's intentional. but it makes me think of how in the "you wear fine things well" scene ed TOTALLY STEPS IN THINKING STEDE'S ABOUT TO KISS HIM.

WRITTEN BY ALYSSA LANE AND ALEX SHERMAN. SHOUTOUT TO THOSE GUYS.

[thelioncourts]

would love to hear your thoughts on the trailer :) I don't know what thoughts I'm looking for, I guess just general ones, but also the thigns you're excited for and all that

I have to admit, I've only actually watched through the trailer about three times, it makes me feel genuinely insane. we're getting this piece of art this year !!!!

In all seriousness, my thoughts are all over the place (in an overall good way). I'm curious and excited and terrified and crying at all the Louis and Armand things. The part at the beginning where Daniel asks if they're going to finish each other's sentences the whole time, how they've been sitting on the couch in all the clips we've gotten so far, the 'We've been together for 77 years,' the kiss (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), the cheek kiss (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), the strange scene we've seen once or twice where it looks like a kiss might have happened but Louis seems to faint afterward, etc. etc. It's all so much and I have known since s1 ended that Louis and Armand's love story was going to leave me fulfilled and devastated all at once and it feels utterly confirmed in this trailer. I think they're still so in love, in so many ways, and I think it can't, won't, shouldn't work out and it makes me so sad, I can't wait to be heartbroken and destroyed watching it. I will say, though, seeing all the clips of them does make me curious about the future of Loumand. Louis leaves Lestat for Armand again at one point and I have thoughts and ideas on potentiality for that in the future of the show, depending on how long it goes on. Regarding Louis himself, I'm just -- so in awe of Jacob Anderson, as per usual. Louis is the most interesting, beautiful, enrapturing thing on the screen and everything is better when it comes back to him, always. The 'It's you and me' clip, with all the flashes of Louis and other people, all returning to Louis, just !!! it's him. He's everything. It's all so much better when it comes back to him, we're so lucky. In terms of Claudia, Delainey seems to have this grasp/concept of Claudia that has me shaking. Her Claudia is everything to me already. I know lots of people have talked about it, but Claudia's ghost being a part of some later stories feels so much more doable with Delainey and I hope, in some capacity, that comes true. The 1700s stuff scares me a little, but only because it appears we're getting a lot more of it than I was anticipating this season. I expected some, absolutely, and when we got Nicki casting confirmation I was like, "Oh, we're getting the 1700s for real," but the trailer is a lot of 1700s and it scares me for a couple of reasons, namely that -- once again -- we're not getting Lestat's POV of it so there is the toss-up of 'how did he see this play out though' that will somehow have to be addressed in later seasons. It also scares me a little because Gabrielle has to be there, right??? Did they cast Gabrielle and manage to keep it a secret???????????? That's wild. But in reality, it scares me too because I hope we're not living too far in the 1700s this season. I know it's important and I know Armand was there so it makes total sense, but I feel like we're already treading a lot of waters with 1) The life in New Orleans that can only be told by Louis 2) the life in New Orleans after the arrival of Lestat 3) the life in New Orleans once Claudia was brought into the family 4) all the time spent getting to Europe/exploring Eastern Europe (basically, anything pre-Paris) 5) early Paris 6) Paris once Louis and Claudia and the future of their being together starts to play out 7) the trial 6) San Fransisco from what Daniel will inevitably start to remember 7) San Fran from what Louis remembers 8) San Fran from Armand, who might be our most aware of that entire time 9) Dubai pre-Armand knowledge 10) Dubai now. Like, I know a lot of those are paired up (You could categorize it simply as 1) New Orleans 2) Pre-Paris 3) Paris 4) San Fran 5) Dubai) and that cuts it in half, but given all the POV bits we get, that's just not the case. Adding yet another time period in here is just. So much. (It also scares me because I think some fans have expectations of several different things in 1700s that I don't think will happen/can happen/at least definitely not this season happen and I'm readying for the 'WAIT BUT' and the bitching etc.)

The Loustat stuff will utterly ruin me this season. It's going to be gut-wrenching. The hallucinations, the possible reunion that it appears we see, the modern New Orleans skyline, the way that Louis seemingly will talk about Lestat in a way that makes Armand seem to feel not as loved (this is a speculation based solely on the "Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat" scene, I have SO many thoughts on that and of Armand there, god, I'm nauseous with it). I need to find my post about it, but I made a post either during s1 airing or immediately after (definitely by Nov. 2022) about how I think we'll get some kind of complete Loustat confirmation of sorts this season and by s3, they will be back together and will stay together. I have lots of reasons and thoughts on that as well. Anyway, I will cry endlessly about them this season, I know it.

I LOVE the hallucinations. I mean, when we knew that was definitely happening while s2 filming was going on, I was already excited, but seeing it just !!!!!!!!!!! it's so good. I can't even put into words how excited I am about the hallucinations of Lestat. Oh my god. Louis. The theatre!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Santiago looks fucking insane, god bless Ben Daniels, and I'm excited to get to actually know some characters from the theatre. It's something that doesn't really happen at all in the movie, and it's definitely not a focus or anything in the IwtV book. But I love side characters, I think they'll fill in some space that the Azalea had in s1 and I love that.

