#he would just see 'guy who's using magic for nefarious purposes' and be like 'yeah he's evil like dear old dad has been in the past'

[martianbugsbunny]

Saw a post t’other day that was like “Wonder what it would’ve been like if Neal had been around for the fight between Emma and Gideon” and as much as I like him, I just know Neal would’ve taken one look at Gideon and decided there was too much of Rumple in him and he probably would’ve been even more reluctant than Emma to believe he wasn’t evil. Neal would’ve been too obsessed with making sure Emma and Henry didn’t become collateral damage in what I’m sure he would view as Rumple’s mess to spare a kind thought for his enslaved brother.

[rigmarolling]

History in the News: DUDE, WE KNOW WHAT THIS MUMMY SOUNDED LIKE

Are you freaking out?

Are you?

I mean, maybe you’re freaking out in general but HERE IS SOMETHING SPECIFIC FOR YOU TO FREAK OUT ABOUT.

“...about which you can freak out?”

WHO CARES? BECAUSE BOY HOWDY, HOLY SHIT, AND HOT DANG, SCIENCE HAS DONE IT AGAIN.

(A warning, for those who may not like photos of mummies...below the cut, thar be a photo of a mummy. It’s not that bad, I promise.)

Meet Nesyamun. In life--more than 3,000 years ago--he was an Egyptian priest and scribe at the Temple of Karnak. Today, his well-preserved mummy calls Leeds its home, and he’s one of the most extensively-studied mummies in England.

People just can’t get enough of this guy. So much so that a few years back, scientists referenced his mummy to reveal what our buddy Nesyamun actually looked like:

Look at that Yul Brynner-lookin’ dreamboat. Those eyes! Those cheekbones! That flawlessly symmetrical face! Look at him go in that temple, carrying incense, honoring the gods, chanting their sacred hymns...

Oh, and speaking of chanting, not only do we know what he looked like, but with the help of science, we now know what he may have sounded like.

Did you get that? Let me just reiterate it in case it hasn’t sunken in that this is one of the coolest things ever:

WE KNOW WHAT THIS 3,000-YEAR-OLD DEAD GUY’S VOICE SOUNDED LIKE.

Well, sort of. 

See, Nesyamun may not look like it, but he’s very well-preserved, as far as mummies go. See for yourself:

Oh, please. Don’t make that face. Like you haven’t woken up from a three-hour nap in the middle of the day, dehydrated and disoriented and looking like beef jerky.

ANYWAY.

We know a lot about this guy, partly from the detailed information about his life inscribed on his sarcophagus, and partly because of his mummy, which, yes, I promise is in good condition. 

Such good condition, in fact, that when scientists ran this dude through a CT scan, they discovered that his vocal chords were still intact. 

“What to do with this information?” David Howard, one of the members of the team that resurrected Nesyamun’s voice, wondered. 

But Howard knew exactly what he wanted to do with that information: 3D print out the vocal chords and produce sound from them to simulate the priest’s voice. Howard has done this before--3D printing out copies of vocal chords to see how accurately the printed copy mimics a voice, I mean. He’s done it on multiple living people, including himself, and the results are pretty spot-on when it comes to replicating what someone sounds like. 

But he’d never tried it on a dead guy. So with the help of a team of archaeologists, Egyptologists, computer whizzes, and other people who are infinitely smarter than you and I could ever hope to be, Howard and his band of Archaeology Avengers got to work. 

Above: Family photo.

They used computer tech and detailed scans of the mummy to identify the vocal chords and did some sort of alchemy in the computer that I know can be logically explained but which is actually probably some sort of digital witchcraft. 

And then, out of the 3D printer came a life-size model of Nesyamun’s voice. 

Well, his vocal tract, at least:

Yeah, I know. You can say it: it looks kind of gross. No one’s offended, it’s fine.

Meanwhile, using the information they had scanned into their witchcraft robot computer, they were able to reproduce what Nesyamun may have sounded like.

And here it is...a voice that hasn’t been heard in more than 3,000 years:

.....Okay. 

Okay, I know what you’re thinking: 

“Wait, what? What the hell was that?”

Just give me a minute to explain. There’s a reason Nesyamun sounds like the noise you used to make when your mom asked you how school was. 

See, the scientists stressed that they were only able to produce sound, not speech. This is only what air running through those vocal chords sounds like. 

Also, the scientists were up against a slight challenge recreating that sound because our friend Nesyamun was, um...

...missing his tongue. And part of his soft palate. 

Above: Oh, wait, no, it’s still in there, never mind.

As far as we know, this was just natural corrosion and not the result of anything creepy, nefarious, or cinematic; just the consequence of, you know. Being really, really, really old.

But the missing tongue and part of the soft palate complicated things because, as you can imagine, your tongue plays a key role in how you sound and how you speak. Without it, you’d probably sound like...

“...eh.” This mummy.

So the scientists had to recreate the tongue and the rest of the missing bits as best they could, using measurements from other similarly-sized mouths. And for the purpose of their study, they were only able to reproduce one vowel sound.

One whiny, disaffected vowel sound, which truly echoes the malaise and general “do not want” of this day and age, meaning we should absolutely all stan Nesyamun, who, judging by that voice, is probably doing this in the afterlife right now:

Here’s the even cooler part: while the technology isn’t quite there yet, this means that someday--probably sooner rather than later if the world doesn’t implode on itself--scientists could potentially recreate what long-dead people sounded like, provided the person in question’s body and vocal chords are well-preserved enough. Heck, we could even hear them speak full words and sentences. They might even be able to digitally “talk” to us, bringing history alive in the most metal way possible.

That also applies to famous historical people, if, again, those famous folks’ bodies are still intact enough to wriggle out enough info from their vocal tracts. 

Now, the scientists in the Nesyamun study stressed that this technique understandably won’t work with just skeletal remains--in order to recreate a realistic voice, the bodies need more tissue and juice to ‘em.

But still. This is like magic. This is straight-up necromancy. Do you know what this means?

This means that one day, Henry VIII could scream at you to rub ointment on his festering leg ulcer. Rameses the Great could scream at you for not showing up to Thanksgiving dinner again, Moses, what the hell, man, I thought we were cool??? 

It also means that one day, our boy Nesyamun could sing again. In fact, that’s what Howard and his team of superheroes want to work on next: recreating the mummy’s whole mouth so he can sing the actual Ancient Egyptian chants he would have sung while praising the gods at the Karnak Temple. 

How do we know what the chants were? Why, they’re written all over his sarcophagus (and other places), of course! And music historians have already recreated Ancient Egyptian music. 

Now the only thing we have left to do is wrangle an actual Ancient Egyptian into performing that music for us.

Us, in 2030: Nesyamun! Nesyamun! Do Wonderwall! Wonderwall!

Nesyamun:

[axemetaphor]

im definitely not ripping off my friend by making a list of au ideas i have no siree //gonna slap this under a readmore cause i. well i say a lot. all of the time. i tried so hard to format this Good but tumblr fucked me up i am so sorry

so first-off i know i already have one WIP AU (Auckland) on ao3 so i wont talk about That one cause like. spoilers. i actualyl have it like 80% created so its likely gonna truly get finished for once and i dont wanna ruin shit

the other one ive posted about is something me and ben (catgirlrepublic) have worked on together its not at all close to done or anything but it's. a fun little crossover. Between jdate and my fuckinuhm. Original characters story “Untitled Villains Project”. the sketches of the comic version ive started is actually my pinned post 👉👈 its like the first chunk of the story, i think half of part 1? yea.

Tldr john fucking Somehow is able t oget into contact with a certain curious scientist from another reality who’d just love to study the Soy Sauce, most certainly not for her own nefarious purposes

John and Dave meet up with the scientist, her name is Boss, and her lab assistant, Toxic, and after a bit of a preliminary Vibe Check where john determines her trustworthy (which Dave doesnt agree with,) the two agree to be taken to the world UVP is set in. from there they stay in Boss’s lab (big old fucking abandoned military lab). John and Toxic are fast friends due to mutual love-of-chaos. John n Dave get to fuckin, camp out on an air mattress.

The day after they arrive, the two get split up, not exactly intentionally; big plot points of UVP are liek. Fueled by Boss sending Toxic to go fetch her “research materials,” which are usually important artifacts

Fuckin side note i guess i have to explain my dumb bullshit: Boss’s, uh, field of expertise so to speak is actually fckin, basically the scientific study of magic and superpowers n shit like that. This shit’s all real in that world. Toxic’s got fuckin superpowers, so do 4 other main characters, whatever. It’s got a bit to do with spirituality, iss Boss’s hypothesis. So she has Toxic fetch important artifacts that might have “energies” to them. The thing is actually way more fuckin complictated than that, this is just Boss’s initial hypothesis.

Motherfucking anyways. So Boss gives Toxic a job to do, and John get excited about how Cool that sounds, and ends up going with Toxic, leaving Boss and Dave alone. Neither is thrilled about this. But Dave and Boss get to have a bit of conversation (while Toxic and John are off bonding and having a good time) and come to a… mutual grudging understanding of some kind. They still dont like each other though lmao

Theres gonna be deeper shit going on but we havent sorted it out yet/tbh havent like Written For It in a while but i still like thinking about it a lot lol

Also pretty sure our endgame is john and dave steal toxic and bring them back with em lmao boss is kind of not nice and toxic would most certainly be better off in Undisclosed. Actually theyd fucking love it. Theyd become a local cryptid im sure. Undisclosed’s mothman is a teleporting spike baby.

I have. Another crossover AU that i might. Post something about for halloween? Maybe? If i have it finished?

Crosses over into, you guessed it, another one of my original-character projects. God, am i vain or something?

I promise this is just because i think blue and dave should get to team up to beat up some monsters

Quick briefing on my fuckinuh. Original character story, this one doesnt have a name (yet? Idk lol my work never actually goes anywhere sso who gives a shit). It centers around two grim reapers, Red (26, bi woman) and Blue (22, aroace agender asshole). In this reality or whatever, grim reapers function kind of like low-level office workers. They get told who’s going to die + when by some middle-management types, and upper management only involve themselves when punishment needs to be doled out. These Higher-Ups can be seen as analogous to Korrok; they’re decidedly not human, never were, and fucking terrifyingly powerful. Additionally, grim reapers are sort of .. designed to be “background noise” people. In reality theyre supernatural beings and, uh, look Real Fuckin Weird (the whole deal has a neon aesthetic im terrible at drawing uwu) but most humans just perceive them like extras in a movie. A body’s there but the camera’s not focused on it.

To the narrative: the shit starts when Red n Blue get relocated to Undisclosed. Relocation is something that just happens every now and then to reapers; they usually work in teams, but they get split up into different cities to avoid any strong bonds forming (a counter-union strategy from the Higher-Ups).

Red, Blue, John and Dave end up running into each other for the first time in a McDonalds where John n Dave are getting some 4am “hey, we just survived another horrific monster fight” celebration burgers. John and Dave are the only two people who can see how… strange Red and Blue are. Nobody else notices.

John unintentionally pisses Blue off, leading to Blue whacking him upside the head with a dildo bat. They all four get kicked out of McDonald’s. Dave and Red both are less than thrilled

Blue and John end up resolving their differences, somehow. Red and Dave briefly bond over their dumbass best friends being, well, dumbasses. They all part ways amicably.

somehow-or-other (idk yet) they end up running into each other a few more times, and eventually john invites them over to his place, and the four (plus Amy now!) get to know each other a little better

while there, Blue gets a text about some guy who's gonna die and John offers to drive them to where that's gonna go down. they take him up on the offer and get to have a bit of one-on-one conversation

after that ordeal though Blue has had Enough of people and bails, leaving John to head home alone

theres a sort of mirror-development going on with the five of em. Red, John, and Amy would all like everyone to get along, though theyre a bit tentative about it (John moreso than the other two, actually, jsut cause. well Red n Blue could still be Sauce Monsters). Dave and Blue on the other hand do Not like people enough for this shit, and Dave's not unconvinced theyre Sauce Monsters. he will not trust them until proven he should

the story's kinda nebulous but i got an idea for some Shit going down that involves both Sauce Monsters and also the Higher-Ups to have some fuckin absolute chaos go down.

Oops! All Trans

Everybody is transgender. Everyone

Ive actually workshopped this one both with ben (catgirlrepublic) and ghost (ghost-wannabe) lmao its a fun lil concept ive had from the get-go cause i mean. What’s an internet tran gonna do other than hit all their favourite media with the Everyone’s Trans beam

Dave transitioned post-high school and faked his death for it. People go missing in Undisclosed all the damned time, after all. He moved to the next city over, transitioned fully, then came back as a completely new man. Yes i know this doesnt exactly fit with the “everyone knows David from high school” thing alright, hush.

Anytime anyone brings up John’s old best friend (pre-transition Dave) John throws an entire fit like an overdramatic grieving widow. Full-on sobbing “why would you bring her up?! I miss her so much—” to the point that people just stop bringing up because Jesus Christ That Sure Is Uncomfortable KJHGFDS.

This is a scheme he and Dave came up with prior to Dave leaving, though Dave hadnt exactly anticipated John putting on this much of a performance about it— but it’s stopped Dave from ever having tto hear his deadname again, so hey.

Amy transitioned sometime in middle school/early high school. Her family was super supportive and loved her a ton and most people just know her as Amy. she was super shy her whole life really so. Yeah. people just dont think to bring it up lmao also i Feel Like big jim would absolutely wallop anyone who gave her trouble of any kind

John’s nonbinary (genderfluid specifically) and not exactly Interested in transitioning ? like hes fine with how he is. mostly.

he came out to Dave in high school but hes not out to anyone else exactly. Maybe his bandmates. Probably any other trans person in Undisclosed knows, too, cause theyre safe to tell lmao. Johns mostly a “he/him out of convenience” kinda nb who’s cool with any pronouns but does prefer they/them most. Dave and Amy use they/them when the trio are alone

Also this is a totally self-indulgent caveat that i think would be great, Dave’s actually agender but because he's transmasc and transitioned when he thought there were really only two options, and being Boy at least felt less weird than being Girl, he just kind of assumed he was a dude. It’s only through a lot of (like fucking years and years hes probably in his 30s/40s when he puts 2 and 2 together on this one) talks about gender with John that he realizes he actually feels like No Gender. Masc aesthetic with none gender.

