#idk how many years after endgame this is meant to be set??

[cassianandfenrysaremyboyos]

I have SO many questions about the ending of Wakanda Forever and the whole timeline and just so many things

[waynedunlaptheorgandonor]

hey so “find me” dropped on premiere and i just watched it, so you know what that means??

it’s review time!

(super rambly as usual) spoilers under the cut

before i say anything, let me say, IT’S FINE, Y’ALL. as predicted. people are gonna be dramatic bc there are daryl/leah scenes, but like...we been knew? and some of them were rly important caryl-wise. (tbh, the episode was kind of boring and just a set-up for other stuff, lmfao)

okay, review:

opening credits, which i think most of us have already seen, were cute. obvi there was some weird tension with daryl that leads to the coming-to-a-head thing at the end, but their banter is still cute af

they went fishing and daryl’s reaction to carol was adorable, and there’s an important parallel later on, so bookmark this

similarly, there’s an important parallel to carol’s “the dead catch up to us eventually”/daryl’s “i ain’t gonna let it”, so bookmark that, too

dog is the instigator for the flashbacks, so if you wanna blame anyone, blame him. he races to the cabin, which for some reason daryl, who spent five years in this forest, seemed surprised to see? didn’t you literally map out that whole area, my dude? whatever

cue flashback!

i might have the scene order mixed up, but i think it starts with daryl being all sad by himself, and then dog as a puppy shows up and he’s like “!!! a dog!!!” which is v cute, and then he runs back off. we don’t meet leah yet

we see carol and daryl having a conversation while standing on opposite sides of a river for no reason except to probably symbolize distance or maybe covid, lol. the conversation basically goes:

carol: things are different

daryl: yeah

carol: how long are you gonna be out here?

daryl: -shrug emoji-

carol: i get why you’re out here, and i’d join you if things weren’t...

daryl: different

carol: yeah

daryl: yeah. anyway, it’s gonna rain, and also i’m having emotions, so ttyl

the end

at some point we see daryl sitting with an extremely unhappy face while it pours rain on him in the dark, and i want that as a reaction gif IMMEDIATELY 

also the rain destroys his “where in the world is rick grimes?” map, which makes him v upset and scream-y, and we get the idea that he might be going a bit bonkers being all alone looking for a dead (or, ig, kidnapped by helicopter) man

in present day carol finds the note, and is like “oh dunk, she lived here??” so she knew about leah, and daryl’s like, “i already told you everything,” and carol’s like, “no you didn’t,” so we go back to flashbacks (but i’m still not sure what parts carol didn’t already know?? whatever, it’s not that important)

i’m just gonna hit the highlights of the flashbacks bc they were not that thrilling:

first time daryl meets leah the dog leads him to her cabin, and leah ties him to a chair and holds a gun to his head being like, “what are you doing on my land?” bc apparently you can claim whole forests during the apocalypse, and daryl says very little, and eventually she lets him go

next time dog finds daryl and he brings her back and leah is like, “the dog likes you” and they’re kinda flirty, and then daryl says very little and leaves

next time daryl is surrounded by walkers and leah shows up and helps and they hide in a tree and are awkwardly close to each other and daryl cannot handle the close physical contact so when the walkers pass he says very little except to tell her to never come back again, lmfao

the next flashback is my favorite bc daryl just fucking

goes to leah’s cabin and throws a fish at the door???

i laughed for ten years

he throws a fucking fish and then stands there for a minute like “is she gonna notice that i gave her a fish??” like, no, dumbass, you didn’t even knock, you just threw a fucking fish at her fucking door, what is wrong with you??

no wonder it’s taken him and carol so long if he thinks throwing fish at people is a smooth move. boy has NO fucking game

anyway, leah gets him back by finding him and throwing the fish at his head, being like, “wtf, don’t throw fish on my porch?” which, fair, leah

IMPORTANT CARYL PARALLEL (from here on out known as “caryllels”) #1: so earlier i mentioned the carol fish thing, and apparently the same thing happened with leah, where she speared a fish on her first try and daryl was like “tf?” v blatant “we are supposed to be thinking about carol and daryl’s relationship during this scene” sort of thing

leah’s backstory is bland. had a family, they got eaten or disappeared or something. she, her adopted son, and dog’s mom got away, but the kid was bit, and died the same day dog was born, bc ig when god closes one door, he replaces your dead son with a puppy, or however the idiom goes

ONLY PART THAT GOT ME LEGIT EMOTIONAL: 

leah asked daryl who he lost, and he says, “my brother”

asklfdjaslfdjskl

god i miss rick

i hated rick for so long and now i miss him so much

but i digress

IMPORTANT CARYLLEL #2: leah and daryl have the same “the dead get you eventually”/”i ain’t gonna let it” conversation as caryl had earlier, only daryl is playing the role of carol in this scenario, so again we’re supposed to be comparing the two relationships. lemme get through the rest of the summary and then i’ll tell you my opinion on what that means

fuck what even happens next?

i have these out of order bc they were all the fucking same, but the two of them get closer, and there is the vaguest suggestion of sex ever. you literally only see daryl’s hand

then jump-cut to them sitting at the table being emo, ig bc daryl was gonna go back to look for rick for a bit, and leah is like “who do you belong with? your brother you won’t stop looking for? your family that you left? [side note: that seemed rather pointed, like, “hey hoe, you abandoned your family, that was kind of a dick move”] or me?” and he says he doesn’t know, and she’s like “yeah you do, now choose”

jump-cut to caryl scene where carol finds him at the river and says that she won’t be visiting as much, and daryl’s like “k” and they have a brief argument where daryl’s all snippy, like, “what? do you want my permission for you to move on with your life? i’m not still emo about the fact that you’re moving on with your life, and i also don’t think it’s contextually significant that every time you show up in my flashbacks you explicitly mention that you’re married and have a kid,” and carol is like, “bro, you need to Get Your Shit Together and come home”

jump-cut to daryl having what i’m assuming is an epiphany that carol/fam have all moved on while he was out being emo, and so he decides to go be with leah, except, plot twist! she’s gone. the picture of her and her son is gone, but dog is still there. daryl leaves the note, which says, “i belong with you, find me”

for those freaking out about the wording about the note, may i remind you that she specifically asked, “do you belong x, x, or with me?” so he was just answering the question

aaaaaand back to present day

carol is like, “what do you think happened to her?” and daryl is all -shrug emoji-, and then she’s like, “...do you think she might have just...you know...left?” and daryl gets rull offended, which was kind of funny

(she probably just left, bud)

carol tells daryl to stop thinking that when people leave it’s bc of him, and connie’s name gets thrown into the mix, and daryl gets a “oh here we fucking go” look on his face, and it sets him off

he said basically what we were already spoiled for. “you just want to run, you don’t know when to stop, i shouldn’t have taken you off the boat bc you still just want to run” etc

and carol looks fucking HEARTBROKEN, which hurt me, and she goes into the other room and we end the episode with daryl staring forlornly out of the window 

the end

okay

so quick analysis

i think the significance of this episode is supposed to be so we have an understanding of why daryl is suddenly so !teamfamily, and !teamfuture, and how badly he wants carol to be there with him. at one point, one of them even says, “this isn’t about leah, or connie,” or anyone but the two of them. the title “find me” feels significant, bc the whole episode is daryl grappling with where he’s supposed to go, and what his purpose is, and by the end, he says to carol, “i know where i belong,” (implying, with her and the fam), pulling us full-circle. in the first flashback onward he is lost, but by the end he is found -cue amazing grace-

daryl and leah were flirty, but to me it felt very much like something that was just being used as daryl character development. we barely got anything that juicy between the two of them (except the fish throwing thing, that was amazing), and i still don’t think that it would make any sense, regardless of the showrunner, to pair daryl up with some rando after having so many other choices that people would have preferred. i don’t think we’re meant to #endgame ship it, so much as we are supposed to be like, “oh, ok, daryl learned the power of family and stability and leveled up, -you know what that is? growth gif-” as a result, i literally have no idea what leah’s role is gonna be in s11, but i don’t think it’ll be a huge plot point

so now we firmly know where daryl stands. he is all about moving forward, not looking back, and doing the best he can, and he’s frustrated bc when he took carol off the boat he wanted her to be in the same place as him so that they could grow together, but she wasn’t and isn’t there yet

so my guess is that what’s next for carol’s storyline is her reaching that same zen-level daryl’s at

once they’re both there, then they get to ride off into the sunset and make passionate love under the moon casting shadows over the vast desert wasteland 

whew

anyway

tl;dr: idk, episode was fine, if not kinda boring. lots of caryllels. can i go back to writing my vietnam war au now? 

the end

(stay hype, stan kang, and get daryl to call carol sweetheart 2k21),

-diz

[corvus--rex]

Semi-abandoned for now. I have a vague idea of the endgame, but absolutely no middle or coherent plot. It was originally meant to be another Omegaverse (which it still may be, idk rn), so it's a little weird not in that context. This one is modern magic and Lance and Keith are about 400 year old witches.

~*~*~*~

Crash. The sound of metal on metal. Muffled cursing. This was not what Keith was expecting to hear when he let himself into his apartment after closing the shop alone because Lance said he needed to work on a project. But that’s what he heard. And it was coming from the kitchen. He couldn’t help the soft snicker that escaped him as he kicked his shoes off and dropped his keys on the table. He silently padded across the living room to the kitchen, leaning on the doorframe, arms crossed. His boyfriend Lance had dropped onto the kitchen island. Supporting his weight on his elbows, he stared intently at his tablet while surrounded by disaster.

“Need some help with your project?” Keith asked, lips twisted in an amused smirk.

Lance shot up. His expression passed from panic to relief in a split second. “I have no idea how I managed to fuck this up. So, yes. Yes, I do.”

With a twist of his fingers, Keith cleaned up the mess Lance had made. Dishware was instantly cleaned and returned to shelves and cabinets, ingredients slotted back into place, utensils placed back into drawers. He sauntered into the kitchen and directly up to Lance, wrapping his arms around his long-time boyfriend and gently kissing him.

“Now,” he said, “How about I take care of dinner for us?”

Lance dropped his head on Keith’s shoulder. “Please. You’d think I would have figured this out after three hundred years.”

Keith just laughed. “Kitchen magic has never been your strong suit, love.”

“Well aware. But this was something Hunk sent me, so I figured that I’d at least be able to figure that one out.” He couldn’t hide the pout in his voice.

“Well, maybe all three of us can work on that. Do you not remember how much I used to suck in the kitchen?”

Lance snorted. “If by suck you mean how many hearths did you blow up, then yes.”

“Asshole. Anyway,” Keith said pointedly, “I’ll get started here if you could set the table.”

“Absolutely,” Lance answered. He kissed the tip of Keith’s nose before twirling away with a light laugh. He snapped his fingers, directing tableware across the kitchen to the table. He jumped, plates and silverware faltering in the air before returning to their path, when Keith smacked his ass on the way by. Lance let out a high-pitched scoff in mock offense. “Don’t make me drop everything!”

Keith just laughed again, violet eyes skimming over the tablet’s screen.

Elsewhere in the city of Altea, a lone figure sat at a workbench, hunched over the worn, pitted surface. Their hands passed over the herbs and crystals laid over a complex sigil, fingers twisting in precise, intricate motions. The lines of the sigil flared to life, silvery blue twining with pale lavender. The herbs smoldered to ash around the crystals, which absorbed the herbs’ essence and the light from the sigil, refracting the light around the room in a twisted, sickly rainbow. The crystals cracked, the lines breaking the rainbows into fractured pieces scattered across the walls. The cracks spread, splintering the crystals until they crumbled to a coarse sand and fell back to the bench’s surface. The figure chuckled softly, a wide grin spread across their face. The crystal sand rose and floated into a waiting glass bowl, raining down on a pair of miniature portraits.

Both portraits dated from the eighteenth century. One held the image of a pale young man in soft pink, raven hair pulled into a low ponytail tied with a black ribbon, the other of another young man with deep golden skin dressed in powder blue, soft, deep brown curls tied back with a navy ribbon.

The figure ran fingertips along the glass. “Soon it will all be over,” they whispered, voice hoarse with disuse.

“Oh, fuck me. Lance, we’re late,” Keith yelled as he sat up in bed the next morning.

Lance rolled out of bed, startled awake. He checked his alarms that should have woken him already. All three of them were turned off. He also noticed that they only had ten minutes before they needed to leave to get to the shop in time to open. “I’ll call Pidge. She’s closer and knows what to do. Um, my alarms were all turned off. Are yours ok?”

Keith grabbed his phone while pulling a shirt on. He checked, and his alarms were also turned off. “No. They’re all off. What the fuck?”

“I don’t know,” Lance answered, pulling pants on with his phone tucked into his shoulder, “Oh Pidge, there you are. Hey, our alarms didn’t go off. We’re on our way, but can you open up for us?”

“What? Um, sure. I’ll be right there,” Pidge answered sleepily, “You owe me coffee for this.”

“Totally. Thanks, Pidgey.” He hung up, tossing his phone on the bed. “She says we owe her coffee, but she’ll do it.”

“Oh, thank fuck. We’ll swing by Allura’s on the way. Not like we have time for breakfast anyway,” Keith said, coming back into the bedroom with his shoes.

The pair finished dressing, ensuring they had everything they needed for the day. Keith reached for the table by the door for his keys, finding the table’s surface empty. The floor around and under the table was also devoid of keys. He searched his old leather bag, still coming up empty.

“You haven’t seen my keys, have you?” he asked.

“No, but I have mine. They’ll turn up. They’re probably just behind something. We’ll find them, don’t worry about it,” Lance said soothingly while rubbing his knuckles in circles on Keith’s back.

“Yeah,” Keith sighed, “Well, we’d better get going.”

Keith settled into the passenger seat as Lance pulled out of the garage, still upset about the alarms and his keys. He knewhe’d dropped the keys on the table the night before and was at a complete loss as to where they could be. And the thing with their alarms being turned off. That was even stranger. Soon he was lost in thought, his brain attempting to pick apart the how and why. Lance knew better than to interrupt the train of thought, especially at this hour. He let it go until they pulled up in front of Café Oriande.

“Hey, we’re here,” he said, nudging Keith’s leg.

Keith snapped his attention from the window and his thoughts. “Hm? Oh. Yeah.”

“Ok. I admit that the alarm thing is weird, but the keys will turn up. It’s not the first time shit like that’s happened, and it’s definitely not the last time. Please, stop worrying about it.”

“I’ll try, but no promises.”

Lance laughed. “That’s about as much as I expected. Come on, let’s go get breakfast and fuel for the beast.”

Keith snorted. “Just don’t let her hear you call her that.”

“No thanks. I value my life.”

Walking into Oriande, they immediately spotted Allura behind one of the two espresso machines. She had her thick silver hair wrapped in a braided bun that day, her dark skin standing in stark contrast to the blue and pink of her uniform t-shirt and white apron that never showed the slightest sign of wear. Beside her at the other machine was the perky blonde barista Romelle. Coran backed out of the kitchen carrying a fresh tray of pastries, followed by Romelle’s brother Bandor toting a full ice bucket. Coran wove his way through two new faces Lance and Keith had never seen before.

Allura looked up as they came in. “Lance! Keith! I didn’t expect to see you until later!” she shouted from her position.

Romelle looked up from the drink she was making and waved excitedly with her usual bright smile. Bandor turned around, greeting the pair with a wave of the now empty ice bucket. Coran finished refilling the display case leaving the tray on the counter.

“And how are you two today?” he asked cheerily.

“Yeah, we’re running a little late today. Pidge is opening for us,” Lance said to Allura before answering Coran, “We’re good, other than that.”

“Speaking of Pidge, our resident gremlin demanded a caffeinated tribute,” Keith added.

“Oh!” Allura said, coming to the counter by the registers, “You have to meet our new recruits. This delightful girl is Merla,” she gently held the shoulders of the magenta-haired girl at the register before tapping the man behind her, “And this is my cousin Tavo.”

