#in fact I get paid to think about the puppet on company time not that the company are aware | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pinkjiminssi · 3 years

Text

So.. About That Hickey..

I think I’m still processing all of this and reminding myself I’m not dreaming 🤣 I seriously only got 3 hours of sleep last night and when I woke up the first thing I did was check twitter to be sure this “drunk bridal-style spinning hickey neck biting proudly showing off” moment actually happened!!

.. I hate the way my brain works though. I was so happy that it took me forever to fall asleep, spent all day on cloud 9 despite being tired, .. and then my old nemesis, anxiety, stepped in. Well kind of. TBH if all of the MOTS ON:E Jikook moments we got happened with Jimin/anyone else or Jungkook/anyone else.. I would seriously be sitting here saying “well fuck.. I believe they WERE a couple, but looking at all of this it seems they are no longer together.” So really, this just confirmed what I already knew about Jimin and Jungkook: they’re a couple. My anxiety is over.. why? Why show us this? If they can cover all of JK’s tattoos, a hickey/bite mark/whatever we’re calling it should be super easy to hide. Sure it was just rehearsal.. but it was rehearsal with cameras rolling with every intention of releasing what was being filmed as future content. It could have (and some might argue should have) been covered.

Guys... I’m confused. And concerned. ❗❗❗ TW for drama, hate, homophobia, the usual anti issues

That “official” explanation.. again.. why? I’m assuming Jimin and Jungkook were asked and allowed to explain because of the chance of it being spotted and armys freaking out, so BH (or possibly even Jikook) thought to get ahead of the speculation by just being up front about it all.. but THAT explanation? I suppose it works for covering up the army panic of “Jungkook has a girlfriend?! *insert fangirl sobbing*” .. but that’s literally all it does (and only barely if you go looking at some of the anti’s reactions to it all). Really, all it did was draw even more attention and speculation. I mean.. this is, essentially, what we were told: Jimin and Jungkook were together the night before drinking, apparently without the other members as they didn’t seem to know all of this already (and they would have if they had been there), somehow hanging out and having drinks turns into Jungkook picking Jimin up bridal style (random but some of the k-army reactions on twitter were translating through google into “princess style” and I just think that’s so cute 🥰), spinning ensues, Jimin gets dizzy and wants Jungkook to put him down, ... and so he proceeds to do the only logical thing that any of us would have done in that situation... biting Jungkook’s neck? And hard enough to leave a mark the next day?? And instead of being peeved about it (like most of us would have been if our friend bit the crap out of us), Jungkook looks happy?? proud even???

And they arrived together the next day and continue to be cute and playful?

I just.. I mean.. come on. First of all.. that’s a hickey. A bite leaves teeth marks. And one would assume a wild, drunken “let me down” chomp would be something that happens suddenly and ends very quickly. I know I for sure would drop someone on their ass if they decided to take a bite out of my neck (assuming I was even picking up and spinning around with one of my friends like that to begin with.. but let’s not even get into why that was going on at this point) .. but the way this bruised? Yeah. There were no teeth involved (at least not hard enough to leave indentations) and this took more than a couple of seconds of mouth-to-neck contact to still be that visible the next day. So.. in short. Jungkook arrives with a hickey, JK decides to not cover it up (or he would have shown up with it hidden and we see him get out of the car that morning with it clearly visible), BH staff sees it and also decides to not have it covered up and actually have it explained... and the explanation is “oh yeah Jimin just bit him, you know.. no big deal hehehe isn’t that funny?” 🤯 WHAT?! Yeah.. that’s totally normal, platonic behavior between adults...

I’m not saying Jimin and Jungkook are lying btw. I have no doubt it played out more or less exactly as they said with the exception of what they’re calling the end result. Jimin and Jungkook are fine.. I mean, what were they supposed to say? They’re not going to show up saying Jimin was sucking on Jungkook’s neck the night before. We’ll probably never know why Jungkook decided to not cover it up before arriving, but it’s his body and he gets to decide. It’s BH that has me so puzzled. Other than antis and people who refuse to see what’s literally right in front of their faces when it comes to Jikook.. who were BH expecting to believe the bite thing? Just among staff and the other members, it’s a laughable but safe “oh of course *wink wink*” explanation that allows everyone to carry on like normal. But to the public who don’t know them personally, don’t know their usual behavior and patterns, and who don’t have something like a non-disclosure agreement or professional courtesy preventing them from openly speculating.. it doesn’t fly. Pretty much everyone teen and up knows what a hickey looks like (either from having gotten/given one or at least seeing one on someone else in person or online). It’s immediately obvious what it is. And even if there was some uncertainty.. that it’s on his neck (instead of other easily accessible and less sensitive/stimulating locations) and just so happens to be right near his mole as it Jimin were aiming for it? Just another “too many coincidences” thing when it comes to Jikook.

Even antis on twitter couldn’t deny what it was and, so, had to resort to the “well I do that with my sibling and my uncle’s pet raccoon all the time it’s just family things” excuse and/or the “yeah well someone ELSE in the group (or a girlfriend) gave him that and they’re just covering by saying it was Jimin.” Oh. And the same old “it’s just fan service” excuse (as if Jungkook would let someone bruise his neck for the purposes of fanservice which, again, BTS has never done or needed to do. Forever pissed off that so many in this fandom act like Jungkook is a puppet doing whatever the “evil company” tells him to do regardless of his personal feelings or boundaries. The man has tattoos covering nearly every inch of his arm despite that being looked down on in Korea. At this point he can do whatever the fuck he wants). So.. why?? Seriously, why? This all could have easily been avoided with simple makeup.

When they’re doing official content they’re all literally followed around by a flurry of staff fixing hair, dabbing sweat, touching up makeup, etc. Even though it was rehearsal, staff were everywhere in the footage that’s made its way online. If they were worried that it would be seen in the background and “taken the wrong way,” just have the staff occasionally touch up the makeup. “Easy peasy lemon squeezy.” But instead of doing the obvious, BH decides to: not cover it, draw attention to it by asking about it and letting them continue to talk about it, go out of their way to get a camera on it, and then include it in the final cut of the content they sent out?

BTS is literally the most popular group in the world right now and BH has become a behemoth of a company that runs like a well-oiled machine. They’re not stupid; this was not a mistake. For some reason they wanted us to see this and, one would assume based on the lack of a more believable explanation, they wanted us to come to the conclusion that we all have: Jimin gave Jungkook a hickey. You know they have teams dedicated to monitoring reactions to content on social media. You know they know the dialog surrounding Rosebowl, Black Swan MMA, the Memories 2020 “almost kiss,” etc. etc. All of this got “jikook,” “hickey” and variations of their names trending for HOURS (in multiple countries and worldwide).

Out of curiosity, I decided to check the trends at the time of writing this. As of 3 AM CST (about 24 hours AFTER the clips started showing up online), there was still a hashtag trending related to all of this: #FREEJUNGKOOK.. and the tweets being directed toward BH are.. disturbing to say the least:

While I agree that the boys should trend more often based on their talents and music.. what’s going on right now is a homophobic 💩 show accusing BH of “scripting” interactions (rather than.. you know.. Jungkook interacting with whoever he wants however he wants.. the usual “mindless puppet JK” narrative), trying to coordinate the mass sending of angry emails, trying to get people to stop buying paid content, accusing BH of taking advantage of the members.. I mean it goes on and on. And BH know what’s going on right now. They’re seeing the reactions... the good and the extremely negative. And still they let this out. And this is all not even CONSIDERING the mountain of other moments that made the cut on MOTS ON:E.

(side note, the above pic just oozes happiness and it’s so cute I love it!! 😭)

So.. even though I’ve said it dozens of times already... WHY? W H Y? I’m an anxious person by nature and not very trusting. I believe Jimin and Jungkook and I don’t think they’ve been lying and pretending for “fanservice” all of these years. I respect them both too much as individuals and artists to believe that they would stoop to such tactics just to generate a little more “interest” and revenue. I’m suspicious of BH. BTS doesn’t need fanservice to get attention; literally all of 2020 and 2021 so far has proven that beyond a doubt. Even if they suddenly made the decision to do fs.. why not go with the most popular ship (taekook) or at least one that isn’t so hotly debated on social media (remove Jimin, Jungkook and Tae from the equation and you still have four members to “play” with who have much less potential to have fs devolve into a toxic crap show all over the internet). Showing us this will do nothing to help BTS as a group or Jimin and Jungkook at this point. In fact.. all it can do is hurt. Hurt BH, hurt the group, and hurt the individual members, heck.. even potentially hurt other BH/HYBE groups. I’ve already seen people on twitter saying they’re “done” spending money on anything BH or BTS puts out because they’re “sick of jikook in their faces and just two of the seven hogging all of the screen time.” Whether or not that “spending freeze” actually materializes into anything noticeable remains to be seen of course.. but the threat is there and always has been. What is the motive? And why now? As much as my “hopeless romantic” heart would like to believe they’re preparing us for Jikook to be “out” .. I seriously don’t think that is ever going to happen. Certainly not now at the height of the group’s fame, with them being given Presidential honors and ambassador status, and with military service still looming over them all. And let’s not forget... Korea is NOT a safe place for a queer couple. Letting us see and know what they did through what was released has the potential to put Jimin and Jungkook (and the other members by proxy) in danger. Sure.. BTS has never been hardline rule followers and have been breaking molds and shattering norms from the start, so “officially” having an openly gay couple in the group wouldn’t be impossible.. just... highly highly improbable. Especially right now... and I’m concerned. I don’t want to sound like the creeps I posted a screenshot of above throwing blame at the company. The boys chose to renew their contracts with the for a reason so we have to trust their judgement as a group... but still, I’m worried and I’m questioning what the purpose was here.

#jikook #drama #kat thoughts #sorry for being a downer...#I'm stressed :(

15 notes · View notes

mcheang · 4 years

Text

This was submitted to me by @andromeda612

My ideas were added in orange

Idea/Prompt(? : is a new semester and Marc joins the class! Everybody is happy, Marc is such a sweet boy and a caring friend! Obviously the most happy are Nathaniel, Alix and Marinette.

Lila is not. Some nobody is stealling the attention! And it's not fair! She is dozen times more interesting and is obvious that this boy doesn't like the spotlight! But it's ok, the hype would decrease in a couple days. She would be the center of the universe again.

Except that it didn't happen.

Marc is very likeable specially whe he opens up with his friends, also once he is comfortable enough he shows his 'mom friend' side and is so endearing! Marinette, Alix and Nathaniel are the ones who can see this side of him the most, though. But the class is so touched by it, they also want to help him.

Also he and Nathaniel make one of the most popular comics in Paris, and all the class (even Chloe but she would never admitt it) are fans. Oh and Marc is an awesome writer and storyteller!!! Sometimes they manage to convince him to tell some of his stories and forgot completely about Lila.

Lila: but my stories are real! (You wish!) Isn't it more excited?

Kim: yeah, your experiencies are pretty cool, but Marc's stories are just too AWESOME! even if they are just stories, and he is a very good storyteller... once he controlls his nerves.

Not to mention Lila’s bragging has become rather tiresome

Her ego doesn't like this at all. She tries to befriend the boy, maybe she can take advantange of the new darling of the class (and is obvious Marinette is fond of the guy, so it would be a plus to piss her of)

But it is more difficult than she thougth. Everytime she tries to talk to him he just gives her short answers and stammering, he doesn't even make eye contact, and is hard to mantain a conversation straight. She tried to complaint with her minio... 'friends' but...

Lila’s friendly approach is too forceful and bold for the shy Marc

Max: oh yeah, you see, Marc has a lightly social anxiety, so it takes time for him to open up with new people. With the exception of Marinette, Nathaniel and Alix, apparently they manage to win his trust and friendship very quickly. Like some people would say, they just 'clicked'

Alix: Yeah, and Nathaniel and Marc definitely 'clicked' in more than one way if you know what I mean.

The girls giggle.

(Of course that I HAVE to put some Marcaniel here)

Mylene: is not something personal, it took time for all of us to befriend him, but now we are very good friends, and he even is our new "mom friend" I'm sure you would be his friend too, you just need to be patient.

But patient is not what she is, specially when she has to share the adoration and attention of her dumb classmates. Even Nathaniel, who never was one of her admirers or paid her that much attetion like the others do, seems to has eyes only for him! It was low blow to her ego.

Actually I feel like Lila can be patient if the Ladybug episode was anything to go by...

She tries to speed up the proces by charming him with one of her faboulous 'experiencies' and 'conections'

It backfired bad.

Because when she finished to tell her lie a very confused (and uncomfortable because he is still shy around her) Marc started to point out all the holes in her lie and the wrong facts or nosenses in it, with proof. AND IN FRONT OF THE CLASS

She was sure that having the support of her classmates during her tale would help to amaze him, but now the others are seeing her with a confused frown, she need to fix it!

For her luck Marc was starting to look overwhelmed for the attention their confused classmates were given him, so Marinette took him outside to calm him down. She took the chance and did some damage control. Somehow she manage to save face but was a very close call.

Now, the boy is clever than the rest of her dumb minions, and he actually almost got her exposed, so he is clearly a threath, specially if Marinette talks to him about her lies. If he already didn't find it out by himself.

Lila needs to take care of this new obstacle, so she decides to go hostile.

What Lila doesn't expecto is the Marc protection squad.

It turns out that after that close call some of her classmates were skeptical and noticed that something was off (they already had this feeling since Mari was expelled, but they brush it off, but now...) this classmates are Nathaniel, Alix, Kim and Max.

Alix noticing the mood in her friends was the one who brought up the topic, they talked and after a little thinking and the input of Markov they realized that Lila was lying. Then Alix remember Marinette's claims about Lila and decide to talk to her.

When they found her she is talking with Marc, of course is about Lila and her lies, luckily Marc is a good listener and has his own suspicions. They all talk, Marinette's friends finally listen to her and discover Lila's true colors, they apologize and she forgives them, after all despite Lila's threat they never treated her different and were still good friends with her, it hurt that they brush off her concerns but everybody makes mistakes.

They also discover that Adrien knew, at first they were angry, but then Mari calls Adrien and he explains his motives, and well the poor boy really didn't knew better, but he does now and a deal with devil is punishment enough, also he is the reason Mari's name is clean.

Now that they are in the same page, and Adrien is also present (through video call) Marinette tells that now she is more concerned about Marc.

He almost got Lila exposed and he wasn't even trying! Lila is going to see him as a threat and will make everything to get ride of him, just like she tried with her.

That make all of them worried and angry, Alix and Nathaniel the most. So they decide that the bitch needs to fall.

They would protect Marc (and Marinette because despite the deal they highly doubt that Lila would let her alone) from every scheme Lila tries. They also will research and collect proof to expose her.

Lila's first plan is hostility, the boy is terrible shy, it would be easy intimidate him and use fear to controll him like a puppet.

But every attempt goes wrong or backfire somehow, she is caugh in the middle of some of them, of course she says is all a misunderstanding or an accident, but she can't get close thin ice.

Also she can't cornered nor threaten him like she did with Marinette, the boy is NEVER alone, he is always with Alix, Marinette, Nathaniel, Kim or Max, EVEN ADRIEN would keep him company if either of them aren't near.

Then she tries to frame him, maybe she stole an important object from some classmate and tried to planted it in Marc's school bag, but when she tries to put the item in it her arm gets caught by some trap.

Of course she tries to complain against Marc, but Marinette is quick to defend him, Marc is a little paranoid about his stuff, specially his journal, and due to past accidents with stolen stuff (everybody glares at Chloe) she offered to make some security system for his stuff. Marc frees her arm with the key of the trap and shyly tells her that if she needs to borrow something the next time she just need to ask. The brat actually has the nerve to lectures her.

Marc: it’s rude to touch other's belongings without their permission.

And when Marc looks in his bag and takes out the stolen item she tried to make her move, but before she can even open her mouth the owner inmediatly assumes that somehow they lose it and hugs Marc for finding it and keeping it safe "Thanks mom!"

Aaaaarrrrgggggghhhhhh!

And just badmouthing him won't work, from what she learned about the boy he is a little ball of nerves and so sickenly polite, even Lila has to admitt that it would be hard to believe that the boy was being mean even by accident without a well planted proof. Also all the class seems to adore him, and Alix, Marinette and Nathaniel would defend him with tooth and nail.

She tries again and again, but always end the same, all his stuff is sabotage proof and she ends tramped. And her classmates are starting to look at her with suspicion, because is like the fifth time she is caught and why is she poking around Marc stuff in the first place? And oh! Poor Marc! Is the sixth time in two weeks he almos trip over very bad, and he has have many accidents recently! Is a luck that Alix, Marinette, Nathaniel, Kim, Max and Adrien were always there so it never happen something bad!

Hey! Lila is involved in many of them, some of the accidents were her fault! Is strange, isn't it? (Yep, the squad is sowing the suspicious deeds)

She changes targets, If she can get ride of Marinette again she could drag Marc with her.

But Marinette also has all her stuff with tramps, after her expullsion she is more careful with her stuff and the class is on her side. And now she is more suspicious, first with Marc and now with Marinette, is that she hasn't learned her lesson with all her incidents with Marc? Oh and him? That little wretched boy has the audacy to give her a I'm-not-mad-just-dissapointed look everytime she is caught with Marinette's stuff. The class can't help but agree with their 'mom friend'.

The class is getting wary of her, she is losing control, but she refuses to lose against this nobodies!

Now her exposure: it would be that now that her classmates are suspicious of her they start to take a close eye to her, and they start to notice how she is actually very near of Marc everytime he almost has an accident, and how she would make a comment that sound nice but when you think about it is actually a stab in the back, or how quick she is to blame Marinette, or how she tries to subtle disparage Marc or/and Marinette. And now they are noticing the flaws in her stories.

At the end they fact check and discover the truth, or Lila is caught red handed trying to sabotage Marc or frame Marinette. They complain to Bustier and Damocles with the squad's research, the matter goes to the school board and the principal and the teacher are under scrutiny, Lila's mom is called and she is in so much trouble, karma collect her debt. (Akumatization optional)

Maybe for some reason she manage to get Marc alone, or is what she thought, the squad try to not let him alone but they have a plan for that case. If for whatever reason any of them can't accompany him, Max would let Markov with Marc, and the AI would follow-up closely the writer everywere.

So Lila finally cornered and threaten him (and if you want some bashing she can get violent and actually assaults him) but Markov witnesses everything, and since he is an AI his memories are video and audio recording that can be shown as evidence with his testimony, also Marc gave the consent to be recorded for security because they were suspicious about Lila trying something like that.

And just to put the nail in the coffin, the squad's research is presented to the school board, Damocles and Bustier are under scrutiny, Lila's truancy is discovered and her mom is called, she is exposed to all the class and is in so much trouble, karma happens (akumatization optional)

Maybe she is exposed until the squad present their investigation to the school board and... you know what comes next.

In any case, the rest of the class also apologize to Marinette and promise to do better, she forgive them (because at the end they were still her friends and were always nice to her despite what Lila said, everybody makes mistakes).

Happy ending :D

Bonus: Maybe sometime in the middle of the Protect Marc campaign, or at the end of the take Lila Down, Marc and Nathaniel confess their feelings and start dating :3

#miraculous ladybug fanfic #miraculous ladybug fic #ml fanfic #ml fanfiction #ml fic #miraculous ladybug fanfiction #lila gets exposed #lila is exposed #lila busted #lila salt #ml salt fic #post ladybug episode #post episode ladybug #submission

316 notes · View notes

cerastes · 4 years

Text

I’m fine where I am. At least for now, I’m fine where I am. I work for my mentor, who supports me and teaches me still, I have a job at all during a pandemic, when I know many a colleague of mine does not. I am in a position where I can try new things and experiment with my craft, not through just theory, but through being able to put it into practice. I like where I am. I like who I am.

But I feel as though I wish to do more. Two years ago, in anticipation to my busy 2019, I started proactively trying out new things. More proactively than I usually am, I mean. Some stuck, others were a nice experience that I’m ok with not revisiting, others, I’m not particularly enthused about but I made promises regarding my presence and activity in those that stand to this day. I wish to do more. I understand that part of this hunger tinged in frustration comes from the pandemic in at least some degree; I intended on working out more than ever before this year, and I intended to start practicing archery.

There’s fun things to do. Streaming has been fun. I like it. Doing it as a group has been fun. I had always wanted to do more streaming in general, it’s just very calming and fun to sit there and talk while playing a game. I’m glad I’ve had AK to sink my teeth into, both in gameplay and in lore (seriously, how can a game so perfectly tailored for me exist?). Recently, I’ve started a creative project with my best friend. I’m very happy about this, we’re still very much in the preliminary phases, but I’m so happy it’s him with whom I can embark on this journey of creation. I guess it paid of to nerdify and weebify him, because I don’t think this would’ve been able to happen before, and I’m both a hermit and someone who has very particular views and opinions on the creative process and how to tackle it. I almost never collab, because I enjoy the silence and my own presence more than I do the company of others, but if it’s with my best friend, that doesn’t apply, I do enjoy his company more than my silence and presence. I’m happy about that.

I don’t know what else I’m going to try my hand at, and this is a weird thing for me to feel, but... I feel as if I could be doing something. Whenever I feel this way, I try things, because I dislike inaction, and I dislike people that endlessly complain about their inaction while remaining, you know, inactive. Makes my blood boil, I’ll be truthful, the whole “what am I doing with my life?” line of thought and vague text posts. If you have time to ask yourself that, you have time to get up and look for something to do, to be, to enjoy, to indulge, to create, to consume. At times I think it’s a harsh judgement, and it’s not like I don’t get how depression works -- been there, buddy -- but you can’t wait for someone to rescue you. I don’t resent self-indulgent media for being popular and not for me, but I do quite resent it for popularizing and romanticizing the idea that your sadness is something you need to be rescued from. You take the first step, and people will naturally help you out from there, but if you just loiter there saying sad and vague things, no one will bother.

In any case.

I’m looking for that, for that extra something I want to do. I don’t know what it is yet, but I know I want to do it, I feel as if I am wasting time not doing it. I am fervently inspired by seeing people I know chasing after things they’ve wanted to do. I, too, want to chase. Improving is a nice feeling. Trying out new things is a nice feeling. Routine is nice but only as long as it is constantly evolving instead of just becoming a stagnant cycle.

Speaking of particularities regarding creation, though quite obviously I love reading, I’m still more a writer than a reader, and I don’t really talk about my creations. And being honest, I don’t often fancy hearing about others’ in a vacuum (ie. conceptually, “this is my OC!” I’d rather you write a story and show me that). This is a me thing, and I don’t think this explanation will actually be understood by too many (conceptually? yes, otherwise? no), but I think there’s too much You in your creation. This is perhaps just my psychologist brain being itself but people telling me all about their OCs unprompted, to me, who automatically reads between the lines both as seasoned reader and a psychologist, is akin to subjecting me to their psyche, and god I know this sounds cheesy and try-hard, I know, it is painful to write, but 6 friends in the last few months have made big life decisions which were foreshadowed to me by how much of them they put into their creations, which were shared with me. Likewise, I feel like sharing my creations too much, on a conceptual level, even, is putting myself out there. I doubt anyone did, but if anyone wondered why I don’t really share what I write or create with any sort of regularity, there’s why. I just think it’s intimate, and I don’t think intimacy is something to show to everyone, which I know is a weird damn way to see creative endeavors, trust me, but that’s how I view it. That’s not to say I don’t want people to see my things, not at all, I do update my writing blog now and then, after all, and I love seeing people read my stuff, this is more about... Sharing OCs, for example, in a vacuum and talking about them? Feels too weird for me.

Well, there’s that, but there’s also the fact that I also have another particularity (yes, I know) in which I don’t particularly care to hear about OCs as much as I want to see them in an actual written piece. Let me put it this way: I don’t care about a sock puppet if you show it to me during lunch, but I do care for it if you put up a play and let me see the sock puppet in action. I think people should enjoy art and creation in any way they do, but conversely, I like seeing creation in action, not conceptually. Conceptual is easy and vague. Write a story. That’s more exciting and enriching and lets me get a clear view of your created character more than your psyche and all the things you may not even know you’re clamoring (that you put on absolutely every OC, yes, we notice), so write, write, and write. Give your characters a context, scenario, a story.

Of course, I am merely speaking of my own preference. What’s more important is that you enjoy what you’re writing and what you’re doing. I just think a proper story in motion is far more interesting than concepts. I used to love “the concept of”, maybe you remember, I used to make a lot of posts regarding ‘concepts’ and being in love with the concept of this and that in writing. That’s been one of my major changes, honestly, I don’t love concepts anymore. I love execution now.

That’s about it, yeah, head emptied. Sleep now.

#Nothing negative at all just thinking and read more-ing it so as to not put a slab of words on the dashboard

26 notes · View notes

grubbyduck · 4 years

Text

No Man’s Land - an essay on feminism and forgiveness

I have always proudly named myself a feminist, since I was a little girl and heard my mum proudly announcing herself as a feminist to anyone who would listen.

But I believe the word 'feminist' takes on a false identity in our collective imagination - it is seen as hard, as baked, severe, steadfast, stubborn and rooted. From a male perspective, it possibly means abrasive, or too loud, or intimidatingly intolerant of men. From a female perspective, though, these traits become revered by young feminists; the power of knowing what you think and never rolling over! My experience of being a feminist throughout my life has been anything but - it has been a strange and nebulous aspect of my identity; it has sparked the familiar fires of bravery, ambition, rage, sadness and choking inarticulacy at times, sure, but at other times it has inspired apathy, reactionary attitudes, bravado and dismissivness. And at other, transitive times, it caused me to rethink my entire outlook on the world. And then again. And then again.

In primary school, I read and re-read Sandi Toksvig’s book GIRLS ARE BEST, which takes the reader through the forgotten women of history. I didn’t feel angry - I felt awed that there were female pirates, women on the front line in the world wars, women at the forefront of invention, science and literature. I still remember one line, where it is revealed that NASA’s excuse for only hiring six women astronauts compared to hundreds of men was that they didn’t stock suits small enough.

When I was 13, I tried to start a girl's rugby team at my school. I got together 15 girls who also wanted to form a team. We asked the coaches if they would coach us - their responses varied from 'maybes' to straight up 'no's. The boys in our year laughed at us publicly. We would find an old ball, look up the rules online, and practise ourselves in free periods - but the boys would always come over, make fun of us and take over the game until we all felt too insecure to carry on. I shouted at a lot of boys during that time, and got a reputation among them as someone who was habitually angry and a bit of a buzzkill. Couldn't take a joke - that kind of thing.

When I was around 16, I got my first boyfriend. He was two years older (in his last year of sixth form) and seemed ever so clever to me. He laughed about angry feminists, and I laughed too. He knew I classified myself as a feminist, but, you know, a cool one - who doesn't get annoyed, and doesn't correct their boyfriends' bulging intellects. And in any case, whenever I did argue with him about anything political or philosophical, he would just chant books at me, list off articles he'd read, mention Kant and say 'they teach that wrong at GCSE level'. So I put more effort into researching my opinions (My opinions being things like - Trump is a terrible person who should not be elected as President - oh yeah, it was 2016), but every time I cited an article, he would tell me why that article was wrong or unreliable. I couldn't win. He was a Trump supporter (semi-ironically, but that made it even worse somehow) and he voted Leave in the Brexit referendum. He also wouldn't let me get an IUD even though I had terrible anxiety about getting pregnant, because of his parents' Catholicism. He sulked if he ever got aroused and then I didn’t feel like having sex, because apparently it ‘hurts’ men physically. One time I refused sex and he sulked the whole way through the night, refusing to sleep. I was incensed, and felt sure that my moral and political instincts were right, but I had been slowly worn down into doubting the validity of my own opinions, and into cushioning his ego at every turn - especially when he wasn't accepted into Oxford.