I Just Think It’d Be Neat Is All Okay

Also Amy came out to Dave about being trans early on in them seeing each other and his response was to get very nervous before blurting out “me too” and then just being too embarrassed to talk about it for the rest of the day. Hes got a lot of hangups on talking about it actually it takes years for him to get comfortable in that

by contrast when Amy comes out to John about it his response is to yell “EYYY ME TOO” and give her a big ol hug lmao

I think itd be neatt if Amy ran a like. Transfem help/advice blog on tumblr. Kind of helped-with by John who can give her transfem nb insight for certain asks. I also just think that would be neat.

Cowboy AU - i put this one last cause its got drawings to it actually. Theyll be at the bottom

Basically just. Hey you ever watched a western. I think they look neat

This is another one me n ben have come up with lol

The soy sauce and all that shit still exist, im not sure where korrok fits in yet but ill figure it out

Theres no real like solid narrative yet ? but heres the barebones of everybody’s arcs.

John

Johns an absolute troublemaker, Of Course. Hes wanted in several towns for absolutely stupid shit. Hes a loner who shows up, causes chaos, gets drunk, does some drugs, runs away if people get too mad at him

He definitely had the same kind of deal with the soy sauce as in canon— he was at some kind of party, somebody offered it, he took it cause why the fuck wouldnt he, now he can see monsters and shit

Hes kind of a mooch also. Like. dont let him stay in your barn man he’ll never fucking leave and drink all your booze.

He runs into Dave when they happen to just, cross paths in the same town. the bullshit John stirs up ends up involving Dave in a way that makes it seem like it's his fault too, and they both get run out of town

after that he just tags along after Dave. hes decided this guy's Cool he wants to stick around. Dave is pissed at first, but not enough to shoot him or anything, and eventually, John grows on him

Dave

Dave also is a loner but unlike John hes simply so fucking awkward and bad with people. He doesnt feel like he belongs anywhere so he just travels

He’s the stereotypical Lone Ranger tbh. He wanders from town to town, solving their problems, though hed deny its out of any moral obligation (it kinda is, a little bit, tbh. He does like feeling useful). He shows up, fixes things, leaves. He's kind of a legend but most people think he's hiding something dark. other people jsut know him as that guy who farted real loud in the middle of the saloon and promptly skipped town out of sheer embarrassment. you know how it goes with Dave

He ends up involved with the Soy Sauce when a snake (not Actually a snake,) bites him. The snake’s more like the wig-monsters, really. Anyway, it injects him with the soy sauce, he fucking trips balls in the middle of the desert, he can see monsters now

He runs into John and shit goes tits-up, as said, but they become traveling buddies after that. he'd never say so, but he's glad for the company, actually. it's nice. hes not used to companionship but he feels a strange kind of easiness hanging out with John....

not sure how the Monster Dave concept will like fit in to this reality but like. trust me i want it in here. I'll Figure It Out.

Amy

Amy’s been living in a town John and Dave end up passing through and she is very curious about these two new Handsome Strangers who claim to fight monsters and just kinda. Persistently tags along til they let her join for real

Her family’s all dead, unfortunately, just like in canon, and she’s been living alone for a few years before meeting John n Dave. she had nothing left in that town to stay for, she'd been fantasizing about escaping on wild adventures for a long time and this felt a little like a dream come true. (Dave still gives her a spiel about how Difficult it is, but really, her fantasies were pretty grounded-in-reality already. i jsut think thats how she is, yknow?)

Shes the first person to react to the whole “we see monsters” shit with a kind of “oh, okay. neat” kind of response lmao

John and Dave fix whatever the fuck is up with her town (maybe that’s where the Korrok shit can fit, who knows) and Amy ends up being integral to that. After, she insists they take her with them because “they need her now” and Dave just cant really say no. John too is very much "the more the merrier!" and hes actually glad to have another person along he loves people lmao

At the start she has long hair but after she joins them she chops it short with a knife for convenience

also she still is an amputee. justt. idk. it was a wagon/stagecoach accident rather than a car accident lmao. just to clarify since i hadnt mentioned it, i wouldnt rob her of her ghost hand or yknow. all of the significance to her character that Missing A Hand has. although also now im going to have to research what was used as painkillers way-back-when, but im betting shes still got, like, her pain pills, they probably had those, maybe i wouldnt have to try too hard there. old timey medicine could be WACK though,

Shitload

Yeah hes in tthis shit mostly cause i liked designing his cowboy self lmao

Hes a kid (like 16, 17, technically i think in those days that was more Young Man than Kid but whatever. Hes Young i mean.) who got possessed by the Worms out in the desert and, by his family’s perception, just went missing!

Hes also a wanderer, but he ended up at the same town john and dave met in, at that same time, and starts following them after, already aware of who/what they are.

He keeps his face covered 24/7. actually he covers a Majority of his self for reasons. kinda want him to be a slightly more horrifying Worm Entity rather than human idk,

I kinda dont have much for this boy yet sorry Shitload

images !

with some editing notes for me cause im doing a very specific aesthetic with this lmao. i might change some lil details/colours though ...... idk

im also kinda 🤔 about shitload's colour palette. i want things assoicated w the sauce to be black'n'red predominantly but i think his palette might mirror dave's too closely. also im working on a korrok design i jsut am too busy to draw it now

[trensu]

crack tangled au that nobody asked for

i saw a pic of wang yibo with blond hair and decided that lan wangji needed to be rapunzel. idk what else to tell you guys. there’s literally no other reason this exists.

so lwj has lived in his tower for as long as he can remember. his father says he’s not allowed to leave it ever bc the outside is Dangerous. There’s all sorts of unsavory folk that want to take his magic blond hair and use it for Nefarious Purposes. 

lwj is not all that interested in going outside. he trusts and loves his father. his father only wants what’s best for him. the outside world sounds scary anyway. besides, his father gave him a friend a few years back in the form of a small, surprisingly intelligent lizard named huaisang so he’s not lonely. And his father brings him books and other things for his hobbies. he hopes his father visits again soon bc his guqin’s strings snapped and now he can’t play.

lwj would have lived his whole life quite content with his little huaisang in the tower. except one day someone crawled in through his window. a STRANGER found his tower!! a DANGEROUS STRANGER was in his tower for NEFARIOUS PURPOSES. Probably. His father warned him about these guys. so he does the sensible thing and whacks the STRANGER over the head with his stringless guqin.

he stares blankly at the unconscious stranger and then looks at huaisang. 

“what are we supposed to do with him now?” lwj murmurs to his little lizard. huaisang makes a little growly sound. lwj nods. “But I don’t think we have any rope.”

lwj decides to use his hair.

--

look, wwx is not having a great day. he got chased by royal guards after he and jc were caught trying to steal from rich ppl (hey, he and his brother and sister were orphans without a penny to their name!! and sure, jyl brings in some income playing nursemaid to a fairly well to-do family and he and his brother find odd jobs here and there, but thats hardly what you’d call stable income...so maybe sometimes they help themselves to extra gold from the lordly families like the Jins; nbd, right? it’s not like they’d even notice the loss and also they’re all Assholes so they deserve to get robbed) bc maybe, MAYBE jc had a point when he said they’d be overreaching trying to steal from the royal Lan family.

he eventually loses the guards which is good! but then he loses track of his brother, which was bad. and then he somehow acquired a Very Angry Horse that won’t stop following him which is weird. also mildly inconvenient but an angry horse is still a step up from angry guards. then there was this tower he climbs up, ignoring the angry horse’s whinnies.

and now? Now he’s slowly regaining consciousness and finding himself tied to a chair by golden rope...hey, wwx is up for some bondage every now and again but, like, he’s gotta go through all the kink negotiation and safeword confirmation and sort out all the consent stuff before he gives the go ahead. he’s pretty sure none of that has happened.  So this is the UN-fun type of bondage and...wait a minute...this isn’t rope...is this--?

“who are you and what are your Nefarious Plans for my hair?”

wwx looks up and sees the most beautiful face he’s ever seen in his entire life. if jc were here he’d be shouting up a storm, demanding they be freed this instant. jc is about 90% of wwx’s impulse control and 20% of his common sense (the other 80% of his common sense resides with jyl at all times for safekeeping). So instead of demanding to be released, wwx puts on his most charming smile and leans forward towards the prettiest man in the world who’s hovering not nearly close enough in his space.

“well, hello. you can call me your future husband and the only plans i have for your hair involve a bed, you, and--”

He really should have expected the next hit to the head.

--

as far as meet-cutes go...it could’ve gone worse.

--

“i can’t believe you’ve been stuck in that tower all your life. don’t you get bored??”

“No.”

“don’t you ever want to stretch your legs and enjoy the sunshine?? go for a swim maybe?”

“No.”

“well why are you making me take you to through this awful forest and go to the palace??”

“Huaisang.”

“umm...bless you?”

The pretty man known as lwj sighs. “No. Huaisang is my lizard. It’s not fair for him to stay cooped up with me all the time.”

The lizard perched on lwj’s shoulder wiggles its disconcerting little lizard hand at him and, like, smiles at him. can lizards smile? they shouldn’t. it looks creepy. lwj cups a hand over the little lizards head and whispers to wwx.

“he thinks he’s a dragon. i want him to see what a real dragon looks like so he can figure out for himself that he isn’t one.”

“oh, so that’s why you wanna go to the palace. yeah, i wish someone had told me before that they had a dragon guarding the royal coffers.”

lwj narrows his eyes suspiciously at him. “why.”

“uh, no reason,” wwx winces and discreetly tugs the burnt edges of his robes out of view.

an awkward silence lingers for a painfully long time. the Angry Horse makes a sound. wwx suspects that he’s laughing at him. wwx sighs. at least he gets to enjoy the view, he thinks as lwj marches confidently ahead and subsequently gets them all lost.

--

lwj was just trying to be nice. that’s all. he wanted his little lizard friend to be happy. that’s it. his life was just fine before that!

but in the course of 48 hours, he finds out huaisang really IS a dragon, and is actually the little brother of nie mingjue, the dragon that guards the royal coffers. he falls in love with a roguish, penniless thief whose smile outshines the sun and carries a heart as golden as lwj’s hair. Said thief is now being held hostage by the man he calls his father but is in reality Meng Yao, the lan’s royal adviser who kidnapped him as an infant in order to use his magical hair for Nefarious Purposes. Oh, and apparently lwj is the long lost lan prince.

...he knew he should’ve stayed in the tower.

--

lwj feels his lips quirk up slightly as wwx runs his fingers through his now very black, very shortly cropped hair. wwx beams at him.

“didn’t i say i was gonna be your husband?”

“Hm,” lwj gives a small nod. “but having a horse at the wedding is a surprise.”

“yeah well, apparently we’re a package deal bc he won’t quit following me.”

wen qing, the witch officiating their wedding, scoffs. “seriously?? you haven’t figured it out yet??”

she taps the horse angrily chewing at wwx’s robes and suddenly there’s a man in purple robes shouting at the top of his lungs.

“A WEEK. I’VE BEEN CURSED INTO A HORSE FOR A WEEK, WEI WUXIAN, YOU IDIOT. HOW GODDAMN STUPID ARE YOU THAT YOU DIDN’T REALIZE---”

“Oh, jiang cheng! you’re just in time for the wedding!!”

The shouting lost all coherency at that point. but that’s okay. lwj is very happy he finally left his tower anyway.

[sanktagenyas]

alrighty so i guess coherent thoughts about this book might be a very generous estimate of what i’m about to write here but i’ll write down my thoughts anyway ‘cause i wanna share and possibly hear yours like for real interactions with my posts are not just welcomed they’re encouraged.

ok so to start our protagonists are alina and mal and our antagonist is the darkling and i pretty much related to alina right away because i love a hero with insecurities and doubts, i love an underdog so of course i was always meant to fall in love with alina starkov on sight. now the darkling... should be that i and everyone else would be beyond tired of the dark, tall, handsome and mysterious/scary men in fiction especially when they whisk our hero away for even more mysterious and/or nefarious purposes that they leave them completely in the dark about BUT the charisma fucking jump off of the pages i don’t know what else to tell you. and i am deeply intrigued about him and his backstory and also him and how he feels about our protagonist because when you catch the attention of a centuries old immortal being that says something about you but it says more about said immortal imo.

we come to learn that the darkling is beyond ruthless and yet he still a capacity for love after all this time even if it’s quite out of use to say the least. and just the fact that out of the thousands of people who have crossed his path there’s this one girl he saw and he was like well look at that someone who’s not unremarkable for once. and i know that’s not exactly a romantic sentiment but that’s how it starts, folks.

but anyway to cap my little ramble here despite the fact that i’ve seen that kind of villain before i do still really love the darkling. i like that we don’t have all the facts yet about what led him to become who he is so there’s just the right amount of mystery around him to keep you wanting to discover more and he is just human enough that he is not this caricature monstrous villainous figure (alina would beg to differ but i don’t listen to what alina yells at people when she’s angry)

now onto mal. i’m trying to word this in a way that doesn’t make me come off as a raging anti because the truth is that would require me to be invested in mal enough to hate him and as of now i’m just not. with book one being told entirely in alina’s perspective it’s pretty in your face that we should care about mal. our hero loves him and we want her to be happy, right? plus we really shouldn’t ship her with the villain there are so many wrong aspects about that dynamic just to name one aspect the deceit and the lies. the foundation of darklina is so fucked we should not ship it, right? well see that’s where i would argue that my biggest issue with darklina as a ship is the darkling in the final act all but saying fuck alina’s agency i’m going to make her my puppet for eternity not because that is necessary to accomplish my plan but because i’m jealous and resentful that she left me behind and didn’t embrace my plans for ravka and therefore embrace me.