Tavo turned around from the drip coffee machines behind the register. He was taller and darker than Allura, his ink-dark dreads pulled up into a high ponytail. He nodded in greeting. “Always good to meet Allura’s friends,” he said before returning to the coffee machines.

“So, I heard something about a caffeine tribute?” Allura asked.

“Yeah, Pidge is opening the shop for us,” Keith answered.

“And your usual teas, or do you need something stronger?”

“Nah, tea’s fine,” Lance said, “But we will need rocket fuel for the gremlin.”

“And Coran’s magical pain au chocolat,” Keith added.

Allura snorted at the double meaning and went about filling their order.

Breakfast in hand, Allura waved them out of the café. Keith held his very large cup in both hands, adjusting the tea’s temperature to something immediately drinkable. It was half gone by the time they reached their metaphysical shop Marmora. It had been named in honor of the first coven Keith had been a part of. One that was long gone, lost to the mists of the past.

Pidge, who was a part of their current coven, made sleepy grabby hands at the coffee cup in Lance’s hand as he and Keith walked in to the shop. She tripped over herself clambering down from the tall chair behind the counter, nearly faceplanting into the old wood floor. Lance held the cup just out of her reach.

“Gimme my coffee, asshole,” she grumbled.

“I’ll do you one better,” he answered, handing her the cup and one of the boxes containing Coran’s pain au chocolat.

Pidge grabbed both, cradling them to her chest as she darted back to the chair, climbing the rungs, and settling herself cross-legged in the seat, her coffee between her legs as she tore into the pastry.

“Remind me not to feed her after midnight,” Keith said.

“I can hear you,” Pidge said through pastry and chocolate. She took a long sip of her coffee before becoming slightly more human. “So, what happened with the alarms?” she questioned.

“No idea. But all our alarms were turned off and my keys disappeared. I’ll do a summoning spell when we get home.”

“Yeah,” she answered through more pastry, “But that alarm thing is fuckin’ weird.”

“No argument there,” Lance said.

Pidge dropped the empty box in the trash beside her and made grabby hands at Lance and Keith again. “Gimme your phones, I’ll check them over.”

They both put their phones down on the wood counter. Pidge may not have been as old as they were, but she was a highly accomplished witch. She also had an almost preternatural gift for mundane technology. If there was any meddling with their phones, magical or otherwise, she’d find it.

She laced her fingers together and stretched her arms, cracking her knuckles. Fluttering fingers stilled, passing over the darkened screens. Both came to life, Pidge’s magic searching through their inner workings. A dark iridescence like an oil slick spread across both screens, filling them.

“Oh, fuck. Who’d you two piss off? This is pretty strong shit,” she said, staring at the devices in horror.

“No one that we know of,” Keith replied, “Not lately anyway.”

Pidge gave him an unimpressed look. “Define ‘lately’.”

“Fifty years or so?” he guessed.

“Ooh. Yeah, but that got taken care of. That bitch colossally fucked up and managed to drain her own magic. Do you have any idea how hard that is?” Lance added, remembering the incident.

“Very.”

“How very?” Pidge asked.

“Nearly impossible. So that would make it more like a hundred years ago, maybe a little more. I think it was about the turn of the twentieth century, right?” Keith turned to Lance for confirmation.

“Yeah, about then. But that wasn’t to do with us directly. We just got caught up in it.” Lance dismissed the idea with a flutter of his fingers. “Doesn’t matter anyway. No one’s heard from them since then. Like, at all. They vanished completely.”

Pidge was downing her coffee at an alarming rate, but put her cup down at that. “I need you to tell me everything that happened.”

“Tonight,” Keith said, “This might take a while, and I don’t want to get interrupted. Can you break that in the meanwhile?” He indicated his and Lance’s phones.

“I can try, but no promises,” she answered, taking them and her coffee to the back room.

Keith moved around to the other side of the counter, duplicating the chair for Lance. They both settled in, Keith leaning back with his tea. Lance licked the molten chocolate off his finger and turned back to Keith.

“I really hope this doesn’t have anything to do with them. If it does, we may be totally fucked.”

Keith nodded in agreement, then sat up. “But wait, didn’t the others abandon him immediately after that? He’d gone so far over they wanted nothing to do with him anymore. They went into hiding to protect themselves from him, like we did for a while. If anything, it’ll be him on his own.”

“That might be even worse. No one to hold him back after over a hundred years? We need to warn everyone involved.”

Keith put his cup down and got up, wrapping himself around Lance. “Not yet. We need to be sure it’s him first. This could have nothing to do with him. I don’t know who else would want to get at us, but we can’t just go off because of something like this. We’ll figure it out.”

Lance returned the embrace, burying his face in Keith’s shoulder. “Yeah, you’re right. We’ll let Pidge work and see what she comes up with.”

Ten minutes later, when Keith and Lance were finishing their tea, the door to the back room flew open, bouncing off the wall with a crack of electricity.

“OW! Shit! Sorry!” Pidge yelled, and pulled the door closed from her seat.

~*~*~*~

Links to the rest of the series:

1 | 2 | 3* | 4 | 5* | 6* | 7 | 8 | 9* | 10 | 11 | 12* | 13 | 14 | 15* | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19*

[kittybellestark]

Hi ! I don't know if this is where you send requests, but maybe a fic where peter gets all jealous of Morgan and Harley, and its fathers day, but he feels like he shouldn't be there and stays in the room the Stark's have for him- (Tony lives) OH! and maybe Mays dead idk whatever ya want thank you ! <3 Oh! and can I be on the taglist?

hi milove sorry for taking literal months to do your request i recognize you requesting this on nov 18th and it is now February so i hope this is smth that was worth the wait !! 

So I played with the timelines a lil bit bc i suck and i also just kinda took this to a place i don’t think you were asking me to do whoops, it’s not just some cute sibling jealously

also not very irondad based, like sprinkle amounts. also no comfort. my bad 

Post-endgame, Tony lives, Harley & Peter are the same age, Peter got snapped Harley didn’t 

TW: Grief, implication of suicide(minor character), suicidal thoughts,  

-

There wasn’t many things Peter liked. He remembers liking a lot of things, life, school, home, himself. But that was years ago, and yet it was only a few months for Peter. The world was different now, older.

Those who survived held grief in their eyes, they moved slow and while they have grown since the loss of their world, they also had survived the return. They mourned and grew older, making new family and friends. But some who survived couldn’t hold the weight of their loss, and in the 5 years their family was gone, they went to be with them.

The returned came back, and lived in denial. Their eyes were empty, and every movement was carefully thought through. They were left behind, monuments in their place. Those who returned saw how the survived struggled to cope, and in turn they struggled as well. There was no place for them anymore. Especially when they didn’t have a family to go to.

Like Peter.

Peter returned to the world five years later to find May was gone. She was one of those who survived the initial snap, only to not be able to carry the grief. He hated that he came back to life and had no home, no family. Peter was alone.

Tony was nice enough to offer Peter a place to live with his own family. But they couldn’t relate to him, they didn’t know what it felt like to be left behind like this, to be dropped in the future and expected to be okay. Tony had a family now. A child born in an empty world, and another kid, Harley. He was barely a teenager before the snap and now he was 17, just as old as Peter.

He couldn’t help but hate living with them. Harley’s family had returned, but he wasn’t going home. Morgan was a child who was scared by Peter. Tony and Pepper sometimes forgot Peter was there, after spending so long without him they would act as if they’ve seen a ghost when Peter rounds the corner and into whatever room they’re occupying.

Peter missed May. He wished that he could still be in Queens, living in their apartment. Peter missed Ben and he missed the idea of his parents. He should have never returned. There’s no room for him in this world.

He hated how Harley took advantage of their situation. He hated that Harley had a family, a mother and a sister who returned and are alone and he didn’t go back to them. His family returned to him and yet he’s here with Tony. And he hated how Morgan took her family- her full, completed family for granted.

If Peter’s family came back to life there wouldn’t be anything stopping him from being with them. He would cherish every single nano-second if they were alive again.

And yet they all expected Peter to be okay. Adapted. Used to the future like he didn’t just blink and find himself lost and alone. He brings up that he misses May and someone frowns and tells him how long ago she died. How was that supposed to help him? No one even brought him to the cemetery. How is Peter meant to move on from a life that was stolen from him?

It’s not like any of them were okay. Tony and Pepper and Harley all crumbled as whenever there was a reminder of everything that they lost. Peter, unfortunately happened to be one of those reminders.

Tony and Pepper tried their best. They involved Peter in family bonding time and they tried their best not to flinch when Peter is unexpectedly there. Because they survived, they didn’t understand and talking to them led to dead ends.

He tried communicating with them. Cried over May’s death, had been confused about these new things that are actually years old. For them it was so long ago, a literal lifetime ago, so they never really saw the point in talking about these things. It wasn’t that they thought Peter would figure this out, they just assumed he already knew.

Talking to Harley didn’t really work that well either. He didn’t want to talk about the things Peter missed out on and when asked about his family he would shrug and say that he’s moved on.

And, well, Morgan was a kid. She was born in an empty world, told stories of people that she never should have met and now faced with the world doubling and not understanding any of it. Peter Parker was just a character is bedtime stories and now he’s a ghost who wants her home. She used to cry whenever Peter is around and still tries to hide behind people’s legs. 

God, he hated being this kid. Never wanted to be the one who envied others. Before- when it was still just May and Peter, he didn’t feel this gnawing inside him, while they didn’t have much Peter still had someone who fit all the rolls he needed. He hated being jealous, he didn’t feel this when he used to look at anyone who had two living parents.

He shouldn’t be here. Not in this room, which came decorated with everything Peter had loved before he died- and not alive. He didn’t fit. Not into this family who struggles with the idea he’s alive and not on this planet where the world is still mourning the people who came back. 

“Are you coming downstairs?” Harley asked.

Peter can’t be here. He had no right.

“I have a taxi coming to get me.” 

That wasn’t a lie. Something he scheduled last night at some point, between the tears and holding his breath. Peter didn’t think anyone would be awake at this time, Sunday’s were always the day that everyone slept in and Peter could just be alone outside of his room.  Sometimes he would just sit in the living room and other times he’d wander around the property, often ending up by the lake. By the time everyone would start waking up Peter would be back in his room with some breakfast and try not to bother anyone. 

“Okay, well it’s fathers day, so I think they might be expecting your presence in some form. We have plans and all that.” 

Of course they do. They always make plans where Peter only finds out the day before or day of. Maybe Peter has plans. They could consider that. Okay, maybe Peter never really has any plans, nothing more than trying to understand this new world. And maybe he didn’t make the active effort to find where he fit in this home, but he is the child and it shouldn’t really be up to him. Harley probably didn’t have to engage with the adults first. Tony and Pepper more than likely got input from Harley on their plans. 

With a sigh Peter nodded. “I’ll cancel the taxi.”

“Cool! I’ll tell everyone you’ll be down soon.”

Harley made sure to give a big smile, before heading downstairs, a bounce in each step he took. Peter really hated Harley for his happiness. 

Taking a moment after canceling the taxi, Peter tried to pull himself together. He forced a smile and pulled his shoulders back. All that needs to be done is sit and nod, occasionally laugh. Pay no mind to the way Morgan looks at him in fear, and don’t see the look of mourning on Tony and Pepper’s face. He needs to not remember Harley’s family alone in Tennessee. 

He went down the stairs and followed the noise to the kitchen. There was laughter and the sounds of dishes clinking against one another. It smelt of pancakes and cinnamon and hash browns and coffee. Standing here Peter could close his eyes and pretend this was seven years in the past, with him and May and Ben. He could imagine Ben making the food and singing along to the radio with May dancing along as she sets the table. But this wasn’t 2016, this was 2023. Instead it was a finished family forced to bring him in, a harsh reminder that he doesn’t belong.

Peter stepped into the kitchen, Pepper was just finishing up breakfast and Harley was setting the table. Morgan was sitting on Tony’s lap whispering into her fathers ear. Food was laid out ready to be served, with orange juice, iced tea and coffee all in their own pitchers waiting to be poured. He moved through the room, trying to not to intrude before sitting down at the table. It didn’t take much longer for Pepper and Harley to sit down as well, Tony moving Morgan into her proper chair. 

Everyone around Peter fell into easy conversation while he stayed silent, trying to focus on his food instead of the way Morgan was starring daggers at him. They talked about their favourite family vacations and laughed at their own jokes. Peter couldn’t help but feel like he was actually sitting out on the porch. This family had five years together, five years of memories and laughter, of love and pain, and Peter wasn’t apart of any of it. He wasn’t a part of any family, his own buried and far too dead.

“Peter, what about you? Did you have any Father’s Day traditions?” 

Hearing Harley address Peter pulled him back to this world, and welcomed in his deep rooted desire to have his family back. Harley had two families now and he left one completely. Abandoned them when they came back to life. And Morgan was sitting here glaring at Peter completely oblivious to the fact that she has her entire family and how privileged she was for it.

“Well I don’t have any memories of my parents, so I don’t think there were any traditions with them. The only people I could ask about that are now dead. Unless you consider going to the cemetery to go visit your dead father you can’t remember a father’s day tradition, then no.”

The entire table stopped eating, all sounds coming to a complete end. Everyone stayed still as if Peter was some volatile bomb that would explode if anyone nearby breathed too hard. He could feel his jaw clench, as he tried to breathe in and out. It wasn’t working.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Should I not bring up my very dead family? Was that inappropriate to say that my father is dead I have no memories? My absolute bad! Next time I’ll consider how uncomfortable it makes everyone here. I mean jeez, Harley has a whole family in Tennessee he hasn’t seen since they reappeared. You’ve got two whole families to choose from, Harls! What an accomplishment. And Morgan, well she’s older than I was when my parents died, so she’s definitely on the right track. And wow, I got a whole second set of parents out of May and Ben. Which was great until I watched Ben die. Until I die and find out while my death was temporary, May’s wasn’t. Whenever I want to be with my family I have to go all the way back to Queens and visit the cemetery. But you all just live in the same house. So genuinely, I’m sorry for not considering your emotions about my dead family.”

“Peter...” Tony whispered, reaching his one hand out to Peter.

Peter shook his head, pulling away, he didn’t want to see the empty eyes starring back at him. He didn’t want to acknowledge the way Tony looks at him with regret and how Pepper looks at him like he’s lost. He didn’t want to see how the three that lived through both snaps always held pain in their eyes. And Peter most certainly didn’t want to see Morgan, who had no idea how lucky she is, that she was born never knowing loss.

Peter didn’t want to see a family who was pulled together in a time of pain. He wanted to see his family. Peter wanted to look across the table and see Ben and May throwing little balls of napkins at each other. He wanted to be Harley and be able to go home and see his family whenever he wants. He wanted to be Morgan and do science experiments with his parents. Peter wanted the one thing he didn’t have, something that Harley and Morgan had an abundance of.

“I don’t have a family anymore. I never got to say goodbye to May. I would give up the rest of my life to see them again. And you guys just can’t understand that. You have you family. You get to see them whenever you want. I can’t ever see mine again. I can never go home. They’re gone.”

After all, Peter was just a ghost, another person who returned, who had been dead for too long. He didn’t belong in a world of survivors. Peter was just another person long gone who no longer fits into the world around him.

-

Taglist: Ask/DM to be added

@peter-is-a-bean @jean-and-diet-coke @dead-inside-pt2 @they-were-cloudsinmycoffee @parkersjiggle @7peternotparker7 @thatonecrackheadshipper @kevinthewoman @faline4you @lynxshinon @narutoyaoifan @pastelwheeler @thecrazymarvelfan @bonjour-gays @thebestqueenoftheworld

[jonathanrook]

legally i have to give you intern 2

em you have awoken an ungodly beast inside me so i need to warn everyone that this post is. incomprehensible. but so is mymusic so i guess we're all used to it.

How I feel about this character:

i watched mymusic as it was airing/running/coming out specifically bc i'm a jack stannie, and as a kid melvin was my second favorite character (w scene being in first, obvs) for mostly that reason. he basically hovered around this ranking until my most recent rewatch in the summer of 2020, which was actually spurred by some events in my personal life that vaguely reminded me of scene's season two arc w jeff, and i thought it'd been a funny/nostalgic way to get my mind off things.

