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novantinuum · 4 years

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Novantinuum’s SU fic masterpost

I saw a mutual do this, (and please go check out mimik-u’s fic masterpost, she makes lovely stuff), and thought it was a brilliant idea for ease of access on tumblr. So, without further ado:

Crack the Paragon series:

My largest fic project. Currently well over 60,000 words. ‘Tis a canon-divergent AU branching off from the episode Bismuth, wherein old secrets are accidentally revealed two seasons early, and Steven’s world is heavily shaken by these revelations. The second and third stories are one-shots set in between specific chapters of the main fic.

Crack the Paragon (AO3, 13/40 chapters, 59K words)

In another world, he doesn't have his mother's sword or shield to hide behind when Bismuth lands her strike. The bubble pops.

Steven falls apart.

Everything is Different Now (AO3, one-shot, 1K words)

After her unfortunate exile, Bismuth returns to her forge to work, and to reflect on her mistakes.

Seeing Pink (AO3, one-shot, 2.4K words)

Following a video call with Connie, Steven reacts to the discovery that... his eyes aren’t always human anymore.

Multi-chapter:

All but the first two of these stories are actually included amidst my ongoing Brandishing the Star series, but I’m placing them here since they’re all more than one chapter.

Hollowed Moon (AO3, 14 chapters, 8K)

[DISCONTINUED]

Stevonnie doesn't crash the Star Skipper onto that jungle moon. Instead, they crash on a craggy fragment of rock suspended thousands of miles away from its associated colony, long forgotten.

On that lonely hunk of rock is a domed garden.

And standing in that garden, just as lifeless seeming as the rest of it, is a pink Gem.

Misalignment (AO3, 17/? chapters, 11.8K~ words)

His family’s not present the third time he runs away... They never see the creature he becomes.

Early corruption AU.

(AN: Contains a brief sequence of body horror in the first chapter.)

Contact (AO3, 4 chapters, 16K words)

The first (and with any luck, only) time it happens, he’s almost 16.

(AN: Major character injury to Steven + eventual healing.)

Second Skin (AO3, 10/12 chapters, 6.4K words)

Steven can’t help but dread the undefined cocktail of emotions that trigger this newest power...

12 shorts, each delving into Steven’s developing opinions and feelings about his “pink mode” in SUF.

(AN: Deals with delicate topics such as self-hatred and intrusive thoughts.)

Oceans (AO3, 6 chapters, 5.3K words)

A series of shorts detailing what might've happened in the moments after I Am My Monster, told from six different points of view.

Intake (AO3, 2 chapters, 6.4K words)

Steven fills out an important form.

(AN: Some Steven and Greg bonding in the second chapter of this one. Deals with topics such as therapy, depression, and mental illness in general.)

Brandishing the Star one-shots:

All of the stories in this series are standalone, and were written to be canon compliant when I originally made them. Two of them aren’t anymore after SUF, but oh well! XP

(See more under cut.)

Tipping Point (AO3, 1.1K words)

Garnet helps remind Rose of what she’s fighting for.

New Star (AO3, 1.3K words)

Organic life is a fragile, fickle thing. This much is true. What's also true is how the death and resurrection of a humble lion was enough to make Rose Quartz re-conceptualize everything.

On the Origin of Hybrids (AO3, 1.6K words)

The question— incomplete, and yet bursting with long-held curiosity— emerges from thin air while Greg’s about to tuck Steven into bed in the back of the van one night.

In retrospect, no parenting book could’ve ever prepared him for this one.

His Shield (AO3, 300~ words)

Greg attempts to comfort his son during a thunderstorm.

Donut Debrief (AO3, 1.5K words)

Two days after their disastrous island adventure, Sadie and Steven talk about regrets, making amends, and discover something they have in common with each other.

Autumn Bliss (AO3, ~550 words)

Is there any better way to spend a crisp autumn day than playing around in piles of leaves?

Written for Connvember, day 1.

Alienation (AO3, 1.1K words)

“But... I’m human,” he whispers to himself, the words tasting more like a desperate plea for belief on his tongue. “Or at least, part human. Right?”

An awkward interaction with his dad and Connie leads Steven to realize that he's now too Gem to all the humans in his life.

Ramen Soup For the Soul (AO3, 250~ words)

Steven and Connie noisily slurp some soup at the dinner table.

Creative Outlet (AO3, 800~ words)

“Log date, 7 14 9.

“Today, the hybrid creature Steven attempted to further secure my loyalty by introducing me to a concept he calls... ‘music.’”

Taste of Ordinary (AO3, 5.4K words)

When a much needed moonlight conversation with his best friend turns into an attempted (and failed) "spring break" from all his responsibilities as a half-Gem, Steven finally comes to terms with the full truth of his heritage and all six thousand years of its consequences.

Takes place between The Question and Made of Honor.

(AN: Originally planned to be 3 chapters, but discontinued. IMO the first chapter still stands decently well as its own thing, though.)

Ballroom Etiquette (AO3, 2.8K words)

In which Steven is publicly introduced to the Gems of Homeworld as Pink Diamond, and he experiences the first true stage fright of his life.

Finally Free (AO3, 1.6K words)

Lapis genuinely doesn’t know how many hours (Days? Months? Years?) have passed when light finally graces her eyes once again.

Vulnerable (AO3, 700~ words)

Three words.

Three little words, and the intergalactic conflict he‘d been training his whole childhood to defend against was over.

But the hurt... he's not sure the hurt will ever go away.

Cycles (AO3, 1.2K words)

Amidst their danger-fraught mission to retrieve Pyrope and Demantoid's prisms, Pearl and Steven take a much needed break.

Fifteen (AO3, 1.6K words)

Every year, on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, Pearl runs away.

Freedom to Dance (AO3, 350~ words)

Stevonnie celebrates the first anniversary of Era 3 with their friends and reflects on how Homeworld has already changed.

Stardust (AO3, 600~ words)

White Diamond is testing out new terms of endearment. But no matter White’s intention with this little nickname, Steven doesn’t want it.

Bi the Way... (AO3, 2.8K words)

Connie has a question, and also something to say.

(AN: Not canon compliant now, ahah, since this fic assumes Steven and Connie are dating after the movie, and this doesn’t seem to be the case in SUF.)

The Shatter Wish (AO3, 1K words)

You’re 16 years and 2 months old (give or take a few days) when you finally realize you want to die.

(Steven's POV, second person)

(AN: This fic deals with delicate topics like depression and suicidal thoughts.)

Errands (AO3, 3K words)

Steven has an endless stream of items on his to-do list, so many that he often forgets to properly take care of himself in between.

Sneaking off into the woods on the daily to vent out his repressed emotions is merely one of them.

(AN: Not canon compliant now.)

The Brother on the Other Side (AO3, 2.9K words)

Lars has no idea what he was expecting the moment Steven texted him in the middle of the night to ask if he could come over, but being immediately tackled in an intense vice-grip of a hug the second he opened the door probably wasn’t it.

Like Clockwork (AO3, 500~ words)

Connie's got mountains of studying to do.

(It's not just an excuse to avoid reminders of old traumas, of course it's not! Everything's fine.)

Fight the Future (AO3, 3.6K words)

She’s poofed, he repeats to himself like a dying man’s mantra. She’s poofed. She’s stuck in the rubble, but she’s only poofed. She’s fine, and I’m fine, a-and—

Above the scars of Steven's wreckage, thunder claps like mighty titans colliding in the heavens.

(Or: what happens in the moments after Steven and Jasper's rematch.)

(AN: There’s kinda some sanity slippage here, as well as general mental unwellness.)

A Memoir of the Marks Unseen (AO3, 6.7K words)

Steven’s messy self-corruption has scarred him in a manner that transcends the mere physical.

Battling through suffocating waves of self-loathing and relapse, the path towards healing and acceptance is set to be his most challenging venture yet… but in a unexpected twist of fate, he eventually comes to find a cathartic solace in the tangible marks left behind.

(AN: Deals with delicate topics such as depression, and also contains light body horror.)

Ticklish (AO3, 2.6K words)

In which Connie’s subconscious, innocent touch helps Steven realize just how nice the sensation of gentle fingertips gliding across the surface of one’s gem can be.

Connverse fluff.

No Escaping the Weather (AO3, 5.7K words)

Amidst an unusually stormy late summer’s day, Steven finally amasses the courage to confide in his dad about one of his greatest traumas.

(AN: Contains flashback sequences and a panic attack.)

(Our) Shadows Before the Dawn (AO3, 950~ words)

It's their nights that are the most difficult.

(AN: Steven and Connie hurt/comfort, post SUF. Deals with delicate topics such as panic attacks.)

Tides of Renewal (AO3, 2.5K words)

Now twenty years old and living on the other side of the country, Steven spends his morning relaxing on the beach, musing about his past, and having a chat with his dad.

(AN: Contains conversation about mental illness and vague allusions to past suicidal thoughts.)

Other one-shots:

Shattering Atlas (AO3, 4.2K words)

A boy can only carry an entire galaxy upon his back for so long before the weight of it all finally becomes too much.

(AN: A speculative one-shot about the “corrupted Steven theory” written pre-SUF. Deals with delicate topics such as depression, and also contains body horror.)

The Price of Freedom (AO3, ~800 words)

Even while sightless, even when she only exists as thin fingers of light rapidly spreading outwards from her gem, Rose can sense that something is deeply, dreadfully wrong.

Written for Whumptober 2020, Day 1: Waking up restrained.

#su #su future #steven universe #su fanfiction #jen rambles

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liquidstar · 3 years

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I'd love to hear some of your recommendations! And I'm good without any content warnings, but since you're posting this for all your followers to see probably best to add them

Alright sure! I’ll be general then and since you’re just starting out this will sort of be bringing up a lot of really popular ones, the really good ones where the general consensus is “you gotta see this!”, but I’ll also try to give ones from different genres so you have a variety of things to pick from, so this isn’t really a list of personal favorites but I’ll throw in a couple of those too lol, but generally think of this as a handy beginners guide with just a little personal bias.

I wrote a lot so I'm gonna put them under the cut here.

Fullmetal Alchemist

Fullmetal Alchemist is a franchise that’s considered a must-watch, it takes place in a world where alchemy is a borderline magical power, but is considered scientific in-universe and follows scientific laws, namely the law of equivalent exchange. Something can’t be made from nothing, to gain something of equal value must be lost. The story follows the story of two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, who at the ages of 10 and 11 committed alchemy’s one and only unforgivable sin, human transmutation, in an attempt to bring their mother back to life. As a result, one brother lost his arm and leg and the other lost his entire body, leaving his soul bound to a suit of armor. However the brothers are resolute to regain their original bodies, and the older brother, Edward, joins the State Alchemists, a branch of the military, to try to gain access to research materials to help them achieve their goal. But was that really such a good idea?

Fullmetal Alchemist can be a bit confusing to get into due to the fact that there are two series: Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009). The latter is a reboot with a different story that follows the original manga. They both have the same beginning, but diverge paths and tell very different stories. My recommendation for how to watch this show is: Watch 2003 first, and Brotherhood second. Everyone has a different opinion about which is better, but everyone agrees that 2003 has better backstory but a contrived ending, and Brotherhood has a rushed beginning (Because it works off the assumption that you’ve seen 2003) with a great and fulfilling ending. If you can’t do both I say just watch Brotherhood because it will leave you more satisfied and you don’t have to watch 03 to get into it.

For both series the biggest trigger warnings are: Parental death, child death, pet death, war, genocide, dismemberment, religious themes, and miscarriage. For brotherhood specifically: on-screen suicide, and for 2003 specifically: rape (not on-screen) and pregnancy from it. The 2003 series is also a lot darker than Brotherhood which has a more optimistic tone, so that’s worth noting too.

Soul Eater

A show I think is incredibly fun, and a good one for an October watch if you wanna save it. It takes place in a world where certain people have the ability to transform into weapons, and they team up with other people who become their meisters. The characters often travel around, but the main setting is Death City, a fictional city in Nevada based off of Las Vegas but with a huge Halloweentown vibe, and a school right at the top of it called the Death Weapon Meister Academy (DWMA) where a bunch of kids that turn into weapons learn how to hunt down witches and kishins (Beings that consume human souls). The school, of course, is run by the grim reaper, Lord Death himself.

Our main characters for the series are a group of 7 students. Our protagonist Maka Albarn and her weapon partner Soul “Eater” Evans, a scythe. A loud mouth assassin named Black✰Star and his weapon partner Tsubaki, who has many weapon forms. And the son of the grim reaper, Death The Kid, and his two weapon partners Liz and Patty Thompson, who are twin pistols. There are also a bunch of really lively colorful background characters and antagonists, and the cast of the show being as insane as it is really makes it, on top of the great atmosphere and of course the plot, which just builds more and more as the series progresses. Also Crona is there and we all love Crona.

Trigger warnings for this show include: Child abuse (Mental and physical), manipulation, snakes and spiders (The motifs of two major villains), some very surreal moments that can verge on unreality. Also, in the dub and most subs: misgendering of a canonically trans character. Crona is a character who is non-binary, but the dub and subs use gendered pronouns for them due to general ignorance about neutral pronouns in 2008, though this isn’t the fault of the original series and falls on the translators hands.