and you might think wait i’ve lost the plot we were talking about mal and now we’re talking about darklina and the darkling but rewind back a little i said my issue with darklina in the final act of the book is the darkling pissing all over alina’s agency. and he might do that in more extreme ways than mal but mal certainly does seem to view alina as property at times and that implies him not respecting her agency. i could point to the fact that saying “don’t tell me we don’t belong together” is only framed as romantic statement because it comes out of the mouth of one of our protagonists and not our antagonist but that’s a cheap shot, it’s easy. instead i’ll echo my thoughts i shared about that malina reunion in chapter fourteen. mal was not one bit concerned about alina there and even though he says later on that not one hour was spent not thinking about her and wondering about her wellbeing all that flies out of the window the second he sees her with the darkling during the fete and here’s the thing if he had caught them mid makeout session i could understand him letting jealousy completely overtake him to the point that he doesn’t ask if she’s ok or how she’s been treated here and just assumes based on appearances (let’s not forget before she unlocked her powers alina was well and truly miserable regardless of the luxury afforded to her by her new grisha status so appearances don’t mean shit malyen) that she must be hunky dory and then tiptoes the line around slutshaming her but definitely crosses the line over into making her feel like shit for circumstances beyond her control territory and all that over seeing her do magic trickery at a party with another guy. 

alina is allowed to be attracted to another man, she’s allowed to have feelings for another man. they’re both guilty of miscommunication as they obviously both feel the same way about each other but alina has the decency to keep her jealousy to herself and not have outbursts about mal getting close to other girls like she owns his ass or something. that put me off and then i was hoping there would be a talk that would clarify things and he would apologize and that happened but it also came with the revelation that mal was upset to see her happy with the darkling. so he’d rather see the woman he loves miserable and alone rather than happy and belonging? and that’s the romantic lead i’m meant to be fawning over? i’m just not seeing it right now and that’s why even as he so generously offers her absolution (idk if you can read my sarcasm but just to be clear it’s sarcasm) for having loved the darkling and tells her he loves all of her even the part that loved the darkling i’m like..... i don’t believe you boy.

i guess in summary my thoughts about mal as a love interest is i need some consistency you cannot have him throw a jealous fit over seeing alina standing with another man (that’s literally all they were doing for real) and looking happy about it and then have him be like i don’t care i love you anyway. you cannot have him act as though he owns alina and in the same breath throw in her face that the darkling owns her (i hate this foreshadowing thank you very much) and you cannot have him get cold or angry at so much of a mention of a life she might have that doesn’t include him and then expect me to believe he’s made peace with her having feelings for more than just him. he’s not even able to accept a scenario where she goes off and does shit that doesn’t involve him as he shows no interest in her life in the little palace for the longest time. meanwhile you can literally read all about alina wondering what happened to him and what he went through trying to get to her. and for the love of saints i would love it if alina would stop acting like she needs to be forgiven for these feelings i absolutely get that she feels conned and ashamed about it but you do not need to ask anyone for absolution for falling someone who made you feel seen for the first time in your life. fuck that noise.

i just know trust issues are gonna arise and i know he doesn’t feel that way truly. if alina turned around and at some point decided to show mercy to the darkling mal wouldn’t understand or accept it and i’d fully expect a guilt trip to ensue.

now that’s my thoughts on mal as a romantic lead and that’s about the biggest aspect of him we’re focusing on but i do think he is a brave man who genuinely cared for his friends and genuinely cares for alina as that whole journey to hunt morozova’s herd definitely proved. he loves her i don’t doubt that but one grand gesture doesn’t excuse the way he treats her earlier in the books is my point and as been pointed out by others i don’t like how much alina relies on him even when he isn’t here. her refusal to let go of him was directly affecting her happiness and overall health as she couldn’t come into her powers before she thought he was lost to her. if i’m not liking who the hero becomes when she’s with the love interest it’s a big indicator i’m not gonna love said love interest as much as i’m clearly expected to by the author. i like mal just fine, he’s not without redeeming qualities, i just don’t love him yet and i may never do and that’s ok.

now i wanna take a moment and a couple sentences (it won’t be a novel i swear, pinky promise!) to talk about the twist that i should have seen coming miles away and i already know once my sister watches the show or reads the book whatever comes first i will be mercilessly teased about not seeing it coming. but when i found out the black heretic and the darkling are one of the same my jaw dropped. as memers might say i took that personally. and even though we have a lot of grounds to covers still and unanswered questions such as is the darkling still alive? if he is what is he up to now? is baghra dead in a ditch somewhere or worse? will alina and genya ever see each other again? why was zoya so standoffish and violent with alina, what’s her story? the question in my mind most prominent is what happened to the darkling? what happened for him to become who he is. i love the quote monsters are not born they’re made and i much prefer to see a villain who wasn’t always one than one who is just evil for the evulz. so i want a backstory and i also wanna learn about baghra while we’re at it.

it’s all fun and well for her to denounce her son’s actions but and i hate to break it to her but YOU RAISED HIM LADY. so yeah baghra’s whole speech to alina is missing parts for sure because she’s not just gonna admit her hands are covered in blood as much as the darkling’s are. not without some pressing at least. 

sooo to cap off all this i guess i would have just two throwaway remarks and that is that i am getting a lot of gay vibes from alina and if i took a shot every time she remarks on genya’s beauty or just gushes about genya in general i’d be drunk by now and i hope we get an actual queer romance somewhere in these books even just between side characters. second remark would be ivan i’m waiting for you to find some redeeming qualities my dude, i was rooting for you! at first he is a raging dickhead about it but seemed to mellow some and then near the end it’s right back to square one and i am really sorry about his brothers dying but having lost family members is not actually a get out of jail free card that gives you free range to mistreat people just because you can.

[for-peace-war]

No, really. Lovecraft Country sucks.

These are spoilers, but I also don’t give a shit because it’s a bad show and I hope you skim enough to fucking skip it.  I took a few days to decide if I hated it enough to write this and well, I do. 

I will try my best not to say “X is a bad actor,” but instead stick with the characters as they’re intended save for one particular issue.

The Story

It isn’t very Lovecraftian.  And don’t take this as me saying Lovecraft was some kind of master of his craft.  I think he was an absurd racist that used xenophobia as his guise for what truly horrified the sane mind. That being said, the element of the unknown is definitely the hallmark of his world and that in no way is represented in this show.  It could easily be called “Goosebumps: The Black Version” and it’d be just as authentic--if not more so, really.

The story deals with the Bible (?) and magic that comes from uh, knowing the names of things.  You speak a made up language and then you do some kind of confusing magic that has no real purpose or point.  I sound dismissive of this because I am, to be clear.  They could have just as easily had this language be something whites stole from Africans and then perverted into their own means of power (it’d be a pretty easy parralel to any number of imperialist issues left behind in Africa, huh.)

But anyway, it has a tentacle monster. I think we see a big scary octopus at one point.  But the monsters are often in your face and it’s probably less scary than Stranger Things S1.

Honestly, the characters repeat “autumnal equinox” so much that I felt I was going to have a fucking breakdown.  Just the writing is very empty and no one seems to really care about anyone else on the screen except for in a rare moment between the only two characters that make it far and matter. 

Characters

They aren’t very good.  There are tropes present, which isn’t bad at all, but the way the characters interact, speak, and in general move us through the story feels stilted, often nonsensical, and entirely reliant on the viewer assuming that the latest sentence spoken is the only one that matters.

Atticus “Tic” Freeman

A war criminal that derives his power from the white blood inside of him. Again, dismissive but true.  We see this man struggle to connect pieces to a puzzle and eventually he pays the price for it, but not in the way Lovecraft would have someone pay for endeavoring beyond their realm.  Rather, something about fate and a book. Look, honestly? Who gives a shit.  Tic murders a woman in coldblood and it’s never really touched on.  There’s a lot that could be said about militaries, oppression, etc, but we often see these characters enact violence and then the story skips merrily beyond it.  So yeah, he summarily executes a Korean woman and then is later shown torturing another, but it’s okay because he feels a little bad and fucks the Korean sex demon woman.  More on that later.   I felt nothing for him.  He didn’t have some deep animus over being a torturing war criminal.  He was just kind of moving through scenes and having confusing fights with his girlfriend/baby mama.

Letitia “Leti” Lewis

This is what empowerment shouldn’t look like. It amuses me that the show claimed to subvert some kind of norms when the primary love interest (and ultimate heroine) remains the lightest skinned sister in the room.  She is able to maintain the appeal of the ingenue while at the same time having the understood attractiveness of her complexion. As far as Leti is concerned as a character, she too seems to be a pretty shitty person.  We hear that she has “transactional” friendships and she seems pretty much all about self-survival and rarely if ever puts up where others do.  She’s a heroine in the sense that the story makes her be heroic, but it never addresses how her flaws are ultimately all self-inflicted and unnecessary.  She could just not be a shitty person.

Hippolyta Freeman

Well. Hidden Figures was an excellent film, and I think that’s where Hippolyta came from.  In a more serious series, perhaps she and her daughter could have had a very touching arc that would deal with survival and exceptionalism in a world that maligns you for your very being.  Unfortunately, in reality she just comes off as a character that’s quirky in a world that’s also quirky and she doesn’t get to harness her power. There’s an entire episode dedicated to how she discovers who she is and the result is well, her hair turns blue and she makes robots?  I think the character TYPE is great, but they misused her here in all ways.

George Freeman

Well, well.  If the series had remained about George, Tic, and Leti adventuring through America and encountering sundown towns and monsters both human and otherwise, I think it’d have been okay.  The issue is, they wrote this series by the numbers so George is immediately thrown away.  He’s a wise and circumspect guy that has his own flaws (he has patrarchical notions built around protecting/babying his genius wife, clearly), but the flaws he has are understandable and well reasoned. George dies early on.  Then he sort of doesn’t, I guess? But the fact he did was really the nail in the coffin for this series.  The moment they did that, the rest just became empty strokes.  A story where George witnessed the others dying and going back to his wife and daughter would have had so much more heart to it, but well.  Uncle George is literally one of the few bright spots.

Ruby Baptise

Much like her sister, Leti, Ruby is a terrible attempt at showing empowerent on the one hand, and a masterwork on the other.  The bad first: she’s a rapist.  I’ve been called a nigger before and while it didn’t feel great, I don’t think I’d have been justified in just sodomizing the person that did it.  That entire sequence was weird and they tried to hype it as her reclaiming something, when really it spoke to a disgusting and gratuitous tendency toward Ruby: she’s always too much. Ruby, IMO, should have been Tic’s love interest.  In a sense.  First, because Wunmi Mosaku was a very attractive woman with impressive acting chops (she’s where I’ll break my moratirum, sorry), but also because it wouldn’t be what you’d see in every other show now: light-skinned pretty sister, dark-skinned sexual eikon.  And that’s the issue with Ruby there: she’s always too much.  She’s sexual by existing and that isn’t necessarily to her benefit since Leti, the good one, is an actual virgin before her sudden period sex. So the narrative has already spoken as to how it views sex. Yet, because they tried to give Ruby these strange strokes, she comes out as an interesting character.  She has feelings, aspirations, and dreams that she’s kept from and that’s very real. In a story about the absurd, a sense of realness is a familiar handhold to gather your wits.  She’s all that, really.  It’s why she has the best relationships in the show, which is AGAIN an issue, but well. I’ll say Ruby was never bad to have on screen though I was disgusted with how often her blackess (and Blackness in general!) became the source of grotesque horror.

Christina Braithewaite

This is where I get annoyed.  My issue with Christina is that she should have easily been the most hated character, but they overplayed their hand with not showing how nefarious she was.  In fact? Christina and Ruby’s relationship is the only meaningful, real, and understandable one in the entire series.  I felt no joy during her downfall, because I didn’t really get to see her doing anything bad? Just, consider what the show is.  It’s about Lovecraft’s lore, ostensibly, which treats all non (specific types of) white men like dogs.  So Christina comes at it from the “white” but “woman” perspective and you know, she has moments of duality that you can say is she more white or woman here.  But they don’t execute on how sinister she should be.  She’s a little rude at times? Yet she is the only person to treat Ruby like she should be treated and she’s the only person that seems to have a goal outside of “the quest.” It really bothered me that she came out so well done, because either they needed to have her for two seasons and make her far more nefarious after the first, or to just make her less a force for good.  She saves the characters more than a few times and pays for it by being killed when she’s at her lowest.  Yeah, it’s... a weird take.  

Ji-Ah

What can I say?  There are depictions of sex in the series, and they’re all negative: most of Ji-Ah’s scenes, Montrose’s angry self-loathing sex with his boyfriend, Ruby’s morphic horror scenes.  In the case of most of those, there’s something being said.  Ji-Ah is a monster, literally, that could be seen as Lovecraftian in the sense she’s an exotic Asian woman that kills men that sleep with her.  So, HBO was like “we’ll blow our tits and ass budget on her,” and she exists for a series of sex scenes and vague, inscrutable... shit, maybe SHE is the most Lovecraft of all the characters! Anyway at some point she joins the party after confusing drama with Leti because they both fucked Tic.  It’s okay though, because Ji-Ah isn’t here for any of that now.  She’s the one who had the best friend that had her teeth yanked out by Tic, and also who was there when he shot her other friend in cold blood, but they get over that and she’s now their friendly red panda pal or some shit.  It’s fucking trash.   Much like the Freemans (sans Tic), I think she’d have done great in another show. But they rushed her story and it felt less Ghost Nation (Westworld) and more Masturbation (Jordan Peele).

Diana Freeman

Confusing.  A stock character (quirky kid that does art, is impetuous, and won’t take no for an answer) that is given a lot of screen time.  When she sort of hijacks an episode when two ragamuffin girls chase her down and infest her or something because racist cops.  Well, the story veers to her direction.  What can I say?  If you like 11 from Stranger Things but wanted her to have Mike’s attitude, well.  Here you go.

Montrose Freeman

He could have been a good character, I guess. He seemed unnecessary and often was there purely for an x-factor of “uh?”  Like, his infamous scene where he slits a two-spirit Native American’s throat after we learn that this indigenous person had just been restored after being raped by bad guys.  So there’s that.  Also I guess he was self-loathing so he beat his son (that may not be his son???) and also liked fucking dudes, which was I think where we were supposed to care about him. It’s like someone saw Omar was a gun-wielding desperado of drug theft and decided, “Well what made him okay is he’s gay!”  But it didn’t add much.  I get he was angsty but other than Tic calling him a “faggot” (one of the few good scenes between them in terms of emotion), it all seemed empty and kind of meandering. At no point does Montrose seem a part of the team.  He just half-mumbles, gets angry, cries, and falls apart.