(i want to side note here that -- i know you didn't ask, but -- i love jeff. i have since i was a kid. like, obviously not as a person but i think he's honestly the best written character in the series, w indie close in second. idk what it says about the f*nes that their most interesting and well rounded characters are the villains, but i digress. to this day i'm salty that jeff never got added to the theme song and wasn't really included in promotional merch.)

however, in said rewatch, certain things about how he was written started to really get under my skin, and certain moments in particular have really stuck out to me in a negative way. like, for the entirety of season one and a good chunk of season two he's one person, and then he leaves mymusic and we have an entirely different person, but not in a nuanced character building sort of way.

i've said a few of these points before but i'll repeat them here regardless. at the risk of sounding like i've put on a tin-foil hat, it's my sneaking suspicion that scindie was supposed to be endgame, but since fan reception to it was pretty neutral, and scenechart stans were, at the very least, more vocal, changes were made to the intended finale, which is why in the last scene he's basically just. indie. like, if everything about the show was exactly the same but indie was the one who had ended up w scene in the end that would have made so much more sense since a) scene had a crush on indie that he/everyone knew about and b) indie was kind of a dick despite the half-assed attempts at redemption, so both combined make it slightly less weird/out-of-nowhere that he kisses her w/o her consent (since, even though like. implied consent is not real at worst and a fuzzy subject at best but you could argue that scene would want indie to kiss her); and this isn't even taking into consideration that c) melvin is heavily queer-coded in both seasons, with his friendship with nerdcore being, dare i say, homoerotic at times, and his arc about leaving the company and changing his name mirroring nerdcore's almost perfectly (with nerdcore being a character who b*nny [at least] has all but confirmed is actually gay).

i've also been on the fence about melvin's behavior in that final scene making more sense for indie's character being an intentional decision as a way of shoe-horning in a theme about the lasting effects of abuse/cycles of abuse/the corruption of power but i also don't think the f*nes are smart enough for that. however, for the sake of defending my straw theory, i also point to the scene where indie comes to visit the acid factory after melvin told him to shut up, and we see melvin use reggie as a foot-stool, going as far as to say that it feels good to do so (which, in all honesty, i think is a bit that was entirely improvised, since the f*nes were "notorious for never saying cut" [paraphrased from a bts video], but work w me here). he's also given a seltzer mug that perfectly resembles indie's kombucha mug. in these moment melvin is directly emulating the behavior of his previous abuser, purposefully or not, literal moments after being promoted to an equal position of authority, which was totally just included as a joke, but could also be argued is meant to show that he's becoming indie; or, if we acknowledge that the f*nes have no fucking clue what they're doing and were just directing like chickens with their heads cut off, it at least shows that melvin's new position of power is leading him to understand where indie was coming from, which is supported by their conversation in the finale.

the following contains a couple brief mentions of irl sexual assault so if that's something you'd like to avoid skip to the next section!

HOWEVER, that alone isn't what i have a problem with, since i think melvin is completely justified in being a dick to indie (and also reggie enthusiastically consents to being used as an ottoman so good for him i guess). the issue comes completely in how he treats scene in the scenes where the f*nes clearly thought what they were writing was super romantic. like, the fact that the only thing he's got hung on his cubicle wall is a single picture of scene taken from the fucking opening credits (like. how hard would it have been to have. literally any other photo[s] esp since there's an abundance of cute bts pics of the cast in costume that could have been put there) and him scrolling through her twitter at work really creep me out (and at the risk of oversharing the weird, like, social media stalking angle really fucks w me bc that may or may not have been the exact fucking thing i was trying to escape in rewatching mymusic in the first place). also, having him sexually assault scene as a means of comforting her after she had just been sexually assaulted in the same way by someone else was... a choice (which is also, uh, personally familiar).

again, i recognize that demonizing melvin wasn't what the f*nes were trying to do here, and i perhaps seem hypocritical for opening liking jeff, but what makes jeff work is he's intentionally "the bad guy." having melvin do the same things as indie and jeff uncritically only proves further that the f*nes can't write for shit, and ruins his character which had, up until he quit mymusic, been unironically good. like, it's obviously not beneficial that the exact asshole things he does are personally triggering, but the character would still be a mess and i would still dislike him regardless.

i want to say though that jack delivers a surprisingly great performance despite how shoddily his character is constructed and how little experience he has as an actor. like, it's clear he was having a lot of fun on set and i would love to see him in something, like, good; i think he could pull off even like, guest television roles, which is a lot more than can be said for other youtubers.

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All the people I ship romantically with this character:

nerdchart should have been canon i'm sorry. i know that close, nonromantic male friendships are valuable, esp between queer men, but also gd wouldn't it have been baller to have a canon interracial mlm ship. like. c'mon. and they could have been such a good friends to lovers story! we already got to see how melvin was the only person nerdcore could really be himself around so it would have been so cool if melvin's self-advocacy arc/flowchart arc had revolved more around nerdcore with a little role-reversal! and then they kiss! like god intended!

also i ship him and indie bc i'm a grubby little gremlin man ohoho. enemies w weird sexual tension? sign me up. not even enemies to lovers i'm not saying this one should have been canon i just love the vibes. do you think melvin and indie ever explored each other's bod-- *gunshot*

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My non-romantic OTP for this character:

i wish him and scene had just been bros. god remember in season one when they were just bros that was the life.

alternatively, i wish we'd seen more bonding w him and metal, as a means of reconciling that. uh. moment from season one. along similar lines i would have loved to see him get closer w rayna in a similar way to how she bonded w nerdcore in season two. i think that could have also worked to show how she'd grown between the two seasons.

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My unpopular opinion about this character:

HIM. AND. SCENE. SHOULD. HAVE. JUST. BEEN. BROS. (though i think my general dislike of him is pretty unpopular, lmao).

when the show was coming out i don't think it's unfair to say that scenechart/scenetern 2 was the most popular ship (aside from potentially techstep whatever) but luckily we're all gay and have better taste now. unfortunately i totally fell into this camp and scenechart was even my otp for years (until it was arguably more unfortunately usurped by reddie in 2019) and i didn't even realise that it's a hot mess until, again, the summer of 2020.

when actually watching the show the choices the f*nes made in regards to how the ship actually became canon are so odd and out of place, too? okay, so, on one hand everyone just shipped scenechart bc it was the whitest hettiest ship in the show (esp in season two when idol left) aside from scindie (and we already discussed what's wrong w that). but, on the other hand, lainey and jack clearly also just got along? and i suspect that lainey probably also admired jack's work and was happy to be working with him bc we have so many shots throughout even the first season when the ship wasn't the intended endgame of lainey scene looking really fondly at jack melvin at times when it doesn't make much sense at all, esp since she's smitten w indie? this trend continues into the second season which arguably works but it still seems really out of place for him to be the one to ultimately make the first move on her since it's clear she was the one crushing this whole time and also he's gay! this bitch is gay what the fuck!!

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One thing I wish had happened with this character in canon:

at this point i'm struggling to think of anything i haven't covered yet. oops.

i've talked at length before about how he should have been a woman/lesbian, but the tl;dr is that it would have solved a lot of the queer-coding "problems" that just didn't get resolved in the show. if he'd been a lesbian then not only would the friendship w nerdcore still made sense, but scenechart would have as well (not even mentioning that both of scene's other relationships w men make a lot of sense as comphet anyway).

[rorykillmore]

can you rank (loosely if u don't want to play exact favorites) villanelle's most important or influential denny relationships?

i’m just putting them roughly in the order she met/reunited with them on denny, for the record. and in case anyone was thinking of coming for me, this is just what i reckon are the most INFLUENTIAL, good and bad, not a complete list of her friends or family or important interactions

okay and this is just going underneath a cut because it got long as fuck

fox is villanelle’s best friend, her -- if we lived in the, like, idk, homestuck universe (not to immediately make this cursed.) where you can have a romantic soulmate AND a platonic soulmate, he’s her platonic soulmate. and in terms of influence, i want to emphasize how much of villanelle’s denny arc, like... could not have been possible without fox. fox was the first person who was ever kind to her despite having absolutely no reason to be, and he was also the person who challenged her in such an important way at such an important time. during the whole GRACE plot, HE came back for her, and HE’S the one who essentially said “look, you have a choice. you’re not just a tool for this organization. one way or another, you need to make a choice.” which. again. a huge first in her life!

i’m trying to keep these short and sweet since i have so many to talk about, but genuinely like... i cannot understate fox’s importance as a part of villanelle’s life. and for her to even be able to have a best friend, to begin with? that’s such a like, idk. cornerstone of things Normal People Get To Have, and every day i write her i am so so happy she found him. from an ooc perspective, they’ve like, been to hell and back together also, and there’s a fierce kind of joy as writer when you look at a relationship that’s over a year old and has evolved so much over that time and get to go “we made this together!!!”

konstantin meanwhile is... well, he’s the healthiest parental figure villanelle’s ever had. which. really isn’t a high bar! their relationship has always been so tempestuous because it is built on konstantin’s manipulation of villanelle, both to use her for his own gain and... y’know, for his own survival, being able to manage her as long as he did! but he also genuinely loves her, and has gone out of his way on a number of occasions to protect her or help her or take care of her whereas it’s quite likely that most of the twelve’s handlers... just wouldn’t give a shit! i highly doubt that the twelve are the kind of organization where you’re supposed to get actually attached to your agent. and for villanelle, konstantin’s affection for her makes things more confusing, because it’s hard for her to ever draw the line between what’s sincere affection and what’s manipulation. post-canon update, she kind of now aggressively thinks he’s full of shit and is rejecting him for her own well-being which i think! is an important boundary for villanelle to be able to learn to set for herself! and you and i have spoken about how we don’t want to reconcile that immediately, but i also think... she would very much miss him and that it would be very, very strange for her to be without him when she’s ALWAYS had him to fall back on on denny, and indeed in most of her adult life in general. she needs to learn to stand without him, but at the same time.... i’m super interested to see how they approach each other now from this more honest, fractured place.

and then we have ruby , which. i still think ruby and villanelle are one of the most delightfully unexpected panfandom dynamics i’ve ever helped form PERIOD. and it’s interesting because hunter and i have always talked about how you would never expect these two characters to connect on the surface -- and you wouldn’t! but in exploring the ways they’re different, we’ve also found these really jarring similarities between them, too? and i think in a way, they’ve kind of bled into each other on top of that. villanelle’s relationship with ruby is like, INCREDIBLY formative to her learning empathy and just how to... nurture a relationship and be there for other people, but she has also become someone who ruby looks up to, and i think she’s contributed to maybe. Darkening ruby a bit, in that way.  

i also think of all the girls, ruby is the one who villanelle has the most explicitly maternal relationship with. weiss too, but i’ll get into why i think that works a bit differently in weiss’ section. but anyway, WHEN you have that kind of relationship with someone, at least when you’re approaching it with earnesty and a determination to do it Right, it challenges you with a certain kind of responsibility that i think has been essential to villanelle’s development too. not only has it taught villanelle how you love someone in a comparatively selfless way from what she’s used to, but requires from her a certain kind of self-awareness and moral awareness (if she doesn’t care about doing the right thing In General, she cares about doing right by ruby) that has allowed her to mature a bit on denny. so yeah, ABSOLUTELY one of of villanelle’s most influential dynamics. 

she’s obviously also very close with weiss, and i would also call her feelings for weiss maternal, but compared to ruby/villanelle i think weiss and villanelle’s relationship tends to take on a more Sisterly overtone on the surface. and i think that’s maybe because weiss HAS a sister who is basically villanelle’s age, who is her other maternal figure, so for weiss that’s more just how these kinds of feelings tend to Manifest. idk. you know, not to speak for jay, that’s just my take on it. but while weiss and villanelle have never really clashed the way ruby and villanelle have and then had to work through resolving that, i think in a way weiss just holds villanelle more accountable on a more day to day basis? they’re always quite honest with each other, weiss has always been quick to call her out, and like -- post-graceplot, for instance, weiss was the one who was like “i believe you didn’t mean to hurt us but you still need to find a way to make this right.”

and not that weiss did this deliberately, but she’s also the person who REALLY tested the person villanelle has become on denny and how... committed she is to loving the people she loves, via everything that went down during the hunger games. the way villanelle feels about the sacrifice she made is still really complicated -- it’s not something she feels comfortable being commended for, but it’s also not something she regrets. she’s not one to put selfless sacrifice on a pedestal, especially not in a horrible situation like that where neither of them should have had to to begin with, but a part of her... does find a deep sense of relief in finding this validation that her love for weiss - and all the girls, really - is real, and that she proved it to herself. after the games, i think maybe villanelle can be open with weiss in a way that she can’t entirely be with the rest of the girls. it’s just one of those things where if you go through something like that together, the bond it forges is quite unique.

i wavered on whether to include blake because villanelle didn’t do quite as much active development with her or yang, but i’m throwing blake in here for a few reasons.  1) post-graceplot when villanelle was kind of avoiding everyone, blake was the person who was able to approach that from the most empathetic point of view since she had just recently been on a “running away from everyone” arc herself, and i think that ultimately helped villanelle a lot in easing into wanting to make things right.

2) blake’s death during the games, and her not coming back afterwards, was a HUGE driving factor in how desperately angry villanelle became after the fact. it’s also maybe the most raw experience she’d had with grief up to that point, and it wasn’t something she was able to reconcile. that loss really helped to fuel her rage and also taught villanelle that even when you do your best to love someone else, things can still go wrong and you can still lose them, and that... wasn’t an easy thing for her to come to terms with.

and 3) she promised to fuck up adam for her if he ever showed up which, i think, should be the driving goal of the rest of villanelle’s life, 

sun and villanelle aka the single greatest example of “what if we jokingly shipped this oh god oh no wait i’m invested.” look they were always meant to be temporary but they were so goddamn sweet! while they lasted! i think planning temporary ships can give characters MOUNTAINS of development that endgame ships just can’t give you in the same way (not to say there’s not plenty of development that comes from endgame ships; i’m just saying there’s. a special kind of development that comes specifically from being brave enough to approach ending things with finality.) in villanelle’s case, that kind of stable, sweet relationship where she was tempering so much of herself deliberately could have never lasted, but it was good for her to get to experience that for a little while regardless? while i don’t think she was in love with sun, she did learn to just love him, and i think the clarity and simplicity sun approaches people in general with was something villanelle really benefited (and still benefits) from. most of all, it was significant for her to be able to see and understand that she wasn’t going to be able to be present and stable in that relationship in the way that sun deserved, and to make the decision to let him go. even if she was never OBSESSIVE about sun, villanelle still used to be a pretty selfish person who didn’t see any reason to let go of things if she enjoyed them, so i think. it can’t be underestimated, what sun taught her about love. 

emerald and villanelle have come SUCH a long way. first they were friends, then they were very bitter enemies, now they’re friends again approaching even a familial fondness. when villanelle was angry at emerald, it was never so much morally based as it was specifically based in the way emerald had hurt ruby, and penny, and had lied to villanelle herself. and although they started to resolve that after em didn’t take the chance to take advantage of villanelle during the memory glitch, i really think it was all the cinder stuff that allowed them to become close again. there are a lot of parallels between emerald and villanelle: both of them have coped by refusing to acknowledge the depths they’d sunken into over their heads with their respective organizations, both of them have been stuck in incredibly fucked up situations with older women. i think when villanelle acknowledges what emerald’s been through and is able to recognize that and feel compassion for her, she’s in a way learning to feel compassion for herself, and that’s very significant. i’d love to see how they evolve after villanelle’s canon update because i think now she’ll even have. More feelings about that. and i also think on some subconscious level as the new fall maiden she feels some kind of obligation to em, to be better than cinder was.