Also it’s important to note: that the first 3 episodes are prologues and they take themselves less seriously, there’s more fanservice in them than there is in the rest of the series (Except for Blair she stays the fanservice character :pensive:)

Zombieland Saga

Idol anime is really prevalent as a genre, the most popular being Love Live, but my personal favorite is Zombieland Saga. It’s an idol anime, but it’s also a comedy about zombie girls who become idols. It sounds ridiculous but there’s an insane amount of heart in it regardless, it wasn’t a show I expected to get emotional at but I did! It also made me laugh a lot too. The series itself can serve as a bit of a subversion on what idols are, not just because they’re literally zombies, but because of who the characters are.

Sakura Minamoto is a character who starts off as a more typical idol, a peppy pure girl, as the series continues her struggle with depression gets highlighted. Saki Nikaido serves as her initial foil, a delinquent girl with a criminal record who subvers the idea of pure perfect idols. Ai Mizuno, a former idol who has since undergone severe trauma (The way she died). Junko Konno who has ideals that seem very different on what idols “should” be due to the time period she died. Lily Hoshikawa, an explicitly transgender idol. Yugiri nolastname, a former high ranking courtesan, subvering the pure image of an idol by being a sex worker. And Tae Yamada, a completely nonverbal idol who’s still treated with the same amount of importance as the rest of the team. The premise here really is just that these girls don’t fit the incredibly rigid mold of what idols should be and yet they still all deserve love and they gain a fanbase by being their earnest selves.

Trigger warnings for this series aren’t incredibly severe but since they’re zombies there’s still talks about death and they way they died (Including motorcycle/car accidents, plane crashes, getting struck by lightning, and a heart attack), there’s also comedic dismemberment, as in their arms just sort of pop on and off and stuff like that. The most notable thing is the deadnaming of Lily, the trans idol, by her father, but it doesn’t appear to be malicious in any way.

Note: this series is in the middle of it’s second season right now, if you want to wait until it’s over it should be 12 episodes long and just aired it’s 3rd, so about 9 more weeks.

Death Note

This is also absolutely another series that gets recommended to people right off the bat, and for good reason, this show is an intricate game of chess between a serial killer and a detective trying to catch him, and it’s incredibly easy to get super invested in the suspense of what happens next. The story begins when a shinigami, a god of death, drops his “Death Note” into the human world out of pure boredom. A Death Note is simply a notebook where if you write someone's name in it… They die! And who better to pick up such a powerful object than Light Yagami, a prodigy praised for his genius and academy accomplishments as well as his charm and popularity, and with a very strong but juvenile black-and-white sense of justice, likely due to being raised by a cop.

So naturally Light begins his power trip as soon as he finds the notebook, he intends to “fix” the world by cleansing it of all the bad people, but truly he intends to become the world’s new god. Or the “God of the new world” as he puts it. But there’s one thing standing in his way, a detective resolute on catching him with the codename L. The series entire crux is a game of cat and mouse between these two, as they try to outsmart each other and the murders continue, Light loses more and more of his humanity, L becomes more resolute on catching him. There are more twists and turns than a cheetah race, and it’s honestly pretty addictive to see what happens next.

Trigger warnings here obviously include a lot of death and murder, including suicide, but in some cases it’s a forced suicide at Light’s hands. Also abuse, as Light loses his humanity he isn’t above manipulating and discarding people who love him. And one instance of near-rape on screen fairly early on, but the purpitrator dies before it happens and the victim escapes.

K-On!

Slice-of-life is an incredibly popular genre, and K-On! is the quintessential example of it. It’s a series that not everyone will like, because not a lot truly happens, and it can be overly saccharine or “moe” for a lot of people, and that’s fine. But I personally think that despite not a lot happening, the story has genuine substance, more than you may gather at first glance. It’s true that not much in the way of big plot really happens, it’s mostly life events, that’s why it's a slice-of-life. But it’s not about nothing. The real theme of the show is the fleeting nature of youth. It’s about how important the friendships you form at that time are, how they’ll stick with you for a lifetime, and how everything comes to an end. It’s sweetness even becomes a little bittersweet because you knew their after school tea time would end come graduation, and as they realize this it breaks their hearts a little, but they continue on, because they’re still After School Tea Time!

The series itself is simply about 5 girls in a band, Yui Hirasawa on lead guitar, Mio Akiyama on the bass, Ritsu Tainaka on the Drums, Tsumugi Kotobuki on the Keyboard, and Azusa Nakano on Rhythm Guitar (Who shows up later). They’re in a club at school called the light music club where they waste a lot of their time just drinking tea and eating cake, but they’re having fun and that’s what counts! The series has a lot of really great direction and expressive animation despite the fact that a lot of it is just sitting around and talking, it’s incredibly visually interesting so you don’t get bored.

I honestly don’t think there are any big trigger warnings I can give for this series, maybe that Sawa-chan can be a little too forceful when she wants to dress up the girls in cute outfits sometimes but it’s usually not presented as too creepy especially after season 1 where they tone it down due to straying from the manga.

Mob Psycho 100

This series is an absolute love letter to the art of animation as a whole, the artstyle itself may not seem like much to look at but the animation is some of the most expressive, fluid, creative, and vibrant out there right now, it’s the type of series that you can tell was made with a real passion for its medium and it’s story. It’s protagonist is Shigeo Kageyama, nicknamed “Mob”, a term that literally means “Background character”. Mob is a middle school kid and an incredibly powerful psychic, like, insanely overpowered, but he’s currently working part time for a shady conman, Reigen Arataka. Though it may seem as if Reigen is just using Mob for his powers, their bond is actually a very sweet one and you can tell they care for each other, it’s a very important one at the heart of the series.

The core themes of the series itself are what really make it shine, it’s message is stated as clearly as possible in the opening songs, “your life is your own” and “if everyone is not special, maybe you can be what you want to be”. Put simply, you’re the protagonist of your own life, but the other important message of the series is that all the supposed background characters are just as important. The friends you make, the connections you have with other people and the way they impact you, they’re what make you strong. No one is born special, everyone is just a normal person, and everyone deserves kindness. It’s a series that I recommend incredibly strongly for just how powerfully it portrays this message.

Trigger warnings for this series include kidnapping, possession, a scene with a “man in a dress” joke, and a racist design for a background character. Also (spoilers) a scene where it seems like a child was murdered and a scene where it seems like Mob’s entire family was murdered.

Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War!

Hey, speaking of amazing animation, Kaguya-Sama is a romantic comedy series centered around the premise of two incredibly arrogant people falling in love. Kaguya Shinomiya and Miyuki Shirogane are the vice president and president of the student council at the prestigious Shuchi'in Academy, they eventually develop feelings for each other but they’re both simultaneously too proud and too insecure to admit it, so the real crux of the series is the 3D chess they play with each other to try and get the other to confess first. Along with the scatterbrained secretary, Chika Fujiawara, the treasurer in desperate need of Prozac Yu Ishigami, the cast is incredibly fun and they all fit into the comedy great. Every single little game of “do you like me?” that they play is written like the most intense thing in the world, the insane animation absolutely adds to it, making it seem almost like a psychological thriller, the comedy comes from the absurdity of just how much they hyperbolize it.

It’s not pure comedy though, due to a lot of the series being set up around mindgames, the characters are actually fairly psychologically complex with a lot of genuine development stemming from their childhood to explain why they are the way they are. The series may be about mindgames, but the actual narrative frames them as a juvenile way to go about relationships, a way to try to protect yourself from getting hurt because you’re afraid to trust. The entire core theme is that communication in relationships of any kind is the most important thing and you cant replace it with clever little tricks, so the main pair only ever make actual progress when they’re actually upfront with each other. Even if it’s scary to be that vulnerable with someone, especially if you’ve been hurt in the past like they have, the relationships you build off of mutual trust and openness will be worth the risk, and they can help heal you. And one of the things I love about the series is that this doesn’t just apply to the main pair, but it places equal emphasis on the importance of friendship. All the characters' relationships with each other are unique and interesting and they all develop the same way, with trust and openness, and they become better because of each other.

Despite being generally a comedy, a lot of the characters deal with some really heavy things too so trigger warning for: child abuse (not on-screen), child abandonment (again not on screen), anxiety and panic attacks, suicidal ideation- initionally played off as a joke but it becomes very obvious the character in question is legitimately suicidal and in the manga he nearly attempts it but is stopped, this plotpoint will most likely be in the anime at some point as it’s also not complete.

Your Lie In April

Alright I gave you a funny show now I’m going to make you cry. In fact it’s hard for me to type this synopsis because I’m an absolute crybaby and thinking about this show gets me, but I think it’s absolutely worth checking out because it’s a very beautiful sadness. Your Lie In April is a series that follows the stress and trauma young musical prodigies face in their lives, as well as the people around them, and it’s a series about the beauty of music and art, and just how much it affects people. The music in the show is absolutely gorgeous, the way that they convey emotion through it is so beautiful and intricate that it just sticks with you. You feel the music, and you understand.

I’m actually going to give the trigger warnings right now instead of at the end because in order to explain the plot I’ll have to talk about them so tw for: Child abuse (phsyical and mental, on-screen), terminal illness, death, in depth depictions of PTSD, vomiting, panic attacks, the works.

The series follows Kousei Arima, a formal piano prodigy who hasn’t performed since the death of his mother two years ago. Kousei's mother was terminally ill, but she was also incredibly abusive. Kousei has incredibly complex feelings about his mother because of this. The trauma she instilled in him is severe, but because he was a child, he still is a child, and he loved his mom a lot, as any child would, and he didn’t want her to die and he blames himself for not being good enough. He wanted to make her happy, and the only way he knew how to do that was to play the piano. So he played and played and practiced until he was perfect, they called him the human metronome. But he would still get severely punished for being anything less than perfect. He had lost all the passion he once had, and after his mother died it was the final nail in the coffin, his trauma manifests now in a way that makes him unable to play. But all that changes one day in April when he meets a violinist named Kaori Miyazono, a girl full of life and passion for music, she’s someone who according to Kousei “Exists in springtime.” and she’s going to help him play again and refined that love for music whether he wants to or not! Teen drama happens of course, but there are much bigger roadblocks ahead.

Assassination Classroom

This series is thankfully generally more lighthearted… Most of the time at least. The premise is pretty simple, but incredibly ridiculous. An incredibly powerful octopus-like creature is the teacher of a classroom of middle school students tasked with the assignment of assassinating him in order to save the world. The series starts off very slice-of-life as it focuses on introducing the very large cast of characters inside of Class E, also known as the “end class”, but it quickly gains traction and gets a lot more intense as time goes on.

The octopus creature in question, Korosensei, is actually a very kind and genuinely good teacher to all his students. The real crux of the series is that it’s sort of a critique on the educational system, the students in the end class are there because they’ve been ostracized from the rest of the campus, far away in the mountains, to be made examples of. Why? Because they’re students that are considered worthless, instead of getting help they’re only pushed back further down in the system and left to struggle within it fruitlessly. They’re given up on, despite being children with so much potential, because they don’t fit a very rigid mold. That’s what Korosensei wants to help them with, and they’re able to grow as people together. As the series progresses you feel such a great sense of unity for the class, they’re like a family, they stick together and it’s very heartwarming. And watching them work as a team of assassins is so fun!

However the series can get heavy at times too, it doesn’t stray from heavier subject matter at all and i found myself incredibly shocked by it a few times, so trigger warning for: Child abuse (on-screen and off), both at the hands of a parent and a teacher and in one case a parent who is also the principal, misgendering of a character, sometimes as a “joke” but other times played dead serious at the hands of his mother, child death- specifically suicide, a successful one as well as 3 assassination attempts that doubled as suicide attempts by the main 3 characters (weird parallel they all got there huh)

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Honestly this is a series that is good to go in blind for if you need to tws, it’s a deconstruction of the magical girl genre, but if you don’t want to know more than that you can stop reading here. If you want to know more, it’s a series that starts off very light-hearted and in tune with typical magical girl conventions at first, however by episode 3 it’s made painfully clear that these girls are being led to sign up into something they shouldn’t. It’s heavy, though not incredibly so, but it’s also a lot to explain in a summary. Madoka magica is… It’s Faust with magical girls.

I’ll explain as much as I can without giving too much away. The story begins when Madoka Kaname and her friend Sayaka Miki encounter a creature who calls itself Kyubey, who says it can grant a wish of theirs and in exchange they have to become magical girls and fight witches. Both the girls are hesitant, but Sayaka wants to wish for her childhood friend’s injuries to be cured so he can play violin again, while Madoka is content as she is and can’t think of a wish. Luckily they have a mentor, a magical girl named Mami Tomoe who helps introduce them to everything. However something is stopping Madoka from becoming a magical girl, a mysterious new student who is also one herself, Homura Akemi, is resolute on keeping Madoka from becoming a magical girl by all means possible, for reasons Madoka doesn’t understand. Things get even more complicated when a rival magical girl shows up, Kyoko Sakura, who becomes Sayaka’s new rival. As things get more heated between those two they discover a terrible secret about the nature of magical girls, and what they truly signed up for.