Captain Seamus Lancaster

He’s barely a character, but I need to include him for another point. He’s the “bad guy.”  I guess?  He uses the bodies of black men to stay alive, which is actually a really smart reference to black bodies fueling the American system, but it comes off as cheesy because it just never comes up.  He’s cartoonishly bad in a way that he’s less sinister than a meme.  Compare him to say,   Ridgeway from Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. One’s a sinister representation of an oppressive system and the other’s well, a joke.

Racism

How could this not be a theme?  The issue, as was shown with Lancaster, is that it isn’t even remotely handled with seriousness.  The best scene of racism is in the first episode when Tic, George, and Leti are forced to leave a Sundown county before they’re lynched by the racist sheriff.  The anticipation and animosity lead to some serious anxiety and it was a nailbiter.

But after that?  White people say “nigger.”  Then they get, I don’t know, raped or spit on or who knows.  A lot of black people talk back to the cops anyway in the 50′s and that’s cool.

But the real monsters of the series are all black people.  Let’s go through it: 

Tic brutalized women in the Korean War.

Montrose killed the two-spirit person.

Ruby rapes the shop owner.

Diane crushes Christina’s throat.

Ruby literally sheds her flesh in repeatedly gratuitous acts of the grotesque.

Even Ji-Ah, who’s not black, is a monster in the literal sense.  We do see the doctor that experimented on black people, but that’s about 5 minutes at the end of an episode that has a baby’s head on a man’s body so I was too busy laughing at the absurdity to take any real meaning from it.

The truth is, in Lovecraft Country, white people always should do their best to kill or keep black people down.  It definitely doesn’t speak at all to any togetherness or what have you.  Just, well. Magical negroes doing bad stuff because nothing can stop them.

The show misses the chances to show real horror in race.  Hell, the Tulsa Riots are reduced to a backdrop for a confusing book scene.  But then again, Emmett Till becomes a kind of empty reference point that we then see a white woman act out... for some reason? 

Again, the only characters with any chemistry are Ruby and Christina, which is very unfortunate for any number of reasons. As far as a statement that racism is bad goes, I mean. I barely saw it.  If I was a racist I’d be like hell yeah, Lovecraft was right they are dangerous.

Even when people try to indicate the horrors of it like, “Oh, the Korean War scenes are bad because we see how men are forced into the military complex!”  We didn’t see a white officer say “Shoot her, boy,” it was just two black guys killing women with no care at all. And no compeuppance, so that’s cool.

The Music

Sucks.  Thanks Peaky Blinders for making modern music over gif sets a thing.

Conclusion

I sure as hell would never watch it again.  If I can get one other person not to, then maybe it’d be worth it. It’s not a good show.  It’s not “smart,” and there’s no secret subversion in it.  It’s just... bad.

I won’t post on it anymore.  Please, in true Lovecraft fashion, trust me when I say that this show is so bad it cannot be comprehended. 

[pinkysfaultorbrainsfault]

pinky and the brain: s1e7 - tv or not tv

y’all do NOT understand how many times i have tried to post this. tumblr just will not stop eating it. this was supposed to be out last wednesday LMAO i am doing my best.

episode summary: brain engineers a pair of Mouse Dentures that give him a charming smile. anyone hypnotised by these dentures Suddenly Adores Him For No Good Reason. unfortunately, he’s also a bit of a shut in, so nobody is actually going to see his charming smile-- unless he gets himself a sitcom.

....or something.

the rundown:

we open on brain talking about the “weird and magical power” of celebrity. he has defaced several women, and is sticking his ass out. as you do. what is he doing to CINDY! and her ilk?? he must be stopped.

“those who have it weild tremendous influence. few can avoid the enchantment of its’ spell.”

“do you know what gives them this power?”

holy shit. he just stabbed CINDY!.

pinky absolutely does not care for CINDY!’s fate. “haha. narf. hey, paddlefoot, do you know what they call a quarter pounder in france?”

of course, sirius black was not in pulp fiction, and neither, as far as i can tell, was he in france. brain silences him with “enough gay banter”, like he wasn’t just sticking his ass out in his general direction, like, two minutes ago.

(this was the 90s, y’all. gay definitely meant gay back then. this is not the faraway tree.)

“pinky! behold the key to the power of attraction!”

“pushpins!”

“hurraaaaaaaaaaaah!”

“no, pinky.”

apparently the key to attraction is a

“winning smile”, as brain points out, tapping on CINDY!’s poor mutilated face for emphasis.

“and a nice healthy gum!”

“and... a nice healthy gum.”

it turns out that brain has “taken this idea of the influential smile to a new level - a level no less than world domination“, which is bold words for Mr Tumble Dryer. to achieve this, he has invented

teeth.

(okay. so it’s a bit bigger than that. he shows pinky the plans for,

and then a prototype of, a whole machine built specifically to engineer him little mousie dentures. a lot of work went into this one. shame, really.

“when did you have time to build that?”

“while you were engrossed in your mr belvedere reruns.”

“oh, i miss him. ):” )

anyway so. brain puts his teeth in.

there he is.

pinky describes this as

“enchanting (’:”

and brain affirms that it’s supposed to be. apparently the “reflective vibrations” (okay) of his smile stimulates the medula oblongata,

“causing the viewer to adore me for no good reason!”

“zort! i’m adoring you for no good reason!”

(he does point out, while brain is admiring his reflection in a nearby bunsen burner, “what if they’re wearing sunglasses?”

brain’s response is “we’ll work nights.”)

still, brain can’t just sit around in the lab twiddling his thumbs and expect the general public to Adore Him For No Reason. he needs exposure! and as pinky ponders “what would mr belvedere do,” brain asserts that he would “eat some butter”.

“i’m afraid, my friend, that you’ve seen far too much of mr belvede--”

more like mr belvIDEA lol. sorry i’ll see myself out.

“pinky, are you pondering what i’m pondering?”

“i think so, brain, bur it’s a miracle that this one grew back. ):”

.....okay.

thankfully, the plan is not, in fact, to amputate pinky’s leg. again???? instead, brain intends to use a weapon of “great stealth, power, and corruption.”

OUR OWN SITCOM.

✨

meanwhile, at the wb studio, we meet jerry kilmer. mr kilmer is currently being harassed by some dudes who also really, really want their own sitcom. for far less nefarious purposes, presumably.

“so there’s this guy, right?”

“and get this! he designs--”

“BIKINIS.”

“TINY LITTLE BIKINIS. OKAY okay okay okay so here’s the hook.”

“HE’S PRETENDING--”

“TO BE BLIND.”

it does not appear to be what mr kilmer is looking for.

(meanwhile, the mice are spying on the acme labs janitor. he seems like a cool dude! but the mice are not here for friendship.

they sneak into his jacket pocket!

and...... steal his.... car keys? “YES. to the television station!”

✨

this isn’t even the first vehicle he’s stolen. hopefully he’ll have this one back by curfew as well.)

they do get pulled over by the police, but i don’t want to go into that. unless you guys reaaaallly want me to. instead, they park outside the studio and harass some poor receptionist.

“excuse me. we’re here to-- pitch. as they say. a sitcóm. my dear.”

i don’t know why brain says words like that.

“appointment?”

“oh, i’m sure you can--”

“work us in.” says brain. he is sticking his ass out for no reason. all the appeal is in his sparkly dentures, so.... there’s really no need for that, my dude.

✨

“you’re next! for no good reason!”

these dudes are still here. “wait!” yells our budding comedian, “wait! check out this idea. it’s about a guy!”

original.

“who always sticks his foot in his mouth!!”

clever. unfortunately, his demonstration goes wrong, and he ends up kicking mr kilmer in the face.

bonk.

gives him a nasty black eye to boot. ouch.

“ugh. can’t i ever just see someone normal?”

good thing these very normal individuals have just shown up, huh? nothing shady about these guys. “ugh, thank goodness,” says mr kilmer. they introduce themselves politely as jonathan michael charles (left) and jamal spelling (right).

“you guys have quite a look.”

“thank you.”

✨

“alright then. what do you got for me?”

“egad, brain.”

“he’s not adoring you for no good reason!!”

“drat.”

“well. we’re young hip adults--”

“and hijinks ensue!”

“who sit on a big fat couch and whine--”

“with disaaaasterous results!!”

“and have lots of generation x friends who trade zippy, sarcastic banter.”

“and i have a monkey.”

a very original concept.

at least, mr kilmer sems to think so. “hmmm. fresh. but tell me! what really brings you here. what are jamal and jonathan all about.”

“actually,  we are two lab mice involved in a broad and sweeping plan to take over the world.”

mr kilmer thinks this is hilarious, apparently.

these guys do not. but they’re not important, for the moment.

the long and short of it, anyway, is that kilmer can’t give them a sitcom because nobody knows who they are, quote unquote. “the day i see your face on the cover of peeple magazine is the day you get a sitcom.”

irritated, jamal and jonathan make their exit.

and mr kilmer laughs so hard at the idea of lab mice trying to take over the world, that he falls out of his chair.

this will become relevant later.

meanwhile -- i just had to screencap this, okay, because of brain’s face. pinky suggests that he get on the cover of peeple by marrying prince charles. and brain thinks this is a horrible idea.

he’s much more interested in princess diana. but no, pinky, the path he must follow is “the same one followed by the leading sitcom stars of the day.”

“i must become a SUCCESSFUL STANDUP COMEDIAN.”

“so hey, how about those mitochondria? do they have enough cilia or what?”

“hey, why don’t you tell a joke you know!”

this may be harder than brain thought. undeterred, though, he presses on.

“do you ever notice how when you’re looking in the mirror of a quadrant electrometre, your forehead seems large?? why is that??”

“i just flew in from cleveland! and boy are my upper extremeties fatigued by a buildup of lactic acid!”

“booooooooooooooo!” says our guy on the left.

“go back to your troll village, squirt!” says his friend on the right. “what do you say to that?”

“i find you repugnant.”

(well. that made them laugh, at least.)

“your stupidity is matched only by the ill-slipped caterpillar, that chews off its’ own wings after emerging from its’ cucoon!!!”

“in fact! all of you! are just a gaggle of pathetically misguided root diggers!!”

“why don’t you all stand under a stalactite and bellow the resonate frequency, causing it to plummet onto your cranium!!”

“you’re all repugnant i say!!! repugnant!!!”

and with that little mousie tantrum out of his system, brain trundles off to sulk.

pinky claps him on the way out.

“egad brain! narf! they love you!”

“yes.”

so then he goes on tv, i guess.

“our comedy challenger is the master of insults! the prince of putdowns! jamal spelling!”

“you’re all a bunch of crevulating nitwits with peat moss for a cortex. repugnant!”

i don’t envy that guy third from the right. he doesn’t look like he’s having a very good time. he’s sensitive about his peat moss cranium, okay? don’t make fun of him.

NEXT ON G, HOWIE TURN HOSTS COMEDIAN JAMAL SPELLING.

“so, uh, jamal spelling. what kind of stupid name is that? cmon? what’s your real name?”

this would be racist if jamal spelling was a human man comedian and not like, a lab mouse. thankfully, this is not the case.

“my real name is the brain.” says brain, helpfully enunciating the “the”. “and you, my unwashed friend, are repugnant.”

HA HA. HA HA HA HA HA.

“oh, you’re hot, baby.”

okay.

but we’re, uh. we’re not going to think about that, and we’re going to go look at the david letterman show instead.

“uh, my next guest-- paul, do you know who our next guest is?”

“daaaaave, i know he’s a beautiful kind of-- nutty cat who just got us all a-wow.”

“here he is, ladies and gentlemen! for your comedy dollar, jamal spelling!!”

jamal spelling appears to be naked.

but he’s funny, so nobody minds.

“somebody here smells like a coagulated agar slant growing in a petri dish. repugnant!”

see! he’s just too comedy for clothes.

(meanwhile, we take a short trip to the office of janet mekko. “welcome, mr kilmer,” she says.

“my... secretary sent me here-- actually, i feel kind of stupid.”

“oh, honey. that’s a good thing! if there weren’t any stupid people, i wouldn’t have any business.”

“now. ya got some paaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiin.”

(in the distance, dan reynolds - at the tender age of eight - mumbles “you made me a, you made me a believer” in his sleep.)

“yeah.” says mr kilmer, completely unaware of this. “i fell out of my chair.”

“i’m gonna hypnotise you, so relax.”

okay.

“this’ll make you sleepy.”

“what is it?”

“a kenny g album.”

“okay. you’re in a trance. i’m gonna give you a random word. if you feel pain, say that word, you’ll feel good.”

“but careful! cause if you say it when you’re feeling good, the pain will come back! bad.”

spooky.

“and your random word is--”

“repugnant.”

there is, of course, absolutely no way this can go wrong.)

let us turn our view to happier pastures. namely, the mice are watching tv.

TONIGHT ON CIRCUS OF THE STARS

HARRY DEAN ANDERSON GETS SHOT OUT OF A GIANT PASTA MAKER

COMEDIAN JAMAL SPELLING FLIES THE TRAPEZE

AND BOB SAGET GETS TRAMPLED BY A BEAR. we hope.

pinky is elated! “egad, brain! circus of the stars! narf! you’ve really made it!”

pinky wants to be on circus of the stars, don’t you know. unfortunately, as he dutifully informs brain in pretty much the same breath, he hasn’t quite made it into peeple magazine yet.

“hm. it’s time to use plan b, pinky.”

“there was an a?? poit.”

ouch. jesus, pinky.

undeterred, brain marches his merry little ass over to the old timey corded phone.

beep.

“yes, connect me with buckinham palace, please.”

“egad! you did it brain! the cover of peeple!”

rule britannia is playing in the background of this scene. let’s... not think too hard about how this works, and agree that, yes, pauly shore, enough.

no more pauly shore, please.

conclusion:

jerry keeps his word, and, upon learning that jamal spelling is now legally married to princess diana (a fact which would certainly not lead to a warrant for his arrest in a couple of years) he asks him for a demo tape.

for such small hands, jamal sure does have very neat handwriting.

“make me laugh, jamal, and you got yourself a sitcom.”

“why don’t you all stand under a stalactite and bellow the resonate frequency, causing it to plummet onto your cranium!!”

he seems to like it! kilmer makes a little hee hee noise, unprepared for where this is undoubtedly going.

“you’re repungnant!”

“AAUGHGHGHHH.”

there it is.

“repugnant!”