eve is, of course, a given on a list like this. she is such a powerful - the most powerful, in fact - influence on villanelle in any universe, and i think a lot about that in the context of villanelle having so many other people in her life now who she loves and who love her. as we’ve kind of seen on at least one occasion, if villanelle had to choose between eve and everything and everyone else she has... she would always choose eve. which isn’t something i’m trying to paint as sweepingly romantic (i love villaneve and i love how disastrous they are around one another, but i can still admit i’d be concerned for someone who would choose their partner over EVERY OTHER LOVED ONE THEY HAVE COMBINED,) but then again, it’s not even necessarily only for romantic reasons. it’s because eve is someone and something villanelle... craves, needs, finds time and time again that she simply cannot live without.

and them trying to make a relationship with one another work on denny has really provided its own unique set of challenges that’ve had an impact on both of them. eve and villanelle are deeply intrinsically connected, but that doesn’t necessarily equate to peaceful coexistence. any semblance of that, i think, is something that they’re always going to have fight for durations of, because their instinct is so much to consume one another instead! while its effect on villanelle of course can’t be described as wholly healthy - like i just mentioned above, she can be pushed into that place where she just sabotages everything else in her life for eve even still - that isn’t to say that there aren’t things about eve that haven’t changed villanelle for the better too! because to even have a romantic relationship with eve for an extended period of time like she has, villanelle has had to get better at certain things. she’s had to access a place of vulnerability and willingness to communicate that she hasn’t with anyone else, she’s had to accept eve’s own agency and individuality separate from their relationship (which is something she did on denny even before season 3 had her do it in canon!), she’s even had to do things like confront what her, say, killing bill actually meant and how it affected and continues to affect eve. it’s an absolutely explosive and constantly unstable dynamic, but there is of course GENUINE love between the two of them, and i really love all the ways in which villanelle’s been challenged to fight for that.

carolyn bears a mention because she’s undoubtedly been hugely influential  in the choices villanelle has made (and the ones which have been denied to her), especially lately. i don’t think villanelle ever particularly underestimated carolyn, but i think she was much too proud and too cocky to have imagined she’d have ever ended up under carolyn’s thumb the way she did. carolyn forced villanelle into the RID, and that was a situation villanelle was pretty complacent in for a while if only because it generally worked out for her. it took being backed into a corner to realize exactly how fucked she was, and interestingly enough i think that started to open villanelle’s eyes to the reality that she keeps ending up trapped by these higher powers, which is something that her canon update is going to heavily heavily emphasize. so. yeah, although while canon villanelle is mostly ambivalent to carolyn, denny villanelle absolutely HATES her. which. heh. may not end well. for at least one of them.

natasha is such a significant relationship for villanelle because i think, even with all the time she’s spent on denny and all the people she’s met? villanelle does not know... many people who are like her. most of her friends who know she’s an assassin either shy away from that part of her, or acknowledge it without really understanding what it means or what villanelle’s relationship is with killing and her own inner darkness. but natasha is such a PARALLEL to villanelle in so many ways, she was shaped into a weapon and told it’s the thing that defines her too, and even though she got out, she still has to grapple with that part of herself every single day. villanelle and natasha have their differences, sure, their variations in character and how their individual stories play out, but they also share a very specific understanding with one another that i don’t think either of them can really get anywhere else at the moment. and that’s a huge part of why nat has been such a significant influence on villanelle. when nat shows villanelle compassion, it comes from a deep, unfiltered place of empathy, something that could never be mistaken as Pity because they both understand what an insult that would be. when nat shows kindness and affection towards villanelle, it always seems to come from a place of “i understand the place you’re in completely, and you deserve to be treated like a human being anyway” which i think is so tragically ironic considering the self-loathing nat still carries around with her.

and i think there’s a part of villanelle that... while on denny she’s never expressed outward interest in completely changing her lifestyle or anything like that, i think there’s a part of her that looks at nat and admires how far she’s dug herself out of the hole she was in and, in some small quiet way, hopes to be like her someday.

pyrrha is pretty unique among the ruby girls in that like, rather than bonding with her gradually, villanelle kind of latched onto her immediately in a very “THIS IS TEAM RWBY’S DEAD LOVED ONE I MUST PROTECT HER” sort of way. which is interesting in its own way, because villanelle is rarely that protective of other people, and i think it goes beyond the physical (because she knows pyrrha can take care of herself) and more into the emotional. which villanelle does not especially consider herself well-equipped to handle, but hey, she’s gotta make sure pyrrha values herself beyond just what she can give or sacrifice to others!!!

on the subject, in terms of influence i have to mention that pyrrha gave her life for villanelle during the games, which is something that no one has ever done for her before, and an event which directly compelled villanelle to do the same for weiss. i don’t think villanelle knows how to even... address that, really, and can’t fully process the scope of it even though she made a similar decision in the end. in simplified terms, she feels like she owes pyrrha a debt, and one she hasn’t yet fathomed a way to repay.

elizabeth really just started out as a minor infatuation, a lil crush like villanelle gets on any pretty woman who intrigues her for more than 5 minutes. her flirtations with elizabeth were all in line with that, and i don’t think villanelle really realized how much she was encouraging elizabeth’s feelings for an attachment to her, particularly because her own feelings were not particularly intense for the first stretch of their friendship! in a way, villanelle’s relationship with elizabeth is a good examination and challenge of something i haven’t really done before with villanelle, which is that, like. it’s not her fault that she doesn’t bond or attach the way other people do (or at least, is much slower to), but she also has virtually no self-awareness of the way she engages and sometimes leads people on as a result. a lot could have been averted if she’d just... had the sense to set boundaries or had found a way to be more honest about the person she is.

but a lot’s happened since then, and now villanelle has to contend with the fact that she DOES love elizabeth, but at a time when their relationship has already just become too strained and impossible for the time being. additionally, villanelle really has no reference at all for being IN love with someone (or approaching that, anyway) in a way that’s non-obsessive and more quiet and gradual and just... very different from the way she loves eve, so she has a real hard time distinguishing this grey area between platonic and romantic feelings. because villanelle is still very literal in the interpretation of her emotions, so her reference for being in love with someone is “eve”, and she doesn’t know how to recognize anything on such a different part of the spectrum (particularly because villanelle is probably physically attracted to like, many of her platonic adult friends,)!  SO elizabeth and villanelle’s relationship is very influential in the sense that it really pushes villanelle into exploring parts of herself and emotional experiences that she hasn’t really yet.

do i need to put cinder here? she wasn’t in villanelle’s life for very long, but technically she is the reason villanelle has maiden powers, which changed her life entirely, so,

and then i’ll also toss in jigsaw (and technically also handsome jack), who will be INCREDIBLY pleased to know that his trap had a lasting effect one way or the other. don’t get me wrong, she was pissed as hell about it and would go on the WARPATH if she ever caught so much as a whiff of their involvement, but i mean. aside from the fact that lasting trauma definitely counts as an influence, i think it is one of the events that definitely brought villanelle closer to and more attached to eve, if perhaps in a. somewhat codependent and overprotective way. still can’t believe they caught villanelle saying she would give up everything else in her life and die for her gf ON TAPE,

[aproblematicpanda]

IF YOU ARE BORED I WILL APPEAR: the 100 for the in depth fandom questions 💖💖

Excellent timing, I just sent you an ask, too! :D Thanks babe. <3 I feel like I have so much more to say than I just did but the inspiration seems to have bailed on me. Oh well. If you have any follow-up questions hmu!

Top 5 favorite characters: Octavia, Echo, Lexa, Lincoln, Murphy Other characters you like: Gaia, Raven, Emori, Monty, Harper, Diyoza Least favourite characters: Clarke, Abby, Kane Otps: Octavia and Lincoln, Lexa and Clarke, Bellamy and Echo Notps: Bellamy and Clarke, basically anything involving Abby Favourite friendships: Murphy and Raven, Monty and Jasper Favourite family: Spacekru Favourite episodes: 4x10, 5x02, probably more but I can’t really think of anything else right now (I appreciated 7x02 but I’m not quite sure yet if I’m gonna call it a favorite, that will depend on how the rest of the season turns out) Favourite season: Season 2 Favourite quotes: “We’re back, bitches!” “I don’t choose pain. I choose life.” “Not everyone. Not you.” “ You're the most beautiful broom in a broom closet of brooms.” “ I can't change the tide if the moon won't cooperate. It's basic physics.” (I’m including this last one because of an amazing Monty/Jasper gif set I saw once.) Best musical moment: Ehh... Well I stll tear up basically every time I hear Cloud by Elias, the song that played during Lincoln’s death scene. It’s an amazing song and anything related Lincoln’s death still gets to me, not just because of the characters but also because of everything that went on with Ricky and everything he was put through, it’s just... it’s a very loaded moment in the series as well as behind the scenes. I’m not sure ‘best’ is the right word here but it’s the moment I’m going with. Moment that made you fangirl the hardest: When Octavia became Skaikru’s champion. I found it rather poetic that a young woman who had been spat out by her community simply for being born was their only hope for survival. Plus, she looked incredible. When it really disappointed you: It’s not just ‘a moment’ but I’ve been really disappointed by the show’s treatment of Octavia and how its hypocrisy concerning other characters who have done way worse shit than Octavia yet they are patted on the back and protected for it by the narrative. It aggravates me. I’m not mad that Octavia has had it rough, when a character gets everything handed to them on a golden platter with no real consequences, that’s boring. But it makes me mad that she’s the only one who has to pay for her mistakes and none of the others have to, and the way the characters are now comfortable joking about what has been the most traumatizing, horrifying and scarring thing anyone has ever had to go through really pisses me off. Octavia deserves so much better, the show really dropped the ball here. I’m also extremely disappointed by the way the show handled Lexa’s death. Octavia survived a sword through the gut and falling off a big ass cliff, but Lexa can’t take a stray bullet in the presence of someone who is meant to be a doctor? I mean I get that this was supposed to prove that we’re all vulnerable and that even Lexa, Heda of the thirteen clans can’t escape death, but come on. Also the way Jason treated the Clexa fandom was gross. Saddest moment: The moment Bellamy called Octavia “the queen of cannibals”. Up until that point I held onto hope that things would get better, that the show would still turn things around, that everything Octavia had been put through would be put into perspective when she could tell the one she loved the most about the horrors the bunker put her through. But when Bellamy called her that, it was made clear that not only did he find out about the most traumatizing part of his sister’s life (and it’s not like it lacked trauma before) but he also didn’t care. It was the moment where I had to give up hope that they could ever get to a place where I would respect and care for their dynamic again and it made me sad, because Octavia deserved so much better. Most well done character death: Oh god, this is a difficult one, because I have issues with most of the main characters’ deaths lol. So I’m gonna go with Nia for this one, because I really liked that Lexa recognized who the real threat was and took matters into her own hands and did what she could to maintain the coalition. I can’t think of another death that I didn’t hate. Favourite guest star: Probably Jessica Harmon Favourite cast member: Marie Avgeropoulos Character you wish was still alive: Lincoln, hands down. So many things would be different right now if he had still been around. One thing you hope really happens: I hope Bellamy and Echo are endgame and not just that, I also hope that the show will allow Bellamy to treat Echo with the love and respect she deserves. Because so far the show hasn’t really shown their relationship much respect and most of the effort is coming from Echo’s side and I don’t care much for that. Bellamy clearly loves her a lot, so I hope the writers will let him show and prove that to us in the final season. Most shocking twist: I don’t really think the 100 is good at shocking twists? You see most of them coming from miles away lol. When did you start watching: When it came out, basically. :) Best animal/creature: Helios! Favourite location: Ehh... I’m gonna go with the dropship or Arkadia, not because I love those places so much but because they’re where the show’s best seasons (one and two) basically happened. Trope you wish they would stop using: BYG One thing this show does better than others: Pissing off its fanbase! :’D Funniest moments: Most of Monty and Jasper’s interactions in the earlier seasons, those two were amazing. Couple you would like to see: I wish the show would make Niylah and Octavia a thing even if I don’t passionately ship it. I also became a huge fan of Clarke and Gaia! Actor/Actress you want to join the cast: I really don’t know anyone for this question... I’m a big fan of Kristen Stewart so I’d probably be thrilled with that, but it’s not something that I actively want or anything. Favourite outfit: Ehh... As much as I hate to say this, Clarke does get the best outfits and I think I’m gonna go with the dress she wore early in season 6. I’m also a huge fan of Octavia’s grounder look bw. Favourite item: Lincoln’s diary Do you own anything related to this show: Nope What house/team/group/friendship group/family/race etc would you be in: Well I don’t know which one I would be in, but Spacekru or Trikru seem like the most fun so I’d want to be a part of one of those! Most boring plotline: I never really cared for the City of Light although I will admit that storyline had a lot of potential, I’m just not sure the show really handled that well? Most laughably bad moment: The fact that Clarke just becomes anyone’s leader anywhere while not doing anything for it. And how fast she was forgiven and integrated into Spacekru in season 6 while doing the bare minimum to work for their forgiveness and showing no signs of remorse or wanting to change. Best flashback/flashfoward if any: I really liked the flashbacks of Octavia’s childhood, they did a good job of portraying what life had been like for her and it helped us understand her character better, even if they were short and limited to one episode. I also really enjoyed watching Octavia during those ten years in Skyring, but I’m not sure those qualify as a flashback and I do have some issues with them, still, so I’m gonna go ahead and stick with 1x06. Most layered character: Octavia, hands down Most one dimensional character: Oh god, how do I answer this... Of the core group I guess I would go with Raven. And that isn’t because I don’t love her, because I very much do, it’s the show’s fault for not really digging into anything that’s related to her. She’s just in the background until they need her to fix a problem they’ve been having or until they need someone to be tortured, or lately when they need to make Clarke look less horrible. She just doesn’t really get much else to work with, we don’t know what motivates her, we barely see her feel a type of way about the things she’s put through and when she does get a voice, it’s obviously meant to create sympathy for other characters so... yeah. Scariest moment: I don’t find it a very scary show hahaha. Grossest moment: The graphic scene of Lincoln’s execution, it was in such poor taste, especially considering everything that had been going on with Jrot and Ricky. Best looking male: Murphy Best looking female: Octavia and Echo Who you’re crushing on (if any): Octavia and Echo Favourite cast moment: Ehh, I don’t really keep up with the cast so idk? I did love Marie calling Echo Octavia’s sister-in-law though. Favourite transportation: None I think, I don’t really care? Most beautiful scene (scenery/shot wise): The one that comes to mind right away is the one of Octavia swimming towards the surface after she ran into the anomaly, it’s just such a pretty shot. Other than that, well, The 100 is shot in a beautiful environment so a lot of their scenery is gorgeous but I just immediately thought of this one. Unanswered question/continuity issue/plot error that bugs you: Jason’s blabbing about the damn worms. The way 3x01 felt completely disconnected from everything that happened in 2x16 also still bugs me. And how it feels as if the new writers never really saw the previous seasons and instead just read character descriptions, I feel like they didn’t really grasp the relationships and stuff like that in season 6. Best promo: Ehh, I usually just watch the episodes so I don’t really have an opinion about this. Loved the uproar the one for season 7 caused, though, because I’m a sucker for drama hahaha. At what point did you fall in love with this show/book: As soon as I met Octavia, she’s my baby and you will have to take her from my cold. dead. hands.

Send me a show/fandom and I’ll answer

[hamliet]

I've never seen Game of Thrones but I've heard a lot about it and apparently many people are upset with the ending. Something about Targaryen becoming a villain at the last second for no apparent reason? Idk, could you explain what's going on? I heard it's based off a book series. Does the show stray from the original plot or stay loyal to it?

*starts sobbing* SPARE YOURSELF

Honestly I’d sum it up like how @mercyandmagic summed it up: image Harry Potter wins the Battle of Hogwarts, but in the very moment he wins, he snaps and the Voldemort horcrux inside him suddenly takes over the rest of his soul and he murders almost everyone and Ginny has to put him down at Hermione and Ron’s urging.

That’s what happened. It was a tone-deaf plot twist in this day and age, misogynistic, ableist, and racist in its execution, and it was poorly written as well--like, there was no foreshadowing for this twist of events.