Spoilers ahead but trigger warning for: Child death, parental death (backstory only), decapitation (off-screen), needles, incredibly surreal imagery inside the witch’s labyrinths that may feel unreal, mind control, suicide, depression and despair expressed by young characters. Also don't bother with Magia Record

The Disastrous Life Of Saiki K.

Alright something lighthearted now, there are a lot of comedy anime I enjoy, a lot of series that have made me laugh, but none has made me bust a gut like this series has, it’s absolutely hilarious. It follows the life of a boy named Saiki Kusuo who has psychic powers. His powers are incredibly overpowered, and he absolutely hates them, in his eyes they cause him nothing but trouble. There’s not much in the way of a plot to describe, because there isn’t any, the series is comprised of 5 minute segments surrounding Saiki and an incredibly vast and colorful cast of characters that are just all completely insane, many serve as parodies as types of anime tropes because the series as a whole is very self aware and doesn’t shy from breaking the fourth wall a lot, but the characters surrounding Saiki are what make his life… Disastrous.

Like I said there’s not really a plot to describe but like FMA people may get confused with this one, there are 3 seasons but one of them is titled “The Disastrous Life Of Saiki K: Reawakened” as is a continuation of the first two with just 6 episodes in it. Also for some reason only the second season isn’t dubbed so if you’re planning on watching it that way you’d have to either stop or switch to subs for season 2

The only major tw I can give here is an ongoing joke about a character being into his sister, he’s treated as disgusting for it of course because he’s a parody of that trope but that doesn’t make it any less uncomfortable, luckily he doesn’t show up much.

Little Witch Academia

Little Witch Academia is a series I personally just adore, it takes place in a world where witches are common and well-known among the people, but the era of witches is over and magic is dying out. However that doesn’t mean passion of magic doesn’t exist, the protagonist is a young girl named Atsuko Kagari, or Akko for short. She’s resolute on being just like her icon, a witch known as Shiny Chariot, as she attends the same magic school: Luna Nova! Unfortunately Akko isn’t exactly a magical prodigy, in fact she can’t even fly a broom, but that’s not gonna stop her, nothing will. Just like Chariot said, believing in yourself is your magic.

Once at school Akko gets into all types of crazy shenanigans with her with her two roommates, Lotte Yanson and Sucy Manbavaran, and occasionally her rival, Diana Cavendish. Akko still struggles a lot in school, in fact her inability with magic is pretty explicitly handled as a metaphor for a learning disability, and though this makes it harder for her she’s still resolute. Though the series is generally episodic, a concrete plot starts to form by the second core. Along with the help of her guidance counselor, Professor Ursula, Akko learns that she needs to unlock 7 “words” to bring magic back to the world, each time she learns a new one it comes with an important lesson to her and ultimately relates back to each of the core themes of the series

The series is pretty lighthearted so the biggest trigger warning I can give is one for bullying, two characters in particular tend to target Akko for not being a good witch and it can really sting to watch. Other than that none come to mind

#if you want stuff out of a more specific genre i can give a list of those too but this is like. general

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gigslist · 3 years

Text

34+ Voiceover Roles & 3 Musician Open Calls - Work From Home - Paid

'F*cking Sober' Podcast

22 + Roles

3 Open Calls for Musicians With Their Own Music

PAID WORK FROM HOME NON UNION

Deadline : September 15, 2021 2:00 PM

Somehow9am Productions // F*cking Sober: the first 90 days Podcast

Katie Mack, coord.

:"A call for artists in recovery for the 2nd Season of The Webby Award Winning Podcast Series 'F*cking Sober: the first 90 days.' We are looking for voice over talent and musicians/music producers for 'FS: Shadai.' 'F*cking Sober' is a semi-comedic mostly non-fictional narrative podcast following Shadai’s first 90 days of getting sober. Thirty-five year old Shadai is the black, queer, strong female in advertising— so what if she keeps shots in her bra for between meetings, right? But after a shitshow holiday party, a fuzzy cop encounter, and a disaster presentation with the new big account, Dry January doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. Maybe Dry Forever is better. This is what it looks, acts, and feels like to get f*cking sober. This 8 episode serialized show features music by artists with their own story with recovery. F*cking Sober Season 1: Anita has received 15k downloads since it’s release in Nov 2020, and received a 2021 Webby Nomination for Best Limited Series, and a Webby Win for Best Writing for a Podcast. At this time we are only looking to work with artists who have a relationship/understanding of recovery. Please follow instructions for submitting and what to include in the cover letter to be considered! Thank you! Listen to Season 1 to get the vibe: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f-cking-sober-the-first-90-days/id1538804959?i=1000499155627 And check out: www.fckingsoberpodcast.com @fckingsober90_podcast More information about Somehow9am Productions & Katie Mack (Producer): www.somehow9amproductions.com www.mackstage.com"

Roles

Shadai (Voiceover): Female, 18+WORK FROM HOMEproduction states: "Note: We are only accepting submissions from artists who have their own story in recovery, TY! 35 year old, black, queer, cis gender female attorney with a dry sense of humor, who has strong opinions and shares them sometimes, is a powerhouse and knows it all… until… until she doesn’t. Please note your experience with improv/comedy in your cover letter If you have writing experience or are interested in writing please note this in your cover letter. We will be giving writing credits to the right candidate who desires to contribute to the molding of this character."Required Media: Voice Reel

Other Characters (Voiceover): 20-70

"Note: We are only accepting submissions from artists who have their own story in recovery, TY! We are looking for diversity in every sense of the word, from all genders, to ages, to ethnicities, to lived experiences, to food preferences!! In short, we are looking to cast dope, interesting people. Looking to cast various characters through out the S2 Shadai, including but not limited to:

Dad (black, army veteran, a dad’s dad)

Mom (black, hyper critical, the opposite of Shadai)

Dana (any ethnicity, work enemy)

Coco (white, work bestie)

JewBoo aka Therapist (Jewish, confidant, motherly, with a special sense of humor)

Miriam (black, best friend and ex-lover who tells it like it is)

Galen (white, gay, best friend who is warm and caring and pushy)

15 other characters Please note any experience you may have with comedy/improv if any. Please submit your reel along with your cover letter."Required Media: Voice Reel, Cover Letter

Musicians (BIPOC Artists in Recovery) (Voiceover): 18+ music from BIPOC identifying artists.

Musicians (Queer Identifying Artist in Recovery) (Voiceover): 18+ music by Queer Artists.

Musicians (Non-BIPOC/Non-Queer Artists in Recovery) (Voiceover): 18+ music from non-BIPOC or non-Queer Identifying Artists in recovery.

"To be produced over the course of October 2021 - January 2022 Shadai’s commitment is estimated at two hrs/wk. Other characters 30mins. Musicians, all work should already exist. Please be prepared to send stems or stripped down tracks."

Compensation & Union Contract Details

Stipend: $25 - $75Production states: "Shadai (Lead Character), $550 for full season. All Other Characters: $25-$50 per episode. Musicians: $25-$75 per song per episode. Sync license contract."

Seeking talent: Nationwide (United States)

Website:http://www.fckingsoberpodcast.com

======================================

'Rain: Series III'

12 Voiceover Roles

PAID WORK FROM HOME NONUNION

Deadline: September 14, 2021 8:59 PM

JKPRising James Klim, filmmaker

Seeking voiceover talent for "Rain: Series III," a web-series, created in the video game Halo Reach on MCC via Xbox/PC. "This series will have a total of 13 episodes. I have many characters to cast, 12 specifically. If you wish to learn more about the show, you can check out my documentary series regarding the show. You can view the first episode here - www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlzPQvJS3og A little bit about me, I am a freelance filmmaker who actually got into film through making Halo videos as a kid when I was younger. You can check out some of my work here - www.jkprising.com/ I've always wanted to return to my roots & finish a series I was never able to before, but now I have the time to focus on it. This is a paid position. Rates depend on each character as some have more lines than others & vice versa. I am not the wealthiest person in the world, but I will to compensate each voice actor for their performance. My budget per character is between $100 - $300. This again, all varies per character. In this post, there is a video of what the character will look like in the series. I have also attached a single page from a random episode script from the show. The highlighted lines are what the character will say. There will also be non verbal lines highlighted, this is meant to be voiced kind of like an anime, where every movement usually has sounds. Typically, how would you make a sound if you did any of the following, head turn, turns around, surprised gasp, sighs, etc. Since this a paid gig, I am expecting a professional voice audition & if hired, continued professional audio. This means minimum to no background noise. The audio needs to be crisp."

Roles

Chloe Moody (Voiceover): Female, 18-35WORK FROM HOME29. Voice type: English/United Kingdom accent, polite, doesn't get mad often but when she does, she loses it, anxious, low self esteem, hopeful. Chloe Moody used to be a psychiatrist, but after the death of her soon to be husband, she spiraled into insanity. She met someone later on in life named Tom Rains, who looked exactly like her dead boyfriend. She became obsessed with him & tried to get with him, which sunk her further into a deep depression. She finally hit rock bottom, which causes her to seek out help from the very people she used to serve. Chloe meets a psychiatrist named Jennifer, who is able to help herself almost fully recover. Chloe eventually accidently runs back into Tom, which triggers Chloe to try one last time. After a final rejection, Chloe comes to the realization that she is not redeemable & decides to take her own life in front of Tom. Chloe's death, triggers a massive event for Tom Rains, which has massive ramifications for the series. Chloe is a major character and will appear in a couple episodes.Languages:

English

Accents:

British

Australian

Voice Styles:

Soft

Softspoken

Crazy

Compassionate

Sad

Angry

Required Media: Voice Reel

Dark Daryl (Voiceover): Male, 18-40WORK FROM HOME

32, voice type: Very dark presence, evil. sadistic, look at examples like Yami Marik from the Original Yu-Gi-Oh - www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xaa_ycud6o, manic, darkness. Dark Daryl is the darkness of his original persona, Daryl. Daryl accidentally acquired a powerful technology known as an imperium. This caused Daryl to lose himself to it at some point & was taken over by an alternate personality named, The Professor, which caused tons of damage. When Daryl came back to his senses, the damage had been done & others abandoned him, which caused him to grow angry at something that he didn't consciously do. Daryl once again loses himself to the imperium, which turns into Dark Daryl, a representation of all the anger & hatred he endured over the course of his past uncontrollable actions. Dark Daryl is very aggressive, sadistic & wants to destroy the people who wronged him in the past. Eventually, he comes face to face with Daryl & fights to stay as the one who remains in control, even if that means killing Daryl & anyone who gets in his way. Dark Daryl is a character who appears in the second half of the show, & becomes the series main villain. He will appear in many episodes.

Languages:

English

Voice Styles:

Aggressive

Angry

Evil

Commanding

Straightforward

Scary

Dangerous

Intimidating

Demonic

Required Media: Voice Reel

Nikki (Voiceover): Female, 18-35 WORK FROM HOME

25. Voice type: Energetic, passionate, caring, open-minded, loving, positive, independent, fighter. Nikki used to date Tom Rains. She didn't really have much going for her, as she had no ambition at all during that time of her life. After Tom broke up with her, this was quite the shock to Nikki. It caused her to really dive deep within herself & from that moment, she tried to learn more about herself. She discovered a love for storytelling, & so went into journalism. Nikki is now dating Jennifer & they have been together for almost a year. Nikki eventually gets wrapped up in a major conspiracy, which drags many of her friends in with her. She is in for the story of her entire career. Nikki is a major character and will appear in many episodes.

Languages:

English

Voice Styles:

Comforting

Compassionate

Caring

Amusing

Animated

Brave

Heroic

Required Media: Voice Reel

Talent works remotely with professional recording equipment.

Professional Pay: $100 - $300Pays between $100-$300 depending on character.

Nationwide (United States)

Additional Materials

Website: https://www.jkprising.com/

Nikki Audition.pdf - https://d26oc3sg82pgk3.cloudfront.net/files/media/uploads/casting_call/7f95c65b-ab53-43d3-a66b-9e59d1041acb.pdf

Dark Daryl Audition.pdf - https://d26oc3sg82pgk3.cloudfront.net/files/media/uploads/casting_call/00cfdf46-84c1-4da6-9dee-91c7bcdeed3d.pdf

Chloe Moody Audition.pdf https://d26oc3sg82pgk3.cloudfront.net/files/media/uploads/casting_call/186cbe9e-9c7e-4ce5-bcbe-2407a9dec00b.pdf

#voiceover casting calls #work from home voice over work #music wanted online #jobs for musicians #remote jobs for musicians #music writer jobs #gigs for recovering addicts

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ryttu3k · 3 years

Text

Part 2 of my season 12 reaction posts! Find part 1 (Resolution of the Daleks to Fugitive of the Judoon) here!

Praxeus

Thoughts on Doctor Who - Praxeus!