“i say repugnant!”

repugnant repugnant repugnant repugnant

repugnant!

and with that, jerry kilmer falls out of the window.

as he does, he yells “i’ll get you, jamal spelling” which personally i think is unfair. jamal couldn’t have known, surely? don’t be mean to jamal. he’s got a lot on his mind, what with that restraining order against howie turn.

meanwhile, in the lab, the mice debate a good pitch for a pilot (i’ve got it, brain! it’s a show about nothing!) when jamal spelling gets a call.

“hi jamal! this is nina from the tv station. could you come down for a meeting?”

“mm hmmm.”

✨

it’s the WB.

as nina types away, jamal and jonathan enter casually, like this is their house, or something. “are you pleased to see us?” asks jamal, in a cocky, egomaniac labmouse sort of way.”

“yes i am!”

(nina somehow doesn’t notice.)

anyway then these guys find the dentures and pitch the first idea that comes into their heads.

“hey cortex! what do you wanna do tonight?”

don’t ask why mouse dentures fit a human man. we suspend our disbelief here.

(also there was no way this was brain’s fault. he couldn’t have known. outside influence it is. a shame, really.)

brain: 7 pinky: 7 outside influence: 14

thanks for the fun meme, @shuunthenonbeliever​ !

[vannahfanfics]

Call It Destiny

Category: Mild Romantic Fluff

Fandom: Fairy Tail

Characters: Juvia Lockser, Natsu Dragneel

Requested By: AwarenessBringer (FanFiction)

Clack. Clack. Clack. Juvia’s boots clunked over the wet brick as she slowly descended the steps of the Hargeon Town train station. The drumming of the rain was steady against her umbrella that she held primly over her head. She did not look up as two girls holding their small bags over their heads hurried past, complaining loudly about the fact that the rain had seemingly followed them the entire train ride; Juvia’s indigo eyes remained fixed on the countless puddles before her, transfixed and disgusted with the way the ripples bloomed across their sheer surfaces. The raindrops flew down endlessly in a constant stream that would be calming to individuals lounging inside their homes waiting for the rain to pass. Juvia almost pitied them, because they would be stuck inside a very long time at that rate. Until she left this town, the rain would not cease; that was the curse that she, the rain woman, wrought upon the world.

For once, however, Juvia could admit that her rain served purpose. The damp, wet atmosphere would surely suit perfectly to douse the fire of one Fairy Tail mage named “the Salamander.”

Juvia knew not how Bora came to calling himself that name. The last she had heard, he had been excommunicated from his former guild for the use of illegal magic and thievery. She also knew not why Fairy Tail, a supposedly upstanding guild, would hire him, unless he had somehow managed to hide his shady pastimes. Juvia was also not sure what had compelled her to come to Hargeon Town. Was she seeking revenge for the way he had so unceremoniously and callously dumped her? Was she here to reveal his nefarious nature for Fairy Tail to see, or, alternatively, reveal Fairy Tail’s shady underbelly to the world? Or even, was she here to see if all of this was just some vain attempt of his to upset her, by flaunting how successful he was while she was still alone and depressed? Perhaps none of them, or perhaps a combination of all of them. Juvia supposed that she would discover her reasoning once she was actually face-to-face with the man.

The streets were largely clear as Juvia strolled through them, thanks to the perpetual rain pouring from the heavens above. Her expression soured a little as she considered the possibility that the weather would drive Bora inside as well, which would make confronting him all the more difficult. As she paused in the middle of the street to articulate her next move, the drumming of the rain was suddenly overtaken by very furious slapping footsteps. The sound was coming from behind her; as she turned, leaning the umbrella back to get a good look at the perpetrator, someone zoomed past her at such speed that a wall of water was what was greeted her instead. She squeaked loudly as she was splashed with rainwater from head-to-toe; Juvia could absorb it and was more surprised than affronted. As she used her magic to do just that, there was a loud screeching noise, and she looked up to see a pink-haired individual rapidly back-tracking to stand in front of her.

“Whoa! Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to drench ya!”

Juvia had to admit, a faint blush rose to her cheeks from how absolutely stunning his smile was. It was so bright that she thought for a moment that the sun had actually come out and she instinctively looked up; however, the sky was still choked with ashen gray clouds, not a ray of sunlight slipping through the thick barrier. She glanced back down to see that he was now a mere few inches from her face, green eyes boring into hers. “Wait a second, where’d the water go? What kinda magic is that?!” he demanded with steam blowing out of his nostrils.

“Juvia is a water mage,” she answered simply. His pink eyebrows quirked before he nodded emphatically in admiration.

“Neat, neat! I guess it’s a good thing I splashed you instead of anyone else!” he laughed lightheartedly. It was then that she noticed that the man did not have an umbrella on his person and was just running about getting drenched in the rain. His salmon hair was plastered to his forehead, and water was running down his face in rivulets to drip down from his chin. His clothes were sodden and probably a few shades darker than they normally were.

“You’ll catch cold running around in the rain like this.”

“Nah, don’t worry about me,” he said while waving a hand dismissively. Juvia flushed darkly, for some reason very stimulated by the fact he brushed off the rain when everyone else she had ever known had griped about it being such an inconvenience. He doesn’t mind it… He then planted it above his eyebrows and because looking about wildly, squatting low to the ground as he inspected every nook and cranny in sight. “I’m on a mission, ya see, to track down this fella callin’ himself the Salamander!” From the way he was huffing and puffing, it was not because he was a fan.

“Juvia is also looking for this fire mage.” The boy straightened up like a rod to look at her with wide eyes. Another grin then split his face like a sunbeam.

“Really?! Well, why don’t we look for him together, then? Three pairs o’ eyes is better than two, yeah?” Juvia narrowed her eyebrows quizzically, but before she could call his intelligence into question, a pair of blue cat ears poked up over his broad shoulder. This was followed by the head of a cat and its paw, waving in greeting.

“Aye, aye! Let’s get looking, because the sooner we find him, the sooner we can eat!” He purred contentedly.

“It talks.”

“Yep! This is my buddy Happy, and I’m Natsu. You’re Juvia, right?” She nodded. “Great! Nice ta meetcha!” he chirped and grabbed her hand to shake it vigorously. His hand was warm. Incredibly so. Juvia felt the blooming sensation travel up her arm, like she was dipping it into a lovely bath. Natsu… Normally Juvia did not concern herself with others, especially when she had a specific mission in mind, but there was just something so… gripping about this young man. She gripped the fabric of her overcoat above her heart, feeling it flutter within. Juvia has not felt this way since Bora…

She was not sure if it was a portent of doom or an omen foretelling better days. Only time would tell.

“Let’s get going, shall we?” Natsu whirled on his heel to begin splashing along down the road, humming cheerfully. Juvia hurried to catch up to him and then extended the umbrella so that it would shield him as well. He was a bit taller than her, so she had to stretch her arms up to do so, and she was almost embarrassed at how quickly her biceps began to burn at the awkward angle. Regardless of what he says, Juvia does not want him to become ill because of her rain, she thought miserably. He looked down at her with upturned eyebrows. “You don’t have to. I’m okay.”

“Please. Juvia wants to share.”

“That’s really nice of you!” he smiled brightly. “That looks uncomfortable, though; lemme help.” She gasped lightly as he plucked the umbrella right out of her hands to hold it up himself. Juvia wasn’t used to not holding it, so her hand automatically slipped to clutch his forearm where it was bent at a ninety-degree angle; once she realized what she was doing, her face flushed tomato-red, but honestly his muscles felt so nice and defined under her petite hand that she shamelessly kept doing so. Natsu didn’t seemed to mind; in fact, he seemed pretty much oblivious to it. “That’s better, huh?” he grinned down at her.

“Aye, aye! Thanks for the umbrella, Juvia!” Happy sighed as he crawled up onto Natsu’s shoulder. He then proceeded to squat down and shake himself from the top of his head to the tip of his tail, splattering Natsu with raindrops. The boy jumped as they painted the side of his head and face.

“Hey, hey, hey, watch it, will ya?” he whined loudly as he tilted his head to try and shake the drops out of his ears. Juvia could not help but giggle at their amusing antics. They get along so well… “Yeesh… I’m starving,” Natsu whined all of a sudden and clutched his growling belly with his free hand. “I can’t wait to find this Salamander guy and then get some grub.”

“Do you know who he is?”

“Nope. All I know is he’s calling himself the Salamander. I’m hoping he’s my master, Igneel!” At the mention of his name, Natsu’s green eyes began to sparkle. He looked so overjoyed at the prospect that Juvia wrestled with crushing his hopes, but she did not wish to see him incredibly upset when he discovered the true identity of the fire mage.

“Actually… He is a mage named Bora.”

“What?!” Natsu stopped in his tracks to look poutily at her. “You mean we came all this way for nothing? Aw, man… And I was so hopin’ I would get to see Igneel again,” he griped aloud. Juvia looked down at her feet miserably. Should she have not told him?

“Juvia is sorry to have to be the one to tell you…”

“Nah, it’s okay,” he sighed deeply. She peered out of the corners of her eyes to see him rubbing his neck and smiling gratefully down at her. “I ‘preciate it. It woulda been a bummer to come all this way and it be just some random dude. I guess me ‘n Happy should grab some grub and then head back to Fairy Tail.”

“You are from Fairy Tail?”

“That’s right!” he snickered and turned to show off his bright pink guild mark on his upper arm.

“Then that must mean Bora is not a member of Fairy Tail.” As she had suspected, he was abusing the guild’s name to build clout. What could he possibly be up to? Juvia was busy considering the possibilities and did not notice that he had closed the distance between them again; after a second, her eyes registered his brilliant green ones centimeters away, and her face turned redder than ever.

“What? What’re you talkin’ about?”

“Rumor has it that Salamander is a Fairy Tail mage. Bora has been calling himself by this name. Juvia knows Bora well; he is not a very good man. He has gotten in trouble for many bad things…” Natsu’s eyes narrowed into sharp peaks as he stiffly straightened back up. His grip tightened so hard around the umbrella’s handle that his knuckles glared white and she feared the plastic may splinter.

“So that’s it, huh? Well, I can’t stand by while somebody is tarnishin’ our good name. I think this calls for an ass-kickin’, don’tcha agree, Happy?!” The cat trilled in agreement over his shoulder. “I’m all fired up now!” His grin was absolutely feral, but something about it filled Juvia with excitement. She barely knew him, but somehow she felt as if she could follow him to the ends of the Earth. Her heart began to pound wildly in her chest again, and despite her many wills, it refused to still.

Natsu…

“It is very good fortune that Juvia met you today,” she remarked with a tiny smile.

“Nah,” Natsu said nonchalantly. For a second her heart threatened to break at his dismissiveness, but when she looked up at him, he was smiling broadly. “I don’t believe in luck! Let’s call it destiny! When we’re done here, you should totally come back to Fairy Tail with me, Juvia!” he offered. Juvia’s eyes widened as she stared at him in shock. Juvia… Join Fairy Tail? Her fingers were twisting so hard into her overcoat that she felt she could tear the thick, cottony fabric. She was so… happy. Juvia could not the last time she felt that emotion so purely and strongly.

“Yes… Juvia will gladly come to Fairy Tail!” she cried and nodded emphatically.

“Great! Ass-kickin’ first, though.”

“Yes!”

~~~~~~~~~~

They tracked Bora to a cruise liner docked at the port. It took a lot of convincing to prevent Natsu from charging in fires-a-burnin’, but she managed to convince him to do so. Apparently, Bora had been seen courting a large group of ladies and they had all migrated onto the ship. Juvia had several ideas about why Bora would be so interested in women, and none of them sat well with her. One peek through the windows validated her concerns; throughout the dining hall there were woman slumped over tables or collapsed on the floor with half-finished drinks still in their hands. They were casually discarded as men in suits hauled them off into another room.

“Human trafficking…” Juvia murmured under her breath.

“What a buncha bastards,” Natsu growled in agreement. “I can’t stand by and watch this anymore!” Before Juvia could rebuke him, he punched through the window to charge into the room, bright fire alighting all over his arms. She cried aloud and looked around wildly, unsure of what to do, before she decided to hop into the interior of the ship after him. Natsu had already slammed the two lackeys into the wall to knock them unconscious and was now plowing through the wooden door breathing fire. “Come out, you asshole! I know you’re in here!”

“I would appreciate it if you stopped making a mess of my ship,” sighed a voice from behind Juvia. The two mages whirled on their feet to see Bora holding a squirming blonde by her wrists. As Natsu went to wind up for a punch, Bora clicked his tongue and jerked on the girl’s arm, making her wail in pain. “Ah, ah, ah. Wouldn’t want to have to break the pretty lady’s arm here. Why don’t you fizzle out for a second, yeah?” Bora sneered at Natsu before his eyes drifted to Juvia. They instantly narrowed in confusion. “What?! What are you doing here?”

“Juvia has come to put a stop to your villainy!” He stared at her, then snorted and looked back to Natsu.

“So, this your new boyfriend? He sick of the rain yet?” Juvia flushed bright pink and slapped her hands to her cheeks, bleating about how Natsu wasn’t her boyfriend at all, but froze in horror when he mentioned her rain. She looked at the fire mage in terror to see him staring quizzically at Bora. “Ah, haven’t figured it out yet, eh? This woman’s a curse. Makes it rain wherever she goes. It gets old real quick; that’s why I dumped her.” Juvia hung her head as she hugged herself. She couldn’t speak of for herself, but her mind was just melancholy echoes of No… Juvia is not a curse…

“You’re a real piece o’ work, you know that, asshole?” Natsu snarled. She peered back at him to see him slamming a fist into his palm, fire blooming at the area of contact. “What’s wrong with rain, huh?”

“Yeah! It makes all the flowers grow and it smells really nice and fresh~” Happy trilled with a wiggling tail.

“You said it, Happy! I’m sure there are plenty o’ people out there who would see Juvia as a blessing. So, kindly let me punch the snot outta ya for disrespectin’ her like that, okay?” Natsu hunched down, fist drawn back with fire swirling within, but Bora once again made use of his hostage. He did not expect the girl to have plenty of fight left in her, however, because once he was distracted by Natsu, she slammed the heel of her boot as hard as she could into his toes. Bora yowled in agony and let her go to begin bouncing around on one foot, while the girl snatched a ring of jangling silver and gold keys to hurriedly dash over and hide behind Juvia.

“I dunno who you people are, but we have to save all the girls on this ship!”

“We’re Fairy Tail mages!” Natsu grinned brightly. Juvia’s cheeks darkened as she smiled happily, her heart beginning to flutter again. She hadn’t even officially joined yet, but he was already acknowledging her as a comrade? The girl began screaming about how she wanted to join Fairy Tail too and that they were going to talk after Bora was effectively handled. Now that the girl was free, Bora hand no shield, and Natsu was rearing up for a big attack.

“Take this, ya scumbag!” Natsu’s chest suddenly swelled up as he breathed in deeply, and the two girls watched in admiration as he released a billowing white-hot flame from the pits of his lungs. “Fire Dragon’s Rooooooooar!” Just barely audible over the rushing of the flames was Bora’s high-pitched totally unmanly screaming as he was blasted through the hull of the ship and out into open water. Natsu snickered and wiped at his mouth, grinning at the large hole in the side of the cruise liner. “Well, that takes care of that.”

“You idiot! Everything’s on fire!” the blonde girl screeched and ran over to bonk him over the head.

“Who are you, anyway?!” Natsu whined, crouching down as he rubbed his bruised noggin.

“My name’s Lucy!”

“Um! Lucy! Please do not hit Natsu! And don’t worry, Juvia can handle the fire,” the water mage quipped suddenly before she scampered over to the gaping hole in the hull of the ship. She gathered some of the sea water below and surged it through the opening, splashing it over the flickering flames to quickly douse them before they spread too far. I will show Natsu that I am worthy to join Fairy Tail! She thought with glee as she willed the water about the room. She got a little excited, though, and three very loud complaining yelps indicated that she had accidentally drenched the others. She laughed sheepishly and rubbed the back of her neck as Lucy and Natsu gave her thin-lipped glares. “Juvia is sorry…”

~~~~~~~~~~

They handed Bora over to the authorities and the drugged women were transported to the nearest hospital for treatment. Now, the three mages and Happy were sitting along the cobblestone wall overlooking the harbor. Lucy had related the tale of her own search for the Salamander and how she had ended up on the cruise liner and foiled Bora’s plot.