When I was 17/18, I broke up with him, and got on with my A Levels. One of them was English Literature. I remember having essay questions drilled into us, all of which were fairly standard and uninspired, but there was one that I habitually avoided:

'Discuss the presentation of women in this extract'

It irritated me beyond belief to hear the way that our class were parroting phrases like 'commodification and dehumanisation of women' in order to get a good grade. It felt so phony, so oversimplified, and frankly quite insulting. I couldn't bear reading classic books with the intent of finding every instance that the author compares a woman to an animal. It made me so sad! I couldn't understand how the others could happily write about such things and be pleased with their A*. As a keen contributor to lessons, my teacher would often call on me to comment in class - and to her surprise, I think, my responses about 'women's issues' were always sullen and could be characterised by a shrug. I wanted to talk about macro psychology, about Machievellian villains, about Shakespreare's subversion of comic convention in the English Renaissance. I absolutely did not want to talk about womb imagery, about men’s fixation and sexualisation of their mothers or about docile wives. In my application for Cambridge, I wrote about landscape and the psyche in pastoral literature, and got an offer to study English there. I applied to a mixed college - me and my friends agreed that we’d rather not go if we got put into an all female college.

When I was 19, I got a job as an actor in a touring show in my year out before starting at Cambridge. I was the youngest by a few years. One company member - a tall, handsome and very talented man in his mid-twenties - had the exact same job title as me, only he was being paid £100 more than me PER WEEK. I was the only company member who didn’t have an agent, so I called the producers myself to complain. They told me they sympathised, that there just wasn’t enough money in the budget to pay me more - and in the end, I managed to negotiate myself an extra £75 per week by taking on the job of sewing up/fixing any broken costumes and puppets. So I had more work, and was still being paid 25% less. The man in question was a feminist, and complained to his agent (although he fell through on his promise to demand that he lose £50 a week and divide it evenly between us). He was a feminist - and yet he commented on how me and the other woman in the company dressed, and told us what to wear. He was a feminist, only he slept with both of us on tour, and lied to us both about it. He was a feminist, only he pitted me against and isolated me from the only other woman in the company, the only person who may have been a mentor or a confidante. He was a feminist, only he put me down daily about my skills as a performer and made me doubt my intelligence, my talent and my worth.

When I was 20, I started at Cambridge University, studying English Literature. Over the summer, I read Lundy Bancroft’s book ‘Why Does He Do That’ which is a study of abusers and ‘angry and controlling men’. It made me realise that I had not been given the tools to recognise coercive and controlling behaviour - I finally stopped blaming myself for attracting controlling men into my life. I also read ‘Equal’ by Carrie Gracie, about her fight to secure equal pay for equal work at the BBC in 2017-2019. It was reading that book that I fully appreciated that I had already experienced illegal pay discrimination in the workplace. Both made me cry in places, and it felt as though something had thawed in me. I realised that I was not the exception. That ‘women’s issues’ do apply to me. In my first term at Cambridge, I wrote some unorthodox essays. I wrote one on Virginia Woolf named ‘The Dogs Are Dancing’ which began with a page long ‘disclaimer for my womanly emotions’ that attempted to explain to my male supervisor how difficult it is for women to write dispassionately and objectively, as they start to see themselves as unfairly separate, excluded and outlined from the male literary consciousness. He didn’t really understand it, though he enjoyed the passion behind my prose.

The ‘woman questions’ at undergraduate level suddenly didn’t seem as easy, as boring or as depressing as those I had encountered at A Level. I had to reconcile with the fact that I had only been exposed to a whitewashed version of feminism throughout my life. At University, I learned the word Intersectionality - and it made immediate and ferocious sense to me. I wrote an essay on Aphra Behn’s novella ‘Oroonoko’, which is about a Black prince and his pursuit of Imoinda, a Black princess. I had to get to grips with how a feminist author from the Renaissance period tackled issues of race. I had to examine how she dehumanised and sexualised Imionda in the same way that white women were used to being treated by men. I had to really question to what extent Aphra Behn was on Imionda’s side - examine the violent punishment of Oroonoko for mistreating her. I found myself really wanting to believe that Behn had done this purposefully as social commentary. I mentioned in my essay that I was aware of my own white female critical ingenuity. For the first time, I was writing about something I didn’t have any personal authority over in my life - I had to educate myself meticulously in order to speak boldly about race.

As I found myself surrounded by more women who were actively and unashamedly feminist, I realised just how many opinions exist within that bracket. I realised that I didn’t agree with a lot of other feminists about aspects of the movement. I started to only turn up to lectures by women. I started to only read literary criticism written by women - not even consciously; I just realised that I trusted their voices more intrinsically. I started to wish I had applied to an all female college. I realised that all female spaces weren’t uncool - that is an image that I had learned from men, and from trying to impress men. The idea that Black people, trans people, that non binary people could be excluded from feminism seemed completely absurd to me. I ended up in a mindset that was constructed to instinctively mistrust men. Not hate - just mistrust. I started to get fatigued by explaining basic feminist principles to sceptical men.

I watched the TV show Mrs America. It made my heart speed up with longing, with awe, with nerves, sorrow, anger - again, it showed me how diverse the word Feminism is. The longing I felt was for a time where feminist issues seemed by comparison clear-cut, and unifying. A time where it was good to be angry, where anger got stuff done. I am definitely angry. The problem is, the times that feminism has benefitted me and others the most in my life is when I use it forgivingly and patiently. When I sit in my anger, meditate on it, control it, and talk to those I don’t agree with on subjects relating to feminism with the active intent to understand their point of view. Listening to opinions that seemed so clearly wrong to me was the most difficult thing in the world - but it changed my life, and once again, it changed my definition of feminism.

Feminism is listening to Black women berating white feminists, and rather than feeling defensive or exempt, asking questions about how I have contributed to a movement that excludes women of colour. Feminism is listening to my mother’s anxieties about trans women being included in all-female spaces, and asking her where those anxieties stem from. Feminism is understanding that listening to others who disagree with you doesn’t endanger your principles - you can walk away from that conversation and know what you know. Feminism is checking yourself when you undermine or universalise male emotion surrounding the subject. Feminism is allowing your mind to change, to evolve, to include those that you once didn’t consider - it is celebrating quotas, remembering important women, giving thanks for the fact that feminism is so complex, so diverse, so fraught and fought over.

Feminism is common ground. It is no man’s land. It is the space between a Christian housewife and a liberated single trans woman. It is understanding women of other races, other cultures, other religions. It is disabled women, it is autistic women, it is trans men who have biologically female medical needs that are being ignored. It is forgiveness for our selfishness. It feels impossible.

The road to feminism is the road to enlightenment. It is the road to Intersectional equity. It is hard. It is a journey. No one does it perfectly. It is like the female orgasm - culturally ignored, not seen as necessary, a mystery even to a lot of women, many-layered, multitudinous, taboo, comes in waves. It is pleasure, and it is disappointment.

All I know is that the hard-faced, warrior version of feminism that was my understanding only a few years ago reduced my allies and comrades in arms to a small group of people who were almost exaclty like me and so agreed with me on almost everything. Flexible, forgiving and inquisitive feminism has resulted in me loving all women, and fighting for all women consciously. And by fighting for all women, I also must fight for Black civil rights, for disabled rights, for Trans rights, for immigrant rights, for homeless rights, for gay rights, and for all human rights because women intersect every one of these minorities. My scoffing, know-it-all self doing my A Levels could never have felt this kind of love. My ironic jokes about feminists with my first boyfriend could never have made any woman feel loved. My frustration that my SPECIFIC experience of misogyny as a white, middle-class bisexual woman didn’t feel related to the other million female experiences could never have facilitated unity, common ground, or learning to understand women that existed completely out of my experience as a woman.

My feminism has lead me to becoming friends with some of those boys who mocked me for wanting to play rugby, and with the woman that was vying with me over that man in the acting company for 8 months. It is slowly melting my resentment towards all men - it is even allowing me to feel sorry for the men who have mistreated me in the past.

I guess I want to express in this mammoth essay post that so far my feminist journey has lead me to the realisation that if your feminism isn’t growing you, you aren’t doing it right. Perhaps it will morph again in the future. But for now, Feminism is a love of humanity, rather than a hatred of it. That is all.

#Feminism #yooo i have written a thesis lol #didn’t mean to do that it all kind of flowed out #intersectional feminism #forgiveness #carrie gracie #mrs america #why does he do that #lundy bancroft #equal pay #equal rights #literature #university #school #oroonoko #aphra behn

58 notes · View notes

chipper9906 · 4 years

Text

Bound To You - Chapter 11: Always Happy To Bleed For The Winchesters

< - - - Previous Chapter

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR SEASON 15

NOTE: Pairings and Ratings Will Change As Story Is Updated

Pairings: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester

Rating: General Audiences

Chapter Word Count: 7,338

Overall Word Count: 84,673

Status: Multi Chapter Fic - In Progress (11/?)

Chapter Preview:

The smug, knowing look that crossed Claire’s face was not one Dean was expecting at his stuttered answer (if it can even be called an answer), the young woman turning to Kaia with a roll of her eyes and a good-natured slap to the arm. “See, what did I tell you? Knew he’d do it eventually…”

“Uh… do what?” Dean asks.

“Oh, not much,” Claire says with a grin much too sly for Dean’s liking. “Me and Kaia just had a bet going on which one of you would confess to the other first. I bet Cas would do it first. Kaia bet you’d do it first, but I said you were way too emotionally constipated to manage something like that.”

“You just cost me ten bucks…” Kaia mumbled in Dean’s direction.

Link To Fic

Click Below To Keep Reading

Character Key For Telepathic Conversations

'Italic Text' - Castiel

'Bold Text' - Dean

The second time Dean rides as a passenger in the Impala since… the incident… is different from the first time. That car ride home was nothing less than awkward, of stale silences and anxious side glances from his brother.

This time? Dean has a smile on his face. The mood is light, the silence replaced with soft rock blasting from the cassette player, of airy laughs from Eileen whenever he taps her shoulder from the backseat and tries to sign the lyrics to a song he’s taken a particular liking to, and Sam’s grunts of telling him to knock it off and stop distracting him; even when he’s got a smile on his face, too.

To put it simply… the hope is palpable. They’re celebrating like they’ve already got Cas back. Like they’ve already won.

Dean tries his best not to let his nerves at that show.

“You really should have let me call Jody ahead and let her know,” Sam throws at Dean over his shoulder as the sign for ‘Sioux Falls’ flashes by them.

“You telling me you’re not looking forward to seeing the look on their faces when they see me like this? And find out that Cas is chilling up here with me?” Dean retorts.

“But did you have to knock my phone out of my hands?” Sam complains, turning the Impala towards the exit ramp of the highway. “Concrete floors aren’t great for fragile glass screens, you know.”

“Your nerdy ass loves any chance to tinker with toys. I gave you a reason to replace your screen. You’re welcome.”

‘Considering you two live off of scammed credit cards, you’re very care-free with your expensive electronics.’

‘Thanks to Charlie, we don’t have to worry about that kind of stuff anymore. Nothing better than scamming credit card companies, Cas. Bastards do all they can to bleed people dry.’

‘If you say so. Perhaps you’d see it differently if you were actually earning a wage.’

‘Oh God, I forgot you didn’t properly get to ‘meet’ the us from the other world… They got paid to hunt monsters, and you know what? I’d rather live off credit card fraud and be myself than be… whatever the hell they were… assholes had their own damn plane…’

‘Are you saying you wouldn’t want your own plane?’

‘Don’t like flying Cas. Prefer to keep my feet on the ground, thank you very much.’

‘You don’t like flying?’

‘Hell no. Trapped in a stuffy metal tube with hundreds of other people, babies crying throughout the whole damn flight, eating overpriced and stale snacks? Oh, and the fact that I’m not in control of the plane whatsoever? And even if I was - if something were to go wrong? Not much you can do but hope you go quick.’

‘Oh. I suppose it’s different for me. I love… um, I loved flying. Plus there’s the fact that we as angels were designed for flying whereas you… were not.’

‘Yeah… and you have a few billion years’ experience over me with flying. Probably as natural to you as walking.’

‘Hmm… I suppose that’s where angels and humans are different. Our ability of flight… it’s part of who we are. A major part of what makes up our true form is our wings. The ability to travel the entire globe, even to anywhere within the Universe if we so pleased – in the span of a second? I’ll admit, it was something I took for granted.’

‘You still miss your wings, huh? I mean, I know you still have them, but…’

‘But they’re broken. It’s okay Dean, you can say it. And, yes, I still miss them. I always will. But it gets easier. You adapt to these things. You learn… there’s more important things.’

‘Yeah… that’s… that’s some words to live by, Cas. Kind of wish I could have seen your wings. I mean, I know you did the whole shadow puppet thing when we first met to show off – and don’t deny that wasn’t what you were doing; I got that smug face of yours seared into my brain. Hell, not even just your wings. I wish I could have been one of those ‘special people’ who get to see your true form.’

‘You… you do?’

‘Course I do, Cas. Sure, I think of you and I see Jimmy’s face, and… well, Jimmy’s face and his body are you now, in a way, but… I don’t know, you’ve seen both my physical form and my soul, and then… I’ve never been able to see the real face of the angel I’ve fallen for.’

‘I don’t think you’d truly want to see me… an angel's true form is… ‘unsettling’, to say the least.’

‘Cas, I don’t care if you’re really ‘the size of the Chrysler building’ and have multiple animal heads like Zacharia did. You’re Cas. You could be in Jimmy’s body, in some random dude's body, your true form, whatever. It doesn’t matter to me. So long as I know it’s you in there? I’ll love whatever is staring back at me.’

‘…what if I was possessing Sam?’

‘Not only did you ruin the moment, but you made it super weird. I’m kinda impressed.’

“What are you two gossiping about now?” Sam’s amused voice brought Dean back into the present, realizing with a startle that they were already pulling into Jody’s driveway.

“Eh, nothing much. Cas just wanted to know If I’d still bone him while he was possessing you.”

“What?!” Sam spluttered, slamming on the brakes a little harder than he intended.

‘That’s not what I meant!’

“That’s messed up, Cas!” Sam turned wide-eyed to face Dean, his startled and disgusted look boring straight through to Cas. “I hope you told him no, Dean!”

‘Technically, you haven’t said no-.’

‘NO, Cas! I would still love you, but that is a line I am not willing to cross.’

“What the hell is happening?” Eileen had her arms braced against Baby’s dash, not at all expecting the rather sudden stop.

“You don’t want to know,” Sam signed towards Eileen, giving Dean one last offended look before switching off the Impala’s engine.

Sam and Eileen had only just transferred Dean from the Impala into his wheelchair when the front door to the Mill’s home swung open, an already welcoming smile plastered on Jody’s face as she took in the sight of Sam and Eileen.

“I thought I heard the Impala’s obnoxiously loud engine,” Jody joked, leaving the front door open a crack as she steps out into the driveway. “Where’s-,”

Jody’s face dropped as Sam shifted to the side, catching sight of an oddly cheerful-looking Dean Winchester sat within a wheelchair. She hadn’t meant for her mouth to drop open the way that it did, or for her mind to fully expect for Dean to jump straight out of the wheelchair and all three of them to burst into laughter at her reaction in what would be some sick prank. But he doesn’t. Instead, he wheels closer to her, the cheerful smile on his face wavering as the seconds tick by.

“Okay Sammy, maybe you were right… Probably should have warned her…”

“What is…” Is all Jody can get out at first, clearing her throat and shaking her head at the ridiculousness of the situation. “What happened?”

“Now that is one hell of a story…” Dean says with a half-hearted laugh. “And it ties into the reason we’re here.”

“I did want to tell you first, but Dean decided he wanted to be an asshole about it,” Sam offers, giving Jody an awkward wave. “Oh, and… this is Eileen.’

“Hello…” Eileen greeted the sheriff with a wave that was somehow even more awkward than Sam’s.

“Right… well, um… you should probably come in…” Jody says, glancing back to the front door. “I’m guessing you’re not just here to catch up?”

“Afraid not. We, uh… we actually need to speak to Claire, too.” Sam said.

Jody frowned at that, crossing her arms across her chest as she stared them down. Typically, when the Winchesters needed to speak to you, it was either because you were in trouble, or they were about to get you into trouble. “…What for?”

“It’s probably best Claire joins us first. Just so we can get the whole story out in one go.” Sam tells her.

“You’re telling me that the reason Dean is… you know… ties into you needing Claire?”

“Sounds weird, but yeah,” Dean says.

Jody can only sigh at that, uncrossing her arms and waving at them to follow as she turns back towards the Mill’s family home.

“You boys do like to test me…”

* * *

Dean had never felt so out of place. Sam and Eileen were sat comfortably on the couch in the living room whilst he was sort of just… off to the side in his wheelchair. Yeah, he could have sat on the couch if he wanted to, but a) he’d rather not be squashed up against Sam and Eileen, and b) …he’s too lazy to move back and forth from the wheelchair.

Plus, even though he feels bad for how distraught Jody looked at the sight of him, he still kinda wanted to see Claire’s reaction.

Sam’s right, he is an asshole…

Speak of the devil, those bounding ‘taking two steps at a time’ footsteps stomping down the stairs could only be those of teenage angst, two other pairs of footfalls following just behind, though much calmer than the ones of the blonde-haired girl that appears in the doorframe leading to the living room.

“Sup dorks-,”

It seemed that Claire is taking after Jody more and more every time that Dean sees her, considering the fact that her expression is pretty much identical to Jody’s, her eyes drawn to Dean sticking out like a sore thumb in the room.

“I know,” Dean says as seriously as he can. “I just get more handsome the older I get, don’t I?”

Claire was so frozen in place that Kaia, who had been following just behind, nearly ran into the back of her. Kaia’s eyes widened upon seeing them, partly hidden by Claire with a hand hanging onto Claire’s sleeve as what could ever be a comforting gesture for Claire, or an attempt to ground herself.

“Oh my God…”

“Nope, we took care of him,” Dean joked.

“Jack took care of him,” Sam corrected him. “We got our asses handed to us.”

“Whatever.”

“Come on then,” Jody’s voice booms from the bottom of the staircases, striding into the living room and brushing past Claire and Kaia as she went. “Apparently, we’ve got a story to hear.”

Claire finally snapped herself out of her frozen trance, taking a few timid steps into the living room with Kaia following close behind as usual. “How bad is it?” She asked Dean, unable to tear her eyes from his limp legs.

“I can’t walk so, you know, not great. Still got my arms and the use of little Dean though, so-,”

“Let’s not get too detailed,” Jody cuts him off, holding out a hand to stop him with a grimace. “Did you… did you break your back?”

“More like shattered. But, uh… probably best we go from the beginning, like Sam said.”

“Wait…” Claire stopped Dean before he could start, her eyes darting between all three of them. “Where’s Castiel? And no offense, but uh… who’s this chick?”

“Claire!” Jody scolded her surrogate daughter. “It's not a crime to remember manners every once in a while, you know.”

“I’m Eileen,” Eileen answered, the off-rhythm tone of her voice getting Claire to raise her eyebrows in recognition.

“Oh! Are you, um… hard of hearing?”

“Lost all my hearing as a baby to a banshee,” Eileen answers. “I can read lips, though.”

“A banshee? Does that mean you’re a hunter, too?” Kaia piped up, starting to shift away from her hiding space behind Claire.

“Born and raised, pretty much,” Eileen answers.

“We met Eileen a few years go on a banshee hunt – the same banshee, actually,” Sam adds. “She, uh…”

“I was killed by a Hellhound set on me by the British Men of Letters,” Eileen finishes the sentence Sam struggled to say.

“Oh…” Claire is just about able to get out, staring bug-eyed at the female hunter in front of her. “And now you’re…?”

“Don’t worry, she’s alive. And human,” Dean reassured them. “Sam went all witch-mode and brought her back.”

“You… Sam, you did what?” Jody spluttered in her mom voice.

The power of ‘the mom voice’ had Sam instinctively cowering in submission. “The spell was mostly completed already…”

“Okay…” Claire butt in before Jody could scold Sam for dabbling in witchcraft. “So… where’s Jack and Cas? Could they not make it…?”

“Technically… they’re both here, in a way,” Dean says with a grin.

Sam sends yet another classic bitch face his way. “Dean-,”

“Alright, alright, I’ll stop being cryptic,” Dean mutters in defeat. “So… you remember when Jack got sick? After he died… Cas found him in Heaven. Along with the Empty… Cas decided to be a dumbass and make a deal without telling us. Jack came back and… Cas’s life was exchanged for it.”

The grief-stricken look that passed across Claire’s face had Dean scrambling to continue. “He’s not dead! Not right now, anyway. He, uh… he sacrificed himself for me. Death was coming for us – and I’m talking the literal Death here – and Cas used his deal with the Empty against her.”

“Wait, I’m confused-,” Jody interrupted Dean’s story. “What exactly was the deal Castiel made?”

“He took Jack’s place in the Empty. Except, the Empty decided it wanted to be a dick about it. It would only take Cas once he ‘experienced a moment of true happiness’, so…”

“So… Cas forced himself to experience a moment of true happiness to… save you?” Claire asked. “How does that work?”

“The Empty… kinda had a grudge against Death. When Cas summoned the Empty to us, the Empty took Death along with Cas.”

“Oh… and, um… the moment of true happiness? What was that?”

Dean’s words froze in his throat, reluctant to leave his lips. There was something about the fact that he was saying it to Claire… the daughter of the guy his angel wears… he could only hope she didn’t find it too weird…

“Well… uh… he…”

“Uh… do what?” Dean asks.

“You just cost me ten bucks…” Kaia mumbled in Dean’s direction.

“Excuse me-,”

“The only way I could see you making the first move would be to kiss Cas at some random ass time, panic that you did it, and then run away,” Claire told him, counting the events on her fingers.

“I…” Damn, she was probably right… “Uh… you knew?”

Claire scoffed at that, feeling comfortable enough to walk further into the room and drop down into the armchair opposite, leaning back against the cushioned pillow with her arms crossed. “Please. I don’t have many memories of my dad, but I remember the way he would look at my mom. Cas has the same damn look when he looks at you.”

‘Well… it IS his face…’

‘Yeah, and that probably freaks her out a little so… maybe not mention that?’

“Hey, me and Eileen had a bet going too!” Sam says jovially, the amused smile on his face slipping away as he caught sight of Dean’s fiery glare. “Sorry…”

“Alright, alright, everyone knew me and Cas had a thing for each other before either of us did. We got it…” Dean grumbles, copying the moody teenager opposite by crossing his arms, glaring at the concealed smiles of the others in the room.

Claire perks up as she picks out something Dean had just said. “Uh… did you just say we?”

‘Time to shine, Cas…’

Jody, Claire, and Kaia startle at the piercing blue light that overtakes Dean’s eyes, unsettled by the unnaturally blank and tense posture that comes over Dean. Three pairs of frantic eyes shift over to Sam and Eileen, only relaxing marginally when they see the two aren’t phased by what was happening.

The blue slowly fades away as Dean slumps back into his chair, shaking his head and blinking sluggishly as the disorientation of possession switching clings to him. He raises his eyes up, settling on Claire with a light smile that was oddly familiar to the teenager, yet looked so foreign on Dean…

“Hello, Claire.”

She didn’t know how, but she knew straight away. Perhaps it was the strained, constipated sounding way he spoke, or his voice dropping deeper (which she thought was impossible already), or the way Dean’s eyes had lost that playful and joking edge they usually held with her, replaced with a much softer and more… more fatherlike look.

“Castiel? Is that… is that you?”

“It is for now, yes,” Castiel answers. “Dean and I… we are currently sharing possession of his body. To repeat Dean’s earlier words, Dean decided to ‘be a dumbass’-,”

‘How dare you-,’

“-during a hunt and got himself injured.”

“Like… ‘shattering your spine’ injured?”

“More than that,” Sam says darkly, gritting his teeth against the harsh memory of that night. “It was a pack of Vamps that had been around for a while. And when I say a while, I mean our Dad once tried hunting them. One of them managed to get ahold of Dean and it… it shoved Dean into a rebar.”

“The rebar pierced through his back and into his chest,” Cas embellished, the others grimacing at the image. “It punctured his heart, along with a lung. And, as you can imagine, it did some devastating damage to his spine. Fortunately… Dean made the decision to pray to me. Dean saved me from the Empty, and in return, I saved his life. But… my grace is running low. I used a majority of it healing Dean’s wounds, but it wasn’t enough-,”

“I thought your grace recharged itself?” Claire asks.

“It does, usually. I’m not entirely sure the reason for it, though I believe it may be connected to Heaven’s weakened power… Either way, it’s still not replenishing itself. In fact… it’s doing the opposite.”

“You’re running out of your grace?” Claire leans forward as she says this, her brow pinched in worry. “What does that mean for you? Will you…”

“I could die. Or I may live in Dean’s body, forcing him out and killing him.”

“Oh… And, um… what happened to… to my dad’s body?”

Castiel frowned at the way Claire’s voice seemed to shrink on itself as she asks him this, for a moment seeing the frightened little girl that stood in the doorframe, asking for her daddy as an alien being takes him away from her forever.

“That’s the reason we’re here, Claire,” Castiel tells her. “I know I’ve taken so much from you already. And now… I have to ask more of you again.”

Claire shuffled uncomfortably under Castiel’s intense and sorrowful gaze. Kaia is by her side within seconds, hovering near the armchair as she senses Claire’s clear discomfort. “Is this going to be dangerous?” Kaia asks on Claire’s behalf.

“No, it shouldn’t be,” Cas answered, unable to see Sam looking uneasily at him in a quick side-glance. “I am asking you… for your permission; your permission to use your father’s body once more as my own. We believe it might be the only way to keep me alive, as transferring me to another vessel may just use up the last of my grace, but seeing as I already had your father’s permission…”

“Right…” Claire mutters, clearing her throat and dragging her line of sight back up to face Dea- no, Castiel. “I’m not going to lie to you Castiel, it’ll always be kind of weird for me. But… I know Dad’s up there with mom, and that they’re happy, and… asides from my actual dad, you’re the closest thing I have to one, so… If this means I don’t have to lose you too, then yeah. You have my permission.”

Claire stubbornly fights back the burning tears in her eyes at the watery smile Castiel gives her, always taken aback to see the once stoic and hard-ass angel showing such raw emotion.

“Thank you, Claire. There’s… one more thing I need to ask of you.”

“Actually-,” Sam interrupts, much to Cas’ surprise. “There might be two things…”

Both Eileen and Cas frown up at him, racking their brains to try and remember the extra ingredient that they apparently needed from Claire.

“We found a spell that might be able to re-create your dad’s body without needing his soul,” Sam begins to explain to Claire, ignoring Eileen and Cas’s inquisitive stares. “One of the ingredients requires a vial of blood from a relative of the vessel. And… you’re the only surviving relative that we know of.”

“That… seems easy…” Claire says, suspicious at how simple this was all sounding.

“That one should be no problem, but uh…” Sam sighs, switching his gaze over to Castiel. “Listen Cas, I didn’t want to bring this up back at the bunker because I kind of had a feeling you’d shoot it down before I could even ask Claire.”

“…Sam…. What are you talking about?” Castiel asked, already dreading the answer.

Sam sighs deeply once again, tearing his gaze away from Cas and back to Claire. “Thing is, we need to use Cas’ grace for the spell. Problem with that is that there’s not much for us to use, and… we don’t really know what could happen if we don’t use enough. The last time this spell was used, the spell caster used pretty much all of the angel’s grace. I’m guessing we need all the grace we can get, and um… I was thinking about it, and… you see, the thing about possession is that the angel typically leaves a piece of their grace behind inside the previous vessel. And, if I remember right… Cas once possessed you.”

“No,” Castiel said sternly, the harshness in his tone making everyone in the room startle at the reminder of the powerful angel in their presence. Castiel knew what Sam was getting at. He knew what this was leading to.