The thing about the books is that they aren’t completed. We are 5/7 books through. The creator told the showrunners the bare bones of the ending (who lives/dies/gets the throne), so I’m hoping this isn’t his endgame exactly. Others speculate it might not be (for example, the main ship--Jon and Dany--might still have one killing the other, but it might be more in a sacrifice than in a “put the mad dog down” scenario like the show gave us. Still hate it, but not “burn it all down”).

We know they cut some characters from the books whom at first I assumed the fact that they were cut meant that they were extra fat, and... well I am now hoping that’s wrong because combining their arcs with the characters we have left would explain a lot about it being shit. 

So, the primary defense I’m seeing of Dany Villain is that she’s a tragic heroine, and her descent just wasn’t written properly. I’d agree that it’s not written well, but I’d also argue that in both the books and in the show, Dany is not presented as a tragic heroine at all, but as a hero on a gritty version of the hero’s journey–just like Jon--but one of the cut characters is indeed a tragic heroine. 

The thing about tragedies is that you have to manage expectations and clearly show that your tragic hero is doomed from the very early on–ie you have to show them making steadily worse and worse decisions (see: Eren Jaeger in SnK), if not directly tell your audience at the very beginning that this is a tragic story (ie see Greek choruses and Shakespeare, the prequels from Star Wars because everyone knows Anakin is Vader–plus I’d argue Anakin’s arc only works because we know he comes back to the light in the end–Kaneki Ken in the first Tokyo Ghoul, etc).

We don’t have that with Dany or with Jon, and we’re 5/7 through the books which is, frankly, too late. If they intended to show Dany as a tragic heroine they needed to start foreshadowing that in, oh, book 3/season 4-5 at the latest, and show divergence from Jon Snow’s arc instead of increasing parallels. But they haven’t, which gives me hope at least that the book’s ending plays out a little bit more like Dany burning a city as the “abyss/underworld” part of her hero’s journey (which she is on, and so is Jon) and then redeeming herself in the end fighting a greater enemy.

A hero’s journey includes a step in which the hero confronts the darkness, the shadow. For Jon, it’s a cold death and the fact that winter is coming. For Dany, it’s her father and her heritage’s legacy of fire and blood. The end of Book 5, the last book published, pretty clearly showed both of them falling to the abyss (well, teetering on the edge, and it’s going to get worse before they’re both reborn). But the important thing is that it’s not the end of their journey.

Audiences don’t like reversing on set up/undoing structure. To make Dany a tragic heroine is to go against the structure of her arc in both show and book. That’s why people don’t like it, even if the books makes it seem more believable.

You know who is set up as a tragic heroine destined to descend and die because of her flaws in the books, whose arc has almost certainly been combined with Dany’s in some sense in the show?

Arianne Martell. (and another character known as f!Aegon)

The show pretty clearly merged Jon’s (main hero’s) arc with f!Aegon’s, even giving him his name (in a nonsensical way. In the books, f!Aegon believes he is Aegon Targaryen, Jon’s brother, though he really isn’t as Aegon is dead; in the show, Jon’s dad apparently named… both his sons Aegon. Mmkay). Characters who are  the mastermindsbehind the Aegon plot, supporting him over f!Aegon, take Jon’s side against Dany in the show. Similarly, the show is merging Dany with Arianne, retconning her as letting her demons overtake her in the end, when that is just not Dany’s arc’s set up at all, in the books or in the show.  

In the books, Arianne is incredibly ambitious, and especially resents her brother and his quest for power. Like Margaery (another tragic character), Arianne seeks power and is intelligent and manipulative in her quest for it. But Margaery’s fatal mistake is that in seeking power and prestige, she’s become more a pawn than anything else for a villain (Cersei). She chose to play with lions, and she’ll be torn apart; that’s not surprising. Arianne, as her chapters hint, is going to almost certainly marry f!Aegon, playing with fire, and die burning for it.  

Arianne’s grasping for her own power is never portrayed as cruel or stupid like the main human villain (Cersei); on the contrary, we empathize with a girl who truly cares about her people, but resents her father’s preferential treatment towards her brother. That’s the difference between Arianne and Cersei: Arianne cares. She is not cruel. But her pride is still going to get her killed.

The books as I recall have always, always portrayed the Others (White Walkers) as the primary threat, not the game of thrones. People who get involved in the game of thrones–it doesn’t end well. The thing about Dany, though, is that she sees herself as a revolutionary. “Break the wheel” isn’t in the books (yet), but it’s a pretty good character moment for her that rings true. But this sets up Dany’s primary conflict: does she want to be like her father or not? Throughout the books, she hasn’t wanted to be. But she can’t have her cake and eat it to. If she goes for the throne–symbolic of her family and her father and those ghosts, as it’s always been portrayed as corrupting–she will indeed probably become more like her father. To be unlike her father, she’d probably have to not play the game of thrones anymore at all, and the Others are like… RIGHT THERE to provide this motivation for her.

But the show said “fuck it she’s her dad let me show you a snap two episodes after she saved the world from the Others who after being the primary threat for 7.5 seasons are now an afterthought and defeated after a single day because we gotta go with Bitches Be CrayCray as a plotline”

Man, I remember being disappointed the show cut Arianne and f!Aegon, but honestly it wasn’t until this season that I’ve been realizing how wrong my thinking that “they must have just been fat that could be cut” might have been. I shouldn’t have trusted D&D, that they knew what they were doing. They did not.

Or this might all be wrong and Jon and Dany are just doomed to be victims of bad writing in any case. *shrugs* Who knows if we’ll ever get those last two books (there’s been an 8+ year gap from the last one) so. Yeah.

That is probably way too long and complicated. I am sorry. I needed to vent lol. Also, the Dany and Arianne and f!Aegon theory is not mine--other meta writers for the books have written about it, but I find it convincing and honestly it gives me hope; see here.

[ecadiuu]

my theory on the ending of snk (spoilers)

wow. I can’t believe I’m so knee-deep into the lore of shingeki no kyojin again. right when I thought I was understanding things, I end up retracing and trying to understand the purpose of events and why characters did what...and the like. needless to say, I became infatuated all over again. during quarantine I got back into the series and caught up, spending the last week doing so. I just wanted to list what I think would happen at the end.

I’m fully convinced that the baby in the last manga panel is the og ymir fritz from the paths dimension being reborn into the mortal world and officially “set free”. I also think that the baby is historia’s. people like to argue about who the father is, if its the farmer, some people say its eren, idk. somehow I feel like it could be eren...that would make the birth of new ymir that much more poignant, but at the same time...I don’t know, I still have my doubts. its a 50/50 for me.

I am also set on the idea that armin will be the one to devise a master plan and make something happen in which he “saves humanity”, where it’s been foreshadowed by eren during that erwin/armin dispute. what he’s going to do exactly, I’m not sure. excited to see it though.

that being said, a part of me also has this theory that whatever happens, the one who will “land the finishing blow” or be the one to actually attempt to stop eren will be mikasa. I think this way because she is the only capable person within the vicinity of the main plot who is unaffected by the founder’s powers, being that she’s ackerman and asian. therefore, if something hypothetically happens where eren uses the founder’s power to facilitate his plan of genocide and therefore render eldians incapacitated, stopping even his fellow eldian friends from his initiation of destruction, mikasa is the only person who would be both unaffected and able to do something about it..also worth mentioning that her bond with eren could make that much more of a difference.

but also, I don’t even think eren’s plan of mass genocide can be stopped. truthfully, I actually think his plan might go through. worst case scenario is that the alliance tries to convince eren, and when that doesn’t work, they resort to killing him. bonus points if it’s mikasa that possibly kills him, like I mentioned, because isayama is the king of Suffer. of course not before eren confesses to armin and mikasa that he’s always loved them and he was distancing himself so that they could bear his death better. watch him about to die, be like, “I knew that this was going to happen in the future, and I don’t regret it. To save humanity, Mikasa, Armin,,,...I love you.” bam death. but then it doesn’t matter since the rumbling just kills everyone because the Will has already been initiated and it was all for naught. sadness ensues

jk I don’t think it’s going to be that sad... though we can never be too cautious because all kinds of deaths and sad dialogues are surely on the table. I think that the ideal conclusion would go like this: the rumbling ends up killing some but not all. eren makes the little girl paths ymir biologically modify the eldian race so that they can no longer transform into titans. this won’t erase any of the hatred that the other nations have for eldia, they will still fear them due to the long history that cannot be erased either. the cycle of bloodshed would most likely still continue, but to me this is the most peaceful way...

...this ending is unsatisfying and inconclusive, and it’s why it’s very unlikely. it’s why I think that the rumbling is inevitable. I also can’t trust isayama. he is not kind to us LOL. he can do whatever he wants. so I still think there’s going to be a lot of death and pandemonium and sadness soon to come.

I also wanted to touch on the subject of shipping because lol why not. I was never really a shipper in snk just cause all of my shipping energy is transformed into love and affection for none other than  a r m i n  the bane of my existence and also my will to live. 

eren’s going to die in one way or another. be it in action or in the few years he has left of life. taking that into account...it’s why I don’t see him ending up with anyone. he’s the main character, but just because he’s the main character doesn’t mean he’s going to have a happy ending with whoever it may be. eren doesn’t have enough time to find a wife and have a kid and live happily, and even if he did he’d only have like 2-3 years left. I’d doubt he’d even want to burden a potential partner by having a family just to leave them behind in the next instant. having a totally tragic, sad, but meaningful death is what I 100% see here, potentially, and that includes the life that he will have cut short due to his story. it’s quite sad to think he dies so early with the curse of ymir...but of course, that’s just how the story goes.

mikasa: IIII’m not totally sure who I see mikasa ending up with. what I do know for sure, though, is that her distance from eren was necessary in order for her character development--to prove that she is indeed not a slave to her ackerman instincts. this totally makes me want to touch on the manga of what I saw regarding her and eren’s relationship, so I’m going to right now. oh god.. straight up, I felt sooo bad for mikasa after reading the scene where...omg....the survey corps went to marley woo fun ice cream and that night, eren talks to mikasa alone near the mid-east refugees, being all like, “wHat dO I mEaN to yOU?” ,,,,like I don’t even consider myself an eremika shipper, but damn I was blushing for her. so cut to that part where she responds “family” when he asks between “because I saved you” or “family”... it was here where it was kinda confirmed that she has those kinds of feelings for eren...which makes this even sadder for me to think about. the way I interpreted that scene was that eren wanted to know if she was only so concerned of him because it was due to her nature of being an ackerman to protect, or if it was because he and her grew up together (in my opinion, it was the culmination of both, but maybe more so the fact that they grew up together). what I understood from his question was that the last thing eren wants is for mikasa to be attached to him due to her bloodline and therefore a slave to him because of her own instincts, which is what he believes. I also understand his motive for being so mean to her was because of this. maybe he even wanted to protect her from the pain of his inevitable death and a guaranteed future without him, and so distancing himself is what he finds is necessary for that. and for that reason, I tend to think that their separation is going to be the endgame for them. undoubtedly, mikasa will have to live the rest of her days without eren. it’s one of those sad aspects of love that’s so vividly shown in SNK that’s like, love is sometimes real but not possible due to circumstances. will mikasa end up with armin? I don’t know. it’s possible but I mean...I feel like mikasa would be too pained knowing how deeply involved eren was in both of their lives. someone “new” like jean? seems hugely weird...also jean constantly disrespected eren so...probably not. I’m totally fine with mikasa being single. she can be an independent bad bitch and have her memory of eren deep within her heart.

armin: okay, so armin has 9 years left to live. will he have partner and a potential family? maybe. a lot of these questions are big maybes. I could totally see it happen. with who? no clue. I see that armin x annie is a thing, but like.............I honestly don’t think annie has the capability to love anyone like that. I think her sole concern in life is her father and that’s that. her life is also limited to who knows how many years, she has an even shorter time than eren. and in addition, like...would armin even like annie....? I just hope this king is happy for as long as possible because he deserves it. I Love You Armin.

as for everyone else, I also could see people like connie and jean finding their partners once everything is over, of course if theyre still alive. levi and hange are probably going to be bachelors for the rest of their lives. focusing primarily on levi, I think his whole life he never really tried to get close to anyone or had thoughts of truly having intimate relationships because he would expect the possibility of them to die. levi is king of “protecting myself from hurt by not engaging in intimacy in the first place”. an art I am also soon to master thanks to his teachings. hange...I hope she lives along with levi and both of them can finally live in peace as the old, tired veterans they truly are. speaking of which, I hope she doesn’t die. but for some reason I have a sense in my gut isayama is going to pull something.

^^the above wasn’t meant to bash any ships or anything. it’s just what I thought regarding the characters’ endings in my point of view, all while keeping the themes of the series in consideration, trying to be as unbiased and factual as possible

as we know, snk characters x happiness is....rare. snk characters x life is even rarer. still looking forward to any ending isayama has tho, might just cry into a pillow when I read it

[annacwrites]

the wip list

Alright, gang. Buckle up. This is going to be a long one, and at this point I can’t even bring myself to be sorry about it. I meant to put this off but then I started thinking about it, so here we are (at 1:05 in the morning when I have to work at 8:30, what am I doing?). 

I’m going to break this down in a couple of ways—fanfiction vs. original fiction, fandom (if it’s a fanfic), series/universe (if it’s in one), and then the individual books themselves (if I have the ability to do that, because quite frankly, for some of these I don’t because I have no idea what the titles are or where I’m splitting the story yet).

Also, “WIP” is an incredibly broad term here. In some cases it means I’ve already written the whole thing but I plan to 100% rewrite it (and haven’t started yet). In some cases it means I’ve written half of the thing but haven’t finished yet. In some cases it means I have it all outlined but haven’t started writing yet. In some cases it means I haven’t really touched an outline on paper yet but I have it all worked out in my head. Take the “in progress” part of WIP with a grain of salt.

(Putting this whole thing under the cut because it is so freaking long. I apologize if the read-more doesn’t work on your dash. Idk what tumblr is doing.)  

Starting off easy—the fics:

Harry Potter: (JKR can fuck off with her transphobia and cultural appropriation and all the other stupid and fucked-up shit that she’s done/promoted but, as I said to my friends, she can pry my next-gen fanfics from my cold dead hands. Cursed Child is not canon in my life because I’ve never read it and I don’t care what nonsense she came up with.)

The “In Your Arms I’ll Stay” universe (Tedtoire/Scorose): 

The first fic in this universe is the first fic I ever finished. 110k words followed up by a ~137k word sequel. It is a disaster and a half but it’s also my baby and I fully intend to rewrite it one of these days. It is full of standard Tedtoire trope-y nonsense—best friends since childhood! two-year age gap! jealousy about other relationships! obliviousness!—and at 15 I thought it was a really good idea to try to turn it into a mystery too, which is a mistake that I have every intention of rectifying because it was unnecessary and I just didn’t know how to do drama and tension back then. 

Anyway. It will probably be two parts again when I rewrite it because one part per school year just works, yeah? We’re covering Vic’s fifth/Teddy’s seventh year and Vic’s sixth year/Teddy’s first year out of school over the course of these parts.

Within this universe we also have Heartbeat and Bone, which is a Scorose fic that I’ve written probably 75% of already but have no intention of actually finishing before I rewrite it. I want to get the stories in the right order so that I can get details straightened out, so Teddy and Victoire get the rewrites first and then I’ll be revisiting this fic. Also full of trope-y nonsense (and my continued acceptance of the headcanon that the Heads have their own dormitory at Hogwarts, because it’s just too much fun that way).  

some things were meant to be (Tedtoire):

Oh god, another fic with a cliché title taken from Can’t Help Falling In Love. I have zero regrets because it fits them perfectly.

This one is... half-done? I fully intend to finish it but I need to finish the outline first. It was my 2019 NaNoWriMo project and I am 100% just writing it for the lols (and because Teddy and Vic are like... my comfort ship where writing is concerned). I wanted to play with a different universe and change up their relationship and roles at school a bit, but once again... trope-y nonsense. It’s unavoidable with them. There is obliviousness everywhere. 