“This turned out great, huh?” Natsu laughed with a beaming smile. “Now I can take the two of you back to Fairy Tail with me! Gramps’ll be pleased.” His scarf swished as he hopped down off the wall and stretched his arms above his head. “He ain’t gonna be pleased about the property damage to the cruise liner that scumbag was renting…” he mumbled with lidded eyes. He then whirled around to point at the two of them. “Anyway! How’s about dinner, yeah? I’m starving after all that butt-whoopin’!”

“It wasn’t even a butt-whoopin’; you took him out in five seconds…” Lucy muttered under her breath, then smiled. “But, I’ve heard of a nice place in town. Follow me!” She hopped off the wall to begin skipping down the street with Happy flying (apparently, he could conjure wings, the strange little cat creature) behind her. Juvia jumped down from the wall and turned to follow when suddenly Natsu’s hand was extended out to her.

“You must be really happy, huh?”

“Oh… Yes. How could you tell?” she blinked. Ever since Natsu had offered for her to join Fairy Tail, she had possessed this floaty feeling in her body, and her heart had refused to be still. Juvia had been hesitant to call it love, since it had landed her in plenty of trouble in the past, but she also couldn’t deny that it was strongly familiar. Natsu cocked his head to the side as he scrunched up his eyes from a big smile.

“It stopped rainin’, you know?”

Juvia gasped and snapped her neck back to look at the sky. Sure enough, it was brilliantly blue and cloudless. Her indigo eyes shook as she beheld the thing that had been veiled to her for as long as she could remember. They filled up with tears that soon spilled over onto her cheeks, and her mouth twisted into a brokenly overjoyed smile.

“It’s… So beautiful… It has been so long since Juvia has seen the sky…”

“Juvia.” Her head slowly fell back down to meet his brilliant green eyes. In the back of her mind, she thought they complimented her shade nicely. “Let’s go. To Fairy Tail.” Juvia extended a trembling hand to slide it into his, and his fingers grasped on tightly. His hand was so warm and welcoming and kind. It had been so long since Juvia had felt such caring emotions from someone. She used her other hands to quickly wipe at her cheeks as Natsu lurched her forward, laughing animatedly. Her feet carried her onward, towards her new future.

Juvia thought for a moment that it was good luck she took the train to Hargeon Town, then corrected herself.

No, not luck… Call it destiny.

Enjoy this oneshot? Feel free to peruse my Table of Contents!

Tag List: @searchfortheonepiece

[gibmb]

ch 8 flowers and thunderstorms

Perfuma was walking through her kingdom with Ahriman in hand, Glimmer walked on the other side of the young heir, still bothered by his existence, while Scorpia followed close behind the three. Both Scorpia and Perfuma were lost within their conversation while Glimmer was lost in her own mind, arguing with herself on what creeped her out more, the little monster she was walking besides, the dolls it was carrying, or the fact that it was Scorpia that made the dolls. Ahriman was holding two stuffed dolls, one looking like Scorpia and the other, oddly enough, looking like Glimmer. Glimmer couldn’t shake off the feeling of unease she felt walking next to the prince as the only thing she could think of was that she was walking next to a mini Hordak holding a doll that resembles her and was about to use the doll for nefarious purposes. On the other hand, she was bewildered, slightly impressed, but mostly creeped out by the intricate detail, stitching and overall high quality of the dolls that Scorpia had made, considering she doesn’t have fingers. Though her thoughts were interrupted when the young prince looked up at her, their eyes meeting as he gave her a wide smile showing his red fangs. It caused Glimmer  to jump a little and Ahriman did the same mimicking her surprised jump. Glimmer frowned a little thinking he was mocking her, when the sound of giggling caught her attention. Glimmer looked up to see Perfuma and Scorpia watch with smiles on their faces, “What!?” Glimmer asked putting her hand on her hips, Ahriman doing the same, which only made her frown even more. With Ahriman mimicking her every move Scorpia and Perfuma desperately try to hold back their laughter.

“Sorry Glimmer, but it’s just too adorable seeing him mimic you.” Perfuma gave her an apologetic smile, “Plus, seeing your reaction is really funny!” Perfuma laughed a little seeing Ahriman’s perfect copy of Glimmer’s frown, “I mean, it's just cute!” Glimmer thought otherwise, believing it was the farthest thing from being “cute”; she began walking faster to make distance between her and Ahriman. Ahriman stopped mimicking her looking confused, so he glanced over to Perfuma and Scopria.

“Don't worry little guy.” Scorpia said walking over and picking him up, “Glimmer is just a bit bad with trusting people, but don't you worry I’m betting when she gets to know you and see how…” she hugs him close, “...adorable and soft you are, she will just love you!” Ahriman giggled after hearing this, his body letting off a little electricity causing both his and Scorpia’s hair to puff up. Perfuma laughed until Scorpia poked her, causing her hair to puff up as well, “There! Now we’re all puffed up.” Pefuma gave a devious smile

“Not all of us.” Perfuma said smiling. Glimmer quickly realized what was about to happen, her initial expression of shock turned into a wide grin, “Don’t even try it,” she proclaimed. Before the puff trio could touch Glimmer she teleported away from them leaving only sparkles where she once stood. The trio were excited with the challenge that laid before them, catch Glimmer and puff up her hair! Scorpia coiled her tail and used it to carry Ahriman, giving him a better angle to watch, while Perfuma used her magic to summon vines that would try to slow Glimmer down. Glimmer dodged, weaved and teleported her way out of Perfuma’s plants and Scorpia’s arms, especially Scorpia’s arms. She never realized it, but Scorpia was quick and agile despite her appearance and the fact that she’s carrying a baby with her tail. They continued their game of cat and mouse throughout the kingdom until Glimmer heard her communicator pad go off. She gestured to Perfuma and Scorpia to stop and pulled out the communicator to answer. On the other end of the transmission was Bow, Adora and Mermista. 

“Hey guys! How’s the investigation coming along?” asked Glimmer. Looking to the screen seeing Bow scratching his head making a face she knows all too well, “It was a bust, wasn’t it? Nothing found? No information, not even a tidbit?” Glimmer sighed, annoyed after the meeting they had just as the twin monsters were born, Glimmer wanted to have the Horde remnants dealt with. It seemed whoever was leading proved to be far superior to Catra or any other in terms of tactics.

“Yeah no, sorry Glimmer we almost had them this time. Mermista wrecked the ship they were using, Adora and I boarded it alongside some of our troops to capture and interrogate them, but then we ended up fighting with them. There was even a sorta shark man that could control the sea life around us, he had a giant squid attack us and by the time we defeated the squid the remnants were gone, but…” he smiled widely, “...on the bright side! We kinda have an idea on why they’re raiding,” Bow turns his data pad to show what looked like half of a large metal boat washed up onto the shore, “They might be gathering up First Ones tech to try and build up there fighting force again.” Bow said a bit nervous at the thought of that, “But there’s one thing that bothers me, just before that shark guy escaped he yelled out ‘Skeletor shall rise once again!’; whoever this “Skeletor” is he's definitely not like Hordak or any other Horde commander we’ve ever faced off against.” Glimmer frowned hearing this.

“From one evil warlord to another,” she rubbed her face with her free hand before hearing a static noise and a yelp from behind her. Glimmer looked at scorpia, noticing that Ahriman had gone missing before feeling her communicator pad shake. Her gaze quickly returned to it shaking and shooting out small sparks of electricity as Ahriman appeared from it, landing on Glimmer. Surprised by his appearance she dropped the data pad while he was still emitting static causing her hair to puff up. Ahriman clapped his hands giggling and from what she could hear Adora and Mermista must have finally joined Bow, their laughter was easy to distinguish, all while spotting Scorpia and Perfuma’s faces both grinning like cats. Glimmer did not find this funny, with a free hand she picked the data pad off the ground looking at it, “We’ll discuss the Skeletor problem later, for now I have a demon to look after alongside...” Glimmer shot Perfuma and Scorpia a glare, “...two princesses.” She ended the video call with Bow and Adora sighing wondering why her mother even wanted her to bother helping Perfuma look after one of those little demons, “Now that you've gotten that out of your system can you come get this thing away from me.” Perfuma frowned at that comment,

“He's not a “thing” Glimmer,” Perfuma said walking over, “He’s a baby and heir to Dryl an-” before Perfuma could continue Glimmer cut in gesturing to Ahriman who seemed more innocent and confused than threatening,

“He’s also the heir and son of Hordak! Making him related to a monster that spent most of his time trying to conquer or kill us, so I don't care! My mom and dad may think that they’re harmless, but I-” Glimmer paused feeling a sharp pain in her hand. She looked down to see Ahriman holding her hand feeding from it, “Arrgh! And then there's this drinking blood thing he does, could you be any more evil!” Perfuma frowned at Glimmer and as she was about to scold her Scorpia interrupted her by tapping her shoulder,

“Sorry to interrupt, but didnt you have a meeting today Perfuma?” Scorpia asked trying to defuse the tension between the two princesses as well as make sure Ahriman doesn't shock anyone. Perfuma paused for a moment before exclaiming

“Oh my! Yes, you’re right Scorpia! I completely forgot about that. How about while I discuss my kingdoms issues with my advisors, you three can wait in a nearby hut? I could have tea sent so that you all may be refreshed and rejuvenated from all of the fun we’ve been having.” She smiles at Scorpia who takes Ahriman in her arms buzzing with joy while giving Glimmer a frustrated stare. They all make their way to the hut Perfuma had suggested and upon arrival, Perfuma has the servant inside the hut leave to gather fresh herbs for tea. “I’ll be heading to the meeting now, hopefully it won’t be too long before I can come back…” Perfuma focuses on Glimmer, “...and finish our discussion from earlier.” Before Glimmer could say anything Perfuma leaves the room in silence. Feeling intimidated by how different she acted Glimmer looked back at Scorpia who was playing with the little monster. She frowns at both of them, while Ahriman giggles and waves his doll of Glimmer.

“How can you be so nice to him Scorpia!? How can you even bear to be around him?” Glimmer asked a little more hostile than she wanted to. Scorpia looked over to her seeming in thought though still playing with Ahriman, Scorpia used her free claw to scratch her head a little bit.

“I don’t know. How can you not be nice to such an adorable little face?” Scorpia says while she uses her magic to create sparks of tiny lightning coming out of her claws. Ahriman gushes with laughter, his eyes reflecting the light of the lightning, he claps his hands for a moment before looking at them. His body is still, sparks begin to illuminate from all over his body; Ahriman, still looking at his hands, scrunches his brows and concentrates, all of the sparks on his body begin to travel to his hands. Scorpia felt a sudden chill running down from the top of her head all the way down to her tail, she quickly realized that there was a lot of electricity being channeled into Ahriman’s hands, “Oh. This can’t be good.” She rushes over to Glimmer, tackling her and pinning her against the wall of the cottage they were in, using her own body as a shield. In that moment Ahriman’s hands grew bright with light and suddenly, massive rods of lightning cracked and flickered out of the young heir’s hands. Lightning launched through the roof and into the sky, the clear clouds turned dark rumbling with thunder, the smaller bolts trailing away to create what looked like a tree made of lightning and storm clouds. Inside, the excess electricity crackling throughout the room, scorching everything in its path. Ahriman giggles and laughs until Scorpia comes rushing to him, picking him up into her arms. Suddenly, the bolts begin to rush to a single point, Scorpia. She calls out to the young prince, “Ahriman! You need to stop! You’ll end up hurting someone! Stop! Stop!” Ahriman looks into Scorpia’s eyes, he sees the fear and worried look she gives him and the light show emanating from his hands stops. He sniffled a little and his eyes water up a bit, he starts to give a worried moan. Scorpia quickly reassures him, “Oh, don’t cry. It’s ok! Look, everything’s ok, everything...is...OK.” Ahriman is still sniffling, on the verge of crying, but Scorpia cradled him as Glimmer got back up. Horror stricken, she began approaching them slowly, her eyes locked on the little monster. Scorpia noticed her and having a guilty look on her face, “Sorry, sometimes when he gets too excited he can lose control, but don't worry before we left with Perfuma I promised Entrapta that I’d help him learn to control his powers.” She had a serious expression, but before she could speak Glimmer cut in,

“Are you kidding me? He just called in a storm with lighting included! HE ALMOST FRIED US! FRIED US! EVEN AS AN INFANT, HE'S ALREADY MORE DANGEROUS THAN HIS FATHER! HE'S A MONSTER AND YOU WANNA TRAIN THAT THING TO WHAT!? KILL US BETTER!? KNOW HOW TO BEST COOK ME WITH LIGHTING!? GREAT JOB SCORPIA! REALLY, JUST GREAT!” Glimmer yelled panting, seeing Scorpia’s wide eyes and Ahriman looking terrified. She didn’t care, she was ready to continue, but scorpia spoke first.