“It’s worth a shot, Cas,” Sam argued, not backing down from Castiel’s ticked off glare. He holds Castiel’s gaze for a few moments before breaking it, turning back to Claire as he continues. “There was a time when I was possessed myself by an angel. We were able to use a, uh… kind of like a big needle to extract the grace from me-,”

“And it nearly killed you!” Castiel spat out. “We might not even need that much of my grace for the spell. Sam, it is not worth the risk-,”

“We don’t know that. And we won’t go all the way, Cas,” Sam assured him before turning desperate eyes back to Claire. “We won’t, Claire. I promise we won't. We managed to extract some grace from me without killing me. It won't extract all of Cas’s grace, but… that extra bit of grace from you could be the difference between this experiment failing, or saving Cas’s life. It’s all up to you, okay? If you don’t want to do this, we won’t force you into it.”

Nearly everyone in the room looked uneasy at Sam’s plan. Hell, even Sam didn’t look like he liked his own suggestion, but mostly… it was a look of desperation, of understanding, patiently waiting when you’re on the edge of your seat waiting for the answer. Claire got to take this all in, along with Dean’s – or Cas’s, she supposed – conflicted grimace, unable to meet her eyes.

“What about this makes it dangerous?” Jody’s voice broke the tension. “You mentioned a needle?”

Sam nodded his head, reaching down to the duffel bag by his feet and unzipping it. All eyes in the room focused on him as he rummaged through the bag, their faces paling at the imposing metal syringe Sam held in his hands.

“The Grace has to be extracted from the neck…” Sam tells them, his own face twisting into a grimace at the reminder of his own experience. “That’s what made it dangerous. To get all the grace… you need to push the needle in further and further. But we’re not going to do that, okay?”

Sam placed the syringe to the side, picking up on how Claire was unable to tear her gaze away from the menacing instrument. “Cas can monitor you the whole time, right Cas? We’ll keep to a safe level, extracting what we can.”

Claire nodded her head, just barely noticeable, her eyes drifting across the room as she sits, lost in thought. “And… doing this… it’ll help you?” Claire directed the question at Castiel, her eyes briefly flickering up to meet Dean’s.

“I… I suppose so, yes,” Castiel begrudgingly admitted. “Every piece of my grace would help, but Claire-,”

“Then I’ll do it.”

Castiel’s mouth swung shut at her answer, taken aback by the assured confidence in her voice.

Kaia looked to Claire, torn between wanting to say what was on her mind, but also wanting to respect her decision. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Claire insisted with a soft smile at the girl behind her. “I’ll be fine, I promise. Cas is looking out for me.”

‘Huh… you know, you and Claire have the same smile. I mean, I know it’s Jimmy’s smile, but… you smile at me like that, too.’

“I can’t say I’m feeling all that jazzed about this decision,” Jody says. “But… I also know it’s not mine to make. Just… be careful. Please.”

“I’ll intervene before even the slightest bit of harm could be inflicted,” Castiel assured Jody in that sincere grovel of his that the Winchesters know mean he’s ready to sacrifice himself if it comes to it. “I give you my word.”

“Okay, let’s just…” Claire tried not to shudder at the thought of what that needle would feel like in her neck… “Let’s get this over with…”

* * *

Claire was able to hold back a wince as the marginally smaller needle slid out from the crook of her elbow, barely even able to get a glimpse of the puncture wound it left behind before Jody was swabbing at it with the gauze from the first aid kit.

She did get a glimpse of the small glass vial filled with a dark crimson liquid that was once running through her veins, now held in Sam’s hands. He carefully screwed the lid back on the top, avoiding spilling any of what was – technically – a precious ingredient to them now.

“Never liked getting blood tests taken…” Claire mumbled, rolling her eyes at the brightly colored care-bears band-aid that Kaia stuck over her arm.

“Better than having to slice your palm open a few thousand times for spells,” Sam said, handing the vial over to Eileen for safe storage. “Makes handling weapons a pain for a few weeks…”

“Maybe you guys should just keep bags of your blood around or something for that,” Claire joked from the couch. “With how often you guys get injured, it would probably be useful.”

‘Doubt a bag of blood would have fixed my heart, but it’s the thought that counts.’

The joking smile on Claire’s face disappeared the second the ridiculously big syringe was back in Sam’s hands, the sight of that long and sharp needle sending chills up her spine.

A small smile of sympathy hitched at Sam’s lips at the clear apprehension on Claire’s face. He takes the few steps over to the couch where Claire was sat, followed closely behind by Cas as he wheels himself next to Claire.

“You might want to lie down for this,” Castiel tells her. “The procedure is… unpleasant.”

Claire swallowed nervously at his warning, shifting around on the couch until her head was resting against the mountain of pillows that Jody had quickly built for her, placing trembling hands across her stomach as she waits for something that’s going to be – well, ‘unpleasant.’

Her eyelids flutter shut at the comforting touch of Castiel’s hand on her forehead, able to feel the gentle hum of Castiel’s grace just beyond the skin of his hand. It was weird to think that it was searching through her body, taking account of her pulse, her rate of breathing, the smallest sign that something was amiss.

“Are you ready?” Sam’s voice filters through her thoughts. Keeping her eyes firmly shut, she nods her head. She didn’t want to see the needle again. She especially didn’t want to see it going in her neck…

‘Unpleasant’ was not the right word, she very quickly decided. In fact, ‘unpleasant’ was pretty damn far from the word she would use to describe the burning pain that takes over every other sensation in her body. ‘Unpleasant’ was a word used for heartburn, or when you scrape your knee falling off your bike as a kid.

She finds her hands digging into the couch underneath her, gripping onto the soft material in a vice-like grip. She has no doubt that Jody isn’t going to appreciate the gouge marks she makes in the expensive leather with her nails, but that’s a problem for future Claire. Right now, present Claire has to focus on remembering how to breathe, on keeping the scream that wants to burst out from her lungs settled in place, on easing pressure in her jaw as she clenches her teeth in case she ends up biting her tongue.

The needle slides in further and, somehow, the pain gets worse. She didn’t think it could, but oh boy, was she wrong. It’s a damn miracle she’s able to bite back the scream, but even her tightly clenched eyelids were unable to stop the few tears that squeezed their way out. There’s a hand brushing through her hair – likely Jody’s – and another hand gripping onto hers almost as tightly as the other is burrowing into the couch – one she knows for sure is Kaia’s. She almost can’t feel them, but… they’re distractions. They take away from the pain in just the slightest, but quite frankly, she’ll take as much as she can get.

“That’s enough.”

Dean’s voice had never been so relieving to hear, even if it was in that freaky deep voice that sounded like Dean trying – and failing- to mimic Castiel’s. You wouldn’t think the feeling of a needle slipping out of your throat would feel good, but anything was better than the agonizing pain she had just been going through.

“There. It’s over.” Sam’s relieved voice finally gets her to pry her eyes open. The sight of the wispy, cloud-like blue gas shifting around within the syringe is almost mesmerizing to see. That grace was inside her – still inside her, in fact – and she had no idea. She can never feel it, it’s just… there.

Seeing five heads peering down at her was rather jarring, even if she knew they were doing it out of worry for her. “Jeez, could you guys back up a bit? I promise I’m not dying…”

“Technically, she’s telling the truth,” Castiel said, his hand slipping away from her head. “I can’t sense any permanent damage done. You might feel somewhat weak for a few hours, possibly a day, but you should recover fairly quickly.”

“How are you feeling?” Jody asks, the worry in her eyes remaining despite Castiel’s diagnosis. She offers a hand to Claire, who gladly takes it, allowing herself to be pulled up into a sitting position.

“About as well as you can after having a needle in your neck…”

‘I think she takes after me more than you, Cas.’

‘You passing on your sarcastic deflections is not something to be proud of, Dean…’

‘Hell yeah it is. Being honest is for losers.’

‘Huh…. For so long, I worried that Jack was going to take after Lucifer… I should have been more worried he’d take after you.’

‘Damn. Don’t get me wrong, that was a great burn, but also… screw you.’

‘Actually, I was waiting for you to do that.’

‘Ha, that’s… Wait, wha-,’

“This spell of yours better work after all that…” Claire tells Sam, getting one last look at the vial of Castiel’s grace before it joins the other vial of her blood that’s tucked away inside Sam’s duffel.

“Thanks to you, it just might,” Sam responds with a grateful smile.

A flash of blue pulls Claire’s gaze away from Sam, glancing over to see the last second of Castiel before being greeted by eyes she knows belongs to Dean Winchester. She can only grunt in surprise when Dean’s arms are wrapping around her back, yanking her towards in a rather clumsy and awkward hug.

“That’s from both of us,” Dean says quietly in her ear, his arms tightening around her side.

Claire chuckled at the unusual softness Dean was displaying, along with the fact that Dean was very nearly dragging her off the couch with his hug. “You went back into the bad place to get Kaia back, so… only fair I did what I could to get Cas back to you.”

Another laugh bubbled out as she felt the heartfelt hug turn into more of a tense hold, patting Dean’s arm in sympathy at what she knew was going to be an awkward question from Dean once he pulled away from the hug.

“Uh, actually, about that… Me and Cas were kinda wondering…”

“Just try and reduce the number of times you two suck faces around me once you get Cas back,” Claire tells him, much to Dean’s – and Cas’s – horror. “It’s gonna take me a while to not see it as you kissing my dad…”

“I’m not too sure what I just walked into, but it sounds like a juicy topic.”

The new voice in the room gets everyone to jump, those with weapons tucked away pulling them out in a smooth practiced motion, training them on the unexpected newcomer. Sam’s eyes widen over his pistol’s iron sight, lowering the gun instinctively once his brain registers that the woman smirking over at them was someone he knew.

“Rowena?” Sam splutters in surprise, gesturing for Jody to lower her own gun – which she did somewhat reluctantly. “How did you-,”

“Just a heads up deary, your devil's trap has been damaged. Think you might have some little micey’s nibbling away at your floorboard.” Rowena tells Jody with a sweet smile and an equally sweet-sounding voice.

“Who the hell are you?” Jody asks, pistol still held firmly in hand.

“Rowena. As Samuel over there just stated.”

Jody’s eyes narrow at the stranger in her living room. Sam’s judgment was the only reason she had her gun pointed to the floor, and not at this fiery woman. “Okay, I’ll be more specific; what are you?”

“Centuries-old witch. Freshly created damned soul. Demon. The Queen of Hell.” Rowena’s impressively fake friendly smile only widens at the discomfort that washes over Jody with every new title she provides. “Take your pick.”

“Sam...” Jody takes a step back from Rowena, instinctively moving closer to where Claire and Kaia were – nearly bumping into Castiel in the process.

“What are you doing here, Rowena?” Sam asks her, sensing the need to defuse the situation before Jody starts shooting.

“What I said I would do,” Rowena answers, sauntering over the armchair Claire was occupying not long ago and dropping into it like it was her own home. “Imagine my surprise when my demons pick up on an angel's grace on Earth that’s not occupying a vessel. I sent some of my men to investigate and… what do you know, they report back to me that the Winchester’s are involved. I could only assume this is a part of your little plan to save the angel?”

“I have a name,” Castiel grumbles from his spot by the couch, mostly blocking Claire and Kaia from view.

“Oh! I suppose that means Dean’s been placed in the timeout corner for the time being?”

‘…the timeout corner…?’

“If you’re asking me if Dean is currently the one not in possession, then yes.”

“Uh, I’m sorry, you guys are friends with a witch?” Claire leans away from Castiel to try and get a better look at the witch that was currently sitting in her favorite chair.

“Ah, well, you know the saying,” Rowena mused out loud, leaning back against the comfortable pillows of the armchair. “Keep your friends close…”

“Yeah… and I’m guessing you’re a powerful enemy to have?” Claire asks.

“Good instincts, that one,” Rowena notes to Jody.

“You still haven’t explained why you’re here,” Eileen interrupts, bringing Rowena’s attention over to her. “You were able to sense Castiel’s grace and… then what?”

“As I said, I can only assume this is a part of your plan to bring back Castiel here. I did say I’d help, didn’t I?”

“You? Are willing to help them?” Jody asks incredulously.

“Aye. It’s only fair I help them after they got me killed.”

“Um… you say that like you wanted to be killed?” Kaia asks.

“Oh no, not in the moment, heaven’s no. But it turned out that dying was the best thing that ever happened to me. No mother should outlive her child, but… it’s only right that I should take over my son’s throne, isn’t it?”

“Your son? Your son was the former king of-,” Jody stops as her brain makes the connection, looking between Rowena and Sam in disbelief. “Crowley? Crowley was your son?”

“You’re acquainted, I presume?”

Jody huffs out a laugh at that. “If you call trying to kill me on the first date ‘acquainted’, then yeah.”

“Ah, that sounds like my son… Both the ‘killing’ part and the ‘trying’… poor boy had so many ambitions, just always failed to reach them…”

“Are you saying your son ‘trying to kill me’ is an ambition-?!”

“Alright, alright, let's -,” Sam quickly jumped between the two ladies to defuse the tension, sensing an argument that could only end poorly. “Yes, we found something. One of the Men of Letter’s – our grandfather, actually – managed to create a spell with the help of a witch back then, uh… Anikka Whitmore?”

“Ah, Anikka…” Rowena drawls out the witch’s name, shaking her head in what Sam could only assume was fake pity. “Shame what happened to the poor girl… She just needed to help people… had a soft spot, you see… Every witch worth her money knows that helping the needy just attracts unwanted attention. She found that out far too late, I’m afraid…”

“Yeah, we… we found the pictures…” Sam says with a wince. “Actually, I have the spell on me right now…”

Sam hurriedly searched through his jacket pockets, pulling out the little folded square of delicate paper and rushing over to Rowena to hand it over. Rowena took the paper with careful hands, long nails unfolding the old paper before taking in the written spell.

“Hmm… Ah, that makes sense… perhaps a bit risky using angel's grace, but… the human blood should help to temper the grace’s volatile power…”

“Does it… does it seem like it will work?” Eileen asks, unable to stop herself from worrying over the fragile paper crumbling away in the witch’s hands.

“I don’t see why not, considering it says here that the experiment was ‘technically’ a success… just not in the way this poor lad was expecting…” Rowena tells them, handing the spell back over to Sam – much to Eileen’s relief. “Except…”

‘Ah, dammit. Of course there’s an ‘except’. Another ‘but’, or ‘however’. Always something… ’

“I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, boys. But I have to say it. The amount of grace is… it’s a problem. The grace is essentially the power of this spell. It’s… it’s almost like the glue that puts the body back together. Creates new atoms, replicating DNA from the blood, then binds it all together. And since you said Castiel doesn’t have much of his grace left…”

Rowena’s sentence drifts off at the sight of Dean’s eyes flaring blue, watching as Castiel fades away behind green eyes. Those blank, unoccupied eyes quickly shift to ones of worry, of impending doom as Dean Winchester once again takes control of his body. “It’s not going to work…?”

“I’m not saying that,” Rowena said gently, keeping her gaze focused on Dean alone despite the four other pairs of eyes staring at her. “It’s hard to know for sure when I have never performed the spell myself – as well as it only being done once. There’s every chance this could work with the grace you have, but…”

“Don’t sugar coat it for me,” Dean insisted, his voice coming out weaker than he intended. “We need to know the risks.”

“If it’s not enough… the spell will break apart mid-way through. The body will begin to disintegrate back to nothing as the grace burns away, and once it's empty? That will be it. Castiel will be gone.”

“Is there anything you can do?” Dean asks. Though, ‘pleads’ would probably be a more apt word… “Something that can boost the spell?”

“There’s nothing I can do myself, no. The spell is simple enough, able to be cast by whoever. I’m afraid it won’t matter who casts it, as the power of the spell all comes down to one ingredient: the grace.”

“What about using another angel's grace, or-?”

Rowena stops Dean's blabbers with a shake of her head. “It has to be the grace of the angel that possessed the vessel. Unless another angel possessed the vessel?”

“Uh… that would be Lucifer…” Sam mumbled uncomfortably.

“Ah. Probably best not to go down that route…”

“So… how likely is it that… that this isn’t going to work?” Dean asks Rowena. “What’s the chance that…”

‘That I’m going to lose him,’ Dean thinks the words his mouth can’t voice.

“There's a chance,” Rowena's answer doesn’t make him feel any better. “But you want my honest opinion? Make sure you say all you need to before the spell. Don’t leave regrets.”

Rowena stood up from the armchair, feeling an unusual pang of sympathy in her chest at the crushed look on the elder Winchester’s face. “If you do make it back to the land of the living, Castiel? I expect an invitation to the wedding.”

And with that, Rowena was gone as quickly as she had come, leaving behind a room of uneasy stillness. Perhaps, in another world, Dean would roll his eyes at Rowena’s parting comment. He'd brush off whatever snarky comment Sam would add, perhaps even make a joke of his own, pretending he wasn’t picturing what that would be like; a private wedding, most likely, small and familiar, just the people he cares about most.

He doesn’t want to picture that in this world, though. Maybe even just a few hours ago, he’d let himself delve into such dangerous indulgences, of things he never thought he'd have. Hell, things he didn’t even know he wanted.

Now, though… what was the use of imagining such things, when in a few weeks he might just be falling asleep clutching the trench coat of who was once the husband in those dreams?

Next Chapter - - - >

#destiel fanfiction #Destiel #destiel fic #destiel fanfic #destiel fixit #destiel fix it fic #fix it fic #castiel/dean winchester #castiel/dean #casdean #supernatural spoilers #season 15 spoilers #angst #fluff

7 notes · View notes

blarrghe · 4 years

Note

"Watching me while I sweat from exercising" for Dorianders because... of reasons? XD

Up on AO3 or uner the cut! (the formattinig is probably better on AO3 tumblr is the actual worst)

Befriending Magister Dorian Pavus continued to be the worst decision Anders had made since the one that had landed him in Tevinter in the first place. Not at the least because being friends with Magister Dorian Pavus was, on a scheduling level, practically impossible. It was almost maddening, how neither of them ever seemed to have any blighted free time. There was Dorian, very important and very busy, always rushing off to meetings or press events or fundraisers or galas, only available for a quick coffee or for trying to convince Anders to go out clubbing at two in the morning. Which, frankly, he had less than no interest in doing — for several reasons, only minimally to do with the fact that the music gave him a headache (the thought of standing by and watching Dorian dance and practice his smarmy lines on attractive club goers made up most of the rest of it). And then there was his own life, overflowing with unkempt medical notes and overdue bills, and a schedule packed with night shifts and on-call hours that made maintaining a regular sleep schedule impossible, never mind a social life. But despite all that, it was nice to have someone to talk to again. Someone passionate and revolutionary and witty and… just about as lonely as he was, so better not to go messing it up. Better to try to maintain this one terrible friendship — the only one he had that wasn't with a "work friend", or a cat. It was just a really difficult thing to do, between the unrepenting workdays and restless nights filled with dreams of his beautiful Maker-damned face.

Dorian, however, was remarkably good at being his friend. He always managed to make time. Drew it out of thin air, it seemed, conjured it up like magic between his press conferences and business trips. He had this impossibly serendipitous way of always seeming to send a text offering to meet for coffee right as Anders' break was coming up, and thanks to his own life of impossible hours he was always amenable to a spot of caffeine well into the evening. Other times, he'd offer up an address, saying "meet me here tonight if by the end of your shift you're still alive", and Anders would reply "doubtful", and then show up later anyway to the movie theater, or concert hall, or burlesque playhouse, only to fall asleep in his seat once the lights went down — which, at the burlesque playhouse at least, everyone seemed to find incredibly amusing.

Today, his shift would be finished at an uncommonly early hour, having started at one that was painfully so. And even though his work-to-sleep ratio for the week was currently hovering at around four to one, when a text came in from Dorian during his break that read simply, "lunch later? Meet me if you have an hour free." He cheerfully replied "I'm off at noon!" And decided to postpone his much-needed afternoon nap. Friends with Dorian, he smiled, terrible decision.

----

Anders did not work out. Whatever strength he had he came by naturally, by way of pushing hospital equipment around and running up and down stairs all day. His calves, as a result, were particularly firm, and he had defined, if skinny, biceps. His core was probably strong enough, what with the constant balancing act that was keeping up with his daily life, but if he had wanted abs he would probably have to do something about his diet; more protein, fewer sugary carbs, meals that weren't eaten while standing on a city bus. But a personal beauty routine had always been low on his priority list. If he was looking to impress someone, he usually tried to get his bad jokes and the somewhat trashy rebel-mage aesthetic (which he also came by naturally) to do the job for him. It was not, historically, the best strategy. But he also wasn't looking. Dorian, on the other hand, had beauty routines for his beauty routines. Apparently the way to make up for the sleeplessness of a busy life was to exercise regularly, drink exceptionally expensive vitamin concoctions (despite the fact that his friend, who was a doctor, had told him repeatedly that the vitamins in such quantities were oversaturated, contradictory, and essentially useless), and to apply a laundry list of products to one's skin and hair — that, at least, seemed to work.

And so it was that when Anders showed up at the designated spot, practically asleep on his feet and slouching eagerly off the bus towards the promise of an hour of good company and food, that he discovered that the place Dorian had instructed him to meet at was not a restaurant, or even a coffee shop, but a gym. A gym with wide glass windows facing the street, so that the gorgeous, obviously affluent, gym-membership-holders could sweat it out while on display for the benefit of all the less beautiful and less lucky passersby. Or perhaps it was the other way around, and rich people got a kick out of running in place for their health while watching working folk run breathlessly after the busses that pulled up to the dirty old bus shelter on the street outside. Anders didn't know, he didn't go to gyms. But Dorian did; he went to this gym. He paid an exorbitant membership fee and wore a tight t-shirt branded with the gym's logo while he ran himself sweaty on a treadmill, spraying fancy water into his mouth like he was advertising the stuff, and towelling himself off with the clean white towels provided while still running, panting with the efforts of his impressively athletic exertions. This, Anders discovered by staring at him as he did it, through the clear glass window from the street, his mouth falling open and throat going dry until Dorian spotted him, and he snapped his mouth shut while his cheeks went red. Dorian's cheeks were also red, a bead of sweat dripping down over one in a long glistening trail from his temple. He pressed some buttons on the treadmill, slowed down to a walk, smiled, and waved. Anders, like a dumbfounded puppet on a string, raised his hand and dropped it again, in some approximation of returning the greeting.

Ten minutes later, Dorian met Anders outside the door of the clean, white and minimalist setting of the gym's lobby with his regular (still tight) clothes on and his damp hair fragrant with some kind of rich, flower-infused cream.

"You got here faster than I expected, sorry you had to wait."

"Good bus timing," Anders shrugged, pointedly not looking at him. One intolerable sensation at a time, and he still smelled amazing.

"You know there's an app for the schedules, GPS tracking and everything." Dorian commented. Why he knew that, when he'd probably never taken public transportation in his life, Anders couldn't guess. But then, Dorian was infinitely more organized than he was; good with schedules. Anders, meanwhile, struggled to keep his own thoughts straight, never mind the kinds of itineraries that Dorian kept. So he just nodded along, certain that he would never remember to check, or even download, the recommended app.

Dorian led them up to the intersection, and pressed the button at the crosswalk, every simple movement somehow upright and deliberate. "So, lunch? I'm starving, there's a great place across the street."

Anders glanced back at the gleaming white and chrome of the gym, and the equally sleek boutiques to either side of it. He frowned, fingering the well-worn leather billfold in his pocket. "How great?" He asked, cautiously.

"Great as in healthy, all vegan food and local produce and the like." Dorian smirked at him, and Anders made the mistake of looking at it. He blushed, and frowned some more.

"Oh, great." He said, with very little enthusiasm. A twelve dollar salad and one of those ludicrous vitamin waters, just what he and his malnourished billfold needed.

"You're a doctor, you can't live on cup noodles and granola bars all the time. It sets a bad example." Dorian berated, lightly, in return.

"At least cup noodles have salt." Anders protested, "Maybe too much, but that's better than none at all. And you know organic is just a buzzword, not everything organic is healthier. And the hoops of getting branded "Organic" just make it harder for actual family owned farmers, who grow perfectly healthy crops, to market to sellers," he ranted about it, albeit halfheartedly, until Dorian sighed and shook his head.

"Which is why I said local, not organic. And I've been, I promise they use seasonings. You really think I'd debase myself by dining somewhere that didn't know how to properly use spice?"

Anders grunted, still disapproving.

"It's good, really. You'll like it there, they have cats."

"They have…?" Anders spun to watch Dorian, squinting in confusion at him as he brightened the world about him with another one of those obnoxiously perfect smiles.

"Cats, they're all very tame. You can sit with them while you eat or play with them afterwards. An endeavour of the local animal shelter to help encourage adoption, as I understand it." Dorian explained casually. Then the light changed and he set off walking. Anders followed, significantly less grumpily, though now his stomach was turning flips for an entirely different reason besides hunger.

Forget Kirkwall, actually. Befriending Dorian was, hands down, the absolute worst decision he’d ever made.

#dorianders #dorian x anders #my fic #my writing #modern au #dragon age fanfic #friends to lovers #mutual idiot pining #dorian #anders #what if we were

3 notes · View notes

dreamcatcherjiah · 5 years

Text

Part 1

Painkillers. That was the first thought that you could rationalise when you woke up. The pain had been getting gradually worse through the months, to the point that it wasn’t only your chest that hurt anymore. When you woke up, the first thing you noticed was the feeling of constant pressure you felt in the middle of you spine, as if someone was constantly pressing some object to your back, trying to reach you heart in one fine blow. You no longer felt the burning on your chests, as things stood at present. Yes, it was annoying, and it didn’t allow you to function properly on a normal day, but the painkillers that numbed your senses more often than not these days dealt with it marvellously.

So the first thing you did that day when you woke up was drag your cold feet to the bathroom and, even before looking at yourself in the mirror, you downed two painkillers with a few sips of water from the tap. They always left a funny taste in your mouth, those pills. Then you sat on the closed lid of the toilet, and patiently waited for the pain to go away. As an afterthought it occurred to you that you could at least have brought your phone and had a look through Twitter now that you had little else to do. It seemed that these quiet numb moments in the morning were the only time of day when you could snatch a few minutes to be up to date with the news and what was old and new about your favourite group. You’d been kind of disconnected lately, so busy with work that you hadn’t step foot in the dance studio for two weeks. It’s not like your body or its condition would have allowed it, anyway. With a tired sigh you decided that you could wait for the numbness to arrive lying on your bed scrolling through Twitter, just as well as you were doing now barefoot in the cold tile bathroom.

You dragged yourself back under the warm covers and reached for your phone in the night table. It wasn’t too cold, the case, but it gave you a startle nonetheless. Opening the bird app for the first time in weeks, you were assaulted with notifications that you ignored in favour of looking through the most recent tweets. And you worried. How would you not, when one of your favourite artists was looking as if he had dragged himself back from the dead? He looked smily and warm, but the bags under his eyes and the defeated curve of his shoulders told another story. Their fans, you along with them, were worried because his dance moves didn’t seem to have that energy behind them anymore. There was also constant speculation about the reason why he was constantly rubbing over his heart. The most adamant ones were even saying that he had found his soulmate and they had died and that’s why he was looking dead standing. It’s not as if they have any proof, though, you thought. The soulmate thing was a nice little bedtime story for those who believed in the long obsolete system, but that was all it was. There was no proof, either medical, nor visual it existed like it used to in the past.

Taking one last look at his tired, but still smiling face, you left your phone between the covers of the bed and started your morning routine. Rolling your shoulders back, you checked if the painkillers were doing their job. Noticing the pain had somehow dispersed evenly through your back and it was a bit more bearable now, you set about seeing that everything you had to do today was done.

Not even lunchtime and you were already in your second pair of pills, now due to the headache brewing behind your right eye. How can a job that you enjoy leave you feeling like a puppet whose strings have been severed? Your coworkers are louder than ever today, laughing ostentatiously about some trifle article they had seen on SNS or some celebrity buying another ultra-expensive apartment you would never been able to afford even if you worked yourself to the bone every day for the rest of your life. Wow, pain did make you cynical.