Star Wars: (it’s Reylo, okay? It’s Reylo. I don’t want to hear it about how the ship is ~so terrible.~ That is literally the furthest thing in the world from a hot take, you can’t say a single thing that I haven’t heard before, and I’m a grown adult and can do what I want. Bite me.)

looking for the map that leads me home (Reylo): 

Stole the title on this one from We Take Care of Our Own by Bruce Springsteen, because why the fuck not, right? 

To put it simply: musician AU. To put it a little less simply: he’s got a dead career, she wants to have even the slightest shot at one, Rose is the best, Poe’s a singing heartthrob, Finn is a love-struck goofball. You know, all that fun stuff. The entire thing is based on a playlist that I made and every chapter has a song that acts as its theme. I haven’t touched it since January 2018. I want to finish it eventually but it’s not really at the top of the priority list. 

There’s a few other fics from other fandoms that I’ve started and never finished but the odds of me touching them again are like... nonexistent, so I’m not including them here. I’ll update this post if anything changes on that front (but it probably won’t).

Now for the complicated part—the original fiction:

Maker’s Magic 

This is a trilogy (or at least, it’s supposed to be). This is also a rewrite of the first story I ever finished—the fantasy novel that I wrote for my first-ever Camp NaNoWriMo back in August of 2011, when I had literally no clue what I was doing at all and essentially stole the plot structure from The Obsidian Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey and built my own story around it. This is not a good way to write a piece of fiction that you want to publish, kids, but it is a damn good way to get your feet wet when you’ve never really written before.

I am reworking this story entirely from scratch. The characters are... kind of the same as the original story. Kind of. Maybe. I’ve changed a few names and merged a few people together and scrapped some others and entirely shifted the backstory of pretty much everyone, but... they’re definitely still the same, right? 

Basically, at this point the plot is really only similar to The Obsidian Trilogy in that we’ve got a trilogy, we’ve got some elves, and it’s your standard good vs. evil fantasy story (in its own unique fashion, of course). I’m still working out the details of this rewrite, but this is kind of the Holy Grail of all of my writing projects and the one that I’m most concerned about getting right, so I’m anticipating that I’ll be in it for the long haul on this one. I’m hoping I might be able to get a draft of the first book done this year, but... we’ll see.

(I also don’t want to give too many details about this project, ‘cause it’s the one that I’d really like to maybe publish one day, so...)

The Willow Hill universe

This started as a single story plus a standalone sequel set in the same universe, conceptualized when I was fourteen and missing horseback riding terribly (so yes, it is a story for all those Weird Horse Girls™ out there). I wrote a good portion of it, then deleted it, then rewrote the entire thing, then deleted it again a few years ago because I was no longer satisfied with the writing quality (after hitting top 100 on the Teen Fiction list on Wattpad way back when, so... I didn’t do too badly as a 16-year-old, but the writing still sucked). I’ve been promising a rewrite to my Wattpad followers since 2016 or something like that (2014? Whenever the hell it was that I deleted it the second time) but haven’t delivered at all.

I now envision this universe as a duology plus the aforementioned standalone sequel, except it’s not entirely fair to call it a YA duology in that the first book is definitely YA, but the second is more romance-y?

I originally just revealed the main character’s endgame relationship in the epilogue of the story, but I love both her and her boyfriend and their relationship so much that I decided that I’m going to be self-indulgent and write the story of them actually falling in love with each other, so that’s book two (so really, you don’t actually have to read book two to understand anything, I’m just writing it because I want to and it’s also kind of a present to anyone who read the original story when they were also a teenager and is now an adult who wants to read other stuff). 

Book one is now about the teenage struggle of crushes and trying to figure out what it is that you actually want out of your life and what you value (I say “now” because it was definitely way more self-insert-y the first time I wrote it and it is decidedly not at this point). It’s also sort of a love letter to trainers who are amazing and the kind of person we should all be so lucky as to be coached by.

These characters are my comfort characters where original fiction is concerned since they’ve been bouncing around in my head for the last ten years or so, and I’m hoping I can get at least the first book rewritten in the next year-ish, partly because I’ve been promising it for so long, and partly because I just really enjoy this world and I want to get back to it again.

The Coffee Shop Chronicles

AKA, I lived in one coffee shop on my university campus for pretty much the entirety of my college experience and it was a very inspiring place to be, so this has less to do with coffee shop AUs and more to do with the fact that I met several of my favorite human beings on this earth over a vanilla chai latte and mutual sass with the baristas.

(One of said baristas is very near and dear to me and introduced me to another regular who is now a very good friend with the statement “You’re both sarcastic assholes. You’ll love each other.”) 

None of the characters in this universe are based on actual human beings whom I know, but I liked the idea of the campus coffee shop serving as this thing that tangentially connected all of these people to one another, much in the way that I am tangentially connected to god knows how many people via my barista friend. Essentially, the idea is that the stories in this universe are all standalone, but the characters sometimes cross paths with one another at Caffeinated, so it’s sort of... Easter-egg-y in terms of who pops up where in which story. 

Currently I only have two stories in this universe that are legitimately plotted out, but there is room for any number of spin-offs based on whichever characters show up in those stories (or don’t—that’s the fun of it being a coffee shop. The barista is the only reliable character). Those two stories are as follows:

Chance Encounters (title so totally subject to change, also stealing the terribly summary from the Wattpad draft that never saw the light of day):

For Bennett McGuire, things with guys just didn't seem to want to go her way. From the disasters that were her attempts at dating in high school to the problem that had been Elijah Becker, she hadn't exactly had the best luck. With all that in mind, it made perfect sense to swear off dating until she finished college—that is, it made sense until one frozen day in February when Gordon Evans walked into her life. After that, who was to say what would happen?

What’s Your Metaphor? (once again, enjoy the terrible summary from the Wattpad draft that never was. I am cringing reading it but also too tired to come up with anything better):

"What's the point?" 

It's a question asked widely, for all sorts of reasons, and it's one that April Hayes didn't know the answer to any better than anyone else. All she knew was that she had her plan, and she was going to stick to it, because it was the only thing that seemed to have any sort of logic to it in her life. The things she thought, the things she believed—well, they all fell before the plan, because she didn't have time to ask herself "What's the point?"

That is, she didn't have the time to know the answer—her answer—until one guy by the name of Drew Collier showed up and made her consider things that she had never even thought of before.

High Blood

Yinz can go read my WIP introduction post for this one. It’s a fantasy story. Just for the hell of it, here’s the summary from said WIP introduction post: 

At the age of seventeen, Thessaly of Averak had a choice—take the crown of her people and her place as her father’s heir, or set it aside to become one of the High Warriors, dedicated to protecting their people and the country that her long-dead ancestor Enred built after leading its citizens out of a long and bloody war. Amidst raids and famine at the borders, she gave up her crown to better serve the people that her family rules.

Ten years later, all is quiet. At least, all is quiet until Beca’s pendant is stolen by a thief who disappears into the night on the journey back from the summer palace, Tess gets herself stabbed, and the discovery is made that the rock-solid foundations of their family’s claim to the throne—and the peace that depends upon them—are laced with hairline fractures.

(I didn’t write anything to speak of for Camp NaNo July 2020 and actually wound up deleting my project for this on the NaNo site because my dad was hit by a car while cycling the Friday before the weekend when I was planning to write like... 30k words to catch up, so obviously I gave up on that plan (he is doing well now, thank you for asking). I’m hoping I’ll get around to this one eventually because this particular universe arguably has the most potential for having multiple stories set in it, fantasy-wise.)

Emerson’s Lights

Natalie Flynn has been best friends with Evan Acheson practically since birth. They've stuck together through thick and thin, from her braces in seventh grade to his jump to stardom as a singer-songwriter their freshman year of college. 

She’d do anything for him, but spending a week with him on tour involves a lot more than she bargained for, culminating in the turn of events that is Caleb Blake, lead singer and primary songwriter of opening act Emerson’s Lights, moving into her house for the better part of a month.

She always knew there would be complications being the best friend of a rock star, but this? This was one that she didn’t bet on.

(Aka, girl meets boy in a band trope. Yay.)

(NaNoWriMo 2020 project)

The famous musician story (this thing doesn’t have a title right now and I’m not even going to try)

Stupid, trope-y nonsense idea that I came up with for my own personal amusement and nothing else. I’ve written a few chapters of it but genuinely have no idea where this falls in the hierarchy of things that I want to get done. Long story short, she’s in grad school for history, he’s a famous musician in town recording for a new album, they meet in the library, she pretends she has no idea who he is, and shenanigans ensue.

And that is where I think I’m going to leave it. There’s four other stories that I can think of off the top of my head that I could theoretically add to this list, but they are legitimately just ideas right now so they can be added at a later date when they’ve manifested themselves a little more strongly. There’s also another quartet in the Willow Hill universe that I came up with in high school that could theoretically be added but I think I might just steal those character names and give them their own little world instead. We’ll see.

Basically, if you didn’t get the point from this list: I am working on a lot of things, and when I say I’m writing, it could mean literally anything on this list (or any of the other ideas that I have floating around). The stories/universe here are the most likely candidates for my time, depending on whether I’m doing a deep dive into my writing or just playing around with something fun, and hopefully (god, hopefully) I’ll be able to move one or two of these to a “completed works” list in the next year(ish). 

(Or at least, as complete as a draft ever gets before you start going in on it again.)

[justasmisunderstoodasloki]

The internship| P.P| 1

A/n: This is the first part of my first ever series. This part is short and maybe the other part will be short too, idk yet. Also in this AU the Avengers made things up after cw and inifinity war and endgame won’t happen. And this fic is based on this post.  Small spoiler, Peter will appear in part 2.  I hope you like it. I’m not the best write, i’m trying.

Pairing: (eventually) Peter Parker- Stark x Fem! reader

word count: 728 

Summary: reader got a job offered by Tony Stark and it all starts with an internship. (sorry i suck at summaries)

Teaser/ prologue  masterlist

Backstory:  Tony was married to Mary Parker for a couple years. Not so long after the birth of their baby, Peter, Mary got sick. She eventually passed away. Peter was too young when this all happened. Pepper helped Tony with raising Peter. Tony decided to change Peter’s last name to his Mary’s maiden name and kept him away from the paparazzi. Now, Tony and Pepper are married, they also have a daughter named Morgan.  (Every chapter will have a small backstory of reader)

________________________________________________________________

‘Tuesday afternoon, Avengers tower.’ That’s what the note on the fridge said. It has been there for a couple days and made you so nervous. Even more, because Tuesday is today. That’s right, you’re going to start your internship at the Avengers tower today. But for now, you needed to pack your back and go to school.

You’ve never really enjoyed school, mostly because of anxiety. You didn’t have a lot of friends. The one friend you made at Midtown High left and never contacted you again. The other friends you have go to other schools and you don’t see them often, but you still keep in touch with them.  

~~~~~~~~

Nothing important happened today, you had several classes, one of them with a clumsy substitute teacher. There was one interesting thing that happened today. You somehow got in a conversation with MJ, she is really down to earth and kind. She said you should join the decathlon team, but you doubt it a bit.

 The final bell rung and you rushed out of school. You left school as fast as you could, but still managed to miss the subway. ‘Great, now I have to wait for gods knows how long.’ You think to yourself. About 20 minutes later you sat in the subway. The ride was boring, too many people in one car. At least you could finish a big amount of homework before you had to get off.

10 minutes later, you finally arrived at the Avengers tower. Would have been less, but you took the wrong direction and walked 6 minutes longer.

You stepped inside the tower and it was surprisingly quiet. There only was a receptionist making a phone call.

“Miss, can I help you?” the receptionist asked you. “Yes, uh I have an appointment with Mr. Stark.” You replied. “Name, please?” “Y/n y/l/n.” She checked her computer. “Alright, follow me. Mr. Stark asked me to bring you to the lab. I’m Evelyn, if you need anything else you can ask me.” She said before motioning for you to walk out of the elevator. “Mr. Stark will be with you in a minute.” You thanked her and she stepped back in the elevator. After the elevator doors closed Mr. Stark walked up to you.

“Hey kid, glad you could make it.” He said extending his arm for you come follow him. The two of you made a small talk while heading to the lab.

“This….” He walks further in the lab with his arms open showing you the lab. “…this is your new working place.” He said. He turns to face you waiting for an answer. “Wow. This. Looks. Amazing.” You look everywhere trying to take everything in.

“…But what is it exactly that I’m going to do?” “Well first of all, you can work on your own projects here, I want you to help me around, you can be my assistant and I can teach you a lot of things. That’s just for now, in the future, if you’re still interested, you can also work with the rest of the team, but that’s is up to you.” You nod speechless. “By ‘the rest of the team’ you mean the other Avengers?” “Yes.” He chuckles. ”How did I ever get here?” You think out loud. “Alright kid, let’s get you all set up.” He motions you to sit down next to him.

For the next hour, Mr. Stark helped you set up and making the internship official. You also got a quick tour in the lab and he told you that doctor Banner also works here in the lab and that you can probably help him too.

After you were done with the tour it was time for you to go home. You said your goodbyes and headed to the subway.

~~~~~~~~

It was quiet when you came home, you were used to it, but you also know what that meant. The more you walked in the house, the more you found. It was pretty easy, every time this happened their stuff were laid out on the same places. Tickets and other information on the dining table, suitcase in front of the closet, parents not home, they were probably going on a last minute shopping spree. ‘For how long are they going on a ‘business’ trip this time?’ You thought by yourself.

Two months?!

_______________________________________________________________

The internship taglist: @orchideax @dark-night-sky-99 @fanficparker

Let me know what you think of this part, feedback is more than welcome! Shall i put Peter’s backstory in every chapter or not? Also, let me know if you want to be tagged

[thevagueambition]

Atla, Zukka and Sokka :)

ATLA

Favorite character: Zuko, 100%. He’s a character I relate to a lot, eg the whole “hard work vs natural talent” thing... I even have a costume, although I didn’t get a chance to use it when I meant to so I haven’t really done so yet OTL

Least Favorite character: Hmm, god, I don’t know.... Bumi, maybe? As a comedic character he feels a bit too “haha crazy” and he doesn’t really (imo) work well as a dramatic one... 

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon):

Zukka

Hakoda/Bato

Roku/Sozin

Tyzula

Jetko

Character I find most attractive: Zuko. Particularly s3 ofc lol

putting the rest under a cut for length

Character I would marry: idk. not big on marriage really

Character I would be best friends with: Sokka

a random thought: The true hero of ATLA is Iroh and I feel ashamed of not having mentioned his name yet in this

An unpopular opinion: The age difference between Kataang is 2 years which is the exact same age difference between Zutara and neither are particularly weird regardless of the fact that I don’t care about either ship

My Canon OTP: Don’t have one. Sokka/Suki is cute I guess is the closest I come to having strong feelings on a canon ship

My Non-canon OTP: Zukka

Most Badass Character: Toph but also low key Sokka bc he’s a non-bender

Most Epic Villain: That old blood bending woman who gave us all nightmares

Pairing I am not a fan of: Zutara, but that’as as much about fandom behavior back in the day as anything else

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Korra, all of LoK 

They gave Toph too little to do in s3 and she SHOULD have had her Zuko outing like all the others >:( Actually Zuko and Toph have a lot in common in certain ways and that was never fully explored

Also obviously SOOOO many characters in this series who were written as straight when they shouldn’t be lol. We get it, it was a kid’s cartoon in the 00s, but they didn’t have to agressively pair off everyone in neat m/f couples by the end of the series

Favourite Friendship: Aang & Zuko

Character I most identify with: Zuko, as mentioned above. He’s also the same MBTI type as me haha (INFP). Also, Sokka mix of being simoultaneously really clever and extremely stupid is a gigantic mood.

Character I wish I could be: Idk... Iroh, in some ways, certainly. Honestly, by the end of the series all the main kids are pretty admirable people. Who wouldn’t want Aang’s kindness, Katara’s righteousness, Zuko’s determination, Sokka’s cleverness, Toph’s independence, Suki’s leadership, etc? Hell, Mai’s bravery and Ty Lee’s loyalty? I love all the main kids.