“He is not a monster Glimmer. He’s a baby! Yes, he has dangerous powers, but so does Frosta, me, Mermista, Perfuma and all the other princesses and you think that as a baby they knew to control their powers?” Scorpia had a serious expression, “I doubt that. It took me months of training and even now I’m still learning how to do this whole magic thing, so if he’s a monster so are we.” She said as Ahriman whimpered a little, “You’re mother wanted you to join us because you hated them for their father's deeds, but they aren't him they’re babies, they’re still learning and all you can do is treat THEM like a monster when YOU yourself used your kingdom as bait for the Horde and was willing to try and use a super weapon to kill how many people?” Scorpia said with a cold tone making glimmer flinch a little from the reminder of her less than good time as a queen, “So, can you say that you’re not without a few bad deeds?” Scorpia saw Glimmer look down rubbing her arm. “Exactly!” She said trying to sound cheery. “Then, if your mother and father can look past what Ahriman’s father did, than you should be able to as well?” Before either one of them could speak again they noticed townsfolk and guards at the entrance of the hut looking at them both stunned and frightened, “Oh. Um, hi there; umm, there’s nothing the matter just a small hiccup on our end, the baby got a little too excited.” Scorpia said holding Ahriman still sniffling, one of the guards looked up at the hole in the roof of the hut, then back to the three of them. Scorpia smiled nervously, “You wouldn’t happen to have a spare hut we could use?” 

The trio followed one of the guards to a new hut, one that wasn’t catching fire, and were told to wait there for Perfuma to arrive. The room was silent, Ahriman held his doll of Glimmer tight to his chest, Scorpia set him down and sat with her legs crossed next to the prince, and Glimmer stood. She kept her distance from Scorpia, arms wrapped around herself, still feeling a piercing sting from the words that Scorpia had spoken to her before changing huts. The room felt small, the air cold, and bitter memories of the past surrounded them; not a single word was spoken between the two princesses. What was only a few minutes felt like an eternity of awkward silence when suddenly, someone entered the hut. It was the servant that was sent to gather herbs for tea, he was young, dark pink skin with snow white hair, his eyes full of sparkle with a small number of freckles lined from cheek to cheek. The boy was short and carrying a tray with a tea set, “Would you like some tea princesses?” the boy asked. Scorpia smiled kindly, 

“We would love some tea.” Scorpia looked to Glimmer, “Come on Glimmer come have a seat, it would do us both some good to enjoy something to drink and calm our nerves.” Scorpia patted an area next to her, Glimmer looking down but nodding, slowly walking over to sit across from  Scorpia, “Well that’s not where I patted but it’s something.” The boy smiled at the two princesses setting down two cups in front of both of them and pouring the herbal tea into both cups before stepping back  for them to enjoy the tea. Scorpia gently picked up her cup drinking it trying not to break the cup like a few times before, but also looking to Glimmer who still looked like a kicked puppy taking a small sip of her tea, “Listen Glimmer I didn’t mean to sound so harsh about what I said, it’s just...” Scorpia looked down at Ahriman he held his two dolls close smiling at them making Scorpia feel light as she smiled at him, “I don’t want them to be looked at like Hordak was when they’re older. People will treat them differently, like they’re monsters or worse and I don’t want them thinking that they are. I want them to feel safe around those that Entrapta trusts. Is it wrong to wanna give them something bright when we both know what others will say or try to do later in life?” Scorpia saw Glimmer look up at her, rubbing her shoulder with her free hand, then she looked to Ahriman who looked to her giving her a small goofy smile causing Glimmer to smile softly back before sighing,

“You’re right Scorpia, you, my mom, Perfuma, Catra and every other person that's given me crap for the way I've acted.” She rubbed her face groaning, “Why am I always like this?” Glimmer heard Scorpia chuckle a little oddly, “Yeah, yeah. It’s so funny that I can’t seem to ever make a decision that goes well” Scorpia’s claw still had her face covered before she heard glass break, a sudden thud and the table shake.

Before she knew it, Scorpia was on the ground. She could feel her body growing numb, at first it was down at her feet forcing her to collapse; her tail went limp and numb, she could feel whatever was paralyzing her travel through her body. Soon she couldn’t feel her chest, panic and fear started to kick in, she looked at Ahriman and tried lifting her arm towards him. A sudden shock pierced throughout her body, the tip of her claw felt as though it was being stabbed by thousands of daggers and that feeling traveled all through the rest of her body. Her shoulders grew heavy as she struggled to keep herself up, she tried to reach out to Ahriman and drag herself closer to him, but her arms grew too heavy and too weak to carry out her intent. Her head was buzzing, her vision blurring, Scorpia could smell the tea she had fully drank from her breathe. Something was off, there was a faint bitter aroma mixed in with the otherwise sweet and delicate one coming from her breathe. Just before everything went dark, Scorpia managed to say a few words before completely passing out, “Whatever you do...DON’T DRINK THE TEA…” Glimmer looked down at scorpia in shock before looking to the boy, 

“What did you do? What, what was in that tea!?” Glimmer asked still shocked and feeling a bit light headed as the boy approached looking stunned

“It was what I normally grab when I make herbal tea, she must be having a bad reaction to it. “ The boy said looking scared and terrified, “You should go get Perfuma while I stay here with them.” The boy said terror still on his face. Glimmer was heading to the door still feeling light before pausing, she had known this boy he had made tea for her before and never has this happened. She turned to see Ahriman looking scared of the boy and trying to nudge Scorpia, Glimmer’s shock turned to anger teleporting between the boy and the baby. She glared at him,

“Nice try, but I know the boy you're impersonating and so does Scorpia if it was really the brew he normally made then nothing would have happened!” Glimmer said trying to stand tall, though  faltering as she stumbled a little. The boys surprise turned into a cruel smile and his voice deepened,

“And here I thought you were the dumb one of the two, then again all three of you are pretty stupid.” The boy chuckled walking forward, his posture changing entirely from a kind of cautious and careful posture to one that said all too well what he enjoyed doing to those who kept him from his prizes, “I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I did attack him on his way back, so I didn't really have much to go on, I had to make up how he would act which worked out.” He smiled then frowned, “Until you actually used that tiny brain of yours, but oh well! The easy way didn't work, sooooo it's time for the fun way.” His cruel smile returned and Glimmer stepped back a little,

“What, what did you do to him?” The question came out a bit more scared and rattly then she'd have liked. His smile changed to a more caring one,

“Oh don't worry, once I got him to talk he didn't feel a thing. You have my word as a professional, one quick stab to the heart and he was gone before he could feel it. Truly a peaceful ending.” The care in those horrible words spoken to her sent chills coursing through her body and she felt sick after hearing them. Glimmer knew she was in deep trouble. “Though when I came in his place I thought I'd be killing Perfuma, but instead I end up with not one but THREE high value targets! Oh, what a wonderful surprise it was, so I used a little of my special paralyzing agent in the tea, well a little for you, a bit more for stinger over there, but it looks like I should have used a bit more for you”

The impersonator changed his voice back into the little boys’ and asked Glimmer, “You don’t mind if I change into something a little more...suitable?” Before she could answer, the boy’s eyes darkened into solid black, then began to bubble into a tar like substance. It dripped down the cheeks of the boy and more of it started coming out of his nose and ears. He let out a cynical laugh before his face began to melt, the black tar spreading to the rest of the body. Soon what was once a boy was nothing more than a standing silhouette of black tar, boiling and bursting, spilling onto the floor but returning to the figure that stood before Glimmer. It began to grow, as more tar burst onto the floor and returned to its host the figure grew and grew until it became just as tall as Scorpia was. Ahriman moaned in fear and wrapped himself around Glimmer’s leg. Glimmer placed her hand on the prince’s head, words could not begin to describe the dread she felt. Her stomach was a bottomless pit and her heart was heavy as all she could do was watch. The figure in front of her had gathered all of the spilt tar and it began to solidify, forming the silhouette of a person. Once solidified, the boy was no more; now, standing before Glimmer was a man dressed in full black armor. It was a kind of armor she had never seen before, it felt similar to the armor the Horde had worn, but the moldings of the boots, gauntlets, and chest were made to look like that of a skeleton. Even the helmet was similar, but with one distinct difference, the face was silver and was formed into the face of a skull. Day turned to dusk and the sun was almost set, the last of the sun’s light came into the room through an open window making the imposter’s armor shine with a warm glow, but before long, the night came and the warm shine that covered the imposter was gone leaving behind a cold and sinister evil standing before Glimmer. 

Using his natural voice he spoke, “There. Much. Better.” The imposter walked to a stand that was holding an unlit torch, “Don’t you think it’s getting a bit dark in here?” With a snap of his fingers the torch caught fire and the rest of the torches and candles within the hut came to life. “Now you’ll get to see what’s coming for you. It’ll be so much fun.” The imposter in his true form stared at her, his eyes shown through the skull mask eyeing her like prey as he drew a knife from its sheath on his waist, “But don’t worry I promise when they have your funeral they can have an open casket.” He said in a horribly soothing tone. Glimmer’s immediate reaction without thinking was to pick up Ahriman and try to teleport, but when she did she only felt sick to her stomach stumbling back. “Ohhh, did you really think that we haven’t planned for your powers? The agent I added, while paralyzing is one of its effects, can also be used to suppress certain talents. It makes sure that only those with skill are allowed to join.” He began his approach readying his knife, Glimmer looked around the hut for a weapon or anything she could use as she felt her body getting numb bit by bit until she sees one of the lit torches. She makes a dash for it while holding Ahriman, grabbing it and prying it off of what held it as she heard the imposter approaching, humming to himself, as he did she twirled and swung the torch at the imposter only for him to catch it with his free hand. His head tilted as if curious, “Oh how adorable! A princess that thinks she can fight a trained assassin.” The assassin’s tone was joyful as he rips the torch out of her hands and sheathed his knife. Using his now free hand he placed it onto the torch, smothering the flame and putting it out. He tossed it to the side before beginning his approach to her again. Glimmer holds tightly onto the young terrified heir,

“Its ok Ahriman,” Glimmer said trying to sound strong, “I’ll stop him.�� No matter how strong Glimmer tried to sound it was no use, her body felt weaker and weaker as the assassin got close. She tried desperately to teleport, but it was no use, so she did the only thing she could, when he got close enough she rammed into him with her shoulder as hard as she could. Sadly an armored, healthy assassin wasn’t affected by a drugged princess. The assassin seemed to chuckle before grabbing Ahriman. She tried to hold on, but he punched her with his other hand seeming to take great joy in hurting others who resisted him rather then killing them quickly. He began to repeatedly strike at her, Glimmer noticed his hand and wrist were unarmored so she desperately bit the hand trying to take Ahriman as hard as she could causing the assassin to flinch in pain before growling and striking harder. By the tenth strike Glimmer was beaten and bruised releasing both her bite and her grip on Ahriman. The assassin held him in his bleeding hand looking down at Glimmer with malice in his eyes as he unsheathed his knife again raising it. Glimmer looked to Ahriman, his terrified expression looked back at her. Glimmer felt the abyss in her stomach deepen knowing she failed him.

“Well it was fun dear princess, but it looks like Bright Moon is gonna be short a princess and two princes!” The assassin said with a cruel joyful tone raising the knife. Glimmer closed her eyes ready to accept death, but after a few moments nothing happened except for the faint smell of something burning. Glimmer opened one of her eyes to see the knife mere inches away from her face, the assassin shaking, seeming to be struggling and in pain. Smoke coming off of the assassin with sounds of crackling coming from him as well. When Glimmer looked to Ahriman she saw him biting where she had bitten him, his eyes glowing red like Hordaks’ electricity sparking off his body. He was biting as hard as he could, Glimmer then looked to the assassin’s eyes with horror. Behind the mask showed eyes that were burnt out, smoke leaving the sockets of the silver skull. Glimmer quickly rushed to Ahriman,

“That's enough Ahriman! Stop! He's gone, he won't hurt us anymore!” Ahriman’s eyes returned to normal, his jaw loosened letting go of the assassin’s hand. The sound of sizzling flesh was followed by a loud thud as the body inside the armor fell onto the ground with smoke continuing to come out of the mask. Ahriman jumped into Glimmer’s arms and buried his face in her chest crying. All Glimmer could do was hold him as tightly as she could both of them sitting on the floor. Within moments Perfuma rushed into the hut with a small number of guards in tow, not one of them could say a word. Perfuma came to Glimmer’s side and hugged her, tears flowing down her cheeks. The guards huddled over the smoldering body while some villagers gathered to Scorpia who was still unconscious. Then, a villager came into the hut with a body their arms and bitter sadness in their eyes. It was the body of the boy the assassin impersonated with a single stab wound to the chest where his heart would have been. Silence. The room was still and the first person to break that silence was a beaten and broken Glimmer, “He said that Bright Moon was going to lose a princess and two princes. There’s only one prince here.” Perfuma looked straight at one of her guards, “Send word to the Bright Moon Kingdom. Warn them, tell them what happened here.” She looked at the dead assassin, “Tell them to be ready.”

[worryinglyinnocent]

Fic: Out of Time (1/?)

It’s here at last! @ripperblackstaff, @woodelf68, @everyone else who wanted to see it. Thanks for your voracious support, guys, and I hope you enjoy!

Summary:  Belle is the one to be sucked into Zelena’s time portal with Emma, and they find themselves in a very different time to the one they had anticipated, arriving to see the confrontation between Hook and a pre-Dark One Rumpelstiltskin. They manage to return to the future, but with some unintentional stowaways. With Rumpelstiltskin removed from his own timeline, the universe throws a fit, and it’s a race against time to set things straight.

Rated: T for now, but it will go up in later chapters.