Someone cleaned their throat next to your desk, and looking up, you just found your typical office employee, pencil skirt, silkish blouse and a huge grin. And you couldn’t for the life of you remember her name. But, the point is that you were certainly pass the point of caring.

“Can I help you?” You asked, feigning a bit of interest, but not so much so that she would take it as a clue to stay talking to you longer than necessary, worsening your headache.

“Always so nice, Y/N! I don’t know how you manage!” I don’t, either, Karen. I don’t. “Well, what I wanted to tell you is that my birthday is coming next week, and I was planning on celebrating it at a cafe, but turns out something fantastic happened! Can you guess what it is?” Not even stopping to catch her breath, or give you time to try and guess, she continued, with such shining eyes you wouldn’t have been surprised if she started crying glitter. “I managed to get my hands in two VIP tickets for BTS’s final concert the day after tomorrow, and I know for a fact that you are also an Army… would you care to come with me, please?”

Right about now you were feeling quite a shitty person, if you were to be honest with yourself. This girl whose name you didn’t remember was offering a ticket, VIP no less, to the concert of your lifetime and you’d been cheekily half-ignoring her. Pain was really a bitch, how did you become this person you didn’t recognise? Even with her looking at you with those open, sincere eyes, saying please as if you wouldn’t give your last cent to experience at least once in your life what a BTS concert was like… You felt terrible.

“Hyejin-ah, Y/N! We are going for lunch in ten!!” Shouted another one of your workers, inadvertently saving you from the embarrassment of admitting you didn’t remember the other woman’s name. “You coming?”

Before Hyejin could answer, you called her name and took a deep breath, braving through the pain.

“Hyejin, I couldn’t possibly impose… those tickets are incredibly expensive, and I don’t think I could pay you…”

“Don’t be silly, Y/N!” She chastised you, releasing a pretty giggle. “It is my birthday, and I want to share my happiness with another Army! The tickets are already paid for, the only thing you need to do is choose a nice outfit for that day, take your Army Bomb and enjoy the concert with me, will you?”

“But…” your words died in your mouth, emotion clogging your throat. You found yourself smiling, truly smiling for the first time in quite some time, and nodding. “I don’t know how I will ever repay you, Hyejin-ah…”

With a little squeal, she threw her arms around your neck and hugged you tight. Forgetting about your back, your chest, your head, you returned the hug instantly. You couldn’t believe how this girl had changed the course of your day in a few minutes. How could someone be so selfless?

“You’ve done so much for me since I joined the company, Y/N-ah!” She was saying, while you mused to yourself. “Thanks to you I could get a head-start on working here and I am so thankful! And I am so happy I found another Army here, and we can share this experience! AND ON MY BIRTHDAY!”

Her happiness was contagious, and soon you were laughing out loud, feeling so much better now compared to the previous… weeks, months…? You didn’t even care anymore. You were going to repay Hyejin however you could in the future. No matter how much pain you were in, or how tired you were. This girl was worth braving through it.

“Oi, you two! Are you coming or not?” Asked the same guy again.

You both took your coats laughing and headed for the elevators. What an edifying morning you were having. You had ended up with a new friend — hopefully — and the best present someone could have given you. What else could happen today to make it better?

The days between the good news and the concert came and went without you so much as noticing. Hyejin was gradually becoming a constant presence in your life. The day after her offer you brought her a cup of coffee and the day after that as well. You could see it becoming a habit, but she was such a nice person that only for the smile she gave you, you would make a little detour to get your coffees each morning. She was such a nice woman, Hyejin. You could almost forget about the pain in your body. The concert being a Saturday gave you all Friday night to panic, running through your apartment to choose what outfit to wear. Your Mang headband was the sure item, but the rest was driving you mad. Deciding that it was futile, you checked your bag for the battery, your Army bomb and your bottle to fill with water once inside. You were so excited for the next day!

Suddenly your heart constricted and you vision went black for a second. Your Army bomb crashed against the floor, but you didn’t realise it, as your knees collided as well with the wooden surface. Panting, you took your hand to your forehead in an attempt to calm yourself. You hadn’t been feeling so well lately, but not so bad either. But this was next level painful. No, you wouldn’t allow this stupid pain to keep you from going to that concert. Not even if you had to drag yourself to that stadium. Little by little, the pain began to leave, and you watched helpless at the clear pieces of your Army bomb looking at you from the ground, as broken as you felt.

As soon as Taehyung had dropped the bombshell, it had been decided that Bang PD-nim needed to know. The situation was obviously getting out of hand, the fans were beginning to notice as well. But what was worse was the slow deterioration Bangtan was seeing in the face and body of Hobi. He was usually his bright self when the situation required it, but it was obviously becoming increasingly painful and the last thing that anyone wanted was for Hobi to be in pain. A couple of weeks after they returned to Korea for the final concert of the tour, he had dropped nearly unconscious to the floor, whimpering and rubbing his chest over his heart. The skin on his chest had become dry and irregular over that spot he couldn’t stop rubbing. This situation was getting out of hand for all parties involved.

With the final and the comeback approaching day by day, they had asked their for a meeting, the seven of them, Bang PD-nim and their managers. Mainly to discuss the situation and what to do in case Hoseok couldn’t perform — which was out of the question, according to him. He was performing and that was final.

“So, you are telling me that you assume these pains, that the doctors you have seen have no medical explanation for, have to do with your soulmate connection?” Asked the CEO, with his eyebrows raising to his hairline.

“Yes, sir.” Answered Hoseok, bowing his head out of embarrassment. If it was up to him he would have downed a couple of painkillers and they would all be practicing their asses out for the concert, and yet here they were because of some insignificant chests pains. Yes, as his mother had told him, chest pains were something really serious, even more so for someone with such a hectic lifestyle as theirs. But, deep down, and after Taehyung’s confession about being able to see the string, he knew what was causing the pain. That was in part the reason why he was feeling so defeated lately. Tae could see the string, but it had always pointed away from them in the same direction. With them travelling around the world on tour, the only thing Hoseok and the boys could manage to figure out was that his soulmate was provably back home in Korea, since the string always pointed in that direction. Now that they had returned he didn’t have the strength to ask Tae about the string. Just seeing his wild facial expressions and the way his head would snap in a thousand different directions was enough to warn J-hope not to ask.

“Son, the soulmate connection cannot be proven… no one can see the strings anymore, Hobi.” Answered back the older man, bringing him back to reality.

His hand instinctively went to his chest and started rubbing it. The painkillers he had taken that morning without Jiminie noticing were loosing their effect. How much longer would the meeting be, so that he could sneak out into the toilet and remedy that? Joonie’s hand stopped the circular motion over his sternum and with a look of finality, pinned both of Hobi’s hands to his leg.

“I can see them, though,” whispered Taehyung, not making eye contact with the CEO. “I can’t see anyone else’s but Hobi hyung’s at the moment, but his is right here,” he said, pointing at a slightly discoloured patch in the middle of Hobi’s favourite T-shirt.

“You have been rubbing away at it, alright, Hobe-ah,” whispered Yoongi, eyeing the T-shirt and the exact location where Tae’s finger was touching Hobi’s chest.

Bang PD-nim was looking at them all alternatively, not really ready to believe what they were insinuating but, what other explanation was there to the state Hoseok had been for the last few months? If finding his soulmate was the solution to free him from the pain he knew the younger man was feeling, he was willing to look for that person himself even. Finding your soulmate nowadays was almost seen as a miracle, and these boys deserved the universe after all the hard work and the blood, sweat and tears they had spilled.

Yes, it was completely unbelievable, but then again, rarer things had been seen through the years. He could take a leap of blind faith for the well-being of his boys, for the well-being of Hobi.

“Have you got any idea of where this person could be?” He asked, setting the boys into a momentary frenzy of disbelief. Was the CEO really agreeing to look for Hobi’s soulmate?

“We have a general idea, thanks to Namjoon,” said Jin, assuming his role as the eldest and revealing what so many nights of speaking amongst the seven of them had clarified, “while we were overseas, for example, according to Tae the string always pointed in the same direction and we checked. Hobi’s soulmate is not in America nor Europe. No matter how much distance east we covered, the string kept pointing in that direction. As soon as we got to Seoul though, Tae started seeing the string pointing in random directions. It didn’t make any sense to us, until Joon suggested that for the string to change direction so fast, the person should be much closer than it had ever been before. For the most part of the day the string would stay still pointing in the same direction, until around 5 pm when it would change locations. The person must be here in Seoul or incredible close, close enough to follow the thread and find them.”

After Jin tried explaining Namjoon’s complex reasoning to the best of his abilities, gaining a nod from the leader, Bang PD-nim looked deep in thought, and none of them dared to interrupt.

“Am I right in assuming you are not only here for the logistics decisions for the concert, but also to ask for permission to follow Hobi’s thread?”

Looks were exchanged among the seven of them, Hobi feeling a strange sense of hope and trepidation filling him for the first time in months.

“Yes, sir” he answered. No other words would leave his mouth now, his eyes fixated on the older man and holding his breath for the words that would free him or condemn him to endless pain.

“We have the concert tomorrow, we can’t very well drop everything and go looking for someone through Seoul,” at these words, Hobi’s shoulders stooped forward and his hands started itching in between Namjoon’s to reach for his chest. “That being said, I don’t see why we couldn’t use the days after the concert to conduct a bit of a search and, with the help of Tae we could find them in a day or two. Yeah, I don’t see why not.”

What happened next surprised every occupant of the room, including Hobi himself. He jumped from the chair, shouting “REALY?” Over and over again. His body was now pray of an energy he hadn’t felt in ages. Cursing through his veins like electricity was a feeling so exhilarating he couldn’t put words to it. Euphoria. Was it? Ecstasy, perhaps? He wouldn’t be able to put a name to it even if he tried, but he just knew he was feeling better than ever.

That was until something inside him told him his soulmate was in pain. He would be unable to tell what was it exactly that told him so, but there was definitely a nagging at the back of his head telling him something was not alright.

“They’re in pain,” was the only thing he managed to say before his eyes filled with tears and he became a whimpering mess in the chair he had been sitting before, in pain again.

“I think it would be better if you took him to the dorms for the night,” suggested the CEO, giving the poor man a warm look. “We will discus our plan of action in more detail tomorrow after the concert, boys. You just rest tonight, tomorrow is a very important day.”

Helping Hobi up, Jimin and Jungguk took him out of the office and towards the elevators. The rest of Bangtan followed slowly behind and the managers could hear them whispering among themselves.

“I swear, these mood swings are gonna end up giving me early grey hairs at this rate, I just want him to be alright,” Jin was saying while they moved slowly.

“As if you would know if you had grey hairs at the rate these people bleach our hair.” Scoffed Yoongi two seconds after.

💞Tight Hearts (Idol!Hoseok x Reader)

Part 1

Plot: The red string of fate was visible when our grandparents were children. They would play around, following the strings from one person to their soulmate and laugh happily when these two people inevitably found each other. It was a reason for happiness. But little by little, people stopped seeing the threads. In bad times, it was dangerous, it was a liability, so people stopped seeing them to protect each other from harm. When I was born, nobody saw them anymore, they just felt their soulmate. Anxiety, happiness, sorrow, love, the hearts of the soulmates are one, feel the same things, but it is almost impossible to find your soulmate, now that the threads cannot be seen.

Tight Hearts Masterlist

A/n: Here is the first part of Tight Hearts!! I hope you guys liked it!! It took me so long to publish because I am a bit of a perfectionist and I want this story to be perfect, as it is very close to my heart🥺🥺🥺 Anyway, I hope you guys liked it! Let’s chat!! Tell me what you thought🥺

Send me an ask if you want to be added to the tag list.

Love 💜🌙

Tag list: @obsessoverthesmallthings247 @threedecadesofawkward @mabel-k3 @tremendousminyoongi @justignoremepleaz @demonic-meatball @hadaises @littlestsweetpea28 @rjsmochii @take-u-2-an0ther-w0r1d @gali-005 @salty-for-suga @indicisive-af

151 notes · View notes

liskantope · 4 years

Text

Some brief (and sometimes not-so-brief) reactions to major Disney films 1937-1967

Around a month ago I made a temporary switch from Netflix to Disney+ with the goal of watching all major Disney movies in order, roughly paced so that one year of Disney film-making equals one day of real life. I should clarify here that by “major Disney movies” I mean mostly just all the animated ones plus a few hybrid live-action/animated ones, and a few of the most popular live-action ones (at least the ones I remember having a song considered good enough to feature on one of the Disney Sing-Along videos, a staple of my video-watching as a kid growing up in the 90′s). I would have been interested to see Song of the South, which I’ve never seen in its entirety, but it’s not included on Disney+ for fairly obvious reasons. As I get further into modern Disney, I’ll probably skip over most of the sequels and other features I strongly expect not to like (with the exception of Belle’s Magical World, which is said to be so legendarily bad that I just have to see what the fuss is about).

This time range of three decades happens to include more or less exactly those Disney productions that Walt Disney himself took a major role in (he died shortly before the final version of Jungle Book was finished). I’d like to do this again in another month, when I will have gotten up through the late 90′s, but honestly this post wound up way longer than I was imagining and took several more hours than I expected (or could really afford), so I’m not promising myself or anyone else that.

Looking at Wikipedia’s list of Disney productions, I’m a little taken aback at what a low percentage of these are animated features, which to me form the backbone of that company’s legacy; visually scanning the list makes the line of animated films look shorter than I had always imagined, but really what this is showing is that Disney produced far more live-action movies than I ever knew about, including (and perhaps especially!) in its early days. Right now I’m continuing on through the 70′s films, but this set of mini-reviews represents the first month of watching and three decades of Disney magic.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937

This is the full-length feature that began them all and which had the burden of defying contemporary skepticism that a full-length animated feature could be taken seriously at all. We are already far beyond the earliest days of animation and have progressed lightyears beyond the quality of “Steamboat Willie”; throughout the film I marveled at the sophistication of the animation with a newfound appreciation of how groundbreaking a lot of the sequences must have been.

I know I watched this at least a couple of times in childhood and I think once when I was a bit older, but even that was long ago.

Snow White is based on one of the simpler classic fairy tales, and the writers had to come up with ways to flesh out this very short story enough to occupy well over an hour. This was done not by exploring the character of Snow White or the Queen or even filling in extra plot details (the fate of the hunter is never addressed) but by spending a lot of time on the dwarfs. The detail spent on individuating them took a lot of work from the animators, but I think their efforts paid off. I can’t say the same about the attention paid to Snow White or the Queen (pretty much the only remaining characters). Snow White has an almost entirely flat personality, with no sense of curiosity or concern whatsoever about the Queen’s designs to have her killed, just having literally only one goal in mind: to marry this Prince who she’d only seen for about two minutes and run away from out of shyness. (This is of course a trend we’ll see with Disney princesses for a long time.) The Queen similarly only has the goal of being “the fairest in the land”. Something about the particular harshness of her voice strikes me as The Quintessential 1930′s Female Villain Voice (“I’ll crush their bones!”), whatever that means -- maybe I got my idea of what this should be from the movie Snow White in the first place.

I still think “Heigh Ho” (which I’ve known well since early childhood) is an excellent song in its utter simplicity, especially when complimented with the “Dig Dig Dig” song (which I did not remember at all until a few years ago when a Tumblr mutual posted the excerpt containing it!). I’m not enormously fond of “One Day My Prince Will Come”, although I did enjoy playing it on the violin at a couple of gigs with one of my musician friends back during grad school -- I was convinced then, and up until watching Snow White just now, that it belonged to Cinderella.

Pinocchio, 1940

This was a favorite movie of mine in earlier childhood; we owned the VHS and I watched it a lot. As a child, I had no sense of one Disney movie coming from a much earlier time than another one; it was only much more recently in life that I understood that Pinocchio really comes from all the way back eight decades ago. Pinocchio taught me the meaning of “conscience” (both in the dictionary sense and in a deeper sense), and it shaped my notion of what fairies may look like -- for instance, my mental picture of the Tooth Fairy, back when I believed in her, was inspired by the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio.

It’s amazing just how much the quality of Disney animated features improved from the first one to this one, the second. It helps that both the story and the characters are far more complex than those of Snow White. The plot from the original book (which I’ve read in Italian and English) was more complex still, of course. There is one gaping hole where it’s never explained how Gepetto somehow found himself in the belly of a whale (I don’t remember whether or how this is explained in the book), but I’ll forgive that.

It’s interesting to see the 1940′s caricature of “bad (early teenage?) boy” shown in the animation and voice of Lampwick. Phantom Strider talks about the turning-into-donkeys scene as a notoriously dark scene for adults who didn’t find it as terrifying when they were children -- count me in as one of those adults! It’s especially terrifying to see the whole mass of boys-turned-donkeys being treated as slaves in the hellhole known as Pleasure Island and realizing that this is never going to be resolved in the movie -- it’s rather unusual in Disney stories for some great evil to be left unresolved with no recompense even for the chief villain. In fact, Pinocchio is pretty much the only Disney story I can think of where the worst villain doesn’t meet some kind of dire fate. Really, the range of Pinocchio’s view is much narrower: it’s just the coming-of-age story of one puppet in his quest for Real Boyhood. (And yes, I still giggle at how intricutely Jordan Peterson analyzes particular scenes from the movie to support his beliefs about neo-Marxism or whatever.)

Disney+ heads many of the descriptions of the older movies with “This program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.” I’m a little surprised they don’t do this with Pinocchio, given what appears to me a rather derogatory depiction of Gypsies.

“When You Wish Upon a Star” has become a timeless hit, for good reason. And I still find “Hi Diddle Dee Dee” extremely catchy.

Fantasia, 1940

I saw this one multiple times growing up (for earlier viewings, I was not allowed to see the final number “Night on Bald Mountain”). My mom, for her part, saw this in theaters at the age of around 4 (even though it originally came out long before she was born) and thought for years afterwards that there was no such film in real life and her memory of seeing it had been just a pleasant dream.

I have nothing much more to say about this one except that, representing a very different approach from most animated films, Disney or otherwise, 1940′s or otherwise, it succeeded exquisitely. The “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” number was particularly perfection; it was as though the composer originally had every motion of the story in mind when writing the music. At the same time, having the main character appear in the form of Mickey Mouse in some way seems to cheapen the effect.

The Reluctant Dragon, 1941

I watched this for the first time, not having known it existed. There isn’t really much to say. All that stuck in my mind was one of the shorts, “Baby Weem” (amusing in a disturbing way), and the longer segment which gives the movie its title (also amusing, in a different kind of disturbing way). It was especially interesting to see a 1940′s cartoon portrayal of a very effeminate man, or should I say, male dragon.

Dumbo, 1941

I saw this maybe two or three times growing up, and not in very early childhood. It was never one of my favorites. Later on, I learned that it was done very low-budget to make up for major financial losses in the Disney franchise. This definitely shows in the animation. However, if there’s one thing I can say in praise of Dumbo, it’s that it’s incredibly daring in its simplicity, not only to have such elegantly simple animation but in having a mute title character (instead the main “talker” in the film is the title character’s best friend, who had much more of a New York accent than I’d remembered).

In some ways I find this film incredibly cold and dark by Disney standards, for reasons I can’t entirely explain, and I remember feeling this way even on earlier watchings when I was much younger. The stark cruelty of the humans running the circus, as well as the elephants other than Dumbo and his mother, just really gets to me. (I vividly mis-remembered one of the lines I found most memorable in childhood as “From now on, Dumbo is no longer one of us.” The actual line is, “From now on, [Dumbo] is no longer an elephant”, which in a way, is even more chilling.) In this regard, there was no need to make a modern, woker remake of Dumbo containing an explicit anti-animal-exploitation message -- the 1941 version conveys this message loud and clear. Now that I’m writing this, I suppose it could be argued that this is another instance of what I described under “Pinocchio” of leaving a major evil unresolved in a Disney film. And apart from that, while the ending for Dumbo is meant to be a very happy one, as an adult I find it incredibly naive: Dumbo is now super internationally famous for his extraordinary gift and is entering the life of a child celebrity, and it’s just going to be smooth sailing from now on? I hate to say it, Dumbo, but your troubles are only just beginning. (I was glad to see Dumbo reunited with his mother in the last scene, however, which I hadn’t remembered happening at all.)

“Look Out For Mr. Stork” is a skillfully-written song I’d completely forgotten about for two decades or so but remember knowing well when I was young. I still think “When I See an Elephant Fly” is a fantastic song, especially with all its reprises at the end -- I’d had some bits of it confused in my memory but had kept the main chorus with me over all the years. Now it’s widely decried as racist, or at least the characters who sing it are decried as racist caricatures. For whatever my opinion is worth, I’m inclined to disagree with this, in particular on the grounds that the crows seem to be the most intelligent, witty, and self-possessed characters in the movie. I’m also pretty sure I heard critical things about it over the years which are false. For one thing, not all of the crows are played by white actors -- only the lead crow is, while the rest of the voices are members of a black musical group called the Hall Johnson Choir. Also, I’m not clear that the lead crow was actually named Jim Crow by the time the movie came out (no name is given in the movie itself). Now an earlier, much more forgettable song featuring black men singing about how they like to work all day and they throw their pay away... yeah that seems awfully racist.

Bambi, 1942

I have surprisingly little to say about this one -- it’s just very distinct from other Disney films of the time, in its story’s lack of magical elements, its characters all being animals and animated in to realistically model animals’ movements, its lack of musical numbers, and its plot reaching the same level of simplicity as that of Snow White. Not to mention actually having a benevolent character die, which I don’t think had been done up to that point. I remember watching this a couple of times as a kid; I was never terribly eager to watch it again and I feel the same way now, despite having majestic beauty that I can really appreciate.

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, 1949

This is the first of Disney’s animated features that I never had seen before. What a strange movie, or should I say, two smaller, unrelated movies rolled into one. I liked Mr. Toad’s half better than Ichabod’s half, or at least I found it more entertaining. I was brought up with the book The Wind in the Willows and recall seeing a non-Disney animated rendition of it (which was better and somewhat more thorough than this half-movie-length rendition). I was kind of excited when the “The Merrily Song” started because it unlocked a song from my early-childhood memory that I’d forgotten about for more than twenty years but knew from one of the Disney Sing-Along videos. I still think it’s a not half bad song, especially with the harmony.

The Ichabod story was not at all what I expected, not being familiar with the original book version (I had always assumed that Ichabod must be the name of a villain). I found it completely boring until the final horror sequence. As a child I would have found the courtship part even more boring (at least now I can muse on how man-woman courtship dynamics were shown in the late 40′s), and I would have found the horror part at the end very scary (in fact, maybe this is the reason my parents never showed the movie to me). It is a little shocking in being the only Disney story I’ve seen so far with a decidedly unhappy ending.

Cinderella, 1950

This one I only ever saw once or twice as a child. This is not counting a very vivid memory I have from around age 6 or 7 when I was watching a part of it over at another family’s house and their child, who was almost my age and nonverbal autistic, rewound and repeated the same 2-minute sequence involving the mice for probably about an hour (I was impressed because I at the time didn’t know how to work the controls of a video player).

I suppose this could be considered the second in the main trifecta of the most conservative fairy tale princess stories that Disney did in the earlier part of its history. I think one can argue that Cinderella has the strongest and most fleshed-out character out of those three princesses. I like the spirited internal strength she reveals in her very first scene. That said, like the other earlier princesses, she seems to have one singular goal in life, and that is to find her true love, not, say, to escape her abusive stepmother and stepsisters.

My reaction to this movie is overall positive. The mice were fun (I also like how their voices seemed a lot more like how mice “should” talk than in most other Disney cartoons); the dynamic between Cinderella and her evil relatives, and the dynamic between the stepmother and stepsisters themselves, was shown in a rounded way; and the fairy godmother is a great character despite having only one scene. The character of the king is pretty odd (very selfish yet his main dream is of getting to play with his future grandchildren) while not especially memorable or well fleshed out. There are certainly some great classic songs in this one -- not the most stellar that Disney has ever produced, but solid.

Alice in Wonderland, 1951

I was curious about what I would think of this one, since we owned the video of this at my home growing up and I watched it many times during childhood but as I got older I fell in love with the original Lewis Carroll books which, together, I often consider my favorite work of written fiction ever. I had not seen the Disney film Alice in Wonderland for around two decades, although I made the mistake of catching parts of more modern, live-action adaptations of the story more recently. I wondered what I would make of the old animated Disney adaptation after getting to know the books so well.

There is simply no way that any movie can recreate the true flavor of the books, but Disney’s Alice in Wonderland does a fine job of creating the general nonsensical, sometimes bewildering dream atmosphere, and, perhaps more importantly, capturing the essence of Alice’s personality. I give a lot of credit to Katherine Beaumont for this -- she has the major girl’s role in the next movie on this list as well, but she especially shines as Alice. Two other very distinctive voices, Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter and Sterling Holloway as the Cheshire Cat, also add a lot to the cast of characters.

While mixing around some of the scenes of the original book Alice in Wonderland, with some scenes of Alice Through the Looking Glass inserted, the progression of the plot is a long, dreamlike sequence of strange situations with only a few common threads, true to the original first book (Looking Glass had a little, but only a little, more structure). In the movie, everything breaks down at the end with many of the previous scenes and characters swirling together and Alice frantically trying to wake herself up. One could object that this is not how the dream ends in the book Alice in Wonderland, but there is a similar sort of breakdown at the end of the dream in Looking Glass and it feels very real somehow, as in my experience this is sometimes how vivid dreams disintegrate.

Oh, and did you know that Alice in Wonderland has a greater number of songs in it than any other Disney film? There are nearly 25 that made it into the film, even if lasting just for seconds, with a around 10 more written for the film that didn’t make it.

So, does the Disney film do a good job of conveying one of my favorite books of all time, within the confines of being a children’s animated film? I would say yes. For reasons I described above, and from the fact that it manages to avoid working in a moral lesson for Alice, or depicting Alice as a young adult, or manufacturing an affair between Alice and the Hatter (ugh), like some film adaptations, I would say that this classic Disney version is the best Alice in Wonderland adaptation that I know of.

Peter Pan, 1953

Although I never knew this one super well, this movie has a special place in my heart from the way the flying sequence enchanted me in early childhood. I have to differ with the YouTuber Phantom Strider when he dismisses the 40′s/50′s-style song “You Can Fly” as just not doing it for him, because that song along with the animation of the characters’ journey to Neverland had a major hand in shaping my early-childhood sense of magic and wonder and yearning. I distinctly remembering a time, around age 6, when I just didn’t see much point in watching other Disney movies, or movies at all, which didn’t have flying in them, because what could possibly top the sheer joy and freedom of feeling able to swim through the air? I’ve had hardly any exposure to Superman, and so the kind of bodily flight I imagined in fantasy or performed in dreams was almost entirely shaped by Peter Pan. (At the same time, the crocodile in Peter Pan influenced my nightmares at the same age.)

I only ever saw this one a few times, but I distinctly remember the most recent of them being when I was a teenager, perhaps even an older teenager, and I remember thinking at the time that it was a pretty darn solid Disney movie. I still think the same now, while granting that some aspects of the movie seem a little antiquated and certain sequences with the Native Americans are quite cringe-worthy from the point of view of modern sensibilities. Only a couple years ago, when visiting my parents’ house, I finally took down the book Peter Pan from the shelf and decided to give it a read and found it a beautiful although slightly strange and offbeat story. In particular, I was shocked at how nasty and vengeful Tinker Bell was (particularly in trying to get Wendy killed), when I had remembered her as sweet and naive in the movie. It turns out I was wrong about the movie -- Tinker Bell tries to get Wendy killed there also! -- but somehow the tone is moderated well enough that in this version I never really feel horrified at her behavior, nor do I feel disturbed at the situation of the Lost Boys in the way the book made me view them. The song of the lone pirate who sings about how a pirate’s life is short, right before Captain Hook fires his gun and we hear a dropping sound followed by a splash, is one of the more masterful executions of dark humor that I’ve seen in Disney animation for children.