Zukka

When I started shipping them: Only a year or two ago, actually! I think last time I rewatched The Boiling Rock I was like 👀

Originally when I was an ATLA fan I was still in the “we must adheer to canon” phase of my existence in fandom and then for a good while I was still affected by my... hesitance to look like a, idk, stereotypical slash fan, in the sense that back in the day people were REALLY hostile to slash ships that seemed, idk, contrived. Zukka also just wasn’t a big ship back in the day I don’t think, Jetko has always been more popular. 

My thoughts: The cammaraderie that developes between them over their stay at The Boiling Rock is incredibly compelling to me and I think that... the ways in which Sokka holds Zuko accountable through “jokes” but still allows him the space to prove himself is really interesting and probably... something that is actually better for Zuko than either Katara’s rage or Aang’s kindness? Idk. 

Also they both have pretty complicated relationships to masculinity and what it means to be a man in their respective cultures and their sort of struggles with that and how those struggles look different due to circumstances like their parental situations and different cultural expectations... Zuko’s is less directly about masculinity per se because the Fire Nation has less strict gender roles, or at least ones that don’t code certain activities as purely masculine endeavours (eg warfare) but certainly there are shades of Ozai’s treatment of Zuko and Azula that are gendered as well as about birth order and it’s interesting how Zuko and Sokka both impose restrictions on themselves about how they should behave and what they should live up to culturally.

What makes me happy about them: I think they complement each other really well. They have a lot in common but are pretty different about their approach to things... I also just really like battle couples lol 

What makes me sad about them: Their respective trauma is part of what makes them compelling but it’s certainly also sad, so in that sense...

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: So much of it is modern AU and i don’t care for it lol. Completely ignoring any sense that the Avatar world must have some elements of homophobia bothers me to exist in the ways it does, but as does completely overplaying it, idk. It’s a balance not everyone strikes well. Also obviously when people demonise Suki or Mai to account for them not being in the picture that’s bad.

Things I look for in fanfic: Honestly, more than anything? Good characterisation. This is a ship that lives and dies by good characterisation. I also really like when they’re set during the time at the Western Air Temple.  

My wishlist:

Swordfighting duels!! Practicing swordfighting together!! Bonding over swords like the dumb teenage boys they are!! Yes I know about the innuendo that only makes it better!! 

Hakoda not just being cool with it but realising about Zuko’s abuse and being like Actually I Am Your Dad Now

I always want fic where the gaang find out about how Zuko got his scar and that with Zukka is even more *chef’s kiss*

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: Hmm ending up with, huh? I like Jetko for the drama but not necessarily as endgame. Sukka is pretty cute so I’m down for that but Maiko is.... look, it made sense for the time that Zuko was back in the Fire Nation because but I 100% don’t think it’s something either of them benefits from afterwards. They’re better off as friends imo also Zuko’s gay

My happily ever after for them: I want them to travel the world together tbh? I never quite know how to account for Zuko becoming Fire Lord in my thoughts about him post-canon because... well obviously I hate monarchy and I don’t actually think Zuko would be particularly comfortable being the leader of a nation, so... I don’t know. Maybe after some years, maybe a decade, of guiding the nation back towards stability Zuko starts reforming the country towards something more democratic and becomes less personally involved in the affairs of running the country? I don’t see them as people who would or really could be tied down by each other because they each have responsibilities to their respective communities and I don’t necessarily find “and then they lived in the Fire Nation palace together for the rest of their lives” compelling... 

Sokka

How I feel about this character: I love him so much. His character developement is so compelling and as one of the very few prominent non-bending characters he is also compelling in the ways that situate him within the world and forces him to look for other things to contribute with. Again, the ways in which he is undeniably very clever but simoultaneously kind of dumb is also just... Very Good and Relatable lol. He was someone I overlooked a bit for a while but I think Sokka’s Master really awakened me to how great he is and on rewatches he became one of my faves. Also, you just gotta love any character that uses sarcasm as a shield lol. 

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: Zuko, primarily, as discussed above. I’m fine with both Yue and Suki as canon ships but I’m not really invested in it. When I was younger I liked Sokka/Toph somewhat but actually Toph is a lesbian so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You could always do Suki/Toph, kill two birds with one stone you know

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: Gotta love a good father-son relationship <3

My unpopular opinion about this character: I don’t know what the popular opinions about him are tbh. I’ll use this to say I think ADHD!Sokka makes sense though

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: Hmm, idk... the episodes he had that were focused on him were very good and did a good job of exploring his inner life in the face of how often he’s a comedic character, so it would have to be more in terms of his relationships with other characters. More interactions with Zuko would have been good ofc ! :3c

Favorite friendship for this character: Hm, probably Aang. Protective Older Brother Mode for a character that isn’t even technically his sibling is Very Good.

My crossover ship: I don’t really have crossover ships

[nineteensixtieschikadee]

Arya Stark’s Death & Nissa Nissa Theory

!!DON’T WORRY, THIS ISN’T A SPOILER FOR S8!!! (Probably.) But this is however, a potential (maybe) spoiler for the books and A Dream of Spring. 

Ahhhhh, it’s that time of year again where I post my GOT/ASOIAF theories So let’s get right on it. Because the show doesn’t really touch base on these things and if you’re a show-only fan, I’ll just do a quick recap. (You’d be surprised as to how many show fans don’t know these stuff.) Pretty sure the show has never mentioned Nissa Nissa before.  

So I’m sure we all know who Azor Ahai is. The Prince Who Was Promised. Same thing. Today, we’re going to talk about his wife. Nissa Nissa. So if you don’t know who Nissa Nissa is, she was Azor Ahai’s wife. Who from based off legend, died when AA thrusted his sword through her heart to forge the legendary sword, Lightbringer. AA worked thirty days and nights to forge the hero’s sword. But when he tempered it in water, the sword broke. So he worked fifty days and nights to forge another sword and tempered it in a lion’s heart. But the sword broke again. Until he worked one hundred days and nights, and eventually, he finished and drove the sword through NN heart. And with her cry of anguish, ecstasy, and courage, the sword forged into Lightbringer Her blood and soul went into the sword to beat the Others. (White Walkers.) Some people think that NN could be Daenerys. She definitely has the traits to be NN. And some people think NN was Lyanna. Rhaegar thrusting his “sword” into her to bring forth Lightbringer, (Jon.) Some even think it’s Sansa? So here, I wanna talk about Arya, and how she could potentially be NN, at least in the books. BOOK SPOILERS DOWN BELOW. 

As obvious, this is a Jonrya post because I’m basing AA off Jon. In the books at least, this is a theory I’ve had in mind for the longest time. In the show, it might just be Dany, but in the books it could be said otherwise.

We know for a fact that before GRRM wrote AGOT his intended goal was to have Jon and Arya fall in love with each other, and have some sort of “star crossed” lovers arc because of Jon’s vows and Arya thinking that they were siblings. And while the Jon/Arya romance storyline isn’t drafted in the books now, you can tell that some of GRRM’s original ideas about Jon/Arya still made it onto the page. He clearly has Jon and Arya set up for something VERY, VERY, IMPORTANT for the endgame of ASOIAF. And I for one, think that Arya will be Jon’s NN. 

Jon’s whole storyline in ADWD is basically about Arya. Most of his thoughts and motivations are about her, and in the end, he DIES for her. I kind of like to think of this as a nice parallel IF Arya were to become NN. Bc Arya is always associated with DEATH. That’s her whole arc. It’s murder, killing, revenge. But she’s also broken, and she struggles with losing some of her identity bc of death. We can speculate from some of TWOW chapters that Arya might learn of Jon’s death at the wall. And to me, I think that might become a breaking point for Arya. It could be the driving force for her to finally leave Braavos and go on a whole murder rampage or something to avenge her favorite brother’s death. She’ll go home because of Jon. Obviously we know that Jon’s going to come back, but he probably won’t be the same. 

We know that they’re going to reunite in the books, bc that was confirmed by GRRM. The Starks would reunite. And we know that GRRM has been setting up some sort of big clash with Jon and the Others. So maybe after his resurrection, Arya comes back and they reunite he’ll focus more on fighting the Others and leave the Watch. Since he’s died and all that. Obviously he’ll probably have to avenge his death first or something. But in the actual endgame, if he is set up to become AA, his NN will be Arya. I know people might suspect that it’s Dany, bc from the looks of it on the text, there’s enough evidence to support that. But I think that like the N+A=J theory, Dany being NN is a RED HERRING. (Don’t get offended if you believe in N+A=J 😂😂) 

Jon falling in love with Dany is plausible. And by taking a look at the evidence, Jon and Dany can be the tragic lovers tale. Though I think Dany’s story will end in another way, that doesn’t involve her getting stabbed in the heart with Lightbringer. We know from the text that Dany is suppose to get betrayed 3 times. One for love, one for blood, and one for gold. 

“Three fires must you light… One for life and one for death and one to love… Three mounts must you ride… One to bed and one to dread and one to love… Three treasons will you know… Once for blood and once for gold and once for love…”

If we interpret the text, the one that hasn’t happened yet, is the betrayal for love. And I think it’s going to be Jon. However, while people assume that the betrayal will be something like he kills her to stop the Others or he betrays her for the throne, I don’t interpret it like that. I interpret it as Jon will LEAVE her FOR love. His love for his sister. (This is HUGE speculation tho.) Mirri Maz Duur for blood, Jorah maybe for gold, (as in to return home), and Jon for love. Maybe that’s her 3rd betrayal. Jon leaving Daenerys for Arya. Exactly how he’s going to betray her for Arya, i’m not sure yet. 

But more on the text, one firm reason why I also believe Arya is NN, is because of this passage in her first chapter in AGOT: 

“You had best run back to your room, little sister. Septa Mordane will surely be lurking. The longer you hide, the sterner the penance. You’ll be sewing all through winter. When the spring thaw comes, they will find your body with a needle still locked tight between your frozen fingers.” 

I find it interesting that this quote comes from Jon himself. It almost feels like this quote is an omen to her death. The “longer she hides, the harder the punishment will be.” In the coming books, I see it as Arya will have to make a CHOICE. What that choice could be idk. But I suspect it might have something to do with the Others and with Jon. Because in the next line it says that she’ll be “sewing through WINTER.” Maybe her choice will be something like abandoning her anger and revenge in favor of duty and saving the realm. The longer she takes to choose between those two things, will cost her. The punishment being the realm destructs, and everyone she loves dies, etc. Maybe she will have to choose between avenging her family, or becoming this some sort of deity to save the people and the world. And that last line in the passage, “When winter is over and spring comes, they will find her with a “needle” still in her, with her hands wrapped around it.” To me, I interpret this as the sort of “aftermath” of Winter. If she were to choose to save the realm, this is meant to mean that the people will “remember” her and remember what she’s done in order to save them all. When they “find her body with a needle still in her,” it means the people will acknowledge her sacrifice. Songs will be sung and stories will be written about her. And of course the “needle” could mean the flaming sword Lightbringer that has been stabbed in her, and frozen between her fingers. That was the sword that saved the realm all through winter, the one that killed her in order to make the ultimate sacrifice. It’s all so deeply metaphorical in a way. 

But ultimately, the reason why I think Arya is NN and Jon is AA, is because of how well it fits their respective story arcs. It’s no doubt that Jon and Arya love each other. Whether it’s romantic or sibling love, that’s up to you to interpret. But Arya and Jon would die for each other. At least in the books. Jon throughout the series constantly thinks of Arya. Knowing that he might see her again is what pushes him to strive and continue living. And in Dance, Jon is so conflicted between “love and duty” because of Arya. And in the end, Jon chooses love over duty. And because of it, he dies. He gets killed because of his love for Arya. ”What do you know of my heart priestess? What do you know of my sister?” And in the books, it’s mostly Jon that helps Arya to strive to continue living. So she’ll be able to see him again. Jon helps her regain a little of her humanity. Sure Arya loves her family, but throughout her journey, it’s JON who she always tries to go back to. To the wall where Jon is. Because of Jon, she strives to never forget that she is a STARK. Arya’s arc is constantly attributed with death. She can be a sort of champion for death. And Jon’s arc is all about life. He fights for life. How fitting and tragic would it be, if by the end of ASOIAF, it’s Arya that will die FOR Jon. Like how he died for her. She will choose to sacrifice her life to save the people like how Jon chose to sacrifice his life to “save” her. Arya will choose to do her duty to save everyone she loves, and Jon will do the same. Yes love is the death of duty. But this time around, love will be the source of duty. It will be the bringer of life. (It’s all so biblical and full of ironies. Something that GRRM loves.) 

Anyways I went off. Congrats if you made it to the end of this. 😂😂 It all feels like weird fan fic lmao. Please feel free to counter-argue me, I wanna know your guy’s stance too. :) 

Also this post was originally a comment I made on a reddit post regarding Arya being Nissa Nissa. I wanted to share it here too. You can find my comment and the forum here: https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/bhot1g/spoilers_published_theory_arya_is_nissa_nissa/ under the username chikchikachikadee. Which is also the username of my main blog here on tumblr. 

[littlemisssquiggles]

Pretty random question, but do you think that RT could wind up killing Ruby or Oscar off? Idk, I feel like if they did it right then it could be really sad. What are your thoughts?

…Uhmm…no?At least not in a permanent way. I’d like tobelieve that Ruby and Oscar both have a strong set of plot armour in theirarsenal. Ruby because she’s our series main protagonist and Oscar because…okayI’ll be blunt here: The CRWBY Writers axing Oscar would honestlybe a rather absurd plot decision given the context of how Oscar wasfirst introduced into the story.

Oscaris meant to more or less replace ProfessorOzpin at some point as the newest incarnation of the Wizard of Light. The CRWBYkilled off Ozpin to bring Oscar in and right now, they’re supposedly integratinghim into the main group and plot indicating that he might have a bigger role inthe story. I mean he certainly does just as much as Ruby given his connectionto the main series antagonist: Salem.

IfOscar dies and it’s a permanent thing then the first question I would ask is: What was the pointof creating his character?

What was thepoint of killing off Ozpin to introduce us to this new child character that wasmeant to replace Ozpin only to kill him off after spending seasons makingaudience members invest in his character and story arc? Why do all of that atall if that was his endgame?

I’msorry. This is mostly my personal Pinehead bias talking but I really do thinkkilling off Oscar for good after killing off Ozpin to get him instead soundreally dumb. Feel free to disagree with me if you will but that’s how Ihonestly feel about that.

Butto really answer your question Momfriend, in the event that the Writers do planon kill either of these two off, I can only see it being done for like the series finale.

ForRuby, I can only picture the Writers’ writing her final swan song as hersacrificing herself for the fate of humanity. While I technically don’t believethe CRWBY would actually kill Ruby, this is one way I can see them doing it ifthe thought ever crossed their minds.

Maybethey can even pull a River Song in Doctor Who where Ruby dies bravely to stop Salem and Oscar useswhat bit of the God’s light he had left in him to bring her back with a literalkiss of life.

Imagine if…in the end, the Writerspull a bit where Oscar is able to share his immortality with Ruby Rose so theyboth become immortalbeings whose love ends up shaping Remnant and its history for many,many generations.

Theycould become the epitome of soul mates wherethey’re attached at the soul and if one of them dies, the other dies as well.So they die together but are reborn separated with their memories intact. Butno matter where they respawn they always find each other again and relive theirlove.

That could be sweet.But I doubt the Writers will do something like this. Makes for a kickass AUthough.

ForOscar I can more picture him dying temporarily onlyto be revived later. Not as a new character but as himself. His true self. Hiscomplete self. I’ve been repeating this theory for the longest time where Ibelieve Oscar is truly Ozma---the reincarnation of his original form reborn inModern Remnant.