====

Out of Time

One

Belle took a deep breath and pushed open the door to the sheriff’s station. She didn’t want to be the harbinger of bad tidings, especially when everyone was getting ready to celebrate new life and new hope.

All the same, something about Zelena’s disappearance just didn’t sit right with her, and far be it from her to sweep something under the carpet and pretend that everything was ok when potentially the entire town was at risk. If Zelena was going to come back at the eleventh hour and cause havoc, then she wanted to be prepared.

As she entered, Belle found that Emma was looking just as despondent as she felt herself.

“Not in the party spirit either, huh?”

Emma looked up guiltily. “Oh. Erm. Hi, Belle.”

“It’s ok, you don’t need to pretend to be happy on my account.”

“I’m glad I’m not the only one who can’t seem to muster up any enthusiasm about the whole thing.” Emma let out a long sigh and waved Belle over to the desk. “So, what’s eating you? I doubt it’s the same thing that’s eating me.”

“It’s Zelena.” Belle leaned against the desk, grimacing as Emma groaned at the mention of the witch. “I know, I know, I want to forget all about her too, but I just can’t. There’s something about her demise that seems too convenient, you know? Even if she did self-destruct like on the video, what happened to her… remains? She must have left some trace behind, but there’s nothing. What if this is just another way for her to cause trouble? Make us think she’s gone for good and then pop up just when we thought we were finally rid of her.”

“I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it myself.” Emma gave a huff of dry laughter. “Your worries are way more valid than mine at the moment; I feel stupid in comparison.”

“I don’t know, everyone has different priorities. What have you been thinking about?”

“It’s this baby. I know that the circumstances can’t be helped, and I know that Mom and Dad went through just as much trauma with this one as they did with me, but that doesn’t stop me being jealous that my brother gets to grow up with both his loving parents and I didn’t. I don’t think it’s even jealousy, really. Now that he’s here I just don’t understand my place in this world anymore. I had a life in New York, and it was really good, even if it wasn’t real. And now Neal’s gone, and I just think that maybe it would be better if I went back and bowed out.” She sighed. “Like I said, compared to fears of wicked witches rising from the grave, it’s fairly petty, but I can’t help it.”

“I think it’s perfectly valid for you to have mixed feelings about the whole thing. These are very strange times that we’ve found ourselves in, and we have to make the best of it. All the same, I think that your parents would be devastated if you were to leave Storybrooke. They still love you and care for you, but naturally they’re going to show it in a different way to you than they show it to the baby.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I can feed and dress myself and articulate my feelings, for one. I guess that we’ve been separated so many times that it feels normal to anticipate another separation. I don’t want it, and I know that they don’t want it either, but sometimes we don’t get what we want.”

“Maybe you need to think about it in a different way. If we hadn’t all had to go back to the Enchanted Forest and you hadn’t had to go to New York, you would have stayed in Storybrooke, and put roots down here, and this second pregnancy would probably have happened anyway. You wouldn’t have left then, because you would have had the time to get used to it.”

Emma nodded. “Yeah, even back in Neverland, Mom was saying that she wanted to have another baby. I guess it was kind of inevitable. It’s just going to take time to get to grips with the idea of having a sibling thirty years my junior. We have a weird family tree.”

“I can’t argue with you there, but then my fiancé’s over three hundred years old so I don’t think I have a leg to stand on.”

“Fiancé, huh?” Emma grinned. “When did that happen?”

“Last night. I guess that’s why I’m so worried about Zelena.”

“Yes, right, we were talking about the possibility of more calamitous happenings, not bemoaning my state of adult childhood.”

“It’s ok, I can tell that you really needed to get it off your chest. I don’t know if I’m qualified to give advice, but I hope I’ve helped in some way.”

“Yes, I think you have. It’s good to talk to someone about it. I didn’t really feel like I could go to anyone else about it because it just felt mean when everyone’s so relieved that the little one’s ok. I hope they name him soon; I can’t keep calling him Little Brother.”

Belle failed to hold back a laugh, and Emma joined her in giggles.

“Anyway, how’s Gold holding up?” she asked once composure had returned.

“All right, I think. I don’t know. He doesn’t want to talk about it, which makes me think that he probably should talk about it, but it’s not my place to force him to confront these things if he doesn’t feel up to it yet. I just want to make sure that he’s safe.”

“I know that feeling. I’m just not sure what we can do about it. Coming to think of it, it would probably be a good idea to grab Zelena’s pendant from the barn. I can’t believe that I forgot to pick it up. Of all the things that might prove useful if she was trying to return, the source of all her power is probably up there on the list.”

“That sounds like a plan.”

Belle followed Emma out of the station towards the yellow bug, and Emma paused before unlocking it.

“Are you sure that you want to come along?” she said. “If Zelena is up to her tricks again, then…”

“Then I would very much like to be there to smack her round the face,” Belle said. Emma’s eyes widened at her words and she opened the passenger door, gesturing for Belle to get in.

“You know, over the last few days I’ve really learned to appreciate your gumption,” she said. “I guess because you weren’t around during the curse and I never really got the chance to get to know you afterwards, I tend to think of you and Rumpel as a pair.”

“A lot of people make that mistake.” Belle sighed. “I am my own person, I always have been, and I’m so sick of everyone measuring my worth in relation to me being with Rumpel. I’m not a person to them, I’m just a pawn that they can use to get back at him. Why do you think I was locked up under the hospital throughout the first curse? It wasn’t anything I’d done to warrant that, oh no. Regina just wanted to make sure she had a bargaining chip in case she ever needed to get one over on Rumpel.”

“I’m sorry, Belle. I really am.”

“It’s all right. It’s not as if you knew I was down there.”

“Yeah, but if I had then I would have tried to get you out.”

Belle smiled. “I know you would. That’s why you’re the saviour.”

“Please don’t call me that. I don’t feel particularly saviour-like at the moment. Not even my normal superpowers are working at the moment. I can’t help feeling like all this can be traced back to Greg. If I’d known straight away that he was lying and here for nefarious purposes, then we never would have gone to Neverland, never would have accidentally unleashed Pan on the town; you guys would never have gone back to the Enchanted Forest, and we could have avoided all this pain and heartbreak.”

“It’s not your fault, Emma. Things are just miserable sometimes. Even now, when we ought to be happy that everything’s over, neither of us really are.”

It was strange to be having this conversation with Emma. They had never really interacted before outside of Emma needing Belle’s expertise for something, and it was nice to get to know each other as people, with no hidden agenda in the background waiting to strike. Belle was about to make some comment to keep the chatter flowing, but before she could do so, they had rounded the corner that brought them onto the barn road, and the words died in her throat.

“Well, that certainly does not look good.” Emma glanced over at Belle and then looked back through the windscreen at the pillar of raw magic that was shooting out of the top of the barn. It was the colour of flame, swirling like molten lava, and Belle knew that whatever type of spell it was, it was something incredibly powerful. She had never paid all that much attention when Rumpel had been brewing potions and inventing spells up in his laboratory; she was interested in the magic that he allowed her to see but had learned not to question the secretive things.

If this was related to Zelena’s attempt to break the laws of magic and turn back time, then it was something that no magician had ever attempted to control before.

Emma continued up the lane towards the barn a little way until the bug’s engine gave out with a splutter.

“Magic and technology don’t mix,” Belle said. “Rumpel’s warned me about it before. The stronger the spell, the more widespread and potent its affects.”

They got out of the car and made their way towards the barn on foot. As they got closer, the roar of the magic grew louder and louder until they had to shout to make themselves heard over the din.

“Ok, whatever this is, I really think that we’re going to need back-up!” Emma yelled. “How are you supposed to switch this thing off? Belle, I really think that you ought to wait in the car.”

“And let you be blown to smithereens by whatever this is? Not likely!”

Emma wrenched the barn door open and was almost blown away by the force of the magic that was spiralling inside. Holding on tight to the frame, she peered inside. Belle followed her lead.

The spell was coming from a circle marked out in the dirt floor, with four points facing along compass lines. There in the centre, fuelling the magic, was Zelena’s pendant.

“I knew it was too good to be true!” Emma groaned. “Why does this always happen just when we think that everything’s solved?”

“Magic’s a law unto itself. If that’s what I think it is, then we want to get as far away from it as possible.”

“Yeah, I don’t exactly feel very safe here,” Emma agreed. “It looks like a bean portal but going up instead of down.”

“It’s a portal through time and space, rather than just space,” Belle explained. “Come on, let’s get out of here before something happens. It looks really unstable. Maybe if we leave it alone it might burn itself out.”

“Yeah, I have a whole new appreciation of your proxy knowledge of magic now.”

Emma let go of the doorframe and took a step away, back towards the car, and in that moment, time seemed to slow down to a crawl. Emma was moving away, and a tendril of lava-like magic pulsed out from the portal, snaking itself around her ankle. The portal was not going to stop until someone had gone through it.

“Belle!”

Belle grabbed Emma’s hand, but the force of the portal was too much for the both of them, and she felt herself being ripped away from the door where she was holding on for dear life. Her fingers could take no more, and she let go.

But she did not let go of Emma. Whatever might befall them at the other end of this journey, she wasn’t going to leave Emma to go through it alone, and Belle clung to her hand as they were both pulled into the swirling golden vortex and shot into the past.

[goron-king-darunia]

Another Dream Journal because this one was weird enough for me to remember long enough to type out.

So, I had the strangest dream involving Dragon Maid and DotNW. Torhu was this wild dragon (who, it turns out, is a girl being parasitized by some sort of curse that forces her to either eat people or pass the parasite on to a new host. I forget the exact word for the curse, but it was a single word curse that basically meant “I actively invite you to distrust me, and because of this mutual distrust we are friends.” Part of the curse relied on infecting young maidens by the power of song. I can’t remember the words, only the melody. Also basically every infected girl looked like a magical girl for some reason except for the real Torhu (when her dragon form melted away, she was the humanoid Torhu, and then after that, the human form melted away into a very frail young girl with dark hair who was crying and weakly singing the curse song.))

 DotNW comes in because I’m apparently in charge of some sort of detective agency and Richter and Emil are part of it. We were charged with finding someone’s daughter after she had been lost at this huge fair in town. I had to hijack a firetruck at one point and for some reason it was way harder to steer than a normal car. It was like trying to drive one of those old bumper cars where the steering column is sticky and you have to turn three times harder for the same effect. I don’t remember why I needed to do this, only that I did it and bumped a lot of people because I didn’t know how to turn on the damn sirens. Anyway, we put on clothes for the service people at the event and ran around everywhere looking for this girl who may or may not have been Real Torhu. At the end of a huge search of what my brain translates as a fairground styled after Spirited Away, we finally see a girl resembling Seles (Zelos Wilder’s Sister) singing what I can only describe as a very slow and sad version of “Fun and Laughter” from Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumber Land. At least I think that’s what it’s called. I can’t find anything lyric wise online to confirm this. Apparently the movie WASN’T POPULAR. Anyway, so we see her singing this song in a dark alley and a girl walks up in a daze, and we watch them walk off hand-in-hand and we’re like “Well, that’s it, then! Someone is hypnotizing young girls, and if we follow them, we’ll find the one we’re looking for and probably a bunch of innocent girls that need help!” Then a bunch of shady men come up and tell us it’s no use. The song is part of the “Distrust” curse that was part of a sort of tourist trap gone wrong. The dragon and the distrust it inspired was originally planned to lure people in. Everyone wants to see a dragon after all and the “distrust” has a net positive effect because “human curiosity is so intense that we want to know more about the things we’re wary about.” Then they found out that the “dragon” is a parasite that needs a human host and basically self-cannibalizes if it can’t get one. So, regrettably, in order to keep the dragon and tourist trap alive, they’ve been allowing it to take girls from the village. It had been sustainable for a while. Maiden sacrifice sounds barbaric but since the maiden didn’t really die, people just participated because they thought it was all theatrics. The girls that come back don’t really remember being the dragon, but they also don’t remember that it’s EXCRUCIATINGLY PAINFUL to be the dragon, so they’re basically sending girls off to be tortured for a few years at a time. However, things started getting out of control, the dragon started taking more hosts without permission, and they stopped coming back. (The parasite itself seems to dictate how long a particular host will be the “dragon.”) So we’re all obviously like “What the fuck?” and Richter and Emil are in really colorful and ridiculous maid dresses for some reason (I’m dressed as wait staff to get into the kitchens because I had the brilliant thought that “Young children are always lured in by the promises of food and candy so a missing kid might be in the kitchens somewhere?” I guess Emil and Richter had the idea that “If we look like the things being hunted by the mysterious outside force, maybe they’ll pick us up for their nefarious purposes too?” Like, nice logic, but you’re adult men, so, like, no? XD) Richter is carrying Emil bridal style, too, for whatever reason? Anyway so we turn to these guys and we’re obviously like “What the fuck? Why are you letting this happen? Just let the parasite eat itself.” And they’re like “Well, at first we didn’t know it hurt to be the dragon, and it was an effective tourist trap so we didn’t stop because money and also what harm was it doing? But then when we realized maybe this wasn’t ethical and tried to shut it down things went CRAZY. The parasite is even more desperate without a host, and thus more… persuasive with how it lures in a new host. It’s also much less picky about who it takes and the one time it got a non-human host, the entire island we were set up on was destroyed so, yeah, we have no idea how to make it not do that.” And then the oldest of these shady dudes who knows all the lore and stuff is like “Well, actually, the WORD “TK” (Using TK because I can’t remember what word they used for the word “Distrust” in the Distrust Curse.) actually has an antonym. “TK2” Which basically means cowardice.” “How is that an antonym?” “Don’t ask me, I’m a historian, not a linguist. All I know is that both words are always used in an opposing context and that those are their closest definitions. My best guess is that this parasite can only be killed by a… well a complete coward. Because if you think about it, a coward hasn’t a single shred of curiosity. He has no hope of winning, he has no desire to learn more. He just wants the bad thing to go away, right? So a coward won’t be persuaded by demands or songs or anything. He’d be too scared to do anything at all, much less what the dragon wants.” And we just… all stare at Emil. And then I woke up, so I don’t know if it would have worked or not but I feel like I went to another universe and it was wild. This is also one of the RARE times Richter ACTUALLY showed up in a dream without me putting him there. So it was great.