While most of the songs in Peter Pan, considered as songs on their own, are pretty good, I think the best one is the one whose lyrics didn’t make it into the film: “Never Smile at a Crocodile”.

Lady and the Tramp, 1955

Despite being more obscure than most of the old Disney animated classics, I used to know this one quite well since we had it in our home. I’ve always considered The Great Mouse Detective as the most underrated Disney film of all time, but I think it has serious competition here. Lady and the Tramp is an absolute gem. While not quite as Disney-fantasy-ish with its lack of magic and other fairy tale elements, in my opinion Lady and the Tramp is, in most ways, superior to everything else on this list save Mary Poppins. Beautiful animation which shows Lady and most of the other animals moving realistically in a way we haven’t seen since Bambi*. Everything visually and conceptually framed from the dogs’ points of view. Great voice acting. Consistently solid dialog without a single line too much or missing. A story evoking the dynamic between humans and pets, class inequality, and deep questions about the place of each of us in society and choices between a stable existence among loved ones and striking out to seize life by the horns. Our first female lead who stands on her own two four feet and whose sole goal isn’t to get kissed by her true love (one could argue that Alice was the earlier exception, but she is a little girl whereas Lady is actually a romantic female lead). When Lady is approached by her two best (male) friends in a very awkward (perhaps especially from a modern sensibility) but sweet scene where they offer to be her partner, Lady makes it clear that she doesn’t want or need a husband just for the sake of having a husband to make babies with -- her standing up for her own wants in this way doesn’t in the least turn into a Moral Stand that dominates the movie. Excellent music all the way through.

Oh, and this movie was my very first introduction, in early childhood, to the Italian language (”Bella Notte”), which some 25 years later sort became my second language of sorts.

Criticisms? Well, the baby was animated rather stiffly and unnaturally, but that was like half a minute of the movie at most. And there’s the whole segment with the Siamese cats, which produced a great song purely music-wise (fun fact: Peggy Lee provided the voices of the cats) but nowadays comes across as rather racist. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it, but I will say that I’m sure in the minds of the creators this was no different than having animals of all other nationalities (Scottish, Russian, Mexican) appearing in the film with voices reflecting the respective accents.

*There may be a few exceptions, like Peggy, who seems to be modeled after the musician Peggy Lee and moves like a sexy human woman. The way that human sex appeal is conveyed through the animals’ movements in this movie is quite impressive: my mom confesses to having somewhat of a crush on Tramp growing up and not quite understanding how that could be possible when, well, he’s a dog.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1954, and Old Yeller, 1957

I don’t want to say about these movies, as they don’t really fall under the category of animated classics. I just want to say that, while I saw each of them once growing up, on seeing them again I recognize each as a great movie in its own adult point of view way that is not necessarily very Disney-ish.

Sleeping Beauty, 1959

I think this was the movie I was watching at the time I decided it would be fun to write a bunch of mini-reviews for Tumblr, as my reactions were changing a lot as I was watching. I went into the movie very curious, because while I only remembered enough of the fairy tale story to know that it was another of the very simple ones, and I remembered the one song as a waltz by Tchaikovsky, and I knew I had seen the movie once (and probably only once) as a kid, I couldn’t remember anywhere near enough to possibly fill a full movie time. What was actually going to happen in this hour-and-a-quarter long film?

I wasn’t watching long before I came up with the description “spectacularly forgettable”, in part to justify why I’d managed to forget practically all of my one previous viewing. The story doesn’t have much substance and feels sillier than even the other fairy tale Disney plots, like even minor twinges of critical thought, even granting the magical rules of the universe, are liable to make the plot topple. There is some filler to flesh out the movie, but (unlike with Snow White’s dwarfs) none of it is as amusing as the creators seemed to think it was. The only characters with actual personality are rather boring -- the capers between the members of royalty and the jester are a bit on the annoying side in my opinion. Maleficent seems to have no motive whatsoever. She actually calls herself something like “the mistress of evil” later in the movie. This is pretty black-and-white even by Disney standards, where the bad guys usually at least want to think that they’re on the right side of things or justified in their aggressive behavior. Aurora (the title character) has the least personality of all the Disney princesses. Literally all I can say to describe her is that she has the Disney Princess Trifecta of characteristics: she has a good singing voice; she is friends with all the “nice” animals; and her only goal in life is to be reunited with her True Love who she met once for all of a few minutes. The reason why I couldn’t remember any songs other than the Tchaikovsky one is that there aren’t any.

The one thing I consciously really enjoyed while watching was the fact that the score throughout was Tchaikovsky; the idea of having one work of classical music as the entire score seems like a bold one for a Disney film. As I was digesting the movie afterwards (and watching the short documentaries supplied on Disney+ helped here!), I came to realize that this classical music backdrop was complimented in quite an interesting way by a fairly unique animation style. I had been disappointed by the animation early in my watching, disliking how a lot of the figures in the beginning castle scene (for instance, various people’s faces), looked very “flat” somehow. But I’ve come to see this as part of a style where everything looks almost like a series of cut-outs superimposed on each other, to incredibly beautiful effect in a lot of the outdoor scenes.

My conclusion? If you watch this the same way you watch most Disney animated movies -- focusing on plot, characterization, action, and meaning of the main story -- it will just be kind of forgettable at best. But if you watch it as more of a purely visual and musical piece of art without trying to make much “sense” out of it (so, more like I would watch a ballet), you may find it uniquely beautiful among Disney classics.

One Hundred and One Dalmations, 1961

Whew -- what a complete and utter contrast from its predecessor! I can hardly imagine a film that’s still distinctively Disney while being more different from Sleeping Beauty in every aspect.

I remember seeing One Hundred and One Dalmatians a handful of times in childhood (when I was around 5 and it had just come out on home video, my mom almost bought it for me but decided to go with Beauty and the Beast instead explaining that it had better music -- I grew up knowing the preview for Dalmatians that showed at the beginning of our Beauty and the Beast VHS than the dalmatians film itself). I remembered a number of scenes very distinctly, including a lot of the Horace and Jasper bickering and Cruella smashing one of their bottles of beer into the fire and knew Lucky’s line after getting stuck behind in the snow almost word for word, while I had entirely forgotten all of the country/farm characters and entire sequences involving them. I had forgotten, but soon remembered, the television scenes including the Kanine Krunchies jingle. (Some years later, I think as an older teenager, I read the original book with some interest.)

Although I wasn’t around in 1961, everything about this movie’s style strikes me as very contemporary -- the animation in particular seems like the current style for 60′s cartoons. Something about the dialog and humor feels that way as well, as though it closely represents a sort of 60′s young-people-in-London culture that I’ve never seen myself (I was struck for instance by Cruella being asked how she’s doing and cheerfully answering, “Miserable dahling as usual, perfectly wretched!”). It was a little strange and offputting to see television so prominently featured in Disney animation from so long ago, and to see such a decrepit bachelor pad (with the accompanying lifestyle and attitudes) as Horace and Jasper’s in a children’s movie. The crazy driving in snow at the end startled my adult sensibilities (as I now have some memorable experiences driving in snow) in a way that didn’t affect me as a child -- scenes like that just didn’t feel like Disney after having just watched all the previous films. All in all, these novel features made the whole movie a wild ride.

I’m bemused by the fact that, despite taking place in London (which I hadn’t remembered -- I thought it took place in America), the only accents which are fully British are those of the villains Cruella de Vil, Horace, and Jasper.

Main criticisms: I found all the stuff with Rolly being characterized by his body shape and only ever thinking about food to be in poor taste (although not surprising for the times). And while “Cruella de Vil” is a great jazz number, the movie has no other music to speak of -- my mom was quite right to choose Beauty and the Beast over it.

(I realized when finishing this review that this is the only one of all the movies in the list that I’d actually enjoy seeing again sometime soon. Not sure what to make of that. Something about it is more interesting than most of the others? Especially the human-centric parts?)

The Sword in the Stone, 1963

I never saw this movie until later childhood or maybe even early teenagerhood, when I quite liked it. On watching it again, I was overall pretty disappointed. This movie has some decent songs and some fun aspects to the story, but a lot of it is kind of weak and forgettable and it’s all just sloppily done.

The story has a clear moral message which is generally pro-education and about reaching one’s full potential, but in my eyes it comes out kind of muddled because the story shows Wart ending up as a legendary king only out of the arbitrary happenstance that that happens to be his divine destiny. Merlin’s motives seem kind of inconsistent as well, with him sometimes seeming to support Wart in his desire to become a squire, then flying off in a rage when Wart chooses squirehood over fulfilling a “greater” destiny, then joyfully returning after Wart pulls the sword from the stone and is now set on the fixed path to being king, even though this involved exactly zero change of attitude on Wart’s part. The message that actually comes across looks more like, “We have to just follow whatever fate has in store for us” than “We must strive to be the best we can be”. And, it arguably even comes across as subtly disrespectful to more mundane lifestyles and career paths.

The animation is not great by the high standard of full-length Disney features (I noted how I especially disliked how tears were shown). Wart’s voice seems to change a lot, sometimes broken and sometimes not yet broken. I found out after watching that this is because the character was played by three different actors, sometimes with more than one of those actors in the same scene! This was purportedly because the voice of the first actor cast for the role started to change, but then why does Wart sometimes sound like his voice has already changed anyway? Sloppiness all around.

Still, some parts of The Sword in the Stone are fun even if none of it is stellar, and it entertained me more when I was younger, so worth watching once, especially if you’re a kid, I guess?

Mary Poppins, 1964

I came into this one far more familiar with it than with most of the other Disney movies, including the ones I watched many times when I was young, so it feels a little strange to try to summarize a similar-length review of it. Mary Poppins is in my book without a doubt one of the top three Disney movies of all time, in some respects the very best, and certainly the masterpiece of Walt Disney himself, the culmination of literally decades of determination on his part to turn Pamela Travers’ children’s works into a movie. (I would feel sorrier for Travers about how strongly Disney twisted her arm to turn her books into a movie whose style was entirely antithetical to hers, if it weren’t for the fact that the Disney version of the story is just way better than her rather weak set of stories. I give Travers ample credit for having created an amazing character in the person of Mary Poppins, but for coming up with good stories, not so much.)

I didn’t see the full movie Mary Poppins until later childhood (although I knew many of the songs) and it quickly became a favorite of mine. I went a gap of a number of years without seeing it before I copied the soundtrack from someone when I was in college, which spurred me to go out and rent it (back when Blockbuster was a thing) and so I managed to reconnect with it at the age of 20. More recently I’ve become somewhat of a Mary Poppins enthusiast -- feeling pretty alone among my generation in this regard, with the possible exception of the theater subculture -- having seen probably most or all of the documentaries there are on its production and learned a ridiculous amount of trivia about it, not to mention knowing the whole soundtrack pretty much in my head.

Mary Poppins seems to be Disney’s longest children’s classic, at 2 hours and 19 minutes. All it lacks, really, is an animal-themed or classic fairy tale atmosphere and a proper villain. But what can you get out this movie? Stellar child acting (especially for that period) and excellent performances all around, apart from some awkward but endearing aspects of Dick Van Dyke’s acting (while his singing and physicality is superb). A complex and multi-layered story combining magic, comedy and a little tragedy, appreciable in equal measure from a child’s level and from an adult’s level. Revolutionary special effects which include the first extended hybrid live-action and animation sequence. Timeless words and phrases which have permanently entered the lexicon. One of my favorite extended musical sequence of all time in any movie (”Step In Time” takes up 8 minutes and change, and I’m glad they didn’t go with the “common sense” measure of cutting this “unnecessarily long” number). The Sherman brothers at their very best, in a musical soundtrack that easily scores in my top two out of all Disney movies (the other one being The Lion King). A beautiful message (among several big messages) about the little things being important (or at least, that’s a very crude summary), exquisitely encapsulated in the most beautiful song of the movie, “Feed the Birds” (this apparently became Walt Disney’s favorite song ever, and I’m pretty close to feeling the same way -- I’m determined that one day when I finally have a piano I’m going to learn to sing it along with the piano). I could go on and on here.

If I try really hard I can come up with the sole nitpick of feeling that maybe the parrot head on the umbrella’s handle shouldn’t only reveal itself as a talking parrot head in only one scene right at the very end -- this should have been shown at least once earlier. Even granting that, this film is still practically perfect in every way.

The Jungle Book, 1967

(Let’s get the Colonel Hath in the room out of the way first: “The Jungle Book” is a terrible title for a movie. You know, when you base a movie on a book you don’t have to give it the same title as the book...)

I saw The Jungle Book several times as a kid and, despite not considering it nearly as good as Mary Poppins, similarly reconnected with it in adulthood (particularly the soundtrack). Only several years ago I found myself thinking of getting hold of a double album of classic Disney songs that I thought I’d heard about but couldn’t seem to find online. It soon occurred to me that mostly what I really wanted was some of the songs of The Jungle Book, so I got that movie’s soundtrack instead. I soon learned for the first time that The Jungle Book’s songs were written by the Sherman Brothers*, precipitating an “Ah, that explains why I remember them as so good!” moment. (“I Wanna Be Like You” seems like the clear winner among the songs.) Of course hearing the soundtrack made me curious about the movie, which I did eventually get hold of several years ago; thus I had seen this film exactly once already since childhood.

It says a lot about the music and the overall technique behind this film that I still look back on it as one of the great classics, considering how weak the story is. In particular, I consider a story arc to be pretty flawed when characters that seem significant and/or memorable come in without really living up to their expected big role: the wolves who raised Mowgli play a crucial role in the beginning before more or less disappearing (and it doesn’t entirely make sense to me why Bagheera, rather than they, is guiding him to the man village), and King Louie (who is a well-formed character that I particularly enjoy watching) really ought to come back into the story later somehow (an alternate, and much more complex, ending had him make a reappearance). The villain Shere Khan is not especially well developed in terms of his character and motives, but I do enjoy his menacingly bass voice. Still, the voice acting, the action, the animation, and the overall setting are all very solid here.

I’ll end with some random observations about the song “That’s What Friends Are For”. I think the likeness of the vultures to the Beatles was mostly lost on me as a kid (along with the recognition that this movie came out in the Beatles’ heyday). More interestingly, even when I was old enough to understand how vultures eat, the fact that every single line of the song is a clever macabre double-entendre went completely over my head. I do think it was a very obvious mistake, by the Obvious Standards of Cinematography, to give Shere Khan the last line of the song and begin that line with the “camera” on him, rather than have his voice come in “off-camera” and Mowgli and the vultures looking thunderstruck before panning to him, but maybe I shouldn’t be pushing for overdone techniques here.

* An exception is “Bare Necessities”, which was written by Terry Gilkyson, the original songwriter Disney received submissions from, who wrote two hauntingly beautiful other numbers which were deemed not Disney-ish enough to be put in the film.

Some general stray observations:

These older Disney films love gags involving alcoholism and drunkenness, a bit of a questionable emphasis given that the audience is children. This trend continues into the 80′s at least, but I don’t think one sees it much in modern Disney movies.

Watching these animated films I often find myself flinching as characters’ heads smash into things or gigantic objects smash over their heads, feeling almost surprised when they come out of it pretty much fine. I guess this a staple element of cartoon action throughout the decades, but I can’t recall a more recent Disney animated film where we see this (guess I’ll soon find out!)

There is a certain style of vocal music, with unified rhythm and lyrics but complex harmony and a capella, which seems to have been immensely popular in the 40′s and 50′s and distinctively appears in practically every single one of the 40′s and 50′s films above (“You Can Fly” is a typical example). I recognize it also from some non-Disney-related old records my parents have that were passed down to them. I’m curious about whether this style has a name.

For years I thought the Sherman Brothers did only the soundtrack for Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, only discovering they did The Jungle Book songs rather recently as I explained above. It turns out they were involved in most of the major Disney films around that period, including The Sword in the Stone and The Aristocats (although not its best-known number “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat”).

There is a particularly sad instrumental passage, played by the string section starting with a minor-key violin melody going downward and joined by lower string instruments, which I knew well from my Jungle Book soundtrack (partway through “Poor Bear”) but was surprised to hear in desperately sad moments of several of the other movies around that time (including One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Robin Hood, or at least a close variant of this passage with slightly different endings). I have no idea who wrote this or how it came to be reused so many times.

I knew the name Bruce Reitherman as the voice of Mowgli in The Jungle Book, but in watching all of these other features back to back I’ve noticed that there are some other Reithermans in the front credits of quite a few of them.

22 notes · View notes

letterstothemidnightsociety · 4 years

Text

CARRY ON MY WAYWARD SON IS JUST THE WHOLE MOOD FOR 2020, CAN WE ALL AGREE ON THAT?

Oh boy, guys, it’s here. The end. The very end. Tonight, Supernatural says goodbye for real this time. Maybe. Who really ever knows. But I’m not great at goodbyes, so instead let’s go back to the very beginning. It’s Supernatural!

So I’m here, at the season finale of Season 1. Very conveniently on the same day that the show is on the series finale of Season 15. It’s like I planned it, you guys! I did not plan this.

Also, let’s take a minute to appreciate the irony of using Carry On My Wayward Son in every season finale when the Winchesters will never be done, they’ll never have peace, they will never lay their weary heads to rest. Don’t mind me, I’m just laughing til I cry.

I genuinely think of the the last two episodes of Season 1 - “Salvation” and “Devil’s Trap” - as if they’re one episode. This is because a) I think they are designed to be a two-parter and b) they’re the only two episodes on the last disc of my box set BUT I think it’s important to note that these two episodes did not air on the same night. There was a week between them and that is...rough for an audience watching in real time. But when I watched it the first time, I was watching this exact dvd disc and of course I plowed right on through the cliffhanger in “Salvation” until the literal car crash that ends “Devil’s Trap”.

This disc! Right here! That has the real soundtrack on it, UNLIKE SOME STREAMING SERVICES!

Let’s look at a couple things:

Way back in 2006 when these episodes aired, Supernatural’s success was average at best? Even though it’s the 5th most watched show on the WB, it’s averaged a little more than 3 million American viewers per episode, which at the time, wasn’t great. In contrast, the #1 show of the 2005/2006 TV year was American Idol season 1 - an average of 12.7 million viewers per episode. So it’s not exactly a winner of a show, but it’s not too far behind the WB’s #1 show, Smallville, which averaged around 4 million viewers per episode. Still, Supernatural’s fate was uncertain. “Devil’s Trap” aired on May 4, 2006, but the show didn’t get renewed for season 2 until May 18. That’s two weeks of cliffhanger limbo, and lemme tell you, that would have been a real slap in the tits if the show had been cancelled.

Even further back, though, in January of 2006, it was announced that the WB and UPN would be renouncing their independence and merging under CBS and Time Warner company into what we know today as The CW. It was a network that was frankensteined together from the only working pieces of both networks and honestly I think that was a big reason Supernatural did get renewed. The CW was in need of some kind of programming to kick off the 2006 Fall Season and they greenlit new seasons for 13 of WB’s and UPN’s established programs. For a real blast from the past, here is their list of inaugural shows -

7th Heaven (WB)

Beauty and the Geek (WB)

Gilmore Girls (WB)

One Tree Hill (WB)

Reba (WB)

Smallville (WB)

Supernatural (WB)

America's Next Top Model (UPN)

Veronica Mars (UPN)

Everybody Hates Chris (UPN

Girlfriends (UPN)

All of Us (UPN)

WWE SmackDown! (UPN)

I think my favorite part of this list is that both Gilmore Girls AND Smallville were still on the air, arguably the origin stories for Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles respectively.

However, there’s evidence that Supernatural was in less danger of cancellation than you might think. In March, around about “Hellhouse” time, Supernatural gets moved from a Tuesday air date to a Thursday air date. If you follow American network TV at all, then you’ll know that Thursday is THE day. Historically, Networks believed this was the best day for programming. Advertisers paid extra for the combination of influencing your weekend plans and also influencing you before the weekend since you’re less likely to be watching TV and more likely to be spending money. Friends aired on Thursdays. Grey’s Anatomy is a Thursday show. Putting Supernatural on Thursday would indicate that the WB had some faith in it, although it’s possible they were simply removing something else that wasn’t working in that 9pm time slot.

Ratings aside, once we get to the finale Supernatural has a good thing going, and it seems critics agreed. I think the back half of season 1 is where the show really starts to shine and take on the semblance of what it will become. This is where you see it shift from Monster-of-the-Week, anthology-style, to episodes that focused more on character - what I like to call the Feelings Episodes. That’s not to say there won’t be a ton more Monster-of-the-Week episodes, just that those are the B-story line, less important than the Winchesters-Working-Through-Trauma A-story lines. There’s also a greater emphasis on the overarching mythos and story arc of the season in the back half. This is ultimately what carries Supernatural into season 2 and beyond. Everyone from critics to series creator Kripke agreed that the episodes that focused more on the relationships and the internal struggles of the Winchesters was what really captured audiences.

And all that gooey feelings stuff really comes to a head in the one-two punch that is “Salvation” and “Devil’s Trap”.

UGH. FEELINGS.

The day of reckoning is finally here - the Winchesters finally know who they’re after, where to go, and how to kill it. Thanks to Sam’s Oh yeah! He’s got ESP!, they know exactly who’s gonna get hit next. The search is finally over, the battle’s about to begin. But it’s not just the Quest that’s winding down, it’s a bunch of character arcs that are coming to light as well. In fact, the Quest really does get pushed aside in favor of big character moves.

John Winchester, hyperfixated on revenge for the past 20 years, is finally close to resolving his grief and guilt over Mary’s death and the way he raised his kids. He tells his sons “whatever it takes” and we know he means it. This plays out in his decision to split up the team, in his willingness to sacrifice his own life so his boys have the opportunity to kill the demon they’ve been hunting all season.

Who’s fault was THAT, you piece of shit.

Sam Winchester’s own feelings of guilt and grief are also on the cusp of absolution. We see just how similar Sam and John really are, specifically in their reactions to fridged girlfriends lost loves. For the first time this season, Sam follows John’s orders without question or complaint. He doesn’t hesitate to risk his own life to kill the demon, willing to literally walk into fire for a second shot at it. Sam’s here to do whatever it takes, and it’s only because of Dean that he doesn’t.

Dean, on the other hand, is finally struggling with following John’s orders. I love the scene where John yells specifically at Dean when he finds out about Sam’s visions (watch John’s eyeline, he is NOT looking at Sam on that line)

Exhibit A, because this show has turned me into a 19YO Stan again and I hate it.

and Dean yells back, pointing out that they were in much more dire straights than death omens and John never picked up the phone, not once, not even when Dean was dying.

It’s TRUE and he SHOULD SAY IT! And seriously, John, even MEG knows you don’t answer voicemails, that’s why she calls Sam.

More importantly, Dean is not willing to do whatever it takes if whatever it takes means losing what he already has. Dean, who was so gung ho about finding mom’s killer in the beginning of the season, understands better than ever what he stands to lose if he lets his family continue on this path. It’s a real reversal of his attitude from the beginning of the show, but the about-face has happened so gradually over the last 22 episodes that it doesn’t feel out of left field.

Because that’s what you get when you put Sam and Dean together on a cross-country road trip for nine months! The two grow and change just by proximity and the sheer number of hours they spend in the car together. Over the course of 22 episodes, Dean reminds Sam why they do what they do - saving lives - and Sam reminds Dean what and who they do it for - family, safe and sound and living their best life now. John’s got his own thing going on, so who even cares what his motivations are, I don’t, hurry up and get out of here, John, nobody likes you.

That being said, “Devil’s Trap” starts with a pretty ruthless Dean performing an exorcism on Meg. He’s not dicking around this episode, and based on the fight he has with Sam in “Salvation”, it makes sense. Dean won’t do whatever it takes just for vengeance, but he will do whatever it takes to save someone, especially if those lives are his brother and his father. You could even extend that motivation into his decision to exorcise the demon and essentially kill Meg Masters - she may be dying, but she’s been saved from being a human meat puppet and unwilling participant to any number of evil things.

In other news, Bobby Singer is a National Treasure and the Best Part of this Episode and Maybe All Episodes. He doesn’t have a lot going on in this episode, he’s just amazing and I love him forever.

I had to pull a still from the episode because lookit this glorious mullet that he loses immediately, thank GOODNESS!

After getting a reality check from Dean in “Salvation,” Sam’s still struggling to figure out where he is on this spectrum, and you get to watch him make that decision in real time. He has the choice to be like John, to do whatever it takes to kill the demon, even though that means killing his own father. And he does not hesitate to aim when John tells him to shoot to kill, and that says a LOT.

But it’s Dean who convinces Sam not to lose himself in this fight, even when he’s so close to winning it. It’s Dean’s tiny little “Sam, no!” that makes Sam put the gun down, and that ALSO says a LOT.

It also hits me right in my heart meats, just OOF.

And THEN, just when you think the Winchesters are at their lowest, beat to shit and barely holding on, THEN the show delivers its final blow: they crash a semi into the Impala.

Listen, I watch a lot of garbage, and I watch that garbage on purpose. Sometimes, that’s just what you want. I don’t rate movies and tv shows on a good to bad scale anymore because some bad movies are GREAT and some good movies are just really terrible and I don’t like watching them. I’ve started talking about movies and tv in terms of whether or not I enjoyed them. Does it spark joy? Will it spark joy in others?

My legitimate reaction to anything that looks like a dumpster fire.

I enjoy Supernatural. A LOT. And maybe it’s just because my calibration settings are off, but I’d also argue that this season is good. As in, it’s well-crafted, satisfying and (mostly) logical storytelling. Is it perfect? No. It’s a show that aired on the WB in 2005. And when I watched this for the first time in 2008, I didn’t dig too deep into character arcs or story structure, I just liked watching two hot guys fight ghosts and sometimes cry a little. Twelve years later, watching it with a more experienced eye and a more refined palette - er, well, maybe just more educated palette - I can see the skill that went into crafting this 22-episode long story.

Well, skill and and a little bit of sheer dumb luck. Cuz remember when I said that Kripke and Co. figured out that the Feelings Episodes ended up doing better than the Monster-of-the-Week episodes? That wasn’t until after they realized what a gift they’d been given in their two leads. It was the chemistry between Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki that both sold the show at the outset and built the foundation for seasons to come. Viewers cared about the show because they cared about the characters. They wanted to see these two beautiful dumpster fires struggle and overcome their internal battles way more than their external ones. If you need proof - I did not once talk about the Yellow-Eyed-Demon motives or plans from this episode. I barely even mention the quest, unless it’s in relation to how the characters are handling it, emotionally, and how that’s impacting others around them. When you come down to it, Supernatural is a show about a family struggling to survive just as much as it is about two guys saving the world, and that’s something that any audience can relate to. I’m never gonna perform an exorcism or face down angels and demons to stop the apocalypse. But I am gonna struggle with insecurity and doubt, grief and anger and family drama. That’s the human element. That’s what connects you to these characters. And when you’re lucky enough to have two lead actors that really sell the hell out of the family dynamics, you're setting up for some serious television gold.

Fifteen years after this season aired, both of these elements - the story-crafting AND the luck - are more important than ever. No matter what show you’re watching, when you get to a season finale, that finale needs to feel like a set of dominos tipping over. It needs to feel like you’ve set up for that final confrontation both externally (the quest arc) and internally (the character arc). It needs to feel satisfying and motivated when those dominos finally fall. Most importantly, you need to make sure your audience cares about why they’re falling in the first place. Who cares about anybody’s arc if you haven’t built that character connection with your audience in the first place?

For a TV show looking ahead to season two, all that resolution also needs to ask more questions. It needs to propel us through one conflict and into another. That’s what the finale of this season does. It threads the needle into that sweet spot between conclusion and new beginning. Will our heroes live or die? Will the yellow-eyed demon be defeated? What’s next? And on this side of 2020, how did they keep that momentum going for more than a decade?