OKAY FIRST. THANK YOU, SHOW, FOR FIXING A BIG ISSUE I HAD WITH THE FIRST SEASON. So they were doing a thing where they’d introduce incidentally queer characters, have a female character mention her wife, stuff like that, only for them to die. This episode had Jake and Adam, married/separated/it’s complicated couple, who face huge amounts of danger, who both come close to dying, but who survive! And have a Big Damn Kiss! And walk off together holding hands! They survived!!

Plotwise, I enjoyed it a ton while watching, although in retrospect it did feel a bit free of danger. The companions were never in true peril because the Doctor can home in on them automatically, and we never got the true scale of the risk of infection, since the only people we saw get infected were in isolated areas. I would have liked to see, for instance, the threat of Praxeus spreading beyond just the very Hitchcockian birds; all of the peril was on an individual level.

Good message, if unsubtle. Mind you, that’s kind of Doctor Who’s thing, and it pisses off conservatives, so all for it, really XD (They must have loved the core relationship in this episode, too!) Like. Subtle doesn’t work. There are literally climate change deniers that exist. Sometimes you actually do have to tell a message with all the finesse of a sledgehammer because .

(Side note, I was deeply concerned when I saw the cowriter was the guy who did the hot mess that was Kerblam!, so at least this was just an unsubtle and kind of questionably written story instead of an actively harmful one.)

The companions: Ryan seems a fair bit more confident on his own? His initial scenes with Gabriela showed that he’s starting to work well even without backup, and picking up the bird proved to be a damn good call. Yaz and Graham were a fun pair, and Yaz got a lot to do when she and Gabriela (again!) got to explore, and I can definitely understand the conflict between curiosity/doing what’s right and safety when it came to the teleport scene. She does seem to be bordering on the reckless. Intriguing!

Minor plot snag - Graham knows how to set up an IV, presumably because of the shitload of time he spent in hospital! …And yet he doesn’t know what a pathogen is?

Friend note!

“fun fact about graham seemingly not knowing what a pathogen is! in my reading of the scene, i saw it as graham knowing what one was. with "Well, I’m glad you asked that…!” he seems like he’s actually sort of pleased with himself, like he’s about to launch into an explanation, and then IIRC there’s a very brief shot at Ryan giving him a Look and Graham immediately changes tone to “…cause I didn’t want to look stupid.” he immediately changes from boosting his own ego to bolstering ryans and im love"

In which case, good shit gooood shit.

SFX - the infection was creepy as shit. The very obviously puppet bird near the lab was hilariously bad.

Apparently the filming was tricky because it was super windy so all the shorts of Thirteen with her hair Like That weren’t planned, it just kind of happened. Love a fluffy ruffled Thirteen.

So anyway. People calling for more plot focus - literally this is the Doctor trying to distract herself and not focus on the plot! This is her avoidance tactic! Emotional honesty? Who’s she? She’ll get back to it eventually, but for now she needs a distraction after being punched in the emotions. Give her that for one episode, c'mon.

Ryan: “…I do a lot of running.”

Graham: “Whatever is giving off those weird readings… is on the other side of that wall!” Yaz: *silently turns scanner around* Graham, not skipping a beat: “…is on the other side of that door!”

Yaz: “I don’t want you to panic, but… we followed one of those things through a teleport and now I think we’re on an alien planet.” Thirteen: “…well, you don’t do things by halves!”

Thirteen: “That’s why you smell of dead bird! I thought you’d changed your shower gel.”

Thirteen: “I’m having half a thought. Ooh, this one tickles!”

Thirteen: “What can I say? I’m a romantic~”

In conclusion, Doctor Who said gay rights.

Can You Hear Me?

Thoughts on Doctor Who - Can You Hear Me?

Trigger warning for discussion of depression and suicide.

You know you're in for a wild ride when iView warns for horror themes instead of science fiction themes.

Overall: at first impression, it felt sort of mashed together? There's 14th century Aleppo, and there's 21st century Sheffield, and there's a deep space station, and there's creepy monsters and dream villains; I do kind of wonder why Zellin targeted a random girl in Aleppo as source for his pet monster, although targeting people like Ryan's best friend makes sense if he's deliberately trying to lure the Doctor to him.

The theme, on the other hand, of mental health resiliance and reaching out, was done incredibly well. Oh yeah there'll be more comments about it - the Guardian described it as 'adventures in Wokeness' - but damn, sometimes you need to hear it. I loved getting more of Yaz' backstory, about being a desperate teenage runaway at the point of being suicidal, and her reunion with the older woman legitimately made me tear up.

But like, goddamn. Her nightmare - she's still hearing that. She's still hearing her sister saying that she should "do it right this time" and that this time she won't call and that no one is coming and holy fuck. God this makes so many of Yaz' scenes incredibly painful in retrospect, knowing that she was at that point only three years before and that she's still dreaming that shit! It makes her recklessness terrifying!

Ryan's nightmare, and his experience with Tibo - it's quite reflective of the Doctor, too. She wasn't there, and Gallifrey burnt. And Ryan is realising this now, and really thinking about the potential future in Orphan 55. I think this is absolutely foreshadowing Ryan leaving at the end of the season (there's been a lot of speculation given Tosin's new TV role), and I think Ryan and Yaz' discussion at the end of the episode was a definite hint in the direction of Ryan choosing to going back to Earth.

Would have really liked Graham, during his talk with the Doctor, to gently remind her that she can talk about her own problems, although I can understand the narrative choice on why she didn't (although, yeah, would have been good for Graham to ask). Because, yeah, if anyone needs a sympathetic ear (...sans fingers) or a shoulder to lean on, it's her!! The entire theme of this episode was like... reaching out. Conquering your fears with the help of others. Sharing your fears to lessen them. Getting help. And the Doctor deliberately... not doing that makes it into an actual Thing that I think is going to seriously be addressed by the end of the season.

It's been such an ongoing theme. A bunch of episodes have started with an obviously depressed Doctor. The Fam has tried to raise the issue multiple times and have discussed it amongst themselves even more. Scenes like Yaz' reaction after being abducted in Spyfall (...which makes her, "I thought I was dead" part even more worrying) and being comforted by Ryan, not the Doctor... her whole reaction to Graham being like, "I'm glad you talked to me but I literally can't do the same in return" - if it's not addressed by the end of this season, it's at least going to have to be an ongoing theme, because it's becoming very deliberate now.

An interesting note: the actor who played Zellin (an immortal manipulator of nightmares) also voiced the Remnants (who were the first to mention the Timeless Child in The Ghost Monument). Coincidence or deliberate?

Assorted thoughts:

"I'm still quite socially awkward." There's socially awkward and there's emotionally repressed... (I saw a description of it on Tumblr as 'weaponised dissociation' and... yeah. And also yikes.) Also the way she was so closed in on herself, basically hugging her arms to her body! On a semi-related note, talking to herself in Aleppo was a bit depressing. Like it's continuing the theme of The Doctor Does Not Like Being Alone.

The finger thing - ew ew ew ew it's in their EARS ewww D:

Stylistic comment: the traditionally-styled animation for the Immortals' game was gorgeous.

"Try not freak out, yeah, but you're on a floating space platform trapped in a gravitational pull between two colliding planets."

"Thanks for lending a helping hand!" Companions just being, "...Doctor p l s."

On an old lore note, loved the callback to Eternals, Guardians, and the Toymaker! On a concerning note, man, the Doctor has so many issues with immortals. They abandoned Jack, there was the punishment they gave the Family of Blood, they had those Issues with Ashildr (from what I've read), now this, an eternal punishment with no chance of redemption, perhaps because she knows what immortality does? Parallels with the Doctor as quasi-immortal too, which Zellin even pointed out.

"You're wrong about humans. They're not pathetic. They're magnificent. They live with their fears, doubts, guilt. They face them down everyday and they prevail. That's not weakness. That's strength. That's what humanity is."

(Contrast: "That's what humanity is." The Doctor isn't human. She's not prevailing against her fears, doubts, and guilt.)

In conclusion, literally everyone but the creepy immortals needs a hug.

The Haunting of Villa Diodati

Thoughts on Doctor Who - The Haunting Of Villa Diodati!

tfw you think you're just going to get a nice spoopy historical and instead get major plot?

Overall impression: Well, Jack is going to be pretty miffed, given that the Doctor had to do precisely what he didn't want to happen - giving the Lone Cyberman what it wanted. To save Shelley, and also to save the future, although that does bring up the question on if the death of one person can rewrite the future, why doesn't that apply to literally everyone? Fletcher the valet and Elise the nurse died too, do their deaths have the same impact? Either way, the Doctor takes the Cyberium for herself - then realises that the Cybermen are inevitable, and returns it. And now she's trying to go and stop them. So... a bit conflicting in the message there, I think.

Yeah. Bit of a Trolley Problem there.

The characters were really fun. I did enjoy seeing Mary's sense of morbidness, but also her kindness and sympathy towards the Cyberman; you can see the foundations of Frankenstein there. I'm seeing some criticism of how Byron was portrayed as a coward, but eh. Nice little callback to Ada. Also I love how one of the rules was 'no one snog Byron'. Put that dirty boy back, you don't know where he's been! Glad Claire realised that too, although historically, she was already pregnant with his daughter at that point (and that didn't go well at all)... Either way. Good display of all these bright young reckless things.

(And yes, they were young. Byron was the eldest at 28. Shelley was 23, Polidori was 20, Mary and Claire were just 18. And while Claire lived to 80 and Mary to her 50s, the three men all died young, too - Byron at 36, Shelley at 29 - yes, from drowning, Polidori at just 25. Also wasn't mentioned that Polidori also created something on that Dark And Stormy Night along with Mary's Frankenstein - he wrote The Vampyre, the first modern vampire story!)

The Lone Cyberman (and I am deliberately using that instead of 'Ashad') - creepy as shit. Not just the whole Frankenstein look, but the way he acted! Not emotionless and blank, but actively manipulative and sadistic! Mary showed empathy and he actively threw it back in her face! I mean, yikes.

House was terrific and also spooky as hell. (Am lowkey miffed that no one went "VIBE CHECK!") The jumbled layout was quite Castrovalva, and I actually really dig that Graham got to see some actual ghosts. Ghostly sandwiches!

I think we got actual confirmation here that Yaz does have feelings for the Doctor? (Bleeding Cool News is pretty sure that it was for Ryan, but... lmao no.) BBCA twitter certainly thinks so!

Claire: "His answers only increase the enigma." Yaz: "I know someone like that." Claire: "This enigmatic person of yours... would you trade them for reliable and dull?" Yaz: "My person's a bit different..."

I MEAN.

(It got deleted. So. There is that.)

Thirteen: "Hmm. Fourteenth... no. Fifteenth century... touch more umami." (Doctor, have you been playing Detroit: Become Human again?)

Mary: "I don't think they're really from the colonies!" Byron: "No, she... is from somewhere much, much stranger." Polidori: "The North."

Thirteen: "YOU HAD ONE JOB."

Cyberman: "You appear courageous. But your vital signs betray a heightened state of anxiety." Thirteen: "Or as I like to call it... Tuesday."

Thirteen: "Yeah, 'cause sometimes this team structure isn't flat. It's mountainous, with me at the summit, in the stratosphere, alone. Left to choose. Save the poet, save the universe. Watch people burn now, or tomorrow. Sometimes even I can't win."

Claire: "You pursued Mrs Doctor without a care for my presence, belittled my thoughts and opinions... and then proceeded to use my person as a human shield." Byron: "...And?" Claire: "And the spell is broken... my lord." Polidori's face: "haha you fucked up dude"

Next week: Shit Hits The Fan.

Ascension of the Cybermen

In lieu of a proper post for Ascension of the Cybermen, here are a list of questions we need an answer for.

Will Graham and Yaz survive, on a giant carrier full of Cybermen?

Who is Brendan, and what is his relevance to the story?

What is the Boundary?

How is Gallifrey in the Boundary?

How was the Master in Gallifrey, and not trapped by the Kasaavin?

Who is Ko Sharmus and why am I getting Yana vibes?

Who is Ashad and what is his story? (And why is his theme such a literal banger?)

Is he an actual Cyberman? Because I'm totally getting this impression he's human in armour?

How did Brendan survive being shot, and why did his non-ageing father and mentor do that?

Why did it look like a chameleon arch?

Is Ethan's tech-savvy just warzone familiarity or something more sinister?

Are there any other large human populations left?

Was I detecting a hint of romantic tension between Graham and Ravio?

What's up with Yaz?

Why did the Cyberium get sent to that time period?

Who or what is this alliance Jack is a part of?

How do the Time Lords and the lie of the Timeless Child come into it?

WHO THE FUCK IS BRENDAN?

The Timeless Children

WELL THEN.

While I gather proper thoughts on The Timeless Children, here are the questions I had from Ascension of the Cybermen, now with answers!

Will Graham and Yaz survive, on a giant carrier full of Cybermen?

Yup! Disguises for the win!

Who is Brendan, and what is his relevance to the story?

Brendan is a filtered overlay memory of one of the Doctor's former lives.

What is the Boundary?

An anomaly, as far as I can tell.