Ihave this picture in my head where Salem captures Oscar and takes him to her Dark Domainwhere she performs some kind of dark crucifixion ofsome kind. I’m not sure if you’re an Avatar fan as well but in its sequelseries, the Legendof Korra, it is revealed that the Avatar is in fact a combination ofa spirit and a human soul.

InKorra’s second book, the Avatar spirit---Raava is ripped out ofKorra---the current Avatar and whipped right before Korra’s eyes.And with each beating, Korra loses his connection to her past lives going downthe lineage until the Avatar cycle is reset and Korrabecomes the first and last Avatar.

Somehow I’ve picturedOscar suffering a similar fate like that where the reincarnation cycle is reset with him as theLast Wizard of Light. The last life. In my vision, Salem uses her dark magicto force Ozma or what she believes to be Ozma’s soul out of Oscar’s body. Ozpindescribed himself not just as one man but a culmination of them. So it’s my assumption thatwhen the Merge occurs, the souls of the other Wizards don’t truly die ordisappear but become a part of something I dubbed the Wizard Persona which they share with their current successor.

Ithink all thesouls of the past Wizards live within Oscar.He just hasn’t done anything to really connect withthose differing souls beyond Professor Ozpin. However I do think they are allthere with him. My Pinehead headcanon is that Salem will strip Oscar of his connection tothe other Wizards, killing them one by one until all that remains isOscar’s feeble soul.

Similarto Korra’s experience, picture…Salem extracting the souls of each of theWizards before Oscar who are a part of him. Picture Salemkilling each and every one of them for good, right before Oscar’s very eyes andwith each disconnection, Oscar feels his soul suffer as if he’s being torn in two.

Salemdoes this because she’s trying to get to Ozma who she’s trying to find amongthis mess of men. Unfortunately for Salem, she never finds Ozma and it isrevealed later that Oscar has been Ozma all along---his true reincarnation of him as the younger revived version of hisoriginal self. So Oscar technically dies but he’s brought back one last time tocomplete the mission he promised to fulfil all those years ago in his firstlife as Ozma.

Mytheory is that Oscarwill meet the God of Light or at least one of the Gods in the Realm BetweenRealms again. Since Ozma met the Godof Light, I think it’d be a cool contrast if Oscar met the God of Darkness and it would fit with the theory I have where Ibelieve the Godseach contribute to the creation of life inspite their differences.

My theory is thatBrother Godsdon’t just represent light and darkness but also body and soul. Dark represents the body while light represents the soul.

Mytheory is that through a consult with the God of Darkness, Oscar will learnthat he has been Ozma all along. He is the original form---the body ofOzma---that the God of Darkness brought back with his power. But when questionedof why the God of Darkness would do such a thing, he informsOscar that he did it in aid of his brother. The Brothers may differ in theirsentiments and levels of mercy shown towards mankind and while the God ofDarkness might not share much what fate befalls his so-called greatest creation,he does care and believe in his brother; even if he might never say that to hisface.

Let’s say, the God of Darknesshad a hunch that his brother’s experiment with Ozma’s soul mightfail at some point. There was no way he could keep doing this forever and atsome point, humanity would fall again by Dark’s premonition. So as one lastfailsafe, in addition to reviving the God’s Champion: Ozma, each Brothercontributed an additional trump cardto aid Ozma in the event that he failed to see through with his mission.

TheGod of Light’strump card were the Silver EyedWarriors---beings he blessed with his eyes to destroy the Creaturesof Grimm. The finaltrump card, the one Darkness had a hand in, was the creation of Oscar.

Godof Light was never able to revive Ozma’s old body. It was a feat out of hispower. But not Dark’s. While the God of Light revived Ozma’s soul, Ozma’s old body wasreborn and granted a new life and a new nameuntil his truepurpose will be realized. Destiny has a way of trailing back to where it’s supposed tofall after all and eventually Ozma’s revived soul would ultimately merge withhis revived body, reviving the hero---the champion known as Ozma completely. Ozma was theChampion of the Gods. The Wizard of Light andOscar is Ozma.

Thisis why I’m standing with the Merge not killing Oscar. It’s supposed to make himcomplete.Ozma will be made whole again. Oscar will be made whole again. That’s my headcanon and boy do I love it.  

Do you knowwhat would be interesting?

What if… the Gods being gods foresaw their greatest creation bringing abouttheir own damnation? What if…the Godsalready knew Salem was going to bring about humanity’s destruction but wereunaware on how to stop it.

Sothey introduced players and trump cards intheir game of Fate against Humanity. It’d be funny if RWBY is revealed to be one big game that theBrother Gods have been playing this entire time alongside another known God.

Possibly a third God---A higher being who warnedthe brothers that their greatest creation would fall and rise to destroy themboth and themselves.  Picture…this third Godbeing the Creator of the Brother Gods.  Perhaps there isa female Goddess---AMother of theCosmos who is the mother of the Brothers of Light and Darkness.

AlrightI think this is where my headcanons needto stop since I’m getting ahead of myself here. But it’s cool to think about,right? Hope I actually answered your question fam.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2019)

[loires]

doranmartell replied to your post “[[MOR] none of this is revised properly, so expect a lot of...”

word on all of this, especially "hawkeye in tokyo" made me soooo uncomfortable, and the path they took Steve on kind of destroyed his character? not to mention HELLO? He basically killed her kids. And what about Sharon Carter? to think that Steve would be as selfish as that, to destroy all those lives so he could live in a fantasy redo is just…. wrong. It’s like when the comics tried to make him a hydra agent, lol it just didn’t work and was OOC also, hella yes to those lazy jokes. Did I laugh? yeah. I was meant to, and the narrative tricks you into it, but as I laughed I felt wrong.

asdjflkdf;; MASAO... tysm for reading all of my word vomit, aaahhh. i hope i made sense, omg... ( /)u(\ )

ugh, the hawkeye in tokyo bit was so irritating. i know it’s not a new thing for marvel/action movies, but it’s SO TIRING. i’m so tired of “white guy visits random foreign setting” because [foreign setting] + [foreign noun(s)] are aesthetically pleasing and make for flashy fight scenes. while watching, i was thinking, “really? we’re still doing stuff like this... okay...” but i mean... this was just a surprise sucker-punch to my stomach because i just—it doesn’t help. it doesn’t help that the only main cast poc guy here is don cheadle, IT DOESN’T HELP THAT T’CHALLA + PRACTICALLY ALL THE OTHER MAJOR BLACK PANTHER CHARACTERS WERE WIPED OUT IN THE LAST MOVIE. and the ones who survived barely do anything in this movie (before the last battle), SO YEAH.

the more i think about steve’s ending, the more ??? i get. like my initial assumption was that he created a split timeline when he went back, which would mean that peggy and her kids and her family all still happen—just in the prime timeline. and i’m guessing he deals with bucky and everything else in the new split timeline he creates? (it sucks that we don’t get to see all of that, but... okay... i guess???)

when i thought about it more later, though... like if the split timeline is true then...??? how is older steve there, sitting on the bench, existing in the same timeline as them?

one could say that steve just saved the particles to travel back to the prime timeline or whatever when he thought it was the right time, but then why didn’t he just reappear in the time machine? like the way everyone else did when they completed their missions in the past??? if they wanted a more aesthetically pleasing shot or something (older steve just chilling on a bench is nicer, idk???) then fine... i guess???

but yeah, even after taking all of the plot happenings into account, i just... don’t think it fits steve’s character very much...? isn’t the whole thing with him about learning how to move on despite all he’s lost, and about finding a life and place for himself even if it’s in a world that is now unfamiliar to him???

like i said before, if the movie didn’t seem to be so focused on “moving on after tragedy,” i don’t know how i’d feel about it. as it stands, though, it’s just... very weird if you try to do both: if you show people moving on, living with what they’ve lost, and then you show steve rogers just peacing out back to the past—and closing the entire movie out that way. like choose one or the other, but not both because now everything seems to contradict one another, and i’m not sure what to take away from the film anymore.

i mean there probably is a way to do both, sure, but... uh. i just don’t think this was it.

i get not everything has to be “deep” but... that just goes back to another problem i had with endgame. the tone flip flops all over the place and it feels like it doesn’t know what it wants to be. if you’re going for a somber movie—opening with hawkeye losing his entire family, UHHH yeah—then be smarter with the humor instead of making so many of these random slapstick (ant-man) / fat jokes. like what happens to thor in the last five years is fucking tragic, but it’s like the movie wants me to laugh at him instead (ie. thor having a heartfelt meeting with his mom who tells him to “eat a salad” before he leaves)? what?! which one is it???

oh wow... i forgot about sharon carter. that’s a good point. :U

frankly, i thought the movie would end with them dismantling the time machine technology or whatever—maybe steve looking longingly at the peggy picture and closing it for the last time, finally choosing to move on (this happened in captain america: winter solider already imo but FINE), as the machine blew up.

it’s just??? kind of dangerous to have this whole time machine chilling out there because you can literally do whatever the heck you want with it in future films? but i guess we’ll see what happens, haha.

[thecloserkin]

book review: Mira Grant, Deadline (2011)

Genre: Sci-Fi

Is it the main pairing: Yes

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: No

Is it endgame: Yes

Is it shippable: Yes

Bottom line: how is it possible that the book where one half of OTP is dead is shippier than the first one where they’re both alive

Book 2 of the Newsflash trilogy picks up with our boy Shaun, who’s turned desk jockey since he lost George, riding to the rescue of some buddies beset by a zombie swarm. Everyone makes it out alive and Shaun tries to play it like it’s no biggie but the truth is,

I’ve lost one of the integral traits of a good Irwin: I’m not having fun. When I wind up in the field, it’s a chore to be survived, not an adventure to be relished. Without that little spark of gosh-golly-wow to drive me on, I’m essentially a dead person walking … George is the one who stopped breathing, but I’m the one who gave up on living.

Without George he has nothing to live for and so he’s sensibly withdrawn from fieldwork. The one thing that keeps him going is George’s voice in his head, chiding him for (among other things) picking up a coffee instead of a can of Coke. He’s started drinking Coke to appease her. He says it himself: “I am a haunted house pretending to be a man.” As for whether she’s real or just a figment of his imagination, this is Shaun’s take:

Screw sane. I don’t want anything that makes her stop talking to me.

Buckle up for an angst rollercoaster, kids:

One apartment for me and George, who didn’t take up any physical space but was so much a part of every room that sometimes I could fool myself into thinking she had just stepped out for some fresh air.

Several people have said it doesn’t really feel like anybody lives there, and what they don’t seem to understand is I like it that way. As long as I’m not really living there, I never have to think about the fact that I’m living there alone.

Outwardly he’s functional i guess but this is not the behavior of a person who has Moved On.

Sometimes I think this series is a how-to manual for small business owners masquerading as science fiction. For Shaun and George, the work used to be everything. Now George is gone Shaun is in the unenviable position of having to make all the tough calls, and second-guessing every last one because maybe George would have done it better. Oy vey. Offhand he informs us that their parents are also suing Shaun for ownership of her intellectual property. I always knew they were vultures but seriously???

So Shaun’s raison d’être right now is to bring down the person or people who murdered George. Obviously this does not mean the ones who pulled the trigger, it means the ones who gave the order & plotted to remove her. In the process of doing this he uncovers an even bigger conspiracy—although maybe it’s merely the same conspiracy from Book 1, only expanded in scope. I’m not sure. What I’m mainly interested in is how bad absolutely clueless Shaun is at signaling or perceiving romantic interest. Like, there’s a co-worker/employee of his, and they’re thrown together rather a lot, and she’s clearly crushing on him hard only Shaun’s too dense to see it. After the whole affair ends disastrously (he sleeps with the poor girl then calls her by George’s name) he ruminates:

”Why would I know what the signs were? I never had to read them before.”

It’s obvious why Shaun, a not-unattractive grown ass man whose other social skills appear to fall well within the range of “normal,” has such atrophied skills when it comes to this one thing. He’s never had to use them. Here’s Maggie the relationship guru:

”Have you ever had a girlfriend?” “Not as such, no.” ”Have you ever been in love?” There’s never been a good answer to that question. I didn’t even try. I just shrugged.

I can’t find the tweet anymore but Seanan Maguire has confirmed that Shaun and George first got together the night after junior prom—they went with other people as a sort of experiment. (@JKRowling see, this is the sort of authorial headcanon that the fans actually clamor for.) The two of them just skipped right over the tentative fumbling awkward initial stages of dating, of getting to know each other, because they already know each other inside out. Shaun says:

Sometimes I’m even arrogant enough to think the Rising happened so we could be together.

Colloquially we use the term two people “being together” to mean they enter into an exclusive romantic relationship. But it’s intentionally ambiguous here whether he means that, or just the two of them finding each other, because what would have been the chances of their being raised together absent a global catastrophe like a zombie apocalypse. Shaun finds it impossible to separate the romantic aspect of their relationship from the familial bond, and that’s why I love incest thanks for coming to my ted talk. Oh, here’s Mahir the relationship guru:

”I mean, I didn’t know…” “What, that I loved your sister? Of course you didn’t, just like you had no idea Rebecca fancied you. You never had to go searching like the rest of us.”

Can I just say, on an unrelated note, I feel SO BAD for Mahir’s wife who’s not even a proper character? She doesn't get any screentime. But this is a small business how-to manual, remember, and the way Shaun is always ringing Mahir at 2 in the morning and Mahir feels obligated to pick up because it’s his boss? Mahir’s wife is a saint, canonize her immediately. Back to my earlier point about how Shaun has less experience with flirting/dating than your average fourteen-year-old:

This sort of thing was easier to handle when George was around. She was always the one who noticed when girls started crushing on me, and she made them go away. One way or another. I’ve never tried to deal with this sort of situation on my own before.

What’s fascinating is that it’s not just romantic entanglements that he’s at a loss to deal with:

I’d never driven any real distance with a passenger—not unless you counted George, who didn’t actually change the way the bike was balanced, or make it necessary for me to compensate for additional weight.

WHEN GEORGE RODE PILLION ON HIS MOTORCYCLE IT DIDN’T EVEN THROW OFF HIS BALANCE!!! He’s not used to having to think about compensating for a passenger’s weight bc with George everything came naturally!!! If this isn’t a metaphor for their entire relationship idk what the hell it is.

She didn’t like touching people, so I touched them for her. She didn’t like emotional displays, so I took up the slack.

She was the yin to his yang, they were a team etc etc. Here is how Shaun reacts when the book’s antagonist gives his Evil Villain Spiel:

”I never gave you much credit for brains, Shaun—that was your sister’s department, God rest her soul, and if she made any errors in judgment, it was in trusting you to watch her back—but I still thought you were smarter than this.” “You take that back,” I whispered.

Shaun couldn’t care less that this fool gives him zero credit in the brains department, but let him impugn George’s judgment even slightly and our boy is ready to throw hands. We stan.

These are my two favorite passages from the book:

George and I shared a lot of rooms exactly like this one, one of us dozing while the other kept working, the staccato click of keys providing the white noise that meant it was safe to sleep.

It’s a work partnership! It’s a sibling bond! It’s a romantic pairing! It’s us-against-the-world, it’s everything! Also this:

George and I used to have shower races. Who could get in and clean and out again in the shortest amount of time. All the guys we went to school with insisted that their girlfriends and sisters took forever in the bathroom, but George always beat me … once a month or so, she’d take over the bathroom for an afternoon to dye her hair back to its original color, which inevitably resulted in her shouting for me to come in and help her dye her roots. The sink on our old bathroom was stained a permanent brown by the time we were sixteen, and we ruined so many towels.

Lol the implied contrast between “other guys who complained about their gfs/sisters” and Shaun who’s been President of the Georgia Mason Fan Club for over two decades.

ANYWAY the twist at the end of this novel is that George is alive. She’s being held at some scary, sterile government facility, and it’s clear from a minor early plot point involving clones that this isn’t George, it’s got to be a George-clone. Because George 1.0 died in Shaun’s arms. But George 2.0 has got all George’s memories so we’re going to go ahead and treat her just like George, which sets us up nicely for alternating Shaun-and-George POVs when we return for the final installment of the “Newsflesh” trilogy.