I can’t think of any current show right now that I would follow for 15 years. Hell, I didn’t even follow this show for 15 years. But the longevity of Supernatural means that they’ll be the template for any show looking to last even half as long as they did. And no matter how you feel about this show, you’ve gotta admit that’s heckin’ WILD.

3 notes · View notes

sparklyaxolotlstudent · 5 years

Text

The Ladybug Puppet Show

How to Succeed Thanks to Spite Part 4

Inspiration striked me.

“And then Chat Noir asked my little sisters if they could sign their drawing. He really loved it.”

Alya was telling her friends about her encounter with the heroic duo, and how they had given her their blessings for their video. She had even gone to school with her red shirt with black dots. Nino had a black shirt, and Rose had brought cat ears for him.

“This is embarrassing”

“Nah, you look Pawesome bro” Marinette side-eyed Adrien after that pun.

“We’re filming after class. You’re more than welcome to join us. You can be Hawk Moth”

Adrien almost choked on his drink.

“Sorry, can’t do, I have a photo shoot”

“Really?” Marinette took out her phone and looked at her calendar. There was no scheduled thing, so it meant that Adrien was uncomfortable playing Hawk Moth. Not that she could blame him.

“Besides, Father wouldn’t like me appearing in a video without his approval”

“Your dad is no fun. What about you Girl? Want to join our circus?”

“I’m not good in front of a camera. I don’t think having Hawk Moth interpreted by a girl would be…”

“You’re gonna make Hawk Moth a girl in your video?” asked Juleka. Rose was at her side with hopeful eyes.

“Well, our first choice was Adrien, but since he’s not available… and since we’re making a parody, we might as well go all out. You wanna be Hawk Moth?” Alya eyed Juleka. She was already wearing purple clothes, so she could just use a Butterfly mask and she would be a nice and girly Hawk Moth.

“No, Rose wants to”

“WHAT”

“Well, Hawk Moth uses Butterflies, and I have that butterfly costume from last year’s festival, I could totally be a Butterfly villain!” Rose said, twirling and posing.

The group looked at each other.

“Rose that is… BRILLIANT! Do you think you can get your dress for after classes so we can film it?”

“Yes! I’ll call my mom right away!”

<('-'<) ^('-')^ v('-')v (>'-')>

“This isn’t working!”

Alya was frustrated and exhausted. Turns out, making a voiceover was much much easier than performing the stunts necessary for the video, even if they were just pretending.

Most of the class was with them, including Adrien, whose photo shoot was “cancelled” at the last minute, Ivan, who was reusing his suit from the movie to represent an Akuma. The others were extras or working behind the cameras.

Or at least tried to, as Alya reviewed their video so far; the first cameraman had been Max, who somehow forgot to record their performance. The second had been Kim, who got distracted and started recording a squirrel that somehow got inside the school. The third had been Mylene, who managed to record the whole thing, but was nervous and thus the footage was all shaky. The fourth had been Markov, who had managed to do a decent job, but by that try they all were tired and irritated, so the whole thing had been a waste of time.

“We could try again” said Nino hopeful, but catching his breath from the last stunt. Even with their daily parkour practice, this was still too much. “After we take a break”

“Yes, Ladybug, enjoy your little break, because once it is over, I will have your Miraculous! MWAHAHA” everyone looked at Rose. Despite the Fairy Princess Unicorn Butterfly Star costume, she made a scarily convincing Hawk Moth. “Sorry. Going all evil monologues is fun.”

“You should include more world play tho. Like ‘Enjoy your little break, because once it’s over, I’ll give you a lesson and get your Miraculous’” Now everyone looked at Adrien. Marinette wondered why everyone seemed to be good with evil monologues.

“ANYWAY. It’s useless; we bit more than we could chew.”

“Why don’t we try another approach?”

“Like what?”

“Well, we could edit the videos of Ladybug that you have taken…”

“I doubt we could get a coherent narrative using only fights with Akumas. Even for a Parody”

“Why don’t we make a ‘Top Ten ways the Eiffel Tower has been destroyed’?”

“For the last time Alix, we are not asking Chat Noir to destroy the Eiffel Tower just for footage”

“Spoilsports”

“Why not a web animation? There are tons on the net, and some are actually good”

“Because only Nathaniel and Marinette can draw and only Max and Markov can code, and none of us can animate. Plus, if we do a crappy one That Guy could gloat that we’re nothing without his ‘awesome’ movie.”

“Why not middle point? Not live action, not animation”

“… CGI? That’s even more difficult”

“No, I mean, we can use Marinette’s dolls” everyone looked at Kim as if he was joking, but then they turned to Marinette. “I mean, she already has Ladybug, Chat Noir, and a couple of Akumas. But not Dark Cupid, even though it is the Best Akuma.”

“We are not having that discussion again.” Alya eyerolled. “And the dolls, while awesome, would be difficult to control especially if we go with stop motion”

“Why not puppets?” suggested Max. “They’re a valid form of entertainment and if we make them right we will be able to control their motion in an accurate manner”

“The Muppets are fairly popular and even if we are clumsy, we should be able to make a decent show with them”

“Hmm… That would give us some suspension of disbelief in certain things…”

“Well, I don’t like bragging, but I’m an expert in theatre, and have worked with the Muppets before. They wanted me in the movie, but thought I was too young and casted Amy Addams instead.”

“Wonderful! You should go and ask the company and see if they can help us with some Muppets, or at least some patterns to make them”

“Err.. I…”

“C’mon, don’t be shy, I’m sure Kermit will be glad to help, and the sooner you ask for help, the sooner we can start filming”

“I don’t have their number in my cellphone”

“Oh, don’t worry, go home and call them there if you want”

Lila mumbled something and left. Marinette was annoyed that Alya seemed to still believe the lying liar who lies.

“Ok, now let’s be real. A puppet show is probably the way to go, but the only one who can make them is Marinette, and she is loaded with commission work for Jagged, Clara, Austin Moon and Kitty Section. It would be unfair to ask Marinette to do all that work and for free.”

The members of Kitty Section gulped. Marinette smiled at her friend reassurance, and the fact they were now playing Lila instead of the other way around. “Well, it’s not a problem, but with my other responsibilities, it would take at least a couple of weeks… a month, even.”

“Can’t you just cut your current dolls legs?”

“I’d cut your legs first. Puppets and dolls are very different things. Even if I reuse the dolls, I still need to design the patterns for a functional puppet. Once I have it I would need to tweak it for the different characters.”

“We can help with the sewing” Offered Juleka. Rose and Mylene nodded. Ivan nodded too. Everyone just looked at him.

“Mom taught me how to knit. It’s relaxing. It’s different from sewing but I can help.”

“I can assist Marinette with the engineering of the puppets” offered Markov. Max nodded.

“We can do the backgrounds” offered Alix, pointing to Nathaniel.

“And Marc, Adrien and you can do the plots and dialogues. Nino can be the director.”

“Yeah, we all can help in one way or another!”

Alya thought of that. A puppet show was a little low brow, but it was for fun and everyone was willing to chip in. Even Lila could probably help if she didn’t lie her way out of it, or got akumatized first.

“We can try that.”

Everyone smiled and cheered for their new group (plus Marc) project.

“Ahem” Chloe cleared her throat. Everyone turned their attention to her. “I couldn’t help hearing…”

“Because you were spying on us”

“… I couldn’t help hearing on purpose that you’re planning a Ladybug show made with puppets.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I want in.”

“Really? You think you can just come in, spy on us and demand to be included in our show? Just like that?”

“I’m paying for all expenses, including material for the puppets and the time Dupain-Cheng spends making them, the props, and anything else you might need. I need to approve of it, though”

“… what would you gain from it?”

“My only demands are: Marinette makes me a Queen Bee doll, Queen Bee gets to be a regular in the show and I voice her”

“You won’t interfere with the plots or try to change dialogues to make you look better?”

“I understand what a parody is, thank you very much, so as long as you don’t single out Queen Bee as a loser or butt monkey, I’ll play the part as written”

Alya thought about it. They doing voluntary work was good, but if Chloe was offering to pay for the puppets and props, it would be even better, Marinette deserved to be paid for her designs, after all.

“Deal” They did a handshake to seal the deal.

-----------------------------------

And that's how Equestria was made. Would Chloe try to take advantage as the producer of the show? Would Alya manage to reign in this chaos? Would Lila try to convince everyone that the Muppets sent her crappy socks with goggly eyes glued to them?

(No, hell no, and yes)

#miraculous ladybug #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #alya cesaire #adrien agreste #Nino lahiffe #lila rossi #ml au #ml fic #ml fiction #ml salt #Ladybug Puppet Show #Rose is Hawk Moth

253 notes · View notes

homenum-revelio-hq · 4 years

Photo

Welcome (again) to the Order of the Phoenix, Amos!

You have been accepted for the role of non-biography character MAURICE CREEVEY with the faceclaim of Tom Sturridge! We really enjoyed reading through your application! The idea of a Muggleborn character who is actually not all that excited about going to Hogwarts is awesome! He’s resentful that he was taken away without a choice - resentful that he can’t go back and be the same person. We’re so thrilled to have him as an addition to the cast!

Please take a look at the new member checklist and send in your account within 24 hours! Thank you for joining the fight against Voldemort!

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME: Amos

AGE: 22

TIMEZONE: GMT

ACTIVITY LEVEL: You already have a pretty good idea of my activity. There is also plenty of time when I’m around and could be writing but I am either caught up on Fab or don’t have quite the right muse for him, so hopefully this new charrie can fill those gaps!

ANYTHING ELSE: nope

CHARACTER DETAILS:

NAME: Maurice Creevey

AGE: 24

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Male, He/Him, Homosexual. Gender isn’t something he’s really ever thought about. He’s pretty content in that respect. He is quite unapologetically gay though.

BLOOD STATUS: Muggleborn

HOUSE ALUMNI: Ravenclaw

ANY CHANGES: This is where you can request a FC change or a change from something in the skeleton bio.

CHARACTER BACKGROUND:

PERSONALITY:

To sum Maurice up very concisely, he’s angry. He hasn’t always been. He was a relatively happy go lucky child, full of endless energy and enthusiasm. Then he was plucked from his life and sent away to a school to learn magic. At first that was pretty cool, after all, every 11 year old wishes they had magical abilities, the difference being they get to grow up and forget those wishes and live normal lives. He has to live with his childish fantasies for the rest of his life. And apart from that, he appears to be in a world where muggleborns are being hunted and killed by an evil wizard and his crazy cult. To make things worse, they can’t escape back to their muggle lives because of all the damn secrecy laws. So yes, he’s angry, and a lot of his actions are fueled by that. Make no mistake though, Maurice is no Gryffindor, he doesn’t use his anger in brash reckless ways, he is more calculated. You may catch it crackling under the surface occasionally, but it would take a lot to make him properly explode. Even slurs like ‘mudblood’ would only make him roll his eyes and perhaps give a snarky retort.

Maurice is a Ravenclaw. He is a big believer that knowledge is power. He did fairly well at his subjects in Hogwarts considering he didn’t try all that hard. He did not choose this path and as a consequence, resented it. He would often get his brother who was a few years older, to send him muggle textbooks when he’d finished with them. He was fascinated by science and maths and history. Of course he had some curiosity for his lessons at Hogwarts, and the things he and his magic was capable of, but the element of choice was important for him. It felt like by attending Hogwarts, a whole area of understanding was suddenly off limits. As anyone knows, forbidden knowledge is the most desirable.

He likes to ask questions about as much as any other Ravenclaw, but he is also a big observer. He likes to take time to gather information before jumping into a lot of things, especially interactions with other people. He by no means stalks people, but a few minutes, to watch, take someone in, before starting a conversation is quite usual for him. It’s all about making informed choices. As a consequence, unexpected interactions can throw him, making him more awkward than he’d like.

He can be arrogant, he has a conviction in his beliefs that can come across as condescension if viewed the wrong way. He can get frustrated when someone is not following his thinking quite as quickly as he’d like, which is why he’d make a terrible teacher. However, this works equally in the opposite direction. His frustration can be palpable when he doesn’t understand something, and these moments are when he is least in control. A lot of his acts of protest come from anger, sure, but also the frustration of not being able to fathom how things got so bad, why they can’t just make them better now, why people can’t see it for themselves. But usually he is quiet. Unless he is invited to speak, or is so damn angry the words won’t stop, he can keep his thoughts to himself until someone is listening and his words can have an impact.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY:

Until the age of 11 Maurice grew up in a very normal, working class family in the midlands. His mother was a typical housewife, loving but somewhat distracted, staring out of windows whilst doing the washing up, leaving the dinner in slightly too long when listening to the radio. Maurice didn’t mind, he barely noticed, and she was excellent at bedtime stories, so what was there to complain about? His father was a miner, a tough, but humorous man. He worked hard, and he always came home dirty, but played football with them in the garden the weekends.

He has one older brother. Not the brightest bulb, but the kindest person Maurice knows. Maurice always thought him brave, in a quiet way. There is no one Maurice has ever looked up to quite like his big brother, even if they squabbled and scrapped as much as any other loving siblings.

Perhaps this happy set up, along with glowing school reports and a nice bunch of friends, was why he has always resented being ripped from that life and that path.

When he was a child, he dreamed of being an astronaut, an archaeologist, a doctor, a lawyer, and what’s more, none of these were stretches for him, with his brain and desire for learning, he could have done it, he could have gotten out of the rows and rows of back to back terraced houses that he and his family were confined to. He could have taken them with him. But he was torn away and sent to Hogwarts, and his parents only vaguely understood, were proud, but in a distant way. His brother became a milkman, a job he enjoyed, but not one that paid well. He married young, his school sweetheart, and they are expecting their first child. They all seem happy enough, they have the things that matter, enough food to eat, a roof over their head, love, but Maurice can’t help but feel he could have saved them. The terror of living paycheck to paycheck, the mundanity of their terraced hells, or just never being able to treat yourself to that little bit extra. He remembered as a child, when his father would be on strike, the unspoken fear that filled up their home. He had wanted to save them from that.

When he would return home for the summer, he would act like nothing had changed, he wouldn’t speak of Hogwarts, or of his magic. He would pretend like he was no different from them, but something had changed and something had broken, and eventually he realised that something couldn’t be fixed. Getting his Hogwarts letter had been the beginning of the end for Maurice. He hated it when summer would end and he’d have to go back, but he also hated going home in the first place.

OCCUPATION:

Maurice works as a sound engineer at the Wizarding Wireless Network. It was not something he expected of himself, more something he fell into. A job at the Ministry would have gone against all his principals. A deep hatred for ‘the man’ but also the wizarding world in general, he wasn’t about to go work in a place trying to keep it all ticking over, and bore himself to death in the process.

He considered more academic positions, but he’d had a hard enough time concentrating at Hogwarts. Trawling magical forests for new flora and fauna, or raiding tombs and breaking their curses had no appeal to him. Which largely left working class positions or the arts. It was not a tricky decision.

The newspaper was an option, but the fact that the Daily Prophet seemed to have a monopoly on journalism in wizarding Britain didn’t sit well with Maurice. Without another widely available newspaper to oppose their horribly biased reporting, what was the point? He would not be a puppet for their propaganda. For a while, he tried to write his own pieces, publish them independently, but that wasn’t entirely successful. The pieces were convoluted, preachy, and he had no audience, no one to either agree nor criticise him.

Eventually he wound up at the Wizarding Wireless Network. Again, it irked him that there was only one major company broadcasting, but at least they had a bit more variation, and whilst they did broadcast the news, the purpose leaned towards entertainment. It’s not a cause Maurice is particularly passionate for, but it’s not one he opposes.

As a sound engineer, he’s around for recordings and broadcasts, cleans up pre recorded audio, fixes equipment, just whatever needs doing that seems like it fit within his job title. Most of it he learned on the job, but it was fascinating enough to capture his attention, and similar enough to muggle radio not to infuriate him. It also introduced him to the world of pirate radio.

About 2 years after he started at WWN, his friend and mentor quit, and in his last few days, confided in Maurice that he was leaving to start his own show. Technically WWN was the only official broadcaster on wizarding radios, but if you knew how to get a frequency, you could broadcast whatever you liked. He and some friends were setting up a station out of someone’s garage, mostly to play the music the WWN spurned.

The idea lit a flame in Maurice. Of course, the fact that it was ever so slightly against the rules, and possibly the law, made it exciting. But the idea of broadcasting whatever he liked, even if there was no one listening, putting something out there, finite and unique.

So that’s what he does with his evenings at the weekends, he broadcasts late into the night and the early mornings. The Order gives him a focus, not just long rambling opinion pieces that sounds like the inner thoughts of a paranoid conspiracy theorist. He has found a purpose now. His show, it helps spread news, it helps spread information, it helps spread hope. Of course there is the tricky business of making sure the wrong ears don’t hear it, but he’s a smart guy, there’s a way around everything.

ROLE WITHIN THE ORDER/THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ORDER:

Maurice joined the Order with best friend, Daisy Hookum. He was at the same Squib’s Rights March, right in the middle of the rioting, and landed square in the Order’s gaze because of it.

Maurice has always been an activist, even before graduating Hogwarts, he would hold small demonstrations, conquering whatever stage fright he might have for the greater good. Standing up on tables at breakfast to make impassioned speeches, chaining himself to statues and refusing to go to class, he even came very close to slashing a painting once before the painting’s occupant managed to talk him out of it.

Maurice has taken a lot of inspiration from muggle strikes and demonstration techniques. He remembers picket lines from his childhood, and grew up with the punk movement. He even had a bright red mohawk once before Daisy told him it really didn’t suit him.

These energies are what he hoped to bring to the Order. He recognises that Voldemort and the Death Eaters are the main enemy, but in his eyes, the Ministry are accomplices, and he feels just as violently about them. The Death Eaters may be the ones directly killing people, but the Ministry are letting them do it, even helping them to a certain degree. The fact that so many squeaky clean Ministry employees come to the Order to ‘do their part’ indicates to him, that there are just as many who are going over to Voldemort for the same reason. He wishes more of their actions were against the Ministry directly, but he can also do that in his own time.

Day to day, Maurice is generally a pretty good foot soldier, he isn’t crazy about the actual violence part, but he’ll do it if he has to. He’d like a louder voice at the table, but he knows how these things work, and he knows too many cooks spoil the broth. The fact that they are organised is enough for him. There is a system, and if he ever feels he needs to take something to the top, then he knows how to do that.

He has also brought his pirate radio platform to the Order. It’s a good way to spread news to people such as those being helped by the dissendium task force, and a good way to organise large groups of people. And also quite simply, it can raise spirits. Assuming that people tune in to listen. Maurice doesn’t think it’s quite being used to its full potential, but it’s getting there. The Order function on secrecy, whereas Maurice wants to inform the masses. There is clearly a conflict of interest.

(I see this radio show as being very similar to the Potterwatch of the second wizarding war, and if it isn’t quite at that structure yet, then building it up to that during the game.)

I think although he is happy to fight with the Order, and be on the front line of the fight against You-Know-Who, his main motives are doing something about the International Statute of Secrecy, even if he is a little distracted by other things and other causes, it all really comes back to him having the choice to fight, to flee, to live his life where he pleases, taking the elements of both cultures and combining them. And he wants that choice for others as well. A lot of his anger and frustration is on a very personal selfish level, but he does recognise that he’s fighting this cause for people other than himself.

SURVIVAL:

Being both muggleborn and publicly vocal in his opinions, does put a bit of a target on Maurice’s back. He’s had a few close scrapes in the past, but luckily that’s as much as they were. Making enemies with a lot of purebloods perhaps isn’t the most efficient way to survive this war. He doesn’t move around a lot, thankfully he’s never been traced to his home address and he wants to keep it that way. He rents a little place in Muggle London, clean and comfortable enough, but out of the way and non-descript. He wards it heavily, and takes great lengths to make sure he isn’t followed home.

He isn’t too bad at dueling, but it isn’t his greatest strength. Mostly he relies on quick thinking rather than brute strength. And paranoia. He’s seen what the other side is capable of, and he’s heard enough of Moody’s lecture like speeches to know how to watch his back.

Still, he can lay awake many nights, realising there that if he continues to fight like this, there is a large chance he won’t survive the war. Is it worth it? He usually falls asleep before reaching a conclusive answer. Needless to say, as a 24 year old, he is terrified of dying. He is just also too angry to let that stop him.

RELATIONSHIPS:

Daisy Hookum: Friends since first year, he and Daisy have a special bond. There are very few people who know him as closely as Daisy knows him. Even his family, who he loves dearly, can’t understand him the way Daisy does. They may have been brought together by class timetables and group projects, but what bonded them was their shared views of the world. Particularly as they got older, they could talk for hours and hours about their politics. They didn’t always agree on every point, but respected each other enough to hear the other out. Of course this wasn’t the only thing that kept them friends. They could have fun together, let loose, forget for a little while that things were so bad, forget how angry they were.

They joined the Order together, as they did so much together. But then Daisy left for her year in the muggle world. Since then the relationship has been strained. He understood better than most what she was trying to do, but the reality is still that he felt abandoned, and jealous, that she could go off and live her ‘muggle’ life. It’s become obvious since her return that Maurice’s idea of activism is now split from hers. She wants to take a more passive role, and Maurice couldn’t bear that.

Caradoc Dearborn: Caradoc is someone Maurice begrudgingly looks up to. On the one hand he is everything he despises, wealthy and pure blooded. But the way he conducts himself is something that Maurice admires. He can’t help but want to be in Caradoc’s good books. If he had an issue within the Order, he would most likely take it to Caradoc.

Mary MacDonald: Mary is a more recent friend. They were a few years apart at Hogwarts and so only got to know each other after they both joined the Order. A lot of Mary’s politics match up with Maurice’s, and apart from that they are very compatible on a personal level. She is one of the lucky few Maurice has let in. Of course it helps that she is muggle-born as well, he feels that with so few of them inside the Order, they really have to stick together.

He has never been the most social of people. It is not that he doesn’t enjoy company, more that he doesn’t settle. If he is going to spend time with someone, properly invest in them, he wants to be sure they are the right person. He does not do this consciously you understand, but he is constantly assessing and reassessing the people in his life. First impressions, as he’s found, are often misleading, but that doesn’t mean doesn’t heed them. He’s more inclined to search out the red flags than give someone the benefit of the doubt. The people who slip through the cracks however, get the best of him. The warmth, the wit, everything he’s been desperately been bottling up waiting for the right vessel to pour it into.

Generally, Maurice is going to feel some animosity for the richer, pure blooded members of the order, but he’ll tolerate them. He’s also going to be fairly uninterested in those who aren’t as active in the cause, or any cause for that matter. So maybe he’s made a few enemies within the Order, or at least brushed some people the wrong way. Or perhaps he’s been pleasantly surprised by others.

OOC EXPLORATION:

SHIPS/ANTI-SHIPS: No ships or antiships, I’m really open to anything. I do see Maurice as gay, so I think relationships with women would be unlikely, but I’m a sucker for some unrequited love plots, or maybe some confused one night stands. Basically anything is on the table.

WHAT PRIVILEGES AND BIASES DOES YOUR CHARACTER HAVE?

Well Maurice is a white male, so let’s start with that. I don’t think feminism is high up on his rank of causes, or racism, simply because I don’t think it’s played a huge role within his personal life experience. He probably doesn’t even realise a lot of the privileges he has as a white man.

He’s also gay, and whilst he is quite unapologetic about that, his sexuality seemed to be more of an issue in his muggle life than in the wizarding world, so it isn’t something he feels the need to fight about all the time. Again there are more important causes right now.

As a person who grew up in a working class family, he generally just resents the wealthy, and he won’t give them much chance to prove themselves to him either. This definitely stems from growing up poor, but perhaps if he’d been able to make his own fortune and save his family from their poverty, then he wouldn’t feel as strongly. In that sense it’s quite hypocritical. Now it’s also tied to the fact that the wealthy are the ones in control, both in the Death Eaters and their reign of terror, and at the Ministry, making and enforcing the laws that keep them all trapped and helpless. It hasn’t missed his attention that most of the wealthier wizards are pureblooded, so he’ll often lump them in with his disdain.

This works the other way as well. He’s willing to overlook a lot of shit that his working class/muggle born acquaintances get up to, forgive a lot of their sins. I don’t think he realises he does this, but it certainly happens.

He doesn’t necessarily hate the people who work for the Ministry, even if he has a dislike for the establishment and the way it’s run. He understands everyone has to work, and most don’t get the privilege of doing something they like or agree with entirely. There is a bit of time though where he’ll figure out their motives before he really trusts or likes them.

Law enforcement isn’t particularly in his good books either, but that is perhaps more linked to his view of how muggle police act towards protests and demonstrations.

When it comes to the issues of half-breeds, he’ll go along to the marches, he’ll sign the petitions, he’s probably up to date on all the latest views and opinions, but again, it’s not at the top of his priorities.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? You already know I love this roleplay. I’m looking forward to being more active hopefully, interacting with a wider range of characters, playing someone who is quite different to Fab as well and stretching those writing muscles.

PLOT DROP IDEAS:

I would love to see his pirate radio show have an effect somehow, either positive or negative (but maybe more positive at least at first, I’ve already done a lot of disappointing the Order with Fab).

I would love to see how his bloodstatus affects him. If he is genuinely more in danger for being a loud annoying muggleborn, it might be nice to work that into the larger plot somehow.

ANYTHING ELSE? I haven’t put whether he’s low level or mid level in the Order, I’m happy for either, wherever you think he’d fit best.

EXTRA FOR NON-BIO CHARACTERS:

PAST:

Maurice Creevey grew up in the midlands, part of a typical working class family. His mother was a housewife, and his father a Miner. The strikes and picket lines his father was a part of were some of his first experiences with activism, and the spark didn’t stop there. Maurice was rudely torn from his happy muggle life by the revelation he was a Wizard and the letter ‘inviting’ him to study at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. With no choice but to follow this path, Maurice has resented it ever since. He didn’t waste his time there by any means though. This was when he got his first taste for activism, protesting in the great hall and demonstrating in classes. These habits followed him faithfully into adulthood, developing until he found real urgent causes. At the top of his list, was tearing down the Statue of Secrecy that traps all muggle-borns in the wizarding world whilst an evil wizard and his cronies are attempting to pick them off one by one, and also prevents the muggles from fighting back on their own terms.

PRESENT:

It’s his activism that brought him to the attention of the Order. He is a good soldier for the Order, willing to do what has to be done and follow orders dutifully. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his own intentions. Maurice works for the Wizarding Wireless Network, and a few nights a week he hosts his own pirate radio station. Sometimes his broadcasts can get hundreds or thousands of listeners, all scared but hopeful, wanting to hear what no-one else is telling them, the news the papers won’t print, the the stories the WWN won’t air. The Order value their secrecy, but Maurice knows information is power, and knowledge gives you a choice. He knows he can use his show to the Order’s advantage if only it’s given a chance.

FC CHOICES: top choice is Tom Sturridge, I’m not very good at fcs so if you don’t think he fits I’m happy to go with recommendations!

#homenumaccepted

5 notes · View notes

welcometothepenumbra · 5 years

Text

JUNO STEEL AND THE MAN OF THE FUTURE (PART ONE)

SOUND: RAIN. TRAIN ARRIVES, CREAKS TO A STOP. DOOR CLANKS OPEN.

CONDUCTOR: Ah, good evening, Traveler. And welcome… to The Penumbra.

SOUND: DOOR CLANKS SHUT.

Take your seat, please, take your seat.

MUSIC: STARTS.

The junction lies ahead, so if you’ll allow me just a moment.

SOUND: TRAIN WHISTLE.

We are now passing through Newtown.

SOUND: TRAIN MOVING.

Our next stop?

SOUND: TRAIN BRAKES.

Juno Steel and the Man of the Future.

SOUND: DOOR CLANKS OPEN, RAIN.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

***

VOICE 1 (FROM TV): (FADING IN) Only forty-eight hours remain until the gates to Oldtown open, and town hall remains completely silent on this issue. Though some protestors have called for city officials to remove Mayor O’Flaherty from office completely, no such motions have been put into effect.