How is Gallifrey in the Boundary?

No idea!

How was the Master in Gallifrey, and not trapped by the Kasaavin?

No idea!

Who is Ko Sharmus and why am I getting Yana vibes?

A big damn hero.

Who is Ashad and what is his story? (And why is his theme such a literal banger?)

We're still not actually sure. Either way, he's an action figure now.

Is he an actual Cyberman? Because I'm totally getting this impression he's human in armour?

Yeah, sort of.

How did Brendan survive being shot, and why did his non-ageing father and mentor do that?

Because Time Lords.

Why did it look like a chameleon arch?

It's probably related technology! If the chameleon arch rewrites memories, this one just wipes them.

Is Ethan's tech-savvy just warzone familiarity or something more sinister?

Just warzone familiarity. Poor li'l bean.

Are there any other large human populations left?

Possibly! If the Boundary really did send them to random places, there still could be surviving pockets elsewhere in the universe.

Was I detecting a hint of romantic tension between Graham and Ravio?

Maybe a bit XD And now they're all on Earth, who knows?

What's up with Yaz?

Who knows?

Why did the Cyberium get sent to that time period?

Ko Sharmus sent it. Didn't send it far enough.

Who or what is this alliance Jack is a part of?

Same organisation Ko Sharmus is part of. Also, young!Ko Sharmus/Jack please.

How do the Time Lords and the lie of the Timeless Child come into it?

In so many ways.

WHO THE FUCK IS BRENDAN?

The Doctor!

More thoughts later!

Thoughts on Doctor Who - The Timeless Children.

...Actually, first thought is the title. Timeless Children? Hmm.

Anyway. That is... sure a literally mind-blowing revelation for the Doctor, yes! Like, damn, the discovery that you're not even the species you thought you were, that your adoptive parent spent lifetimes abusing and experimenting on you, that your memories were routinely erased by people you thought you could trust (including your adoptive parent), that you're literally the progenitor for your entire species, that you've lost who knows how much time and who knows how many memories... yeah. Damn.

What's an appropriate birthday present for someone turning ten million?

Also, huh. Amidst all the old lore and casual mentions (like Borusa!) that got mentioned - were they taking hints from the Cartmel master plan? About the Doctor being some kind of founding figure for Gallifrey? Not exactly written as Cartmel had it, but that big main concept of the Doctor as a sort of... foundation piece of Time Lord culture was still actually there.

Brain of Morbius Doctors confirmed, I guess. I guess even Four was going, "...the fuck?"

Cybermen = still scary. Regenerating Cybermen = felt somehow obscene. Like, no, that's just fundamentally not right. Like the TARDIS responding to Jack by noping the fuck out kind of not right. God. And the Master was completely and utterly magnificently batshit, like, more than usual, come on, dude, you know they'd kill or convert you the second you turned your back.

Still. Deeply, deeply entertaining to watch just from a villain perspective, completely Chaotic, and like... I do understand where he was coming from? His entire life is a lie. His entire life is because of the Doctor, who, I think it's fair to say, he has Complicated Feelings regarding. (Their entire interaction this episode was a giant power play. Like damn guys just get into BDSM and leave the would-be genocide and universal takeover.)

Tecteun = Rassilon, I'm assuming. Goddamn. Like they were a pompous abusive asshole from the outset, this just kind of makes it worse. I also wonder if Rassilon chose the Master specifically to get the drums because he was friends with the Doctor? That actually may have been something the Master worked out himself, too. I mean, I'd be pissed off as well :-\

Also, how many people know about this? I assume Gat knew, since she was implied to be responsible for the mind wipes, but was it like... a super tightly-held secret or was it something a lot of higher-ups knew? Because that's fucked up tbh

Thought on the Master. Okay, he's hugely furious that he's been lied to, that the entire origin of his people is based on a lie, that his greatest friendrivalloveenemy is incredibly special and that a part of her is in him and not in the fun way, but like... I'm also wondering if he's looking at the Time Lords, the way they turned him into their puppet, how they drove him insane for their own purposes, then looked at the Doctor - someone who has also been used, abused, experimented on, manipulated, controlled, and went, "No. This is an injustice and the Time Lords need to be punished for it."

Oh, saw a nice theory regarding the TARDISes - Ruth!Doctor had the original busted police box TARDIS. When she was eventually taken in to be mind-erased, they sent the TARDIS off to storage to be eventually repaired. The Doctor manages to steal that one, goes to Earth, and it immediately gets stuck again because it's still broken. Explains how Ruth!Doctor can have the police box while also being pre-everything.

I really want the Doctor and Jack to sit down and have a nice chat about being timeless undying constants of the universe. Also for Jack to get one of the spare TARDISes around. Be kinda funny if he got the Master's old one, given the Year That Never Was, but it really is just sitting there. (Poor TARDIS stuck as a tree on a random wartorn planet in the far future, though!)

Also, Jodie was fucking magnificent in this episode. The hurt, the absolute fury, the almost glee when she's telling the Master he can't break her, her refusal to press the button at the end (so much like Nine's "coward or killer?" moment!)... just... so good.

Beautiful post I saw here on Tumblr - the Doctor as the Timeless Child, making the choice to help.

Amazing post here on Tumblr about abuse and repressed memories. Even if the Doctor doesn't remember it all, the abuse they underwent at the hands of a beloved parent figure still informs a hell of a lot of their behaviour, but it doesn't define them. The Doctor's need to run = informed by abuse. The Doctor's desire to help crying children = informed by abuse. The Doctor being an inherently good person = being their own person, no matter what their upbringing, no matter what their past was. They made the choice to be the Doctor, and that's a hell of an important thing.

Extremely painful post I saw on Tumblr about the Doctor being 'hip with the kids' by calling her companions her Fam but hell if they're not more family to her than her actual adoptive mother ow my heart.

Also, the scene between Yaz and Graham was so sweet <3 I do want to see Yaz, at some point, admit that sometimes she's so terrified she can barely move, and to tell him what she came so close to doing when she was sixteen, and Graham to just go, "Yeah, but you keep going." Also I'm trying not to think about how Yaz would respond to the Doctor going off on a suicide mission when Yaz was suicidal just three years earlier because ow my heart. She knows that Ko Sharmus went after her, she knows the Doctor might be alive, but either way, she's just seen someone she loves leave with the intention of dying (and Ko Sharmus too, actually). Someone please give her a hug. Actually please just let the Fam have a big group hug in general.

"Have you ever been limited by who you were before?" "Huh. Now that does sound like me talking."

So, remaining questions to be answered next season!

What actually is the Doctor? Since they were found near the Boundary, they could be from anywhere. It's fair to say they now are recognised genetically as a Time Lord, but what were they originally, why were they abandoned in the first place, and are there any more of their original people out there?

How do the Remnants know about the Timeless Child, or were they just picking up on that unconscious knowledge from the Doctor's own mind?

Like... we're generally under agreement that the Master, the eternal cockroach, survived, right? Despite definitely being lowkey suicidal like oh, was hoping the Death Particle would kill me? Like the Death Particle was made by the Cyberium, it could have gone, "Nah, keeping this one."

What's going on with the Kasaavin? Remember them? Still out there, stationed all through time and space? And are we going to see Daniel Barton again?

Is something going on with Yaz?

Will the Fam stay on? (I personally think Ryan will elect to stay on Earth to account for Tosin Cole's new TV role, and if Graham and Ravio enter a relationship, he might too.)

When will we see Jack again? If he was connected to the Lone Cyberman arc, that seems... pretty conclusively finished, unless we're going to learn more about it?

Is it Christmas yet?

............so the Christmas/NY special is going to start with Jack using his vortex manipulator to bust the Doctor out of prison and get back to the Fam and it'll never be mentioned again, right.

"At least buy me diNNER!!"

#doctor who #companion love #best enemies #long post

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elizabethrobertajones · 7 years

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sam & season 12

I keep going on about how much I loved season 12 for Sam, and I was talking to @bluestar86 last night (Or, hyperactively talking AT :P) and they were saying how narratively neat it was to end with Sam at the beginning (facing down a 1x01 parallel scene) again just like Dean ended last season back at the beginning, getting Mary back. Anyway several of the conversations I've seen or had about Sam are about how some people feel this season really wasn't very good for him and he didn't have anything happen to him... I think I kind of veered onto that for a moment after 12x21 because there was a lot of negativity around especially after we were all excited that the "someone in the life" thing he'd been about in season 11 and Eileen seemed to clearly be a part of had obviously taken such a blow, and the BMoL thing was now also obviously a total failure for him.

I think 12x22 did a pretty good job wrapping that up for Sam, since Berens did all the legwork in the first place for setting Sam up with the BMoL and then answering how that made feel and giving Sam a clear win with it in The Raid pt.2 so I don't think I need to talk about that too much and also it only represents a fraction of his character stuff, something that was just sort of happening to him this season and actively for only an even smaller part of it, while obviously there had to be a much more real deal to it all.

I don't know if maybe it's too obvious or the problem seems to be that people think that he didn't engage with the story enough for it to seem like it was happening TO him despite what I felt was a clear thing all through the season, but the Sam and Mary stuff was absolutely brilliant this year to me, and I think 12x22 and 12x23 spelled out a lot of stuff about how Sam was interacting with his arc and how the show was telling it, giving me some really clear examples to use. As I was accidentally talking Bluestar's ear off (oh god I'm scrolling back through this conversation to scavenge my points and I am so sorry about how much of this chat is me... :P) Sam's always had his shit dealt with largely in an external way, with things often being quite allegorical while Dean has an internal approach (the season 1 queer subtext for Sam vs Dean's where Sam's powers are queercoded but Dean just *is* is my favourite example :P). The 22/23 use of putting Dean IN Mary's head to talk through everything while she didn't say a word and he stood on the spot and vocalised everything, and then putting Sam in a different reality to passively view and have AU!Bobby explain to him all the relevant exposition to why this was the mirror of the previous episode doing the same thing for Sam is a very very neat back to back image of how their stories get told.

So back to the start:

Obviously Dean and Mary are more emotionally connected anyway because Dean was alive longer at the same time as her previously; in 1x01 he's defensive of her memory and Sam doesn't know her so can say something objectively ridiculous like she's never coming back and Dean can get all angry about him DARING to suggest that. So when Mary comes back, Sam takes 1 and 3/4 episodes to find out while Dean starts a much more complicated emotional arc with her dealing with her sacred memory and other personal crap he's accumulated with her.

SAM Mom. For me... just, um... having you here... fills in the biggest blank.

Sam doesn't have a history with her, but he does have a massive emotional investment, so in a way their story can only start when they start actually DOING stuff together. But 12x02 also lays out the problem, that Mary is going to want to run away and not face her past because she DOES have massive personal crap accumulated about Sam, because her presence brings back the original balance where the emotional story was with Dean and the mytharc crap was with Sam, but now it's about her - she could have had this exact same arc in season 1 if she'd been alive, say taking Jess's death as the point to leg it and not bear to face Sam, as she feels responsible.

DEAN Mom, look, I am... thrilled that you're back. I mean, I'm so damn happy, I-I-I can't even stand it. MARY I just... it's just gonna take me a second to catch up, you know? DEAN Yeah, no, no. Look, take – take all the time you need, all right? It's – it is what it is. MARY And when we do find Sam... how am I gonna face him? DEAN What do you mean? MARY That yellow-eyed thing would never have come for him that night if I... I started all of this.

This all spells out nice and simply the entire sum of what's going to be their problem this year and what they need to overcome at least in the sense of coming to peace with it. Sam just wants Mary around, Mary can't be around Sam.

In 12x03 Mary begins the process of running away. Cutting her hair is symbolic of shedding her past image and is important and a step forward in mending with Dean and shedding saint!Mary and the dreaded nightgown image, but regressive in dealing with Sam, because they have such opposite demands on her emotionally. She needs to face the past with Sam, but to move forwards with Dean - which is also too much work for her because she's being given the huge task of accepting messed up adult Dean because his need for her is so vast so of course it's daunting (and I'm assuming there's at least some postnatal depression kind of metaphor going on with all this ESPECIALLY with Sam - of course all mixed up in mytharc but 12x06 gives us that she would rather go hunting than stay and do childcare with Dean). Sam loses out harder because his need is so simple and Mary being flawed and hurting Dean is ultimately for the best - after 12x02 we wrote meta about his drinking alone scene as representing exactly this, and 12x22 and "I hate you" was the point he had to be brought to. But Sam makes no mytharc emotional progress with Mary if they'd spend the entire season joined at the hip catching up and doing generic mother - son activities, because it wasn't addressing their problems.

12x03 also showed us Mary's trauma she needed to address, visually, with the John, Dean and Sam parallels in the haunted house. Sam wasn't even a real baby - he was the broken, burned hollow doll. He was an object of absolute, triggering horror for Mary after she was trapped in the nursery with the doll by the ghosts, a reminder of her death, and the state of the doll very suggestive of what happened to Sam because of her deal - and basically visually displays everything Dean eventually told her what happened to Sam in his speech in 12x22.