If Justin Kirk is David, that's the one thing that is going to piss me off this season. I honestly, truly 100%, thought we might not get David and I was soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo more than okay with that. I hate David so much and don't think he serves any kind of plot purpose and he remains to be a shitty replacement for Louis that never worked out and was completely insignificant by the end of the series. Now, if they don't do some of the wild shit with him and make him solely some kind of tie-in/draw to the new Talamasca show they're doing, then fine. But if they start attempting to make him a love interest, I might legit tap out, I can't stand that man. At least Marius is vital to the stories, we truly can't get Akasha or Lestat or Armand without Marius. David................oh my god, die already. San Fran SCARES ME. It's one of those things that, sure, obviously we know how it goes in the book, but they have flipped it so heavily on its head, I can't predict anything and it's exciting and horrifying. Armand being there, the seemingly-more-than-one-night interview, the interview ending by the time Louis was only halfway done with the story, the brief scene that appears to be Armand looking worried at something (maybe Daniel) while Louis is floating/levitating (!!!!!!!!?) in the back, etc. Oh my god. I think we're in the wildest ride there. Um. Louis and Claudia turning Madeline together........

Louis' men not being shitttttttttttttttttttt. Every time I do see gifs or see clips or something, and I see that quick scene of Lestat walking through the audience (Sam Reid's silhouette is insane, those broad shoulders, that profile????????????? He's so hot I'm feral about him) and Louis is on the stage, next to Claudia and Madeline, and you can see where Lestat's chair is next to Louis, but further away, on the stage.......................bitch, you're really letting them do that to Louis and walking through the crowd, telling your story??? And Armand, bitch?????? You're really letting them do that to Louis, just sitting there watching it play out, having taken Louis and Claudia and Madeline out just before???????????????? They're not SHIT, Louis deserves better, always has. I need to stop rambling, but lastly, the thing I already made a quick post about, but the fact that I do obviously recognize things from the book but none of it is quite how it seems..........I'm obsessed. This show is literally like....okay, like asking someone to summarize the book for you and they say, "The book is about a vampire named Louis de Pointe du Lac who tells his life story to a young reporter in 1970s San Fran. His story details how he became a vampire, how he fell in love with his maker, the Vampire Lestat, how they created and took in the child vampire Claudia, how Louis and Claudia killed Lestat, how they went to Paris and met a theatre group of vampires, and Louis fell in love with the leader Armand. It also details the inevitable and tragic death of Claudia at the hands of this theatre, and how that death left Louis utterly changed." And you're like "Oh okay" but the details aren't all there so they just...............filled in their own, and we get this masterpiece of a story that is the bones of the book, and made what it is by time and care. Idk. I love that we're all on an equilibrium.

OH. I'm also holding out, but not anticipating sadly, some Loustat flashbacks. I need them. I'm sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo in need of it, you have no idea.

[canonicallyobserving911]

Evan ‘Buck’ Buckley: On-the-job-injury

Buck hasn’t been injured on the job in almost four years.  The last time he was injured was in 2x18 “The Life We Choose” after the ladder truck explosion.  The embolism he had in 3x1 “Kids Today” happened during his welcome back to the 118 party but after his recertification test when he ignored the pain he felt in his leg.  Every other time Buck has been in danger, he escaped it without serious injury.

In 4x13 “Suspicion” Captain Mehta tackled him to the ground to get him out of the line of fire after Eddie was shot by a sniper.

In 4x14 “Survivors” he was being reckless by not waiting for Bobby’s orders when he climbed up that crane to save a construction worker.  He wasn’t injured but Bobby reprimanded him and he told Buck “Don’t do it again”.

In 5x6 “Brawl in Cell Block 9-1-1″ Dom whacked Buck over the head with the butt of his gun because he approached the other escaped convict, Mitchell after Mitchell threatened to shoot him, Eddie and their son Chris but that doesn’t count as an on-the-job-injury.

In 6x4 “Animal Instincts” Buck took off on a victim’s bike to chase a drunk driver who left the scene with Chimney trapped inside of the car.  Bobby didn’t reprimand Buck after that incident.  He wasn’t injured.

The 6B trailer shows Buck being struck by lightning while he’s on top of the ladder and Eddie’s at the bottom operating the controls.  It looks like they both might be injured but the audience will have to wait until March 6, 2023 to see if one or both of them get injured.

It’s Buck’s turn on the whump wheel because everyone else has either been injured on the job and/or attacked because of their jobs. Eddie and Bobby were shot by a disgruntled former LAPD sniper in 4x13 “Suspicion” and 4x14 “Survivors” while Hen and Chimney were attacked in 5x17 “Hero Complex” by Jonah who was a fellow LAFD paramedic they trusted (not Hen because she never trusted Jonah) in the last two seasons.  At the end of season 5, it was speculated numerous times that Buck would possibly be injured during season 6 and it looks like he just might get injured in 6x10 “In a Flash”.  Will Buck be injured during 6B?  Only the showrunner(s), writers and producers know the answer to that question.

GIFs 2x18, 3x1, 4x13, 4x14, 5x6, 6x4, 6B trailer