RAMSES O’FLAHERTY: (OVER THE BELOW) Time, time; just give me time. This will work. (SIGHS)

VOICE 1 [REPORTER] (FROM TV): (OVER THE ABOVE) Victories in the mayoral race by as large a margin as between O’Flaherty and former Mayor Pereyra are extremely rare, and it’s likely that a removal from office so soon would lead to rioting in the streets.

RAMSES: It has to.

REPORTER (FROM TV): The whereabouts of Pilot Pereyra remain unknown. The HCPD’s investigation into their disappearance continues—

SOUND: ELECTRONIC CHIME.

—but with funding to law enforcement cut so radic—

SOUND: TV CLICKS OFF.

THEIA (FROM SPEAKER): Mayor O’Flaherty. You have an appointment. With the citizen known as:

JUNO (FROM SPEAKER): —ey, get your metal-claw-gun-things off her, you lousy—

RITA (FROM SPEAKER): Mista Steeeeeeeeee—

THEIA (FROM SPEAKER): Would you like me to send them in?

RAMSES: Just Juno. Thank you, Theia.

SOUND: ELECTRONIC CHIME.

(SIGHS, GRUMBLES) A difficult conversation… an important conversation. But you’ve had those before, Ramses. And you have the most important advantage: you’re right.

SOUND: DOOR OPENS. STUMBLING FOOTSTEPS.

RITA: HEY you give me back my Mista Steel right now you nasty old robot or I swear I’m gonna fill you with so many viruses you’ll—

SOUND: DOOR CLOSES.

JUNO: (PANTING) Rita!

SOUND: DOORKNOB RATTLES, BANGING.

RAMSES: The door is locked, Juno.

JUNO: (PANTING)

RAMSES: She’ll be perfectly unharmed. I hope you know that. My goal is not to hurt either of you, and… whatever you think of me now, I hope you still know that good is what I’m after. I couldn’t possibly lie about that. Not to you. And it was always my plan, my honest intention, for you and I to work together in making that good; if you hadn’t run off like that I would have explained. You would understand.

(AFTER A PAUSE) Are you just going to stand there and stare at me, Juno? Say something!

MUSIC: STARTS.

JUNO (NARRATOR): I can’t take any credit for how well my silence was riling O’Flaherty up, because… honestly, I was shouting the same thing at myself. Say something, Steel; say… anything.

I had plenty to say – the whole way here, dragged by a huge spider-legged enforcer bot that called itself the Theia Peace, I’d dredged up a few thousand things I wanted to throw in Ramses-O’Flaherty-slash-Jack-Takano’s face. And now, standing in front of him… I couldn’t get a single one of them to come out.

My name’s Juno Steel. I’m thirty-nine years old, and, I don’t know how the hell that happened; because I still feel like a scared little kid who needs his heroes to keep sane in a galaxy that doesn’t give a damn.

That’s why I couldn’t speak. Ramses O’Flaherty was still my hero, and, at the same time I wanted him to drop dead, and the two incompatible thoughts were crowding out my one small brain and I just couldn’t. Move.

But I’d spent months by then doing things I just couldn’t do, and the secret was this: you just do ‘em anyway.

RAMSES: Juno…?

JUNO: So.

“Newtown,” huh?

RAMSES: (CHUCKLES) You make that dramatic an entrance, and you want to criticize my branding?

MUSIC: ENDS.

(LAUGHING) Oh, it is good to hear that wit again, Juno. It’s good to see you well.

JUNO: What’s goin’ on here, Ramses?

RAMSES: Going on? You and I are just talking. A reunion. I’ve found my partner in good again, and Juno… I can’t tell you how much of a relief it is. I can’t tell you how worried—

JUNO: You know what I mean. Newtown. Those giant… Theia-things outside. The closed borders, you, all of it, what in the hell is going on?

RAMSES: We’ll… get to that, I promise you. I have a lot to catch you up on, but first… let an old man be sentimental, won’t you? Because there’s, um… something I have to tell you… about our– well– …our acquaintance. How I found you… eh, well, uhm… although, it is a fact that—

JUNO: I can count on Jack.

RAMSES: What?

JUNO: (SIGHS) I know, Ramses. I know a lotta things now, and I suspect even more. For example: I know who you really are, and I suspect that’s why you hired me in the first place. Must have been spooky, setting up a big real estate con like that and then finding out the thorn in your side is the kid you screwed over thirty years ago? Must have been real spooky.

RAMSES: You… know.

Of course. You figured it out. Nobody else has, but, if it was going to be anyone, it– it would be you, wouldn’t it?

JUNO: Don’t think that’s why I came here to talk to you.

RAMSES: Ah that’s why you left.

I can’t possibly tell you how sorry I am, Juno. Everything that happened to your mother—

JUNO: Listen to me.

RAMSES: You have to understand that I had it all planned out. Her deterioration, Benzaiten, neither of them was supposed to happen. I didn’t want to steal from her; I just wanted to help the company, the people who worked there. And I was always going to send her the profits from Andromeda, every cred, but she never accepted a single payment—

JUNO: I said listen!

This is not about us. You messed up. Bad. And I’m never going to forgive you for it, no matter what you say, so don’t bother. I’m not here to talk to Jack. I’m here to talk to Mayor O’Flaherty about what he built, so drop it. Now.

RAMSES: (SIGHS) Fine, then. We’ll just talk business.

JUNO (NARRATOR): I realized I needed a drink worse than I had in decades. My throat was begging for the cold knife of it, the burning embers left behind, and… I knew Ramses probably had one of my favorites in those desk drawers – a bottle of Crater Moonshine, maybe Europa Black.

But I wouldn’t ask for it. I knew and feared and respected Ramses O’Flaherty, and– I knew it was gonna take every neuron I had to keep up with him. We weren’t shooting or brawling: we were talking. That meant I was fighting in his element.

RAMSES: You’re a citizen of this city. I’m your mayor. If you have complaints, say them.

JUNO: You shouldn’t have built all this. You shouldn’t have destroyed Oldtown.

RAMSES: Why?

JUNO: Because you kicked people outta their homes!

RAMSES: And gave them all new ones. Homes that don’t leak. Homes that run on government electricity, electricity which costs a fraction of what they paid the monopolies in the rest of the city. Homes with security.

JUNO: Security! It-it’s a police state out there, Ramses!

RAMSES: It isn’t.

JUNO: It is. I had my head out of the sewer for two seconds before a Theia stuck a cannon up my goddamn nose.

RAMSES: Because I knew you were coming to me through the sewers – a fact that the Theia Orders told you directly. There are not guards on every street corner. Only where I knew you would need an escort.

JUNO: An escort!

RAMSES: And besides, it was not a cannon. It was a stun blaster. Large, so that it cannot be concealed, but less forceful, even, than the stun lasers on your own gun.

JUNO: Like I believe that.

RAMSES: You don’t have to. I can show you, in hard numbers, the force of those bots’ firepower. The voltscanners we’ll use to do it were confiscated from the police office we closed – terribly corrupt. The very office responsible for the multiple robberies perpetrated upon your childhood home, which led Sarah to—

JUNO: Stop it.

I mean it. I’m not here to talk about her, or you, or us. I’m here to talk about my city.

RAMSES: Our city.

JUNO: You can’t just buy a town, you lousy—

RAMSES: So go ahead. What complaints do you have with Newtown? All ten minutes you’ve seen of it.

JUNO: (AFTER A PAUSE, GROWLS)

RAMSES: You’re on quite the roll, Juno, but may I interject a question into this litany of complaints?

JUNO: Fine.

RAMSES: What is wrong with Newtown?

(AFTER A PAUSE) I asked, “what is wrong with Newtown?”

JUNO: I heard you.

RAMSES: Let’s grant, for a moment, your assertion that I should not have evicted people from old, broken-down, dangerous buildings. That I should not have wiped the slate clean in Oldtown, the sector of this city with the most armed crime, the most murder, the most fatal drug use, the lowest graduation rates, the most egregious police corruption, the least access to clean water and healthy food. Though I find the assertion absurd, let’s grant that I should not have done that.

What now?

JUNO: What do you mean, what now?

RAMSES: ‘Shouldn’t have’ is useful for determining long-term policy and strategy. If you and I decide that my actions were at fault, I will write into action a slate of laws that ensure they never happen again. But no matter how many laws I write, Juno, none of them will reassemble Oldtown from its ashes. Oldtown is gone.

So what would you have me do now?

JUNO: “What would you have me do now?” “You and I decide?” I know when I’m being taken for a ride, O’Flaherty.

RAMSES: I said I wanted you as my partner in good, Juno. Discussions like this were always my final step. I trust your ability and your moral compass more than any other person, including myself.

JUNO: (SNORTS) Funny way of showing it. If you trusted me more than you, Ramses, the puppet and puppetmaster would’ve been switched.

RAMSES: You’re talking about the Theia Spectrum.

JUNO: You’re damn right I’m talking about the Theia Spectrum. You picked me up and tossed me around like a doll, O’Flaherty—you used me. You used me to kill Pilot—

RAMSES: You did not kill Pilot.

JUNO: And your Piranha-faced goon—

RAMSES: The Theia controlled you to avoid exactly that end, Juno, but you insisted—

JUNO: And who cares what else! I don’t give a damn about your excuses, O’Flaherty, because the fact is: you reached down and plucked my mind and muscles like a goddamn harp. You used me. You used me just like you used me when I was a kid, just like you used my mother—

RAMSES: Your mother—

JUNO: Sarah Steel! You used her—

RAMSES: Well then. Juno, is this conversation personal, or isn’t it?

JUNO: You goddamn—!

(BREATHES) Fine. It’s not about us. I’ll drop it.

But your point is still bunk, Ramses. If you trust my moral compass better than yours, why the hell aren’t you listening to me?

RAMSES: Because you’ve yet to make a single coherent statement for me to listen to, Juno. Not one.

I return again to my question. Oldtown is gone. So: what is the good thing to do now? Give them new homes? I’ve done that, and better ones. Treat them well, give them freedom to build the lives they wish, reimburse them for their pains? All these things, done, and many of them out of my own pocket so that the city still has plenty left for everyone else. What would you have me do now?

JUNO: Let them all go. They aren’t free; you have them locked up in here.

RAMSES: They will be let go, in forty-eight hours, when it’s safe to go—

JUNO: Safe! So you’re saying it’s dangerous! You’re putting them in danger!

RAMSES: If you wish to know what’s happening in Newtown, do not interrupt me.

It isn’t dangerous for the residents here. They are safe. But you can’t just drop a new neighborhood, a new way of life, into a pre-existing city and expect the transition to be flawless. We allow individuals across the border first; anyone may leave, but only Newtown residents and select guests can enter until the city adjusts to our idea.

JUNO: What idea? You keep saying that, but what—

RAMSES: The idea that a place can solve the big problems for us. The myth for too long has been that if we all just behave ourselves, paradise can be ours. But our surroundings have never allowed that. Now they do. In Newtown, there is no more crime, no more suffering. These things only happen when people want what they can’t have, and that does not happen here. The city itself solves it.

JUNO: That’s… come on, Ramses, that can’t be true.

RAMSES: You see? Even you are reluctant to believe it. What’s the rest of the city going to do to Newtown if we don’t acclimate them first?

JUNO: I don’t know, Ramses, but, it’s hell out there. People are scared. Really scared.

RAMSES: Well. What should I do about it?

JUNO: And the sewers – the rabbits, really? You had to kill them?

RAMSES: We… tried letting the rabbits up here. It… didn’t work. They just can’t understand. Yet.

(CLEARS THROAT) It’s, uh… horrible. I asked for them to be relocated, but with our remaining resources… so much had been put into Newtown itself, and projecting costs to the rest of the city—

JUNO: It’s awful, Ramses.

RAMSES: I know. But the human good is so massive, Juno. What would you have me do?

JUNO: Just… f-fix it!

RAMSES: Fix it! And what would that entail?

JUNO: I don’t know! That’s not my job!

RAMSES: You’re right. It’s mine. And yet you seem intent on not listening—

JUNO: Give up the job. Alright? That’s what I want you to do. You’ve only made people miserable with it, so step down and let somebody else pick this place up.

RAMSES: Like who? Is there anyone you trust with that, Juno? Is there even anyone you trust to choose someone like that?

JUNO: Y’know, O’Flaherty, you keep saying that you trust my opinions then tossing ‘em out when I give ‘em. If you’re gonna drag me in here to advise you I don’t know why the hell you’re treating me like a goddamn misbehaving kid!

RAMSES: Because I’m disappointed, Juno! You ask for everything and you don’t care if you contradict yourself and you don’t care if what you’re asking for is possible. You are acting like a child!

No, worse than that. When you were a child, you understood that a small, harmful act was acceptable if it led to greater good in the future. You understood that lying to your mother meant saving your brother, meant saving every job at Northstar! Do you think they’d still have jobs if Sarah—

JUNO: Saving my brother?! My mom?! They’re dead, Ramses, and it all started that day!

RAMSES: Because she wouldn’t just take the damned money! It all would have been fine if she just took the money I gave her!

Instead, she obsessed over what I should not have done for years, until it turned to rot inside her. Until she killed her son. When all the while, the opportunity for a better life was begging to be taken.

Don’t make the same mistake, Juno. Please.

JUNO: I’m not Sarah Steel.

RAMSES: You are certainly not.

JUNO: I make my own mistakes.

If you think they look like hers, that’s on you, but I’m a different person, in a different time, with… a different life, talking to a person she never met named Ramses O’Flaherty.

And I’ll admit it; I don’t know what’s wrong with this city, but I don’t know what’s right with it, either, ‘cause… here’s the thing, Ramses: I can’t talk about what’s going on in Newtown because you haven’t said a goddamn thing about it.

RAMSES: Hah. If I told you now, you’d accept every detail you liked, and accuse me of lying for the rest. That’s what happens when you go in with your conclusion already determined.

JUNO: You’re dodging the question. What is Newtown, Ramses?

RAMSES: This is a waste of my time.

JUNO: It’s not a hard question. No crime, no want, no suffering – how are you doing it?

RAMSES: If you want to know so badly then go out there and find out!

Yes. Yes, I think that may be the answer after all.

JUNO: What is?

RAMSES: I concede to your point, Juno. You’re right. It was unfair of me to engage you in a debate on a topic you knew nothing about. I cannot create good merely because I want it; it must exist without me. And Newtown is built to do just that. I am certain of it.

This is what we’ll do. With the time we have.

JUNO: I’m listening.

RAMSES: You assert that Newtown hurts people. That there’s something nefarious at work here. I assert that everyone in Newtown is happy, healthy, safe. Therefore: I will give you twenty-four hours to roam Newtown to your heart’s content. And if you find a single person suffering within these walls – even one person – I will call an end to this. I will resign as Mayor of Hyperion City. I will donate everything I have left to whatever causes you choose.

JUNO: Twenty-four hours isn’t a very long time.

RAMSES: I know. Believe me, Juno, I know. But Newtown opens in forty-eight hours, and there are… processes I must follow in order to close it.

JUNO: You could delay it.

RAMSES: And keep all those people at the gates without their families for how long? Another day, week, decade? It is agony to hurt them even this long. No. I cannot delay it.

JUNO: You talk a big game about givin’ me a fair shot, Ramses, but when I tell you what one looks like you got a lot of excuses.

RAMSES: You want what I can’t give. It’s no more complicated than that. (SIGHS) What do you want? What can I give you to help this investigation, Juno? A direction? Suggestions?

JUNO: Sorry, nope. Don’t take leads from the enemy.

RAMSES: You are the only one of us who sees it that way.

JUNO: Yeah, well. You have a census or anything like that? List of names, addresses, comms coordinates?

RAMSES: I do.

SOUND: ELECTRONIC BEEP, SCROLLING, BEEP.

I’ll send it to your comms immediately. Is there anything else?

JUNO: Not yet. But I’ll keep in touch.

SOUND: THUD.

The hell?

RAMSES: Your associate, I believe. I tried calling her several minutes ago, but, by now I’d imagine she has my Theia wrapped around her little finger.

SOUND: DOOR OPENS.

THEIA: The door is open. Yippee.

RITA: HA! Mista Steel, I saved you! Rita’s here—

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

—and she ain’t leavin’ until we get what we—

JUNO: I’m done. Come on, Rita, let’s… get the hell out of here.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS SLOW TO A WALK.

RITA: …Oh.

And you! Don’t you ever bother Mista Steel ever again, you…! You…!

(BLOWS RASPBERRY)

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

RAMSES: Try not to break my town, will you?

SOUND: DOOR CLOSES.

(SIGHS)

JUNO (NARRATOR): I expected Ramses to excise, or– conveniently forget the name I was looking for on that census, but, there he was: name, address, everything.

I didn’t want to call his comms ahead of time because I didn’t want anyone to know where we were heading. On the way there I tried to keep track of what parts of Oldtown we were passing through, but… with no recognizable landmarks it was pointless. This was a new city on old land.

The place was on the fourteenth floor of a new skyrise. We passed a crowd of people leaving the building as we entered, not a single stitch of fear or hunger in their faces—

SOUND: DISTANT CROWD LAUGHTER.

—they seemed… content.

I felt sick watching them; and it just got worse when I felt how clean and clear the air was, and… when I realized I hadn’t heard a single shout or threat or slur since we got here. Sick like Ramses might’ve been right; sick like I was standing in the way of his progress. I tried to slow down. Desperation was just gonna make me jump to conclusions. If Ramses wanted a fight, I had to be better than this.

RITA: This is the address, boss.

JUNO: Seems like it.

SOUND: DOORBELL RINGS.

RITA: D’you think everything’s okay?

JUNO: Not sure yet.

SOUND: TWO DOORBELL RINGS.

MICK MERCURY: (THROUGH THE DOOR) Uh, just a second! I-I’m coming! I’m—

SOUND: MUFFLED CLATTERING.

Whoa! Oh! Oof!

JUNO: (SIGHS) Yeah, it sounds like everything’s… as okay as it ever gets with Mercury.

MICK: (THROUGH THE DOOR) Ah, just a minute! I just gotta… clean up, I guess…

JUNO: Yyyyep. Typical.

SOUND: MUFFLED CLANKS.

MICK: (THROUGH THE DOOR, OVER THE BELOW) Owww!!! Ah, c’mon, stupid…! (GRUNTS) Ahh!

JUNO: (OVER THE ABOVE) Listen… we don’t know what kind of trouble Mick’s in, alright? Even if he’s actin’ weird, we can’t ask why; we—

MICK: (THROUGH THE DOOR, OVER THE BELOW) Yeow!! Ow! Ow ow ow! (SIGHS)

JUNO: (OVER THE ABOVE) —we don’t know who might be listening and it could just put him in more danger. Alright?

RITA: Yeah, yeah, I know, boss, I been with you on a few cases now, I get it. I get the pictcha—

SOUND: MUFFLED HAMMERING.

—the pictcha is mine—

MICK: (THROUGH THE DOOR, OVER THE BELOW) There! That’s more- yeow!

RITA: (OVER THE ABOVE) —I own it the pictcha now. So give it a rest already, willya?

JUNO: …Okay.

SOUND: DOOR OPENS.

MICK: Sorry, sorry! I was just uh, doing some, uh, jazz redecorating and I…

Jayjay!

SOUND: THUD.

JUNO: Oof! …Mercury.

MICK: Oh man, it’s you, I can’t believe it’s really—

RITA: So what kinda trouble you in, Mista Mercury? Are you bein’ watched? Listened to? Smelled at?

MICK: Whuh?

JUNO: Rita…

RITA: How many bad guys you got hidden in there, huh? How many? Four or five in the closet, sixteen all balled up under the sink? Spill, Mercury!

JUNO: Or don’t, please.

MICK: I– is this what this is all about, you guys? You think I’m in trouble or something?

JUNO: (SIGHING) To be fair, Mercury, you’re usually in trouble.

MICK: Well! Yeah, I used to be. But not anymore!

JUNO: And you usually sa—

MICK: I know what I usually say, but not anymore to that too, alright? This is real, Jay, this is the real deal!

JUNO: What is?

MICK: Newtown, buddy! It’s amazing here! I’m back on my feet in a big way, and I got a great apartment, and a bunch of friends, and, my life hasn’t been in serious danger since the last time I saw you! Which, y’know, is maybe cause for alarm for me right now, but I’m willin’ to let bygones be bygones.

JUNO: Bygones?!

MICK: And I’m gettin’ cultured, Jay. I’ve got culture like they write about. I’m so full’a culture that if you squeezed my stomach fine wine would spray—

JUNO: Y’know, maybe don’t finish that thought, ‘cause I feel like it’s just gonna hurt your point, actually.

MICK: Then here, look, I’ll prove it to ya. (CLEARS THROAT) Would either of you ladies like… some tea?

RITA: Not really—

JUNO: Yes. Yes, we both want tea, just… so bad.

RITA: (WHISPERING) But boss, you don’t even like—

JUNO: (WHISPERING) Maybe not, but– I have to see him try to make some. I just… it’s been a rough couple of days; I need this.

RITA: (WHISPERING) That’s kinda mean, Mista St—

MICK: Alright! That’s two teas for Club Whispers over here. Now why don’t you two come inside and have a seat on my furniture. Ha!

SOUND: DOOR CLOSES.

(WHISTLES)

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

RITA: He’s got a nice place, Mista Steel.

SOUND: DISTANT DOOR OPENS, CLOSES.

Slidin’ door out onto the balcony. Soft sofas. It even smells nice, like… like… well, not like Mista Mercury, is I guess what I’m sayin’.

JUNO: Yyyep. Real nice.

So the question is who the hell Ramses must be screwin’ over in order to afford to keep up such expensive apartments for everyone.

RITA: Huh? They ain’t expensive, boss. Probably cost less than yours, and yours is a real dump, which don’t make any sense ‘cause y’know, as your financial advisor, I’ve been meanin’ ta tell you ta start spendin’ some of the money comin’ in ‘cause it ain’t like you’re usin—

JUNO: Not expensive? How?

RITA: Oh, um, I mean, they’re all mass-produced, Mista Steel. Like an assembly line. Except, if all the parts of the assembly line were bots with that same creepy lady’s voice.

JUNO: You mean this place was built by Theias? The ones with cannons for arms?

RITA: Nah, but they know how to. The ones I hacked into so far know how to do everything, Mista Steel, or at least everything any of the other ones know how to do. It’s weird ‘cause they ain’t got no security—it’s like they all got copies of the same one mind, y’see, except it ain’t a real mind, not an AI or nothin’, just a pretty simple cause-and-effect pipeline that knows how to put the solutions to formulas into new formulas, but it ain’t like it can learn or make new formulas from scratch or– OH! Maybe that’s somethin’ kinda weird an’ interestin’!

JUNO: Uhhh, yeah. I think so.

(MUTTERING) If only I knew what the hell it meant.

SOUND: DISTANT DOOR OPENS.

MICK: Here he comes, with some tea for his houseguests.

SOUND: CHINA RATTLING.

And he only burned himself twice.

RITA: Uhh… maybe, Mista Mercury, but that burn on your neck looks pretty bad…

JUNO: Burned his neck. (SNICKERS)

MICK: Hey, I’m still gettin’ used to this place, alright? Never had a toaster oven before.

Anyway, anyway, enough about me! Sit down, come on, make yourselves comfortable. You like couches? ‘Cause that couch over there is made from one hundred percent…

…couch.

JUNO: Sure, we’ll s– we’ll sit, Mick, but… you’re actually who we’re here to talk about. You and… Newtown.

MICK: Me and…? Oh, what, did I already do something wrong? Ohhh, I knew I shouldn’t’ve switched those two chairs when I moved in! They said this place was gonna be fit to my specifications exactly, and then I came in and saw the chairs and I went, “hey, maybe they’ll look better this way,” and then they didn’t! And now they’re gonna kick me out of Newtown, aren’t they?

RITA: No, Mista Mercury. We ain’t gonna kick you out. An’, we can help you move the chairs back if you really want.

MICK: (SOBBING) I already diiiiiiiiiid!

JUNO: So… h-hang on a second. This is exactly what we’re looking for!

RITA & MICK: (IN UNISON) It is?

JUNO: Yeah, it is! I– I knew there would be a catch. So, Mick, you’re saying that Newtown has these weird, inscrutable rules, right? And if you don’t follow them they kick you out?

MICK: Well, no, I didn’t—

JUNO: Ha! So much for a brand new world order, O’Flaherty; that’s got Fascist Renaissance written all over it!

MICK: Hey, Jay, listen—

JUNO: Fascist Renaissance, Fascist Renaissance…

SOUND: SNAPS FINGERS.

Torture devices! Executions! That must be what the carnival in the town square is all about—they open the doors… then public executions, to show Hyperion he means business.

MICK: Jay, quit it! There aren’t torture devices or whatever in the square, okay? I helped build some’a those. It’s just candy stands, and hologram light shows, and– I don’t know, just fun stuff!

RITA: That really does sound like fun stuff, Mista Steel!

JUNO: But– you were so worried about getting kicked out of Newtown. That must mean… y’know, that you’re scared here, right?

MICK: No way, man, this place is just great, and I don’t want to lose it. I’ve been waiting for the catch for a while now, but I can’t find it! This place is catch-free!

JUNO: You mean besides the whole completely-sealed-off-from-the-rest-of-society thing?

MICK: Well, they gotta do that for now, don’t they? I mean it’s competitive housing for now, sure, but, once they open this up and start expanding it, I mean, everybody gets a place like this. And it’s huge, Jay! And built just for us! People who can’t do heights get the first floor and—

JUNO: So where’s the liquor?

MICK: And… and… and… and… and…

RITA: Uh… Mista Mercury?

MICK: Uhhhhh, wh-what?

JUNO: You want to stay awake for like two seconds, Mercury? This is serious: the booze. If you got a place based on what you’re interested in—

MICK: I just, uh… I haven’t felt like drinking lately, I guess.

JUNO: You? Really?

RITA: That’s not such a bad thing, boss. Healthy, actually.

JUNO: What about your hovercycle? I didn’t see it coming in.

MICK: Who needs it? The buses here—

JUNO: I didn’t ask about need, Mick.

RITA: Mista Steel…

JUNO: You love that bike, Mick. Where is it?

MICK: It was busted. Dangerous, like… ughhh!

JUNO: Dangerous like what, Mick?

MICK: I mean… ughhh!

RITA: Mista Mercury… are you okay?

MICK: Yeah, I just… feel a little outta sorts. Headache or somethin’…

(CLEARS THROAT) I’m gonna get some more tea. That’s supposed to help you feel better, right? You just drink so much tea you feel like you’re gonna barf?

JUNO: Think that one through. Then you tell me.

MICK: Maybe I’ll think about it after I drink it… gotta take somethin’ for this headache…

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING.

RITA: Feel better, Mista Mercury!

SOUND: DOOR CLOSES.

Mista Steel, how come you’re bein’ so mean to your second-best friend!

JUNO: Because he’s a chump, Rita. I always knew he was a chump but it’s still disappointing to find out just how true that is.

RITA: Oh, come on, boss—

JUNO: You ‘oh come on!’ (GROWLS) Sorry, I’m just… disappointed. I really thought that he’d have the answer, or at least that… Ramses wouldn’t sucker him, too. Like he did me.

RITA: Aw, boss…

JUNO: Either way, I don’t think Mercury’s gonna help us with this one. And, we only have… twenty-one hours left. We gotta keep movin’.

RITA: But first…?

JUNO: But first nothing! All of Oldtown, hell, all– probably all of Hyperion’s on the line, and you want to ‘but first’ about my loser friend? No. Hell no.

Yeah, wow, that sounded pretty bad, huh?

RITA: Mmmmm-hm.

JUNO: I should probably just… apologize.

Fine. But, then we go.

RITA: Okay, Mista Steel.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

JUNO: Hey, Mick… Rita and I’ve got to go in a second, but I just wanted to say I’m…

SOUND: DOOR OPENS.