Moving on to actually looking at how Sam feels about the mytharc, 12x04 and 12x05 featured Magda and Ellie as blatant Sam mirrors. With Magda, Sam gets to look back at his powers arc and say stuff that indicates how he feels about it now, especially when it comes to self-blame and his feeling of being unclean caused by Mary's deal. (In the long run, Ketch killing her was for our shock value, Sam never learned on screen, and it wasn't a part of his arc that she died, just something for us :P yay) With Ellie, he has an almost identical conversation about her horror about discovering her family history and that the blood running in her veins has this connection and that she was a fated vessel, if technically only because she was geographically nearby. Both of these mirrors make the episodes for Sam's part focussed on how he feels about himself and what Mary's deal did to him, and show he's actually already, through all his previous trials and tribulations, made some peace with himself.

I mean... "trials" is deliberate word choice, since 8x21 he got to address how he felt unclean, then did the trials and I think even if he didn't finish them again once he's had time to process he's already in a better place than before about it before season 12. I also feel season 5 resolved his original character arc and his actions in Swan Song completely redeemed him and eased his conscience and he literally was a blank slate after that, and also has a demonstrable sense of peace all through Gamble era - even in the middle of season 7 Bobby calls him out about it but ends up agreeing he's just somehow ended up really zen :P... The problem here is that because Mary coming back was not really on the books back in season 5 Sam's arc got resolved on a LOT of major points relating to the mytharc and he was really only left with Lucifer and Hell trauma which all dates from AFTER this resolution though as a direct result of it. So these two episodes explain how he's feeling and that it actually isn't something Mary should be afraid of because Sam's in a good place with his past and so on, as he eventually manages to tell her in 12x22.

12x06 has their shared moment of trauma/horrible flashbacks when the 1x01 parallel happens where Sam and Mary get to relive it all with Bucky being tied to the ceiling and dripping blood (On Asa’s face, a sort of child figure to Mary as well) as the warning he's there. The demon's MO on killing like that was blatantly only so that we'd get them having this moment.

12x12 is where it really kicks off again, and after a lull on this while they dealed with other branches of the story, including the start of the nephilim arc, which with the Lucifer connection was already at least tenuously like Sam just for shared backstory - there was some speculation that the nephilim would be a good vessel for Lucifer and he only wanted it for that, which would have made Jack a direct Sam parallel... We didn't see that although it was obvious Lucifer only wanted to use him to take over the universe and having a loyal son to do it is much easier than relying on his supposed perfect destined vessel, who was a bit harder to control than Lucifer had reckoned on :P Lesson learned since 5x22. Point is it was a sped up version of the process of milennia of figuring out how to get a Perfect Fated Vessel to empower Lucifer for the big take over.

Anyway

I screamed and knocked my table with my knee so hard I still have a dent in it when Ramiel flashed yellow eyes at Mary along with the old season 1 remember-when-demons-were-scary sound effect. I'm honestly still kind of stunned and impressed that they brought back literal yellow eyed demons to act as a visual aid here. It forced a moment for Mary to tell Sam what she saw and for it to immediately become a Mary and Sam moment sharing this very specific trauma of what a YED meant to them, with Sam asking Mary what she'd gotten them into as if she even knew. Bringing in these princes of hell was again just a sort of visual thing to put on screen to put season 1 and Azazel's original work with Sam back on the table, again making it clear the mytharc is connected to Sam. Dagon does for Jack what Azazel did for Sam, and even though Dean killed Azazel before his plans could come true he died convinced Sam was ready and going to be everything he was supposed to, leaving a thought for Dean for season 3 that Sam hadn't been brought back right that segued into him going genuiely dark even if nothing was actually wrong with him like Azazel insinuated; I'm pretty sure Dagon died thinking that this changed nothing too, because Kelly saying Jack was good because he saved her just made Dagon laugh.

Dagon's time on the show carries this part for Sam even though he had almost no interaction with her, just by visual association of yellow eyes and what she's doing. 12x17 parallels her directly to Azazel in the staging of the action to 1x21, for example, and she already has her special child in hand unlike Azazel who was having a lot of fun with an ant farm with the entire special children project. (This also escalates into the main problem after the midseason in general making the second half of the show about a mytharc connected to Sam metaphorically in the same way Amara was connected to Dean metaphorically - I suppose 12x08 would be the 9x11 step of all that. Cas was already connected to the nephilim arc in 12x08 when he was the one who broke the news to them, 12x10 making it very clear he felt it was his problem. 12x19 MAKES it his problem. And in general now we know for sure it was used as the end of season episode thing that escalated everything into season 13 and was the final shot of the season.)

So I think when it comes to Sam stuff that gets us back to 12x22 & 23 - with Dean making clear Mary's deal was the biggest hurt in his speech to her and listing what it did to him with her death and to Sam with the mytharc smacking him in the face because of it. When Mary is back, she repeats the thought from 12x02 that she's scared of Sam, and Sam appears out of the woodwork to hug her and reassure her with the same message but this time it's post-communication so they actually all have a real understanding, and don't have this catastrophic void. Mary's still fucked up but at least she isn't ready to flee from Sam in horror, and I think it was that far more than anything about dealing with Dean that made her run in the start of the season, because she could have worked things out awkwardly with him because she had no underlying fear of him in the same way.

And then to 12x23 where the AU is caused by Mary NOT making the deal, and I think it's important to bear in mind everything about Sam and this so far this season because it's all been dredged back up again, but in 12x22 he got to make a peace with Mary that they could actually deal with this. It's not a manipulative, wow the world would suck worse if it DIDN'T happen, be thankful it did. It's something Sam can see, sure, but we benefit the most in a meta way to know that the message of the show is that Mary's deal is now all good, at least for how Sam can feel about it. The fact he sees the world as better because of it, and that he's at peace with what it did to him, is written into the fact this world is showing US that things would be so much more worse without it, and I guess this is the representation of how he feels shown to us in an actual example of a tangible world that expresses this feeling.

And of course as I said the season ends with Sam running off to investigate what happened with Jack, and being the one to follow his scorched footprints into the room with the crib that such a big fuss was made of earlier like he would get a chance to USE it but now is acting like set dressing:

Again one episode after Sam was represented as a crib all through a long speech (because babies suck at acting :P)

and a reminder that everything for him began with that moment in 1x01. Even though the thought Mary was in was more like 5x16's memory than 1x01, Sam was brought down from the nursery and his crib was there, and the way Dean woke up in the chair directly paralleled 1x01's opening with John waking up there. So the two blurred, and the conversation happening over the crib was about Mary's deal which resulted in Azazel standing over the crib. In the show's language, nurseries are Sam. And he ends the season in one, looking at a yellow-eyed thing that that crib technically belonged to even if he's massively over sized for it (lol, even Sam wasn't that tall a baby)... And whatever happens to Jack, now reflects on Sam, and his original feelings and choices about the demon blood arc and being Lucifer's vessel. If Jack is pure evil he's just a dark mirror for Sam to work through some shit. It's more likely he'll at least start neutral or as a uncomfortably powerful and volatile blank slate, but like how Mary isn't exactly fixed, Sam now has a stage set to work through his own stuff that he might not have wanted to touch to blame Mary in the same way Dean had to get to an "I hate you" stage.

(And I wonder about Mary in this because one thing that wasn't revisited except a brief mention she didn't remember, was 1x09 and Mary apologising to Sam there as a ghost, right as things were kicking off with his psychic crap. I think also once he knew all the truth later in season 4 & 5, he could also feel that Mary had already apologised and so again he's in a different place from Mary where he's ahead of her since she doesn't remember... I still feel like season 13 will probably be tackling Sam and Mary more directly than this year where it was more Dean and Mary, and Jack for good bad or neutral will offer a way to put a LOT of stuff on screen that we can see through him as Amara was to Dean a representation of his issues made manifest... He doesn't even have to have a ton of contact with Sam although I am perversely hoping he duckling-imprints on Sam since he was the one who walked in on him freshly born :P But ech, speculation. Who knows how this will go, I can't really do more than wonder about the longer character arcs and what I'd find funniest to do in the first minute of the next episode :P)

Anyway, this is all for me why season 12 was an incredible Sam season, and I'd been yelling loudly about each and every one of these developments as they happened. Long story short, I'm now an enthusiastic Sam girl because of Dabb and Berens's combined efforts, and I genuinely feel like this season did him a great service in the story.

#season 12 #Saaam #my stuff #long post for ts #angels are watching over you

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aion-rsa · 6 years

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The Umbrella Academy Review (Spoiler Free)

http://bit.ly/2UGi03k

Netflix's The Umbrella Academy is an admirable attempt to bring the comic to the small screen that ultimately misses the mark.

Books

This Umbrella Academy review does not contain spoilers.

Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba's The Umbrella Academy, which opens with the spontaneous birth of 43 superpowered babies right at the moment a wrestler elbow drops a giant space squid in the ring, might be unadaptable. Despite its best efforts to capture the delightful weirdness of the comic as well as expand on some of the storylines only hinted at in the book, the new Netflix series is ultimately too grounded and sluggish to really keep us invested. The series never quite finds its rhythm until the very end and is surprisingly dull throughout, especially in the first few exposition-heavy episodes.

The Umbrella Academy is the story of the Hargreeves orphans, a super-powered group of kids mysteriously born at the exact same time in different parts of the world, who are trained by their cold and manipulative adoptive father, Sir Reginald Hargreeves, to save the world. Originally a famous superhero team of seven -- Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, Number Five, Ben, and Vanya -- the family slowly begins to decay as the years go by. One sibling dies during a mission while Number Five capriciously travels far into the future against his father's wishes, never to be seen again. Most of the others eventually pack up and leave the Academy when they're old enough.

When the series begins, it's been 12 years since the team was together. But when Sir Reginald suddenly dies -- seemingly of natural causes, although Luther (Tom Hopper), the loyal leader of the team, is not so sure -- his adult children are forced into a nightmarish family reunion and back into old habits. As you would expect, things do not go well.

It should be said up front that viewers expecting an action-packed superhero romp or something akin to Netflix's Marvel lineup will be sorely disappointed. The Umbrella Academy is not that kind of show, trading in the action sequences (of which there are very few) for slightly long-winded family drama. Of course, this won't surprise fans of the Eisner-winning series, itself a deconstruction of iconic superhero teams such as the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and most importantly, DC's Doom Patrol, one of the comic's major influences. While the Netflix series does an admirable job of trying to captivate its audience with this particularly dysfunctional family of super-weirdos, it does so at the expense of its pacing. The Umbrella Academy is incredibly slow.

The show's biggest problem is that it tries to stretch the book's six-issue first volume, "Apocalypse Suite," into 10 50-minute episodes, with bits and pieces of the second arc, "Dallas," thrown in. It's clear two or three episodes in that the show doesn't have enough material to keep things moving to the end, so showrunner Steve Blackman (Altered Carbon) and writer Jeremy Slater (Fantastic Four) crafted new storylines and expanded others while also remixing a few of the comic's character arcs. Unfortunately, these "bonus" scenes and new subplots rarely work. At times, they're actually detrimental to the characters.

Further Reading: Gerard Way on Umbrella Academy: Hotel Oblivion

This is largely the case for protagonist Vanya Hargreeves (Ellen Page), who is inexplicably thrust into an unnecessary romantic subplot. In the comics, Vanya is an outcast, neglected by the emotionally abusive Sir Reginald and sidelined by her narcissistic siblings. When her father dies, she's lonely and without a support system, harboring a quiet animosity towards her brothers and sisters, who are too busy dealing with their own drama to notice her. They've never let her in, even with her father removed from the equation. So when Vanya makes the choice to leave the family behind and go her own way, it's not really all that surprising.

The show, on the other hand, puts Vanya in an awkward relationship in order to flesh out another major player from the comics. The problem might be that the show never fully commits to the relationship, spoiling a big twist before we're ever really even invested in Vanya's love life. In the end, Vanya's story feels diluted by the additional subplot.

It's all in service of getting this show, which could have easily been two or three episodes shorter, to the finish line. Other annoying additions include a murder mystery surrounding Diego (David Castaneda), the family's robotic caretaker Mom (Jordan Claire Robbins), and their super-intelligent chimpanzee friend Pogo (Adam Godley); and an extended look at time-traveling assassins Cha-Cha (Mary J. Blige) and Hazel (Cameron Britton), who also falls victim to a strange romantic storyline. In the case of the murder mystery, the family members search for Sir Reginald's missing monocle -- which might provide evidence of foul play in connection to his death -- but it never really goes anywhere. To make matters worse, the show basically gives up on the yarn in the third act, giving the audience the answer with a few lines of exposition.

Meanwhile, troubled, drug-addicted Klaus (Robert Sheehan) gets much more screentime than comic fans might expect, and Sheehan is excellent in the role as if it were written for him. But too often, perhaps inspired by Sheehan's outrageous performance as Nathan Young in Misfits, the character is played for laughs. The result is a joke that begins to feel repetitive. Klaus is nowhere near this dim-witted in the comics. One thing that does work in Klaus' favor is his ability to communicate with the dead, which adds a horror element to the show. When Klaus learns to finally use this power to his advantage in the climactic battle, I absolutely cheered.