Sorry…

Uh… uh… Mick? Where’d you go?

RITA: (DISTANT) Maybe he’s in the bathroom or somethin’?

JUNO: There aren’t any other doors back here. Just an… open window…

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

What the—

RITA: What the what, Mista—

JUNO: Rita, duck!

MICK: (YELLS)

RITA: (YELPS)

SOUND: BIG CLUNK.

RITA: M– Mista– Mista Steel, what was that?!

JUNO: That was… Mick?! Rita, get over here. Quickly.

RITA: O- okay!

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

MICK: What the…

Hey, my couch is upside-down!

SOUND: HEAVY SCRAPING.

Are you guys havin’ a party in here without me?

JUNO: Hands up, Mick.

SOUND: GUN COCKING.

MICK: Wh-whoa, there, buddy, be careful where you point that thing, alright? Rough-housing’s one thing, but—

JUNO: I said hands up!

MICK: (NERVOUS LAUGH) I think I mighta twisted my ankle, Juno. Can you help me up?

JUNO: Rita, don’t go any closer.

RITA: But why, boss?

MICK: Yeah. Why?

JUNO: This. Your voice. What you just did. This whole creepy apartment, it’s all wrong, Mercury, it’s all—

MICK: Me finally having my act together is wrong to you?

JUNO: That’s– not what I said.

MICK: After all we’ve been through? That hurts, Jay. That really hurts.

JUNO: What the hell is in your hand, Mercury!

MICK & THEIA: (IN UNISON) What happened, Juno? I thought we were buddies.

JUNO: When you jumped at Rita you had something in your hand! Tell me what it was right! Now!

SOUND: POWERING UP, THEIA BEEP.

Mercury!

RITA: M-m-mista…

SOUND: GRUNT & THUD; RUNNING FOOTSTEPS; BLASTER SHOT; GRUNT; TWO BLASTER SHOTS; GRUNT.

Steel…?

JUNO (NARRATOR): It… (SIGHS) It all just happened so fast. At the time I thought it felt like that because I wasn’t expecting it. Because I never thought– I-I mean… it never actually seemed possible that he would—

(SIGHS) First he jumped clean over the couch.

SOUND: GRUNT, THUD.

Then he started to run at me.

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

Fast. It was faster than I’d ever seen him or… anybody else run. Ever. And in his eyes, I swear, in his eyes, I saw… absolutely nothing. So I fired.

SOUND: BLASTER SHOT.

It should’ve been enough to take him down. A stun blast in the shoulder from that close could’ve taken down anyone, it had taken down goons twice as big as Mick and three times as angry, but– he kept running. All it did was push him off-balance a bit, just enough… for him to miss when he swung at me.

MICK: (GRUNTS)

JUNO (NARRATOR): It wasn’t a punch. It looked like a slap, but there was something small and metal glinting in his palm. I panicked. I— (SIGHS) I wasn’t thinking. He didn’t feel like Mick Mercury anymore; just some… monster, and that’s why… I shot him again.

SOUND: BLASTER SHOT.

And again.

SOUND: BLASTER SHOT.

Which all went this fast:

RITA: M-m-mista…

SOUND: GRUNT & THUD; RUNNING FOOTSTEPS; BLASTER SHOT; GRUNT; TWO BLASTER SHOTS; GRUNT.

Steel…?

JUNO (NARRATOR): …and ended with Mick, on the floor, motionless as a doll.

No, I noticed. Stiller than a doll.

Dead still.

And that’s when I realized what I’d done.

JUNO: Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh n…

SOUND: RUSTLING.

RITA: Is… is Mista Mercury okay?

JUNO: Get over here, Rita. Please. He-help me find his pulse.

RITA: His pulse?!

JUNO: It’s supposed to be a billion-to-one chance, Rita. A-and it gets worse with more stuns but still, I didn’t think it would ever– but-but I stunned him like three times, Rita, and I can’t find his pulse. Rita, goddamn it, I can’t find Mick’s pulse!

RITA: His heart?

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

I’m comin’, boss!

SOUND: RUSTLING.

I– I can’t find his pulse either!

JUNO: I gotta… uh, I-I gotta try CPR or something. But– but I barely remember, it’s been since the Academy, and… (BREATHES) Th-this is a nightmare, a billion to one chance, oh god damn it, this is a nightmare!

RITA: I can do CPR, Mista Steel. You just tell me when he’s breathin’, okay?

JUNO: You know– r-really?

RITA: ‘Course I do! Rita knows a lot of stuff. Just gotta find the right spot on his chest…

SOUND: RUSTLING. ELECTRIC SPARK.

JUNO: There! His heartbeat! I can feel his heartbeat again!

RITA: What? But I ain’t even start—

SOUND: SPARKS.

Ahhh!

JUNO: What happened?

RITA: It’s hot, Mista Steel! He’s got somethin’ on his chest and it’s really really burnin’ hot!

JUNO: He has… oh, no. Oh, hell no.

SOUND: FABRIC RIPS. RUSTLING.

RITA: Mista Steel you can’t just rip your friend’s shirt without askin’ unless this is just a thing for you two– oh my god what is that?!

SOUND: PULSING BUZZ.

JUNO (NARRATOR): It looked like a… computer chip. It looked like a little computer chip, with metal brackets rooted into Mercury’s chest. I could see it had something written on it but I couldn’t make it out: it was so hot, it was burning red, the skin around it was sizzling, and blistering, and cracking.

And then Mick’s hand moved. Just a twitch in the knuckles, but… enough that I knew we were almost outta time.

JUNO: Rita… we have to tie Mick up. Now.

RITA: Tie him up? But just a minute ago we wer—

JUNO: We don’t have time for this, Rita. Look at his hand!

RITA: Computer chips! Like the one on his chest!

JUNO: And he was trying to stick them on us.

MUSIC: STARTS.

(SIGHS) They say Theia on ‘em, don’t they?

RITA: I’m not sure, boss. I can’t—

SOUND: THEIA BEEP.

MICK & THEIA: (IN UNISON) The Theia Soul is now online.

RITA: Ooooooooh!

JUNO: It’s too late to tie him up. Hide, Rita!

RITA: Where?!

MICK & THEIA: (IN UNISON) Jay! Rita! You’re leavin’ already?

JUNO: The balcony! Get out on the balcony and we’ll see if we can find a fire escape or somethin’.

RITA: But boss—

JUNO: No time!

MICK & THEIA: (IN UNISON) Stay there.

JUNO: Come on!

RITA: (MOANS)

SOUND: PANTING, RUNNING FOOTSTEPS. DOOR OPENS.

RITA: He’s still comin’!

SOUND: DOOR CLOSES. WIND HOWLING.

JUNO: Hand me that chair, quickly!

MICK & THEIA: (IN UNISON) Give up.

SOUND: SCRAPING, CLINKS.

MICK: (CALLING, THROUGH THE DOOR) Juno! Rita! Come on, guys! You really gonna lock me out of my own balcony?

JUNO (NARRATOR): I tried to get a read on our surroundings, but it didn’t look good. No fire escape; the apartments were big, and– that meant the balconies were far apart. Nowhere to go, and, even if we managed to get out of here, it’s not like we had anywhere to hide—we were trapped here. Trapped in Ramses’s City of the Future, and Newtown liked it that way.

MICK: Come on, I don’t think this game is super fun. Why don’t you just give it up?

THEIA: (OVERLAPPING WITH ABOVE) Give up.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Was this really supposed to be O’Flaherty’s ‘good’? I didn’t know how to make sense of it. I didn’t know how to make sense of the fact that the chip that had turned my best friend into a monster had probably just saved his life, too. Ramses had decided that what we were all missing was a soul – and, I didn’t know how to make sense of the fact that so far… his plan seemed like it was working.

RITA: Mista Steel, what do we do?

JUNO: I… I don’t know, Rita. I don’t know.

MICK: Hey, I’ve got an idea! Why don’t you just give up.

THEIA: (OVERLAPPING WITH ABOVE) Give up.

RITA: (WHIMPERS)

MICK & THEIA: (IN UNISON) Give up control to the Theia Soul.

MUSIC: ENDS.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

***

SOUND: TRAIN MOVING, MUSIC.

CONDUCTOR: If you’ve enjoyed this tale, please consider donating to The Penumbra on Patreon. Our artists work tirelessly to bring you these stories, and if you have the means, we hope you will support our efforts. Every dollar helps. You can find that page at patreon.com/thepenumbrapodcast. If you support us on Patreon at the $10 level or higher, you’ll receive access to commentary tracks like this one, from actors Joshua Ilon, Kate Jones, and Stefano Perti:

SOUND: TRAIN STOPS, DOOR SLIDES OPEN, RAIN.

STEFANO: …totally flip-flopped the script on me, one time a dentist called me trying to set an appointment. And, for like laser– free laser whitening. I was like ‘oh. Well hey, I’ll trade ya appointment for appointment.’ And the woman said ‘I dunno if we can do that.’ And then I said, ‘why don’t you put me on the phone with whoever can?’ And then she, uh, clearly faked putting her manager on the phone, and I said ‘hello?’ And then she just kinda got all befuddled and hung up. And s…

SOUND: DOOR SLIDES SHUT.

CONDUCTOR: You can also support The Penumbra by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter @thepenumbrapod, following us on Tumblr @thepenumbrapodcast, telling your friends about us, telling your friends to tell their friends about us, and especially by rating and reviewing our podcast on iTunes. Every rating, comment, and kind word spreads our stories further and inspires us to keep creating more and better tales to come.

We would like to give special thanks to all who support us on Patreon, but especially to Minchowski, Camille Blanton, Garrett M, Atha Lang, Kim Zeugin, Jaimie Gunter, Fiona Parker, Jay Iannuzzelli, Ko, Canteloupe, Christine Kim, Regan, Charlie Spiegel, Karin Z-H, Ota Arcana, Rowan Collins, and Demi for their incredibly generous contributions per episode. Thank you.

Did you know that The Penumbra has merchandise for sale? It’s true! The Penumbra has partnered with DFTBA to bring you the posters, shirts, and pins your heart desires. Just go to dftba.com and search for The Penumbra Podcast.

This tale, Juno Steel and the Man of the Future, was told by the following people: Joshua Ilon as Juno Steel, Matthew Zahnzinger as Ramses O’Flaherty, Kate Jones as Rita, Stefano Perti as Mick Mercury, and Sophie Kaner as the Theia.

The Penumbra is created and produced by Sophie Kaner and Kevin Vibert. If you wish to know more about our ever-expanding, infinitely-creative team of artists, musicians, editors, designers, and managers, you can read about them in the show notes of this episode.

I’m afraid this is the end of the line for today, dear Traveler. We hope you will ride with The Penumbra again soon.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

#juno steel

21 notes · View notes

venti3dieci · 6 years

Text

I love Erkenci Kus, I do, but...

I have some problems with it.

Since it's like 4 issues I'm going to start with the least important ones for me until the one problem that prompted me to write this.

How easily manipulated Emre is

Emre makes me so so so angry sometimes! He's a freaking puppet in Aylin's hands and he know this but he's not doing much about it. In the beginning it was even worse so he learned a bit but not enough.

Aylin

The entire presence of Aylin is a problem for me. I love the actress, like I'm in love with her, she's so beautiful but her character is just the most vile, awful person in the world and I just wish that she would just go away. Also, I still don't understand what's her problem with Can and Sanem. I mean, Can wasn't even against Aylin and Emre being together until she just ruined it by taking away Can's life (photography) and his work, and Sanem hasn't really done anything to her.

Can and Sanem's jealousy

At the beginning it was kind of funny to watch but now I'm really tired of it. I don't like jealousy in general so having all those scenes where Sanem or Can have to keep an eye on the other person makes me want to punch something

The work ethic (or lack of it)

This is literally the one thing that makes me the most angry in this show!

Maybe my problem is that I'm applying my own work ethic to this but I really can't with Sanem (especially, but sometimes also other people) and her complete disregard of work. This all came out mainly from the last episode, when Sanem gets a promotion but doesn't actually work, instead tells Ceycey to cover for her and follows Can (who, btw, is happy of this and that's a problem on its own). My work ethic is: when you are working, nothing else exists, you are being paid to do something so you do it, as well as you can. Nothing else should enter the work environment, so, if you have problems outside of work, those problems stay out, if you have problems in the work environment, unless it's something work related that problem stays out too. The only things that could disrupt you from work is if someone is sick, or dying, or in danger and you need to leave. If your problem is the fact that the boss/your boyfriend goes somewhere without telling you, that's not something you can be excused for.

For the work stuff, I stand with Deren, wholeheartedly. She may say what she says because of her jealousy, because she's in love with Can, but she also has a point. And if I were working there, I would think too, like the other colligues, that she got the promotion just because she's with the boss.

Let's admit this, Sanem hardly works. She definitely worked sometimes, and when she was working she was good at it, but she also made a lot of mess, she disappears a lot, she made a huge mistake with a project she was coordinating so I don't think she actually deserved the promotion. She did deserve at least a raise because with the presentation she did an excellent job, facing a problem that was unexpected and getting out of it like a winner, but a promotion, in my opinion, is a bit too much.

And Can, also, has a work ethic that sometimes is awful and makes me stand with Emre (which is a huge red flag, if you stand with the bad guy). In the last episode, he should have been a bit happy if Sanem was inside (supposedly working) because it means that the business he's the boss' of is not going bad, but no, he pulls her away and they go to have their fun while they should be working to make the business (who had major problems in the last weeks) thriving. Then he comes back because of Seyda (I'm not sure if this is the way you spell her name) who managed to arrange a dinner with some big guy just for him and he has the guts to say that he can't because he has other things to do (date with Sanem)? Like, that was made specifically for him, at his request, with someone who is influential (I think) and also very busy, someone that freed his time just for you, and you refuse? If I were Emre, and I found out that his important thing was a date with Sanem, I would have told him to just leave the company, since he clearly doesn't want to work, and just wants to be with Sanem. At this point it is better to have Emre be the boss, since Can doesn't seem to care enough about his father's company. I really don't want Emre to be the boss, but at least he wants to work, not like Can.

This is a really long rant, but it makes me so mad! If I had friends that watched this show or other Turkish tv shows I would have made like a 20 minutes Wattsapp audio about it, but sadly they miss out on such great shows so I can only rant on here. If you reached this point props to you, I love you, and I'm sorry that you had to survive this long ass text

#erkenci kus #erkenci kuş #Rant #turkish tv series

24 notes · View notes

starryburglar-archive · 5 years

Text

Ignis Info

Full name: Ignis Crane

Species: Human

Age: 19 ( verse dependant )

Sexuality: Heterosexual

FC(s): Tsugumi Hazawa ( Bandori ) || Makoto Nijima ( Persona 5 ) || Shailene Woodley

Bio: Ignis is the only child of the Crane family, a powerful and rich family from Germany. Their business? It used to be dedicated to selling to the public nothing but the most quality art products at an accessible price, while also participating in charities. That has changed, however, with the death of the previous head, Marcus Crane. It was a tragedy, all happening during a car accident – it was considered a miracle that his daughter, Ignis, survived with little to no injuries outside of a few broken bones.

The death of her father caused much pain to the little girl – she was six at the time, and the two of them were very close: he introduced her to the world of art, the basics of drawings and painting, that there are no limits to the imagination. Once he was out of the picture, however, not only did Elizabeth take over the company, changing the angle from art to calculators and office materials (and stopping the charities altogether) but also had complete control over her daughter’s agency and will for almost a decade. Strick classes, no light in her life, forced to become a perfect woman who knew multiple languages and how to behave like a proper upper-class lady. The few times Ignis defied her mother at first, the punishments could be either several slaps in the face of being locked in her bedroom for hours.

Ignis was scarred for life, being physically and mentally abused and without any way of contacting the outside world. But everyone has their limits – she reached her at the age of fourteen. She wanted a life, a normal life, to feel the sun, go to school like most teenagers, to simply… live. It took more than a couple of months, but her plan worked. With nothing but a small bag pack, her most important belongings, and cutting any way her mother could use to track her – so, no mobile phone, no credit cards, no electronic devices – and left the manor in the depths of the night, took the first train available to France, and left Germany during a cold winter’s night.

It’s not like she travelled to another country without a plan in mind. She knew exactly why to go to France and not anywhere else. That country is where the only living relative who actually cares about her lives: Marianne Crane, her grandmother and father’s mother. The woman, currently in her late 60’s, was surprised to see her only granddaughter, now fully a teen, at her door’s house so early in the morning. But it didn’t take too long for the woman to catch up to what happened – after all, she disliked Elizabeth Woodford from day one, never liked the idea of her son marrying her, and learning what she did to Ignis only increased her hate for the woman. They began a new life together, depending on one another, helping each other… Marianne did everything she could to help Ignis get enrolled into a decent High School. It started slowly, cutting ties with the past – such as cutting Ignis’ long hair to have it barely above her shoulders – and having new additions to the family, such as a Dalmatian whom Ignis named Shady.

Due to the lack of communication with other people – either because she didn’t see that many people or wasn’t allowed to talk period – Ignis has a hard time opening up to others. Not to mention she avoids talking too in-depth about her family outside of her grandmother and her father; to avoid the bad memories, of course, but also to prevent from being recognised as the daughter of a rich family. Despite the awkwardness at first, it doesn’t change the fact that she’s a sweet girl who will offer a hand to others if necessary. Another downside to not be used to social interactions is being quite slow in the romantic department, not catching up to flirting or the like as fast as most people.

-----------------------------------------------

V001: Timid Artist

Default main verse. All the information necessary is at her bio page; this is also her default “College Verse”, in which she’s studying to get a degree in arts. Aside from getting paid by walking the dogs of the neighbourhood, Ignis accepts commissions online and gets paid via Patreon. She would like to teach young kids how to draw, or just be a Kindergarten teacher in some shape.

V002: Sanctuary Underneath the School

Amour Sucre verse. After moving with her grandmother, Ignis never thought she would end up assisting to a school like this. Very pink and bright, even the same sounds like out of a romantic comedy. But she does her best to live her daily life as normal as possible, being careful to not get recognized by who her mother is by accident. She usually spends time in the basement where she paints the walls… very illegal, but is where she goes to find peace and leave behind expectations and mean girls.

NOTE: Age is 16 - 17 in this verse within the context of the original Amour Sucre. If it goes into the realm of MCLUL, then her main age is 19 and she’s ( in most versions of this AU ) married to Castiel Heinsworth / @kindcstguardian

V003: Hiding in Plain Sight

Alternate main verse. Ignis underestimated the persistence and resources her mother has at her disposal being a millionaire and all. She and her grandmother had to react quickly, moving to a country which they were sure her mother wouldn’t suspect of them living there. Marianne, luckily, made the process easier than it could’ve been thanks to some old friends from said country, but is still a sad departure.

V004: A Stranger in the Chat

Mystic Messanger verse. It all started with a mysterious cell phone. Ignis had only picked it up to return it to its owner if given the chance. One thing led to another and curiosity killed the cat – it’s still strange how all of this was happening not too long after moving to Korea with her grandmother. And now, the artist was stuck in a mysterious apartment with nothing but her backpack, her cell phone, and a private app to RFA’s chat log.

V005: Royalty from Beelzenia [Private w/kindcstguardian]

Madness of Duke Venomania verse. The Crane aristocrats, like any other citizen from the Beelzenian Empire, share the same physical features. Brown and red hair or eyes. Ignis inherited the red eyes from her father, who inherited them from his mother way back when -- the bright brown hair, on the other hand, came from her mother.

The happy family didn’t last for long, as her father tragically passed away. The reason? Poison. Someone had poisoned the aristocrat kind man, leaving his wife and daughter alone in the world. This is when the lady began to show her true colours -- Ignis saw just how cruel and despicable she could be. Elizabeth spent the majority of the following 12 years shaping Ignis into the perfect, passive little wife, all while searching for a suitor for her.

Soon enough, much quicker than Ignis would’ve anticipated, she was engaged to Sateriaris Venomania.

V006: Speechless Lady

Royalty verse. Ever since her father’s death, Ignis has been living under an iron grim. Always occupied, always with etiquette lessons on how to be a proper Lady of society. She knew what her mother was trying to do. It was so obvious to her and the staff of the mansion. Ignis Crane was to be made into the perfect bride to be, so the search for a husband would be easier on her end and Elizabeth Crane could arrange a marriage for Ignis. All for the sake of money, titles and recognition.

She couldn’t say no, she couldn’t say anything ever. Ignis was nothing but a puppet for her mother, to be toyed and played with until she was perfect.

V007: Witness my Resolve

Persona 5 or Sweet Persona verse. Despite doing the impossible, Ignis didn’t feel like she had accomplished much. Sure, being with her grandmother and as far away from her old life as possible, down to the point of moving to Japan, was leagues better than the life of abuse she endured for so long. And yet, nothing about her had changed -- Ignis was still a pretty reserved girl who had trouble interacting with others and opening up ( not to mention the language barrier as a new obstacle ).

Things didn’t get better once she began attending Shujin Academy. All alone and timid, not many people tried to talk to her, and those who did struggle with their broken English or her broken Japanese. The gym coach, Mr Kamoshida, didn’t make things better for her. He kept pushing her forward under the excuse of “It will help you open up!” but it only made her more anxious, not to mention the guy itself freaked out, even if Ignis never knew why for half a year.

Imagine her surprise, the following months, when the pieces began to fall into place. It all happened one day after class, all Ignis wanted to do was return to Sakamoto Ryuji his school book that he had forgotten at the end of the class, but instead of simply returning it to him and leaving, she ended up on a reality much like her own but very different at the same time.

That’s when she saw them. The two boys and one girl, one being Sakamoto, all dressed up in leather, black or red, and wearing masks, with them was a strange-looking cat ( and it talked! ), and in front of them was Kamoshida... a Kamoshida that resembled her worst nightmares, one that made her feel scared for the first time since she ran away. The strange creatures immediately captured her, bringing her up to Kamoshida, who only laughed at her suffering. And all Ignis could think of was... Why? Why was this happening? Why couldn’t she do anything to escape? But, is running away the best option?

Then, she heard a voice. ‘My, my, you have finally awoken, my child,’ and her head spin and hurt like hell. ‘Running away can only get you so far. Is this how you really want to live your life? Afraid like a mouse, constantly running? Deep down, you know you don’t want this,’ her body juggled in all directions while still feeling the firm grip of the monsters, she was trying to escape. ‘I am Thou, Thou art I. Let me grant you the means to push forward and not turn back in fear.’

Ignis felt a rush of adrenaline in her veins, enough to set herself free while feeling something take form in her face. A mask, a Venetian mask, and she knew what to do next. When she ripped it off her face, it felt like being born again. Her clothes changed to go with the others, her right hand now held a long silver trident and behind her stood her Persona, Jean D’Arc.

CODENAME: DA VINCI || PERSONA: JEAN D’ARC || ARCANA: LOVERS

Note: Since this verse will be used for the Sweet Persona AU as well ( a MCL AU heavily inspired by P5 ), her awakening takes place inside a different palace. Also, her age in this verse isn’t 19 but 16.

V008: Beginning Anew

Fire Emblem Three Houses verse. To be written in more detail later but here are some important tidbits:

Ignis is the only child of the Cranes, which is a respected noble family from the Empire.

Her father died when she was young and, not too long after, her mother took control over her life, forcing her to be the perfect child.

It was unknown for 10 years but Ignis bears a Minor Crest, even though nobody can tell which crest it is. (That crest is one of the ones lost to history, the Crest of Noa)

This way of living was too much for her. At the age of fourteen, she fleed the place that used to be her home, nowadays known as the House Woodford, and left the Empire.

She went to live with her grandmother, who is currently living in the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus.

The girl has an affinity for magic; with the help of her grandmother, she enrolled in the Royal School of Sorcery in Fhirdiad. Her top marks and dedication guaranteed her a letter of recommendation to, later on, enroll in the Officers Academy as a student of the Blue Lions.

She’s 16 pre-timeskip and 20 post-timeskip.

She specializes in magic and sucks with most weapons except the bow. Her class is probably the Warlock.

V009: Obey me

Obey me verse. How did this happen? How did this come to be? One second, Ignis was on her way home from class, already thinking about what to cook for dinner and to also do some quick grocery shopping for the dogs, and then the next... She, well, si not even in the same familiar streets or in the same familiar town anymore. It took more than a couple of hours for her to catch up on what’s going on and even then this all feels like a strange dream. The Royal Academy o Diavolo?? She’s a transfer student from the human side?? There are demons in this realm?? At least half of them are named after the demons linked to the seven deadly sins? Oh boy, this is going to be wild.

V010: Overwatch

Overwatch verse. Tired of being forced to be basically a living doll --- never talking back, never acting out of line, always looing, acting and being perfect, always being AFRAID --- for her entire life after her father’s death, Ignis Crane decided to take matters into her own hands. It took at least a year to plan out and do it on her own so she wouldn’t be discovered, plus the many trial and errors she run across when building her own machinery, but once she was ready, the heist began.

Ignis cut her long, beautiful brown hair, leaving it as short as a boy’s haircut; her perfectly tidy and clean dresses were replaced by a worn-out hoodie, shirt, jeans and running shoes, all covered in dirty, paint or both; the hood of said hoodie covered her head, while a grey scarf covered her face just below the nose and a pair of goggles rested on the upper side of her face.

At first glance, Ignis looked like a street-rat graffiti artist ready to vandalize any wall no matter what. Well, good, the disguise worked. Sure, she carried around lots of spray paint cans but not all of them worked as intended, not to mention the flamethrower she had on her back alongside her backpack with money, some food and replacement parts. The spray paint cans had paint in them, yes, but at least half of them were modified to work as bombs -- her way to stop the police or omnic ( or anyone, really ) chasing after her by leaving them in a sticky situation against the ground or wall. She also carried lots and lots of bedbugs to leave on the ground. The flamethrower, which she found by chance some years ago, was cleaned and refilled with fuel ( which her bag had more spares in case it runs out ). Ignis does have one more ace under her sleeve, a bomb, but didn’t have time to make a lot of those and still inexperienced in that area, so those little guys are reserved for special circumstances.

Her main goal, at first, was to not only become a runaway but to also expose her step-mother for the vile that she is. Her first heist was to her mother’s money vault, after all, and Ignis took as much money as she could before leaving, but not without leaving a message with her spray paint: Elizabeth Woodford is a Talon associate, she’s an enemy of society --- Phoenix. A few days later, after she began appearing on the news as a fugitive and criminal, Ignis felt so much satisfaction for ruining with her mother’s perfect image that she thought of continuing on with this, to mess with as many asshole rich people as possible and steal ( some of ) their money for those who need it.

V011: Kamiaso

Kamigami no Asobi verse. In order for his plan to proceed without any inconveniences, Zeus decided to bring not one but two humans to the Garden, to act as teachers and guides to the gods. Kusanagi Yui was his first choice from the beginning, but picking another worthy human was a tough choice. In the end, after searching and searching, inspecting different countries and such, he found his second candidate.

Ignis Crane, after returning home from her college classes, was planning to rest for a bit before doing her homework and other house chores. However, just as she was about to lay down on the sofa, a powerful light engulfed her whole, blinding her. The last thing she heard was Shady’s barks as the scenery around her changed. -- she was no longer at her house in Paris, France, but in a world unlike any other, and soon to be tasked to get along and live with literal all-mighty Gods.

-----------------------------------------------

CONNECTIONS

Castiel Heinsworth :: [ Bae ]

:: Ignis ♥ At last I see the light [ Castiel ( kindcstguardian ) ] ::

Zen || Hyun Ryu :: [ Bae ]

:: Ignis ♥ Foolishly in love [ Zen ( kindcstguardian ) ] ::

Karamatsu Matsuno :: [ Bae ]

pending tag

Arthur Kirkland :: [ Bae ]

tba

Daria Novak :: [ Bae ]

pending tag

Kentin Bronsworth :: [ Martu ]

pending tag

1 note · View note