Further Reading: The Umbrella Academy Cast on Creating a New Kind of Superhero Show

While all that's going on, knife-wielding Diego, the rogue of the family, also gets a love interest, and it's by far the least interesting love story of all. Why Blackman and Slater felt that the only way to explore many of these characters was through romance is beyond me. In Way and Ba's comic, introspection doesn't come from the romantic, but through the familial ties that bind. For example, in the comic, Diego has to figure out a way to work with Luther, an altruistic hero who is sort of incompetent at being the team's leader, and while at first Diego despises his brother, they end up growing together. In the third arc of the comic, it's Diego, a loner by nature, who has to convince a depressed Luther to get the team back together.

It's clear that everyone involved with this adaptation has real love for the comic, from the way it accurately recreates the young Umbrella Academy's costumes to the camera angles that recall the work of film auteur Wes Anderson, who is a clear influence on both the book and the show (you could almost imagine this as Anderson's very own take on the superhero genre, with all of the beautiful shots and retro zaniness). Blackman and his crew really took the time to make the show look and sound great -- one particular shot of helicopters flying over Vietnam comes to mind -- but it also feels like they don't fully understand what makes Way and Ba's fast-paced, minimalist, vignette-heavy family drama so effective.

Despite my complaints about Vanya's extended storyline, I'm happy to say that Page's performance as the timid and anxious main character of this family tragedy is top notch. She makes the best of every scene she's in, even when her romantic counterpart isn't quite up to the task. Page is subtle in scenes with her over-the-top siblings, layering in claustrophobic loneliness over her deep-seated anger at being the sister everyone always ignores. I loved watching Vanya absolutely lose her shit later in the season, and Page has already given us so much by that point that it's impossible not to sympathize with her character, even as she takes a dark turn that she may not be able to return from.

Number Five, played by Aidan Gallagher, who's spent most of his career on Nickelodeon kids shows, is also a highlight. Gallagher is well-cast and is able to convey the wisdom beyond his years necessary for the role of a 60-year-old hitman trapped inside the body of a 10-year-old (although he's slightly older than that on the show). He rarely cracks a smile as the self-serious Number Five, or partake in his family's childish shenanigans, but when he does let loose, it's entertaining and very funny.

Further Reading: Everything You Need to Know About Avengers: Endgame

This trigger-happy hero-turned-assassin is also one of the few characters who benefit from an expanded storyline. The show dives much deeper into Number Five's backstory, giving us colorful pieces of his backstory the comic never has. Along the way, we learn much more about the secret organization Number Five worked for before rejoining his family in the present day. His interactions with this faction of time-jumping assassins are among the best in the entire series. Here, the show doesn't rely on romance to flesh out a character and it's really refreshing.

Surprisingly, Luther and Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) get the least to do. While at the forefront of the comic, Luther takes a backseat to the characters the people behind the show are really enamored with, like Vanya, Klaus, Number Five, and Diego. On the show, Luther is a bit more bumbling and I had a hard time believing that any of these characters would actually follow him into battle, but there are some high points for him, too. His story is one of self-discovery, as he steps out from under his father's shadow for the first time (this is a man who's never had a drink or done a drug or rebelled against his dad), and it's in Luther's search for clarity as an independent adult for basically the first time that this character shines.

Allison is in the middle of losing a family, even as she regains another. "Hotel Oblivion," the current comic's third arc, begins to explore why Allison, who can alter reality at will by telling lies, has become alienated from her husband and daughter. The show expands on that, showing what created the rift, and it perfectly fits the character.

As the credits roll on an enjoyable final episode, it's hard to call Netflix's The Umbrella Academy a success, but like its troubled family of freaks, it's not a lost cause. There are parts of the series I really liked -- the latter half of Klaus' arc when he's given a bit more depth, a hilarious showdown involving an ice cream truck, and a character's complete infatuation with the torso of a mannequin -- that hint at a freshness that could set it apart from other superhero TV and movies. The Umbrella Academy is at its strongest when it commits to the weirder elements of its story and world, such as the aforementioned talking chimpanzee, and does itself a disservice by trying to ground its characters in needless romance and the menial. Like Vanya herself, there's potential here, the show just needs to go off the deep end first.

John Saavedra is an associate editor at Den of Geek. Read more of his work here. Follow him on Twitter @johnsjr9.

2.5/5

Netflix

The Umbrella Academy

Gerard Way

Review John Saavedra

Feb 4, 2019

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takemypulse-feelmyheart · 7 years

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A lot of people have strong feelings about 13 Reasons Why. That's fair. It's an intense show. What's unfair to me, though, is declaring that your feelings are the only valid feelings related to it. That your feelings are correct, and other feelings are wrong. That your experiences give you, and you alone, the deciding vote on whether or not the show should have been made. This isn't supposed to be a rant, but if that's what it becomes...so be it.

For context: I am 22 years old. I have attempted suicide three times, once when I was 18 and twice when I was 19. I have been diagnosed with clinical depression, anxiety and PTSD. I live with all three every day, to varying extents each day. Some days are easier than others, some days are harder. But that's life. I have been sexually assaulted three times, and harassed countless more. I told my parents about one of the harassments and one of the assaults, but never reported either. It'd be my word against theirs, and I wouldn't stand a chance of winning that trial.

So let's talk about everything about 13 Reasons Why that has everybody’s knickers in a bunch.

1. Unfiltered depiction of Hannah's suicide.

I had a really hard time watching this scene. But I was warned by the trigger warning at the beginning of the episode. I chose to ignore it. I had to look away a few times, and I lost track of how hard I was crying. It was hell. Watching Hannah end her life was hell, because I understood it all. I remembered that feeling, I remembered those moments, I remembered that pain. It hurts. Slitting your wrists physically hurts. Bleeding out while your body fights to hold on, knowing that your brain and heart are shutting down, hurts. 13 Reasons Why is the first show I've seen that has unapologetically shown viewers those final moments. As the viewer, you don't get to hide from it. You don't get to just see red water in a tub with a hand draped over the side. You don't get to just see a casket. You have to watch it all. You have to experience the hell. You have to see a parent's worst nightmare come true. You have to feel your heart break as Hannah's mother holds what you, she, and the whole world already knows is a lifeless body, while still fighting to believe things will be okay. It is a horrible truth, but it is just that: a truth. Someone has to find the body. Someone has to mop up the overflowing tub. Someone has to wash the bloodstains from the bathroom rug.

Psychologists have said that showing that scene in all its torturous detail can be triggering and unhealthy to people contemplating suicide. Of course it is triggering; we all saw the trigger warning at the beginning of the episode. But what I believe many psychologists are missing is the fact that, even if we haven't seen it with our own two eyes, we already know what exists. People have called the scene a "suicide manual." I've never before seen the step by step process of a person slitting their wrists, but I knew how it was done. I knew how to cut and where to cut. I knew about the bathtub. I know how to hang myself, how to overdose, and where to shoot to kill myself with a single bullet. I know where and how to get a gun. I didn’t have to see it on a Netflix show to know how it's done. It exists in every teenager's everyday world. I understand and acknowledge the research stating that the “risk of additional suicides increases when the story explicitly describes the suicide method, uses dramatic/graphic headlines or images and repeated/extensive coverage sensationalizes or glamorizes a death.” But I can assure you that the conversations it has started, the awareness it has raced, and the pain it has forced you to acknowledge both validates and fully rationalizes its place. If people want to kill themselves, they already know how.

2. Unfiltered depiction of Hannah and Jessica's rapes.

This has received less backlash than the suicide scene, but certainly has not gotten off scot-free. For starters, there's a critical detail I feel like a lot of people are missing in their criticisms of the show: it's rated for mature audiences. Yes, the main characters are high schoolers. But that doesn't necessarily make it a show for young teens. Project X was about a 17th birthday party. 21 Jump Street and Superbad both took place in a high school. Sausage Party was an animated cartoon. South Park features elementary school kids. The age of the characters is in no way a determination of the intended audience.

Now for the content itself. Much like the suicide scene, there is no hiding from the two rapes. Hannah's especially, you have to see it. You are forced to be uncomfortable as you see Hannah essentially give up (sidenote - how incredible was katherine langford in that scene? wow wow wow A+ acting for real). She never explicitly says the word "no," but we all knew it was anything but consensual. Why does that matter? Because in today's world, consent is somehow still a blurred line. People still are somehow fuzzy to the concept that the only true consent is a sober, fully-informed, continual "yes." Silence is not consent, as Hannah showed. She was raped, and we had to watch it knowing there was nothing we could do. We felt just a fraction of Hannah's helplessness, and it didn't feel good. I would argue seeing those two scenes and the rage it brought us against Bryce made them the most important scenes in the show. We should be enraged about rape. We should be enraged that serial rapists walk among us every day because their victims aren't supported enough to report them. We should be enraged that Jessica continued a sort of friendship with Bryce, as so many victims do in an attempt to normalize the rape. 13 Reasons Why was infuriating in that moment, and I'm glad it was.

3. Inaccurate portrayal of depression and oversimplification of bullying as the sole reason for suicide.

Depression is a disease. Getting a common cold is a disease, though far less severe. Sometimes you get a cold that's more sore throat. Sometimes is a dry cough. Sometimes your nose won't stop running for days. Sometimes you get a fever. Sometimes you get multiple symptoms at the same time.

When I was in the worst of my depression, my therapist and I would refer to days as either "down" days or "blah" days. The blah days were my favorites, because I felt nothing. There was no joy, no hope and no true life in me, but I also didn't have to feel anything else. I didn't wake up in tears, and it would only take me an hour or so to get out of bed. I would be able to eat. The down days weren't so great. Some down days wouldn't let me get out of bed. A string of down days in a row sometimes meant I wasn't eating a proper meal for nearly a week. At the worst of the down days, the suicidal thoughts would start creeping in. Enough down days in a row, and rock bottom would rapidly approach. In the midst of all of it, though, I was able to keep my grades up in all my classes. It was the only thing in my life I had a chance of controlling, and I couldn't let that slip away. A friend of mine at a different school was also battling depression. She dropped out of college because she couldn't control it anymore.

Every cold is different. Every case of depression is different. Hell, every day of depression is different. Criticism of an "inaccurate portrayal" of depression makes no sense to me, because there is no single accurate portrayal. Depression isn't a checklist. You won't necessarily have every symptom every day in every situation, if at all. One of the symptoms of depression is physical pain, like headaches or back pain. I never had that. But I was still depressed.

One major criticism of 13RW is that the word "depression" is never mentioned. But did it really need to be? From what I've seen, people in the midst of battling mental health issues don't tend to advertise it. They don't wear signs or t-shirts proclaiming their diseases. Maybe no one ever explicitly said Hannah was depressed, but I question if they really needed to. Her behavior, and how it changed over the course of the 13 episodes showed more than stating it ever could. Depression isn't the sole cause of suicide. It is a contributing factor, just as bullying is, and just as so many other things can be. You don't need to explicitly state it for it to be understood. Bullying wasn't the reason Hannah killed herself: as the title states, there were 13 reasons. You can take her tapes as what they are, putting responsibility on individual people, or you can consider what those people represent.

1: Justin - Humiliation, the first time Hannah has been sexually taken advantage of, and the second wave of loneliness from losing another person she cared about (the first being Kat moving away)

2: Jessica - Loss of trust, loss of control, and a third wave of loneliness from losing another person she cared about

3: Alex - Objectification of Hannah's body, being used as a pawn in someone else's game, fourth wave of loneliness

4: Tyler - Loss of privacy without consent, blackmail, fifth wave of loneliness when Courtney turns her back on Hannah

5: Courtney - Second time intimate relations have been used against Hannah, reminder of losing Justin, further humiliation.

6: Marcus - Third time Hannah has been sexually taken advantage of, and additional loss of trust

7: Zach - Another reinforcement of Hannah's loneliness (emptying Hannah's compliment basket), and the first person who hears Hannah's plea for help, which he throws away.

8: Ryan - Another loss of privacy without consent

9: Sheri - Guilt from hurting other people

10: Clay - Another unanswered cry for help and long-lasting damage from the history of the damning reputation from nonconsensual sexual exploitation

11: Justin, 2.0 - More guilt from hurting others/not being able to protect the ones she loves

12: Bryce - Being physically, sexually and emotionally taken advantage of without consent, exploited vulnerability.

13: Mr. Porter - The most blatant unanswered cry for help.

Hannah's thirteen reasons weren't just bullying, and they weren't just people in her life. The thirteen reasons were a string of humiliation and guilt, constant sexual objectification and exploitation, lack of control in her own life, desperate loneliness, and unanswered cries for help.

4. Reckless dramatization of suicide as a "way out" and overall glorification of death.

This reason has to be the one I understand least. I can't imagine a single person who watched 13 Reasons Why and didn't find at least a part of themselves begging for a different ending, one where Hannah survives. As viewers we wanted so desperately for Hannah to see that things could be okay again, that there were people who loved her, that once people knew the depth of what she was feeling they truly wanted to help. We wanted Hannah to live to see things get better, but she didn't. And she won't. Because she can't. Sure, 13 Reasons Why showed Hannah’s drastic way to stop feeling the pain that was haunting her, but what it showed even more than that was the opportunities she never got. She never got to see that Clay loved her, that her parents were truly broken without her, that Alex couldn't handle life without her, that Jessica truly needed her, or that Zach tried to do right by her. There was no happy ending to 13 Reasons Why, because there is no happy ending to suicide. So yes, they dramatized suicide in a drama show, but I can't imagine anyone seeing the world Hannah left behind as a glorified place.

5. No direct suggestion of how Hannah could have been helped.

I guess the people complaining about this missed the part at the end where the cast of the show give you resources for mental health assistance. Or they missed the entire rest of the show where the lack of simple kindness broke Hannah more and more each day. Maybe there wasn't a 20 minute PSA that gave you a step by step on how to prevent teen suicide, but there was a 13 hour show that gave you a whole lot of ideas.

6. Hannah using suicide as a means of calling for attention, and successfully getting that attention.

Yes, Hannah got a whole lot of attention from committing suicide. But the concept of "attention" is one that seems a little distorted in this argument. The attention Hannah and many other people considering suicide so desperately seek isn't the whole school talking about them. Hannah already had the whole school talking about her when she was alive, and it certainly wasn't helping. The attention many suicidal people seek is help. Support. Knowing someone cares. It's not a cry for popularity, it's a cry for help. Hannah cried for help throughout the show; many people didn't hear her, and those who did hear did nothing about it.

7. Suicide as a way of exacting revenge on those who have hurt you.

While the fundamental concept of this argument makes a little bit of sense - the thirteen tapes certainly did bring pain to those who had brought pain to Hannah - the rate of people who commit individual suicide out of spite or for revenge is notably small. Those who commit suicide for revenge or to bring pain are more often people who will physically hurt others before killing themselves (suicide bombers, school shooters, etc.), which Hannah certainly was not. Her death was not a revenge suicide, nor were the tapes. Her death was her own pain, and the tapes were her extended letter.

8. Promoting the assumption that kindness is all it takes to save lives.

I don't know why this is such a problem. I will gladly admit that it would be delusional to believe that nothing more than kindness is all it takes to end mental health issues. That said, I have never met a person who was truly hurt from too much kindness. We've all heard the stories of people who, because of a single smile or one genuine "hello" from a stranger, decided not to commit suicide that day. Could Clay's love alone have saved Hannah? No, not at all. Hannah needed help far greater than any single person could have provided. But could Zach allowing her to read compliments she was given have given her invaluable hope? Yes. Could Mr. Porter actually listening to Hannah and validating her feelings have given her a sliver of hope that she would get the support she so desperately needed? Absolutely. Could Alex or Jessica checking in with Hannah when she started to show signs of falling apart have helped her get through another day, another week, another month? Perhaps.

So no, kindness alone cannot save lives. But it certainly can help people keep fighting until they get the help they need. And I don't understand why we would ever discourage kindness among teenagers.

Like I said, these are just my thoughts, my understanding, and my response to what I see as excessive and undue criticism of 13 Reasons Why. I'm not saying my opinions are worth any more than yours. You don't have to feel what I felt watching it. You don't have to agree with me. But using your own experiences to decide how someone like me should have felt, should have reacted, should have been triggered, should have been traumatized by, or should have hated 13 Reasons Why is getting really old, really fast. You may be an expert. You may be a victim. You may be a survivor. But you are not me, and you are not everyone. Try considering that before writing off an entire show simply because it didn't sit perfectly with you.

(let me know if i missed any other arguments and i will gladly add them)

#13 reasons why #13rw #spoilers #trigger warning #rant #katherine langford #hannah baker #clay jensen #dylan minnette

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kitchenwitchsuperwhovian · 8 years

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Why?

Pairings/Characters: Castiel x Reader, Dean, Sam

Summary: After Season 12 Episode “First Blood”. The reader tries to cheer Castiel up with unforseen consequences.

Word Count: 1,948

Warnings: THERE ARE TRIGGERS so please read the warnings before reading the story. Angst, little bit of fluff, (minor) character death

Tags: @leatherwhiskeycoffeeplaid (beta)

A/N: This is a story idea that came to me while I was pissed off and depressed. I was mostly in a dark place so sorry….not sorry….

*GIFs not mine*

“Dammit Dean! I am trying everything I can to find Kelly. Just give me some time.” Castiel huffs out in frustration.

“We don’t have time Cas! God knows what that kid is capable of and it’s not even born yet!” Dean screams at Cas in barely repressed rage.

Castiel gets an inch from Dean’s face as he spits out in anger, “How many times can I say I’m sorry?! Do you need to hear it again? I’m sorry that I lost Kelly and the child, I’m sorry I couldn’t find you and Sam before you made the deal with Billie, I’m sorry that I’m useless and a bother to you! I’m sorry! Are you satisfied Dean?”

Sam tries to interject and get Dean to calm down but Dean just shakes him off as he rages in Castiel’s face.

“No, Sam! He’s right, he is sorry…” Dean rages and rants until a loud whistle stops his next words.

“Dean Fucking Winchester! Shut the fuck up!” Y/N yells as she stomps into the library and steps up to Dean’s chest. She starts poking him and he backs up while she grits out, “You need to apologize to Castiel.”

“But-” Dean starts and she cuts him off with a simple word.

“No!” Y/N growls. “He wasn’t the only one to fuck up. Yes, he made a mistake but it’s not like you are fucking perfect. Now apologize!”

Dean looks at Cas and takes a deep breath. “Sorry Cas. I just hate waiting for the other shoe to drop and the whole Kelly thing is on all of us.” Dean gives him a quick hug and looks at Y/N with his sad, puppy-dog eyes and some of her anger starts to melt away.

She huffs as he continues to pout and she slowly walks up to Dean and give him a quick hug. She ruffles his hair and tells him to get out of here. “I need to talk to Cas for a minute. And Dean, next time you get frustrated, come talk to me, Sam, or Mary please. I hate having to yell at your stupid ass.”

“Okay, sweetheart.” Dean mumbles as he hugs Y/N again and kisses the top of her head before letting go and leaving the room with Sam.

You smile then laugh softly as you hear Sam talking to Dean as they walk down the hall to their respective rooms. “Dude, mom is gonna be pissed when she hears about this….”

“Sam! Don’t you dare tell her….SAM! SONUVABITCH! SAM!”

A couple of minutes go by in awkward silence as Castiel tries to calm down. He is just so tired of letting everyone down time and time again. He knows that losing Kelly and Lucifer’s child is major and the only thing he hates more than letting his family down is knowing that the Universe has something horrible in store for him because he killed Billie to keep the Winchester’s alive.

While Castiel is deep in thought, Y/N takes a moment to watch him uninterrupted. The way his hair is slightly messed because he’s repeatedly running his fingers through the midnight strands, the flush on his cheeks and labored breathing while arguing with Dean. The way his grace starts to flicker in his eyes as he becomes more expressive and emotional. Unbeknownst to the Winchester’s and Castiel, Y/N can see the shadow of Cas’ wings when his grace starts to flicker into action. As Cas paces back and forth while muttering explicatives under his breath, his wings bend and sway with his rigid movements. On a pass too close to Y/N, one of his wings sweeps her feet out from under her and Cas stops pacing at her gasp of pain.

“Y/N, are you okay?” he mutters sheepishly while helping her off the floor.

“Yeah, nothing broken just a little embarrassed is all.” she mumbles while a faint blush rises in her cheeks.

“Why would you be embarrassed?” Castiel asks with a tilt of his head and a raised brow.

“Oh, well, I saw your wings getting closer and I guess I was so mesmerized by the bend and sway of them while you paced that when they got too close, I didn’t have enough time to move out of the way. Did you get hurt when they hit me?” Y/N asks as she bends down to touch the tips of his wings.

Castiel is stunned into silence and when Y/N receives no response to her questions, she looks into his eyes to see his grace flicker as a warm, loving sensation caresses her cheeks and arms. He hesitantly walks towards Y/N and stops an inch from her body. The warm sensation continues across her skin until her entire body has been touched and sensitized. The flicker of his grace fades and his wings slowly bend and wrap around her back, gently pushing her into Castiel’s body until there is nothing separating them. The look in his eyes as his face slowly descends towards her lips sends her heart pounding out of her chest. He smirks a wicked little smirk as he darts his tongue out to lick his lips and Y/N can’t stop the whimper of need that escapes as her eyes stay focused on his now shiny, lush lips. The kiss is everything that she ever wished for. It’s sweet, hot, desperate, caring, and passionate all rolled into one. Castiel groans and hugs her impossibly closer as his wings flutter and tremble across her skin. They only stop kissing so Y/N can take a breath and then Castiel’s lips are immediately on hers for another series of kisses that leave her light-headed and panting into his chest.

“Come on Cas. Let’s get out for a bit and go somewhere nice, okay?” Y/N mumbles into his chest with a sigh of contentment.

“Do you wish to drive or shall I pop us somewhere?” He whispers as he rests his chin on her head to catch his breath.

“Do you have enough mojo to pop us in and out?” Y/N asks worriedly while patting her hand nervously over his heart. He grabs her hand to stop the fluttering and brings her finger to his lips and kisses each tip with a wide smile on his face.

“I believe that I have enough mojo, as you call it to pop in and back. I will let Sam and Dean know that we’re going out so they don’t worry.” Cas mumbles sadly.

“Cas, don’t worry. Dean will come around. He is just worried about the unknown. He’s never been good at being patient or going into something without some kind of plan. Anyway, you go talk to them and I’ll grab some water and snacks for me for the road.” She kisses his cheek and runs to the kitchen to make a quick basket for the trip.

As she makes a couple of sandwiches and chips, she scrolls through her phone for places that Castiel might like. She yelps in excitement as she finds a listing for a flower farm about 35 miles from Lawrence so they can drive or pop in with no trouble.

Castiel decides to pop them into a secluded part of the farm after he has had a chance to check the area for dangers himself and he’s overjoyed to find that it’s near the bee keeper boxes. Y/N looks around and takes a deep breath of the fragrant air. Cas starts to animatedly talk to Y/N about bee keeping processes and why bees are so important to the environment. As they are walking around the farm, bees buzz excitedly around their bodies. Cas seems fascinated with each bee that comes by but Y/N has a sudden thought. She realizes that she has no idea if she is allergic to bee stings. With that dark thought, a sharp pinch to her left hand has her looking down in fear. A stinger is sticking out of her thumb and the bee is falling off her hand.

Her hands start to shake and sweat pops out on her brow as Castiel’s voice fades to background noise. She takes a shaky step forward as her heart races in terror as her chest starts to heave in exertion.

“Castiel…” Y/N shouts as her knees buckle and her airway starts to swell and close. She is clawing at her neck while trying to suck air into her lungs. Cas appears in her peripheral vision and his normally calm, lilting voice is panicked as he tries to help her by using his grace. He starts to cry as he realizes that he doesn’t have enough grace to heal her. Her vision starts to cloud from the lack of oxygen but she manages to grab Castiel’s hands and places them over her lips. She mouths “Don’t blame yourself. I love you” seconds before her airways close completely and she loses consciousness. Less than a minute later, Castiel is holding her limp body as he cries into her hair. She was only trying to cheer him up with his love of nature and now she’s gone.

After what seems like a short period of time to Castiel, he looks up from her body to see that night has fallen. He gently scoops her into his arms and makes the trek back to the bunker. For once, the night is silent as the tears fall from the Angel of Thursday onto the ground in a symphony of pain and rage. After walking for hours, cradling her body close to his chest like a precious package, Castiel arrives at the bunker doors just as the sun rises from the east, bathing the area in a golden light. As the light touches Y/N’s face, Castiel falls again to his knees and rages to the skies while screaming.

“WHY?! She should have been saved! Is this my punishment for Billie?! It should have been me! WHY?!” Castiel yells until his voice has gone hoarse from the combination of his scream and the constant stream of tears since she passed.

Dean and Sam can hear shouting from their rooms through the bunker wall and they rush up the stairs, guns at the ready. Sam opens the door carefully and Dean passes by him quietly. When he halts after two steps and drops his gun, Sam looks around Dean’s shoulder to spy Cas crying over Y/N’s body. Dean and Sam rush over to them and Cas looks up at the Winchester’s with tears in his eyes.

“She took me to a flower farm so I could be surrounded by nature and the bees. She was stung and I didn’t have enough grace to save her. She died trying to make me happy. Why her? Why did it have to be her? I was just beginning to believe in life and the Universe again and then this happened. What am I supposed to do without her now?” Dean and Sam look on in heartbreak as the sound of the angel’s cries carry into the stillness of the dawning day.

#castiel x reader #castiel #castiel fanfiction #castiel fan fiction #castiel fan fic #castiel fanfic #spn fic #spn fanfic #spn fan fic #spn fanfiction #spn fan fiction #supernatural fanfic #supernatural fan fic #supernatural fan fiction #supernatural fanfiction

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